Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Sovereign Capability) Share this | Hansard source

An appropriations bill is about where government spends the money, and let me tell you from the outset that they're not spending it very wisely. This government's priorities are all wrong. The No. 1 priority for any government should be to keep the people safe and their border secure. Well, clearly the Albanese Labor government is failing on that.

But let's move on to the No. 2 priority, nation building: building dams, building roads—building infrastructure that everybody can use to then make a quid out of. What are the government doing? They're not nation building; they are bureaucracy building.

One of the very first things that the Albanese Labor government did on coming to office was to slash all the funding for the dams. There was a project just near me called the Urannah Dam. The money was in the budget. It was also matched by private equity money. But, no, that money was then withdrawn by the government. Urannah Dam was obviously going to be a dam for water. Newsflash: we have a dry continent, so building dams should be very high on the list of priorities. Urannah Dam would have provided water for mining; it would have provided water for urban use; it would have provided water for tourism. There was a way to have a pipeline that would've gone from Urannah Dam into Peter Faust Dam, near Proserpine, to make sure that that dam never ran dry. There was also going to be capability for putting a hydro component on the dam. But, no, that was scrapped.

And, while we're talking about infrastructure, let's talk about the Bruce Highway debacle. That has been mentioned many times in this place. Prime Minister Albanese stood up before the election and committed $7.2 billion to go towards the Bruce Highway, and I thanked him for that. That was really good. Unfortunately, Minister Gallagher jumped up and said, 'The money's not there.' That was a bit of a problem. We looked a bit further into this, and Senate estimates then revealed that there was only $432 million available over the next three years—only. That's far different. When you're talking about $7.2 billion—and a billion is 1,000 million—$432 million is less than 10 per cent, so let's not get too carried away.

What's happening with the Bruce Highway in my neck of the woods? The Bruce Highway is starting to crumble, because it just hasn't had the maintenance and the infrastructure. But that money could have been used towards overtaking lanes or some separation within the middle section; it could have been used to fix the many potholes that we seem to have and that are getting worse, as, in the wet season we're currently experiencing, the pavement is starting to fail.

The member for Forde is not here, but I listened to his speech in the Federation Chamber the other day where he said, 'Energy is the economy,' and I couldn't agree more. Well done for that. Energy is certainly the economy. However, the $9 trillion failed energy plan of those opposite is nothing more than a pipedream.

I need to explain exactly why that is. It's all to do with capex—capital expenditure. When you've got the premises and you've got your solar panels, you've spent your capital on the solar panels. But then, as we know, when clouds come over or it's night time, solar panels don't work. In order to firm the solar panels, those opposite say, 'Okay, we'll get some wind turbines.' Righto; say we get the wind turbines. You have to pay for them as well, so that's more capital expenditure. And then, when the wind doesn't blow, they think: 'The sun's not shining; the wind isn't blowing; we've still got no power. What do we do? I know. We'll add some hydro to it.' Again, that's more capital expenditure on the hydro. But, as we know, sometimes that can be weather dependent as well, if the dam's not full and you can't release water. So what's the next thing? Gas—and gas has only been mentioned lately, I might add, as a way of firming the power. But, again, that's more capital expenditure.

While all that is going on, once you've got the solar arrays and the wind turbines you actually need to connect those to the grid somehow so that people can use the power. What are we doing there? The proposal of those opposite is to have 28,000 kilometres of poles and wires. It's absolutely crazy. So let's have a look at this. Everyone gets their power bill. When you have a look at your power bill—let's talk about generation and network charges. Let's talk about generation. That's one component. It's about fifty-fifty. So what do you think is going to happen with the bill when you add 28,000 kilometres of poles and wires that then have to be maintained forever? It's just crazy, and it can't work. And for what—to lower emissions? We're supportive of lowering emissions. That's why the people on this side of the House have got a cheaper, better, fairer plan for energy use. So we will do that, but it'll be cheaper because we'll use the existing assets we've got. We won't have to use all this new capex that we spoke about—multiple capexes to try to get reliable power. And it'll be fairer because we all will share the burden. We'll share the same amount of burden as all the other OECD countries. Currently, we're going way above those.

Currently, for the emissions, how those opposite have created 90 per cent of their emissions is by locking up farming land, land that should be used for growing the food and fibre of this country. But, no, it's being locked up. What do you think happens when it gets locked up? When it gets locked up, it breeds pests and diseases. All the weeds stay in that ground that's been locked up because farmers aren't coming in, killing the weeds and looking after it. All the pigs, all the feral animals, are all in that locked-up area, and they don't get the memo. They don't stay on their side of the fence. So what they do is then come in to the farmer's paddock, wreck all their fruit and veggies and destroy everything. And the pests and the weeds? The weeds seed and then blow all the seeds into the farmer's paddock. They actually have to then eradicate those weeds, because as we know—I'm a farmer myself—one year's weeds ends up seven years seeds. So then you have to go and actually kill all those weeds. It's an absolute nightmare.

