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

It appears that the Labor government does not want the people of Australia to hear what I have to say, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Tomago and Rushy Lagoon look like different stories. They are not. They are both examples of governments using enormous amounts of public money to force economic activity to fit their chosen political target. At Rushy Lagoon, taxpayers helped a carbon investor beat agriculture. Tomago taxpayers are asked to rescue industry from the price of energy. They're asked to rescue industry from Labor—the same government that tells Australians the transition is delivering cheap power and stronger industry. They're the ones who have driven Tomago to the brink of bankruptcy. They're the ones that Australian jobs now have to be rescued from. They've lit the house on fire. They're spraying a bit of water on it and asking for a thankyou. You can't make this up.

Much of this spending is also dressed up so it does not look like ordinary spending. Loans are called 'investments'. Risk is shifted onto public balance sheets. Guarantees are treated as if they're free. But there is no magic government money. There is taxpayer money, borrowed money and taxpayer risk. If these projects are as cheap and commercially irresistible as Labor claims, then why do they need so much taxpayer help? Why does this government have to underwrite them? Why are consequential loans required? Why does Canberra keep inventing new schemes to make their failed economics work?

Australians are paying more for electricity while being told that the technology driving the transition is cheaper. Families do not care what a government model says electricity should cost. They care what appears on their ever-growing bills. Manufacturers care about whether they can keep operating. Businesses care about whether they can stay competitive. Tomago cares about whether it can get reliable electricity at a price that keeps the smelter open. Under Labor, they couldn't. That is the future that Labor created. That is the path that we are facing—a future where our manufacturing, our industries, our farms cannot stand on their own two feet. They don't have the power to run. The market has been perverted, and we see these outcomes which are so detrimental to our future productivity and the jobs in our regions.

Then we get to the issue of the environment. The environmental hypocrisy is just extraordinary. Labor and the Greens lecture Australians—I'll give you a shout-out there, Senator McKim—about protecting nature whilst supporting the industrialisation of huge areas of regional Australia. Transmission corridors cut across farmland. Wind and solar disturb land and habitat. Roads, substations and other infrastructures have to be built. Apparently, environmental damage stops being environmental damage when it helps Chris Bowen meet a target. Regional Australians are the ones who are expected to wear it.

The towers are not being built through inner-city streets. Large renewable intermittent developments are not being concentrated beside people writing the policies. It's regional communities who are forced to bear the brunt of the infrastructure that is forced upon them by this Albanese Labor government's net zero obsession—and Rushy Lagoon fits perfectly into that pattern. A productive farm becomes an opportunity to store up carbon. Taxpayer money is making it happen, and the people who are told this is all for their benefit are expected to applaud when it's their jobs being wiped out and their communities being destroyed. Other countries are already discovering that political climate promises eventually collide with economic reality. Canada scrapped its consumer carbon price. The European governments are reworking their climate policies because of competitiveness, industrial pressure and household costs.

Eventually, the bill arrives. For many Australians, the bill is already here—and they are finding it very difficult to pay. Australia needs to learn that lesson. Instead, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen keep treating net zero as the organising principle of energy policy. In One Nation, we believe this is a fundamental mistake. That is why One Nation would scrap the net zero obsession. We would stop treating taxpayers as an unlimited source of risk capital for the politically favoured projects that Labor choose. We would not allow carbon credit schemes to distort the value of productive agricultural land. We would put reliability and affordability back at the centre of energy policy. We would stop pretending, like Labor does, that destroying productive capacity can somehow be called progress simply because someone's attached the word 'green' to it.

That brings us back to Rushy Lagoon, Tasmania's largest farm—productive agricultural land destroyed by Labor. Tasmanians are the ones paying for it. (Time expired)