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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to summarise this bill by borrowing a phrase from Senator Whish-Wilson, who uttered it, I think, a couple of years ago. I don't normally see his phrases containing accuracy but this one is accurate: 'This bill is like a dog revisiting its own vomit.' The Treasury Laws Amendment (Prohibiting Energy Market Misconduct) Bill 2019 should really be the government's 'we failed' bill. It is proof of failed governance and it vindicates all that we've been saying about energy and climate for the last three years yet the government touts it as a big stick to protect users. That is a lie. It is another Liberal-Nationals facade. Energy prices are ridiculous, and it's of the government's own making. When large companies, as we see today, need help and are crying out for help, it's really saying something. Aluminium smelters were built in the states of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia because of our cheap coal-fired electricity. They have shut, and now more are shutting. Large industries are crying out for relief. Food processors and fodder growers are crying out for relief from electricity bills. Families are crying out for relief from electricity bills.

Before getting into the detail, I want to talk about the primacy of energy. Since the Industrial Revolution, which started around 1850, we have seen a relentless decrease in real prices of energy. That has driven the material development of Western civilisation, and now civilisation around the world. When energy becomes cheaper, productivity increases. When productivity increases, wealth increases. When wealth increases, we have much more ability to do the things that people want and need us to do. And the environment improves. It is a well-known fact that high productivity leads to wealth, which leads to improved environmental outcomes.

I also want to talk about the market we had in this country, under what is known as competitive federalism in our Constitution. It meant that, if any one state was sloppy on its electricity prices, raised electricity prices or didn't deliver reliability, then businesses and families moved to other states. We've seen that in South Australia recently; we've seen businesses leaving South Australia. But we haven't seen South Australia wake up. We've seen the Greens driving South Australia downhill, with the Labor Party—especially in the form of Jay Weatherill—piling on, and the Liberal Party, Senator Bernardi and the Centre Alliance all piling on. Why? Because South Australia has been bailed out by the other states, especially Western Australia. It's no longer competitive federalism in this country; it is competitive welfare-ism. Now we have Victoria following South Australia's lead. We have Queensland, under the Palaszczuk government, threatening to follow South Australia's lead. It's a mess. Employers have bailed on South Australia. And now employers—you watch!—will bail on Victoria in the near future. So that means companies are now looking to go overseas, and they well need to, because that's where they're getting competitive energy prices. Brickworks, a major Australian company, is talking about moving to America. And it's not the only one; others are talking about it.

Let's go through the government's glossy brochure on this bill—the 'we failed' bill. It talks about retail pricing prohibition, which, it says:

… requires retailers to pass on 'sustained and substantial' reductions in costs to consumers.

That means the market has failed. Secondly, it talks about 'contract liquidity prohibition', which, it says:

… penalises generators that withhold electricity contracts for the purpose of substantially lessening market competition.

That means it's not a market; it is a racket. The government talks about 'wholesale prohibition', which, it says:

… bans generators from manipulating the spot market, for example by withholding supply to inflate prices.

That means the market has failed. On and on and on it goes. Watch them get around all these civil penalties. Then the government talks about contracting orders. It says:

… if recommended by the ACCC, the Treasurer can require a generator to offer contracts to third parties for up to three years.

The market has failed. Divestiture orders are another gamble from the government. It says:

… if recommended by the ACCC, the Treasurer can apply to the Federal Court to force a company to sell an asset or assets to an unrelated third party.

What happened to free enterprise? The Liberal and National parties have become bastions of socialism and of governments allocating the means and resources of production. This is a question from the government:

Did you know: The ACCC found retail margins more then doubled between 2007–08 and 2017–18.

In one decade, retail margins doubled, under the Liberal-Labor-National policies over the last 15 or 20 years, starting primarily with John Howard's Liberal-National government. The government says:

The ACCC has the power to obtain information from retailers about their costs, including the cost of:

…   …   …

• complying with green schemes (environmental costs).

That sounds like the Murray-Darling Basin again. And then the government says, 'The ACCC will choose the most appropriate remedy for the size of the wrongdoing.' More bureaucracy, more socialism! Then we read here that the government says:

Where a company—known as a gentailer—

there's a new term, a gentailer—

owns both generation and retail services, it might be tempted to withhold contracts to drive up prices or gain an advantage in the retail market.

Socialism has failed. The legislation penalises generators that refuse to offer electricity contracts for the purpose of substantially lessening competition. Regulations caused this. The government goes on to say:

There are good reasons why a generator may not enter into contracts with rival retailers. For example—

hello, listen to this one!—

intermittent generators like wind farms—

and solar—

are unable to sell supply contracts because they can't be certain they can produce the generation when it is needed. This kind of behaviour is not prohibited.

