Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kennedy for his question. I wouldn't want to limit the ambitions of the Bullamakanka Progress Association, but I do note India's really important commitment to lowering emissions. They are of course the world's most populous nation, and they do have important ambitions.

I can assure the member for Kennedy that the coal industry will not be abolished. It absolutely will not be. As he says, it supports 48,000 jobs in this country and the industries associated with it. But the question does go to the challenge of meeting very important global net zero targets, given the global demand for reliable and affordable energy, which, as he says, so many people around the world want. Australia's net coal exports were worth $61 billion last year, and thermal coal was worth $37 billion, and that is royalties and taxation that go into the revenue of governments of coalmining states around the country and support infrastructure like hospitals and roads.

What we do know is that demand for coal is changing around the world as the global economy seeks to decarbonise and reach net zero emissions, but the International Energy Agency's World energy outlook 2023 did confirm the role of Australian coal in the global energy mix. I have been really fortunate, before I was minister for resources but then since being minister as well, to be able to visit coalmines in New South Wales—I might add, not quite Queensland—such as the Bloomfield open cut mine in Maitland with my friend the member for Paterson—the daughter of a coalminer—a family company. There is a 80-year plus relationship with customers in Japan and that will continue for some time to come. I also experienced quite remarkable underground longwall mining at the Ashton mine with my friend the member for Hunter, who has been an actual coalminer as opposed to the cosplays that we see in some other places. It is very hard work and those people who work in those mines deserve every cent they get for the hard work they do. That is why this government is really proud to have same job, same pay so that those that work alongside one another with the same experience doing the same jobs do get treated equally for the hard work that they do keeping our economy going well into the future.

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