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

I move:

That the Senate notes that grocery prices have skyrocketed due to net-zero policies, energy costs, foreign corporate land ownership and massive regulatory costs faced by farmers dealing with red, green, black and blue tape.

What is happening in Australia now is something we cannot disregard. It should concern everyone, especially the people in this parliament, because the decisions that we make and legislation that we introduce do affect the people of Australia.

That's why I've moved this motion to speak to the rising cost of living. Grocery prices have skyrocketed due to net zero policies, energy costs, foreign land ownership and regulatory cost forced on the farming sector by red, black and green tape, and blue for that matter. Blue tape means United Nations agreements that we've been signed up to and free trade agreements or whatever agreements we've signed up to which dictate to us. They're not agreements that have been born out of this parliament but have been signed behind closed doors by our ministers of the day, and we're bound to them.

The biggest thing that's coming out of all this is the cost of living. We have homeless in Australia, and we hear so often from our aged that cannot afford to pay their bills and are choosing whether to put on a heater, buy their medicines or eat. And too often we hear about the homeless sleeping in their cars—families in their cars. You see it constantly, all the time. I see it even where I live, driving past people that are living in their cars and people living in tents with their children. And it's an absolute disgrace to see this country has gotten to this situation. As I said, it all comes down to what has been passed by this government, previous governments and successive governments that we've had in this country; that is delivering to us what we are enduring today.

I want to read you some figures here. The Salvation Army's latest Red Shield Appeal report, released in May this year, highlights the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on the low-income Australian families. Of the 4,400 people surveyed, 19 per cent said they'd eaten food from rubbish bins in the past 12 months; 60 per cent said they'd eaten expired or spoiled food; 91 per cent said they had skipped meals, and 32 per cent said they do so on a daily basis; 35 per cent said they survived on only one meal a day; 67 per cent said they watered down food and drinks to make them last longer; 35 per cent of parents said their children had gone to school hungry; 59 per cent said their children had missed school because they couldn't afford the transport costs; 84 per cent said they went to bed early to keep warm; 63 per cent said they used candles and torches for lighting their homes; 49 per cent said they go to public places like shopping centres to keep warm or cool; 51 per cent can't afford a doctor, dentist or optometrist; and 46 per cent can't afford prescription medicine. OzHarvest's annual Frontline report this year showed about 350,000 Australians were seeking food relief each month; more than two-thirds of them are families. Charities report having to turn away 74,000 people each month, and every charity reports increasing demand. About 36 per cent of people seeking relief are doing so for the first time. Almost a third of households needing relief have at least one employed person.

These figures—they're absolutely disgusting. They're appalling. And it's like, 'Who cares? Who's really talking about these figures?' Even with full-time jobs supporting them, hundreds of thousands of families in Australia need basic food relief just to get by. We hear about it all the time. And it just doesn't seem to be sinking in. This is the main issue on people's minds at the moment: can they feed their families? And, like I said, it's about whether you can turn on a light, or keep yourself warm or cool. It's about: 'Can we actually buy the medicines? How are we going to survive? Are the kids going to be fed?'

These real impacts on us are coming from net zero, and I'll tell you why. This government has been driving net zero to the point that electricity costs have gone up exponentially. That's why we can't afford this. So everything comes from the cost of electricity. We've seen, in past decades or centuries, that having electricity creates productivity and a decent standard of living and way of life. But since this government has driven this net zero BS—that's why we're in the state that we are in now, because we can't produce the electricity that we need to drive this nation and to give cheap electricity costs.

Now, primarily, there has been a massive increase in the cost of Australian electricity—at least 206 per cent since the first introduction of large-scale renewable-energy targets by the Howard coalition government in 2001. In some states, the figures is closer to 300 per cent. The cost to Australian taxpayers of the renewable energy transition—the chief vehicle by which proponents claim net zero will be achieved by 2050—is estimated at $1.5 trillion. Get your head around that: $1.5 trillion. That's $1,500 billion.

The massive geographic footprint and high materials and energy intensity required by renewable energy generation, including wind turbines, solar facilities, batteries and new transmission lines, are particularly impacting productive agricultural land, native forests and ocean habitats and increasing the vulnerability of Australian energy grids to weather or system shocks, examples of which include the statewide blackout of South Australia in September 2016 and the nationwide blackouts in Spain and Portugal in April 2025. The impact of record-high electricity prices on Australian households, businesses and industry has been devastating. So, because of all this net zero—because of renewables—blackouts are happening.

