Former outspoken Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon has been appointed to the board of the listed company Brickworks, which specialises in building materials and also holds a 26 per cent stake in coal mine owner Washington H. Soul Pattinson.
The appointment of the former Hunter Valley MP – a loud defender of the coal and gas industries and a vocal critic of the shift to renewables – was announced on Monday and continues a long tradition of former Labor, and Coalition, MPs taking up key appointments in the fossil fuel industry.
Brickworks said Fitzgibbon has extensive experience as a politician and expertise in “public policy, social and environmental” issues. He will receive a fixed salary of $160,890 for his role as a director.
Washington H Soul Pattinson in September reported a near doubling in its cash flows and a big increase in dividends thanks to the jump in earnings from its investment in the New Hope coal mining operation, which benefited from the huge rise in coal prices that swept through to customer bills this year.
“New Hope has passed on the benefit of higher coal prices to its shareholders,” the company noted in its report. Fitzgibbon, who has pushed for new fossil fuel developments to help “lower prices” will no doubt bring an interesting new perspective to discussions around the board table.
As Dan Gocher, from the European Climate Foundation, notes, Brickworks and New Hope chair Robert Millner was boasting recently that Australian coal is the “cleanest coal in the world.”
This is interesting timing for Fitzgibbon given the new allegations from independent MP Andrew Wilkie in federal parliament of deliberate attempts to downplay the moisture content of Australian coal, and to make it look cleaner than it is.
Other choice quotes from Millner cited by Gocher include: “Politicians have rushed to turn off these coal-fired power stations” and “There’s not enough baseload power”. They were made to the AFR.
Gocher also notes that Brickworks was a major campaigner against the carbon price that was repealed by the Abbott government, and set Australia on a 10-year spiral into climate and energy denial.
