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

I do thank the member for Fairfax for moving this important motion. A survey was published in The Australian yesterday showing that 70 per cent of those who were surveyed ranked power prices and reliability as the highest priority, while only 24 per cent ranked meeting emissions targets as the priority. Many in that 24 per cent will, no doubt, be those who can afford massive power prices and those who believe the world will end by Christmas if we do not make sacrifices to the climate gods.

Yesterday in an opinion piece to my local newspaper in Mackay, the Daily Mercury, the Queensland minister for energy and gullibility, Mark Bailey, described renewables as 'the cheapest form of power'. He said that near Townsville in my electorate:

SunMetals is constructing Queensland's largest industrial solar project with 1.3 million solar panels providing the zinc refinery with a third of their baseload needs. That's right—baseload solar.

But, no, it is hardly baseload if it only generates one-third of the needs of a single business. And if it takes 1.3 million solar panels to do that, the 50 per cent renewables target is going to turn Queensland from the Sunshine State into the 'Shady State'. In criticising my commitment to affordable and reliable electricity through clean coal generation, the minister asserted:

Stagecoaches served their purpose till motor cars and Henry Ford came along.

What the minister fails to recognise is that people did not start using cars because the government taxed horses or subsidised cars or poured taxpayer money into car production or banned the construction of stagecoaches. For the past decade we have seen government interference in the energy market on a grand scale, with them trying to force renewables on people and using the people's money to do it.

Where has that got us in Queensland? According to the Queensland Productivity Commission's report on energy pricing, which was released last year, electricity prices in Brisbane increased 87 per cent in the past decade, but in the previous 26 years electricity prices had not increased at all. Why is that? In the 26 years from 1980-81 to 2006-07 the cost of electricity did not rise, but in the nine years from 2007 to 2016 the cost of electricity increased 87 per cent. If you go back over the past decade you will find that Labor governments—and, regrettably, but to a lesser extent, coalition governments—have been spruiking renewables at any cost.

And it has come at a cost: billions of dollars in costly regulations; a billion dollars of free money through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency; large-scale and small-scale renewable energy targets; solar panel rebates; $1.6 billion in the Solar Flagships program; the solar cities program; feed-in tariffs in Queensland of 44c per kilowatt hour, more than double the domestic-use tariff of 21.3c per kilowatt hour; the clean energy initiative; the Clean Energy Trade and Investment Strategy; the Solar Homes and Communities Plan; the Green Loans program; Minister Bailey, himself, spruiked this week about spending $386 million in clean energy; and of course we had Labor's carbon tax.

With all that free money, subsidies, mandated usage and the carbon tax, what actually happened? Electricity prices went up 87 per cent. Now Labor and the Greens and the climate gullibles all say that we can lower prices by spending more on renewables and shutting down more coal-fired power. I am reminded of a very popular definition of stupidity: to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

According to the Climate Council, the biggest user of wind power is Denmark and the biggest user of solar power is Germany. Is it somewhat of a coincidence that those two countries—Denmark and Germany—have far and away the most expensive electricity in the OECD? It is double the average. If we want a different result we need a different strategy.

What Australia has not done in past decade is build high-efficiency, low-emission coal-fired power generators that can provide power for $60 to $70 per megawatt hour, including building and operating costs. That is cheaper than wind, half the cost of solar and a quarter of the cost of solar thermal with storage. Around the world there are more than a thousand of these supercritical and ultra supercritical units, with another 1,231 planned or already under construction. Over the next five years, 88 per cent of new coal-fired power will be in Asia, and it will be mostly supercritical and ultra supercritical. China has 579 of these units and is building another 575. India, another 395; Japan, 52; South Korea, 18; another 90 in Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Australia plans zero. It is time we delivered on what people want and people need: power they can afford, power they can rely on, with new clean coal generators, especially one in North Queensland.

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