Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has lashed out at the federal government’s focus on renewable energy instead of coal.

A NSW coal-fired power station is the only coal plant among a shortlist of a dozen projects considered to be underwritten by the federal government.

The remaining companies include gas and hydro plants but Mr Joyce has long been campaigning for a new coal-fired power station in Queensland.

The Nationals MP says more than 120,000 Australians have had their power cut off in the past financial year, including more than 32,000 in NSW, because they couldn’t pay their energy bills.

Mr Joyce tells Ben Fordham this is “intolerable” and the government should invest in baseload coal power.

“The more so-called free power we get the dearer their power bill goes.

“We’ve got to wake up to ourselves, realise the reality of what we’re in.

“We have tied ourselves up in this sort of ‘green myth’ that we are somehow singlehandedly going to cool the planet from a room in Canberra.

“I can tell you Ben, if it was possible to change the climate in Canberra I would have crossed the floor to vote for rain and now we wouldn’t have a problem with the drought, but it just doesn’t work like that.”

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