Matt Canavan says National Party is not wedded to coal

Matt Canavan says politicians need to get away from their “ideological corner” to solve the problem of high power prices.

Minister for Resources Matt Canavan says he’s in favour of any power generation solution that cuts prices. Picture: AAP

Resources Minister Matthew Canavan has said the National Party is not “wedded” to the idea of building a new coal fired power plant and politicians needed to get away from their “ideological corner” to solve the problem of high power prices.

In a landmark report last week the competition watchdog made a key recommendation which could see the government underwrite and potentially subsidise new “firm” cheap power generation for industrial and commercial users.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack then declared this was a “green light” for government-investment in new coal projects, as a senior cabinet minister left open the possibility of a royal commission into the electricity sector “down the track”.

Senator Canavan said he was in favour of any power generation solution which cut prices.

“I want to stress very strongly — I’m not, and the Government, is not wedded to a particular fuel type here. Whatever works,” he told the ABC.

“I’m not, and my Nationals colleagues are not mandating that coal should be definitely invested in. But what we are doing is reflecting the common-sense of the ACCC that all fuel types should be considered.”

Senator Canavan added there was a message for all political parties.

“The Australian people want us to do is get away from the ideological corner, whether you’re anti-coal or pro-free market or whatever it is. And work out what is an obvious and clear problem for the Australian people and the people in the Australian manufacturing industry.”

The Resources Minister said the best time to start building new power generation would have been years ago but the second best time was now.

“When is the second best time? Today,” he said on the ABC’s Insiders program.

“Yes, sure, it will take time to build any large-scale power plant. I think that six years is at the outer end of what it would take … So, that’s why we should get on with the job of doing this as soon as we can.”

Senator Canavan said relying on renewables was a gamble.

“I’m not willing to put all of our eggs in the basket of potentially improvements in batteries of renewables. That might happen, but that approach would effectively, like going to the casino, and saying — let’s put it all on black and see how we go.”

“Because if it doesn’t work, we’ve got thousands of people who will lose their jobs. If it doesn’t work, we won’t have nickel refinery. We won’t have aluminium smelting in this country. There’s 50,000 or 60,000 jobs in metals manufacturing in this country.”