George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is going to create the windmills that the Greens love—the down-the-rabbit-hole fairy land the lunatic fringe puts up as their utopia; their pie in the sky that they want to ram down our throats. None of that is possible without coal and without coalminers. Trying to shut down coal-fired power generation before viable alternatives are in place is not only putting the cart before the horse; it is shooting the horse and believing that it is somehow going to force innovation. Well, the motorcar was not invented because we went out and shot the horses. A return to cave-dwelling under the mistaken belief that that will somehow magically drive the mythically green technology is just lunacy. Without the materials that coal provides, without the electricity that coal provides and without the funding that coal and a functioning economy provide, none of the fairyland that the Greens go on about will ever be possible. An unemployed scientist eating grass and weaving hemp baskets in Nimbin is not going to invent any green technology.

I say to the Labor Party: I know you guys side with the Greens more often than not these days—and it is very sad—but I have workers in North Queensland and Central Queensland who have voted Labor all of their lives who are hoping that you guys will get on board and support the government on this because they want to see this project go ahead. If the Labor Party decides to vote this legislation down, it needs to come up to the Mackay region and tell people—

See this speech in context