Europe has become dependent on Russia's gas because of their surrender to green scare campaigns that have seen them ban fracking and shut down coal fired power. For all the strict economic sanctions the west has placed on Russia since it invaded Ukraine, Europe continues to buy huge amounts of coal, oil and gas from Russia, helping Putin to finance his war. At current prices, Europe is paying Russia every week around $6 billion for gas, $2 billion for oil and $600 million for coal.

Europe desperately wants our coal and gas to help wean them off their Russian dependency. No one in Europe is asking for us to send them solar panels.

That is because it is fossil fuels that helps provide the strength to any country seeking to defend their borders. You need fossil fuels to make many things in factories, you need fossil fuels to move trucks, tanks and planes, and you even need fossil fuels to grow food, as most fertilisers are made from fossil fuels.

The free world is quickly waking up from the green induced coma that has seen it shut down manufacturing and weaken our defences. Fortunately we have not gone as far as Europe down this path. So we have opened new coal mines, like the Adani Carmichael mine, and we retain some capacity to help the world wean itself off natural resources from rogue nations.

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Abbot Point port from which Adani's coal is exported. A ship had already left full of coal from the Carmichael mine. More will follow as the final testing of their rail line is complete.

This week I was due to visit the Adani mine, but I did not make it because of the funeral for my colleague Senator Kimberley Kitching.

There are 2000 Queenslanders employed at Carmichael thanks to the fight we all put up to protect these jobs. Anthony Albanese and Labor did nothing to help deliver these jobs. We were left on our own to fight for it.

Do you remember when Labor claimed that if we opened the Adani mine it would crash the coal price and threaten the viability of other coal mines around Australia? Labor's climate change Minister at the time, Mark Butler, said that the Adani mine "would simply displace coal and jobs in existing coal regions, like the Hunter Valley."

Well the Adani mine is here and coal prices are at record levels. Mark was wrong and Labor was wrong because they listen to the Greens, not us.

The Adani project is the biggest investment from India in Australia by far. The coal that it will deliver to India will come as a huge relief to them at a time when energy prices are surging around the world.

India will need lots more energy as it grows and develops. If we do not increase our energy production to help them, then countries like Russia will instead fill the void. That will push other nations away from the free nations of west into the arms of dictatorial regimes like Russia and China.

The future of the free world depends on us developing our natural resources so that free nations are not dependent on the unfree.