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

A cheaper, better, fairer plan for all regional Australians—indeed, for all Australians—in relation to energy prices, cost-of-living pressures and emission reductions has been released, and I can tell you right now that this plan is much cheaper than Labor's $9 trillion net zero 2050 plan, it's better than Labor's $9 trillion net zero 2050 plan and it's certainly fairer than Labor's net zero 2050 plan. Deputy Speaker, you would know that every household in this country is struggling with its power bills. You know that there have been a lot of government bailouts, which I will go into. Industry and business are struggling in this country.

But, Deputy Speaker, there's more to it than that. I'd ask you the question: should regional Australians, as an example of Labor's reckless renewable-only plan, have to absorb 60 million solar panels for that plan to work? I would say no. Should regional Australians, because of Labor's reckless renewable-only plan, have to absorb 20,000 wind turbines in regional Australia? Again, I would that say the answer to that is no. Should regional Australia have to absorb 20,000 kilometres of new transmission lines or poles and wires through pristine forest and important agricultural land, dividing communities about those? I would say again that the answer to that is no. But there's more than that as well. We are seeing job losses being announced—thousands of job losses have been announced already—because firms in regional Australia, especially heavy industry, cannot afford their power bills. But, again, there's more just in regional Australia that's been very damaging. Because of Labor's plan, thousands of hectares have been locked up. Productive agricultural land has been locked up, unable to be used for agriculture because of Labor's plan. Right now, this is all occurring every day, and it has to stop.

One of the problems, I believe, in this plan that was released is that Labor's emission reduction ambitions are much faster than the rest of the world's. They're certainly much faster than China's, India's, the US's and those of many other countries. The pace of what they are proposing is sending us broke. I have a map of Australia here that I want to go through. They talk about Future Made in Australia. I can tell you right now that, if Labor's plan continues at the rate that it is, we won't have anything made in Australia. The whole Future Made in Australia plan will be a fantasy land because no-one will be able to afford to compete with anyone in the rest of the world with what they're trying to do. Here's a map of Australia. I certainly won't hold it up, but I'm just going to refer to it while I go through some of the examples here. These are companies or industries that either have shut down or are looking for assistance because they otherwise will shut down. In Western Australia, you've got the nickel smelter in Kalgoorlie. In Kwinana, in Western Australia, you've got a nickel refinery and an aluminium refinery. In South Australia, you have the steel mill in Whyalla and you have the lead smelter in Port Pirie. In Hobart, you have an aluminium smelter and a zinc refinery asking for assistance. In New South Wales, just in the last couple of weeks, you have Tomago, an aluminium smelter, needing assistance. In Queensland, you have a copper refinery and a zinc refinery in Townsville and a copper smelter and a lead smelter in Mount Isa.

In anyone's language, when you have all this happening in a very short space of time—most of those have all happened over the last few months—you have to ask yourself: what is going on? what is the problem? There's a link, and it's not a very difficult link to draw. The problem all of them have is their energy bills. Our energy bills in Australia are now higher than in Japan—and we export energy to Japan. Work that out! This is linked to the emissions reductions in Labor's net zero 2050 plan. You might say, 'We should do our bit for emissions reductions.' I agree. We agree that we should do our bit for emissions reductions. But let's not fool ourselves; Australia contributes one to two per cent of global emissions. The three biggest emitters across the globe are the United States, China and India. And none of them—not one of those economies—has signed up to this government's aggressive emissions reduction targets.

They may feel very righteous. They may feel like they're going to save the globe, but I can tell you right now that you could shut Australia down today—turn off every light and every electrical appliance and stop driving any car or any vehicle. You could do all that and what would that mean? That would do nothing to the temperature of the globe. China's emissions go up by more every year than the total emissions of this country, but this government is hell-bent on an ideology to cut emissions at a rate that, literally, is going to mean we're not going to be exporting anything except jobs. Jobs will be the biggest export in this country with Labor's emissions reduction targets.

We released a plan on the weekend with emissions reductions—a very sensible plan, I believe, for doing our fair share. We actually took China and India out of the modelling because we thought, 'If we kept them in, we could still keep raising our emissions.' We looked at OECD countries—like-minded and similar economies to ours. We said, 'Let's match them. Let's not do what they say they're going to do; let's do what they are actually doing.' The modelling would show that, with the ideological obsession that this government has, we would not be racing ahead. But we would certainly slow down this government's exporting of jobs. I commend that report to those opposite.

While I'm talking about the disregard of this government toward regional Australia, I have to go over a couple of other issues as well. During the last parliament, some of the most damaging things for regional Australia were announced in this chamber. The one I always have to mention—because it's gutting communities in the regions—is the fact that this government took water away from our communities through the Murray-Darling Basin plan. They have this obsession that the River Murray can never be shut. The mouth of the River Murray used to be shut all the time before the locks and weir system, because locks and weirs hold the water back. But this is an obsession by the Labor Party. The other thing I have to talk about is the live export industry, which has been gutted by this government.

I was hoping to get a question up in question time today on this, but the other disregard that this government has for regional Australia is its solution for the roads problem—I'm glad the minister is here at the table. They have been ripping money out of local roads and the regional roads program. They say: 'We're not going to give you the road funding that we currently give you. We're not going to give you Roads of Strategic Importance. We're going to close the local roads and the community infrastructure program.' Do you know what their solution is to the fact that they're not giving us any money for roads in regional Australia? Their solution is to make you drive slower—that's their solution. The minister is also reported as saying that this only relates to unsealed roads. I'd like the minister to confirm that it's only unsealed roads, because that's not our understanding. If we've got a sick child or we've got a family emergency and we're 100 kilometres from the hospital or 100 kilometres from a GP, guess what? 'Sorry. We're not going to give you money to fix up your roads; just drive slower to the appointment.' If you've got a 100 kilometre drive to work every day and you've got family commitments, bad luck! Just drive slower! That's this government's response to that.

The other thing that I need to talk about, because this government talks all the time about health and talks all the time about its commitment to Medicare, is the health issue. This government again made the decision very early in the last term of parliament that the thing that was going to change was the distribution priority area. So good on them if they think they're doing a good job by putting money into Medicare. The problem when they changed the distribution priority area for GPs was that a lot of our communities lost their GPs. So, if you can get to see a doctor or drive a long way to see one, you hypothetically, through Medicare, may not be paying as much as you were, but we've been gutted. Our health system, our GP system, has been gutted by decisions of this government.

I encourage those opposite to read the plan. I encourage those opposite—because their net zero 2050 plan is killing regional Australians. It's going to export jobs. The infrastructure spending that you've taken out of this is also doing a terrible thing to regional Australia, and shame on all of you.

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