Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on this urgency motion today about the need for a comprehensive investigation into the political and financial relationships between the Albanese Labor government, industry funds, super funds and unions, and their impact on government policy, specifically regarding net zero targets and wind and solar energy. There is nothing that encapsulates the long march of the left more than the takeover of private industry by superannuation funds, because let me tell you that superannuation is communism.

I've got to be honest here. It's not often I'd say this, but I think the other side of the chamber sometimes has a better understanding of capital than this side of the chamber does. I'm in this party because I believe in capitalism. I believe in people who'll risk their own capital. I don't believe in free markets. I believe in the risk-reward paradigm. I'm in very good company when I say that, because no lesser person than Sir Robert Menzies himself said in the last paragraph of the 'forgotten people' speech, 'We should not go back to the old and selfish notions of laissez faire … there will be … more control, not less.' I want you to think about and ponder that. There will be more control, not less of it. The reason Robert Menzies was so on the mark was that he foresaw the future. He knew that we are always at the threat of the communists and the Marxists who are always trying to override our personal responsibilities. There is nothing that overrides our personal responsibility more than taking 12 per cent of a worker's wage and giving it to someone they've never met—and they may or may not get it back when they're 67. That's not capitalism; that is communism.

The big mistake that we made in the eighties was to sign up with Hawke and Keating. This is where I come back to understanding capital. You see, they understood, back in the eighties, what they were doing when they introduced compulsory superannuation, because they knew that if you control capital, you control industry. Today superannuation controls over $3 trillion in capital. Do you want to know why they supported the 'yes' vote in the Voice referendum? Because they control the capital. Do you want to know why they're mandating renewable energy targets? Because they control the capital.

What we've got are industry super funds that work together to combine their votes, with one proxy voter at an AGM. They control over 20 per cent of the vote at major blue-chip companies. Add to that another 10 per cent of retail funds, which are often controlled through BlackRock and Vanguard. BlackRock is run by a bloke by the name of Larry Fink, a well-known leftie. You've now got capital controlled by the Left.

That is not what a true protectionist believes in. A true protectionist believes in empowering families and individuals. That is what true protectionism is. There is no better way to protect the family and the individual than to let the worker keep their wages, because they know better than anyone how to spend their own money. If they're not looking after their money—and that's what true capitalism is, when the person who earns the money looks after it—you're giving it to these unaccountable authorities, whether it's the government and their taxation, the bureaucrats and the way they spend money or the superannuation funds who pull out a lazy $30 billion a year in fees just to shuffle paper and gamble with your earnings; it's also corporate executives, I might add.

One of the things we have to realise is that large corporations are not capitalists. If I had a dollar for every time some CEO drove a company into the ground and then got paid a golden handshake on his way out! That is not capitalism; that is crony capitalism or socialism. Small to medium business, when it's being run by the people who actually own the capital and control the capital, is true capitalism.

What we've got now is the result of 40 years of a neoliberal takeover, whereby the individuals and the families have had their rights destroyed. We have these lunatic policies like renewables based off shoddy models that at the estimates hearing this morning even the head of the CSIRO couldn't explain. He couldn't explain or didn't even know what assumption were used in that GenCost report. This is the problem. We are being controlled by people who take no risk. They basically put the risk onto the individual and families. That is why I've always believed a true politician should be fighting for the rights of the individual and families, not smarmy superannuation funds and their crazy ideologies.