STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator BROCKMAN (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (12:45): I rise today to join you, Mr Acting Deputy President Scarr, in giving my support to the Iranian Australian community. The Iranian Australian diaspora is such an amazing addition to our broader Australian community. They show in their actions and in their beliefs that they care absolutely about freedom and that they care so much about what is happening back in their country of origin, Iran, where so many people are suffering at the hands of a despotic regime.
We all wish for peace and a better future for Iran, and I want to give my thanks to the amazing displays of solidarity and support that the Iranian Australian community have provided to those suffering back in their home country. Labor is bad for Western Australia in so many ways. We can see it in the current fuel crisis.
I was speaking just this morning to an earthmoving contractor in the Great Southern of Western Australia. He uses around 5,000 litres of fuel a day when operating at full capacity, and he's got 5,000 litres of diesel left in his tanks. He's been told by his supplier that when he can get supply, which he is not guaranteed, that supply will come at over $3 a litre.
Think about what that is doing to the cost of business in my home state of Western Australia. Think about what that is doing to so many individuals who rely on transportation and rely on diesel to generate their income, like earthmoving contractors do. This Labor government shut down the Western Australian live sheep industry.
They have just signed a deal with the European Union, a so-called free trade agreement, that offers nothing to Australian agriculture and nothing to Western Australian agriculture. They have let the unions bust back into the great Western Australian mining industry—an industry that has seen 30 years of high productivity at very low industrial disputation rates.
Under this Labor government, following the instructions of their union masters, we've seen 900 right-of-entry requests in 2025 alone and 164 to 10 March this year. That's an average of 2.4 every day in one company alone. I have every respect for FIFO workers.
I have every respect for mining workers. These are not low-paid workers. In fact, the average pay rate of a FIFO worker in Western Australia is around double the average income in Australia.
The union movement will only reduce productivity, damage the great Western Australian mining sector and thereby damage the whole of Australia. We've seen this government's lukewarm support for our wonderful gas industry in Western Australia. At the state level, the Labor Party has attacked the commercial fishing industry in Western Australia.
Its failed and disastrous cultural heritage legislation is still causing pain, with Mr Maddox still tied up in court for putting a culvert over a drain, a non-permanent water flow through his property, so he could get access in the winter. That's the pain that Labor's cultural heritage act is still causing in Western Australia. We have a federal Labor government that has promised its own version of the cultural heritage act, which the minister said was going to look very like the Western Australian act.
God help us all! Western Australia is suffering under a bad state Labor government, and suffering even more under a bad federal Labor government. The great gas industry in my home state of WA just keeps being attacked in this place.
There are those at the end of the chamber who want to see a new tax put on that industry. And what's that going to do? Is it going to encourage new investment?
Is it going to encourage the new supplies of gas that we will need in the decades to come? Of course it won't. And in the middle of this current energy crisis, which the Labor government has completely failed to address in any meaningful way, we see the importance of that gas industry in another way.
I've talked in this place before about its economic importance, not just to Western Australia but to the whole of Australia. There's the billions of dollars of tax revenue that flows into our coffers and into the state government's coffers from it and it employs thousands of people in very high-paying jobs. But we see now another benefit of that industry, and that is in the geopolitical trade links it provides us with in our exports to South-East Asia and in particular with our good friends, trading partners and geopolitical allies like Japan, who see the benefit of the supplies of gas and, in return, provide us with the diesel that we need to keep our industry going.
These two-way trade flows strengthen our economy, strengthen our resilience. We see it in our relationship with Singapore. We see it in our relationship with Taiwan.
We see it in our relationship with South Korea. This gas industry is not just good for the economy, it's not just good for manufacturing in Western Australia, it's also so good for our place in South-East Asia. Now what is this government doing when we face a fuel crisis the likes of which this country has never seen before?
They're spending their time talking about putting more politicians into Canberra! Can you think of anything less likely to provide benefit to the people of Australia when they are suffering a fuel crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, an inflation crisis, an interest rate crisis than putting more politicians into Canberra? That's just going to cost taxpayers more.
And will it improve the efficiency of this place? Well, I don't think you can really make a case for that. We do not need more politicians in Canberra; we need better government that is delivering for the people of Australia.
As I stand here today, it is extraordinary that back in my home state of Western Australia we have farmers who are uncertain about the future of their crop planting. The Western Australian wheat industry, the Western Australian grains industry has performed magnificently over the past four or five years, in fact over the last decade. In three of the past four years they have delivered record crops to the Western Australian bins.
Quite extraordinary! Twenty million-plus tonnes of crops. Now that grain doesn't go to feed Australia, it goes to feed the world.
Ninety-five per cent of the Western Australian grain crop is exported. That is, in turn, feeding 50 million-plus individuals on this planet who don't live in Australia. That is an extraordinary contribution from the Western Australian grains industry to the world.
And yet we have those extraordinarily efficient Western Australian grain farmers today wondering what the future of this season holds because of a lack of certainty over diesel supplies and a very high lack of certainty over fertiliser supplies throughout the season. Western Australian grain growers, who, as I have said, feed the world, deserve more certainty from this government.
It was caught asleep at the wheel. It was very clear that the likelihood of disruption from the Middle East was extraordinarily high, and yet they were asleep at the wheel. For four weeks, we heard in this place that there was no problem with our fuel supply and there was no problem with fertiliser supply.
Yet now we see it, on the ground, hurting real Australians.