Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Distrust and division: these are the two words defining the Morrison government today—two goals of a government that has nothing else to offer the Australian people. When you step back and look at how our nation is holding it together right now, it is difficult to comprehend exactly how we got here. We should be on the cusp of great things right now. We should be about to rebuild our economy and our society after two incredibly difficult years, during which the overwhelming majority of Australians pulled together. They did the right thing for themselves and their families and they understood that we are stronger when we work together as a community. We should be united in pride about the sacrifices that Australians made to keep each other safe. We should be in awe of the scientists who delivered vaccines, despite all the odds. We should be determined right now to lift up everyone who fell behind in the last two years.

As we head into a new year, we should be full of hope about what we can achieve in the future and be prepared for any setbacks that might come along the way. Instead, we are mired in distrust and division that is overseen by the highest elected officeholder in the land, our own Prime Minister; that has been actively fermented by the highest officeholder in the land; and that has been fanned by a prime minister who, everyone knows, is playing two sides of a very dangerous game. He is agreeing to condemn, under questioning, anti-democratic protesters threatening violence and threatening our democratic process in Melbourne. But, at the same time, he is using their exact language. He is using the exact language of these violent protesters over and over again, mimicking their lines that 'it's time for a government to get out of our lives'. This is a desperate and dangerous game. It is unbecoming of our Prime Minister. It undermines our democracy, it is a complete failure of leadership and it squanders the goodwill and the support Australians have been showing each other through these two years of crisis. It is a disgrace. It is a dog-whistling, vote-grubbing, desperate disgrace, and it is a hypocritical disgrace.

Imagine if, instead of all of this, our Prime Minister had just explained, over the last two years, that we needed restrictions in place while there were no vaccines to keep us safe. Imagine if we'd had a prime minister who had told the truth to the people—that, until he rolled out the vaccines, we would need rolling lockdowns. Imagine if we'd had a prime minister who had actively pursued those vaccines and bought them when they were available, so that people hadn't had to go through this second incredibly tough year. Imagine if, instead of Prime Minister Morrison, we had a national leader who could actually bring people together. The distrust and division that this Prime Minister and members of his government are actively courting is being piled onto a massive trust deficit that already exists and is overseen by our Prime Minister—a prime minister who is, at best, loose with the truth, a prime minister who has been caught out lying again and again, a prime minister who is always searching for the next line to get through his next difficult day. He bends with the breeze. He distracts and diverts and spins and spins, hoping no-one will know which way is up. He is a prime minister who moves to his next message just as fast as he can get from one press conference to the next, and he does all of this because he has absolutely no plan for our country.

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

[by video link] As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that we are living through a time of great civil disturbance. The media have chosen to fill our screens with exaggerated horror and fear. As a result, families are turning against families, neighbours against neighbours, and employers against employees. At this difficult time, we cannot lose sight of the good in this world. While it is daunting for some, we benefit from counting our blessings and looking forward to again becoming the Australia we all know and love. My message tonight is simple: 'abundance' is not a dirty word; it's a blessing to be appreciated.

Australia is blessed with natural diversity in climate and soil. Somewhere on our continent exist the conditions necessary to grow any crop to rival the world's best. Whether it's olives in Inglewood or cashews at Dimbulah, Aussie farmers will always step forward to have a go. As 42 countries slip into food deficits, Australia's agricultural output is at record highs. We're literally feeding the world right now, and more water for our farmers will feed more of the world's hungry. Our entrepreneurship lifted Australia from a prison colony to a top-10 world economy. Australians invented the black box flight recorder, heart pacemakers, the electric drill, bionic hearing, wi-fi hotspots and even Google Maps. This flow of innovation has not stopped. It continues. The University of Queensland has pioneered a world-first tissue culture system that can produce up to 500 avocado plants from a single cutting. This gives Australian producers the ability to bring new cultivars to market, faster, cheaper and using fewer chemicals than anywhere else in the world. The world avocado market is valued at $20 billion, and Australia has only $500 million of that so far.

Let's look at mining. An Australian invention called the Reflux Classifier allows for the recovery of minerals that normally run to waste in the processing of ore. The University of Newcastle pioneered this recent technology, returning $1.5 billion in royalties to Australia every year. The University of Newcastle recently registered a patent on a new type of low-cost thermal storage called miscibility gap alloy. Miscibility gap alloy raises the promise of storing energy from non-baseload power sources, to be fed back into the grid at times of peak energy demand. This has the potential for a multibillion dollar export and licensing industry. I certainly hope so, because that may stop some arguments about the proliferation of unreliable renewables—what I call 'intermittents'. Miscibility gap alloy could not exist without carbon and without mining. The economic powerhouse that is Australian mining has kept Australia out of recession these last two years. At one point, we had the world's largest value of stored natural resources. If we were still exploring for the bounty this land has given us, we may still be the richest country in the word. It's not too late. We need to reject the black-armband view of our history and, by extension, our future. We need to embrace entrepreneurship, to defend the inalienable right of everyday Australians to lift themselves up through hard work and enterprise, and we need to make sure the benefit of that hard work accrues to the Australians doing the work, to everyday Australians, not to foreign corporations. Let me explain.

The wealth each Australian creates every year, called the gross domestic product—per capita and inflation adjusted—increased from $41,000 per person in 1980 to $77,000 per person in 2019. Do we feel almost twice as wealthy as we did 40 years ago, though? No, definitely not. Median or mid-point wages have not increased in this period. The spoils of the hard work of everyday Australians have not gone to everyday Australians. Instead, this wealth has gone to foreign multinational corporations and to the administrative class. Public Service wages are growing at four per cent while private enterprise wages grow at less than one per cent, and that's just not right. What's needed in the short term is the removal of all COVID restrictions so the economy can open up and the Australian entrepreneurial spirit can repair the damage of COVID lockdown mismanagement. Then we need to remove green tape so farmers can farm and miners can mine. Instead of unelected, unaccountable foreign bureaucrats dictating to us, we must start making decisions for ourselves. Government does have a role to build the roads, the dams and the railroads. We need to restore our productive capacity to support this growth. Tax and finance reform are necessary to ensure that Australians can access the capital to expand and ensure that the profits from that expansion stay here.

We have one flag. We are one community. We are one people. We are one nation. Abundance is not to be ashamed of. Abundance is a blessing to celebrate.