House debates Matters of Public Importance
Energy
Tony Pasin Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting for Fisheries and Forestry
3:53 pm
I seem to encourage interest from those opposite, and I'm pleased. Because—through you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I suggest to the House that, as a result of this really difficult decision that was delivered to 500 or 600 South Australian regional workers by the Premier of South Australia yesterday, there won't be any less structural steel utilised globally or indeed in Australia. But now it'll be produced in jurisdictions who care less about carbon emissions, who care less about workers' safety, who care less about workers and what workers are paid.
I want to live in an Australia that makes things. I want to live in an Australia where we don't have the working poor. As the brother of a dead worker who died on the job, I want to make sure people making things can do it safely, but unfortunately those opposite want to live in this utopia where unfortunately you can drive up the cost of energy but heavy industry survives in Australia. It isn't exposed to global competition. That's exactly what's happening. If you don't realise that what you're doing is exporting jobs to the rest of the world, then think again because that's what's happening here. We couldn't build this building today with Australian products, but we could in 1988.
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