Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standing) Bill 2015. In doing so, I pose a question. If you lived in Townsville and you were going to put a fence around your pool or change the fence around your property, should someone in Melbourne who has had something to do with a fence at some stage in his or her life be able to object to you putting that fence around your house? Should they be able to object to that such that you have to defend that action in court? Putting it the other way, should someone in Townsville be able to object to someone in Melbourne doing something to their house because, at some stage or other, the person in Townsville had something to do with a fence, a pool or anything like that?

That is why this environment protection and biodiversity conservation bill has been worded in the way it has. At the moment, if you have had anything to do with the environment, you can lodge an objection on any grounds whatsoever and it must be discussed and ruled upon, no matter where it is. You could be in Adelaide and object to a mine for anything going ahead in North Queensland, purely because you have had something to do with it. That is what is wrong with the system. The member for Melbourne was just in the chamber. I notice he did not get to Canberra by horse and cart; he flew here on a stinking great big fossil-fuel-burning jet. He got to the parliament this morning in a fossil-fuel-burning car. He is happy to use those things. He comes from Melbourne, which gets most of its electricity from those brown-coal energy generators in the Latrobe Valley. He is happy to receive all that and he is happy that his industries can use that, but, if someone in North Queensland wants to get ahead in their life—if they want to drive North Queensland and northern Australia—damn them to hell, says the member for Melbourne. 'You should not have the same opportunity as the rest of Australia. You should not be able to use your resources as you see fit because you know what you're doing.'

The Great Barrier Reef has been used as a working reef since time immemorial. Since the dawn of Aboriginal and Islander Australia, the Great Barrier Reef has been used as a working reef. Again and again in this argument and this debate on the environment, I have pointed out that everything we do impacts on our environment. It is how we manage those impacts which is important. The environmental constraints we have around the operations of ports and mines have grown substantially since the mid-1800s. If you look at how they first started digging gold around Ballarat, Bendigo, Bathurst and those sorts of places in the 1800s, it was a lot different from what we do now. Abbot Point, for instance, has over 300 terms and conditions already in place around which it must operate. The Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority—all the environmental groups—have looked into those things, and still people complain. There are 300 terms and conditions, and numerous reviews have taken place. Do not forget that at one stage the Anna Bligh government was going to have coal ports from Princess Charlotte Bay all the way down to Brisbane. What we did was concentrate it all on Abbot Point and make sure that what we do is world-class. It is about how we manage the impacts; that is what is important. When we put these things forward, the Greens eventually complained about the destruction of the wetlands adjacent to the port near Bowen. What they did not realise—and that still had to be ruled on—was that these wetlands were actually man-made. They were not mangrove wetlands; they were man-made.

We talk about lifting people out of poverty. When I talk about the Carmichael mine and renewable energy in North Queensland, it is a serious conversation. The Carmichael mine is going ahead and has to go ahead for the sake of North Queensland. It is not about the biggest coalmine in Australia; it is not about the amount of stuff that is going through the Great Barrier Reef; it is not about the lifting of hundreds of millions of Indians out of poverty and giving them the kind of future that they should have. For me, the Carmichael mine in the northern Galilee Basin is all about small business in Townsville—from the stevedore at the port in Townsville, the technicians who will survey the road, build the road and fix the bridges, the drivers who will drive the pie vans to the men who are working, all the way to the drivers driving the trains to Abbot Point—with all the construction that will go on there. All those small businesses that profit in that area are what this is about. When this goes ahead, we will be looking at how we generate power in northern Australia. If the member for Melbourne were still here, he would be happy to hear about what we are trying to do there.

We need to underpin what we are doing with baseload power. To backtrack a little, Queensland is the only really decentralised state in the country. Townsville is 800 kilometres north of where the power is generated. For industry to develop in North Queensland, it must pay the transmission costs of that energy, including for all the power that is lost during transmission. I have Queensland Nickel and Sun Metals, the zinc refinery, in my electorate. Sun Metals is the second biggest user of electricity in the state. Because they have to pay the transmission costs and for the loss of transmission, they are paying an extra $20 million to $30 million a year to operate in Townsville. What is their option? To shut up shop. They were given a deal by premiers Peter Beattie and Wayne Goss when they signed up to this thing where they would have cheap power, equivalent to what is available in Gladstone and in Brisbane.

On top of that, when it comes to where the pricing point goes, it is an artificial point somewhere near Pine Rivers in Brisbane. That is where the point is—and it is an arbitrary point—so we are not competitive when it comes to providing power and energy into heavy industry in northern Australia. We should be value-adding our processing here. We should be able to process minerals and we should be able to export refined products and value-add. That is what we should do.

