Preamble

Australia is well endowed with energy resources, and has some of the best managed primary industries in the world. Our success as a country has been as a result of the competitive advantage provided by these abundant resources. We will ensure that the Federal Government strike the appropriate balance between farming enterprises and other primary industries, concurrent with the need to protect agriculture throughout energy production. 

Policies

Energy self-sufficiency: Australia’s vast reserves of gas, coal, uranium and oil shales, should be utilised to ensure domestic energy self-sufficiency and a pricing structure to maintain an economic competitive advantage.

• Maintain sovereign energy self-sufficiency.

Mining: Mining is critical to the Australian economy and employment.

• Support the continued expansion of mining industries in appropriate locations, notwithstanding that mining exploration and extraction must NEVER be allowed to permanently effect prime agricultural land or water systems – either surface or subterranean.

Forestry: The Australian forestry sector faces many challenges in maintaining a sustainable and commercially viable industry. The rise of ideologically driven anti-forestry activism has resulted in Commonwealth usurping State jurisdictions, by agreeing to the destructive policies of the Greens. As a result the Commonwealth has allowed the Greens to strangle Australian forest industries.

• Commit to rebuilding a viable and sustainable Australian timber industry.
• Introduce a National Gas Reservation Policy to guarantee clean and affordable domestic gas supplies for all Australian households.

Renewable energy – solar, wind, wave: With the exception of Tasmania, the current investment in renewable energy is heavily subsidised by domestic consumers. As a result Australians are paying unsustainable domestic energy prices simply to support these experimental alternative power schemes.  

• Oppose the continual subsidisation of these alternative energy sources while there is an abundance of cheaper energy sources available. 
• Support the Tasmanian renewable energy market which has proved to be commercially viable without the need for heavy subsidisation.

Atomic energy: Australia has some of the largest known sources of uranium in the world, yet no plan for the development of a viable, safe and sustainable uranium energy industry.

• Support atomic energy as a viable energy solution to move away from fossil fuels.