Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | 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.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the debate that's been brought forward by Senator Hanson, because we just haven't heard enough from the government about the most important issue facing Australian families, and that is the cost of living. It is the most common issue that's raised with me. When we get out of this place—we'll get out of it soon—I'm sure we'll be inundated. When we go back to our electorates, when we go back to watching our kids at the soccer fields and the like, people will go, 'Jeez, everything is costing so much in this country, and why is it?'

The biggest reaction I had on budget night—now we're finishing these budget sessions, so it was back in early May, six weeks or so ago—was, 'What are they doing about the cost of living?' There was just no mention of it. It was it was just completely ignored by this government, despite it being consistently the most important issue that's raised by Australians as what's wrong with the country right now. It comes through in all of our polling that all political parties do. The cost of living is right up top, way, way above everything else. But there was not even a mention of it in the budget speech six weeks ago. It's the major economic plan from any government each year, an annual statement they make on what their plans are for the economy, and it was pretty clear the government had no plan on this.

In fact, it was the first budget speech this government has given—they've given four of these now—where they did not even mention and did not promise to lower electricity prices. It was a core promise of this government when they came to power that they would lower your electricity bills. The Prime Minister infamously said it almost 100 times on the hustings in the 2022 election that he and the Labor Party won. They promised that they would lower your power bills by $275. It hasn't happened. In every budget speech they gave, though, until this one, they repeated the promise—that is, they wouldn't repeat the $275 figure; they dropped that pretty quick, but they repeated the promise that their investments in these renewable energy things, their investments in hydrogen, their investments in batteries would lower electricity prices for Australian families. That was until this one. It didn't happen. They never got there. They never reduced electricity prices. The average family's bill has gone up at least $500 since this government came to power, but many families with larger households, with kids, end up with bills that are $1,000 or more than what they were four or so years ago.

It hasn't happened, but the government did keep up this myth, this idea, that, 'while we don't have these discounts today, come back to the pub tomorrow, and there'll be free beer. There'll be free beer tomorrow. Just hold you out,' like at the Ettamogah Pub. 'There's free beer tomorrow.' But, when you come back tomorrow, the sign is still there; it hasn't changed. That's what this government's economic pressure was, but at least now it's had to drop the sign, because people have come back enough years to realise this is a trick; this is a ruse. So now they're not even promising to lower electricity prices and therefore lower the cost of living.

Instead, they've now sought to distract the Australian people with a massive big tax grab, with a policy that they don't really know what the impact will be on the property market. Let's say a few prayers for our banks, for our financial institutions, for property! The government has no real idea of what it's doing at the moment. It's making up things as it goes along. So we come back to asking: what is the plan here?

There's a very strong reason why this is the most important issue, why people see this. They're not fools. They can see. When you get to the checkout now—and often you're at these self-service things—you can see it; you can see that the bill goes up every time you scan. You look down at your basket and you look back at the checkout and you think, '$50 doesn't get you much these days, does it?' It's hard. I find it hard. I've got five kids. It's hard to actually buy stuff for dinner that's less than 50 bucks if you want some meat, some protein. It's expensive stuff. If you're not just going to do noodles or something, if you're going to actually give your kids a healthy dinner, you struggle to get it under about 50 bucks. That's what it used to cost to go out; you'd go out for a takeaway meal and you might spend 50 bucks or 60 bucks. That was a special night. Now every night making dinner is a real challenge. You're left with tacos to get something reasonable, but even the price of that has gone through the roof. Forget about doing a steak on a regular basis. It's out of control.

In a country like ours, we should be able to offer every Australian family to be able to afford a steak for themselves and their kids. We've got all this cattle. We've got all this land. Why can't we afford it? Because we impose all these costs on farmers, on our food production. The farmers have to make money. The processors have to make money. They're being loaded up with so much cost that all of that has to be passed through.

I want to use a stark Australian example here to hammer this home. I just checked this while I was listening to Senator Hanson. It's a comparison I've used a few times, but I just made sure it was still the case. I looked up Woolworths. At the moment, if you go down to your local Woolies to get yourself a pack of Tim Tams, to eat while you watch the footy over the weekend, that's going to set you back six bucks. That's six bucks for nine Tim Tam biscuits. That's 66c a biscuit these days. At least it might be good for your diet! You won't want to have too many of them.

