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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to acknowledge the people in the gallery. My brothers and sisters in Queensland amongst the rural sector were at a property rights conference just last Friday. The stories about the so-called green power—wind and solar—are well and truly horrific.

People are just starting to wake up to the blight that is coming upon this country. And it's not just the city people paying for power; it's rural landholders and farmers losing their land, losing their livelihoods and losing their health. The social, economic and moral impacts are enormous and devastating. And the anti-human Greens are responsible.

I want to compliment the farmers who have come here today. Thank you so much, because what you're showing is democracy in action. You're putting pressure on the people down here in this chamber. We are paid by these people. We serve them.

Recently I was in the wonderful Widgee community to listen to people about the Queensland government's plan to destroy their national park and communities in order to build a high voltage powerline. Electricity transmission has become a controversial topic in recent years. The UN's 2050 net zero—next to zero—needs a huge spend on wind turbines and solar panels, inevitably located in the bush and requiring tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines to bring the power all the way to the cities.

Long transmission lines were not needed when coal power kept lights on and fridges running, lifting our beautiful country into a period of prosperity and stability.

The woke Left—the socialist Left—are destroying what works and replacing it with a short-lived, unscientific exercise in feelings. Net zero will need $50 billion spent just on transmission lines, every cent of which will come out of the pockets of everyday Australians and electricity users, including manufacturers.

Queensland Premier Palaszczuk's plan for a big battery in the Pioneer Valley calls for peak generation of five million kilowatts of electricity to be delivered into a 275-kilovolt transmission line. It's absolute insanity, deceit and arrogance. Premier, where's the costing on the several thousand kilometres of additional lines necessary to carry that amount of power into the grid without melting the wires? Are you forgetting that melted wires is exactly what happened when the Kennedy renewables project was connected to the grid, and that was less than one per cent of the Pioneer project?

It's a fact that Katherine Myers from Victoria addressed the Property Rights conference in Gympie on the weekend. She told us that 80 per cent of solar and wind in western Victoria is not connected to the grid. You guys have blown that money and now you're wanting to tear up farms to get it to the cities. Once wind and solar wear out, which takes only 12 years—and that's the reason they're called renewables, by the way—and taxpayers become jack of this ruinous drain on public finances the bush will be left a wasteland of glass, toxic chemicals, rusted steel towers, concrete and fallen wind turbines full of oil and dangerous chemicals. Do you know why they're called renewables? Because you have to renew the bloody things every 12 years. In the space of building one power station you need to build four generations of solar and wind. That's why they're renewables.

Wires melting is exactly what happened when the Kennedy renewables project was connected to the grid, and that's less than one per cent of the Pioneer project. Nothing stacks up—nothing. Their owners are Bahamian shelf companies and Chinese shelf companies, which have no intention of remediating this inevitable environmental disaster. Who will be left with this legacy of blown toxic panels and wind turbines? You will be. That's why we need this inquiry to explore this issue.

One Nation stands opposed to green vandalism underway in rural Australians' backyards just so that wealthy, ignorant and uncaring inner-city anti-human Greens and teals can feel better about their inhuman energy consumption myths. Why do the Greens hate nature? Let's look at their track record. They chop down trees to make way for steel and fibreglass monuments to the sky god of warming, who is celebrated with religious fervour by people who think themselves too clever for religion. Tens of thousands of hectares have been cleared and devastated for electricity interconnector easements. It's a permanent scar across the landscape for no reason.

The seabed is marked with two new interconnectors to get hydropower from Tasmania to energy deficient Victoria. Suicide is what's going on with the Victorian government. They're suiciding their state. Productive farmland and native grasses are covered in a carpet of glass and silicon reflectors. The sea is supposed to shine, not the countryside. Productive land is dug up as a graveyard for expired wind turbine blades. There's strip mining of the seabed for rare earth minerals to make EVs and big batteries. Beautiful natural lakes in China are polluted with toxic chemical run-off from the processing of rare earths. The Greens look the other way with this environmental vandalism because ignoring environmental standards is essential to bring the price of solar down so that they can claim the price of solar is falling.

This is the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull. So there's China's environmental standards and the health of the locals, but who cares about children being devastated? Our beautiful bird life is sliced and diced in wind turbines across the country. If oil were the culprit, they would never shut up about birds. But with wind turbines: 'Shoosh. No-one mention the dead birds.'

I make this offer to the Greens: come camping with me. Let me show you the beauty of this amazing countryside and then perhaps then you will be less likely to chop it down; cover it in glass, steel and concrete; pollute it; and lock it away so nobody but a chosen few can appreciate the beauty. One Nation is now the party of the environment.