These days the only place you hear the word “transition” more than in a gender studies department is in a coal mining town.
Last week the Labor Government were at it again. They announced that they would set up a new government agency, the Net Zero Authority, to help the country “transition” away from coal and gas.
This week Labor took credit for the first Australian Government budget surplus in 15 years. This surplus was all thanks to the coal and gas industries. Yet I did not hear anyone from the Labor party saying thanks to the hard working men and women of the mining industry.
The figures do not lie. Resources exports have increased by just over $110 billion this financial year. The corporate tax rate is 30 per cent so mining has delivered around $33 billion in extra revenue. The Government had predicted the deficit to be $36 billion late last year. So mining alone has almost wiped out the entire deficit.
And, those figures do not capture all of the flow on benefits of those extra mining exports. Last week I helped reopen the Burton mining complex near Moranbah. I met a bloke named Rod Hawkins. Rod was from Beenleigh just south of Brisbane. He was a builder not a miner. But he had built a successful business building sheds and other buildings for the mining industry.
It is people like Rod and the 20 people who he employs who benefit when our mining industry is strong.
In fact, Queensland reopened two mines last week. Along with the Burton reopening, the New Hope mine finally reopened after waiting more than 15 years to get its approval.
These mines are reopening because there has never been stronger demand for Australia’s coal. A few years ago I calculated that the world would need to mine more coal in the first 40 years of this century than it had in the 20 centuries beforehand. I used the International Energy Agency’s forecasts to work out this result.
As it turns out, the IEA had been too conservative. This year the world is mining 300 million more tonnes of coal than they had predicted. Australia mines around 450 million tonnes of coal every year.
The world is demanding more Australian coal because Europe has discovered that it cannot power its grid through solar and wind alone, poorer people want the electricity and housing that we all enjoy (that needs coal) and it is better for the environment to use coal than land-hungry renewables.
So why does the Labor party think we need to transition everybody (that is sack people from their jobs) when there is so much demand for our coal? The only people that can shut down coal jobs is ourselves and the Australian Labor Party seems intent on doing that with their new government transition agency.
After a fleeting budget surplus this year, Labor will return our country to more debt as they predict commodity prices come down to more normal levels. How will we fund things in the future if we shut down our productive industries? We will not solve climate change, countries will get their coal from elsewhere, but eventually we won’t even be able to fund new bureaucrats in useless government agencies.
