Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it's fantastic to be back on my feet again following a short break in proceedings on these bills. We've all had the chance to think more about the bureaucracy that would be created through this new Net Zero Economy Authority. Of course, I'll return to some very obvious questions about this authority and whether or not the government, for example, will rule out giving this authority new powers to streamline or expedite regulatory approvals or financing for transformational green energy projects.

Another issue besides the bureaucratic waste, is the pattern of Labor's meaningless slogan-making. The government is long on rhetoric and short on delivery. We know that funding for renewable energy projects is also expected to come from the newly badged Future Made in Australia. Can we expect similarly meaningless spin that lacks substance there as well? While Labor has gifted $13 billion in taxpayer funded subsidies to big business in the green energy sector so far, what do we have to show for it? The fact is that we're in a cost-of-living crisis and that Labor's policy mix is not making life better for Australians. In fact, most Australians are asking, 'Why is this government not focusing on me?' Labor's focus should be on dealing with high energy costs, high inflation and out-of-control red tape rather than focusing on creating new bureaucracies. Instead, Labor continually fails to address the fundamental realities facing most Australian residents and businesses. With insolvencies at record highs and more businesses going offshore, supporting a small number of big businesses is irresponsible and is a slap in the face for small businesses desperately seeking answers from this government simply in order to survive.

In the second major component of the proposed authority's remit, the Energy Industry Jobs Plan, we find, once again, a union wish-list item being enshrined by their servants at the expense of the taxpayer. Australia's current industrial framework features a well-established safety net that applies, and has applied, for a considerable amount of time to instances of business closure and industry change—especially relating to the closure of coal-fired power stations. We know the AEMC's National Electricity Rules already mandate a minimum of 3½ years notice before coal-fired power stations are able to be closed, giving sufficient for the employees to transition. Furthermore, a national agency to assist regional employees on energy projects also duplicates state based mechanisms to achieve the same outcomes. For example, regional planning initiatives already exist through the New South Wales government's Hunter Regional Plan 2041 and the Victorian government's Latrobe Valley Authority Transition Plan.

The coalition is also of the view that the proposed new authority would undermine the work of existing Regional Development Australia committees, which recognise that different approaches must be tailored for different parts of Australia. A Canberra-centric view simply doesn't work. The proposed Energy Industry Jobs Plan's process overlaps significantly with existing industrial obligations, including consultation, paid leave, union access and enforcement, without dealing with how those overlapping obligations should interact. This bill takes no steps to harmonise features which will cause confusion, uncertainty and disputation at the workplace level that could otherwise be avoided. The pursuit of guaranteeing regional jobs is one of moral conviction, but the meritorious underpinnings of this component are more than overshadowed by the detriment that will flow by handing the unions a stick with which to beat business, promote unrest and ultimately drive union membership.

It's important to note the larger risk in this legislation is not for the large energy corporations like AGL, Origin or Energy Australia but rather the smaller businesses who supply goods and services to a closing power station that may be caught up in this energy industry jobs plan process. While the big corporates have the benefit of teams dedicated to regulation and compliance, these measures will only serve to cause chaos and confusion for the smaller players in the sector. Once again the Albanese Labor government fails to consider the implications for all Australians and small business. Importantly, while the bill will require employers to offer workers retraining opportunities and attempt to match employees with new jobs in the green economy, this is unlikely to benefit older, experienced workers approaching retirement or workers with highly specialised skill sets. Again it is unsurprising to see the Albanese Labor government leaving behind older Australians, a cohort that have contributed so much to our nation but are often forgotten or lose out when policy is designed by those opposite.

The energy industry jobs plan is bought and paid for by the union movement. The union movement want the Net Zero Economy Authority to be legislated because the authority would be able to collect the personal information of employees of coal-fired power stations from financial records through to phone numbers. Indeed this bill does not even require the relevant employees' consent for the information to be passed from their employer onto the Net Zero Economy Authority, and the legally mandated trade union representation is on its board. This bill is not a bill for the regions; nor is it a bill to support the net zero transition or energy sector workers. This is an industrial relations bill that the Labor government are gifting to the union movement. I am pleased to be a member of the coalition which will not be supporting this bill.

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

The Greens said very clearly at the election that we owe coal and gas workers in this country a debt of thanks. For many years, coal and gas workers have helped power our country and engage in industries that helped get the country to where it is today. It is not coal and gas workers that anyone should have a problem with; indeed not only do we owe them a debt of thanks but we here in this place have an obligation to coal and gas workers and their communities to ensure they are not the ones asked to bear the brunt of tackling the climate crisis. In many instances, coal and gas workers live in regions that are going to be some of the hardest hit by the climate crisis. Parts of Queensland and parts of Western Australia stand at risk of becoming close to uninhabitable during the course of this century if we don't get the climate crisis under control. That is the clear evidence from the scientists.

It's just that we now know things about coal and gas we didn't know before. We now know coal and gas are products that, when used as intended, cause harm. Coal and gas are the leading causes of the climate crisis. Just as tobacco and asbestos we now say need to be treated as harmful products that cause harm to the community and to individuals when used as intended, so too do we need to say coal and gas are fuelling the climate crisis. Australia has a lot to lose if the climate crisis is not brought under control. According to the previous government's own agency's estimations, farmers are already losing $30,000 a year in income as a result of the climate crisis.

We have people in northern New South Wales who still haven't been able to get back into their homes or have them properly retrofitted or modified since the devastating floods. We have people in inner-city Brisbane who now can't insure their homes because of the effects of the climate crisis, plus we have the growing billions of dollars of damage bills after the extreme weather events: the fires, the floods and, of course, the droughts that have been fuelled by coal and gas. So we owe it to people, to workers and to communities to say, 'We are going to protect you from the effects of the climate crisis by getting off coal and gas as quickly as we possibly can and, at the very minimum, not opening new coal and gas projects.'

That is critical because, according to the scientists, if we're to have any chance of tackling the climate crisis, at a bare minimum, we need to not open a single new coal and gas mine. Then we need to have a managed transition out of coal and gas and onto renewables and storage. If we plan this and accept that these products are now harmful but that it is not the workers or the communities that are not at fault—rather, they need our support—we can make the transition, and do it very quickly, in a way that will ensure prosperity for those communities. That is why, going to the election, the Greens very clearly said, in places like Queensland and in many parts of the country, like here, 'The best job for a coalminer will be another mining job,' because there are critical minerals industries that we can grow.

We also said, 'The communities need support.' Communities need support in attracting new businesses and industries, and government can play a very key role in that. The principle should be that the coal and gas workers should be able to move into another job that pays just as well and not suffer financially by virtue of the need to get out of coal and gas. That should be the guiding principle. It's why the Greens took to the election a wage guarantee for coal workers. In that way, you would have a situation where an authority with local worker representation on it could oversee it and say, 'In this area, where we will be getting out of coal, we are going to attract new industries by giving the new employer a subsidy if they take on a worker from a coalmine.' So, if a worker leaves a coalmine and goes and works in a new industry, they don't lose a cent. They have their wage guaranteed. That would attract new industries to the area because they would know they would be getting assistance as well as getting some incredibly skilled and trained workers.

If you do this, together with substantial government investment in things like publicly owned renewable energy and critical minerals, where the public gets a stake in it—if we're going to be tipping in billions of dollars, we should ensure that there's a return to the public that is doing that—we could make the transition, and make it really clearly, and honour that debt that we owe to coal and gas workers. That is what a proper transition would look like.

We've seen the transition done very, very badly in this country. We've seen industries collapse, with no thought about how to ensure that workers don't lose wages, that they get secure employment and that new government led industry and other industry grows in those communities. That is why we took such a strong position to the election for not only a legislated transition authority but a wage guarantee for workers, plus significant government investment in growing the new industries in those places.

That is, unfortunately, not what we're seeing with this bill. We're seeing an increasing trend from Labor of greenwashing. They are saying that they care about the climate crisis and bringing legislation before this place that they say is tackling the climate crisis but then doing something very different. They are opening up more coal and gas mines. Thirteen new projects have been approved in the life of this government, with more in the pipeline. As a result—look at the emissions data that came out on Friday—pollution is actually up under Labor.

This is what happens when you try to have your foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. You say you are going to shift to cut pollution but then you actually pour money into things like the Middle Arm project in the Northern Territory. That is a massive gas subsidy. A big new gas factory is going to be built, with Labor asking the public to put their hands in their pockets to pay for it. Then, you look at this legislation that comes forward saying it is going to create a net zero authority.

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell the full story of Middle Arm!

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Solomon!

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

There's an interjection from a Labor member who says, 'Let's tell the full story about Middle Arm.' Well, let's tell the full story about Middle Arm, about how the Northern Territory Labor government—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Solomon, if you're going to take a seat, please do so quietly, or leave the chamber quietly.

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

The Northern Territory member asked for the full story and then leaves the chamber because he doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to hear about how the Northern Territory Labor government has just agreed to underwrite a purchase of gas from the Beetaloo Basin—the Beetaloo climate bomb that we know, if it is lit, will have a country's worth of emissions from it. The Northern Territory Labor government has underwritten that. Do you know what else is part of the full story that the member doesn't want to tell you? At 5.15 pm on the day after this parliament rose after an extended session where we were talking about gas, do you know what we found out? The environment minister had approved the Beetaloo pipeline and didn't tell the chamber. It was hidden from the department's website for weeks and weeks and weeks.

We have this government here that says: 'Oh, no, we're moving to net zero. Come and pass this legislation. Please pass it.' Then, it chimes in from the cheap seats and says, 'Why don't you tell the full story?' I'll tell you the full story. The full story is that this Labor government is using public money to expand the gas industry. Gas is as dirty as coal, and the scientists have said very clearly that we cannot be expanding new gas projects and new coal projects right now. And what does Labor do? It does this greenwashing: 'Here's a net zero bill.' Do you know what? It doesn't cover the people in the gas mines. It doesn't cover the people in the coalmines. And what does Labor do quietly behind the scenes? They say: 'We'll open up new gas projects. We will use public money to fund a big giant new gas plant in the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory Labor government will then underwrite it using public money, and the environment minister will quietly sign off on the pipeline and not tell the parliament.' That is the full story.

Is any bit of that wrong? No, not one bit of that is wrong, because Labor is sitting here trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. It is crystal clear that Labor are climate frauds, saying they want to tackle the climate crisis while expanding coal and gas. If you are serious about this, read the title of the bill—I know the member from the Northern Territory has gone very silent now because everything I've said is true—the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill. You would take a whole-of-economy approach. You would say: 'We know we need to get out of coal and gas. We know we can't open new projects,' like Labor wants to do. We can't keep opening these new projects like Labor wants to do. You would say, 'Let's have a plan to ensure that the workers don't lose money and that there are secure jobs in those communities,' but this legislation doesn't do that.

Instead, what we see in practice is a Labor government extending the life of a coal fired power station in Eraring. Faced with a choice of managing the transition, they use public money to extend the life of a coal fired power station. Even with the narrow category that the bill supposedly applies to, the need for it is rapidly diminishing because Labor is keeping the coal fired power stations going for longer. All these things should be addressed in the bill, and the member for Solomon, the Northern Territory member, knows it but he has fled the chamber after demanding the truth be told. When the truth was told he didn't like it and left, because he knows, like every Labor member here, that they'll say in their electorates that they care about the climate crisis and then come to Canberra and back more coal and gas. They open up new coal and gas mines.

Then, on top of that, we get the Future Gas Strategy. At the same time the government tells us we have to get to net zero emissions by 2050—too late, but that's the target the government has set itself—it comes and releases a strategy, which it's hidden from this bill, that says we need gas to 2050 and beyond. Are you getting to net zero by 2050? No. You're releasing strategies that say we're going keep gas in the system to 2050 and beyond. And Labor is approving coalmines that go past 2050. Please stop with the climate fraud where you pretend to care and bring in bits of legislation that have 'net zero' in front of it and then keep opening new coal and gas mines.

The Greens have said we need a legislated authority. Our version would be much stronger than this one. It would have a much wider remit and it would have money in its pocket to go and drive the transition. That is what we need. That's why we're going to be reserving our position in the Senate on this bill. It is time now for Labor to decide where it stands. If you're serious about getting to zero emissions, then have a plan for the whole of the economy but stop opening up coal and gas mines. You send mixed messages to the communities in the Hunter, the communities in Queensland and the communities in Western Australia when you say, 'We want to tackle the climate crisis' but then back new coal and gas mines. When you back new coal and gas mines and open them up, you suck up workers and capital that could be going to the zero-pollution industries of the future. Pick a lane, Labor. You can work with us to cut climate pollution, but if you keep opening new coal and gas mines you'll be exposed as climate frauds.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The title of this bill, the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024, is a little bit misleading because this bill isn't primarily about net zero and the net zero economy as such. As it is again with Labor, this bill demonstrates so much how little experience there is on the other side of the chamber in making a buck. As the shadow trade and tourism minister, as a local MP in my community, when I walk around talking to anyone who is trying to do anything in this country—whether they're trying to build houses or in a small business, medium business or big business trying to generate wealth or jobs in our economy—the major complaint, without exception, across any sector and any size business is red tape, green tape and bureaucracy speak. We make it so hard to do anything in this country to make us productive, to grow jobs and to grow the economy.

What's this bill doing? What's the essence of this bill? The essence of this bill is basically to create a new authority. Everything they want this authority to do already sits with an executive agency within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. But Labor's go-to on any issue, any policy, is: 'Let's create more of a bureaucracy. Let's create more government employees on taxpayer funded salaries, more bureaucracy, more red tape, more green tape, more everything tape to make things more difficult.' That's what this bill is about—creating another layer, another bureaucracy, to make things more difficult in this sector. That's why we're going to oppose this bill, because it's about more obligations on business, on small, medium-sized and large businesses.

