ADDRESS TO ASIA PACIFIC CARBON CONNECT CONFERENCE, NEWCASTLE
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Well, that is a lovely warm welcome. Thank you very much. And I too want to acknowledge all the work that Steph has done in preparing for this few days. I want to thank Whitehaven for your sponsorship this evening. I want to acknowledge Yamamoto san for his presentation and coming all this way with such an important message about Japan and our trading partners’ need and desire for more Australian coal, but mostly to all of you, the coal family. How terrific to be here with you tonight. I don’t think I’ll be networking as hard as other people were networking last night, but I encourage it. There should be more of it. So terrific.
So mining pays the bills for Australia and I start all of my presentations with that because that is an incredibly important thing to know and I’m not sure that Australians do know that anymore. We certainly know the Treasurer doesn’t know that. And at the budget last year with a $50 billion surplus from windfall prices, he managed in his budget speech to not mention mining at all, much less coal, gas or iron ore. Couldn’t find anywhere to mention that in his speech. That is shocking. So when people say to me, I think mining companies need to do more to sell their message. Well, it’s very difficult when the recipient of the benefits of mining the Australian Treasurer can’t acknowledge those things. So there’s something in that – that I promise you, you’ll always know that we know who pays the bills in Australia and I’ll talk about it until you are sick of me talking about it.
So the Coalition stands strong with mining at every point because we know that mining wages – at $2,932 as the median weekly wage – is twice that of what the rest of society’s wages – twice. We know that royalties and corporate taxes and PAYG taxes from the mining sector pays in large part for the fabulous lifestyle that we have in this country, for the ability for us to be out networking and enjoying our lives in terrific locations like this and our beach lifestyles. And we know that the export earnings last year of $405 billion were 60% of our national export income, 60%. And we know that what exports do for Australia, it’s not just the taxes and the income in the country. Exports allow us to trade our dollars. Export allows us to keep our exchange rate up, exports allow us to afford the new dishwasher or other products that we buy.
These are really important points. That is what mining does for Australia. And it’s a message that has been lost, I think across the country. You know about the 285,000 direct jobs. But what I wanted to touch on is the 42 and a half billion dollars worth of company taxes. Now, I know that you don’t want to talk about the amount of tax you pay, nobody does. But just remember that the amount that Medicare costs for Australia is $41 billion. Mining company taxes pay for Medicare with a bit left over for the Treasurer to spend on something else. That is a huge number that allows us to be this fabulous, prosperous, lucky country that we enjoy. But when we threaten mining, particularly coal, we threaten our ability to pay for Medicare. We threaten our ability to have this fabulous lifestyle. What is it that we are going to replace coal income with?
What is it that the Greens are suggesting? Is it income from solar and wind? What other suggestions have we got? This is scary stuff. This is our economic fundamentals that we need to be able to explain across our society. So Paul is right. I spend a lot of time on mining sites. I have to admit, sometimes it’s hard rock. I do see other mines, but it’s because they are exciting. The new technology, the things that you do that are world leading, whether it be mine worker safety, environmental outcomes, employing more Indigenous remote Australians in places where there otherwise is not opportunity, that’s really great stuff that is really rewarding stuff. And if it’s not mines, who is it? Who is it? Now I come out of the beef industry in North West Queensland, cattle. But the coexistence between agriculture and mining is something that I feel passionate about.
I’m from a mixed marriage, one grandfather a mining engineer with Mount Isa Mines and the other one a cattleman. But we know that you can have successful agricultural businesses in remote parts of Australia because of what mining does. The services that mining brings, the hospitals, the aircraft, flights, the education, small businesses, pumps and motors, all of those things that would not exist without that activity. That is a story that I love and we need to tell more of. But every time I go on site, there is another terrific story about what excellence looks like onsite with the workforce, with rehab, with more environmental scientists employed by mining and more environmental projects paid for by mining than any other sector. Why don’t we know that? Why don’t we have that understanding amongst the Greens?
So Labor’s policies, in the last – it seems a lot longer than three years – it seems like an eternity, but in just three years they have identified 13 new policies to bring in that are anti-mining. So Paul’s touched on his favourites, IR safeguards, the new EPA Nature Positive funding, the EDO, that’s my favourite. There have been so many new policies that make it harder for you to do business, make it harder for you to attract investment and to expand your project and your programmes. It means that Australians can feel very, very pious, but we risk being very, very poor. And so that’s what keeps me up at night and off the grog until the election, because I don’t want to leave one stone unturned, one day unthought in how I’m fighting for the prosperity of our country, for my kids, for your kids, for us as a society that we must fight for our important industries that pay the bills.
So I’ve already said to you that the Coalition stands firm with mining and Peter Dutton has made announcements that we will halve approval times, we will defund the EDO. In my space with offshore gas releases, we’ll return to making annual acreage releases available. We will ensure that we return to being the reliable trading partner and the dependable defence ally that Australia’s reputation has been built on over generations. That’s our commitment to you. That is what we will do because we know that whilst I’m concerned about investment in mining for families, it’s playing out in energy costs. Now, Labour took a commitment to us all as Australians 97 times that they would reduce the price of electricity per household by $275. And instead, electricity prices are up $1,300 and that’s including taking taxes out of your pocket and giving them back to you as an energy rebate relief. That’s the prism that families see it through because it turns out our problem wasn’t about climate deniers. Our problem is with economic deniers.
So 27,000 small businesses gone, gone, but employment remains up because the government has employed an additional 36,000 public servants. Emissions have flatlined. We are committed to getting Australia back on track. We want to turbocharge confidence in the mining sector, in the coal sector. So we want to accelerate approvals. We want to cut red and green tape. I’ve already mentioned my favourite, cut funding to the EDO and provide clarity on who has standing under acts like the Cultural Heritage Act. The EPBC approvals need to stand. They cannot be appealed over and over again. So we’ve also committed to cheaper and consistent power, and that’s all sorts of power. This renewables only policy has failed. We’ve seen that this rush to 82% renewables is killing us all. So we have committed to having an everything policy. You know about our nuclear policy, we see the demand for gas and coal, both jobs and supply and mining and energy going on.
This doesn’t mean that we are stepping back from a 2050 net zero commitment, but it does mean we see coal as part of that commitment, as part of that energy mix. And we believe that we will continue to supply coal to those who want it. As long as our trading partners need and want our coal, whether it be for energy, for steel, then we will supply it and we’ll do it proudly. We won’t mandate down demand. We won’t tut to our trading partners about what they do because we understand that when we supply these important commodities to our trading partners, we do three things. One, it’s good for us economically, great wages, taxes, royalties, it pays for Medicare amongst other things. It’s important to us geopolitically in our region in a time of instability. Our trading partners and our defence allies, the people that we want to stand with and continue to support.
And most importantly, our high quality coal and gas reduces world emissions. It allows our trading partners to meet their own targets. These are three very good reasons why we want to continue supporting Australian commodities, Australian resources, and in particular Australian coal. So we all have choices. I have a choice that I’m not drinking because I’m so committed to this fight, but I ask you – a commitment that you make as you talk to your employees, your family, your friends, your children, and I want to thank those in the Queensland election who ensure that the resources sector’s voice was heard, that you made a clear pitch to Queenslanders about why coal in particular is so important to our economy. And at our election we had a result that saw a change of government to somebody, to a government that is fast tracking approvals, ensuring that we have great outcomes environmentally, for our regional Indigenous communities and others, but most importantly economically that we can continue to pay the bills. Thank you very much.
ENDS