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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I speak in favour of the Matter of Public Importance moved by Senator Dean Smith. This budget contains page after page of regulations and schemes designed to centrally manage the economy, and extra bureaucrats to make sure that happens. Missing from this budget is real infrastructure.

Queensland has lost Hells Gates Dam, despite a business case that clearly showed the dam would provide a return on investment. I thank the Senate for agreeing this afternoon to my document discovery, to bring that report to the public. Urannah Dam funding has been cancelled, a dam that would have grown Australia's high-value agriculture industry and made a substantial contribution to the government's own target of $100 billion of agricultural output at farm gate. The Hughenden Irrigation Project, a wonderful project in North Queensland, has been deferred despite the agricultural potential of the Flinders River black soil plains to bring prosperity to our north. Queensland deserves better than a Labor government that hates agriculture.

Energy is missing from this budget. Nature-dependent power currently receives $13 billion a year in renewable energy subsidies. If the number of nature-dependent power plants is to increase, to meet the 2030 target, then the allowance for the increase in subsidies should be shown in this budget. Yet it's not. Where is the base-load power generation? Nowhere. Blackouts, here we come.

In Wednesday's Financial Review the ABS announced that power prices in the September quarter rose 15.6 per cent or 60 per cent annualised. This is a catastrophe for struggling families and small businesses. How can any business have the confidence to invest when they see a basic business input blowing out, with no end in sight? This budget is an economic suicide note.

One Nation supports productive capacity, less red tape, creating wealth and a future for everyday Australians, who are the core of our nation.