Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We've got a huge opportunity in this country right now. Australia has a lot of the critical minerals that the rest of the world is going to need, but, critically, we've got the critical minerals that we can turn into products that the rest of the world is going to need as we move towards a zero-pollution society. We've also got a massive opportunity to learn the lessons of the mining boom—the squandered opportunities there that saw Australia not capture and save for the benefit of the Australian population the massive wealth that it created in the way that other countries did with their sovereign wealth funds and their proper taxation arrangements. But we have the opportunity here, on the cusp of a new mining boom, of actually ensuring that it helps set our country up for the future financially, in the way that other countries have done.

To make all of this happen, we in the Greens think government support is absolutely critical. As to this idea that somehow a government cannot play a role in shaping the future industry of this country to ensure that it's the kind of industry that creates secure jobs, gives a lasting return to people and helps tackle the climate crisis, all of those things are going to require government assistance. When it's well spent, that is a good place for government money to go. That's the principal approach that we take to measures that apparently, on the face of it, are about securing a better future for Australia.

What we don't support, and are concerned about, is legislation that is about creating an election slush fund for more coal and gas. There's a real question mark over this legislation, because what we're seeing, at the same time as the government says it wants a future made in Australia, is that it wants a future for coal and gas past 2050. This government has approved 23 new coal and gas projects. Its Future Gas Strategy says it wants gas out past 2050, and the environment minister has been approving projects that run to 2080. When we're meant to be at net zero, Labor is approving coal and gas projects to run out to 2080. We are in a climate crisis now. The scientists are crystal clear when they tell us—and they are ringing the alarm bells as loudly as they can—that, to have any chance of having a safe climate, we can't open a single new coal or gas project. And yet Labor have approved 23 already, and they're asking the public to pay for it; in fact, they're making the public pay for it.

Look at the Middle Arm development up in the Northern Territory, where Labor is building a massive new hub that's based on extracting gas from the Beetaloo. They have public money, again, subsidising a climate-destroying project that First Nations owners don't want and that scientists have said to us cannot go ahead if we're to have any chance of meeting the climate crisis. So, for Labor, A Future Made in Australia is a future for more coal and gas. There's nothing in this legislation that rules out public money going to more coal and gas or to the infrastructure that supports it—nothing. Given that we know Labor now believes that somehow you can cut pollution by increasing it, by opening and approving more coal and gas projects, there's a very real question mark over this legislation as to whether it could be turned into another election slush fund for more coal and gas.

The Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024, the second bill that forms part of this package, contains some more support for ARENA, and we support that. The Greens were instrumental in establishing ARENA back in 2010. Because of the design of it, it has survived, it has thrived and it has helped grow renewable energy, so more support for ARENA is something that we also support. But what is also clear in this legislation is that the government wants to expand the old Efic—now Export Finance Australia—to expand its remit and turn it inwards, and to significantly expand the amount of funding going into Export Finance Australia. Why does it want to do that? Well, unlike other agencies, the agency formerly called Efic is overseen by cabinet. It's not an independent statutory authority that's got its own mandate; it's something where cabinet, or ministers, can have a say.

We fear that we're seeing a big pile of money going into a government election slush fund for more coal and gas. We're seeing gas giants like Chevron and Impex salivating over the government's future gas strategy and saying what a good idea it is for the public to dip its hand into its own pocket and use public money to expand new polluting fossil fuel infrastructure. We have no guardrail in this legislation to stop the government from doing exactly that, giving more public money to big corporations to expand coal and gas. And it's all dressed up under the label of 'net zero', which we now know Labor doesn't believe in because Labor says gas beyond 2050 and approved coal and gas mines to run as late as 2080—2080!

There is nothing in this package of bills to ensure that the public gets a fair return from all of this investment. In this country, we have government owned corporations in our markets. For example, Sweden owns steel companies. Japan, China and South Korea own Australia's gas export terminals. Canada owns the Bank of Canada, Finland owns its gambling monopoly and Singapore owns Optus. Australia already has publicly owned corporations in its markets. It's just that none are Australian government owned, and the profits of Australian resources go overseas. We have an opportunity to fix that, to stop it before it starts, by ensuring that, if public money is going to these big new investments, there's some public return and some public ownership. Other countries do that, and they do it in Australia. They ensure they benefit from it, so why can't we do it ourselves?

