I have never heard a greater spray or screed of double standards in this place. I was not going to raise the Pakistan issue, but since Senator Faruqi has she might be interested to know—and I don’t know if this came up in discussions over there on the subcontinent—that in February, less than six months ago, under a headline from Reuters it was reported that Pakistan plans to quadruple domestic coal-fired power and move away from gas. But she has the temerity to come into this place and blame this country for this climate crisis while failing to mention—and I’m sure she would know—that Pakistan is turning on more coal-fired power stations just as they’re going out of fashion. How about we apply an equal standard here? Why are the Greens so quick to damn Australia, our country and our people, but are so quick to let others off the hook, whether it is Pakistan, China, India or Europe—and I’ll come to Europe later.
The other broader double standard in this contribution today is that every time it’s cold we are told the weather is not climate, and then as soon as it is hot in Rome apparently the weather is climate. What a double standard. Do the Greens remember May? Only a few months ago in May—and I am quoting from a report—more than 100 weather stations across Australia registered their coldest May minimum temperatures on record. I’m not saying that is climate, but you are. You are saying that because it is a bit hot in Europe at the moment it’s global boiling, which is apparently the term now. Global warming is no longer useful, so they have come up with a new term to replace the old term to scare us even more. But they are just using weather, using data points, to justify putting a massive new restriction on our own economic restrictions while they are ignoring the data from our own country, which shows we just had one of the coldest Mays on record.
Why do you ignore that? It does not make any sense because what is actually happening around the world, not just in Pakistan—a news flash for the Greens—is the world is increasing its use of coal. But that’s not the case in Australia. We are getting blamed. The Greens constantly blame us. They want to blame their own country and their own people, yet they ignore—
Senator Whish-Wilson: Where are they getting the coal from, you goose?
Senator CANAVAN: It’s not from Australia—I’ll take that interjection from Senator Whish-Wilson because Australia’s coal production actually fell by three per cent in the past year, whereas in China it’s up six per cent and in India it’s up eight per cent. Europe has increased its coal production by one per cent over the last year. Our use has actually declined. If the Greens looked at the data, they would actually see that Australia is not contributing to this issue, it’s the other countries that they refuse to condemn. As the International Energy Agency reported last week:
As projected in the Coal 2022 report last December, global coal demand reached a new all-time high in 2022, rising above 8.3 billion tonnes …
Australia’s production actually fell by three per cent, but this new record was reached because other countries—China, Indonesia, India—are increasing their production of coal. Even Europe are increasing their reliance on coal.
It should be stated, to get the facts right here, the world uses 8,300 million tonnes of coal a year. Although it has declined a little bit, Australia’s production is 450 million tonnes of the 8,300 million, so it’s about 5½ per cent. We produce about 5½ per cent of the world’s coal, so we’re not the cause of all of these issues. And even if we were to completely shut down the coal industry here, as the Greens would want to do, it would make no difference to the climate at all. It would make no difference to the climate at all because China, India and other countries would continue to mine their own coal. They would easily be able to increase their production to replace our coal.
So, what is this actually about? It’s not really about the climate. It’s not about that at all. They simply want to deindustrialise Western countries. That is the agenda here. They’re letting all the other countries off the hook. You never hear speeches about Xi Jinping and his policy to build two coal-fired power stations a week. There’s never any condemnation of that. There’s never any condemnation of India’s plans to expand their coal production to over 1,000 million tonnes per year. They’ve achieved those plans; they achieved them in the past year. There’s never any condemnation of that. There’s never any condemnation of Pakistan and their plans to quadruple the coal-fired power stations in their country. If they really cared about the climate, they’d be mentioning those things as well.
What the Greens really care about is shutting down industry in Australia and shifting and redistributing that wealth to other countries. That is the agenda here, as plain as day given the double standards that are constantly espoused by those in that corner.
