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Drill, Refine, Secure: Solving the Fuel Crisis for Good

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The Albanese Labor Government’s Fair Work Amendment (Fairer Fuel) Bill 2026 was nothing more than a drop in the tank during the fuel crisis. While its aims were to reduce lead times for renegotiating road transport contracts from over a year to a few weeks, it failed to solve the broader issues crushing our economy, agriculture, and everyday families.

Labor’s rushed these poorly drafted bills without proper consultation. This legislation hands unchecked, unscrutinised powers to the minister to interfere in the Enterprise Agreements protecting independent trucking companies indefinitely.

One Nation supported this bill because we wanted to offer immediate relief to our critical trucking industry. However, A One Nation government will amend it. We will mandate a sunset clause, require a formal declaration of emergency as a legislative instrument, and ensure measures expire as soon as the crisis ends.

The government should have invoked the Liquid Fuel Emergency Act 1984 weeks before this legislation was introduced. Doing so would have forced foreign multinational oil companies to release hoarded fuel reserves into the market, reining in regional price gouging.

While trucks keep Australia supplied, farmers face doubled fuel costs, making winter crop planting unsustainable. Labor is picking winners while ignoring regional Australia, small businesses, and manufacturing.

Australia is in this position because Net Zero ideology was prioritised over practical energy security.

Domestic oil production must be restored. We need to build new refineries, construct gas-to-petrol plants and establish a domestic gas reservation so Australia is never left vulnerable to foreign supply shocks again.

— March | Senate Speech

Transcript

Senator Roberts: The Fair Work Amendment (Fairer Fuel) Bill 2026 is a drop in the tank when it comes to managing the fuel crisis. The bill relates to road transport contract chain orders which used to be called delivery contracts. It allows those contracts between businesses and their trucking companies to be renegotiated as a result of this fuel crisis. Currently, that process takes 12 months or more. This bill may—’may’, not ‘will’—reduce the lead time on a contract renegotiation to a few weeks. 

The road freight industry is critical to the functioning of the economy. Everything in our supermarkets, hardware stores and shopping centres is trucked in. If trucks stop moving because the government failed to secure a supply of fuel, affordable diesel, then people starve; chemists, doctors, dentists and hospitals run out of supplies; casual employees and apprentices are put off work; and loans, rents and mortgages go into arrears. And it’s all downhill from there. It’s that simple. 

This bill amends legislation that Labor introduced in 2024 which created these road transport contract chain orders without any emergency provisions or the ability of the government to step in when the public interest is not being protected. This bill corrects the Albanese government’s lack of foresight and forethought. This government needs to slow down its conga line of poorly written bills—we’ve had so many—take the time to consult and stop using the committee system as a rubber stamp. Had it done that, these provisions would most likely have already been included. The problem with this bill is that it doesn’t actually relate to the current fuel crisis, yet it gives the minister powers to interfere in any RTCCO—road transport contractual chain order—it wishes for the rest of time. Powers are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny, and there’s no requirement to make an order introducing an emergency RTCCO through a legislative instrument. Power without accountability is always a very bad idea. Emergency powers exist for emergencies, not to tip the scale in favour of your union mates. 

One Nation will support this legislation. Given we have not had the time to prepare amendments to introduce checks and balances, One Nation will amend the bill when we take government. Our changes will require a declaration of emergency to be a legislative instrument setting out the reasons for the order and include a sunset clause, a trigger, so that, unlike what Labor is trying to do, measures do not extend past the end of the crisis. 

One Nation points out that, while the trucking industry deserves the help this bill may provide, so does the rest of Australia. Due to a doubling of fuel costs, farmers are struggling to fund their harvests. Farms’ fuel bills must be paid in 14 days, while farmers are not paid for their harvests for an average of two months. With fuel costs rising from, as in one case I was told about, $15,000 per week to $30,000 a week, there are massive extra amounts for family farms to bankroll themselves—and they can’t. Around Australia today, farmers are unable to plant their winter crops. The spring harvests will be down, and fuel prices will go up. The Labor government is hollowing out the bush again. It’s driving people into the cities, and it’s running the fuel crisis to push that objective. 

If the government had the best interests of Australia at heart, it would have already invoked the Liquid Fuel Emergency Act 1984. The act enables the Commonwealth government to prepare for and respond to severe shortages of crude oil and refined liquid fuels such as petrol, diesel and jet fuel. It supports Australia’s obligations under the International Energy Agency agreement and emphasises cooperative responses with industries, states and territories. It provides strong ministerial powers as a last resort if market mechanisms are insufficient. The act requires the minister to be satisfied that there is or is likely to be a serious shortage of liquid fuels with national implications that cannot be adequately addressed without using this bill’s special powers. Powers include directing industry-held stocks of crude oil and liquid fuel, such as requiring companies to maintain, purchase or release specified reserves at certain locations and, secondly, regulating fuel sales and distribution across Australia, including bulk-supply restrictions and retail rationing. This legislation is there, and it should have been invoked weeks ago. This is day 32 of the Iran conflict—32 days for the Prime Minister and his ministers to stop the selfies and cringy TikTok videos and address the real crisis; 32 days of horror for the economy, the devastation of which will ensure the ALP do not form government again. 

Let me explain what’s going on here. These powers require the minister to do certain things. One of those things would be to force foreign multinational oil companies to direct the fuel they’re currently hoarding and supply some into the spot market. This is the market which supplies smaller outlets, especially in rural and regional areas. These are the outlets that suppliers are currently charging way over the odds for their petrol, causing price spikes. Then, once they’ve driven price spikes in the regions, the city outlets that those same multinational fuel companies own themselves put up prices to match prices imposed on the bush. The outcome is price gouging. It’s calculated, and it’s deliberate. The government rammed through legislation last week to increase the fines for doing exactly that, but it will take years before the ACCC’s legal action against multinational fuel companies gets through the courts. They’ll get a rap on the knuckles and agree to a small fine, banking windfall profits and most likely doing it all again. The Albanese Labor government is once again proving it’s the best friend of foreign multinationals and no friend of everyday Australians. 