If you have a look—all this stuff's online now; you can check it easily—you can all see how terribly this government has managed our economy. If you go to Walmart in Canada, a pack of Tim Tams is Can$3.98. If you convert that, at the current exchange rate they're about the same; we're about parity, so it's $4.08. That is compared to six bucks here. So it's Can44c. If you're a Canadian, good luck to you! You get your Tim Tams for Can44c each. How is it that a basic Australian staple is now costing 33 per cent more, a third more, in Australia than it does in Canada? How has that happened? Have we lost a war or something? What happened? Why?

There's one big difference: Canada uses its energy resources. It's always proudly used its oil and gas, even while it's had hopeless left-wing governments. Even this current one has completely scrapped all their carbon taxes. They've moved away from all this rubbish in Canada, even under a left-wing government. They had to scrap the Trudeau government because they were failing all these issues, but even under the Trudeau government, every time I went there, they were still massively oil and gas. They promote their resources. They promote their industry. They're proud, in Alberta and these provinces, of their industry. They export it to the world.

But this country has followed a naive approach, a different approach, where we've denigrated them. This government denigrated our coal industry and denigrated our gas industry. We still export it to the world. We do that, just not proudly. We let that happen because the government needs the revenues to pay its bills, to cover its wasteful spending; we just don't use the resources ourselves. We deny ourselves the use of the resources.

The government's only response now is to provide more and more subsidies—that have run out now, for electricity, at least directly. Let's see your electricity bills go through the roof. They're reliant now on an unbelievably wasteful home battery scheme. This is one of the greatest scandals in Australia's fiscal history. A scheme that was meant to cost around $2.8 billion is now $12 billion. This home battery scheme has blown out by six times. Then they have the temerity to say, 'This is a cheap form of power.' How is it cheap? It's $12 billion. You're all paying for that—people pay for that—just not through your bill. You pay it through the debt that we're racking up and the interest we're going to have to pay on that debt. It's still being paid for; it's not cheap. It's $12 billion for those batteries—and counting. So that hasn't helped.

But, more to the point here, this fundamentally misunderstands the importance of energy to our economy, because this government has been trapped in this political spin on energy where it only really views the energy question at the household level, through people's household bills. And that's very important—the electricity bill is very important to everyone. You can see it. You know how much it's costing. So, when the government come along and say, 'We'll give you a battery; we'll give you a rebate for a few years,' they think they've solved the problem. But the problem is that the electricity that households use—that pops up on your bill—is only about a quarter of the energy used in Australia. Businesses use four times the amount of power that households do, in Australia. The power that goes into making Tim Tams, that goes into making bread, that goes into refrigerating and transporting milk—that energy use is way, way more than what we use to run even our air conditioning or dishwashers or TVs in our homes. It's just off the scale.

What happens is, when electricity prices go up, when energy prices go up, yes, you feel the impact through your bill, but you actually feel it a lot more keenly through your shopping trolley. It's a silent cost increase—well, it's not silent; you see it, but people don't know it. They don't see it on the Woolworths docket. You don't see, 'Okay, this is the amount that it's gone up by because of electricity costs.' It's just embedded in all these products, embedded right through our economy.

The National Party did some work on this a few years ago in partnership with our research centre, our think tank—the Page Research Centre. They did some work and looked at what the impact of the increase in electricity prices is on the average household bill. They found that the cost from the higher energy prices we've seen under this government was over $3,000 extra. So, as I said earlier, electricity bills have gone up by maybe about $500 to $1,000 depending on the size of your home, but your other costs, the costs of buying things at the shops, have gone up another $3,000. That's the impact on Australians; that's why people are feeling this cost-of-living crisis. And that's why the government's gaffer-tape-type solutions at a household level are not going to work. They're not dealing with the fundamental problem, which is the efficiency, the productivity of our electricity sector.