Let's go to the topic in relation to this authority. It already exists; this economy is on the path to net zero 2050. Then, when you read about what they want this authority to do, they say it will 'seek to work with project proponents and state governments to get renewable projects to investment decisions'. Again, everything with this side of politics is about ideology. It's not about practical outcomes; it's about ideology. You look at through something through a glass prison and you can't go outside it. As we keep saying, yes, we are on a part to net zero 2050, but that needs to be agnostic about technology. We need to get there in the way that is the cheapest and the most reliable form of energy transmission.

The Minister for Energy and Climate Change—and whatever else his title is—he is a gift that keeps giving to us. Whenever he gets up, I go: 'Get him up. Let's get him an extension of time.' He's our best asset and he has an history of being a good asset for us as well. He thinks he's clever today because he gets up and he talks about the OECD countries who, he says, don't have nuclear. He says, 'You've distorted the figure.' We talked about 19 of the 20 largest countries in the world who have some nuclear as part of their equation. Look, I like renewables too. We're not about nuclear versus renewables. We are not about renewables versus nuclear, as they are. We want everything to be part of the mix. So how was he clever today? Such a clever little thing! He comes in today and goes, 'All these countries in Europe don't have it nuclear.' They don't have nuclear in their country, but guess what? They have transmission grids that come from France. Every European country—or a lot of Western European countries—rely on France and rely on nuclear energy for their power. This is the infantile type of position that this debate is at with that minister. He knows that. He knows that there are so many countries in Europe that are powered by nuclear energy, but because they don't physically have a nuclear power station, he says they don't have it, so we're distorting it. That's infantile.

The other part of how infantile this discussion is, is that we he has also spoken very negatively about carbon capture and storage. Even the Democrats in the US—hardly a centre-right party, with Joe Biden at the head—and even John Kerry, who is the leader for meeting a lot of their net zero targets, support nuclear. America supports carbon capture and storage, but not our genius minister. He rules it all out. This Labor government have the most ambition targets for renewables for the timeline they have as part of the energy grid. Yes, we are committed to net zero 2050, but at the same time we believe it's essential for the lights to stay on. We need to look at all of these technologies. You can't go into something as important as your energy supplier and say, 'I'm going to rule out and not consider a whole lot of different technologies.' This government has done that with ones that other countries are saying are crucial to it—that is, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear, among others.

The record of the minister is reckless, with previous ministries he's had in previous governments and when in opposition. That's why we're not going to support this bill. It's a low bureaucracy, which is going to make things more difficult, and it's also going to basically direct where money needs today. If we had a vacuum here, you could maybe understand the new agency or statutory body, but we already have an executive agency within the department. We have ARENA and we have the CEFC—we have two net transition authorities looking at trying to get us to net zero. They're standalone agencies anyway. But the Labor government are always looking to make things more difficult and more costly.

The other thing I really want to say about this is the Prime Minister said 'the buck will stop with us, we will be a new, transparent government,' and the lights were going to shine in. The other thing that's very disappointing, too, is I have never heard—and with all due respect I will say that many ministers on the other side do get up and really come up and meet the policy discussions when we disagree with them, and I respect that. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy never gets up seriously or says: 'Do you know what? This is what's going on and this is what we're doing.' He always gets up and thinks he's the funnyman. He's always having a go about policies in an ideological sense. He never comes up and says, 'I'm going to address these issues and address why we're ruling out this, this and this.'

Again, energy is a really important issue for us as a country. Obviously, net zero is an important thing—what we do and how we get there are going to be very important. I'm a naturally optimistic person, but, in my role as shadow trade and tourism minister, I'm not speaking to anyone across this country who is. That's in any stakeholder group across any industry body, whether they be farmers, miners, retailers or even in tourism. I had a meeting with a stakeholder in an industry tourism group. They were saying that the biggest thing they're finding with this new government is just that there's more red and green tape. They're finding it exceptionally difficult to do anything.

Of course, that doesn't resonate over on that side of politics because they're so overrepresented by the union movement. There wouldn't be a handful of people over on that side of politics who have woken up every day and gone, 'I've got to go into my business today to generate enough income—to have enough customers and enough cash flow—not only to pay my salary but the salaries of the people I'm employing.' That means you have a really different mindset and a really different outlook. It's about how streamlined you have to be—how cheaply you can do things in the sense of getting things to market or to your customers as quickly as you can. That side of politics has never got that. In history, there have probably been a few that have had a bit of an idea—I think that when Paul Keating was Treasurer he did some things which showed he understood how the economy works and tried to make ours a more productive economy. That's probably why he was in the Labor government with the longest term ever. But that's unusual; it isn't how they're wired and it isn't within the DNA of the Labor Party—and it's certainly not in the DNA of the Greens. Interestingly, I sat here before the leader of the Greens spoke. Hearing him scares me! I certainly hope that this government is never in minority government with them. I know that they do deals now in the Senate which are to the detriment of our country, but they would lurch to the left and the lights would go out in that case.

Again, it isn't in their DNA. Their starting point on anything is: 'Let's set up a new bureaucratic process. Let's set up a new entity,' as in this case, 'Let's put more people into that entity. Let's have more people involved in the decision-making of this entity. Let's make everything more difficult. Let's make everything go around in more and more circles.' That's why we aren't supporting this legislation and, again, the directive within the legislation. They're already ruling out a lot of the solutions that will take us to net zero anyway.

I've seen other bills which are coming forward to this chamber and I worry about the future of our country, the prosperity of our country and job growth in our country. With this particular bill and the way in which the minister is looking at this, I worry, literally, about the lights staying on in this country. It's about this minister and the legislation he's bringing forward here with other bills. That's why the coalition will vote against this. We understand that to get to net zero by 2050 we have to work with business and with every technology that's available—and that we should do that in a way that's as streamlined as we can. The last thing we need to do is make another entity that's going to make things more bureaucratic and is ideologically opposed to solutions that will make this work.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024. Straight up: the coalition will be not be supporting these bills. Why? This is yet another attempt by the Albanese government to push their radical green agenda by transforming the Net Zero Economy Agency from being a division within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to a statutory agency. In the latest budget, the government doubled funding for this agency to a staggering $1.1 billion over the medium term. This on top of the billions of dollars already being moved into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the newly branded Future Made in Australia.

Why should we support this when the government has failed to provide a clear explanation on how the additional funding will be used? This is nothing but a bureaucratic waste, duplicating the responsibilities of existing state and federal departments. How many federal agencies tasked with renewable funding does this government actually need? This government seems obsessed with top-down, Canberra-centric approaches that ignore the needs and priorities of rural and regional Australia. We saw this during the Voice to Parliament debate, and we're seeing it again now. The last thing Australians need is to expand the powers and responsibilities of the Albanese government so they can further their net zero and climate agenda. Labor should be focusing instead on the real issues facing Australians: high inflation, increasing costs of living and excessive red tape.

In addition to this, we have a new fuel efficiency standard which is really just a big new tax on SUVs and utes for Australians. If you're an Australian and you have a large family, if you're a tradie or a farmer, if you tow a boat or a caravan, you will now pay more for new SUVs and utes. If you drive a Ford Ranger, a Toyota HiLux or Prado, a Mitsubishi Outlander, an Isuzu D-MAX or MU-X—the list could go on—all those new cars will become more expensive under the Albanese government, because what they have done, through the back door of the fuel efficiency standard, is impose a new tax on Australian consumers, particularly in the regions, where these vehicles are actually the workhorses of our local economy.

In addition to that, we're also seeing this obsession with renewables continue in Western Australia, with a proposal for an offshore wind farm on the south-west coast of Western Australia. Of course, this will have all sorts of impacts, starting with the visual damage it will do to our beautiful horizon. Locals can appreciate that already. There will be damage to the ocean floor. There will be damage to our marine life. There will be damage to birds. All of this, of course, is before we even talk about the economic and financial cost of this wind farm. It'll cost a lot of money. There's a reason why these clean energy businesses are always asking for government handouts, and it's that they're not profitable. That's why Labor are subsidising this. That's why they're putting it on us. They're ignoring the concerns of our local community. The City of Mandurah has opposed it, and just last week the Labor member for Dawesville, my state member, who represents the Halls Head area, which will have views of the wind farm—she has come out and opposed it as well.

Those are just two examples of Labor's net zero obsession and how it's going to impact regular Australians—a new tax on SUVs and utes, and a massive big, ugly wind farm, producing unreliable, unaffordable energy for Western Australians.

The member for Cowan knows full well what this is going to do for your trips to the Margaret River. You won't be able to see that beautiful horizon when you leave Perth. You'll be instead looking at countless Eiffel towers on the horizon. Birds, marine life and ocean floors will be damaged, because of the Albanese government. You should focus on the concerns of regular Australians. You should focus on addressing the fundamental realities facing most Australian businesses and families. This Net Zero Economy Authority is not a priority for the families and businesses in my electorate of Canning. Their priority is ensuring that they can afford food, bills, petrol and keeping a roof over their heads.

To my constituents: I assure you that all of us on this side of the chamber are focused on making your life better, the cost of living more affordable and getting inflation down. We're not interested in bureaucracy and wasting time for no other purpose than to expand the reach of the bureaucracy here in Canberra.

Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join the member for Canning in raising some serious concerns, not just for the west of this nation but also for Queensland and Far North Queensland. I am happy to speak on the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024.

One thing that is of great concern to me, and will be to many people around the country, is when this bill talks about what happens with all of the workers that have kept the lights on, our coal workers. The bill talks about just moving them somewhere else: 'We'll transition them out of the industry they've worked in maybe their whole lives and put them somewhere different.' I don't think that's good at all, because in a place like Townsville, where I live, where Bravus has a coalmine and the majority of the workforce gets flown in and out to service that mine, when I speak to these coal workers, they love working there. They want to work there. They know one of our largest exports is coal, and they know they're doing good. They keep the lights on in this country and others around the world. Most importantly, they have stability in their job. They can provide for their families, they get good rosters and they get looked after. I think this bill is scary to many people who work in these industries.

The member for Canning raised the ute tax, which is another scary tax that is going to be imposed on people around Australia: those who drive utes or the family car or want to get away in a caravan. We heard before someone yell out, 'It'll be cheaper at the bowser but more expensive at the dealership.' I think it'll be more expensive at the dealership, and that will outweigh any sorts of savings spruiked by the government. We've seen other nations who had taken this up walk back how far they had gone with it. I've heard small businesses in the electorate of Herbert, in Townsville, say this will crush their business. This will kill small business, and I don't think that's good.

The energy industry jobs plan would allow the authority to utilise the industrial relations system to manage the redeployment of workers in closing coal-fired and gas-fired power stations and their dependent employees, coalminers that are reliant on a closing power station. This is scary language that talks about people that work in these industries, that work in gas and coal, being told this is now not important: 'We're closing this down, and we're going to move you somewhere else. We won't tell you if you'll be moved into a place where you want to go, or we won't tell you if your renumeration is going to be equal or less.' I don't think giving the responsibility of someone's livelihood to a bureaucrat in Canberra is a good idea. We love self-determination. We want people to work in industries they choose, we want them to have a career in what they want and we want them to live in this country anywhere they want.

I think this is a massive overreach. This is essentially an IR bill disguised as a bill for the regions and for transition, which we will oppose. We will oppose it because we believe it's bureaucratic waste and duplication; it's a top-down, Canberra-centric approach which will fail to deliver on the unique needs of the regions. New obligations on small, medium and large businesses—the fact is that this is another example of Labor's have haphazard approach on industry policy, which delivers no guarantees for local workers. This is very much a Canberra thought bubble policy that will absolutely hurt the regions. In regional Australia, in places like Townsville, is where we have the workers this will affect. I haven't seen any of the ministers or the energy minister in Townsville talking to the workforce this is going to affect. I haven't seen the minister holding a community town hall—not handpicked people; open it up for the community and allow them to come in and voice their concerns. That's what I would expect from a bill and a policy that'll affect regional Australia.

On top of the significant flaws in these pieces of legislation, as we found out, the government has doubled the authority's budget to nearly $400 million from 2023-24 to 2026-27 alone and further funding to a total of $1.1 billion over the medium term. The federal government cannot afford to waste over a billion dollars on Canberra bureaucrats across the Net Zero Authority, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and the Fair Work Commission when it is unable to detail the actions this authority will perform that are not already being done. The component of the Net Zero Economy Authority that relates to the new investment in the net zero transition is a bureaucratic waste which largely mirrors the responsibilities of existing federal and state agencies. We're putting your money, taxpayer money—it's good to see the member for Lilley here at the table—into an agency that is mirrored by other federal and state agencies. That seems like wasteful spending.

The authority explicitly has responsibility for facilitating public and private sector participation and investment in greenhouse gas emissions reduction and net zero transformation initiatives in Australia, including in new industries. This is almost copy and paste from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation role: 'to facilitate increased flows of finance into the clean industry sector and to facilitate the achievement of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets'. Similarly, the role of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency is 'to improve the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies, to increase the supply of renewable energy in Australia, and to facilitate the achievement of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions targets'. The level of duplication in the proposed Net Zero Economy Authority's responsibility to promote new investment in the net zero transition in existing Commonwealth entities is beyond a joke. How many federal agencies tasked with renewable energy financing does the Commonwealth require? This approach, focused on facilitating investment consistent with net zero ambitions, also links into the government's preference for picking winners, rather than genuine investment facilitation and jobs creation.

