The economic structure of Australia and the way it has changed has a lot to do with the energy and emissions problems we have today, indeed it is largely the cause.
Within living memory the nation’s economy was radically different and far more sustainable from a resource and environmental perspective than it is today.
NSW and Vic were the heavyweights doing everything but Tas and SA were far more significant than they are today.
Of particular relevance there is that so far as heavy industry and energy is concerned, Tasmania ranked third nationally and wasn’t far behind second place Victoria. Late 1960’s and 23% of all industrial electricity use in Australia occurred in the island state, a figure which exceeded Queensland, WA, NT and SA combined.
Meanwhile the nation’s third largest city at one time was Adelaide with its economy based around the manufacturing of finished goods, largely using refined metals and other materials produced elsewhere in Australia.
Then came the big shift to mining with iron ore in WA and coal in Queensland and it all happened rather quickly.
By the mid-1970’s Queensland finally had a proper state electricity grid and in one fell swoop, Gladstone power station, it became bigger than Tasmania or SA’s.
Growth of the coal and more recently gas industries in Queensland made the factories in other states, especially SA and Tas, economically inconsequential at the national level and lead directly to the situation we have today with economic reliance on coal and gas exports and an inadequate domestic supply.
Why persist with hard, clever stuff like refining and making things when we can just dig coal out of the ground instead? Quite simply we didn’t.....
About the same time the situation was paralleled in WA with the growth of iron ore mining. It took longer than Queensland but in terms of the broader development which flowed locally from it, and in particular noting the energy aspects, by the mid-1980’s the South West Interconnected System (that is, the grid) was now larger in capacity than Tasmania’s, WA was also exporting fossil fuel and in the following years Perth firmly overtook Adelaide as a city in terms of population.
Now my point isn’t a parochial one or suggestion that one state is or ought to be better than another or anything like that. Absolutely not.
My point is simply that Australia’s economic reliance on exports of iron ore, coal and gas is a recent thing and that within living memory those industries were inconsequential (iron, coal) or simply didn’t exist at all (gas exports only go back 30 years).
That we’re the kings of coal exports and are domestically short on gas is a created situation. It’s not how the nation evolved of its own accord, traditionally we were far more focused on innovation and technology and were often world leaders.
Trouble is, now that we’ve hitched ourselves so firmly to three commodities plus the two big city economies it’s rather hard to go back and do anything else. Can’t simply return to the factories when they’ve been mostly bulldozed and we’re way too far behind technically to start again and be competitive.
Bottom line is we’ll keep pushing coal for as long as anyone’s buying it.