That brings me to one of the most important issues here, and that is the productivity of our economy. The government's been making a big play this week of the fact that on 1 July, yesterday, the minimum wage went up 4.75 per cent, saying: 'Great! Your wages are up 4.75 per cent.' It sounds good; that's a pretty good increase if you just look at it at that level. What the government don't say—or they don't say it in the same sentence—is that their own budget papers that they released at the start of this sitting period say that inflation this financial year is set to be five per cent. So your minimum wage goes up by 4.75 per cent, but the price of everything, on average—sometimes it's going up by more than that—is going up by five per cent. Now, either the government are just completely deceiving you or they're not very good at maths, but five is greater than 4.75. So, if the price of everything you buy is going up five per cent and your wage is going up 4.75 per cent, you are not better off. You're worse off. You've gone backwards.

That's why the government's rhetoric on wages going up is falling flat, because people are not stupid. They can see that their living standards are falling at a rate we've never seen. The first four years of this government have seen the worst performance in our productivity in our nation's history—and it's not even close. In fact, we have never had a four-year period—four consecutive years—in our nation's history where productivity growth has been negative. Sometimes it dips, it goes down, but it has always stayed even just slightly positive over any consecutive four-year period—until now. This is a record-setting government in a negative fashion. They have set the record: productivity growth has fallen over this first four years of their government, and not just by a little bit; it's fallen by five per cent. It is a five per cent fall in just four years.

That's why we can't get real wage increases. It's why, when wages started going up, as they did last year, inflation broke out again. We had the highest inflation rate before the Iran war—so before the war, before the increase in fuel prices, we had the highest inflation rate in the developed world. That is because, without productivity, you can't offer higher wage increases without it leading to this increase in prices and this spiral. The Reserve Bank had to increase interest rates again. After a small respite last year of a couple of reductions, we're now back to increasing rates—and we might get another one before we're back—and that's because we just haven't dealt with a major issue.

The government had a productivity conference last year. They had a roundtable with lots of fanfare. They invited all these business leaders and everybody to come here. But, just like in their budget, they ignored the major issue. They ignored electricity prices; it didn't rate on their agenda. If you look at what's happened to productivity in our country at a sectoral level, there is an electricity issue. Electricity is a sector that's gone down massively in the last 20 years—a 20 per cent reduction in our productivity in electricity. The mining industry's had a similar reduction, although there are some specific issues there that I don't have time to go into—particularly around the terms of trade booms—but it's electricity where we could have a big impact. If we got that right, it would make a huge difference to our nation's prosperity, our wealth and, ultimately, the living standards of Australians—and, ultimately, the price of Tim Tams in our shopping trolleys!

But the government's waved the white flag on that. They don't have a productivity agenda. They don't have a growth agenda. They don't have an economic plan about getting inflation down. Their plan amounts to taxing you more. That's what they've got. They've got a massive, big tax that they think will crash prices in the housing market and will somehow help. I don't know how hurting our economy, our most important asset, is going to help. We need a government that focuses on the real issues. We need a government that focuses on the cost-of-living crisis. We don't have that right now, after this budget period.

Tyron Whitten (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

It's heartbreaking how few Australians can say they are better off now than when Labor took over four years ago. In this amazing country of ours, we've been accustomed to our standard of living increasing year on year, generation after generation. But, under this Labor government, that trend has been shattered. Too many families are treading water or slipping backwards. Real wages have plummeted to 2011 levels. And don't give me your 'Every working Australian gets a tax cut'—seriously! Oprah was giving away cars, but not Labor: 'You get a cup of coffee, you get a cup of coffee!' Australians haven't had a real pay rise in 15 years, and these pitiful tax cuts will be eaten up by inflation within the year.

In my home state of Western Australia, we're hearing from more and more people that the escalating price of groceries has become their biggest concern. Since Labor took office, the cost of the weekly shop has exploded, adding hundreds of dollars for just the basics. What is driving these ballooning prices? One of the fundamental drivers is energy prices. Energy reaches into every corner of the economy. No work is done without it. Whether it's diesel, gas or electricity, it is the most fundamental input of any enterprise—and food is no exception. But now, for the first time, many Australians are having to make decisions that put a country as wealthy as ours to shame—to heat their homes or put food on the table, to stay cool in summer or skip the essentials.

Energy prices driven by deliberate Labor policy have smashed our country's most vulnerable people. The long-term increase of power prices over the last 10 years, under the Paris Agreement, has been staggering. Electricity prices have run at twice the rate of general inflation. And since this Labor government's promise of $275 off your power bill, we have seen power bills rise by more than 25 per cent. Remember 'We've done the modelling—oh, hang on: we've changed our position; it's not our modelling anymore'?

