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

Welcome to the latest episode of your favourite TV show: One Nation Were Right All Along. First up, we have the Nationals finally seeing the light of the net zero scam—well, kind of. Their support has gone from unqualified support to 'how much net zero can we do before we start losing seats?' In their announcement, Nationals leader David Littleproud said: 'The Nationals accept the science of climate change and remain committed to emissions reduction. The current aggressive pursuit of net zero is unfairly damaging to regional Australia and economically unsustainable for the country'—he's waking up—'We need a slower pace aligned with the OECD average'.

That's a clever sleight of hand. The OECD reduction has stalled for five years. Their accumulative reduction is currently 14 per cent, and Australia's is 24 per cent. The latest data will show ours at 28 per cent, double the OECD's. Tying Australia to the OECD will buy the Nationals an election or two before having to restart reductions. Remember, though, that they still believe in net zero and in the need to cut carbon dioxide production. I welcome the Nationals realisation of the damage net zero is doing and wish they had more courage to walk away from the scam entirely.

In contrast, One Nation strongly oppose net zero, and we would abolish all federal government net zero mandates, programs and boondoggles. We would shut down all the schemes and departments promoting this scam, saving taxpayers $30 billion every year. This is not the only cost of course. Parasitic billionaires and corporations sucking on taxpayer subsidies and electricity consumer subsidies, and others in private industry, are taking advantage of this scam to build industrial solar and wind, transmission lines, big batteries and other paraphernalia of net zero. This cost will be as high as $1.9 trillion through to 2050. Remember that industrial solar and wind lasts only 15 years, which means everything that has been built so far will not be in use in 2050 and will have to be built again and again. The government's Bollywood version of the cost of net zero does not take into account this massive expense—nor do they consider the environmental cost of the destruction of native forests for wind turbines, access roads and transmission lines; the cost of dumping these monstrosities into landfill every 15 years; or the run-off from toxic metals from damaged solar panels. This would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

Electricity is an input cost right across the economy. The price of everything you buy, from physical goods in stores to services and financial products, goes up as the electricity bills of the companies providing those services go up. Everyday Australians are poorer because of net zero, and so is Australia's beautiful natural environment. The government used to say, 'Renewables are cheaper, so prices will come down eventually.' However, after 20 years of the transition—the last three at breakneck pace—electricity bills are not coming down; they're rising rapidly.

Some of those who are wealthy enough and have an actual house in which to install solar panels and an expensive wall battery are reporting slightly reduced electricity bills. The very few Australians with the money to spend $25,000 on a solar array and wall battery for a home they own are thumbing their noses at the millions that do not have a house and $25,000 to add solar and a battery. Net zero is becoming a case of the haves and have-nots. Those who can't afford their own electricity generation are left to buy electricity at prices that have increased at twice the rate of inflation since the net zero benchmark year of 2005. It's a trend that continues, with a nine per cent increase in electricity prices in 2025.

One Nation are right in our opposition to mass migration. Today we learnt that the majority of Australians agree with us—right again. A poll in the Australian yesterday showed that almost two-thirds of Australians want a reduction in the migration rate; 94 per cent of One Nation supporters support reduced migration, which has now been a feature of One Nation policy for 30 years, ever since the Liberal-National coalition under John Howard doubled migration and started mass migration. Significantly, 78 per cent of coalition voters want a reduction in immigration, and so do 71 per cent of supporters of smaller parties and independents, which does include the teals—so that's very interesting.

What caught my eye with the poll is that two parties who have been pushing infinite immigration are doing so against the wishes of their supporters. Only 10 per cent of Labor's supporters want more migrants, while 49 per cent want fewer. While 27 per cent of Greens voters want more immigration, 32 per cent want less. Immigration is now one of the biggest election issues in New South Wales, which is not surprising, given the rental crisis in the greater Sydney area, thanks to the Albanese immigration invasion. It is interesting to see there is no gender divide on immigration. Opposition to high immigration is spread evenly between men and women.

It's a betrayal of the very concept of democracy for this government to continue its globalist agenda to flood Australia with these very high levels of mass immigration against the wishes of the Australian people. Liberal and Labor governments are importing too many new arrivals from cultures that do not readily assimilate and bring with them a religion, Islam, that seeks to carve out a slice of this country to introduce their own system of law—divisive.

At the same time, the government is inhumanely ignoring the tragedy of the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, in Sudan and in South Africa. I asked the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs yesterday in question time how many Christian refugees we brought in from these trouble spots. The answer was telling: zero! I asked who's benefiting from Australia's humanitarian intake. His answer was that the top five countries for refugee visas, 15,000 in all, are all Islamic countries. This is nothing more than selective discrimination against Christians. In the past, Australians would have considered this sedition. One Nation still does.

Third, One Nation is correct about the standard of living. For years, I've been warning the Australian people that the net zero agenda, combined with mass immigration, is destroying business investment in our productive capacity, reducing living standards. Sky News is reporting today just how bad things have become. One in seven Australians now live below the poverty line, and one in six children are below the poverty line. That's 3.7 million people struggling to pay for food, power and rent in a nation bursting with resources, all a result of Liberal-Labor uniparty policies—mass migration, net zero, housing, overregulation.

In what was once the richest country, per capita, in the world, we now have the worst poverty in my lifetime, yet we still have the natural resources; the abundant hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas; amazing farmland; and a strong tourism industry. For years, successive Liberal and Labor governments have shut down industries that provided breadwinner jobs in steelworks and heavy manufacturing, and value-adding jobs like textiles. They weighed our farmers down with so much green tape and blue United Nations tape that they are struggling to stay afloat. Australian wealth is being sabotaged in a process called 'managed decline'. It's deliberate. Yet our GDP is still growing. What's going on? Australia's wealth is being transferred from Australians to foreign beneficiaries. The world's predatory billionaires have used their investment funds, like BlackRock, First State, Vanguard and State Street, to buy not only shares in Australian companies but entire industries. Except for two of our insurance companies, all our insurance companies are foreign owned.

Major retailers Coles, Woolies and Bunnings are foreign controlled. The Australian big four banks are foreign controlled, and so are our telcos and oil and gas companies. Satan's bankers then put up prices, knowing they control the markets, so consumers become price takers. There's no market anymore; it's controlled. Australians working at the top of these companies take extremely high salaries—in many cases, multimillion dollar salaries—in return for compliance, and everyday Australians go backwards into poverty.

The government is making things worse, allowing so many new arrivals that housing prices and rents are forced upwards, while quality of life and standards of living go backwards. In Sydney, median unit rents have surged 40 per cent since 2021, and Melbourne and Brisbane aren't far behind, climbing more than 30 per cent. For low-income renters, over half now spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing—30 per cent on housing! Our prime minister went to the last election promising to leave no-one behind, knowing his policies were doing exactly the opposite. The government is now increasing spending on housing, on paid parental leave, on child care and on hiring more and more and more public servants on high wages to paper over what is a crashing economy. The government can't use debt and money printing forever to save its backside. Debt and printing money cause their own severe economic problems and then more poverty.

One Nation has opposed the net zero war on business investment. We have opposed the migration invasion, and we warned that these policies, combined with the red bureaucratic tape, green tape and blue United Nations tape would destroy the standard of living in our beautiful country. And it has. We bloody told you so! We have put forward solutions and practical, effective policies to solve all these challenges—proven solutions. All these issues are due to decades of dishonest Liberal-Labor uniparty policies and laws. As President John F Kennedy said:

Our problems are man made. Therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.

One Nation is right.