Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak tonight about two aspects of discussion in the House today that impact very heavily on the city of Gladstone, in my electorate. It is a very fine city, an industrial city that wins tidy town awards. So it is very switched on to its environment. Tonight we have heard this business of green energy. We have heard about greenhouse gas emission reductions, and I broadly support that as a concept. But in having a national agenda we have got to make absolutely certain that we reduce these various emissions in such a way that we do not cripple our own country.

Gladstone’s great attraction is that it has amongst the cheapest coal-fired power in the world, and it has good steaming coal. So compared to current-day coals it is relatively clean. Also, as the House is aware, the government is spending over $400 million on various projects to improve power stations, coal burning, sequestration and the like. All those things are well known to the House. I commend those and I want those for Gladstone. But I do not want to see the price of power doubled and the aluminium industry, the alumina industry, the potential magnesium industry, the chemicals industry and the nickel industry move offshore.

When this proposition was put to Kim Beazley at the last election, when he was in Gladstone, he said, ‘We should ratify Kyoto.’ And they said, ‘But Mr Beazley, the one city in Australia that would be disadvantaged by this is Gladstone.’ And do you know what his pathetic response was? ‘I will get special arrangements for Gladstone.’ Not a soul in Gladstone believed that. Gladstone exports 12 per cent of Australia’s—

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wasn’t Mark Latham our leader at the last election?

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, and Kim Beazley came up twice on that issue.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I remind the member for Hinkler that he should refer to members by their seats.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Very well; I apologise, Mr Speaker. However, the point I am making is that idle promises do not solve the problem for country people. This is a port that is responsible for 12 per cent of Australia’s exports by volume. A lot of that depends on coal, and if we are to accept what the member for Kingsford Smith says, that all future coalmines are finished, then tell me how we are going to open the Surat Basin, where there are six to nine coalmines. What about Mr Beattie’s train line from Gladstone to Toowoomba? What about its connection with the inland rail network? What about the general job profile of Central Queensland and the coalmines behind Mackay, Rockhampton and Gladstone? I am all in favour of projects like sequestration. I say that we should be responsible in other ways. We should be looking at reforestation and at many things. But this quick grab that is being promoted by the Labor Party is not going to work.

The other thing I want to talk about is the myth that floats around this place about the New South Wales state election, that somehow this was a defeat for the coalition. In technical terms it was, but I think the swing was 4.1 per cent against Labor. But, interestingly, if you look around New South Wales electorate by electorate, you see it was not IR that was the issue. In fact the greatest swings against Labor were in the Hunter Valley, and the Labor member for Tweed, who based nearly his whole campaign on IR, lost his seat to the National Party. Interesting stuff, isn’t it? I suspect they will run the same campaign in Gladstone at the end of this year, and I predict that the ALP will come a cropper.