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

It gives me great pleasure this evening to rise to speak on the appropriation bills for 2018 and 2019. I'd like to start off on the subject of university funding and the recent case of Professor—or now Doctor—Ridd. I'll start with the comments about what John Stuart Mill wrote back in the year 1869 in On Liberty:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

It is that belief that is the reason why we fund our universities with taxpayers' dollars so that they are the bastions of free speech, places where free and open debate are welcome. They become places where dissenting opinions are welcomed, not frowned upon, where alternative views and theories are listened to and tested. The idea of gagging scientists, of silencing academics criticising their university, of having intolerance for different views, where dissent must be crushed rather than encouraged, is a perversion of those words of Mill. It is a perversion of the legacy of the Enlightenment. That is how totalitarian regimes develop and work.

And yet we have the treatment by James Cook University of Professor Ridd. First they tried to punish the professor for simply daring to question the sacred peer review. And these are the words they objected to which Professor Ridd said:

… we can no longer trust the scientific organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science, even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies – a lot of this is stuff is coming out, the science is coming out not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions and the fact is I do not think we can any more …

Professor Ridd is merely voicing an alternative opinion. His opinion should be tested against the facts with different hypotheses tested over and over. That is how the scientific method works. But yet, because of those words, there was not only the campaign to curtail Professor Ridd's academic freedom; James Cook University actually made an order that he should not even discuss their campaign to silence and censor him.

And this has gone to the length of absurdities. He was even told not to contact or speak with his wife about the case. He was told that he could not trivialise, satirise or parody James Cook University, and that is what they've accused him of. They've actually accused him of trivialising, satirising and parodying, because he sent a newspaper article about his case to an old friend—merely copied the article—and wrote the words 'for your amusement'. For that, we have a university trying to censor a professor.

But we know what Professor Ridd's real crime was. His real crime was that he dared to question leftist groupthink ideology—an ideology that has a totalitarian mindset that dissenters must be crushed. So I say to those running James Cook University: 'Your targeting and your seeking to silence Professor Ridd are an affront to everything our universities stand for. They are an affront to the very principles of Western civilisation, to the legacy of enlightenment and to our democracy.' When John Stuart Mill used the word 'evil', he said that the particular evil of silencing the expression of opinion is something that we should avoid. I ask those running James Cook University to look at themselves closely, look at the history of the enlightenment and allow Professor Ridd to continue his work. And, if his work is wrong, prove it with science and evidence.

I'd like to address a few other issues during this debate. Firstly, there is the contrast between the coalition and the Labor Party during the budget speech and budget-in-reply speech. We heard the opposition leader, on the night of the budget-in-reply speech, say that he would commit the Labor Party to copying the South Australian experiment—the failed South Australian experiment of a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target which was inflicted upon the poor, long-suffering residents of South Australia. They were turned into guinea pigs for that experiment. What did that experiment deliver—the very experiment that the Leader of the Opposition wants to foist upon the entire nation? It gave that state not only the highest electricity prices in the nation but, unbelievably, it gave that state the highest electricity prices in the world. That is what the Leader of the Opposition wants to copy and inflict upon the nation.

The Labor Party talk about the greater happiness for the mass of the people. That 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target resulted in South Australia having the highest rate of disconnections in the nation. In fact, they went to a 130 per cent increase in disconnections. In 2009-10 in the state of South Australia, there were 4,748 disconnections—people having electricity turned off. Fast forward: once they'd implemented the wonderful policy of a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target, in 2016-17 there were 10,902 households in South Australia that had their electricity disconnected—a 130 per cent increase. That is what the Labor Party want to inflict on all of Australia. How does a family operate if they've had their electricity disconnected? How do their kids do their homework at night? How do they cook their evening meal? How do they keep food fresh in a refrigerator if they have no electricity after it was cut off? And yet the policies of the Australian Labor Party are to introduce and copy the very policies that saw a 130 per cent increase in South Australian households having their electricity cut off.

