David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President Trood, I do not believe I have risen to speak in this place while you have been presiding. Congratulations on your deputy presidency.

I want to talk to the motion and draw the attention of the Senate to what ‘ending the blame game’ as a mantra has meant for my state of Western Australia. We have had nine months of the Rudd Labor government. We have had 2020 talkfests, inquiries, summits, committees, reviews—we have had a whole host of things that have not actually produced anything, save for the fact that in regional Australia the very first thing the Rudd government did was to slash Regional Partnerships funding. For all of those small communities that require a fire station or a community park or recreational facility, the first thing the Rudd Labor government did was to undermine the quality of life in regional Australia.

The other thing that they did, which bears out their long-held and galling attitude towards the Australian agricultural community, was to say to farmers, ‘Because of global warming, we’re going to change exceptional circumstances criteria for drought funding.’ These are the two predominant bits of action that the Rudd government have actually done. If we look for instance at this chamber, the legislative flow through it has been a quite remarkable litany of rehashed coalition legislation that was left over from the Howard government. One or two seriously major bills, in addition to the budget papers, have come here.

This party of government, this Labor Party, has no plan or agenda. It is simply marking time while it thinks about what it is going to do. That is very, very dangerous in regional Australia because, for example, not making a decision with respect to water—and I pause to say that the Minister for Climate Change and Water is clearly out of her depth. To come in here, point opposite and say, ‘What are you going to do?’ really lets the cat out of the bag, and I will have a little bit more to say about that.

On emissions trading, the crazy formulas of gross revenue and the crazy structures that are sought to be imposed through the green paper have sent the business community in this country into a tailspin. The minister has become known as the company killer. This is the sort of stuff that really does worry one when looking into the future to when they actually start to do something. Pensioners have been left out of the budget. The computers in schools program is nothing more or less than a fiasco. I was in Balgo the other day and there is absolutely no chance that Prime Minister Rudd’s computers in schools program is even going to get there, because they do not have the infrastructure for a whole lot of computers such as the plan sets out.

The other thing was the restructuring of the car industry. That is being measured daily by the number of jobs that Senator Carr has destroyed. That is the benchmark, the litmus test, of how well that minister is achieving his portfolio plans. We see the fiasco of truancy, the vacillation, the recycling of a Howard government policy—but, again, no real action. We all know that in education the Commonwealth has no constitutional jurisdiction. So this is window-dressing of little or no meaning, unless of course the Prime Minister is going to bludgeon the states with a significant reduction in education funding. That is the point: the states will not do anything unless they are threatened. We want to hear what the threats are all about. Then we have the fiasco of uranium mining. Three or four states and one territory are in complete opposition to a proper, professional, internationally respected policy. Lastly, we have—just off the top of my head—the fiasco in broadband. The minister promised that he would have broadband up and running within a matter of months. The whole thing is just in a black hole of fog through inability to come to terms with what is required.

No greater damage can be done through the incompetent, vacillating style of government these ministers and this Prime Minister bring to the table than in my state of Western Australia. Western Australia is virtually the only state, save Queensland, that is making any realistic and positive contribution to our national economy as I stand here now. The problem there is that, whilst Mr Rudd and his ministers sit back and allow the incompetence of Premier Alan Carpenter and his group of ministers to run rampant through Western Australia, the national interest is at risk. This is a very important state economy, but Labor ending the blame game has meant that we have a whole lot of fiascos.

I want to point to one particular fiasco that really distresses me. The policy potential index in the Fraser Institute’s survey of mining companies for 2007-08 sets out rankings for jurisdictions around the world that have high-potential mining regions. The latest rankings revealed that, although Western Australia is in the top 10 in terms of resource potential, we are slipping down the league ladder very dramatically when it comes to being a desirable place for companies to carry out exploration. In the international rankings of conduciveness for doing mining business, Western Australia has slipped from number 18 to number 25 in 2007-08, out of 68 destinations. Western Australia should in fact be first on that list—but, no.