The renewables obsession has driven up costs, through intermittency, expensive grid upgrades and the early retirement of cheap base-load coal plants. These higher energy costs flow straight into the price of food, through production, processing, storage and transport. The mismanagement of our energy system borders on criminal. It is driven by ideology, not reason or economics. The attack on energy is putting our farmers under enormous pressure. They face skyrocketing input costs for energy, fertiliser, transport and, on top of that, the regulatory burdens of climate policies.

Australia is a food powerhouse. We produce far more than we consume, exporting around 70 per cent of our agricultural output and importing only about 11 per cent of our food. But our food systems are under threat. Productive land is being sequestered under climate change targets for carbon credits, taking it out of food production and adding pressure on remaining farmland and rural communities. Prime agricultural land is precious, and we need to have strong support to keep it in the hands of our Australian farmers, who have cared for the land for generations. But under the current strain we are seeing farmers sell off farmland to foreign corporates to make ends meet. Around 50 million hectares is now under foreign control. That's roughly the size of Spain and Portugal combined.

We cannot take our strong agricultural heritage for granted. Our self-sufficient food system is part of what built Australia into the great nation it is today. But the recent energy shock from the Iran conflict has highlighted just how vulnerable our food production is, with fertiliser supplies caught short. Australia is the third-highest producer of gas in the world. Why don't we produce our own fertiliser? It is because this Labor government doesn't want the emissions from the production, even though the countries we buy it from most likely use our gas to produce it. Labor has strangled this vital industry to death through carbon taxes and environmental regulations. It's not just a disaster for food prices; it's a disaster for national food security.

All of this accumulates in the hip pockets of Australians, with our most vulnerable impacted the worst. Australians deserve better, and there is a clear, positive path forward to mitigate these problems and unlock the next golden era of Australia: cut government spending by targeting waste, reducing the bloated bureaucracy, scrapping programs that duplicate functions between federal and state governments, and ending subsidies for intermittent energy. This will deliver billions of dollars in savings every year. Cooling public demand will help bring inflation under control and create room for real cost-of-living relief without adding to debt burden. We will end subsidies for renewable energy. If it can't stand on its own economic merits, the taxpayer will not be propping it up—no more billions of taxpayer dollars being poured into projects that have failed to provide affordable or reliable power.

We will focus on reliable, affordable, dispatchable base-load power from our incredible resources, like coal, gas and nuclear. These will deliver stable, low-cost electricity around the clock and help to ease prices throughout the economy, including the weekly shop. We will support the farmers, who feed the country, and ensure that our prime agricultural land stays in the hands of Australians.

Implementing these measures to drive down the cost of the basics is a top priority—more money back in the pockets of everyday Australians. We have the land, we have the resources, and we have the skills and the people. What has been missing is the will and the courage to change course from policies that have failed. This vision is achievable, it is necessary and it will deliver a brighter future for every Australian family. One Nation has a vision and a plan.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I've been thinking about the comments from the last speaker and comments from the other speakers in this debate. From most of my interactions with senators in this place, I think we all have a view about trying to make things better for fellow Australians and the ambition to help particularly those who are in need but really everybody in the community, to lift people up and give them an opportunity.

But the real question comes down to not just wishing for it to happen but actually working out policy so that it can happen and, when those policies are put forward, not voting against them. Consistently there have been policies put forward to deal with the cost of living. There are consistently policies put forward in this place to make it easier, not easy, for Australians, to make sure that people can raise a family and can afford to buy small luxuries and sometimes even larger ones—whether it be our housing policy, whether it be our industrial relations policy and, yes, whether it be our energy policy.

But what we see time and time again is that, with every proposal to reduce taxes, to improve wages, to deal with energy policy, to give bill relief, those opposite, the parties of the right, the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation, gang up to say to fellow Australians, 'That's not the right way to go.' I think they have an ambition for things to be better, but the problem is they never have a pathway. They never have an explanation. They never have a sense of what has to be done, because, if they did, they'd be voting for the things that have been put forward in this place.

