Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, look at what happened in Mozambique—my point exactly. Mozambique was going to be Rio Tinto's new, big greenfields coal site—one of the biggest coalfields in the world. Look at what happened: $14 billion in write-downs. 'Thank you very much. Thanks for coming. There's the exit, Tom Albanese, see you later.' Just because we have an efficient system in this country for assessing environmental projects on a federal and state basis does not mean that we are a high sovereign risk.

I have here the SmartMoney list of countries for sovereign risk, political risk and country risk. I used to teach this to my students. Australia is in the top 10 and has been for a long time. Mozambique is about No. 48 on a lot of different factors. Go and read that and then tell me that companies are going to leave this country—a stable political environment, English-speaking and with long track records—and take their billions of dollars elsewhere. It is the No. 1 argument that I hear on that side of the room and it is rubbish. Yes, they will diversify their portfolios; they will always look for projects offshore to diversify their earnings—they need to do that from an exchange rate point of view. The idea that they are somehow going to dump Australia is false. We need to maintain our federal environmental powers in balance with the states. That is why this bill needs to be supported.