House debates
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Statements by Members
Mining
1:56 pm
Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source
This House has heard many times me and other people speak about the clean energy corridor. The clean energy corridor is a copper string proposal to build a transmission line effectively from Townsville to the heart of the north-west mineral province at Mount Isa. As I talk, we have found huge coal anomalies at Hughenden along the way, about halfway. We are talking about the development of 16 mines. One of those mines alone, Legend Phosphate, is worth $2,000 million a year to the Australian economy. There is no doubt that those 15 or 16 mines will produce $12,000 million for the Australian people and create 8,000 jobs. A further 3,000 jobs will be created by wind labs and the solar biofuels project at Pentland.
Why is this not happening? Because of the narrow, selfish interests of the company based in Zurich. They have decided they will not buy. They have a little sweetheart deal for themselves, so the rest of us can go jump in the ocean. The same company are flying in about a quarter of their workforce to Mount Isa. They have announced they are going to close down copper smelting in Mount Isa. They are closing down the copper refinery in Townsville. They are going to close down 15 potential mines and wind labs in Pentland. (Time expired)
Comments
Mark Wright
Posted on 3 Jan 2012 12:06 am
Roger,
Off the cuff comments always fail. Countries all over the world use alternating current because it is cheaper when surpassing great distances. e.g. Canada, South Africa, South America.
I could go into a detailed engineering explanation for you, but Thomas Edison beat me to it more than 100 years ago.
Mr Katter, your "narrow, selfish interests of the company based in Zurich" statement shows a very micro point of view regarding this industry.
In short, lets see why they don't opt for your alternative instead of a relatively cheap transmission line?
Profit!
These companies are not charities! But if we keep putting obstacles in their paths, do you think they will just accept these and remain loyal to Australia?
Do you think that they will never think to move their business to countries in Africa with their cheap labour and similar resources?
Companies based in Zurich with mining interests will probably already have mining interests in other countries such as Africa and South America.
It is a relatively simple economic excercise to ramp up one interest and ramp another down.
Roger Colclough
Posted on 5 Aug 2012 10:23 pm
Please give me the detailed engineering explanation.
You are grossly wrong quoting Thomas Edison who was a proponent of DC transmission, Nikolas Tesla championed AC distribution.
However HVDC is the accepted method of long distance power transmission and I can give you a detailed engineering explanation.
Roger Colclough
Posted on 2 Jan 2012 10:31 am
I applaud Bob's ideas except to note that nowhere else in the world is High Voltage Alternating Current used to transmit power over such distances due to inductive losses. High Voltage Direct Current is used which has no inductive losses