While market competition and cost-of-living relief are urgently needed, the Greens’ proposal for state-run supermarkets and price caps is economically flawed and infeasible.
Instead, One Nation supports increasing competition by funding the ACCC to investigate and prosecute restrictive trade practices, dishonest advertising, and unfair competitor advantages used by major supermarkets (Coles, Woolworths, Aldi). We propose shrinking government waste and passing those savings directly to Australians through tax cuts.
State-run supermarkets historically fail.
Will the Greens’ proposal to acquire existing Coles and Woolworths sites offer fair compensation, or will they rely on state acquisition tricks similar to what John Howard used to steal farmer’s property rights in the past?
Supermarket profits (around $1 billion combined from $100 billion in sales) represent a thin profit margin on actual sales. A 1% reduction in retail prices would completely erase those profits. And the Greens’ promise of a 30% price reduction is mathematically unrealistic without massive taxpayer subsidies, which ultimately will require raising taxes.
While the Greens’ policies will add to your cost of living through higher taxes, One Nation’s policies will put more money back in your pocket, delivering genuine, lasting cost-of-living relief.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: This motion is two-thirds of a good idea. Yes, the Colesworth duopoly needs competition. One Nation would do that, funding the ACCC to investigate and prosecute restrictive trade practices in the industry used for the market advantage of Coles, Woolies and Aldi, including supplier agreements, side agreements, rebates, dishonest advertising and disadvantaging competitors, sweetheart union agreements and government policy designed to damage small and medium competitors. Secondly, yes, everyday Australians desperately need cost-of-living relief. One Nation would do that, shrinking the government to fit the constitution, as we said, in early 2025, eliminating government waste and duplication, then passing on the savings in the form of tax cuts, with more people keeping more money of their own. That’s One Nation’s way.
It’s the third part that One Nation opposes: a government run supermarket. With this policy, the Greens looked across the Pacific to New York and its communist mayor, Mamdani, and thought: ‘You know what? We’re going to try to run state run supermarkets.’ That’s always failed badly. And price caps have been another disaster wherever they’ve been tried. At least Mamdani is building his supermarket. The Greens just want to steal Coles’s and Woolies’s existing sites. Mamdani doesn’t open his first supermarket until next year, and already the Greens are declaring the idea a winner. There’s no talk of just compensation, because it’s against the federal constitution, so I assume the Greens will use state governments for acquisition—the same trick John Howard used to steal farmers’ property rights to comply with the UN Kyoto protocol. Strange bedfellows, indeed! Supermarkets are low-margin operations. Yes, they’re getting greedy, and this is where One Nation would step in, as I mentioned. The $2.1 billion figure is not accurate. The figure includes all divisions: supermarkets, variety stores, pet stores, liquor, property, hotel businesses, and online and loyalty programs in Australia and New Zealand. Coles has funds employed—the investment to build and run supermarkets—of $12 billion on a 12 per cent return on investment. Woolworths has $19 billion invested on a 17 per cent return on investment. Those are healthy returns and suggest more competition is needed—not much, though. The actual $1 billion or so in profit that ‘Colesworth’ makes from supermarket sales comes from around $100 billion in annual sales. A one per cent reduction in prices would wipe that out completely. Are the Greens promising to subsidise their supermarkets with taxpayers’ money? If so, be honest about it. How much will be needed, and whose taxes will you put up to pay for it? The most this idea will save is between one and two per cent. The Greens are promising a 30 per cent saving. It just doesn’t add up.
I am extremely concerned that the EPBC Act harms economic growth. Data from the Minerals Council shows average resource project decision times increased from 2.3 years in 2019 to 3.8 years in 2025. This imposes a heavy financial penalty on applicants.
Minister Watt countered that the reforms passed last year (which we opposed) are specifically designed to speed up assessment and approval timeframes, covering housing, energy, and resources, while strengthening environmental protections.
Officials reported that on-time performance for resource projects like coal, gas and oil improved from 67% in 2024–25 to 92% in 2025–26 (up to 11 May). While questions on specific project age metrics were taken on notice, Minister Watt maintained that decision-making timeframes are improving.
I then brought up the budget allocation to introduce AI to the department. Officials explained that a trial of AI is being introduced to help populate referral documentation, assisting them in gathering required conservation information faster to avoid delays during the assessment process.
Poor governance in the Department is costing jobs and prosperity.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, we started talking about the national environmental standards under the EPBC.
Senator Watt: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: I said that there hadn’t been—you asked me to come back and ask all the same questions, so that’s what we will do.
