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

That was a very good speech by my colleague. I think she articulated many of the concerns we have. These are, of course, very difficult times for the country and for the globe. We are constantly focused on the domestic situation of our constituents, and that is understandable—because I think all the vulnerabilities of modern life have been highlighted. At the start of this pandemic we had a situation where we'd run out of or come perilously close to running out of personal protective equipment. We had issues around the supply of ventilators. We had a fear that our health systems and hospital systems would be overrun. Normally, it is a bit of a chore to go to the supermarket, but even the supermarket became a place of great anxiety for many Australians at the beginning of the lockdowns when we had these runs on toilet paper—which is pretty essential to modern life.

We saw that pretty essential product that we expect to be there and has always been there suddenly disappear from the supermarket shelves because of panic buying, because of the fragile supply lines that we have. We manufacture toilet paper here in this country. We've manufacture it from pulp down in the south east of the state of South Australia. A great company down there provides the nation. So that was a relatively easy problem to fix. But, of course, when we look at these vulnerabilities, I think they have made it very, very clear that the worst case scenario can happen and, if you don't plan for it or you don't think about or you don't account for it, you can find yourself in great peril.

And then I look at some of the external things that can happen to Australia. In my time in this place—I'm coming up to 12 or 13 years now—I can't count the number of times, for instance, that John Blackburn has come to the foreign affairs committee and given us a submission about fuel security in this country. He constantly came before the committee and warned governments of both persuasions—I'm not trying to make this a partisan thing—that we've got a perilous situation when it comes to our fuel security. Seventy per cent of our fuels come from overseas. Only about 20 per cent are refined here. So it doesn't take you long to realise that, in any sort of external crisis where our sea lanes are blocked, we will have a desperate problem very, very quickly and we will have to ration very, very quickly. That will bring modern life to a halt very quickly. So we need to start dealing with these things in a bipartisan way pretty urgently.

When we think about these things, we should start to think more in terms of self-reliance. What do we absolutely have to know is there? What is the lifeblood of modern life?

We know, for instance, that electricity is a pretty critical part of modern life, and over the years we've seen a number of things happen to our electricity system. We could talk a lot about it, but primarily what we've seen is disaggregation at the state level—that is, we had monopoly systems that have been broken up. In South Australia it was ETSA. ETSA had the transmission lines, it had the poles and wires, and it had the generation. It was one system that operated with engineers running it, and they ran it as a unitary system. We've also had privatisation. In South Australia, in 1994, there was a pretty controversial lease of our power assets at the time. The Labor Party opposed that, and I'm proud that they did.

When you think about that disaggregation and that privatisation, you've also got to think about who ended up controlling these critical bits of infrastructure. In South Australia, it wasn't just that things were broken up into generators, into poles and wires, and into transmission lines; it's also that they were sold to foreign companies. At the time we lived in a more benign world, and Hong Kong was controlled, at that point, by the British. It followed their legal norms, and it was seen to be a jurisdiction particularly friendly to foreign investment and as the gateway to mainland China. So it's not surprising that there was a level of comfort in selling a majority stake in the poles and wires of what's now known as SA Power Networks to CK Infrastructure. It's not surprising that, when the transmission lines were sold—I think this is somewhat more controversial—the State Grid Corporation, which is a state-owned company in China, took a significant stake. It's a minority stake, but it's the largest stake in that company; it's just short of controlling it. They are very pertinent facts.

In 1994, those ownership structures might have been appropriate. As I said before, Labor opposed the privatisation of ETSA, and I think it was sensible to do so at the time. But even those who are enthusiasts for privatisation should now realise that you have to have control of your critical infrastructure. You don't have control if it's owned by a foreign owned company, and you particularly don't have control if it's a foreign owned company where the government can influence anything that company does. And that is certainly the case now, with both of those companies.

We need to think carefully about what happened in 1994 in South Australia to the electricity network, and we need to think about whether we have control, ultimately, of this critical infrastructure. Deputy Speaker Zimmerman, in your home state, when the privatisation of Ausgrid occurred, the then Treasurer, the now Prime Minister Scott Morrison, blocked the sale of that electricity infrastructure to those two companies, to State Grid Corporation and to CK Infrastructure. We've now got a situation where, in New South Wales, these companies were blocked from owning the electricity grid and yet, in South Australia, they've owned it for the better part of a couple of decades. So I think, and I mean this as a humble suggestion from a backbencher, that ownership structure should be reviewed.

As I've said before, when I've spoken out about Darwin port, I think there is some infrastructure a country has to own. In a situation where there might be political sensitivities in it, it's better that the nation's government asserts that control in the first instance. To my mind, if you block the sale in New South Wales, you shouldn't allow this ownership to go on in South Australia. Those portions of ownership by those companies should either be subject to nationalisation or to forced divestments, or some combination of both. There are a couple of reasons for this.

Electricity is the lifeblood of modern society. You cannot have a situation where the government does not have control. We now know that these grids are particularly vulnerable to all sorts of interference and technological sabotage, which cannot be easily remedy if it occurs, so it's critically important that we know that this infrastructure is secure, reliable and can be depended on. In my mind that means you have to have some sort of Australian ownership and control.

We now know interest rates are low and the government's capacity to borrow is high. We also have a vast pool of superannuation funds and other private wealth. We're no longer capital starved, as we may have been in the past. To my mind the solution to this is easy. We have a vulnerability. It has been there for some time. We know that it may get worse over time. It should be remedied. The remedy is relatively easy in the modern context.

I'm not the only politician concerned by this. I know Rex Patrick has spoken out about it, and I think that's sensible. We should have a discussion about critical infrastructure in this country. The Prime Minister and the then Treasurer should be commended for their decision. It is not easy to make a decision to block a sale to foreign companies. It's essential that we control this infrastructure. It's essential that we don't have a benign view of the world we live in. It's essential that we take a pretty rigorous and cynical view. To some extent we need to plan for the worst. If we're doing those things then we should secure critical infrastructure in this country.

With those comments I close my argument, as it were. I humbly submit it for your consideration, Mr Deputy Speaker.

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