Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Will the minister update the House on the importance of a stable investment environment to support major infrastructure projects, create jobs and protect the environment? Is the minister aware of any threats to investment in this area? Could I also take the opportunity to wish the minister happy birthday on his special day.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Leichhardt for his birthday wishes—it is very good of him. It is good to be 30 again!

Can I acknowledge the member for Leichhardt's deep interest in making sure that Australia is well positioned when it comes to ongoing investment in major infrastructure and when it comes to investment certainty. One of the things that we on this side of the House know very well is how crucial investor certainty is to make sure that we see investment inflows into this country and investment by major businesses in this country that will ultimately drive economic growth and make sure that we create the jobs that Australians expect the Australian government to help create. That has been a crucial part of this government's plan as part of our National Economic Plan—to create jobs and to create economic growth—and that is by providing investor certainty.

In that sense I would note how fundamental it is that that certainty is given, especially where we see very large amounts, often multibillions of dollars, of capital invested, often with long lead-in times, long periods of time that elapse until the benefits start to flow from those major investments. That is part of the reason that as a government we have been so focused on, for example, major infrastructure like Western Sydney Airport as well as our vision for inland rail—visions and investment in infrastructure that the Australian Labor Party were never able to put in place.

The member for Leichhardt also asks about threats. I am sorry to say that there are threats to our investment environment. One of the principal threats comes from that mob opposite, the Australian Labor Party. The Australian Labor Party, not just at a federal level but at a state level as well, do not understand the need for certainty. The Australian Labor Party have no commercial sounding, no commercial basis, no commercial grounding to understand why certainty is so fundamental. That is why we see such a deeply divided Australian Labor Party. They are deeply divided in Queensland, where it was actually only on 17 May this year that the ABC reported:

The Queensland Government is offering Indian mining company Adani a "royalties holiday" worth hundreds of millions of dollars for its massive Carmichael coal mine in the state's north.

That was 11 days ago. On the weekend, the Queensland Premier put out a press release saying there will be no royalty holiday for the Adani Carmichael mine. We see a deeply divided Australian Labor Party, and we see it federally as well. Captain Chaos over there presides over a divided Labor Party. We see the same tensions between the Labor left and the Labor right, between Palaszczuk and Trad, between the member for Grayndler and the Leader of the Opposition, each hoping Adani becomes their ticket to the leadership and to the prime ministership. But it will not be under this government, we can guarantee you that much.