Recently in Townsville we had an energy round table. The government has an energy white paper out at the moment talking about how we do these things. The question I posed to my local industry groups, including Townsville Enterprise, was: Ewen Jones would really love to see a great, big coal-fired power station right in the middle of the state development area in Townsville; why shouldn't he? So we got together all the people involved in these things. What we came up with was that the energy needs of northern Australia, and of North Queensland in particular, whilst underpinned by a baseload coal-fired power station somewhere in the Galilee Basin, would represent a mosaic of power supplies. We have the ability, through Tully-Millstream—if we can ever get that thing operating—to provide hydroelectricity. The same goes for the Burdekin Dam and Hell's Gate—we could provide hydroelectricity through there. West of there we have the Kennedy wind farm and the large solar projects which can go in that space. We can provide the whole nation's renewable energy targets through those sorts of things. If we can get those things up and if we can use this $5 billion of concessional loan facilities to provide the framework and the high-powered wires to put these things together, we can establish an energy forum—an energy area—in North Queensland which will be very attractive to heavy industry. If you build that framework there, then that is what people will come and see. That is what will be attractive to investors and to industry.

At the moment we cannot progress that because we are so uncompetitive with the cost of energy, and into that goes Renewable Energy Certificates and the Renewable Energy Target. If we do this right, we can fix this up. We can develop the north of Australia, we can be an attractive destination for investment in industry and we can provide the nation's renewable energy targets. We can provide them well into this century—past 2050—and we can export that energy, technology and intellectual property into our region and around the world. That is what we can do. But unless it is underpinned by baseload power, it does not come off.

Whilst I appreciate that when the member for Melbourne was in here before he was speaking to his Melbourne constituency which principally uses brown coal burnt in the Latrobe Valley for its electricity and energy, where I come from I am talking about big wind, big solar and hydro, and I am talking about renewable energy in the form of the North Queensland Bio-Energy Corporation's establishment at Ingham, which will feed into those things. I am talking about the MBD Energy algae project at James Cook University which can be used to produce, basically, zero emissions baseload power. We can export that technology around the world. That is what we have to do.

More than anything, we have to be able to get to the stage where we can build stuff. If we have to continually turn around and appease some fellow who has got rich on the internet and has a philosophical bent on this and does not care how much it costs him, then we have to be able to do something about that to protect North Queensland and northern Australia, because these people are out to kill us. These people are out to make sure that North Queensland remains an energy backwater. These people are out there to make sure that we cannot develop our resources and our tech industry, and that we cannot become an alternative destination for investment or do anything in this space. We cannot let people make ridiculous claims against projects which have the future of our nation at their base. The member for Melbourne is going to stand there and tell me that Barack Obama has berated us in relation to the Great Barrier Reef. But Barack Obama has been able to lower his nation's carbon footprint by fracking. I do not see Alan Jones jumping up and down about that. I do not see the member for Melbourne jumping up and down about that. He almost climbed over three people to touch the man when he was here.

People like the member for Melbourne and people who do not go there and do not understand what we are trying to do on the ground really get under my skin. It gets under the skin of people trying to do the right thing in North Queensland. People in North Queensland are not economic vandals. We are highly sensitive to our region and our environment. We understand, above everything else, that whatever we do has an impact on our environment. But it is how we manage those impacts, and that is what we have had to do all the way through, because we have had state governments and federal governments which have pushed North Queensland and northern Australia to the backblocks because you cannot supply energy at a reasonable cost in these areas to develop industry. If we can do that, we can then develop the north of Australia properly, and that is what this is about. This is not about what the member for Melbourne wants. This is not about what India wants. This is about the small businesses in Townsville. This is about how we build my city of Townsville. This is about how we end up with a waterfront area in Townsville. This is about how we redevelop our CBD area. This is about how we improve our schools. This is about how we get more people to teach in North Queensland. This is about how we remove the tyranny of distance for remote education and for people who live in our region. Some of the most socially isolated people in Australia are in these regions. Nothing happens in the north of Australia without water and energy. Nothing happens unless we are prepared to work in that space and unless we are prepared to make these things here. Then we can provide a response to the world that says, 'Not only can you provide coal to hundreds of millions of Indians trying to drag themselves out of poverty, but you can provide it on a less costly basis and by a safe transport method.' What happens if they do not get it out of Australia? Do they just dig it up and use the swamp-based coal of Indonesia, the carbon footprint of which will be 10 times that of the thermal coal coming out of North Queensland?

Are we happy to do that? Are we so ideologically bent in this country that we do not care if somebody else supplies the coal, that we just want to make sure that Australia—and North Queensland, in particular—goes backwards?

That is what this country seems to be doing. The member for Melbourne is just trying to make sure that we cannot develop what we have here. It is okay for him, in the streets of Melbourne. It is okay for him down there; they are already fully developed. We are on the cusp of something great here. We finally have a Prime Minister, a Treasurer and a Minister for Trade who believe in the development of northern Australia. Let's get these other people out of the road so that we can actually do something in this space, because this is really important—not just to us but to the entire world. I thank the House.

See this speech in context