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

I move:

That this House:

(1) supports the Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project because:

(a) its proponents, Adani Australia, already employ 800 workers in Queensland;

(b) it will open up the Galilee Basin and lead the way in creating as many as 15,000 jobs across five potential mines for the workers of Central and North Queensland; and

  (c) it will improve the lives of millions of Indians by providing their country with affordable and safe electricity; and

(2) notes that the Opposition is now opposed to the project, endangering both existing and future jobs in regional Queensland as evidenced by:

(a) the Leader of the Opposition stating that 'Labor is increasingly sceptical and today's revelation, if true, is incredibly disturbing, and if Adani's relying on false information, that mine does not deserve to go ahead';

(b) Senator Singh stating that 'I believe the Adani coal mine is a big mistake for this country';

(c) the Shadow Minister for Environment and Water stating that the Carmichael coal mine 'will simply displace existing coal operations elsewhere in Australia. There will be jobs lost elsewhere in Queensland or there will be jobs lost in the Hunter Valley … The demand for thermal coal exports around the world is in rapid decline and I think instead we should be talking about other economic developments and job opportunities for North Queensland'; and

(d) the Member for:

  (i) Charlton tweeting that 'Hunter coal mining jobs are endangered by the Adani project'; and

  (ii) Gellibrand stating that 'the reality is, the Adani coal mine has always been something that regional Queenslanders know well: snake oil'.

I'm glad we're talking about jobs in North Queensland—or at least we were for a while, before we moved on to Victoria—as it's very apt considering what we're about to talk about right now. The Carmichael coal project in the Galilee Basin represents an enormous benefit for Queensland and Australia, raising billions of dollars in royalties and billions of dollars through income taxes and GST. The project will generate 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, an outcome the greenies are desperate to downplay. I even had one of these extreme greens write to me to tell me the project would create just 1.5 jobs. The truth is that Adani already employs 800 people in Queensland, even before a shovel has been put into the ground. Contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars will sustain employment not only in Queensland, North Queensland in particular, but in other parts of the country, including the already announced $74 million deal to buy railway steel from Arrium's Whyalla steelworks in South Australia. Townsville and Rockhampton will be home bases for workers who fly in and fly out to what is a very remote mine site, hundreds of kilometres and a mountain range away from the coastline.

The Carmichael coal project will open up the Galilee Basin, creating as many as 15,000 jobs across five potential mines, which is precisely why a multi-use rail line linking to the port should have been funded, or at least financed, by the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility. I note that Mackay is going to be a logistics hub for this project and Bowen is going to be the railway hub for the project, spreading those jobs right across our region. In India, coal from the Galilee Basin will provide hundreds of millions of people with power, bringing them out of energy poverty—families that have no electricity at all and suffer all the ill health effects of burning dung and other such substances, the only alternative energy source they have, in their homes.

But none of these benefits are supported by the Greens and none of them seem to be supported by Labor. Labor don't support these jobs. Labor don't support workers having these jobs in Townsville, Rockhampton, Mackay or Bowen. They don't support the mining service companies in Mackay that want the work. They don't support the Whyalla steelworks, which wants to work. They don't support the infrastructure and economic growth that will come from this project. They don't even support the massive revenue boost that both state and federal governments will get from the opening up of the Galilee Basin. It's no wonder that unions are bleeding members when Labor's doing this. Workers don't want to waste the money they earn from their jobs to fund a party that is out to destroy those jobs. Asked again and again, the Leader of the Opposition has refused to support the Adani project. His weasel words were that the project must 'stack up commercially and environmentally', and then he said:

Labor is increasingly sceptical and today's revelation, if true, is incredibly disturbing. If Adani is relying on false information, that mine does not deserve to go ahead.

It wasn't false information, but he said, 'The mine doesn't deserve to go ahead.' The business community can translate those weasel words into English and they know that, if a weasel says he's 'increasingly sceptical', he doesn't support it. It just means he doesn't have the guts to come out and say it, because he knows that, in doing so, he's shafting thousands of workers in Queensland. The shadow environment minister filled in the blanks when he said of the Adani project:

I have a very clear view that the economics of Adani don't stack up, and it would not be a positive thing for Australia for the Adani mine to go ahead.

