David Gillespie's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Regional Australia | Matters of Public Importance | House debates
As these sun sets on this sad 47th Parliament, what have we got to show for three years of parliament? We have more debt, deficits as far as the eye can see and over $1 trillion in debt. Regional...
As these sun sets on this sad 47th Parliament, what have we got to show for three years of parliament? We have more debt, deficits as far as the eye can see and over $1 trillion in debt. Regional Australia is also a lot worse off. There has been this passive-aggressive attack on agriculture, food bowls, food and fibre production, with cuddly sounding names like 'restoring our rivers', which is code for taking 750 gigalitres out of the Murray-Darling Basin. We have got this idea that nature repair involves putting covenants on good productive land and letting it turn back to native bush, putting covenants on land for lazy farmers, usually based in capital cities, who don't want to farm but think they are going to fix nature by letting productive land go back to bush. We have got the threat of methane pledges, which will reduce so-called bovine methane. We've seen what has happened with those sorts of policies in Ireland, where they suggested a 30 per cent cull of their dairy herd—same in Holland. Also, we have had passive obstruction to our energy system, and they have abandoned a lot of regional and rural road programs, putting in place amorphous road and bridge programs which, funnily enough, favour metropolitan Australia. We've had passive aggressive behaviour towards gas and oil exploration, yet the nation runs on diesel. When has there been an oilfield struck in this country? There hasn't been one in decades. We have survived off the Bass Strait, and we are now dependent on imported oil and gas. Long gone are genuine changes to Medicare. This government is making out that it's saving everyone by having these Medicare urgent care clinics everywhere. Well, in regional Australia, we're not seeing them. They're all in metro Australia. There are no new buildings, no new doctors, no new nurses; there's just a block grant and new Medicare stickers over existing clinics. I've looked through the website. They're all based in existing clinics. All these big super clinics that the corporates run are pocketing the $600,000, or however much the block grant is, and there are no new doctors. There is just, maybe, extra hours practice. The distribution priority areas have been destroyed so that the areas that have no doctors are the least likely to get a doctor. Look at our energy system. Their obsession with renewables is just a giant merry-go-round of subsidies. Where are we now? We got the most expensive energy; we should have the cheapest energy system. That's what kept our industry alive in this country. Not only have we had 29,000 small businesses go broke; we've got all the big industrial companies going off shore to Asia and back to America, because they've got cheap energy. We've now got subsidies for solar and wind for large-scale generation certificates and small-scale technology certificates—that's for rooftop solar and large solar. We've got subsidies for wind. We've got subsidies in the road budget for oversized and overmass special roads to go to renewable energy zones. That's another subsidy. And now we've got the ultimate paradox: we are relying on batteries that don't generate energy; they just storage and consume energy, and they're getting subsidised! Plus, the poles and wires expansion is also being subsidised. The Capacity Investment Scheme is running into the billions of dollars, and that will add to the ever-increasing network costs. Solar and wind are not a cheap system. As a one-off, a solar panel is cheap or a solo wind turbine, but all the other bits are expensive—the extra poles and wires; everything. And the ultimate irony is that everyone in this country still relies on coal 65 per cent of the time. The New South Wales Labor government and the Victoria Labor government are all subsidising their coal plants to keep the lights on, yet you guys are trying to get rid of them all. It is just a joke. Nuclear is the answer. (Time expired)
Nuclear Energy Select Committee; Report | Committees | House debates
I rise to say a few words about some of the comments made about this report. I gather there was a lot of work done, but I don't agree with all the conclusions. I just want to repeat a few reality...
I rise to say a few words about some of the comments made about this report. I gather there was a lot of work done, but I don't agree with all the conclusions. I just want to repeat a few reality checks. A lot of people are concerned about the cost, the delay in building them overseas, that it's not the answer, that it's a stalking horse to keep coal and gas in the system, that it uses way too much water and that renewable energy is very affordable and cheap. I just want to place some corrections on that. First of all, the states of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland are already relying on coal and gas, and they are subsidising the power stations to stay in. It's not a secret plan of the coalition; it's just a reality that 60 per cent of the energy in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales—roughly; if you follow the AEMO live generation, it's still 60 to 65 per cent—comes from coal. You can install all the gigawatts that the former member for Bennelong talked about, but the fact of the matter is they are all low capacity, randomly generating and often generate nothing or next to nothing. Capacity factor is how often an installed capacity actually generates. Everyone thinks Australia is so sunny and we'll have heaps of solar power. There is light for half the day, so it's at least 50 per cent. But actually, averaged over a year, it's 24 per cent. When it's light in the early morning, it's not generating, although it's light. In the dusk it's not, because the sun is not going straight onto the solar panels. When it's cloudy, it stops. When it's raining, it stops. When you have wet weeks and months, it stops. So you can install as much as you like and, because Australia is part of a world that has a north-south axis for the biggest part of the national electricity market and because of our native weather patterns, all these renewable generators are highly correlated. That means they all generate at the same time and they generally, over vast distances, stop at the same time, and overinstalling them doesn't mean that you will get something that's available 24 per cent of the time on average. If you build four times as much, you won't get 100 per cent of the time; it just means more and more installed capacity all stops at the one time. The second thing is, 'All it needs is a lot of firming, and we are firming.' Well, that's what the New South Wales government is paying the power stations for. Firming is a euphemism for what you turn to when renewables are not generating. At the moment, the New South Wales Labor government is subsidising power stations to stay there because the market rules have sent them broke. They are old plants designed to get up to steam and spin a generator, which then generates electricity. They're not designed to ramp up or ramp down. Some of the new nuclear plants can do that handsomely. The BWRX-300 that Canada is building can ramp from 45 per cent up to 95 per cent because the neutronics in these modern plants is great. You can go from 45 per cent up to 95 per cent. But back-up is expensive because it is generally a low-capacity-factor utilisation. If you're having gas on standby and it sits there and it's only firing up when there's a shortage, it makes it a really inefficient gas power plant. It's the same for coal, pumped hydro and batteries. They are very expensive. Why are people's electricity bills going up and up even though they've got rooftop solar? There are plenty of businesses that have got rooftop solar and batteries, yet their bills are still going up. That is because in your bill stack, what makes up your bill, the electricity is the minority part. That's the wholesale cost of electricity. It is low compared to the network costs, the poles and wires and all the synchronous condensers that you have to add to the system that utilise energy but don't generate energy. All the new poles and wires, the massive expansion—all these extra bits and pieces on a renewables based grid—are what makes it expensive. Sure, they're cheap. But they're only cheap 24 per cent of the time. By giving them a red-carpet ride onto the grid, they can do that because the market allows them to. They're not responsible for the other 75 per cent of the time. They also get other payments than what they get paid for their electricity. If you're a coal plant, unless you're selling electricity, you get diddly squat. You don't get paid anything. It's the same for gas. It's the same for countries overseas. You can bid in the market, but you only get paid for your electricity except if you're renewable. You can get a contract for difference, so your risk is reduced. You can get Capacity Investment Scheme payments to get your facility up and built. You get the grid from the whole public that pays in their bill. You can get the grid built for you even though you're not near where the load is needed. When we had a sensible, engineering based system, you had your load near where the generation was happening, and you had your fuel next to the load. Basically, firming is expensive. Putting electricity into batteries, into a pumped hydro from direct current into alternating current, sending it through the wires, then putting it into a battery energy storage system, then taking it out, then inverting it back into AC and then getting it to your house uses oodles of the energy you've just generated. In an alternating current generated system, it's AC to AC to your house. You can transmit alternating current hundreds of miles without much consumption of the electricity. These guys called Tesla—remember him?—George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison had battles about this in the 1880s and 1890s. One guy was building a DC system, and the other decided: 'No; this is crazy. You're losing all your energy.' They had to build a direct-current power station every two or three blocks in Chicago and New York because they couldn't transmit it. Tesla came along and developed how to make alternating current. It's pretty easy. You have copper wires intersecting the electromagnetic field of a magnet, and—hey presto!—electrons come out the end of it. How do you get a big 150-tonne magnet to spin around at 50 hertz a second? You boil water to produce steam, which spins a turbine that then spins the generator. Hey presto; that's what you've got. That's what you get in nuclear. They are big. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy said, 'The member for Lyne has talked about nuclear; it's just a big kettle.' Actually, a coal plant is just a big kettle. A closed-cycle gas plant has a gas energy source which spins a turbine. But then it has a side channel that boils water so that you've got two bites of the energy to make more. So, ladies and gentlemen, the idea that you have a cheap system based on renewables is quite fallacious. It is not a cheap system. It's cheap when you've got it, but, for the rest of the time, it makes the system unsustainable. The International Energy Agency has written about this forever—or since this renewable transition was proposed. They said, 'Up to 10 per cent, it doesn't cost you much; it's just money for jam.' You stick a wind tower up and—hey presto!—you get a bit of extra electricity. It's the same with a solar panel. But, once you get into the double figures, all the integration costs, all the extra poles and wires, all the bits and pieces, all the inverters, all the batteries and all the pumped hydro just sends you broke. Now—hey presto!—that's what happened in Germany. They have thousands of wind towers and they are about to start up their nuclear plants, because, if you have big baseload providers that can work with the existing renewables, then—hey presto!—you don't have to rely on Russia; you can just rely on yourself. And Germany has worked that out the hard way. An honourable member: And you can't get gas anymore. Yes—and you can't get gas. So you need a constant— An honourable member interjecting— But we can get uranium and we can run a plant for three years, so a lot of the stuff is very—
Petition: Renewable Energy | Statements by Members | House debates
Twelve thousand, one hundred and thirty-seven people have signed this petition from around Port Stephens in the Lyne electorate and the Paterson electorate opposing the proposed wind farm...
Twelve thousand, one hundred and thirty-seven people have signed this petition from around Port Stephens in the Lyne electorate and the Paterson electorate opposing the proposed wind farm development off Newcastle and Port Stephens. That's 12,137 people. As has been found out around the world, offshore wind farms are highly unpredictable and hard to maintain. They can be a barrier to navigation on the surface and confuse radar and submarine sonar. It's adjacent to one of the busiest ports in the country, the Port of Newcastle, as well as Port Stephens. There's a huge marine industry based around food security, with food supply coming from that area, as well as bluewater economy. It is also an incredibly expensive way to provide baseload energy. It requires gas backup, pumped hydro backup, batteries, coal plants and gas plants—you name it. If you're going to rely on a bit of wind, that's the consequence. You just get more build and more intensity. This offshore wind farm is proposed as the source of energy for Tomago, but it would be better to have a highly efficient baseload energy system. I commend this petition, which will go to the Petitions Committee. I'd like to thank all those people that signed the petition, because it's a major issue for the whole state. (Time expired)
No, not yet, but we're running out of time to do that. I seek leave to table it.
I seek leave to table a petition from the members of the Lyne electorate.
