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

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

Fear-based net zero 'climate' policies are harming everyday Australians and have no environmental justification.

As a servant to the many different people who make up our wonderful Queensland community, I say that fear-based net zero climate policies are harming everyday Australians and have no environmental or scientific justification. Yesterday this chamber saw a display from the Greens that is best described as fear based. I could feel their terror. They were terrified. It was not fear of some impending human barbecue; it was fear of impending political irrelevance. The public are starting to wake up to the fact that climate change is the greatest display of mass formation psychosis since the Salem witch hunts.

Last weekend, Tory Prime Minister Sunak in Britain won a surprise victory in the Uxbridge by-election, campaigning against Lord Mayor Sadiq Khan's net zero policies. A Conservative politician took a stand against net zero and won. The British media have sensed the changing mood and their reporting tone has changed. Here's a sample of their headlines from the last few weeks. 'Change the ludicrous net zero timetable,' read the Telegraph. 'Rishi Sunak must be bold and delay our net zero deadlines or the cost will be ruinous.' That was the Sun, saying what I have been saying for last 15 years, except I've been saying 'cancel', not just 'delay'. 'Sunak will have to water down net zero,' read the Spectator. The Washington Post weighed in with: 'Backlash to climate policies is growing.'

The UK going off-reservation and winding back net zero will provide economic competition to countries like Australia which continue to commit economic suicide with a net zero agenda. The money flowing into the pockets of the predatory billionaires who are behind this scam is already under threat. Swedish state energy company Vattenfall has announced one of the world's biggest offshore wind developments, the 1,400-megawatt Norfolk Boreas project in the UK, has been suspended due to spiralling costs. Increasing prices for wind turbine materials, including copper, zinc, chromium, nickel, rare earths, cement and the oil for the fibreglass blades, gearbox and lubricants, have caused a 40 per cent cost overrun. This pushed their projected cost per megawatt hour from $85 to over $100 a megawatt hour.

Offshore wind is not cheap electricity and it never will be. Wind energy is expensive and, due to the laws of physics, always will be prohibitively expensive.

This insane ideology is causing everyday Australians to feel deep pain and hurt. Building a home is getting dearer because all of the materials used in net zero are used in homes. Rising construction costs mean home ownership is harder and rents are increasing. Retooling our entire energy grid, both generation and transmission, is transferring hundreds of billions of dollars out of the pockets of everyday Australians into the pockets of the climate carpetbaggers running this scam, using rising electricity prices and higher taxes. We are the world's most energy-rich country, yet we have some of the world's highest prices for electricity. We export coal and uranium so foreign countries can have cheap, reliable power; yet the energy policies of the Greens, Liberals, Labor and the Nationals mean we cannot use it here—all in the name of this new religion of green self-flagellation.

In two weeks, I will be visiting the site of the latest green environmental vandalism in Chalumbin, Queensland. Thousands of hectares of native forest are to be chopped down for an industrial wind turbine complex—killing the environment to save it, apparently. Oil companies are experiencing record margins and profits thanks to the Albanese government allowing this profiteering, despite having the power to bring prices down. The higher the price of petrol, the less people use their cars, allowing the Albanese-Bowen government to claim progress towards net zero.

All of this is based on faulty science and selective misuse of natural events—fraud. We were told this was the hottest July on record, when in fact it was the hottest July since last year. We were told the ice extent is shrinking. However, the Arctic is within long-term fluctuations and the Antarctic is not melting, except for the section where there's significant volcanic eruption under the ice. You fearmongers didn't bother to mention that, did you?

In my adjournment speech tonight I'll speak on the warmers' scientific fraud. Even the fearmonger in chief, Jim Skea, the new head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has had to ask for an end to the hyperbole. Speaking on the weekend, Skea said, 'We should not despair and fall into a state of shock,' if global temperatures were to increase by 1.5 degrees. He said, 'The world won't end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees.' Rebranding climate change as climate boiling is designed to drive fear.

Senator McKim said yesterday that billions of people will die. That's what he said—no facts, just fear—because the Greens are terrified of the rapidly changing public mood. People are waking up that the public are being bullied into continued support for policies that achieve nothing except to hurt human beings and harm our natural environment. Now, in this debate, the Greens are silent. (Time expired)