Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I ask the minister if he would not mind switching hats for me—switching from his beach hat to his mining and resources hard hat. I have a great deal of sympathy for you, because you strike me as quite a practical man. I do not know how you manage to sit through some of your cabinet meetings listening to the bulldust about the carbon tax. I know that in your heart of hearts, Minister, you do not actually believe in what you are being forced to implement.

I want the minister to try to explain to me the seemingly contradictory position that he has. He has openly spoken about his support for efforts to clean up brown coal, possibly for export purposes. I think that it was the minister who coined the phrase, 'The Latrobe Valley could be the Pilbara of Victoria.' I believe that that position contradicts and is in stark contrast with your government's contract-for-closure policy, under which you are seeking to force the closure of 2,000 megawatts of brown coal power production and force the owners of those power stations out of business. Perhaps the minister can explain to me the miracle that occurs on the ships as they cross the seas in which this brown coal is somehow cleaned of its carbon content. Minister, I do not believe that you have any love for the contract-for-closure policy. Previously, you have left yourself a fair bit of wriggle room in your comments. You are saying that it is not contract for closure at any price. You are probably the only minister who has left himself a bit of wriggle room in that regard.

On the contract-for-closure policy, given that we are just days away from the 1 July deadline the government has set, will the minister deny that the government is going to announce an extension of time for this process? Isn't it a fact, Minister, that the whole process is completely off the rails and there is no prospect of an agreement within the next couple of weeks and that you need an extension of time to try and salvage something from this policy wreckage? Rather than announce an extension of time, Minister, why won't you do what you really want to do, which is abandon this dud of a policy, a policy that will cost jobs and do nothing to change the temperature of the planet? Minister, we both know that closing coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley will not deliver a single direct environmental benefit anywhere in the world. We both know that contract for closure is a dud policy. Minister, will you deny that the government is going to announce an extension of time on its contract-for-closure policy?

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