Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

Cheaper, better, fairer—that's the plan that we announced on the weekend as the National Party. It's a very important issue that we all know. It deals with emissions reductions and our commitment to emissions reductions, and, also, because of that, it feeds into a whole lot of areas and issues within our economy—not least of all is energy.

What we have at the moment is that the government is committed to net zero 2050. What that means is quite aggressive emission reduction targets—more than many, many countries. I'll tell you three countries that aren't committed to net zero 2050: China, India and the US. Why do I say those three countries? Because they're the biggest emitters that we have in the world. Australia could literally shut down tonight—we could turn off every light; we could shut down every industry—and, as a country that only has between one per cent and two per cent of total global emissions, we would not change the temperature of the globe at all. This is a global issue that needs a global solution. Yes, as Australia, as the Australian economy, as a sovereign nation, we need to do our part. But what's happening, as we race ahead and are putting mandates on that mean we will race ahead of many other countries in emission reductions, is we are exporting industries, we are exporting wealth and we are exporting jobs to other countries. This has to be unacceptable to everyone in this chamber.

Why do I say that? Because the evidence is in the paper almost every week. We've had the nickel industry in Western Australia, which has been completely shut down. We had Tomago just last week, in New South Wales, the aluminium smelter, which looks like it's going to shut down in two or three years time, and I'll tell you why. It cannot get an energy contract that makes it competitive. We've had about seven or eight bailouts as well, in the last few months, of major industries around Australia—in Whyalla, in Port Pirie, in Hobart and in other major regional centres—where the companies have gone to the government asking for bailouts, often in the realm of hundreds of millions of dollars.

What this tells you is we have a major issue in this country with competitiveness. We have major issues in this country in relation to being able to have these industries survive. Again, I think it's all linked back to things like the safeguard mechanism and other things, which are making these industries and our energy bills uncompetitive.

It has to be fixed. Again, what I love about our plan is we have emission reduction aims. What we've done is pegged it to emission reductions of like-minded economies and countries, those being the OECD countries. We didn't even put countries like China and India into that mix, or that formula, because, if we did, we could put emissions up. China's emissions go up every year more than Australia's total emission output. Just get your head around that in the sense of what impact we have in the bigger picture of this. What we've said is, 'As a responsible sovereign nation, we should do carbon emission reductions like like-minded economies and like-minded countries—being the OECD.' We would benchmark our reductions to the actual reductions of those countries.

What we believe will happen from there is we will maintain a competitiveness with energy prices. Policies like the safeguard mechanism, which is effectively a carbon tax on big companies here in Australia—those uncompetitive practices would not happen, which, very importantly, would keep those jobs and those industries in Australia. I'm very excited about that. I'm very excited now to have a mature debate about this in this country so that the Australian public can have an alternative to this commitment to net zero 2050.

I want to conclude by lamenting that the Labor government wants to drop the default country road speed limit from 100 kilometres an hour to 70 kilometres an hour across regional Australia. Instead of fixing our roads, they just want us to all drive slower—be slower when we have an emergency, be slower getting to work—adding extra cost to regional Australia for the times for things to get around our regional communities. It's a disgrace from this government.

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