CANBERRA, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is facing a revolt from his own party over his signature energy policy, the national energy guarantee (NEG).
The Liberal National Party (LNP) agreed to take the NEG to an open vote in parliament on Monday but 10 Members of Parliament (MP) reserved the right to vote against the policy unless amendments are made.
Conservatives within the party, led by former PM Tony Abbott, have made it clear that they will not support any energy policy containing an emissions reduction target.
Under the NEG, Australia would be committed to reducing its emissions by 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
The conservative MPs have warned that they would oppose the NEG, which seeks to reduce the soaring costs of electricity in Australia and guarantee the reliability of the National Electricity Market, unless the emissions target was decoupled from the policy or dumped all together.
Peter Dutton, Australia's home affairs minister and the most senior conservative member of the party, on Thursday said there could be a time when he resigned from his ministerial position over policy, potentially triggering a leadership crisis.
The situation was exacerbated on Thursday night when it was revealed that Turnbull had given a draft of NEG legislation to the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) MPs before those from his own party.
Bill Shorten, leader of the ALP, described the act as one of "extraordinary" arrogance.
"If he refuses to show his own colleagues all the details, what is he hiding? If they can't even look at the legislation, why should they vote for it?" Shorten told News Corp Australia on Thursday.
Turnbull has previously lost the leadership of the LNP over environmental policy when he was defeated by Abbott in a ballot in 2009 after he decided to support the then-ALP government's emissions trading scheme.
He reclaimed leadership in a 2015 ballot, two years after Abbott took the LNP to election victory against the ALP.
