Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps one day it might be named after me, but I doubt it, Madam Deputy Speaker Scrymgour! I rise to speak in support of the bill that was recently introduced to the House by the member for New England, a bill to end Australia's reckless commitment to net zero by 2050. Net zero in the most basic terms is the idea that a nation balances the amount of greenhouse gas it emits with the amount it removes from the atmosphere so that the net effect on the climate is zero. It sounds neat, even noble, but in practice net zero is a costly illusion—a political slogan masquerading as science, imposed without honesty and absent realism.

Since its adoption, Australia's commitment to net zero has delivered nothing but pain to the Australian people. It has driven up the cost of power, destroyed manufacturing and gutted regional communities, while doing absolutely nothing to change the globe's climate. Australia contributes just over one per cent of global emissions—one per cent—yet this government behave as though Canberra holds the planet's thermostat. Meanwhile, China, India and Indonesia are building hundreds of new coal-fired power stations. Together they account for almost half of global emissions. They are not stopping. They're not slowing down. Yet Labor persists with this ideological crusade, punishing Australians for the sins of other nations.

Net zero has become a moral vanity project for those who can afford it and an economic catastrophe for those who cannot. It's easy to preach climate virtue from an inner-city office. It's much harder to pay the power bill on a farm or keep the lights on in a small workshop in regional Australia. Everywhere I go across my electorate people are telling me the same thing: their power bills are crippling them; businesses are closing; and farms are furious at the destruction of their country for wind and solar projects that tear up paddocks, divide neighbours and desecrate landscapes that our families have cared for, for generations. These so-called renewables aren't clean, and they're not green. They're future landfill—industrial junk that will one day be left rusting in our fields because this government has made no provision for their decommissioning or rehabilitation. Farmers will be left with the cost and the contamination, and those opposite in this place are doing nothing but looking the other way.

Labor's net zero policies are built on deceit. They tell Australians that power prices will fall, yet every bill tells a different story. They claim jobs will grow, yet we're watching our heavy industries collapse. They promise energy security, yet they are shutting down the very power stations that keep the lights on. Through the safeguard mechanism, the Capacity Investment Scheme and a web of green subsidies and taxes, the government is transferring billions of dollars from hardworking Australians to foreign-backed renewable companies. That is not environmental policy. It is economic sabotage.

All this significantly weakens Australia at a time when the world grows more dangerous by the day. When our nation's security depends on self-reliance and strong industry, we're dismantling our competitive advantage in affordable, reliable energy. The government speaks of transitioning—but transitioning to what? A grid that is 82 per cent intermittent and dependent on the weather? Vast solar and wind farms built with Chinese steel, Chinese labour and Chinese financing? This is not sovereignty; it's surrender.

The greatest hypocrisy of all is that the same voices who lecture Australians on climate virtue continue to rely on fossil fuels for their own comfort and convenience. They fly across the world to climate conferences, stay in five-star hotels and demand ordinary Australians tighten their belts in the name of saving the planet. The United Nations climate bureaucracy led by unelected officials now dictates to sovereign nations like ours what we can mine, what we can manufacture and how we can live. I will not stand by while unelected foreigners backed by global billionaires tell the Australian people to accept higher costs, fewer jobs and a weaker nation. At the same time, we're witnessing the slow death of manufacturing in this country. Food plants, glassworks and aluminium smelters—industries that once made Australia strong—are being forced offshore not because they're inefficient but because they can no longer afford the price of power in Labor's Australia.

This legislation is not about denying climate change; it's about defending Australian people from a policy that is impoverishing them. It's about sovereignty, affordability and fairness. It's about putting Australians first. Our duty in this place is to put the people of Australia, not the global climate lobby, first. Our responsibility is to ensure affordable power, secure jobs and a strong nation. Net zero has failed economically, strategically and morally. The House must have the courage to end it.

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