Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's good to finish off the speaking on this bill. I seem to recall that last time we started off by pointing out that this side of the chamber is the side of the chamber that believes in jobs for working-class Queenslanders and all Australians. I'd like to welcome back my coal-loving patriot friend, Senator Canavan. If it weren't for Senator Canavan, who has his finger on the pulse of the Queensland people, I probably wouldn't be a senator.

Matt Canavan listens to the people. So does the LNP, and so does the federal coalition. We know that what matters is jobs. All we want to do is help look at a scoping study to see if it's possible to put a coal plant in North Queensland so that north Queenslanders can have some jobs, because, heaven knows, the Queensland Labor Party is doing its best to destroy jobs. They've brought in the reef regulations, which are a threat to our cattle and cane industries—two industries that are synonymous with the great state of Queensland. But that's not enough. No. They want to destroy the coal industry as well, and tourism, and it goes on.

They're subsidising a foreign wind farm that is to be built in a national park—that's right, a multinational owned wind farm in a national park. But do you know who they won't let in national parks? Do you know who they're kicking out of national parks in Queensland? Australian beekeepers. National parks are where the bees go to have a rest after they have helped pollinate all the trees that grow the fruit et cetera. And I want to give a big shout-out to Rodney Smith from Chinchilla. He's a beekeeper who took me out to Barakula State Forest one day and showed me how it all works. The bees love their eucalypts. But I digress.

What's so annoying about this motion is the sheer blatant hypocrisy of it. It is sheer blatant hypocrisy that we can't look at all forms of energy generation—the power, the industries—that this country needs to get some jobs and some economic growth so we can get out of COVID. I'll explain why. The federal government has laid down $10 billion for the clean energy fund, another $5 billion for the Snowy Hydro project, another $3½ billion for the Climate Solutions Package, $2½ billion for the Emissions Reduction Fund, $1½ billion for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, another $1 billion for the Grid Reliability Fund and half a billion dollars for the National Hydrogen Strategy.

An honourable senator: How much is this?

It is $24 billion—about 10,000 times more than what the subsidy is or what we're going to put in for a scoping study at Collinsville. It is 10,000 to one. Is it that hard?

But it doesn't end there. The madness continues, because the Queensland state Labor government is signing offtake contracts with multinational companies to build wind farms. What's so frustrating about this is that the state of Queensland has twice as much supply as demand. The highest demand that Queensland has ever had on one day, 14 February 2018, is 9.7 megawatts per hour. On the supply side, it has 13 gigawatts in coal and gas, and it already has about another four or five gigawatts in renewables, so it has plenty of supply. But that's not enough, because, in order to meet their 50 per cent renewable target, they're basically going to build all these windmills and all these solar panels that they don't actually need. It's like 10 people going to the movies and ordering tickets for 30 seats. You don't need it.

What's annoying about it is that this is undermining the people of Queensland's own energy assets: the coal fired power stations. They are coal fired power stations that are going to last until 2040 or 2050. We have all the energy to meet the needs of Queensland until 2040 and 2050, yet the state Labor government is subsidising foreign multinationals to build wind farms that will be obsolete before the coal-fired power stations become obsolete. But it doesn't end there. The cheapest operational cost for the production of energy, as shown in the Finkel report in Australia, was at Kogan Creek—$9 a megawatt. At Callide and Tarong, the cost was $17 a megawatt. There is 200 years worth of coal at Kogan Creek. It's sitting right there on the surface—mine mouth coal. You just scrape it up and put it straight in.

What is interesting is that 60 to 70 per cent of the energy in this country is provided by 21 coal-fired power stations. To get renewables to make up that difference, AEMO says you're going to have to spend $100 billion on transmission lines to get the power to the market. Transmission lines are made up of lots and lots of switching gear and, in that switching gear, there is a product called sulphur hexafluoride. That has a global warming potential 23,000 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. Why would you put a toxic synthetic gas into the atmosphere that has a global warming potential 23,000 times greater than that of carbon dioxide? Might I add: all molecules absorb and emit. One of the big myths about carbon dioxide is that it traps heat. Nothing traps heat. Gustav Kirchhoff in the 1850s said that atoms absorb and emit at the same frequency. Carbon dioxide emits at four frequencies: 2.8, 4.3 and two degenerate vibrational frequencies at 14.8. What's interesting is that the atmospheric window is between nine and 11 microns, and we know that because of Wien's law. Wien is the guy who got a Nobel prize in 1911 for physics. Wien's law proved that the atmospheric window the earth emits at is about 10 microns. And what emits at 10 microns? What's the atmospheric window at? Between nine and 11. It's a function of pressure. It just happens to be sulphur hexafluoride. Why would you be putting this stuff that goes straight through the atmospheric window into the atmosphere? It's not very smart at all, is it?

But, of course, it takes more than transmission to make renewables work. The unicorn farmers over here think that they're going to run manufacturing on green energy. It's never going to happen, because you can't build big enough batteries to power industrial use. Even if you could, it would cost a fortune. I'll explain why. Lithium batteries are made from lithium, which is a one per cent ore body. That means you've got to mine 100 tonnes of the stuff just to get one tonne of it, so you're going to be digging some very big holes to get this stuff out of the ground. Then it takes four energy-intensive processes to extract the metal out of the ore. And that's only for the anode. You haven't even started on the cathode, which could be cobalt, nickel or who knows what. That will mean another great big hole in the ground. The hypocrisy of all of this is: when these solar farms and these wind farms are built, does the state government charge them an environmental bond? No. Mining companies have to put down an environmental bond when they start a mine. Yet again, we're giving a free pass to renewables. Let me tell you: in 100 years time when the atmosphere is full of sulphur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride, which is the stuff in solar panels—that's the stuff used in solar panels, not the stuff used in etching solar panels. The stuff used in etching solar panels is silicon tetrachloride. You probably don't hear of that, because that's made in China, like neodymium, which is also made in China, because it's a rare earth. They're the only country that makes this filthy toxic stuff. Silicon tetrachloride is more toxic than nuclear waste. But, of course, they'll never tell you about that, will they? No, of course not! So I— (Time expired)