Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mackellar. I'm sure he's a little sensitive, as somebody who would love to think of himself as a modern liberal but who votes with the climate change deniers on his side. We've even had the member for Mallee saying that wind farms don't work at night, which I'm sure would be extraordinary news to some of those in the wind industry.

This Smart Energy Council today launched its election campaign, aiming to vote out the Morrison government for their inaction on climate change. They say: 'Scott Morrison claimed credit for programs like the renewable energy target that he tried to axe. He banked emissions reductions from policies that don't work or won't happen.' The Smart Energy Council is aiming to vote out the Morrison government in order not only to stop the blockers of climate action but to get the jobs in renewables. They point out that there are another potential 45,000 jobs in renewables by 2025.

Many of those jobs will be in offshore wind—technology which has been adopted by many other countries around the world, yet it is where Australia has been slow to act. We have one of the longest coastlines in the world, and work by Blue Economy indicates that feasible wind resources are 2,233 gigawatts of offshore wind. That is for an energy market which totals only 55 gigawatts, and it would allow Australia to be a major energy exporter. This is an opportunity which has been taken up by Britain and by many other countries.

An important thing to remember about the benefits of offshore wind is that it can tap into areas that have in the past supported coal-fired power stations that either have closed or are scheduled to close in the future—Gippsland, Latrobe, Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, the Illawarra, Gladstone, Central Queensland—where we've got electricity grid infrastructure and the ports, railways and populations that can benefit from new energy and new industry. There are jobs there as well. Those turbines need maintenance, and there's a network of ships and ports required for that maintenance. There are some 26,000 people who work in the offshore wind industry in Britain, and by 2026 there will be another 70,000 people working in that industry. We also have projects that are ready to go. Green Energy Partners have two projects they're looking to start exploratory work on, off the Illawarra and off Newcastle, and they are aiming to use Port Kembla as a construction hub.

These bills are inadequate. There is meant to be three bills. We are only debating two of them today, as the Deputy Speaker has noted. As Labor has raised and previous Labor speakers have noted, there are concerns over the way in which worker safety is addressed in these bills. The inquiry by the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee into these bills heard concerns that the government hasn't adopted the harmonised national work health and safety laws in this bill. That could potentially lead to confusion, and it poses risks for both employees and employees. It's critical that we get this right. Labor is also concerned that in the merit criteria for licences the bill doesn't require local benefits to be included. We believe that the minister should be required to consider the benefits for local workers, businesses, communities and First Nations people.

We welcome the bills, but they have come very late in an environment in which many other countries have done far more to accelerate the uptake of offshore wind and in which there are more than a dozen offshore wind proposals in Australia. Labor supports clean energy, unlike the Prime Minister, who has compared a large battery to the big prawn or the big banana; unlike the Prime Minister, who has said that electric vehicles will end the weekend; and unlike the Prime Minister, who has presented slideshows and sideshows modelling a so-called plan that is nothing of the sort and that has net zero modelling, net zero legislation and net zero ambition for Australia.

If only Australia had a prime minister who was as ambitious for Australia as he is for himself. If only we had a prime minister who was going to Glasgow with strong targets to create renewables jobs in Australia and turn the nation into a clean-energy superpower.

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