I’ve had a surreal feeling here in Canberra during the last two weeks. We face, as a country, perhaps the biggest challenges since the 1930s, yet we have wasted our time in this parliament on issues that are not going to deliver real results for Australians and are not going to make our country stronger and more prepared for what might be to come. After two years of a pandemic, in 2022, we now face a year when war has erupted in Europe for the first time since the 1940s. This week, the Chinese Communist Party is, effectively, putting into place a blockade against Taiwan. We do not know, over the next year or two, what Australians might be called upon to do, particularly young Australians. This war in Europe now is metastasising, potentially to become a world war, and we will not be able to be completely immune from its impacts and effects. We should be preparing for that. We should be making our country more resilient and stronger and we should be getting back to being self-sufficient in basic things that we need to supply any type of economy during wartime. Instead, all this new government is focused on is symbolism and tokenism.
This morning in the other place, a bill was passed to establish an emissions target for 2030—eight years time. Who knows what’s going to happen in the next eight years? We do not know, yet we’re setting a target. On the government’s own admission, they don’t really need the legislation. They’ve said that. They’ve said: ‘We don’t need the legislation. We’re just doing it, effectively, to fill time.’ I think there are other things we could be doing in this place, rather than just engaging in symbolism. Another thing we’ve been told we’re going to have is an Indigenous voice, but, again, we’re told: ‘It won’t have any real power. It’s not going to be able to do anything. It won’t be able to solve any issues for Indigenous people.’ It will just be more politicians here in Canberra. More talk! What this country needs now is action, not talk. Yes, I agree with Senator Bilyk that this government is only a few months old, and they are still riding off the excuse that it’s their first day on the job. Fair enough, but there is a lot of talk and not a lot of action here. And we as a country desperately need action, given the circumstances we find ourselves in.
This is a reply to the Governor-General’s speech. I was making notes during the Governor-General’s speech to us. In fairness to the Governor-General, it’s not written by him; he just says it. When you look at the political speech the government put together here, it’s often more what is not said than what is actually said that is key. In the speech of more than 20 minutes provided by the Governor-General to this chamber, there was not one single mention of Australia’s mining industry, perhaps the greatest contributor to our nation’s economy, particularly over the last couple of years. I’ll come to some of our weaknesses, which we need to be honest about. But perhaps one of the shining lights in our economy, where we’ve become stronger, better and more self-sufficient in the last couple of decades, is our mining industry. We’re the world’s largest exporter of iron ore, the largest exporter of uranium, the largest exporter of coal and now, in just the last couple of years, the largest exporter of liquid natural gas. We are an important country because of that.
Just today, we read the news that the shipment of coal that we donated to the Ukraine has arrived in Poland and will soon be providing power to Ukrainians. President Zelenskyy, just in the last few days, has thanked Australia for that contribution. We can contribute a lot to world security through what we mine and the energy we provide, particularly given the situation we see where the autocratic Russian regime is using its energy exports as leverage to gain control over and influence a wartime situation. We can help prevent those countries having that ability to dictate to weaker and smaller countries, that leverage over them, but only if we support our mining sector: our coal, oil, gas, iron ore and other industries.
Yet that speech did not have a single mention of it. There wasn’t even a mention of lithium, nickel or cobalt, which are the flavours of the month. But the biggest exports currently that we can help contribute are in those fossil fuel industries. Instead, we’ve heard over the past couple of weeks—I know the Greens are always going to want to shut down the coal, oil and gas industries—from the government, from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, that he agrees with the Greens, and he will find other ways to shut down these industries. He’s not going to do it through this legislation I described, but he’s going to use this thing called the safeguard mechanism. Isn’t that an Orwellian term! Be very, very scared of something the government calls a safeguard mechanism. He’s going to use this safeguard mechanism to shut down these industries. He’s been telling the Greens sweet nothings about this. We don’t know what they’re saying behind closed doors. And that gives exactly the wrong impression to the thousands of Australians that work in our mining industry—and, as I said, how that industry can contribute to keeping and maintaining global peace and stability. The government just does not seem focused on that.
They should be. They should be, because, while we have had a generation of success in our mining industry, it’s a different story in our manufacturing sector. That has been in decline. We need to be honest about that, assess that and change that. It’s been happening through various governments—I’m not blaming or being partisan to any side of politics. But, for decades now, our manufacturing sector has been in decline. In the year 2000 we were self-sufficient in raw petroleum. We could produce enough petroleum for our domestic needs. We exported a lot of it, but we still could be self-sufficient, push come to shove. We had 96 per cent of our raw petroleum needs produced here in Australia. Today that figure is below 50 per cent. We’ve lost two-thirds of our oil-refining capacity over that period. They’re gone. So what happens if the sea lanes around us close and we can no longer import oil? We cannot—
Senator Antic interjecting—
Senator CANAVAN: Yes. I’ll take that interjection from Senator Antic. The response seems to be this: ‘We’ve got lots of solar panels’—also made in China, by the way—’we’ve got lots of wind turbines, we’re going to have these batteries, and it will all be all right.’ We are not going to be able to defend this nation unless we can be self-sufficient in oil. That is going to be a key factor in any coming conflict in the region, and there is too little focus in this country right now on our deficiencies in oil, despite the fact there would be a lot more oil in this country if we had the guts to look for it and develop it, and despite the fact that there seem to be attempts to shut down the one shining hope in this country to produce more oil and become self-sufficient again, the Beetaloo basin in the Northern Territory. There are people here who want to shut that down. They’re not talking about making Australians drive less or use less oil. We’ll just import more of it from overseas and become more dependent, instead of becoming more independent as a nation and being able to use our God-given and abundant natural resources for the benefit of this country and the defence of our great nation.
I’m going to run out of time, but I’ll pick it up later. I also passionately want to defend our steel industry and what it is going through. We’re now a net importer of steel, despite being the biggest coal and iron ore exporter. That should change. I’ll be able to pick that up next time we’re back—at the same bat channel in the same bat place.
