George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to highlight a major problem inhibiting job creation in North Queensland and to propose a solution.

The Australian Conservation Foundation this week lodged a new court challenge to the approval of the Carmichael mine in north-western Queensland. They have two arguments running, and both of them are vexatious. Firstly, they are arguing that the Minister for the Environment failed to take into account a submission by the Black-throated Finch Recovery Team in the approval process. Secondly, they are arguing that the Minister for the Environment failed to consider whether the impact of climate pollution resulting from burning the coal that will come from the mine would be inconsistent with Australia's international obligations to protect the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef. These are not genuine arguments; they are just a means to frustrate and delay the project in the hope that its proponent, Adani, will walk away, taking jobs and prosperity to another country.

This government—the Turnbull government, the Liberal-National government—wants to see those jobs in Australia. We would rather see the mines and jobs here in Australia than in another country where the environment does not have strong protections or where exploited labour works on those mines without proper health and safety provisions.

In Australia, we actually care about species like the black-throated finch. It was identified and provided for in the conditions that are attached to the minister's approval for the mine, where the applicant is required to secure more than 30,000 hectares of land specifically for the black-throated finch.

The Australian Conservation Foundation's second argument is not only vexatious, but it is also self-defeating. If the extreme Greens insist that the Minister for the Environment consider the impact of this approval based on what an energy company in India may or may not do with coal, then they are shooting themselves in the foot. If the approval is given and it is coal from the Carmichael mine, then the Greens must prove that the emissions from that coal being burnt is going to impact the reef. But if the approval is not given, or if it is overturned by the court and it is coal from another country that is burnt, then the Greens will have to prove that even more emissions will not impact the reef. I say that because the demand in India is there. The coal is going to come from somewhere. It will be burnt in India and, if it is foreign coal, it is going to have a higher ash content and therefore most likely lead to more carbon dioxide emissions.

The Greens cannot argue that black is white—and black—at the same time. I can assure them: India will import coal from somewhere to create the electricity needed to bring 100 million people out of energy poverty. Last week, I visited one of those very power generators. It is located a few minutes drive from the largest coal-importing terminal in the world at Mundra on the north-west coast of India. It is built right next to the port, because it requires 16 million tonnes of imported coal—that is about 100 shiploads—per year to operate. Right next to that generator is another generator, requiring the same amount of coal, and there will be at least two more of these generators to come as India needs to produce a further 4.5 gigawatt hours of electricity in the next five years. Right now they are delivering that coal from Indonesia. When the Carmichael mine goes into operation, it will be higher-quality coal with fewer emissions generated and it will go directly into those power plants.

The Greens consistently argue in this place that more emissions are bad for the environment. So unless they are complete hypocrites, they should be sending congratulatory wreaths of paspalum, hemp and dandelion to the Minister for the Environment for actually approving this mine—and I expect to see members of the Labor Party congratulating the minister for creating industry, generating jobs and economic growth, and backing local workers.

Which brings me to the solution: I believe it is time to cut through all of this nonsense and stop using the environment to hold this project to ransom. We need to ensure that the legal processes of delay driven by these antidemocracy and anticaptitalism—anti-everything—movement are pushed out of the way. I have told the Prime Minister it is time we legislated that this project, the Carmichael coal project, be protected from vexatious legal claims so we can get on with the job of creating jobs. It is time also that Labor heeded the actions of their Queensland counterpart where the Queensland Labor government called in a local government application for a solar farm when the initial approval was legally challenged in the Land Court. In that development, they declared that they were going to call it in, because it would provide a significant economic investment. What would this mine do—10,000 jobs— (Time expired)