'Not a positive thing'? Well, the project has already stacked up. It has passed all the environmental approvals that the government gives, so his comment is just a personal view about not wanting the project to go ahead.

Even in Queensland, where the most benefits from the coalmine will come, Labor opposes the mine in favour of green votes. It was the Queensland Labor government itself that applied for the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility loan to build the railway line to the Galilee Basin, and then, under pressure from the inner-city green voters, the Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, vetoed the loan and withdrew support for Adani. Labor's federal MPs and senators are also forthright in their lack of support for these jobs. Senator Singh has said:

I believe the Adani coalmine is a big mistake for this country.

She is a Labor senator. The member for Shortland, who is going to speak on this, said:

Hunter coal mining jobs are endangered by the Adani project.

The member for Gellibrand took it further, saying:

… the reality is, the Adani coal mine has always been something that regional Queenslanders know well: snake oil.

Labor's federal leader has even described the employment opportunities being created by Adani as 'fake jobs'. Well, I can assure him that they are real. There are 200 workers receiving pay packets in Townsville. It would be good if the member for the Townsville area, the member for Herbert, spoke up. (Time expired)

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise proudly to speak on this motion because, yet again, we have seen myths being peddled by the member for Dawson. Let's look at some facts. Fact 1: global coal consumption peaked in 2013. Fact 2: Chinese coal consumption has fallen by nearly four per cent. Fact 3: imports of coal to India have fallen considerably. Fact 4: global seaborne thermal coal volume, which is the main Australian thermal coal market because we ship our coal via the seaborne trade routes, peaked in 2013 and has fallen every year. The global thermal coal trade market has declined every year since 2013. The market for thermal coal globally is declining. That is not contested by any serious economic commentator in this area.

So we've got a declining coal market, and the proposal from the member for Dawson and the rest of the coalition is a billion-dollar subsidy to open up new supply that threatens existing coalmines in my region. I have 18,000 coalminers in the Hunter region. If you subsidise competition into a declining market, by definition, you are imposing competition that will drive down coal prices and threaten the livelihood of those 18,000 coalminers.

I'm proud to stand up to support those coalminers. My neighbour's a coalminer. My kids go to child care with coalminers' kids. My local footy team is packed to the rafters with coalminers watching play and is sponsored by a coal company. I'm proud that we've been mining coal in the Hunter region since 1799. Ironically, the first coal dug up was exported to India. I'm proud of all those facts, and I'll stand up for coalminers in this place and say: I don't support a billion-dollar subsidy that threatens their jobs, because this is all this is about.

I won't be lectured to about support for coalminers by these people. I don't see them at the Northern Districts miners memorial that occurs every year in Cessnock, which commemorates the 1,800 workers who have died in coalmines in the Hunter region—miners as young as 11 and as old as 76 who have died in those coalmines. I've never seen a single coalition representative at that memorial, even though the electorate of the member for New England has many Hunter coalmines in it. So this is rank hypocrisy by the coalition.

That doesn't amaze me. The coalition profess a love of Queensland, but this is the party of the Brisbane line. This is the party that supported not defending anywhere north of Brisbane during World War II. This is the party that's proud of the corrupt Jo Bjelke-Petersen regime that destroyed Queensland for 20 years. So this is all weasel words from a government that has nothing of substance to say on this region. Oh, come on!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member seeks a point of order?

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

Does he support the mine or not?

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member; that's not a point of order.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It shows I've hit a sensitive note there—he's been forced to take spurious points of order.

Let's go back to the facts. A billion-dollar subsidy is a bad idea. I do not support it at all because it threatens hundreds of coalmining jobs. I support our existing coalmines. They've got a long life. Sixty-five per cent of Australia's trade in coal is in metallurgical coal, coking coal, and that's got a strong future, but thermal coal trade is declining globally. We need to be cognisant of the fact and make sure we've got plans in place for a transition that should take decades. The most important thing we owe to coalminers and the communities that depend on them is honesty—honesty to say that change is coming, honesty to say, 'We will work with you over the decades when the change is occurring to transition your industry and the communities that depend on you.' The easiest thing for a politician to do in this place is to lie to people—to put their head in the sand and say, 'Change isn't coming.' Well, change is coming. As I said, global coal consumption peaked in 2013 and it is declining every year, and we need to be honest with our communities.

