House of Representatives on Wednesday 5th November 2025

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Australia is facing a productivity crisis. Our national productivity has dropped to near the bottom of OECD rankings, just ahead of Mexico. If you look at the Harvard index of economic complexity, you'll also see that over the last 30 years we've dropped from 62 in 1995 to 105 this year. That's out of 149 nations. If you look at all these different metrics, we are dropping behind. It should alarm every Australian. Productivity drives our economy—it's what drives wages and job creation—and productivity drives our national prosperity. Yet this Albanese government is pushing ahead with environmental law reforms that will make a bad situation far, far worse. That is why we don't support the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025.

Labor's proposed changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, known as the EPBC Act, will slow down investment and send projects offshore. They will continue the rapid deindustrialisation that we are witnessing right now and put more Australian jobs at risk. Some industry groups have said that these reforms are worse than the laws we've had for 26 years. I think that's a pretty damning indictment on this bill.

Let me relate this back to my electorate of Canning, where I live. Back home in the Peel region, industry isn't just part of the economy; it's part of our identity. Alcoa has operated in our region for decades with the Huntly and Willowdale bauxite mines. We also have the Pinjarra and Wagerup refineries. We're going to have a gallium plant, which Prime Minister Albanese and President Trump announced in Washington, DC a couple of weeks ago. It will be right in the heart of my electorate. Just to the south-eastern border, we also have Australia's largest gold mine, Newmont, as well as South32's Worsley alumina refinery operation.

The Peel region, which I represent, relies on heavy industry for local jobs. Also, if you go to any of our school graduations or to a lot of our charities, you'll find that Alcoa sponsors a lot of the prizes given to kids at the end of the school year, and it's also behind a lot of charitable donations that are made towards our volunteer groups. So it's really important that we keep these jobs and this heavy industry in this country. It contributes millions to our economy and it plays a vital role in our community. I'm very proud that my kids go to school with Alcoa families. Last year, my son's basketball coach was an Alcoa dad who works at the Pinjarra refinery. It's great to see what a difference Alcoa has made across the community—even to our basketball team. It's a cornerstone of our community and it's a symbol of what strong, stable industry looks like.

Under Labor's reforms, businesses like Alcoa will face more red and green tape, longer delays and greater uncertainty. We've already seen the Kwinana refinery close down, and a lot of people's jobs were affected. I've spoken to some of the workers who took redundancies, not because they wanted to but because they were forced to. We've also lost an important part of the Alcoa operation on our west coast. The changes proposed in this bill will make it harder to get projects approved and, even if they are approved, they will carry a greater risk. The proposed environmental protection authority would have sweeping powers to issue indefinite stop-work orders. That's not oversight; that's overreach. While this government claims to have a productivity agenda, the bill suggests otherwise.

The government introduced this bill in October, despite previously saying it wouldn't come before Christmas. Now they're rushing to pass it in the final sitting weeks of the year, with barely two weeks for consultation. It's reckless. It's rushed. It's wrong. It makes a mockery of this whole parliamentary process. The reason why we have committee work is to make sure that the laws that are passed are examined with due diligence and that laws are amended through that committee process, as required.

I support strong environmental protections and I've stood up for my community over the last few years. I opposed a dredge of the Peel-Harvey estuary because we have a lot of local fishermen, we have a very unique habitat there that needed protecting and I support our local environment. I want to protect it, like the beautiful forestry we have up in Dwellingup, which abuts a lot of Alcoa's operations. Like everything in life, there are trade-offs, and I acknowledge that there are environmental groups who are opposed to Alcoa operations, but we have to find the balance. We have to have strong local industry. We have to have strong jobs. But we also have to protect the beautiful jarrah forests that we enjoy in Western Australia.

We all want to preserve the natural beauty of our country and our local environment. But we also need laws that support industry, jobs, growth and productivity, because we need Australia to be competitive, productive, prosperous and secure. Mining and manufacturing pay for our hospitals, schools, roads and essential services, and WA does a lot of heavy lifting. Western Australians are proud of what we've achieved through our resources sector. Some like to brag about it; I just think it's a really positive contribution to the country. With horizontal fiscal equalisation, which guarantees uniform services across the states, it means that a lot of that is funded by the resources sector in Western Australia, and we're proud of that. In the 2023-24 financial year alone, mining companies contributed nearly $60 billion in taxes and royalties. That's what funds the services that Australia relies on every single day. I think of my community, where NDIS needs are quite significant. I have an ageing population as well, and aged care is a critical thing that we all need. Our industry funds those essential services.

Labor's reforms threaten those things. They risk sending investment offshore and locking Australia into a downward economic spiral, where we become less and less productive, and less prosperous. If Labor does a deal with the Greens, who want to ban all coal and gas projects—this is economic vandalism, if we ever saw it—we'll see even more damage done to the economy. Labor calls that environmental stewardship, but we call it economic sabotage.

The Business Council of Australia has also raised serious concerns, and their CEO, Bran Black, said the EPBC system must support economic growth, but I think that it's clear that this government is not listening. Instead, they're creating a bureaucratic monster—a massive monolith—and a new EPA with unchecked powers and no clear accountability. It goes far beyond what was recommended in the independent review led by Graeme Samuel. That review called for a commissioner, not an unaccountable authority, but, in its current form, the EPA would act as both assessor and auditor, marking its own homework. The CEO would be a statutory appointment, with no binding statement of expectations and no clear KPIs. The only person who could dismiss them would be the Governor-General. I think all of us here believe in the sovereignty of the parliament, and vesting the CEO with that sort of authority is a massive mistake.

We've heard statements like the minister claiming that these reforms would prevent mining under Uluru. That's a pretty poor attempt to sell a bad policy with a fantastical and nonsensical example. No-one is proposing to mine under Uluru. What we need here is serious policy and not political theatre. That's why the coalition will fight to amend these laws. We will stand up for industry, for jobs and for the communities that rely on them. We'll be thinking about the families who rely on the jobs that this bill will impact across this country. I think of the families I represent in the Peel region in Western Australia. We will protect the prosperity that comes from hard work, investment and responsible development. Back home, we know the value of industry. We know what it means to have stable jobs, strong businesses and a future built on productivity and competitiveness.

It's very clear that the world is getting more and more competitive. Nations are investing more and more in their energy security rather than emissions reduction, and Australia has got to wake up. People like to say we're the lucky country, but I like to quote Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore, who said:

This is not a game of cards.

We've got to fight for our future, and we've got to be good stewards of what we have and invest in the future so that our kids and the kids that follow them will have the same prosperity and security that we have. I think Labor's reckless reforms in this bill put all of that at risk, which is why I oppose it.