Another thing that's concerning is the way it talks about transitioning the workforce into other employment. It talks about coal workers and people who work in the gas industry. What about the small, mum-and-dad business that runs the cleaning on the mine site? That's not mentioned in here. What happens to that business? A small business takes a risk, invests, works hard, gets a good contract and a stable workforce, and then this bill appears—out of Canberra, not out of the regions. They didn't consult with you. Where is the small business to go? What's supposed to happen to them? There are lots of question marks in the cloud over this bill. It's on the minister to answer, and we haven't seen that yet.

It is also likely that, once the authority is established, the federal government will continue to add powers and responsibilities to the authority to support its net zero and climate ambitions. Will the government rule out giving the Net Zero Economy Authority new powers to streamline and/or expedite regulatory approvals or finance for transformational green energy projects? Following the tabling of Labor's 2024-25 budget, the funding for the authority and its related activities is budgeted to be $399.1 million from 2023-24 to 2026-27 alone, with further funding, to a total of $1.1 billion, over the medium term. That is on top of the billions of dollars in additional funding being moved into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the newly badged Future Made in Australia.

This $13 billion in taxpayer funded subsidies for big business does not address the source of Labor's cost-of-living crisis. Labor's focus should be on dealing with energy costs, high inflation and out-of-control red tape. Instead, Labor continually fails to address the fundamental realities facing most Australian businesses. With insolvencies at record highs and more businesses going offshore, supporting a small number of big businesses is irresponsible and a slap in the face for all businesses desperately seeking answers from this government in order to survive. The level of duplication between the net zero authority and existing Commonwealth institutions demonstrates a complete waste of over $1 billion of federal government funds over the forward estimates.

The proposed energy industry jobs plan is a long-held union wish list item. It was an election commitment carried under Bill Shorten and dubbed the 'Just Transition Authority' and has been adopted in some form in all ALP national platforms since 2018. Australia's current industrial framework features a well-established safety net that applies and has applied for a considerable amount of time to instances of business closures and industry change, especially relating to the closure of coal-fired power stations. Under section 2.10.1 of the AEMC's national electricity rules, coal-fired power stations must provide 3½ years notice before being able to close. Furthermore, a national agency to assist regions is also duplicative of state based mechanisms designed to achieve the same outcome. For example, regional planning initiatives already exist throughout the New South Wales government's Hunter Regional Plan and the Victorian government's Latrobe Valley Authority transitional plan. This new authority would also cut across the work and vision of existing Regional Development Australia committees, which recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating a vibrant region.

This bill adds an additional layer of regulation not previously considered by the Fair Work system. This bill does not even require the relevant employee's consent for their information to be passed on from their employer onto the Net Zero Economy Authority and the legally mandated trade union representation on its board. This bill is not for the regions; nor is it a bill to support the net zero transition. This is an industrial relations bill that the Labor government are gifting to the union movement.

The coalition will oppose the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 because it's bureaucratic waste and duplication—a top-down, Canberra-centric approach which is set to fail on delivering unique needs of the regions. There are new obligations on small, medium and large businesses, and the fact is that this is another example of Labor 's haphazard approach on industry policy which delivers no guarantee for local workers. The coalition not support this bill, and I would encourage ministers to come out to the regions. Come out to the people who will be affected by this. Sit down with them. Have a town hall meeting. Go to a coalmine. Go to a coal-fired power station. Sit down with the workers and talk through this because it's clear that that hasn't happened. No-one has come to Townsville. No-one has sat down with the Bravus employees and said, 'This is what the plan is for your future.' They're going to be reading about it tomorrow. They're going to be seeing it tonight. I think it is a shame for a government that ran on transparency not to be transparent with the people that they are going to, effectively, ruin the livelihoods of.

If you look at the small business, the mum-and-dad business that could be running the cleaning operation on the site, you wonder what happens to them. They're not mentioned once in this bill. Those opposite don't talk about where that business will get transitioned to. Do they just lose and have to walk off with no support from this government? I think that's a disgrace, and that's why the coalition won't be supporting this bill.

Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Throughout the last century, one of the great debates that was linked to bloody conflict was around the role of government. It's one of the great debates because it affects peoples lives—which path you take: whether you want more government or you want less government. When we look at the great movements in the last century for dragging people out of poverty, for lifting prosperity, all of the other advances in human technology, all of the metrics that make life worth living, we see that most have been not because of government but in the absence of government.

You can view power in one of two ways. You can view the success of the nation through the success of the government, and it is the size and the power and the resources of the government that can drive you. That's one view. Another view is that your measure of success is the absence of government. It is the small business, the family and the private sector, and their success is our success, driven by their ingenuity and their ability to solve problems, to put capital where it needs to be put and to incentivise labour in the way that it should be incentivised. These aren't just abstract theories that we talk about at political conferences or in the classroom. They are central to the great movement of taking people from poverty into prosperity. It is at the heart of this nation being where it is today. It is at the absolute heart.

So when we come to this place, whether we are Liberal or Labor, it is important to ask these questions: Do you want to democratise power or centralise it? Do you want to democratise prosperity or centralise it? They're important questions because it is in our DNA and our human nature to want to centralise things. You don't have to be a particular leader with an ego. That's just what power does. It coalesces around other power. That's what prosperity does. It must be resisted, and it must be resisted for very important reasons, because we need to resist it now more than ever. The Intergenerational report notes that Commonwealth government spending per person in 2023 was $25,000. Accounting for inflation, using that 2023 dollar mark, that report has that number going to $40,000 per person. That is a weight that the nation cannot bear, particularly if, in the absence of productivity growth, the median wage is going to be about $65,000 and the average wage is $95,000. It's unsustainable. What we haven't seen from this government are the productivity gains to offset that.

In the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and in the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024, we are seeing the creation of an agency, the Net Zero Economy Authority, that will have several functions that will concentrate power, concentrate bureaucracy and not address the substance of the issue that there is bipartisan support for. This authority will coordinate net zero policy and planning across government. It will facilitate both government and private participation and investment and support affected workers, including First Nations Australians, to participate in the transition. It also has a role to deliver educational and promotional initiatives. With many bills that come before this place, if you just open up the objectives, they are usually drafted in a way that reasonable people can agree with those objectives. But the devil is always in the detail—the unintended or the intended consequences that will flow from that and will have significant impact on peoples' lives.

There are two broad aspects to this legislation about these powers. The first power is that it will facilitate new investment in the net zero transition. It will operate as a shopfront, for want of a better word. It will seek to work with project advocates and state governments to get renewable projects to investment decision. Again, it's a government-knows-best view, and we've seen where that goes. We've seen how that movie plays out. Like many families in Australia, I was quite glad to get the NBN and use it. But no-one has to be a technology or communications engineer to know that that technology will quickly fade, and we're seeing that. The government didn't have anything to do with Starlink and Elon Musk, but that's already an alternative to that monumentally expensive project. But here we are. There is a great risk in centralising this one-stop shopfront that knows best. We are going into an area that is about not just other technologies but technologies that are linked to the most fundamental input into business after capital and labour, being energy. They're the three big inputs for anyone running a business: capital, labour and energy. This authority covers all three, and not necessarily for good.

The second responsibility of the authority is in assisting the impacted workers in the transition through the Energy Industry Jobs Plan. When there's change, there are those who are left behind. That happens. That happens all the time. It is important that—whether it is through training, other opportunities or just the initiative of the individuals involved—there are other opportunities out there for them. Like when we transitioned from a horse and cart transport sector to the combustion engine, that happened without the government working out what to do. The big oil companies put petrol stations up. They did that without much help from the government because they saw an opportunity, they saw a need and they reacted. That's how the process works; it's how it's supposed to work. For some reason, we are reinventing all of those lessons over many decades.

Where did this come from? Where did this newfound love of government knowing best come from? It's an old idea and a dangerous idea, but it's one that the Treasurer quite clearly articulated in his previous summer's essay where he put a kite up to show that whilst he might admire Paul Keating he doesn't, in his actions, follow his commitment to the non-government sector driving prosperity forward. In fact the essay sought to reinvent capitalism. That is quite disturbing and will have consequences, because the Treasurer is seeking to reinvent capitalism. Again, point to an example in history or around the world where many, many other leaders and political parties—whether they were democratic or otherwise, and they're usually not democratic—have sought to reinvent capitalism. How did that turn out? How has it gone for those countries? How has it gone when government seeks to pick winners? Again, when government knows best.

What special skill and expertise is in this building that knows better than Australians out there who are taking the risks, who are putting their own capital forward and putting their own house on the line? Why do we think that we know better? It is hubris, it is absolute arrogance.

The other issue with this bill is that it is a wolf in sheep's clothing. There are industrial relations impacts contained within this bill that have not been properly spoken about. They haven't been frank with the public and they haven't been frank with those who either run a small or medium business, or who aspire to, about the extra burden and layer that's about to be put on them.

We will oppose this bill for several reasons. Fundamentally, it is a philosophical difference and objection to the role of government that we believe in democratising power. That's an admirable thing because it means are we in this place for ourselves or for the nation. It's about democratising prosperity, and there's humility to that. Do we know better, or do we trust Australian ingenuity, Australian risk-takers and Australians who work hard to know better, particularly those in the regions. And because this bill disproportionately affects regional businesses, I do listen to my Nationals colleagues and my regional Liberal colleagues. I don't represent a regional seat, but that's the point. Because I don't represent a regional seat, who am I to tell my good friends in the Nationals and my good friends in regional Liberal areas what they should be doing? And it goes both ways. I wouldn't ask you to tell a metropolitan member what we should do in Melbourne, even though some do. That's the purpose of this place. There are 151 seats, each little bit of Australia broken up and represented. Through their voices, we get to the better decisions. So, when the regional and rural members, through our friends in the Nationals and our party, are telling us that this is going to hit the regions particularly hard, we should listen. I listen. The government benches should listen.

This is another example of Labor's haphazard approach to industrial policy. There's only so much that Australian businesses can take. Every corner of this country is doing it tough, but there are some that are doing it tougher than others. In my state of Victoria, small and medium businesses are doing it particularly tough. There is a churn to businesses. Some will go; some won't survive. That happens. It's part of the process. But there has consistently been, more often than not, an aggregate increase. What we know is that, last financial year, the only state not to have an aggregate increase was Victoria. In an aggregate sense, 7,600 businesses left our state. Again, my good friend the member for Herbert is from Queensland. They had an increase of 11,000 businesses. I have heard many Queensland members tell me about the Victorians that have moved north to set up business there. So, if you want to have a good look at what the future looks like with a Labor dominated government, go to the history of a Labor dominated state government. That's your looking glass into the future. To those small business owners and those medium business owners, I say: you need help, not further burdens from a bill like this.

There are those who will look at the title of this and make the usual calls about who is standing strong on climate change or not. That is a dishonest view of this. It's a straw man argument. Australians want us to solve the problems that matter to them in a serious way. Engaging in those sorts of straw man arguments—and we've seen them particularly from the Greens political party—is not in the interests of our economy and our society. This transition is happening. It is a difficult one that's happening around the world. There's bipartisan support for it. But we have to ask ourselves: What has changed from all of the lessons, particularly in the last century, where we have learned that the top-down government-knows-best approach isn't going to solve it? What has changed that we think we can flip the script on that? I enjoyed the Treasurer's essay, but the answer isn't there. I enjoyed his reading his PhD on Paul Keating, and the answer certainly wasn't there. So we ask the government: Why do you think you can reinvent capitalism? Why do you think that you know best over Australians? Why do you think we should not, wherever we can, democratise power, democratise prosperity and, in doing so, put the interests of Australians before ourselves, because that is needed more than ever.

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024. I look at this through the lens of: what will this bill do for my electorate of Dawson? The answer is net zero. This bill is turning the Net Zero Economy Agency into a standalone statutory authority. By doing so, the Albanese Labor government are wasting $1.1 billion. They are wasting $1.1 billion of taxpayers' money on duplicating something that already exists. This comes hot on the heels of the recent budget, where 36,000 more bureaucrats are going to be employed at a cost of over $24 billion over the forward estimates. Unbelievable. How much more do you think the taxpayers of Australia can pay? There are already federal and state entities who exist and largely mirror the responsibilities of what would become the Net Zero Economy Authority, and—classic Labor—this bill has net zero details of how they plan to deal with how the overlapping organisations will or should work together. This is all about the reckless race-to-renewables fantasy of those opposite. It's about fast-tracking the swindle factories—you know, the big whoosh-whoosh fans that wipe out heaps of birds, bang, when the birds hit the blades. Of course fast-tracking the solar projects as well—

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! You shouldn't encourage him.

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They go as far as the eye can see—again, enormous environmental damage, wiping out G-qual, good quality agricultural land that provides the food and fibre for the whole nation. They feed the nation out of the good quality agricultural land, but no, we decide to put solar panels there. What about the native vegetation? The native vegetation is being wiped out. Whole hilltops, straight across, are being wiped out to put swindle factories up in the top area of those.

Where are the Greens on this? Their silence is absolutely deafening. I thought they were keen to look after the environment, but no. If this were a coalmine or a grazier who was trying to knock a tree down so he could have some grass to feed his stock, he'd be in jail. No, because it's this reckless race-to-renewables, that's okay. Do whatever you like. You get a free pass. As everyone knows here, I'm a farmer by trade, so I want to talk about a little thing called photosynthesis. What happens with photosynthesis is it takes the carbon dioxide out of the air, through the process of photosynthesis, and turns it into oxygen. What do those opposite want to do? Fill all of the paddocks full of steel—which, by the way, has to be made by mining as well, but everyone seems to forget about that. I just don't get it. Again, the Greens, through all of this process, are absolutely silent. This is all just to create intermittent, unreliable power, and that's exactly what it is. It doesn't work all the time.

