Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens are approaching the Future Made in Australia legislation proposed by Labor—the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 and Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024—very cautiously. I'll explain in a little while why we are doing that and what some of our concerns and, to be fair, our fears are about this legislation.

I want to start at a high level. While we are in, as we are, an era when the ecological processes that underpin all life, including human life, on this planet are crumbling around us and collapsing and while the planet's climate is breaking down, the time for more government intervention in the economy is upon us. We have seen what laissez-faire capitalism has delivered us. We have seen what a so-called free market approach has delivered us. It has delivered us calamity and catastrophe. It has delivered us a planet that is becoming unlivable. It has delivered us an extinction crisis. It has delivered, and is delivering, us climate breakdown. That's what this hands-off, leave-it-all-to-the-markets approach has done. That is what privatisation has delivered us. That is what allowing corporations to behave in the psychopathic way that corporations do has delivered us. That is what standing back and allowing rampant corporate profiteering and price gouging is delivering us—an unlivable planet and a massive redistribution of wealth in our society away from people at the bottom and in the middle and up to the oligarchs at the top. The time for more government intervention in the economy is upon us. We have to do this. We have to understand that governments can be lenders of first resort. We have to understand that governments can nationalise companies and sectors that currently are run by the private sector but, not many decades ago, were run by governments in this country.

It's ironic that the Australian Labor Party, who obviously are now in government, are the architects of the great privatisation agenda that we've seen in the last 40 or 50 years in this country. Of course, that privatisation agenda and the wholehearted embrace of neoliberalism and corporatism started under Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating. Privatisation is a Labor agenda. Labor governments rarely saw an asset owned by the public—one that wasn't absolutely nailed down—as anything other than something to be sold and privatised. We support starting to move away from this privatisation agenda that's been in place since Labor brought it in 40-odd years ago.

We support moving away from just letting markets rip—letting markets slash and burn, smashing up our society, making our society more unequal, rendering the planet uninhabitable and driving an extinction crisis. We support ending those things and moving back to the scenario where, when there was a social need for something, governments stepped in. Take, for example, housing at the moment. Governments once stepped in and built enough houses so that everyone in Australia could have a safe, affordable and accessible home. That's the way it used to be. Governments would build houses, and they would rent them out at affordable prices so people could have a safe and affordable home. It's a disgrace that, in a country as rich as Australia, we don't have enough homes for people. But that is what neoliberalism has delivered, what privatisation has delivered and what the big corporations who've got their hooks into the establishment parties in this place have delivered. The Greens support governments setting an agenda for the direction of our economy. We need an urgent transition out of fossil fuels and into renewables. Governments should be driving that agenda much more quickly than we currently are. We want governments to put in place frameworks which shape investor decisions about which productive parts of the economy we want money to flow into and which unproductive, undesirable parts of the economy we don't want money to flow into.

The problem that the Greens have with the government's Future Made in Australia agenda is that, even though it sounds terrific to make our future in Australia, we're not convinced it will do any of those things that I just outlined. We're not convinced about that at all. The real danger here is that, as it's been presented to this parliament, Labor's Future Made in Australia agenda is actually all about a future of coal, oil and gas well beyond 2050. Labor's Future Gas Strategy is inherently linked to Labor's Future Made in Australia framework. And that is dangerous. It is dangerous for our country, it's dangerous for everyone in the world, it's dangerous for all the species who are being driven to extinction, and it's dangerous for our climate. We have very real concerns that, hidden within this nice, fluffy, warm-sounding framework, a future made in Australia is actually a dangerous future for coal, oil and gas beyond 2050.

There are some indicators there. I've read the Chevron submission to the Senate inquiry. I've read the INPEX submission to the Senate inquiry. They love it! And do you know why they love it? It's because they can smell public money to boost their already obscene profits. Remember, folks—about a third of the top-100 biggest corporations in Australia pay zero tax. That means that a nurse, teacher, chippie or plumber that goes to work and pays income tax is paying more tax than giant, multinational corporations that operate in Australia and then offshore their profits and avoid their tax responsibilities. One in three of the 100-biggest corporations in this country pay zero tax at all—absolutely nada. Nothing! I say to every nurse, teacher and carpenter—everyone who does an honest year's work in Australia and pays income tax—thank you for your contribution, but what a shame that so many of the big corporations are paying zero tax. Of course, they turn around and use those profits to pay multimillion-dollar salary and bonus packages to their wealthy CEOs and their senior managers. They also use some of those profits to donate to the establishment political parties in this place. And so the cycle goes on.

