Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted to rise to speak on these bills, the Climate Change Bill 2022 and Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022, which truly must be one of the most poorly considered legislative positions taken in recent times, not because of its intention to reduce emissions—I think we all understand that we were on a pathway to emissions reductions under the previous government, and that will continue—but it is the speed of this legislation and the impact it will have on the very most vulnerable in our communities: families and regional people. Right across Australia, there will be an impact on investment and others.

I rise to fly the flag for people facing the terrible prospect of cutting their food budgets and power use thanks to this rushed and ill-considered push for legally enforceable emissions reductions. The energy minister, Minister Bowen, has already made the point that legislation was not required. Immediately upon forming government, the new government went to the UN and made the new emissions target. Yet we have charged ahead with legislation that is going to open the door to greater activist situations and lawfare, which will pull up projects that are critical to investment in and the development of this nation.

Legislating emissions reduction targets is the hallmark of a government that doesn't trust its people. It reeks of a way of going about governance which sees high targets being set and people then being penalised, instead of innovation and technical change being incentivised, which was the pathway we were on before. I am nervous, particularly for the resources sector, a sector that we rely on for the great royalties and tax income. The money pays for us to have high environmental standards that allow us to see more women and Indigenous people going into mining companies in well-paid, purposeful medical jobs. These are all things that are now threatened by this headlong rush into emissions reductions within too short a time frame.

I have been speaking to resources companies right across Australia, who are telling me that, particularly following AEMO's report last week, South Australia will be looking at further blackouts, that Victoria and New South Wales will suffer under the same going forward over the next two years. But we already know we do not have suitable energy generation in this country. We know the investment in transmission lines that is required to bring online more renewable power but we also know that we don't have the capacity to mine the critical minerals and rare earths that are required to build solar panels and wind farms within the time frame that this legislation is outlining. We actually can't do it. So mining and resources companies who have to make the decision about investments, multibillion-dollar investments over the longer term, are now looking at Queensland in particular but Australia more broadly and saying, 'Is this the place that we can trust to invest our dollars?' And there is a big question mark over that.

We compete in the world. The Fraser Institute confidence survey that is done every year has seen Queensland specifically slip from 12th down to 18th for investor confidence, and has seen the understanding of regulation and confidence in the state slip from third to 19th. These are appalling statistics. Western Australia, I am pleased to say, still sits at first. But already these companies are looking at the slowness of approvals, the subjective nature of approvals, and now they have had to add one more element: whether or not there is going to be adequate supply of power to run their projects. We know that they are now having to run the ruler over Australia as a destination and compare it to places like Canada, which has invested in pumped hydro and doesn't have the emissions reductions that are in line with some of the power generation in this country, so they will be considering investing in Canada, in South America, in the US, in South Africa. These are all places that are competing with Australia for investment dollars.

Investment dollars in Australia do a range of things. It isn't just the introduction of royalties. It isn't just the introduction of company taxes. It is also the personal PAYG taxes that are paid by those people employed by mining companies. It is not just miners and engineers; it is the chefs in the camps, the people right across the industry, who are receiving at least double the average salary in that sector than the average wage in this country, and they won't be replaced. They won't be replaced by any other industry that we are considering. These companies train our young people. They give them careers, well-paid careers but in innovation and technology that we can then export around the world. Whether it is mine rehabilitation, environmental scientists or engineers, Australia leads the way in a range of sectors that are associated with our resources industry. We should be proud of that. We should be proud of that and encouraging that, and doing everything we can to ensure those investment dollars come to this nation, rather than go to another jurisdiction.

When we consider the tax income, we think about big companies. We think about the big industry leaders who invest in this nation but we also have to remember the juniors, the explorers, the drillers. When you consider every project that talks about hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in investments, those dollars are spent on Australian based businesses who carry out the infrastructure. Whether it is building a new rail line or whether it is building roads, camps, supplying the food, the tyres, these are all spent all spent on Australian businesses who then in turn pay their own tax, employ their own employees. The depth of the impact that this ill-thought-through and rushed out legislation will have on such a critically important part of our economy and our nation, I think, is terrifying. We should do well to consider what it is that we are proposing.

