The Coalition has voted with One Nation in the Senate, backing a motion calling on the government “to facilitate the building of new coal-fired power stations and the retrofitting of existing base-load power stations”.



The Hanson motion was defeated 34-32, but the Coalition backed it in the Senate on Wednesday afternoon – a move reflecting a push within the Turnbull government to ensure that coal is given assistance as the government moves to implement its proposed national energy guarantee.

While proponents are framing ongoing support for coal as the price of internal peace, Labor has warned the government that new subsidies for coal as part of any Coalition settlement on the Neg will scuttle the chances of ending 10 years of partisan warring over climate and energy policy.

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The Nationals are split over the Neg, with some favouring the bankrolling of a new fund to prolong the life of existing coal plants, or a research fund. One of the dissident Liberals, Eric Abetz, declared after party-room meetings on the policy on Tuesday that the “landing” of the Neg would have to involve either the retrofitting of coal plants “or building a new one”.

Labor pursued the government over its intentions on coal during parliamentary question time on Wednesday. Malcolm Turnbull avoided a direct answer, declaring the focus “must be on lower energy prices”.

“People have been paying too much for electricity. So you focus on getting prices down, ensuring power is reliable, the lights stay on, ensuring you have dispatchable power and coal is always going to be a big part of that,” Turnbull said.

He said the Neg was technology agnostic, “designed to ensure you have dispatchable power, reliable power, affordable power and you meet your Paris emissions’ targets”.

“That can be done with a variety of technologies – coal is a big part of it now. I believe it will be a big part of it for a very long time.”

The shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, told Guardian Australia on Tuesday: “Any subsidy for new coal in the Neg will destroy any chance of the government attracting broad support for its policy.”

On Wednesday, he said: “We’re not going to agree to a model that seeks to fly in the face of all of the expert advice, from industry and stakeholders, that building new coal-fired power stations would mean there is no way of achieving our commitments under the Paris agreement and also would deliver higher priced electricity to households and businesses.

“Malcolm Turnbull has made a virtue of saying that his energy policy would be technology agnostic, or technology neutral and everyone in the energy industry and beyond has said that the future of investment in energy in Australia, as it is in most parts of the developed world, is going to be renewable energy with firming technology like pumped hydro storage and batteries,” Butler said.

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“Now he is flying in the face of that if he thinks there is a way in which the government can design a policy that either will extend artificially the life of coal-fired power stations, or would support the building of new coal-fired power stations.

“We’re not going to support that sort of a fantasy that flies in the face of his own expert advice, including the chair of the Energy Security Board, simply again to kotow to Tony Abbott’s group in the Coalition party room.”

The energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, will meet his state and territory counterparts in early August. Any one of the states or territories could scuttle the Neg, because adopting it requires consensus across all the participants in the national energy market.

If Frydenberg can ultimately secure the support of the states, and then steer the required legislation back through the Coalition party room in defiance of his internal critics, he will need Labor’s support to get the proposal through the parliament.