Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to reiterate the Greens' support for the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024. As the Greens spokesperson for resources, trade, First Nations and northern Australia, I can say that this is at the cross-section of four of my five portfolios and has my support to continue and build on this important work.

I stand here to congratulate the Albanese government today on this work. I want to place on the record that, in fact, we could go further, and, with the Greens in minority government in the 48th Parliament, this could actually be possible and would make a difference to all Australians. I'm a proud Western Australian senator, and I've lived and worked in our regional areas. In fact, during the early 2000s, I worked and lived in the Goldfields. I have friends and family, like many of you, who work in Western Australia or in other regional areas across Australia in the industry or who have done so previously. So my focus is on the cost-of-living crisis and how we can have a plan for the people and the planet by developing and forecasting a transition plan that enables us to seamlessly ensure that workers are not left behind.

Let's talk about public and private partnerships and their role in Future Made in Australia. What does the government actually mean when it talks about partnership between government and private companies? There is a critical need—and I want to say this loud and clear—to avoid the continuation of the 'billions for billionaires' scenario in this country. We need to be talking about community benefits, and we need to be crystal clear about what we actually mean when we talk about community benefits and how exactly the community will benefit from this. It's all well and good to talk about community benefit sharing, but, without the government or the community holding some type of direct interest in that, the benefits tend to be limited to employment or some tax revenue, and even that is minimal when governments are captured by big business in this country.

First Nations communities and regional FIFO towns are already aware of what this looks like. In some Western Australian areas, we are still failing to provide some of those community benefits, such as basic infrastructure needs like adequate schools and hospitals to service those communities. I hope that this bill actually starts to turn that around and fix what we saw under the previous coalition government.

One thing we can do is amend the sections of the current bill that govern the hydrogen production tax offset, or HPTO, and the critical minerals production tax incentive, the CMPTI. I'd like to foreshadow an amendment to these sections, which has been circulated in my name, to ensure that community benefit rules are actually consistent with and designed to realise the community benefit principles as stipulated in the Future Made in Australia Act 2024. As it stands, the way that these incentives actually work is that they don't have to be measured against the stated desired outcomes. I'd like to thank our friends in the union movement—and I have no shame in saying that—for pointing out this problem during the inquiry into this bill.

I'd also like to foreshadow an amendment to this bill to ensure that a recipient of the production tax credits provides regular public reporting on its performance to actually meet those community benefit principles in the original act that is now law. We could also legislate to ensure that the intended beneficiaries of those principles are able to seek and secure a remedy where there is an actual or potential breach of the principles by the recipients of those tax credits. Future Made in Australia has the potential to help us with the climate emergency. We could have reformed this critical minerals production tax incentive to include a gas phase-out mechanism so that the recipients of the tax benefit would also be incentivised to invest in low and zero emissions processes. Over here in the Greens, we will continue to fight to ensure that we can find a means of doing that.

We look forward to working with the government on how we can legislate in the future to ensure that the growth of the critical minerals processing sector is consistent with Australia's climate targets and obligations. This theoretical mechanism could include tiers or a taper rate so that recipients of the tax incentives would receive a portion of the benefit based on reductions in greenhouse gas emissions per unit of production. The mechanism could be designed to be more stringent over time so that the sector would be close to zero emissions, or as close as possible, by 2040.

Aside from the Future Made in Australia being able to help us with environmental issues, we have to make sure that it doesn't contribute to or accelerate those climate issues. Across the country, we are experiencing more floods, more fire and, in my home state of Western Australia, more cyclones right now. For that reason, we need to make sure that the critical minerals that are explicitly listed under this bill—and only those—should be eligible for the tax incentive over the life of that scheme. Being such a wide-reaching and important initiative, Future Made in Australia should include an explicit statutory review process to assess the outcomes from the hydrogen production tax offset and the critical minerals production incentive scheme to enable adjustment of the scheme if necessary. I foreshadow an amendment along those lines.

I also want to foreshadow an amendment to schedule 3 to establish mandatory consultation processes and benefit-sharing agreements for projects operating on First Nations land that receive these tax credits. This would align with the intent of the HPTO's community benefit rules. The consultation processes would have to align with the principles of free, prior and informed consent, as described in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The bill contains provisions for equity partnerships, but it also contains provisions for a large amount of government money ending up in private hands. I can't help but wonder if the balance is, in fact, out of whack.

