Clive Palmer has scotched claims of division in his party over ongoing support for Australia's renewable energy target, as a group of Coalition backbenchers also lobby ministers for a change in the scheme.
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The Fairfax MP says incoming Palmer United Party senator Jacqui Lambie will "always go along with the team" despite her calls for Tasmanian businesses to be exempt from the target.
Ms Lambie has been reported as saying she will be seeking exemptions for businesses in her home state, sparking talk of a possible rift over environment policy in the crossbench party.
But Mr Palmer said on Monday that all of his senators were behind the party's position on the RET, which was to support the current target of 41,000 gigawatt hours (GwH) of large scale electricity generation from renewable sources by 2020.
The Palmer United Party has said it will not support any change to the RET before the next election.
"Everyone will be voting in accordance with our statement with Al Gore," Mr Palmer said on Monday.
"Every senator can make calls for their state - the Liberals do it all the time, and Labor.
"They've got the right to say that.
"It's her statement, that's what she thinks but that's not how the party has decided to vote.
"She'll always go along with the team."
Fairfax has contacted Ms Lambie for comment.
Mr Palmer's comments come amid a push from 25 Coalition backbenchers to have aluminium smelters exempted from the renewable energy target entirely.
The lower house MPs have written to Environment Minister Greg Hunt and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane asking for the industry, which already has a partial exemption, to be spared from taking part in the scheme.
The MPs, led by Victorian Liberal backbencher Dan Tehan, also want the overall RET to be scaled back to a true 20 per cent of electricity generation by 2020.
The current target of 41,000 GwH by 2020 would represent about 27 per cent of Australia's electricity generation because of a decline in electricity usage in recent years.
"The smelting industry is forecasting an $80 million cut to it by 2017 because of the RET," Mr Tehan said.
"We are obviously very concerned about the direction the industry is heading at the moment due to cost."
Mr Tehan said he had spoken to Mr Hunt and Mr Macfarlane and both understood the aluminium smelting sector was unique due to the intensity of electricity usage in its operations.
But he said the proposal "by no means determines what the final government position will be" and the government was waiting for completion of the current review of the RET.
"This isn't about abandoning the RET," Mr Tehan said.
"This is about what they call the true 2020 position and as part of the change an exemption for the aluminium smelting sector."
