Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. Minister, after your successful visit to the Latrobe Valley, would you update the House on government efforts to build a sustainable future for Australia’s coal industry? Is the minister aware of any policies that would threaten the industry’s future?

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for McMillan for his question and also for his very strong support for the coal industry in Victoria. The minister for agriculture is also a strong supporter of the coal industry in Victoria and in fact the whole of Australia. Both of them have a number of workers and thousands of families, I would think, who rely on the coal industry for their income.

Around Australia we see around 30,000 Australian families relying on the coal industry. That is why this government, the Howard government, is making a long-term investment to ensure that coal remains a competitive power source both now and in a low carbon emission future. Last week the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and I jointly announced a $100 million grant to support HRL’s $750 million project for clean coal in the Latrobe Valley. The project will deliver coal-fired power with 30 per cent less emissions and use half the water of a conventional brown coal power plant. It is the fourth coal project supported under the government’s Low Emission Technology Demonstration Fund and brings the total investment by this government in lower emissions coal to $275 million in projects approaching $1 billion.

I notice that the Leader of the Opposition is not listening. Perhaps the member for Kingsford Smith can listen, because he and the Leader of the Opposition were both up in Queensland looking for friends in the coal industry last week. While they were there looking for those friends—I am not sure they found any—they should have taken the time to remind Peter Beattie that the Howard government has already put $125 million into coal projects in Queensland to lower emissions in those areas. That has not been acknowledged by the Premier. In fact, he must have had a lapse of memory, because he said that the federal government was putting nothing into the coal industry in Queensland. I know that Peter Beattie does not lie, so he must have just had a lapse of memory, because those projects are worth over $600 million. His Treasurer and his Minister for Mines and Energy are both shareholding ministers in those projects.

I was asked by the member for McMillan about the alternative policies of those opposite. Of course, we know the policy of the member for Kingsford Smith on the coal industry. He was quoted the other day—and I am sure he said this. He told us that the automatic expansion of the coal industry is a thing of the past. This is the Leader of the Opposition’s spokesman, who one day aspires to have control of the coal industry in Australia. If I were a coalminer in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia or any other state that has coal for power then I would be worried about my future as a coalminer under any Labor government.