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

I rise to take note of Minister Ayres's comment. One of the most fundamental parts of a senator 's job is to review and scrutinise the government. That's why I support almost every single order for the production of documents, regardless of who moves it. Most importantly, scrutinising the government means scrutinising how the government is spending money—and, by the way, scrutinising the impacts of government policy on the national economy and on individual Australians is part of scrutiny of government.

To build back on the first point, scrutinising how the government is spending our money: the government forgets that what it spends isn't the government's money; it's taxpayer money. Minister Walsh recently couldn't utter the word 'taxpayers'. I asked her what government money was. She said it is about revenues and that the policy was fully costed. She twisted and turned and gave me several other answers, but she could not utter the words 'taxpayers' money'. There is no such thing as government money. It is all taxpayer money. As taxpayers, we all pay taxpayer money. It is Australians' money.

Last week I spoke in the Senate about Minister Bowen taking subsidies, completely away from parliamentary scrutiny. It was a cosy little deal worth billions of dollars. I mentioned a potential deal with a fund taken over by Julia Gillard, the former Labor prime minister. I made no imputations. I'm just saying we need to have a look at that data. The government is hiding, hiding, hiding and stopping scrutiny, stopping us from doing our jobs, which is a theme for this government. Too often the government is willing to waste hard-earned tax dollars. The minister has just been hauled in front of the Senate to explain because the government refused to answer where they're spending taxpayer money. This is the second—we've just had discussions about Housing Australia—and the government has refused again. This secretive Labor government refuses to tell Australians where it's spending its taxpayer money. Why the secrecy? Why the hiding? It's not your money. It's the Australians' money. It's because you don't want Australians to know that you don't treat taxpayer money with respect.

Now we come to the second motion that Labor is trying to keep secret, on climate targets. There's a backstory here that shows how incoherent the Liberals and the Nationals are. The motion is from the Liberal-National coalition asking the government to hand over documents in relation to the Climate Change Authority and their targets. Australians hear all the time that the Liberals and the Nationals want to ditch net zero, yet here's a motion that the Liberal-National coalition pursues that's criticising the government for not putting out information on net zero targets. This is insane. It's almost as insane as the net zero pipedream.

While the Liberals and the Nationals spin their wheels and try to figure out which way the wind is blowing, One Nation is clear. On this motion, One Nation says to the government, we're not bothered about you handing over your net zero targets. We say, don't bother pursuing net zero at all. All of these billions of dollars amounting to trillions of dollars and efforts to keep things secret are a waste of time and money. Every minute you spend making climate targets, bogging businesses down in green and blue tape and hamstringing our productive capacity harms the country. Give it up, government, and start putting Australians first.

Remember that the Liberals and the Nationals introduced every major climate and energy policy, including net zero. You did it. That Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison introduced net zero after breaking his election promise to not pursue net zero. What about the government spending trillions on net zero without a detailed project plan—no milestones, no measures of progress, just leading Australia towards an economic cliff blindfolded. Worse, net zero is taking Australia to energy ruin without any policy basis. The CSIRO have never specified—and I've asked them repeatedly in personal sessions and in Senate estimates—the specific, quantified effect of human carbon dioxide on the climate. Without that, you can't have a policy. Thus there's no basis for policy cutting human carbon dioxide. That's why there's no way of measuring the progress of implementing climate and energy policies. That's why you've got to keep it secret. That's why you've got to hide it. I'll continue my remarks on this topic in the future.

Question agreed to.