Doorstop: Burdekin Falls Dam; Adani coal mine; energy prices

CATHY O’TOOLE,MEMBER FOR HERBERT: It’s fantastic to have the Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy here, Mark Butler. We have such opportunity hear in the north around renewable energy and addressing our high cost of energy so Mark has come today to talk with people in the industry and some of our community leaders about our opportunities, what we are currently doing here, and to see where to into the future. So I’ll hand over to Mark.

 

MARK BUTLER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY: Thanks, Cathy. It’s great to be here in Townsville today talking about energy. Cathy has talked about the challenges and the opportunities, with Bill Shorten and with me for some time that face businesses and households here in Townsville. On the challenge side we know that prices are sky-rocketing here in Townsville. We’re seeing price rises across the country at the moment but we know they are higher than the rest of the country here in Townsville because you don’t have enough local generation, you rely on transmitters hundreds of kilometres from Gladstone. So that’s certainly a challenge that Cathy talks about very regularly and I’m keen to understand better but there are also enormous opportunities in a region like this particularly with clean energy technology moving ahead as fast as it is.

This is a region that has wonderful wind resources, extraordinary solar resources but perhaps uniquely, very differently to the south of the continent, it also has great resources for hydro-electricity. That’s why the State Government and Federal Labor are so excited about investing in hydro-electricity opportunities at the Burdekin Falls Dam. There’s also pumped hydro opportunities here, we’re seeing it developed at Kidston. The ANU has identified a range of other opportunities here, that together, with solar and wind, are able to rely on community like Townsville. So I’m very keen to talk to businesses about this, about meeting those challenges but also harnessing those opportunities because clean energy investment is now finally moving forward in Queensland after having been shut down effectively by the Newman government. It should be remembered that during the term of the Newman government there was not one single large scale renewable energy project delivered in Queensland while they were being delivered time and time again in Victoria and New South Wales and South Australia. So it’s great to see solar energy finally being delivered in the sunshine state, which should be a leader particularly for solar energy.

 

All of this happens against the backdrop of a national energy crisis. Australia really is in the throes of a deep energy crisis that is causing prices to sky-rocket across the country and also, particularly in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia are facing a very real risk of blackouts over the summers. So there is, for all the local challenges that need to be met here in Townsville, a national imperative for the national government to do what it needs to do to solve this national energy crisis.

We see again this morning a very significant part of the reason why Australia is experiencing this deep crisis and that is the deep, deep divisions within the Coalition. Again we’ve seen the civil war between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull breakout on the front page of our newspaper with Tony Abbott again threatening to cross the floor if Malcolm Turnbull seeks to implement the blueprint that was delivered by the Chief Scientist. So there’s a very clear choice for Malcolm Turnbull at the moment. He’s got a blueprint delivered by the chief scientist, supported by state governments, supported by Federal Labor, and by business groups on the one hand, which he can implement and start to resolve this energy crisis, or he can give in to the threats and the bluster of Tony Abbott yet again and all we’ll see then is for the crisis to go deeper and longer for households and businesses. Thanks very much.

 

JOURNALIST: Turnbull has come out and said he would support a new HELE plant up here in the north. What are your thoughts on this?

 

BUTLER: Well I don’t think a coal-fired power station is the answer to the challenges that Townsville has. Let’s be very clear that this would not be delivered, if you could find a private company to fund it, for the best part of a decade. The last coal-fired power station that was built in Australia took 8 years to build and this is new technology, there’s not an Australian company that has any experience in electricity that has expressed any interest. If this is a solution, and I don’t think it is, it’s about a decade away so it does nothing for Townsville for a very significant period of time. Even the Treasurer Scott Morrison has admitted this is expensive technology, and this will do nothing to relieve power price pressure in Townsville. It will deliver expensive power for Townsville if it were ever built.

 

This has been a bit of a theme this year by Malcolm Turnbull, he started the year with a National Press Club address saying for the first time anyone had said this in years, that he wanted to find private sector partners to build new coal-fired powered stations and since then there has not been a single private company in the electricity industry or in the banking industry that has said they’re willing to put any money into building new coal-fired power stations, with only one exception and that is Clive Palmer. And no one understands Clive Palmer’s track record better than the people of Townsville, so this is a fantasy. This is not going to happen. It would deliver very expensive power, a very risky prospect for a private sector partner or for taxpayers to put money on the table. Instead what North Queensland should be doing is getting behind the renewable energy plan that’s sweeping this part of the country. There’s enormous investment happening in this part of the country, and as I said, great opportunities to firm that up with pumped hydro and hydro electricity from the Burdekin Falls Dam.

 

JOURNALIST: Have you met with any of the business leaders in Townsville yet?

 

BUTLER: No, we’re about to have a roundtable here, then meet with a number of companies that are doing exciting projects so it’s really an afternoon of talking to businesses, which Cathy has organised, about energy challenges and energy opportunities here in North Queensland.

 

JOURNALIST: After you meet with them today, what’s the next step? Do you form a report or what do we see after that?

 

BUTLER: Well we’ll talk to Cathy and to Bill Shorten about what we’ve learned. We’ve obviously already made very significant commitments to this part of the country with a $200 million commitment to hydro-electricity plant for the Burdekin Falls Dam, that would partner with the work that the Palaszczuk Government is already intending to do. There’s obviously a lot of private sector investment, as I’ve said, in wind and in solar power in this region at the moment, so I’m really open to ideas from the businesses that will be attending this roundtable about how we can continue to lift that.

 

There are other exciting technologies happening around the country. In my state of South Australia for example, we’ve just decided to build the first concentrated solar thermal plant in the country. It seems to me that Townsville is an obvious location for that sort of technology. It would deliver very reliable electricity because it stores the solar power for up to 8 or 10 hours, so it’s a baseload type of technology. As we see the plant built and delivered over the next two and half years in South Australia, those costs will come down. This is technology that can be delivered in the short term, compared to coal fired technology which will take the best part of a decade and be extraordinarily expensive.

 

JOURNALIST: Given your portfolio, what’s your stance on Adani’s Carmichael coal mine?

 

BUTLER: The only matter before the Commonwealth Parliament, before Federal Labor and the Federal Government for that matter is whether or not taxpayers would fund a $1 billion loan through the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility to this multinational company Adani that is proposing to build the mine at Carmichael, and Federal Labor is steadfastly opposed to taxpayers’ money being given to a multi-national company to build a private sector operation like a coal mine. That’s why over the last couple of days Bill and Cathy O’Toole reaffirmed our commitment to commit instead $1 billion from that Facility to tourism infrastructure projects. To small and medium enterprises here in North Queensland and Far North Queensland who often do find it difficult to get credit from banks. They just need a bit of support from the Government, Australian businesses employing locals to grow their business and take opportunities that are presented by the growing tourism market but both domestically and internationally. So that’s where we think this Facility should be directed. Not at propping up the business of a multi-national. Frankly, that should stand or fall on its own merits.

 

JOURNALIST: Do you think then that the Saudi Arabian renewables project shouldn’t have received a concessional loan from the Federal Government?

 

BUTLER: This is a project that is part of the Renewable Energy Target which is directed particularly at pulling through technology in areas where they weren’t able to stand on their own two feet. There are 173 nations in the world that have renewable energy targets that are directed at one thing and that was to ensure that renewable energy, particularly solar and wind technology, would get to the point of being able to compete on its own feet in the market. And it has worked in Australia. We are now at the point where solar and wind technology are cheaper than old style technology and electricity generation and they’ll be able to compete in a properly constructed market. It’s worked here as it’s worked in so many other parts of the country and it’s now delivering cheaper, cleaner electricity to Australians.