Vikki Campion: Australia’s mining industry is our most strategic economic asset

The state of the world should serve as a reckoning – that we should be using our natural resources like coal and oil at home – instead of shipping it all overseas, Vikki Campion writes.

Nobody knocks at the door begging for thoughts and prayers. While politicians and zealotillionaires, fall over themselves with well-wishes for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia, thoughts and prayers are not all we can offer and mean nothing on the ground for those caught in air strikes or taking in millions of refugees.

Thoughts, prayers, and condemnation must be the precursor to action.

When Poland called Australia this week, it wasn’t for soothing conversation. They wanted Australian minerals, our coal, not out of friendship, not out of a trade relations junket, but out of necessity.

Energy is their vulnerability, like it is ours, as our mining and fracking projects, or even diversification projects funded with coal or gas money, are cut off from finance and insurance.

Liberal democracies don’t subdue to subservience, but Europe weakened itself by cutting off baseload power on a Glasgow fantasy, and became reliant on a totalitarian state to keep warm.

European institutions, like Australian banks, won’t insure or finance our coal. Still, now their governments ask for tens of millions of tonnes because they yielded their energy independence to a dictatorship.

Our coal mine are great economic assets for Australia, Vikki Campion writes.

One of the co-investors in Nordstream 2, the umbilical cord for Europe’s energy supplies, is Engie, the French company that bought Hazelwood in the La Trobe Valley and shut it down in 2017.

The company that bleated about its commitment to shut down Hazelwood for green credentials with a “transformation plan concentrating solely on low carbon projects for power generation, renewable energy and natural gas” was at the same time backing in Nord Stream 2 designed to force Europe’s reliance on Russian gas and isolate Ukraine.

In Victoria, Engie are ecowarrior wokevestors. In St Petersburg, they were supporting Putin.

Lay down your environmental sanctity unless the economic support of an invading army is something of merit. Emerging threats are not pitching for green preferences.

Energy is our soft spot too; it has growing implications for national security as South Australia discovered a few years ago.

Responsibility for energy is divided between the states and the federal government, the former who are refusing to approve any new coal projects, and instead are subsidising renewables.

The latter must ensure there is co-ordination to run your toaster and the Tomago aluminium smelter, another industry that will be forced out of Australia.

If states consider energy supply from a purely green-preferenced policy perspective or follow the wokevestors in Peter Pannish “if you believe, you can fly” corporate activism, ignoring national security implications, the compounding affect on us and our neighbours is massive.

Petrol prices continue to rise as high as $2 a litre. Picture: Justin Lloyd

The mining industry is by far Australia’s most strategic economic asset. Our economic relationships are mainly in the Indo-Pacific and coal, iron ore and natural gas dominate.

While wokevestors falsely proclaim that coal is dead, this week, the price of coal tripled to a new spot record above $US400 a tonne.

Board members in bespoke suits, who drink from the same Peter Pan cup of believing happy things gives you wings, are demanding those companies implement Environmental Social and Corporate Governance policies that satisfies their demands around climate change.

Now that Europe is dusting off its coal power stations, are these European-based institutions going to impose their ESG policies on them too? Or do your views on emissions change when you can feel the vibrations of the shells?

These same wokevestors fly first class and tell us to embrace a cottage-core life.

Our petrol price has doubled to $2 in two years yet we still don’t refine our own petroleum, don’t make our own petrol and very little of our own fertiliser, which is important if you want to eat.

When petrol goes over $2 a litre, you hear you should have bought an electric car – a ridiculous proposition for anyone on basic wages or living in the bush, looking at their sorghum crop wondering whether it will be worth the fuel costs to harvest it.

The state of the world should serve as a reckoning – that we should be using our natural resources like coal and oil at home – instead of shipping it all overseas.

It will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild after the floods and it’s going to take imported product because we have talked ourselves out of making it.

Saying the right thing is the name of the station where wokevestors get off as they smother industry in environmental impact statements in this crusade to save the world.

Our primary national interest test should be security and economic growth, and that basic interest test should apply to all our jobs and standard of living for all Australians.

Thoughts and prayers to our corporate activists and politician Peter Pans, please let them grow the conviction to actually change things, not just wish it.

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