We have seen from the Australian Energy Regulator what it has done to the average debt. While the average electricity bill debt in Queensland is $650 and in New South Wales it is $850, in the state of South Australia it is $1,200, almost 50 per cent higher. What that means is that residents in South Australia have less money in their pocket to spend on services, at the local shops or at the local cafe. They have less money to buy something extra for their kids or something nice or to save money for a holiday, because they have to put more money aside for electricity. We are talking about a $550 difference between Queensland and South Australia in what they have to pay on their bill, yet this is the policy that the Labor Party want to inflict on all of Australia.

It doesn't stop there. We also have seen the Labor Party commit to upping the Paris targets. They think the Paris targets that we have committed to are not high enough. They want to up it to a 45 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

So I would ask the members of the Labor Party this. We know what your plans are for electricity. We know how your plans proceed. We know exactly what happens. We have the example of the state of South Australia. But can you tell us: how are you going to get a 45 per cent reduction in emissions in the transport sector? Are you going to put up the price of petrol? Are you going to put up the price of registration? Are you going to take cars from people? Explain to the Australian public how you are going to get a 45 per cent reduction in transport. How are the Labor Party going to get a 45 per cent reduction in emissions in the agricultural sector? What do they have planned for the farmers of this nation if they inflict or force upon them a 45 per cent reduction? What about industry, which uses gas? How are they going to get a 45 per cent reduction there? Quite simply, we'll close the businesses down, put the workers out of work and send the production offshore. Is that the plan that the Australian Labor Party have? What about gas for home heating? How does the Labor Party intend to get a 45 per cent reduction in the emissions from people using gas for their home heating? Do you expect people to sit shivering in the cold so we can achieve some sort of virtue signalling and so you can run around and say, 'Yes, we've achieved our targets?' This is what the Australian people need to know. This is what the Labor Party need to explain about their policies. We know the damage that they are going to cause in the electricity sector, but tell us: what are your policies on transport to get those reductions, what are your policies on agriculture, what are your policies for industry, and what are your policies for gas and heating?

Finally, this is where we see the greatest difference between the coalition and the opposition. We see the difference in speech after speech in this chamber. Members of the Labor Party simply think the size of our economic pie is fixed. They think the wealth that we've created just arrives naturally and it's just a matter of carving it up in a way that they see as fair and equitable. This is a mistake that, as we've seen in nation after nation, has sent countries backwards, because the size of the economy is not fixed. The wealth that we have in this nation depends on the hard work, the entrepreneurial efforts and the risk taking of the Australian citizen.

That's why we think that it is best policy to lower the corporate rate of tax, because we know that we need to have that corporate rate of tax internationally competitive. How long can we continue with a 30 per cent corporate tax rate, stuck at that level since the year 2000, if we see all our international competitors lowering their corporate rate of tax? We see the US bringing it back to 21 per cent. We see the UK bringing it back to 19 per cent. We see Hong Kong and Singapore at 15 and 17 per cent. How can we attract investment if we are going to have a 30 per cent corporate tax rate, plus a top marginal rate of tax of 49 per cent, where 50 per cent of every extra dollar that someone earns goes to the government? These are the destroyers of the incentives that create the wealth in our nation.

There cannot be greater clarity between what the opposition plans for this nation and what the coalition does. We see the plans of the opposition. They will give us uncompetitive energy prices. They'll copy South Australia and give us the highest prices in the world. They'll make transport unaffordable for many Australians. They'll make our corporate rate of tax uncompetitive. If we have those things uncompetitive, how can we in this nation therefore afford to pay the wages that we'd like to see? How can we increase people's wages if more and more of every business's expenses has to go to a higher and higher electricity bill to meet some artificial target so the Labor Party can go around in their electorates and virtue-signal to the Greens to try to get their preferences?

This is the choice that is coming, and it is a stark choice. It is about a coalition government acting responsibly, bringing the budget back to a balance, then to a surplus and then paying down that debt as the coalition government have done and succeeded at before. The alternative is a reckless Labor Party that will spend and spend money we don't have, make our nation uncompetitive and destroy wealth. (Time expired)

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