Crisafulli's future-focused Press Club address exposes hypocrisy of locking Queensland into fossil fuel past

The Queensland Conservation Council has called out the hypocrisy of Premier Crisafulli's future-focused pitch to the National Press Club while his government in fact remains tied to expanding fossil fuel industries of the past and undermines investment in clean industries of the future.

The peak body warns that the Premier’s eager pursuit of fossil fuels and critical minerals will come at the expense of Queensland’s iconic nature and leave communities at risk from increasing climate impacts, unless the State Government focuses on taking climate action and protecting nature.

Queensland Conservation Council's Coal and Gas Campaigner, Ms Charlie Cox says

You can’t sell Queensland as the future while locking us into the past. Premier Crisafulli’s address today showed he knows the language of the future. However, the actions of his Government are to fast-track the expansion of the polluting fossil fuel industries of the past.

There is a very thin veneer of future industries with the Premier talking about being open for investment in critical minerals and renewable energy. But the jig will soon be up, as increasing extreme weather driven by climate change drives up insurance costs.

Crisafulli’s ideological commitment to coal and gas has been exposed. Although Queensland’s coal fleet is the youngest in the National Electricity Market, it is still ageing and has some of the least reliable power stations in the NEM. Callide C broke down again in a January heat wave, and over the last year, an average of 23% of Queensland’s coal-fired power station capacity was offline.

Queensland can’t be open to next-generation clean industries while our Government is actively propping up yesterday’s technologies like coal and gas.

Streamlining environmental approvals to fast-track coal and gas threatens the communities and biodiversity that make Queensland what it is. The Government’s moves to stifle renewable energy investment, through abrupt planning changes and calling in already approved projects, shows their lack of commitment to clean industries.

Crisafulli has at least read the community right, that Queenslanders want the progressive coal royalties scheme to stay. We know it is only fair that multinational mining corporations return a share of their superprofits back into the communities they extract resources from.

We can develop new, clean industries that protect nature and our climate. But without accelerating nature protection laws, particularly bioregional planning under the new EPBC reforms, expanding critical minerals could allow a repeat of the devastation coal and gas mining has wrought on Queensland’s landscapes.

Any critical minerals development must be done with robust environmental safeguards and First Nations collaboration so we can develop the clean industries that will allow Queensland to get maximum benefits out of our resources, not just continue exporting our resources overseas for multinational profit.

For Crisafulli to create a Queensland that we can all be proud of, he must match his optimism with policies that secure a stable climate, protect nature, and build a genuinely modern energy system.

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