Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot believe Senator Moore and Senator Furner, both Queenslanders, both from the union movement, can come into this chamber and not stand up for the jobs of working men and women in the Central Queensland coalfields, in the Mount Isa underground mines and in the metals-processing plants in Queensland. I refer particularly to those plants in Townsville and the other zinc metal, copper and nickel production plants in Queensland. Labor politicians and unions come in here and will not speak up for them. I cannot understand why the union movement is not going crazy over this flawed emissions trading scheme. It would be different if this flawed emissions trading scheme were in any way going to impact upon the changing climate of the world, but it will not—and the Labor Party know that. All it will do is export Queensland jobs to other countries with no impact on the changing climate of the world. Let me give you some examples as to why this will happen, Madam Acting Deputy President.

Australia’s biggest competitor in thermal coal exports is Indonesia. Australian coal is going to be slugged with enormous taxes by the Rudd government’s ETS. The Indonesian coal industry will have no taxes. You do not have to be a trade genius to work out that Indonesian coal will become much more acceptable to Australia’s traditional markets of Japan and China, so even if the coalmines in Australia do not shut down they will certainly not expand. They will not be able to continue being uncompetitive as to that competition from Indonesia, so jobs will be lost. In Queensland some 22,000 working families rely on the coal industry for their employment, and they will be out of work in favour of Indonesian workers. Have a look at the copper industry, which is very big in Queensland with copper processing in Townsville and the mines out in the North-West Minerals Province. They will be taxed out of existence. Their South American competitors will not have an ETS so in no way will they be subjected to these additional taxes. So our copper industry will lose out to South America’s.

Take the cement industry. You had the situation in Gladstone whereby Cement Australia was about to spend $800 million on a new cement factory, employing 200 or 300 people in construction and 100, 150 or 200 people in continuing to operate that vastly expanded plant. That has all gone. In Australia cement will become uncompetitive because, under the ETS of the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, cement will have a $20 per tonne tax on it. We are already competing with Indonesian cement in Australia; and Australian cement producers can match it. But when you put a $20 per tonne tax on Australian cement and you can get Indonesian cement at $20 a tonne less, who is going to buy Australian cement? That is why in simple terms this emissions trading scheme is a dog and will cost jobs in Australia.

In my home town of Townsville, Korea Zinc, through Sun Metal, their zinc processors, have said publicly that they will move offshore, so we will not be saving the world’s changing climate and we will be putting Korea Zinc into a country which does not have an ETS. We will be putting all the coal producers, all the copper producers and all the zinc producers into a country which does not have any form of ETS and is not likely to. What we are doing is exporting Australian jobs, and the Australian union movement does not seem to care. I cannot believe that those senators sitting opposite us, supposedly representing the workers, are not marching in the streets to stop this particular problem.

I am pleased to see that Senator Bob Brown is here. Senator Milne led the defence of the Labor Party, as the Greens tend to do over everything the Labor Party do. The Greens were again completely excusing them. That is of interest to me because in the Queensland election the Greens are going to preference Labor in 10 marginal seats. What will this do? It will mean that the Traveston Crossing dam, which I, the LNP and the Greens are totally opposed to, will be built by a re-elected Labor government. Sure, they are not giving preferences in the seats directly involved with the Traveston Crossing dam—well, they are held by the LNP anyhow—but in the marginal seats that will or will not change the government of Queensland the Greens are going out and supporting the Labor Party again.