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

As I said earlier, we used to have a Labor Party in this country that supported workers and supported a coal sector. Indeed, it was only as recently as the Rudd and Gillard governments, when they sought to unnecessarily, in my view, impose a carbon tax on this country. They did modelling, and they said that we would still have coal going out into the future.

Now we have a Labor Party that has subscribed to a view that we should shut down all of our coal-fired power stations in this country. We had a Senate inquiry report endorsed by Labor senators last year just before Christmas—endorsed by the shadow minister, Mark Butler—that said we should shut all our coal-fired power stations in this country. Apparently we can still export the coal to other countries, like Japan and China. They can make the aluminium for us, and we can import it back here for our planes and for our cars. We can still enjoy the resource but not have the jobs. We will not have the jobs if we do that. Well, we back jobs on this side of the chamber, and that is why we back coal-fired power and we back our aluminium sector.