Nuclear Energy | Statements by Members | House debates
I would like to give a great shout-out and a thank you to Grace Stanke, a US-trained nuclear engineer and nuclear fuel specialist who took leave from her job as a nuclear engineer in America to...
I would like to give a great shout-out and a thank you to Grace Stanke, a US-trained nuclear engineer and nuclear fuel specialist who took leave from her job as a nuclear engineer in America to go on a tour of Perth, Collie, Port Augusta, Adelaide, Sydney to tour a waste facility, Melbourne, Brisbane, Parliament House, Lithgow and Gippsland. She spoke with Australian nuclear specialists in nuclear law and nuclear engineering—Lenka Kolla; Adi Patterson; Robert Barr; Helen Cook; Kirsty Braybon; Jasmin Diab; and Will Shackel, the prolific teenager who set up Nuclear for Australia. People are hungry for cheap, reliable and clean power, and nuclear delivers that. All those stereotypes about people being afraid of nuclear—once it's explained to them, they are very keen to know more and look forward to Australia embracing it. I'd like to thank Grace so much for taking time out. Americans don't get many holidays, and it probably means she used up all her annual leave to come and educate us about the massive expansion, the safety and the reliability of nuclear power.
Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
This Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill is a really important bill because it's addressing a fatal and disappointing development in Australian society. That is the rise of antisemitism,...
This Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill is a really important bill because it's addressing a fatal and disappointing development in Australian society. That is the rise of antisemitism, which has grown exponentially since the Hamas terrorist invasion of Israel and the kidnapping and killing of many innocent people. That was a day of murder, torture, kidnapping, brutal sexual violence and the massacring of children and innocents. It was cruel, it was barbaric and it was unbelievable. Yet in Australia we saw, on the steps of the Opera House no less, in the middle of Australia at one of Australia's iconic landmarks, ranting and chanting by supporters of Hamas that went unpunished. The law was not enforced by the New South Wales police. I could not believe it at the time. It is an offence to incite people to violence, let alone to give aid to declared terrorist organisations. Then, this acceptance or turning of a blind eye— A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 17:02 to 17:21 As I was saying, there was a failure to enforce the law in failing to prosecute and in attempting to arrest people who were inciting violence based on the criteria of religious belief. Blatant antisemitism has been uncovered. I'm a big believer in free speech and the right to protest but it's not legal to incite people to violence or to spray-paint businesses' cars and torch them, attack places of religious worship, firebomb children's daycare centres or vandalise people's houses. That is not legitimate political expression; that is illegality. The current government have been asleep at the wheel. They have failed to prosecute or—not necessarily the act of arresting; that would be up to state police. But they have failed to condemn. They have failed to condemn universities tolerating the occupy movements plastering universities with antisemitic graffiti, allowing discrimination and the ostracising of both academics and students in universities, doxxing people and actually arguing for the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah. Supporting a registered terrorist organisation by physical or other means is illegal in this country. But these laws have been left unapplied, and that is why antisemitism has grown. On a diplomatic and international scale, the current government has made moral equivalence a justification for not doing anything because of stuff it feels is Islamophobic. But it's just not realistic. On the international stage we have abandoned our support for Israel. We have voted against Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East that has the rule of law and lets people vote. It's a shame that Australia has really let its standards drop in supporting any of those things I've mentioned. This bill, in putting some teeth behind applying the law, is a little bit too late. We need strong leadership from this government and also from state governments, who should have had their police forces enforcing this. The fact that our security agencies were not engaging with the current federal government tells you enough about their opinion of what's going on in this government. In question time today, we saw the Prime Minister obfuscate. He wouldn't admit that the security agencies didn't want to brief him because they were worried about his administration leaking any information, which would hinder them identifying the perpetrators. And the caravan packed with explosives. My goodness! That was just an abject failure of our intelligence capability, when local neighbours identified the caravan. It goes on and on. Vandalising synagogues and trying to torch them in Sydney, and then the Adass synagogue in Melbourne, were just absolute shocks. I cannot believe that Australia has let down the standards of applying the rule of law and having a tight, well-connected intelligence network. It really is a cause for concern. These proposed changes seek to lower the threshold for criminality for those that urge violence against individuals or groups. Instead of intending that violence occur, police now only need to prove that the person was reckless as to whether violence would occur. These laws also propose removing the good faith defence for those urging violence. It is really appropriate, because how can you urge someone to engage in acts of violence in good faith. I mean, it's really, totally unrealistic. It's long overdue that the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill has finally been introduced for us to discuss. The coalition did write to the government about it before parliament resumed in October. It's been to a committee and was examined carefully. The recommendation from the review was that this should come before the parliament. The bill also needs to be a bit stronger to cover attacks on places of worship. It needs to be blindingly clear that any antisemitic action is not acceptable in Australia. As I have said, the consequences of us being ambiguous about what is tolerable under the law are really important. I do not want to stifle free speech, but free speech doesn't mean you can incite people to violence or say 'kill Jews' or 'kill anyone'. That is a different matter; that is not free speech. That is against the law. I commend these amendments to the House. I hope that our security agencies do get to the bottom of who has initiated the caravan full of high explosives, and who the people are that are paying some of our gangs—not necessarily people from overseas, but getting local criminals and gangsters to do this for a fee because they need to face the full force of the law as well. There must be jail time for any of this behaviour, otherwise, people will do what they have been doing. They feel like their weird, twisted version of what should be done is being tolerated because silence from the authorities and inaction by the bodies that enforce the law have emboldened them. As I've said, universities have questions to answer about them tolerating support of terrorist organisations in their own institutions and having academics and students afraid to move freely in their own institutions. It really is a wake-up call for Australia. This bill is long overdue, and I support it. Let's hope that Australia gets its strength back and supports Israel. They have an existential question of survival. That's why they went to war against Hamas and Hezbollah. People don't realise that it's not just about the land and occupying areas on the West Bank. There is an administration called Hamas, and there is Hezbollah, which are backed by Iran. Their whole plan is not to just get back a bit of land. They want Israel wiped off the map, and we can't let that happen. What we can do in this country, though, is make it crystal clear that the behaviour we've seen should never have been tolerated and should've been called out when it happened, and then we wouldn't have let this monster out of the bag. We need to put it back in. Antisemitism has been through the ages: the pogroms in the Middle Ages, the pogroms in the Russian Revolution in and after World War I and then again with the Nazi Holocaust. The rest of the world, including Australia, supported the creation of the State of Israel at the United Nations. It has a right to exist, and we in Australia should be supporting that right. We shouldn't be tolerating any more of this horrible behaviour that we've seen in our own country.
Lyne Electorate: Australia Day Awards, Lyne Electorate: Community Events | Constituency Statements | House debates
I acknowledge and pass on my best wishes to the multiple Australia Day award winners of the Medal of the Order of Australia. My first congratulations goes to Trish Nicholls, a Forster local, for...
I acknowledge and pass on my best wishes to the multiple Australia Day award winners of the Medal of the Order of Australia. My first congratulations goes to Trish Nicholls, a Forster local, for services to basketball as an accomplished statistician, including the statistics involved in the Sydney Olympics and other many world events, and to Laurieton resident Adele Whelan, with over 50 years experience in services to Little Athletics through administrative roles. I'd like to recognise Great Lakes local Julie Brady for her service to the community through social welfare organisations, particularly establishing a women's shelter and providing a safe haven for women and children escaping domestic violence. A posthumous award went to the late Roger Lynch, who passed away in 2021, for his services to the Great Lakes region, not only as an accountant and businessmen but also in many community sports. It was a well-deserved award, and the award was accepted by his wife, Jan. I also recognise Ken Cameron of Marlee for his contribution of services to the Rural Fire Service and the Marlee community over many years. The Emergency Services Medal was awarded to Julie Wilcox of Forster. In the Military Awards, a Conspicuous Service Cross has been awarded to Wing Commander Benjamin Sawley of Luskintyre for his outstanding service as commanding officer of the No. 1 Flying Training School of the Royal Australian Air Force. I'd also like to congratulate Wauchope Bowling Club President Rick Simpson and all the members for their $1,000 donation supporting the Wauchope District Memorial Hospital, and the Kendall Tennis Club, who supplied another six ball kids for the prestigious United Cup, an international teams tournament held from 27 December until 5 January in Sydney and Perth. Trevor Coles, 76 years young, is the most senior competitive cricket player in the Camden Haven, and he played for the New South Wales cricket over-70s division second side when they won national championship. Joel Fleming of the Forster Aquatic Swim Club competed in the South Australian State Open, making the finals of all events. It was heartbreaking to hear of the Laurieton Fishermen's Co-Op, which was destroyed by fire recently. The cause is still unknown at this stage while police investigations continue. On the upside, many community events have been organised to help the displaced fishermen whose livelihoods are in jeopardy, whilst plans are being worked on for the rebuilding and the reconstruction of the co-op, which had been operating since 1946. For all of those who have contributed to help the fishermen's co-op get up and running, I salute you. That's what makes the Lyne electorate such a strong community.
Future Made in Australia (Guarantee of Origin) Bill 2024, Future Made in Australia (Guarantee of Origin Charges) Bill 2024, Future Made in Australia (Guarantee of Origin Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
This is a very interesting bill, to say the least. I hate to disappoint listeners and members in this chamber, but I can't support it, because of the reasons I'll outline. The Future Made in...
