Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

In my time in politics there are few things that really get under people's skin in such a form as they will change their vote. The independent power swindle is most definitely one. It is not renewable; there is nothing renewable about thousands of tons of concrete and steel that is placed on a hilltop, or solar panels with cobalt and lead in them, where we don't quite know what happens if it gets into the groundwater. Or there are the bisphenol A and microplastics, which from these wind turbines will blow over the ground to be consumed by cattle and sheep. If you eat them, the micro plastics go into you. We've now got studies where we see it gets into the bloodstream and crosses into the brain, because it goes on a blood-brain transfer. There was a good report out the other day showing a spoonful of microplastics in people's heads. It can't be a joke because now in the stock insurance schemes I've got to nominate how I keep stock away from them, even though I don't have them. This is a nightmare we're creating for ourselves.

What happens if the cadmium and the lead get into our groundwater? What exactly do we do? How do we press reverse on that? We're not allowed to graze around them either, because of the concerns. We're seeing the decommissioning right now of some of the wind towers. The argument is about who is responsible for it. What we're seeing on farms is some farmers have been sucked in to become hosts. The swindle factories—that's what they are, and I'll tell you how they'll rip you off later on—are not really interested in anything but collecting money in a big dollops from well-meaning people who do want to do something about climate change. They use guilt to rip them off. With the farmers, they are so honourable! They say, 'We'll pay you $3,000 a tower.' Sometimes the price of a megawatt unit of power is up to $17,000—like on 5 February. You might think, that means you're going to pay that farmer for maybe half an hour of what the wind tower produces—maybe a day at best. It's nothing. But here's a trick: the farmer is responsible for the decommissioning.

Andrew Dyer, who was the Labor Party ombudsman—not us, it's not something we put up—   came back with a report and he was very diligent. He's a professor of law at Monash University. He said it's between $400,000 and $600,000 to decommission one that is structurally sound—and this is now probably a year or so old—and up to $1 million per tower that has a structural imperfection. So if you're a farmer who has 12 of them, that's a $12 million impairment on the place. These farmers are not going to get $12 million from anybody to pull them down, so you are going to have properties with a negative value. You're going to have the issue of microplastics that are fouling the land—that is definitely on the cards. You're going to have the issue of bisphenol A. You've got the issue that no-one is responsible for decommissioning them. You've got the issue that these companies that set them up become $2 companies—they flip their liability; any liabilities and they go. That's out there.

This is amazing, I reckon these people need an award. If there were an award for lobbyists for the biggest rip-off ever put onto the Australian people, these lobbyists should have gotten it. Remember, they always told us it was the cheapest, and if it is the cheapest product you shouldn't need to subsidise it at all. Let's start with the capacity investment scheme. Can anybody actually tell me—because we believe in transparency—how much we're paying these people under capacity investment schemes? Surely, we have a right to know. It's the taxpayer's money. Why can't we see how much money we're underwriting to intermittent power precincts? Let's never call them renewables. They're intermittent power precincts. That's what they are. We use this romance nomenclature such as renewables and farms. That's part of the swindle to massage you into a position of compliance. Who knows what we're getting for these capacity investment schemes? Are we paying them a 10 per cent return? I've heard 15 per cent. I've heard 18 per cent. It means that, even if they don't produce power, they get paid. I would like to buy a cattle place and say, 'Well, even if I don't produce cattle, you can just pay me a portion of the $10 million; pay me $1 million a year.'

When you give way to these bat-poop crazy ideas—guess what?—they build them everywhere! Why wouldn't you? Yet, we're not supposed to know it's commercial-in-confidence. Well, that's rubbish! It's just covering it up. Be transparent. Be honest. Tell us what's in it. The next thing is that we're creating a product that people have to buy. I can say, 'You have to buy this type of power.' Surely, if it's the cheapest, I'll buy it because it's the cheapest. Why do I have to buy it? Do you have other products in other shops where you say that, if you go, you have to buy that type of potato or you have to buy that type of laundry detergent? Why do we have to buy this product that they keep telling us is the cheapest? Shouldn't it stand on its own two feet and you buy it because it's the cheapest? Don't just buy it because you're told to buy it. Why does a country tell you to buy certain products? Well, socialist countries tell you to buy certain products. What type of country hides agreements that are underwritten by taxpayers' payments? Well, Australia. There's one. Then we build their transmission lines for them. We're told we're going to spend all this money for 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines.

