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

One Nation circulated the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Domestic Reserve) Bill 2026 last Thursday. The government has prevented us from debating the bill because democracy and the Labor Party are mutually exclusive these days. The issue One Nation's bill raised is simple: should Australia have a domestic gas reservation which requires 15 per cent of our own gas to be used here in Australia—our own gas staying here to help our own people? On this issue the Albanese Labor government are running scared.

After selling off Australia's liquid fuel reserve in 2022 and after failing to increase storage in Australia, they know the electorate is holding them responsible for the fuel shortages we have across Australia right now—fuel shortages that extend to gas or will when the Lytton refinery closes in a few weeks time for 10 weeks maintenance. I hope the government has worked with the owner of Lytton, which is Ampol, to postpone that maintenance until buffer stocks have been put in place. Although, the necessary maintenance at Lytton has already been pushed back for a year because of Australia's pathetic stocks of gas products thanks to a Labor government that hates hydrocarbon fuels and that would rather descend the economy into an energy nightmare than actually work with industry to fix the problem.

One Nation warned the Liberal, National and Labor uni-party governments about this problem in 2016—a decade ago. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, after the Labor Albanese government sold off our fuel reserves—our warnings were ignored. Now look at the state of our country. A domestic gas reservation will provide high-quality low-cost natural gas into the Australian market. This replaces the current supply arrangements for Australian gas users, which does have some local sale of our natural gas, supplemented with imports of our own gas which is sent overseas and then brought back again. Same gas, same ships—Australian gas sails around the world and comes back to us at double or triple the price we would pay out of the well. How incompetent are successive uni-party Labor and coalition governments to allow the stupidity of the current arrangement where we allow foreign corporate rations to export gas at low prices to avoid the petroleum rent resource tax and then we buy it back at double or triple the price—really clever. Not only do Australian taxpayers miss out on billions in taxation, but we pay more for the gas we use. This is insane. It's our bloody gas.

Thanks to the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Nationals' incompetence—the uni-party. One Nation will change the point at which the PRRT is levied. Currently the PRRT is levied on profits, which don't happen because the gas companies using transfer pricing. Remember that when you think about the Greens amendment and David Pocock's amendment. Australia has lost out on more than $100 billion in gas revenue since the PRRT came into place thanks to Bob Hawke. One Nation will levy the tax at the wellhead. The volume will be counted and can't be beaten at the wellhead at a dollar value rate per gigajoule of energy, making transfer prices irrelevant. This will raise at least $10 billion a year in additional revenue. This isn't a new tax. It's the same tax being calculated differently, better and on multinationals. It will be important to ensure the tax is levied on exported gas only so that any tax revenue does not affect domestic gas prices. That's very important.

The second part of this motion, a domestic gas reservation, will allow a guaranteed supply of our own gas to lower the gas price through removing the expensive imported component. This will lower costs for businesses and everyday Australians. Given the current inflation, due to the uni-party's ineptitude, anything getting cheaper—indeed, anything not going up in price—is a win for consumers, the Australian people. Our use of this gas will support gas-to-liquid plants located near capital cities, anywhere that is on the end of a national gas pipeline. Gas-to-liquid plants convert gas to petrol and diesel. As long as the gas is sourced cheaply, the petrol that's produced will cost around the same as petrol before the Iran war, around $1.50 a litre. It's a profitable and commercial proven process. Even better, it makes really clean petrol and diesel, improving engine life and fuel economy with less carbon dioxide, for those who still believe in that rubbish.

In addition, One Nation has already promised to reduce the fuel excise by 26c a litre, halving the fuel excise. That's fully costed. The Labor government has refused to adopt this policy despite it being fully costed. Everyday Australians are struggling with the cost of living. Reducing the fuel excise will make a huge difference to household budgets. Instead, this Labor government is too busy spending taxpayers' money on net zero and social engineering to care about Australians, who are working harder and going backwards. So much for Labor being the party of the worker! One Nation are the party of the worker now.

