Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

In this appropriations debate today I want to talk about the city of Gladstone and how four issues swirl around Gladstone and will impact on Gladstone in one way or another. Gladstone, as you know, is the port city in the northern part of my electorate. It has a population of about 28,000, and the Calliope shire, with another 16,000, adjoins it. It is known as the port city to the world, as indeed it is. It is responsible for 12 per cent of Australia’s exports by volume, which is quite remarkable for a city of that size. Its main export commodity is coal. It has other export commodities, including alumina, aluminium, chemicals and timber, but it is essentially a coal port. It is Australia’s second biggest coal port. I will talk about coal, Kyoto, nuclear energy and infrastructure because all these things impact on Gladstone. It is a very good city. It is a city that does things well.

Recently, the Gladstone Observer, the local paper, polled its readers, asking them whether the coal industry should be restricted to protecting the environment, and 60 per cent of the respondents said no. That is not surprising, given that it is the economic powerhouse of Central Queensland and much of the wealth of Central Queensland comes from coal. Five years ago, the Port of Gladstone was exporting 35 million tonnes of coal. Last year, it was up to 43 million tonnes and, as it comes on stream with a new loader at Wiggins Island, it will move up towards 70 million tonnes.

If you look across Australia, you will see that coal is responsible for $24 billion worth of income to this country, $14 billion of it from Queensland. It is responsible for 130,000 jobs. That is a lot of jobs. All around Central Queensland, in the coalfields and in the great towns of Dysart, Moranbah and Emerald and so on, there are many coalmines and more to come on stream when the Surat Basin is opened up as a result of the recently announced rail line. At first, it was thought there might be five mines; it could be as high as nine. So there is a vast rail network and also many rail workers dependent on this. It is one of the most efficient rail systems in Australia. In fact, Queensland is the only state that has profit-making railways and a lot of it is pinned on the Central Queensland system.

Gladstone is also the hub of engineering. There is an engineering alliance, which is both a think tank and a practical group, that gets things done in and around Gladstone and its hinterland. We have a university, a TAFE and a group apprenticeship scheme, all heavily dependent on coal or affiliates of coal in one form or another. So you can understand that I am very sensitive about it. Another thing that flows from that is the varieties of coal. There are several varieties of coal, but we have a particularly clean, steaming coal that is much in demand from that area. By using that in the three powerhouses of Central Queensland—that is, Stanwell, Gladstone and Callide, which itself is in three subpowerhouses—you get a degree of reliability, a triangular grid, which you have to have for the aluminium industry. The one thing you cannot have with aluminium is a close-down of power, a freeze-up of the aluminium, as it is extraordinarily expensive. So it is an integral part.

Why we get these industries like aluminium and alumina and chemical companies and why magnesium and nickel have been active there is the low-cost coal fired power. So the answer is not to close these down but to get involved in technologies that reduce greenhouse gas. That goes to the design of powerhouses. As was said in question time today, the government is spending almost $2 billion on the whole climate change agenda, but $1.1 billion of that is for the development of low-emissions and renewable technologies.

In the 2004 white paper, the government spoke about $500 million for the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, which was the subject of today’s question; $1 million for the Renewable Energy Development Initiative; and $75 million for the Solar Cities program. They are all important, but I concentrate on the first two because they are the ones that could be important to Gladstone. We really need to advance the cause of sequestration because that will be critical in maintaining that industry.

The other great threat to the industry, of course, is Kyoto. If Kyoto is to go ahead in its present form—and I choose my words carefully; I said ‘in its present form’—then Gladstone will not be a beneficiary. We have signed Kyoto but we have not ratified it, and not without good reason. The United States, China, India and Korea, all industrial competitors of ours, have not signed; nor would China or India as developing countries be required to have very strenuous targets—in fact, not any targets initially. So what we have is about 46 per cent of the capacity of the world’s industrial countries not recognising Kyoto in one form or another. So what a silly situation it would put Australia into! In Europe there are another four or five countries that are not meeting Kyoto targets, and there is one in Asia. Spain, Italy, Germany and Japan are responsible for another 11 per cent. Take 11 per cent and add that onto 46 per cent and you are up around 57 per cent. Why would Australia walk into a trap like that? That would be tantamount to trying to run industry in Australia with one hand tied behind your back.

The other thing it would mean is that, effectively, in putting a premium on power that drives all that industry in Gladstone, it would export Australian jobs offshore. That would be the effect. The member for Brand, Kim Beazley, knew that when he came to the last election. He came out with this line: ‘We’ll get special arrangements for Gladstone.’ Everyone knows that, once you put your signature on the dotted line, you are into the Kyoto agenda. I do not think Australia should do so until those emitters that are emitting 46 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases and the other 11 per cent that are not getting anywhere near their targets do something about it. Then I think there is a case for us to get involved.

It is clear that a lot of the European countries are not meeting their targets. Just to name a few, for example, as I said before, we have Germany, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands and then, in our own area, Japan and New Zealand. Then we have Norway, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. We are going to sign up when we are probably one of the few countries in the world that are going to meet our target. What sort of dills would we would be to do that?

I am not against a whole range of measures to improve the environment. I favour wind energy, I am a supporter of biofuels and ethanol, I am a supporter of gas sequestration and I am a supporter of using gas as a substitute for coal where it is appropriate. So let us have an end to this fear campaign that is being driven around Gladstone.