I hold the First Nations and resources portfolios, as I have already said, and I get to see how these two worlds interact every day—mostly from a negative frame when it comes to the broken cultural heritage laws in this country. This is critical because we need to start thinking about how equity stakes in projects like these can and will actually work. So the red tape, the green tape and the black tape that those in this chamber refer to can all be solved if we have the formula right, giving First Nations people the power to increase their participation in decision-making processes and to benefit directly. Imagine that—First Nations people in this country actually getting themselves out of poverty. Wow!

I have recently learnt that—and this was also part of the First Nations Clean Energy Network work that's being done—in Canada, First Nations people have a 20 per cent stake in the electricity grid. In Australia, their stake is less than one per cent. Future Made in Australia is supposed to supercharge renewable energy in Australia—like it says on the tin—and, if it's going to provide an economic leg-up for First Nations people as we've been told, then that number needs to be a lot bigger. I welcome the extension of the role of Indigenous Business Australia in relation to that and I look forward to seeing how that will come to fruition in the future.

We need big-picture approaches like the Future Made in Australia, but we also need balance to shift more towards community benefit. The idea that more industry automatically means more community benefit is outdated and simply wrong. The era of billions for billionaires, as I have already said, has to end in this country. The literature that occupies the Future Made in Australia bills is all about renewable energy, and we, the Greens, are great supporters of that. But the package does nothing to reduce the subsidies given to the fossil fuel industry, and it may have even provided new investment for gas companies if we hadn't continued to push the government. That's what it means to have Greens in power—it will absolutely stop us from creating those backdoor deals.

The literature talks a lot about benefits for First Nations communities and where the equity is in those projects, but there's also a need for the federal government to increase its own equity stakes in projects. That's the only way to ensure that the Australian community gets its share, apart from more equitable tax and royalty schemes, which seem to be in the too-hard basket in this country. We need to make sure that we are increasing the big stakes in our resources projects, just like they do in Norway and Saudi Arabia. Why is Australia shying away from this? We seem determined to give away our stuff for free.

On a day when we're here to talk about the national agenda on Closing the Gap, First Nations people are the ones who are missing out—or, in fact, being blamed for some of the outcomes. The lack of investment is the thing that I've heard about here. We are holding up projects. But, alongside some of the minority Australians who also live and work in some of those regional and remote communities, they are being overtaken by the extractive industry and simply being left to clean up some of the mess, or even worse. These folks are trying to live through an absolute nightmare. Their water is not swimmable. It is not drinkable. It is contaminated. That includes for First Nations people who are trying to hunt for bush food on their land.

The climate conditions are becoming worse. Some places above the 26th parallel in this country, in Northern Australia, will be unliveable in a decade. The climate crisis will be worse, and these communities are so close to the epicentre of these projects. It is why we should bring all this and the rest of Australia who are missing out when government forget these resources belong to all of us. They belong to all Australians, not to just the few who are banking the billions of dollars that they are making off this.

As I said at the start of this speech, I commend the big-picture thinking of this government, leading Australia to have a plan for future. But I also have to point out the problems that are caused by the outdated mindset of thinking that we are just a quarry—that we can continue to dig and ship. In fact, that concept should be dead. In some ways, Future Made in Australia is a lost opportunity, but we must think past the influence of fossil-fuel producers and extractors in this country. Investment will come if we have the right formula and are placing community at the centre of this work. That's the way we should be moving.

Australians are already doing it tough in this country, and we hear that right around the horseshoe here, where people talk up cost-of-living pressures. But do they know what that really means? It's our job to make sure there is a plan in place so that all Australians can see themselves investing in a future plan—in a future that is truly made in Australia. It will be one that will not compromise the environment that they live in, in which we are consistent with protecting people and the planet and doing all we can to ensure that, for people who are doing it tough, we are trying to turn that on its head.

I move the Australian Greens' second reading amendment:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes the importance of benefit sharing and community consultation requirements for resources industries, including adherence to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the principle of free, prior and informed consent; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) establish mandatory consultation processes and benefit sharing agreements for projects operating on First Nations land that receive production tax credits,

(ii) ensure the bill's community benefit rules align with the community benefit principles as stipulated in the Future Made in Australia Act 2024, with clear transparency, accountability and reporting mechanisms; and

(iii) implement a statutory review process to enable assessment and adjustment over the life of these schemes.