Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I remember the days when, under the former Leader of the Liberal Party, the member for Wentworth, the member for Groom was rushing around this building doing deals, talking to everybody, trying to get a carbon price in place. That was back when the Liberal Party had a rational, reasonable, sensible market based approach to dealing with climate change and carbon emissions. But those days seem long ago. Those opposite seem to have embraced the lunar Right—the Tea Party, the Birthers, the nutters on the internet. That is who they are driven by now.

What has ended up happening is that the community are demanding from all of us, from everyone in this House, a decent, reasonable debate. That is why Nigel McBride from Business SA was on Belinda Heggen's show on FIVEaa radio today calling on politicians to end the blame game. He was saying that we need to take a fact based approach to this, reminding everybody that Olympic Dam is still operating, reminding everybody that this is a deferral and that BHP is looking at a less capital-intensive way of doing things. The problem with the sensible approach from Business SA is that it collides with the political opportunism of those opposite. We all know that what the Liberal Party want to do is have a scare campaign. They had a scare campaign over carbon pricing and now they are going to have a scare campaign over mining investment.

In particular, in my state they have been trash-talking the South Australian economy. Tony Abbott went to the Liberal Party conference only a week ago and compared South Australia to Tasmania, managing to insult both states in the process. Here is a man who is going to declare war on South Australia and Tasmania through GST collections. He is going to rob a billion dollars in taxes that are coming to South Australia at the moment, forcing state governments to sack nurses, teachers and police.

We know what they are going to do with the car industry. From reading an article by Lenore Taylor on 13 January 2012 headed 'Hockey's line in the sand on cars', we know what they are going to do. They are going to shut Holden down, jeopardising 16,000 jobs. But we do not hear a word about that from those opposite.

We know what they are going to do with submarines too. The Labor government wants to build submarines in South Australia. We know what the member who submitted this matter of public importance to the House said. He said, 'We want to see what the benefit is in actually building these submarines here in Australia rather than getting cheaper versions from overseas.' That is what the member for North Sydney wants to do. He wants to get our subs from a slow boat coming from Europe or elsewhere. That is what his plan is—not to manufacture them in South Australia. It is the same with our cars. He wants to send the car industry on a slow boat to China and bring submarines in on a slow boat to Australia. It is a curious thing.

We heard a lot about mining. They have moved on to trash-talking the mining industry in South Australia. There are a few points that need to be acknowledged. First of all, we have gone from having four mines to 20 mines in South Australia. There has been an explosion in mining activity, in exploration in particular. There are another 30 mines in the pipeline. We are No. 2 in the country for exploration, second only to Western Australia. We are actually No. 1 in terms of greenfields sites. The independent Fraser Institute rates us as one of the most attractive mining destinations in the world. That is what is happening in South Australia. There is a boom in mineral exploration that has been promoted not only through world conditions in commodity prices and demand but also because we have the PACE exploration scheme and because there was a geological survey done way back at the time of the Bannon and Arnold governments. But people do not talk about these things. All we know is that mining investment is a very long time coming. You have to work very hard to get mining investment going. There are long lead times. They look for investment certainty and the like, and that is what they are getting in South Australia.

We have heard a lot about the carbon price and, in particular, BHP's attitude to carbon. I point out to those opposite that on 16 September 2010, in an article titled 'BHP boss Marius Kloppers: it's time for carbon tax', Marius Kloppers is quoted as saying:

We do believe that such a global initiative—

a carbon price—

will eventually come and, when it does, Australia will need to have acted ahead of it to maintain its competitiveness.

The head of BHP, in other words, is saying that it is important to have a carbon price in advance of what the world is doing. The member for North Sydney went to the National Press Club a year ago and admitted there was going to be a global carbon price, saying, 'Oh, well, it will happen eventually.' He, like the member for Groom, was in favour of pricing carbon in the previous parliament, under a previous leader, before the Liberal Party was taken over by the lunar Right and the nutcases on the internet who drive this stuff.

The reality is that the companies look for investment certainty and that carbon pricing provides it. The decision made by BHP in recent days on the Olympic Dam project was based on BHP's own commercial interests. It was based on the capital intensity of the project. We and those opposite know that the project is capital intensive because there is a lot of dirt on top of the minerals in South Australia—these are not shallow pits; these are deep pits, and that means that it is expensive to get at the minerals. The position of the Australian dollar, actual economic activity, the skills available in the economy and the company's own disposition towards making very large investments in this internationally unsettled time also played a role in BHP's decision.

If those opposite were being honest and sensible and were trying to make sure that the South Australian economy kept growing and that consumers had confidence rather than trying to scare people, they would be saying, 'We'll be a loyal opposition, and we'll work with the government to make sure the project happens.' Instead, they come in here and try to perpetrate a fraud: that the carbon tax is responsible for the halting of the project and that the mining tax applies to it, even though the mining tax does not apply to gold, copper or uranium mines. That is the one fatal and obvious flaw in their logic, but it does not stop them going out there looking like a bunch of gargoyles and talking down the South Australian economy. It pains me to say this about the member for Grey, because he is a distinguished fellow and a man of the land and I have a fair bit of affection for him, but he looked like a gargoyle standing next to the member for Sturt and others—these grim gargoyles talking down the South Australian economy. It is not good. If you think that voters are going to be impressed by your gleefully high-fiving one another about not getting an investment, you've got another think coming.

They could not wait to get out of their offices—they burned outside, Abbott's army—but the member for Warringah, although we were not meant to know this, had not at that time even read BHP's statement. He did not care a lick about that; what he really cared about was mounting another scare campaign. This is because the little scare campaign that they have had going for six months about the carbon price has fallen flat on its face, and people are saying, 'What was all the fuss about?' Now the member for Warringah has to cast around for something else to hang his hat on, but there is not much available. There is no industrial relations policy on the other side. There is no policy on how they are going to fund super. There is no policy on how they are going to fund the member for North Sydney's $70 billion black hole. There are no costings or any policies from them. They do not have a sane or rational policy on how they are going to deal with climate change, because they want to appeal to the lunar Right and the nutcases and the Tea Party people who are now populating the fringes of the Australian Right. The scare campaigns that those opposite mount are an absolute disgrace, and they will not be received well in the state of South Australia.

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