Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Pauline Hanson's One Nation travels Australia and our home states, listening day in and day out, week in and week out. During those travels we always hear that the greatest challenge affecting everyday Australians is the cost of living: cost of energy; cost of doing business; red, blue, or UN, and green tape; taxes; fees; charges. At every turn, governments of both major parties have their hands in the pockets of Aussies, stealing our money. As we are servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, people come to us and say that the greatest government squeeze has gone too far. They say, 'We have had enough. We cannot cope.' People say to us that they do not have one, two or three—let alone 0.5—per cent of their incomes to spare for the government. This government—in fact, every parliamentarian—would be well served by listening to everyday Australians about how tough it is out there and how big, monolithic government needs to get out of the way. Everywhere we travel, people tell us they want government out of their lives.

Let me give just one example to trigger this debate. Drakes Supermarkets, which trades as Foodland, is owned by Roger Drake. Its electricity will increase from $5 million last year to $7 million this year. That is an increase of 40 per cent. Who pays? All people who buy food or all those whose jobs are cut to cover the extraordinary new cost.

Let me frame this matter of public importance by saying from the outset that this conversation does not have to be about quibbling over the exact details of the billions of dollars the government steals from people every day. Rather, it must be framed in the context of big government goosestepping into our very lives. The government's intrusion alone is causing cost-of-living pressures. I am resoundingly pro human, with enormous faith and pride in and admiration for our human species. Why? The last 170 years have seen billions of people lifted out of poverty and removed from the vagaries of nature's weather extremes of drought, flood and famine, vastly lengthening lifespans and increasing comfort, safety, ease and security. And along with the miracle of hydrocarbon fuels—that is coal, gas and oil—which, until recent government interventions, were actually falling in real prices, that miracle is due to human creativity, initiative and love, or, if you will, our care. Yes, care. Everyone in this room is here because in our early years someone cared for us. In fact, in today's marketplace, companies that care for their people and customers thrive. Indeed, a defining trait among humans and advanced species is that those who care for their offspring and for others in their species survive. Caring genes are passed on. With humans, care is inherent.

Our human spirit unites us, powers our constant search for improvements to life and drives our inherent creativity. Creativity explodes in free societies when ideas are shared and extended. Big government encroaching on our lives does nothing to assist in human creativity or initiative. Big government, especially accompanied by regressive Greens policies heralded in the 1980s and 1990s, has caused catastrophic consequences for our species, such as increased power prices, hyperinflated home prices, exhaustive taxation and strangling of the businesses that used to employ millions of Australians. People cannot afford the cost of living when they do not have a job. Our creativity has been stifled. For the control-oriented side of politics to now say that the government should restrain these people or create industries is delusional and denies human creativity, human endeavour and spirit.

It is sad how humans can at times be derailed from our core value of care, as last century showed, with socialists causing the mass deaths of people in Germany, Russia and China, to name but a few countries inflicted with genocidal dictatorships. Why were these deaths caused? Because, as part of our human journey, we form egos or identities that make us vulnerable to delusions and fear. It leads some, such as the Australian Greens, to a negative view of our species. It leads the fearful and inadequate to attempt to control others—control, feeding on fear and ego. Ego feeds big, monolithic government that feeds off of the people to keep itself growing—ever omnipresent, ever oppressive and ever controlling. Our species endures this tension between fear, which underpins control, and freedom, which enables creativity and progress. However, there is a limit to how much control will succeed, and we have pushed people beyond breaking point in Australia. These are fundamental contradictions that we face and endure: control versus freedom. In politics today, the concept of left versus right is out of date and inadequate. We are returning to an understanding that control versus freedom is the core issue, which manifests itself through inadequate documents like last night's budget.

