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

There are a few things that I want to refer to here with regard to the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change) Bill 2023. To listen to the coalition opposition, they voted against the safeguard mechanisms because of the impact it would have on businesses and the cost to them and the jobs that would be lost. That was the reason why I didn't vote for it as well. But the coalition are going to support this bill. The opposition are going to support this bill about carbon capturing and what it means. I have to ask the question: why? If they were so opposed to the safeguard mechanism, why are they supporting this bill? The bill will get through with the opposition's support. So it is only the crossbench that is actually here asking questions of this bill. The two major political parties are supporting it.

Going back to the safeguard mechanism bill, Senator McAllister said then:

They are sensible reforms, and they are designed to ensure that Australia's largest emitters remain competitive in a global economy that is decarbonising.

Climate change has been one of the biggest debates we're had for the last 12 years, with changes made to our country through legislation affecting our economy and impacting the Australian people by driving up the cost of living. And I think it's been a vote catcher for some parties too. They use it to put fear into the hearts of people, as we've heard today—for example, Senator Pocock mentioned the Great Barrier Reef is in disaster. The fact is, as I've stated here, UNESCO has given it a clean bill of health; it's not on the endangered list at all. It's actually pristine at the moment, and that's been advocated as well. I actually live in Queensland and I've been on the Great Barrier Reef a number of times; I've dived on the reef. There are no problems there. We have bleaching, as we've always had for centuries. We've always had bleaching. The bleached reef actually recovers very quickly. It's a natural thing that happens with coral.

Where I want to go from here is to say that we have been scammed. This is a scam. The United Nations and other countries around the world have scammed us with everything that's happening here. Climate change BS! A lot of people think it's a load of BS. Our climate is changing, but to actually think that it's changing because of human emissions when 97 per cent of carbon emissions comes from natural resources—and it comes from the oceans actually. Seventy-five to 80 per cent of the earth is covered by oceans. Carbon dioxide is released or taken into the oceans based on the temperature. That's how it works. We have it in our soil. We'll have it in growth. Carbon dioxide is 0.004 of the earth's gases, and it's a gas that we have to have for growth. Actually, at the moment, we are high in carbon dioxide, and guess what? We've had the highest production of agriculture that we've seen in a long time. So how is it hurting our world, if that is the case?

The thing is that climate change is a scam. We have used it, and a lot of people are in fear. Senator Whish-Wilson talks about how the islands are going under. Actually, there has been the growth of land masses across the world as well. So they're not actually going under. And there's another thing also: for how many years have we heard that the oceans are rising and we're going to be flooded and we won't have a coastline? How many times have we heard that? A number of times, yet people keep buying up their land. Members of parliament and former Prime Ministers all live on the coastline. No-one is selling up. They still are maintaining higher costs for those properties.

And we have talk about the heating. As Senator Pocock said, it's been the hottest year that we have had on record. Do you know they stopped taking records in 1910? You can't get records beyond that. If you go back to the late 1800s, we had hotter records than we have now, yet we didn't have all the cars, we didn't have the human emissions and we didn't have the number of people, but we had hotter temperatures then. What about the time when Australia was underwater inland? That wasn't due to humans here; that was all climate change due to other effects and changes and causes. Has anyone really discussed the sun and its impact on us? No. We all go back to human emissions, which is only three per cent. And of that three per cent—just tell the Australian people—Australia has one per cent of the three per cent. Three per cent is the whole, and we have only one per cent of that three per cent. We are actually destroying our economy and the way of life of a lot of Australians, and you're continuing to head down this path.

What I want to tell people is that Tony Abbott signed up to the Paris Agreement in 2016, and guess what? Only 37 countries signed up to it. Russia, China and India didn't. Look at the populations of those countries—over a billion people each in China and India, and hundreds of millions of people in Russia. We signed up to it, and they are the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide—China over 30 per cent to our one per cent.

How hypocritical of this government to actually then want to crucify our businesses, our companies. We are forcing them to shut down. We're increasing prices to the consumer for their goods, yet we keep exporting. How hypocritical. If you think coal and gas is so bad, why do we actually keep exporting it, which I agree with, to China to make steel—their emissions are over 30 per cent—and then buy back their product? Where is this government's sense of what's fair and just? You're a bunch of hypocrites and you're destroying the economy for it.

This is another stupidity of the London protocol, which the minister mentioned yesterday. It says here that a part of this London protocol that we're part of is to research marine cloud brightening or seeding. This is injecting sea salt into cloud updrafts to reflect sunlight back into space. I mean honestly. Truly? And you've signed up to that as well? I can't believe it. You're letting these scientists out there run around with fairies in their heads and all this rubbish and we've got to pay for it. You expect the Australian taxpayer to pay for this technology.

It's the same as when you headed down the path of this hydrogen. You've put $2 billion in the budget for hydrogen. The report I have here says, 'Modelling has not been undertaken to calculate the number of new wind turbines needed to deliver the $2 billion Hydrogen Headstart program.' No modelling has been done on that either. You're just scamming your way through this and you expect the Australian people to pick up the bill for all this. You're buying votes; that's all it is. You're buying votes in this place from the Australian people through you're fearmongering.

And I'll tell you another thing, the government actually—this is what the public should know. The government creates carbon credits and sells them on the market. It's become a trading market. A lot of people are making money out of it. Do you know what they did in Savannah, in Queensland? They reduced last season's grassfires. They burn off their grasses and then, by burning off their grasses, they get 18,000 carbon tax credits. They've done this every year since 2015. Do you know they've accumulated over 57,955 carbon credits worth $32 at the moment? And that's where we're giving it to them. You're actually creating carbon credits and the government allocate carbon credits to the tune of half a billion dollars. You're out there making money out of this trading and you're allowing businesses to go ahead and do it at a cost to the taxpayer. It's a big scam with this climate change BS that you're pushing on the Australian people.

I will keep opposing it. I will oppose this bill. I'm not opposing gas mining or fossil fuels, because we need them. They prop up our economy. You've got nothing else to fall back on. If you think you're going to export our wind and solar, you're playing silly buggers with the public here as well. You've got nothing to export, and we can't even supply our own needs. Go and ask South Australia how they feel about their wind— (Time expired)