The Fair Work Amendment (Fairer Fuel) Bill 2026 will result in transport charges rising—and that’s the point of the bill. Before the crisis, getting a tonne of produce to market cost $100. With the fuel shock, it’s now $175. This legislation will drive that price even higher. This isn’t the government helping the trucking industry; it’s the government making the rest of the economy pay more to help the trucking industry. Food will be dearer. Clothing will be dearer. Consumers will pay. The answer is to reduce the price of fuel, not force up the price of freight. 

Last Friday, the National Road Transport Association, NatRoad, published comments critical of the legislation, pointing out: 

“… most small to medium operators simply could not survive until Fair Work Changes flowed through.“

Here’s another quote: 

“… recent announcements, including emergency Fair Work Commission powers and moves toward better fuel monitoring failed to address the immediate needs of industry.…

NatRoad is calling on the Federal Government to urgently implement three … measures to keep trucks on the road and prevent further economic disruption: 

  • Activate emergency financial support payments for affected transport businesses 
  • Introduce a six-month moratorium on heavy vehicle equipment loan repayments through lender hardship arrangements 
  • Immediately remove the Road User Charge for heavy vehicles”

The national road user charge is a tax of 32.5c per litre of diesel. Operators claim back the fuel levy of 52c per litre and then pay the road user charge. One Nation calls on the government to suspend the road user charge for heavy vehicles for as long as this crisis continues. Taking out the fuel duty and the GST will make a large difference to trucking industry cash flows and their ability to get through this crisis—and reduce grocery bills. Invoking the Liquid Fuel Emergency Act 1984 to stop multinational fuel companies profiteering will reduce fuel prices and reduce the need for freight charges to rise. 

The truth is that every sector in the economy is in need of assistance. The knock-on from extreme fuel prices extends right through the economy. Trucking has the potential to impact everyday Australians—and every Australian—and more quickly than other sectors, so it deserves first attention. We see no problem in that. My objection is that the Labor government is picking winners, helping some but not others based on its radical communist ideology. Labor says to small business, ‘No assistance for you’; to manufacturing, ‘No assistance for you’; to farmers, ‘Definitely no assistance for you lot’; to rail transport and ports, ‘No assistance for you’; to Defence, ‘No fuel for you.’ 

The Albanese Marles government refused the request from President Trump to participate in international efforts to make safe the Strait of Hormuz so Australian bound fuel tankers can get through to Singapore or South Korea to refine our petrol for us. This raises the question: Australia doesn’t have a defence strategic liquid fuel reserve, so just how much fuel do our armed forces actually have? And why did the Navy ponce around in Exercise Kakadu Fleet Review last week? This wasn’t a training exercise; this was to show off. From where did those boats come, to where are they returning, and how much fuel was wasted for a photo op in the middle of a fuel crisis? Fair dinkum! The Navy has now caught the selfie virus. Heaven help us. 

The Albanese government snubbed the President of the United States, our greatest ally, while grovelling on hands and knees to him for fuel. ‘Please, sir,’ the Prime Minister pleads, ‘can we please have some of your oil reserve, as we sold ours off for a quick buck?’ The Albanese Labor government is a dishonest national disgrace. How did you not see this coming? One Nation have been banging on about the need for restoring oil production and increasing our domestic reserve since 2020—and about fuel security since 2016. 

Now, I know social media is circulating a Liberal Party meme claiming that One Nation voted against giving subsidies to the Kwinana and Altona refineries in 2020 to keep them in production. Let me address that first, with a history of closures. Port Stanvac closed under the Howard Liberal government in 2003. Clyde closed under the Gillard Labor government in 2012. Kurnell closed under the Liberals and Nationals in 2014. Bulwer Island closed under the Liberals and Nationals in 2015. Kwinana closed under the Liberal and Nationals in 2021. Altona closed under the Liberals and Nationals in 2021. Now, the meme circulated says that One Nation voted against the fuel security package in 2021, which we did. What the meme does not tell you the bill we opposed was a stunt. BP and Exxon had already announced the closure before the bill was ever written. The Liberal-National government designed the bill to pretend to the public in the 2022 election that the Liberals cared about fuel refining—all to look good, not do good. Exxon and BP never received the money. They knocked it back because plans for closure were underway, and $2.3 billion wasn’t enough to change their minds. So what did we vote against? Nothing—a Liberal Party con, a fraud on the voters. I’m so pleased the Liberals dug that one up though; it shows they haven’t changed. 

By the way, I remind people that Pauline Hanson said: ‘Why are we handing over money? We need equity.’ No, the Liberals didn’t want equity. Just hand over the cash. In her speech in the Liberals’ 2021 bail-out bill, Senator Pauline Hanson called on the government to use that money to buy those refineries and put them into the hands of Australian people to maintain our domestic refining capacity. Of course, the Liberals and the Nationals ignored that request. 

Let’s be clear. Australia is in this mess because the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Greens, the Teals and the Labor Party all still believe in climate change. I tested that last week with my amendment to the appropriation bills that called for the net zero spending to be removed from the budget. Their vote on our amendment is damning. Labor opposed. Liberals opposed. Nationals opposed. Greens opposed. Teal David Pocock opposed. These parties all support giving away another $9 billion to climate prostitutes feeding off the UN net zero scam—parasites killing Australia’s energy and economy. So, of course, they’re not going to do anything to help the petrol and diesel industry. This government is making a horrible mess of the fuel crisis because it’s making decisions based on ideology not practicality—on a scam and contrary to the hard, empirical scientific data. And the globalist Liberals and Nationals are right there with them. Shame on you all! 

We need to drill for oil; restore production in the known deposits—and we’ve got plenty; get started building new refineries; and, in particular, build new gas to petrol plants to use Australia’s cheap, natural gas to make our own petrol again. One Nation introduced legislation for a domestic gas reservation to provide the gas we need for that, and of course the uniparty voted it down. When will people realise these tired old parties love their ideology and their donors and hate anyone who doesn’t agree with their ideology or with their donors? One Nation cares about everyday Australians, and that’s why we’re surging in the polls. It’s not about patriotism or nationalism. Our surge is the public realising that the old parties do not have their backs and One Nation does. 

