Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

This motion today confirms that the Greens don't support a prosperous Australia. They don't support Australian workers or understand the importance of supporting investment. They either don't understand the importance of the resources sector or are so arrogant that they don't care about the benefits that it brings. The Greens are simply empowered by one motive: playing politics. They would rather generate hot air in this chamber and fearmonger than come to the table like adults and work on delivering real policy that helps Australians. Whilst they all benefit from the resources sector, they refused to support it. The hypocrisy is rife because they're happy to drive on roads built by taxes resource companies pay, drink from glasses manufactured with gas and use their phones and laptops built with Australian minerals, yet they continue to appear in this chamber and try to drag the whole sector through the mud and shame the more than one million Australians who work in the sector.

We know that the resources sector is responsible for and is to thank for propping up the budget and is to thank for the schools and hospitals that we enjoy and the roads we drive on. Yet you won't hear the Greens acknowledge this. They just ask for more and more, until there is nothing left.

What you'll hear from the Greens is that they don't actually speak on behalf of all Indigenous Australians. They only like to talk about those that fit their ideological crusade. I'm sure you won't hear about the Indigenous voices who do support the resources sector. I've had the pleasure of meeting with members of the Top End Aboriginal Coastal Alliance, who gave evidence at this hearing last week. A group of Indigenous Australians—

How appalling to have those people undermined in this very place, when we are supposed to be here to represent them. I'd ask you not to do that. It is a group of Aboriginal Australians from northern Australia who support the resources sector because they know the value that projects like the Barossa project bring to their communities. The Greens never talk about communities like these.

The Greens would much rather parrot the talking points of the Environmental Defenders Office, an organisation that receives taxpayer funds to try and sabotage our nation's wealth-generating industries. What an outstanding, upstanding organisation they are, with allegations of witness coaching and confected evidence. Yet the Greens are happy to be strongly associated with that organisation. I'm sure that those on the government benches are proud to be spending millions of dollars on funding that organisation.

What about the government—the alleged party of the workers? Thanks to their terrible energy policies we are seeing manufacturing jobs leave this country. The mess this government has created is costing Australian workers and costing the country. We see senators on the other side talk about how proud they are of their union backgrounds and their support for Australian workers, so let's see what the unions have said. Brad Gandy, secretary of the AWU's Western Australian branch, called out the exploitation risk that is occurring in the offshore oil and gas regulations, saying:

The vulnerabilities in the regime that are being exploited must be closed, whilst retaining the integrity that the process needs.

AWU national secretary Paul Farrow expressed concern that workers were becoming 'collateral damage' in the campaign to destroy the oil and gas industry—a campaign the government is helping to fund through the payments to the EDO.

I raise this question: how can Australian workers have faith that Labor supports them? The answer is that Labor does not, and it's become apparent that the coalition is the real party of working Australians because Labor's only solution is to talk about how they support Australian jobs, while their policies lead to the closures and jobs fleeing offshore. As investment and capital flees, thanks to their energy policies and industrial relations disaster, more jobs will leave.

The coalition remains an ardent supporter of Australia's resources sector. We remain committed to ensuring that this crucial industry, which generates and delivers so much wealth, is able to keep investing in our nation. It's worth recognising just how important this contribution is. Australia's gas industry generated $92 billion in export earnings in the last financial year, which provided direct economic support to federal, state and territory budgets. It powers energy and manufacturing across the entire country and provides secure energy to many of our international partners.