John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will make some commencing comments in relation to Senator Bartlett. He said the ripping-off of superannuation funds is a disaster, and a terrible thing in relation to the royal commission. I agree. What I want to put on the record here is that in September last year we tried to bring in legislation for criminal punishments, criminal laws—$420,000, I think, was the fine, and up to five years in jail—for those trustees, the directors of those super funds, who stole workers' superannuation money. And guess what? The Greens—Senator Bartlett part of them—and Labor would not support that legislation. 'Let the criminals run free'—that was your attitude. When Mr Keating brought in superannuation with no criminal laws attached to it, the Senate said it didn't need it—or they spoke to the industry super funds who had been building their way up through the union movement. Senator Bartlett makes a point: people have been ripping off our super. I wonder: when that bill comes back here to bring those criminal laws in, are the Greens, including the new Senator Faruqi, going to vote for some proper criminal laws for those people that have been stealing our workers' money? Good point, Senator Bartlett, I'm glad you raised it. I'm sure Senator Polley and Senator Ketter will not forget this either. When the bill comes up, we'll see if they'll get fair dinkum.

I'll be frank, Mr Acting Deputy President: it's been a rough week for the coalition. But that's politics, because only a few weeks ago those on that side had a very rough week, when they showed what they thought about business and business tax, and winding back the tax cuts for small business back to a $2 million turnover—oh, they back-pedalled quickly then.

Now we have a policy together, and it's about price, it's about competition and it's about supply in electricity networks, because the cost has been outrageous. Who's to blame for it? Probably every state and every federal government of every political persuasion for the last 10 or 15 years. And now the coalition, under Prime Minister Turnbull, has had the courage to take the issue up. It's mainly a state issue. Where did we add to the cost? Renewable energy certificates and renewable energy targets, where the Rudd government wound it up to 41,000 gigs. We wound it back to a proper figure of 33,000, because 41,000 was going to be around 26 per cent, and costly. If we were to construct one wind turbine today—Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, you'd be interested in this, since you come from South Australia; when I grew up down there, they were everywhere—that's three megawatts, and if it were to spin for eight hours a day, 365 days a year, and if the large energy certificates were trading at $80, then we would give the owners of that one turbine $700,000 a year before they'd sold one watt of electricity. I've seen the newly constructed ones up near home: hundreds of tonnes of cement at the base of them, and an enormous amount of steel. These are huge towers they're building up home between Inverell and Glen Innes. With all the metals in the generating system, from the copper to the steel, and probably aluminium as well, I wonder how long those things have to spin before they become carbon neutral. I really do. I think their lifetime is 25 years. They are probably going to have to spin for 15 years before they actually pay—if I can put it that way—the carbon usage to construct them.

Going back to some of those on the other side: Senator McAllister is a young lady; I'm sure she's not suffering any memory loss. Let me just bring back a few things about when Labor was in government, a little walk through history and the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era. What was the story when Kevin Rudd came here? He said the greatest moral challenge of our time is climate change. When the Senate rejected his policy of an emissions trading scheme for a second time, did he go to a double dissolution? No. Head down, tail between the legs, he ran off to the corner. Then it was Ms Gillard, who said: 'Challenge for Prime Minister? I've got more chance of playing full-forward for St Kilda.' I don't think she made a very good full-forward, but you never know. Of course, the next day it was on. Why did they sack Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister? They had the kitchen cabinet—there were four people running the country. They brought out things like the pink batts scheme—what a disastrous campaign that was! There were the school buildings. It was amazing. We had the launch of our National Party campaign in Wagga Wagga and, while we were there, the school building fell over It was brand new, poorly constructed and cheaply done. There was the infamous Grocery Watch, and then there was Fuel Watch. There was the huge debt building. Remember the then Treasurer, Mr Wayne Swan: 'We will have a surplus in two years time,' and the next year, 'We will have a surplus in two years time,' and in the next budget, 'We will have a surplus in two years time.' We never saw a surplus. We only ever saw debt. Now, at least, with proper financial management, in 12 months time we'll be looking at a surplus at last.

Then, of course, there was the biggest disaster of all, when a TV program forced the Labor Party to abandon live exports of cattle to Indonesia. That's the way you treat Indonesia when some in the abattoirs do the wrong thing—you cut off their supply of food! That'll fix them. What a disaster! The people of the Top End, who couldn't get rid of their cattle, what did they do? They put them on trucks at the top of Western Australia and road-transported them down to Bindaree Beef in Inverell, where I live—thousands of kilometres—because they couldn't send them on the short journey across the water to Indonesia. That was the kneejerk reaction of Labor in power, yet they sit over there throwing political hand grenades at us. It's amazing how quickly they forget.

I'm proud of the fact that job numbers have grown so much in Australia under our government. We're now looking at a proper budget surplus, and hopefully that will grow and we can start winding back the debt. There are the little things we've done for small business, like the effects test in the Competition and Consumer Act to give small business a fair go. There are the changes to day care, where it's capped at $7,000. We had parents going out to work. Dad might have been the main wage earner but often mum would want to work as well. There are many, many mothers—millions of them—working these days, of course. They'd get to the stage, as the year went on, where, by the time they'd paid for day care and paid tax, they'd be working for nothing. Thank goodness we made a change to that for the better. There are the free trade agreements. It's a pity the drought's on, because, with the sheep prices, mutton prices, wool prices, lamb prices and beef prices, the agricultural sector in Australia has never looked so good.

Sadly, the rain is not there, but those opposite think they're going to change that. They're going to bring in huge emissions targets, with a huge cost of electricity, and they're going to change the planet. Even though China, India, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam are building coal-fired power stations, leaving us way behind, those opposite think somehow we're going to change the planet from Australia. No, we're not; we're going to put the cost of doing business up and up until we're uncompetitive and we force those businesses overseas.