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

I rise to speak to my Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Domestic Reserve) Bill 2026. With this legislation I deliver on my commitment to ensure the Australian people benefit from the national energy and mineral resources they own.

I have been fighting for this for many years. Australia has tremendous reserves of natural energy resources, which are some of the largest in the world, yet we face energy shortages, driving up our energy prices to among the highest in the world. This makes no sense. This natural wealth, which should make every Australian rich, has been squandered by successive Labor and coalition governments over decades, allowing other countries to use our continent as a cheap dirt mine. It is fundamentally wrong any way you look at it. It is a betrayal of the Australian people, it is incredibly damaging to our economy and it makes us an international laughing stock.

I can only imagine what Norwegians think of Australia's approach. They are laughing all the way to the bank. Norway's sovereign wealth fund, built on revenue from the country's oil deposits in the North Sea, is now valued at over $2.17 trillion. That's almost $400,000 per Norwegian. It's easily twice as much as most Australians' superannuation balances, although that's probably an unfair comparison because our super comes from our individual earnings and Norwegians contribute nothing personally. All that wealth comes from their natural resources and governments which have wisely invested in them. When I think about the wealth Australia could have generated from natural resources, which dwarf Norway's, I get very angry.

This criminal waste of our natural wealth is an outrage. It's why I introduced my Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Benefit to Australia) Bill in 2022, hoping to generate more revenue for the nation from the exportation of our resources. The main parties voted against it, faithfully serving their pay masters in the resources sector and continuing the betrayal of the Australian people.

There has been one small step in the right direction recently, and it is something for which I lobbied the past three prime ministers. On my first meeting with the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, I pleaded with him with regard to the PRRT in relation to the North West Shelf, and then he proposed changes to the petroleum resource rent tax that are forecast to increase revenue by about $2.4 million. That was delivered in the budget of 2023. Originally all we were getting was about $200 million to $300 million a year, but I lobbied the prime ministers. I even lobbied the Morrison government over this. It is something I have been passionate about. The PRRT was reduced from 100 per cent to 90 per cent. That's why we are starting to get some money on it.

Australia has some of the largest reserves of natural gas on the planet, and we're the world biggest exporter of it. About 93 per cent of these reserves are in Commonwealth waters concentrated in the North West Shelf of Western Australia. The majority of it is exported to Asian markets, so much in fact that Asian countries' customers pay less for our gas than Australians do. How can that be? Here we are exporting our gas, and now we are going to have to import our own gas to supply our needs in Australia. How stupid are we? How ridiculous is it to actually do that in the cost-of-living crisis that we have? A small amount is kept in the west thanks to the policy of the Western Australian government to ensure 15 per cent domestic gas supply is processed in the state and kept in the domestic reserve. This has been done for decades. They were smart enough to do it. But what annoys me is that that gas is in Commonwealth waters. That gas should be 15 per cent domestic gas supplied to all Australians, with not just those in Western Australia getting the cheaper gas.

That's why I have proposed a bill for a pipeline from Western Australia to the east coast so we can bring the gas across so all Australians can use it. My bill also proposes that the 15 per cent domestic gas supply should be on the east coast as well. Wherever we actually utilise our gas, even by foreign investors, it must give us a 15 per cent domestic gas supply here in Australia.

My bill will amend section 95 of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 and include references to a condition that petroleum and gas producers must enter into a domestic reserve agreement with the Commonwealth. The substantial amendment is to introduce a new section, 162A. This new section provides that licences will have 12 months to enter into a domestic reserve agreement. If the licence was generated before then, that licensee will still have 12 months to enter an agreement from the day the licence is granted if this happens after 1 January next year. For each year the agreement or licence operates, the licensee must reserve an amount of petroleum or gas equivalent to 15 per cent of the amount exported by the licensee the previous year. Such agreements must operate for a minimum of 10 years. If the first contract expires but the production licence is still enforced, licensees will be required to enter a new agreement.

A lot of you will vote against this. I have no doubt the Greens and Labor will vote against this. I know your attitude. Because One Nation puts up these bills, you won't support them. You don't care about the Australian people. You're not economic managers of this country. You have no idea how to utilise our resources here. You're running this country into a hell of a debt that future generations won't be able to pay down. You're overspending money. You can't control the credit card. You keep handing it over. We're going higher and higher in the debt—more interest that we are paying a year in paying off our debt. And we will not be able to provide these services that future Australians will need with an ageing population, with nursing homes, hospitals, schools, roads, infrastructure, bridges—all this that needs to be done. And we won't be able to do it because you're so—what can I say? Your attitude towards this is unbelievable, and you do not care about the Australian people that are struggling out there.

