December 1, 2016
Deputy Opposition Leader and Member for Nanango Deb Frecklington fears the State Government plans to sell out regional power industry workers in exchange for inner-city Green preferences.
Mrs Frecklington said she was alarmed by reports that Federal Labor and the Greens “had jumped into bed with each other again and conspired to shut down the State’s coal-fired power generators”.
This was in reference to an interim report from a Senate Committee, “Retirement of Coal-Fired Power Stations”, released earlier this week which investigates the development of a national plan to transition away from coal-fired power generation and the “orderly” retirement of coal-fired power stations.
“These people simply don’t have a clue,” Mrs Frecklington said.
“Labor have obviously not learned the lesson of their disastrous carbon tax.
“Labor, now in cahoots with their Green buddies, are advocating the forced closure of coal-fired power stations – a move that would see electricity prices go through the roof.”
Mrs Frecklington, who spoke about the issue in State Parliament on Wednesday, said such a policy would be disastrous for Queensland, including in her electorate.
“It would have disastrous impacts across the entire economy and would result in mass job losses,” she said.
“No thought has gone into the fact that coal-fired power generators account for nearly three-quarters of the State’s power.”
Ms Frecklington said the LNP supported an evidence-based approach to the transition to renewables.
“As the representative of one of the regions with so much to lose from this ideological stupidity, I am not going to let this go quietly,” she said.
“Unlike Labor we will not sell out the thousands of workers at these stations – or the many businesses which rely on efficient and affordable energy – in a desperate bid to stitch up Green votes in Brisbane.”
During the Parliamentary discussion, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk repeated the claim that modelling by the Queensland Renewable Energy Expert Panel had stated that the early retirement of coal-fired generation in Queensland was not required in order for the State to reach its 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030.
“My government firmly believes that we can get the balance right,” Mrs Palaszczuk said.
- Related article: Unions Welcome Power Industry Report
- Download: Retirement of Coal-Fired Power Stations – Interim Report (570kb PDF)
* * *
Mrs Frecklington, from Hansard (November 30):
Today we have seen more evidence of this Labor Party completely forgetting its roots and selling out those blue-collar workers in rural and regional areas.
Not having learned the lesson from the disastrous Federal Government’s proposal of a carbon tax, federal Labor is now advocating to close all coal-fired power stations across Australia – a move that would simply do one thing, and that would be drive up power prices.
The other thing it would do is it would cruel hundreds of thousands of jobs across Queensland.
I am a representative of one of those regions that has a power station that has been supported by the coal mine beside the power station supporting something like 600 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs in all the surrounding towns such as Maidenwell, Nanango, Yarraman, Wondai and Kingaroy, yet this Minister stands in this House and advocates for renewable energy alternatives.
Let us talk about, for example, the proposed wind farm. That will be great and provide 10 jobs ongoing.
The Minister sat opposite and said it would provide 1600 jobs across Queensland, but the Minister’s maths do not quite add up when there are 600 direct jobs at the power station in Kingaroy and he is proposing they be replaced by 10 jobs. Maths is obviously not the minister’s strong point.
It is incredible that we even have support from the CFMEU, which said: “Mass redundancies, especially in a regional area with limited other industries, can entrench high unemployment and social disadvantage and dysfunction that can take decades to repair, if ever.”
The CFMEU goes on to say: “It should be acknowledged that the social impacts of power station closures in particular regions are not likely to be greatly different to the adverse impacts that have occurred in other regions hit by major industry closures.”
Today the Premier needs to distance herself away from Federal Labor’s forced closures policy. Today she should reassure the thousands of workers across Queensland employed by that industry that their jobs are safe and that she is not bending to the Greens agenda.
Obviously the LNP supports an orderly, evidence-based approach in the transition to renewables but, unlike Labor, we will not sell out jobs across rural and regional Queensland.