Senator Watt: Yes—the questions you attempted to ask in corporate.
Senator ROBERTS: Correct.
Senator Watt: Sure. We’re ready.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m sure you are! Your website on the new environmental standards under the EPBC does not appear to have been updated for some time. It still says a circulation draft of the new standard would be made available in April. When will the new standard be made available to senators?
Senator Watt: I must admit I haven’t checked that website lately, Senator Roberts. I might get someone to do that for me. But, roughly three weeks ago, we commenced a second round of consultation. Ms Kay will give you the details.
Ms Kay: We’ve only got two national environmental standards open for consultation on our ‘Have your say’ website. The matters of national environmental significance standard was released on 30 April, and our consultation closes on 29 May. The offsets standard was released on 8 May, and consultation for that closes on 9 June.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, as things stand, the EPBC Act is, in my opinion, a disaster for economic growth in Australia. The Minerals Council of Australia quoted an increase in average decision times for resource projects of 60 per cent—from 2.3 years in 2019 to 3.8 years in 2025. What steps are you taking to increase your throughput—faster processing?
Senator Watt: As I mentioned in an earlier section—I don’t think you were here, Senator Roberts—that is one of the key reasons behind the reforms that we passed the parliament last year. It was to speed up the assessment and approval timeframes for projects in Australia, whether they be housing, energy or resources. The other objective, of course, was to strengthen environmental protections. We want to fix that.
Senator ROBERTS: So, your main steps are revising the EPBC.
Senator Watt: Yes. We’ve done a lot of work internally to speed up the processes. You may have seen that today I announced some really dramatic improvements around housing approvals. We’ve done what we can under the existing law, but, with those reforms that we passed last year, we expect to deliver big improvements around timeframes for decisions.
Senator ROBERTS: The budgeting—we discussed this slightly before—includes a measure for introducing AI to the department. Will that help in data collection and analysis, or will that be making actual decisions? I think Mr Kaiser said it won’t be making decisions, but perhaps you could explain.
Senator Watt: Yes. There was a little discussion about this before, Senator Roberts, when you weren’t here, but why don’t we quickly go back over that again.
Mr Gaddes: I might have a go at that. The EPBC Act has a range of threatened species and ecological communities and other nationally protected matters that proponents are required to gather a whole lot of information about. There’s a range in our conservation planning documents—and they’re quite complex—that proponents need to work through in creating a referral. The AI trial is designed to help people populate their referral documentation. If you have a certain action in a certain area, you put that into the AI tool. It then tells you the sorts of things that you should consider as part of your assessment. Proponents go and do that. It helps them speed up their assessment-documentation-gathering process. We get all the information up front, and they go through the system much faster.
Senator ROBERTS: Basically, the applicant can provide details and you can tell him or her, based on what their project is, what they need to apply.
Mr Gaddes: Well, the AI tool does it. It helps them at the front end gather all the information so that we don’t have to stop the clock and ask them to go and gather things through their assessment process.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, is the increased complexity of the EPBC Act a way of increasing delays for projects?
Senator Watt: No, and I would argue that we’re reducing the complexity in this act. Not only would I argue that but a range of stakeholders from the business community have also acknowledged that the changes will improve processes as well.
Senator ROBERTS: On a $500 million project—we started discussing this—the whole thing cost the project, across a 3.8 year development application cycle, $25 million a year and almost $100 million total over the four years. How is this not a financial penalty on applicants caused by procedural failure in your department?
Senator Watt: I think, when you asked that question earlier, Senator Roberts, I made the point that, again, that one of the objectives of these reforms is to reduce the timeframes for decisions around projects.
Senator ROBERTS: Is there a review on the EPBC Act’s effectiveness in two or three years?
Senator Watt: In five years. It used to be every 10 years; we changed it to every five.
Senator ROBERTS: How many applications for resource projects with a project cost in excess of $50 million are you currently holding, and what is the average age of those projects?
Senator Watt: We’ll get the relevant officials to answer.
Mrs Svarcas: We don’t capture the value of the project. I can’t tell you how many there are over a certain value in the system. There is a field in the system, but it’s not mandatory, and it’s not verified. You wanted to know many resources projects we had in the system?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, and what the average age of the projects is.
Mrs Svarcas: We also don’t have the average age of the projects here today, but I can take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, how can you tell whether or not it’s improving?
Senator Watt: What I’m saying is that one of the objectives of the reforms is to improve the timeframes. Those reforms are only just starting to roll out.
Senator ROBERTS: If you don’t measure the timeframes, how can you determine whether or not it’s improving?
