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Tuesday, 12 May 1964

Dr MACKAY (Evans) .- Mr. Deputy Speaker,as I listened to the honorable member for Hunter (Mr. James), I could not help but wonder what reception his words would receive as they went out across the nation. In the honorable member's view, this is a nation with a vast and chaotic coal industry that provides the means of power production; yet a nation in want of a national policy on fuel. The picture that he has painted so vehemently is that of a nation that is sorry for itself. How very different is the honorable n mber's picture from that painted in the official reports received by the Government from its instrumentalities and various committees and independent research organizations that have been established to inform it of the actual situation. Let me place on record the findings of the Joint Coal Board in its sixteenth annual report, which deals with the year 1962-63. The picture painted by the board is very different from that just painted for us by the honorable member. The report states, among other things, that the board is happy to report that the coal industry continued to meet its obligations in 1962-63. Referring to New South Wales, it adds -

Captive mines are those that are producing for specific purposes within particular industries. The report states also-

These are the official views of the Joint Coal Board and not partisan word's of this Government. The report also contains the following statements: -

The report goes on to make this wise observation-

The report goes on to state that the volume of exports from the south coast of New South Wales and the Burragorang valley has continued to increase, and so on. There is nothing like the tone of the speech just made by the honorable member for Hunter to be found in these quotations from the report. However, I wonder at the great difference that fifteen years can make. I wonder what would have been the tenor of the speeches, had they been made fifteen years ago, of the two champions of the coalminers who now sit side by side on the Opposition benches as representatives of electorates in coal-mining areas of New South Wales, where the coal-miners, they say, are searching for work. Fifteen years ago, this nation was held to ransom. Throughout Australia, there was a chronic shortage of coal. I recall that very many people, including some whose words have been quoted here, said at the time, "The day will come when the miners will regret that they have taken such extreme action to attain their ends ". What has now happened has indeed followed the pattern of what has happened elsewhere. I am not in any way trying to belittle the particular or individual cases mentioned by the honorable member for Hunter. The current developments are only common sense in the eyes of those of us who have seen whole States, as South Australia was, plunged into darkness, with industry grinding to a halt for want of power and with people being thrown out of work in hundreds of thousands. After such events, it is only common sense that any nation would set about providing alternative sources of power.

Unfortunately, honorable members opposite, instead of confining this discussion to specific cases, have levelled a broad accusation that this Government has no national policy on fuel. Let us consider the areas in which fuel is found at present and will be found in the future. In the past, of course, coal and lignite have been the ageold sources of power. It is perhaps 100,000 years since man first found that the black stone that he used as his hearthstone caught fire and burned merrily. But it is only just over 100 years since the oil industry came in to its own and transformed the whole industrial face of the globe. These are the current sources of power. Tomorrow, power will be obtained from the exotic chemical fuels and nuclear energy. The day after, we shall have the utilization of solar power. J. B. Conant, in his Putnam report, stated -

Let us leave that to the future. I want now to make the point that continual change is taking place. There are continual flux and tension across the world as new and different fuel sources emerge. This is the key to the industrial age. There are many causes of this change. New resources and reserves of energy are found. Economics within nations and between nations change. Labour costs and labour availability change. Strategic considerations also change. In the midst of all this, there is flux. We have seen in the United States of America, for instance, the very great battle between coal and oil, and we can learn from it.

A fuel policy there must be, certainly, but it need be nothing of the kind that has been suggested by Opposition members in extravagant terms. For instance, they demanded a statement of policy from the Prime Minister (Sir Robert Menzies) immediately - and that was their very word - and they flung at him the question: What about it? I can only say that throughout the nation to-day the best brains in this field are working industriously. The plentiful reports that are available indicate the tremendous amount of work that has been done and is being done by bodies like the Coal Utilization Research Advisory Committee established by this Government in 1959, with Mr. Bill Pettingell as its chairman, and with very wide terms of reference requiring it to make a survey of research and investigation overseas as well as in Australia. There is also Australian Coal Association (Research) Limited, which has a current budget of £250,000 a year for research and is scheduled to raise its research expenditure to more than £1,000,000 a year. Great work is being done also by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and the Joint Coal "Board, as well as private companies and government departments. The information obtained by this research is being channelled into the Government's central reserves for the purpose of producing exactly the results about which Opposition members talk.

When I knew that this matter was to be raised for discussion as a matter of public importance, I telephoned a friend of mine, Professor John Morgan, who is Professor of Mining Engineering in the University of New South Wales and an expert on coalmining. When I asked him whether there was a policy on this matter, he said, "We certainly have a fuel policy in the making ". But he stresses that preliminary research is an essential prelude to the formulation of a worth-while policy. We know that recommendations are before this Parliament at the moment with respect to fuel.

In the few minutes that I have left - my time is all too short, Mr. Deputy Speaker - let me discuss this question of defence, which has been flung at us. As a result of the far-sighted activities of this Government, which has subsidized oil search on the most generous terms adopted by any government in the free world in relation to oil search organizations, this Government is now able to face the nation and Australia's enemies and say, " For the first time in our history, we are relatively secure as regards defence requirements of petroleum ". In the last war, when we faced the nations to our north, we had only six weeks' supply of petroleum at the seaboard in vulnerable tanks. To-day, a mile under the earth's surface, there is more oil in the Moonie field, and oil of a higher grade, than in all the seaboard reserves at present in this nation. This oil is in oil sands which are so permeable and so delightfully open that the oil can be flowed, if necessary in an emergency without regard for efficiency, at a tremendous rate that would enable our strategic requirements to be met. The oil is of such a grade that it can simply be filtered- and put straight into the bunkers of our fighting ships and, if necessary, straight into the tanks of our diesel-powered implements of war. The same oil is very rich in the higher grade and more exotic fuels.

This is one of the direct results of the Government's policy. Never has Australia been more secure in terms of its defence fuel requirements. Yet we have this proposition thrown up to us by the Opposition that we lack a policy. On nuclear power, we are told by the chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission that the policy of the commission has been to train men so that when in 1973 South Australia perhaps has a nuclear power station and this trend spreads through the nation we will find trained Australian personnel right in the forefront of producing the power that we need. Policy is a changing thing, but this Government is well to the fore in meeting the requirements of change.

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