Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to deal with some of the spurious arguments we've just heard from the previous speakers, but to start with I'd like to return to the substantive issues facing this country and why we should seek to use our natural resources to grow and develop our nation and create jobs. I believe that we have a strong future as a country as a manufacturing nation. I think we should be seeking to bring back manufacturing jobs here to this country, which we have, unfortunately, for too long seen hobbled—our manufacturing industry has been hobbled—with jobs disappearing to other countries. We have to face the facts that the policies we have pursued at least for the past 10 or so years have been ones of failure for our manufacturing sector. We have to face facts, particularly now the coronavirus epidemic has shown the fragility of the supply chains and the importance of having domestic manufacturing. We need to face facts.

The facts are that the last decade has been the first decade on record that the Australian manufacturing industry has gone backwards in real output, in real terms. The share of manufacturing as a percentage of our economy has been declining for some decades, as it has in most developed countries, but even during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s our manufacturing output continued to grow every decade, almost every year, even though it was a smaller share of the overall economy. The last 10 years have actually seen a decline, a decline in absolute terms, and that's a decline I think we should work to reverse. Because of that decline, we've seen fewer jobs in the manufacturing industry. In 1990, 1.2 million Australians worked in manufacturing. Today, the figure is around 900,000. It bottomed out at about 850,000 mid last year. So we've lost about 300,000 jobs in manufacturing over that time, and that's something we should seek to reverse.

It was summed up nicely by Senator Ayres that apparently there are some industries we can support now and some that are a third rail, at least for the Labor Party and the Greens, that we can't support. Senator Ayres said we should focus on industries like exporting coal. We should export coal according to Senator Ayres. Of course, given his contribution was on behalf of the Labor Party, that means they don't think we should use coal here; we should export it to other countries but not use it here. That is the position of the modern Australian Labor Party—that somehow it is okay for other countries to have access to our natural resources, to create jobs in their nations, to send back the goods for us saps to buy, but it's not good enough for us to use the same resources ourselves to create jobs in this nation. Well, I think that's a tower of absurdity; it's an absolute tower of absurdity that we would help empower, help arm other countries to compete against our own businesses but deny the same natural resources for the use of those same Australian businesses trying to compete on the world stage, trying to grow and develop their manufacturing base. It is ridiculous.

As Senator Ayres sort of implied—he didn't say it, but he implied it—there obviously is a market for the export of coal, or the Labor Party think there is. There are people in this country who are building coal-fired power stations. In fact, around three Hazelwood power stations—people might remember the Hazelwood Power Station that shut in Victoria; it was 25 per cent of Victoria's electricity supply—a week have been built in our region in the past decade, so there's a very strong market for Australian coal. Particularly given the high quality of our coal with the predominantly low ash content, it will be in greater demand as countries seek to improve their air pollution and the environmental circumstances in their country. There's a great demand for that. So, if there is a demand overseas, if other countries are using it and think it seems to be worthwhile for them to create manufacturing industries and create jobs, why would we deny ourselves access to the same resources? Why would we just say, 'No; nothing; not at all'? We can't even look into it. The only reason you can fathom that that position would have any kind of coherence is that the Labor Party cannot support it because of the votes they need in inner-city areas and the preferences they need from the Greens. That's why they have this absurd position, where they'll apparently support coalmines but just not the use of the coal in Australia. What the Labor Party support, basically, is that there should be a direct channel from the coalmine to Japan or Korea or China, and we can't touch that. It's got to go straight from the mine onto the ship and overseas, and none of it can be touched or put to use here in this country. That is the public position of the Labor Party. The reality is that all of us here, every day, rely on our high-quality Australian coal to get our energy, to get our electricity. In fact, I've just checked the figures right now—you can check them all the time—and in New South Wales 80 per cent of the power in this area is coming from coal-fired power. In Victoria it's 67 per cent.

I tell you what, Madam Acting Deputy President Stoker, I think I've been the only North Queenslander to actually contribute to this debate—and this is about a project in North Queensland. A lot of people are taking interest in North Queensland, which I welcome and love. But I am the only North Queenslander to take an interest here in this debate. I'll give you a guess what the figure is of coal-fired power being generated in North Queensland right now. You don't have to check a live app: it is zero. There are no coal-fired power stations in North Queensland. The last—the northernmost—coal-fired power station is at Stanwell, just west of where I live, in Rockhampton, and anywhere north of that has no coal-fired power stations—none at all. As I said, they're welcome to have their views, but, to be clear, the view of a bunch of southern Queenslanders and the Labor and Greens parties is that it's okay for us here to rely for the majority of our power on coal-fired power—to power our homes, to keep our lights on, to keep the factories running. That's okay. But for North Queenslanders: you can't touch it, you can't have any of it. You can't even think about building one there.

Why are Labor and the Greens so desperate to avoid supporting a $3.4 million feasibility study into something? Why are they so desperate to avoid even the question being asked? It's because, I think, they might not like the answer. That is the reason. There has been a study put in place into a coal-fired power station at Collinsville in recent years—in fact, it was commissioned by none other than Mr Wayne Swan, the world's greatest Treasurer apparently, according to some. He commissioned a study into a Collinsville coal-fired power station—I think it was a deal he had to do with Mr Bob Katter at the time. Mr Swan commissioned it. He didn't really want to do it, but he was forced to do it. The study came back with a report in 2014 from GHD, a respected engineering company: 'A major 800-megawatt coal-fired power station will put strong downward pressure on electricity prices.' It was pretty clear that, guess what, if you produce more power, you get lower power prices. It's not rocket science. And that, fundamentally, is why they don't want the question to be asked—because they're afraid of that answer. And that answer would make the absurd position of the Labor Party—that we'll export coal but not use it—even harder to sustain.

I want to get onto and rebut some of the arguments that have been put forward here. I've been away for a little while. This is my first day back in a couple of months, and I think there is a little confusion as to what democracy is. We are in a democratic chamber. We've all been elected here. And in the other place they go to an election every three years. They've all been elected. But there seems to be a little confusion about exactly what democracy is.

An honourable senator: Give us a reminder!

I thought we lived in a democratic system, where governments and parties, and all of us, put our policies out before an election and take them to the people, and there's a vote, and then the party that has the greatest number of people over there in the other place gets to form a government, and the government, generally, will seek to implement all those promises and policies that it put forward to the Australian people and that were voted on.