To remind the Senate, One Nation has already called for the removal of the fuel excise and a three-month moratorium on GST on liquid fuels. Taken together, they will reduce fuel prices outside the trucking industry by 75 cents a litre—a real benefit for everyday Australians. The government has refused to take that measure, even while Treasury is making out like bandits raking in hundreds of millions of dollars each month in additional GST payments on crazy-high fuel prices. I haven’t heard a state premier complain about that either, as they benefit from the GST. The states must be held to account, as well, for their greed. 

Everyday Australians are filling up their vehicle in terror and, yes, in anger at the Albanese government’s greed and arrogance and distance. It’s $100 to fill a small car and up to $200 to fill a family car in the most energy-rich nation on Earth. The biggest exporter of hydrocarbons in the world is Australia. Groceries will go unbought; that’s if they’re available. Clothing and homeware stores are already reporting slow-downs. Your children won’t get those new clothes, new shoes or quality groceries, because their parents are having to pay for the stupidity, the arrogance, the dishonesty, the deceit and the greed of the Chalmers-Albanese Labor government. I foreshadow One Nation’s second reading amendment on sheet 3747. 

I’m pleased the government sees the fuel crisis is real. When we mentioned it first, One Nation were called far right extremists for labelling it. I’m pleased the government sees the regional crisis is now real. Again, One Nation called it first because we listen. Suspend fuel taxes now!

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Coal vs Renewables: Who’s Paying the Price?

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According to the Australian Energy Regulator, the last quarter of 2024 recorded the second-highest number of extreme electricity price spikes ever, with prices exceeding $5,000 per megawatt hour. This is what happens when baseload generation is not in the mix. Coal, when operated continuously, delivers power at around $50 per megawatt hour—reliable and affordable.

Senator Ayres responded by doubling down on the government’s plan to “modernise” the system, dismissing concerns about cost and reliability. Instead of addressing the real issue—keeping affordable baseload power in the mix—the Minister ridiculed critics and pushed for more renewables, calling opposition arguments “too silly for words” and driven by “imported ideology.”

When will this government stop forcing Australians to pay record electricity prices and run our coal generators properly?

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to Senator Ayres, representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Mr Bowen. Minister, is coal powered electricity generation intermittent energy or base-load generation? 

Senator AYRES (Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) : Well, here I am. Senator Roberts’s question really does bell the cat in terms of where One Nation and their almost coalition partners over here in the National and Liberal parties really are on some of these climate and energy questions. If I go directly to Senator Roberts’s question, the unreliability of our current aging coal-fired power fleet is, as I cursorily read in the newspaper, what I think Minister Bowen was referring to. What is going on every single day is that there is an unplanned outage of one or more of these facilities. That unplanned redundancy causes additional cost, puts pressure on industry and reminds Australians that, under the previous government, with all of that uncertainty and all of that policy failure—I’ll come back and let you know, Senator Roberts, if I get this wrong—I think 24 out of 28 coal-fired power stations announced their closure. And what do we have from the Liberals and Nationals? Relitigation the same old nonsense that held Australia back—a $600 billion nuclear power plan and Mr Littleproud saying, ‘We should sweat these assets.’ If you went to some of these power stations in New South Wales, you would know that the only people that would say you should sweat that asset would be someone who had never been to one. (Time expired.) 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a first supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: Coal power is base-load generation. It’s designed to run continuously, and when operated continuously electricity generation from coal is reliable and affordable. It only becomes intermittent and expensive when the generator is deliberately turned on and off all the time to give preference to what is really intermittent power: solar and wind. Minister, why is the government’s energy policy set to deliberately destroying base-load power—coal? 

Senator AYRES: I suppose there are a number of responses, Senator Roberts. The first is that coal-fired power stations fail when there is a breakdown or planned maintenance. Now, planned maintenance is a good thing because you’re improving the capability of the asset. When an asset like that has gone on for so long that it can’t continue to function reliably— 

Senator Canavan: Thanks for your TED talk. 

Senator AYRES: Old ‘Koala Canavan’ over here! 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Ayres, withdraw that remark. 

Senator AYRES: I withdraw. But that is the problem. So we are moving to modernise the electricity system, to deliver the lowest-cost and most reliable approach—the Australian approach—and we won’t be deterred by imported ideas about political means and weird ideologies about the future of our electricity system. 

The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Ayres. Senator Roberts, second supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: According to the Australian Energy Regulator, the fourth quarter of 2024 saw the second-highest number of extreme electricity price events ever, with prices exceeding $5,000 per megawatt hour. This happens when baseload power generation is not in the mix. Instead, when run continuously, coal can run electricity at just $50 per megawatt hour. Minister, will you give Australians suffering from record high electricity prices are break and run our coal generators properly? (Time expired) 

Senator AYRES: What this government will do is continue to modernise our electricity system in the interest of industry, in the interest of households, in the interest of future industry, because what we require in this country is additionality—more generation capacity and more transmission capability. The coalition and One Nation campaign against energy generation capability around Australia, wandering around complaining, whether it’s about koalas or that somehow offshore wind projects will be bad for whales. There are whales who go up and down the eastern Australian coast, dodging container ships and bulk carriers. Are they somehow going to door themselves on a stationary offshore wind tower? It is too silly for words. It’s too silly for words, sillier than a two-bob watch, and it’s imported, weird ideology coming from overseas that’s being used to try and stop progress right here in Australia. 

The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Minister Ayres. 

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Labor’s Cost-of-Living Crisis Is Bleeding Aussies Dry

Milk’s up. Eggs? Up. Lights on? Might cost a kidney! Coffee’s $6. A sandwich? $50.

It’s not one big hit — it’s death by a thousand dollars.

Labor’s cost-of-living crisis is eating Aussie life, one small joy at a time.

Transcript

The price of milk is going up, The price of eggs is going up. The cost of freight is going up. Turning the lights on means selling a kidney on the black market. Everything’s expensive.

Want a Uber Eats sandwich these days? Well, there’s 50 bucks. A quick coffee to warm you up from whatever mini Ice Age we’re shivering in right now – there’s 6 bucks. It all adds up.

Now I like coffee, some days 2. $12.00 in coffee to stay alive. That’s $4,368 in coffee in a year.

Little things add up. 10 years ago it cost $1456 a year in coffee, the odd dollar here and there.

