Michael McCormack tells state convention coal will be part of the mix but talks up need for national energy guarantee

The Nationals leader and deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, has issued a subtle warning to the Queensland Liberal National party to fall in line with the government’s proposed energy policy, while leaving the door open for a coal-inclusive future.

A somewhat tired-looking McCormack addressed the LNP state convention on Saturday, as the warm-up for an exuberant Malcolm Turnbull, covering issues such as infrastructure and dams, before turning to the party’s biggest fight – energy policy – in the last minutes of his speech.

The Nationals, particularly Nationals-aligned Queensland MPs, where the Coalition is formally one party, have begun privately straying from the party line, prompting Josh Frydenberg to visit two Queensland Nationals electorates, leaving open the possibility of a new coal-fired power station in the state’s north.

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Nationals MPs have also begun pushing for a $5bn equity fund to be set aside for coal-fired baseload power generators as their price for supporting the national energy guarantee when it returns to the government party room following the Council of Australian Governments (Coag) meeting.

But speaking to the LNP faithful, who hold 21 of the state’s 30 seats, of which Labor has identified 10 as potential election swingers, McCormack pushed for the party to support the Neg, name-checking two of the Queensland party’s most influential voices, Matt Canavan and David Littleproud, as also being in support.

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“Like all other Nationals, and those in the Liberals too, I support the Neg and its purpose to bring about consistency in the energy supply arrangements through a Coag process,” McCormack said.

“All governments in Australia have a role to play in this process, especially in Queensland where the government already has the poles and wires and runs the generators.

“My Nationals colleagues also know this all too well and Queensland senator Matt Canavan said this week, in an interview, an excellent one, as always, on Sky News, ‘we need to get on with the job of establishing a stable energy policy for Australia. That includes, the national energy guarantee. That includes a pathway to our Paris commitments in a way that is affordable and maintains a reliable power supply’.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself. And like senator Canavan, I too want to get on with the job, of establishing the Neg, to provide reliable energy supply, while building towards the Paris commitments, to achieve the emissions reductions of 26%. We are already meeting them. In fact, we are more than meeting them and we have to play our part.

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“... and another of my Queensland colleagues, David Littleproud, also has an eye on pragmatism and in a speech in parliament he did in May last year, he said he was ‘proud to be part of a government which approached an industry policy in such a sensible and pragmatic way’. And of course, that is what it is all about.”

But in a nod to the debate raging within the joint Coalition party room, flamed by Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce, McCormack assured the crowd that coal had its role in any future plan.

“Of course, coal has to be part of the mix,” he said. “We are very pro-coal in the LNP. Of course we are.”

Energy issues, including removing subsidies for renewables, committing to build a new coal-fired power station in the north, and investigating a nuclear power future in the uranium rich state, played a big role in the convention’s policy discussions, and the room was in favour of all three.

A vote count was necessary, and the show of hands supporting the motions vastly outnumbered those that did not.

Outside the convention, a Galilee Blockade protest, featuring a dinosaur costume, a paper mache Pauline Hanson and protesters in Malcolm Turnbull and Adani chief Gautam Adani masks, called attention to the largely forgotten – at least at this conference – issue of the Adani coal mine in Queensland, once billed as the largest in the southern hemisphere.

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“Politicians supporting new coal mines and power stations are stuck in the past,” the Galilee Blockade spokesman Ben Pennings said.

“Thermal coal markets are disappearing with renewable energy the key to a cleaner prosperous future.”

Inside, McCormack, who had been tasked with tackling the energy debate, freeing Turnbull to speak on the coming Longman byelection and Labor’s “failings”, rebutted that message.

“... I would like to see some of those latte sippers from Sydney and Melbourne go up to Mackay, go up to Gladstone or Cairns, indeed anywhere, Rocky you name it, and you tell those hi-vis workers that ‘we don’t want you to work. We don’t want you to have your jobs. We don’t want you to dig up coal for exports, for domestic use’.

“And of course they wouldn’t. Coal has to be part of the mix.”