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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, this is One Nation's address-in-reply to the Governor-General's opening speech for the 47th Parliament—a speech on behalf of his government. The reviews on social media were underwhelming. Everyday Australians struggling with cost of living were looking to the government for a real plan to bring inflation under control. None was forthcoming—no plan. The truth is: we have a new government that has a long list of sponsors that it needs to placate. Everyday Australians, sadly, are not on the government's list. One Nation is ready with bold nation-building ideas to deliver breadwinner jobs, lower inflation and energy security.

So let me start where all good governments should start: with the people. If everyday Australians today feel like they're working harder and going backwards, it's because people are. This month's Treasury financial data shows the share of our GDP going to people—that's wages and salaries—is at an all-time low, yet the percentage going to corporate profits is at an all-time high. Over the last 30 years education, health care and housing have increased 300 per cent, far outstripping wages growth.

Next: One Nation continues to pursue its commitment to workers' rights across the course of this parliament. Today we reintroduce our Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill 2022. This bill ensures casuals and labour hire contracts in industries that do not have provision for casual employment receive the same pay as the full-time worker alongside them doing the same job. Our bill covers black coal, airline crew and stevedoring. In anticipation of any future exploitation of workers, the bill is worded to allow additional awards to be added.

Next: energy. It's unbelievable that a nation as resource rich as Australia has plunged its people into an energy crisis. Our governments should be able to guarantee affordable and reliable energy, yet in 2022 state and federal governments are failing. I remind the Senate that Australia has enough coal and uranium reserves to last hundreds of years, yet we have the highest electricity prices in the world—the highest in the world. We are the world's largest exporters of energy—No.1 in gas, No. 2 in coal—yet, due to government subsidies for unreliable wind and solar, we have the world's highest domestic prices of gas and electricity.

Australian families bear the cost of the unreliable wind and solar fairytales, with our living standards declining and electricity bills climbing. The inefficiencies and consequences of unreliable and expensive wind and solar are breathtaking, devastating and totally unchecked against reality. Small and medium-sized businesses are struggling to keep the doors open in the face of frightening electricity bills, causing supply chain inflation. Large corporations with dominant market power are able to simply pass on higher energy prices. Small businesses are not. Small business employs 4.7 million Australians who are struggling because their employers are struggling.

The government have signalled their intention to use unreliable wind and solar—or, more accurately, unreliable, unstable, unscientific electricity—to lead an attack on the living standards of everyday Australians. Let me break it down for you. It is simply impossible to build the volume of wind and solar and batteries needed to meet the 2030 deadline. Wind and solar constructed so far in Australia operate at just 23 per cent of rated capacity because relying on nature's variability gets you just 23 per cent, not 100 per cent. To meet the Prime Minister's 43 per cent target, for every one megawatt of reliable baseload coal power that's shut down, Australia will need to build 4.3 megawatts of unreliable wind and solar power. For example, replacing the 2,000 megawatt Liddell coal-fired power station will require 8,600 megawatts of wind or solar. Even this will only deliver power reliably if matched with a big battery having a similar capacity—absurd! So to build the volume of unreliable wind and solar and batteries needed by 2030 is simply impossible.

The 2030 carbon dioxide reduction target of 43 per cent is not a target for the construction of unreliable wind and solar energy generation. We know that is impossible. Rather, it is a sneaky target for reducing electricity usage. In 2010, Australia's electricity consumption was 213 terawatts. It had already fallen in 2021 to 188 terawatts—an 11 per cent decrease—despite Australia's population going from 22 million to 26 million, which is an increase of almost 24 per cent. At 10,071 kilowatt hours per capita, Australia ranks 14th in per capita electricity consumption. It's a legitimate argument to say that Australia should reduce our electricity consumption further only once the rest of the world reduces theirs.

Anyway, why should we reduce electricity consumption? High prices are not an unintended or transitional outcome of unreliable energy. High prices are designed to deliberately reduce electricity consumption. That's why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already abandoned his campaign promise to cut electricity bills. That was never real. It was hollow tokenism—a deliberate lie. Parliamentarians, corporate leaders and their media mouthpiece in protected ivory towers live in a parallel reality where cost-of-living price hikes like fuel and electricity are a mild inconvenience, not the bloody choice between eating dinner or staying warm that confronts many people in Australia today. Destroying baseload power with reckless abandon is hurting the people who must make the choice between food and warmth. Where is the humanity in that? Where is the care?

