Coal news and updates

Greens MP Adam Bandt has accused the opposition of “fiddling while the planet is burning” by moving towards announcing an inquiry into Australia’s electricity industry.

The moves by Bill Shorten, revealed in The Australian today, has also been criticised by Coalition MPs, one of whom warned the idea was simply “code for ultimately pushing up electricity prices”.

The inquiry could be charged with developing a plan to shut down ageing coal-fired power stations under an opposition election policy that seeks to avoid a carbon tax scare campaign.

Mr Bandt, the Greens’ energy spokesman, accused the opposition of “kicking this critical issue into the long grass” at the same time as it approves new coal mines.

“Labor is conflicted on what to do about coal and I think they’re hoping to buy a bit of time when the science and the energy industry is saying get on with the job,” he said.

“We produce more electricity in Australia than we need. We’ve currently got about five coal-fired power stations worth of excess electricity in the grid.”

Mr Bandt called on the government to immediately begin phasing out coal-fired power stations.

“Labor is fiddling while the planet is burning,” he said.

Liberal MP Michael Sukkar said the inquiry sounded “awfully similar” to Ms Gillard’s proposal to break the parliamentary deadlock on climate change policy by outsourcing the issue to an unelected body of 150 ordinary citizens.

“I’m having flashbacks to Julia Gillard talking about a people’s convention. It sounds awfully similar and ultimately we’re seeing an unreconstructed Labor Party here,” the MP for Deakin told Sky News.

“If there’s one thing that came out of the 2013 election it was the Australian people repudiating Labor’s electricity tax, they’ve already spoken about bringing back the carbon tax, and now they want an inquiry into electricity which I think is just code for ultimately pushing up electricity prices.”

Ms Gillard’s citizens’ assembly was abandoned after the 2010 election delivered a hung parliament, and the issue was handed to a cross-party group comprising Labor, Greens and independent MPs that recommended a short-term carbon tax that would transition to an emissions trading scheme.

Mr Sukkar conceded a Productivity Commission inquiry would have greater credibility than the Labor Party, but insisted the opposition was “determined to push up electricity prices”

The Opposition Leader said Labor’s policy would focus on renewable energy, which would “give consumers power over their electricity prices” while creating new jobs.

“Labor will always be more trusted on climate change than the Liberal Party,” Mr Shorten said in Melbourne.

“We believe in climate change, we believe in acting on climate change, and we certainly won’t fob off to the future what this Liberal government is refusing to do now.”

Labor is committed to abolishing the Coalition’s “direct action” Emissions Reduction Fund and introduce a carbon price if it wins government.

“One thing we won’t be doing is pretending like Mr Turnbull that Tony Abbott’s policies on climate change were at all effective – they simply weren’t – all that the Liberals are doing is paying large polluters billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money for poor environmental outcomes,” Mr Shorten said.

Brett Hogan, director of energy and innovation policy at the Institute of Public Affairs, a free market think tank, cautioned against any moves against coal.

“Since April of last year, India alone has installed over ten gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity – this is more than all of the coal-fired power stations in Victoria or in New South Wales,” he told The Australian.

“It makes no sense for policy makers from any political party to continually attack Australia’s largest and cheapest source of electricity when so many other countries are moving in the opposite direction.”

Mr Hogan said that – if renewables were truly becoming cheaper, as their advocates claim – they would eventually overtake fossil fuels without any need for government intervention.

“In order to grow, businesses need lower taxes, cheap land, affordable electricity and competitive labour costs. Australia is in danger of achieving none of these over the next decade,” he said.

Source: The Australian