He didn't make it. Instead Matt Canavan became an economist, worked at the Productivity Commission and was elected a Senator in 2013.

He became a federal politician because "I wanted to do something where my children could see the differences that I was making", he said during his inaugural Senate speech in 2014. He was clear about coal from day one.

"I want to put on the record my admiration and support for our fossil fuel industry and the thousands of jobs it supports, including my brother's," he said in that speech. He was Australia's Resources Minister by 2016.

Canavan has ramped up support for coal since the Coalition was re-elected in May, claiming the surprise result gave the government a mandate for coal-fired power stations.

At a NSW Minerals Council conference and the Sydney Institute this week he played a dead bat to questions about climate change, which didn't rate much of a mention in his speeches.

He preferred the "cogent comments" of the International Energy Agency, which he said predicted growth in thermal coal to at least 2040. Canavan also argued coal was the best path for about one billion people around the globe denied access to electricity that "we all enjoy here in the Western world".

The IEA was established in 1974 in response to the "oil shocks" of that period, when embargos by some oil producers showed just how vulnerable the world was on energy. Australia joined in 1979 and is one of 30 oil-consuming member countries. The IEA examines the gamut of energy issues including "oil, gas, coal supply and demand, renewable energy technologies, electricity markets, energy efficiency, access to energy, demand side management and more".

Remember that Matt Canavan prefers the IEA's "cogent comments" on energy issues over other authorities, and environment groups have been strong critics of it.

Late each year the IEA releases its World Energy Outlook, which features different scenarios for things like coal, oil, gas and renewables supply, demand and production, access to energy and carbon emissions, and projects them forward for decades.

"It does not aim to forecast the future, but provides a way of exploring different possible futures, the levers that bring them about and the interactions that arise across a complex energy system," the IEA said.

The Current Policies Scenario plots where we'll be by, say, 2040 or 2050, if nothing changes from today. Not a great place, apparently. There will be "increasing strains on almost all aspects of energy security", says the IEA, and troubling emissions increases.

Matt Canavan relied on the New Policies Scenario this week to bat away climate change questions and paint a rosy future for thermal coal until at least 2040, without saying it was just one of the IEA's scenarios. And it's not even the scenario the IEA cites as the only one capable of providing electricity to one billion people by 2030.

There's a lot Canavan doesn't say about the IEA's reports which are readily available on the IEA website, and relatively easy to understand.

He doesn't say that under the New Policies Scenario he plucks his "coal's rosy future" prediction from, the IEA predicts carbon emissions on a "slow upward trend to 2040", which is "far out of step with what scientific knowledge says will be required to tackle climate change", representing "a major collective failure to tackle the environmental consequences of energy use".

The New Policies Scenario sees "some gains in terms of access, with India to the fore", but if we stick with that scenario - and Canavan seems to want to - "more than 700 million people, predominantly in rural settlements in sub-Saharan Africa, are projected to remain without electricity in 2040".

I haven't heard Canavan quote another IEA conclusion, readily found in the 2018 World Energy Outlook document, saying "Renewable energy technologies provide the main pathway to the provision of universal energy access".

Not coal.

The IEA is very clear about the biggest issue facing the world today when it comes to energy. Governments. And that's another thing Canavan doesn't quote the IEA on.

"Our analysis shows that over 70 per cent of global energy investments will be government-driven and as such the message is clear - the world's energy destiny lies with government decisions," said the IEA's executive director Dr Fatih Birol in a quote at the top of the 2018 World Energy Outlook website page.

An Australia-specific IEA report released a few months earlier pegged Australia as a country blessed with energy resources but dogged by bad government and decision-making.

"The energy policy governance in Australia is very complex and fragmented. It suffers from frequent changes of policy direction and institutions at Commonwealth level," the IEA said, in what I would describe as "cogent comments".

The agency Canavan cites when he wants to dismiss climate change questions expressed concern about the Australian Government's push for more coal-fired power, saying "the continued use of new or old coal plants makes the attainment of Australia's Paris commitments problematic and may result in carbon lock-in". Another cogent comment.

The IEA ticked off Australia's energy problems - a national electricity market featuring "a stretched power system with bottleneck interconnectors between states", declining baseload capacity, a gas market with "largely unregulated infrastructure", opaque pricing and "unsatisfactory" competition and transparency levels, growing demand, stalling investment and poor efficiency.

Canavan didn't mention one of the IEA's other "cogent comments" this week - that the Australian Government needs to develop an integrated energy and climate policy framework up to 2050. That's the policy framework business has been crying out for.

Last year Canavan described his cherry-picked coal figure from a scenario the IEA warns we shouldn't follow as a "short, sharp shock for those who have set out to destroy confidence in our world-class coal industry".

It wasn't. It just made clear who was fielding for the mining industry at silly mid on.