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

The government's plan is to close every coal-fired power station in Australia and replace the dispatchable power they provide with the electricity generated by a combination of solar, wind and stored green hydrogen. What could go wrong? Let's look at South Australia, where the plan is most advanced—so they think! Electricity prices in the state are the highest in Australia, and are increasing at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country. Much of South Australia's energy comes from wind and solar, but in the second quarter of 2023 this required back-up from gas 36 per cent of the time. In short, almost two million people in South Australia would have a been subject to rolling blackouts without natural gas. South Australia's current energy situation represents the future every other state is moving towards, in what can only be called an 'economic suicide pact'. If not coal, gas is essential to back up solar or wind generated electricity but, despite having some of the largest reserves of gas in the world, it's in very short supply in Australia. We keep exporting too much of it and foreigners pay far less for Australian gas than we do. My bill to create a domestic gas reserve, which I have introduced today, would guarantee supply and lower prices.

I now want to return to the government's plan to replace gas with green hydrogen. It's a plan that exists on a paper napkin, pie-in-the-sky stuff, and we have all been there before—namely, with the NDIS. There is no business plan for any part of the hydrogen idea, including restarting the national electricity grid following a major blackout. How do I know that? In September 2016, the first statewide blackout happened in South Australia. The state could not restart its own grid because there was no power to pressurise the gas into a turbine. The power came from an old coal-fired power station in Victoria, one of the few still operating and not being blown up yet. When all the coal-fired power stations are closed, what will we do to restart the grid? The government says that Snowy 2.0 will come to the rescue but, personally, I would recommend all households keep a supply of candles. The project has come to a complete standstill, with the tunnelling machine stuck for more than a year and no resolution in sight. This project is facing a blowout now estimated at $12 billion, thanks to poor policy and business planning.

Before I finish, I want to talk about the plan for green hydrogen to replace natural gas. Again, no business plans are available. This year the government announced $2 billion for the National Hydrogen Strategy, without a business plan or any modelling. This was either brave or stupid. The only beneficiary of the government's subsidy will be billionaire Andrew Forrest. Oh, yes—is he a 'yes' campaigner? Yes! Unless you can produce hydrogen for less than $2 a kilogram, it will never stack up economically. Labor in South Australia has committed more than $600 million to a green hydrogen plant at Whyalla, again without a business case. What could go wrong? The same as what happened to the state in 2016.

Australians need to wake up to green energy fantasies invented by emotionally driven climate change activists and children brainwashed through our educational system, who say the world is coming to an end—fantasies that are not even remotely based on evidence or science but on the vote and financial gains. These are pipedreams driven by green fearmongering. They sound wonderful and they sound too good to be true. That's because they're not true. And the ones who will end up paying for it all with more taxes and record high energy prices will be the Australian people. It looks like we'll have to give up those creamy barista coffees and go back to opening tins of grandma's International Roast! And we'll have to sacrifice a great deal more on the altar of the climate change cult. The people of Australia are fed up with paying the rising costs in electricity. It irks me to hear the Labor Party blame the coalition for the escalating prices in electricity when Labor keep putting 28,000 kilometres of power lines across the country, against the will of the people of this nation, because they're pushing their own agenda that doesn't stack up.

People understand that electric cars won't stack up because we don't have the minerals in this nation after more than one generation to build electric cars. So they're going to control the people in this nation, but the fact is they're destroying this nation. The Greens and the Labor Party are destroying the people of this nation.