Queensland’s Labor government is playing “a dangerous game” with coal that could hurt the party’s chances in inner-city Brisbane in the federal election, according a political expert.
On Wednesday, the state energy minister, Mick de Brenni, ruled out closing any of Queensland’s eight coal-fired power plants, despite plans to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
A spokesperson for de Brenni on Thursday said the minister was answering a question when he made those comments – describing them as a long-held position of state Labor – and that three of those power stations were privately owned.
Glenn Kefford, a political scientist from the University of Queensland, said the comments appeared to be “part of a broader strategy” that Labor had implemented at the state level.
He said the party had “walked away” from “some of the more ambitious messaging around climate change, in particular in Queensland”.
“We know what happened in 2019,” he said. “We all can remember the infamous Adani convoy and, I think, that can be taken as part of the messaging strategy here.”
But Kefford said he did not expect this kind of messaging to be amplified too much over coming weeks.
“We know the dangers of this strategy,” he said. “Labor has had problems with this type of approach previously, whether there’s a perception that they walk both sides of the street.”
Where Labor feared dividing blue collar and professional voters during the 2019 federal election, the Coalition faced a similar threat with regional and inner-city supporters.
“We’ve got both major parties effectively wedged on climate change and extractive industries,” Kefford said.
The minister’s comments were seized upon by environmental groups and the federal Greens party, which is trying to unseat Labor’s Terri Butler from Kevin Rudd’s old division of Griffith, and targeting the nearby, Liberal National party-held electorates of Ryan and Brisbane.
The Greens candidate for Brisbane, Stephen Bates, said the comments would “100%” impact the campaign in that electorate, where he said the number one election issue was “far and away” the climate crisis.
“It’s just another example, really, that Labor’s policies on climate change depending on your distance to the 4000 postcode,” he said.
“If you want to have a serious plan to address climate change, you have to close down coal and gas-fired power stations. That’s just what the science tells us. That’s what the IPCC report tells us.”
Federal Labor’s shadow minister for Queensland resources, Murray Watt, said upgrading the national electricity grid was the “key to reducing our emissions, cutting power prices and creating new energy and manufacturing jobs”.
“That’s exactly what Labor’s powering Australia and rewiring the nation policies will do,” he said.
“The country’s leading energy economists, Reputex, modelled Labor’s plan and found that Labor’s policies don’t bring forward coal closures.”
De Brenni said the state government was committed to releasing its energy plan this year, which would “specify the pathway to modernising our assets, and show how they will sit at the heart of our renewable energy ecosystem”.
“As I have repeatedly said before, we will not be shutting the gate on our power stations, their workers or their communities and instead will invest in their future,” the energy minister said.
The Queensland Conservation Council’s director, Dave Copeman, said de Brenni’s comments “ignored” the impact of coal power on Queenslanders electricity bills” and were “inconsistent [with] the market reality”.
“Keeping coal online will force electricity prices higher, adding to inflation and cost-of-living pressures for Queenslanders,” Copeman said.
Kefford said his team had been researching digital ads in the election campaign and had picked up on a glaring omission in messaging.
“Neither of the major parties are talking about climate change at all, they don’t want to touch the issue,” he said.
