General Manager send off
It was a pleasure to join the mayor, councillors, staff and community leaders to farewell Cessnock City Council's General Manager last Friday night. Stephen Glen has served the city well. His modest and quiet demeanour belied his strong and innovative leadership. With our elected councillors, he has helped to place council on a more successful and sustainable course. Stephen is entitled to be proud of his time here. I again thank him and extend best wishes to him and his family.
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Parliamentary Friends
I was somewhat bemused when my decision to co-chair the Parliamentary Friends for Coal Exports caused such a fuss. It's not particularly revolutionary for the Member of Hunter and Shadow Minister for Resources to express support for our coal industry, I've been doing it all of my political life.
After all, the region I represent is home to the world's largest coal port and the Hunter electorate provides the lion's share of its coal. Coal mining underpins our local economy and creates tens of thousands of jobs directly and indirectly. Both the major parties support the mining and export of our coal, another reason the formation of the new parliamentary friendship group should not be controversial.
There are hundreds of parliamentary friendship groups in the federal parliament. They are an expression of support for a cause, industry, need or area of public policy. For example, there are groups centred around health and social issues. In fact, there is a friendship group to assist in the elimination of just about every form of cancer. I'm also the co-chair of the friendship group for primary producers, another good example. The co-chairs of the friendship groups often facilitate meetings or social events, at which experts in the cause they seek to promote are invited to speak and engender a better understanding of the opportunities or challenges of the cause in question. To maintain the integrity of the friendship group system the co-chairs of friendship groups come from different political parties and they operate on an entirely bi-partisan basis. They are a beneficial extra within our parliamentary processes.
No engineering miracle
AGL has announced there will be no engineering miracle and its Liddell power station will no longer generate electricity after April 2023. I'm pleased the engineering review has given three of the four turbines four additional months beyond the original de-commissioning date of late 2022. The additional months will give us more time to build the new generation and storage capability AGL has promised and help us get through the 2022/23 summer. AGL will press on with its new investments in the Upper Hunter including the upgrade of Bayswater power station. Along with its investment in pumped hydro, storage and a new gas-fired generator, the Bayswater upgrade will allow the Hunter electorate to remain the power-house of NSW. That means more economic and jobs growth. AGL has again committed itself to making sure Liddell's workforce will be taken care of and I welcome that commitment.
The unrealistic pre-election pressure the Morrison Government put on AGL to significantly extend the life of Liddell has been exposed as no more than a political slogan. The fact is, Liddell has reached the end of its economic and physical life. To secure more investment, Australia needs an energy policy after six years of Government inaction.