If the past decade of climate politics in Australia was a fight over whether to act, the next one will be a fight over who benefits.

Out in regional and outer-suburban Australia, people aren’t debating the science of climate change anymore – they’re debating whether the clean energy transition will make their lives better or worse.

For many, “net zero” sounds like a plan for someone else’s prosperity. What they want to hear about is how this transition builds things here, creates jobs here, and cuts bills here.

The civil war within the Liberal and National parties over climate targets perfectly illustrates why the old politics no longer works.

While Liberal moderates push for credible emissions reduction targets, the Nationals dig in to protect coal and gas interests, creating a Coalition at war with itself.

Former leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy was less a serious policy proposal than an attempt to paper over these fundamental divisions. But this internal chaos presents an opportunity for Labor to reframe the entire conversation.

For years our national debate has pitted the environment against the economy – a false choice that only ever helped stall progress.

The truth is that most Australians want action on climate change, but they rank cost of living, jobs and security ahead of it. When people are struggling with rising prices, “net zero by 2050” doesn’t sound like a solution, it sounds like another cost.

That’s why framing matters. When climate action is talked about in moral or abstract terms – as sacrifice, target or ideology – it alienates people who should be its strongest supporters.

When it’s framed as a practical nation-building project, it cuts through.

Labor should stop defending net zero targets as if it’s in the dock. Instead, it should be prosecuting the case for Australia’s industrial renewal.

Every time the opposition attacks renewable energy subsidies, the response shouldn’t be about emissions percentages. It should be about the many thousands of jobs already created in renewable energy, and the hundreds of thousands more that are coming.

It should be about the manufacturing plants returning to regional towns, powered by cheap, reliable renewable energy.

Australians understand that global crises drive up their bills. The war in Ukraine, disruptions in global coal and gas markets.

These aren’t distant events, they show up in every power bill. What people want is control.

The message that resonates isn’t about lowering emissions, it’s about taking back control of our energy.

Energy made from Australian sun, wind and water. Energy that isn’t hostage to foreign wars or volatile markets and the vagaries of geopolitics.

While the Coalition ties itself in knots trying to defend both fossil-fuel exports and household energy bills, Labor has a clear story to tell – Australian-made energy for Australian households and businesses first.

If the goal of “net zero” is to cut our exposure to global shocks, then the way to sell it is as energy independence.

People don’t want to be told to go green – they want to know we’re building a system that can’t be taken away.

Every industrial revolution has created new winners. This one could create them in Gladstone, Whyalla, the Hunter and beyond.

The future of clean energy is not just solar farms and wind turbines, it’s the factories building them and powered by them. It’s refining our own lithium, manufacturing our own batteries, building our own hydrogen hubs and export industries.

This is where Labor’s opportunity lies. Instead of getting dragged into technical debates about baseload power or grid reliability, it should be talking about the apprentices training in renewable energy trades, the factories opening to build solar panels, the regional communities becoming energy exporters instead of just coal towns waiting for the inevitable closure.

This is how climate policy becomes economic policy. When the transition is local and visible – when it keeps families together, powers small businesses, and restores pride in regional manufacturing – it stops being divisive. It becomes something to get behind.

The Coalition’s internal warfare over climate policy is fundamentally a fight about the past.

Labor needs to make this a contest about the future. Not the future of the planet in 2050, but the future of Australian jobs next year and the year after that.

Australia has a chance to lead the world in producing and exporting clean technology, but that won’t happen through slogans or spreadsheets. It will happen through the same formula that has always built this country: Ambition, practical investment, and a belief that we can make things here again.

If we keep talking about “net zero”, we’ll keep having the same arguments. If we start talking about the next jobs boom, we might finally win them.

Patrick Leyland is chief digital officer at Populares, and former director of digital campaigns for the Australian Labor Party