That’s what this cost of living crisis is built on. It’s eating away at the things Australians used to enjoy – one by one.

Even heading down to the pub with your mates for a couple of beers is a luxury expense.

I heard tolls were going up across Sydney – again! Drive across the bridge or have an extra cup of coffee? Turn the lights on or skip lunch? Use the air conditioning? Plug in an electric car to charge?

Are you crazy?

Every Labor tax hike, every bit of kindness to fund Treasurer Jim Chalmers latest thought bubble, every cent squeezed out of you adds up to a personal crisis.

So when we buy our eggs, we buy our milk, we take a detour to avoid a toll or walk past that coffee we can’t afford? Remember Labor’s greed added those costs. One man – $1.00 at a time.

The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, with a little help of course from Chris Brown and his mad, elusive cheap energy.

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Net Zero Destroys, It Doesn’t Deliver

Australia’s political class is not putting Australians first.

The Nationals and Liberals are more interested in fighting each other than actually putting forward something that will benefit the country – cheaper power and cheaper groceries by ditching Net-Zero.

Interview with @empactnews

Transcript

Australian leaders, to be good, to be effective, have to put Australia’s interest first. That is the theme that drives Pauline and myself.

You know, Pauline has a very simple political philosophy. Is it in Australia’s interest?

David Littleproud’s net zero, it’s his baby, is not in Australia’s interest. It is counter to Australia’s interest. It is death to Australia’s energy sector, death to manufacturing, death to our environment with solar and wind turbines destroying the environment.

You know these people are pushing up solar and wind to protect the planet while killing the environment. I mean, this is insane. On environmental grounds, on farm and food security grounds, on economic grounds, on energy grounds. Every which way we look, this is rubbish. And to make it worse, it’s all based on the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull.

You know there is no evidence to back it up.

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$2.15 Billion in Subsidies: The Hidden Costs of “Cheap” Renewables

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During the last Senate Estimates, I questioned ARENA about their massive spending of taxpayer money. The numbers are staggering – they’ve now committed $2.15 billion in subsidies to supposedly “cheap” renewable projects.

Despite claims that solar is “the cheapest form of electricity generation in history,” Australians’ power bills tell a different story. The reality is they don’t account for all the extra costs of firming, storage, transmission lines and general unreliability. This is what happens when government agencies focus on pushing unreliable renewables instead of ensuring affordable power for Australian families.

We used to have some of the cheapest electricity in the world, but these massive subsidies and failed green energy policies are driving up costs for everyone.

The net zero fantasy is already hurting our regions, ruining small businesses, and driving up the cost of living across Australia. It’s time to ditch these wasteful subsidies and return to reliable, affordable power.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Do you ever think about how much taxpayer money your agency has spent on net zero policies, only for power bills to continue to get more expensive? 

Mr Miller: Senator, that doesn’t occupy much of my time. We’re working on innovation to help lower the cost of the core technologies that go into lowering power bills in the long term. And, as you would appreciate, this innovation cycle takes a while. We’ve obviously seen the success of solar PV, which was maybe written off many years ago, but has come through as the lowest cost form of generation in history, as we’ve noted in past conversations. I’m very confident, actually, that wind technology, solar technology and battery technology, which is coming down the cost curve rapidly, combined at scale will actually reduce energy costs for Australians. 

Senator ROBERTS: Is your job to bring down power bills or give money to solar and wind energy? How much does the Australian Renewable Energy Agency currently administer in deployed capital in terms of loans or equity stakes? 

Mr Miller: The objects of ARENA, the agency, are set out in the act. They are to improve the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies, increase the supply of renewable technologies and support Australia’s decarbonisation emissions reduction objectives. You’d be aware that we’re a granting agency, so none of our funding is provided through debt and equity. It’s all through the provision of grants. In some circumstances, those grants are recoupable based on performance of the projects, and we make that decision on a case-by-case basis. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. How much did ARENA issue in grants in the most recent year? 

Mr Miller: I can get you that in a minute or two. My colleague Mr Faris could probably find that number in the pack. When we think about the progress of our work in terms of project projects, we look at approval rates, which is the key milestone for ARENA when I, under my delegation, or our board, or the minister— 

Senator ROBERTS: Getting a project to approval stage. 

Mr Miller: When we provide an approval, we then, in most circumstances, are working through to a contract, which ultimately lands to be grant money flowing. But that can take months and years in some cases. But I think in the last financial year we provided approvals of $497 million, and I think in the year before it was $540 million. So, per our annual report: funds approved in 2023-24 total $445 million, and contracts written, which is a later stage, were $392.5 million in that financial year. 

Senator ROBERTS: So what did you call your key measurable indicator? 

Mr Miller: Approvals. Well, it’s one of many, but, yes, that’s an important one. 

Senator ROBERTS: What do you categorise as an approval? 

Mr Miller: An approval is a decision by the CEO, the board or the minister, with respect to their relative delegations, to provide funding to a particular project in that amount. 

Senator ROBERTS: Approve the funding? 

Mr Miller: Approve funding, yes. 

Senator ROBERTS: Do you know what your total budget allocation is over the forward estimates, the next four years? 

Mr Miller: That will be in the PBS, and we will get that number for you if we can. Otherwise, we’ll take it on notice and provide it. 

Senator ROBERTS: Is that located in one area? Are all the different components of the money located in one area? 

Mr Miller: It’s an aggregation of various programs and funding pools that we have been provided with by the government over time. Well, let me say governments because we were well supported by the coalition government a number of years ago, and have been even further supported by this government. But it relates to what we call our baseline funding, which is the money that is provided to ARENA where ARENA’s board, essentially, is the primary decision-maker on policy and programmatic objectives. And then, in addition, there are about a dozen programs that ARENA is running, with specific funding amounts, and with specific instructions through the policy instruments, and we’re managing all of that through the funding. But it all gets amalgamated, ultimately, into the forward estimates amounts. So I’d be very happy to read you the figures in the forward estimates for each year, revenue from government, if that would help you. The current year’s revenue from government is $425 million. The budget for next year is $709 million. The year after that, it is $735 million. Then we’re at $1.1 billion, and then we’re at $1.117 billion for the final year of the forward estimates. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. That’s a lot of money. 

