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

A future made in Australia—I admire the desire, but I think the policy won't achieve anything. In fact, it will exacerbate the problem which has caused Australian manufacturing to exit the country. Giving money away to approve more renewable energy projects of national significance is exactly what's happening already. The regulators in the state of Queensland have changed it so that any renewable project doesn't have to comply with any environmental law. Under state code 23, one just has to put in an application to the local council's CEO and—hey presto!—it doesn't even go to a council vote; it gets approved. New South Wales has an expedited process already. I'm not sure if the other states do, but, judging by the plans that have been approved that are out of Utopia, I suspect they have.

The Renewable Energy Agency has been around since the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd times. The time for us to be investing in renewable energy was when there were nascent technologies at the University of New South Wales. That boat sailed decades ago. If you'd said, 'There's a clever scientist over at UNSW who's got this thing; they're going to make direct current out of panels, and you just put them under the sun,' anyone with any insight would have realised it was great and invested early. Whereas the world is now awash with solar panels. The price of them has dropped 40 per cent because China is flooding the world with them. They've even undercut the Europeans. There are a few tokenistic small-scale producers left but—hey presto! It's a forlorn hope that we can get a new person or a new business with the aid of maybe a billion dollars of capital as a grant to compete in the marketplace.

When push comes to shove, price matters and people will buy the cheapest as long as the product is reasonably good. The Chinese have got the supply chains stitched up. Even though we mine more lithium than most other countries put together, it all goes to China. We want to keep a lot of our rare earth minerals here—sure! I think keeping and processing our raw minerals sounds like a really good idea. That's what we do well. But Tomago Aluminium, Portland Aluminium and Alcoa, which shut in the Hunter Valley years ago—why did they shut? Because the biggest input is not the bauxite and the alumina; it is electricity. That's why they shut up shop and left.

There's a story often quoted about all of the car making that left Australia. I was really sad when it left, but if you look at the records, Chrysler Valiant left in the eighties followed by Leyland and BMC. Ford announced their closure in May 2013 before the coalition was even elected.

A government member: You told them you were ending the subsidies!

No; that was Labor—

A government member: That was Sophie Mirabella. That's why she lost her seat.

Excuse me, Madame Deputy Chair, the good member over there is confused. It was Tony Abbott who told Toyota we wouldn't give them any more subsidies. That was the only one. It was one company. All the others made their decision years ago. As it turns out, Ford made their announcement in 2013, but we convinced them that they were competitive and to stay, and they decided to keep their design team. Many members would not know that the Ford design team based in Melbourne designs four wheel drives for Ford around the world. Even the big monster trucks and Ford Rangers are designed in Australia, but they're built in Vietnam, Thailand or elsewhere.

We all want manufacturing in this country. The best thing we can do is get cheap base-load electricity. I have 1,200 people at Tomago who can see the writing on the wall: when their current energy contract ends, Tomago will close. It's pie in the sky to think that 24-hour electricity that is required to run that smelter will be produced regularly enough and at sufficient volumes if we keep closing our power stations. We have to keep it there. More renewables is not the solution. They will have a part in our grid but, if we're going to get out of coal— (Time expired)

See this speech in context