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The Abbott Government

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noco said:
SP, the Green/Labor left wing socialist party will not be happy until all the coal mines are closed and thousands of workers are thrown out of a job.

Without coal, iron ore cannot be smelted so there goes the iron ore mining.....more workers thrown out of jobs.

What hypocrites they are when they have the audacity to criticize Abbott for considering buying subs from Japan and perhaps throwing 3000 out of work
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Be good to make a distinction between thermal and coking coal. Coals ain't coals to mimic an old TV ad.

Personally I'd love a future where we don't need coal to produce electricity. Not sure how feasible it would be to replace coking coal, but that's a far smaller market.

Wouldn't you like a future where we no longer needed to burn a substance that spreads mercury, sulphur, and small particulate matter over large areas?
 
noco said:
SP, the Green/Labor left wing socialist party will not be happy until all the coal mines are closed and thousands of workers are thrown out of a job.
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I can't remember if the UK went down the gurgler when the doyen of then conservative politics shut down their coal mines last century or not? The UK has a very large car industry too as I recall....it's almost like we are deliberately out of lockstep with Europe......
 
I was reading this article and thinking that increasing goods and services output might be a good idea.. we could call it ....something like Nation Building? A novel idea where we actually grow our great country instead of reducing revenue to reduce spending to reduce cost to reduce revenue to reduce spending to ......

With the net debt figure I'm wondering if that includes the $130bn ish dollars Labor threw into the ledger to cover the employee super shortfall left by the previous govt? It is shown on the dept of finance's own budget papers 2012.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-63-leading-australian-economists?CMP=soc_567
 
sydboy007 said:
Be good to make a distinction between thermal and coking coal. Coals ain't coals to mimic an old TV ad.

Personally I'd love a future where we don't need coal to produce electricity. Not sure how feasible it would be to replace coking coal, but that's a far smaller market.

Wouldn't you like a future where we no longer needed to burn a substance that spreads mercury, sulphur, and small particulate matter over large areas?
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Firstly, you are so wrong with your facts about coking coal.......coking coal is the second largest export commodity after iron ore....see the link below....we mine and export more coking coal than steaming coal.

Australia's coal export market represents 27 % of the world supply.

Coking coal has less than .5% sulpher.

So now if the Green/Labor socialist left wing party closes down all the coal mines, and that is what they plan to do, what will silly Billy do with the 57,500 workers who are currently employed in the coal industry?...send them down to Adelaide to build subs....and what will do for base power supply when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing?....Nuclear would be the way to go but then we would have lots of opposition from the Greens.

The other fallacy the Green/Labor coalition promote from the alarmist propaganda is every time they show coal fired power stations, they show photos of chimney stacks emitting heaps of black smoke...photos that were taken 40 years ago.....to the best of my knowledge modern coal fired power station have anti pollution equipment as required by law and all you see now is a steam vapor being emitted from low large diameter concrete stacks.

How will he produce power without coal ...coal produces 85 % of Australia's power.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
 
noco said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
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I didn't see much there except to see China doesn't have many years of their deposits left. Maybe Australia could hold on to some and in 30 years it could be more valuable if some of the competitors that have low volume exports but high reserves don't expand capacity.

http://www.minerals.org.au/resources/coal/exports have figures that are about a year out of date but it shows we exported more thermal coal than coking coal.

I don't know why you think Labor & unions want to close mining - in particular coal mining. Unions are not any mines.
 
Geothermal electricity in 24 countries, geothermal heating in 70 countries. First in 1930's but the petro coal,industry repressed a lot of possibilities.

On solar, storage is improving and a lot of research in other countries is going on in this.

Of course coal etc., cannot be just turned off. But we are stupid Not adding to what we know by having government led research into cleaner energy. This type of work has proven to be cost effective and in itself will produce jobs.
 
noco said:
Firstly, you are so wrong with your facts about coking coal.......coking coal is the second largest export commodity after iron ore....see the link below....we mine and export more coking coal than steaming coal.

