Sean Bell (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Hansard source

After that contribution, you start to understand why One Nation's 'Fire the Liar' campaign is slowly creeping towards $5 million, with nearly 80,000 individual Aussies getting behind us because they are sick and tired of listening to this government talk big and deliver nothing. It's interesting to note that one of the things that was just said by Senator Sheldon was that One Nation somehow blocked something. I actually can't recall recently where One Nation blocked a single proposal from this government. What we see is that the government comes to us with legislation. We take a look. The last tax grab budget they passed is a perfect example. We took a look and we said: 'Well, there's a lot of this that is absolute rubbish. We'll support your tax cut. Fair enough.' We moved an amendment to carve that out, and they said, 'No, we won't carve it out; you have to vote for it all as one.' It's a trick. It's a trick where they'll put in a tiny little sweetener and say, 'Well, if you vote against everything else that's in the legislation that is absolutely terrible—a giant tax grab—then we'll accuse you of voting against a tax cut.' That's the trick. That's the trick they are playing. Then they say we block them. We haven't blocked anything. Labor, with help from the Greens, have gotten every single thing through this parliament that they've wanted. Every single thing that they have said is supposed to make your life cheaper and easier, they have gotten—every single thing—yet things have never been worse for Australian families.

All of the words and promises that they say and make, all of the election commitments that they change their position on—none of them have come true. And Australian families are hurting. They're hurting because the cost of everyday staples is going up. Groceries are not expensive by accident. It's not a magic thing that occurs. It is because the major inputs into the cost of food that Australians need when they're having dinner, including fuel, fertiliser, electricity, land, the regulations, the freight and the labour, all have been driven up by this Albanese Labor government because of the legislation that they have passed with the help of the Greens.

We stand here and we say that these ideas that they're pushing and this legislation as proposed are going to make things worse, and we vote against it. They get what they want; prices continue to rise. At the centre of this failure, the Albanese government's failure—and this is what we point out time and time again—is their net zero agenda. It is that net zero agenda which is forcing higher energy costs onto farms, transport operators, manufacturers, retailers, households, families, mums and dads. It is their net zero agenda that is doing this, that they all vote for, that they get and that we proudly oppose. The second that we have the chance, we will scrap it. We will dismantle it, and we will replace it with mechanisms that deliver the cheapest possible energy—coal, gas, whatever delivers the cheapest energy to bring down the cost of food and the cost of electricity for families. That is what One Nation will do. If they proposed that, we would support that. But they don't. They keep putting up terrible ideas and then, with the help of the Greens, they get them through.

The grocery bill for families is where the failure of this government really hits home. In the 12 months to May, ABS data shows that food and non-alcoholic beverages are up 3.3 per cent. Meat and seafood are up by 5.4 per cent. Beef and veal are up by 13.3 per cent. Lamb and goat are up by 14.8 per cent and dairy products are up by 5.2 per cent. We warned them that, if they continued to pass bad legislation, this is what would happen, which is why we voted against it. But they got it anyway. They got what they wanted with the help of the Greens. Prices have gone up and inflation has gone up. Behind those increases is the same cost chain. Electricity is up 21 per cent. The cost of transport is also up, by 3.3 per cent. That's electricity and freight.

When Australians look at the supermarket receipt, they are not just seeing the price of food; what they are seeing is the cost of Labor's policies and the cost of the Albanese Labor government's net zero agenda. Australian families are not asking for luxury. They are asking merely to be able to afford the ordinary essentials of life: food, fuel, power and maybe enough left over at the end of the week to breathe a little easy. That is not asking too much in a country that is as blessed as Australia, with the natural resources that we have that they fail to use. Consider the benefit and prosperity that could exist if we simply used our natural resources to their full extent instead of cutting ourselves off at the knees because of their net zero agenda. A government that cannot deliver on food affordability has failed the most basic test of all, and food security is national security. A country that cannot afford its own food is not a strong country. A country that fails to protect its farmers is not a secure country. A country that allows the cost of food processing to spiral out of control is not a well-governed country. You cannot keep driving up the cost of energy and then pretend that food will stay cheap. You cannot force farms and food processors to carry the cost of net zero.