Of course, it reaches its high point in Gladstone—there is a union campaign now to call me Nuclear Neville. I just want to make my position very clear in the parliament regarding what I have to say about nuclear power. I think it is an informed debate that all Australians have to have. I am not saying I would sign up to it, but I am saying we need to have a strong debate. We need to ask whether nuclear power is an economic and safe alternative for Australia. Can we, with 22 million people, really sustain nuclear power? It might be that we cannot. Might it have some strategic importance feeding, although not necessarily in the area, the Melbourne and Sydney basins? Is it competitive with coal in Australia? So the economic and safety argument obviously has to be the first one.

The second part of the debate is that we have 40 per cent of the world’s uranium—and Canada has an almost equal amount, another 40 per cent—and we should be asking how we harness that important resource that in the future may be one of the great saviours of the planet in the sense that it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We can look at the countries that have oil, particularly those in the Middle East and in the central and northern parts of South America. The oil cartel in those countries impose a tremendous premium on the rest of the world. While I am not suggesting that Australia should act in a similar manner, if we have the new resource for the next generation, should we not be thinking of how we can value add to it? Should we not be enriching that uranium in Australia and selling it on the overseas market to those countries we know will use it responsibly, to those that are signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and not just willy-nilly? We could be an influence for good in the sense that we would control the manufacture of the enriched uranium and we would sell it to those countries that were going to use it appropriately and, in that way, value add to the product in Australia. That is the second debate we need to have.

The third debate is: if there is going to be nuclear power in the future, how do we ensure that Australia handles it properly? How do we store it? Of course, the federal government is looking to a site in the Northern Territory to do that. Geologically, Australia has some of the best places in the world for a repository and perhaps, as part of this debate, we should be asking whether there is a future for us to do that.

The other question we should ask as part of that nuclear debate is whether everything is as dangerous as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl or whether the world has moved on from there. The answer is, yes, it has. I do not know if honourable members were watching  a science program on the ABC the other night that dealt with a new technology, known as pebble bed nuclear reactors, that Dr Dennis Jensen, one of our own members, is across. In pebble bed technology, the uranium is encased in a ceramic and in that way you have many minireactors as part of your reactor. That particular technology is infinitely safer than anything that was at Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

We really have to ask ourselves whether we are looking at the science in this country well enough. Have we informed ourselves or do we say what Peter Beattie said: ‘It is never going to come to Queensland. We will introduce a bill through the parliament and we will never have nuclear power in Queensland.’ I think that will be a bill that the Queensland government or a subsequent Queensland government will regret and will probably have to change. This sort of populist approach is quite silly. I am not here and now on this day advocating that we should go to nuclear power, but I am advocating that we have an informed debate that is not simply driven by fear.

Australia was pretty responsible with emissions in the period between 1990 and 2004, but we can probably do better. During that period, our economy grew by 57.9 per cent whereas our emissions grew by only 2.3 per cent. Some might say that 2.3 per cent was still not so hot; nevertheless, if we could continue to bring that down, that could become a very important thing for all of us.

I do not think I am alone in asking for a debate on this. On 7 June last year on 2NM the member for Hunter said, ‘There is a case for adding value to it’—meaning uranium—‘in the form of nuclear power generation.’ I am not as fearful of nuclear power generation as some people are. It is true that most of Europe uses it. I am not having a crack at the member for Hunter—I think he has been commendably honest. I would like to think that in a bipartisan way we can talk about this and see if we can have a range of measures—sequestration for coal, perhaps nuclear power, wind power, hydro, gas; we need to have a suite of these things including solar power as well in our homes—and in that way make life better for all Australians and particularly for a place like Gladstone. I do not think we will ever see nuclear power in Gladstone because with its abundance of steaming coal it would probably be the last place you would go to put nuclear power.

Finally, I want to talk about infrastructure. The future of Gladstone also depends on being able to control its infrastructure. We have this idea that the companies can pay for the infrastructure. If they want to go to Gladstone, they can do that. But, of course, in point of fact they do not. There you have 28,000 people, which is a very small rate base, having to accept industries of $2 billion, $3 billion and $4 billion in value and the roads and rail connections and all of that. Although the companies pay for some of that, the downstream effect in the communities, whether it is in civic centres, libraries, health services, roads, water or sewerage, is that it puts cities like Gladstone under enormous pressure—a pressure far beyond the capacity of the rate base to handle.

Even though Gladstone will not be in my electorate after this federal election, I still have a great sense of responsibility and I will fight for these things right up until I leave the Gladstone area. We have to get more arterial roads into that area. One of them in particular is called Kirkwood Road, which comes off the Bruce Highway. Back on 7 June 2004, the then Minister for Transport and Regional Services, John Anderson, announced AusLink. One of the things in the initial AusLink statement was that the port city of Gladstone would have a special AusLink corridor. I believe that corridor should come in from Benaraby on the Bruce Highway, across the southern suburbs of Telina, Emmerdale and New Auckland of Gladstone and go across the Callemondah overpass and along a road known as Red Rover Road to the powerhouse. That will not mean a lot to members, but in effect it is an arced bypass road right across the southern part of Gladstone.

I found to my surprise that, when I went to push this, the state government opposed it, despite the fact the Labor candidate in the last state election was asking me to join him in getting Kirkwood Road built. I found out after the election that the local main roads department does not even favour it. We have to start talking honestly about these things. Gladstone and cities like that are not going to progress unless we do something about it. Shortly the Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services will table a report. I cannot talk about the content of that report, but I can tell you that, from the evidence we received, there are port problems in most of Australia’s major port cities—access problems—and those are problems we must address in the future. Gladstone needs to be at the top of that list.

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