Australia's coal export market represents 27 % of the world supply.

Coking coal has less than .5% sulpher.

So now if the Green/Labor socialist left wing party closes down all the coal mines, and that is what they plan to do, what will silly Billy do with the 57,500 workers who are currently employed in the coal industry?...send them down to Adelaide to build subs....and what will do for base power supply when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing?....Nuclear would be the way to go but then we would have lots of opposition from the Greens.

The other fallacy the Green/Labor coalition promote from the alarmist propaganda is every time they show coal fired power stations, they show photos of chimney stacks emitting heaps of black smoke...photos that were taken 40 years ago.....to the best of my knowledge modern coal fired power station have anti pollution equipment as required by law and all you see now is a steam vapor being emitted from low large diameter concrete stacks.

How will he produce power without coal ...coal produces 85 % of Australia's power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
Click to expand...

So you prefer a world where we need to burn coal to produce electricity? I look forward to a future where the economics of renewable energy can compete with fossil fuels. I look forward to a future where Govts don't subsidise resource companies.

China may not want our coal quite as much as they used to - see below graph for just how big an impact their new policy is going to have on coal producers in Australia.

I don't hear anyone from the centre of politics calling for mines to be immediately closed. I just hope eventually they are, and long before we've used up all the coal.

As for the hot steam that gets you riled up, it's the fly ash or soot that I'm more worried about. 500 tonnes of it dispersed from a 500MWh plant each year. Then we're faced with:

  • Over 50kg of lead, 1.8kg of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.
  • 220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone.
  • 102kg of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion.
  • Sulfur dioxide (SO2): Takes a major toll on public health, including by contributing to the formation of small acidic particulates that can penetrate into human lungs and be absorbed by the bloodstream. SO2 also causes acid rain, which damages crops, forests, and soils, and acidifies lakes and streams. A typical uncontrolled coal plant emits 14,100 tons of SO2 per year. A typical coal plant with emissions controls, including flue gas desulfurization (smokestack scrubbers), emits 7,000 tons of SO2 per year.
  • Nitrogen oxides (NOx): NOx pollution causes ground level ozone, or smog, which can burn lung tissue, exacerbate asthma, and make people more susceptible to chronic respiratory diseases. A typical uncontrolled coal plant emits 10,300 tons of NOx per year. A typical coal plant with emissions controls, including selective catalytic reduction technology, emits 3,300 tons of NOx per year.
  • Mercury: Just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury deposited on a 10 hectare lake can make the fish unsafe to eat. A typical uncontrolled coal plants emits approximately 77 kg of mercury each year.
Then we get the more solid wastes like:
  • Over 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber each year.
  • Toxic substances in the waste—including arsenic, mercury, chromium, and cadmium—can contaminate drinking water supplies and damage vital human organs and the nervous system.

Then we're looking at something like 270B-681B litres of water each year to cool a 500-600MWh plant. Do you remember during the last drought some of the generators in QLD were operating at reduced capacity because they didn't have enough cooling water?

Hopefully that gives you a better understanding of why I'd prefer we moved away from energy production that leaves us to deal with the above by products.
 

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It is somewhat telling as to the real problems that society faces that a thread about the current Australian Government generally, has ended up on the subject of energy.

Our domestic oil production meets only one third of consumption and that figure is rapidly falling. Meanwhile global oil production is struggling to keep pace with demand, indeed it's falling if you exclude the US and Canada, and there's all sorts of wars breaking out or threatening to do so.

Meanwhile Australian debate about energy focuses almost exclusively on means of generating electricity, in a country where virtually all electricity is produced from domestic resources. Uranium mines, hydro-electric dams, siting of power stations and transmission lines, coal, LNG, carbon tax, solar panels, wind farms, the Renewable Energy Target.....

We've been debating power generation in Australia at a significant level since the 1970's and yet we've completely missed the fact that our oil production has pretty much collapsed over the past few years. Oil, not electricity, is the real energy problem we're facing and the one that politicians of all persuasions ought to be worried about.

