Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The title of this bill, the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024, is a little bit misleading because this bill isn't primarily about net zero and the net zero economy as such. As it is again with Labor, this bill demonstrates so much how little experience there is on the other side of the chamber in making a buck. As the shadow trade and tourism minister, as a local MP in my community, when I walk around talking to anyone who is trying to do anything in this country—whether they're trying to build houses or in a small business, medium business or big business trying to generate wealth or jobs in our economy—the major complaint, without exception, across any sector and any size business is red tape, green tape and bureaucracy speak. We make it so hard to do anything in this country to make us productive, to grow jobs and to grow the economy.

What's this bill doing? What's the essence of this bill? The essence of this bill is basically to create a new authority. Everything they want this authority to do already sits with an executive agency within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. But Labor's go-to on any issue, any policy, is: 'Let's create more of a bureaucracy. Let's create more government employees on taxpayer funded salaries, more bureaucracy, more red tape, more green tape, more everything tape to make things more difficult.' That's what this bill is about—creating another layer, another bureaucracy, to make things more difficult in this sector. That's why we're going to oppose this bill, because it's about more obligations on business, on small, medium-sized and large businesses.

Let's go to the topic in relation to this authority. It already exists; this economy is on the path to net zero 2050. Then, when you read about what they want this authority to do, they say it will 'seek to work with project proponents and state governments to get renewable projects to investment decisions'. Again, everything with this side of politics is about ideology. It's not about practical outcomes; it's about ideology. You look at through something through a glass prison and you can't go outside it. As we keep saying, yes, we are on a part to net zero 2050, but that needs to be agnostic about technology. We need to get there in the way that is the cheapest and the most reliable form of energy transmission.

The Minister for Energy and Climate Change—and whatever else his title is—he is a gift that keeps giving to us. Whenever he gets up, I go: 'Get him up. Let's get him an extension of time.' He's our best asset and he has an history of being a good asset for us as well. He thinks he's clever today because he gets up and he talks about the OECD countries who, he says, don't have nuclear. He says, 'You've distorted the figure.' We talked about 19 of the 20 largest countries in the world who have some nuclear as part of their equation. Look, I like renewables too. We're not about nuclear versus renewables. We are not about renewables versus nuclear, as they are. We want everything to be part of the mix. So how was he clever today? Such a clever little thing! He comes in today and goes, 'All these countries in Europe don't have it nuclear.' They don't have nuclear in their country, but guess what? They have transmission grids that come from France. Every European country—or a lot of Western European countries—rely on France and rely on nuclear energy for their power. This is the infantile type of position that this debate is at with that minister. He knows that. He knows that there are so many countries in Europe that are powered by nuclear energy, but because they don't physically have a nuclear power station, he says they don't have it, so we're distorting it. That's infantile.

The other part of how infantile this discussion is, is that we he has also spoken very negatively about carbon capture and storage. Even the Democrats in the US—hardly a centre-right party, with Joe Biden at the head—and even John Kerry, who is the leader for meeting a lot of their net zero targets, support nuclear. America supports carbon capture and storage, but not our genius minister. He rules it all out. This Labor government have the most ambition targets for renewables for the timeline they have as part of the energy grid. Yes, we are committed to net zero 2050, but at the same time we believe it's essential for the lights to stay on. We need to look at all of these technologies. You can't go into something as important as your energy supplier and say, 'I'm going to rule out and not consider a whole lot of different technologies.' This government has done that with ones that other countries are saying are crucial to it—that is, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear, among others.

The record of the minister is reckless, with previous ministries he's had in previous governments and when in opposition. That's why we're not going to support this bill. It's a low bureaucracy, which is going to make things more difficult, and it's also going to basically direct where money needs today. If we had a vacuum here, you could maybe understand the new agency or statutory body, but we already have an executive agency within the department. We have ARENA and we have the CEFC—we have two net transition authorities looking at trying to get us to net zero. They're standalone agencies anyway. But the Labor government are always looking to make things more difficult and more costly.

The other thing I really want to say about this is the Prime Minister said 'the buck will stop with us, we will be a new, transparent government,' and the lights were going to shine in. The other thing that's very disappointing, too, is I have never heard—and with all due respect I will say that many ministers on the other side do get up and really come up and meet the policy discussions when we disagree with them, and I respect that. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy never gets up seriously or says: 'Do you know what? This is what's going on and this is what we're doing.' He always gets up and thinks he's the funnyman. He's always having a go about policies in an ideological sense. He never comes up and says, 'I'm going to address these issues and address why we're ruling out this, this and this.'

Again, energy is a really important issue for us as a country. Obviously, net zero is an important thing—what we do and how we get there are going to be very important. I'm a naturally optimistic person, but, in my role as shadow trade and tourism minister, I'm not speaking to anyone across this country who is. That's in any stakeholder group across any industry body, whether they be farmers, miners, retailers or even in tourism. I had a meeting with a stakeholder in an industry tourism group. They were saying that the biggest thing they're finding with this new government is just that there's more red and green tape. They're finding it exceptionally difficult to do anything.

Of course, that doesn't resonate over on that side of politics because they're so overrepresented by the union movement. There wouldn't be a handful of people over on that side of politics who have woken up every day and gone, 'I've got to go into my business today to generate enough income—to have enough customers and enough cash flow—not only to pay my salary but the salaries of the people I'm employing.' That means you have a really different mindset and a really different outlook. It's about how streamlined you have to be—how cheaply you can do things in the sense of getting things to market or to your customers as quickly as you can. That side of politics has never got that. In history, there have probably been a few that have had a bit of an idea—I think that when Paul Keating was Treasurer he did some things which showed he understood how the economy works and tried to make ours a more productive economy. That's probably why he was in the Labor government with the longest term ever. But that's unusual; it isn't how they're wired and it isn't within the DNA of the Labor Party—and it's certainly not in the DNA of the Greens. Interestingly, I sat here before the leader of the Greens spoke. Hearing him scares me! I certainly hope that this government is never in minority government with them. I know that they do deals now in the Senate which are to the detriment of our country, but they would lurch to the left and the lights would go out in that case.

Again, it isn't in their DNA. Their starting point on anything is: 'Let's set up a new bureaucratic process. Let's set up a new entity,' as in this case, 'Let's put more people into that entity. Let's have more people involved in the decision-making of this entity. Let's make everything more difficult. Let's make everything go around in more and more circles.' That's why we aren't supporting this legislation and, again, the directive within the legislation. They're already ruling out a lot of the solutions that will take us to net zero anyway.

I've seen other bills which are coming forward to this chamber and I worry about the future of our country, the prosperity of our country and job growth in our country. With this particular bill and the way in which the minister is looking at this, I worry, literally, about the lights staying on in this country. It's about this minister and the legislation he's bringing forward here with other bills. That's why the coalition will vote against this. We understand that to get to net zero by 2050 we have to work with business and with every technology that's available—and that we should do that in a way that's as streamlined as we can. The last thing we need to do is make another entity that's going to make things more bureaucratic and is ideologically opposed to solutions that will make this work.

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