I hear them say that we haven't had a real wage increase and there are issues with wages. Yes, I agree with you. Wages in many places need to go up even further—in an appropriate, fitting and negotiated way that the system allows. But the fact is that One Nation has, for the last 20-odd years, voted with the Nationals and Liberals on every occasion to smash the living wage. They voted against gig workers having minimum standards. They voted against gig workers not being sacked by an algorithm. They voted against gig workers getting paid the minimum wage. They voted against truck drivers getting better arrangements. Those at the top of the supply chains that are making all the dollars are the ones that they rally against but vote for. It's easy to rally against somebody and then tell them, on the private: 'Don't worry. I'm not going to vote against you; I'm just going to talk against you.' That's the reality of what happens on the opposite side. That's the reality of what happens with One Nation. Time and time again they come into this place and vote against real Australians getting real support and having real rights.

When they start talking about this very broad thing about blue tape, green tape, black tape and red tape, what they're talking about is that they want to take rights off people. They talk about those as red tape. Someone's red tape, blue tape, green tape or black tape is someone's rights they want to take away. Time and time again they come in this place and, whether it's a motion or a proposal, vote something down. They vote down consistently people's rights in this country. And I don't mean only people in small groups; I mean across the economy.

When you say that you're against, don't support and won't rally for the minimum wage being increased, which you do time and time again; when you say that people should not have access to parental leave; when you vote against weekend penalty rates being protected; when you vote against same job, same pay, which you did consistently—where one person's getting paid $20,000 or $30,000 more for doing the exact same job as the person they're standing next to and getting the same instructions and working for the same management, while the company at the top of supply chain is making all the money out of it—then you are saying to Australians, 'You don't deserve to get a leg up.' Oh, sorry, that's right; we're all lazy Australians. Remember that? We're lazy Australian workers. That's how we were described by One Nation at the National Press Club. I saw every one of those One Nation senators and House of Reps people standing there and applauding.

I still remember when the increase of $110 a week to the minimum wage came through, and Barnaby Joyce called it a pittance, something that was hardly even worth it. Those sorts of approaches from those people opposite tell the real story. That tells the truth of what's actually going on. That tells the truth about what they're actually saying. They say one thing and they quietly say to those very powerful forces, who make the Tim Tams: 'You can get away with it. You can charge more. You can make them pay more.' We've brought price-gouging regulations in against the retailers. We've brought actions against a whole series of areas in the energy industry to deal with those shonky arrangements where they just keep putting prices up. You'd find out about it after it was done secretly, but they have to do it on an annual basis. That's more transparent. We turned around and had energy bill relief, which they voted against. So they can paint it any way they like on the opposite side. They can play whatever game they like to play, saying they really know what's going on. Well, you know what? I know what's going on with you people: you're voting for the ones that you're rallying against rather than voting for the people you pretend you're supporting. That's what the right is about. That's how the right across here have been voting for, for 20 years.

Let's not pretend to ourselves that One Nation is some new fad. I've sat here for seven years and watched it my entire life, and those characters across the way have voted with the other characters across the way and voted against every initiative that's given somebody a leg up or a support or lifted the boats for all, because they think it should just be dog eat dog. People like Gina Rinehart can get away with whatever they want whilst everybody else that's working for them can't get a fair shake. That's why they want to get rid of same job, same pay. I heard them rallying for same job, same pay for years, saying the casuals were being badly treated, and what did they do? When it came to it, they turned around and voted against those same people. They misrepresented what they were going to do to them. They were going to betray them. That's exactly what they did. They come into this place and, on every occasion, they betray those people they pretend to represent. Now, I agree that we all have an aspiration in this place for things to be better, but their pathway to be better is to look after those at the top of the town rather than the people across the town.

We've got so many changes that we've made that have made improvements in so many places. There are the tax questions. We've had five rounds of tax cuts, leaving the average worker up to $2,800 better off per year. And what have the parties of the right done? They have voted against it every time. That's what they do. They say one thing and then they vote against tax cuts. They say wage increases and then they vote against the way to get a wage increase and don't support wage increases coming in. They talk about Australian workers. 'We're for them.' 'No, they're all lazy.' They talk about families. Oh, no, they shouldn't have parental leave. The reality is that this country will be in a dire position, that every hardworking Australian will be in trouble, if these people are ever elected to become part of a government. The coalition of the ugly, I'd call it, because of the consequences when you start standing up here saying there's too much money spent on some of the things that they raised here on so many occasions. When you get down to the detail, you find out how many billions of dollars they want to take out of services for Australians. They want to follow the playbook that's been used in other parts of the world, because they can't come up with an idea themselves. So they want to take an un-Australian approach and say that they're going to beat down on every Australian to make sure things are just a bit better for those at the top just to make sure that they get a bit more of a pat on the back from Gina. You never know; there might even be an extra plane in it!

