Matt Canavan: Pointless climate cap will only destroy jobs

The self-imposed Labor-Green carbon ceiling is a sellout of all the workers in our mining and manufacturing industries, writes LNP Senator Matt Canavan.

Two weeks ago the US Biden administration approved the Willow project, a massive new oil development in Alaska. It will produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day and generate 263 million tonnes of carbon emissions over its life.

This week the Senate sat to all hours of the morning – one session went past 4am – debating a Bill that would cut Australia’s carbon emissions by 205 million tonnes.

To justify putting new restraints on Australia’s economy, the Prime Minister said, “we’ve dealt with bushfires, we’ve dealt with flooding, we deal with the impact ongoing of climate change.”

But how will Australia’s action stop one bushfire when at the stroke of a US President’s pen, all of the carbon emission savings we make are wiped out?

And that is just in the US. Britain is opening up oil drilling in the North Sea, Germany is reopening 24 coal-fired power stations and China is building two coal-fired power stations a week.

Australia should only reduce its carbon emissions if other countries do too. Our current approach of letting other countries do what they like, while we handcuff ourselves, is an act of economic self-harm for no environmental benefit.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The Labor Party’s new carbon tax was already a bad deal for Australia but it has been made much worse this week because of a deal the government has done with the Greens. Labor’s carbon tax is now not just an added cost for Australian businesses, it is a ceiling on our economic potential.

The Greens have negotiated, in the words of their leader Adam Bandt, a “hard cap” on carbon emissions. What this means is the amount of emissions that can come from our mining, manufacturing and industrial activities will be capped at 1233 million tonnes over the next seven years.

When we cap carbon emissions in such a rigid way we are capping our industrial growth.

A real-world example goes to how we grow our food. Later this year our last remaining urea fertiliser plant will shut. Urea helps to grow almost half of Australia’s food so next year we will rely on overseas inputs for our food security. But urea is made from natural gas which means it creates a lot of carbon emissions even while we rely on it to be fed.

A Queensland gas company wants to build a new fertiliser plant using new gas production in western Queensland. Thanks to the Labor Party and the Greens this project faces a massive hurdle because how will it come under the carbon cap imposed by the Labor-Green deal?

The government says it has allowed for a reserve for growth in new industries. But the Minister had said this reserve was just 17 million tonnes over seven years or just 2.4 million tonnes a year.

Part of the old fertiliser plant at Gibson Island, Brisbane

The old Brisbane fertiliser plant would use more than 10 per cent of this cap before you even looked at other industries. The coal mines that are planned in Australia would add about 24 million tonnes a year, 10 times the government’s carbon reserve.

Adam Bandt is then right that his Green deal will amount to a massive stop sign for new coal and gas projects across Australia. He says his hard cap will stop half of all coal and gas projects. On the numbers above, he – with his mates in Labor – might stop more than that.

The self-imposed Labor-Green carbon ceiling is a sellout of all the workers in our mining and manufacturing industries.

Keep in mind that this does not just impact coal and gas. There are 24 iron ore mines and eight copper, nickel or gold mines on Labor’s carbon cap list. That is because these mines use a lot of diesel.

Our economy is staying afloat thanks to record mining exports. But in the future the government’s Labor-Green deal will remove that life support system because we won’t be able to significantly grow mining production regardless of the demand for it from other countries.

Many countries pay lip service to the climate cult and say they are going to cut emissions and reach net zero. Few countries are as silly as us to impose the restraints in law.

The US government has not and that is what has allowed them to expand their oil production in Alaska.

The oil producer behind the Willow project said after Biden’s approval that they would create “good union jobs”. That is what mining does but by capping mining production this week, Labor has also decided to cap the number of good union jobs in Australia.

Matt Canavan is an LNP senator for Queensland