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

I rise to speak to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023. One Nation is not inclined to support this legislation, but as usual we're going to try and make it better. I remind the Senate that this is why we are here—to improve legislation, not to rubber-stamp the green left political agenda. One Nation will be moving amendments to the bill. Our first amendment will attempt to put some substance behind the phrase 'Australia is the clever country'. This nation has produced world-leading scientists, engineers and inventors who have contributed a great deal to the body of human knowledge. But all too often clever Australians are forced to take their great ideas overseas to be commercialised and this intellectual property is lost to our nation. A recent example of this was a non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Queensland. It was refused a patent, and the TGA refused to approve it. Australia was left to import vaccines from overseas pharmaceutical companies.

A more famous example is the invention of wi-fi. The alliance which owns the trademark is not based in Australia but in the United States. While the CSIRO was eventually compensated to some extent, those making real profits from this piece of Australian technology are foreign companies like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Intel and Sony.

The government says this bill will make it easier for industry to commercialise innovation and technology, supporting the development of our national sovereign capabilities. One Nation's amendment seeks to absolutely guarantee this by ensuring that the commercialisation of Australian intellectual property, for the benefit of Australia, is included within the investment parameters of the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, within the definition of 'constitutionally-supported activities'. A subsequent amendment will also loosen up the risk management guideline.

Innovation, ideas and extracting some reward from their success often require taking risks. Clever Australians often risk a great deal of their own money and reputation to bring their ideas to commercial realisation. At the very least the government should help them shoulder some of the risk if there's a good chance their innovation can benefit the Australian people.

One of these inventions was brought to my attention in about 2017 or 2018. A lot of Australians would be shocked to know that both the Liberal and Labor governments—and I personally spoke to two former Liberal MPs and PM Anthony Albanese—canned an asbestos eradication plant that I brought to them in 2017. The coalition government put aside $80 million in the budget. This went through a process. After going before six ministers, who dragged their knuckles, nothing happened with regard to this. It would have been the first plant in the world that would have dealt with 100 tonnes per day of deadly asbestos fibres, instead of burying them. Instead, every state and territory is leaving a deadly legacy for future generations to deal with. With a few minor changes the same plant could also deal with low-grade nuclear—that's, hospital waste—and solar panels. We have not discussed how hundreds of millions of panels are going to be dealt with, other than burying them, which has the potential to poison our waterways.

This is what they've turned their back on. They talk about innovation and the Reconstruction Fund, yet no-one was interested in taking up this technology, which would have actually got rid of asbestos, nuclear waste and solar panels. You're all pushing for solar panels, but no-one has told me how you intend to get rid of the solar panels, apart from burying them in the ground. You've lost this opportunity. It's still there, if you've got the determination to do something about it. But our Prime Minister wasn't interested.

Our second amendment once again seeks to ensure that it is Australians who benefit from the extraction of our natural resources. This is because Labor has once again caved in to the green Left extremists and ruled out investment in gas and coal projects by corporations, despite Australia's desperate shortage of affordable and reliable energy. This is despite Labor's promise to reduce household energy bills by $275 a year—a promise they obviously never intended to keep.

Our amendment will ensure that the ban placed on the corporation investing in the construction of pipeline infrastructure for the extraction of natural gas will not limit investment in pipelines for the transport of natural gas to Australian households and businesses. Australia has some of the largest reserves of natural gas in the world, yet we receive very little in return for their exploitation by mostly foreign-owned multinationals, which pay little to no tax in Australia. This is another issue I have raised with the former coalition and Prime Minister Albanese.

We in Australia export $91 billion worth of gas, and 93 per cent comes from the North West Shelf and seven per cent from the east coast of Australia. Of that $77 billion off the North West Shelf we get about $300 million in taxes because the Labor Party thought it was a great idea to increase the PRRT. On an investment they have a 15 per cent uplift factor. If they put $100 million a year in exploration, they get $115 million in tax credits, which accumulates every year. So your big companies—Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell—have accumulated about $400 billion worth of tax credits, so we're not getting anything out of the North West Shelf.

All these resources belong to the Australian people, and you're not chasing that. You're chasing your tail. You want to get rid of personal tax cuts for Australians, which they need and highly deserve, but you're not prepared to go after the multinationals, get rid of the PRRT and make them pay for the resources that belong to all Australians.

You allowed the Western Australian government to do another 25-year deal so that they get their gas at cost price. Premier McGowan has said: 'It's our gas. We're not going to send pipelines to the east coast to supply the rest of Australia.' That is what is actually happening. Yet nothing is done about it. No-one is interested. That gas does not belong to the Western Australian people. It is in our Australian waters and it belongs to every Australian.