Sean Bell (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | 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.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) | Link to this | Hansard source

Sadly, the reality facing Australians after four years of the Labor government is this: Australians are paying 42 per cent more for their insurance. They're paying 38 per cent more for their electricity. They're paying 37 per cent more for their gas. They're paying 23 per cent more for their rent. They're paying 21 per cent more for their education. And each and every day, when they go through that checkout, they know that this is their reality. They are paying 17 per cent more for their food. That's right. Each time you walk into that grocery shop and walk out of that checkout under the Albanese government, you are paying 17 per cent more for your food.

But, on top of that, Australians have now lived through interest rates increasing 15 times under the Albanese Labor government. When that Reserve Bank meets, Australians hold their breath, and they pray to God—they pray, 'Please, please drop interest rates.' But, sadly, the role of the Reserve Bank is to step in when government fails. Because this government fails time and time and time again to rein in its spending so that inflation is under control, the Reserve Bank has to step in and do the hard work. Sadly, what that means for the Australian people is Labor fails them and interest rates go up. Under Labor interest rates have now gone up 15 times. That means that the average Australian with a typical mortgage is now, under the Albanese Labor government, around $29,000 worse off per year.

What's worse is that Mr Albanese time and time again promised the Australian people that, if he were elected, life would be cheaper. That's not the reality for the Australian people. The reality after four years of Labor—it doesn't matter what those opposite stand up and say. Australians know when they wake up each and every morning that their reality is that they are paying more for the basics and they are paying more to keep a roof over their heads—if they can keep that roof over their heads. So many Australians now are living in their cars. These are Australians that have jobs. But, because interest rates have gone up 15 times under the Labor government and because on average Australians with a mortgage are paying around $29,000 more per year, something had to give. Do you know what the bad news is? The house had to give, and they now live in their car.

The reality is they're paying more tax under Labor. It doesn't matter what the Labor Party says. The reality is that Australians are actually paying more tax under this government. Sadly, after four years of Labor, this is the reality they're faced with. They're actually working harder. Many more Australians are actually working two jobs now. Do you know why they're having to work two jobs? They're having to work two jobs because they're paying more when they walk out of the grocery store. They know the reality is that they are now paying 17 per cent more for their food. You've got to have insurance. They now know they're paying 42 per cent more for their insurance. Electricity is a way of life. You can't live life without electricity. They're paying 38 per cent more for their electricity, 37 per cent more for their gas, 23 per cent more for their rent and 21 per cent more for their education.

Those on the other side say, 'We're doing the right thing by the Australian taxpayer,' but the reality for the Australian taxpayer is they know that you're not. What the Australian taxpayer is actually looking for is a plan for a fairer Australia. They love a fair go in this country. They want a government that says, 'We have a plan for a fairer Australia, for a freer Australia and for a better Australia.' That's what the coalition is going to put forward—a credible and competent plan to restore Australians' standard of living. They know standards of living under this government have crashed. Australians live that on a daily basis. Worse than that, this is a government that has turned its back on Australian values. They are looking for a credible alternative and a government that will say to them, 'We will protect your way of life.'

We will offer Australians a tax-back guarantee. Those on the other side wouldn't know what that is. Each and every year under a coalition government you will get an automatic tax cut that gets bigger every year by stopping inflation from pushing you into a higher tax bracket. If you get into that higher tax bracket, do you know what happens to you? The government takes more of what you earn. If a government can't control its spending, you deserve to actually ensure that you keep more of what you earn. That's what the coalition will offer you.

Migration and housing—this is where the Labor Party have fundamentally failed Australians. You bring in 1.4 million people, you basically crash the housing market and you wonder why Australians are living in their cars. You have got to tie migration numbers—lower them; numbers have been too high and standards have been too low—to the number of houses built. Only the coalition offers a plan for a fairer, freer and better Australia.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the debate has expired.