Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion with great joy. It's a very sensible motion put forward by the very sensible member for Fairfax. We seek every opportunity to work with the government on sensible policy. We seek the opportunity to provide scrutiny to the government's agenda. That is our job as the opposition. It's a job that we take very seriously, and we do that in an open manner. We seek the opportunity only to do our job and provide scrutiny to the government's agenda.

I want to get to one point that very much supports this motion, which is the work of the committee and the value that it does provide across this parliament. The economics committee has been a veritable beacon of bipartisan cooperation by working very well together. Unfortunately, none of the members are present, so I'll have to praise them in their absence. But I will acknowledge very openly, as I have on many occasions, the stewardship of this committee by the member for Fraser, who has always been willing to allow a bipartisan approach to any discussions that we've had on that committee. The fruit of that work has been borne out multiple times. I refer particularly to the work we did in the inquiry into competition and productivity, where we heard from the small banks about the need for a regulatory grid to be brought into the Australian banking system, much as it has been in the UK. We heard that multiple times. Before we even got the report out—the primary recommendation of which was to implement a regulatory grid—to their credit, the government implemented a regulatory grid, and that is now part of how Australia operates. That came from Liberal members bringing it into that committee. It was discussed, it was debated, and it came through. This is an example of working together. This committee works.

I would also point out the work the committee has done raising the issue of capital and liquidity requirements that APRA have brought into question and seek to change. It is through the work of that committee that we've put pressure back onto APRA and called their overreach into question. This committee works. It is a good committee. I praise the members of it. I praise again the leadership of the member for Fraser and the work that he does. This is the right committee to send something like this to. These bills should be given full scrutiny, and I will repeat the point that the member for Fraser made. Why are we on this side of the House concerned about this? It's because we saw consideration in detail gagged for the Future Made in Australia Bill. Our ability to do our job, to hold the government of the day to account, was withdrawn from us. The Australian people lost out. The simple workings of democracy were denied the Australian people. We seek the opportunity to provide that scrutiny. We seek to do it through processes that are already in place, processes that are strong and proven.

There are a lot of questions that we would like to have answered. I would love for the committee to hear from the Chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, to understand why she feels that 'We need to be very cautious when stepping into this space.' That was her comment on the Future Made in Australia Bill. I would like to understand what's behind that comment. I think it would be great to have that brought out—for those questions to be explored and to form a part of a report provided by this committee. I would like to hear from the CSIRO and understand whether the 8,000 jobs that it said would be provided by the green hydrogen industry still stand, when multiple organisations are running away as fast as they can from this. Do those 8,000 jobs now need to be publicly funded? Has that number declined, as we suspected it would? I would like to hear about that. I think that would form sensible scrutiny of these bills. I would like to hear from Fortescue and Origin to understand why they walked away from green hydrogen, why they are turning their backs on this. These are questions that would inform our deliberations, and this committee would be perfectly placed to deal with. I'd love to hear from the resources council. I'd love to understand what the impact of these bills will be on jobs and growth in our resources sector, and I'd like to hear about the capability of our resources sector to match these investments.

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