This is a very interesting bill, to say the least. I hate to disappoint listeners and members in this chamber, but I can't support it, because of the reasons I'll outline. The Future Made in Australia (Guarantee of Origin) Bill 2024 and associated bills are really quite extensive, but, on reading an analysis guided by the investigative powers of the Parliamentary Library, it has confirmed my worst fears. This is another renewable subsidy boondoggle. We all know that the current renewable energy subsidy scheme will come to an end at the end of 2030. The hope then was that everyone would just be paid for electricity, not paid for generating large-scale renewable energy target-induced large-scale generation certificates, small-scale renewable energy schemes developing small-scale technology certificates, and energy efficiency certificates and energy savings certificates—at least in New South Wales, Victoria and the national electricity market. There is a cost to all these certificates that we have in our system now. The value of these gets paid for by retail and wholesale customers. That's included in the price that people pay for their electricity. They sound really innocuous—large-scale generation certificates, small-scale technology certificates, energy efficiency and energy savings. They're all innocuous, but basically it's about $4 billion every year just to meet the 2024 targets. The LGCs from large-scale wind and solar are $1.6 billion. There are 33 million of these certificates floating around already. Similarly, the cost to retail customers of small-scale technology certificates to meet the 2024 target is $1.516 billion. The Victorian scheme is $788 million and the New South Wales Energy Savings Scheme is $108 million. These LG and ST certificates will come to an end at the end of 2030, but this new Guarantee of Origin scheme is all about carbon emissions accounting and more certificate generation. The whole system is going to create registered holders of either a production certificate or a delivery or consumption profile, and they will generate PGO certificates for each batch—each one-megawatt hour—of green electricity that produces green hydrogen. This certificate will add a whole new level of complexity and will continue the current system onwards from 2031. The industry can actually touch up the value of their certificates, and that is buried in the details. These certificates will then be labelled 'REGO' certificates, and after 2031 starts there will be the ability for them to be aggregated, so even small-scale renewable projects that are used to generate green hydrogen will be able to take part in this festival of a second line of payments behind the electricity or the renewable energy generation. The Guarantee of Origin scheme was originally planned for hydrogen, but it could be applied across the board in many other sectors. We have had to have a moment of reality—both economic reality and reality about the amount of energy produced in hydrogen compared to the amount of energy that is invested and used up in generating the hydrogen. Legislators and regulators thought that, just by creating a parallel scheme to LGCs and STCs—that we are burdened with now—we would, all of a sudden, have an amazing huge hydrogen superpower in this country because everyone around the world will want to buy green hydrogen. But, around the world, renewable hydrogen projects are being jettisoned time and time again. The hard-nosed energy return on energy investment is really negative with hydrogen. In terms of electrolysis alone—which is what is planned to produce green hydrogen; there are people who are deadly serious about appropriating colour labels to hydrogen—the serious people who need hydrogen need an awful lot of it for rockets and missiles. And, if you do want to produce steel in a green way, you will need a massive increase in the amount of hydrogen to do that, rather than using coal and gas to produce steel. There are 70 million tonnes, in the whole world, of hydrogen being produced as we speak. Seventy-six per cent of that comes from gas, and 23 per cent comes from coal. But, by 2050, the plan was to increase that to 287 metric tonnes, mainly in the green energy and the hydrogen superpower plans that this government has for Australia. It would have to be massively scaled-up, beyond anyone's rational comprehension. Around the world, we have, in total, only 5,000 kilometres of hydrogen pipelines that can actually take hydrogen gas and cryo-compressed liquid hydrogen. We would need three million kilometres of new pipes. You can't put that amount of hydrogen into gas pipelines or into gas turbines. There is a limit to how much hydrogen you can use. Also, to make hydrogen by electrolysis in these hydrogen hubs—which is the plan, using our renewable energy certificate makers—they will need nine litres of distilled fresh water to split with electrolysis and heat to make one kilo of hydrogen. In a country like Australia, to get pure hydrogen means either setting up a desalination plant and then a distillery filtration system or taking water out of our rivers that is already dedicated to growing food and providing water supply for cities. To get 287 metric tonnes of hydrogen would use prodigious amounts of water, which Australia doesn't have. The hydrogen withdrawals around the world are falling like dominoes because everyone has gone with this promise of huge amounts of energy. They've been sold a policy position: 'We'll just change from gas and coal, and we'll make a lot of hydrogen.' These policies have been made by scientists, but they're political scientists. They're not necessarily hard-nosed chemical engineers or electrical power and gas and oil industry engineers who understand the scale of this project. That's why we've seen Fortescue Metals drop their plans. In the Financial Times, in America, in the financial pages, you'll see hydrogen projects meeting reality. But I'm concerned that we will continue on this path of thinking that this is actually achievable. Australia does need a hydrogen industry because it's a very important industrial chemical, particularly if we're going to have missiles and rockets and things that are essential for our defence. We'll need a hydrogen source. We need it, but to think that we naively expect these plans to be reality is quite scary. In fact, Princeton University, Melbourne university and Queensland university, along with other energy groups, have analysed the cost of this green energy hydrogen superpower scenario, and it will mean 23,000 kilometres of new poles and wires and millions of acres for renewable energy projects, which will consume vast amounts of water. All these processes need to be constant to be efficient, but they will stop at night, on cloudy days or when the monsoons are coming and we have lows across all of Queensland and New South Wales. To make hydrogen and then to make ammonia requires a huge amount of energy. We have to be realistic. You can have your grey hydrogen from methane—that's natural gas, and you get four molecules and one carbon. Or you can have blue hydrogen, which is splitting natural gas again—methane being split. This is called 'methane reforming'. You add on carbon capture and storage, which is a known technology. There are two ways to make it, but they're both energy intensive. Could someone play the dark scary music again? Because we're going to talk about coal. There is a lot of hydrogen made from coal and it's called 'black' or 'brown'. Then there's pink hydrogen at the end. That's made by electrolysis of water, but the heat and the electricity are coming from a nuclear power plant that produces bountiful, constant energy at a reasonably low cost. I have visited hydrogen plants in Korea and Japan; the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water did a tour. Korea and Japan have an amazing industrial capability, but their ambitions are being met by energy reality. They will invest billions and billions if they think it can be produced, but they're all coming to the same conclusion. We are in that situation here now. I call all these schemes to everyone's attention. These new rego certificates will be traded like large-scale generation certificates, small-scale technology certificates and all these energy-efficiency and energy-saving schemes, which every electricity user pays for now. People have to realise that these green schemes are not free. They cost a lot on your electricity bill. The cost of the extra transmission in the system is also being subsidised separately by other policies. There's a huge grant allocation in the budget to help rewire the nation with a lot of grids that are totally unnecessary. They're there to supply a transmission vehicle for energy that is only going to be produced by a big solar farm for 24 per cent of the time, at best. If it's coming from a wind farm, either at sea or on land, it will be produced for an average of 34 per cent of the time over a year, at best. The rest of the time, they won't even have electricity in them, because they're plugged into these renewable megaprojects. Unless there is electricity being generated, which stops when it's cloudy or when it's night or when we have big rain events for days or weeks on end, it's just going to sit there. And all these grids get paid money for their capital costs. They have a fixed return on it. Part of this renewable energy mania has involved New South Wales and Victoria, I'm told. The regulatory investment test was set by the regulatory system. Before a new grid could be built or upgraded, it had to go through the regulatory investment test. But that has been abandoned, so a lot of these grids are being approved without an economic basis. But, again, guess what costs retail customers 42 to 45 per cent of their bill now? It's their grid costs. The energy-generating cost is actually one of the smaller parts of your bill. The cost at the power plant is one thing, but to get the power from the plant, which can be a wind farm, a solar farm or rooftop solar, involves a lot of grid costs. So this current plan is going to double or triple the costs—or quadruple them if they did the whole hydrogen superpower and green energy superpower plans. Our bills won't go up by just the 20 per cent planned for next year; it'll be multiples much greater than that. In fact, this whole value of certificates— (Time expired)
Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | House debates
(): It has been truly an honour and a privilege for me to serve the people of Lyne in this House in the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia. First and foremost, I would like to thank...
(): It has been truly an honour and a privilege for me to serve the people of Lyne in this House in the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia. First and foremost, I would like to thank the people of Lyne who have continued to send me here since 2013. For nearly 12 years I have given my best, but many of you who know me better than some of the others who know me okay realise that I haven't been my best during this past term. I have had my annus horribilis and I was not able to perform at my peak. Starting at the top, I'll give you a quick run through: vaccine side-effects followed by a serious bike accident—fractured ribs, sternum, vertebra, amnesia for a day or two, pneumonia then pleurisy, kidney damage—and then the ignominy of injuring myself playing cricket. I now have the experience of driving a four-wheel buggy. It's a bittersweet moment for me to be leaving now as I have really enjoyed my time as an MP in this House, and I will enjoy it to the day this parliament rises. But serving here in parliament as a politician in a big country electorate comes at a cost to other really important parts of one's life, particularly as this is my second career. I had a full-on 33- year career doing even longer hours as a GP, followed by these five campaigns. I have a whole lot of thank yous to people who helped me get here. Firstly, a massive thank you to my beautiful wife, Charlotte, hiding in the back there, my greatest friend and confidante through this, which is our latest journey but not our last. In fact, it's been a long journey, since 1988. Thirty-four years go in a flash like that. Charlotte has been a constant support throughout all my careers, doing all the hard yards in my junior medical years, coping with me being away on antisocial long hospital shifts by day and night and weekends, then coming home to sit in a room and study and then study again and study a bit more and keep doing exams until I passed. I did not get it the first go and that was the toughest lesson in my life because I used to pass everything first up, but eventually you get there. She then left her international merchant banking career to start our family. We then moved up to Port Macquarie with Isabel—our little three-month-old over there—where we had no family connections to start my gastro enterology practice. Soon enough we had Ollie and Alice as well. Charlotte was doing it all, being a supermum as well as running the practice and the day surgery which we built for our patients as well, and together we also built our family cattle operation. As many of us realise, after I volunteered, our family—my family—were conscripted. At the beginning of my political career the kids, especially Alice, explained they were being 'weirded out' by seeing their dad on billboards, on buses and on TV ads like I was stalking them. Thankfully, they are no longer permanently scarred, and all three of my adult children are now confident young adults with careers of their own. I'm so proud of you all. And Ollie, if you are watching or listening over in London, I'm proud of you all and what you have achieved. It's fantastic to see your children flourishing. My deepest apologies for being absent from all your big moments, from family holidays, and from school, university and sports celebrations that I've missed. Thank you, Char, again for your patience, in particular for giving me the time to pursue the latest outrageous idea—that was, to run for federal parliament. It is a challenge for families, as we all know. Many of you here in the chamber have had similar experiences, but once you put your head above the parapet and you declare yourself as running for a political party and parliament, you're breaking cover. Sometimes that can mean losing some friendships and groups that see the world totally differently to what you're committing your life to. But Charlotte has supported me through all those, usually with frank, fearless and—it's uncanny, she's always right. She's been my biggest supporter and wisest counsel. I'm really looking forward to our next adventures, which we will do together. I also thank my father-in-law, Martin, who is up there, and my late mother-in-law, Elizabeth Maynard, who can't be with us, and all the Maynards for being great in-laws, great grandparents and great cousins. They have supported Char in my many absences. Thanks to all the Gillespie crowd up there—my siblings, Maryanne, Mike, Andy, John, Jane. They're all there. Sadly, Pete, my brother could never be here. Mum and Dad are both gone. They would've loved to have been here. Mum got to see me enter parliament. Thanks to Patrick and all the other in-laws, to Pru and Andy for all your support and to all my brothers and sisters, who've encouraged me and supported me. I can't thank you enough. Next goes a big shout-out to my staff members over the years. You've all been great and you've all worked really hard and for long hours, particularly during campaigns, but mainly on solving problems for my constituents. They've been very well served by your efforts. You've helped them with federal, state and council regulations and