Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

We just heard in the speech by Senator Hanson-Young that the dodgy deal by Labor and the Greens announced today to introduce a new carbon tax is a massive new stop sign in front of every coal, gas and mining project in the country. The deal announced today says, 'No more emissions—a cap on emissions.' All new projects have to do that. Iron ore mines, which have to use a lot of diesel—they're gone. It won't be possible to put in place new iron ore mines, because they'll have to offset. It won't be net zero by 2050. It's net zero today. This is absolutely insane. It won't be net zero overseas. It'll just be net zero here. In Mr Bandt's statement, he said:

The Beetaloo gas field will be required from day one to offset all of its emissions—scope one, scope two and scope three—for domestic use.

That means you can export the gas and coal to China and you don't have to worry about it, but if you happen to have the temerity to want to use our energy resources here, you'll be taxed and penalised. This is a pro-China deal from Labor and the Greens. It's not a pro-Australian one; it is a pro-China one.

It gets worse. All new offshore gas projects—for my friends in Western Australia—that will be feeding LNG terminals will be required to be net zero CO2 from day one. Vladimir Putin's Russia won't need to be net zero from day one, but the gas projects here in our own country that create Australian jobs will have to be.

Closer to home for me, in Central Queensland, there is a coalmine being built right now. There are 500 people working on that coalmine. It's not in operation yet. It's called the Olive Downs mine. It's producing coking coal, which we need to produce wind turbines and steel. Those 500 people there don't know whether they'll have a job tonight, thanks to this deal being announced in Canberra. They haven't been spoken to; no-one's spoken to them. They're a new coal mine. Will they need to offset their emissions from day one? If they do, those 500 jobs will be lost and the 1,000 jobs that would have come from the operation of the mine will never start. This is policy announced today is deadset against the interests of this country. We should be making this country go, not stopping the jobs being created in Australia.