Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today the IPCC report was released, and it is a sobering read, just like all the previous IPCC reports. It is a call to arms, and it only confirms what Obama said—that we are the first generation to live through the consequences of climate change and we will be the last generation that will have a chance to do something about it. It also sounded a note of hope, and that was the sound of a gun that was fired last year, through the passage of our historic Climate Change Act. That gun sounded the note of climate action, a clarion call to the rest of the world, sending a signal to markets, giving businesses and industry the policy certainty they needed in order to invest in Australia, in her ambition and her future.

It laid out across the sky that Australia was open for business, but we also know that, since the passage of that act, storm clouds have been gathering. Those storm clouds have been getting closer and closer, and they threaten to rain on our parade. I speak of the Biden administration's passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which, in combination with the CHIPS act and the infrastructure bill, pours the equivalent of A$3.2 trillion on the green shoots of green industrialisation in the US. In its scope and magnitude, it is simply overwhelming. I congratulate the United States for acting on climate change in this way. As we know, for decades congress has been gridlocked on this matter. Through the passage of these acts, the US is moving, but there are always winners and losers.

The effect has been surgical in some parts of the world, particularly in Europe. We have seen capital and businesses move across to the US. The car industry has gone, in some cases, followed by battery manufacturers. We've also seen the movement of fledgling green hydrogen industries to the US, based on the fairly generous tax incentives and subsidies that this conglomeration of acts provides. There's no question that this historic series of acts has exerted a gravitational pull. The US is drawing in capital and talent. What does that mean for Australia?

The first thing is that we on this side of the house understand that our green hydrogen industry is exposed, but we're also doing something about it, and that's the key. The energy and climate ministers met on 24 February. They identified that this was a threat to our industry and committed to refreshing our green hydrogen agenda, and it can't happen too soon. Why? Because four days later a multimillion dollar green hydrogen project in the Hunter was put on ice. We know that the Inflation Reduction Act is there, an ever-present force in Australia, but it is actually not our enemy. The enemy is complacency. For too long, Australia has been a nation that has rested on its laurels. We have been the world's quarry, without considering the value-add. That is something the Albanese government is addressing through its National Reconstruction Fund, which is pivoting this country to a manufacturing nation, modernising it. We're going from a commodity driven nation to a more complex, diversified economy, and green hydrogen, along with all our renewable energy, will be a core enabler of that mission. But that's not all. Complacency was driven from this House through our work on housing, skills and visa reforms, as well as health. All these things underpin a healthy and vibrant economy.

In terms of our actual work in green hydrogen, we're sending rivers of money down—over half a billion dollars to support green hydrogen hubs in Gladstone, the Hunter and the Pilbara. This is also in concert with the $20 billion we're investing in transmission, because green hydrogen cannot happen without renewable energy captured from the sun and our wind—massive natural endowments that are then sent to the manufacturing hubs we're going to be installing.

I close by saying that the IRA and similar schemes incorporating these incentives are threats to our domestic industries, but it is also highly motivating on this side of the House because it has forced us to lean harder towards this green boom.

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