Our only task should be to make Australia as powerful as possible with the growth of China, but we seem to be doing “everything in our power” to make it not up to task, according to Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce.
His comments come amid news Australia’s most carbon-intensive coal-fired Yallourn power station in Victoria will close four years earlier than scheduled casting doubt over the future of hundreds of jobs.
Energy Australia announced the plant – which produces 22 per cent of Victoria’s power – would close in 2028.
“We have lost sight of where this nation needs to go,” Mr Joyce told Sky News host Peta Credlin.
“We’ve got Liddell shutting down, we’ve got Vales Point not going to expand, we’ve got Yallourn shutting down, we’re talking this garbage that a battery’s going to do it.”
Mr Joyce said we only have “one task,” which is to make Australia “as powerful as possible as quickly as possible”.
“That is the only thing we’ve got to concentrate on, but instead we’ve gone down this path,” he said.
“We just seem to have absolutely left reality. We have become naïve, and we’ve become politically naïve.”