No one in Australian politics or the energy industry was talking about building new coal power plants until former prime minister Tony Abbott piped up a few weeks ago.
Now there's still no one in the industry talking about it but Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg insists the government is serious about investigating the possibility.
"Tony Abbott penned an op-ed about new coal fired power stations (and) suddenly this government has shifted to the centrepiece of its energy policy being about building new coal when no one in the industry, in the broader business community, no one's talked about new coal for years," Labor energy spokesman Mark Butler told Sky News on Sunday.
He said the debate now should be about what was needed to power Australia for the next four or five decades, not solely about coal.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced in a major speech last Wednesday the government would consider putting taxpayer money into new high-efficiency low-emissions coal-fired power plants, most likely using ultra-supercritical technology.
Mr Frydenberg said on Sunday the government was very serious about the policy and would discuss with industry and state governments about how Australia could use the newest coal plant technology.
He rejected the "demonisation" of coal and said his government would take a technology-neutral position.
But he cautioned the numbers on investing in new coal plants would have to stack up.
"Renewable technology today doesn't have the storage capacity to stabilise the system," the minister told Sky News.
"While that technology is being developed, the more we can keep baseload power - whether it's coal or whether it's gas - in the system, the more stable the system will be."
Mr Butler said Australia wouldn't get anywhere meeting its commitments to cut emissions under the Paris climate change agreement if it invested in any type of coal power.
"Even at best, these ultra-supercritical plants are still twice as heavily polluting as a new gas plant," he said.
"That's really why banks and electricity companies across the country are all saying this is simply completely uninvestable and unrealistic."
Both sides agreed gas generation owould be important and say governments needed to look at how to increase capacity.
Mr Frydenberg said state government moratoriums on gas extraction had done the country a lot of economic damage.
