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

The core issue here is integrity. We see the National Party and the Liberal Party tying themselves in knots. The coalition is unravelling, according to some. The coalition is all over the place, according to others. It depends who we listen to. But the core issue is a complete lack of integrity from the Labor Party and the Greens. According to Senator McAllister, this parliament has seen 'all manner of scrutiny'. Oh really? I can remember Senator Ian Macdonald standing here saying this parliament has never debated the climate science—never. So this is all being done on nonsense. In fact, the science that says that we need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity and that we need to go to renewables has never even been brought into this chamber—never. The parliament always tends to go to the second question, which is, 'How do we do it?' rather than going to, 'Should we do it?' The core question, if we're really being faithful to and serving the people of this country—the taxpayers and the energy users, who are being bled dry—is, 'Should we do this madness?' not, 'How do we do it?' The question of how we do it comes second. The parliament too often in this country goes to the second question.

No-one in this parliament—either house—has ever presented the empirical scientific evidence that says carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut. It is now day 770 since I asked Senator Richard Di Natale and Senator Larissa Waters this fundamental question: where is your empirical scientific evidence that shows that carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut? That's it. They dodged it. They have never come back with the evidence. They refuse to debate me. I asked Senator Waters this almost 11 years ago—in fact, it is 11 years ago this month—and she refused debate me then. Then, Senator Waters talked about a waste of money. Oh, really?

We're spending $19 billion a year on this rubbish. We're destroying our energy sector, destroying manufacturing jobs and exporting them to China. We send them our coal, they generate electricity using our coal after we've shipped it thousands of kilometres, and they sell it for 8c a kilowatt hour. We use the same coal here in this country—some of the best coal in the world—and we sell that electricity for 25c a kilowatt hour. Why the difference? Why is it three times as much here? It's because of all the renewable regulations, subsidies and climate rubbish. That's why. Not only do we export our coal, but we export our manufacturing jobs, because the No. 1 cost of manufacturing these days is electricity. It's not labour anymore; it's electricity. We're gutting jobs and throwing people on the scrap heap—with no livelihoods—for nothing, because no-one has ever presented the science that says we need to do this. They run from it.

In One Nation we welcome the debate. We welcome a debate on the science. We will welcome putting both coalitions, the Liberal-National coalition and the Labor-Greens coalition, under scrutiny. The policies of the Liberal-National coalition are so close to the policies of the Labor-Greens coalition. Where's the difference, other than slightly in degree? What we're doing to this country—what this parliament is doing to this country, to the taxpayer and to the jobs of real people—is an absolute disgrace. The jobs of everyday Australians are getting gutted, and it's based on a lie. Al Gore's making like a bandit, because the crook has made hundreds of millions of dollars out of this scam, along with several other people, including academics and politicians, and government agencies. It just goes on and on and on. This has got to stop.