I'll end where I began by saying that I'm proud to represent a coal community, I'm proudly embedded in that community and I recognise the world that coal delivered to my region for 200 years. But we need to face up to the facts, stop peddling lies, stop giving people false hope and stop trying to subsidise a Queensland project that imperils the 18,000 coalminers in my community.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Central Queensland is a vital cog in the machine that is the national economy. It is home to a range of national industrial capitals: Rockhampton, the undisputed beef capital of Australia; Blackwater and Moranbah, the coal capitals; and Gladstone, the energy capital of Australia. Living in such close proximity and being responsible for those who work within these industries gives one a particularly privileged and detailed understanding of the industries that, quite literally, keep the lights on and the wheels turning.

I always enjoy my trips to Canberra because I get to witness some of the greatest acts of hypocrisy one could imagine. For those opposite to have the audacity to, in almost the same breath, cry for greater funding for health and education while downplaying and outright lambasting projects like the Carmichael mine is unbelievable. As they don't really understand, I'll explain it for them. The budget of your beloved Labor government in Queensland lives and dies by coal royalties. Just last year, the Queensland Treasurer, Curtis Pitt, recorded a budget surplus because of coal royalties boosting it to $3 billion. The Queensland government is dependent on mining royalties to keep its record-breaking program of hiring public servants going. Without said royalties, it would be forced to face the dire consequences of its drunken-sailor spending spree.

But don't get too down in the dumps. We do have coalmining and we do have royalties—thus, the budget is saved. In Central Queensland, we have two major coal basins: the Bowen Basin in the east and, tucked behind it to the west, the Galilee Basin. The natural resources within these basins are immense and provide enormous benefit to the state and national economies and to government budgets. The Bowen Basin is a household name in Queensland, as it should be throughout the rest of the country. The coal seams of the Bowen Basin provide for thousands of direct jobs and billions of dollars in gross domestic product. These coal seams are more than that to me, though; they are the basis for thousands of families and dozens of small communities across the region. These coal seams do not just create some carbon-emitting hole in the ground; they create a home for so many Central Queenslanders.

When it comes to important items like national security, foreign aid and natural disaster recovery, we will tie ourselves in knots and abandon internal ideologies to ensure a bipartisan approach, because these things are considered important. Why is it, though, we can't prioritise economic advantage for rural Australians? As a National and a passionate regional member, I've seen firsthand just how much can be achieved by pulling appropriate levers to unlock the economic potential of people in the bush: the real battlers, the men and women of the weatherboard and iron. Why is it that we cannot prioritise bipartisan support for these people and their lives?

Right now, we see a project in the west of my electorate that is being torn apart by policy uncertainty. The Adani Carmichael mine project has suffered at the hands of policy redirection, particularly, most recently, with the Labor state government deciding to veto a NAIF loan that they applied for. We now have the federal opposition leader gallivanting around the countryside undermining one of this country's great economic development opportunities just to try win a few extra votes in the Batman by-election. I have a message for the sellouts opposite: get on board and help us provide some certainty and hope to the men and women of rural Queensland, people who just want to get themselves and their families ahead and to give their kids a better, more prosperous future than they themselves enjoy—people who the Labor Party used to be about. These are the people who want to get a chance at a better life through the development of the Galilee Basin. These are the people we should be fighting for by not pillorying a project that has all of the approvals it requires—more than any mine in our history—and is already employing hundreds of Central Queenslanders for preliminary works.

