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

Well, the policies are the same, so they might as well merge! Good policies need to be built on solid data. There is nowhere in the world that has justified the economic lunacy and suicide of the Greens on climate. I've challenged Senator Larissa Waters three times and she's run three times. I challenged Senator Di Natale once two days ago and he still hasn't provided a single source. There is no-one who can—not in CSIRO, not in the Bureau of Meteorology, not in the UN, not anywhere. I challenged the head of NASA, Gavin Schmidt, and he had to admit an error to me. There is no evidence anywhere. I challenge people again: you're wrecking our country based upon UN policies that are nonsense. They are crap. You have not presented any evidence to this parliament. Senator Macdonald used to sit over there. In late December 2016 he stood up and he looked across at me and said, 'I don't always agree with Senator Roberts, but I must give him credit for starting the debate on climate science that this parliament has never had.' True words. We've never debated climate science. I invite anyone to have a formal debate on the climate science.

We must get back to building policies on solid data—not political opinion, not spin, not headline grabbing, not political partisanship, not corruption but hard, objective data. Secondly, we must restore our Constitution that is being bypassed. We're taking duties and responsibilities off the states and we need, as former Liberal Premier of WA Richard Court said, to get back to rebuilding the Federation. The title of his work is Rebuilding the Federation. It was published in 1994. I recommend it to everyone. It's a very simple, short book but fundamental.

Thirdly, we must have comprehensive tax reform to tax multinationals and free up mobility of capital. Let's make sure that it becomes fair. We need to get back to the basics. I agree on this point: we need to bring forward the income tax cuts. If they're so good, as the Liberal Party said just a couple of months ago, let's bring them forward and get the benefit now in the productive capacity of our country. Then we have the last point in Senator Gallagher's position here: implementing increases to Newstart. What about pensions? It's one of One Nation's policies to improve significantly the age pension and other similar pensions.

I look at this country and I look at the people resources—resourceful, creative, innovative and entrepreneurial. We have a history of punching above our weight. I look at our people. I've managed them as coalminers. I've worked with them as farmers. They are being choked, they are being suffocated, by the federal government. I look at the resources in this country from soil to water to minerals to energy. We are now the largest energy exporter in the world, with the No. 1 position in gas and the No. 1 position in the export seaborne trade of coal—and yet we have high energy costs. How? How can that happen? We have enormous opportunity. We have enormous potential.

The water in the north and the water in the east of the Clarence River up the tributary can be used productively for greening the west. The Greens—the lunatic Greens—call for not building dams. Yet, if we provided water to the west, we would be able to cover the whole of western Queensland and New South Wales in green vegetation. They believe that we need to absorb carbon dioxide; I don't, because we can't control the level. But if they believe that sincerely then they should support the greening of western New South Wales and western Queensland by building dams to send the water to the west.

We have great people, the world's best. We have resources amongst the world's best. We have opportunity and potential. But we have wombats running the joint. That's the problem. Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens are putting people down. It is an insult to look at what we're doing to our energy sector, the most vital sector we have in this country. Then the Liberal Party accelerates it all, seeking preferences. This country has the best people and resources in the world, and we have the lousiest leaders in the world. That is clear.

We're killing agriculture, choking mining and killing manufacturing. China is our biggest trading partner. China is taking our iron ore, our coal—and coal is Queensland's No. 1 export—and our gas. After these are gone, what will we have? We have to develop the productive capacity of our country. We have to invest wisely—not to get Liberal and Labor headlines—but to invest in our peoples' future. The core choice of any sane, sensible federal government must be to invest in the productive capacity for the long-term future of our country. I don't see anyone in Labor or Liberal attending to this, because they're held back by the Greens. It's time to stop looking after the Greens and to come back to integrity and start looking after the people of Australia by investing in the productive capacity of our country.