Talk:Nikki Williams

• "The Australian coal industry supports action on climate change. We are the only industry in the world to voluntarily establish a AUD$1 billion fund to invest in technological solutions to reduce emissions from the burning of fossil fuels but we oppose the carbon tax because it will reduce our competitiveness; stymie our investment pipeline and - despite all the pain that will be inflicted on the Australian economy - it will not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions."

• "The opening of A Tale of Two Cities might just as easily describe the great contradictions that currently characterize how Australia feels about its economy, and its mining industry. We’re the darlings of the business pages, yet we’re painted as demons in the early general news. We help Treasurers keep budgets healthy and give Australia the strength to stave off the threat of recession, yet our industry is a lightning rod for the most adversarial of political debates."

• "Australia cannot take its comparative advantage in coal for granted. Whilst the industry is – as it always has been – highly exposed to intense competitive pressure, the very legitimacy of coal mining in Australia is being called into question by campaigns of misinformation, disruption and delay by anti-development activists. These campaigns extend to opposing the development and demonstration of carbon capture and storage."

• "ABC journalist Quentin Dempster once commented that, “Australia grew up on the coal conveyor belt not the sheep’s back”. Perhaps it is ironic then that in Australia, the coal industry confronts the type of opposition and protest - which you see on the screen before you - each and every day. At mine sites, ship loaders, railway tracks, at AGMs, in the media, in local towns and major urban centres, on roadways, in advertisements in national and international newspapers, in petitions to government, in apparently ‘academic’ treatises and right across social media platforms. There are literally thousands of expressions of anti-coal sentiment popping up every day of every week, of every month, of every year. How to know what’s real and what isn’t? What’s justified criticism, requiring an adequate industry response, and what is fiction? Is all the noise a groundswell of popular hatred or a concerted effort to amplify the voice of a relative minority?"

• "The war against coal and fossil fuels, in the name of climate, should be exposed for what it really is: an attempt to snooker development by stealth. It is often an affront to democratic values whilst posing as legitimate ‘people power’. Anti-development activists are attempting to bludgeon society with a singular value-set that has the capacity to transform our world in ways that most of us would not endorse."

• "To date, the coal industry has looked more like a conventional army, playing and fighting by certain established rules against detractors whose tactics more closely resemble the “hit and run” of guerrilla insurgencies. Of course, this is an ‘inside out’ perspective from the industry - and I know there are those who would scoff at the comparison. However, the eco-activists are experienced, professional, well-resourced and highly motivated campaigners; driven by an anti-development ideology rather than by a mission to improve coal industry practice. The eco-warriors are not trying to force the coal industry to be more responsive to environmental or social values. On the contrary, their focus is to put the coal industry out of business and in doing that, they jeopardise much more than the commercial interests of coal companies."

Nikki Williams, "Rediscovering Our Competitive Edge", Speech to Australian National Conference on Resources and Energy (ANCRE) Canberra, 19 September 2012, page 8.

Dr Nikki Williams, CEO of the Australian Coal Association, "Address to the Queensland American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham QLD), 4 July 2012.