I say to those opposite: go to towns like Clermont and Alpha, where the project is already having a positive effect, and tell them that they don't deserve a job. Tell them, while you sip on your coal-powered soy latte, that their jobs are somehow immoral and must end. I know that you won't, because you know that to do so would be hugely offensive. Continuing the same line in parliament or in Batman is no different. If you don't have the guts to say it to their faces, don't say it in this place. Bipartisanship is reserved for important issues. What could be more important than the economic development of our region? I will keep fighting for them, and I hope that some of those opposite can join me in fighting to give these people a real chance. (Time expired)

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ten days ago, the Australian newspaper published an article headed 'South32 dumps thermal coal, citing uncertainty, climate change'. Matt Chambers wrote that the BHP spinoff is:

… getting out of thermal coal because it is becoming less attractive to investors, has an uncertain future that does not support long-term investment and because the world needs to decarbonise.

There is a clear structural shift underway in the global thermal coal market, a shift driven by a change in the nature of China's economic growth and its war on air pollution and a global shift away from coal-fired power generation.

The great hope for the thermal coal industry has been India. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, was elected on a promise of bringing affordable electricity to all Indians by 2019, but it's increasingly clear that the Modi government does not intend to deliver that promise on the back of Australian coal. The Indian government has imposed production quotas on the local industry that are intended to put an end to coal imports by the end of this decade. Thermal coal imports to India have been declining substantially since 2015 and are expected to continue to do so.

I pause to emphasise that I'm not dealing with the outlook for coking coal, which remains relatively robust as industry still searches for cleaner ways to make steel, but the outlook for thermal coal traded across the seas is a different matter. Australian governments have still been consistently bullish about the outlook for thermal coal exports. The energy white paper of 2012, for example, forecast that total coal exports were expected to grow strongly to up to 690 million tonnes by 2025. The paper said pointedly that 'increasing demand has meant that an entirely new coal precinct has opened up in Queensland's Galilee Basin.' The reality today, though, is quite different. Total coal exports are running at around 390 million tonnes, not 690 million tonnes, about half of which is thermal coal, and volumes have been flat for several years now.

The IEA, the International Energy Agency, describes the Adani Carmichael mine as the only significant export-oriented greenfields project—that is to say a project in the new thermal coal basin—on the face of the planet. The case made a decade ago for opening up the new thermal coal basin rested on demand projections that are fundamentally inconsistent with current market trends and the more probable scenarios for future global demand. In all of the many discussions that I've had over recent years with different interests about the Galilee Basin projects, a consensus view has been put to me that they are simply not financially viable. Adani, we know, continues to struggle to get financial backing for the Carmichael mine, which was most recently seen in the decision of the largest Chinese banks to walk away from the project. The projects that are next in the Galilee queue, owned by GBK and Clive Palmer, appear even further removed from financial viability.

We all recognise that there is a great deal of frustration in Queensland about the constant delays and the debate about the Adani project and whether the promised jobs will ever really happen. In a region that's been hit very hard by the end of the mining boom, job opportunities are crucially important. Bill Shorten isn't willing to wait on Adani's continual delays in this project, delays that will likely come to naught, anyway. He's putting concrete announcements with the member for Herbert and others from Queensland for the people of Central and North Queensland about jobs that we can guarantee will happen.

I and most commentators might be wrong about all this. Adani's project at Carmichael might notionally go ahead, particularly if the Turnbull government finds some way of throwing a heap of taxpayer money at it, but the industry itself has been clear that any thermal coal mine from the Galilee to chase a declining seaborne market would simply displace coal and jobs in existing coal regions like the Hunter Valley—advice contained in the details of a report from the well-known coal industry analysts Wood Mackenzie. For the life of me, I can't see how that prospect is in the national interest.

Even on the IEA's two degree scenario—a scenario that says we do achieve the Paris commitments—there will continue to be substantial demand overseas for thermal cold exported from Australia's established basins, like the Hunter Valley, for some time to come, but the growth projections that underpin plans for a brand-new basin in the Galilee have simply disappeared.

Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the Carmichael coalmine and associated rail and port projects in that region. Coal is still a booming industry, which can be seen through the announcements of late by Allied coalfields, which extended their coal leases for another 20 years. The Rylstone coalmine is going very well and the Baralaba North project is now underway. There is a very good future for coal, and I think Adani and the Carmichael mine should be a part of that.