But it is common sense. We told them this would happen with solar and wind.

And then the government talks about prohibited conduct on the electricity spot market, basic and aggravated cases. I will get onto the aggravated case later. For basic cases, it says:

A corporation contravenes this section if:

(a) the corporation:

  (i) bids or offers to supply electricity in relation to an electricity spot market; or

  (ii) fails to bid or offer to supply electricity in relation to an electricity spot market; and

(b) the corporation does so:

  (i) fraudulently, dishonestly or in bad faith; or

  (ii) for the purpose of distorting or manipulating prices in that electricity spot market.

This is the Liberal-Nationals-Labor-Greens market for electricity in this country—destroying farmers, destroying industry, destroying exports. Let us go on, though, because this is an essential service that has failed under this Liberal-Labor duopoly governance. We go onto section 153H—big, capital letters!—'PROHIBITED CONDUCT—ELECTRICITY SPOT MARKET (AGGRAVATED CASE)':

A corporation contravenes this section if:

(a) the corporation:

  (i) bids or offers to supply electricity in relation to an electricity spot market; or

  (ii) fails to bid or offer to supply electricity in relation to an electricity spot market; and

(b) the corporation does so fraudulently, dishonestly or in bad faith, for the purpose of distorting or manipulating prices in that electricity spot market.

This is the supposed market that the Liberals, Labor, the Nationals and the Greens have concocted over the last 15 to 20 years. It is not a market; it is a bureaucratic racket. It is socialism that has failed. Then we see that, if you get two basic cases, they become an aggravated case. Again, market failing! This is the Liberal-Labor government admitting failure.

The dreamers in the Labor Party still will not own up. At least the Liberal Party—although it did not know it—has owned up. They have created this mess. And we see the Queensland Labor government. Listen to this; this is coming from the Liberal-National government:

To prevent forced privatisation, government-owned businesses will be provided the opportunity to divest to another business owned by the same government that is considered to be in genuine competition with the business.

Annastacia Palaszczuk's government owns the generators in Queensland. There is no competition. She had competition before, because she competed with New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. Now it is gone. There is no competition. The Labor Party in Queensland milks the taxpayers in Queensland for all they are worth—or, rather, the electricity users and businesses in Queensland for $1.4 billion going to $1.6 billion a year.

This happens because policy on energy is based on a lie. That leads to a bigger scam, which is the energy scam, the energy racket. Mr Angus Taylor knows this. He knows from his farming business what is going on in this country. We need to bring back competitive federalism. Socialism has failed. You created this mess with regulation. Now you're trying to fix it with regulation—more regulation and more complex and onerous regulations. That adds more cost and it employs more bureaucrats and more lawyers. It's more socialism, government control and allocation of the means of production. It could be Lenin leading you lot. We told them that solar and wind are not sustainable and not economic. They added subsidies that Australians are paying for with their jobs, not just their wallets. We told them solar and wind are not reliable. They ignored us. Now they claim that this will ensure solar and wind generators that are not reliable will be hit with a reliability penalty and that will add to prices. What is going on in this country?

I could talk about Kilcoy where governments are subsidising the proposed installation of the largest solar panel in the Southern Hemisphere, destroying 10 kilometres of a mountain range and destroying the productive capacity of productive farmland—valuable farmland—raising electricity prices and killing industries. And they're subsidising the Chinese to do it, because the Chinese will be building this solar industrial complex. When the Japanese bombed Darwin, Prime Minister John Curtin, a Labor leader, did not send them a cheque saying, 'You'll need to pay for the bombs,' but that's what we're doing with the Chinese. We're paying for them to destroy our energy. Meanwhile, they'll take our coal and build cheap wind turbines and cheap solar panels with it, and then we'll pay them subsidies to install them and run them. What is going on?

Minister Taylor knows that farmers lost their property rights to the Howard Liberal-Nationals government working with the Borbidge National Party government in 1996, and in 1998 the Beattie Labor government in Queensland and the Carr Labor government in New South Wales. Minister Taylor has firsthand experience of the damage to farming and the pain to farmers. Liberal and National party MPs know that climate change is crap and rubbish. It is really climate variability that is just going through cycles, yet this lie has been perpetuated. This afternoon we heard Senator McKenzie telling us that the Nats are committed to pushing this—committed to climate action. The sad thing is they are, and it's destroying us. Look at them hanging their heads in shame.

