Abbott pushes party for new Power Stations, page-11

In the medium and even perhaps the long term, coal is the only viable and cheap source of energy. It will be used in some regions for centuries. In many cases nuclear is too expensive and gas unavailable. Wind, solar, wave etc cannot under current technology provide cheap base load power. Gas, where available to the world is an alternate base load provider. Some lucky countries such as NZ and Switzerland have the luxury of hydro.
It's quite simple, whilst we all wish for cheap reliable base load renewable sources of base load power generation, nothing can match fossil fuels. To believe otherwise is delusional.