To illustrate this I'll tell a little story which best sums it up the 'intermittent and unreliable'. Four blokes go into a bar, and they order four schooners. The barman comes over: 'What do you want, fellas?' 'Four schooners.' 'Sorry, mate. No beer today, because the sun's not shining and the wind's not blowing.' This is the analogy. This is the direct comparison. These four blokes go home, tails between their legs, thinking about Slim Dusty's pub with no beer, but not to be outdone, they front up again the next day. 'We're going to the pub, boys. You beauty.' They go and see the barman: 'Four schooners, please. You've got beer today?' 'We've got beer today.' Beauty. He brings the first two schooners over, disappears and comes back: 'We need another two.' 'Sorry, mate. The wind's not blowing. You can only have two schooners.' What do we do about that? I know in the electricity world we have to load-shed. We have to share. We have blackouts; we have brownouts. That's exactly what happens. Not to be outdone, day 3 comes along and the four blokes are still keen. They want to have a round together. They want to have four beers. They come in: 'Four schooners, please. We've got beer, don't we?' 'We've got beer today.' They pour the first two straight across, and they get another one. The fourth bloke is waiting for his beer. Where is it? 'Sorry, mate. A cloud has gone over. We can't provide you with a beer.' That is a direct analogy of exactly what happens when you've got an intermittent and unreliable electricity supply. It beggars belief. What if you went to the bakery and they only sold you bread when it suited them? It should be beholden on whatever the energy creator is to be able to provide power 24/7.

The Albanese Labor government is intermittent and unreliable as well, so this doesn't surprise me at all. What has the Albanese Labor government done to help the Labor created cost-of-living crisis? Net zero. What have they done to alleviate the pressures of the housing crisis? You guessed it: net zero. What have they done to curb inflation? Net zero. What have they done to stop interest rates rising? Net zero. What have they done to bring down the rising cost of energy? Net zero.

So let's explore the capex of this. We hear from Minister Bowen about how renewables are the cheapest form of energy. Well, let's look at the cheapest form of energy. When you look at a solar panel, you only look at what it produces in the middle of the day, not how much it produces overnight or when clouds go over. Say you buy the solar panels. At best, they only last 20 years. Some of them last 15 to 20 years. So what are you going to do with the solar panels? You'll have to store them somewhere or put them in landfill because you can't recycle them. That cost of landfill, with all the leachate and all the monitoring, is therefore ever. And then you've got to do it again.

Let's look at the capex. Because solar panels only work seven or eight hours a day at the most and we need power 24/7, they have to be supplemented with something. So here comes wind. You've already have paid for your solar panels and then you've got to put a wind tower up. Let's also overlook the cost at the end of the life of the wind tower. It costs $600,000 to dismantle a wind tower. That's the cost at the end, but you've got to buy them upfront. Again, the wind tower only works when the wind's blowing. It doesn't work when there's not much wind, and it doesn't work when there's too much wind. So that capex is expended.

Then I hear, 'Okay, we need hydro to supplement this as well.' You've got to pay that capital expenditure as well. So you pay for all the dams, and all this stuff also has to be connected by a transmission network. Those opposite are saying, 'Okay. We need 28,000 kilometres of poles and wires to get all this connected up.' I'll go back to the hydro. We've got the hydro, which can't provide it all the time either. Then I hear about batteries, but batteries just do not last long enough. Renewables are not baseload; you need baseload power.

Currently, the only baseload power that we have in this country is coal, which those opposite want to shut down as quickly as possible. They're too frightened to use more gas, but that is good for baseload as well. But if you really want net emission technologies, you need to go nuclear. Nuclear will provide next to no emissions technologies and will provide power 24/7, not like those opposite, who only want to provide power when it suits them.

I want to have reliable and affordable energy 24/7. I don't want to go up and see Mrs Smith, who is lying in the hospital bed on a ventilator and say: 'Excuse me, Mrs Smith. I just need you to hold your breath for the next 14 hours until the sun comes up or the wind blows so we can get a little bit more power into the grid. Just hang on there for me, love.' I don't want to do that. I live in the real world; I don't live in some ideological fantasyland. I live in the real world and I want to look after the real people.

In my maiden speech, I spoke about how we need to look at all energy mixes. I'm happy enough to use solar panels. Through the middle of the day, in offices, that's absolutely a fantastic idea. But what about the placement of the solar panels? Why don't we put the solar panels on rooftops or on top of Woolworths or Coles or—

Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're not making sense!

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The temporary member for Hasluck is interjecting.

When you have solar panels over the top of a car park, that's a fine place for them, but why would you put them out in the country? Why would you put them out in my part of the world, destroying all the native vegetation?

Those opposite talk about manufacturing. Well, I've got a newsflash for you. You have zero chance—net zero chance—of having manufacturing in this country unless you have reliable and affordable power. That comes back to your capex as well. When someone invests in manufacturing, they want their factory to be able to operate 24/7. That's how you get your return on your capital. They can't afford to have manufacturing that only operates when the wind blows or the sun shines. So it's just an absolutely ridiculous proposition.

But those opposite, the Albanese Labor government, are full of useless propositions. What have the Labor government done to create a solar plan to move Australia forward? Net zero. What have they done to strengthen our economy? Net zero. What have they done to increase productivity? Net zero. What have they done to support our farmers, our fishers, our miners and all our primary industries? Absolutely net zero.

But what they have done is they have brought in the family car and ute tax. Isn't that a ripper for rural and regional Australia! This is taxing the very vehicles that all the people around my electorate drive. They have to. This is a bid to get them to drive electric vehicles. But—newsflash for those opposite—the electric vehicles can't carry the weight, can't tow the load and can't cover the vast distances that are required. They're not suited for our purposes. If you want to use them in the city, happy days. But why tax my people out of existence to create this ideological fantasy land?

But, at the core of this bill, it isn't just about net zero. It is an industrial relations bill. What this legislation does is give the unions a big stick to threaten employers to provide paid time off, to facilitate activities to drive union membership—oh, we love that, because we clip the ticket on the way through for that, don't we, folks!—and enforce obligations that businesses may not be able to afford. The union movement want the Net Zero Economy Authority to be legislated because the authority will be able to collect the personal information of all employees, and those opposite do exactly what their union puppetmasters say.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in opposition to the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024, because this is just more of the same from the Albanese government. This is another cog in the machine that is their environmental policy, which will see this nation burdened with debt and dysfunction for generations to come. I certainly will not stand by and quietly let that happen. So speaking against this bill is important.

The bill supposedly is to create yet another department, which seems to be something that the Albanese government is excelling at—that is, creating bureaucracy. I know, when it comes to renewable energy, the Prime Minister loves to come in here and talk about us being a renewable energy superpower. At this rate, the only superpower we're going to be is a bureaucratic one. With the proposed 36,000 public servants, at the cost of $24 billion over the forward estimates, we are becoming a bureaucratic paradise under this Labor government.

This bill moves the current agency that operates under the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet out into its own independent authority and it's given a number of responsibilities to facilitate both government and private participation and investment, to support effective workers, to support First Nations Australians to participate in the transition and to deliver educational and promotional initiatives as Australia transitions to a net zero emissions economy. It all sounds very lovely, but, as is the case with Labor, the serving suggestion label should not be taken as what it is, because it looks very different to that in operation. When the cake is made, it looks and tastes very different.

This bill will facilitate projects that are already having a very negative impact on my local area. The Forest Wind project that is proposed for the coast is one of the biggest wind turbine electricity generation projects, with hundreds and hundreds of these giant wind turbines, and there's been virtually no consultation with the people living around the project. This has been thrust upon them. What a cracker the Borumba Dam pumped hydro project is—$14 billion proposed for a pumped hydro scheme that will produce two gigawatts for 24 hours! No wonder the Labor government is refusing to give over the business case and the detail on this project, because blind Freddy can see that that is a project that will not stack up. It's been thrown out there based on ideology and politics, not on the economy and science. This is what we are experiencing throughout Australia with these mad projects. This is the main focus of this government. When we're in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis that has been acknowledged and by the Reserve Bank governor as being somewhat homegrown now, they want to concentrate on this ideological madness where they're killing off industries instead of growing them.

Look at the comparison between that and the approach of the coalition. We have already announced that our plan is not to pick industries that will die under our administration. It is to support all industries that will potentially flourish and produce employment and revenue to provide the services that we rely on. We will streamline approvals for projects like gas projects, which will be required as we move forward. We will streamline those projects and so those projects will come online quicker and there will be more jobs in those industries for Australians. There will be more jobs for workers. We'll also look at some of the barriers that are stopping Australians from having those jobs, like the Environmental Defenders Office. We will defund them, because all they're doing, and all this government is doing in supporting them and funding them, is killing Australian jobs for workers. It defies belief that the Australian Labor Party has got to the point where, due to its left-wing ideology, it is now saying to tried and proven industries with blue-collar workers, 'Your industry? No, we don't like it anymore. We're going to kill it.'

This bill is not a shopfront for industry. It is palliative care. It is an industry hospice. Let me tell you about these jobs and these industries. You go in there. They'll give you a bit of support. But guess what? You are not going home, and there are no jobs at the end of this. There is the suggestion that green hydrogen is going to save the country. The numbers around that are just mind-bogglingly ridiculous. Eight hundred gigawatts of energy are required for this proposition. If you believe that, I've got a really good deal on a bridge! It looks like a coathanger, and I'll give it to you for a really good price! That's how mad these things are. These proposals say, 'We're going to transition you out of being a well-paid miner into manufacturing solar panels.' That's the alternative that's being suggested here, and this bill facilitates all of this. Talk about taking proud Australian workers and almost ridiculing them with this sort of stuff! What has happened to the Australian Labor Party?

Once upon a time, the unions looked after their workers. They have a proud history of this. I remember going on a driving holiday with my kids years ago and stopping in Barcaldine at the Tree of Knowledge. I remember showing the kids the Tree of Knowledge and telling them about the shearers' strike of 1891 and explaining to them the importance of these things throughout Australian history. But if I were taking that same trip now, I'd be saying, 'Now you can't recognise that party for what it was when that manifesto was read under that tree in the 1890s. It's now some sort of left-wing ideological servant of the United Nations that kills off jobs. It doesn't support fair conditions for workers. It actually puts them into unemployment.' My goodness, me! What has happened to the Australian Labor Party?

As I said earlier, people out there are currently in a cost-of-living crisis. There has been an 11 per cent increase in the price of food. Housing has gone up by 14 per cent, rents by 30 per cent, electricity by 20 per cent, gas by 25 per cent and health by 11 per cent. And we're talking about killing off industries and killing off revenues and pumping government money into the economy with a bureaucracy that is only going to inflate these problems? There is no sign of course of the $275 promised at the last election by the Prime Minister, who stood before the Australian population many, many times at many venues and promised that, under him, there would be this $275 reduction in your power bill. That certainly turned out to be an absolute and utter falsehood.

You've got to ask yourself, when you look at this bill and you take into consideration those numbers of 36,000 more public servants and the $24 billion: Is this going to save us somewhere? Is this going to perform a function that's going to improve the country? When you look at the detail, the answer is no, because these positions that are being created are basically duplicating positions that already exist. Even if you support the intention of the government in creating this department, surely you can't support the fact that it will be doing a job that other state and federal departments are currently doing. It makes no sense, it's economically irresponsible and, at what is now forecast to be a billion dollars for this department, it defies belief.

In conclusion I will say that, aside from the obvious problems with this bill—the duplication; the fact it's masquerading as an industrial relations bill when it's designed to give the unions more power—you have to ask yourself: what it is ultimately going to do? What is this government department going to do? I can tell you what it's not going to do, and that's change the temperature of the world. This government department will have no influence whatsoever on the temperature of the world. Look at our international trading partners, particularly China. Our emissions for 2023 were a bit over 400 million tonnes, which is only about 75 per cent of China's increase for that year. If you take our emissions right out, China, with its increase, will have increased global emissions without us. You think to yourself: China has agreed that its carbon emissions will peak by 2030 and it will be net zero by 2060, but some people are anticipating that it has 300 gigawatts of coal-fired power currently under construction and planned. Bear in mind that our energy system in Australia is about 70 gigawatts. They've got 300 gigawatts of coal-fired power planned or under construction. Is this bill going to make any difference whatsoever? Is China going to achieve these goals that it's signed up to? It's obvious that it won't.

Based on ideology and politics, we're going to trade in our First World economy for an unreliable, intermittent energy source that ultimately is going to be very expensive, before it collapses. This is an atrocious bill that has been put forward by an atrocious government.

Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I start this afternoon by congratulating the previous two speakers on such great contributions to the debate on the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024. The two members represent parts of regional Queensland that are going to be impacted by the government's plans to achieve net zero and meet its ambitious targets over the next few years, and these members understand what the impact of this bill will be on their communities.

I represent a section of bayside Brisbane, Deputy Speaker, that some people wouldn't think of as a natural place to have a lot of people working in fossil fuels within the energy system, but in fact Brisbane is often talked about as being our biggest mining town. There are a lot of people in my electorate who work for companies that undertake these kinds of operations and who will be affected by what the government has planned. I will use an example from my electorate that I think illustrates where the government is trying to go here. It's a cautionary tale, perhaps, that those opposite might be able to look at in thinking about where we don't want to go and how we ensure our money is spent wisely.

In my electorate I've got North Stradbroke Island, which is a great tourism mecca for people not just across South-East Queensland but across all of Australia. But on North Stradbroke Island there was a very strong, thriving sand mining industry for many years, and it became a fashionable thing to talk down the sand mining industry and to talk about its impact on the tourism product of the island. I disagreed. Many of the islanders who worked in the sand mining industry disagreed as well. They liked the jobs that they had on the island. It didn't have a major impact on the tourism product there. People didn't even know it was happening. It was out of sight and out of mind, but it created a lot of jobs and it created a lot of wealth.