What I am saying here is the Australian people are struggling. Their energy costs are going through the roof. People are losing their homes because they can't pay their mortgages due to rising costs, and this all comes down to energy, like I explained. Norway has a tremendous wealth fund gained from their resources. We have been so stupid in this country. We haven't done it. We've had governments and members of parliament who have never had long-term vision as our politicians did a century ago. They're here just for your term, and all they want to do is make sure that they make the right decisions to win their seats back again. But they're all making the right long-term decisions for this nation, and it is a shame, because it is the Australian people who are missing out.

This is a great opportunity that we have to actually recover from our resources some money that we can put to good use. We're struggling with hospitals in rural and regional areas. Hospitals are closing down—schools and infrastructure. The roads are an absolute mess. There's so much waste of government money, and you're scratching around and you're bringing in a productivity commissioner who's talking about a heritage tax. That's a death duty on tax. That's what you're going to consider, whether this budget or the one after—increase taxes. Forget about getting wealth from our resources that other countries pay us—let's hit the Australian people again with another tax, whether it is capital gains tax, let's look at superannuation, let's tax them more on their superannuation, let's look at an inheritance tax or let's look at a death duties tax. All this government can see is tax, tax, tax, more regulation, more red tape, shutting down the farming sector, shutting down business, industries, manufacturing—we've had over 1,400 industries manufacturing shut down under this government and 40,000 small businesses shut down insolvent under this government. Forty-five per cent of businesses are struggling to pay their power bills because of climate change. That is right. Let's, in fear, along with the Greens, climate change—it is all coming to an end, so we actually have to put in all this generation of power of Snowy 2.0. From $2 billion now to $20 billion once the transmission lines—$40 billion Snowy 2.0 is going to cost us with not one extra kilowatt of power delivered. Then all your transmission lines are going through farming sector, which they don't want, so you are destroying the farming land out there. You've destroyed how many millions of hectares of prime agricultural farming land to put your solar panels on that are destroying the land. Where are they going to go? into the ground. Your wind turbines that you destroy land to put up—all this is coming from China. We're just seeing the dollars flow out of this country, going to China to provide these wind turbines and the solar panels that we put on our prime agricultural land that then have to be buried in the ground, because nothing else happens. How much money is being spent on this? How much is it—$50 billion or $60 billion so far in subsidies to multinational companies that you bring out here to Australia and paying them, making sure they get a good deal out of all this?

I cannot believe—I've been a businesswoman most of my life, and what you have done is absolutely disgraceful to this nation. You really have—and then you brainwash the kids in the educational system that they're in fear that the world is coming to an end, which is an absolute rubbish. It's a load of rubbish. You can't back up anything that you put out there, and you play on the fear of people out there, and that is why they're feeling this way. But this is the way that we can move forward to give security to people and lower the gas costs.

Even now, this government and governments in the states—you want to get rid of the gas appliances in the houses and put in electricity. How ridiculous is that? When the wind doesn't blow and your turbines don't work, especially in South Australia, the only thing you've got left is gas because you got rid of the coal-fired power stations. If you don't have enough gas here, what's going to happen? Blackouts. Oh, that's right—it's already happening. If you get short of electricity—oh, that's right; I spoke to a cotton farmer, and guess what? He said, 'They ring us up and say, "If you turn off your power, we're going to pay you $150,000 so that we can actually deliver power to other Australians without being seen as incompetent because we can't deliver the power that this nation needs."' That's where you run this country into the ground.

Gas is so important to us, but utilise that gas to the best of your ability so that we get a return for Australians, because it's our resource, and you're not using it to the best of your ability. Gas is so important. This bill that I'm putting up here shows that we can use basic business common sense to deliver gas to the Australian people, get money back on our returns and be a wealthy nation to pay down your debt that you made along with the coalition over the years. Both of you are to blame for the state of this nation, which is absolutely disgraceful. You haven't been thinking. You haven't used your brains. Politicians should have this problem solved, and the lot of you have no background or experience in running a business. You wouldn't have a clue.

You're absolutely brain dead when it comes to things like this that can make money for this country. Start listening to the grassroots Australian people. Start caring about the grassroots Australian people. Start making them some money instead of spending it all the time. As far as I'm concerned, it's an absolutely disgraceful waste. Start learning how to make money instead of spending the Australian taxpayers' money. That's what One Nation stands for: putting up good policies that are for the benefit of the Australian people. There's no denying that we need to do something about it. Give us the 15 per cent domestic gas reserve. Australians get cheaper gas.

Have your investments in Australia by all means. I've got Australian companies that want to start working here, but you shut it down. The Labor Party shuts everything down here in Australia, whether it's gas on land or—you're not looking after the North West Shelf at all. You're not using your common sense. That should reduce your PRRT again there. You dropped it 10 per cent, and guess what? We made $2.4 billion by dropping it 10 per cent. This is only giving more benefit to the multinationals setting up and taking our gas. That's a resource that belongs to the Australian people. If you can't do your job properly here, then I think that we need to get rid of the ministers who make these incompetent decisions and cost Australian taxpayers billions of dollars. I think you should lose your jobs and go back to the backbench.