Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I am greatly heartened by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship's closing comments that other EMAs will proceed. It will be great when he actually delivers this one, despite the efforts of others on that side of the House this week and of those who support those on that side of the House.

The energy and resources sector is a crucial sector for Australia. It is crucial to the economy but, just as importantly, it is crucial for creating employment. It employs tens of thousands of Australians not just in Western Australia, not just in Queensland, not just in New South Wales, not just in Tasmania or South Australia or the Northern Territory, but also in Victoria. Many of those workers participate in the resources industry directly by flying in and out or by living in the resource regions, but almost as many if not more people—and the minister has said that for every one resource job there are three others, and I suppose that is right—actually benefit from the resource industry by creating services and goods for the industry to use.

So I was heartened when I heard on Friday morning that this EMA was being put in place. I thought, 'Finally the Labor Party are delivering something for the resources sector.' They have introduced a mining tax and, just as the industry was starting to digest that, they introduced a carbon tax—bigger than any other mining industry anywhere else in the world will have to face. Then just recently in the budget they introduced a withholding tax. I thought: 'Despite the fact that the government have done more to break down Australia's sovereign risk profile and done more to make sure we get less of our share of the investment dollar'—and we have seen Australia fall under the government, from getting 22 per cent of world investment in the resources sector to 15 per cent, and there is a very clear reason for that—'this time they had got it right.' Well, I would never want to play football with these guys. I played a bit of football in my younger days. There they were, the try line is wide open, the minister passes the ball to the Prime Minister, she drops it on the ground, they form a maul and then she kicks it into touch! There is a golden opportunity blown.

What we did not know at the time was that in that maul were the unions and the members of the Labor Party on the backbench who were not happy with this good news story. They wanted to see these projects stopped. They did not understand that these 1,500 workers would create jobs for 6½ thousand Australian workers. Because without these 1,500 people with those special skills that we cannot supply in Australia this project just will not happen. So, again, we saw something that could have been good for Australia completely messed up. That opportunity to improve the sovereign risk profile of Australia, once in this government's lifetime, was blown completely. We heard the assurance from the minister at the dispatch box that this is only the first of many EMAs, and I hope he is right. I hope so for the sake of Australian industry and for the resources sector and for Australians themselves who will rely on these EMAs to ensure that other projects—whether it is the Galilee Basin or another iron ore project or Gorgon—get up. This minister, though, has yet to deliver his first; he is yet to actually get it put in place.

Today we see from the caucus that the Labor Party has formed yet another committee as it seeks to portray the resources sector as something separate from the rest of Australia and as something that has to be harnessed in and tightly controlled—to form more committees and more oversights as if the resources sector is some sort of competitor to the rest of Australia. In actual fact, it complements Australia, it supports Australia, it creates wealth, it creates jobs and it gives this government money to spend. But I must admit I should have said 'waste', because that is the way Labor parties are: tax and spend, tax and spend.

We need the resources sector to continue growing. There is a window of opportunity out there. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of projects that need to proceed. They are getting jarred by a series of bad decisions by this government—

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