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

As a servant to the many different people of our Queensland community, my comments tonight celebrate humanity. New data shows the world has been saved from the population apocalypse. Even more surprising, the data has come from the Club of Rome. Before I excite the chamber with the wonderful news that the Australia we know and some of us love is safe from green grinches, here's some background.

For many years the Club of Rome maintained the world population was out of control and would exceed nine billion, most likely 10 billion and possibly 15 billion. This was being used to justify onerous antihuman restrictions in how we live. The antihuman green lobby has decided that, because of population growth, everyday Australians should eat less, travel less, have fewer children, live in hive homes stacked on top of each other and leave nothing to their children. The antihuman green lobby decided private interests should not own and develop natural resources—or, as they prefer to call it, the commons. Instead, a Soviet style elite, who in practice would be the world's richest individuals, should own all resources. Even homes, cars, refrigerators and brown goods would be rented, not owned. Aboriginal and native title would be over land they occupy yet continue to not own; in fact, no-one would own it.

To make sure this happens, the antihuman green lobby will implement measures to force all physical goods to be repairable and recyclable, to include a very high percentage of recycled materials and to operate on such a low electricity rating that they may not work at all. This huge increase in cost would price household goods out of the reach of everyday Australians. This absurd wonder of Soviet central planning is called the circular economy, which is another way of saying everyday Australians will never own anything new. Wealthy investment funds and superannuation funds will own everything.

I'm sure you've heard the campaign slogan: 'You will own nothing and be happy.' This is what the antihuman green grinches serve. The party of the trees has turned into the party of the tall poppies. Recently they voted against my motion to investigate in vitro lab meat because they know the countryside will be locked up and food will be mass produced as bug burgers or, worse, fake meat grown in bioreactors in the same way cancer cells are grown.

Antihuman greens and teals openly promote this reduction in living standards. They say it's necessary because there will be too many people in the world to sustain the old way of doing things. By 'the old way', I mean Australians having the freedom to work harder, accumulating wealth and assets, enjoying a comfortable retirement and then passing their wealth on to their children to give them a head start in life. There's no room for that in the Soviet republic of Greensland! All this is based on a lie that the world's population is expanding so rapidly that we must, today, start to destroy the wealth of everyday Australians and to lock up the sea and the countryside—which they call the commons—to save it from overproduction.

We can now call off the population apocalypse. Here's the good news for human beings the world over. Recently the Club of Rome released a follow-up to its infamous limits of growth study, which has caused 50 years of shivering bedwetting from the green lobby. This is a significant document as the first major review to the limits of growthin 50 years. Who conducted these new calculations? The Earth4All collective of leading environmental science and economic institutions, including the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Norwegian Business School.

The Club of Rome modelled two scenarios. If we do nothing, the world's population will top out at 8.9 billion—it's already eight billion—in 2050 before falling to 7.3 billion in 2100. Or, if we work hard on improving the living standards of developing nations, as One Nation supports, the world's population will top out at 8.6 billion—remember it's only eight billion now—in 2040 and then fall to just six billion in 2100. Six billion: that's it!

This clearly shows that we do not need to lock up the commons in order to protect it. Over time our natural environment will be used less, not more. We don't need to reduce everyone's share down to subsistence levels. The reduction in population will make current consumption easily sustainable. We do need to provide sensible stewardship of the natural environment and reuse, recycle and introduce new materials like hemp plastics, of course. This is wonderful news.

What will the anti-human green grinches use now to generate fear, to generate their own bizarre brand of environmental self-flagellation? Soviet style? Without a doubt the answer is: they will do whatever it takes—whatever lie and whatever twisting of the data it takes to keep the fear campaign going. It's time to take another look at the fundamental assumptions of the climate campaign. The emperor has no clothes. One Nation enjoys truth. One Nation shares the truth.