Do you know any other businesses that say, 'Well, I'm going to start carting all your produce free backwards and forwards to the supermarket? Where does that come from? So we're going to do this stuff for them for free. Then there's the next swindle. We have corridors that are pushed through farmers' places. Right now, there are security guards demanding access against the farmers' rights and being backed by the police if they don't do it. The farmer has to get an occupational health and safety check to go on his own land. We're doing this in Australia. Once they get their corridors and push it through, they're basically divested from the farm, their private asset, and guess what they do? They sell it to a Spanish transmission company. Guess what they sell it to them for? Billions of dollars. So they've divested the asset off the farm, passed it through to the hands of a state government, and then onsold it for billions of dollars to an overseas organisation. It's divesting a private individual of their assets. This whole thing stinks!

We went through the pricing. This was pure genius. You get a product that you need 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, both night and day, but instead of selling it as required, which is 24  hours, it's sold in five-minute blocks. Who dreamt that up? How convenient. Anybody can produce for five minutes. You look up, and the sun is shining. I can bid in. There's a bit of a breeze; I can bid in. But they're so cunning. If you argue against them, they say, 'You're a denier! You don't believe!' There's that religious metaphor that charges in when any cult-like structure starts. They use the religious metaphor whenever they fail to try to guilt trip you in. So there's five-minute blocks. Let's say we've got 100 units. If there's a bit of breeze, they come in and say, 'We're so cheap,' and they bid negative for 20 units. They know full well that AEMO will need 80 or 100 units. Then coal comes in, and they're going to charge you $70 a megawatt hour. Then gas comes in, and they're $150 a megawatt hour. Then it goes all the way up to batteries. Then the strike price happens, where AEMO says, 'Got it.' Then everybody gets paid the highest price. Why don't you get paid what you bid for? What other market do you go to where you bid low but you end up owning the house? Do you go to a sale and say '10 bucks' and walk away and say, 'I'm going to end up with a house,' because that is how it works? It defies logic.

As I said in here just the other day, the spot price was at 57 bucks. The price in the stack went to $17,000, and no-one blinks in this country. No-one blinks and says: 'Hang on. There's something wrong with that.' There is something morally wrong with that, because it's not magic. Poor people—people who can't afford electricity—pay. I saw Mission Australia just then on television. People are living in their cars. We just sit back and go, 'Oh.' We have been so gullible that we've been sucked into this idea that it's somehow morally prudent and imperative and the top of the moral apex tree. We should put aside all our lateral vision, all our clear understanding, and actually get these intermittent power companies, bring them into the Senate, into here, sit them down and start getting some truth about this whole thing so we can stop ripping Australians off.

Stop being so naive. Stop being so gullible. Just be what you're supposed to be in this joint—a politician. It's on all sides. There's no side that's pure on this. It's this because it's worked this way for ages. Always ask yourself the question—we know it; we're all politicians—to follow the money. Who's making a motza out of this? What's driving that person? Has anybody sat down, had an inquiry, dragged these people in and said, 'Let's have a talk to you'? They might say, 'You don't believe in climate change.' It's nothing to do with climate change. I might; I mightn't. It's got nothing to do with it. I want to know where our money's going. I want to know what's going on here. Tell me. I need to know. I've got a right to know. It's my job, actually. I get paid pretty good money to find out the stuff you're trying to hide from us. When you see this, you sit back and think about it. If you sit back and have this unquestioning belief, beyond reason and beyond observation and you just blindly believe something, it's called a cult. Very smart people, decent people, get sucked into things like that. It's because they don't question. You don't have to be a cynic. You don't have to be a stoic. You just have to understand that you've got to question stuff.

We're seeing it now. Ultimately, these things fall over. Green hydrogen's fallen over. Where are the taxpayers' dollars that have gone into that? Are we going to get them back? Are these people going to pay us the money back? Of course not! 'See you.' They're gone, gone with our dough. Are we going to see it with all of these other things? Ultimately we'll be smacked on the backside by reality. As people go broke, as no manufacturing goes here and as it becomes self-evidently a total debacle, I wonder if then we'll have an inquiry where suddenly an epiphany will happen in this place. They'll say: 'What on earth did we do to our nation? How did they get away with that? Who was in politics at that stage? Why were they so naive? Why didn't they haul them in? Why weren't the questions asked?' For us who were here, what are we going to say to those people? What are you going to say to them when you see these field of intermittent power precincts that just don't work. They work for about 30 per cent. You can get to about a 30-per-cent saturation of the market, and after that it just does not work. Physics beats philosophy every day of the week.

This bill is emblematic of fiasco. The minister found out he had powers he didn't know about and now wants to get rid of them. Remember that this is the same minister who stands up with that smirk on his face pretending that he's all over the subject matter, all over his brief, has got it all under control and is actually divining a new energy system for Australia.

I'll close with this: whatever you think, if you go outside and look up at the sky, have a good look at it—that arc of heaven—just watch it and observe it both night and day, and then go down to the chamber and ask the question—

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