Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Trade. Would the minister advise the House how the government has supported the responsible development of Australia’s export coal industry? Are there any threats to the billions in exports this industry provides to the nation?

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Dobell, who knows full well the importance of the coal industry to Australia. As the Prime Minister mentioned, the coal industry represents $24.3 billion worth of exports this year; one in eight of our export dollars comes from coal. We export to 38 countries and help fuel much of the economic expansion of Britain, Japan, China, India and a host of other countries in and near our region.

It is important, in the context of the greenhouse debate, to note that Australia’s coal is far cleaner and produces lower greenhouse gas emissions than, say, Chinese coal. The Australian government has been investing significantly, in partnership with the industry itself, in clean coal technologies to further lower emissions. Indeed, we have committed around half a billion dollars to clean coal technologies. In addition, our government has been working constructively with the industry to help upgrade the coal industry’s infrastructure, including massive developments to get rid of some of the bottlenecks in the Hunter Valley rail network. The Deputy Prime Minister recently opened the Sandgate rail flyover, which is part of a $380 million investment to lift the capacity of the Hunter Valley rail network to about 115 million tonnes of coal a year.

This government is committed to the coal industry. We have demonstrated our willingness to work with the industry to help make its technology cleaner and to help it achieve its maximum potential for our nation. Thirty thousand people work directly in the coal industry and another 130,000 are dependent upon that sector. The honourable member for Dobell asks, ‘Are there threats?’ Of course there clearly are. The Greens Senator Bob Brown declared over the weekend that he wanted to close down our coal exports and our coal fired power stations in Australia within three years. Within three years, he wants the entire great Australian coal industry to disappear.

Many may just dismiss that as the wacky Greens off again with another quite strange policy idea, but the alarming fact is that, at every election, Labor does a preference deal with the Greens. It is always prepared to trade off matters of principle to get Greens preferences. And it is at it again. There are banner headlines ‘Rudd woos Queensland Greens vote’. There is one thing the Queensland Greens want: to close down all the Queensland power stations and this great industry, the biggest employer and the biggest export earner in the country.

They have a bit of sympathy in the Labor Party from the honourable member for Kingsford Smith, who said that the expansion of the coal industry is a thing of the past and a few days earlier dismissed jobs in the mining industry as being hypothetical. How many hypothetical coal industry jobs are Labor going to trade off this year for their Greens preference deal? How many jobs in the Hunter, how many jobs in the new electorate of Flynn in Queensland, the heart of the coal industry in that state, are going to be traded off for this year’s Greens preference deal? Labor cannot get a candidate in Flynn and it is no wonder if they have to try to defend a policy which would close down the most significant employer in that region.

So the reality is that Labor is close to the Greens and does deals with the Greens. It identifies with this wacky policy to close down the coal industry. I call on the Leader of the Opposition to stop his negotiations with a party of that nature. Do not try to woo the vote of the Greens in Queensland; be responsible about Australia’s coal industry and let them get on with earning the export dollars that are so vital to our nation’s industry.