I just feel so sad that a member representing the coalmining area of Australia can get up and give the speech that he gave. It is a reflection upon the party system in this nation and in this place. A representative from the coalmining heartland of Australia is standing up and applauding this bill that closes down his industries. I just can't believe what I'm hearing. It is the party system that reduces a good person to a party apparatchik—you hold up your hand when you're told to.

You've got to understand what is happening here. The price of electricity in Queensland went from $900 to $3,200—$1,200 of that was for carbon credits, which is an imposition upon the people of Queensland, and another $1,000 was because of the inefficiencies that are in the system now, because 54 per cent of the daytime electricity in Queensland is coming from solar panels. Where do we get solar panels from? China. Where do we get ethanol from? Australia—or we should be getting ethanol from Australia. So, instead of going to ethanol and fuelling our cars with ethanol produced from one of the four biggest grain and sugarcane exporting countries in the world, we've chosen to buy our fuel—solar panels—from China. That's in keeping with the fact that 52 per cent of our motor cars sold this year have also come from China.

Once upon a time, in the 1980s, in my lifetime, 62 per cent of our cars were built here in Australia, and, if I may be excused for using a crude term, they were bloody good cars. Thanks to the stupidity of the ALP and the LNP, we now have no car manufacturing in this country. Now we have a bloke who comes from the coalmining capital of Australia getting up here and advocating that we have no coalmining. Just how hypocritical is this place?

Now, they referred to the first Australians. Well, shame upon you. Shame upon you, because in every speech that becomes available, I'm going to remind this place that the life expectancy of first Australians living in their homeland has fallen from 54 to 49. Now, these people are not only friends of mine but they're relatives of mine as well, so there's a personal basis for my rage on this issue. You say, 'Oh yes, you know, they did it really good.' They firestick farmed. Read the great Australian historian's Triumph of the Nomads. They firestick farmed this country. I mean, the hypocrisy of you.

I met a young lady and I asked her: 'What do you do?' She said, 'Oh, I'm in economic development.' So because I don't notice any economic development taking place in the northern half of Australia, I asked, 'What economic development?' And like extracting teeth, I found out that she sells carbon credits. Now, that means that those people there can never, ever make a quid. They can't ever make a quid. You're condemning them to nothing for the rest of their lives. And is it any surprise that the suicide rate is absolutely heartbreaking in the community areas of Australia?

Now, in sharp contrast, what people are doing is ignoring your whitefella laws because we've had a gutful of your whitefella laws, right? And a great hero called Jason Ned had mustered more cattle than any other person in human history. He was getting a good Australian award from the Prime Minister, but he died two weeks before. But he just went out and said, 'I'm not worried about your whitefella laws. I'm just taking up this block of land here, which my family lived on for 40,000 years, and I'm going to call it my cattle station,' and everyone in Doomadgee applauded him. In fact, four other families have gone out and done the same thing now there is a precedent for that. New South Wales was taken up under squatter's rights. They said, 'We don't care what your British government's saying. I'm just going to go out there and take up this land.' All of New South Wales was taken up under squatter's rights. So God bless my fellow Australians, because they're telling you to take your laws and telling you what you can do with your laws, right?

The hypocrisy of this gentleman before representing the coal mining industry and telling us this is good for us. I mean, this is good for us? The Queensland economy is based upon coal. If you close it down, the state is bankrupt. There are 50,000 jobs in the coal mining industry and this place is constantly and continuously advocating the closure of the coal industry. Now, if you had any brains or any energy to do proper work on the issue, you would know that the modern power station will be built where there is a lot of water and where they will have algae, which will grow on the CO2 in the ponded areas. Now, no less a person than Tanya Plibersek knew the names of all the algae and has actually done some very good research on it. It's very sad that she's been removed from those portfolios.

There are10 power stations which account for almost all the electricity in Australia and three of them have announced closure dates. I've asked again and again in this place: how are you going to stop the lights from going out? I mean, the sun? If you're talking about solar panels, the sun doesn't shine overnight. You've got a bit of a problem there, and there are no storage facilities in Australia. There's one pumped hydroelectricity station in the Snowy and that's it.

So when we come here today and talk about giving carbon credits to first Australians, remember this young lady who said she was in economic development and who I eventually found out was selling carbon credits, which means that the people of Doomadgee, the people of Pormpuraaw, will never, ever, ever be able to make a living. If you want to make a living then you have to go to the bank to borrow some money. If you don't own property, the banks won't give you any money.

