Voters in Coalition seats back global ban on new coalmines, poll shows

Extract from The Guardian

Majority of voters in four Coalition electorates – including Tony Abbott’s – support global ban on new mines

Phone polls conducted in electorates of Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Peter Dutton and Kevin Hogan found majority of voters supported ban on new coal mines. Photograph: Patrick Pleul/dpa/Corbis

Daniel Hurst Political correspondent

@danielhurstbne

Friday 8 January 2016 07.09 AEDT

A global ban on new coalmines and a transition to renewable energy enjoys support from a majority of voters in four key Coalition electorates, new polling shows.

The findings coincide with further steep declines in Indian coal imports, prompting warnings about the viability of new mines in Australia including Adani’s Carmichael proposal in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.

The phone poll, conducted by ReachTEL in the federal electorates of Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Peter Dutton and Kevin Hogan, was commissioned by the Australia Institute, a vocal supporter of a worldwide halt on new coalmines.

Voters were told a global moratorium would mean all countries would stop building new coalmines and expanding existing ones, but current mines would continue to operate.

About 57.3% of respondents in Abbott’s Sydney seat of Warringah voiced support for the idea, while 23.4% said they were opposed.

The support-to-opposition level was 50.5% to 33% in Joyce’s regional New South Wales seat of New England, 52.2% to 28.9% in Dutton’s south-east Queensland seat of Dickson, and 53.3% to 28.5% in Hogan’s northern NSW seat of Page. The remaining respondents were undecided.

The Australia Institute argued the results showed a moratorium on new mines was now a mainstream idea.

“Unlike many of our politicians it now seems that voters instinctively know that building massive new coalmines does not make economic or environmental sense,” said Ben Oquist, the group’s executive director.

“Similarly with renewable energy, the electorate is ahead of its politicians in knowing that Australia can be powered by 100% renewable energy over the next 15 years.”

When ReachTEL asked people in the same four Coalition seats whether they supported or opposed Australia gradually transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2030, about three-quarters of the sample were in favour.

Separate analysis shows Indian coal imports in December were 34% lower than they were in the same month a year earlier. The year-on-year decline for November was 49%, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

The IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies, Tim Buckley, said it appeared that Indian thermal coal imports “not only peaked in mid-2015 but are set to permanently and rapidly decline”.

He said the decline was not surprising in light of the target announced by the Indian energy minister, Piyush Goyal, to cease thermal coal imports by 2017 except for coastal plants. His research suggests the trends are influenced by increases in domestic Indian coal production, accelerating deployment of cost-effective renewable energy, and reform of electricity distribution companies.

“Across the board, India is transforming its electricity market,” Buckley said. “That has huge implications for Australia because we’re the second-largest exporter of thermal coal in the world, behind Indonesia. We keep investing in new coal assets on the premise of growth. This indicates that’s a flawed premise.”

Buckley said the US$51/tonne price of Australian thermal coal exports was 60% lower than the 2010/11 peak. He said the Newcastle coal future price indicated a further decline to US$44/tonne by 2021, “showing the market is increasingly pricing in a permanent structural decline”.

Australian governments should take the trends into account when considering supporting new coal-related infrastructure such as ports and railways, rather than relying on assurances from an industry that had “got the call wrong”, he said.

Buckley, a financial markets expert whose organisation backs a reduction in coal dependence, said it was in Australia’s interests to ensure an orderly move to renewable energy rather than having a “chaotic transition”.

Malcolm Turnbull has previously dismissed the idea of a coal moratorium, although he couched his criticism in terms of a unilateral Australian ban on exports. “If Australia stopped exporting coal, the countries to which we export it would simply buy it from somewhere else,” the prime minister said in October.

“Coal is a very important part, a very large part, the largest single part of the global energy mix and likely to remain that way for a very long time.”

The Australia Institute/ReachTEL survey was conducted on 17 December and polled 743 residents in Warringah, 747 residents in New England, 738 residents in Dickson and 762 in Page.