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

As a senator from the National Party here today, I can say that there are a lot of people upset with us. Gee, we are not flavour of the month down here in Canberra! Today, everybody's at us. The press are all over us—we're doing all these terrible, evil things. I suppose my message back to the people of Central and North Queensland is: that's the way I like it. If we're doing things that are making people down here in Canberra upset, we're probably doing something good for you, because—I tell you what—the people down here in Canberra are not on your side. They're always trying to find ways to kill your job, to take away your industries, to deny opportunities for people in regional Australia. So you can take it as a given that, if people in Canberra are upset with the National Party, the National Party are fighting for you. That is the test, and, boy, are we meeting that test this week! Everybody is angry with us. Everybody is upset with us.

As I say, that is the way I like it, because I don't come to this place to make friends. I don't come down to Canberra, leave my family and have to go back through quarantine—that's the way it works now—to make friends in Canberra. That's not why I'm here. Other people might be interested in doing that; I don't care. I don't care that the restaurants haven't been open here in Canberra, because I don't care about making friends. I'm here to fight for people's jobs. I'm here to fight for people's futures. I'm here so that families in Central and North Queensland can have a future for their children working and living where they live. I don't want people's kids to have to move to a capital city just to get a job. That's why I fought for the Adani mine. There are 2,000 people working at that mine right now. It's about to export coal into a market that is absolutely desperate for coal right now.

Let's judge people on how good they have been at predicting things in the last few of years, because we were all told a few years ago that the Adani mine had no commercial case, it was never going happen and there were going to be robots. Do you remember that, Senator Roberts? Robots! There were going to be robots, or Indians maybe, sometimes, working as miners. Well, go out to Carmichael now. When has any Labor senator turned up there? Go out and meet the 2,000 people who have jobs, thanks to the fight and effort that we put in. That's what I and many of my Nationals colleagues are continuing to do here.

We learned today that this whole idea that we should sign up to net zero is actually because the US and UK want to us do it. That's apparently why we've got to do it. We didn't get a vote. There were a lot of concerns about the US presidential election last year. There were allegations of dead people voting and other people voting. There were no allegations that Australians voted. I don't think anybody here got a vote. But apparently now, because the US wants us to do it, we've got to do it too.

Well, I don't know if that's true, but what I do know is that signing up to net zero would be a massive sellout of Australia's interests. How would we build anything anymore under a net zero target? How are we going to build another Adani mine, given the demand for coal is through the roof? Everybody wants our coal. There is enough coal out there in the Galilee Basin for another five mines that can employ another 15,000 people if we have the guts to open them up. How are they going to do that if we sign up to a net zero target, because what will happen. We've all seen this before.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells, I'm not saying anything about your heritage here, but you've been here a while. You know how it works here in Canberra. If we set a net zero target we will weaponise the bureaucracy here in Canberra, which is not on your side. They will take an inch and run a mile, and anyone who wants to build a mine in this country need not apply because they'll have to offset all their emissions. What does that mean? They'll have to pay people to plant trees or do other things to get to this net zero. When they have to pay that—guess what?—that is a tax. That will mean a tax on every mine built in this country. It will mean a tax on every dam built in this country, because farming creates emissions too. There will even be a tax on airports. If you want to build an airport at the Great Barrier Reef to open up a new island for tourism, that will attract a tax. Already overseas courts in the UK have stopped airports because the UK government signed up to net zero. That has happened, and that is about to be our future. Our future is about to be what the UK is getting right now, which is petrol lines and energy shortages. They can't even feed themselves, because—guess what?—in the ultimate irony, they don't have enough carbon dioxide. They're running out of carbon dioxide, because you need gas to make that, and they now get all their gas from Putin, who's not giving it to them. This is madness, and we should put a stop to it.