Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

While the member for Lingiari is insulting people personally when he doesn't agree with their ideas, when they won't bow to his thuggery, let me explain to him why the contribution from his side has been so disappointing. Apparently, to listen to their speeches, they're all in favour of this piece of legislation. In fact, they tell us that their only complaint is that we didn't do it sooner, ignoring the fact, of course, that when they were in government the greatest moral challenge of our times got swept under the carpet because it became too difficult for them. So instead of congratulating the government yesterday for doing something that they could never achieve when they were in power, they come here and they whinge and they whine and they complain that we just didn't act soon enough.

Now we're acting. But, once again, in this most extraordinary of situations, they find themselves moving yet another piece of meaningless second reading amendment. You have to ask yourself: why do the Labor Party continue to move these second reading amendments? Could it have anything to do with this mysterious website called theyvoteforus.com.au? (Quorum formed) The Labor Party keep calling for quorums because they don't want to talk about theyvoteforus.com.au. The reason they don't want to talk about these left-wing front groups is that it exposes their hypocrisy over and over again on these debates and so many other debates.

They move these second reading amendments because of their big-tech billionaires, litigation lawyers and industry super. You may note one group missing in all of that—organised labour. That's because Labor are no longer the party of organised labour. They are no longer the party of the working men and women of this country, because most of them haven't even met one in their entire lives. They are too stuck in the boardrooms of AustralianSuper in Collins Street, where they get to look over all that they have taken over.

That's why they don't care. They don't care if electricity prices go through roof. They can come in here and quote to us, as often as they want, what Boris Johnson thinks of offshore energy. But what they won't stand up and talk about are all those pensioners in the United Kingdom who will not be able to afford heating this winter because of the sorts of politics that Labor would happily inflict on the Australian people from this place. But, don't worry, there's theyvoteforus.com.au—the big-tech billionaires who have got their hands in their pockets and are fronting up all these left-wing front groups for them. Talk about astroturfing—astroturfing, thy name is the Labor Party and the crossbench support that they rely on!

The absurdity of their position over and over again—even for a bill that they claim they support they still have to move second reading amendments, they still have to quote Boris Johnson. This year the pensioners of the United Kingdom will find themselves either not being able to afford heating or not be able to feed themselves because of gas prices, because of Boris Johnson and the UK's over-reliance on offshore wind energy and under-reliance on nuclear energy and gas. But Labor don't want to talk about that. They want us to go headlong into magic bean solutions for the climate and for the energy market, because that's what their backers, that's what their funders, that's what their donors want them to do.

The working men and women of this country that you used to represent, that you used to stand up for, can go to hell as far as you guys are concerned—people; sorry, I don't mean to be gender specific about that. What this shows is that we on this side are relying on technology. What we are doing on this side is actually creating the environment and the frameworks that allow other Australians, innovative Australians, to go out there and build the future, to go out there and build the electricity grid of the future. This legislation is not about banning, is not about mandating, is not about telling people what they can buy and how they can live; this is about creating an environment that enables investors to make decisions that will allow Australians to live in a net zero world sooner rather than later. It does this by encouraging them to do that. It does this by enabling them to do that. It does this by creating a positive vision about what this nation can be. But most of all it does this by getting government out of the way of people who have the solutions to this problem.

We keep hearing that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy anywhere in the world. Well, if government is not in the way, then investors will start providing that energy. You only have to look at the New South Wales government and their renewable energy zones to see the billions of dollars just waiting on the sidelines to invest in this sort of technology. Yes, we don't have all the solutions yet. Anyone who says they do is talking through their hat, but what we do know through the IPCC report—and those opposite should read past the executive summary. They should read chapters 2, 3 and 8 that talk about the importance of nuclear energy, that talk about the importance of firming in dispatch power, that talk about the importance of carbon capture and storage to humanity getting to a net zero world. Yes, it also talks about the importance of renewable energy and it talks about the importance of offshore energy. Those on this side, like the member for Higgins, like the member for North Sydney, like the member for Wentworth, have pointed to all those things that sit before us right now. It only takes our capacity to reach out and grasp them, and that's what this bill does.

This is a package of three bills: the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Bill 2021, the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure (Regulatory Levies) Bill 2021 and the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021, all of which were introduced to the House on 2 September. These bills will establish that regulatory framework that will allow that investment, that will allow those things to occur, that will allow that positive vision to come to life. The Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Bill, the main bill, establishes that framework to enable the development of offshore electricity infrastructure. The proposed framework covers all phases of development from construction through to decommissioning of generation and transmission projects. Projects that could be enabled by this legislation include the Marinus Link project over the long-term and support Tasmania's Battery of the Nation vision that would see dispatchable power going into the grids of Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. That will allow more renewable energy to be used as part of our grid, because that dispatchable power will be sitting there. There is also the Star of the South, which many members have mentioned, which will allow 2.2 gigawatts of energy to come into the grid in Victoria that could, at different times of the day, represent 20 per cent of their electricity needs.

We also have Sun Cable, which is backed, of course, by Twiggy Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes, and they are proposing to send electrons from the Northern Territory to Singapore. This is something that has had the backing of the Northern Territory government and of course the federal government and of course those private sector investors—and they are taking on the risk of innovating for that project. I think if the opposition were directly involved in that, two things would probably happen: it would be over budget and it would never quite work the way we want it to. Because of this innovation, because of this private sector involvement, Australia will be exporting renewable energy to Singapore sometime in the near future.

I am told this framework will see 10 projects that are already at proof of concept come into the marketplace, and investment can commence. And why wouldn't it? Australia has some of the best areas for offshore wind and also onshore wind. That is what Geoscience Australia says. We are responsible for some of the largest areas of territorial waters, globally speaking. Innovations in floating offshore wind farms are allowing the deployment of those stations further and further out to sea, all within bodies of water that Australia has control over. That will represent massive opportunities for us to electrify our grid.

Now, as Rewiring Australia has pointed out—and as Bill Gates argued quite succinctly in his book—the best and clearest path not just for Australia but for the entire world towards net zero globally is to electrify everything we can. To do that, we will need to produce in Australia somewhere between five and six times as much electricity as we currently do; and, globally, eight times as much. That task should not be underestimated by anyone in this chamber or anyone in the media who thinks, 'Well, now we've declared it, we can all go home.' No, this will be an incredibly difficult task for us to fulfil.

It is important to note that these bills are not just about offshore wind. They will also enable undersea cabling, which is also incredibly important for enabling us to get power—the most obvious case being from Tasmania to the mainland.

If we can achieve these things, if we can make this work, then Australia can indeed set up a future where we have very cheap, very clean energy. We can also start to attract to our nation the manufacturing jobs that we lost under the carbon tax. People will realise that this is the best place to make green steel and clean aluminium because the major cost of that is energy, and the energy that will be produced in Australia will be in such abundance that there will only be one logical place in the world to produce those materials and those goods, and that is here. I call on the Labor Party to stop playing games for the benefit of their big-tech billionaires and to get with the program.

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