I want to turn my attention to another topic. In 1996 Pauline Hanson named her new party 'One Nation' as an expression of her heartfelt belief that this beautiful nation must include all Australians, fairly and equally. She and I serve the people of Queensland and Australia. No single group should be favoured over another and no-one should be denied opportunity. One Nation is committed to the belief that we must give all Australians the same opportunity to lift themselves up through their own hard work and endeavour. And we must provide a safety net for those who can't provide for themselves. Where one group in our community is trailing behind, then the solution is not arbitrary or forced inclusion. That didn't work in the Soviet Union and it will not work in Prime Minister Albanese's soviet republic of Australia. Why? Because it doesn't actually solve the problem of why people have fallen behind in the first place. It does, though, let politicians and compliant community leaders off the hook. 'See here,' they go. 'Look at this thing we are doing. Aren't we wonderful, vote for us and you too can feel good.' Not solve anything, just feel good, look good. Not do good, just paper over the problems and pretend to do good.

One Nation stands for solutions not feelings. We will build the east-west corridor across the Top End, bringing power, water, rail transport and the internet to remote Aboriginal communities, opening up markets, expanding job opportunities, educational opportunities and tourism, which we know exposes the world to Aboriginal culture. And that's a good thing. One Nation will build the Great Dividing Range project to bring environmentally responsible hydropower—cheap power—and water to North Queensland to drive agriculture and tertiary processing, adding tens of billions to our national wealth. One Nation will build the Hughenden Irrigation Project, the Urannah dam and hydro project, the Emu Swamp dam and the Big Buffalo dam in Victoria. All of these will make more productive use of land already in use for agriculture so as to grow more food and fibre to feed and clothe the world. This is the difference between One Nation and the parties of feelings. We offer Australians natural wholesome food and natural fibres, while the tired old parties in this place offer you bugs and used clothes.

What I don't understand is the black armband view of prosperity that permeates the policies of the old parties in this place. Abundance is not a dirty word. Abundance is not mutuality exclusive with environmental responsibility. The attack on the food and manufacturing sectors is one of ideology, not environmentalism. It's about controlling us using deliberately created scarcities. Food scarcities and energy scarcity are deliberately created and can be easily corrected by a One Nation government. Soviet politics of oppression are not the Australian way.

Australia is a place where a coalminer born in India can become a senator, where the daughter of a migrant from a war-torn country can come to Australia and find not only peace and prosperity but a place amongst the leaders of our beautiful country and where a refugee from the fall of Saigon can come to Australia stateless and take her place in the House of Representatives. There are so many examples just in this parliament of how Australia's proud history of equality of opportunity has lifted up those who have chosen to embrace the opportunity given to them.

Equality of opportunity though does not mean equality of outcome. I remember a story about a wise old Russian, just a regular citizen of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet approach to mandatory equality. The wise old Russian drew a series of stick figures of different heights on a piece of paper, and then he said, 'In the Soviet Union everyone is equal,' and proceeded to draw a line across the page to the height of the smallest figure. The heads of the successful were chopped off to bring everyone down to the height of the worst performing. That's, indeed, how socialism works. That's why the Soviet Union failed, and it's why left-wing ideology permeating this government is failing and will fail.

What people do with the opportunity they're given is their own business. Governments cannot provide an equality of outcome, because governments cannot control how people handle the opportunity we are all given. As a government, we can only ensure every Australian has access to a breadwinner job, a home that suits their needs, a safe community, transport, education, health care and, of course, a safety net. The rest is up to the individual. But mark my words: depriving Australians of these core government functions, no matter the geography or the background, will not be tolerated.

Sadly, deprivation is exactly what is happening not just in remote Australia but in our cities as well. After attending public forums across Queensland in the last few weeks, it's obvious there is a failure to deliver basic government services by Premier Palaszczuk and by successive federal governments. Feelings will not fix failure—they just lead people into false security. Ideas, vision and hard work will fix Australia. One Nation is ready to take up the challenge. We have the policies, and Senator Hanson stands ready to lead. I must say the fire burns as strongly as ever in the heart of Australia's favourite redhead.