ADDRESS TO 2024 MINERALS WEEK “UNEARTHING THE FUTURE” EVENT, CANBERRA

WEDNESDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 2024

E&OE

Mining pays the bills for Australia.

The Coalition understands that. And so do most Australians.

For me it is a privilege to be able to speak at Minerals Week, and to this most important topic, Unearthing the Future.

For me it is not a begrudging diary engagement; it is not an itching for a spat; and it is not a showdown complete with threats and warnings; it’s not a tit-for-tat session.

Instead, it is a privilege to be amongst the job-generators and the wealth-creators of Australia.

Thank you to Tania Constable, Andrew Michelmore AO, and the Minerals Council, for inviting me to speak on behalf of the Coalition today. And thank you Paul Flynn, for that warm welcome.

Often keynote speeches include a traditional acknowledgement of the lands upon which we meet.

But after the Labor Government’s decision on the Blayney gold mine, I don’t know anymore how we are supposed to confidently determine who the traditional custodians are.

We learnt from the Blayney gold mine decision, that not even the recognised traditional owners can be sure they are the recognised traditional owners.

It is a nonsense that the lip service of an acknowledgment of country does not extend to any meaningful protection for recognised Native Title holders.

But that’s the nightmarish reality of how subjective and warped and unpredictable the approval processes have become under this government; this government that will go back to the polls within the next eight months.

We are on the cusp of an election; and it’s time to reflect on where we were at, on the cusp of the last election.

2021: Our nation was still exiting the upheaval of COVID; Western Australia had not yet opened its borders, and Madeleine King had declared:

“My message to mining communities across the nation is simple: Labor supports mining and the jobs it creates.”

There were more soothing and reassuring words.

“We will support the ambition of the resources industry”, King said, “which creates thousands of good jobs for workers right around the nation, and is, as our biggest exporter, literally the backbone of our economy.”

So how did they go?

Labor disregarded economic realities, and forced a safeguards mechanism.

Labor snubbed industry concerns with its new EPA – a bureaucratic environmental police-squad underpinned by a combination of environmental extremism and union intimidation.

Labor disregarded industry concerns by pushing ahead with its Nature Positive laws.

And now, Labor disregards industry concerns again with a framework for industrial relations mayhem.

It proposes to break the important relationship between employee and employer, and forcibly insert the union movement into the workplace.

Entrench industrial warfare with so-called “same job same pay” provisions that punish workers for the experience and skills they have acquired; and remove the ability for remote mine sites to attract and retain workers.

And that comes on top of Labor’s cost-escalating multi-employer bargaining regime.

Dismissively Minister King declares “I’m seeing a bit of hysteria about unions in the resources industry. The Government’s bargaining reforms are working as intended”.

The Government’s bargaining reforms are working as intended?

It’s little wonder industry investment is stalling.

Latest ABS data shows a 5.5% drop in expenditure on mineral exploration coupled with a 16.6% drop in petroleum exploration.

The recent misuse of Section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, in an attempt to save votes in Minister Plibersek’s own electorate, further undermines investment certainty.

One of the greatest threats to future investment in our resources sector is activist lawfare.

We saw that with the Carmichael mine. We saw how our trade credentials to guarantee supply chains to India, were undermined by activist lawfare.

Backed by funding and donations from unknown foreign players; on behalf of unknown corporations and possibly governments; with unknown motives; our minerals and gas sectors are in desperate need of certainty and clarity from government.

You tell me that while you may want certainty of outcome; you need to have certainty of process.

Instead of delivering certainty and clarity; the government has become complicit in denying it.

This isn’t just exampled by its decision to fund the Environmental Defenders Office, with the sole objective of obstructing and grinding our resources sector to a halt; but it is also exampled by the government’s dismissive refusal to act on the EDO even after a court found it had engaged in coaching indigenous witnesses; and that it had had relied on confected evidence.

