Sen Susan McDonald (2) – Taroom Trough, self-sufficiency

Welcome back, Rural Queensland today on the Resonate broadcast network.

Maddie Beatle will be joining us shortly.

Senator Susan Mcdonald, our guest this morning on Rural Queensland today.

Senator, to room trough, you've been around everywhere over the last couple of days,

but I want to talk about how important this is for this nation that we get this right.

There's a lot of different understanding, but your commitment announced yesterday

making the Turum Trough project of national significance and obviously increasing fuel storage

requirements is that and that is a huge announcement, but do the Labor government feel the same way

do you think? Well, so two things on that been. The first thing is, yes, today Angus Taylor,

later if the coalition was in Queensland, we went out to the Litton Refinery run by Ampole

and talked about what fuel supplies, what crude oil supplies look like into the future,

and what opportunity Australia has to once again be self-sufficient.

It's only about 20 years ago that Australia still supplied over 90% of the crude oil required

to make petrol and diesel in this country. We can return to that. We have these extraordinary

reserves and the Turum Trough in the Therat Basin is a wonderful example of that. There are

drill rigs out there now. There are drillers and geologists and all the support crews out there

using new technology and new bit technology and putting down these deep wells to access

the crude oil, the Australian crude oil, that is there right now. What do we do about it? Well,

we have to fast-track approval. We cannot allow it to be 15 years between the identification of

the reserve and production the way it is in Australia for a moment at the moment. We have to be

really fast and agile and prioritise Australia's national interests. And yes, today,

Angus and I announced that that is exactly what we would do in government, which could be the

election could be as early as August of next year. In government, we would make sure that the

Turum Trough, the approval, would not bog down in red tape and bureaucracy. We properly assess it,

we do it fast and we get Australian oil out of the ground and be processed into diesel in places

like Britain and hopefully a new diesel refinery if we can get one up. And we make sure that Australia

is securing its own supplies again. That is the first thing. But what has Labor done? Well,

since they've been in government about four years, they have introduced a new tax on our refinery,

on our coal mines, on our oil and gas facility. They have changed the environmental protection laws

to say you cannot fast crack oil, gas or coal projects. They have funded the environmental

defenders offer who fight campaigns against approvals, government approvals. And then when

those sort of organisations have got blind grants, donations from somebody unseen to pay off their

penalty for having lied and infected evidence against the Baroque project, they don't ask any

questions. And instead, they just keep funding them. They be clear. The Environment Minister

Murray What and the government will say, no, no, we want to see Australia's best interest happen,

we want to support Australian jobs. But that can't be true. You can't say that if what you're

actually doing is introducing taxes, talking about more renewables and batteries on primary

agricultural land, and not fast crack approval for fossil fuels and other projects here in Australia.

I just, I, the two completely different things. So, the government coalition at fast crack,

we would get on, we will get Australia back to being energy secure, we will never be in the

situation that we are again today. And like the decision we made to fund Permanence,

we have Australia's fertilizer made here, we'll do the same with fuel.

Can I ask you this? And I'm, and I'm being serious about this. We talk about it and I don't know

why we've ever gone away from it. But is it realistic that it will happen again? Look, is it the

only way we survive? Is it we start, you know, becoming our self-sufficient here in this country

in this area? And have we, because of what's happened around the world and the green ideologies

and the way we've gone and they're pushed for renewables? Has that fast tracked in your eyes,

the belief system that we need to get this underway now? So, we never have to go through this again.

Absolutely. And the reason I know that's true is that following both World War I and World War II,

Australia doubled down on our capacity to, to mine and to smelt and to refine here in Australia.

We had both big industry and government all holding hands and making sure that Australia's domestic

capacity, whether it was to smelt aluminium and aluminum copper, whether it was to be able to

fit to build a butterfly. Right here in Australia, because we knew it was important

that whatever the world brought to us, that we were able to defend ourselves, to feed ourselves,

and to fuel ourselves. These are three really important things for any nation. What Labor has done

in a very short space of time is to completely reverse the boat on that, to turn away from self-sufficient

and to turn towards technology like green hydrogen and like renewables that is not yet developed

enough that Australia could be secure. We've got to keep doing what we know works

until anything else is a genuine and real opportunity. So, 100% Ben, this is our priority right now,

fertiliser production, diesel production, making sure that Australia can pay its own bills,

using our wonderful abundant natural resources, do what we're good at, focus on Australian jobs,

Australian housing, Australian everything, get our energy cost down, get our fuel businesses

back in the black and then we can return to being the prosperous first world country that we have

been for so long. We should be incredibly proud of the nation that we've built, but that means

hard work, that means stopping governments taxing us into oblivion, and it means they have to stop

supporting and funding organisations that do not have Australia's best interests at heart,

and by that I'm clearly putting my finger at people who do not disclose where their funding comes

from, like the environmental defenders office, like the Australia Institute, like the Institute

for Energy, Economics and Analysis, these are all organisations that will not disclose where

their money comes from. I hear it's from dark money overseas, and they do have to come in from

everywhere. They certainly don't, they certainly don't. Appreciate your time, thank you so much

for being with us. As usual on a Friday, we're very lucky to have you as part of the show. We'll

catch up with you again, hopefully, and my day, I mean, everything shuts, what I would say quickly

Senator, and this annoys me more than anything, we've got a public holiday for my day, and literally

nothing is open, but on the end of that day after one o'clock everything opens. I mean, how,

it makes zero sense to me, zero sense, and I don't care what anybody says, if there's going to be

a day where everything shuts down in this country, it's not, it's not to make Christmas,

it's not Easter, it's Anzac Day. Yet we open everything back up, and that's fine, but don't close

everything down on on a Monday, because of Mayday, that to me, you're taking the piss, and I understand

that, you know, it's a political thing, but you is, it breaks, in my opinion.

100% couldn't agree more than, I think that Anzac Day is our most sacred day, the service and

things that we give to people who have defended our shores, and made sure that we are the safe

prosperous country that we have been. We should fight hard for that, and I've been, I've been

thickened by the political discussion about welcome to country, and whether it should or shouldn't

be held on Anzac Day. In town, for there was no welcome to country for Anzac Day, we are a

garrison city, we focused on past figures and present, and I launched about this year, a day,

I launched about the ABC riding online around this the other day, that that's what they took out

of what was a wonderful ceremony, that there wasn't a welcome to country. I mean, seriously,

taxpayer-funded money online, and she went after it and wrote that, that was the take out of what

was a magnificent ceremony. I'm sorry. Fails that, fails the pub test every single day.

Appreciate your time. We'll catch you again next week. Thanks so much for being with us.

Thanks a lot, Ben.

Senator Susan McDonnell joining us this morning. This is Rural Queensland today. It's the first of May.