Along with coalmines come jobs. Jobs are so very important for the Central Queensland area. Many jobs come along, and the skilled workforce has diminished over the last 10 years or so, and there are quite a few skilled projects involving workers not existing. This will help fill the void of the unskilled workforce and skill those people up for the future. Adani already employ about 800 staff on site, whether it be in the Galilee Basin or at Abbot Point. They have made purchases of land, equipment and ports in the area, but they are being continually frustrated by the people getting in the road, people such as protesters and the like, as well as by government approvals. They have had the environmental impact statement approved by the federal minister and there are no issues there. They've been well and truly scrutinised over the environment and they've come up to the mark on all points. The jobs are very, very important. If the mine ever gets underway there will be 3,700 permanent jobs. Townsville and Rockhampton are the fly-in fly-out centres, but there are towns in my electorate, like Emerald, Blackwater, Capella and Springsure, that will help with those jobs by having drive-in drive-out workers. It's not that far away from the Galilee Basin.

There are three main coal basins in Queensland: the Bowen, the Surat and the Galilee. If the railway line, which would be a standard gauge—four foot 8½—line, is built into Bowen or Abbot Point, it would open up more country. It would be a shared railway line, which would give benefits to all the people along that 400 kilometres of railway line. I understand that most of the agreements with 36 farming properties, from Clermont and the coalmine through to Bowen, have been approved or are well on the way to being approved by the landholders and Adani. So let's hope, for their sakes, it goes ahead. The four feet 8½ inches line will be the first in Queensland and will of course carry a lot more per axle than the wagons on the three feet six inches gauge railway line as we have throughout Queensland at the moment.

There are 250 million people in India who do not have electricity, and these people need to be looked after. We have our free trade agreements. We haven't had one with India yet. But this is all part of looking out for our friends in India. If we can help them, then we're helping the world and the welfare of other nations and our own.

What it will do for our economy is humongous. Gladstone Port last year, 2017, had a record 120 million tonnes of exports—mainly coal and gas, and grain and agricultural products. So that too will add to the Bowen Basin and also to the Bowen area. People up there are really looking forward to this project going ahead. I think their wishes should be considered along with those of other people. They need the work; they need the jobs. They need to see their investments in that area go ahead and expand. This is not happening at the moment. I was up in Bowen only three weeks ago, over Christmas, and things were pretty steady. The people of Bowen are crying out for these jobs. (Time expired)

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If, 20 years ago, you had been told that the Labor Party would be using all of their energies to stop coalmining, you would've thought you were mad, because the CFMEU would kill you. Well, I can assure the ALP that the CFMEU are going to kill you!

We're criticised all the time for having a close personal relationship. Yes of course I have—I represent coalmining areas and have all my life.

Collinsville had 6,000 people. It was a thriving community. It had the highest average income of any town in Australia when it was in my old state electorate under the Bjelke-Petersen era. We built the railway lines; we built 6,000 kilometres of railway line into the coalfields and a couple of mineral basins as well.

They accuse us of being agricultural socialists. But I'll tell you one thing for sure: they are not socialists. If socialism means that the people own the asset, they are not socialists. They are the representatives of the capitalist class, because the ALP in Queensland sold the railways and corporatised the electricity industry, for which the people of Queensland annihilated them in the worst defeat ever recorded in Queensland history. Their opponents were so mind-numbingly stupid that they went into the next election promising to privatise what was left, and achieved an even greater landslide!

The people are not prepared to have this country owned by foreigners. This is not about A-D-A-N-I—I'm not going to keep on using the name. This is about the Galilee. Half of Australia's coal is in the Galilee. I am sick and tired of the primitive stupidity that I hear in this place. Are you going to seriously tell me that a coal-fired power station is going to be more expensive than and has no future up against solar energy? I'll give you the figures—not my figures, but Finkler's figures: $40 for coal-fired power; over $100 for solar power. If you like paying 150 per cent more for your power, well, keep going with solar. I'll tell you what it does. It closes the power stations in Australia, and they're closing at the rate now of one every two or three years. It is closing the coalmines that supply them. These jobs are being exported to China, so, instead of producing the electricity here, we now produce the electricity via the production coming out of China.