The Paris Agreement is an agreement signed through the United Nations. When people talk about United Nations regulations, that is where it's coming from—the Paris Agreement. The reason we must get out of the Paris Agreement is that the mechanisms of legislation that you move are actually downstream from that agreement. A lot of people don't realise, but, for the federal government to be able to legislate on the environment, they need an international agreement. It's through a mechanism called the external affairs power. This is why there is not a single international agreement that this government would ever consider getting rid of. Their entire legislative agenda depends on it. That is why One Nation talks about getting out of these international agreements. It's because it is those agreements that you are using to force your destructive net zero agenda onto the Australian people. You cannot make fertiliser more expensive and harder to secure. You cannot bury farmers in paperwork and expect grocery bills to go down.

The Fire the Liar campaign is successful because the rhetoric, the things you say, simply do not match the lived experience of the Australian people. This new trick that you're using—you're standing up and completely misrepresenting Senator Hanson's position on paid maternity leave. She has stood up in this place, and she said to social media: 'We're not going anywhere near paid maternity leave. We're simply not going to do it.' Yet you hear them time and time again. You watch. They will continue to bring this up despite the fact that they know it's a complete misrepresentation, but that's okay because the Australian people are awake to these tactics. They're awake to the broken promises.

This is the reality, and this is why One Nation is resonating. We have not forgotten about what everyday Aussies are going through, and we are prepared to stand with the people who grow our food, the people who transport the food across the nation from the farms to the supermarkets and the people who process and manufacture our food. We stand with the small businesses who try to sell the food, and we stand with the families who struggle to afford that food because of this government's vandalism of our economy. We stand with the farmers trying to keep the property viable; the truck drivers trying to keep the shelves stocked; the butcher watching the costs rise, hoping he can keep his business running; the baker opening another power bill with dread; the pensioner counting every dollar; and the parent putting items back when they get to the check-out and see the cost of their groceries, the cost that is a direct result of your bad policies.

No child should go hungry in a country that could feed the world. That is why One Nation says the answer is not more excuses; the answer is to take the cost of net zero out of the food chain. Irrigation systems, cold storage, dairies, abattoirs, bakeries, processors, packaging plants and small grocers all depend on energy. When power prices rise, food prices rise. Your groceries, your food, the reason that you can't get a steak as much as you want, the reason why, when you go out to have a dinner, prices are through the roof—it all comes down to the cost of electricity driven by this government's obsession with net zero. One Nation will prioritise whatever source of energy delivers the cheapest and most reliable power, whether it's coal, gas or nuclear. We're happy to use renewables where appropriate, but it has to stand on its own feet and not be propped up by billions and billions of dollars of government subsidies hidden in shady areas like the Capacity Investment Scheme. That will stop.

Australia must secure its fuel supply as well, because a weak fuel supply means a weak food supply. We should never have allowed ourselves to become dangerously dependent on overseas supply chains for the fuel that keeps this nation moving. Every weakness in the fuel chain becomes a cost in the food chain. Every cost in the food chain becomes a burden on Australian families. We have that many natural resources, like oil and gas, that are underutilised because of this government's refusal to utilise them.

I do not think this government understands the burden of administration they put on our farmers. Every time you pass a new bill, like that gigantic mess of an EPBC Act you rushed through and guillotined the other day, farmers sit there in dread because they know that the sheer scale of administrative work they have to do is going to crush them. I'm actually not sure, off the top of my head, the exact number of new regulations that have now flowed through off the back of that legislation, but I think it's over 20. And every single time you do that, you take a farmer away from doing something that could be productive. You make his life harder, you hurt productivity, and you drive up the cost of the food. You drive up the cost of the groceries, and that causes everyday Australians to suffer.

A nation should be able to feed its people, protect its productive land, back its farmers, secure fuel and deliver cheap and reliable power. That is what they should be able to do. And yet this government seems unable to do so. One Nation instead want Australia to grow things, make things, own things and build things. We want to mine more. We want a second mining boom. We want to put Australia first and give them the opportunity to have good jobs. We want to see the price of groceries come down. That is why we vote against your legislation—because we see what you're doing, and we know the result is going to be higher electricity prices, more inflation and more expensive groceries for Australian families.

The Australian people are paying the bill for your failure. That is why, again, I'll say it: we will scrap net zero. One Nation will back the cheapest and most reliable energy. We'll take pressure off farmers, businesses and households. And we will fight for a food system that serves Australian families first. As I said, a country that cannot afford its own food has been very badly governed. A country that punishes the people who grow its food has lost its way. Australia is too rich, too capable and too blessed to leave its own people struggling to put dinner on the table. This is a failure that One Nation will keep calling out. This is a fight One Nation is taking up. We will always put Australians first, and, so long as you continue to put up terrible legislation, we will oppose it, and we make no apologies for it.