MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (15:44): Last night we saw on Four Corners that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy had the audacity to say, 'I never really bought into all the hype about green hydrogen.' I would suggest to the chamber that he was actually the salesman-in-chief. I would go back to April 2023, where Minister Bowen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, said: Today's release of the annual State of Hydrogen report reinforces that Australia has the foundations to become a global leader in green hydrogen.
Then, six months later, in January 2024, he said: Firstly, of course, our government wants Australia to be a hydrogen superpower, a green hydrogen superpower. And then a year later, in March 2025, he said: Hydrogen, green hydrogen, is really the only game in town when it comes to ultimately supporting the Australian and international industries as they move in the longer term to get off gas.
And Australia is one of the few places in the world which can be home to a serious green hydrogen industry. And he goes on—there are so many quotes that I could provide to the House. The problem is that we now find we have the smelter in Whyalla closing.
That was the big promise—that green hydrogen would be able to run that smelter. All of a sudden, what we have instead are 600 jobs gone. While Labor want to declare that they are the government for workers, I don't think losing 600 jobs is the way to be the government of workers.
I don't think making bold promise after bold promise, based on ideology and creative thinking, is helping Australia at all. We are seeing more businesses closing and we are seeing fewer people have confidence in this government, and it's for a very good reason. In my electorate alone, we have the renewable rollout under Labor federally and Labor state, and it is all turning to custard.
The reason it's all turning to custard is that they don't bother actually checking in with the communities. There is no social licence for all of the renewable that is ploughing through prime agricultural land. That's a problem.
That's a problem in my electorate. If Australia wants to know where farmers have risen up and formed a serious protest movement, it started in Mallee, and I am very proud of those farmers. They're there to farm.
That's what they want to do. It is the most important thing to them. It has been the most important thing to their grandparents and their great-grandparents, and so I could go on.
Sixth- and seventh-generation farmers are now finding it so hard to farm under this government. It's not only the red tape, the green tape and all the biosecurity issues they now have to worry about. We've got carbon tax.
We now have renewable energy rolling through their properties and forced acquisitions by the Victorian Labor government. But lo and behold, today we find that the Victorian Premier has made the announcement that the Western Renewables Link is going to go into 'pause mode' until after the election, because maybe they need to do a bit of an inquiry as to whether the funding for it actually stacks up.
Well, I don't think it's going to take the Premier very long to find out that the communities don't think it stacks up, let alone the economics. What we are seeing is Australia becoming not a superpower—not a superpower. We are losing industry, we are losing manufacturing, and we are losing farmers who are giving up their passion under this government.
It is extraordinary to me that this Labor government is so blind to what they are doing to our nation. Well, I can tell you what, it might be 18 months until the next election, but Australia will not forget.