WE WILL STAND UP FOR THE HUNTER: JOYCE/GILLESPIE/CANAVAN

Barnaby, David & Matt inspect the turbine 5 at Vales Point Power Station

Three senior Federal Nationals MPs are making their way around the Hunter over the next couple of days to highlight the importance of the coal industry to both the region and the nation.

Federal Member for New England Barnaby Joyce and Federal Member for Lyne Dr David Gillespie who both represent parts of the Hunter region, together with Nationals Deputy Senate Leader Matt Canavan, will tour the region this Wednesday and Thursday.

During their tour of the region, the three MPs will address the Newcastle Business Chamber on Wednesday before visiting Centennial Coal’s Mandalong mining operation and the Delta Energy Power Station at Vales Point on Thursday.

Mr Joyce said the current Labor Party leadership had ignored long-serving MPs like Joel Fitzgibbon who had raised serious concerns about the severe impact Labor’s energy policies would have in areas like the Hunter.

“Labor’s leadership team is more concerned about capturing the vote of the soy latte-sipping elite of the inner cities, than representing it’s traditional blue-collar working-class base in places like the Hunter and in the outer suburbs and regional areas of Australia,” Mr Joyce said.

“Well I can assure the people of the Hunter and the blue-collar workers of Australia – the National Party has your back. We will stand up for common sense. We will stand up for your jobs and we will stand up for our nation’s future prosperity,” he added.

Dr Gillespie said that Labor had failed to come up with a viable energy plan to deliver baseload power to keep Australia’s industries running.

“Tomago Aluminium, for example, employs hundreds of people from my electorate. They, like many other businesses throughout this region, require affordable, reliable energy and that is something we will be working hard to deliver in government,” Dr Gillespie said.

“If we were to abandon coal, the lights would go out and many industries would shut down leading to massive unemployment. We must continue to reduce our greenhouse emissions and new technologies coming online will allow us to achieve this.”

David, Barnaby & Matt inspect the Long Wall operations at Centennial Coal Mandalong in Lake Macquarie

Deputy Nationals Senate Leader and former Resources Minister Matt Canavan said Australia’s resources sector had invested heavily in new transformative technologies to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Here in the Hunter, Australia produces the best coal in the world. With new technologies being developed to deliver greater efficiency and carbon capture, there is the potential to significantly reduce emissions at our coal-fired power plants. Now is not the time to be abandoning the coal industry and the many other industries and jobs that rely on it,” Senator Canavan said.

“We should of course be pursuing all forms of energy and the new technologies that come with them, but they must be affordable and reliable,” he added.

During their visit to Centennial Coal’s operations at Mandalong, the three MPs will travel underground to inspect the mine. Over 400 people are employed directly at the mine. The mine produces 5-million tonnes of coal annually with the bulk of the coal supplying Eraring and Delta Vales Point local power stations. The balance of coal production is exported through the Port of Newcastle to South Korea and Japan.

The MPs will also tour Delta Energy’s Power Plant at Vales Point. Delta’s Power Station and adjacent mine operation employs over 500 people. Recently, the government announced $8.7-million to support efficiency upgrades at the Vales Point which supplies 10% of the state’s power and 4% of the national energy power needs.