Transcript – Tania Constable interview with Jaynie Seal on Sky News

Transcript - Tania Constable interview with Jaynie Seal on Sky News

Topics: Back Australia Campaign, energy sources, tax and environmental policies.

E&OE

JAYNIE SEAL: Leaders in the energy industry are reigniting a campaign calling on the government to shore up domestic supply. The Back Australia campaign has been calling for policies to bolster and unlock natural resources in a bid to reduce energy prices. Members behind the push argue the conflict in the Middle East has exposed vulnerabilities in Australia's local supply and our reliance on other countries. The campaign, which is backed by the Minerals Council of Australia and mining magnate Gina Rinehart, claims investment in oil, gas and coal is being stifled.

Joining us live is Tania Constable, Minerals Council of Australia Chief Executive. Great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. So, yes, leaders, Tania, in the energy industry really reigniting this campaign. Talk us through the importance of our energy security, and certainly what we have seen, for example, in the Middle East.

TANIA CONSTABLE: Well, Jaynie, it's great to be with you. And it's a massive wake-up call for Australia - the Iran-US conflict. It shows that we need more national resilience in Australia. We need to use the massive amount of resources that we have. Oil, LNG, coal, uranium, all of those energy sources for Australia need to be utilised properly for the good of all Australians. And that needs to start now.

JAYNIE SEAL: Jim Chalmers just spoke about the Arafura rare earths announcement, becomes the first company to receive backing under the Albanese government, and he made mention about we have what the world needs. Do we have what the world needs, and are we using what the world needs?

TANIA CONSTABLE: We've always said we've got what the world needs in Australia. And I've just mentioned some of the energy sources. It's great to see a project as important as the Arafura project in the middle of Australia, it will provide another 4 per cent of the world's needs on rare earths. And some of that processing will be done 150 kilometres from Alice Springs. So that's a project that's going to bring jobs to Australia, it's going to bring critical supply chain and strategic partners for Australia across the world. And it's been heavily backed by the Northern Territory and federal governments in a project that is so vital. So great to see. Plenty of backing by the Australian government and by other political parties for critical minerals, but we need to see that across the board because we need low energy costs for Australia once again. And we haven't had that for quite some time.

JAYNIE SEAL: What's missing in this? Because I know we've spoken numerous times about uranium not being on the critical minerals list. I think it is for the Northern Territory but it is in the US as well, and we have an abundant supply. According to your organisation, we have Australia's reserves are the world's largest and the third total global resources.

TANIA CONSTABLE: That's right, Jaynie. We certainly do. Uranium is vital for nuclear energy. If we're going to cut emissions across the globe, then the use of uranium in nuclear power in small modular reactors and other nuclear reactors, which we're starting to see in countries around the world - they're already in operation, as we've discussed, in Canada, in France, the United States now - has a big push, and they're looking for more uranium. I think Australia is well placed to do that. So we just need to get things moving. We need exploration and development occurring in Australia and stop the demonisation of industries like uranium, like oil and gas and like coal, which are so vital to energy costs coming down. We want to bring them down. We've got plenty of resources, so it needs to start now.

JAYNIE SEAL: And we're about to hear from Senator Pauline Hanson announcing her gas policy, and we believe that it's going to be similar to what Norway has adopted. I just had a long conversation with an economist, and this particular economist said on paper what Norway is doing isn't a bad thing. It's got some merits, we have to understand the risk and reward for Australia in adopting such models like that. I also asked this economist about uranium and whether we should lift the brain. It's a no-brainer to this person. It's a no brainer to a lot of people. People say it's an ideological, you know, thing that the Labor government has. And if we look at China, for example, we look closely at China for many, many things. They are big on their renewables. We purchase a lot of their renewables. But also they have - what - 50 nuclear-power plants being developed simultaneously. They have around 60 of them. We're seeing France as well the US, that debate on whether we should have nuclear power plants or not. But the abundance of uranium, where we could be lowering emissions, why are we not doing that?

TANIA CONSTABLE: I think because we see ideology creeping into decisions by political parties. We should have mainstreamed the uranium industry, the nuclear industry, decades ago. The opportunity was there. The politics took over. We know that it's safe. It is the most highly regulated industry in Australia. There are more government departments that regulate this particular industry than any others. It works safely, as you've said, in other countries around the world. And we should be doing that in Australia. We're just missing a huge opportunity when prices for uranium are high, when we know that we have high reserves in Australia, the most reserves in Australia in this particular commodity. So we're missing out in taking that forward, and we don't want to do that with other energy sources.

In the comparison between Australia and Norway on gas, I don't think we should be comparing the two. I know it's always important that Australians get their fair share, but we'll get their fair share by making sure that we have projects on the ground and we're growing industry. We want investment coming into industry, into Australia. We don't want higher taxes because that means that these companies will go offshore. And everyone forgets that Norway in getting their industries up and going, they created a fledgling industry with the oil and gas industry, and they spent 20 years before they were seeing returns into their sovereign wealth fund.

