Energy, health, homes, jobs and farm picker crisis drive Bush Summit debate

Sparks flew as the debate over Australia’s energy future took centre stage at The Daily Telegraph’s third Bush Summit on Friday. Read our blog to recap the day's events.

Sparks flew as the debate over Australia’s energy future took centre stage at The Daily Telegraph’s third Bush Summit on Friday.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, ahead of the COP26 UN Climate conference in Glasgow, said the bush had a ­crucial role to play in the country’s “low emissions future”.

“We’ve had your back as you’ve faced the fires and floods and calamities of recent years,” Mr Morrison told The Bush Summit. “And we’ll have your back as the world transitions to the new energy economy.”

He predicted that “technology not taxes” would help drive up to 100,000 new jobs by 2050 in hydrogen, renewable energy, green iron and alumina, and critical minerals.

"And the majority of those jobs will be in regional Australia,” he said.

Barnaby Joyce and Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes clash over the value of renewables during The Bush Summit. Picture: Toby Zerna

But in a fiery debate Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes told the man Mr Morrison left in charge in his absence, acting Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce: “I still don’t see a plan to get us there.”

Mr Joyce argued that ­renewables took jobs and that there were mining towns across NSW but no renewable towns.

“We've had a six-fold increase in power prices in a year, up to 850,000 people a night have been losing the energy provider … chaos, because the wind power was unable to fill the void,” Mr Joyce said.

“There’s no point shaking your head, you are wrong mate,” he said.

“There was a 40 per cent gap that was supposed to be provided by renewables because … of a wind drought.”

Mr Cannon-Brookes arg­ued that “Australia’s future was underpinned by renewables” and that every town was a renewable town.

“Our mining industry will benefit massively from the decarbonisation of the world … we’re going to need to do a lot more of it,” he said.

“All of the critical minerals, all of the essential elements that go into any form of global carbonisation, we’re in the leading pack for almost all of those things.”

NSW Jobs and Investment minister Stuart Ayres told a panel on The Great Inland ­Migration that energy would drive what happens in rural and regional Australia.

“Hydrogen is a game changer right across the globe and here in NSW we have just released a hydrogen strategy that says we want to deliver 110,000 tons of hydrogen,” he said.

Daily Telegraph deputy editor Anna Caldwell interviews Premier Dominic Perrottet during the Bush Summit on Friday. Picture: Toby Zerna

But the shortage of suitable housing for the workers taking those jobs needed to be add­ressed.

Housing minister Melinda Pavey conceded: “There is no doubt there are some big challenges, costs have gone up.”

One solution to the immediate crisis was “granny flats,” she said.

Mental Health Minister Bronwyn Taylor said the government has “thrown billions of dollars” at the lack of doctors and specialists in the regions but “we still don’t have a solution”.

She said the focus was trying to reduce the waiting times to see a psychologist.

The Summit also looked at the recovery from Covid.

NSW Farmers head of policy Annabel Johnson said there are challenges: “Number one is workforce. We have this amazing crop across the majority of the state but farmers only get paid once we get the crop off and we get it off to market.

“That’s where we’re running into issues, with the borders having been closed for so long we have a 16,000 worker deficit in NSW.”

NSW Deputy Premier Paul Toole said he had been working with Foreign Minister Marise Payne to get the first of 55,000 Pacific Islanders into the state.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott used the even to urge the Coalition to take a proposal of domestic nuclear power to the next election in order to differentiate itself from Labor.

Mr Abbott said that laws banning nuclear energy no longer make sense and need to be scrapped.

Mr Morrison has rejected recent calls to lift the ban on nuclear energy amid staunch opposition from Labor.

Speaking from Washington DC in high-powered panel discussion held across five international time-zones, Mr Abbott said that makes things more “complicated” for the government, but it could be used as an election issue.

“There doesn’t appear to be as much difference between the two major parties as normal, and in the end, elections are contests, not coronations,” Mr Abbott said.

“There’s going to have to be something that the two parties are arguing about at the next election. If we were to say, look, over time, we are going to move to a civil nuclear industry in Australia, that would be a way of sharpening the difference between the Liberal/National Coalition and the Labor opposition, and that might not be such a bad thing.”

The Summit drew up a communique of six points ­including mental and physical health, housing, energy, jobs and trade that need to be add ­dressed in the future.

The Daily Telegraph’s editor Ben English said challenges remain in the bush.

“That’s why the Bush Summit is not just a one-day event. It’s an ­always-on commitment from The Daily Telegraph.

“It forces us to devote our resources and attention to the most pressing issues facing our regions,” he said.

The Daily Telegraph’s next Bush Summit will be held in Griffith in the Riverina next year.