Matters of Urgency — Energy

Deborah O'Neill

The Senate will now consider the proposal from Senator Hanson:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

"The need for a comprehensive investigation into the political and financial relationships between the Albanese Labor Government, industry superannuation funds, and unions, and their impact on government policy, specifically regarding net-zero targets, wind and solar energy, and nuclear energy."

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Pauline Hanson

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for a comprehensive investigation into the political and financial relationships between the Albanese Labor Government, industry superannuation funds, and unions, and their impact on government policy, specifically regarding net-zero targets, wind and solar energy, and nuclear energy.

Follow the money. If you want to know why the Australian Labor Party is indulging in a childish scare campaign against nuclear energy, follow the money. This pathetic Labor scare campaign is an insult to the intelligence of every Australian. If Labor was truly against nuclear energy on principle, it would cancel any arrangements to purchase nuclear powered submarines and it would dismantle the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney.

However, we know Labor has no principles other than doing the bidding of the union thugs who fund them. This appears to be the ultimate reason behind Labor's antinuclear scare campaign. Labor provides billions of dollars of grants, subsidies and incentives to support renewable energy investments. Between Labor and the coalition, this has cost taxpayers $29 billion over the past 10 years.

Labor enforces regulations and mandates which enforce a guaranteed market for renewable energy. Industry superannuation funds controlled by Labor's union bosses invest heavily in these renewable projects, and why not? They are underwritten by taxpayers, thanks to Labor, guaranteeing a lucrative return for these union-controlled super funds. These lucrative returns are then used to support the Labor Party with large donations. It was no coincidence that in December 2023 union-controlled industry super funds demanded even more favourable investment conditions, underwritten by taxpayers, for the transition to net zero. These funds include Cbus, chaired by former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan, and AustralianSuper, which has close ties to former Labor prime minister Paul Keating. I'll highlight a few more union affiliations amongst the current Labor cabinet: Bill Shorten and the AWU, Tony Burke and the SDA in New South Wales, Don Farrell and the SDA in South Australia, Katy Gallagher and the CPSU, Pat Conroy and the CFMEU and the AMWU, and Richard Marles and the ACTU.

It's insidious how much unions have infiltrated this parliament and how this compromises good government. This is a scam paid for by the Australian taxpayer through subsidies and by Australian consumers through their record higher energy bills. Labor and its union masters don't want this corrupt gravy train derailed by nuclear energy. That's why they've come out swinging against it while once again showing their absolute contempt for the intelligence of the Australian people. Fortunately, Australians are smart enough not to fall for Labor's pathetic scare campaign of three-eyed fish memes.

Australians understand that nuclear power is safely used at 450 sites around the world in 32 countries. Australia is the only advanced economy of the world which doesn't make use of this proven technology, despite having at least a quarter of the planet's proven uranium reserves. This important natural advantage to Australia is being squandered. It makes absolutely no sense that Australia, one of the world's most energy-rich countries, is facing energy shortages this winter and has some of the highest energy prices in the world—that is, unless you follow the money trail.

Labor and the unions are orchestrating a massive scam on the Australian people, and the price of it will be our economy and our standard of living. This scam and the destruction it is causing must be exposed and stopped. Nuclear energy is the beginning, but uranium is just one of Australia's natural advantages. We also have abundant reserves of coal and natural gas. All of these natural advantages should be utilised in an independent energy policy that prioritises affordability and reliability over climate change ideology. The Prime Minister's inability to stand up to unions has been exposed by thugs like John Setka. The Prime Minister's weakness has been further exposed by Senator Payman, who has escaped any serious sanction for crossing the floor against Labor's policy last week.

Why are we allowing this union-Labor renewable scam to happen? Is it to arrest climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions? If it is, that's not working. Global emissions continue to rise, another indicator of the union-Labor renewable scam.

Louise Pratt

What a ridiculous motion it is that has been put forward by Senator Hanson today. Of course we, as a government, listen to super funds, our nation's biggest investors. They are custodians of our biggest investment portfolios and custodians of Australians' retirement savings. Of course we listen to industry superannuation companies. Of course we listen to unions. The truth is that it is those opposite, the coalition and One Nation, who are not listening—not listening to communities, not listening to scientists about climate change, not listening to industry and not listening to workers.

Let's take, for example, this nuclear fantasy of the opposition leader, Mr Dutton: seven nuclear reactors at the sites of existing or former coal-fired power stations around the nation, including in my own home state of WA, near Collie, at the site of Muja Power Station. What we have in the coalition's nuclear power plan is a plan that will throw our emissions targets in the bin. It is a plan that will divert investment from cheaper, shovel-ready renewable electricity generation projects. They will simply be put in the bin under this kind of proposal, because it will divert investment and waste precious time—precious time that industry super funds, the Business Council of Australia and workers in these communities right around Australia know that we don't have, and precious time that we must spend getting on with the job of committing to and implementing a transition to renewable energy.

