David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is rather a critical bit of legislation that is matching the old saying that bull can baffle brains. Surely we have just seen amendments come back from the Senate that will deliver absolute certainty to heavy industry in this country. It is certain that it won't grow—that manufacturing won't grow—because no-one will be able to afford to power manufacturing.

There are also other sinister implications for agriculture, because these amendments are limiting over a five-year period. It's just like moving the deckchairs on the Titanic. Making them net over five years will still have the same outcome. Coalmines and gas facilities will all be producing CO2 and methane. That means all the gas and mining investments that were scheduled to happen will probably not happen.

Now these people in the Greens think that is a great thing. But, unfortunately, the reality of life is: we need gas for fertilisers. We also have a lot of biological methane that will be captured under this mechanism. Bovines produce methane—everyone knows that, but that is a measure that is going to be undertaken—as well as nitrous oxide. So sayonara, fertilisers! There will be caps on dairy herds and beef herds. You name it—just about everything will be captured with these provisions. The certainty is that a lot of new investment that would have delivered much cleaner energy than a coal-fired power station—namely, in natural gas—won't happen.

We will still require gas for all those industrial processes that require huge amounts of heat, like smelting et cetera. The member for Kennedy pointed out the bleeding obvious. We still require, for everyday life in the city and the suburbs, things like concrete, aluminium, copper and all those rare earth minerals. How do you think they are mined? They are mined using fossil fuels, diesel—all that sort of stuff. It means a lot of these endeavours won't happen in Australia. They will happen over in China, India or some other place that isn't shutting down what is essential for all manufacturing: abundance of energy.

Even our cities will suffer. It's not just out in the mines that there will be decreased economies. All the food manufacturing and processing will be affected. With way cities run transport systems, all their costs will go up. The member for Fairfax has pointed out that, if the costs go up, eventually it's the consumer that pays. Trying to put it in the context of catastrophisation of climate change and thinking that Australia, by getting rid of dairy farming or capping herds of beef farms, will do anything when it's a normal biological process—but that is the intent of all this.

Agriculture will suffer. Industry will suffer. Consumers and cities that need cement, tarmac for roads, aluminium, steel—all those industries will suffer. One of the perverse outcomes is that good farming land will be bought at exorbitant prices. The new safeguard mechanism units and Australian carbon credit units will mean good food-producing and fibre-producing land will be the target for all these industrial enterprises. That is the only way they will be able to survive. I encourage anyone who's got carbon credits not to sell them to the market, because you're going to need it on your beef farm, dairy farm or anything with bovines. You will need it because you will likely be captured by these mechanisms too.

Rather than congratulating, I think the only certainty is that prices for energy will go up, land use will be perverted to unproductive food and fibre and a lot of industrial processes that happen in our country and we need for our own energy and industrial sovereignty and to protect manufacturing will go offshore. (Time expired)

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