One of the more important works of recent times was by Hernando de Soto, an economist with the World Bank. His cousin was head of the third-biggest mining company in the world, Rio. Hernando de Soto, in his book The Mystery of Capital, said the three poorest countries on Earth are Peru, the Philippines and Egypt. Why are they the three poorest countries on Earth? Because you can't get a title deed. You can't own property. If you can't own property, the banks won't loan you money. If the banks won't loan your money, you can't build a house, you can't open a business, you can't do anything. With no property rights, there is no money. If there is no money, there is no home, no farm and no economy. That is the fate of Peru, the Philippines and Egypt—and that is the fate that you have imposed upon the First Australians of this nation. Their life expectancy has fallen from 54 to 49. Whose fault is that? If there are high alcohol rates and other things, whose fault is that? The tooth fairy's or penguins from Antarctica's? It's your fault. You passed the laws that made it impossible for these people. So I come here and praise the people of Doomadgee—and, if you dare interfere, God help you. They're just doing what Australians did when they first came to Australia. They're taking up squatters' rights—'It's a big empty land and we're going to run cattle on it, and, if you don't like it, well, too bloody bad for you.'

The last speaker in this debate represents the coal industry, and he came in here justifying the closure of the coal industry in Australia. He's talking about motor cars that are electric. They come from China. The electricity comes from China through Chinese solar panels. Don't you like your own country? Do you want it to be an economic colony of China? That is what, of course, it is rapidly becoming—an economic colony of China.

Build a 3,000-megawatt power station, which is almost twice as big as the 10 biggest power stations in Australia. Build it at the headwaters of the Burdekin River, the third biggest river in Australia. We have got flat land going on forever and it's called the Desert Uplands. There's nothing growing there; it's a rain shadow. Just put it there and then have these algae ponds. I praise Minister Plibersek for her great work in this area, and it's very sad that she was removed from the portfolio. If you do that then you will have the cheapest electricity in the world. People have had $1,000 a year dumped on them in electricity charges. They've had an extra $1,000 a year dumped on them because we export all of our oil and import all of our petrol. What sorts of lunatic governments do we have in Australia? We export our oil for $8,000 million and we import our petrol for $62,000 million. Are we mad or something? Brazil is on 60 per cent ethanol and they were filling up for $1.70, the last time I looked. Ethanol was introduced in every country in the world because they needed oxygen to replace the lead that was taken out. It got a very poor burn, so there was a serious problem with particles getting into your lungs. The Premier of New South Wales, Morris Iemma, introduced ethanol because it's got oxygen, you get a much better burn and you don't have 9,000 people dying in the Greater Sydney area every year from lung disease that comes from motor vehicle emissions.

I plead with people in this place, particularly younger people: do your research; do your homework; know what you're talking about. You don't follow the latest pop ideology that's out there. It was overpopulation; now we're a dying race. Most of the European sorts of countries are all dying races. We're vanishing. When 20 Australians die, on present trends they'll only be replaced by 15 people.

Similarly, on the issue of energy, I don't hesitate to say I'm an expert in this field. I was the energy minister in Queensland. We had the cheapest electricity in the world. And I put in the first standalone solar system, not because I'm some pop ideology follower but because it was cheaper. In an isolated, remote situation like the Torres Strait, it was cheaper, and we didn't have the maintenance problems. So I know a hell of a lot about it. To put solar panels on your roof to get electricity in a city is absolute madness and a criminal irresponsibility. In a remote area, it is magic, but not in the cities. So where do you get your power from? The next power station should be built on the upper Burdekin River, the third-biggest river in Australia, on the Desert Uplands. There will be ponds that will absorb the CO2 and grow algae, which produces diesel fuel for you—renewable diesel fuel! Or it can produce pig feed, cattle feed—whatever feed that you want.

For those people that come in here and start preaching about ideology and saving and rescuing the nation, 30,000 square kilometres of my homeland has been taken over by prickly tree, and that's because there's no-one living there anymore. You destroyed the wool industry, and the cattle industry has never picked up, so it's just empty land. There's no-one looking after it. The blackfellas firestick farmed, but now there are no blackfellas there firestick farming, so you changed the ecology. The cassowary is doomed because you've banned shooters from going into the national parks. The pig numbers are exploding, and it'll be on my watch—I predict that within 16 years there'll be no cassowaries. So you've got 30,000 square kilometres of prickly trees destroying everything over there. You've got the Forty Mile Scrub, the most iconic national park in northern Australia, burnt to a cinder because there was no-one there to look after it. There are three cattle stations around it with not a single leaf burnt because there are people there looking after it. I own a 250,000-acre cattle station. When I and my neighbours had a fire, I had a dozer, my neighbour had a grader, and the other neighbour had a water tank on his truck, and I also had a water tank available. So, if we had a fire, we had a very formidable way of combating it. (Time expired)