The Liberals say they're working on climate change, while they're trying to do as little as possible, yet still people pay the high prices. Industry pays the price. Families pay with unemployment. Farmers pay by going out of business. Labor senators say they're working on it, yet people smashed them for it five months ago. The root cause is that energy policy under the Liberals, Labor and the Nats has followed the Greens, implementing the UN's agenda now known as the 2030 Agenda—previously known as Agenda 21. Senator Pauline Hanson has rightly been calling it out for 23 years. It's an agenda for central global governance, as UN bureaucrats have admitted many times. In 2004, it was written into Greens policy and written into the policy agenda of the ALP. The Liberal-Nats pushed it. Ask Senator Robert Hill, who drove it. Queensland LNP has successfully passed several motions, I believe—certainly two; maybe three—banning their federal MPs from enacting Agenda 21. They passed that in 2013 and 2015. Does the name Smeed mean anything to you? Does the name 'Noosa branch' mean anything to you? Does the name 'Wide Bay branch' mean anything to you? They drove this right through the state.

Have a look at the Greens' policies today aimed at 2030 to comply with the UN's agenda. The UN's agenda is unelected global socialist governance. The Liberal-Nats are socialists hell-bent on regulating everything centrally and ultimately in accord with UN treaties, protocols, agendas, agreements and declarations—like the 1972 UN Lima Declaration that Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam signed in 1975 and Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser ratified the following year; like the 1992 Rio declaration, which gave birth to UN Agenda 21, now known as 2030; like the 1996 UN Kyoto protocol that drove John Howard's Liberal-National government to steal farmers' property rights, against the Constitution, with no compensation; like the 2015 UN Paris Agreement that President Donald Trump has just pulled America out of. We ask you again: pull Australia out of the Paris Agreement. It continues, as does the control of property, the control of energy and the control of water. The UN admits it. Under water, for example, UNEA, which stands for United Nations Environment Assembly, says of itself:

In May, countries will meet in Nairobi for UNEA 2—the world's de facto "Parliament for the Environment"—

not my words, UN words—

to discuss how the United Nations Environment Programme can deliver on the environmental dimension of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Those are not my words; they are the UN's words. And they claim credit, in the article, for installing water trading in Australia to control water quantities and prices. Look it up. The article from UNEA is entitled 'Development of water trading in Australia'. They take the credit for it because it's all based on a lie—the UN's climate lie, which is embedded at the heart of Liberal, Labor, Greens and Nationals policies, which are based on UN dictates and lies. The Greens are leading the charge as the UN's useful idiots, despite wrecking our nation and hurting our people.

There's an underlying philosophical problem. The UN-Greens goal is to keep nature as it is, untouched. Our goal is human happiness. Animals affect the environment. Humans are no different. Yet we are the only species that has the ability to know when it is hurting the environment and the only species with the intelligence and the care to minimise our impact. The Greens say we must choose between the environment and civilisation. According to the Greens and the UN, they're mutually exclusive, and they're brainwashing the kids to choose one or the other. We say that is nonsense. We say the environment and civilisation both need each other. They're mutually dependent. The future of civilisation depends on protecting the environment today. The future of the environment depends upon making sure we have a civilisation that is healthy. The UN-Greens approach is antihuman. Our approach is prohuman. We are happy when people are happy.

We've seen that regulation begets regulation—just bandaids on bandaids on bandaids. That adds cost. Canberra's workforce is growing. It is the wealthiest town, with the highest growth, in Australia—lawyers, bureaucrats. That's not productive capacity. It is destroying productive capacity. While Canberra grows, the rest of the country is putting up shutters. Just go anywhere in the bush. Our productive capacity is being destroyed, smashed, killed. So I grit my teeth. This situation is almost hopeless. Yet most MPs don't even see the problem. I grit my teeth because we must support this legislation to close the exploitation that Liberal and Labor have designed into their duopoly's energy policies. The real and honest solution, Mr Taylor, is to tell the truth on climate and to get back to policy based on solid data and facts. Let the cheapest generator prevail, on a level playing field.

I want to commend Craig Kelly, who questions the Bureau of Meteorology for its lies on climate, its distortions, and who is working diligently to turn the ship around. I want to compliment Senator Rennick for questioning the Bureau of Meteorology. And I want to acknowledge Maurice Newman, former international banker and head of the Australian Stock Exchange, who has said the same and exposed the UN's desire for control openly and publicly. Energy primacy, water privacy, property rights primacy—we will restore the productive capacity of our beautiful country.