Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I again rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024. As I observed briefly last night, this is a typical Labor piece of legislation. It's got a catchy title—no doubt research driven—and those opposite have spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the broader policy in very generic terms. But the fact is that this is about production tax credits. From what those opposite have said, you'd think that this one small measure alone will actually address the challenges and barriers that are now facing our mining, oil and gas sectors. You'd think that this will fix it all.

What they didn't actually talk about—and I don't think I heard a single Labor senator actually talk about it—was the production tax credits. They quoted a couple of people in the mining sector who are supportive of this. On its own, it's not a bad policy. It will help a very few in the mining sector. But, again, it doesn't address the big issues that are currently crippling new projects and, in fact, current projects, such as in the nickel industry, which I will come to very shortly. A number of people in the sector have said, 'It's better than nothing at all,' but it does nothing, as I said, to fix the problem.

Instead of addressing the fundamental issues that are constraining our mining sector—and, in fact, there are ones that the bill itself has made worse—this government is putting forward this attempt to say, 'We are actually dealing with the challenges that face the critical minerals and rare earth industries which are so essential for the development of new energy technologies'—the so-called net zero technologies. We've got a lot of them here in Australia, but it's taking 15 years under this government from finding a deposit to actually producing it. That is absolutely outrageous. It is ridiculous. These commodities are actually not rare at all. There are vast deposits overseas—in Greenland, as President Trump has identified, and in many other nations.

So what's happening? We are not competitive. Companies here can't get capital. They can't get certainty. We in this nation are now defined as a sovereign risk in the mining, oil and gas sectors and that includes for the minerals and the rare earths that are needed to get the globe to net zero. So what are those opposite doing? They have introduced legislation that makes red tape even harder to deal with, even more expensive and longer. Thank goodness 'nature positive' has been shelved for now, but there is nothing more certain than that, if those opposite are actually given the Treasury benches again after the next election, 'nature positive' will be back and it will be a further death knell for Western Australia and Australia's mining and oil and gas sectors.

So we oppose this bill not because the individual tax credit will help a mere handful into production, although not into development, but because this is all spin and it doesn't do anything to benefit families, workers or Western Australian industry. Australia has a very proud and long manufacturing history, which this side of politics has always supported. But what does a strong manufacturing and mining sector need? It needs strong economic management to get our country back on track, to get the mining sector and the oil and gas sector back on track, by getting the basics right—everything that this government in just over 2½ years has made infinitely worse.

So what does the sector need? It needs affordable and reliable energy. It is more expensive, it is less reliable and, when you have a look at other nations that are now competing actively for our miners, our capital and for the mining projects that could have been built here, what have they got? They've got reliable and cheap energy. They have less regulation. So what have those opposite done? They have made it even worse and longer. They have added five years to projects being delivered. Even for the most critical of minerals they've added five years. What does that mean? It means that projects are now going overseas.

Have a look at what Donald Trump has announced in terms of reducing regulation and red tape. It's not to say that here in Australia we want lesser standards. We've got the best standards in the world. But the amount of red, green and black tape that now strangles our businesses has been exacerbated astonishingly in just five years by those opposite.

Let's have a look at the critical minerals and rare earth sectors in Western Australia that this is supposedly designed to assist. A few businesses, if they're in production, will benefit from it, and that's a good thing. But, again, it's putting a finger in the dike. Having been a passionate advocate for our critical minerals and rare earth sector for almost all of my time here in the Senate, I've consulted and engaged with the industry over many years. I've worked with them to find meaningful policy outcomes that support the critical role that they play in the prosperity of Western Australia and in the prosperity of our nation. As one of the fastest growing industries, Australia, but Western Australia in particular, does have some of the most significant critical mineral deposits in the world, including virtually all of the minerals on Australia's own Critical Minerals List, and is now the leading supplier of lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, mineral sands and rare earths. We've got advanced critical minerals processing capabilities, with large-scale global investment in refineries, but we could and we should be doing much more.

While critical minerals are essential for our energy transition, the sector is facing serious global challenges. As I've said, it has taken far too long in Australia—what investor in their right mind would invest in any project in Western Australia or Australia when they know it's going to take 15 years, the regulatory environment is going to keep changing, there is going to be more and more investment and it takes hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to invest. We're a sovereign risk, and I can't believe I'm saying that in this place—that those opposite have made us a sovereign risk. Of course, companies, investment and capital—it's incredibly mobile, and it is moving.

A lot of Australian companies, under the US IRA, have been incentivised to set up production facilities in the United States. Just this week, Meg O'Neill, the CEO of Woodside, said that the Trump administration's early action on deregulation and energy investment adds to the acute challenges facing Australian producers. She also urged the nation to stay focussed on being competitive in global markets, pushing for an energy policy debate based on science and facts and not wishful thinking. She also said, 'Amid rising global protection and greater competition for global capital, Australian must sharpen its competitive edge even further.' But this bill does not do that. This bill does not come within cooee of doing that. Instead, it's just a quick fix, pre-election, for the Labor government to say: 'See? We get rare earths and critical minerals. See? We're doing this.' But they're not. You're picking a few winners. You're picking a very small part of the market to help. You are not making any difference—any positive difference, anyway.

Let's have a look at one of the sectors, just one of the sectors, and what's happened to the nickel production here in Australia. This is in the context of a global cold war going on between China, Australia and our allies. It's a battle that we are continuing to lose. This is a battle that's being fought not on a traditional battlefield but in the global mining commodity markets, across many commodities, and it's done differently commodity by commodity. Our nickel industry, which is so important in Western Australia, is a prime example of this battle. Significant Chinese investment has bombed the global nickel market. They've invested in new nickel mines and processing in Indonesia, and Indonesia has far lower costs. They've got faster regulatory timelines. They've got affordable and reliable power, and they have Chinese investment led infrastructure. Our domestic market, our nickel companies, did not see it coming. They didn't think that this investment could happen so fast, and they were blindsided by something that was hidden in plain sight.

The fact is that the nickel we produce remains significantly less emission intensive than that in Indonesia and elsewhere. It is cleaner, demonstrably cleaner, but it is more expensive. Our market share has now plummeted from 16 per cent of the global market to just four per cent today, and it is dropping. BHP's announcement that it will suspend its Nickel West operations in the Goldfields highlights the consequence of this battle. China's systematic manipulation of global commodity markets, not just the nickel market but many others—they do this through subsidies, export restrictions and strategic stockpiling—have undermined the markets. Yet we are doing nothing to combat that to assist our own companies.

In conclusion, it is a really sad indictment of this government—and, sadly, we've seen so many other examples in this place—that it's all about perception, politics and spin rather than about any genuine attempt to support our mining and oil and gas sectors. As a Western Australian, that breaks my heart, because we can see it in Western Australia. Fifteen years is far too long. People are just not going to invest anymore, because there are plenty of other markets where they can get the commodities faster, cheaper and more reliably than Australia. That is a shame, because we still have the best environmentally sustainable standards. We are slavery free. We have mine rehabilitation. And our product is traceable. But, again, we are doing nothing in this country and nothing in this bill to save those industries and to prop up our economy.