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Gina Rinehart has issued a grim warning that Aussies face huge price hikes and fresh food shortages unless the burden of climate change policies are lifted from farmers. During an address in Bali on Tuesday, the mining magnate made the ominous forecast to mark National Agriculture & Related Industries Day, of which Mrs Rinehart is the founding patron. Australia's richest person, who owns millions of farming hectares, said governments need to cap what agriculturalists spend on achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions to $200,000 - or the entire nation faces dire consequences.

Mrs Rinehart said governments "seem to forget" that "modern resources and agricultural industries underpin human flourishing", while reigniting her push for the Federal Government to mark two days in November as national days for the two sectors. "For all the platitudes we hear about supporting the agricultural and resources sectors, their actions show the opposite," she said of governments. "Platitudes and press releases don’t lift a single tonne of any mineral out of the ground." Mrs Rinehart said the growing burden of red tape - including looming "huge increases" to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act — and increasing regulation around net zero emissions, were evidence that government actions defied their supposed support for the sector.

Australia has long been a nation of primary producers, of farmers and miners who go out into regional and outback areas and contend with whatever nature may throw at them to provide the food, fibre and raw materials that we need to survive and thrive. We have cultivated agriculture that feeds and clothes Australians and tens of millions of people around the world. And we have taken risks and developed the minerals that have enabled higher living standards across Australia and the world. Thanks to our primary industries and the many businesses they support, we live in one of the wealthiest countries that has ever existed, and Australians today have among the highest standards of living ever experienced by human beings.

17 November 2023.

Beach Energy interim chair Ryan Stokes has warned Australia’s energy transition is at risk of failure as an ambiguous and complex environmental approvals process adds to growing domestic supply constraints. Mr Stokes said gas projects were experiencing extensive and costly delays in the environment approvals process. “According to the regulator, only five applications have received approval in the last 12 months and there are over 40 applications under review,” he told the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday. “A process that may have previously taken months is now taking close to two years.

Nearly half of Australia’s business leaders say long environmental approvals are a big risk to the country’s ambitions to cut emissions, adding to growing alarm about green tape tying up projects. A total of 47 per cent of respondents were concerned about the approvals, while only 37 per cent of the corporate decision-makers surveyed felt Australia could hit the crucial net zero by 2050 target. It is the latest warning signal to emerge in an escalating battle over regulations — delaying projects across the country.

New traditional owner opponents against Santos’ $5.8 billion Barossa offshore gas project in the Northern Territory have joined the legal battle, as a Federal Court proceeding started that could be a key test case over underwater Aboriginal cultural heritage approvals.

Australia is struggling under the burden of red tape that is growing at nearly twice the rate of the national economy, leading to urgent calls for parliament to act to cut out-of-date regulations and ban new rules from being imposed without old ones being repealed.

Until recently, debate over the Anthony Albanese’s Closing Loopholes legislation has largely ignored a factor that could smash the economy. Unless this is clarified, resources and energy operations could shut. Thousands of workers could be out of a job. Frankly, it is ludicrous to think the FWC, with only one of its 50 members ever having run a substantial business, could be allowed to make assessments about future work plans that experienced business managers and board directors haven’t yet contemplated.

Australia’s slow pace of mining approvals is diminishing its attraction as a global investment destination, Hancock Prospecting, owned by Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart, said on Tuesday. "The current policy environment, duplication of processes, overreach from all departments and delays to approvals is negatively impacting new investment into the mining industry and is reducing Australia’s competitiveness in the international resource sector,” said Hancock.