Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'll make it very clear: I am being relevant to the bill. I am talking about investment in fossil fuels, oil and gas, and I am talking about investment in coal. The link with the amendment bill is that the Nationals suggested over the break, in the dumbest idea of 2021, that the taxpayer set aside $250 billion to contribute to these investments. This is actually entirely relevant to the bill. Then I was just making the point that I will be interested, when decisions are made by the Liberal side of the coalition—because they must be made—to go down an emissions-responsible path in relation to these investments, to see how the Nationals stand and whether or not they will put their ministry ahead of their big coal, oil and gas investor-donors.

But I will come back to where I was going, and that is that we need to understand that, as the market dries up for these commodities, the investments that are being proposed under this bill will go bad. I put it to you that they will go bad more quickly than anyone imagines. They will go bad more quickly than the analysts think, because that is what happens. You end up seeing a collapse. That is the danger of the sorts of investment that could come into play under this bill. That is why the Greens amendment is important. I say that looking at it from an economic perspective, and I know that Senator Steele-John approached it in that manner as well. I found it very difficult to disagree with what he said, even though from time to time I do disagree with what he says.

So we need to rethink what we are doing. Investing in the export of these sorts of commodities or even assisting our Pacific friends to do such things is a bad idea. When it comes to exporting these products, the writing is on the wall. The writing is on the wall, and, unfortunately, the Liberal coalition is not reading the writing.

If we look at the UAE, the history is really interesting, in that, unlike other Middle East countries that have squandered and through corrupt processes distributed the wealth associated with the oil that had flowed from the Middle East, and we find that the UAE took a very country interested approach and invested in things that were going to be around when the oil dried up. They invested in tourism, an international airline, an international transport hub, manufacturing and other sorts of capabilities, rather than something they know won't be there forever. We need to be thinking about the same thing. We need to understand that these commodities that we are exporting are going to be turned off at some stage—not because the Nationals are standing behind, trying to pump the gas as it leaves the country, but because there won't be a market for it.

This goes back to the sort of thing that I've been pushing for for some time: in our consideration of where this country's going, we've got to stop thinking in terms of exporting rocks. We've got to stop just exporting rocks. In Whyalla we're struggling with the steelworks there, and there is an intention to turn that to green steel, and there are some good hydrogen projects that are spinning up there. But we've got to make sure that, instead of just exporting iron ore, we invest in exporting steel; instead of just exporting lithium, we export batteries—that we develop capabilities, we develop IP, we develop products that are exportable and we create jobs. That's the future. In looking at this bill and what it may allow or permit to happen, the reason we need to clamp down on it is the very thing that the Greens are putting up today, which is that investment in these false future markets will end in tears. We have to start rethinking the way we do business. The change is coming. Unfortunately, our thinking has lagged for too long and we've got to move forward, and I think their amendment goes a little bit towards that.