In the dissenting report that was tabled by the coalition about this legislation we looked sincerely at the idea of how we can review the impact of the legislation. We would like the Productivity Commission, as the most logical, well-resourced and most focused group, to review the impact of this legislation as it would play out in Australia. It needs to be regular—at least five-yearly—and it needs particularly to understand the impact on regional Australia, which of course, is where most of these resource activities happen. It needs to understand the impact on energy generation. We have not talked at all about the requirement for new transmission lines to allow renewable projects to be hooked up to the grid. That requires new transmission lines. It requires more copper than we are currently mining, yet we are not seeing new copper projects being brought online in a speedy and fast manner. In fact, we heard from the Japanese ambassador several weeks ago and, more recently, last night at a Minerals Week function where he gave a speech which clearly outlined the undermining of confidence that Japanese companies, amongst others, now have and their uncertainty about continuing to invest in Australia, not just in coal but also in copper, hydrogen and rare earths. These are all critical investment decisions.

Australia is a relatively small country, with its 24 million people. We do not have the investment dollars to build some of these projects ourselves. We rely on being a destination for investment dollars. I am worried about what this means for Australia not next year and not even in three years time but for the Australia of 2030, the Australia of 2040 and the Australia that my grandchildren will live in. We hear a lot about emissions reduction being the most critical thing we can do. We had a plan. We had an effective plan to be able to use technology and not taxes, to use innovation and the very smart people that we have working in this country to slowly, methodically and in an organised manner reduce emissions in this country. Instead, we are driving out investment dollars. We are driving out our resources sector. We are smashing the regional parts of our country.

I am worried that we will slip back to being a very basic economy, one like that we used to have in years gone by when we didn't enjoy the high salaries and the high quality of life. We in this country are blessed that we have a quality of life and a standard of education and of healthcare services—even with our limited skills and workforce at the moment we still have childcare systems—that are all something that we can be incredibly proud of. We do it in a way that is to the world's highest standards environmentally, and also to make money. It is not a dirty word for companies to be able to make money and to be able to make investment decisions this country. Where are our trucks going to come from? How are our drivers going to be able to get a return on their investment if they're not driving materials around Western Australia and Queensland and into northern Australia. Where are we going to get the resources and the companies that are paying for these services?

Young people want to engage. They want a future. They want it to be safe. They want to work in an industry where workplace safety is important. They want to work in an industry where environmental outcomes are important. They want to be paid for it. They want to be able to pay off their home. They want to be able to buy a new car. They want to be able to afford to train themselves, their family and their kids to have a better lifestyle than the one we have today.

I sincerely worry that this rush to legislation, this rush to these emissions reductions targets is not going to end up in the best outcome for Australia, much less for the world as a whole. We have some of the highest standards of coal, both metallurgical and thermal, in the world. But if you believe the rhetoric we would stop mining our highest quality resources and push those offshore to companies and countries that don't have the same standards we have, that don't have the high grade of minerals and coal that we have. So whilst Australia might have reduced its emissions, the rest of the world won't have. Surely that is not the outcome that we seek to pursue as a nation. We have a responsibility, both in this Senate and in the other place, to be making decisions that are good for this country, that are good for our young people, that enable everybody to be secure and confident, and, as I stated, that are not forcing people to make the decision about whether or not to buy food or to turn on the electricity.

These are very, very serious discussions we are having, and I'm concerned that the practical nature of our nation and of the industries that we rely on are being lost. They're being lost in a really lovely statement: we've got to do more for the environment; we've got to do more for the world. Nobody disagrees with living in a cleaner, well-managed planet and nation. But what we do have to seriously understand is that we live in a very competitive world. We compete every day, as a nation, for investment dollars, for our young people to stay in this country and work, and for the high quality of life that we have come to enjoy on the basis of the development of resources and agriculture in this land. This legislation is looking at this and it will see this come to an end, and there is no replacement. There is no alternative to mining, to agricultural production for food security for Australia and for our near neighbours.

I cannot support this legislation. I would hope that the government would, at the bare minimum, consider passing an amendment that would see the Productivity Commission review the legislation and its impact on our nation, that it would do it regularly and that it allows for a pause to be set—as we're seeing is happening in the UK, in Germany, in Europe. They are discovering that the impact of emissions reduction legislation is it's too fast; it just leads to the loss of jobs, to increased electricity prices that will most impact the people in our society who are least able to get around it. The leafy green inner-city seats are not going to be impacted by this. They will be able to pay their way out of the impact of increased cost of food, of electricity—and they may even be able to go without the well-paid jobs that the resources, mining and agricultural sectors provide. This is our responsibility, to look after those people and ensure we don't legislate against them.