Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Energy. Will the minister update the House on how the government's policies are supporting Australia's energy sector? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for O'Connor for his question and acknowledge his deep commitment to resources across Australia, given the richness of the resource industry in his electorate, and ensuring that Australia remains a global energy powerhouse. Who would have thought back in 1989, when Australia had one LNG facility, that today we would have 10 either operating or under construction, which will see Australia overtake Qatar as the world's largest exporter of LNG by 2020? In fact, we will see a tripling of our export earnings up to $49 billion, which will see LNG join coal and iron ore among our top three exports.

There are enormous opportunities for the LNG sector in Australia, but what is holding it back is actually the high cost of construction, because the BCA has told us that to build an LNG plant in Australia is some 50 per cent higher cost than to build a similar plant in the US Gulf of Mexico—and industrial relations are a major component of that. We know that when the ABCC was in place we saw increased productivity, a fall in industrial disputation and more money flowing into Australian terms of investment. Woodside's experience with their fourth and fifth LNG trains is illustrative because, with their fourth train, before the ABCC came into being they lost 254,000 hours due to industrial action, but their fifth train, which came into being after the ABCC became a cop on the beat, saw that drop by some 90 per cent to only 27,000 hours lost to industrial action.

You do not have to trust the industry groups like ACCI and the BCA as to why the ABCC is important. You do not have to trust us on this side. You only have to listen to a former Labor minister for resources, the former member for Batman, who said in a speech to CEDA, and I quote—this is worth listening to: 'As the son of a bricklayer, I know a thing or two about the building industry, but it's time that some in today's union leadership recognise that their members' long-term interests are aligned with their long-term job security. Rather than seeing the ABCC as a tool that allows one side to get an upper hand over the other in some never-ending ideological skirmish, it should be seen for what it was: a mechanism that holds both sides to account and which can help deliver projects on time and on budget.' There you have it from the former Labor member for Batman.