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

I rise to speak against the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022 for many reasons, and the first is it's designed to increase global emissions, perversely. This is a bill that will drive industrial activity out of our economy to other economies that emit much higher levels of carbon. This is a bill that doesn't properly understand the challenges that heavy industry have, in particular, and expects them to achieve things that industrial chemistry and science are yet to actually develop and discover for them to apply to their sectors. These are sectors like the steel industry and like the cement industry, with their very complex industrial processes that are yet to find commercially viable solutions to the carbon emissions that those heavy industries undertake. By the by, I might indicate that I was very excited to be a part of the successful application for the HILT CRC, the Heavy Industry Low-carbon Transition Cooperative Research Centre application, led by the University of Adelaide, amongst other institutions, in my home city of Adelaide. It's looking to take on those exact challenges and to find solutions, commercial solutions, to the emissions that come from heavy industry. That's because a lot of those industrial processes are yet to have viable commercial pathways and processes that can decarbonise.

We're in a situation where this bill, a bill from the government, says to Australian heavy industry and high emitters: 'We are going to hold you to an unfair and unreasonable standard that we won't apply to your competitors, particularly those that, perversely, will be importing product into our country to compete against you. We will put a restriction on you that we won't put on the same production that occurs somewhere else.' This safeguard mechanism crediting scheme will have no impact on cement produced in China. It will for cement that's produced in Australia, so Australian cement is now going to be more expensive than, say, Chinese cement. I've got nothing against Chinese cement. I just think it shouldn't have an unfair advantage against Australian cement that's produced by employing Australians and that's invested in by Australian superannuation funds. Perversely, for companies like Adelaide Brighton from my home city of Adelaide, an iconic business, this legislation will put an impost on them that their overseas competitors selling into the Australian market against them won't have. The reality is that cement produced somewhere else is produced at a higher carbon intensity than Australian cement produced in Australia.

Under this bill, emissions go up; Australian jobs go down. We have a government that has a bill to increase carbon emissions across our planet by moving industrial production from a responsible economy like ours to anywhere but Australia. There's nothing in this bill that says, 'Equally, we will put some kind of mechanism on importing competitors.' If you're going to do it, at least be fair about it. What government in the world right now is disproportionately advantaging production from somewhere else against their own economy? This is treasonous. This is a bill that says we want to take Australian jobs, give them to another economy and increase carbon emissions at the same time. And that's something—

exactly—that the government will not be honest about with the people of this country because they know, if they were honest about that very simple proposition and equation, what the consequences would be. Instead, we have this surreptitious attempt to pretend that something is being done through this legislation to reduce emissions when, in fact, it's increasing emissions but also costing Australian jobs.

We're in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. At the moment cement produced in this country is competing against cement that's being imported, with all the additional costs through that supply chain. Once you run Australian businesses out of business what's going to happen to the price of imported cement? I just wonder. Once we don't produce it and there's no competition from Australian production against sources of cement from other countries, I wonder what will happen to the price of cement in this country? Apart from the fact that it's continuing to emit carbon at a higher rate than Australian produced cement, we'll also have a situation, because we don't have sovereign production capability in this country, where we'll be completely at the mercy of prices being dictated to us by importers that have 100 per cent control over the market. We're destroying Australian sovereignty, destroying Australian jobs and increasing global carbon emissions through this bill.

Cement's not the only example, obviously. We know that in a lot of heavy industries there's high carbon intensity. We know that in steel, in aluminium, in a vast variety of industrial processes. Achieving carbon neutrality means tackling the challenge of those industries decarbonising. But the perverseness of the solution being, 'Let's just shut down that industry in our country and give it to someone else, let's just let all of the high-emissions industries exist not in Australia'—in success, that's what this bill achieves. That's the whole point of this bill.

The point of this bill is to penalise those exact types of businesses so they shut down in this country and so those same businesses in other countries increase their production output jobs in those economies, earn that income in those economies and increase their emissions, because they don't have anything like the standards we have in this country. And that's the outcome. It's a bill to increase global carbon emissions at the expense of Australian jobs. We do not support the lunacy of that proposition whatsoever.