CHAIR: Last question, Senator Roberts. 

Senator ROBERTS: Ever since ARENA came on the scene—when was that?—you’ve been issuing grants and loans in solar and wind. Have people’s power bills actually got cheaper? 

Mr Miller: It’s not my jurisdiction to talk about power bills, but we came on the scene on 1 July 2012, and as I— 

Senator ROBERTS: In 2012? 

Mr Miller: Yes, 2012, and, as I mentioned before, we don’t do loans. We do grants. 

Senator ROBERTS: You don’t do loans—well, issuing grants then. So you’ve been spending billions of  

dollars, and power bills have gone up. 

Senator Ayres: Well, Senator, you should— 

Senator ROBERTS: I’m asking Mr Miller. You don’t need to— 

Senator Ayres: Yes, and I’m entitled to drop in from time to time. It’s one of the inconvenient bits of  

estimates for senators who ask questions. If you go and talk to your constituents in the main street of a country town somewhere in Queensland— 

Senator ROBERTS: Which is what I’ll do. 

Senator Ayres: Yeah, I know. We saw you beaming in. But if you talk to them and then listen to the answer that they give you—engage in a conversation—what you’ll find is that many of them have solar technology on their roofs, which substantially decreases their electricity costs. 

Senator ROBERTS: Well, I actually was talking to a shopkeeper yesterday, and she said— 

Senator Ayres: Fascinating as that is, I am just going to keep answering your question. 

Senator ROBERTS: power bills have gone up tremendously. 

Senator Ayres: That is technology that was invented in Australia. All of the IP in solar panels all around the world—it’s Australian, right? It’s something that we should be proud of as a country—invented here, substantially reducing costs for households, with some of them earning a quid because they are under residual agreements. 

Senator ROBERTS: Without your subsidies, without your energy relief, the costs would be higher than ever. 

CHAIR: Okay. And we are running out of time. 

Senator Ayres: They are substantially benefiting from that technology. Now, it’s different for different households. Our job as a government is to make sure that the lowest-cost technology is in the system, and also to make sure that more of those Australian inventions are commercialised here in Australia and manufactured in Australia, and Mr Miller and ARENA’s work is to make sure that more of that technology is commercialised in Australia, and they’re doing a very good job indeed. 

Senator ROBERTS: Your policies are driving up prices 

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DEBUNKED: Brian Cox & Senator Malcolm Roberts on QandA

Join me as I break down the famous QandA session from 2016 with Brian Cox.

Have my arguments stood the test of time? Have the warnings of certain disaster by 2024 come true?

I go into depth to explain the full story behind this exchange that captured millions of views.

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Government Will Take Power from YOUR Solar Panels and EV

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For years, the Government has subsidised rooftop solar and, more recently, wall batteries. This isn’t so you can have cheap power, it’s so they can have YOUR cheap power.

Half of Australia’s solar energy is generated from rooftop systems. During the morning and evening peak hours, when the sun isn’t shining and wind energy reduces by 90%, the government will take the charge from your wall battery and EV to keep the grid going. This is called “grid connectivity”. Under net zero policies, you will receive only as much electricity as the officials in Canberra decide you can have.

One Nation will end the net zero scam, build new high efficiency coal plants and restore wealth and prosperity to Australia.

Transcript

I thank Senator Van for this matter of public importance. Without criticising the science, cost and impracticability of net zero, which I did last night and will do again tomorrow, it’s certainly possible to talk about wasted capacity in the electricity sector. The ad hoc stance towards solar power in Australia has meant that a lot of people have fitted solar panels without battery storage. This is a distortion in the market as a result of government interference—subsidising solar panels early on while only subsidising wall batteries much later. In fact, the distortion in the energy market as a result of government interference is exactly why energy prices in Australia are out of control. In the most energy rich country in the world we should have the cheapest retail electricity in the world; it should not be amongst the dearest. 

Remember, though, that One Nation is the party of free enterprise. If an Australian homeowner, body corporate or business wants to spend their own money to install solar power, connect it to a battery and then use that investment to start trading in electricity, all power to you. In fact, homeowners organising themselves to direct the output of their solar panels into community batteries is a way of getting into the energy business.  

The government promised community batteries, and I know it has so far funded 370. Only one of the 370 grants went to a community organisation. The other 369 were to either government departments or energy companies. Why are we giving grants to energy companies to build big batteries when the proceeds of those big batteries will be sold back to the grid? Can’t they finance themselves? The Albanese government are handing out taxpayers’ money to their big business mates at a time that everyday Australians need the money for themselves.  

Electric vehicles are another area where energy trading could be an option. Modern EVs use a battery which can hold 100 kilowatt hours of electricity. If charged from the owner’s own solar panels during the day, selling that electricity into the grid during peak hour will help stave off blackouts. Instead, all of these measures fracture energy generation and make the task of maintaining the reliability of the grid harder and more expensive.  

There is a better solution. Modern clean-coal technology allows for the retrofitting of a device which captures all of the gas coming out of a coal fired plant and converts the gas into useful products like fertiliser, AdBlue and ethanol. In the language of the woke, that means zero emissions. This process costs less than $100 million per power station and works best using sea water. Instead of spending more than $1 trillion and up to $2 trillion to simply replace our electricity generation and convert to electrification, clean coal will achieve the same objective for a few hundred million dollars. Clean coal is the real wasted resource in the Australian energy market. Clean coal will reduce the cost of living under Labor. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Hughes): The time for the discussion has expired.  

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One Nation is the True Champion for the Environment

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As I travel through Queensland, visiting communities affected by industrial wind and solar projects, it’s increasingly evident that Greens’ politics are rife with hypocrisy and the public know it. While they present themselves as champions of the environment, they support the massive environmental vandalism involved in the push for net-zero energy.

Tops of mountains in native forests are being blown off to accommodate massive wind turbines and permanent access roads, which require blasting, are being constructed to transport enormous wind turbine blades—some over 100 meters long—around corners and up the mountain. Additionally, thousands of kilometres of forest are being clear-felled to make way for the transmission lines that will deliver the power to the cities, where Green supporters can pat themselves on the back for using “green” energy.

