Radio Interview, ABC Newcastle

SUBJECTS: Australia's 2035 emissions reduction target, Net zero

HOST, PAUL CULLIVER: Pat Conroy is your Federal Member for Shortland and the Minister for Defence Industry, Minister for Pacific Island Affairs, and joins you on the line. Minister, good morning to you.

MINISTER FOR DEFENCE INDUSTRY AND PACIFIC ISLAND AFFAIRS, PAT CONROY: Good morning, Paul. How are you? 

PAUL CULLIVER: Great to be joining you today. We've obviously just been hearing from Barnaby Joyce making the point that nothing Australia does will make a difference when it comes to averting climate change. Why try?

MINISTER CONROY: Well, what you just heard was the deranged ramblings of the modern Coalition. They have retreated into the 1950s, if not the 1850s, on their refusal to recognise the need to take action on climate, not just for the environment but also for our economy. We need to seize these jobs, otherwise we're going to be left behind. But the Coalition are in a horrible place. They've been rejected by the Australian public and now they're rejecting the Australian public's view of the need to take action on climate change. Why should we take action? 80% of the world's economy is covered by net zero commitments. 90% of our trading partners have net zero commitments. The world is decarbonising despite Barnaby Joyce’s ramblings. And if we don't take advantage of the clean energy opportunities, we'll be condemned to be the rust belt of the Asia Pacific. Now, there's one thing I agree with Barnaby, it’s that we need to drive manufacturing jobs in this country. And the best opportunity for that is getting the cheapest possible energy. And the cheapest possible energy is solar and wind, backed up and made 100% reliable with pumped hydro, batteries and peaking gas. And that's our plan. Our plan is for cheaper power prices to drive more jobs in our economy. What the Coalition are talking about is economic devastation as well as environmental devastation. And the Australian people clearly rejected that at the last election.

PAUL CULLIVER: Alright, if you're a worker in a coal mine at a coal fired power station or at Tomago Aluminium – at any heavy emitting industry in the Hunter – can you explain how you wouldn't look at an emissions reduction of 62 to 70% and say that means my job won't exist in 10 years’ time?

MINISTER CONROY: Well, the Tomago Aluminium Smelter is already planning on converting over to renewable energy. They're doing that because it's the cheapest form of new power and it can be made 100% reliable and still be the cheapest form of new power. That's the way of securing it into the future. In terms of coal fired power stations, they're retiring because they're reaching the end of their natural plant life. And they will be replaced over time, by renewables backed up by gas and batteries and pumped hydro. That's got nothing to do with our climate targets. That's just the pure economics of these plants. So, if we want cheaper power, that's the way to deliver it. I'm proud that our region has powered the country, and it will continue to power the country, and we'll look after those workers. But we need to be fair dinkum about it. Power prices are higher than people would like them because the last Government had 23 energy policies and we had a whole lot of coal fired power stations retire and they had no plan to replace them. We've got a plan. We're going to take a calm, methodical approach which will deliver cheaper power prices than what otherwise would be – and drive more jobs into our economy.

PAUL CULLIVER: It's a pretty hard one to accept, right? If people have seen now three plus years of this Labor Government pursuing this renewables approach and still haven't seen power prices come down once, it's pretty hard to believe it's going to happen, right?

MINISTER CONROY: Well, it takes a while to build power plants – and we dealt with a decade of inaction where over 4,000 megawatts of power generation was pulled out of the system and there was very little replacement. So, we're dealing with a legacy of a Coalition that just careened from policy to policy. We're driving jobs growth in this economy. We've got low unemployment, inflation is back under control, interest rates are coming down and we're going to take a calm, methodical approach to decarbonising the economy and seizing the economic opportunities that are there, not just for the large cities but for regions like ours. And we've got huge opportunities here. But we need a plan. We've presented that plan. We need to make those strong investments that will drive change. And you've also got to look at what the alternative is. The alternative is either no action or a rush at the end of the 2050 period. And the independent modelling has found that both of those things would be much more costly to the economy, impact households and also lead to higher power prices.

PAUL CULLIVER: Minister, thanks for your time today.

MINISTER CONROY: Thanks. Have a great day.

ENDS