Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Well, here we are. For decades now, Labor governments have entered into political stitch-up deals with their coalition partners, the Australian Greens. They've put political convenience ahead of working families and our sustainable forestry and farming industries. Here we are: another day, another decade in the Australian Senate and another stitch up—not for any technical reason required in the legislation or because anything needs to be done before the end of the year but simply for the political goals of the Albanese government. It's a tried and tested pattern of betrayal, turning cynical deal making into an art form and turning their backs upon families and workers who once supported them and their party. We are now watching this pattern repeat.

From the start, the Greens have been really clear about what they demanded and what they got. In their own press release, they were very clear. They boasted that they had secured the end of the regional forestry agreements. Those exemptions within 18 months have gone.

This exemption has been the cornerstone of regulatory certainty for the native forestry industry for nearly 30 years. Removing the RFA exemption is not a technical amendment; it is the structural dismantling of a system that has allowed a sustainable industry to operate with long-term planning and measurable environmental protections. The Greens describe ending the RFA exemption as a spanner in the works of the native forest logging industry. They celebrate it as winning extra tools to fight the forestry industry. So, for the minister to stand up and say there is nothing to see here by getting rid of the RFAs—I beg to differ, Minister; I think your coalition partners have a huge issue. They are celebrating this as the mechanism by which they can end native forest logging in this country. He talks a big game on New South Wales and Tasmania as the only states with RFAs. Do you know why? Because Victoria, my home state, doesn't have an RFA. This is what industry has actually said—I'm very happy to read it into the Hansard:

The loss of Victoria's RFA last year has had a terrible impact on local jobs and communities and undermined new plantation establishment.

In fact, my National Party colleague Darren Chester only just last week was down in Yarram, a small dairying and forestry community, where the local sawmill closed down and 70 people lost their jobs, because the Labor government in Victoria got rid of the regional forestry agreement.

So, Minister, these mechanisms have real impacts in the real world. They are required by the Greens for their ideological outcomes, but there are 70 families a month out of Christmas whose parents don't have a job. That's what's happening as a result of this. What the Australian Forest Products Association has also said is this:

Under the EPBC reforms, the removal of Regional Forest Agreements (RFA)—which have effectively served the nation and managed our forests sustainably for decades—will strangle the native forest industry in green tape and put at risk any future plantation investment. As the Federal Court confirmed last year, RFAs are an alternative mechanism by which the objects of the EPBC Act can be achieved.

So, Minister, empty words in this chamber are cold comfort to families who are losing their jobs in communities far away from Labor Party MPs and senators, in regional communities.

It's not just the forestry sector. The National Farmers' Federation calls this an outrage. They are bitterly disappointed by the agreement between the government and the Greens. They've warned that it will create new risks and new layers of complexity for people who manage more than half of Australia's landmass, the Australian agricultural sector. We all wanted to support genuine reform to what has been a complex and unworkable act, quite frankly. We all want a genuine reform. But we can't support this deal, because the detail is either unclear, untested or unworkable. The absence of detail around definitions and how the complexity contained within this legislation is going to work in the real world is shocking. The fact that this is now going to continue to be examined by a Senate inquiry just shows you what a farce of an operation is being run here. When the Senate actually looks under the bonnet, gets all the stakeholders together, gets their feedback and recommends changes based on that consultation, Minister, are we going to be back here in March or June next year moving amendments to yet another suite of government legislation because you got the drafting wrong again? The number of times this chamber has had to amend your own legislation over the last 3½ years is embarrassing.

So there are concerns about the continued use provision and its removal. It's a provision that has allowed for the routine management of regrowth for decades for Australian farmers, not for some dirty, big corporate farm. You're a former agriculture minister. These provisions have actually allowed for basic land stewardship, weed control, feral pest management and bushfire mitigation. Hello! Thank you, Labor! You're not able to do that at all.

One of the things that I would have liked to have seen in the reforms of the EPBC Act is the removal of the moratorium on nuclear energy. That's why I'm foreshadowing amendments on behalf of the opposition to remove the ban on nuclear, amending both the EPBC Act and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act. Do you know what? We want to lower emissions, and we want to stay a rich economy. We want to be able to provide world-class jobs in advanced manufacturing. We want to be able to power the data centres required for artificial intelligence in coming decades, and we're not going to be able to do that with windmills and solar farms.

Why can't we, as an advanced economy with a backyard full of uranium, do what every other nation that is as rich and prosperous as us is doing and use nuclear energy as part of the mix of our energy system? Right now the renewables-only push has pushed energy prices up in excess of 37 per cent. That doesn't hurt just mum and dad when they get their power bill and it's gone through the roof; it hurts every bit of our economy—every doctor's surgery, every hospital, every data centre, every school, every factory. In a country like ours, we need to be able to make metal, in our big smelters and refineries. If we don't make it here at home it'll be coming in from China, and we know that is not about being a sovereign country, which the Prime Minister talks a lot about.

Energy security is important. If you care about the environment, you want to have low-emissions energy powering our economy, and the very best source of that is nuclear energy. So I will be moving this amendment to make that a reality, just like in other countries, or to at least remove the ban so we can start having a sensible, respectful conversation about how we're going to power our nation in decades and centuries to come. It is a shame that the Labor government has chosen to prioritise political expediency and punching out media releases at the end of a parliamentary sitting calendar year, rather than getting the results of this right.

I think it's a shame on the Australian Greens, but at least they're upfront about the fact that they're up for a deal. How the Labor party conducted itself and how the Labor party continues to treat this chamber—and to Senator Pocock's very sensible commentary, why couldn't we sit all through the night, like we did when we were in government and were putting through significant reforms in certain areas of our country? The Senate has to do its job, and then you still get the deal but we've actually held you to account.