In reality, there’s nothing green about green energy and there’s nothing green about the Australian Greens. One Nation is the true champion of the natural environment now.

Transcript

And what do the Greens do? After finally showing their true colours as the party of Hamas; as the party of left-wing union thuggery, donations and bribes; as the party of communism; and as the party of environmental destruction in the name of net zero energy, they have a problem. Their traditional base of decent Australians concerned about the natural environment is turning away from the watermelon Greens. So here’s the Greens’ answer: resurrect a bill which was already defeated because it’s a stupid bill, and use this to pretend the Greens still care about our precious natural environment. 

The intention of this bill is in the name: ending native forest logging. Regional forest agreements will be made subservient to environmental regulations which will tie logging down in the courts and bring logging to an end—end logging. All those workers, many of them fine union members, will be out of a job. It is logging that produces timber for, amongst other things, the very seats the Greens are sitting in today, right now, which were made from logged native timber—Western Australian jarrah and Tasmanian myrtle. 

Putting aside their hypocrisy, it’s clear the Greens think their supporters can be gullibly convinced by a superficial virtue-signalling stunt. After all, who would oppose protecting native forests? Actually, the Greens oppose protecting native forests. Greens’ energy policies are blasting the tops off mountains in old-growth forests to erect 300-metre-high wind turbines. They’re clear-felling thousands of kilometres of forest for access roads and the power transmission lines to get the power hundreds of kilometres back to the city—thousands of kilometres, in fact, back to the city. Thousands of hectares of native forest are being permanently destroyed.  

Blasting has released arsenic previously locked in sandstone into our waterways and aquifers. In the case of the Atherton Tableland in pristine North Queensland, aquifers contaminated with arsenic will eventually come to the surface in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, through underground basins.  

Unlike forest taken for logging, forest damage from net zero energy is not regrown. The access roads are required for maintenance for the life of the turbine. The transmission lines are permanent. Unlike coalmines that are remediated at the end of the mine, there’s no remediation bond on industrial wind, solar and transmission lines, so these things will be a rusting blight on the landscape for a hundred years, for the community to pay for, for taxpayers to pay to rehabilitate and for farmers to rehabilitate. The Greens are environmental vandals. 

I tell you who does support protecting native forests: One Nation. We would end the environmental destruction from net zero energy measures and would restrict solar panels to built-up areas where the energy is needed. We would end any new wind turbine subsidies and instead promote vertical wind technology. One Nation will prevent logging in old-growth forests. 

Regional forest agreements are an accord between the federal, state and local governments to supervise the timber industry. This means the Greens believe they know better than the state governments—all six of them—who have been managing their forests for 200 years. Aboriginals have been managing Australia’s forests for tens of thousands of years, including through the use of burning off. Each state government consults with Aboriginal communities in the development of regional forest agreements. Aboriginal voices only matter, though, to the Greens when they can be exploited to advance Greens technology and lock Aboriginals into victimhood and dependency.  

Generations of ongoing development of forestry agreements, planning out supply and demand, protecting sensitive habitats and protecting old-growth forests—all that great work involving communities, industry and government is torn up and thrown away because the Greens think they know better. They are playing God, playing tsar. What an ego—and to what benefit? 

The Greens are proclaiming their love of housing and promising to build more houses than anyone else. The question arises: out of what are they going to build those houses? The Greens want to shut down the Australian forestry industry, the conventional steel industry, the gas industry, the diesel industry and the cement industry. The Greens are proposing to build houses without timber, steel or concrete. Well, the last time I looked, pixie dust was not a building material. Does the CFMEU know they’re hopping into bed with a political party that would remove from the market all the materials tradies need to build a new home and build new apartment towers while also removing diesel for tradies’ generators and utes, which they now propose to tax out of existence? 

I don’t want to confuse the feelings coming from my left with facts, yet that’s what I do. I deal in facts. At last mapping, there were 131½ million hectares of native forest in Australia, which is 17 per cent of Australia’s land area, and there were 1.8 million hectares of commercial plantations, including pines and eucalypts. This is where most logging occurs, yet it’s not enough to sustain Australia’s demand for timber. There are 30 million hectares of land, most of that privately owned, which can be logged under the careful management of regional forest agreements. Last year, two per cent of those 30 million hectares were logged, meaning Australia is logging 600,000 hectares out of the 133 million hectares available, less than one half of one per cent of our native forests. 

What happens when a forest is logged? Is it clear-felled, never to grow anything again? Of course not. Forestry is about renewal. That’s the whole point of regional forestry agreements. The logging industry is allowed to go in and take the productive timber, remove the stunted and useless timber and then leave that forest to regenerate for 10 years or so before returning to repeat the cycle. Habitat is not destroyed; it’s enhanced. Forests are not destroyed; they’re enhanced. Rather than helping our forests, this Greens bill will harm them. 

Logging removes the fuel from the forest. It thins the trees and protects native forest from bushfires. There are huge areas of this country that have never fully recovered from the bushfires during the drought because some native forests contain so much fuel they burned like hell. What happened to the wildlife the Greens profess to care so much about? They were incinerated—agonisingly, cruelly incinerated. The damage to native flora and fauna caused in those bushfires resulted directly from restrictions on burn-offs, something sensible forest management would have mediated. They tried to, but the Greens stopped it. This is the problem with communists. They think imperious proclamations are a substitute for good government facts and data. They are wrong. 

Let’s be clear: it has been illegal to log old-growth forests for the entirety of this century. I know there has been some intrusion into old-growth forests. This bill from the Greens won’t deal with that problem, though, because the intrusion is mostly coming from the construction of wind turbines, access roads, solar panels and transmission lines, which the Greens adore and love and drive. Illegal logging, logging that damages old-growth forests, must be prosecuted, and One Nation will prosecute offenders. 

One Nation opposes this bill, because we are the party of the environment and we know the current system is best for the environment. As someone who has personally planted thousands of trees, rehabilitated land and protected coastlines, I know One Nation is now the party of the natural environment. 

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Government’s Net-Zero Push Threatens Economy

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The government wants to drive us off a cliff as we speed towards Net-Zero dictates from the un-elected United Nations and World Economic Forum.

None of it is based on proper data and all the evidence we have is that it will destroy our energy grid and our economy.