We also have an opportunity now, as we are drafting legislation and looking ahead to this massive potential mining boom 2.0 that could set Australia up for the future, to avoid some of the mistakes of the past that the government has made with the gas industry. To be very clear, the Greens have a very different approach to gas than Labor and Liberal. We want to stop opening new gas projects. Gas is not part of the solution; it's part of the problem. Gas is as dirty as coal. And the system has plenty of gas to help us make the transition. The problem is that Labor handed everything over to the big gas corporations, including overseas gas corporations. As a result, Australia is awash with gas, yet they claim there's a gas shortage for Australian manufacturing and households. How has Labor allowed a system to arise where we have Australian owned resources but end up exporting four times as much as is used domestically and then claim there's a shortage? The reason is that Labor just did whatever the big corporations wanted. As a result, everyone else was left to suffer.

We have the capacity to stop repeating the same mistake. We need to ensure that, of these critical minerals, enough are reserved for Australian needs, and on top of that, we also invest in ensuring we're processing them here. But there's nothing in this bill that stops a repeat of the debacle of the gas industry. Under Labor's plan, in 10 to 20 years, we could find ourselves worried about a shortage of these critical minerals in the same way Labor says there's a supposed shortage of gas—even though Australia is awash with the stuff. If you hand it all over to big corporations and let them send the resources offshore together with all the profits and put no restrictions around it, then you're setting yourself up for exactly the same situation in 10 or 20 years. It will be robbing the Australian people.

We've got four concerns about this package that Labor is putting forward. As I say, these aren't concerns based on what the coalition was saying—that the government shouldn't be getting involved in setting up industries of the future. Of course, it should. We took a very clear position to the election of expanding significant public investment in exactly this kind of area of critical minerals and manufacturing and, because in many places the best job for a coalminer is another mining job, ensuring that there is a transition made so that workers get well-paid, secure jobs in industries that are going to last. But that's not what this package is.

Firstly, the government has to stop opening new coal and gas projects, because otherwise their 'future made in Australia' will just become a future for more coal and gas. They have to stop funding more coal and gas projects and the associated infrastructure. There are better things for public money to go on than helping big gas corporations to wreck the climate, but that's what the government wants to spend money on. That needs to stop, and it needs to stop in this bill.

Secondly, we also need to ensure that this country gets a fair share of its mineral wealth. We can't miss this mining boom 2.0. A big way we can do that is by looking at public ownership when we have public investment and a public return in the way other countries do. This is our chance to do that. But that's missing from this bill.

Thirdly, we want to avoid a repeat of the situation we find ourselves in now where Australia is awash with resources and yet apparently there aren't enough to use domestically. We have to avoid that. The way to avoid that is to avoid letting the big corporations write the rules. But that's what this bill does. It still allows the big corporations to write the rules.

Fourthly, there is something that's absent from this bill. That's an answer about what happens with First Nations owners under whose land many of these minerals sit. We've seen First Nations people claim, rightly, that they have a claim to this and a right to be involved in what happens. It's not just about, as the Prime Minister's been saying, that First Nations people can go and work for Rio Tinto. It's about what rights the First Nations people, whose sovereignty has never been ceded, have over this country. We know at the moment that in many places there is litigation going on about this very question about the rights First Nations people have on what is happening on their land and on the land under them. That needs to be addressed as well. If we are talking about a future for Australia, then, critically, we need to resolve that question as well.

These bills are working their way through a Senate inquiry at the moment. That will go for a few months. We will reserve our position on these bills until we see the outcome of that inquiry and we see what the government's response is to these very real issues that we have raised.

It's not enough to just set up big buckets of money to use during an election with little to no oversight. This is about whether we can set Australia up for the future, whether we can get a fair share of the minerals and resources and whether we say that the public is entitled to a return on the minerals and resources that we all own.

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