James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to address the House on this matter of public importance, and I start by commending the contribution of the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction. In fact in question time, in his answer to my question, he reminded me of the visit we made together to the Tonsley precinct in my home city of Adelaide. It's a project that the Commonwealth is investing in with Australian gas networks and other industry partners to look at blending hydrogen into the natural gas network in the surrounding suburbs of that precinct—a very practical example of the sorts of things this government is investing in to progress technological solutions to the challenges of emissions reductions that ensure we also have a bright economic future to look forward to as we undertake this transition to decarbonise our economy in an economically responsible way.

I want to touch on a very exciting announcement that the government made recently that I was quite closely involved in lobbying for—again, it's in my home state—which is the HILT CRC. Minister Porter announced it was successful in receiving a little over $40 million in funding from the Commonwealth government—HILT CRC being the Heavy Industry Low-carbon Transition Cooperative Research Centre. It's a project put forward with lead partners including Adelaide university; industry partners such as Fortescue, Alcoa and Roy Hill; and, of course, other eminent institutions like the CSIRO.

A huge number of industry partners are working together on one of our major challenges, which is how we're going to find a future pathway for our heavy industries that, at the moment, are very high emitters—of course, they must exist into the future—and how we crack the code of understanding how we can continue to have those industries, particularly the steel industry, whilst pursuing technological solutions to the high CO2 intensity of those sectors. There is no future without industries like steel, like aluminium and like cement. We accept these are high-emitting sectors, and we need technological and scientific solutions to ensure we can continue to produce steel, aluminium and cement—but, of course, hopefully in a way that reduces their CO2 footprint.

This is actually something that presents an enormous opportunity for this country. Green steel is an example. Through the HILT CRC developing commercial technologies to allow us to produce green steel, it could see an enormous job creation opportunity right here in this country. We all know we've got the raw material, we all know we're an enormous producer and exporter of iron ore, but can we, in fact, have a green steel export industry right here in Australia? Of course, green steel is going to involve the processing of iron ore in situ, meaning here in continental Australia.

The HILT CRC is a great example of us investing in finding technological solutions that not only address the challenges of needing to reduce our CO2 emissions but grow our economy in the process and recognise that the future does involve solving these problems. But, rather than exporting jobs out of this country and going it alone by setting targets that will only see industry leave this country to go other countries that don't put in place the same punitive measures—and, perversely, see an increase in CO2 emissions globally—it doesn't matter what CO2 emissions are in a particular country, a particular state; it matters what they are planet wide—we need to do our fair share as a country. We need to make sure that we're not doing things that are unnecessarily and pointlessly punitive to the Australian economy and, perversely, have no impact or benefit whatsoever in reducing the net CO2 emissions of the planet. So solving these sorts of challenges and investing in the other sorts of things that we are doing as a government are going to see that dual benefit of reducing emissions but also protecting jobs in our economy and growing jobs in our economy.

In my home state of South Australia we're doing important things in this regard, like the interconnector with New South Wales. That is going to see an enormous increase in the already high investment in renewable energy generation in South Australia because we will have export markets to other states through investing in that infrastructure. These are the practical things that we're doing as a government, and they are going to pay much more significant dividends than any of the rhetoric that we hear in this chamber from those opposite, which is not backed up by any concrete plans to achieve anything whatsoever.

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