With inflation re-emerging, we have to put a stop to the billions being poured into climate policy making Australians pay more.

Transcript

Every time you see a wind turbine or an industrial solar complex, think one thing: your energy prices are going to increase. That’s what those things mean. We’ve been promised that energy prices will decrease, but wind turbines and industrial solar complexes mean higher prices for people, for families, for small businesses, for larger corporations and employers, for the whole community. And they mean trillions of dollars in waste in our economy. In every country around the world, as the percentage of solar and wind has increased, the cost of electricity has increased. That’s a fact—everywhere, consistent. And now, after nearly 30 years of pushing solar and wind, which started with John Howard’s renewable energy target, we see the ridiculous situation of the Labor government offering energy price relief. Why? Because they’re driving up the cost of energy to make it unaffordable; that’s why. So let’s have a look at why. Let’s see why killing the environment in the name of supposedly saving it is costing us so much. Let’s turn to the terms of the motion for an inquiry. So many people want us to have an inquiry, not just rural people but urban people, because they’re worried about the cost. This is what the inquiry is looking into: 

… the importance of ensuring that the National Electricity Grid has the capacity to provide a reliable and secure supply of energy to Australians as the economy transitions to new and more dispersed— 

and we’ll talk about that— 

methods of generations and storage, and acknowledging that transition will necessarily transgress on agricultural, Indigenous and environmental lands and marine environments … 

The environment and our productive capacity are suffering. 

I’ll cover some key concerns that are key to the inquiry because the uniparty has not thought about this—from when John Howard, the Liberal Prime Minister, started the renewable energy target to this ridiculous situation we’re in now. By the way, John Howard started that and did three other things, which we might have time to discuss, that laid the foundation for the crippling of our energy supply in this country. Six years after he was booted from office, he admitted that, on the matter of climate science, he is agnostic. He didn’t have the science. This whole thing is based not on science; it’s based on contradictions of science. 

Let’s start with solar and wind. The amount of steel needed per megawatt of electricity from a coal-fired power station is 35 tons. For wind turbines it’s 542 tons of steel. That’s 15 times as much. Straightaway, wind is suffering a cost penalty. It’s a huge cost burden. Then, when you look at the energy density of coal, it’s very high. It’s not as high as uranium, but it’s very high. For solar and wind, it’s very low. 

Secondly I see the government throwing barbs at the coalition, and well it should over aspects of its nuclear policy, but the government is accusing the opposition of uncosted policy. Where are your costs, government? Where are your costs on solar and wind? Where are your costs on solar and wind, Greens? We even see some solar and wind complexes, massive complexes in the Kennedy electorate in Queensland and in western Victoria, not connected to the grid. They have been built but not connected. That’s how much thought has gone into this. It’s bloody ridiculous. 

Solar and wind have an inherently high capital cost plus a low energy density, which means low energy production and very high cost per unit of electricity. Plus the amount of land needed for solar and wind is enormous. And then we see that the average capacity utilisation of solar and wind is 23 per cent. That’s less than a quarter of what the nameplate capacity is. Now we see the latest figures just released on wind, which show that it’s 21 per cent. That’s one-fifth of the capacity. What does that tell you? For a given capacity of a coal-fired power station, you’ll need a certain capacity of solar and wind. Multiply that by four, because you’re getting less than 25 per cent. Multiply it by five in the case of wind. Five times makes it prohibitive. Four times makes it prohibitive. Then think about this: at peak hour, when we need maximum electricity, the average utilisation and the average capacity is 10 per cent, which means that, to get the equivalent of that coal-fired power station, we need 10 times the solar and wind capacity—10 times. Then, for sizeable periods, we have the sun not shining brightly because of clouds or we have the wind drought. That means we need a further multiplication to make sure we can store up enough in energy and batteries. But the batteries to store that amount of wind and solar energy have never been thought of, never been considered and never been developed. It’s impossible. The cost if we don’t have them will be blackouts and outages in hospitals, businesses and family homes. 

Plus there are the transmission costs. Transmission costs, many years ago, used to be 49 per cent of the cost of the electricity bill. I don’t know what it is now, but it’s certainly substantial. Solar and wind have to be located a long way from the major metropolitan areas, which means straightaway that transmission costs are even higher than for a coal-fired power station, which can be located close to the metropolitan areas. Then, because of the dispersed nature of solar and wind, we have even more transmission lines. Then, because of the capacity factor that I just mentioned, we have even more transmission lines. This makes it prohibitive, not just in terms of the installation of solar and wind but also in terms of transmission lines. Plus, the transmission lines will barely be used because of the capacity of solar and wind not being utilised. And then we have the 15-to 20-year life, at best—12 to 15 years more likely—of solar and wind industrial complexes. That means that over the life of a coal-fired power station or a nuclear power station, they have to be replaced four times, so multiply the cost again by four. What have we multiplied it by so far? We’ve multiplied the cost by five, then by 10 and now by another four. Yet the CSIRO considers not one piece of that puzzle—not one piece. They say that it’s all sunk cost; just ignore it. 

That’s why solar and wind can compete. And they still need subsidies. Then you’ve got to add batteries and pumped hydro. Pumped hydro itself is an admission of failure. You cannot have pumped hydro without a disparity between peak hour prices and off-peak prices, and that’s due to the failure of the grid and solar and wind. And then we need firming, another cost, because coal, nuclear and hydro are stable, synchronous power supplies. Solar and wind are asynchronous—unstable—so they need firming. And they need backup gas or backup coal because solar and wind are unreliable. There’s a doubling. Look at the multiplication that we have got there. 

None of this is included in the GenCost report from the CSIRO. It assumes no transmission cost because they’ve already been built. That’s rubbish. We need far more new transmission lines. We have an inherently higher cost from solar and wind, plus low capacity, plus regional, plus dispersal, plus backup, plus stabilisation. Think about this: for a business, you need a stable, reliable, low-variation input. When variation occurs, it costs enormous amounts of money. At industrial and manufacturing plants, farmers are using backup, so they have to pay twice for their electricity. We also have a huge footprint in terms of land. Solar complexes and wind turbines use far more land and are far more scattered than a concentrated coal-fired power station or a nuclear power station. They’re taking up huge quantities of resources. The resource footprint of solar and wind is enormous.  

