Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a number of my colleagues have suggested, this Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 is essentially an industrial relations bill disguised as a bill that pretends to be about transition and for the regions. But it's really the bill that will create bureaucratic waste and duplication—a top-down Canberra-bubble approach which will not deliver on the unique needs of the regions and which will put a very large cost on small and medium businesses.

Another problem with this bill is: why are we picking winners? We saw in the budget that this is a government focused on the squeaky wheel, the large corporates, the lobbyists and their megaphones. The likelihood of a government failure is much more likely than the likelihood of private-sector failure, but instead, we're putting government bureaucracy at the centre of something that is really a private-sector problem. How we provide cheap, reliable and clean energy is a problem that should be solved by the private sector and by industry, but instead this government keeps thinking more bureaucracies, more bureaucrats and more government departments are the answers to this problem.

Why aren't we instead subsidising gigawatts? When someone is using a TV or a car, or a manufacturer is trying to use energy, they just want a gigawatt that's cheap, reliable and clean. They're not ideological about where their energy comes from; they want outcomes. This is what the people in the electorate of Cook worry about, and they are extremely worried that they've got a government that's focusing on ideology. We have only to look at the budget to see billions and billions of dollars being pushed to one energy source over the other. Green hydrogen is being subsidised enormously, and we have $13 billion of subsidies there for big businesses. Why don't we let all the power sources compete against one another? Nuclear, renewables, carbon capture and storage—all competing for subsidies based on the number of gigawatts they provide. That is what middle Australia wants to see from this government.

This bill is also about duplication and waste. How many government bodies do we need to look at financing energy? Currently we have: the Australian renewable energy finance corporation, ARENA; we have the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the CEFC; we have the Major Projects Facilitation Agency; and, now, the Net Zero Economy Authority. What will this fourth body do that the other three won't? Why do we need a fourth body where three are? This authority has a responsibility for facilitating 'public and private sector participation and investment in greenhouse gas emissions reduction and net zero transformation initiatives'. This is almost copied and pasted from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation's legislated role, which is 'to facilitate an increased flow of finance into the clean energy sector and to facilitate the achievement of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets'. These are two energy bodies with almost identical roles, and now the Australian Renewable Energy Agency has almost a carbon copy of that role as well. What is this new body going to do for us? It's quite unclear when we've got three other bodies almost duplicating its role.

The funding for this authority is almost $400 million over the next three years and a further $1.1 billion over the medium term. In a cost-of-living crisis, is this really how we want to spend $1 billion? On a new agency that I can't explain to my electorate what it will really do and what it will do compared to the other existing three agencies? It's a staggering figure. I spoke in my first speech last week about the cheapest area of my electorate, Kurnell—someone on the average Australian household income could never, ever afford to repay the mortgage on the median house. I've got people doing it that tough in my electorate, struggling for money, cutting their budgets—what is the government doing? It's blowing $1 billion on an agency we may not need. Middle Australia and my electorate of Cook rightly expects the government to be cutting its budget and holding the purse strings tight, because that's what middle Australia is doing.

Instead, this government has been focused on bureaucracy. Labor is in a bureaucracy binge. Like any binge, you pay the price afterwards. We've hired 36,000 new bureaucrats since the last election—that's 50 new bureaucrats a day. I ask the people of Australia, I ask the people of Cook and I ask the government on their benches across there: does the average Australian feel better for having 36,000 more bureaucrats in jobs, taking taxes? Do they feel better off because of this? I don't think so.

Again, as mentioned, this is an industrial relations bill; make no mistake. This is not a bill for the regions; it is a long-held union wish list item to get this in here. It's industrial relations by stealth. Australia's current industrial framework features a well-established safety net that applies and has applied for a very long time. This helps with instances of business closure and industry change and especially with those related to coal-fired power stations. We have an existing mechanism to deal with this. There are justifiable benefits in mechanisms to help keep jobs and employment in affected communities and regions; that is a noble goal. But in reality what this legislation does is give the unions a big stick to threaten employers to provide these employees with paid time off, facilitate activities to push up union membership and enforce obligations on dependent businesses that they will not be able to afford. There is no sense of the limit around what obligations, pay or conditions can be applied, and much would be left to the Fair Work Commission to determine.

