Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support Senator Roberts's matter of public importance. The Labor Party government came to power promising Australians they had a plan. They had plans alright! They had a plan to address the cost of living. They had a plan to lower the cost of power. They had a plan to boost productivity. But after almost 18 months of them being in office it is now clearly evident to every single Australian out there that the government did not have a credible plan at all, unfortunately. I wish they did.

Growth is up slightly, but inflation is higher. Our dollar just doesn't go as far as it should. They have managed to create a one-step-forward, two-steps-backwards economy where people are becoming poorer despite the rhetoric of economic growth. The growth itself is not keeping pace with the huge increase in immigration which has been authorised by this government. We had 1.5 million new migrants in five years. Do know what that sounds like? It's a Ponzi scheme. It's a pyramid scheme. That's what it is. We are in a per capita recession. There are some watching this broadcast right now that might not understand or even care to understand what a per capita recession is, but they understand what an unaffordable power bill is. They understand what $300 a week or worse on a grocery bill is. They understand what $1,100 or more extra per month on a mortgage is. They understand what paying more than half of their income on rent is and what it feels like.

Having stumbled into office with 32.6 per cent of the vote, our Prime Minister and Treasurer are now hiding their ineptitude behind a surge of new arrivals, hoping that these new immigrants will disguise our persistent and underlying economic problems. Talk about adding fuel to a fire—that's what that is. Not only does the surge in immigration fail to fix our economy; the surge creates brand-new economic problems in the form of increased pressures on health, housing, education, transportation et cetera. We have Minister Bowen spending billions rewiring the electricity grid to fit his obsession with net zero. We have Minister Burke rewriting industry agreements in his obsession with industrial relations. We have Treasurer Chalmers, whose main contribution to the Australian economy is a 6,000-word essay on reimagining capitalism, even as he reimagines our nation into a per capita recession, unfortunately for us. What's our Prime Minister doing? He is obsessively distracted with the divisive constitutional change that half the country or more doesn't even want. That's what he's doing.

For the sake of all Australians, I urge the government to stop fiddling while this nation burns. Stop propping up the economy with international arrivals. Manage the economy with a coherent, economically responsible plan. If you want to encourage economic growth, we need the government to be truthful with the Australian people. We all know that our electricity grid is a house of cards and that net zero is a pipedream. The wind and solar racket has ensured that Australia is more dependent on China, because that is where most of the solar panels come from. They also control most of the world's mines of cobalt—a key mineral used in solar, wind, batteries et cetera. We send our coal and other minerals to China, they use our cheap coal to process these minerals and then they send us back some solar panels and everything else with a hefty profit margin. These panels obviously have to be thrown out every two decades or so, roughly. That's another Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme for you. The government must consider nuclear as an option. It is safe, it is economically viable and it has been very effective in comparable nations like Canada and the United States. Without cheap, reliable energy, our nation will continue to go backwards.

The government needs to focus on one thing only, and that's getting out of the way. Get out of the way. It is time to reform our nation, repeal some legislation, reduce tax, reduce red and green tape and put our trust in the Australian people and the free market to get to work. The way to correct our economic course is very simple. It's just this: less government, more freedom.