When in government we invested heavily in looking for the research and development opportunities to decarbonise these industries in a way that keeps those jobs here in Australia. So if the HILT CRC that the Adelaide university are leading can develop—and we all hope that they can—transformative industrial processes to decarbonise elements of the supply chain in things like steel, cement and aluminium, then that would be a fantastic outcome. That's the pathway to decarbonise, doing it through R&D and growing the economy of this country, in the same breath.

Green steel, if and when we can produce it, means that it will happen in Australia. It will co-locate the production of green steel with where the iron ore is. If you're trying to get carbon zero or net zero green steel, you're not going to dig up iron ore and transport it somewhere else; you're going to process it in situ. Green steel, in the right circumstances, is extremely exciting for this country, because out there at the Pilbara you will take the iron ore, there where it is, and transform it into steel at that exact point. That will be the lowest carbon footprint of green steel, co-locating it with where the iron ore is.

If people like those at Adelaide university who are working on those industrial processes can decarbonise steel production and produce green steel, that will be an absolute jobs bonanza for the Australian economy. We all know, because of our mineral wealth in this country, that this can be the case across a whole range of industrial products and processes. The only thing that will stop it is if these industries are gone before we get to that point and if we drive all of our heavy industrial processes off to another economy. That's, essentially, what this bill seeks to do.

Major employers in my home state—I mentioned Adelaide, Brighton and Nyrstar at Port Pirie, which is a very significant lead smelter that my family has been very connected to through the Broken Hill North Mine. My grandfather was a mining engineer and had capital works there before and after the Second World War. All that lead goes to Port Pirie. The member for Braddon would know well that the zinc from there goes to Tasmania. These are exciting businesses that are very successful employers, and we want to keep them here in this country. We don't want to send that oxide off to be processed somewhere else because those businesses are being told, 'You're not welcome in Australia and we're going to put a huge tax on you and penalise you until you leave.'

Some people feel good that the accounting trickery of this shows a reduction in Australia's emissions. But when that is at the expense of a greater increase somewhere else and, at the same time, the loss of Australian jobs, then it's a completely unacceptable path to take.

The government, at times, like to talk about an orderly transition towards net zero by 2050. Sometimes they have arguments with members in this House, particularly from the Greens party, about the pace in which they're moving. This is the most frightening element of all the things they're proposing: de-industrialising our country. When those jobs are gone—they've been pretty important to our economy for a long time. We wouldn't be much of an economy if those sorts of industries weren't the backbone, as they have been for decades—in fact, centuries in the case of some of these complex mining and mineral processes. It's happened across the country and it's one of our great endowments and one of our great assets as a nation—the mineral wealth we've got and the industrial opportunities that raw material provides to our economy.

Regrettably, here in 2023, we are faced with the prospect that the government of this country, for the first time ever, is turning its back on that industry and saying: 'We don't want you anymore. We don't want those jobs in our economy. Instead we'd like someone else to have them.' It's disguised by this ludicrous proposition of reducing emissions when emissions will go up if this policy succeeds. If that production leaves this country, which is comparatively a much lower carbon intense economy, with much higher standards across the board environmentally and the like, and we move that production—which will still happen. The rest of the planet won't say, 'Now we want less steel and less cement and aluminium and less copper and less minerals'; in fact, hilariously, the transition to net zero needs a lot more minerals and metals to facilitate it. But we are, in essence, saying we don't want those industries here in Australia. In the coalition, we have to stand up against that. We have to stand up for those industries, for their value to our economy, for the fact that it is more environmentally friendly for those industries to continue on and succeed and thrive in this economy than in someone else's. We cannot and will not stay silent and fail to call out the perverseness of what is being proposed here—that is, that we say we want to de-industrialise elements of our economy, lose jobs and, at the same time, increase global carbon emissions, and put ourselves in a position where we are turning our back on the sovereign capabilities and sovereign industries that have been vital to the growth of our economy and to the security of our economy into the future and where we're now happy to be completely reliant on 100 per cent imports of all kinds of vitally important product that we currently proudly make in this country.

To the workers that will lose their jobs in these industries: in the coalition, we stand up for you, we back you and we are proud of the contribution you make to our economy. You're not doing anything wrong. You've got nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, we appreciate you and what you're doing to create wealth and to grow the standard of living in our economy. We regret that we've got a government that holds a different view, but we will do all we can to support you. Fundamental to that is us opposing this bill.

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