David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023. Before commencing, I want to acknowledge the contributions of my Senate colleagues, Senator Cox and Senator Allman-Payne. I particularly want to give credit to our regional Queensland senator, whose work has been critical to ensuring amendments that will see this $15 billion fund deliver long-term security, long-term jobs and clean, renewable investment across not just her state of Queensland but the entire country. It's an example of Greens senators and MPs understanding their brief, talking to their community and then delivering real, measurable change in this place. We saw those amendments adopted downstairs, and they will make a nationally significant contribution to this bill.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill is designed—from the Greens perspective, anyhow—to move us towards a decarbonised manufacturing industry. It will have an actual focus on rebuilding manufacturing and rebuilding a renewables industry, literally stepping into the gap that has been created by the dead years of the coalition government federally and, before that, a lack of strategic investment in green renewable manufacturing by the previous Labor government. But we should acknowledge just how much ground there is to cover. The last nearly decade of the coalition's dead hand on manufacturing, it's dead hand on any kind of investment in a renewables industry, its direct messages to that industry that the then coalition government didn't want those jobs, didn't want that investment, didn't want that future for Australia—we have to lift off that dead hand.

The Australian public went a long way to doing that in the last election, when they put in a minority Labor government and a big increase in Greens representation in this place and in the other place. We're hopefully seeing through that commitment from the Australian voting public, with millions of Australians not only throwing out the coalition but also voting in this government, a parliament that's going to look to rebuilding Australia, a government that will rebuild with those green jobs and that renewable investment. Critically, we're looking at this parliament, which sometimes looks like a petrostate with both major parties literally owned by the fossil fuel industry, somehow turning this parliament around and getting that investment in jobs that are not only going to be there for our kids but going to sustain our kids' and grandkids' future.

What will the National Reconstruction Fund deliver? This is a $15 billion fund to help rebuild an industrial base in Australia. The National Reconstruction Fund will have seven priority areas. The first is one that I've been passionate about throughout my political life, and that is renewables and low-emissions technologies. Again, this is about lifting the rotting corpse of the previous coalition government out of industry and out of manufacturing so that we actually have that future and will see significant investment in renewables and low-emissions technologies. We're talking about a $3 billion investment in renewables and low-emissions technologies, which will hopefully be leveraged with other investment from industry to make a significant difference.

The second priority area is in medical science. If you wanted a lesson in how important it is to have domestic capacity in medical science, we've just been through a three-year lesson on that with COVID. We've seen the need to have onshore manufacturing, facilities and R and D in Australia—that has been proven to us—I'm hoping we see with this that the parliament—or at least that part of the parliament sitting in the majority on this and supporting this bill, which includes the Greens—is listening. Again, the coalition are trying to tear it down and take us back to the 1950s. but, thankfully, a majority in this house are listening to those millions of Australians who want a different future and are putting aside $1.5 billion for medical manufacturing.

The third is transport. I've got to tell you how frustrating it is to see government after government in the past not actually investing in low-emissions transport but investing in reports and studies. If I see another study on a fast train from Sydney to Canberra or on a fast train from Sydney to Newcastle, but I don't see another fast train, I think, like five million other people from the Greater Sydney region, I'll have a singular revolt. We don't want another study, we don't want another brochure, we are not another episode of Utopia, which is what we really got from the coalition; we want investment in clean, green transport. I would love to be catching a low- or zero-emissions fast train home from here at the end of every session and, I can tell you, so would every other Greens senator and MP. Let's start making it happened with this kind of strategic investment in transport.

The fourth area is value add in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors—low emission, securing regional jobs, securing regional investments. From a New South Wales senator perspective, when you go to the western slopes and ranges in the southern half of our state of New South Wales or you go around the region of Oberon and see the jobs and industry and regional wealth that follows from investment in the plantation industry—rather than the destruction that happens in native logging—it gives you a sense of hope in how strategic government investment can fundamentally change lives in regional New South Wales. The Greens are hoping this will provide that value-add investment in industries like plantations. That will make a real and meaningful change for generations to come in regional NSW.

I'll speak later, briefly, about the amendments negotiated by my colleague Senator Allman-Payne that will prohibit investment in native forest logging. That's a critical part of ensuring this investment goes where it's needed—not in native forest logging but in plantations and value-adds, genuine long-term value-adds, in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors. It's also going to invest in value-adding resources. Again, that cannot—and must not—be fossil fuels. Thankfully, key Greens amendments will make that happen.

Investments in defence capability are a matter we will have a watching brief on. The obscene amount of money that this government seems to want to spend on defence is something that should trouble anybody interested in their kids' future. But if we are going to have an expenditure on defence, and there will be some, ensuring as much of that is spent locally, rather than as part of a global arms industry, is going to be an important way of keeping Australia safe without fuelling a global arms industry. And, lastly, in enabling capabilities. We're talking about, out of the $15 billion fund, $500 million for that value-add in agriculture, a billion dollars for the advanced technology and a billion dollars for critical technologies. This, I hope, will be nation-shaping investment.

I want to highlight and give credit for the amendment moved in the other place on behalf of the Greens but negotiated by my Senate colleague. It secures an amendment that ensures coal and gas and native forest logging are prohibited investments from this fund. That was make or break for us with this investment fund. We told the government that straight up, in negotiations. We will not see billions of dollars more of public money going into coal and gas or native forest logging. That was an absolute red line in negotiations. Thankfully, we've been able to deliver on that, in the amendment in the other place.

Let's remember, that is the same amendment that was put in by the Greens for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA. That prevented the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA being used as a slush fund for the coal and gas industries—as the coalition so wanted to do. The coalition has never seen a bucket of public money that they don't want to dip in to the corporate coffers of the fossil fuel industry. It has taken the Greens, using their balance of power in this place, to prevent Labor doing exactly the same with this bill.