Canavan leads “caravan” for coal, urging Nationals to bury future in fossil fuels

“The Hunter is a perfect place to build a new power plant, with locations near Muswellbrook easily able to accommodate a new power station that would not only bring jobs to the area but the entire state,” the Nationals petition says.

Joyce, Canavan and Dr Gillespie spent much of the day talking to commercial TV hosts, and of course Sky TV, using the media platform to say bad things about wind and solar, and the newly legislated bill that represents the NSW government’s embrace of a renewable energy transition.

Gillespie is a medical doctor, so one area where he might have been able to advise his fellow Nationals with some authority is on the health impacts of coal generation. If he did, it fell on deaf ears, including his own.

The three of them appeared in this Facebook post spruiking the case for a new coal fired power station. Gillespie got so excited he compared a new coal fired generator to a “Maserati”, and renewables to an old Holden, which got me confused. Joyce mumbled something about renewables only operating 33 per cent of the time, and a very “unreliable 33 per cent of the time” at that.

Canavan said: “If you want to make stuff in Australia again join our fight to build a new coal fired power station to bring manufacturing jobs back to Australia.”

People do want to make stuff in Australia. But it won’t be with coal, because it’s dirty and expensive. It will be with wind and solar, with cheaper electricity, and through “green metals”, using low cost renewable to value add Australian minerals – rather than just exporting the ore and buying back the processed product, like a third world country.

And don’t think this is just a bunch of government back-benchers doing the dirty work of the fossil fuel lobby. Current resources minister and Nationals MP Keith Pitt put in his two cents worth on Sky News, describing the NSW plan – which is whole-heartedly supported, incidentally, by the NSW Nationals, – as a “fantasy”.

Pitt, who reminded viewers that he is an electrical engineer, then went on to talk about “carbon capture and storage”, which he said was already commercial, which will be news to the carbon capture and storage industry which is seeking massive government handouts.

Pitt then went on to say CCS was merely promising. “Technology has to be the solution,” he said. It will be, but not the technologies that these Nationals are talking about.