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

Trust, trust, trust. As servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, we listen to the people of Queensland and across Australia, and people repeatedly tell us they can't trust the tired old parties. Think about this, senators from the Labor Party: you had an opportunity today to decrease energy prices by removing the GST on energy, and what did you do? You voted against reducing energy prices.

Before we go into that further, let me just remind people of the fundamental importance of energy. Since 1850 and the industrial revolution, we have seen energy prices decrease in real terms. That has led to increasing productivity, and with increasing productivity there is increasing prosperity. That has enabled us to have human progress. Human civilisation has progressed dramatically, not just because we are a creative species and a caring species—contrary to what the Greens would have us believe—but because we also apply that creativity to reducing energy prices. That has increased human progress dramatically. Energy is what drives the implementation of our creative talents. Kevin Rudd's initiatives, joined by Penny Wong, Peter Garrett and Julia Gillard—and Christine Milne; how could we forget her!—are reversing human progress. They are denying the people of the Third World cheap energy, or they are trying to. They are denying people jobs in this country and, in fact, they are exporting jobs from this country.

A false statement in this Labor Party motion is that the clean energy target will reduce energy prices. We have seen prices go up by more than double the CPI to an outstanding high—eight times what they were in 1980. That is an explosion in energy prices. As a result of the Finkel report, I commissioned, at my own cost, a review by a well-known energy economist, Alan Moran. He points out that, if we adopt the Finkel report, consumers will not be paying less for energy; they will be paying around $800 a year more. He also points out that energy prices have increased from around $40 per megawatt hour during the first 15 years of the present century to currently in excess of $80 per megawatt hour and that futures prices are now over $100 per megawatt hour. There is more to come in the future, and with the clean energy target there will be even more beyond that.

So we are seeing a degradation of our energy market. In fact, this is really an energy racket, because it is polluted by subsidies, vested interests and regulations. This is a fundamental thing in what we see the Labor Party advocating. They are advocating the Finkel report and the clean energy target when, fundamentally, the driver of energy prices is the overregulation of energy. We no longer have an energy market; we have an energy racket. That energy racket is now laced with subsidies, vested interests, regulations and politicisation. We don't have an energy market now; we have an energy racket. What is more, that racket is distorting prices; it is increasing prices dramatically. We are seeing more of it and it will continue, as the Moran report shows.

Let's look at the Finkel report and see what it is based on. Finkel does his projections based on the economic modelling of Jacobs. We see that, in recent years, literally within the last few years, the Jacobs modelling has contradicted itself several times. It raises serious questions about Dr Finkel's report. We have to question now the purpose and the nature of the modelling. It looks to me like it was rigged to produce the result that government wanted. Is that what Alan Finkel was paid to do?

We will see something else now. As Dr Moran has pointed out, if we continue to do what the government is doing now, we will see export industries hurt. The trade-exposed energy-intensive industries that are really suffering will suffer body blows, and we could lose them as well. So it won't just be small business that falls prey to the tired old parties; it won't just be employees. It will be big businesses and our highly competitive businesses that will be destroyed in this country. We need to end the renewable energy target, not bring in a worse replacement. I must give credit to Senator Macdonald. I have developed enormous trust in him as a result of his work in recent months.

Let's have a look at what has happened in South Australia. We have seen a Labor government destroy its own state, gleefully blow up a power station and celebrate it. Isn't that what terrorists do? They destroy the power stations. That is what Jay Weatherill's government has done. Why have they done that? Because the Greens have pushed them into it. They have lulled the Labor Party into it. The Labor Party needs the preferences; the Labor Party then falls for the trick. The Greens are actually running South Australia, to the detriment of all South Australians. We have seen the Greens in their home state—it is basically their home state, apart from Tasmania, the state where they were most popular—lose one of their two senators, and Senator Sarah Hanson-Young is now on her own. That is not all we see in South Australia. We see the madness that the Xenophon team has been plying the alliance of the Greens and the Labor Party. Those three have colluded to drive up energy prices in that state. But, sadly, we've also seen a dysfunctional Liberal Party in South Australia that has been gutlessly silent—cowed into submission and cowed into not having the guts to stand up and call the alliance of the Labor Party, the Greens and the Nick Xenophon Team for what it is. They're all hurting energy prices.

How can we have trust in those tired old parties, especially the Greens and the Nick Xenophon Team? Why is there inaction, supposedly, from the Prime Minister, according to Senator Gallagher's motion? It's very simple: the economic reality is biting. We now see the legacy of driving up energy prices. People are now feeling it in the hip pocket. Businesses are now sacking employees. Steggles have gone under—a household name. They're gone. What we've seen is economic reality coming home to roost, but it's going to get far worse.

As for action, part (b) of Senator Gallagher's motion talks about action. Look at the action that her own Labor Party is taking in the state of Queensland, where the major coal-fired power stations are owned and operated by the Labor Party government.