Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party, Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I'm thankful for the opportunity to respond to what has been absolute twaddle. We'll give a couple of lessons to the member for McMahon. Out in the real world, there's a thing called a material safety data sheet. He should go and look some of them up. If we're going to have tens of thousands of acres of solar panels in this country, it's a responsible government that will deal with them in an environmentally friendly way when they come to the end of their working lives. Those opposite may not know this, but solar panels actually deteriorate over time. Their output deteriorates to the point where eventually they're not worth having and are removed. They get damaged—they get hit by hail—and they have to be disposed of appropriately. If those opposite are seriously saying that we shouldn't have a plan to deal with these issues, well, they are lost—lost once again.

I'll say this to the member for McMahon as well, who raised bushfires. From someone who lives in an area affected by bushfires, in regional Queensland, there are three things which come into play for bushfires: the fuel load, the ignition source and oxygen. If state governments continue to not deal with hazard reduction burns and if they continue to not decrease the levels of hazard in terms of the fuel load, then these results will continue. Mr Deputy Speaker, I know you've been out there as well, in your former life. You know that, if you're out there standing in front of a fire which has 40 years of fuel load on the ground and there's a 30 kilometre-an-hour wind up its backside, it will be a massive fire coming towards you. You would really want the state government to have dealt with this issue beforehand. These things can be dealt with, the risk can be reduced and we can have a better outcome.

I say to those opposite that the questions remain the same for their policies: What's it going to cost? How are you going to do it? Who is paying and where do they reside? We know from the last election—it was very, very clear—that the former Leader of the Opposition had no plan and didn't know what the cost was. And, when the Australian people put the pressure on him, they decided that he was the Bill they couldn't afford, hence we are here in government and we're delivering on our technology road map. We're moving forward with our plans.

We've heard a lot from those opposite about critical minerals and a lot from those opposite about those opportunities into the future. It's this side which is actually taking on those opportunities. It is this side of the House which established the Critical Minerals Facilitation Office. It is this side which is engaging internationally to see that those opportunities come to fruition. In fact, in Western Australia there's been a deal done for lithium between a company and the US Department of Defense. I think this is another good outcome which we will continue to build on into the future.

What do we say to those opposite? I read the press, like many people in this building, and I think that Greg Brown from The Australian belled the cat. He had a great story, some weeks or months ago—

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