Senate debates

Monday, 19 June 2017

Matters of Public Importance

Energy

5:03 pm

Photo of Malcolm RobertsMalcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I rise to speak to the matter of public importance proposed by Senator Hanson. Look at the crocodile tears flowing in this chamber! There is only one party that is the party of cheap energy, and that is Pauline Hanson's One Nation. Currently, Australian consumers actually pay around 60 per cent more for our own gas than Japanese customers do in Japan. This is doubly difficult to understand, as, in order to be exported, Australian gas first has to be liquefied; that should increase the price by around 25 per cent. It is fine to hear Senator Xenophon, the Liberal Party and the Labor Party, and the Greens especially, talking about energy prices, but they caused this.

Coming back to gas, just like runaway power costs, Australian working families are being ripped off with sky-high gas prices, due to overregulation forcing a decrease in supply and an increase in prices. Regulation also decreases competition, which leads to overcharging by a cartel of Santos, Origin and BHP. With less regulation, though, customers would pay less and companies would earn more. Further costs are being added by the quasi-monopoly control of gas transmission pipelines, mainly by the APA Group, which, from looking at a map, controls around 95 per cent of the gas pipelines in this country. Their return on equity for some pipelines is as high as 159 per cent—enabled by government regulation. No wonder they call Australia 'treasure island'. Why does this situation occur? Maybe it is because instead of tax, gas cartel members pay political donations to the major parties, as Senator Hanson itemised.

We need to remove restrictions on supply and demand. That would encourage efficiency. As Senator Hanson has said, we clearly need to allow companies to build gas import terminals, including revaporising plants, on the east coast, to allow us to transport our own gas around the continent and then return it to domestic consumption. Transport costs from Western Australia to the east coast would be around 70c per gigajoule, and revaporising costs would be around 75c per gigajoule. This would allow us to import gas which is currently selling for less than $4 a gigajoule, in comparison to the Sydney spot price now of $10.

The impact on our economy and living standards of runaway gas prices cannot be overstated. On top of the spiralling electricity prices created by the obsession with expensive, unreliable, intermittent wind and solar power, the current failed policies of the government, the opposition, the Greens and the Xenophon party must be changed as a matter of urgency before our economic growth grinds to a halt. Only One Nation is the party of cheap energy—Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party.

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