Seen those "without trucks Australia stops" signs on the back of trucks? What they should really say is "without imported diesel Australia stops" since that's the reality of the situation we're in. Electricity is a far lesser concern at the national level. :2twocents
 
sydboy007 said:
So you prefer a world where we need to burn coal to produce electricity? I look forward to a future where the economics of renewable energy can compete with fossil fuels. I look forward to a future where Govts don't subsidise resource companies.

China may not want our coal quite as much as they used to - see below graph for just how big an impact their new policy is going to have on coal producers in Australia.

I don't hear anyone from the centre of politics calling for mines to be immediately closed. I just hope eventually they are, and long before we've used up all the coal.

As for the hot steam that gets you riled up, it's the fly ash or soot that I'm more worried about. 500 tonnes of it dispersed from a 500MWh plant each year. Then we're faced with:

  • Over 50kg of lead, 1.8kg of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.
  • 220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone.
  • 102kg of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion.
  • Sulfur dioxide (SO2): Takes a major toll on public health, including by contributing to the formation of small acidic particulates that can penetrate into human lungs and be absorbed by the bloodstream. SO2 also causes acid rain, which damages crops, forests, and soils, and acidifies lakes and streams. A typical uncontrolled coal plant emits 14,100 tons of SO2 per year. A typical coal plant with emissions controls, including flue gas desulfurization (smokestack scrubbers), emits 7,000 tons of SO2 per year.
  • Nitrogen oxides (NOx): NOx pollution causes ground level ozone, or smog, which can burn lung tissue, exacerbate asthma, and make people more susceptible to chronic respiratory diseases. A typical uncontrolled coal plant emits 10,300 tons of NOx per year. A typical coal plant with emissions controls, including selective catalytic reduction technology, emits 3,300 tons of NOx per year.
  • Mercury: Just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury deposited on a 10 hectare lake can make the fish unsafe to eat. A typical uncontrolled coal plants emits approximately 77 kg of mercury each year.
Then we get the more solid wastes like:
  • Over 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber each year.
  • Toxic substances in the waste””including arsenic, mercury, chromium, and cadmium””can contaminate drinking water supplies and damage vital human organs and the nervous system.

Then we're looking at something like 270B-681B litres of water each year to cool a 500-600MWh plant. Do you remember during the last drought some of the generators in QLD were operating at reduced capacity because they didn't have enough cooling water?

Hopefully that gives you a better understanding of why I'd prefer we moved away from energy production that leaves us to deal with the above by products.
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Rumpy, Smurf is right.....we have strayed from the appropriate thread, however with all that pollution hot air you have stated and given your superior knowledge on the subject, what are your thoughts on how the weeks of bush fires in NSW and Victoria and the current active volcanoes around the world in PNG, the Philippines, Indonesia and Iceland affect the atmosphere?

It is a wonder we are all still alive....I mean surely those bush fires and volcanoes would out weigh pollution from burning coal.

I am sure you have all the answers and I will be disappointed if you don't come up with some more hot air.
 
Smurf1976 said:
It is somewhat telling as to the real problems that society faces that a thread about the current Australian Government generally, has ended up on the subject of energy.

Our domestic oil production meets only one third of consumption and that figure is rapidly falling.

. Oil, not electricity, is the real energy problem we're facing and the one that politicians of all persuasions ought to be worried about.

Seen those "without trucks Australia stops" signs on the back of trucks? What they should really say is "without imported diesel Australia stops" since that's the reality of the situation we're in.
:2twocents
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I'll take this as a Clarion call to our self proclamating 'Infrastructure PM ' to take shovel and pick axe in hand, turn the first sod* on the Melbourne-Brisbane rail freight line and set night sky of the western plains aglow with the fire boxes of hundreds of CHOO-CHOO trains, run on good Aussie coal, not that barbarian Arab Oil, On Aussie steel wheels and tracks not that multi god worshiping Indo-Indian Rubber .

