Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is sometimes mistakenly said that money is the root of all evil, but the real question we should concentrate on in this parliament is: what is the root of all money? There are many here in this parliament who think money simply grows on trees—that it comes from anywhere; we just spend what we want. There are others who think we can just make money by borrowing it, without realising that the consequences will be higher taxes and fewer government services for future generations of Australians, plus the obligation of future governments to continue to pay the interest bill. Our interest bill is now running at over $1 billion every month. That is money we have to divert from this parliament, money that could otherwise have been spent on health, child care, education, aged care, pensions and kids with disabilities. A billion dollars every month gets diverted just to pay that interest bill.

When we ask the question, 'What is the root of all money?' there is an answer, and it is value added production. As Ayn Rand wrote, wealth is not static; it is not there 'to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained by favour'. We can actually, in our society, make money and create wealth. That is what I believe this parliament needs to focus on more. We hear so much in our debates about taking wealth from one group and giving it to another group, thinking of wealth as static. We need to refocus our attention on our job in this parliament, which is to allow the citizens of this country to get out there and create wealth, to make money. If we do that then we will be able to have more money to pay for all those things in our electorates—road networks, our kids with disabilities, aged care, schooling—that so many of us see the need to invest in. We all want to see more money put into those areas, and the best way to do that is not to quibble over who gets what but to grow the economy to allow wealth to be created.

When it comes to creating wealth, what is at the root of all wealth creation? I say it is two things. Firstly, it is human ingenuity and entrepreneurialism—people willing to try new ideas and have a go. Secondly, and most importantly, it is low-cost and affordable energy. Energy is the lifeblood of every single thing that is important in our society. It is the combination of those two things—energy and human ingenuity—that creates all the wealth in our country, so our job as parliamentarians should be to do everything we can to increase human ingenuity, increase entrepreneurship and make sure, above all, that we have low-cost and affordable energy.

I look around me, Madam Deputy Speaker, and everything that I see here in front of me, from the leather in the chairs to the timber in the lectern and the metal in the speakers, has needed electricity in its production. As I speak, it is electricity that is driving the cameras, the microphones, the lights on the ceiling. Every single thing that we touch on a daily basis involves electricity, yet we have had policies in this country that have not only driven up the cost of electricity, making it unaffordable for many in our society, but made it unreliable.

If we look back over the last decade and look at all the misguided—though well-intentioned—policies that have backfired and have cost this economy wealth, we need look no further than the policies that we have had on energy. I will just give a few examples. The Grattan Institute's report Sundown, sunrise: how Australia can finally get solar power right, by Tony Wood and David Blowers, says in the overview:

But lavish government subsidies plus the structure of electricity network tariffs means that the cost of solar PV take-up has outweighed the benefits by almost $10 billion.

By the time the subsidies finally run out, households and businesses that have not installed solar PV will have spent more than $14 billion subsidising households that have.

So it has been nothing other than a massive wealth transfer from those who have not been able to put solar panels on the roof—often the most less fortunate in our community—to those who have been able to. It has been a $14 billion wealth transfer, with a net cost to the economy of $10 billion. Their report concludes:

Governments have created a policy mess that should never be repeated.

But it is locked in. And there is another one that we can look at to see the damage that we have done to ourselves, another one which has prevented us from creating wealth. A recent report from BAEconomics on electricity production in Australia details the annual—every single year—cost of the renewable energy mandates. The total cost of the renewable energy mandates this year are $2 billion. It is actually $2,073,000. Then you have the feed-in tariff schemes. That is another $772 million. When you add up all those subsidies, this year alone it amounts to $3 billion. Yet next week we will see the closure of the Hazelwood power station, the generator that provides 20 per cent of Victoria's electricity production and five per cent of our nation's electricity production.

In a war, the first thing that you would target is your enemy's electricity grid and their power stations. We saw that in the Second World War, the conflicts in the Gulf and even in the NATO attack on Serbia. The first thing they did was to take our the power stations. So, if our nation was at war, the first thing an enemy would target—if they had a list of priorities of what they would target to damage our country and prevent our country from creating wealth—would be Hazelwood power station. That is the first thing they would bomb. But the Victorian government, with their policies, are doing exactly the same thing.

See this speech in context