MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa—Leader of the Nationals) (15:23): During the election campaign we heard ad nauseam about a future made in Australia. There were $38 billion worth of programs to say that we're going to make everything here in Australia. It is nothing more than an expensive slogan.

The lived experience of industry across this country today is that it has now cost them over $3 billion in bailouts to try and keep industry alive, because this government has worked on slogans rather than fixing the fundamentals of what makes us competitive and what keeps industry going. It's not just heavy industries in Port Pirie, Mount Isa and Whyalla; it's also the new emerging industries like artificial intelligence and data centres where you need baseload power and cheap, affordable energy that will be there when you need it to be able to compete.

When you are blessed with all the resources here on this continent, why do we have the most expensive energy in the world? That is why we saw, even yesterday, at the National Press Club, BlueScope send another warning to this government about their operations—the thousands of people that BlueScope employs across this country, along with those smelters—that are now at risk.

They are simply being bailed out, with dollar after dollar, year after year, because we have not had the courage to face up to fixing the fundamentals. And this government is continuing to go down that path of an all-renewables approach. There is no industrial country the size of Australia that has gone down an all-renewables path.

There are a couple that have had a red-hot crack at it: Portugal and Spain. They got to 77 per cent of renewables, and their entire grid went out for over a week and a half. They had to draw on continental Europe to be able to get their baseload power up and the turbines for their energy generation going again, to give them some hope and to keep their economy going.

That is the reckless race that this government is taking us down. But it comes at a cost. It comes at a significant cost.

Only this week, Rainforest Reserves, which is not necessarily a card-carrying member of the National Party, let me give you six to four on that, the environmental group, has, for the first time—because the minister for climate change has not even bothered to model, has not even worried about, what sort of impact it would have on not only the cost to your energy bill but also the environment—has done the meticulous work, and it has been costed at $1.382 trillion.

An opposition member: How much? Mr LITTLEPROUD: Trillion—$1.382 trillion! Just cast your mind back to the election campaign and the scare campaign that the Prime Minister ran, talking about a $600 billion nuclear plan.

At least we had Frontier Economics model ours— Government members interjecting— Mr LITTLEPROUD: You may laugh. You actually use them in the same way that we do. In fact, they are a respected economic house.

They put our plan, which had 38 per cent of our grid as nuclear energy, a bit over 50 per cent renewables and the balance as gas and coal, at $331 billion, not $600 billion. But, even at $600 billion, that's less than half of what every Australian is going to have to pay of the $1.382 trillion. That's why we have a government that does not have the courage to face up to the Australian people and tell them exactly what the cost is.

What is the cost that the Australian people are prepared to pay? It's not just as governments but also private enterprise, because guess what happens? Private enterprise—they'll come in here and use some mealy words and say, 'We're going to incentivise business to be part of this.' But guess what?

Business has to be paid back. Business has to get a return, and guess who pays? The good old taxpayer.

You get that in your bill every quarter. That is the lived experience of Australians—not just heavy industry, with the frightening situation that they are in of potentially losing their jobs. It's what every Australian sees every quarter, every time they open their energy bill.

They should see the Prime Minister's and the energy minister's face on that bill every time they open it. Remember that the government promised us that their bills were going to go down $275 this year, based off their 2022 bill. No, they've gone up by $1,300.

And the RBA governor belled the cat when she said, 'Not only is that baked in, but it's going to continue to go up.' But there's also the impact, not just the costs that business is saying they can't afford and are uncompetitive. The human toll for Mount Isa alone—17,000 people would have been impacted by that smelter going under. That's the human toll of the decisions that this government is making.

They're putting people out of their jobs. At some point, the subsidies are going to have to stop, because you know what? What this mob doesn't understand is that unfortunately Australian taxpayers' money runs out.

It's not for them to keep spending. It's for them to understand that they need to fix the fundamentals to keep industry going to allow them to pay the bills in this country. When you think about the impact on our environment—over 430,000 hectares of landscape, both prime agricultural land and native environment, are going to be ripped up.

We're destroying the very thing we're saying we're there to protect, but we're also tearing up this nation's food security and we are pushing up your food prices, all for an ideology. The greens actually understand—not these Greens but the green conservation movement—but the ideology of this government doesn't. They're also talking about 45,000 kilometres of new roads.

Well, I'm from western Queensland. We'd just like some potholes filled in on the highways we've already got. We don't need to build new roads.

And let me tell you, that $1.382 trillion doesn't include the transmission lines, and it doesn't include the battery program that the minister talked about today that 70,000 or 80,000 are signed up to. Just a little number for the minister to understand—while there might be 70,000 or 80,000 households taking it up, there are over 17 million households in this country, and most of them can't afford the other two-thirds you've got to fork out for a battery, so bully for them.

The poor old pensioner out there is never going to afford a battery, but they're going to have to continue to pay their electricity bill. It also doesn't include the extra 15 gigawatts of gas that needs to be developed and put into the grid. So those opposite understand, your energy bill is determined by your highest input cost.

The highest input cost is gas, and the more you have to put gas in, the higher your energy bill goes up. It is an important part of every energy grid, but it shouldn't be greater than what it needs to be, because it's going to push your energy bills up. These are the economics, the physics, the environmental and the social impacts of this reckless race to an all-renewables approach.

Let me tell you, there are a couple of chestnuts coming along on top of this that the Australian public need to be aware of. We heard from Senate estimates today that there is not only a $300 carbon tax coming our way but also this thing called the safeguards mechanism that has been weaponised by those opposite. It says to the top 219 emitters that they must reduce their emissions by five per cent every year between now and 2023 or they can utilise technology.

The safeguards mechanism was put in place by the coalition because it was about utilising technology, rather than taxes, to get to an emissions reduction. But it wasn't a stick; it was a carrot. This government has imposed a stick.

If you can't impose a technology that doesn't even exist, you have to buy offsets. So that five per cent every year is a cost that gets put onto the consumer, and guess what happened? This government is now saying that next year they're going to broaden the safeguards mechanism, which means businesses across the economy are going to have to pay a tax that will be passed on to the Australian consumer.

But don't worry. They've done a deal with business industry groups, and they're going to say: 'We know that's going to make industry in this country even more uncompetitive, so we're going to square the ledger. We're going to bring in a tariff.' The technical term is a carbon border adjustment mechanism, but, for us, it's a tariff.

It's a tariff on like products that are being imported into this country so that we can make our industry competitive. But guess what? That's inflationary.

That means that everything, like cement, steel and aluminium and also things like fertiliser and agricultural inputs, therefore herbicides and pesticides, goes up in price. That means your food bill goes up. That means your ability to build a house goes up.

That means that you pay more. This is where their ideologies are meeting the practical realities of what Australians are having to bear. This is where there needs to be some courage.

This is where there needs to be some acknowledgement from those opposite that, while ideologically it seemed great and was a great idea at the time, the reality is that the lived experience of every Australian will be that, whether they be employers or at the household level, they will be paying the bill. They would be paying a bill that is not necessary. If we drew on the resources of this country and had an energy grid that did not rely on just one energy source but a number that gave baseload power and the ability to compete internationally, then Australians wouldn't have to fear for their jobs.

There would be a future for artificial intelligence. There would be a future for data centres in this country. But, unfortunately, we are going down a path that is taking this nation back to being a poorer one where Australia will be left behind.

That is an ideology that has not met the practical reality and the lived experiences that Australians feel today or will feel into the future. The day of reckoning is coming very soon.