Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a contribution in this matter of urgency: 'The stopping of the Adani coalmine poses no sovereign risk to Australia and we must show leadership to address the great challenge of climate change.'

We always have to take issue with the some of the contribution in the first couple of minutes from Senator Macdonald. I can always dispense with half a page of my notes after his contribution. But I think the Labor Party has been exceedingly clear on this. There have been three public statements, from the Hon. Bill Shorten, from Hon. Tanya Plibersek and Senator the Hon. Penny Wong, saying that we're not in the business of ripping up proper, well-made approvals. No country, and especially not a country like Australia, will profit by ripping up agreements that have gone through the appropriate environmental checks, state and federal, and which have had the scrutiny of the marketplace. If this is a bad deal, then the marketplace won't provide the capital. And, if it's a bad deal, then I'm not sure that Adani would be putting its own money in to do the deal. I think those things should be on the record.

Let's just have a look at this risk to sovereign risk. Australia's export mix continues to be dominated by minerals and fuel. If we look at the combination, it's basically iron ore and $54.3 billion worth of coal. I have had the great honour of travelling on parliamentary delegations in my short time in this place, and I have seen a steel mill—a boutique steel mill—in Taiwan that had in its reserve stockpile 750 million tonnes of Australian coal. It had a four-kilometre long wharf which had mooring facilities for ships to come on every tide, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. I said, 'My goodness, this is a production capability that's quite large.' They said, 'No, no, Senator, we're a boutique steelmaker.'

So, if we were to look at the steelmaking that goes on in Japan, Korea, China and other places in ASEAN, it's all fired by coal. It may seem to the Greens political party that we should just bump Adani off the map and not allow them to use their own capital or borrowed capital and not allow them to go through a process of state and federal environmental approvals and just say, 'No, you're not allowed to do it,' but what signal would that send to the other people in the industry who have invested to the tune of $54.3 billion? It would be catastrophic to Australia's sovereign risk. And yet the leader of the Greens said that it's no big deal! 'It's no big deal; you can just bump Adani off the map, don't let them do it and it'll have no effect on the second-largest export that Australia has.' Coal was 14.5 per cent of our exports in 2016-17 and iron ore was 17 per cent. And they're intertwined.

I accept that there's a debate. I find it exceedingly ironic that this is coming from the Greens political party, which had the chance in previous parliaments to agree with the Labor Party and put in some sensible pricing to send proper signals to the market place about what we should be doing about climate change. They threw that out.

Then we heard the disgraceful contribution, alleging corruption and impropriety, from Senator Waters. It is the lowest form of debate if all you've got is to say—