Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You can write in your book, Member for Fenner, if you like. If you want to sing out, add it to your next chapter! And I say it with all due respect, because you're a learned person, and I do have high regard for your economic background.

That said, what we did during the COVID years was protect jobs and save lives, and it took a lot of money to do that. But Australia finished up as the second best in the world for COVID-19 preparedness, according to the Hopkins Centre. And, as the Deputy Prime Minister for many of the COVID years, I'm proud of that record.

Coal supplied 62.6 per cent of electricity to the National Electricity Market in 2022-23. Gas was 4½ per cent; hydro was 8.3; and other renewable energy, including wind, grid, solar and batteries, was 24.1 per cent. Australia has the fourth-largest share of coal reserves in the world, and our coal is the best in the world. It's the cleanest in the world, and we have it as an export. It has helped the member for Rankin's, the Treasurer, ability, to create a surplus in this nation. Without it, we would not have been able to put that surplus in place. In Australia, nearly 80 per cent of coal is produced from open-cut mines, in contrast to the rest of the world, where open-cut mining accounts for only 40 per cent of coal production. Such mining is cheaper than underground mining, and it enables up to 90 per cent of resource recovery.

They're important figures, but behind all those important figures are workers: they are the men—and women, too—who put on the high-vis and the helmets with the torches and go out and work and help our country be powered, help our exports be strong and help our nation. Many of those people who live in our cities and enjoy their lattes and their magics and whatever other coffee brew they have of a morning don't quite, I think, appreciate that without our coalminers they wouldn't be able to enjoy that beverage, that morning cup of pick-me-up coffee.

Since May 2022, the Minister for the Environment and Water has approved 12 new coalmines or expansions with 725 million tonnes of lifetime emissions. I know that they'll have to be abated. That's just the way life is these days, until we get some common sense. But I applaud and encourage the opening of those new mines. Indeed, I would encourage even more. Without them, we're not going to be able to power Australia. We should have the cheapest energy in the world. We should. Unfortunately, we don't. I'd love the Minister for Climate Change and Energy to explain why that is so.

When you see that in the 12 months to May 2025 there was $45.8 billion worth of coal exports, can you imagine trying to provide the National Disability Insurance Scheme, support for public schools, support for public hospitals or just keeping the lights on and keeping the wheels of economic activity in this nation without that coal wealth? When I say 'wealth', I talk about the 27,000 Queenslanders employed by coalmining. Those people would perhaps not be in work. I tell you what, they certainly wouldn't be an ecotourism. The Greens would like them to be. There are no jobs in ecotourism like coalmining wealth. Coal royalties are $5½ billion a year.

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