MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (16:35): I thank Senator McKim for this motion. The first thought I had after reading this motion was simply 'how much is enough?' The resource industry, mining, oil and gas paid $45 billion last year in company tax and royalties in Australia. Over the last five years, they've contributed $335 billion in tax.
If the Greens want even more, there is a simple way to achieve that: more mines, more gas wells, more utilisation of Australia's immense natural resources to bring in taxation and to create the wealth and opportunity for all who are here, especially in rural and remote areas where the workforce has a large Aboriginal component. My office met this afternoon with Tamboran, who operate a new gas well in the Northern Territory, and included hearing about their successful Aboriginal employment program.
Tamboran are giving Aboriginals breadwinner jobs, training and a future independent of government handouts, empowering Aboriginal workers to break free of welfare dependency. I can see why the Greens don't like it. Who knows?
Once Aboriginals own their own homes, are married with families and enjoying the benefits of resource job brings, they may vote One Nation. Resources already provide returns into their superannuation funds of everyday Australians, as well as extra royalty into government coffers, to pay for the free stuff that government offers. The Beetaloo project has already attracted inquiries from data centres looking for a location connected to the national internet backbone, which is the Northern Territory.
Data centres could start planning today, knowing the gas for power and the water for cooling are available. This is One Nation's solution: more resource utilisation for the benefit of all Australians while, of course, ensuring the protection of our natural environment—the natural environment, not the sky god of warming as Labor, Greens, teals and globalist Liberals still believe.
The green solution is to tax the resource industry while shutting down the resource industry. This is insane. Yes, I know it doesn't make any sense to me.
Published Greens party policy is no new coal, no new gas and no extensions to coal or gas leases. High taxes will force resource projects out of business and, importantly to the Greens, prevent new developments. Massive job losses will result from this Greens party policy.
Huge communities will be cast into poverty, heat and isolation because wind and solar are a useless way to drive air conditioners, transport and industry. Government revenue to pay for all the free stuff goes, and superannuation returns fall, and the Greens celebrated the refusal of a $1.3 billion extension to the McPhillamys goldmine in New South Wales. The reason Minister Plibersek gave for the refusal was the section 10 Aboriginal protection order, as the site hosted a mythical blue-banded bee important to Aboriginal culture, apparently.
Today, the Federal Court officially overturned the mining ban. Justice James Stellios ruled that Minister Plibersek's protection order was legally invalid due to a procedural failure and a lack of procedural fairness. The company that owns the mine paid $900 million in taxes last year on other projects.
The taxes on this mine will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Who knows, there may be enough to cover the operating losses of one of Senator McKim's Greens supermarkets. This motion shows the stark contrast between the Greens and One Nation.
The Greens will use high taxes to force resource companies out of business in the name of social justice virtue signalling while One Nation will encourage environmentally sound resource extraction in the name of providing abundance for everyday Australians for many, many, many years to come. Voters of Australia, the choice is yours.