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

If the Senate is talking about tax and the cost of living, we cannot ignore the most regressive tax on the poor and the vulnerable. Parliament is considering it now—$244 billion over 10 years barely registers compared to the trillions of dollars in economic mayhem that climate change and related energy policies are already inflicting, will continue inflicting and are making worse. Make no mistake; climate change and related energy policies are a brutal, highly regressive tax on the poor and the vulnerable.

Trying to tax carbon dioxide means trying to tax every single thing we do as humans, including breathing. That's why the United Nations and the World Economic Forum are pushing these burdens. They want to control every single thing we do. For these policies, the poor will always proportionally pay the highest price—by far, the highest price. Rich, inner-city elites can afford to buy a brand-new electric vehicle. The poor cannot. The rich can afford the outlay to install solar, which they get back with subsidies that the poor pay for through higher electricity charges. The poor cannot. The rich will be able to afford it when power bills go up, and, despite promises about the wind and solar pipedream, power bills are skyrocketing and will skyrocket. The poor cannot afford it, and, while life gets harder and more expensive for the poor, billions of dollars are being poured into the doomed wind and solar pipedreams.

Companies receiving government subsidies to build wind and solar complexes are giant multinational companies, quite often associated with the Chinese Communist Party and run for the benefit of the billionaire CEOs, billionaire owners. Climate change policies are like a reverse Robin Hood, taking taxes from the poor and giving to the rich, thanks to the Greens, the Liberal Party, the Labor Party and the Nationals. People on the minimum wage will suffer as life gets more expensive—much, much more expensive. As more intermittent and unreliable wind and solar is forced into the grid and reliable baseload power is prematurely forced out, power bills will go ever higher. As productive farming land is locked up for carbon dioxide credits that the Nationals, Liberals, Labor and the Greens want, groceries will get more expensive.

So, let's talk briefly about the carbon dioxide credit rort. If a producer of carbon dioxide pays for enough trees to supposedly offset carbon dioxide, it will get the green tick of approval and continue producing carbon dioxide. It's a tax, a hypocritical and destructive tax, about everything in life, because the end user, the customer, the people, will pay. The credits don't stop anything. They just say companies can do it as long as we, the people, pay a tree fee. Of course, that includes a fee to the companies and the government and the United Nations for their apparent services in managing this system—a tax. There are many more examples, and no-one should be in any doubt: climate change policies and related energy policies try to change the entire country, the entire economy. These changes will restrict almost everything—everything—making life more expensive. The rich will be able to afford it. The poor will not. Climate policies are a highly regressive tax on the poor.