Senator Watt: Ms Svarcas can answer that.
Mrs Svarcas: What we do report is how long it takes us to go through the approval. For resources projects— coal, gas and oil—I can tell you that in 2024-25, 67 per cent of the project went through the EPBC system on time, within the timeframes. In 2025-26, through to 11 May, that has improved to 92 per cent. We have seen a substantial increase in the performance stats.
Senator ROBERTS: Percentages are essentially averages, and can hide a lot. Can you tell us the actual details of the projects’ age?
Mr Gaddes: I think that what Ms Svarcas is trying to say that we collect that information, but we don’t have it in that format before us right now. If you have some questions, we can take them on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. What is your expectation for reductions in the figure of average age in the projects in 2.8 years, and will the EPBC laws stop getting in the way of economic growth, Minister, and the breadwinner jobs that go with mineral projects? Mining drives the economy, mining drives exports, mining drives the standard of living.
Senator Watt: All I can do is repeat what I’ve been saying. That’s one of the reasons that we passed those reforms. I have to point out that the One Nation party did not support those reforms.
Senator ROBERTS: Because of the complexities that we think will make it worse.
Senator Watt: There are many industry groups that don’t agree with you.
Senator ROBERTS: And there are many who do agree with us.
Senator Watt: I’ve got the press release from the Property Council and from the Housing Industry Association. I can dig out comments from mining groups.
Senator ROBERTS: The Minerals Council?
Senator Watt: I can come back to you with those, if you’d like.
Senator ROBERTS: Is your government aware it’s spent a lot of money—it’s still spending a lot of money— which is inflationary and hurts people as well. They need to pay for welfare, and they need to pay for the caring economy. It comes largely from the mining industry.
Senator Watt: I think I acknowledged earlier that the mining industry is an important economic industry in this country. It’s not the only one, but it’s an important one.
Senator ROBERTS: Many people would be hoping those words come true.
Senator Watt: It’s already a big exporter. It’s a major employer et cetera. One of the objectives of these reforms is to make quicker decisions around mining projects—brace yourself—solar and windfarm projects, housing development and critical minerals, as well as to strengthen environmental protections.
Senator ROBERTS: There’s another aspect we can talk about.
Senator Watt: I think your colleague had a go at that earlier.
Senator ROBERTS: There will be a review in five years?
This session is with Treasury’s Fiscal Group, the division tasked with delivering federal budgets, analysing fiscal policy, and ensuring efficient public spending. The group’s core duties span three main areas: budget production, managing financial arrangements and payments between the Commonwealth and States and Territories, and providing spending advice.
In this advisory role, the group guides portfolio ministers on government spending regulations and resource allocation across policy areas, including health, education, labour markets, infrastructure, and defence.
Coming from a business background, I always look for ways to streamline and reduce major costs, especially while everyday Australians are facing a cost-of-living crisis. With that in mind, I asked for a complete accounting of the Albanese Labor Government’s net zero policies and measures, including departmental costs, grants, co-investments, spending to date, projections across forward estimates, and contingent or “off-the-books” liabilities (which reports suggest could reach a trillion dollars).
Mr White noted this was a massive query not fully covered by Budget Paper No. 1, so I asked Treasury to take it on notice.
I also asked for the costs since 1 July 2022 (plus forward estimates) of federal agencies or departments duplicating services where constitutional authority rests with the states, particularly in areas like health, education and the environment.
Despite concerns raised by Treasury and Minister Gallagher regarding the scope of the requests and the distinction between federal and state roles, I reiterated that reducing government waste is vital. Given the cost-of-living pressure on Australian households, the focus should be on delivering tax cuts and cutting expenditure rather than raising taxes.
In business, identifying and then cutting unnecessary duplication is a huge opportunity to reduce spending and ease the burden on taxpayers.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here tonight. I asked these questions of the previous group, the Markets Group, and they recommended that I ask you. Could I just check, please, because it seems like you’re perfect for it, that the Fiscal Group is a core division within the Australian Treasury responsible for delivering government budgets, analysing fiscal policy and ensuring efficient public spending.
Mr White: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: It works to achieve sound fiscal outcomes through structural policy advice, coordinating the federal budget and managing financial transfers to states and territories—correct?
Mr White: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Key responsibilities—three of them—are budget production; Commonwealth-state relations, managing the timely and accurate payments and financial arrangements between the federal government and the states and territories; and spending advice. It advises portfolio ministers on whole-of-economy government spending regulations and resource allocation across policy areas like health, education, labour market, infrastructure and defence—correct?
