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

I rise to speak on the Coal-Fired Power Funding Prohibition Bill 2017. Many, many Australians are very confused when it comes to climate change and what they've been told. We have one side of politics and some scientists telling us the world is basically coming to an end and we're destroying ourselves, and then we have the other side of politics and other scientists saying, 'No, it's not.' Over a period of time I have seen this become a political football. It has been used by individuals, companies, multinationals and different ones to line their own pockets with business. That's what it has become—a business, at the cost of many Australians. It's going to cost us jobs. It's costing us livelihoods. It's putting a strain on many homes and families across our nation.

This issue has been taken up around the world. This is something that was started many years ago, even a couple of decades ago—when this was all put into place—and we're wearing the effects of it now. I speak to many companies and businesses who are actually struggling to pay their power bills. I speak to many families who have had a shock when they've opened up their power bill and found that it had more than doubled in a very short period of time. And yet we sit here and hear the Greens with their same old rhetoric—that if we don't do anything about this, the reef is going to die. Where is the evidence that the reef is actually dying? I have dived on the reef, and the coral does die, but that is a part of nature and has been happening for many, many years. The first time it was ever reported was around 1936. Climate change was not the issue then, nor was it spoken about at that time, but the coral was dying. It rebuilds itself within a year. This is due to the organisms of the coral itself.

They also say the water temperature is rising; it's heating, and that is killing our coral. How can they explain the fact that, if you go closer to the equator, the coral growing around Indonesia is thriving? It's not dying. The water temperatures are higher. This argument is being used as fearmongering to push their point. And they say the point is about coal—'Coal is killing it'—and that's why they're anti Adani opening up. Yet the Adani mine is 388 kilometres from the coast, and then from the coast it's about another 50 kilometres to the reef. I'd like to know how it's happening, because once the coal is dug out of the ground we're very stringent on how it's transported. It's all covered. Even going to the ports, it's all covered. We've had coalmining in this country for how long? Over a hundred years. We've still got a reef. The way they're talking you'd think the whole reef is about to die completely. This is being used as their ploy. There is no science to it whatsoever.

They say the government is a free marketeer and wants to subsidise the coal-fired power stations. If that is the case, it would be a loan from Efic, which will be repaid by any company that takes on building a new coal-fired power station—a new one!

We're debating about one new power station in this whole country, yet around the world 1,600 are being built now or are in process for the future—1,600! China is building around four a week. We've got countries like Poland building power stations, as are Japan and Germany—all these countries. Do you understand— (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.