Mr Trump is getting very popular despite the left-leaning budgerigars in America because he said: 'None of your solar panels are coming into America anymore. We're going to produce our own. We're going to provide jobs for our people.' The Labor Party was the party that created jobs, that built the railways, that built the sugar mills, that built the dairy factories in Queensland, and my family were very proud to be part of the Labor Party for about 50 years like the rest of Queensland outside of Brisbane was. And then of course, later on, like other people outside Brisbane, we ended up in the Country Party and were proud to be part of that party. But they built the railway lines. That we can be arguing about giving a thousand million dollars to a foreign corporation—it will not open up the Galilee. It'll open up one mine. If there's anyone in this place naive enough and stupid enough to believe that the most powerful infrastructure magnate on earth is going to allow his railway line to be used by his competitors to sell their coal then they believe in the Tooth Fairy.

Have a look at what happened in Western Australia. The law said to BHP that it had to be a multi-use facility. There was never a tonne of iron ore carried on the BHP railway line. I'm quoting Twiggy Forrest, who spent 21 years fighting to try to get access to a railway line which by law he should have been given. So forget about that. It's not going to open up the Galilee; it's going to open up one mine in the Galilee. The government could build this railway line as they build the other 6,000 kilometres of railway line—it's just a tiny little 300. But the state government said they've got no money, but the ALP plucked five thousand million out of the air for yet another tunnel in Brisbane, the most tunnelled city on earth, and the LNP plucked five thousand million out for a road tunnel. So they've got the money all right, but they're not going to use it to provide jobs for Queenslanders. That's not going to happen. (Time expired)

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This debate shows the complete disconnect that the opposition have that I see in this place very week. The opposition come into this parliament day after day and complain. They want more money spent on universities. They want more money spent on schools. They want more money spent on aged care. They want more money spent on disabilities, more money on hospitals, more money for everything bar the kitchen sink. But, when it comes to creating the wealth that actually can pay for those things, they're against it every single time. We've got a complete disconnect. As the member for Kennedy correctly said, the Labor members of old would be rolling in their graves if they saw how today's Labor Party has rolled over and sold out to the Greens.

If you want to create wealth, if you want to have more money for all the things that are important that all of us as members of parliament see in our electorates, you've got to get behind the wealth creation projects of this nation. Whether you like it or not, it is the coalmines of this nation—that black coal seam that runs down our eastern seaboard—that are one of the greatest sources of wealth creation that we have in this nation. And yet the Labor Party want to close it down and stop it, to stop jobs. And why? Simply to try to win green votes in the city, to give up on their own people in the regions.

We had the member for Hunter talking about the decline in thermal coal exports. Unfortunately, the member for Hunter is completely out of date. Why a member who represents a coal area would come into this parliament and talk down the prospects of coal exports in this nation is beyond me.

Let's look at some of the figures that the members on the other side conveniently forgot. Last year in this country our coal exports increased in value by 33 per cent. We had the largest value of coal exports in our nation's history. Last year our exports of thermal coal to Japan increased by 50 per cent. China's consumption of coal last year increased by 5.2 per cent. The International Energy Agency, with their latest predictions, predicts the world demand for coal will increase by 200 million tonnes out to the year 2020. Some information came in only this morning: in January our exports of coal to China increased by 9.4 per cent year on year. China also increased their imports of coal in January up 40 per cent from Indonesia and up 43 per cent from Russia. Yet we have members of the Labor Party talking down the prospects of coal. What would the old members of the Labor Party say if they saw that?

The member for Kennedy also talked about what's happening in the USA. We saw a release from only last week from their Energy Information Administration with the title, U.S. coal production, exports, and prices increased in 2017. In fact the US last year had a 60 per cent increase in their exports of coal, the largest year-on-year increase since the year 2001. Again members of the Labor Party talk this down and pretend that the coal thermal exports are in this massive decline.

