Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Vasta, I'm sure that you've been around this place long enough to have heard a lot of things. We hear a lot here. There is one thing I don't hear when I'm down in my region in the great state of Tasmania, at the epicentre of small business in the north-west, on the west coast and in King Island. Constituents just don't come up to me and say things like, 'Gav, I wish we had more bureaucrats.' I've never heard it. They never say things like, 'This Canberra-centric approach is really working for me and my business, and it's making my life that much easier.' I've never heard that. They never say things like, 'Don't worry, Gav, Canberra will look after us. If you can't trust the government, who can you trust?' I've never heard that either—not once, not ever, nil, nada, zip, zero. And, frankly, I'm not holding my breath.

When we think about this legislation, the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024, we just need to cast our minds back to Labor's failed Voice referendum. There are a lot of lessons that we should all have gleaned from that process. There was something in that for all of us. But one in particular was that people living in the regions are sick and tired of city based bureaucrats telling them how they should think, what they should think about and how they should feel. It offends them. It offends them deeply, because bureaucrats rarely understand what it's like on the ground, and they rarely understand what it's like to run a business, to borrow money, to employ people, to take risks, to work 24/7, to give to your employees before you take for yourself.

I've run a lot of businesses in my time, and I would literally, genuinely and faithfully feed and give to my employees before I took for myself. The mark of a leader—and I learnt this in the military—is that leaders eat last. It's no different in small business. I'm sick of the stories that come up from time to time in this place hammering employers because they are apparently taking the mickey out of their employees. Well, that rarely happens. It might happen in occasional cases, in exceptions to the norm, but, 99 times out of 100, most small-business operators think the world of their people. They're the livelihood of their business. It's time that this government understood that it is impossible to understand the unique needs of regional Australia when you're sitting behind a desk in Canberra. Unfortunately, it is blatantly clear that Labor has not learnt or continues to refuse to listen, and these bills before us today are a clear reminder of that.

Business is doing it damn tough. Small and medium-sized businesses have done it tough for the last two years. It's a sad indictment of the government that one of the only things that they've managed to deliver is an insolvency crisis across the Australian economy of small and medium-sized businesses. According to data recently released by ASIC, insolvencies across construction have already exceeded the annual 2022-23 figures. Small and medium-sized manufacturing business insolvencies are set to exceed the 2022-23 figures by the end of this month. Insolvencies across the whole economy are already three times higher than under the last year of the coalition's government.

If your business has managed to stay afloat, the situation is dire. I don't mean to be a pessimist, but it is. One in five small businesses are now struggling to pay their energy bills. Nearly half of all small businesses are concerned about their ability to pay future energy bills. More than one in three small to medium-sized enterprises have experienced energy hardships during the past 12 months, and rising energy costs are cited as the No. 1 factor. Labor's focus should be on supporting small and medium-size business enterprises and working with employers to navigate the processes that they need to run their businesses. They should be dealing with the crisis that they made, implementing strategies to combat rising energy costs, high inflation and out-of-control red and green tape.

This legislation imposes little risk on the large players in the energy market, by the way—companies like AGL, Origin and EnergyAustralia. The total risk of this legislation will be borne by smaller business operators, by the subcontractors who supply the goods and services in the shutdown and closing down power stations. These businesses don't have an HR department. They don't have a department that deals with red and green tape. They don't have accountants doing their taxes. They're probably mum-and-dad businesses that work hand in hand to keep their heads above water on a daily basis. These businesses don't have internal workplace lawyers—and I'm grateful for that, I can tell you. These businesses don't have the capacity to administer the services outlined in this bill. In large part, these businesses have absolutely no idea what's coming down the pipeline for them and won't until it's too late. The imposition of the new obligations contained within this legislation will simply send more businesses to the wall, and I can never support that.

It's never the right time for government to waste taxpayers' money subsidising big business, but it is unforgivable during a cost-of-living crisis of their making. It's unforgivable that the Albanese government is heading down this path while small and medium businesses are forced into insolvency at record numbers, as I've already stated. In the 2024-25 budget, this authority and related activities are funded at $399.1 million from 2023-24 to 2026-27. Add to that a further $1.1 billion over the medium term. This is on top of the billions of dollars of additional funding being moved into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the newly badged Future Made in Australia.

And what do you get for this investment? That's what most businesspeople ask. What do you get for this investment of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars? You get an authority that duplicates what other agencies are already doing. We've got the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. We've got the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the role of existing mechanisms such as the Major Projects Facilitation Agency. And there are also the state based duplications such as the New South Wales government's Hunter Regional Plan, the Victorian government's Latrobe Valley Authority transitional plan and the work and vision of existing Regional Development Australian committees, which recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating vibrant regions. This is like the start of a bad joke. It's like an episode of Utopia, fair dinkum. How many federal agencies does it take for the government to deliver renewable financing?

Our pathway to decarbonise the Australian economy must be ambitious, optimistic and aspirational, but it also needs to be practical and it needs to be achievable. Practical Australians out there, like the ones running the businesses in the great state of Tasmania, share a common goal as we make our transition towards net zero. It's simple. This is Humphrey B Bear stuff. Australians want clean power that's reliable and affordable at the same time. It needs to be achievable.

When the Albanese government took charge of our renewable energy transition, they enshrined in law the emissions reduction target of 43 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. A key assumption of this target was that Australia will generate 82 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by that time. There was a lot of work to do; I admit that. To meet the 43 per cent reduction target, the speed and the scale of this transition will need to be unprecedented. It is estimated that, for Labor to meet that 2030 target over the next seven years, they will need to do the following: install 22,000 solar panels every single day, build 40 wind turbines every single month, lay more than 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines and, estimates also assume, have no increase to the demand for energy over that time. We all know that is a pipe dream. In fact, their entire energy policy was a pipe dream, and it is unravelling very quickly before everyone's eyes, particularly those small business operators that are just shaking their heads in disbelief. Under Labor's watch we are now paying amongst the highest prices for electricity in the developed world. Our electricity grid is now vulnerable, and emissions are increasing not decreasing. That is a fact.

It's not inner-city Melbourne or Sydney and it's not Canberra that's feeling the impact of Labor's uncoordinated and ad hoc push towards this emissions reduction target. It's regional Australia that's being burnt—it's the bush. It's the people that can't afford it, the people that are trying to earn a living, the people that are growing food and the real people doing real jobs that matter—and they're feeling it worse. The challenges faced by them are not uniform across each rural electorate or community. Each region has its own unique set of circumstances. As such, each region will require local understanding and community driven solutions. Heaven forbid, what an idea!

Never, ever can this be done by adding yet another layer of Canberra bureaucracy into the mix. Solutions driven by highly paid public servants who think that they know best will always fail. I've seen it before. I firmly believe in small government and free enterprise. I believe our nation's energy transition is best left to the free market, unencumbered by government intervention. Government inserting itself simply produces a false market. This authority is being set up for exactly that purpose: to pick winners and to dictate preferred technologies. All that this will result in is a complete market distortion.

Every decision Labor has made recently in relation to our energy market is only putting Australia and its energy security at risk. I cannot in good conscience support this bill.

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