In his address to the National Press Club earlier this year the current Net Zero Economy Agency czar, Greg Combet, could give no guarantee on the transition of coal-fired power stations to green jobs in this renewable sector. There is a real risk that, despite this billion dollars of investment, these workers will be left with fewer opportunities than they already have and lower rates of pay. What I worry about is an unholy triumvirate, an unholy alliance between big super, big business and unions. Small and medium businesses are the ones being left behind. Small businesses in this country have never felt smaller, because large corporates and large governments have never been larger. What this bill does is further grow government and further grow large corporates. It's unsurprising that government and the large corporates they're cosying-up to are happy with this. They both believe their size gives them the power and moral authority to tell individuals, tell households and tell small businesses what to think. This bill is explicitly about prioritising large business, large super and unions over legitimate needs of small businesses.

In my first speech, last week, I talked about small business hiring while large businesses fire. Small business was responsible for all net new job growth in the Australian economy over the last 20 years. What we're doing is strangling small business with this regulation, with another government bureaucracy. While some large businesses actually improve productivity, start investing in capital and substitute capital for labour, what will this authority do? It will just invest more labour into a sector that has zero productivity. The government sector has for the last decade had zero productivity, and we are just throwing more bureaucrats at a problem they cannot fix. From watching this government spend $400 million dollars over the next three years and then $1 billion, it does not look like a government focused on efficiency, it does not look like a government focused on productivity and it does not look like a government focused on Middle Australia. It's a government not listening to them; it's a government focused on ideology instead of the concerns of Middle Australia. This government has failed to explain how this bill will actually lead to outcomes Middle Australia care about. They want cheap, reliable and clean power. Middle Australia are sceptical of this, and they deserve to be. What is it about this fact base, because we're not subsidising gigawatts? Why aren't we taking the moratorium off nuclear and letting a gigawatt compete against a gigawatt? Why is one gigawatt seen as superior to another? Why aren't we subsidising gigawatts and letting the market work?

These bills also claim to be about the regions and claim to help the regions. But this is Canberra-bubble decision-making. This is not a body embedded in the regions and not a body that speaks for the regions. Increasingly we are looking to the regions to get the raw deal that subsidises the cities.

Lastly, on nuclear: there is a nuclear reactor on the doorstep of my electorate of Cook. Lucas Heights is the sleepiest part of the Sutherland shire. No-one is scared about it; that reactor has been there for 70 years, and it's been responsible for great improvements and great exports in nuclear medicine. Products are sent there from all around the world, like Switzerland. There are products made in the Lucas Heights reactor that are made nowhere else in the world.

The coalition will be opposing the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 due to their bureaucratic waste and duplication; their top-down Canberra centric approach, which is set to fail on delivering the needs of the regions; and their imposition of new obligations on small, medium and even some large businesses. This is another example of Labor's haphazard approach to industry policy, which delivers no guarantees for local workers. Instead it's focused on picking winners, something the members on the opposition bench with very little experience in the private sector—it's no surprise to me that they think the answer to every tough problem in this country is more government, more bureaucrats and more legislation. Instead, we need a level playing field. We need moratoriums lifted. We need regulations lifted. We need to give small and medium businesses a fighting chance to compete with these large behemoths. We need to give small and medium businesses a chance to get out from under the weight of regulation. Scope 3 emissions will bring in further weight of regulation as small and medium businesses try to report on the emissions of their customers. In the Liberal opposition we are focused on empowering small business. We are focused on giving them the voice that the Labor government won't because they're too focused on unions, lobby groups, big super and big corporates.

This federal government cannot afford to waste $1 billion on Canberra bureaucrats in the Net Zero Economic Authority. It's going to duplicate the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and the Fair Work Commission. These bills add an additional layer of regulation not previously considered by the Fair Work Commission. If you're out there in Middle Australia trying to run a small business, trying to run a corporation, ask yourself this question: Do you need another bill giving you more regulation on hiring people than is already there? Do you need another bill giving you more regulation on energy than is already there? This overlaps significantly with existing obligations but these bills don't even explain how these overlapping regulations will interact with those already there. They take no steps to harmonise these. It will cause confusion, uncertainty and disruption at a workplace level that can be avoided. There's no sense of limit around what obligations and pay conditions can be applied, and as much will be left to the Fair Work Commission to determine. For these reasons, I will be opposing these bills, and so will the opposition.

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