(apologies to Cory Banardi, for sections lifted from the 'bedtime stories' chapter of his recent 'best' seller)

*there's actually a fair whack of it built already.

And remember a 'be-heading ' is only a radical lobotomy, something this government has an intermit knowledge of. Ever wondered why Eric Abetz has that squint, If you look closely you can see where the drill went in, just under the eyebrow. And See now, how much clearer it is to understand Barnaby Joyce's thought patterns.
 
orr said:
I'll take this as a Clarion call to our self proclamating 'Infrastructure PM ' to take shovel and pick axe in hand, turn the first sod* on the Melbourne-Brisbane rail freight line and set night sky of the western plains aglow with the fire boxes of hundreds of CHOO-CHOO trains, run on good Aussie coal, not that barbarian Arab Oil, On Aussie steel wheels and tracks not that multi god worshiping Indo-Indian Rubber .
Click to expand...

So far as infrastructure is concerned, it is by its' very nature a long term investment.

Roads, rail, airports, power, water, gas, fibre / copper communications....

It all has a lifespan measured in decades or longer. If we're going to build infrastructure, and this government seems pretty keen on that idea, then we need to be looking at what we need in 2030 and beyond, not what we need today.

Without focusing on any specific issue, this government seems to have the basic concept right (build infrastructure) but is focused on simply extrapolating and scaling up the past without any real thought to what we're really going to need in the long term.:2twocents
 
On the Scotland referendum, they voted no to split from the UK.

I haven't heard of a Tasmanian secession movement, but Tasmanians would these days have little choice but to vote no. So tragic for the state to have come to this.
 
Logique said:
On the Scotland referendum, they voted no to split from the UK.

I haven't heard of a Tasmanian secession movement, but Tasmanians would these days have little choice but to vote no. So tragic for the state to have come to this.
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The latest episode of Utopia is a good example of why.
The organisation went to public meetings to see what Tasmania needs and then ignores the recommendations.
 
Smurf1976 said:
So far as infrastructure is concerned, it is by its' very nature a long term investment.

Roads, rail, airports, power, water, gas, fibre / copper communications....

It all has a lifespan measured in decades or longer. If we're going to build infrastructure, and this government seems pretty keen on that idea, then we need to be looking at what we need in 2030 and beyond, not what we need today.

Without focusing on any specific issue, this government seems to have the basic concept right (build infrastructure) but is focused on simply extrapolating and scaling up the past without any real thought to what we're really going to need in the long term.:2twocents
Click to expand...

I'd prefer to see less PPPs with 20% IRR and restrictive clauses eg 1 public bus route to Sydney Airport or compensation if more public transport options are delivered than compete with a toll road.

I've read a lot of research that shows for public infrastrucutre with long life, just think harbour bridge still going strong, it seems fair to have Govt fund it via long term bonds, with mot of the costs covered by low tolls that are requried to repay the principal over 30+ years, along with maintenance costs. This way future generations who will also benefit will also contribute to the infrastructure. Some inflation linked bonds underwritten by low tolls would be highly desirable to SMSFs and pension funds around the world. Funding would be relatively cheap.

I don't see the Abbot Government going down this path. It's private sector all the way as being more efficient when there's little evidence to back this up. Private monopolies just privatise the monopoly rents. At least a Govt owned monopoly can funnel the excess returns back into more infrastructure.
 
orr said:
I'll take this as a Clarion call to our self proclamating 'Infrastructure PM '
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With this PM it more likely for whom the bell tolls (double entendre boom boom pun :D).

By the end of his term all the projects Rudd and Gillard started should be finished intime for him to take credit by not pulling funding to shore up the levee against Labor's big black hole debt thingy or whatever incessant cliché they call it.

When Julie and Tony take up their role as the new world order, thanks to the previously wasteful, but now an LNP initiative, Rudd/Gillard pursuit of a seat on the UN Security council, some poor sap will have to restart real spending and create another giant big new hole tax whatever in the budget......just like the pork barrelling road infrastructure future spending by Howard before he got booted.
 
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