David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

As these sun sets on this sad 47th Parliament, what have we got to show for three years of parliament? We have more debt, deficits as far as the eye can see and over $1 trillion in debt. Regional Australia is also a lot worse off. There has been this passive-aggressive attack on agriculture, food bowls, food and fibre production, with cuddly sounding names like 'restoring our rivers', which is code for taking 750 gigalitres out of the Murray-Darling Basin. We have got this idea that nature repair involves putting covenants on good productive land and letting it turn back to native bush, putting covenants on land for lazy farmers, usually based in capital cities, who don't want to farm but think they are going to fix nature by letting productive land go back to bush. We have got the threat of methane pledges, which will reduce so-called bovine methane. We've seen what has happened with those sorts of policies in Ireland, where they suggested a 30 per cent cull of their dairy herd—same in Holland.

Also, we have had passive obstruction to our energy system, and they have abandoned a lot of regional and rural road programs, putting in place amorphous road and bridge programs which, funnily enough, favour metropolitan Australia. We've had passive aggressive behaviour towards gas and oil exploration, yet the nation runs on diesel. When has there been an oilfield struck in this country? There hasn't been one in decades. We have survived off the Bass Strait, and we are now dependent on imported oil and gas.

Long gone are genuine changes to Medicare. This government is making out that it's saving everyone by having these Medicare urgent care clinics everywhere. Well, in regional Australia, we're not seeing them. They're all in metro Australia. There are no new buildings, no new doctors, no new nurses; there's just a block grant and new Medicare stickers over existing clinics. I've looked through the website. They're all based in existing clinics. All these big super clinics that the corporates run are pocketing the $600,000, or however much the block grant is, and there are no new doctors. There is just, maybe, extra hours practice. The distribution priority areas have been destroyed so that the areas that have no doctors are the least likely to get a doctor.

Look at our energy system. Their obsession with renewables is just a giant merry-go-round of subsidies. Where are we now? We got the most expensive energy; we should have the cheapest energy system. That's what kept our industry alive in this country. Not only have we had 29,000 small businesses go broke; we've got all the big industrial companies going off shore to Asia and back to America, because they've got cheap energy. We've now got subsidies for solar and wind for large-scale generation certificates and small-scale technology certificates—that's for rooftop solar and large solar. We've got subsidies for wind. We've got subsidies in the road budget for oversized and overmass special roads to go to renewable energy zones. That's another subsidy. And now we've got the ultimate paradox: we are relying on batteries that don't generate energy; they just storage and consume energy, and they're getting subsidised! Plus, the poles and wires expansion is also being subsidised. The Capacity Investment Scheme is running into the billions of dollars, and that will add to the ever-increasing network costs.

Solar and wind are not a cheap system. As a one-off, a solar panel is cheap or a solo wind turbine, but all the other bits are expensive—the extra poles and wires; everything. And the ultimate irony is that everyone in this country still relies on coal 65 per cent of the time. The New South Wales Labor government and the Victoria Labor government are all subsidising their coal plants to keep the lights on, yet you guys are trying to get rid of them all. It is just a joke. Nuclear is the answer. (Time expired)

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