There are over 600 coal-fired electricity generators being built in the world right now. Not one of those is in Australia. Our coal-fired generators are being decommissioned and demolished. Yet, Australian coal resources are huge.

For reasons that are hard to fathom, Australian politicians appear to be deliberately antagonistic to coal-fired electricity generation. The playing field is not level – it is deliberately structured to make coal kick up-hill into the wind, so to speak. Solar and wind powered generators have the down-hill with-the-wind advantage afforded by taxpayer funded subsidies.

Why? Solar and wind are both unreliable. Hence the need for battery storage. Solar and wind combined with battery storage is incredibly expensive. The coal supply in Australia is plentiful; enough to last hundreds of years. Coal is a low cost, efficient and reliable source of electricity. Why is Government policy skewed against it?

Without stable, reliable and low cost electricity Australia will crumble into a backward, poverty stricken future. Take a look at those third world countries without electricity to see what I mean. There is no prospect of renewable energy sources providing the equivalent level of power reliability and efficiency as does coal. The only viable alternative to coal is nuclear. I have no preference as to which we rely on – only that energy policy is amended such that no one source of energy is penalised, no one source is favoured, and the Government gets out of the mix. If renewables are the future, as the chant goes, then they do not need Government policy enforcement.