James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi. Does it not say a wonderful thing about this chamber that dissident crossbenchers, such as yourself, can chair a debate like this. I am sure you do it very well.

Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to hear the contributions of all of the previous speakers, but, just out of an abundance of caution, I have decided it might be helpful to put some facts on the record in a calm and considered manner. The substance of this debate is about an application for a loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to build a railway line. An application has been made and the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility is considering that application. The government has not made a decision, and nor will the government make a decision in this matter, because it is a decision for the infrastructure facility. So those in this debate who have sought to betray the fact that the government has already approved or is about to approve a concessional loan through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility are not correct. It is a matter for NAIF to consider against the rigorous criteria they have to assess all applications for infrastructure development in Northern Australia.

It is worth just spending a moment to think about what the purpose of NAIF is, why it was established and why it is, I think, a very sensible and measured way to northern development. Australians from across the political spectrum have shared a concern that we have not taken advantage of the unique opportunities in Northern Australia for development. For a range of reasons for many years, many opportunities in Northern Australia have not been captured by Australia, and this government's proposal to, in part, deal with that is to establish an infrastructure facility that can fund worthy projects of economic infrastructure in northern Australia. It is not all that different to the infrastructure that governments fund elsewhere in Australia. The roads that we fund, the bridges that we build and the dams that we build are all funded, in part, by government funding. The Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility is just a special vehicle to help ensure that is happening in northern Australia as it should happen.

It is also worth pointing out that sometimes in this debate it is put forward that the potential construction of this railway line from the Galilee Basin is for the Adani coalmine only. But one of the criteria of loans under the NAIF is to ensure that it has multiple purposes and that it cannot just be for the benefit of one company—the applicant in this case. It has to be able to be shared and used by others. Because it is economic infrastructure supported by the taxpayer, it has to be something that is made available generally to those who wish to utilise it. If this is approved and if this is constructed, it will not just be Adani that will benefit from it; other coalmining operations or similar operations in the Galilee Basin will also benefit from it. The Galilee Basin has huge economic potential, which I will come to in a moment.

These loans from the NAIF are made under commercial-like terms. They have to be paid back. Only 50 per cent of the debt can come from NAIF. The other 50 per cent of it has to come from the private sector. That ensures that private sector rigour is brought into the decision making. It is not just going to be a decision of government. It is not just going to be an interjection suggested before a slush fund—or political in its decision making—because private sector financing must also be made available. In my experience, private sector loan makers—banks and other institutions—do not typically put up money just for political purposes, and they do not put up money if they do not expect to get a decent return on it. In effect, these applications have to jump a double hurdle. They have to demonstrate to NAIF that they are worthy economic infrastructure for northern Australia and they have to demonstrate to a private sector partner that it stacks up on economic grounds that there will be a return on investment.

It is worth noting that this application is supported by the Queensland Labor government very strongly, and that this mine has been approved by the Queensland state government and has passed all the federal approvals too. In fact, I doubt there is a mining project in Australia which has been subject to greater difficulties in receiving its permits, not because of anything about the nature of the project itself, but because of the nature of the political opposition to it. Case after case after case has been run by environmental activists who often have no genuine or legitimate connection to the region or the area, but who construct a connection for legal purposes to try and obstruct this coalmine. They have singled it out for particular activism and attack through the legal system, and are taking advantage of the laws as they are today in an attempt to disrupt it, and they have failed. In every instance they have failed. The only thing that they have succeeded in doing is delaying the construction and start-up of this project through their extraordinary legal strategies to disrupt and delay the project, but they have never been successful in any of their legal challenges, nor does it appear that they are likely to be.

I think the truth of this matter is that the Greens are opposed not just to the Adani coalmine and not just to a Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility loan for a Galilee Basin rail project but to coalmining in general. That is their right. That is their view. They are entitled to strongly argue for that case, but they should be honest. This motion should not be about taxpayer financing for a railway. It should not just be about Adani. It should be about coal altogether. It should be about the fact that they believe that no more coalmines should ever be built, no more coal fired power stations should ever be built and no-one should burn coal ever again in the future to generate power. That is an ideological position that they hold; it is one that I do not think is supported by evidence. It is certainly not one that is formed taking into consideration the many nations in the world that still depend on coal-fired electricity, and who will depend on coal-fired electricity for many years to come according to every projection.

The minister, in commenting on this issue in question time earlier today, pointed out that in this century, in just the 17 years we have had in this century so far, there has been a 60 per cent increase in coal consumption. That is an extraordinary statistic when you consider all of the emphasis placed on renewable energy and the growth of renewable energy and the idea that that would somehow displace coal-fired generation. There is no realistic prospect that it will actually displace coal-fired generation for many years to come, so, in the meantime, the coal-fired power stations that exist today and the many more that are being built in countries like China and Japan and India will need to be supplied with coal.

We have a choice before us as a country. Do we want to supply that coal and be the economic beneficiaries of selling our resources? Do we want to supply that coal, which is a higher quality than much of the coal mined elsewhere in the world and which will be mined under much stricter environmental approvals and regulations than anywhere else in the world? Or do we want to surrender that economic opportunity, surrender the jobs and the export income that comes with it? Do we want to surrender the opportunity to ensure that higher quality, better coal is supplied to these coal-fired power stations? Do we want to ensure that they mine in countries with less stringent environmental standards, lower quality coal—ultimately to the detriment of the planet?

Perhaps when the Greens are running the world government, as they aspire to one day do, they will be able to stop coalmining everywhere and they will be able to stop coal-fired power stations everywhere. But in this day and age, all they do is have a few senators here in this chamber in an attempt to influence Australia's politics. So even if they were successful in stopping it in Australia, the reality is they are not going to stop it elsewhere in the world. It will occur; it will continue. It might as well continue to our benefit and to the environment's benefit with high-quality Australian coal.

I want to finish by making one point: we should bear in mind who the ultimate beneficiaries of the coal mine in Australia and of the exported coal are, other than those who will directly benefit from the jobs and investment in Australia. They are the obvious beneficiaries, but the ultimate beneficiaries are the people in countries like India who will be able to access electricity at low costs as a result of this mine. My former colleagues and friends at the Institute of Public Affairs did a report on this issue a number of years ago. It demonstrated that the coal mined and exported from the Adani coal mine alone could bring cheap, reliable, low-cost energy to 82 million Indians. In condemning this mine today, in condemning the infrastructure necessary to facilitate this mine and its construction, you are also condemning 82 million Indians to continue to burn dung and biomass and other low-quality fuels in their homes. You are condemning them to be, as the World Health Organization has found and identified, poisoned by burning those low-quality fuels in their homes when, alternatively, they could be connected to a reliable grid, a reliable energy source, that is much healthier for them, that is much cheaper for them and that is much more reliable for them. That is the choice we face today. There are still hundreds of millions of Indians today, to take one country as an example, who do not have access to reliable baseload low-cost energy. We can be part of the solution in ensuring that they are. We can be part of improving human health, which the World Health Organization has identified, by removing those poor-quality fuels that many countries still rely upon. I think Australia should make that choice. It is a good choice for Australia to make. We benefit from it; the world benefits from it; the poor of the world in particular benefit from it. I urge the Greens to reconsider their ill-conceived opposition to quality low-cost Australian coal.