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

Let me explain why the Greens' policies are causing so much damage to our environment. I'll make it very clear so that everyone can understand. Let's look at fuel levels and bushfires in national parks. We've seen so much country locked up and left. And, when you lock country up and leave it, what happens? The rain falls, the grass grows, the fuel levels get higher and higher, the lightning strikes, or the fire starts for some reason, and, once you have more than 150 tonnes of fuel per hectare, and once you have more than 50-kilometre-per-hour winds and a more than 40-degree day, the fire is uncontrollable. Take the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, a very sad event: 90 million tonnes of CO2. But these are the Greens: 'Lock up the country, leave it and burn it.'

Twice now in the last six years I've seen the Pilliga scrub, up near where I live, burn from end to end. And they're doing a survey now and wondering why 90 per cent of the koalas are dead. There has been a 90 per cent reduction in the population of koalas in the Pilliga scrub. At our farm, we're very pleased with the great koala populations we have. They don't die, they don't get burnt, because we graze the country; we keep the fuel levels down and look after them. But these are the Greens: 'Lock up the country.' We were talking yesterday about forests and the milling jobs in Victoria. There are national parks everywhere. Take the red gum forests down the river. They will burn and they will destroy those forests as sure as I am talking to you now. Why? It's because they'll take them from forestry to national park, and they won't allow the stockpeople to run their cattle and graze the country and keep the fuel levels down, and then the savage, severe fires will start off and burn like all blazes, destroying the forests from the native grass seed on the ground up into the crowns of the trees, killing the trees. And this is called conservation, Greens-style!

Let me go on. Remember when they wanted to have the big carbon tax. This is a classic. They said, 'Let's put this great big carbon tax on Australian industries.' Look at the cement industry. I remember the figures well. In Australia, we produce 10 million tonnes of cement a year. When we produce a tonne of cement, we produce 0.8 of a tonne of CO2. So, for our 10 million tonnes of cement, there's eight million tonnes of CO2 from producing that cement. In China, they produce one billion tonnes of cement a year, roughly, but, for every tonne they produce, it's 1.1 tonnes of CO2. So let's tax the crikey out of Australian industry with a carbon tax, an emissions trading scheme or however you want to do it, and shut down the cement industry in Australia. Instead of getting those 10 million tonnes produced here in Australia for eight million tonnes of CO2, we'll shift it to China, where the 10 million tonnes will produce 11 million tonnes of CO2, another three million tonnes, for the same product. This is conservation, Greens-style!

Six months ago I went to the Library here for information. When you have a coal-fired generator, one generation unit is one unit. If you go to Bayswater or Liddell, you'll see four cooling towers. They are four-unit generators. Just recently, there have been how many new coal-fired generation units constructed around the world? The answer is 621. There are 621 units under construction or just completed. Let's go through some of those figures. For example, in China they are constructing 299 new coal-fired power generation units to add to their 2,107 units. Those 299 units will produce an extra 677 million tonnes of CO2. Australia produces 550 million tonnes, holus-bolus, in the whole economy. The extra coal-fired power generation units being built in China will produce more CO2 than the whole of Australia.

The Greens have to get their heads around this. These coal-fired generators—guess what they're going to burn. They're going to burn coal—c-o-a-l. Do they burn brown, dirty coal from China or less productive coal from Indonesia, or do they burn a more efficient, black coal from Australia? That's the question. No. You want to shut down every coalmine in Australia, let all these coal-fired generators be built around the world and let them burn less efficient coal, putting out more emissions. This is crazy. Let's look at the coal-fired generation stations being built: 132 extra in India, an extra 288 million tonnes of CO2; 10 in Japan; 22 units being constructed in the Philippines; 34 units being constructed in Vietnam, to produce another 67 million tonnes of CO2. But no; the Greens say, 'Do away with coal.' There is a Green religion going on. They want to stop our live exports of animals, sending beef producers and lamb and sheep producers into poverty. This Green religion is a very simple religion. It says: 'Come follow me, and I'll lead you to the land of poverty.' That's what it means.

It means expensive electricity. Renewable energies are good. They go on, supposedly, forever. But take one wind turbine—just one, three megawatts. If it spins eight hours a day, 365 days a year, it produces all those renewable energy certificates at $80 a certificate. We—and, when I say 'we', I mean everyone who is hooked up to the electricity grid: this building, the abattoirs, the manufacturers, the widow pensioners—pay $700,000 a year to each wind turbine before they sell one watt of electricity. That is $700,000 in subsidy, and everyone who is hooked up to the grid is paying for it. The retailers have to charge it. You wonder why these foreign companies are coming here and setting up all these big wind turbines. It's because they can earn so much money, take the money back home to their country, and we suckers are paying for this, and we think we are changing the planet.

As Dr Finkel told Senator Macdonald at Senate estimates, we can abolish all of our emissions in Australia, the whole lot—we can't abolish them all, because three people breathing in a year actually produce a tonne of CO2—and it will make no difference to the planet whatsoever. The Greens and those opposite have to realise one day that we don't have a tent over our country. There is not a tent over Australia. We are actually linked to the world when it comes to the atmosphere. But you want to put all these costs on and shut down our coalmining industry. I just can't understand why the CFMEU, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, ever give money to the Greens-Labor Party. I can never work that out. Construction—the Greens hate it. Forestry—the Greens hate it. Mining—the Greens hate it. Energy—'Cut out all the mining jobs for the workers from the CFMEU.' It is unbelievable that that union has paid so much money to the Greens and those opposite, the Labor Party. We've got Mr Shorten, who hates coal when he's in—

Senator Farrell interjecting—

You'll get your chance in a minute, Senator Farrell. Interjections are disorderly. Why does he hate coal when he's in Melbourne for the Batman by-election—

Senator Farrell interjecting—