IT was Scott Morrison, as the photograph here reminds us, who famously - or infamously, if you like - brought a block of Hunter Valley coal into Question Time during the first parliamentary sitting week of 2017, and waved it around, saying: "This is coal. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared."
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Mr Morrison was treasurer at the time to prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, looking a little unsure of things as the great reveal unfolds beside him.
Four years later, it's Mr Morrison in the big chair, and if coal was controversial then, it's more so now.
From a big-picture point of view, the Morrison government wants to be seen as "technology neutral" when it comes to power.
With Mr Turnbull and his rival Tony Abbott both gone from Canberra, the energy debate on the Coalition side is not as fevered as it was.
But the ructions are still there, as seen by the release of Manufacturing 2035 - a paper from the National Party's backbench policy committee, which meets in Canberra during sitting weeks.
With the proposed 2023 closure of Liddell drawing steadily closer, the office of Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor, has been working away - some might say, behind the scenes - to maintain the government's influence in a situation in which it is far from the only player.
A grid begun by the states and old-style county councils is now a mixture of government and private-sector assets, with a near alphabet soup of oversight agencies at state and federal level: and no single body - it seems - "in charge".
The Manufacturing 2035 paper uses various previous reports to justify its call for more coal-fired power stations, saying that gas is too expensive, as things stand, to be a baseload fuel.
Mr Taylor says the government's focus is on affordable and reliable electricity prices: coal-fired power stations "will be an important part" of the grid "for years to come".
Such statements tend to infuriate the environmental lobby, and the Newcastle Herald is not blind to the many and varied environmental impacts of the mining and burning of coal.
But as things stand, the unavoidably intermittent nature of wind and solar generation means the grid cannot operate 24/7 without "dispatchable" power.
The Coalition has been in power for much of the time that our grid problems developed.
An awful lot rides on the government and its advisers in getting the solutions right.
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Ian Kirkwood
Reporting journalist at the Newcastle Herald since 1987. Editorial writer, general reporter, industrial relations, industry and coal.
Reporting journalist at the Newcastle Herald since 1987. Editorial writer, general reporter, industrial relations, industry and coal.