In the Tipakalippa case off the coast of Darwin, Justice Natalie Charlesworth found, “opinions expressed…are so lacking in integrity that no weight can be placed on them.”

“It is conduct far flung from proper scientific method, and falls short of an expert’s obligation to this Court.”

And the government’s response was not to cease the $8.2 million in funding; but instead it gave a seal-of-approval declaring the EDO had not breached its contract.

Activist lawfare is playing on the natural will and want of Australians to value and respect our indigenous peoples.

In the worst forms of paternalism, those engaged in activist lawfare are using the same tactics they claimed were racist:

● They claim to know what is best for aboriginal and islander communities;

● They claim to speak for those communities for their own purposes;

● They now misrepresent and twist the wants and needs of those communities, for
their own agendas.

The most recent decision by Minister Plibersek to invoke Section 10 of the ATSI Heritage Protection Act on the McPhillamys gold mine near Blayney in NSW, should never have happened.

We all know that.

Here we have a project cleared by State and Federal approvals; and had the support of the Premier and local community. It was opposed by a group that has no cultural authority over the area.

The decision to essentially block the mine, should raise serious questions about the power a group like this has; and how this government has allowed them to be empowered.

It is almost a year since the referendum on the Voice to Parliament when the government claimed it could identify who local indigenous voices were for the purposes of decision-making.

Yet a year later, we now have the same Government ignoring the voice of the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council, a voice which has cultural authority in the Blayney area.

This weaponization of indigenous voices by environmental activists is damaging to the cause of Indigenous Australians, damaging to the integrity of our justice system, and damaging to the Australian economy: its jobs and its incomes.

It was once that a person’s indigeneity impacted on an individual’s sense of community and to benefits: welfare, education and health, for example.

It was about how someone defined and identified themselves; and the impacts of that decision were largely confined to themselves.

But now the impacts of that decision are no longer necessarily confined to themselves.

The impacts can be imposed on others.

How someone identifies and who they identify with, can now jeopardise an entire gas or mining operation; deprive other Australians of jobs and income; and deprive other Indigenous Australians of their collective say in the future of their communities.

That is why the Government must now show leadership.

It must give industry the legal certainty about who compromises the recognised local indigenous community.

The resources sector cannot be left to guess to play chance – when they are identifying who is a traditional owner and who should be consulted.

This doesn’t only apply to those impacted by the EPBC Act, and cultural heritage laws, but it must also apply to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act.

Those in the gas sector are experiencing identical problems – having to guess who to consult. Government must give that legal certainty.

A Coalition government will. That is a commitment.

We fundamentally believe the benefits of mining and gas projects must be invested into multi-generational development for our indigenous people.

These cannot be short-term sugar-hits.

As already flagged by the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator Nampijinpa Price, a Coalition government will also put in place a stronger framework to guide how financial  benefits from our mining and gas projects, are invested for indigenous communities.

Just as government needs to provide certainty for approval processes; so too must government provide the framework for certainty in investment and certainty for supply chains to both Australia and our allies.

Australia is blessed with an abundance of critical minerals, and we must position ourselves to take full advantage of this and drive the industry’s expansion.

But incredibly, this Government has fumbled the opportunity.

Their entire critical minerals agenda has been focussed on the production tax credits.

The uncosted, unmapped and undelivered production tax credit, that is major plank of its so-called Future Made in Australia policy.

It’s fast becoming a never to be made in Australia policy.

Over 8000 Western Australian jobs have been lost in less than a year under this Government.

The production tax credit would not have saved these jobs.

If a government is serious about critical minerals; if a government is serious about national security; if a government is serious about securing supply chains for Australia and our allies; then we need to have the following declared a critical mineral:
● copper
● zinc
● bauxite
● alumina
● aluminium
● potash
● and phosphate.

And a government that focuses on national security should also ensure that it has a critical minerals policy that includes those metals essential for defence industries.

