Katter awards QLD Government an ‘Oscar’ for coal and energy policies
KENNEDY MP Bob Katter has awarded the Palaszczuk Government an “Academy Award” for hypocrisy as the Queensland Resources Council (QRC) launches a campaign against the new royalties regime.
The QRC has reported the new royalties scheme, which effectively doubled the taxation of coal mines, was already impacting investor confidence in the sector, as well as in the critical minerals sector, which would produce the metals needed to manufacture energy infrastructure for the Queensland Government’s $62bn renewable energy plan.
“With this increase in royalties, they’re going to make the state’s economy depend upon coal at the same time they’re spending $62bn to eliminate coal-fired power stations in Australia,” Mr Katter said.
“For an exercise in hypocrisy, this gets the Oscar.
“But the criticisms from the mining sector are 100 per cent accurate. You don’t want to do deals where they change the rules of engagement.
“These people in the Queensland Government, none of them have done a business deal in their life. Your most important asset is your integrity. Lose that and you won’t be doing much business.”
Mr Katter said it was naive of governments to “relegate the economy of Australia to intermittent power”, while he personally prepared for the worst.
“I don't know about other people, but I priced a little generator, some batteries and an inverter, because we have already had outages twice in Queensland because Callide B is closing down.
“They're not going to do any repairs or maintenance on it, and it's constantly dropping out. Five power stations are closing in Australia, taking one-seventh of our base-load power away and replacing it with intermittent power.”
Mr Katter said with a reserve resource policy guaranteeing cheap coal, and algae ponds accompanying modern coal-fired power stations, CO2 could actually become a product rather than an emission.
“We want to produce as much CO2 as we can possibly humanly produce, and a coal-fired power station is the best way of doing that because that CO2 is the feed for algae.
“The Minister for Environment and Water knew the name of the algae—which is much more than I knew—you use to produce diesel.
“That's the way of the future. I went to Israel, because Mike Kelly, the senior minister in the Rudd government, told me I had to go to Israel. They are making so much money out of the CO2. They're putting into hothouses and they're putting it into ponds to grow algae, and that is where we want to go in Australia,” he said.