bureaucracies. Many of my staff have been there all the way through, from the early years. But long before I had any political office, Rob Nardella was there, helping me as a newbie aspiring candidate. He's been there from day one, and he sits here now. He's been instrumental to my time as the member for Lyne. But I'd like to thank all the others, including Georgie McDooling, Noel Atkins, Jane Corcoran and Bill Yates from way back in 2009 and 2010, when this journey started. Thanks to all the National Party branch members across the original and slightly different distribution of Lyne and the current Lyne. There are over 700 of those people who can proudly call themselves members of the Nationals. I give a shout-out to them all. Together with my staff and hundreds of other supporters, volunteers and booth workers, they have combined to deliver me into this parliament for four terms, and I thank them. There are some who really went above and beyond—an awful lot of them went above and beyond. They know who they are and I know they are, and a special thank you goes out to them. To all of my Nationals colleagues here that have sat in this House with me over the four terms, thank you for your support. All my colleagues in the opposition, I thank you for all your friendship, counsel and advice in the good times and the bad times. We've been through a lot. I'd like to thank the late Bruce Cowan, Mark Vale, 'Wacka' Williams, Warren Truss and Andrew Stoner. I also thank Tony Abbott, with whom for years I've plotted politics. He gave me much wise advice and help. Thank you all. I'd also like to thank Barnaby, who called me into the ministry on two occasions. Being a member of the House of Representatives is a great privilege with lots of responsibility. I've worked out that you need a lot of skills to be a good MP. You are not just a legislator. You're a voice for your constituents. You're an inquisitor in committees. You're a policymaker. You're a negotiator. You're part parish priest. You've got to be an economist. You have to be an industrial advocate, a diplomat, a social media genius, a writer—and the list goes on. It has been a journey and a half, full of highs and lows. As a rural member, I have found that there are far more geographic challenges, and all you rural members would know the long distances. There are multiple communities that have their own economic drivers and their own view on what's important, and you've got to know them all, because you can be in one and upset the other. But with tens of thousands of kilometres between parliamentary sittings, it's a big job. But it's been worth it in the seat of Lyne because I've seen all these improvements that we have delivered in government for the people of the electorate. Lyne getting its fair share of our nation's infrastructure build has been fantastic. Before I announced my retirement I asked my wonderful office to collate all the infrastructure that we've delivered in Lyne. It's quite sizeable. I seek leave to table this list. Leave granted. The big favourites are the two major Pacific Highway upgrades that bookend the seat of Lyne: north of Port Macquarie to Kempsey delivered in the first term and now the Hunter River crossing. But there is still unfinished business. There are six highway overpass interchanges and several realignments that will need to be completed for it to turn into a full freeway. It's not only for safety. There will be major economic differences if we get those because you get these huge bottlenecks forever. I'll put Senator McKenzie on notice: it's called the Pacific Highway upgrade 2.0. It'll cost about half a billion dollars, but please take note. There have also been two major airport upgrades: within the old Lyne boundaries of Port Macquarie, where jets can now land, and we've got a new terminal, a new taxiway and an apron expansion thanks to the help of Warren Truss, Michael McCormack, Luke Hartsuyker and now Pat Conaghan. At the southern end of the electorate, we have the big one: the Newcastle Airport, which is now going to truly be an international airport. We were able to secure two grants totalling $130 million. I'd like to give a big thankyou to our former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, again to the member for Riverina and to the member for New England for listening and delivering the funds for that. It will be the best-value international airport in the country, not just for the 750,000 people in the Hunter but also for all the people in the Mid North Coast region, who will all of a sudden have their own international airport. All the inbound and outbound tourism that comes via Sydney can also come via us. It won't go to Brisbane; it could come to Newcastle. We've got huge inbound and outbound tourism capability. I have noticed that, as a country MP, you see a lot of community and sporting infrastructure and arts funding totally skewed and massive amounts going into capital cities. So I worked really hard to develop sporting facilities in my electorate of Lyne. Sport, in a country town or in a big town, levels all strata of society. If you're in the same sporting team, it's good. It's great for children's development and for teamwork and it unites all layers of society. We've got two major indoor stadium upgrades for basketball: one in Port Macquarie in the old distribution and now a three-court expansion in Taree. New surf club upgrades are scattered across the electorate, including the massive Forster Surf Life Saving Club. Again, I thank the member for New England for the wonderful grant that he organised for that. There were new grandstands, female change facilities and oval upgrades in Maitland, Gloucester and Karuah, and they're just to name a few. We expanded, courtesy of federal money, the Manning Entertainment Centre, and, down the road in Forster, there was a massive project for the Forster Civic Centre precinct, which is an exemplar library and conference centre. It's the envy of other councils. I'm really proud of the work we did during COVID, particularly in the health portfolio but also with the member for Bradfield when we got together a fund to keep Australian picture theatres—the genuine ones—alive. Another equally transformative institution from critical coalition policies is the development of the Taree Universities Campus. In 2019 I put together a proposal with education and community leaders, and they took to it like ducks to water. We were able to secure two funding grants to make a new campus a reality. It is the Taree Universities Campus with multiple universities, ensuring access for local young people who couldn't afford to go away, mature-age people or those who are looking to upgrade their skills, whether it's their first chance or their second bite at advancing their education. So Manning Valley, Gloucester, Forster-Tuncurry and the region now have access to a multi-university, community owned facility in a permanent campus for the next 25 years. They have 500 students utilising it now. They've had 55 students graduate—huge numbers of nurses. On checking this morning, I see they have another 65 coming this year. Everyone said this would never work and that it would be a white elephant. I'm so proud of it. In my community, I was known as a doctor, but it was really cool for me to develop and deliver into my own electorate some really important health facilities. There is now a headspace in Taree, and the Manning Valley now has a public hospital MRI in Manning Base Hospital, when they are as rare as hen's teeth, and there's a new radiotherapy unit being built there. In Port Macquarie, in my first term, when I wasn't in the ministry, with the help of Professor Lesley Forster of the University of New South Wales rural medical school, we developed a unique model that would allow a cohort of Port Macquarie students to train not just for three months or six months as a sampler course but to go from go to whoa in Port Macquarie. She went against the grain, so thank you, Professor Lesley Forster. She is now doing that with Charles Sturt University. It has been an outrageous success. During this time in parliament, we've had some major challenges. We had the devastating, record-breaking 2019 fires after years of really extreme drought. Everyone thinks it's always green on the coast and that the rivers are always full, but most of them are salty. They're tidal. And we had a drought like no other. Some of the rivers on the coast stopped running. But for the tide, they wouldn't have had water in them. Then a year later we went to the other extreme and had the most massive floods since the 1960s. It was really distressing to see houses, lives, memories and animals literally going up in smoke. Hundreds of buildings, including many houses, were destroyed. Then, in the flood, thousands of people were made homeless. Whole houses and huge numbers of livestock were literally washed away. We had literally thousands of people living temporarily in service clubs, like the local sporting clubs, the RSLs—all sorts of places. I had a few hiccups and a challenge in 2016. We can all get a bad redistribution in the lottery, but I had to speed-date 48,000 new people. They took away Port Macquarie, my home base where I had practised and treated about half the electorate, so that, as a gastroenterologist, I knew them literally inside out. Those I hadn't met at a fete, I had met in the day surgery. But, in spite of what I lost, I gained something even better. I now inherited all the territory down to the Hunter across to Hawks Nest. Just about every tourism and primary industry is now encapsulated in Lyne, plus I picked up the mighty Hunter River and Maitland and all that Hunter history and many service industries and even more people in the mining industry. On the coast, there were two coalmines. I've got one left, but there are about 20,000 people who work because of the Hunter coal-fired power stations or the coalmines, and they all live in the beautiful part of Lyne. But there are opponents and obstacles everywhere, coming for all these primary industries. They are all at threat with the net zero agenda. Often it's these harmless sounding names like 'restoring our rivers' or 'nature repair' or 'a safeguard mechanism'—like a poison pen in a soft, cuddly name. They are all coming. We have a huge problem because these are all the industries that make us our money. We won't have an energy system, if we don't have base load. We've got a huge red-tape reform agenda that we really need to start again. There's a heap of confusion in the federal-state fiscal relationship; it's totally unbalanced now. Originally, state and federal responsibilities were very clear. We had a good constitution. States used to do a whole lot more without getting out of bed to get a grant from the feds; it's a complex history. Their revenue and regulatory arrangements were matched by appropriate fiscal ability, but it all changed in World War II when a lot of the powers were temporarily ceded to the Commonwealth, and then they never wanted it back because of the war debt. But now it's all confused. Half the money comes from here. It's like the proverbial structure of a plate of spaghetti if you try and do all the connections between who runs what and where the money comes from. In his first term, Prime Minister Tony Abbott instigated a federation reform agenda; I'd been whispering in his ear for a long time. In that context—without his knowledge, because there were other matters—I developed a tax reform paper and a parliamentary budget analysis to launch the push for the expansion and increase of a broad based consumption tax. It argued for major reductions in income tax, company tax and several other taxes and imposts as well as for increasing the welfare safety net. It would provide extra revenue streams that better aligned the work that the states and territories have traditionally done like running hospitals, police and schools, and building main roads, dams, bridges and railways. Of those things that I've just mentioned, it's only the police that we don't give money to the states for, so we're on the hook for everything else. We did get lift-off with that debate, and several states got behind it. It was really encouraging considering I was a backbencher in my first term. I thought: 'Wow. John Howard tried twice and I'm just on the backbench. We're going to get the GST up.' Unfortunately, it didn't fly. As they say in those blogs and in lots of podcasts, the rest is history. But I think we need to readdress the red tape and green tape that is strangling both federal and state governments. I think both federal and state governments have left too much of the policy work to delegated authority in the public service. There are a few 'to do' jobs and suggestions for you; you're not bound by this, but I just thought I'd put them in there. The cost blowouts in infrastructure are scary. An extra guideline here, another environmental measure there or another community consultation—the next thing you know, building a new highway roundabout can take eight or nine years instead of 12 or 18 months and it costs three, four or five times more. We really have to stop and think, 'Just keep it simple.' Make it all rule by common sense. It would be really good if we did have a deregulation agenda in the next political cycle and require all departments and agencies to begin putting proposals to remove 25 per cent of the regulations that increase costs. Put in a new test, something like 'one in, one off' or 'one in, three off', similar to Paul Keating's competition payments—he started that—or Tony Abbott's asset recycling payments. There needs to be some incentive to get the states on board. It's not the sole preserve of this side to do these things. In my time as a minister in the health portfolio I worked up many long-term projects that I'm really proud of. As the member for Parkes mentioned last week, things in the health system have a long gestation. It takes about 12 years to become a fully fledged doctor hanging a shingle. While I was there I established the position of rural health commissioner, which is a vital role and doing good work. Of the three commissioners, two have been appointed by me. They have all done a great job. We created more holistic long-term benefits for rural centres so that they could attract, train and retain doctors and nurses: end-to-end med schools; HECS fee relief for nurse practitioners and junior doctors working in rural and remote parts of our country; expansion of the Flying Doctor Service, securing its planning for over a decade; and, as I mentioned before, expansion of the rural medical clinical schools placements from sampler placements for three or six months to end to end, beginning to end. Everyone was clamouring for a Murray-Darling medical school, but it was proposed to be at the expense of the 17 established rural clinical schools that are a great legacy of Michael Wooldridge; they had the sampler variety of placements—maybe six months or a year. But I thought, 'Hang on, the perfect solution is what we did in Port Macquarie.' By wheeling and dealing and getting the heads of the universities around the table, I organised for Melbourne uni to set up a whole medical school in Shepparton in the seat of Nicholls. I got La Trobe a deal that meant the top 12 graduates from their biomedical degree would go straight into Melbourne uni. With that method, Monash did a deal with Albury and Bendigo. That then started more of a chain reaction. I was able to convince UNSW to do what I did in Port Macquarie without any money but just by rejigging it, to establish one in the member for Riverina's electorate, so now he has an end-to-end one. The members for Fisher and Fairfax will know the horse-dealing that went into starting the Sunshine