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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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Grievance Debate

MINING INDUSTRY

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite) (15:18): We seem to have a contest going on over here for who is either going to be the leader or the deputy leader of the Labor Party. We have the Three Stooges—Larry, Moe and Curly Joe, in the form of the current Deputy Premier, the member for West Torrens and the member for Playford—all trying to compete for either the spoils of victory or the spoils of defeat. We are not quite sure what it is going to be. I am not sure if it has been a terribly good week for the member for West Torrens. I am not sure how his cab is ranking up at the moment because there has been quite a bit of bad news in his portfolio areas and quite a few silly comments from him in his portfolio areas.

Sadly, Mr Speaker, we have the news today regarding Honeymoon. It is indicative of the problem facing the mining industry at the moment Honeymoon has closed; prior to that, the Angas zinc mine, near Strath, and Centrex Metals have taken a backward step with its WISCO fusion iron ore project. We had the scrapping of the $1 billion Arafura rare earth processing plant, 61 jobs lost at OZ Minerals at Prominent Hill and of course Olympic Dam. That was at a time when the member for West Torrens—who is in this competition to see whether he can be the leader of the Labor Party or the deputy leader of the Labor Party, depending on how things pan out in March—made a very wise decision to get into the mining budget during the recent state budget.

He ripped $6.9 million out of that mining budget, including very significant cuts to the PACE scheme, and we have seen quite a disinvestment from mining exploration as a consequence. Knotted with that is the government's grab for cash through royalties measures that were introduced into the parliament some time ago to strip well over $30 million out of the industry at this very difficult time. So, I do not know if the member for West Torrens is really making the right calls here.

But it does not stop there for the member for West Torrens because he has made some real purlers in recent weeks. Apparently, he now wants to go out and renationalise ETSA and spend $7 billion reacquiring the state's electricity assets. It is a really curious position for the member for West Torrens to take; I know he railed against privatisation right back in the 1990s, but I notice he has been strangely silent on the question of what he would do about it ever since. He now thinks that going out and spending $7 billion renationalising ETSA is a really good thing to do. Somehow or other he is trying to twist the argument.

Because the opposition has said that we need to get about the business of reforming the regulatory regime, he is suddenly trying to twist that into some sort of a bizarre set of circumstances that only he understands. In fact, what he revealed in the Sunday Mail is that he does not understand the need for national regulatory reform. He does not understand that to get meaningful regulatory reform he will have to line up with former prime minister Kevin Rudd, former prime minister Julia Gillard, and the former Labor government's energy white paper, where the minister said that Queensland and New South Wales need to divest themselves of their government-owned assets.

Of course, the Productivity Commission and every other respected commentator in the country all argue that regulatory reform will not really be possible until Queensland and New South Wales divest themselves of their assets. The minister said to the house on 30 October that the Queensland cabinet has resisted regulatory reform, and he said, 'Why? They own their assets. Regulated decisions that increase their profitability hurt their treasury.' He has acknowledged himself that this is what is needed, but he has not taken the steps through SCER to make it a reality.

What the minister needs to do is more to help the mining industry. What the minister needs to do is to do more about regulatory reform to get our power prices down because they have gone up 133 per cent. Unless he can get some better results, I am afraid with the Three Stooges over here, Larry, Moe and Curly Joe—the member for Enfield, the member for West Torrens and the member for Playford—he will lose this contest about who is going to be either the leader or the deputy leader of the Labor Party, whatever may come in March. He will really have to lift his game. Based on this report card, I think it will be a distant third.

The SPEAKER: The member for Waite will withdraw the unparliamentary imputation that any member of this chamber is a stooge, let alone three of them.

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: Sir, I could not possibly presume that there would be three stooges on the government's side of the house. If your view is that that is unparliamentary, I am happy to withdraw it.

The SPEAKER: And is the third Curly or Shemp?

Ms Bedford: There were lots of thirds.

The SPEAKER: Were there?

Ms Bedford: Yes, more than one.

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