We need more of our gas here to keep the lights on when Labor's insane weather-dependent power is not coping with demand, which is frequently, and driving unaffordable electricity prices. With the abundance of coal, oil and natural gas under our feet, Australia is an energy superpower. Australia is a top 5 gas exporter, a top 2 coal exporter and the largest energy exporter in the world, and yet we have an energy crisis and can't use the stuff here.

You are not going to believe what the Greens' brilliant solution to the energy crisis is. They want to ban gas. 'It's toxic,' we just heard from them. So your gas stove top and your gas hot water heater are to be forcibly converted to electric. That's not forgetting Senator Pocock, who is right there championing the electrification agenda. That's a word that means no petrol, no diesel and no gas—just a nation blanketed in toxic solar panels and wind turbines so virtue-signalling lefties can sip their champagne in their inner-city high-rises and bask in the glory of their own ignorance. This is the dream team—it's a nightmare! This is the modern Labor Party and the teal party team. Voters in South Australia, Nepean and Farrer: please, make a stand, sweep away the stupidity and give One Nation a chance to fix this country while we still can.

I want to talk about the Greens amendment and Senator Pocock's amendment. One Nation's bill and the motion we just discussed goes to establishing a 15 per cent domestic gas reserve. One Nation also believes that the petroleum rent resource tax, the PRRT, has completely failed to capture the appropriate tax take for the benefit of Australians. This lady next to me has been saying it for a decade. One Nation supports the PRRT being changed to be based on production at the wellhead. Measured gas quantities cannot be affected by transfer pricing deals—no shonky business profits that have been abused.

The Greens are circulating an amendment striking out our gas reserve policy and replacing it with a 25 per cent tax. Twenty-five per cent of zero is still zero. It is still zero. The 'toxic-gas Greens' welcome a tax. The same applies to David Pocock's amendment. Twenty-five per cent of zero is zero. They can calculate the profit back to zero through transfer pricing. One Nation wants a reserve established. We support lower taxation for citizens and better taxation for everyone, but the Greens' figure appears to have been pulled out of thin air. We won't support the Greens amendment, nor David Pocock's amendment. We would be happy to debate all of these issues in the normal way on One Nation's gas reserve bill, which we haven't been able to do this morning because the government does not want scrutiny.

Labor are now saying they want a 15 to 25 per cent reserve of gas production for the domestic market, to modify the Albanese Labor government's domestic gas reservation scheme. Labor has no gas reservation scheme! Fifteen to 25 per cent of zero is still zero. You can't figure this out. What's 25 per cent tax on zero profit? It's zero. What's a 25 per cent reservation on zero? It's zero. Only One Nation has thought this through. We've been at it for a decade. Why? Because security is vital to us. Security is absolutely essential. I want to thank the farmers and fishers in New South Wales and Queensland who have been contacting my office, and the offices of Senator Tyron Whitten, Senator Pauline Hanson and Senator Sean Bell—across three states—saying, 'Please do something about the diesel supply.'

One farmer was in tears: 2,500 cattle may not be fed in his dairy farm this week, because he can't get the fodder crop out of the ground. It becomes an animal welfare issue. But there are three words that are important in this, in addition to animal welfare. The first word is 'security'—oil and gas security. We're exporting gas overseas when it could be made into petrol and diesel here, and we're importing petrol and diesel. Now, because of the Iran conflict, there's no security of supply.

The second word is 'volatility'—price volatility. If we had the proper gas fuel reserves in this country, then there would be reduced volatility. Instead, we now have high price volatility. That means that the people of Australia, the farmers of Australia and the truckies of Australia are paying through the neck.

The third word is 'truth'. We've had lies, misrepresentations, misinformation and disinformation from the ministers on the other side in regard to our security. I raised this first on Monday last week, the first thing after we knew about the Iranian war. Then Senator Tyron Whitten, Senator Bell and Senator Hanson followed it up every day last week—Monday to Thursday in the Senate and Friday outside. Then we started again on Tuesday this week, the first day in the Senate.

This is extremely important because it's a matter of life and death. When fridges shut down because the coal mines don't produce coal for the electricity, the food spoils. This is about food security, it's about farm security, it's about electricity security, it's about lifestyle and it's about life security, and we've got to stop the people having to pay for the government's mistakes and waste.