Coast medical school. You were both there for the opening, with Greg Hunt. Also, for Charles Sturt University's applicant process, I did the policy work and the deals to pair them up with Western Sydney uni. So now the Sunshine Coast has its own medical school, Charles Sturt has its own medical school, Wagga has its own medical school, Shepparton—you name it. When I came back the next time, following my call-back to the ministry, the member for New England and I were able to secure more Commonwealth supported places, so the member for Leichhardt could get an expansion up in Cairns and the member for Barker in the Riverland could get an extended training program for doctors. During my time in child services, it was a bit distressing. I was there during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, where I heard many harrowing stories. I also had oversight of and insights into the state-run foster-care system. The children there are usually there as a result—it's the same thing—of either drug or alcohol addiction, or both; domestic and family violence; appalling child neglect; or, sometimes, mental health. Back in the old days, they were there because there was shame in being unwed and having a child, so kids were adopted out. That doesn't happen now. These children are coming from, in many cases, a bad space. You want these children to have what every other child wants, and that is a permanent home. Fostering is meant to be a stopgap measure—and they're glorious people that do it. But there's an inertia in the system, not to change. Instead of foster care being temporary housing until children are placed in a permanent parental arrangement, depending on the state—it's only New South Wales that allows adoption easily these days, but they have open adoption—there are now 46,000 children in permanent foster rotations. When I was in the ministry, it was only 42,000. And it seems to be growing, more and more. I did have the temerity to suggest that adoption should be made easier and earlier with an open adoption model, where the biological parent or parents know where the child is, the child knows where the mum and dad are, and there are the adoptive parents. So it's open, but the children get permanence and they're not bounced around the system. I still hope there can be some positive arrangement made with the states. There is sensitivity about the stolen generation. Let's face it: that was a pretty scary and bad period. But permanence is what a child needs. This experience in my own electorate gave me the resolve to get more children and family services into my electorate, because there is certainly a need. We got a big grant—again courtesy of the member for New England—to finish off the most amazing building—a wonderful, friendly, uniquely designed building and community organisation called First Steps Count Child and Community Centre. It has everything in it, all in a one-stop shop, from playgroups to hearing checks to eye checks to assessment for autism spectrum—any childhood problem—and it's going really well. It's fantastic, and it will deliver long-term benefit. There is another really exciting thing, but I had to be a bit subtle about this, because I think I might appear on the list somewhere. There was a bit of legislation when I was in the ministry, the Autonomous Sanctions Amendment (Magnitsky-style and Other Thematic Sanctions) Bill 2021, that was looking for someone to introduce it. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I thought: 'Hey, I've read Red Notice. I know all about this. There are a lot of mad and bad people doing very evil things and moving money into Australia or around.' So we had that legislation. I'm pleased to see it's established. It gets reported on all the time. But I introduced it and shepherded it through this House after it came here from the Senate. So that was great. Being a minister has its pros, but, gee, being a backbencher is a great honour, and you can get a lot done. Other people have mentioned the parliamentary committees. They are a critical part of parliament. They're an invaluable informal channel for diplomacy and exchange of ideas and perspectives, and they can get ministers and members and senators up to speed on issues that are really technical and important. A lot of these experts will really give you fearless and frank knowledge rather than fearless and frank opinion or policy, which is totally different. The net outcome is that the parliamentary friendship groups, as well as the formal committees, are a really invaluable part of this. Because of my medical background, I was on every one, or every second one, of the Parliamentary Friends of medicine. There is a long list, as the member the Macarthur would know. We've done a double date on so many things. I'd like to thank him for all his assistance. I also thank the member for Makin. We've been on a tour through batteries, and I can tell you there are not enough minerals in the world or enough mines in the world to deliver the amount of batteries that will last 10 years. The idea that this world is going to run on electric vehicles is one of the biggest naivetes ever. We've looked at electric vehicles in Korea. We've looked at them in Japan. They are an amazing technology but so material rich it's scary. We will have to mine more copper than has been mined since records began just to get enough copper to get this 'transition' up to about 2030. So the markets are responding. Not everyone wants an electric vehicle, so I think nature and people's needs will sort it out. But that's the importance of these committees, because you find this stuff out. This whole transition thing really should be described as an addition. Electric vehicles are just the latest and greatest new form of transport. If you really want to electrify transport, get our Inland Rail up and then electrify it. Get our high-speed rail up and electrify it. Get more mass transit in our big cities, rather than 'mass transit' meaning everyone buys a smaller car and there are three million cars instead of two million cars. So that was it. My best thing ever, and probably my most substantial non-legislative role, is setting up the Parliamentary Friends of Nuclear Industries. I must say it's been great fun. I was a nuclear sort of child in my medical career. You do physics at uni as well as high school, but my first job was injecting radioactive isotopes into people. Can you play the dark scary music over there—isotopes! ABC sign from the left, please! Anyhow, radiotherapy and isotopes have allowed medical practitioners like me to diagnose to treat, to cure and to do amazing scans. I have had more radioisotopes on me than I can poke a stick it, but I'm still here. It's only too much radiation that's dangerous. The idea that any radiation is bad is a totally debunked theory. It's called the linear no threshold theory. It's not a straight line—zero being nothing and the other end being really bad with anywhere along that being less bad. No. To get bad, it has to go up, and then it straightens out. But that's a bit of an aside. As the minister for ARPANSA, the authority on radiation protection and nuclear safety, twice, I got to see what our amazing capability is in this country, and it is sizeable. It's far greater than even I realised. In the news just the other day was the announcement that we're not part of the gen IV group with the UK and the US, but we are actually the chair of it, and we've been the chair since 2017. It's a research and safety standard setting organisation for six different types of advanced reactors. They're the ones that you're hearing a lot about in the SMR space. They don't boil water and act like a kettle and a steam engine that spins an electric generator; they boil salt or lead or helium at really high temperatures. Our guys at ANSTO have been setting standards for molten salt reactors and high-temperature gas reactors, so there we go. That same place, ANSTO, has developed this amazing industrial final waste repository system. It's a big factory. It's world-leading. It's called symo, named after Synroc, which is a technology ANSTO developed. It will take permanent transuranic, all the really bad 'iums' with which you can't do anything more, that are a side product of all the medical isotopes and stuff they do at ANSTO. That will deal with our own waste. It is world-leading. I've had American professors and big Canadian engineering firms saying: 'Can we be your agent? We'll sell 11 of these around the world.' It is world-leading. The idea that we don't know what to do with waste is absolute rubbish. But I digress. I would like to thank the member the Hinkler. He started my electrical engineering tutorials back in the first term. He's taught me a lot about grids. I joined the ANS, the American Nuclear Society, and have been to as many conferences as I can. Along the way I've met some amazing people, and I want to give a huge shoutout to my biggest tutor, Rob Parker, who's up there in the gallery. He's doing a great job with all the lectures and information around the country. I will also shoutout Robert Barr, who's been a sidekick on our tours to North America; Tony Irwin, who has built and operated eight nuclear plants, and he went over when Chernobyl happened and taught the Russians how to really run it, and he lives in Australia. To Helen Cook, Stephen Smith, Dave Collins and all my turbocharged pro-nuclear Argonauts out there in big, wide Australia, being marshalled by Peter Sjoquist—a big shoutout to Peter. He has got to get the award for the most WhatsApp group messages ever. I would like to thank Tim Stone, in Britain; professors Jacopo Buongiorno and Andrew Whittaker, in the USA; all the engineers at Hatch engineering; AtkinsRealis, which built the CANDU reactors; and Ontario Power Generation, which is the second-biggest power utility in North America, and guess what? It's government owned. It's like our Electricity Commission of New South Wales. The biggest one in America is Tennessee Valley Authority. Hey presto, guess what? It's owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority, another government owned power utility. They've been very helpful too. The friendship group had lift-off. The aim of educating and convincing members and senators on the nature of nuclear energy and its potential here in Australia has been reached. We in the Nationals have been ahead of the curve. We've seen the light, and our membership and federal council adopted this many years ago. I'm so pleased and proud that my liberal colleagues are now onboard. That is the way to go. I know there are lots of members on the other side who are secretly pro-nuclear, but they chickened out once they got into government, and they're strictly following orders. But they're welcome back. You can always change your mind when the facts change. That is quite okay. We won't criticise you at all. But it is bipartisan anywhere else in the world, and there are now 31 countries that have signed up to triple their nuclear energy. One of the other great friendship things we run in this country is the nation parliamentary friendship groups. I reckon that's one of the best gigs going, because you get to meet a lot of really interesting people in the embassy and that come out from whatever country. I've signed up for so many of them I just can't get to them all. But the one that I've really tried to make a difference on is the Australia-Japan parliamentary friendship group, because Japan and Australia are really important to each other. In 1862, at the start of the Meiji Restoration, when they decided to industrialise, Japan's first load of coal came from somewhere down in the Illawarra. We've been sending energy ever since. They have built that industrial powerhouse with gas, oil and coal from us. They don't and can't have solar panels, so that's why they need us. In places like Korea, they're exactly the same. We shouldn't feel guilty at all. It is absolutely rubbish that our ecowarrior extremists are trying to make out that Australia is bad for the world. We power with food 100 million people besides ourselves, but we're only 25 million. We supply energy for over a billion people, like those in India, yet we're measured on our carbon footprint as though we're using all the energy and food. It's really not logical. I would like to acknowledge His Excellency Suzuki and Ken up there. Thank you so much for what Japan has done for us. After the war, thanks your investment in Australia, started by John 'Black Jack' McEwan, we made peace and have moved forward ever since. Your technology is the bread-and-butter technology that we all use in Australia, and your investment has developed our mines, our energy systems and everything. It would be so cool if we could get a high-speed rail gunning up the north coast once we finish the Inland Rail. We will go from strength to strength. I would like to keep going, but I'm going to run out of time. I just want to say thank you, Peter, for your leadership, particularly for your commonsense approach to policy development, including on nuclear energy. I think you'll make an excellent Prime Minister. It is lucky that, as I found out from Bill Shorten's speech the other day, I am probably the 220th MP to get to make a valedictory, which sounds a lot more exclusive than the 1,244 that came in and made maiden speeches. It has been a pleasure, Mr Speaker, to work with you on the trade and investment growth committee. It was also a pleasure to serve on the speaker's panel in the last parliament. I would have loved to have done more. One recommendation I can give to first-termers: do some time on the speaker's panel, because then you know all the procedure, and you're not walking around like a dazed person in your first term. You know what all the terms mean and what the procedure is. I'd like to thank the presiding officers and all the assistant clerks and parliamentary support staff who have assisted me in my duties here in this place. I would just like to leave you a couple of to-do items for when, hopefully, we do get into government. We've got nuclear and electricity covered. It will take time. But the urgent necessity for this nation now is that we've still got an electricity system that works—just. It might tip over the edge. But where we are really thin is on liquid fuel security. We have got to, as President Trump said, 'drill, baby, drill', because we need to get liquid fuel security in this country. Again, the 10 biggest oil and gas businesses aren't BP or Shell; they're state-owned enterprises. So if Australia is really going to develop our oil security, take a leaf out of INPEX, which is publicly owned but the golden shares are owned by the nation of Japan. Maybe that is something we should look at. I would also like to thank all the coalition leadership team for all the work you're doing. It is really important that we all have our ducks in a row for the next election. I'll be helping whoever wins the preselection on the weekend get to be the next member for Lyne. Timing is everything. As Kenny Rogers said, 'You've got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them …' I've been incredibly fortunate to serve the communities and people of the Lyne electorate for the past 12 years. I would like to thank them again. They put their trust in me for over a decade or more to travel down here and fight for the issues that they thought were important. I have thoroughly enjoyed being your MP, meeting all of you and everything else in this wonderful building. For those of you who have had my three-times-a-year newsletters, you would have seen this little catch line: 'he listens, he cares, he delivers'. But I can quite happily stand here, cross my heart and hope to die and say I listened, I cared and I did deliver.