As the member for Kennedy said, we do need more baseload generation in this nation. Whether it comes from coal, gas or some other combination of renewables with some type of storage doesn't matter; we have to do it at the most economical price. When the member for Kennedy talks about comparing the cost of generating electricity from coal versus some type of intermittent and unreliable renewables, he is not making a comparison of apples and apples. Even though he is correct that coal has a much lower cost to generate electricity, it is not an apples-to-apples comparison. You cannot compare dispatchable power and intermittent and unreliable power in price. They are not the same product. (Time expired)

Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was born and raised in Townsville and I have seen and experienced the impacts of policy decisions, both positive and negative, delivered by federal governments on my community—the community I am proud to represent. Let me say that in all of my years living and working in Townsville I have never seen such a negative impact on job cuts in my community than I have seen under the Abbott and Turnbull governments.

It's all well and good for the member for Dawson to stand in this place and put up this meaningless motion. I call it meaningless for a number of reasons, but the reality is that, when push comes to shove, the member for Dawson says one thing in Dawson and another in Canberra. In Canberra the member for Dawson does exactly what he's told by the Prime Minister. The member for Dawson talks a big game of bravado when he's in his own electorate, but he cowers and follows the Prime Minister when he is in Canberra. His track record proves this. If we're talking about the jobs that this motion is referring to, let's just look at the fact that he has voted five times in favour of the $65 billion tax cut to big business. He has voted against penalty rates, which affects 13,000 people in his electorate. The member for Dawson has supported cuts to education, TAFE and universities, which will hurt James Cook University and Central Queensland University. Cuts to education are job cuts, and they are also the cuts that severely impact on the skill building that Queenslanders will need into the future. The member for Dawson has supported cuts to public sector jobs. The list rolls on.

His track record when it comes to jobs for North Queenslanders is not good. Just a few moments ago I moved a motion against hundreds of job cuts delivered by the Abbott and Turnbull governments to Townsville. I did not hear the member for Dawson speak to that motion. I did not see him fighting against the job cuts that his coalition government has delivered. The question is: where was the member for Dawson when these critical job cuts occurred?

The member for Dawson's motion is insincere and I don't buy it. If he were genuinely sincere in fighting for jobs he would have stood up to the Prime Minister when it counted. He would not have voted to give a $65 billion tax cut to big business and he would have voted to protect penalty rates but he has not done that.

I made a commitment to the people of Herbert that I would fight tooth and nail in this place for jobs for my community, and my record is quite clearly different to that of the member for Dawson. I have fought for and lobbied my Labor team and have been able to deliver real commitments and real jobs. I fought for the Townsville stadium. Labor was the first to the table on this infrastructure project, and the government was dragged kicking and screaming to the table five minutes before the election. That project is now delivering 750 jobs. I fought for large infrastructure projects that Townsville needs to ensure water and energy security. That is why Labor committed $100 million towards stage 2 of the pipeline that will give us water security and that is why Labor has committed $200 million to support the Burdekin Dam hydro project which will deliver at least 150 construction jobs. I fought for the port expansion project which will deliver $580 million of benefit to our city and jobs, and that was why the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister for northern Australia were in Townsville last week committing $75 million towards that port expansion project.

These are the infrastructure projects I have fought for and have secured real commitments. That's my track record, instead of the deafening silence that we see from the member for Dawson when it comes to job cuts. I will continue to fight for quality secure jobs in all sectors of our community from public sector to mining to manufacturing to tourism to renewable energy and in the community sector. No one will stand in the way of jobs for north Queenslanders. I will never back down from fighting for secure jobs for the people of Townsville.

My position on the Adani coalmine has always been clear: if it stacks up environmentally and financially then it will go ahead. This is a commercial business and it needs to go through the processes that are required. But I will never support one red cent of money to the tune of $1 billion of taxpayers' money going to a foreign billion-dollar company. I will fight in this place every day for quality, secure jobs that the people of Townsville both need and deserve. So if we are talking about opportunities to build jobs for north Queenslanders, we should be talking about the very important infrastructure projects that our communities need.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.