Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell. Will the minister advise the Senate of the vital role clean coal technology will play in the battle against climate change, and is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Heffernan for a question about climate change and the importance the coal industry will play in Australia in addressing dangerous climate change. It is tremendous to have our friends from Bulgaria and from New Zealand here. They are two countries that stand shoulder to shoulder with Australia in the fight to maintain the moratorium on the slaughter of whales, so thank you to both of your governments.

In relation to climate change, on which Bulgaria and New Zealand work very hard alongside Australia to address this truly global issue, I send my regards to Minister David Parker, because he made such a sensible contribution to the work to create a post Kyoto protocol, a new Kyoto—something that Mr Parker is very excited about. He is also very excited about the Asia-Pacific partnership and other proposals of the coalition government here. He is very much at odds with his Labor comrades over on this side of the Tasman, but he understands, as I do, that you will not address climate change unless you use all of the technologies available.

Mr Parker also understands, as I do and you do, Senator Heffernan, that you will not address climate change globally unless you address the issue of coal. Coal will form a substantial part of the world’s energy source for the next 40 to 50 years, according to the International Energy Agency. As much as Mr Beazley and the rest of the Labor Party and the Greens would geosequester their heads in the sand, bury their heads in the sand, and pretend that you can solve climate change by signing up to the old Kyoto, the reality is that you need to clean up coal if you are going to address climate change.

Overnight we had a decision by a court in New South Wales to effectively stop the approval of substantial new coalmining in New South Wales. This was encouraged by the Greens and Labor in this place and encouraged by the silence of Mr Beazley. Twenty days after the Labor Party’s Newcastle City Council voted to stop coalmining and the expansion of coalmining; some months after Kelly Hoare, the member for Charlton, wrote me a letter saying that her electorate in the Hunter Valley is home to a rapacious coalmining industry, an industry that she thinks should be brought to end; a few months after Labor senators voted for a Greens motion effectively putting in jeopardy the Queensland Isaac Plains and Sonoma coalmines; and some weeks after Labor and the Greens dominated the Waverley Council in Sydney and voted to do all they could to prevent the Anvil Hill mine—what did we hear from Mr Beazley on coalmining along with any of those people? There was absolute deathly silence.

This week in the Senate, Labor can make up their mind on coal. They can support an anti-coal amendment to the environment protection law, which would bring the Anvil mine provision under federal law. The Greens’ proposal and Anthony Albanese’s proposal to put a greenhouse trigger into the environment law in this place is an anti-coal amendment. We will see where Mr Beazley stands on coalmining when Labor senators are asked to vote on the Albanese-Bob Brown amendment—the anti-coal amendment—to the federal environment law.