John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's quite amazing to hear the other side talking about economic and affordable electricity. Amazingly, Senator McAllister talked about China. Acting Deputy President Bernardi, you come from South Australia. I know that. I was born there. I didn't know you in my younger days, but I'm very familiar with your state. What has South Australia done? There has been a huge reliance on wind generation and selling electricity cheap because of the huge subsidies on wind turbines.

Mr Acting Deputy President, do you realise that an average wind turbine at three megawatts per hour, running for eight hours a day, 365 days a year will attract around $700,000? One turbine equals $700,000 in renewable energy certificates a year. That's a pretty good subsidy to get from the people and the businesses who use electricity, from anyone who is hooked to the network, from anyone who has 240 volt to the house. That is most Australians. They are paying for that: $700,000 for one wind turbine. That means that the coal-fired generators can't compete. What happened to Port Augusta's privatised coal-fired power station? They shut it down. No money in that. They blew it up, literally.

It is amazing that Senator McAllister talked about how the Chinese are doing a great job with their renewables. Let me make this point. As I speak to you now, 621 units of coal-fired generation are being constructed around the world. You might ask: what's a unit? If you go to the Hunter Valley and visit Liddell or Bayswater power stations: they are both four-unit generating plants. You will see the four big cement cooling towers. Often the Greens and those opposite will say you can see the pollution coming out of the top of those big cement towers. It's actually water vapour, the same as clouds. It's not pollution at all.

I visited Liddell a few years ago. They put in a solar thermal plant—I think it was about $16 million—to assist the coal, to reduce their carbon emissions. Well, between the two stations, it reduced their carbon emissions by one-sixteenth of one per cent, which is not much at all for $16 million. Anyway, I was in Tonga just recently, talking to a bloke who designed and was a key player in putting the solar thermal in there, and he said that now it's been mothballed; it no longer exists. When I was there, the big risk they had was cleaning the top of the plant all the time. The dust was settling on it. If a hailstorm was coming over the hill, they had to turn all the panels upside down so the hail wouldn't break them. Here we are talking about reliable and economic supply of electricity, and of course the best thing to do that is coal, as we've had all my lifetime.

China is now constructing 299 new units of coal-fired generation, as I speak. Those 299 units will produce 677 million tonnes of CO2 a year. That 677 million tonnes extra is more than the whole of Australia produces. Just by their additional 299 units of coal-fired generation—adding to some 2,100 units they already have in place and operating—they are going to put out more CO2 than the whole of Australia. Mr Acting Deputy President, I'm going to give you a curly question. What do you think they're going to burn in these coal-fired generation plants? They're going to burn coal. Believe it or not, they'll burn coal Where will they get the coal from? They have the choice of getting much cleaner black coal from Australia, unless we shut down our coalmines, as the Greens and many in the Labor Party want to see. I don't know why the CFMEU finances and backs the Greens and Labor Party when they're trying to shut all those CFMEU workers out of a job. China is going to buy our clean coal or go to Indonesia. Even China itself has huge production of coal. China a few years ago was a net exporter of coal. One year it imported 32 million tonnes and exported 33 million tonnes. Its coal is nowhere near the quality of Australian coal, but it is going to use it.

India is building 132 new units of coal-fired generation, alongside China's 299. That will produce an extra 288 million tonnes of CO2. But we're going to change the world from Australia here, you see! We've got just 73 units of coal-fired generation. Those opposite want to wind them down, shut them down, get rid of them and basically spread the problems of South Australia Australia wide. That is what the Andrews government wants to do in Victoria, with a 50 per cent renewable target. Queensland is talking the same. 'Let's make electricity expensive'—a $700,000 subsidy.

I'm amazed about the people who are saying the renewable energy certificate market is going to come down. I've been looking all my life for people who can tell me where markets are going. It's just a fact of genius to know where the markets are going in the future. I want to know where the Australian dollar is going—to help our exports if it's going down or harm our exports if it's going up. I want to know where the ASX will be in couple of years time, because I've got my super invested and I've got to retire in a couple of years time. And those opposite know where the markets are going. That is simply amazing! That is dreaming. That is just not right. The markets will go where demand and supply take them.

If we want electricity prices to go down, we need good base supply so that, when the hot weather is on around much of Australia, in January-February, people—especially our elderly and those in our aged-care facilities—can turn their air conditioners them on and afford to turn them on, and likewise with their heaters in wintertime, in the freezing cold. I, like you, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, know what it's like in South Australia with that cold south-easterly coming off the South Pole—it can get pretty fresh at times. That's when you need to have the heaters on and to be able to afford to put those heaters on.

Quite amazingly, there is this whole story about renewables being the only economic way to go, the best way to go. Hydro is a great way of generating electricity. As the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Joyce, has said, we want to build new dams. When those dams are built, no doubt they will have hydroelectricity generators at the base of those dams. But watch the Greens. As soon as the site is picked to build a dam, in come the Greens: 'No, there's a frog there. You can't build the dam there. It'll destroy the habitat of the frog,' even though it'll be storing more water, as we have to do in this country, especially as the population grows, and for industry and agriculture. But the protesters will be out there: 'You can't build a dam here.' The response will be: 'But we're going to put hydroelectricity at the base of it.' They will say: 'No, you can't do that. You'll upset the habitat of the frog.'

We've seen it all before—these people with their green religion. This is what their green religion says: 'Come follow me and I will lead you to the land of poverty.' That is what their green religion is: make everything expensive, have our businesses not able to compete overseas and make electricity prices go up. The reason those opposite want to see this clean energy target set is for their politics. It means that when they go to the next election they will not have to promote their carbon tax again—as they have promised to bring back in the carbon tax that most of Australia despises. They will put up the electricity prices even more and change the planet while all these coal-fired generation units are being constructed around the world. They'll say, 'We're going to change the planet from here.' Unless we get a big tent over this country, we're not going to do that.

Here's the situation: we need affordable, reliable electricity, and coal will be a major source of that for decades to come. In Australia we are swimming in coal and gas, and in our nuclear efficiencies and capability. We have probably more energy per capita than any other country in the world, and our energy prices are going up because of that green religion—that 'Come follow me and I will lead you to the land of poverty.' That's what it means.