Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Throsby for his question, because the coal industry is extremely important to regions that he represents in the Illawarra and also to the region that I represent in the Hunter. There has been a range of forecasts about the future of the coal industry in recent months, all of them overwhelmingly positive, but there is one that has been incredibly negative, and that is from the Leader of the Opposition. We know about his economic forecasting! He has predicted from 1 July, next Sunday, the death of the coal industry. The death of the coal industry—the end of it. In the Illawarra, coalmining has gone; in the Hunter, it has gone. That is what he has predicted. But the closer we get to the introduction of a carbon price from Sunday and the more facts that come out, the more utterly ridiculous, hypocritical and misleading the Leader of the Opposition's comments have been.

Just take the Illawarra: last Friday, BHP Billiton approved an $833 million investment in Illawarra coal. The carbon price starts in less than a week, the Leader of the Opposition has forecast the death of the industry, and here is BHP Billiton announcing an $833 billion investment commitment. In fact, it is the largest capital investment that BHP Billiton has ever made in its Illawarra coal subsidiary. The new mine will support the ongoing employment of 500 workers currently employed at the West Cliff mine and generate 300 new construction jobs. With my background I have some familiarity with the industry. The coal seams in the Illawarra are relatively methane intensive and will attract a carbon price liability. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the forecasts of doom, $833 million has been committed in Illawarra coal, just days before the introduction of the carbon price.

On the one hand, we have got the death of the industry being forecast by the Leader of the Opposition, who will be held to account for this by workers in the coal industry—they will hold him to account for what he has predicted and the insecurity that he has engendered—but on the other hand, we have got BHP Billiton and $833 million on the table. Just as the Leader of the Opposition was misrepresenting the position with Alcoa earlier in question time, so he has misrepresented systematically the circumstances in the coal industry. In fact, there has been an upward revision from $96 billion to $107 billion in the investment pipeline in coal and it has a strong future.

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