The problem here is that we take Queensland’s and Western Australia’s resource- and revenue-generating capacity utterly for granted. There is no better example of the frivolously irresponsible state of mind of this Prime Minister and these ministers than this tax slug of $2.5 billion over four years from the Woodside joint venture. There are very, very few organisations and projects—not just in Australia but around the world—that could survive the commercial whack of $2.5 billion coming off the bottom line of their balance sheet. Canberra has simply reached into this organisation and said, ‘Thank you very much,’ without any consultation or formal engagement. I would describe it as a mugging from behind. The fact is that Woodside, to continue to be solvent and deal with this on behalf of its shareholders and partners, is obviously going to have to pass these costs on, both to its customers in South-East and East Asia and, more alarmingly, to the domestic consumers of Perth and throughout the south-west of Western Australia. That is the legacy we already have from Canberra after nine months—a delightful little gift from Mr Rudd to Western Australia—’We’re going to jack your gas prices up because we want the money to spend in the eastern states.’ That is the sort of contribution that this government is making to regional Australia.

We have seen an almost comical situation arise with respect to the mining of uranium in Australia. We are an international laughing-stock now in terms of IPOs, finance and mining investment. The diversity of governance policy on this subject means we are little more than a joke. At their last national conference the ALP voted to allow uranium mining in Australia so long as the premiers agreed. No more stupid is that proviso than the Premier of Western Australia this week actually disclosing that he voted in favour of that uranium mining motion. He votes in favour of the motion and yet he does not allow his own state to engage in a reputable, safe and very profitable industry—not just profitable for the shareholders of the companies but very profitable for the state.

More importantly, in Western Australia most of the deposits are located near or adjacent to several Aboriginal communities. The Martu Aboriginal traditional owners of land covering the Kintyre deposit in the East Pilbara were not consulted on Mr Carpenter’s sudden reversal with respect to the banning of uranium mining, which he proposes to do were he to win Saturday’s election. The Western Desert Land Corporation holds land including that covering the Kintyre deposit. The chief executive of that corporation, Clinton Wolf, said Carpenter’s announcement was disappointing. He said:

We strongly believe that uranium mining could be an opportunity for our people to generate equity and commercial benefit and importantly play an important part in the development of significant resources projects for this state.

When was the last time we heard the chief executive of an Aboriginal community out in the desert saying something like that? Clinton Wolf, you are a national champion, because Aboriginal people are crying out for something decent to do—crying out to be trained in an industry that is sustainable into the long term such that they can give their children some hope.

What have we got from the Premier of Western Australia and, indeed, from the Prime Minister of Australia? ‘We’ve ended the blame game’, and silence, as this incompetent state government simply rips the rug out from the potential that those Martu Aboriginal people had. Clinton Wolf went on to say:

This is an important intergenerational issue for our people, and it’s an issue that Martu should be able to consider and make decisions about in an informed manner, especially as a means of achieving economic and social outcomes for a group of people who continue to be underserviced by state government ...

Wolf added that the Martu wanted to generate their own income. Again, I say: congratulations and kudos to him. He went on to say:

By proposing to ban uranium mining, the premier and state ALP government are effectively robbing one of the most poor and disenfranchised people in this country of the right to earn a living and potentially achieve an equity stake in a major mining project.

There we have it: both a federal government which talks the talk about Aboriginals self-determination and a state government which is big on land rights and all that sort of stuff, just ripping the potential living possibilities out from underneath a group of people who are very interested in self-determination.

The other point I should make—not as important as the Martu people’s future—is that about $3.2 billion will be lost to Western Australia’s gross state product between now and 2030. We would have also avoided, through the export of uranium from Western Australia, 1.5 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. There is the hypocrisy and stupidity of a Premier and a Prime Minister who simply cannot get themselves organised. The exporting of uranium is probably the single biggest contribution Western Australia could make to the global fight against climate change. There is a significant, great and consistent demand for Western Australian uranium from world markets and from our traditional trading partners, who are all reliable and trusted people—China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. They are all hungry for uranium from Australia to help reduce their reliance upon high-carbon electricity from black coal and gas.