Petition: Nuclear Energy | Statements by Members | House debates
I would like to present a petition to the House that has been considered by the Petitions Committee and found to be in order: The petition read as follows— This petition of certain...
I would like to present a petition to the House that has been considered by the Petitions Committee and found to be in order: The petition read as follows— This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House that the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 currently prohibit the development of enrichment, fuel fabrication, and nuclear power plants in Australia. Nuclear power is a zero-emissions, baseload energy that must be part of Australia's energy mix to ensure Australians receive affordable and reliable electricity. We therefore ask the House to remove all federal legislative barriers to the development of nuclear power in Australia. from 311 citizens (Petition No. PN0627) Petition received. Over 300 people within my electorate have signed a petition to remove the moratorium on nuclear power in Australia. This petition is a clear indication of the sentiments within Australia. Not everyone has bought the government's renewables-only energy policy. Most Australians recognise that, in order to have affordable, safe and reliable energy, we must have a constant base-load source of power that can replace outgoing traditional fossil fuel plants, and that is nuclear. Labor would have you believe that nuclear is some fanciful pipedream, but this petition reveals that Australians don't think that that's the case. They recognise its invaluable role in our future energy mix. It doesn't mean we're opposed to renewables; it's not a binary choice. It simply means that we have to put our eggs in more than one energy future basket. So I call on the government to take heed of the wishes of 335 people in the Lyne electorate and start a conversation on the removal of the current prohibition on enrichment, fuel fabrication, and construction and operation of nuclear plants in Australia. The government's failure to even have a discussion on this matter is an affront to the Australian people, who hold very legitimate—
Rural and Regional Health Services | Private Members' Business | House debates
This motion is a really important issue, or it speaks to a really important issue, and that is the health workforce. My many years of experience in the medical profession—in fact, 33 of...
This motion is a really important issue, or it speaks to a really important issue, and that is the health workforce. My many years of experience in the medical profession—in fact, 33 of them—were preceded by me working in the hospital system as a hospital cleaner, a central sterilising agent, a wardsman and a med student. I saw all sorts of hospitals in my training. I have seen multiple people, 18 beds in a row, down one side and 18 down the other side, with just curtains between and none of this private room rubbish—that was the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital that was built in the 1870s or 1880s and named after Prince Alfred who got shot by somebody when he came out here on a visit the 1860s—through to the Chris O'Brien centre, at the other end of the extreme, or St Vincents in Melbourne or Sydney. The thing that makes the quality good is like with the F1. It's not the car; it's the driver. The health workforce is what makes Australia's health system great. Many places have Nobel prize winners, and Australia has plenty of them in our health workforce, but there's a uniform, high standard across Australia. Whereas with some countries it's all over the shop because they don't have a good health training system. A lot of them just get book knowledge. Anyone can be a doctor. You just go to uni and buy the books, and you get a medical degree. Germans and Italians used to come out here to get training as med students because they heard that we actually got to see patients. But, Houston, we have a problem! Australia doesn't have enough of a health workforce in rural Australia—from pharmacists, physios and OTs through to doctors, nurses and whatever. Because of its roots, the National Party feels this acutely. It's more than what would be felt in Sydney. There's an overall shortage of GPs, as the member mentioned. In the Deans survey, only about 15 to 17 per cent of medical students now want to do general practice. When I graduated—about the same time as your husband, Member for Mallee, or a bit after—the figure was over 50 per cent. We've got specialists for the left toe, the right ankle and everything. There are square inches of the human anatomy that are looked after by only one specialist. In a big city, you need about 10 doctors to look after a general medical patient; whereas, in the country, a generalist does it all. That's the beauty, because everything is connected—everything in the human body. We have been at the forefront of developing the rural health workforce. Unfortunately, due to the snakes and ladders of political life in this building, I wasn't there to announce the Stronger Rural Health Strategy. That fell to my successor, and I got put into children and families. But I do remember negotiating with University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, La Trobe uni, Monash University and getting medical schools created on the Sunshine Coast, because a wicked sandstone university was convinced to give up a lot of its extra places. So the people in the seats of Fairfax and Fisher have the Sunshine Coast medical school. The Queensland university at the tip of the point up there in Cairns and James Cook uni were beneficiary of the extra spots. We had Charles Sturt uni created. The National Party created that med school, because we got them a bunch of Commonwealth supported medical places, and we partnered them at the start with Western Sydney uni. Then I came back again with a second life in the health portfolio and got them a rural medical school, even though their school was rurally based. Unfortunately, the member that was the beneficiary of that chose to sit on another part of the building, but there we go. We were just so pleased that we got it for people in country Australia, because they have been short-changed. Convincing Melbourne uni to give La Trobe students a pathway into a Melbourne uni degree was another stroke of genius, and I worked on that. I've been at the forefront of getting all these expansions. With the HECS debt relief for nurse practitioners who go remote, they get two years off for one—the same with doctors. The Stronger Rural Health Strategy is a really good example of that, but we need more pharmacists. We need more physios. We need everything, because it's the professionals that are important, not necessarily the buildings.
Aged Care Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
The Aged Care Bill 2024 is a very important bill. The aged-care industry is a huge part of Australian life and has been through huge changes over the last 10 to 15 years. We've been through the...
The Aged Care Bill 2024 is a very important bill. The aged-care industry is a huge part of Australian life and has been through huge changes over the last 10 to 15 years. We've been through the royal commission, and there's not much that's been said in the explanatory memorandum or in speeches in the second reading debate about all the things that we had already done. It's almost like this bill is meant to rewrite history. I want to put on the record that most of the recommendations of the royal commission were enacted already by the last government. There was an extra $18 billion added to the aged-care budget by Senator Richard Colbeck and Minister Greg Hunt, who were the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services and the Minister for Health and Aged Care respectively. We already had an Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission and Commissioner, although, from reading the documents, one would think this is a new position. I just want to put that on the public record. Also, we created funding for thousands more home-care places, which are part of the aged-care spectrum of care. We have many more people who are cared for at home. The plans to merge simple assistance at home with aged-care packages and put them all in one homogeneous system were a policy development of the last government. We're obviously supporting this bill because we support the aged-care industry, but I would like to make some other comments. It's all very well to say we have the new means-tested user-pays entry, but it appears that not everyone is paying more—just self-funded retirees, who again are cross-subsidising those who don't pay as much. Fortunately, due to the negotiations by our shadow minister for aged care and health, the terms and conditions are grandfathered for those who are already in or have signed up for an aged-care situation, so they won't be giving an extra amount of refundable accommodation deposit and they won't be charged more than what they signed up for, There is a lifetime cap of $130,000 on the contributions, but that only includes funding of their home-care package contributions and their non-clinical care. So if you get to the stage in aged care where you are the means tested funder, you may well go over that $130,000, because they define clinical care as different from independent support and everyday living. As I mentioned, they seem to be trying to rebrand the aged care commissioner, who has slightly more powers. But we had addressed a lot of the things when it is sort of implied that this is the legislation that is finally fixing up this whole tranche of problems. It's a new act, but a lot of the recommendations from the royal commission, the vast, vast majority, were already addressed in the last period of coalition governments. I might add there are a few other comments I would like to make. Not only was there the development of a lifetime cap and a time-limited cap as well of four years, we also put in a $300 million capital funding round for rural, regional and remote aged-care facilities so that they could upgrade some of their facilities or expand their facilities, because in many of these rural and remote areas, there is no way in a month of Sundays that a lot of the people going in to rural nursing homes would have the capital to give a refundable accommodation deposit of, say, $1.5 million, which happens in Sydney. We have had aged-care providers come into our area during my time who have taken on aged-care facilities that they thought would have millions of millions in accumulated refundable accommodation deposits. When our current care provider came into Gloucester, they found it was $120,000, not $1.2 million, and they were shocked. But that is the way it is in country Australia. We also got some more sensible policy evolved through these negotiations with the government to remove the criminal penalties from the act. There was no recommendation from the royal commission to have criminal penalties applied to board members or operators of nursing homes. In fact, you wouldn't have had any staff left. Those people are often unpaid directors of aged-care facilities in country Australia. It would have been hard to find any new directors, I can tell you. There are existing workplace health and safety laws, there are banning orders and there are Criminal Code provisions for the regulatory framework that applies, but telling people working in an aged-care facility that they could be put in jail is pretty scary. The upgrade of nursing homes is an ongoing pattern, but I do note that during the time of this government, which is only a bit over 2½ years, 49 aged-care homes have closed around Australia. There was nothing like that happening when we were in government. We kept a few aged-care facilities open. In my electorate, we had one very prominent community built and operated aged-care facility that was taken on by a major provider, only to be shut down two years later. I'm so pleased that it has now been bought by another local not-for-profit community controlled organisation, which seems to have a much better business model that offers all the services, not just residential accommodation, which means people in the Bulahdelah district will be able to age in place when they do get to that stage of their life. They will be servicing the aged-care facility; upgrading the rooms at Cedar Wharf Lodge in downtown beautiful Bulahdelah, offering palliative and respite care services, as well as Meals on Wheels and other facilities in the aged-care home-care packages et cetera. Many of the people in the aged-care industry are obviously happy for this legislation to occur, but what they are worried about is that a lot of the details of the bill will come later, in subsidiary legislation. A lot of them want to know the fine details. So there is a frustration with all the delegated legislation. We also don't think that every nursing home needs to have an RN on duty around the clock. Most of the aged-care facilities in my electorate wouldn't be able to recruit that number of registered nurses. Even in metropolitan Australia, you would have trouble doing that, because the payment system for RNs in an aged-care facility is less than in a hospital system and in other areas like the NDIS. This is an important bill. We will be supporting it. We think the contribution caps need much more detail, but it appears that self-funded retirees will be bankrolling a lot of the extra income, rather than facilities getting more from the federal government. We don't want aged-care facilities to be turned into a purely medical model, because they aren't meant to be hospitals. That's the thing. In aged care, the use of the phrase 'nursing home' gives some people the impression that it should be like a hospital. It's not meant to be a hospital. It's meant to be a home for senior Australians so that they are in a comfortable, well-managed, well-cared-for environment. By all means, don't try to turn it into a hospital. But, apart from those concerns, I commend the bill to the House. We should look at getting a reduction in the costs of running aged-care facilities, and one way of doing that is removing the mandate to have totally fixed numbers of hours per person. It sounds good in theory, but in reality it means there's not much care happening but there's lots of filling out of forms and you have a lot of overqualified people that are mandated, which puts huge costs on low-margin businesses. There are many aged-care facilities whose costs are going up but whose incomes are not going up to match them. It would be better to reduce their cost burden with cheaper electricity, cheaper food and less rigid application of that nursing model rather than a care model.
Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2024 expands the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 and aims to create a hostile regulatory...
The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2024 expands the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 and aims to create a hostile regulatory environment for money laundering and terrorism financing, which are very eminent ideals. I would just like to remind members of this House that the coalition is concerned about some of the unintended consequences of this rushed-in bill. The government's own modelling predicts that the regulatory cost to industry and to the economy will be $13.9 billion over 10 years. In rural Australia, people like accountants, car dealers, real estate owners and people involved in advising trusts and companies are really concerned that they will be left holding these costs, which will make small business in those particular fields of professional work unviable, which will just put more work back into big corporate organisations. We have a long history of supporting anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing. The actual act that is being amended and deleted by this bill was created by the Howard government. After the September 11 terrorism attacks, we really got involved with stamping out terrorism financing and the act has been very successful thus far. I'm concerned that we've got 165 pages for people to digest. There are lots of businesses that, as I said, this bill classifies as high-risk businesses, because they have a perception that all this money laundering is going through small legal firms and real estate deals in country Australia or regional Australia. They think every crook is buying a Lamborghini and then cashing it out, or bringing in money from overseas, buying Australian property and then rinsing it out on the other side. But these costs are going to be huge for people that deal in these industries. They called for the regulation of designated non-financial businesses and professions, or the so-called 'tranche 2' entities, which may be big players in money laundering and terrorism financing. I can tell you that in Laurieton, Wingham, Taree, Foster-Tuncurry and Wauchope we have hardworking lawyers, accountants and businesspeople that sell land and houses and, trust me, they are not financing terrorism. I think it's a long bow to put in a bill that's going to cost all these people $13.9 billion over 10 years, yet the government predicts that there might be—might be—a $2.4 billion return to the government in stopping dodgy terrorism financing using mum-and-dad businesses in regional Australia. There is a concern that if we don't do this, we will be given a black mark or a grey listing by the international finance industry, but I don't think that will happen because we will know by our tax records and by our listing of real estate. We have a very transparent property transfer system. It's there for anyone to look at and see if there are concerns. Likewise, cars are all registered and sold, and cash transactions already have to be reported. It's not just me that's thinking: 'Slow down. We need to really work this through.' The regulatory cost is one thing, but the mismatch between the allocation of costs and the benefits is huge. The Real Estate Institute of Australia has come out against these proposed reforms. Even the Law Council have come out against this because they are concerned that small legal firms will have to employ people to do due diligence on just about every transaction that is bread and butter for a country legal firm. I'll tell you, if the Law Council are concerned about it, they are not the only professional body. Accountants from CPA Australia, CA Australia and the Institute of Public Accountants are also concerned because they are just being buried in paperwork. They have to be up-front with people about their fees but, if they're going to have compliance officers in every country accounting firm, people will be paying through the nose for simple transactions and for management of trust and super funds. They're already paying thousands of dollars every year. If you're a business, you are paying an accountant and getting audited. All these processes we have already. COSBOA, the Council of Small Businesses of Australia, also has concerns on the impact for small businesses and their ability to comply due to limited resources. I also note that there are huge proposed regulatory or legislative instruments and directions that the minister responsible for this act will have for the next four years, which could totally redefine things. The so-called Henry VIII clause will give the minister four years to make rules under the bill. I think it would be a case of making haste slowly. Rather than rushing this through, wait until the Senate legislative committee has finished its review. Then we can be realistic about how we can reduce the costs on all these industries that were badly affected and all consumers who will be paying through the nose for their legal advice on property purchasing, tax matters and trust and family business matters. It is a really significant change, so I would make haste slowly, listen to what the Senate committee comes up with and look at the amount of heartache you will cause for what appears to be a marginal benefit over 10 years.
Nuclear Waste Management | Adjournment | House debates
I rise to speak about the issue of nuclear waste. First of all, it is being reported by people who live in ignorance that it is a big, insoluble problem that the whole nuclear industry has never...
I rise to speak about the issue of nuclear waste. First of all, it is being reported by people who live in ignorance that it is a big, insoluble problem that the whole nuclear industry has never sorted out. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not nuclear waste unless it's wasted. It's actually very valuable, energy dense, one-use-only fuel, with at least 98 per cent of this potential energy remaining in the first cycle of spent nuclear fuel that comes out of an electricity-producing pressurised or boiling water reactor. There are well-established international protocols, which were worked out in the 1960s, and there is huge, deep monitoring of all nuclear waste—in the Western world, at least—by International Atomic Energy Agency protocols and procedures. The waste from Australia's nuclear reactor—and we've had three—is not wasted. It's taken by France and put through their recycling plant. They filter out the reusable uranium and put it in with freshly dug up enriched uranium to power reactors. They use it time and time again. The final leftover products of fission are then transported in dry casks, which are well engineered, totally impervious and built to exacting standards to survive car crashes, truck crashes, train crashes, being dropped from height, being incinerated for an hour or more in hundreds of degrees of heat or being immersed in deep water, with all being safe and secure at the end of it. Australia also has incredible capability in managing high-level nuclear waste. We produce a lot of molybdenum, which we manage ourselves, and for all the medical isotopes we use we have developed Synroc, or synthetic rock, which is a permanent storage vehicle for intermediate and high-level waste. A factory, an industrial-scale plant, has been built by ANSTO, yet this government keeps it silent. It is world beating. I have heard professors and nuclear facility managers from around the world marvel at the capability that we've developed, yet our government says we don't know what to do with waste. One visitor said he wanted to be an agent for us because he could sell 11 of these plants around the world to other nuclear-producing facilities. Finally, what happens to nuclear waste when it's finished its cycle through the nuclear plant? It's left to cool inside the plant in deep pools. Then, when it has cooled down and stopped fissioning, it is transported in dry cask storage vessels—cement, ceramic and glass—in a well-established protocol, for recycling or for storage in these dry casks. Eventually, it can be accessed again if people want to use the used fuel as a starter for other reactors—particularly high-temperature gas reactors. These burn the waste and generate hundreds of times more power than non-high-temperature gas reactors, which is what most pressurised water reactors and boiling water reactors are. The other thing is that there's no radiation coming from nuclear waste unless you crack open an impervious, 150-tonne cement cask that has the spent fuel inside it. It's absolutely safe. There's never been a reported accident in transporting waste in the Western world. The other thing is that radiation is not dangerous unless you have too much of it. Radiation will probably be used to cure some member's prostate cancer, breast cancer, brain cancer or myeloma. It's only when you get too much, and nuclear plants do not emit radiation. Maybe if you hammer to get inside the pressurised water reactor, through steel that's very thick, bury in and jump in there with it, you might get some radiation. But the steam you see coming out of a nuclear reactor is not radioactive. It is just cooling water that runs in a separate circuit to the reactor, which is boiling water. Nuclear fission does not produce electricity itself. It produces heat, which, under pressure, delivers high-temperature steam, which spins a turbine, which in turn spins a generator, just like a coal-fired power station. (Time expired)
Lyne Electorate: Community Events | Constituency Statements | House debates
I rise to bring to the attention of the House a bicentennial festival that was held at Rollands Plains, north-west of Port Macquarie. It was one of the earliest agricultural centres of production...
I rise to bring to the attention of the House a bicentennial festival that was held at Rollands Plains, north-west of Port Macquarie. It was one of the earliest agricultural centres of production north of the Sydney basin in early colonial times. Two hundred years of families have lived and worked in the area, first in the sugar cane industry, which was started in the Hastings River and rapidly moved up to the Wilson River and to Rollands Plains. There were historical mementos from multiple generations and multiple families. Hundreds of people returned from around the country, as many people have moved to other places in New South Wales, Queensland and overseas. As well, there were many items of historical memorabilia. The committee put on a wonderful celebration. After that I had the opportunity of attending the wonderful Old Bar Beach Festival, which gets stronger and stronger every year. The Old Bar Beach Festival is held on the October long weekend, and I would like to congratulate the committee for all their efforts to get together a variety of displays. It's obviously well known for its kombi festival with its restored kombi vans—VW Kombis, an icon of car design—as well as many other classic cars and small bikes, all assembled. There are literally hundreds of old cars that have been restored amazingly, and the very best of them are on show at the Old Bar Beach Festival. Also there are megamarkets, fireworks and acrobatics. This year, they even had a movie festival on the Friday night, including a recent movie about kombis and an adventure. Herbie, the old beetle, was also present—the exact replica from the 'Love Bug' movies of the 1960s—and we had the latest electric kombi on display. This committee has done an amazing job. It's a not-for-profit community group. They all do it for the benefit of people who are car nuts and for the communities that live on the coast at Old Bar, west of Taree on the banks of the Manning River. Old Bar has got the nearest beach to this area. So we had people from north and south staying in the district and contributing to the tourism spend. I congratulate all the committee members who put on the bicentennial festival at Rollands Plains and this year's Old Bar Beach Festival.
Cost of Living | Matters of Public Importance | House debates
Everywhere I look, the cost of living is hurting families in my electorate and around Australia. All the fundamental costs that families and individuals face seem to be going up. The pressure...