The Coalition fundamentally supports the expansion of our resources: our minerals and our gas. We unashamedly support new and expanding markets.

But we are also mindful that we have an international responsibility to ensure our policy priorities; and our policy settings; and our policy focus, also strongly support securing the supply chains of our allied countries.

In 1963 on a visit to meet John F Kennedy, Sir Robert Menzies said that Australian-US friendship: “contributes so greatly to our national security, but basically because, great or small, we work for the same kind of free world.”

In the over sixty years since: Australia and the United States still work for the same kind of free world.

This is exemplified by the groundbreaking AUKUS agreement entered into by the previous Coalition Government.

While the focus of this agreement is often seen from the prism of military perspective – personnel and hardware – it is important to understand that it is the resources sector that also plays a critical role: energy security, and supply chain security.

We have the critical minerals the United States and our allies need for research and development, high-tech industries, defence, aerospace and medical research.

We are the answer to their supply chain concerns.

We have the resources, the expertise, and the historic relationship – based on shared values – to develop this partnership even further.

In Japan and Korea, Australia has literally powered their economies for decades with our high-quality, low-carbon coal and gas; and over the same time, supplied the iron ore and high-calorie met coal that – to steal a slogan – let them build their cities on rocks and coal.

And under a Coalition Government, we will continue to do so for decades to come.

These nations require our critical minerals for their high-tech industries.

Australia is the answer.

Under a Coalition government, we also hope to make Australia a greater part of the answer to their zero emissions nuclear energy needs; just as we aim to add clean zero-emission nuclear power into our own domestic energy mix.

We all know how crucial this mineral is for the country, and for our international partners.

And we know that demand in the future is only going to increase, as more countries turn away from Russian and Russian-linked sources.

Uranium should be on our critical minerals list.

Labor isn’t even up to having an adult conversation about uranium and nuclear energy.

The Prime Minister will do a photo-op inside a nuclear-powered submarine, yet he will endorse a juvenile campaign that includes three-eyed koalas.

He will talk about the strategic value of nuclear-powered submarines, and then he will walk away from a low-level radioactive waste site that was 50 years in the making.

He will talk about the importance of secure supply chains, and then remove any potential to develop a significant uranium mine in the Northern Territory.

That is the approach of a Prime Minister and a Government that see the resources sector as a political pawn; not as a wealth-generating, job-creating industry.

At my previous addresses to Minerals Week, I urged you all to arm your workforce with the right information: to ensure your workforce is a campaign army at the kitchen-tables, the
school sports days, and the backyard barbecues.

The taxes your industry pays; and the workforces your industries employ, are the greatest advertisement for the resources sector.

Properly deployed and properly armed, they become the greatest asset to combat the radical anti-mining rhetoric.

This is the last Minerals Week prior to the Federal Election.

I see in the media concerns about what happens if there is a minority Government after the next election, where the Greens political party controls the balance of power.

They are serious concerns.

But, we already have a minority Senate, where the Greens already hold a balance of power.

At the last election, in our two resource rich states of Queensland and Western Australia, the Coalition lost a Senator in each of those states to the Labor Party.

Additionally, the Coalition also lost a Senator from the ACT and Victoria.

We need to remember that the future of the resources sector is equally dependent on a strong and supportive Senate.

We need to restore those Senate positions.

It’s not just exclusively an election about Prime Ministers and the number of seats held; it is also about ensuring the Senate is as strong as possible for those who support and see a
strong future for the resources sector.

Along with my colleagues, we have spent the last two years listening, engaging, and working with you all.

We know what your sector needs to flourish; to get Australia back on track.

A Peter Dutton-led Coalition Government will deliver on that.

We know what needs to be done to deliver and sustain the next mining boom for Australia:
● Affordable energy
● Access to gas
● Reduced and streamlined approval processes
● Investment certainty
● Workable and flexible IR laws.

We now need the keys to government.

We are ready.

ENDS