We've got a very mature set of industries on oil, gas, coal in Australia. You don't want to start these things halfway. So the commodity forecasting for Australia are very low by the Australian government at the moment. Any windfall gains on that should be just put straight into a fund for the benefit of Australians. And we already know in the Minerals Council that that's going to occur because the forecasts are very low. So that's one way to get more returns into Australia - not taxing really important industries like oil and gas and coal and gold and iron ore more than what we do. We want to grow these projects. We want more projects on the ground because, at the end of the day, there's more jobs for Australia, there's more small businesses for Australia, there's more revenue in every state and territory for Australia, as we're just starting to see in the Northern Territory with that and with oil and gas coming on. And if we see more projects, then that's going to benefit all Australians.

JAYNIE SEAL: So as a CEO of Minerals Council of Australia, what would you like to see in terms of short, medium and long-term outcomes? What do we need more of? Because energy security is national security, as we know. And it's a very unstable world and we need to protect ourselves and also our trading partners and other people across the globe.

TANIA CONSTABLE: Right now we need fuel security for Australia. We need the diesel and we need the jet fuel and we need that sort of fuel security occurring for Australia. The Australian government is doing a great job in making sure that we're working with strategic partners to get fuel into Australia, working with the downstream petroleum industry and the upstream processors, looking at their projects to see what can come into Australia. That's the near term.

We need to make sure that we've got exploration and development occurring wherever it can across Australia. Get those projects going in Queensland, over in Western Australia, in the Northern Territory, in New South Wales, South Australia, in every single state there are projects that could be moved forward. We've got to fast track the oil, gas, coal projects in line with what we're seeing in critical minerals in the environmental approvals process. It is ridiculous that they have been carved out for political purposes in order to get the environmental approvals regime through the system. We need artificial intelligence used in the regulatory approval process to fast track those things. We need to make sure that we've got our science agencies looking at a prospectus on what might be available for the future. They're just some of the things that we should be doing for that medium and long term.

But, importantly, sending a signal from every government across Australia that we've got your back, industry. We've got your back, mining industry. We've got your back, LNG industry. Doing those things, not taxing us - and we were very relieved to see that didn't occur with the mining industry in the budget - but sending a clear signal to say that this investment is welcomed into Australia rather than being seen as pariahs for Australia. When we see that sort of backing, then investment will start to flow back into Australia. And we beat every other country around the world. So they might be strategic partners, but they're also competitors. That's what we need to do.

JAYNIE SEAL: We've got to wrap it up, but, I mean, we've heard the word "change", and we saw the Farrer byelection, for example, and whether people are voting one way or another, change is really what came out of it. And we are seeing the world change, regardless of, again, what side of politics we are on. So when we look at our energy and our energy security, what else do we need to really focus on? You've got AI that you mentioned, which is - we believe by tech experts in the industry that it's going to chew up so much more energy than what we consume with AI. We also have to look at data security, having our data here. We look at big companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon who have signed up for decades for the millions or billions of dollars worth of, you know, nuclear power plants and so forth. So we're seeing things that happened haven't for decades because the world is changing. We're getting to that next, you know, industrial revolution, whatever you want to call it. So how important do the government on all sides really need to listen and industry, you know, leaders in terms of this massive change?

TANIA CONSTABLE: Well, I think that business wants to know that they're being backed by governments sending those signals, having stable policy settings. Because it's not just about one set of policy settings; you need a stable regulatory regime. You need workplace relations laws that are fair. You need really stable taxation settings that don't tax you retrospectively or don't put changes into place, like capital gains tax, that might impact every business across Australia and ruin the aspirations of small business and large business across Australia. So you want very stable tax settings. They're very important.

You need the skills and talent and keep working on making sure that the regimes that we have, the regulatory processes, support migrant skills coming into Australia, professional skills coming into Australia and growing our own in Australia. And the environment approval processes are very fast compared to the rest of the world. And, as I said, you can use new technology to support that.

I think a technology neutral approach and not just having ideological views around the appropriateness of one set of technologies compared to another is also really, really important for Australia, because I think we're all sick of it. We're sick of paying high energy prices unnecessarily compared to other parts of the world. We have all of the minerals available in Australia and we need regional industries such as mining, farming, tourism, seafood, forestry, a whole range of regions that are the backbone of the Australian economy, having them supported. And that's why we're saying Back Australia through this particular program that we're running at the moment.

JAYNIE SEAL: And are you confident that this can all be achieved if we all work together?

TANIA CONSTABLE: Absolutely. We've done it in the past, and we need to start it again. Political parties will have their various policies. But there's one thing - well, there's a few things that should be crossing all of that, and that's support for regional Australia and support for industry. And if we do that and we have more than bipartisan support, we have absolute support across political parties and across states and territories towards these important industries, then we're not just backing Australia; we're backing Australians.

JAYNIE SEAL: Tania Constable, thank you so much. Really interesting conversation, and hope to speak to you again very soon. Thank you.

TANIA CONSTABLE: Thanks very much for having me, Jaynie.