Coal vote power fires up

FEDERAL Labor has made a second attempt to strip funding for a business case from a proposed North Queensland power plant, even as the state colleagues are days away from a knife edge election.

The Palaszczuk government campaign has been heavily focused on regional Queensland in the past week, but the Greens have been making inroads

South Brisbane.

Labor’s energy spokesman Mark Butler yesterday blasted the $3.6m feasibility study into a high-efficiency, low-emissions power plant in Collinsville as a fantasy and a “cynical, transparent election ploy” that would never deliver anything.

“We will never support this waste of taxpayer funds,” he said.

“This is a in seats project like entirely without merit, you don’t need a feasibility study to understand that.”

He sought to move a disallowance motion to strip the funding from the study yesterday, less than two months after a similar vote was shut down in the Senate in August.

Resources Minister Keith Pitt said it was an “unholy alliance” with the Greens just before the election.

“It says that the Labor Party are full of idealists who don’t care about working g people,” he said. . Federal MP for Herbert Phil Thompson ( right) said the election promise for the Collinsville coal- fired plant would be e kept.

“What we saw from Mark Butler, let’s be clear, was a latte-sipping leftie telling people what they can and can’t do, telling miners where they can and can’t work,” he said.

“This is a bloke in a $5000 suit saying that the coal industry needs to go.”

M e a n w h i l e Burdekin MP Dale Last seized on Federal Labor’s move to warn his state opponent about the “power of coal” vote.

He said Burdekin Labor candidate Mike Brunker’s “claims” of supporting coal were now “completely worthless”

“(The) motion in federal parliament confirms, once and for all, that Labor have abandoned the coal industry,” Mr Last said.

“Obviously they didn’t get the message after the federal election, so I urge Queensland voters to send them a reminder. The Labor candidate for Burdekin has now been shown to have no influence on Labor policy.”