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

It gives me no joy at all to speak on this motion, because, at the heart of it, the ability for Australia to extract more of its resources is absolutely imperative to the economic and social success of this nation. We are a great mining country. We are a great gas country. They have powered and funded the fact that we are a First World nation. We should be proud of that. We do it to the highest standards in the world, and not only do we do it for Australia's benefit but it has allowed us to become a reliable trading partner and a dependable defence ally. That is what resources have done in this country. They made us one of the First World nations.

Unfortunately, though, we are also a very trusting nation. We are so trusting that we have allowed foreign influenced money to flood in and provide soft influence on our policy debate and setting. I spoke about this yesterday. We have organisations, like the Environmental Defenders Office, whose sole purpose on Earth seems to be shutting down mining activity in this country, including gas projects. But, when they were discovered to be confecting evidence and when they were discovered to be running against the national interest, the courts ordered a significant penalty and fine. Of course, the EDO couldn't pay for that fine themselves, so a huge loan was given to the organisation to pay it, and now we discover that that money has been forgiven. We don't know who is funding it.

I reflect on what happened in the UK. A huge antifracking campaign was run, which meant that the English voters were convinced that they should not allow gas extraction in the UK and offshore to go ahead. It was later discovered that the money for the campaign had come from Russian sources, which is a country that was doing its best to keep the UK poor, both energetically and financially. In this country, whether it's donations to the Environmental Defenders Office or the Australia Institute and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis—both have refused to provide me with their funding sources at Senate estimates and at committee hearings.

These groups are funding this kind of debate. They're saying we should stop using economics and a business model—which Senator Hanson referred to—to attract more investment into this country, to see more taxes, more onshore and offshore royalties and more incredibly well-paid jobs. You receive about $400,000 a year to be a cook on an offshore rig. You receive huge salaries, and that benefits all of Australia, but it is a competitive space. We are already seeing investment going to Alaska, investment going to the Gulf of Mexico and investment not coming here, because we are making it too hard—whether it be environmental groups or this kind of changing the rules and changing the goalposts, when it comes to investment, after a decision has been made.

There are a couple of reasons why this motion doesn't work, and I want to work through that, but I do want everybody to understand that the offshore foreign money that is funding anti-fossil-fuel projects will leave us poor. It is not Australian. We should be frightened of the influence of these groups that hold themselves out as being energy experts and as being interested in Australia's wellbeing, because they are not.

The reservation that has been proposed this morning, a 15 per cent reservation in Commonwealth waters, is a noble idea, but I'll tell you why it won't work: we are extracting gas in places that have no infrastructure to support it. Western Australia, which has a 15 per cent reservation, has absolutely benefited from that. They are using it to extract a portion of the gas from their onshore developments and from the offshore developments. That is terrific. When we were in government, through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, we provided funding to the Perdaman project, a terrific project that's going to use some of that gas to develop fertiliser for use here in this country. But what it doesn't allow—when we talk about the big projects that are offshore in the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia—is the sort of pipeline investment that's proposed by One Nation. It's billions and billions of dollars.

But I'll give you some good news: as at right now, we have drills in the ground extracting gas from the Beetaloo in the Northern Territory. In Queensland, the minister there has just approved further exploration leases to extract gas from the Taroom Trough, which will also have some liquids with it from which we should be able to develop more Australian fuel refining. These are close to the places where they're needed, close to the big manufacturing hubs. But I'll tell you where it's not close to: it's not close to Victoria, the state that has crippled itself. It has got manufacturing jobs—forget the businesses; it's the jobs of Victorians—being forced out of that state, either into states like Queensland or, worse, offshore because of this agenda to shut down gas extraction in places like Victoria. Even Western Australia has been suckered into this antifracking campaign, which has meant that they have bans on fracking there too. This is why it doesn't work. Senator Hanson talked about being businesslike and having common sense. Well, this is what we have to focus on: what is practical and what is in Australia's best interests.