What will this mean for the average Australian? It will increase their prices at the check-out. So then, every time they go there, fruit and veggies and all the agricultural commodities are going to get more expensive. The Australian dream is rapidly becoming an Australian nightmare, and the fingerprints of this Labor government are all over the crime scene. Every morning, families in my electorate of Dawson wake up and have a kitchen table conversation that no-one should have in a country as rich as ours. They're sitting there with their bank apps open, looking at mortgages that have just been hiked up 13 times, looking at grocery bills that have jumped up 16 per cent and looking at insurance premiums that have skyrocketed 39 per cent. And they're looking for someone to blame, and they don't have to look much further than the Treasury benches in this place.

We're talking about these appropriation bills today, a request for another $12.7 billion in taxpayer funds, because this government has a serious spending problem. It would actually make a five-year-old in a lolly shop look disciplined. They are spending money they don't have to fund programs we don't need and to satisfy inner-city ideology that the average Australian just can't afford. The Treasurer likes to stand up and talk about restraint. What restraint? This is the highest-spending government outside of a pandemic in 40 years. They are outstripping record levels of revenue with record levels of waste. In 2025, this Commonwealth raised $717 billion in receipts, the highest in 25 years. They are swimming in taxpayer cash like Scrooge McDuck. Yet those opposites are still running deficits. They're like a household that gets a massive pay increase but still manage to max out the credit card.

Every dollar they print and every dollar they borrow is a bucket of debt petrol poured onto the inflation fire. While the rest of the world is seeing inflation fall, Australia is seeing inflation take off. Our inflation is higher than the UK, higher than the US, higher than Canada and nearly double that of Japan. This isn't a global phenomenon. It is an Australian, Albanese Labor government failure. It is a failure made right here in Canberra by this government, which has let the fiscal guardrails fall off.

Let's look at where the actual money is going. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is set to receive over $2.9 billion in this round of appropriations. A massive chunk of that is earmarked for the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and we've certainly heard a lot about that. $2.9 billion is a staggering amount of money to throw at a net zero fantasy while ignoring the fundamental bread and butter of affordable, reliable baseload power. This government's answer to the energy crisis is to subsidise a luxury battery that only the wealthy can afford in the first place.

In my electorate of Dawson, to buy one of these batteries, a family is looking at out-of-pocket expenses of around $15,000. I have to tell the minister, in the suburbs of Mackay, in the streets of Bowen or out in Townsville, there aren't many families with a lazy 15 grand just sitting around. This policy is reverse Robin Hood. It takes tax dollars from the battlers who are struggling to pay their quarterly power bill—which has already gone up by close to 40 per cent—and then hands them to higher income earners who cannot afford the upfront costs. It's a shocking way to run an energy policy. If you can't afford the 15 grand, you're left paying higher prices for a grid that is becoming increasingly more unstable.

The Minister for Climate Change and Energy has an ideological obsession. He wants to reach net zero by 2050 at an estimated cost of $9 trillion. But he won't actually tell the people of regional Australia what that looks like on the ground. Well, I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like 60 million solar panels and 20,000 wind turbines. The minister for energy stands up in this place and says, 'Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy.' Well, my question to the minister is, 'Why are electricity prices going through the roof?' That to me does not make sense. As I said before, he's ignoring the 28,000 kilometres of new transmission lines that are required because of this government's obsession with building generation where there are no poles or wires. The delivery costs, like I said before, make up 50 per cent of the bill.

And what about manufacturing? These are our heavy industries—the smelters, the refineries, the lifeblood of our industrial base. They're crying out for help. They are energy intensive. They need consistent power to keep the furnaces burning. Instead of providing baseload security, this government is forcing them to pause operation or beg for subsidies just to survive. We see it in the copper industry, the zinc industry and the steelworks. All of them are saying they need government assistance to keep going. Why? It's because of the government's obsession with emissions reduction at any cost. It's just a blank cheque.

We are leading the world in the race to the bottom while China, India and the United States watch from the sidelines. China's emissions go up every single year. We make just over one per cent of global emissions. Nothing we do will change the temperature of the globe. We should all do our fair share, but we shouldn't commit economic suicide to satisfy an inner-city ideology. Energy policy we see in this place hits the kitchen table every single day. Those opposite need to do better, spend the money in the right place and get Australia back on track.

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