ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - BILLS - Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024 - Second Reading
I rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. There are already some remarkable success stories when it comes to being made in Australia, and I want to highlight a couple of those right in my hometown of Wagga Wagga. Indeed, Tim Rose, who is a chemical engineer with degrees in both environmental science and business and has 25 years of industrial operations experience, seven years in re-refining, is responsible for overall group performance and management of Southern Oil Refining in the Riverina Intermodal Freight and Logistics Hub at Bomen in north Wagga Wagga. He also has a plant operating at Gladstone, the Northern Oil Refinery. This has produced 140 megalitres of waste lubricating oil processed. It's about 40 per cent of Australia's total waste produced.
What they do is re-refine this waste and turn it into brand-new oil that can be used—indeed, bitumen as well. About 100 megalitres of base lubricating oil is produced and sold, which is about 40 per cent of Australian demand. Both plants are at capacity, and there's obviously then the need to expand. Forty megalitres of fuels and bitumen are produced, replacing imports. So that is a proud made-in-Australia story—$100 million in product sales. That is tremendous. As the member for McEwen comes and gives me the signed copy of Sovereign, smart, sustainable, I'll just put that where it needs to go.
What we've seen from these particular plants at Wagga Wagga and Gladstone is job creation. The Wagga Wagga plant opened in 2001 with 35 jobs, Gladstone opened in 2014 with 32 jobs, and there are another five jobs at Brisbane. And this is creating opportunities. This is turning waste into a viable, usable product that is environmentally friendly and economically productive. It is a fantastic made-in-Australia success story.
Then we have, not far away, Riverina Oils. In 2013, a state-of-the-art fully integrated oilseed crushing and refining plant was built with a crushing capacity of 200,000 tonnes of oilseed annually, certified non-GM canola. Each year, the plant at Wagga Wagga, north of the city in the industrial estate, has the potential to produce more than 80,000 tonnes of high-quality refined vegetable oil for the food industry and 110,000 tonnes of premium canola protein meal for the poultry, dairy and animal feed industry. I'm certainly very supportive of this. They're looking to increase canola storage bunker capacity at the Bomen site. The development application is being considered. It's a significant project. It's a priority project, and the New South Wales government recognises it as such. Hopefully that will proceed. Later this year, we'll get the go-ahead, the green light, for that wonderful project to enhance further the RIFL Hub. There's the special activation precinct, which is also taking advantage of Inland Rail.
Why do I mention all this? Because it's not just Wagga Wagga—and Gladstone in Central Queensland where there's that wonderful deep port harbour. It's right around this nation that we have ingenuity, entrepreneurship and activity, and much of it was based on the good policies of the former coalition government. I know that I was directly responsible in part for introducing Tim Rose to Ken O'Dowd, the then member for Flynn, which then led to the Gladstone facility opening. I'm pleased to say Ken is in the parliament tonight being applauded and lauded for his work with the Nationals as the member for Flynn for four terms. He did a great job, and Colin Boyce is continuing that great work in Flynn to make sure that it is one of our great industrial electorates in the nation.
When it comes to great industrial electorates in the nation, they need lots of power and they need lots of energy. Sadly, what we have seen from this government since May 2022, is power prices going up and power prices becoming unaffordable not just in Riverina. Mallee, Flynn, Capricornia, Parkes, New England, Cowper, Lyne—I could go on. It is so sad, to the point where this rush to achieve net zero—and you only have to look at what the Institute of Public Affairs says about this—there are many jobs at risk.
Mr Neumann: I can't believe a National is quoting the—
Mr McCORMACK: Yes, I am quoting the IPA, because they correctly point out that there are hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk because of the rush to renewables. I'm not against renewables—I'm not—but when you have a government which is putting renewables and the rush to have renewables ahead of everything else that has been sound and safe and reliable and affordable and accessible and available in the past, what we're going to see are blackouts. What we're going to see are shutdowns at aluminium factories and other manufacturing sites. Yet the Labor members come in here and pretend as though they have got these great ideas and great policies and legislative frameworks to put forward proposals that they say are going to have a future of manufacturing made in Australia. The fact is, it's not going to lead to a better future for this nation. It's not going to create more jobs in manufacturing.