The current state Labor government decided to abolish sand mining on North Stradbroke Island, and the pitch to the locals was, 'Don't worry. We're going to invest $20 million in an economic transition strategy. You're not going to lose your high-paying job in sand mining. You're going to be forging a new career in a new industry. You're going to get a great job in the tourism sector or in ecotourism,' or whatever other industry the government dreamt up that would replace their high-paying mining job.

That economic transition strategy started in 2015. The $20 million has all been spent and, really, no-one can point to anything of tangible benefit out of it. There's a lot less employment on the islands, and the tourism industry has actually gone backwards over that period of time. A lot of the islanders just look at that and go, 'We were absolutely sold a pup.' All that money was wasted, and I fear that—as the government introduces this bill and seeks to make this legislation and brings through the details of this bill—we are heading in the same direction but on a much larger scale. This isn't just the microcosm of North Stradbroke Island. This is something that will impact a lot of communities across the length and breadth of Australia, and over a long period of time.

The coalition will be opposing this bill because it is costly, it puts pressure across businesses—not just big businesses but small businesses as well. We consider it a union pushed IR reform masquerading as a bill. It neglects our regions of course, as I've mentioned, and it does not help local workers.

The aspects of the legislation that the government's speakers have highlighted earlier in this debate are that it's going to facilitate new investment in net zero transition, but it does this by duplicating the work of existing agencies. The coalition just can't consider it to be money well spent to be duplicating the work that's already being undertaken by other agencies, both at the federal and the state level.

The second responsibility is assisting the impacted workers in that transition area through energy industry jobs plans. Here, the coalition is concerned that this is masquerading as a solution while really being a union pushed IR bill.

It's costly. Labor, of course, loves wasting money. We saw this with the Voice referendum, which cost us $450 million. I had a chat to our opposition spokesperson on government waste this morning and he outlined some of the great examples that he's compiling of how much this government is wasting, and this is certainly on that list. We saw record spending and inflationary spending in last month's budget. Now we see this with bureaucratic waste.

The government has doubled the authority's budget to nearly $400 million from 2023-24 through to 2026-27 alone, with further funding to cost $1.1 billion over the medium term. The government has failed to justify this spending. They've not detailed what actions the authority would perform that are not already happening. Existing state and federal agencies already do the work that the Net Zero Economy Authority promises to do. The work of existing agencies and mechanisms such as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Major Projects Facilitation Agency will be duplicated under this new agency.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation's legislated role is 'to facilitate increased flows of finance into the clean energy sector and to facilitate the achievement of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.' The new Net Zero Economy Authority's role is 'to facilitate public and private sector participation and investment in greenhouse gas emissions reduction and net zero transformation initiatives in Australia,' including in new industries. These are almost identical. As Australians struggle with the cost of living, we need a government that will rein in spending. Spending over a billion dollars to change the Net Zero Economy Agency to the Net Zero Economy Authority does not rein that in. It is simply bureaucratic waste and more duplication.

Another factor as to why we are opposing this bill is we're worried about the pressure this will place on business. There's concern about the scope of the legislation, particularly for smaller, dependent employers. The explanatory memorandum provides an example of a local cleaning service with a commercial relationship with a closing generator, classified as a dependent employer. It is not clear what liability or obligations the cleaning service would be expected to adopt under an Energy Industry Jobs Plan. It would be up to the FWC to determine. There are no carveouts or exclusions for small businesses in this legislation. These small businesses are unlikely to have the resources or the capacity to administer the services that are going to be outlined in the bill. It's also unclear whether the plan will apply to any permanent employees of closing or dependent employers, and whether casual employees will also be captured. The change claims to help workers in the regions who lose their jobs through the transition to renewables, but Australia already has a well-established safety net. Under section 2.10 of AEMC's national electricity rules, coal-fired power stations must provide 3½ years notice before being able to close. In many instances of business closure and industry change, especially relating to the closure of coal-fired power stations, our industrial frameworks have already been successful. The bill adds an additional layer of regulation not previously considered by the Fair Work system.

Labor's focus should be dealing with energy costs, high inflation and out-of-control red tape; instead, what this bill does, and what we are, unfortunately, seeing too from this Labor government, is continual failure to address the fundamental realities that are facing Australian businesses. We are seeing insolvencies at record highs and more businesses going offshore. Supporting a small number of big businesses is irresponsible and a slap in the face for small businesses desperately seeking answers from this government to survive, particularly when staring down the barrel of what this transition will mean for them.

The Energy Industry Jobs Plan is disguised to help regions but is really just something that Labor's union friends have been pushing for a while now. The Energy Industry Jobs Plan is bought and paid for by the union movement. The unions want the Net Zero Economy Authority to be legislated because the authority will be able to collect the personal information of employees of coal-fired power stations, from financial records to phone numbers. Indeed, the bill does not even require the relevant employees' consent for the information to be passed from their employer onto the Net Zero Economy Authority and the legally mandated trade union representative on its board. This is a gross violation of privacy that Labor's union friends have crafted into this legislation, and I think most Australian workers would be shocked if they read the details of that understood the implications.

The bill also doesn't do enough to care about our regions. We saw this in my electorate where Labor ignored the unique needs of my Bay Islands and denied them eligibility to our Growing Regions Program funds. But my seat is only slightly regional; the impacts on some of these bigger regions are going to be significantly worse. The bill claims to protect regional jobs, but with a lack of detail that delivers no guarantees for local workers and adds pressure to businesses without any guarantee of the types of employment that workers may transition into. This is the promise that was made to the constituents of mine on North Stradbroke Island—they were promised that they were going to be given much-better-paid jobs, greater tenure moving forward and nothing to worry about regarding the closure of their industry. Well, today, they look back and think about the golden times that they enjoyed when that industry was thriving on the islands.

Furthermore, a national agency to assist regions is also duplicative of state-based mechanisms designed to achieve the same outcome. For example, regional planning initiatives already exist through the New South Wales government's Hunter Regional Plan and the Victorian government's Latrobe Valley Authority transition plan.

This new authority would also cut across the work and vision of existing Regional Development Australia committees, which are undertaking a lot of this work and which also recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to create vibrant regions across our country. The challenges will be quite unique. They'll be unique to western areas of New South Wales compared to some of the coalmining areas in the Hunter Valley and up in Gladstone. And, of course, there are the broader challenges across all the different and varied regions of our country. We see this with plans that failed to deliver; a one-size-fits-all approach is certainly not going to work across such a broad country. A national body risks a top-down Canberra-centric approach which does not fully consider regional needs and priorities. The coalition fears this plan is too Canberra-centric, while it pretends to manage the redevelopment of workers in regional coal- and gas-fired power stations.

I'll turn to the recommendations that were made in the dissenting report from the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration's considerations of the bill. The coalition members produced a really top-notch dissenting report on this bill and I just encourage the government to consider some of the factors that were highlighted in that report. Of course this is going to pass this chamber—we don't kid ourselves of that—but I do hope that in the fullness of time the government will consider reassessing whether a top-down application is truly the best way to achieve the outcomes they want through this bill. There are also some good recommendations here in relation to how this system, this layer of regulation, has not been fully considered by the Fair Work system. I hope the government does some workarounds there.

The new authority overlaps significantly with existing industrial obligations, including consultation, paid leave, union access and enforcement, without dealing with how these overlapping obligations should interact, and it takes no steps to harmonise measures that will cause confusion, uncertainty and disputation at the workplace level so that it can be avoided. I think that's a critical part of this debate: this will be difficult for business and for employees; why does the government need to make it even more difficult by creating unnecessary confusion and duplication when we can take action now to harmonise these measures? That would ensure there isn't confusion and that there's clear guidance from the federal level which syncs in nicely with the state regulations as well. Why not take the opportunity to do that now before we get down to the business end of the transition? It seems to me that the government has missed a trick in not taking the opportunity while it has presented itself over recent months.

The coalition will be opposing this bill because it is a costly, union-pushed IR reform masquerading as a bill. It puts pressure on small, medium and large businesses. And, most importantly, it neglects our regions and does not help those local workers who are the backbone of the Australian economy and who we should be supporting in this place.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024, which I will be opposing. The coalition will be opposing this bill for a number of reasons, and I will elaborate on all of these reasons.

Essentially, there are five reasons. This is a bill that Labor has promoted as supporting the net zero transition, particularly in the regions. But when significant research is done into this bill, it's anything but. This is an industrial relations bill and the Labor government, in introducing this bill, is simply providing yet another gift to the union movement. This bill also shows bureaucratic waste and duplication and it shows a top-down Canberra-centric approach, which is set to fail in delivering for the unique needs of the regions. The regions have unique needs that are different from those of the metropolitan areas around Sydney. But also, each region in and of itself has unique needs, and this bill is going nowhere to address that. Finally, it is imposing significant obligations on small, medium and large businesses alike, particularly within the regions.

My seat, the seat of Hughes, is a metropolitan seat, so, when I was considering my approach to this bill, I particularly had regard to the speeches and the commentary made either by my colleagues who are members of the National Party or by my regional colleagues. I've just been present in the chamber for the member for Bowman's speech, and I was similarly present for the member for Herbert's speech. I think that, for those of us who have seats in metropolitan areas, it is important to consult with those who are in the regions, because they understand their seats the best, and they are unanimous that this will not deliver for their specific areas.

I would like to turn to what this bill is actually about. It is stated that it will transition the current Net Zero Economy Agency from an executive agency which currently sits within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to a standalone statutory authority known as the Net Zero Economy Authority. Under the legislation, the authority's stated functions are: first, to coordinate net zero policy and planning across government; second, to facilitate both government and private participation and investment; third, to support affected workers; fourth, to provide First Nations Australians the opportunity to participate in the transition; and fifth, to deliver educational and promotional initiatives as Australia transitions to a net zero emissions economy. That statement of objectives is full of motherhood statements. That may well be the intention of these bills, but, when we delve into the substance of these bills, we can see that the legislation, as it is currently drafted, will not achieve those objectives.

There are two broad aspects to the legislation that in fact operationalise the authority's powers. One is the facilitating of new investment in the net zero transition. It has been stated that the authority will be a shopfront for industry and investors. It will seek to work with project proponents and state governments to get renewable projects to investment decision. That all sounds fabulous, but it won't do that in practice. The authority will mobilise public moneys through vehicles like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the National Reconstruction Fund, with private financing support; address enabling infrastructure needs; and navigate regulatory processes.

The second main responsibility of the authority is to assist the impacted workers in that transition area through the Energy Industry Jobs Plan. This plan will allow the authority to utilise the current IR system to manage the redeployment of workers in closing coal-fired and gas-fired power stations and their dependent employers. This includes coalmines, for example, that are reliant on a closing power station. What the plan does not specify or anticipate is the types of employment that workers may transition into. Therefore we say that this is essentially an IR bill disguised as a bill for the regions and the transition.

As already indicated, in the coalition's view, this legislation has significant flaws. As we found out the night of the government's failed budget, the government has already doubled the budget to nearly $400 million alone, with further funding to a total of $1.1 billion over the medium term. But this is establishing simply another big Canberra bureaucracy across the net zero authority, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and the Fair Work Commission. The government has been unable to detail the actions that this authority would perform. Instead of consulting with the regions, we will have a Canberra bureaucracy dictating to the regions what will occur in each and every region and what in particular will occur to their deployed employees. This is very important for regional Australia.

The component of the Net Zero Economy Authority that relates to new investment in the net zero transition is simply a bureaucratic waste. It largely mirrors the responsibilities of existing federal and state agencies, and we already have those agencies established. It is difficult to understand, then, why these are being duplicated and why this is setting up more Canberra bureaucrats. The authorities that will be duplicated include the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australia Renewable Energy Agency and the role of existing mechanisms such as the Major Projects Facilitation Agency. This is because the authority explicitly has responsibility for facilitating public and private sector participation and investment in greenhouse gas emissions reduction and net zero transformation initiatives in Australia, including in new industries. But this is almost completely copied and pasted from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation's legislated role. Then, when we look at the role of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, we see it similarly contains exactly those sorts of authorities. This level of duplication, when it is couched as being to promote new investment, is highly concerning. It simply is going to be Canberra again trying to dictate to the regions what will occur in their particular areas.

We have seen with this type of body that it will simply be a national body. It's going to be a top-down, Canberra-centric approach. It won't be able to fully consider regional needs and priorities. We've heard already in this place from many members whose seats are in regional areas, and they have pretty well identified and articulated individual needs for their particular regions. Therefore, having a top-down approach to say 'This is what is going to occur in all of these regions throughout Australia' simply does not make sense when one considers that every region throughout Australia is unique and will have unique needs.

It's also quite likely that, once established, the federal government will continue to add additional powers and responsibilities to the authority to support its net zero and climate ambitions. But it remains unclear—and I say it will always remain unclear—how this authority is actually going to assist workers in the regions who will be facing unemployment. Of course, when it unemployment comes through those regions, in many cases, particularly in the smaller towns, the whole town collapses.

We see with Labor's budget this year that the funding is now being budgeted to $400 million, with further funding to total $1.1 billion over the medium term. It's still unclear how many will be employed in this authority and what its specific tasks will be besides a very generalised view to supposedly assisting those in the regions who will be losing their jobs as we transition to new energy. We already have over $13 billion in taxpayer funded subsidies for big business, so this legislation goes nowhere and, indeed, will only add to this crisis we already have. It is far too much spending. Instead, Labor should be focusing on dealing with energy costs and high inflation, and its current out-of-control red tape. This is adding one more layer of red tape and one more layer of bureaucracy.

