Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I know how difficult it is to stand in the way of a powerful faction boss like Senator Farrell, but congratulations for having the intestinal fortitude to do that! I am surprised that Senator Farrell did not rise on a point of order to say thank you to me. I will leave it to him to explain why he needs to offer me a humbling apology a bit later on.

The reality is that government decisions are what is making the cost of living very difficult for families. That is notwithstanding the fact that some families are struggling through lack of employment opportunities or through personal circumstances. But the environment for employment opportunities is provided by government. The cost of electricity, while not prescribed by government, is influenced by government policymaking, and that is evidenced by the green experiment in South Australia. It is a Petri dish of their failed green dreams and it is a dud. It has not grown some positive culture; it has created a virus that is infecting the whole country. It is now creeping across to Victoria, where they are about to shut down the Hazelwood power station. We are going to have a massive power crisis in this country directly attributable to federal and state government policies. It is time we woke people and governments up to that. I digress, but part of that is to highlight the fact that we need governments to not only live within their means in spending but also ensure that the long-term implications of policy decisions are considered. That is where I think successive governments have failed.

There may be some on the other side who want to defend some of those decisions, but I think morally it is very difficult to do so because we have got, as I said, $500 billion worth of debt already accumulated that none of us in this place have any real hope of paying back. We are actually leaving it for the next generation of workers to pick up the pieces. The answer from those on that side is: 'Let's just tax them more.' That is to ignore the reality of economics, the demographics of our country and the process of immigration, which they sustain as well and which is on an unsustainable path and putting pressure on our infrastructure and our social cohesion. All of these things are intertwined.

Ultimately, we have to take even the most modest of steps to arrest the problems that we are creating. That is why as an Australian Conservative I support this bill, notwithstanding the fact that there are going to be challenges for people who are affected by it. We need to start to deal with the issues that we have created. With that, I commend this bill to the Senate.