The previous Speaker, the member for McEwen, was talking about the coalition saying no, but here we have a government that say no to agriculture. They're saying no to live sheep exports out of Western Australia. And by doing so, they're going to place at risk the jobs of many families who've had that industry for many years. They're saying no to mining. They're saying no to fossil fuels, when we know that coal and iron ore and uranium and other exports that propped Australia up during COVID. Indeed, these exports have led the way for our balance of payments for many years, but the Treasurer, in his budget speech last year, couldn't even bring himself to say 'agriculture' and 'mining' and just said—wait for it—'the things we sell overseas'. He couldn't utter the word 'coal'. He couldn't utter the word 'gas'. He couldn't, for the first time in 25 years of Treasurers delivering budget speeches, mention the word 'infrastructure'.
What we did when we were in government is we had a $120 billion infrastructure rollout.
Mr Brian Mitchell: You didn't deliver much.
Mr McCORMACK: I hear the member for Lyons rudely interrupting and interjecting, but he knows as a regional member that we rolled out phone towers not just to Labor seats. We also built roads in his electorate in Tasmania. We built roads. We built a dam. I know. There was a dam started and finished—Scottsdale dam—in Tasmania under my time as Deputy Prime Minister. And I'll tell you what: the irrigation farmers in Tasmania were thrilled when it was completed. They were absolutely delighted. But will we see dam building under this Labor government?
Dr Webster: No.
Mr McCORMACK: No, of course we won't, Member for Mallee. Will we see anything happen in the infrastructure space? We'll see plenty of reviews. We'll see plenty of plans. We'll see plenty of ribbon-cutting for projects that were funded by the previous coalition government. But will we see a positive action plan of rollout, of delivery, by this Labor government? The answer to that is a resounding no. Members on the coalition side understand it, they know it, and they're worried about it.
Moreover, our constituents are very concerned. When the member for Ballarat, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, put in place her 90-day review, we knew that this was just procrastination. We knew it was just Labor being Labor. Don't believe what Labor says it's going to do; believe what Labor does. It's never the same two things, as the member for Forde just said to me a few moments ago before I rose to speak on this bill.
It is an important bill. Whilst the opposition is opposing this bill, it is important that we do talk about manufacturing and things being made in Australia, because it highlights again the sad reality that power prices, energy costs, are going through the roof for industry, for farmers, for households, for Australians. When we have a prime minister who promised on no fewer than 97 occasions before the May 2022 election that there was going to be a power price reduction of $275 reduction off your bill, that hoodwinked many Australians. They're not fooled now. They know, as all Australians do. All Australians who live in the real world know that life is so much more expensive now than it was before Labor came to office. Labor has pushed prices up across the board.
I heard the member for McEwen also talking about housing and how difficult it was for Labor to build houses, but we've got a Labor government which is acceding to the requests of its state governments. In Victoria we've got an administration which is banning conventional gas onshore and offshore. We have the Jacinta Allan government, following on from the Daniel Andrews administration, which won't allow the timber industry. What do you build houses out of? What do you power houses with? It's so difficult to build a house anywhere in Australia, let alone in Victoria. The reshuffle is not going to fix anything. It's not going to put roofs over people's heads. It's not going to bring power prices down. Whilst ever you've got a government that is pushing this manic renewables drive over sensible, practical, available baseload power, you are going to have—
Mr Brian Mitchell: Like nuclear!
Mr McCORMACK: I didn't quite hear you, Member for Lyons, but no doubt it was some—
Mr Brian Mitchell: Like nuclear!
Mr McCORMACK: Well, yes, thanks. Absolutely. If we are to get to net zero, let's have a national, rational discussion about nuclear power. We've got uranium supplies—very bountiful supplies of yellowcake. Why wouldn't we have the national discussion instead of producing, as you've done, silly little memes with three-eyed fish and The Simpsons and the like? Why wouldn't we have a national, rational discussion about nuclear as an option? That's the trouble. Labor members knock and mock ideas, but let's have the discussion about having balance, about having options in our power mix. Let's not just go to wind and solar and wholly and solely go down that path, because let me tell you: there is a lot of prime agricultural land at the moment which is being taken up with projects that are then placed under state-significant development approvals et cetera, which are usurping local councils' ability even to look at projects. What they're doing is taking the best available farmland, which, I might add, grows our food and our fibre and puts food on our plates and clothes on our backs, not just for this nation but for many others.
So the coalition is opposing this bill. We've put forward a sensible amendment, as you'd expect. As the shadow Treasurer has just said, this is a slogan in search of a policy: Future Made in Australia. It's an ill named bill, like most Labor policies. Labor's policies on workplace reform through flexibility are just run by the unions. We saw what John Setka did and said yesterday, and this policy is just bad. (Time expired)