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

With all respect to the minister, my question didn't go to the priority areas. My question went to an amendment that's in the legislation. So, obviously these priority areas post any bill can't use the funds from this bill in a way that would be inconsistent with the legislation. The legislation as amended through the agreement between the Labor Party and the Greens prohibits, as I mentioned, the financing of something that directly involves the extraction of coal or gas. I'll just repeat again, and maybe this is a good education for the minister—I'm not sure how much he's aware of this—that about half of our nation's agriculture comes from the use of urea. Urea is effectively a developed process from natural gas, through the Haber-Bosch process. You need natural gas to create urea. If we're going to have a sovereign capability to produce urea in the future, there'll need to be the associated production of gas. Will this fund help us solve this major issue which we'll be confronting, in just a matter of months, where we rely almost exclusively, and for half of our agriculture we'll be reliant, on the importation of a fertiliser from overseas? It's a shocking development in a nation that's prided itself for its history, at least since the days of the early settlers, on being able to feed itself. Well, in a few months time we won't be able to do that. Your own minister for agriculture has been holding out that this somehow is a solution to this. Can you please address this issue before we vote on it? Will the Greens amendment knock out the development of a urea fertiliser plant being funded by this fund?