Let me turn now to the PRRT. This is another agenda that has been run by anti-fossil-fuel activists. They think that we can change the investment mandates and decisions and that people will continue to invest in this country, no questions asked. That's not businesslike. That's not common sense. They're telling me with their dollars that they are investing somewhere else. So the changes the government made recently to reduce the amount of deductions that can be made to 90 per cent didn't create a huge influx of cash. It brought forward a small amount, but we were always going to receive over $2 billion in PRRT last year. Now we've received $2.4 billion, and that amount will continue to grow because we allow companies to offset their capital costs before they start paying tax. For those people who are watching or listening, it's a supertax. It's 40 per cent, not the 25 per cent that Senator Pocock wants to introduce. We'd actually get less PRRT under his proposal. That's why it has got to be carefully understood and cannot follow the agenda of these anti-Australian anti-fossil-fuel activists who have crept into our civil discussion. They are affecting our policies, they are affecting Australians' beliefs, and it is beholden on those of us who care about Australia and love Australia to speak up and to stop being sucked in by people who want to see us poor and in the dark. Queensland's and Western Australia's reservations are working very well in those states. As a senator, coming here, I believe in states' rights. I don't want the Commonwealth to run all over the top of us, the way they do with vegetation management and environmental overlays—things that slow down and stop projects that affect Australians.

I take the interjection from over there. It doesn't kill the planet because we operate to the highest standards in the world. Under the Greens, we shut down most of our forestry industry but we're okay to import it from countries that have absolutely no environmental standards at all. That's what happens when environmentalists get out of control.

Our domestic reservations in states work—unlike in Victoria, where it is a complete disaster. We are seeing such a negative impact on our future viability. Gas is the pointy end—remember when it was coal? Remember when coal was the pointy end for all these activists? I think we even had senators chaining themselves to trains. But coal is the cheapest form of electricity in Australia. It provided the ability for states to open up, to attract manufacturing, and then gas came along to further support that development. But let's be clear. You're fighting against gas today, but tomorrow it will be the next agenda. It'll be broad-scale agriculture. It'll be food production from cattle. It'll be broad-scale wheat and other crops. Be afraid of what this agenda is because it is dangerous for Australia.

We are absolutely having a cost-of-living crisis in this country. We are absolutely having a fuel crisis in this country. But, please, this dangerous soft policy influence that is being funded by foreign actors who will not disclose their donations and who are, in many cases, getting tax deductibility status from the government—the Environmental Defenders Office receives tax deductibility status, but, at the same time, is paying millions of dollars in penalties for falsely confecting evidence. When we talk about a gas reservation in this land, be clear. It's got to be practical. It's got to be in the places where we need it, and it has to be on a scale that we can use.

Do you know what 15 per cent of gas from offshore would do to the Australian market? Well, you couldn't get it here. That's why we'll never know that. The infrastructure doesn't exist. Thanks to the unions, thanks to the Maritime Union, we have cabotage in this country. You can't even put it on a ship from Western Australia and sail it around to the gas-poor state of Victoria. You can't do it. Legislation doesn't allow it. That's the sort of stuff that we should focus on fixing, not this absolute rubbish of sending messages to the people who invest in this country, who paid $21 billion in corporate taxes, state royalties, PRRT—and that doesn't include the PAYG on hundreds of thousands of Australians that receive a salary at least double the average. We are threatening all those people. We are threatening communities like Roma and Chinchilla who now have farmers able to stay on their properties. They can send their kids to boarding school. This gives them choices.

That's what this sort of discussion does. It is dangerous. I'm putting it on the record now: if we keep attacking investment in this country, we will be poor. We will be dark, and guess where the activists will move next? They won't really care, will they? They will have done their job here. For people who scoff and laugh at this, we have plenty of countries where this has worked. This worked in Argentina. In the 1970s and 1980s they moved to a different model, and they had to subsidise gas companies to come back and assist them. They also shut down their beef industry because they decided beef was too expensive. They stopped exporting it, and beef got very difficult to invest in.

The final point I'll leave you on, for people who think that Qatar and Norway are some sort of textbook example, is that the reason why they receive more in gas taxes is that they pay for the investment. They pay. Is Australia prepared to pay the $30 billion or $40 billion that it would take to get up one of those offshore projects? You would have to take it out of Medicare, the PBS, roads, schools and hospitals. If that's the debate you want to have, let's have that, but stop with this rubbish. (Time expired)