Teacher, soldier, engineer, and farmer turned senator Greg Mirabella says he wants Australia to focus on energy and manufacturing sovereignty.
In his first speech to the Senate, the Victorian said he was a proponent of hydrogen and ammonia as "fuels of the future" and while talking about large-scale clean energy production, warned against "accelerated" climate action.
"I am gravely concerned at how a Labor-Greens-Voices coalition would accelerate climate action," he said on Wednesday.
"Ban coal? Shutdown more baseload generation? This country is at the point where we do not need more intermittent generation."
The senator said he was most shaped by his work as an army engineer - or sapper - after he joined the army reserves and trained as an infantryman during university.
"I was fortunate that most of my time as an active sapper was making, rather than breaking," he told the chamber.
But the nascent senator said he considers himself more than a soldier.
"For more than half my working life I've worn the flag of my country on my sleeve, but the other half has been in civilian clothes - more recently I've been a farmer," he said.
"But I have given myself the additional task of being a champion for regional Victoria."
Senator Mirabella spoke about invigorating Australia's manufacturing sector following disruptions to global supply chains during the pandemic.
"Here in Australia we need to be examining our national self-reliance," he said.
"What's the balance between allowing global markets to deliver cheap goods, versus critical shortages when supply chains are disrupted?"
He also spoke about doing more for veterans, saying the government needed to do better than what's been done in recent years.
"It's the farmer's job to feed the nation, and it is the engineer's job to build all that makes it work, and it is the soldier's job to protect the people," he concluded.
"It does not occur to me for a moment that these do not remain my tasks, even as I serve from this place."
The new senator was joined by his mother and four children in the gallery and payed homage to his father who died weeks before he was selected to replace the retiring Senate president Scott Ryan.
Senator Mirabella follows his wife Sophie Mirabella - the former Liberal member for the Victorian electorate of Indi - into parliament, the fourth couple to have both served in federal parliament and the first man to follow his wife into the role.