Today's debate is about two paths that the government's budget could have taken. One path promotes fear and regressive big government—a budget any Labor Treasurer would be proud of—while the other path promotes freedom, with less control and less theft through taxation. A so-called Liberal government chose the former, not the latter. It is ironic that for seven decades Western nations have been fed the nonsense that we humans are inherently uncaring, greedy, irresponsible and even evil, and that, as a result, we need more government to protect us from ourselves. Yet government itself consists of humans. Why is it that the Australian Greens, union bosses and the tired, old parties advocate for ever more control through big government intervention and regulation? This advocacy of control has driven the distancing of government from the people they claim to govern. It has driven overregulation and distortions that smash employment and stifle strong and firm industrial relations. Regulation adds cost and decreases quality; it increases prices. There is little or nothing the government can do well or right when compared to the same effort of the private sector or, if you will, human endeavour.

Let us considered the obscene and meagre attempts to solve the costs of purchasing a new home. Unlike Senator Dastyari and the ALP, our party understands the love and care that can be associated with home ownership. However, how could the government possibly think a cap of $30,000 will even make a dent in the cost of a deposit for an average home for most Australians? For an average home, that is barely five per cent of the deposit. The mortgage insurance alone could be close to $30,000 on some of these purchases with a five per cent deposit. Also, releasing a few parcels of federal land for development in Melbourne will not solve the problem. The problem with housing is red, green and UN-blue tape strangling land release and limiting the growth of human creativity in property development. Giving a first home buyer a $30,000 tax concession saving is an insult to our intelligence, but the elites just do not get it.

Last night the Treasurer said he would take a scalpel to the problem of housing affordability, not a chainsaw. Why is it that the Hon. Treasurer looks at the left-wing control side's chainsaw solution of taxing investors as a possible solution? Why wouldn't a so-called Liberal government look at our chainsaw solution and drastically cut red, green and blue UN tape to release more land and human creativity? That is the supply side sorted—fixed.

Further, the government laments $13 billion of discarded savings in this budget. Thirteen billion dollars does not even cover our interest debt, by the way. It is a long way short. However, we can reduce the need for excessive taxation which drives the cost of living, simply by looking at expenditure. There is something novel—let's look at expenditure! I might add: we can get rid of or send back to the states the departments of environment, health and education. We can abandon the ridiculous climate and energy policies that are crippling our nation. We can save tens of billions of dollars. If the public were to learn, via a transparency portal, every red cent that bureaucrats spend, I can tell you now that, as quick as could be, government spending would fall by billions. This has been proven in some states of the United States and in parts of Europe.

I have called for an urgent meeting with the Treasurer to discuss this proposal. We need 24 million auditors in Australia poring over every cent that we spend in this parliament. Public servants would be too embarrassed to reveal how much they spent on travel, accommodation, finger-painting lessons and massage chairs. They simply would not spend the billions of dollars the government could save by releasing, in real time, the exact amounts governments are spending. In fact, if we did away with duplicated federal departments, as I said, and ceased disproven climate policies, that would further reduce government spending and the need for hikes in taxation. Reduce spending and you reduce the need for our greatest cost-of-living expense, taxation.

Figures in the late 1990s and the early 2000s from the Australian Bureau of Statistics said that a person earning the average wage spends 68 per cent on government. They hand over 68 per cent to government on rates, fees, levies, taxes, surcharges, special fees and special levies. That is the equivalent of working from Monday to mid-morning on Thursday and handing it over to the government. The meagre rest—one and two-thirds of a day—is available for spending on education, sewerage, water, travel, transport, food, shelter. That is the cost-of-living pressure.

On my Facebook wall today, Vivienne Schnell said:

When did any government vote for less government? They have to be forced to do that at gunpoint.

I have hope and trust in the human spirit that fights to be free. I have hope and trust that freedom, not control, will prevail and that the march towards big government will end peacefully. That journey starts with debates and dialogue here in this chamber. People like Ms Schnell may be frustrated and have nothing from last night's budget to give them comfort, but I warn all senators here gathered that her patience—and that of the millions of Australians like her—is wearing thin. Here, in this parliament today, we have been charged with the task of igniting Australia's creativity and initiative which will restore our prosperity.