Senator Matt Canavan via Facebook
The National Party’s Backbench Policy Committee released its Manufacturing 2035 plan on Tuesday – it was no surprise to see coal mentioned.
The document features a 9-point plan and sets a goal of doubling employment in Australian manufacturing.
“We must take radical action to reverse the trend in fewer things being made in Australia,” said Senator Matt Canavan, chair of the Policy Committee.
Senator Canavan says this includes reinvesting in Australian energy resources such as coal and gas.
The paper states the main barrier to Australian manufacturing strength over the past decade has been Australia’s high energy costs..
“The way to get power prices down is simple. We need more supply of affordable and reliable power. Intermittent renewable power is not the answer to restore Australia’s manufacturing strength.”
The Committee says Australia needs to build modern coal fired power stations to help manufacturing industries. While the Nationals are already backing a coal power station at Collinsville in North Queensland, the paper indicates more will need to be built and calls for the Morrison Government to also support a new coal burner in the Hunter Valley.
While very pro-coal, Senator Canavan isn’t a huge fan of renewables – in February last year he stated:
“Renewables are the dole bludgers of the energy system, they only turn up to work when they want to.”
Then there was that “Black Coal Matters” thing in October last year.
Senator Canavan also jumped on the Barnaby BS bandwagon yesterday after a power outages in Sydney on Tuesday, declaring:
“How are we going to make more things in Australia if we can’t even keep the lights on in our biggest city? Time to build some reliable coal fired power stations.”
The situation in Sydney had nothing to do with electricity generation – these were network related issues. But Senator Canavan doesn’t appear to be overly concerned about letting facts stand in the way of garnering support for a coal power revival in Australia- and that speaks volumes about its ongoing prospects.
Sharma: Renewables Provide Lowest Cost Electricity
In an interview with Sky News yesterday, Liberal MP Dave Sharma wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the coal power element of the Nationals’ plan.
“I don’t think the jury’s out on this, I think the lowest cost of new energy generation sources is renewable energy and that’s even when you add in the costs of firming either with gas or batteries or pumped hydro, and that cost curve is only coming down,” he said. “Coal in fact is going up because it is less investible as an asset.”
CSIRO’s GenCost report released in December last year indicated wind and solar power continue to be the cheapest source of energy in Australia, even when factoring in extra system integration costs such as storage and additional transmission expenditure.
Mr. Sharma said the way to get cheaper power to boost Australia’s manufacturing sector is to smooth the transition of renewables into the grid.
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Wait, wait… Senator Matt Canavan says he wants to “reverse the trend in fewer things being made in Australia” by extracting coal and natural gas for export overseas which will then be traded for what? Unless he’s extremely generous with other people’s money and wants to give the coal and gas away, it’s going to be manufactured goods, isn’t it? It doesn’t look like Matt has thought this through.
Added to this is that it will be a foreign-owned company that will employ their own workers that extract the coal, then the profits will go overseas, and tax-free at that.
But we, the real tax payers, will help these overseas companies with generous subsidies.
It concerns me that some of these politicians are spreading incorrect information like the Barnaby rant about Manly losing power and blames renewable for the outage?
Huh? What?
He doesn’t seem to understand as do many of the coal MPs that generation is a separate process to transmission and distribution.
Loss of distribution happens regardless of source of generation.
Loss of transmission happens regardless of source of generation.
Loss of transmission impacts distribution networks.
Neither impact generation (apart from having to dial down the generator’s output to match the drop in load).
What’s so hard to understand this?
But blaming local network outages on renewables due to local weather events such as storms that take out power lines is laughable.
That’s like saying the dam has run of water when there’s a water mains that burst somewhere in the suburb and people can’t get water. People don’t blame the dam, they blame the pipes for breaking. Ditto for renewables for generation and local power outages.
Sheesh, the idiocy of some politicians how they link cause and effect.
Energy costs are a factor. Labour costs dwarfing that but I guess they’ll get to work on that too.
I wonder if they know industrial electricity costs are lower in Australia than China?
They already are. Seen the wage movements in Oz compared to other countries lately?
I would guess not, but it isn’t about jobs of course, it is about delivering on the requirements of the wealthy benefactors that prop up these pollies whilst they line their own pockets. Nothing new here of course.
Meanwhile, broadcast on ABC TV 7:30 last night (Jan 28) was an interview by Laura Tingle with Earth System scientist Professor Will Steffen. The transcript included:
“LAURA TINGLE: What does it mean for the Government’s so-called gas-led recovery?
WILL STEFFEN: There is absolutely no room for the expansion of the fossil-fuel industry. That’s absolutely clear.
To meet these Paris targets, to get the emissions down by 50 per cent by 2030, we have to rapidly reduce our use of fossil fuels – coal, gas, and oil.
And that means you simply can’t expand any of these industries if you know that you’ve got to reduce them by 20 per cent in just one decade. That’s a massive task ahead of us.”
See: https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/more-extreme-weather-expected-as-atmosphere/13100714
Steffen says a +3 °C world (above Holocene Epoch pre-industrial age) “is going to be a really, really tough world just to live in, let alone survive in any sort of reasonable sense”.
I’d suggest Senator Matt Canavan’s call for more fossil fuel projects is effectively advocating for future human suffering and civilisation collapse.