We have agricultural land being sterilised. We have poisons and toxins potentially going into the Brisbane water supply, into their drinking water—lead, cadmium—which feeds Brisbane, Beaudesert, Gold Coast, potentially Toowoomba, Ipswich, Logan and other areas in the south-east of Queensland. We also have the future cost yet to be added—Snowy 2.0.  By the way, when they first did the costings of Snowy 2.0, thanks to Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership and poor leadership, they forgot about the transmission lines. They forgot to add the transmission lines. Whoops! We better add a few more billion to that. Now look at it. It was originally slated for $2 billion. We could see this, and I’m not an energy expert. We could see it when Malcolm Turnbull first released it. We told them, and no-one took any notice. Now they’re putting in all these additional costs, and Snowy 2.0 is heading for $14 billion and perhaps $20 billion—if it moves! This is not about having an alternative energy supply; it’s about less energy and control of energy. 

We also have Mr Albanese and Mr Bowen, ‘Blackout Bowen’, talking about us being a renewable superpower. It means economic and environmental suicide, resource sterilisation, and displacement of Indigenous. No costings—a huge catastrophe! We’re talking about billions of dollars and impacts worth trillions of dollars. We must have this inquiry. They’re building in a high-cost overhead and a huge environmental legacy. When some of those farmers who are looking at the money now—some aren’t selling out, but some are selling out because of the money coming in—think about the environmental legacy. No bonds. The energy company owning the wind turbines and the solar complexes can just walk off and leave it. There’s no requirement to fix it. Farmers will pay for that. They’re already paying in many cases, as are rural towns, with the slow thrum, thrum, thrum of infrasound, which is proven harmful to humans. So they’re killing the environment to save it. We’re seeing human progress being reversed. 

The No. 1 message from the last 170 years since the industrial revolution started was that we have a higher standard of living and all the benefits that brings because of a relentless reduction in energy prices. What we’ve seen since John Howard come to power is a reversal of that. As energy prices increase, productivity falls, wealth falls and prosperity falls. We see a reversal of human progress. So what if we spend billions on solar and wind, what if it costs our economy trillions of dollars—and it will—and what if China does not? What happens then? Now do you get what’s going on? Now do you see it? 

I want to turn to two other points. As I said, John Howard introduced all the problems we’re seeing now: the Renewable Energy Target; the stealing of farmers’ property rights to comply with the UN Kyoto protocol; and the National Electricity Market, which is really a national electricity racket. He also introduced an emissions trading scheme as policy—not as fact, but as policy. That’s a carbon tax. He was the first major leader of a major party to have that. The CSIRO has never provided any empirical scientific data and logical scientific points that prove the need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. The CSIRO admitted that to me when I held them accountable, and they gave me three presentations, each 2½ hours long. In the first presentation they admitted that they had never given the advice and had never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and needs to be cut. In the second presentation they gave me, they admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented; they’ve happened before—many, many times. In fact, the scientific term for periods of high temperature is ‘climate optimum’, because they’re beneficial for humanity, for civilisation and for the environment. The temperatures are not unprecedented. 

The second point is that I’ve asked many government departments in this federal government for their basis of policy. To have a basis of policy you need to have the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on some climate factor. No-one has given us that. We have amassed 24,000 datasets on climate and energy from around the world, from legally scraped websites and research institutions like the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, and we’ve never found any change in any climate factors at all, so there’s no basis for policy. You need that quantitative impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on a climate factor so that you can then study the alternatives, if you want to get rid of the carbon dioxide production. You’ve got to have that to track progress, but there’s none of that. There’s no basis for policy. We are flying blind. We’re heading for a cliff. 

Then we see there’s no environmental impact statement for the use of solar and wind—none at all. What impact is the energy we’re taking out of the wind going to have on our climate? What impact is it going to have on the natural environment? Yet they say that 0.03 per cent of the carbon dioxide is coming from humans, and 1.2 per cent of that from Australians. No impact quantified—the absurdity is enormous. And who will pay for all this mess? We, the people. You are foisting this on the people. We need an inquiry now. (Time expired) 

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Coal Still the Cheapest Reliable Power Source

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The argument about nuclear is overshadowing an inconvenient truth.

Coal remains the cheapest form of baseload reliable power and nuclear is a better alternative compared to wind and solar.

I support nuclear power and believe it should be part of our energy mix, but there’s no need to eliminate coal to make it happen.

Transcript

Labor, the Greens, the paid-off media and climate activists are all fighting tooth and nail against nuclear. You can hear them screaming so loudly because reliable baseload power is a massive threat to the billionaire solar and wind cartel. Both sides of politics have, for more than two decades, mismanaged energy so grossly that we’ve caused an energy crisis that Australia is now facing down. One Nation congratulates the coalition on agreeing with One Nation’s longstanding policy to remove the ban on nuclear energy and have a debate about where it sits in our energy needs. We can only hope that One Nation’s full policy is adopted one day: remove all the subsidies and let the cheapest form of power win so we can put more money back in Australians’ pockets. 

There’s no reason that we need to forcibly shut down coal to put nuclear in the mix. The coalition plan is to forcibly acquire coal-fired power stations, shut them down and replace them with nuclear. Let’s do nuclear, and let’s do coal too. One of those coal-fired power stations the coalition wants to shut down is at Tarong. I visited there on Friday. It sits right on top of a coal mine. Coal is dug out of the ground and put on a conveyor belt straight into the power station with minimal transport costs. What more could you ask for? We’ve got 40 years of real-world costs on the Tarong stations, and it’s as cheap as chips. It uses high-energy-density fuel. Why tear down Tarong and replace it with nuclear based on projections—or worse, solar and wind based on unicorn farts? Instead, just build another coal-fired power station right there at Tarong beside it and use the same power. 

The coalition can’t do that, because it’s fully committed to the United Nations net zero madness, a catastrophic nightmare in the making, and we haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve got these people in the government putting on benefits to energy policy because of the rising cost due to their policy. Only One Nation will say, ‘up yours!’ to foreign unelected organisations telling us what to do and instead use Australia’s coal and uranium resources for the cheapest power possible. 

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