Even if you were a climate change denier, the truth is that the coalition's nuclear power plan is still slower and more expensive than the energy plans already in place. The coalition admit that coal-fired power is coming to an end by the end of the decade, yet at the same time they want to wait decades for nuclear reactors which will cost more than renewable energy can be built for today.

Take the community of Collie in Western Australia, for example. They already have a plan to manage the transition from coal through the Collie Just Transition working group. It is a place where government bodies, unions, business and local community organisations have all come together to produce the plan to manage the end of coal power in the community of Collie. It's critical for our whole state, the state of WA, that they be given a chance to get this right and to do this job, because without it the electricity reliability of our whole state is in jeopardy. That is what those opposite seek to do: jeopardise the power future of the whole state of Western Australia. Collie Just Transition have a plan in place that calls for investment in renewable energy, retraining programs and embedded consultation with the local community. They have new industries that they are working with. They are working today to replace the jobs that will go when coal-fired power closes by the end of the decade, in 2029. The community of Collie cannot wait until 2040.

So the motion before us today names something, frankly, that is patently obvious. Of course as a good Labor government we're working with industry super funds, with unions and with communities to protect our nation's future.

Andrew Bragg

Every political party has problems, but the problem that the Labor Party has is the same problem it had a century ago, which was identified by Alfred Deakin when he said that the problem Labor has is that it's beholden to vested interests. The mother of all vested interests today is the union between the Labor Party, the trade unions themselves and the super funds. This enormous conflict of interest can be seen in personal terms, in flesh and blood, here in this building, where you see the National President of the Labor Party, Mr Wayne Swan, who is also the chair of the Cbus super fund. The most remarkable part of this is that, when Labor announced a dodgy housing policy which was designed to allow the super funds to take over the housing market, the only organisation that said that they would put their members' hard-earned savings into it was Cbus. Cbus is the only one that said it would do it, with Mr Swan at the apex of the Labor Party and the Cbus fund itself.

This is all about underwriting Labor's campaigning capacity and capability. In the last year $40 million was sent from the super fund off to the union and the campaigners. What was the first act of the financial services minister, Stephen Jones, in this parliament? His first act was to roll back the disclosures and the transparency that were passed in the last parliament so that people could see when their super fund was giving money to a union. What did Mr Jones say? He said: 'No, we don't want that. We don't want people to see it. We want it to be a secret.' Helpfully, the coalition worked with the crossbench to roll back that disgusting attempt to cover up $40 million in payments from super funds to unions and Labor affiliated organisations.

This is a huge problem for our country—to have one of the governing bodies over a barrel to these interests. So many of the bills of this parliament are designed to funnel more money off to these super funds. When you look at that $40 million, it's a lot of money in campaign terms. AustralianSuper, Cbus, Hesta, Hostplus, TWUSUPER and First Super have all given more than a million dollars in the last year.

The idea of any organisation arguing that any particular form of zero emissions energy is bad is fundamentally unscientific. You can have an argument about how you want to do it in different ways, but the idea that any of these funds will get further involved in politics should be very scary given they're already very involved here in this building. I think the Australian people expect that the laws that we enact here will be enforced. I don't think that's unreasonable. There was a law on the books that said these funds must operate only for their members—not for the big unions, not for any other political organisation and not for the big banks or the financiers. They're supposed to be holding this money in trust. These are trusts, and they have very clear laws. It's about the best financial interests of members, not the best financial interests of unions. This is a major problem that we are all sitting on here in this building—that the prudential regulator, APRA, is not enforcing the law.

I was very pleased to see at Senate estimates only a few weeks ago that APRA had announced that they were investigating one fund, or maybe a number of funds, for breaches of the best financial interest duty. I asked whether it was appropriate for the fund called First Super to have made four $700,000 payments to the CFMEU. APRA said that, because they have secrecy provisions, they couldn't answer on the floor of the Senate estimates meeting. But I expect that those laws will be enforced and that APRA will set a standard and say to these funds, 'You cannot give your money that belongs to the workers to the unions or to the banks, because that is not in the best interests of the workers.'

This parliament created this scheme of superannuation. It is not a very successful scheme. Most people will be on the pension beyond the middle of this century. It has been very successful at enriching bloodsuckers, leeches and rent seekers, who have made a huge amount of money in the financial institutions but mostly in the unions. This is keeping the unions afloat and it is a disgrace.

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