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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I will discuss the real economic inequalities that this government has created and the disastrous effect they're having on hardworking Australians.

As we've heard in the last half-hour, the Greens and Labor play as a tag team to attack the government on the budget's inequalities. Yet both are complicit in supporting the most destructive and regressive attack on the working class ever seen in our country—that is, the United Nations-led war on cheap energy. This war is hurting humanity, destroying the environment and curtailing the freedoms and sovereignty of our nation. Let's not forget that, while Labor and Greens policies will cause a swift and evil end to affordable energy in our country, the Liberal and National parties' approach is death by a thousand climate regulations. In the end, whether Labor-Greens or Liberal-Nationals climate policies prevail, the destruction of our economy will be the same; only the length of time it will take to deindustrialise and destroy our way of life will differ.

The Greens and Labor talk about inequality, yet they ignore the inequalities their own policies have on Australians. Where is the equality for Australians, who are now paying 39 per cent of their electricity bills for climate policies and renewable subsidies? Although the government tell us it's only six per cent, it's own data says 39 per cent and cannot be sensibly refuted. Where is the equality for Australians, who are paying $526,000 for every wind turbine erected in Australia with taxpayer subsidies going directly to, mostly, foreign companies? They're paid even when the turbine generates no power. Where is the equality for working-class Australians, who are paying $13 billion extra a year in higher electricity bills due to climate policies championed by wealthy elites, who can afford the higher cost of electricity? Where is the equality for Australians, whose economy is being destroyed through trying to limit our 1.3 per cent of global human CO2 when countries like China, who produce 30 per cent of global human carbon dioxide, build hundreds of new coal-fired power plants? This is not democracy; this is hypocrisy. I would like everyone in this chamber to take a moment to think about the most vulnerable people in our society—the poor, the elderly, students, the unemployed—and the effect your climate policies are having on them. This is a highly regressive tax on these people. The proportion of our electricity bills created by climate policies is now 39 per cent. Again, this figure is from state and federal governments' own figures.

Paying for an essential service like electricity is becoming a luxury for some. For the majority it means less disposable income for families to spend on food, birthday presents or a family holiday. When are you, my colleagues in this chamber, going to start focusing on what is good for the people of Australia rather than on enriching your corporate mates in the green energy business and virtue signalling to the elites and the United Nations? You were elected as servants to the people of Australia. It's time you started acting like it.