Senate debates

Wednesday, 5 December 2018

Matters of Urgency

Mining Industry

5:14 pm

Photo of Barry O'SullivanBarry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

'Jobs on a dead planet,' I'll take that interjection. What they're going to do is take all the coalminers and close down Mackay, Rockhampton, Moura, Moranbah, Blackwater, Emerald—just close those towns down; just turns the lights off. The economic impact is not only on my home state and the nation but on all those hundreds of thousands of people. They'll have them polishing wind turbines. That's the alternative industry, these wind turbines. These are turbines made of steel that are smeltered from iron ore. There's an estimate—I don't have it in front of me; otherwise I'd quote it more precisely—that it takes about five years of generation before they've offset their own carbon footprint with respect to their structure.

To anybody listening, sadly—I hope that most Australians have a life and are not sitting glued to a television set listening to the tripe that comes out of our colleagues here—all I ask them to do is this: go back over the contribution of Senator Waters or Senator Di Natale or Senator Whish-Wilson or any one of the clan and pick three facts that they've stated in their contributions. They could be today's contributions, yesterday's or those from a week ago. If you're having trouble, contact my office and I'll provide you with both their contribution, their statements of facts, and the science that they plead about so frequently. And you can do your own comparison. I'm not here to tell you what to think. I'll provide you with the facts and you can make your own decision. I promise you that you'll arrive at the same place as so many in this place and so many in the electorate have—that this is nonsense and hogwash.

The problem is that their resistance to these matters, I believe, inhibits the ability for governments to properly engage in the debate around some of these issues and settle at some middle ground with respect to some of the policies—not just of the government but when and if, at some future time, the opposition takes government. So I urge people to watch and listen, and I urge them to be very careful. This tail over here, this tail of the Greens, is going to wag this Chihuahua over here if the Australian people make the mistake of putting them back in to govern this nation. I call on people to be very careful with how they apply their vote.

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