The fairy-tale climate contradictions making electricity production dependent on nature's variable wind and solar is a nightmare; there's no happy ending. Increasing numbers of businesses are failing, jobs are vanishing, families are being torn apart and communities, especially regional centres, are being destroyed. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that there are currently 24,000 people directly employed in unreliable energy. To contend that these same unreliables will cause an increase in jobs of 600,000 is the lie of the century. It will never happen. Indeed, the reverse will be true, because studies overseas show that for every unreliable wind and solar job there are 2.2 jobs lost in the real economy. They are facts. One only has to understand the inherent inefficiency of wind and solar, the low energy density and their high consumption of resources in being built. That is basic. However, baseload power and jobs go hand in hand.

The Prime Minister and the Labor Party, after nine years in opposition, have admitted that they have no idea how to create jobs for everyday Australians. Instead the Prime Minister will host a stage managed talkfest on job creation. Why? Where's his plan, which we heard so much about before the election? The Albanese plan is revealed to be a plan to ask other people what the plan should be! One Nation, though, does know how to create jobs: get back to basics.

Today, the biggest cost in manufacturing is electricity. It's not the cost of employing workers—not the labour cost. High energy prices have destroyed jobs and, with that, gutted workers' power. What drives wages? Supply and demand drives wages. Australia has significant reserves of iron ore, bauxite, copper and rare earths, yet we import our electronics and our white goods—finished products made from these same materials. If Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is serious about job creation, he only needs to safeguard our base-load power through coal and nuclear. That will bring down energy prices and supercharge our manufacturing sector. A One Nation government will do that—get back to proven common-sense basics and fundamentals.

Why has the Albanese government agreed to increase immigration when the Prime Minister has admitted to having no idea how to create the jobs for these people? High immigration without addressing jobs, housing and energy sells out workers. It sells them short and creates disadvantaged groups. It's that simple.

Let's turn to infrastructure. An ambitious infrastructure program will deliver the jobs growth needed to restore workers' rights and restore secure employment—real infrastructure, not the Green fairytale that we've heard from the government and the previous government. One Nation will advocate for a national rail circuit; north-west Queensland's CopperString 2.0 high-voltage power transmission; the Tully-Millstream hydro project; Urannah Dam; the Bradfield scheme, conditional on the business case; and many more nation-building projects.

Let's turn to the Reserve Bank. During COVID, the Reserve Bank admitted to conjuring up $500 billion using electronic ledger entries. It's called quantitative easing. The Reserve Bank's words were 'electronic journal entries'. We now have, as a result, the highest inflation since the 1980s. Quantitative easing is undoubtedly related to the current spike in inflation—it's driving it. Money conjured out of thin air and spent on recurring expenses rather than nation building is inflationary.

Both sides of this chamber took the decision to conjure so much money and spend it on economic sherbet. The Albanese Labor party, while in opposition, were complicit in this economic catastrophe, so they inherit the consequences of their complicity. But don't point fingers across the chamber on this; work together. If this parliament gets this wrong, everyday Australians will suffer through inflation—or worse, stagflation—for decades.

Instead of working together to push Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum plan, based on United Nations policies, work together for our country. Klaus Schwab's 'life by subscription' is really serfdom. It's slavery. Billionaire globalist operations corporations will own everything—homes, factories, farms, cars and furniture—and everyday citizens will rent what they need, if their social credit score allows. The plan of the Great Reset is that you will die with nothing. To pull off this evil plan, Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum will need to take more than just material possessions from Australians. Senators in this very chamber today who support the Great Reset threaten our privacy, freedom and dignity. Yes, they're in this Senate chamber.

One Nation vehemently opposes the Trusted Digital Identity Bill 2021; theft of agricultural land use, forcing farmers off their land; and all of the Great Reset. One Nation has a comprehensive plan to bring our beautiful country back to sustainable prosperity, and in the months ahead we will be rolling that plan out. Instead of Lib-Lab pushing Klaus Schwab's Great Reset with the tagline, 'You will own nothing and be happy,' One Nation advocates the 'Great Resist'. We stand for a world where individuals and communities have primacy over predatory globalist billionaires and their quisling bureaucrats, politicians and mouthpiece media. One Nation accepts the challenge to provide a better future for everyday Australians. We have one flag, we are one community and we are one nation.