Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week, I drove out from Rockhampton to Emerald to attend the AG-Grow farm field days—wonderful days, wonderful events—out there. There's a lot of positivity around the farming sector. It's had good rains. It's raining again, I think, in Central Queensland today. One thing that struck me along the journey was that trainload after trainload full of coal was passing me.

It's always inspiring to see the fruits of the hard work of the men and women in our coalmining industry and how much it provides for our country, but it does get one thinking: how come we're digging up all of this coal, chucking it on a train, taking it to a port, putting it on a boat and sending it all the way, usually—almost always—to the northern hemisphere of the world, across the equator to Japan, Korea, China, India and the like, where they are using that resource to deliver cheap power for themselves, build a manufacturing sector and build an industrial economy, while we, instead, are going to shut down all our coal-fired power stations? All of those in Central Queensland are slated to go. What's going to happen then? Are we still going to export the coal to them? For the environment, it doesn't matter where it's burned. But, for our jobs and for our wealth, it does matter where it's burned.

In the week when we're talking about nuclear energy and other forms of energy, news broke that India is set to register the biggest jump in coal-fired power in a decade. They're set to increase their coal-fired power in one year by 15 gigawatts. We have only about 20 gigawatts of coal in this country. They're going to install three-quarters of our capacity in just one year. We are fools. We're being taken for mugs.

The biggest reaction I got out there at AG-Grow about nuclear and renewables was: 'Why don't we just use our coal? It's right here.' It's right there. Other countries are using it. Let's use it too to bring down power prices and make sure we at least keep the manufacturing sector we have left in this country. We've lost so much. But maybe we can even consider growing it again one day in the future.