Scott Morrison has said the Coalition wants Australia’s coal power stations to “run as long as they possibly can”, vowing to support the coal industry if re-elected.
Morrison made the comments in a Sky News town hall on the New South Wales Central Coast on Monday, during which he tested attack lines against Anthony Albanese and warned leadership was “not for the faint-hearted or inexperienced”.
Asked by the audience if he supports the coal industry, Morrison replied “the short answer is yes” but stopped short of endorsing a call for the government to build new coal power stations.
Morrison said the Coalition’s policy is for coal power stations to “run as long as they possibly can” to provide baseload power “when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine”.
He noted the government’s investment in the $600m Kurri Kurri gas power plant, which he said provides “backup” power and can be switched off and on.
Morrison said he is concerned about the early retirement of the Erraring coal station.
“We want to see replacement for that reliable, affordable capacity here in the central coast.”
Morrison said if the private sector wants to build new coal power plants that was “fine”, provided they were “commercial” and “stack-up”. He suggested this was unlikely, given the required state government approvals.
On electric vehicles, Morrison said he was “not forcing anyone to drive anything” and the Coalition’s policy was one of “choice not mandates”. In November Morrison deliberately mischaracterised Labor’s electric vehicles policy as somehow forcing drivers to adopt electric vehicles.
The town hall continued Morrison’s attempts to reframe the election around national security and the economy in a bid to recover the government’s poor standing in the polls. On Monday the Newspoll found the Coalition trailing 45% to Labor’s 55% in two-party preferred terms.
Morrison argued the May election would be a choice about who was “best prepared and most seasoned to see us through” global instability including the war in Ukraine.
In front of an at-times partisan crowd that cheered for the re-election of the Coalition, Morrison accused Albanese of “pretending to be everyone” – from John Howard, to Bob Hawke, to Kevin Rudd. The prime minister claimed, by contrast, he was not “pretending to be anyone else”.
“I’m still wearing the same glasses, and the same suits,” Morrison said, in reference to Albanese’s new look.
“I’m happy in my own skin … When you’re prime minister you can’t pretend to be someone else.”
Morrison said his faith “informs the why not the what” of his policy agenda, explaining he had been “transparent” about his religious belief but it was “not a reason to vote for me or not to vote for me”.
Morrison criticised Labor, claiming the opposition saw the Covid-19 pandemic as an invitation to be part of Australians’ lives “for the rest of eternity”.
“[We have] a business-led economy, that isn’t one with government at the centre of our lives, telling us what to do. Frankly, we’ve had enough of government telling us what to do in the last couple of years.”
Morrison said the Coalition would aim to repay debt by “bending” the curve of government expenditure down and growing the economy, noting that the Coalition had taken six years to return the budget to balance after it was elected in 2013.
It “didn’t go down the slash and burn approach”, he said, because of stiff economic headwinds.
Morrison said Labor’s slogan to “build back stronger” after the Covid pandemic “sounds good” but claimed it implicitly suggested that there was “something wrong with Australia before the pandemic”.
Morrison also claimed that Labor would have spent $81bn more than the Coalition throughout the pandemic, because it had called for jobkeeper wage subsidies to be extended.
Labor “complain about the debt, but wanted to spend more,” he said, labelling that phenomenon “Albanomics”.
Morrison defended his handling of the pandemic, arguing although there were many “knockers” of the national cabinet, across 64 meetings federal, state and territory leaders had agreed on most issues.
“Name one family who gets together every night and never has a disagreement,” he said.
Asked why the Coalition wasn’t ahead in the polls, Morrison argued that through the pandemic and natural disasters “people have suffered a lot” and “understandably people will get very frustrated”.
He expressed confidence that closer to the election the choice of “who you want to lead” would become clearer.
