The Greens really need to get with the times. They are falling behind the world, because the world can’t get enough of Australian coal and Australian gas from your area, Mr Acting Deputy President O’Sullivan. They can’t get enough of coal around the world. There is record demand for fossil fuels right now.
That is why there are record prices for our fossil fuels. Gas is trading at well over $30 a gigajoule in our region; it’s up three times what it was a year ago. Coal prices are absolutely through the roof at record prices. No-one ever thought they’d see prices at over $200 a tonne for thermal coal and over $600 a tonne for coking coal from my area in Central Queensland. In each one of those trains that goes out past my place in Central Queensland, there is $5 million dollars for our nation at these prices. The rest of the world is just desperate for fossil fuels.
Let’s go around the world and see what’s happening. We’ve heard a lot this week about other countries signing up to net zero—doing something in 2050. But I think the best test of what someone’s going to do in 2050 is probably what they’re doing today, because talk is cheap. Countries can say whatever they like; what they do is much, much more important. So let’s go around the world.
In China over the past week, Premier Li came out and said that coal supply is crucial to people’s lives. He made these remarks while urging coal power stations to go full throttle. They need them to fire up in China because they are running out of power, their lights are going off and electricity has been cut in many regions. At the same time, Premier Li also said that, given these energy security concerns, China would review its emissions targets. They would review when they are going to commit to emissions peaking. At the moment, China actually doesn’t have to do anything. Their promise under the climate change agreements is to keep emitting until 2030, and then, they say, they’re going to reduce emissions—they’re going to do it in 10 years time! Now they’re saying that they might not even do that. This whole climate cabal is falling apart before our eyes. Premier Li said that energy security would be China’s priority.
In India, the government has mandated that 10 per cent of all coal used in power stations must be imported. Typically, India doesn’t import that much coal or tries not to. It wants more imported coal to shore up their energy security. Thank God an Indian company was allowed to build a coal mine in North Queensland at the Carmichael mine site. That was pretty lucky for our country, because coal’s in high demand and it’s going to make a lot of money when those first trains go through Carmichael and out from Abbott Point later this year.
We hear a lot about the US—it’s apparently the reason we’ve got to sign up to net zero. Apparently President Joe Biden has demanded that we do this. Well, in the US, President Biden has actually asked OPEC to increase oil production. He’s asked OPEC—Middle Eastern countries—to increase oil production. His administration itself has put more restrictions on oil production and fracking in the US. The woke Wall Street bankers won’t finance the fracking anymore through Texas and Oklahoma and other places, but they need the Middle Eastern countries to drill-baby-drill. Once again the Western world has been put at the behest of Middle Eastern oil sheikhs. It’s an absolute disaster.
While the US wants us to commit to net zero and change our policy settings—apparently demanding it, we’re told—they can’t even pass legislation to implement their own climate commitments. It looks very likely that the US will go to Glasgow empty handed. That is despite the US Congress currently being Democrat controlled—the party of the President. The President has a clean electricity plan that he’s trying to get through the Congress, but Senator Manchin from West Virginia is holding this up because, in relation to coal mines, he said: ‘We want to make sure we have reliable power. They are not going to close.’ That’s what the people in the US want. That’s probably what is going to happen in the US. So they can lecture us all they like, but there will be almost certainly no action there.
Let’s go over to the UK because that is the most instructive country in this example. In fairness to the UK, they have acted; they have actually done stuff. They’ve closed coal-fired power stations, they’re shutting down their North Sea oilfields and they’ve banned fracking across the whole country. They have reduced emissions more than any other developed country in the world—a gold star to the United Kingdom! How is it working out for them? Well we’ve all seen over the past couple of months that, if you’re a resident in the UK, you’ve got to line up for petrol. It’s back to the 1970s for the United Kingdom. They’re lining up for petrol. Factories have closed all around the UK. Power companies have gone out of business because of surging energy prices and locked in retail prices. In the ultimate comical irony, they are running out of food because they are short of carbon dioxide. You need natural gas to make carbon dioxide and you need carbon dioxide to refrigerate food and transport it from the country to the city. They don’t have enough carbon dioxide because Vladimir Putin is not sending them enough gas. They are running out of food. The UK government has had to bail out a major producer of carbon dioxide in the UK, CF Fertilisers. So taxes will go up more to subsidise something that used to be done without government subsidies.
At least the UK are being been upfront about this. As I say, you can see the cost to their economy. Last night, the UK government released modelling of how much it would cost. They didn’t actually outline the costs, but they did release modelling on the impact of pursuing a net-zero agenda. I give them credit for that. That modelling showed that, to reach net-zero emissions, you would need a carbon price of A$295 a tonne. That is outrageous. That will put a wrecking ball through any economy. If you put $300 a tonne on people’s power bills, on people’s petrol costs and on farmers’ methane emissions and shut down our cattle industry, that is going to be an economic disaster.
They also revealed that there would be a fiscal shortfall thanks to net zero as well because taxes on a variety of things would fall. That would leave them 1.5 per cent of GDP short. If that was in Australia, you would have a $1,000-a-year impact on Australia wages. It would mean we would have to put up taxes just to offset the fiscal impact, let alone the power bills and petrol costs. Just the fiscal impact would be an extra $1,000 a year. That is the disaster that net-zero emissions are spreading through the world in any country that is trying to do it.
What you won’t hear in the mainstream press is that just nine countries in the world have legislated net-zero emissions. The US can’t get legislation through. Those include countries in Europe that are living through a disaster right now. Canada has legislated net-zero emissions but—guess what?—emissions this century in Canada have gone up. They had a reduction due to COVID last year, but until 2019 Canada’s emissions had gone up under the Trudeau administration. You wouldn’t realise that if you just listened to our mainstream press. In New Zealand, they have also legislated the net-zero emissions target. They have exempted their agriculture industry, which accounts for half of their emissions. What a joke! The rest of the world is not doing this thing. They are walking away from it.
We are lagging behind the world. The rest of the world is building coal-fired power stations. We are not doing anything. We need to build these modern, clean, coal-fired power stations, just like the rest of the world is. Four countries that have signed up to net zero are building, combined, 129 coal-fired power stations. China is committed to net zero, apparently. We are told they are committed. And, of course, I believe the Chinese Communist Party; they never lie! They are building 95 coal-fired power stations right now. Indonesia have also apparently signed up to net-zero emissions. Between us and them, we are the first and second biggest coal exporters. They sometimes get the top prize. They have committed to net-zero emissions, apparently. They are building 23 coal-fired power stations. Japan is building seven coal-fired power stations even though we are told, ‘They’re not going to buy our coal anymore.’ They are building coal-fired power stations now. Korea is building four. Demand for Australian coal has never been stronger, and it is going to keep growing for years to come. We as a nation should take that opportunity. We should be building more mines so that we can meet this demand and bring more people out of poverty.
The biggest environmental issue in the world is not carbon emissions. It is air pollution in our region. It kills four million people a year. What we should do to help avoid those deaths is provide reliable electricity that does not create the smog and ash that causes these deaths. Our coal industry does that because it helps electrify countries and remove them from the use of organic matter that causes these deaths. To fix the environment we should be building more Australian coalmines today.