Outside of Europe, Australia has the highest average household electricity prices in the world. This is substantially higher than other Western nations rich in natural energy resources such as the United States which is $1.179 per kilowatt hour. It's $1.157 in Norway, and we're more than twice as high as Canada's average price of $1.118. Household energy costs in Australia have increased by up to 40 per cent in just the past two years to June 2025 under the pro-net-zero Albanese Labor government.

In December 2024, the Australian Energy Regulator revealed more than 130,000 Australian households were on energy hardship plans in 2024, up from fewer than 96,000 in 2023. The AER also revealed that more than 215,000 Australians are in energy debt with average household energy debt in 2025 at $1,415. That's up $309 from the previous year. This government says: 'Oh, well, we're going to give you a rebate. We're going to give you a couple of hundred dollars here in rebates, and that's going to solve the problem.' It just keeps going up and up and up, and it will continue to go up.

Let me just tell you what they're putting in at Scone. Go and ask the people about transmission lines. I had a meeting the other day, and it was pointed out to me about the plan for all these wind turbines going all down the East Coast, then around Victoria, South Australia—Western Australia's in there—and Tasmania. What they're going to do in Tasmania is they want to put all these wind turbines there and hook it up with the Marinus Link to give cheap power to Victoria and destroy Tasmania. A lot of people don't realise this. The cost of doing these transmission lines is massive. They got 4,500 wind turbines now in Australia. They're planning to put in 31,000 wind turbines.

I passed down through Bathurst. When I was there, there was a 3,000-acre property covered with solar panels. In some of these solar panel areas, they're planning to put in five million solar panels. That's on agricultural land. Once you lose that land, you'll never get it back. There's only so much land that we have in Australia that we can grow our food and product on. This is the plan for Australia. In Scone, that's near the Walcha powerlines. They're wanting to put in some powerlines, some transmission lines and wind turbines. They're wanting to put up these transmission lines. It's going to go through 150 farms and landholders. There's been no consultation and nothing's happened. That project was going to cost about double what's charged for the Central West.

There was another powerline that was put in and that was going to originally cost $650 million. That was in 2020. Guess what. That blew out to $5.5 billion. The one they're planning at Scone is supposed to be double the $650 million, so $1.3 billion. Who knows what it's going to blow out to—possibly to $20 billion. This is what the taxpayer pays for. And, on top of that, you don't get cheap power. It actually costs you more in power. The people have to be prepared for that to actually happen.

But, while we're doing all this, we are such fools. We are living in such an energy rich nation. We've got one per cent of carbon emissions, but we're destroying our nation, our productivity, our industries, our manufacturing, and we're putting people in poverty because you're pushing these renewables. Asia emits 60 per cent of the world's emissions. We export seven times the coal we use. That's smart. That's really smart.

It's slower growth and declining living standards. Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter and the second largest gas exporter. You couldn't make this up. This is just ridiculous. We have 30 per cent of the world's uranium. We should have the world's cheapest energy. But we ban the use of hydrocarbons and nuclear power. Australia's de-industrialisation means Australia has now the smallest manufacturing share of the OECD countries of the world. We can't even make anything here any more. Under this current Albanese government, we've lost over 1,400 industries and manufacturing. Under this current government we've lost jobs, prosperity, money into the country. The cost pressure of high energy costs force productivity down.

Asia energy sources are a major driver of carbon emissions—60 per cent of carbon emissions worldwide and over 80 per cent of the world's coal use. This is Asia. They're going to ramp up their coal use. Internationally, Asia will burn 150 million tonnes of more coal this century. But we shut it down. We can't use it. We can't have coal-fired power stations deliver us that stable, reliable power that we need. No, that's stupid. That's too stupid.

You wind and solar can only deliver 30 per cent of power on a good day, if you're lucky. It's only on a good day, so 70 per cent of our power at the moment comes from coal and gas, but we're exporting everything and we're stupid enough—listen to this—that we actually are importing our gas. We're going to start importing gas, and we can't burn our coal. We're driving this country into such a state that people can't afford power, and the cost of groceries will keep going up and up under this current government.

That's why we oppose it. Common sense tells you this is not a good business proposition for the people of Australia. You're running them into absolute poverty. Australia exports four times more gas than we use. The UK and Germany have destroyed their economies, going after this de-industrialisation, and Australia is following. Then we want to go down the data centres. I'll tell you what: data centres use 24/7 power and need stable base load power. On top of that, this government predicted a population increase by 50 per cent over the next 40 years. They're electrifying an entire vehicle fleet. This is what we're doing. That government is running this country into the ground.