As we turn to the impact this will have on small and medium businesses particularly, we need to look at the reality facing most Australian businesses not just in the regions but throughout metropolitan areas of Australia. We already have insolvencies at record highs and more businesses going offshore. Supporting a small number of big businesses in this area is irresponsible and a slap in the face for small businesses directly seeking answers from this government and desperately seeking help simply to survive.

I'll turn now to the second-biggest feature of the proposed legislation—the Energy Industry Jobs Plan. This has been a carryover for many years from when the current minister for disability services, Bill Shorten, was leader, and it has been part of the ALP national platform going back to 2018. Australia's current industrial framework already features a well-established safety net that applies, and has applied for a considerable amount of time, in instances of business closures and industry change, particularly in the area of the closure of coal-fired power stations. Therefore, it is unclear why this new plan is in fact needed.

As has already been stated, a further national agency to assist regions is simply duplicative of state based mechanisms that have been designed to achieve the same outcome. For example, if we turn to some of the specific regions: in New South Wales the New South Wales government has the Hunter Regional Plan; in Victoria there is the government's Latrobe Valley authority transition plan. This new authority, however, would cut across the work and the vision of existing Regional Development Australia committees, which recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating vibrant regions. Therefore, this bill is again going to add another layer of regulation that has not already been considered by the fair work system. How this authority and how this bill, and the regime it is setting out, will work with the existing fair work system is completely unclear. It appears there will be significant overlap with existing industrial obligations without in any way setting out how those existing obligations, in the case of interaction, will play out. Therefore, for all these reasons, the coalition and I will be opposing this bill.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill, the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024, is fundamentally a bureaucratic waste that imposes a harsh new series of obligations on small, medium and large businesses. The Albanese Labor government's ideological obsession with top-down, Canberra centric approaches is going to cost taxpayers some $1.1 billion over the medium term, with this bill.

The bill is nothing more than another industrial relations bill to serve Labor's union donors, disguised as a bill for the regions. The authority explicitly has responsibility for facilitating public and private sector participation, investment in greenhouse gas emissions, and reduction and net zero transformation initiatives in Australia, including in new industries. This provision is almost copied and pasted from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation's legislated role to 'facilitate increased flows of finance into the clean energy sector and to facilitate the achievement of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets'.

The level of duplication between the proposed Net Zero Economy Authority's responsibility to promote new investment in the net zero transition and existing Commonwealth entities is another example of this government's obsession with red tape and union agendas. How many federal agencies tasked with renewable financing does the Commonwealth require? We've got this one which is being set up. We've got the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and Labor's Rewiring the Nation program. Adding all this up, it's billions of dollars.

We know what this will do to local economies, particularly in regional seats which currently have gas and coal closures and which currently have power stations. In a regional centre, what exactly will happen to that economy? It's not just the workers in those power stations that will disappear; it's all the small and family businesses associated in that local region. It might be the local butcher supplying fresh meat from farms in the area. It might be local advertising companies, sign-writers and so forth, who write the signs for the local butchers and other small businesses in the area. If the workers disappear, what happens to the local hairdressers and barbers, and the local cleaning companies that go in and clean where these workers are going from or who clean the toilets and the lunchrooms and everything else? There are the local real estate agents as well, who sell properties in the area or lease them to new people coming in. Prior to coming into this place, I used to run a pest control business. What happens to local pest controllers, who make sure the place isn't overrun with cockies and rats and everything else? None of them get anything in this. There are the local pubs and local cafes, the people supplying lunches and coffees in the morning, and the volunteer organisations that look after the families who are involved in the area, maybe at the local church, the local football club or the local Lions Club. As people are taken out of the regions, what happens to all of them? There is nothing in this bill to help them.

Labor's net-zero targets are fundamentally about closing coal and closing gas, and not replacing them with any other baseload energy. They said no to emissions-free modern nuclear power. They want to do everything with solar and wind—all made in China, by the way. The only solar panels made in this country are Tindo Solar. I've got them on my roof. They're $100 more expensive than every other solar panel you can buy. Everything else is made in China. We had the minister in here crowing the other day in question time about all the solar farms that he had rolled out. Once again, not one of those panels is made by Tindo, I can tell you. They're all imported. The Australian people understand that, that you're replacing Australian minerals, coal and gas with Chinese-made solar panels and Chinese-made wind farms that aren't renewable—they've got to be buried. They last 25 years max—possibly 25 years.

The Treasurer delivered a budget the other night, with a big deficit next year—$43 billion—but a small surplus this year built on the back of coal, gas and other mining activities. They're replacing it all with Chinese-made wind farms, and the minister won't consider alternatives. So it is a real concern. We know from the actions already of this government that, once the authority is established, the government will continue to ram new and additional responsibility into this authority to support its net zero climate ambitions.

The union movement wants the Net Zero Economy Authority to be legislated because the authority will be able to collect the personal information of employees at coal-fired power stations, from financial records to phone numbers, and the bill does not even require the relevant employee's consent for their information to be passed from their employer onto the Net Zero Economy Authority. This isn't a bill for Australia; this is a bill for the Albanese Labor government's union donors, as we have often seen in this place over the past couple years with different legislation that has come through. If you look at the biggest expenditure in the budget the other night for the minister for workplace relations, it wasn't even mentioned in his press release after the budget. It was all about another $60 million for the unions. So this is essentially an industrial relations bill disguised as a bill for the regions and transition.

The coalition will oppose this bill due to its bureaucratic waste and duplication and a top-down approach based here in Canberra which is set to fail on delivering on the unique needs of the regions, which I have partly outlined and which other members, particularly Queensland members like the member for Hinkler and the member for Capricornia, have partly outlined as well. We will oppose this bill due to the imposition on family, small, medium and large businesses and the fact that this is another example of Labor's haphazard approach on industry policy which delivers no guarantees for local workers. There is no guarantee here at all.

Under Labor's renewable-only plan, there is a risk of major job losses. Jobs will be lost in mining in the coal and gas sector and in all of those small and medium businesses that I just outlined a moment ago. What are these people going to do when they lose their jobs? They have families. They have mortgages or they pay rent. These people have already been doing it tough under the last couple of years with inflation and cost-of-living increases.

Mark from North Lakes in my electorate asked me these questions just on the weekend. He said, 'What is the current government doing to grow our economy?' It's returning Australian manufacturing locally, but the way I estimate it we have lost 100,000 jobs in manufacturing in the last few years. That's from the horse's mouth. It's from the minister for manufacturing, Minister Husic. He said that there are 900,000 jobs in Australian manufacturing. We know that during COVID there were around a million manufacturing jobs. In the last two years, since Scott Morrison has no longer been Prime Minister, 10 per cent of manufacturing jobs have gone. But, if you listen to the government, they're talking in this bill about everything being Australian made. That's not what's happening in reality.

My constituent also said: 'The current cost of living is out of control. What's the plan for the next six months to lower it? Have they considered lowering the fuel excise or a reduction in interest rates?' This bill is going to add another $1 billion of spending on top of, we estimate, $315 billion in additional spending since the government was elected in the forward estimates over the next four years. If you take the last budget of the Morrison government, $315 billion additional on top of that in the last two years is within the forward estimates. That will add to inflation. Mark asked, 'How is the current government assisting small businesses to remain economically viable instead of charging more tax with fewer deductions and having woke, green incentive deductions which aren't viable for the majority of small businesses?' Mark sums it up well given that we are talking about the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill, which is another $1 billion with nothing for small and family businesses.

John from Griffin said: 'My burning question is: what happens when we reach net zero? Having spent billions of dollars, when will we get a return on investment?' The government often says, 'We are a net zero superpower.' What does that mean? It sounds good. It sounds good in elections—'We are going to be a net-zero, renewable energy superpower.' They are selling off. They are going to close everything down. Everything's going to be made in China. They have some sort of plan—'We are going to make some solar panels here.' It's $100 extra for Tindo panels. Not everyone can afford that, and this minister will not consider modern nuclear power, which is emissions free. We could actually use uranium and so forth that's in the ground here. In the budget they're extending the good work that the member for Hinkler did when he was resources minister of mapping the minerals in the ground throughout Australia. I wonder whether they'll even include uranium in that. I doubt it. That's a good capacity.

The reality is that, if this minister is serious about looking after Australians and is really serious about achieving net zero, he wouldn't just automatically rule out modern nuclear power that has zero emissions, would he? We could actually mine some of the resources for it here to replace the coal and gas that they are closing down. We could build a station where coal and gas is shutting down, and all of those are small and family businesses that I mentioned earlier—from the butchers, the hairdressers and the real estate agents to the pest controllers and the volunteer organisations—would remain viable in the regions, because that's where you'd put the modern nuclear power reactor that has zero emissions.

But, no, we can't do that. Despite the fact that they're continuing on with and have signed up to AUKUS, which Scott Morrison negotiated, and despite the fact that we currently have a nuclear reactor in the middle of Sydney, and have had for 50 years, he won't consider any of that. There are so many people that basically support it, including former prime minister Bob Hawke, Dick Smith and Tony Irwin. He was on 4BC Brisbane the other day, He's a nuclear expert who has worked on eight power stations in Britain with their energy agency.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So where are they going to be? Tell us the locations.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where are they going to be? They're going to be where there's currently coal and gas getting shut down.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I have one?

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's what we've said a number of times.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell us where they're going to be.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's what we've said a number of times—no problem at all.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You don't know where the coal-fired power stations are! You really need to get out of Canberra, mate.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A nuclear power station can last for up to 60 years, while Chinese-made solar panels last for 25 years. We wouldn't have all the transmission costs. We wouldn't the environmental footprint that this government wants with solar and wind only. That footprint is 370 times bigger than that of a modern nuclear power station. You've got a bit of paper like the one I have here. That's the footprint on the environment that we currently have for coal and gas or we would have if we replaced it with an emissions-free nuclear plant. To get the same amount of power, the Albanese Labor government is going to need 370 times that. What is the impact on the environment—on the trees, the koalas, the wedge-tailed eagles and everything else? They don't want to talk about any of that.

If they were serious about reducing emissions and about climate change, they wouldn't just rule this out hands down. The reality is that the GenCost report, I think, said that if someone wanted to build nuclear power it would cost $17 billion. Snowy Hydro alone is going to cost $12 billion. What's all this costing? It will be another billion dollars here for another authority. No. They're not serious about it, and the Australian people are waking up.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every now and then you get an opportunity to reflect on what happens constantly in this place. Increasingly in this place, we get bills whose titles fail to reflect what is actually going on. Rather, they're drafted in a way—the title in particular—that sends some spiffy message out of this place or, equally, they're designed as a wedge. For example, who wouldn't want to vote for the nature positive bill? And, just as a precursor to what may or may not happen in the party room tomorrow, I'm not sure I'm someone who would, but the title of the bill would suggest that you should. We all want to be positive, and we want to be positive about the environment. When I looked at this bill and its title, I thought, 'Maybe some honesty finally from those opposite,' because I read 'net zero economy bill,' and I thought, 'Maybe they're finally being honest about what their ideological pursuit of net zero climate change policy will do to this economy. It will reduce it to zero.' But no, that's not what this bill seeks to do—this bill which, Madam Deputy Speaker, it will come as no surprise to you that the coalition will oppose. This bill doesn't seek to do that. This bill seeks to spend $1.1 billion dollars, that's more money than you can fire a rocket ship over. They are taxpayers dollars, real dollars in the real economy, not in the net zero economy, to effectively push industry—in particular, small, medium, family businesses—into the pursuit of net zero technologies.

As we just heard from the shadow Assistant Treasurer, there's no harm in net zero technologies. The harm is how you get there. This bill seeks to spend $1.1 billion pushing industry in that direction, when what we should be doing is finding ways, through technology or other means, to allow this technology to be demand pulled through rather than, let's call it, regulation pushed. We know it's regulation pushed because this bill calls for the creation of a whole new bureaucracy. The aim of that new bureaucracy it to do the regulation pushing to force industry and business to adopt this approach.

That would be bad enough, if it weren't duplicative, but it's doubly bad because many of these agencies seeking to facilitate the new investment into the net zero transition exist. They exist today. They operate today. But that's not enough for those opposite. Ultimately, there needs to be a new bureaucracy created to do the work that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation is doing today and that the Australian Renewable Energy Agency—ARENA—is doing today. A whole new bureaucracy to do what we're already doing and, worse, to push businesses in this direction, to drive up the costs of doing business, which we all know—those of us who've spent time in the real world—drives up cost-of-living pressures because businesses either fold or drive their prices up. When they fold, often enough they face import competition, meaning consumers are buying goods from other jurisdictions—many of whom, by the way, aren't climate obsessed in the way that the government opposite tends to be.

There are some themes emerging from this government. It's said that when the government changes, the country changes. This is another example of top-down, Canberra-centric decision-making which is purporting to be about the regions. It's said that a lot of this net zero economy will deliver dividends to the regions. That's a very Canberra-centric decision matrix because I've got to tell you that you just need to look at who the people of regional Australia elect and bring to this place. They don't sit, on average, on the seats opposite. They sit over here. They want a practical and sensible approach to environmental policy and they want a practical and sensible approach to energy policy.

