Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will praise the previous speaker for being a regional member, and a tall regional member! He is a little bit taller than me, Mr Speaker, and I'm a little bit taller than you. The members opposite know the benefits of being tall in this game.

I rise, as I often do in this place, to speak on the issue of net zero, a topic that I've spoken on with furious abandon for quite some time. The first time I spoke on it was in September 2021, and I was quoted at the time as being one of only three MPs who raised their concerns about the implementation of this particular policy—quoted, I would say, as having absolutely no issue with acknowledging man-made climate change. I'm not denying anything, not questioning science; I'm simply questioning the ability of government to manage a budget on such a large and extensive policy setting. I raised the issue of costs back in 2021, and I've continued to raise it all the way through. I'm hopeful that the debate within my side of politics will come to an end, and reasonably soon.

The issue of cost is very important. We sit here in question time and see the line-up of ministers on the front bench, talking about their portfolios. Every single one of them can tell us the costs that are being undertaken in their various portfolios. Just today we heard '$43 billion for housing' proudly expressed by the minister. We heard very clearly what the cost was, and if we went through everyone else we could find the same. But when we ask, 'What is the cost of net zero?' we get no answer.

Fortunately, the University of Queensland, coupled with the University of Melbourne and Princeton University, got together and had a go at working out what that cost might be. There's a little bit of fudge factor they had to put in, but they got to a figure somewhere between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion in capital costs for us to reach our 2035 targets. Amazingly, three outstanding universities—two great Australian universities—put their work together, and the minister accuses this of being misinformation. What a disgrace. What a shameful disgrace. Anyway, that can be dealt with later on.

Let's have a look at what those universities got together and did. If you look at what $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion comes down to, in a figure that we can understand, it's about $20 billion a month between now and 2035. That's still hard to visualise. It's still hard to understand what that looks like. How many hospitals, schools, aged-care facilities and road upgrades is that? These are things we need pressingly urgently in regional communities across the nation, as we just heard. In Toowoomba we're building a state-of-the-art hospital. It's going to cost about $1.9 billion, so, on these figures, we could build around 10 hospitals a month with the cost that we have to spend on net zero capital works. That's extraordinary. The Toowoomba range crossing was $1.2 billion. It was the single-largest road infrastructure project at the time. Goodness me! How many of those could we build across the country at the same time? The Inland Rail has blown out to $30 billion. We're told that's a huge blowout in costs for the Inland Rail, and yet we could pay for it in 1½ months with what we're spending on net zero. This is a significant amount of money, and we need to get the public's attention on exactly what that cost looks like.

Australia cannot control global emissions. This policy requires every country in the world to do the same thing at the same time, and they are not. That is not happening. For every tonne of emissions that we have reduced in Australia, China has increased its emissions by 35,000 tonnes. This policy is not working.It takes 12 days for China to emit the same amount that Australia does in a year. This policy is not working.

What can we do? I'm a child of the nineties. I remember 'Think global, act local'. I like acting on pollution. I like doing things that I can see in my local area—clean rivers, clean beaches, clean cities and clean forests. I've got the Toowoomba escarpment, which is full of lantana and wild dogs. I've got wonderful conservation groups trying to keep the koala populations alive in those areas. These are the things we should be investing in. I'm glad to be joined in this argument by such luminaries as Bill Gates, and it's going to be hard for those opposite to argue that I'm speaking to my base. Actually, I'm arguing on the same lines as Bill Gates right now. It's a good place to be.

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