The Premier in his desperation in this campaign has sought to say that if we export uranium from Western Australia we will have to take the waste back. This is the most ridiculous, ludicrous and intelligence-insulting argument I think I have ever heard. He has been in full panic mode, making this ridiculous assertion that we would have to take back the waste. It is simply a gross misrepresentation—a representation he knows full well to be untrue. There is no precedent worldwide that supports this contention.

Can I quote Mr John Ritch, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association and former US ambassador to United Nations organisations in Vienna. He said:

Nations representing two-thirds of humanity are now using uranium to generate clean electricity, and each one is storing its small residual of waste in compliance with world standards.

He went on to say:

Nowhere has there been a proposal to ship wastes to countries fortunate enough to be uranium exporters, which obviously have sovereign control over their own imports.

Ritch added before concluding:

Any such fantasy is a scare-tactic by a politician looking for an issue.

Oh dear!

In the last few minutes I have, I want to briefly move away from that very embarrassing and disgraceful conduct by the Western Australian Premier—and, indeed, aided and abetted by the Prime Minister of this country—to what has happened to the people of Esperance. A particular mining company from the north-east Goldfields has been exporting lead through the port of Esperance. Western Australia has one of the largest, most skilled and most highly funded environmental protection agencies. It also has a very, very sophisticated mines department. It turns out that the lead was being packaged in a way that allowed the carbonate—and if people do not know what carbonate is, it is a flour-like substance that very easily disperses into the atmosphere—to contaminate the countryside. It was being transported through Kalgoorlie down to Esperance in such a way that the lead was actually streaming out of the rail wagons—in very, very minute particles, but nevertheless was being a contaminant to the surrounding countryside.

It so happens that Esperance has an absolute lead disaster. We all know that lead is principally very toxic and damaging to growing children. It gets into the system, affects the bones as they grow and causes severe damage—particularly, as I say, to children. There has been a report prepared on this industrial fiasco. So not only do we have a state government that is incompetent in administering carbonate, which is a known commodity that they should know better about—it has to be airtight, everybody knows that except the government and the EPA—but they have also done a very big report. They have commissioned a very large report and they are not going to release that report on the causes and the damage flowing from the event of that lead contamination, which is very, very severe, until after the election. This is the sort of contempt, this is the sort of subterfuge, this is the sort of arrogance that this state government in Western Australia has. And they make no bones about it. They have said that they have to put the price of electricity up because it has not been up for 15 years—the tariff has stayed the same in Western Australia—but they are not going to do it until after the election. This is the level of contempt that the state government has for the people of Western Australia.

My state colleague and good friend Dr Graham Jacobs—he is a medical doctor and the member for Roe—has been down there in his home town of Esperance with his family and all of his community, fighting a lone battle to have some justice distributed to the community after this fiasco. Do you think he is getting any assistance from an embarrassed and incompetent state government? This is the sort of thing the federal government should intervene in. The state government is incapable of properly caring for its people. Residents’ spokesman Pam Norris said that locals felt they had taken on much of the task of cleaning contaminated houses and were frustrated by constant delays in the release of the Golder report. That is the report I was talking about. She says:

It’s like pulling teeth to get any results ... They are sitting on this data while we are living in this dirty town.

This is as low as it gets. And what do we get from the senators from Western Australia on the other side of this chamber? We get silence. We get embarrassed fidgeting. This is a state government that is riddled with scandal. It is rotten to the core. They have put children’s lives at risk in this town and will not release the report because it is damning—it has to be damning. This is the length and breadth of the subterfuge, the dishonesty and the contempt that the government in Western Australia and, by association, the Labor Party in Canberra has for regional people. I thank the Senate.