We have concerns that parliament will pass the bill potentially this or next week. We could be told, 'Now we need to use the Future Made in Australia framework to support the opening up of new gas fields so that we can make petrochemicals or fertilisers to support our economic resilience.' But I'll tell you one thing for nothing, colleagues. The physical reality—not to mention the science and the laws of thermodynamics—is telling us very clearly we need to stop opening new fossil fuel projects. We need to stop it, and we need to stop it now.

Where is Labor's response to that? They have a pathetically weak climate agenda that is actually seeing emissions continue to go up. They're going up, colleagues, since Labor came to power. Labor were elected to bring Australia's emissions down. That's what people believed they were going to get from the Labor Party in return for their vote. And what have we seen? It's a Labor Party that has overseen the continued increase of emissions since it came into government. In Australia currently we have the situation where companies like Santos are buying gas in the domestic market and then turning around and exporting it to fulfil international contracts that they overpromised on and now can't deliver on. I want to say very clearly to Santos and other companies in the same boat: that's not our problem. That is not the problem of the Australian taxpayer, not the problem of the Australian people and not the problem of this parliament. We should make it unlawful for companies like Santos to buy gas in the domestic market and ship it overseas just because they got greedy and they overcontracted. That's Santos's problem; they can fix it. Don't start putting the pain onto Australian consumers. Greedy gas corporations are now pushing onto a meek, complicit Labor government that the government has to deal with the consequences of corporate greed and overcontracting and overcommitment. Well, it's not the government's problem. The government shouldn't be bailing big corporations out of that problem.

The Future Gas Strategy, which appears inherently linked to Labor's Future Made in Australia agenda, has a great big dream, a great big fantasy, underpinning it—that is, the dream and fantasy of opening up the Beetaloo basin, Scarborough and Browse, of fracking the Kimberley, Perth and Surat basins. That's the dream. That's the fantasy of the Future Gas Strategy which appears embedded in Labor's Future Made in Australia legislation. The failures of the gas export industry should have taught us an important lesson that it appears the Future Made in Australia premise has forgotten: we cannot just let multinational corporations swoop in, mine our resources, extract our resources for nothing or next to nothing, and ship the resources and the profits overseas. But here we are with a complicit, weak Labor government that appears to be contemplating doing exactly that into the future under the fluffy, warm badge of the Future Made in Australia legislation.

If we want a Future Made in Australia, let's have a genuine discussion about what that means and what kind of future we want in this country. The Australian Greens support government intervention in our economy to drive public and private funds into productive parts of our economy and out of parts of our economy that are unproductive and deliver negative outcomes to our people and our environment. We support that, and it appears that Labor has accepted, in principle, that it's a good thing. But we have to have an honest discussion about what that looks like in reality—which parts of the economy we want to help, which parts of the economy we want to disadvantage and how we are going frame up a future where we can deliver on the needs of our people and ensure an inhabitable planet where the climate's not breaking down around us and ecological collapse has been averted. Those are the conversations that we need to have, and we have no certainty at all that the Labor Party is ready to have those discussions. We stand ready to enter into a good-faith negotiation with Labor on this legislation, by the way.

We cannot keep privatising the profits and socialising the losses. We saw it during COVID, when Qantas and Virgin needed bailing out. What the taxpayer supports should have done was ensure ownership and equity in those companies for the people of Australia; instead, the companies got massive cash grants. Now that they're profitable again, instead of the public getting a financial return on its investment and its bailout, the companies have just pocketed the money and continued to fleece their customers and give multimillion dollar salary and bonus packages to their CEOs. Socialising the losses while privatising the profits is a tried-and-true public policy failure. The people hate it, and rightly so. Privatisation is a tried-and-true public policy failure. The Australian people hate it, and rightly so. Let's start nationalising companies again. Let's start intervening in the market, and, instead of this hands-off, laissez-faire, disaster capitalism framework that we have now, make markets work in the interests of people and the interests of nature and climate.