Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator again for his question. There are risks. We have an alliance here in this chamber. We have a Labor-Greens alliance that wants to shut coal down in our nation. Just yesterday we saw it in a report. It was out there calling on the Australian government to shut down coal-fired power stations. In this report—signed up to by Senator Waters, Senator Chisholm and Senator Dastyari—it said that the question is not 'if coal-fired power stations will close', but how quickly and how orderly those closures will occur. They want to shut down our natural advantage in base load power. They have a leader who was crying crocodile tears with workers down at Hazelwood last week, and then they come back to this place and say their real plans are to shut those jobs down and to shut coal down.

I am proud of our coal industry. I am proud of how it has driven economic growth in places like China. But from Senator Dastyari there is not even a simple 'xie xie' to our industry. There is not even a simple 'thank you' from Senator Dastyari for all the jobs that coal provides and all the wealth it has provided around the world.