Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (17:01): I second the motion with great joy. It’s a very sensible motion put forward by the very sensible member for Fairfax. We seek every opportunity to work with the government on sensible policy. We seek the opportunity to provide scrutiny to the government’s agenda. That is our job as the opposition. It’s a job that we take very seriously, and we do that in an open manner. We seek the opportunity only to do our job and provide scrutiny to the government’s agenda.
I want to get to one point that very much supports this motion, which is the work of the committee and the value that it does provide across this parliament. The economics committee has been a veritable beacon of bipartisan cooperation by working very well together. Unfortunately, none of the members are present, so I’ll have to praise them in their absence. But I will acknowledge very openly, as I have on many occasions, the stewardship of this committee by the member for Fraser, who has always been willing to allow a bipartisan approach to any discussions that we’ve had on that committee. The fruit of that work has been borne out multiple times. I refer particularly to the work we did in the inquiry into competition and productivity, where we heard from the small banks about the need for a regulatory grid to be brought into the Australian banking system, much as it has been in the UK. We heard that multiple times. Before we even got the report out—the primary recommendation of which was to implement a regulatory grid—to their credit, the government implemented a regulatory grid, and that is now part of how Australia operates. That came from Liberal members bringing it into that committee. It was discussed, it was debated, and it came through. This is an example of working together. This committee works.
I would also point out the work the committee has done raising the issue of capital and liquidity requirements that APRA have brought into question and seek to change. It is through the work of that committee that we’ve put pressure back onto APRA and called their overreach into question. This committee works. It is a good committee. I praise the members of it. I praise again the leadership of the member for Fraser and the work that he does. This is the right committee to send something like this to. These bills should be given full scrutiny, and I will repeat the point that the member for Fraser made. Why are we on this side of the House concerned about this? It’s because we saw consideration in detail gagged for the Future Made in Australia Bill. Our ability to do our job, to hold the government of the day to account, was withdrawn from us. The Australian people lost out. The simple workings of democracy were denied the Australian people. We seek the opportunity to provide that scrutiny. We seek to do it through processes that are already in place, processes that are strong and proven.
There are a lot of questions that we would like to have answered. I would love for the committee to hear from the Chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, to understand why she feels that ‘We need to be very cautious when stepping into this space.’ That was her comment on the Future Made in Australia Bill. I would like to understand what’s behind that comment. I think it would be great to have that brought out—for those questions to be explored and to form a part of a report provided by this committee. I would like to hear from the CSIRO and understand whether the 8,000 jobs that it said would be provided by the green hydrogen industry still stand, when multiple organisations are running away as fast as they can from this. Do those 8,000 jobs now need to be publicly funded? Has that number declined, as we suspected it would? I would like to hear about that. I think that would form sensible scrutiny of these bills. I would like to hear from Fortescue and Origin to understand why they walked away from green hydrogen, why they are turning their backs on this. These are questions that would inform our deliberations, and this committee would be perfectly placed to deal with. I’d love to hear from the resources council. I’d love to understand what the impact of these bills will be on jobs and growth in our resources sector, and I’d like to hear about the capability of our resources sector to match these investments.
Mr Sukkar: That’s sensible.
Mr HAMILTON: These are eminently sensible suggestions. It would impress even the member for Deakin how sensible these measures are. We have the opportunity to use the proven systems of this parliament to provide scrutiny to a bill that—let’s be honest—has really struggled to find support in the media. Even that bastion of right-wing thought the ABC is happy to report on the ‘vague and difficult to interpret’ guidelines that make it very difficult to understand how this bill would be implemented. They report Australian Industry Group’s chief executive, Innes Willox, questioning the community benefit principles that sit within this legislation and commenting that they may reduce policy certainty and increase investment risk: ‘This runs’—a somewhat obvious statement here—’counter to the objective of increasing investment in targeted sectors.’ Gee, that doesn’t sound good. That’s not a ringing endorsement. The media has not been behind this. And that’s the ABC. I’m starting with the ABC. I could go to the Guardian if I felt like jumping too far to the left. The Sydney Morning Herald goes down much the same lines; Shane Wright refuses to give this legislation a green pass. No-one’s happy about where this is going. It has not received support. For all of those reasons put together, this suite of bills deserves scrutiny. It deserves to be sent through to the economics committee.
On a final point, I’m old enough to remember the last election—maybe the member for Fairfax and the member for Deakin are as well—and there was a really important word ringing through the campaign, and that was ‘integrity’. When you gag debate in consideration in detail, you are lacking in integrity as a government. This government is running at an integrity deficit. In good faith, we are offering an opportunity to recover that. Show the Australian people that you’re not afraid of scrutiny. This is a bill that the minister himself describes as ‘the biggest transformation since the industrial revolution’. That’s from the minister’s own press release. That sounds like something we should be having a good, hard look at. That sounds like something that does deserve an extra set of eyes going across it. Who better than the economics committee to do that?
In closing, I’m very happy to support this motion. It is very sensible. In choosing not to support this, the government would be walking away from scrutiny, going further and further into that integrity deficit. We are trying our hardest to offer the government a way out. I hope they take it.
The SPEAKER: The question before the House is that the motion be agreed to.
The House divided. [17:14]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)