We heard both the former prime minister and the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, say, 'We're going to get multinationals to pay their fair share of tax.' I'm yet to see any of this. I'd like to see where this bill is going to go. If you're going to give handouts, is it going to be to multinational companies again, who don't pay their fair share of tax in Australia? That in itself is going to be very interesting too.

These things are very important to me. One Nation will continue to advocate for a transcontinental pipeline to bring gas from the North West Shelf to eastern Australia. It has to happen. If you don't do that, then we must transport it by ship, which would probably be a lot easier and cheaper than putting the pipeline in, but we have to look at it. We have a couple of hundred years, if not more, of gas that we can use to drive this nation and give cheap power to the Australian people.

It's an inescapable fact that, as more unreliable and costly renewables come online, more gas is needed to firm this intermittent supply. Green Left extremists either don't understand this or deliberately refuse to acknowledge it. One Nation will continue to advocate for our energy resources to benefit Australia and Australians first. We seek tax reform that ensures Australians get a fair return for our natural resources, as I stated. This government is going to need a way to meet the $368 billion cost for AUKUS. Properly taxing foreign-owned multinationals would be an excellent place to start.

I have a concern about this National Reconstruction Fund. If it's going to be set up by the minister and they are hand-picking who is on the board, who is going on the board? Is it going to be unionists? Are they going to say to the government which firms are going to be able to get funding? Will it be union dominated, meaning that they have to have union workers? These things need to be answered. And if that is the case—if union members are going to go on the board—then why? What right do they have to be on the board? It should be experienced people in the business world, not unions, involved in this. Those questions need to be asked.

I was listening to a Greens' senator yesterday—Shoebridge. He said that we're destroying native forests at a greater rate than human CO2. Actually, no, Senator Shoebridge. All your wind farms are destroying them. Go up to North Queensland on the tablelands and have a look at the hundreds of thousands of acres that you've put under wind farms. You've destroyed natural habitat. You've destroyed the flora and fauna. You are destroying them with your wind farms, which are killing birds and animals—killing flora and fauna. And there are acres and acres of them. There's the size of these wind turbines, which come from China—China, mind you!—and your solar panels, which are mostly out of China. There's 800 tonnes of cement in the base of one of these wind turbines. Again, how is that beneficial to the environment? Are we going to put the moneys from the fund into putting more of these into the country?

We can't run this country on just wind and solar. That is so stupid, to head down that path. It's not going to happen. We haven't got the batteries to store the power. So you're heading down a pathway that is going to destroy our economy, our jobs, our industries and our manufacturing—let alone putting people in a situation in their households where they will not be able to turn on their power for heating, for warmth. But no—listen to the Greens!

Senator Hanson-Young says: 'Scrap fossil fuel subsidies.' Well, then, let's scrap the billions in subsidies to renewable energy. What's the difference? Wind farms are destroying the environment—the wildlife, birds, flora and fauna. Solar panels do not and will not alter climate change and will not deliver the cheap, reliable power that we need.

The Greens are scaremongering with the term 'pollution' as to CO2. It's just ridiculous. It's a gas that is necessary, vital, for all life on this planet to exist. If you're going to scaremonger and tell us that we need to get rid of it, that is absolutely ridiculous. Ninety-seven per cent of CO2 is from natural sources—basically, the oceans, and 70 per cent of this earth is covered by oceans. So why the hell would we tax people or companies and businesses, or tell people to turn off their power? Even Tim Flannery said that if you turned it off and got rid of the CO2, it would never change a damn thing—never alter the earth's temperature at all. All this scaremongering that's going on is purely to get the vote or confuse kids in our education system who don't know what they're doing.

Europe has learnt from this. They got rid of their coal-fired power stations and shut down their gas, and now they understand that people are dying because they can't warm their houses and that their industries are going. Now they've turned around and they're opening up coalmines and building power stations.

And it's not only that. It's the hypocrisy from the Greens again. Where's your complaint about China? Where's your complaint about China's emissions of 30 per cent? You never mention that. You never mention shutting down the imports that we get from them, from all their emissions—not one word! No-one speaks about China or India. India won't change it till 2070 and China not till 2060. So what a bunch of hypocrites in this place! And you actually want to destroy our economy. You want to shut down people's livelihoods and our standard of living in this country. It's an absolute disgrace! I wish that you would actually talk with some truth instead of the scaremongering that goes on all the time in this chamber, purely to get the vote. And that is not what we are about. You want to talk about future generations. There is no computer modelling, no proof, to say that you know that temperature is going to rise by 1½ to two degrees in a hundred years time. What a joke!