Everywhere I look, the cost of living is hurting families in my electorate and around Australia. All the fundamental costs that families and individuals face seem to be going up. The pressure that families and businesses are under because of what this government has done is unbelievable. They start thinking that subsidising processes that drive the economy will make the fundamentals cheaper. But no amount of subsidy will make the fundamentals cheap if we create shortages. At the source of many things in the economy, the basics are food production, clothing production, manufacturing and energy costs. All of those are going up. You've only got to look at what our inflation figures are. The current inflation rate in Australia of 3.8 per cent is remarkably not budging, and that is because we have a lot of extra government spending subsidising industries like the energy system, which is getting huge subsidies, making our electricity system unreliable and expensive. They're subsidising more and more renewable energy. You've only got to look at the subsidy-go-round. There are certificate values for large-scale generation of $4 billion a year. Along with the small-scale subsidies we've got $19 billion of Rewiring Australia subsidies baked in. We've got subsidies for batteries. We've got subsidies, through interest rates that governments are paying, for green energy bonds. The irony of it is that we are now subsidising, in New South Wales and Victoria, coal plants to not close. Their business cases have been destroyed by the market rules which restrict them operating because of renewable energy targets. But, hey presto, people have got to realise that this mantra we've heard day in, day out that renewables are the cheapest form of energy only refers to the generation cost at the solar panel or at the wind turbine. It doesn't include the levelised full system costs of energy—the extra costs of all the subsidies, the extra costs of all the batteries, the extra costs of all the poles and wires for the grid and the extra costs of the backup systems that you need because solar only generates 20 per cent of the time. It's got to have a gas plant or a coal plant just sitting there waiting for if the sun stops shining or when it's night-time. So you've got multiple other system costs which mean the costs of the electricity from a renewable based system, once it gets to your power point and onto your bill, are totally different from the generation cost. We need a system cost cost so people understand the full cost. Look at the cost of cars. The new EV push has put a system in place, through fuel standards, that's putting the cost of a Toyota RAV4 up at least $11,000. Even a cheap Chinese MG is going to go up $12,000. The cars that all the tradesmen drive—HiLuxes and Ford Rangers are two of the biggest selling vehicles in Australia—have gone up: $17,900 for a Ford Ranger and $14,500 for a HiLux. Insurance is going up. Mortgage repayments are going up. There are these huge mortgages in the cities. People are having to pay up to $30,000 more because of this loose government spending without any productivity growth. The economy's growing because we've got unbridled immigration. There's a shortage of housing that's exacerbated by too many migrants, way more than our housing can provide for. Everywhere you turn, costs are up. We need a change of government. At the election next year we'll get back to fundamentals. We're going to make the fundamentals cheap and get tax cuts in that mean we don't have people paying more tax. We're going to bring back the original stage 3 tax cuts and get rid of the 32½ per cent tax rate so people are paying 30 per cent only up until they get to $200,000. Then they'll have enough income to pay their way and get ahead again. (Time expired) Quorum formed.
Tibet | Private Members' Business | House debates
I rise in support of the motion raised by the member for Fisher and reinforce the words of the member for Macquarie. Since the invasion of Tibet in 1950 and 1951, things haven't changed, and time...
I rise in support of the motion raised by the member for Fisher and reinforce the words of the member for Macquarie. Since the invasion of Tibet in 1950 and 1951, things haven't changed, and time doesn't right the essential wrong. The Communist Party of China continues to suppress religion, tradition, Tibetan and Buddhist religious practice and language, and the Dalai Lama has been in exile since 1959 and remains in exile with a government in exile. The CCP continues to ban images of the Dalai Lama and suppresses religious practice. It has banned political expression and is suppressing cultural identity. The United Nations has identified at least one million children in forced assimilation schools, separated forcibly from their parents on a regular basis of increasing duration as they go from early years, 3 and 4, up to their teenage years and are indoctrinated in Chinese culture to try to wash away their Tibetan and Buddhist heritage. Why is China so afraid of Tibet? Why are they suppressing this? Is it the water that they hope to dam and get into China? Is it the minerals? Is it the practice of forced and illegal organ harvesting and trading? Forced assimilation, summary arrest, extrajudicial killings and torture of prisoners, as well as shooting any Tibetans that try to escape across the border, have all been documented. This really does reflect badly on China. Australia has made recommendations to have the Chinese government repeal all the restrictive legislation that suppresses the human rights and encourages more abuse. Suppressing a beautiful culture and a religion makes China look weak. If China were clever, they would remove all these prohibitions and let cultural diversity exist in their nation. There are many other cultures that they are suppressing, Australia is stronger for our heritage of many refugees and willing settlers who have come from all corners of the globe to flourish. Don't be afraid, China. You're a big nation now. You need to stop all these suppressions of Tibetan culture, their human and political rights and their freedom of expression, association and religious practice. I commend this motion to the House.
Gralton, Mr Cliff, Cordery, Ms Dorothy | Statements by Members | House debates
I'd like to congratulate Tuncurry local Cliff Gralton, who has secured a place in the 2024 Australian Irukandjis para surfing team. Last week Cliff won the prone 2 class at the Australian para...
I'd like to congratulate Tuncurry local Cliff Gralton, who has secured a place in the 2024 Australian Irukandjis para surfing team. Last week Cliff won the prone 2 class at the Australian para surfing titles held at North Haven. It was the highest single wave score in the whole division, and it has allowed him to now enter the world championships. Cliff will travel with his small support team to California's famous Huntington Beach to represent his country in these world championships. Cliff and his wife, Jess, currently have a GoFundMe page to help fund Cliff and his team's journey to the US. So get out there, people, and support Cliff. What a massive achievement. Congratulations. I would also like to wish Tuncurry resident Dorothy Cordery a very happy 96th birthday. Dorothy made the move from Sydney to begin her working life. She met her husband, John, when she started working. They moved to the Great Lakes about 40 years ago and have run many hospitality businesses. She is now a much-loved great-grandmother. I hope she has a wonderful birthday. Ninety-six is a great achievement. Keep on going strong. Hopefully, we'll be standing here and wishing you a happy 100th birthday in a few years time.
Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water Committee; Report | Committees | House debates
Plastic pollution in Australia's oceans and waterways was the issue of our very extensive inquiry. The report is titled Drowning in waste for a very good reason—because at the moment we...
Plastic pollution in Australia's oceans and waterways was the issue of our very extensive inquiry. The report is titled Drowning in waste for a very good reason—because at the moment we have a problem with waste in Australia. We have put a ban in place, but we have a disrupted and incomplete circular economy for plastic waste in this country, and waste is building up everywhere. But the good news is that we've made some recommendations which will, hopefully, fix a lot of those problems. First of all, I thank every one of the hundreds of submitters for the very extensive submissions that were presented to the committee as we went around Australia. There are an enormous amount of community organisations and philanthropic organisations and some standout councils and state and local government organisations that are on the job. But there's much more to do. I also thank the secretariat of the committee, who managed huge volumes of information and submissions and put them into a coherent set of data. There was so much information, so to distil it all down was quite an amazing bit of work. I thank all the other committee members, and our chair, the member for Makin, who steered us through a very useful inquiry. What I'd like to do is not give a holistic, blow-by-blow description of this excellent report but talk about the things that I think are the most important and will lead to the most dramatic improvement in preventing plastic waste polluting our oceans and waterways. There is the microplastic issue, which is the small amounts of plastics that are ubiquitous in metropolitan life getting into our food chain, through fish and other marine animals, and there is the macro, or large, plastic waste, which is suffocating sea animals like whales, dolphins, turtles et cetera. Some of the microplastics and larger plastics are getting into seafood. I should acknowledge all the good things that have happened because of the National Plastics Plan. I would just like to give a shout-out and a nod to my former colleague the former member for Brisbane Trevor Evans, who led that legislation when he was the minister with that responsibility in the Morrison government. He addressed a lot of the problems with the whole life cycle of marine plastic and waterway plastic and the issue of how to reduce it. Many people pointed out that there are gaps in our current National Plastics Plan. The first is to do with putting a value on the plastic. It's only waste if you waste it. You can apply that principle to lots of things. But plastic is not waste. It has embedded energy in it, and we need to start using that. I'll expand on that a bit further. A lot of the depositions related to the fact that we have plastics that are easy to recycle and plastics that are hard to recycle. They accentuated that we need to get the plastics that are essential in our lives—PET, high-density polyethylene, low-density polyethylene and polypropylene—because clever industrial chemists can put that to the best use. The more complex polymers are harder to recycle. By virtue of the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act—which the former member for Brisbane Trevor Evans and Scott Morrison were influential in putting in place—the Recycling Modernisation Fund and the National Product Stewardship Investment Fund have been set up and have led to major changes, some of which involve people who made depositions to this inquiry. But we still have a fragmented market. The ban is in place, so we can't export it, but there are not enough entities involved in reprocessing the built-up plastic that we are now banning from being exported. People are turning to fresh, virgin plastic in new presentations rather than utilising this market. There were recommendations for microfibre filters on every washing machine. That was back in the original National Plastics Plan. But we haven't enacted that, so we need to do that. As I mentioned, some councils are already doing really good things with stormwater filters at that macro, local council level. But many more things can be done in that same vein, making it uniform or mandatory across the country. There is the Ghost Nets Initiative. The big nets and bits of plastic that are left over from commercial fishing are a big problem, particularly because they suffocate whales, dolphins, turtles—all sorts of stuff. There is a ranger program to address that. A lot of the areas in the north of Australia are really quite affected by this, because a lot of these plastics don't actually come from Australia but they can end up in the northern part of Australia. One of the recommendations that would address this would be recommendation 3, which is that the government prioritise a sustainable end market for recovered plastics and increase the disposal options for plastics in remote and regional Australia, because a lot of these plastics initiatives are metropolitan based. My particular interest out of this committee is to get recommendation 12 up. Rather than banning plastics, the best way for them not to end up as waste is to get value out of them. Many other countries have addressed this by turning waste into energy either by simple incineration or by chemical processes. The feedstock is the end-of-life plastic, and it goes through chemical processes, providing energy itself, and then, with refining, you can turn plastics that would have ended up in a waste pile, or in landfill, in a river or out at sea, back into what it started as—high-purity diesel, gas and even petroleum and kerosene. The engineering does exist for that. Many places in Europe have waste-to-energy plants in the middle of their cities, but they're in hills or dressed up with vegetation or elaborate architecture, and people don't even know that it's an energy plant using the city's waste. So there are many things that we could do. But we really need to get going with putting a value on plastic waste for everyone in their home. We have so many clothes that are made of synthetic material. The waste can be filtered out at the place it's developed, and we can do that by setting standards for white goods manufacturers. We can encourage states at COAG meetings to institute filters on all stormwater drains, depending on the state. I commend this report to the House. It is a very good report. It's got a huge amount of useful information. Again, I'd like to thank all the committee, all my colleagues, and all those people that are active in the industry of preventing waste from polluting our oceans. But we really need to engage with our Asian and near north neighbours to see if we can get the same rigour applied to their metropolitan and regional practices, particularly in the fishing industry, where a lot of these plastics really have a high impact on marine life. I commend Drowning in waste to the parliament.