Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There you go. What's happening? We are producing less with greater levels of income. What this is about is a long-term handout to their big company friends. Once again, Senator Pocock, the great cheerleader of green energy, was talking about the Australianism of it. Any multinational can come in and set up an ABN. Go down to your local accountant and apply for an ABN—even go online and do it yourself—and suddenly you're an Australian company and you're qualified to do this.

When we look at every policy this government rolls out, we see good intentions turn into bad legislation and then into rubbish outcomes. This is just another step of that. The government should not be able to pick favourites. They're not going to pick winners. They've never picked a winner in their life. They can't pick their favourites in the seats they want to win. From the businesses that do the right deals with the unions, to the businesses that have the right shareholding in industry super funds—that is what this is about. This is about putting your taxpayer dollars in the hands of people that will do the right thing by the Labor Party and the unions. It is nothing more than that. I wish we were looking at a bill that did exactly what Senator Sheldon said, earlier today, it was going to do. This bill is not it. It is a poor shadow. It is the Temu knock-off of a bill for building in Australia. That is what this bill is. The Australian people deserve better.

If we go through everything we've got in here, we're talking about using taxpayer dollars for companies that are not able to compete on the world stage and that will require ongoing subsidies that then require people to pay more. You pay in your tax, you pay in your bills—you pay forever, under this policy. If we look at the amendments that are about bringing some sort of scrutiny, some sort of honesty, to how things are selected, they don't miraculously fix it. They make it better. The rort might not be as 'rorty', but the failure will still be just as big.

We need to get Australia doing the things we do well. The transition has to happen in an orderly fashion, and I agree with those sentiments of Senator Sheldon, but it is not this bill. When you go around today and look at everything wonderful in Canberra and out there in your world, remember the four big things that bring money to this country by trade: coal, iron ore, agriculture and other mining services. They are the big winners here. They are the things we do well. The alumina improvements—adding value to it—are a good idea. I'm not going to stand here and say that is a bad idea if we can do that. If we can do the same with bauxite—process it and turn it into pebbles—that is a good idea. When we find the comparative advantages we have, to make Australia a more competitive place, that is what we should be spending money on.

And we can find the emerging technologies we have the advantage in. At the energy festival in Newcastle, there was a printed solar panel, and they had to go to the UAE to get capital funding to develop it. When we look at these things that are out there, let's not produce the same thing more expensively than someone else and think we're going to have capability. Let's look at the innovation that we have. We have MGA Thermal, in the Hunter, producing energy-holding bricks that you can heat up, when energy is cheap, and use to produce heat and other things at other times. Look at these emerging technologies we have going on.

There are all of these wonderful areas we can go to. But no, we just sit here with a bill that says: 'If you back us, we'll give you taxpayer money. If you're in the right seat, we'll give you taxpayer money. We don't care about the productivity of it. We don't care about anything; we care about a slogan and staying elected, not a future made in Australia, a future assembled in Australia.' Australians deserve better.