The shadow Assistant Treasurer was just pointing out one of the obvious inconsistencies with the thought processes of those opposite, who are strident supporters of AUKUS—as they should be. I congratulate the Prime Minister for his comments today shouting down the Greens and the leader of the Greens, in particular, regarding the very important strategic relationship between our country and the United States of America. Those opposite are happy to see nuclear submarines, Virginia class submarines, at Port Adelaide—I'm a parochial South Australian; sorry about that—and happy to see nuclear energy powering those vessels. They're happy for that technology to be used in submarines, manned by ADF personnel, diving to great depths under the ocean and coming into port at, in South Australia's case, Port Adelaide, a densely populated area. They think that's perfectly safe. But what's not safe, those opposite say, is to have the same technology creating energy on dry land. It's safe to have it in a submarine, but, if the captain of that boat were to get a set of jumper leads to power a coffee van on the wharf, he'd face a term of imprisonment. I mean, seriously! It's little wonder the Australian people are increasingly expressing support for nuclear energy as part of our energy mix.

This isn't the only policy area in which we're seeing Canberra-centric decision-making. Just before question time today I took the opportunity to remind the House that the Australian wine industry is desperate for support. The governments of France and the United States are supporting their wine grape growers. In Bordeaux and the Napa Valley, with the support of government, vineyards are being removed. Why? Because we have fewer wine drinkers globally who are drinking less wine. This is not, as those opposite would like us to believe, an issue of the temporary pause in wine sales into China. It's a product of the global mismatch between demand and supply. But Canberra-centric decision-making says: 'There's nothing to support you as a wine grape grower.'

Another example is that those opposite want to rip water out of the Murray-Darling Basin. That's another Canberra-centric decision. It's certainly not one made in the regions for the regions, as this bill purports to be.

Of course, the greatest example of the disconnect between Canberra based decision-making and the regions is the decision by those opposite to phase out the live sheep trade. This is an industry which has done everything asked of it by government, by regulators, and still it will be abolished in this country. It sounds a significant warning to all agricultural industries: if an industry does everything a government asks of it and still faces being banned from trading, you need to think seriously about the dangerous precedent that sets.

So excuse me if for one moment I highlight the Canberra-centric approach to decision-making which is failing to deliver for regional Australia. Those opposite say that much of the transition to a net zero economy will occur in the regions. It might happen there, but once the wind turbines are built, once our landscape is carpeted with solar panels and forested with wind turbines, the jobs will leave town. I've seen it myself. I've seen it as these satanic mills have rolled out across landscapes. This bill will deliver nothing for the regions. What it will do is impose greater costs, as I said earlier, on small, medium and, indeed, large businesses.

Some people like to laugh that there must be a money tree here in Canberra somewhere. Politicians—treasurers, and perhaps pseudo treasurers aspiring to be assistant treasurers—would like to one day shake that money tree. But no money tree exists, in the same way that industry doesn't benefit from unlimited cash. It turns profits, and it turns profits by selling its goods and services for more than they cost. And if you drive up the cost of delivering or producing the goods and services then, necessarily, they have to cost more.

Those opposite would have to be—have to be!—cognisant of that by now, at least. Let's face it, they spent a good 12 months pontificating about the Voice and spending, as estimates told us last week, what it is estimated to be more than half a billion dollars on that endeavour. At least now I feel confident that most of those opposite have come to the realisation that the cost of living is the No. 1 consideration for Australians from day-to-day and it's the No. 1 issue that they want their government—the government they elected two years ago and trusted to office—to do something about. But this bill does nothing to address that. Quite the opposite; you could make a reasonable case that this bill is purposely directed at driving up the costs of goods and services—most particularly energy, which is sequestered in almost everything, every good, we buy and almost every service we seek. And that impacts us at the supermarket—at the checkout, at the browser and when we sit down once a month or once a fortnight to pay our insurance and to meet our other costs and expenses.

And while I'm talking about supermarkets: people often think that the cost-of-living pressures are delivered by increased energy bills. It's true enough that when a consumer in a household gets an energy bill, if it has gone up it impacts on their cost of living. But that's only the smallest fraction of the real impact of higher energy costs. Fertiliser, which grows the food that comes to the supermarket, is energy. When it goes up, the price of food goes up. Fuel is used by farmers; when it goes up, the price of our goods go up. Factories, food-processing plants and abattoirs all use energy, and energy is embedded in those goods. Those goods are transported to market and, again, with the cost of energy going up, the cost of those goods go up. The supermarkets themselves face higher energy bills for lighting, refrigeration and heating; again, costs go up.

And so this government, instead of coming to this place with a bill which does nothing but duplicate existing facilities—fixated as it is on regulation push when it comes to this question, rather than on technology pull—would do well to trash, to bin, this bill and get back to the basics of what Australians need right now. They need a focus on lower energy costs because they need a focus on cost-of-living pressures, I encourage those opposite to think again.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to congratulate the member for Barker on his contribution and also, likewise, the member for Petrie on his prior contribution. There is much in those contributions that those opposite could learn from. I stand here to speak on the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024, and the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 and, once again, I reflect on the fact that we stand here in this House, discussing a piece of legislation that fails to deregulate our economy. All it does is introduce more red tape, more green tape and more complexity. We know that there is another piece of legislation floating around this place that talks about accounting for scope 3 emissions for businesses over a certain size. That will flow through to our entire economy. Every time we turn around in this place, all that we see from the government is more regulation and, in this case, even worse, duplication. It is duplication in the form of a bill that creates a new agency to do what is largely already done by existing agencies.

As has been mentioned by other colleagues, we all agree on where the end point is—net zero by 2050. The discrepancy is about how we get there. And, as the member for Barker quite eloquently pointed out in his contribution, energy forms part of everything that we do. People sometimes forget that. There is energy embedded in our cup of coffee that we have in the morning. It is not just from the barista making the cup of coffee. There is energy embedded in the entire supply chain, from when that coffee bean is harvested to when that coffee bean is ground and forms part of your cup of coffee. Every part of that supply chain has energy embedded in it. We have seen those opposite, despite their promises at the last election, preside over an enormous increase in the cost of energy over the past two years—some 12-odd per cent, and more for gas. For many manufacturing businesses in my electorate, gas is a key input. Again, it forms part of the energy mix in this country, and the consequence of gas prices going up is that everything becomes more expensive.

It's interesting to reflect, when looking at this bill, on the duplication that it creates. Essentially, as others have said, it is an IR bill disguised as a bill to assist the regions in a transition from coal and gas to clean energy. Well, can I say that wind and solar are far from clean. They're not even renewable; they're intermittent, which is why you need baseload power. That is why the coalition is talking about nuclear as a replacement for our baseload power system to complement solar, wind, batteries and hydro—a mix of energy types to deliver the energy we need across our economy. But, as I look at this bill, all I see is bureaucratic waste and duplication and, once again, a top-down Canberra-centric approach, which we on this side know fails each and every time.

If we want some evidence of this, we need look no further than the answer that the minister for energy gave during question time, where he waxed lyrical about the situation in Germany. I was reading an interesting article today by a German journalist, Georg Etscheit. He goes on to speak about the five environmental reasons why Germany's wind energy insanity is a major threat. When I read this, I'm going, 'Oh!' Given what this government wants to do with its net zero energy transition, as the member for Barker has quite rightly pointed out, it's the regions that are going to pay the price. When it comes to the topic of offshore wind farms off Newcastle, which happens to be held by a government member, or, heaven forbid, off Warringah, which is held by a crossbench member, or elsewhere in this country that is anywhere near sitting Labor members or members of the crossbench, who want all of this intermittent energy generation in our system, no, we can't have that. We don't want to spoil our backyard and don't want to spoil our ocean views, but it's okay if we stick it out west of the Great Dividing Range where our farmers are, where they actually produce our food and fibre and wealth for this country—over $100 billion a year of wealth they create through the produce that they produce.

So let's have a look at Mr Etscheit's five environmental reasons why Germany's wind energy insanity is a major threat. I think it's a very prescient review of what is going to happen here. 'The landscape will be blighted by the addition of 10,000 wind turbines with a height of 250 metres. The natural bio types surrounding these turbines will be irreversibly ruined.' We have already seen to the west of Rockhampton pristine koala habitat bulldozed to put wind turbines in. I can tell you that, if that was happening in the Daisy Hill state forest in the Treasurer's electorate, there would be a hue and cry. But no; it's out the back of Rocky up on a range somewhere that nobody knows about, so let's not worry about it. Let's just do it anyway. Fortunately, the proposed wind farm project at Chalumbin, west of Cairns and next to wet tropical rainforest, has been scrapped—thankfully.

What we don't hear about—the second point he made—is that 'endangered birds like the red kite will lose their habitats. It's estimated that, in an absolute collision rate of around 21 per year and with 40,000 or more wind turbines planned in Germany, the million mark could be exceeded.' We know that, in Tasmania, there are restrictions on the operation of wind turbines to protect birdlife there. Their operating hours have been reduced or curtailed because of the number of bird strikes. We know this is an issue in the United States as well. But these are not taken into account.

He also raises the issue of bats and insects being severely decimated. They are also potentially a hazard for marine fauna. 'Wind turbines have a negative impact from pressure and sound waves on some animal species with extremely sensitive hearing, and the industrialisation of oceans could replace native marine mammals. If more and more offshore wind farms are built, this will have an enormous impact on the North and Baltic seas.' Those same impacts will happen here if we build offshore wind farms. I know it's an issue of concern off the east coast of the United States. The member for Forrest is here; I know it's an issue of concern for many in her community.

Last but not least, there is infrasound harming people. People near wind turbines often complain of severe health complaints such as insomnia, dizziness, headaches, depression, tinnitus, hearing and vision problems et cetera. This is what we want to subject our country to. I ask you, Madam Deputy Speaker: are we serious? This is complete and utter nonsense.

As we look at this bill that is designed to speed up this process, it's interesting to note that the CSIRO conducted a survey recently and releases its results around 10 April. As the ABC reported:

A majority of Australians want the transition towards renewable energy to happen at a "moderate" pace and most are unwilling to accept higher bills to pay for it, according to a major survey by the country's top scientific organisation.

I know those opposite are fond of quoting the CSIRO when it suits. I haven't heard the minister for the environment and climate change quote that report. People don't want to pay higher bills because of this energy transition, but that's exactly what they're going to get with this duplication, and greater and greater bureaucracy as a result.

In addition to that, we're going to see prime farmland destroyed right across our country—buried under acres of solar panels and acres of windmills. The reason it needs to be acres is because the energy density that's generated by windmills and solar panels is nowhere near what is generated by a baseload power station, whether it be coal, gas or nuclear. They just cannot compete. If I look at the NEM fuel mix at the moment, I would suggest that 70 to 80 per cent of the power currently being generated in this country across the National Energy Market is coming from coal or gas. It's certainly not coming from solar panels and, unless it's windy out there, it's not coming from wind. There was one day last week, in the middle of a high-pressure system, where there was virtually no wind across the country and the windmills were producing less than one per cent of our national power grid requirements. How on earth are we going to sustain the manufacturing industry that the government now wants to subsidise through its Future Made in Australia policy when we have a fleet of windmills that can only generate one per cent of the required energy capacity?

I look at the NEM regularly, every day, because I find that it's interesting to see what the fuel mix is throughout the day, depending on the weather conditions. The best I've seen over the last couple of weeks was 20 per cent. That means 80 per cent of our required capacity was not being met. That means that our major employers, our small businesses, which employ over 50 per cent of Australians and which represent 98 per cent of business across this country, will have to shut down.

As I touched on earlier, in addition to this stupidity, is the introduction of scope 3 emissions accounting. That might sound nice for the larger businesses that applies to, but that will cascade through our entire economy. The large business will have to get the small businesses supplying their supply chain to report their emissions. That small business may have five, six, seven, eight or 10 different customers. How do you split out the emissions for each of those individual customers? This is complete and utter nonsense. Added to that, last week we saw the government rush through the new emissions standards for vehicles. This will make the utes which all the tradies and many of the small businesses owners in my electorate drive, or perhaps their small trucks in which they deliver their goods, become more expensive. Every moment you turn a corner with this government, you see more red tape or regulation. It's more cost and more examples of why this government is bad for Australians; they just don't fundamentally understand the consequences of their policies. I oppose this bill.

Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against the government's Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and the associated bill. In doing so, I make this point: by virtue of even bringing these bills forward the Albanese Labor government is conceding that the pathway it is venturing down to achieve net zero for Australia is going to leave regional communities which have experience hosting coal-fired power stations in particular with dire hope for the future—very little hope for the future whatsoever.

I will get, in a moment, to those areas of the bill with which I have a specific problem, but I want to make a broader point upfront first. That is: despite lots of argy-bargy and hot debate on issues of climate change and energy in this country, there is bipartisanship when it comes to achieving the goal of net zero by 2050. But that bipartisanship does not translate into an agreement on the pathway the nation must take to achieve net zero by 2050.

The pathway Labor is venturing down is already creating consequences that are felt by all Australians. We know that Australians today are paying among the highest electricity prices in the world, and certainly the highest in our country's history. There was a day when Australians paid among the lowest prices for electricity in all advanced economies, but today we pay among the highest. Since Labor has come to office we have seen on a weekly basis, on average, over 500 families signing up for hardship arrangements with their energy retailer. Again, it's another consequence of Labor's mismanagement of its transition to net zero by 2050 that is being felt by everyday households right across this country. That is a direct consequence. Around the country we are also seeing fear about the prospect of blackouts. We now have the Australian Energy Market Operator saying that we could see lights going out as soon as this coming summer, and certainly by next winter, because of the mismanagement of the electricity grid.

Why is all of this happening? It is happening because of the pathway chosen by the Albanese Labor government, which is creating real-world problems as we speak today. Regional economies, regional communities are screaming out because they are seeing projects being built without any consultation and without any engagement. They are seeing their way of life and their livelihoods threatened because they are dealing with a government that has set arbitrary targets—including 82 per cent renewables by 2030—without having given consideration to the impact on regional communities. This pain, whether it be economic or social or indeed environmental—especially given the scale of the rollout being pushed by the Albanese government—is being felt today.

This brings me to the point of this very bill. Under Labor's policies, we are going to see 90 per cent of Australia's baseload power, which is 90 per cent of always on 24/7 power in this country, exiting the grid within a decade—gone, without any chance of a replacement being there in time. Where do the generators that create such energy lie? They lie in regional communities which have hosted coal-fired power stations. This bill is a concession on the part of Labor that no communities in this country are going to hurt more and be punished more for Labor's trajectory to next zero than those communities. This is effectively Labor putting up the white flag, saying, 'We've run out of ideas.' This is Labor saying, 'We know full well that you are a regional community with high energy IQ, you get this stuff and your workforces have worked in these assets for generations,' and Labor is saying, 'We have no plan for you.' And they are saying that and putting up a bill in this parliament not empowering those communities to make the decisions about their futures but instead empowering bureaucrats.

This is not a community centred approach; this is a Canberra centred approach. This is quintessential Labor policy—big government, big unions and big bureaucrats with no consideration for what happens on the ground. At what point will Labor put the communities most affected by their ill-thought-through policy at the centre? They're not. So what we see in this bill is a concession from Labor that these communities have dire futures ahead of them. After two years, the solution of Labor's best thinkers, their greatest minds, for these communities is: Canberra will tell you what to do. That's it: Canberra will tell you what to do. Latrobe, Hunter—this is what Labor's saying. Labor are saying to the people of the Hunter: we do not trust you to power your own future. Labor are saying to the people of Latrobe: Canberra will decide your fate. How confident do you feel now?

The government have proved they have no concept of the importance of 24/7 power. They are dealing with communities that have for generations powered this nation—literally. They are closing down these baseload power stations without any chance of a system being ready to go. They know that, by virtue of this bill, those communities are going to be smashed in the process, and the best they can do is create the notion of something else in Canberra, another bureaucracy—a bureaucracy that does absolutely the same thing, by way of mandate, as existing agencies. There's a clear overlap with the CEFC and ARENA. There are state bodies that do these sorts of things already. But that's alright. These guys—the Albanese government—are going to put in $1.1 billion. Guess where that goes? It goes to Canberra, to the bureaucrats. That's what this is all about, and the unions have been calling for it for years. Big government, big unions—that's what this approach is.

Now it would be fair if somebody were to say: why shouldn't the federal government at least learn the lessons from states that have had similar authorities in place for some years? Those authorities at the state level, which have sought to do the same sort of thing in the same communities, have come up with great ideas such as swimming pools and mountain bike trails. I mean, we are talking about hundreds of highly qualified workers who have the ability to run power stations, and the best this government can come up with is to replicate a process already done by authorities at the state level, whose best ideas are swimming pools and mountain bike trails. I mean, seriously! We have some of our greatest minds in these regions, and the vision of the Albanese Labor government is to give Canberra more money so Canberra can decide their future. The senior leadership team includes the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy—not a day of work between them. They're lifetime politicians who live and breathe this building, who haven't got a clue what it's like to get your hands dirty, to have a crack at a trade. These are the people who are going to be making the decision, together with the unions.

As we've seen at the state level, Mr Deputy Speaker, we will see former Labor Party hacks filling the jobs, the roles, on the ground in this authority. That's the experience we've seen. Where this has been in place, including in Latrobe, former Labor Party hacks get the jobs. This bill won't deliver jobs for the coal plant workers. It will not honour their occupation, their family, their multigenerational contribution to their community. This bill honours the Labor Party. It honours the unions. It honours Canberra. This is about big government, and it's being done in the knowledge that communities are the ones who will be hurt. These are the communities who right now are keeping the lights on in this chamber. They are the ones who are keeping the TVs on at home. Ninety per cent of our 24/7 power will be gone within 10 years. Where are the government working on the ground with these communities to ensure that their economies continue to drive for the future? They are not doing that. There's nothing in this bill for that. This bill empowers the unions and the Fair Work Commission. It empowers the Labor Party. This is a bill for Labor and for its masters. It is yet another dirty dividend to the union movement done at the complete rejection of the very communities that this bill makes clear are going to be most hurt by their pathway to net zero.

In due course, we will put forward our pathway to net zero as a coalition. It is a pathway that will absolutely honour communities, especially regional communities. It is a pathway that will be consumer centred when it comes to its planning and design. When it comes to social licence, it will be community centred. For these reasons, this bill must be opposed. With that, I ask the House to think about these communities, do what's in their interest and oppose this bill.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After a very interesting contribution, I am pleased to be here and to sum up this debate on the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and related bill. Creating a Net Zero Economy Authority is integral to our government's vision for A Future Made in Australia, a future that includes all of us, from our cities to our regions and to the most remote parts of Australia. The transition to a net zero economy will be one of the most important economic transformations in Australia's history. That's why I welcome the contributions from members in the chamber to this debate, many of whom have come to talk about what they want to deliver and their aspirations for the future of their communities, recognising the great opportunities for their communities as we make this big economic transition to net zero. This will be a new part of our national story.

We want to unlock all of the community benefits that this new chapter will bring—the new, secure, well-paid jobs in our regions and in our suburbs. Meeting the demands of the new energy economy means creating a supply of new jobs. That's part of building a better future for Australians. When the Prime Minister addressed our nation on election night in 2022, he committed our government to ensuring no-one is held back and no-one is left behind.

The Net Zero Economy Authority will help deliver on this vision. It will ensure, as we build a shared net zero future, that there is a place in that future for every Australian, no matter where they come from and no matter who they are. Every Australian will be part of the journey to bring us to being a renewable energy superpower. When we commit to opening the doors of opportunity, the transition to a net zero economy is about widening those doors. It is at the heart of the future opportunities that we seek to build for the next generation of Australians. Our message is clear: the way we power Australia will change, but those who do it will not. That is why we must ensure that now we have the right tools to generate a bright and clean future for generations to come.

We have seen great engagement from members in this debate on the need to take concrete, coordinated action as Australia transitions to a net zero future. I note that some in this debate have said that this new body is not needed. The government disagrees. Stakeholders have been calling for an entity of this nature for a long time. We have heard that call from business, investors, both domestic and global, unions, local governments, community groups and regional businesses. We have responded to that call. As the Prime Minister said in speaking in this debate, this bill reflects our government's determination to shape the future, rather than wait for the future to shape us. We saw the Minister for Defence Industry and Minister for International Development and the Pacific talk about how:

We must seize these economic opportunities. We have a great opportunity right now to harness this clean energy industrial revolution.

I completely agree. This is as big as the industrial revolution. Indeed, I note that, when it came to the industrial revolution, we didn't have this magnificent parliament. We didn't have the Australian Constitution as that revolution took hold. It is now upon us to show that we can do this big economic transformation in an even more coordinated way.

We had a wonderful contribution from the member for Cooper, the assistant minister, who talked about her experience as a union representative and young nurse back in 1985. She noted that throughout all that time there was 'growing awareness of climate change' and how 'change was needed to reduce our emissions and protect our environment and, importantly, we needed to protect and support workers through that change.'

For more than three decades we've been talking about the need to protect workers as this transformation happens. This bill delivers on that objective, having an enduring authority that will ensure that no worker is left behind and every worker is given the opportunities that they rightly deserve, both in the new energy economy that we seek to build, but also to make sure that as there are changes that are not necessarily in their hands they actually have support through that process.

The member for Chisholm came in and shared some of the community groups who are encouraging her to vote yes to this bill to support it. She talked about the Baby Boomers for Climate Change Action, the Australian Conservation Foundation Chisholm Group, the Kooyong Koot Alliance, the Friends of Scotchmans Creek and Valley Reserve and the Friends of Damper Creek Conservation Reserve—community groups who know that this will deliver for their communities in inner-city Melbourne as much as it will for communities in our regions. We had the other deputy speaker, the member for Newcastle, talk about how this enables her to go into her community and say, 'You can be assured we're not going to be leaving your people behind.' That's exactly right. That is what this bill is about.

The member for Fremantle talked about, again, Labor governments taking responsibility when there are big economic transformations. We did it during the Global Financial Crisis, we did it with the opening up of the Australian economy in the 1980s and 1990s, and we're doing it again, taking responsibility.

I commend the member for Hasluck who said this bill 'is about ensuring those who powered our industries for decades are not left behind as we embrace cleaner technologies and methods'. I note that my good friend, the member for Swan, who grew up in the Goldfields—a great region of Western Australia—talked about her proud time working in the resource sector. She's an engineer who's worked on the mines, and she said, 'But I am also someone who wants to see action on climate change.' This bill delivers on both. We've had contributions from the member for Bennelong talking about how communities like his are sick of governments 'wasting time and politicising climate action'. He said that his community 'wants consensus and they want action'. Again, this bill delivers on this.

The member for Macquarie highlighted that this bill does have an omission. Most bills do. This bill does not deliver the goal of those opposite to deliver a nuclear powered future for Australia. She pointed out very clearly, 'The costings show us that nuclear is the most risky, most expensive option that we have.' Then we saw the member for Canberra talk about the action that's happened on this government's watch, and how we've 'already approved 46 renewable energy projects, with another 130 in the pipeline,' and how, as a result of this action, 'we've seen a 25 per cent increase in renewable energy in the National Energy Market'.

The member for Corangamite reminded me of a quote we used to hear echoed back to those opposite quite a bit, which was a description of the energy policy under those opposite. Those who've come in over the last few days of this debate and made a number of assertions about how they could do it better and how they could manage it better, but the member for Corangamite reminded us that one former Liberal Premier went so far as to describe energy policy under the former Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government as a 'slow-moving train wreck'. That's what a Liberal Premier said about those opposite when they were in government. Again, I remind people that they might say they have got all of the solutions but they definitely didn't have them when they were in government.

I do want to address something that's been said by a range of members of the opposition in this debate. They have outlined and claimed that the Energy Industry Jobs Plan will create duplication within the existing workplace relations system. I note that, as is clearly in the explanatory memorandum that is right there, the Energy Industry Jobs Plan has been designed to work within and complement the existing workplace relations system. It includes a range of safeguards to ensure small businesses are not unreasonably impacted. Additionally, we have listened to business groups and have amended the bill to further align the processes and procedures of the plan with those under the Fair Work Act. Again, those amendments are on the table for members to see.

We saw the member for Fairfax, just a few moments ago, bringing in all of the anger and aggression he's clearly learnt from the Leader of the Opposition, and the same old union bashing that we've seen from those opposite for years and years, huge amounts of partisan politics, assuring us that they've got all the answers. But still, the one question that not a single member of the coalition was able to answer during this debate—despite a number mentioning their enthusiasm for nuclear power—was where any of the promised nuclear reactors would be. Not one said that it will be in their electorate. Not one outlined where that would be.

But we did see some science from the member for Lyne, formerly the Minister Assisting the Minister for Trade and Investment, who explained to the House that 'nuclear power stations are basically big kettles.' I thought it was so good that, after he put it in Hansard once, I'd put it in Hansard a second time. 'Nuclear power stations are basically big kettles,' so, every time we hear the outline that all the policy work is almost done, it's almost completed and there have been very careful costings in the coalition and lots of careful looking at where those nuclear power plants and nuclear reactors will be, we can be assured that they've also really thought through the complexities of nuclear technology, because they've come in here and told us 'nuclear power stations are basically big kettles.'

Others wanted to go further to tell us how much they understood the complexities of nuclear power. We had the member for Hinkler—again, formerly the Senior Minister for Resources and Water, who said working at an existing power station is 'exactly the same job in a nuclear power station because there is no difference.' Working at an existing power station, coal or gas, is 'exactly the same job in a nuclear power station because thee is no difference.' I think even Homer Simpson would be offended by that!

So we've had some interesting contributions in this debate. We've had interesting contributions from people who sat around the cabinet table for nine years—nine years of stop-start policymaking, nine years where they sold us direct action and no direct action was ever taken, nine years where they attempted to abolish and water down the renewable energy target, nine years where they had a clean energy target that they put forward and then abolished. We had a discarded national energy guarantee. We had one member of the coalition, when they were in charge of energy policy, say that energy storage was 'as effective as a big prawn'. And then, in their final year in office before the Australian people gave them some time in opposition, they oversaw one of the largest spikes in emissions in 15 years, with some 4.1 million tonnes of emissions. We saw under those opposite a dive in investment in renewable energy. We saw a lack of investment in storage. We didn't see enough investment in transmission. I also note that, when they were last in office, the establishment of nuclear power plants was not part of their agenda. It's interesting. I wanted to put all of that on the record as we look at what is actually in contrast in this debate.

In my final comments, I will say two things. One is to again thank the outgoing chair of the Net Zero Economy Agency, which has been within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet until, hopefully, this parliament enacts this into a statutory authority. Greg Combet has done incredible work in setting up this agency, getting us to this point where we have this legislation for the parliament to debate, and I want to thank Mr Combet and all of those who worked in the agency within Prime Minister and Cabinet. We hope to soon establish them into a stand-alone statutory authority with the passage of this bill in the weeks ahead.

I conclude with this. The Net Zero Economy Authority will play a pivotal role in Australia's successful transformation into a net zero economy. It will help ensure that we successfully navigate the changes that are happening across the world. We want to make sure that, in the enactment of this legislation, we leave no-one and no region behind. Our government will continue to take action to build the industries and create the jobs that underpin our future prosperity. This bill is an essential part of that. It's for those reasons that I commend both the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 to the House.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with standing order 133, the division is deferred until the first opportunity of the next sitting day. The debate on this item is therefore adjourned until that time.