Mr White: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m used to being in business—companies, small business and large corporations— where we look at our costs, especially our bigger costs, and try to work out ways to improve them, so that’s what I’d like to ask you about. There are two big costs. Could you tell me, please, what are the full costs across the breadth of the Albanese Labor government of net zero measures, net zero policies, including departmental costs, co-investments and grants. Also include a figure for contingent liabilities, including off-the-books matters, which I’ve seen referenced in mainstream media as potentially a trillion-dollar liability. Could you please include spending to date as well as projections across forward estimates. Are you the people?
Mr White: That’s a very large question.
Senator ROBERTS: It is a very large cost, in fact.
Mr White: We don’t have that in front of us. Budget Paper No. 1, page 121, has an appendix B that goes to this, but not in the way you’re asking the question. It has some information about net zero transformation and net zero spending measures, but they’re really new measures, not the whole of the government. Answering that question would take quite some time.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you take it on notice?
Mr White: We can.
Ms P Brown: I might just point you towards paragraph 1 on page 124, which provides similar information that is there for this budget but gives the figures in previous budgets, so you can look at those numbers and see the impact over time.
Mr White: Yes. If we took it on notice, we’d have to work out what we can do. It might not be an easy thing to pull together in that way, but we could look.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Take it on notice. Second, you’re involved in allocating money to the states. Could you please provide the costs since 1 July 2022 of any Commonwealth department or agency which duplicates agencies existing in the territories and the states and for which the constitutional mandate for that power vests with the states, not the Commonwealth. Could you please include data through forward estimates.
Mr White: That’s possibly an even bigger question than the first one.
Ms P Brown: I don’t know how we would do it.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s a huge opportunity.
Ms P Brown: What are you specifically after? Is it whether there are similar functions being done at the Commonwealth level as at the state level?
Senator ROBERTS: The states have responsibility for certain services, and the Commonwealth is duplicating them.
Mr White: Yes, it’s an interesting question. Essentially, ever since Federation started, there have been certain things where Commonwealth and state governments have done things in similar areas, and we have a lot of that now. We have a whole budget paper, Budget Paper No. 3, federal financial relations, which has $200 billion a year we give to the states. The question of duplication versus cooperation and doing things in different areas for the same sorts of things is an interesting question. Is us giving money to the states to run hospitals duplication or not is kind of a tricky question.
Senator ROBERTS: I don’t think giving money to the states as part of grants and things like that is a duplication. It’s where you’re doing the same services. It seems to be rife in health, education, environment.
Senator Gallagher: We have slightly different responsibilities, though. In health, states primarily run the hospital system, but we have responsibility in primary care—GPs, Medicare, aged care, those kinds of things. In education it’s more universities, early education and care; states have public schools. So there are differences. I’m just not sure how we would provide an answer to that on notice in a way that would not take a lot of effort.
Senator ROBERTS: Well, how much is a lot of effort compared to the benefits once we work them out? Australians are in a cost-of-living crisis. The government’s increasing taxes, so why not look at cutting the need for taxes?
Senator Gallagher: We’re cutting taxes as well. There’s tax reform, which includes tax cuts. But fundamentally, we probably have a disagreement that the Commonwealth duplicates functions of the states. I think the Federation and its roles and responsibilities are pretty well understood, and the architecture of the Commonwealth Public Service reflects that, just as the states’ reflect theirs.
Senator ROBERTS: I think it’s a huge opportunity to at least have a look at it and investigate it.
Senator Gallagher: We’re always looking at ways to streamline. We genuinely are. We have no appetite to be in places that the Commonwealth shouldn’t be involved because we have enough in the areas of our responsibility. But I’ll see if there is anything useful that Treasury can provide.
The National Reconstruction Fund is a slush fund that makes sports rorts look like chump change.
We have a trillion-dollar deficit, and the Albanese government is throwing around $15 billion like it’s Monopoly money.
It’s time that the government got out of the way of the private sector and personal enterprise.
Transcript
Queensland community, I speak to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023.
One Nation has, on occasion, pointed out that Labor will run a government for the benefit of their union boss mates, the Liberals for the benefit of their big business mates, and the teals and the Greens for the benefit of their sugar daddies, the billionaire climate-change carpetbaggers. So it was with amusement that I saw an exchange between Minister Gallagher and Senator Rennick on social media over the weekend. Senator Rennick mentioned in a speech that he did not agree with the slush funds that the Liberal-Nationals set up during their government.
I appreciate and compliment Senator Rennick for his integrity. He has shown that repeatedly in this parliament and outside.
Senator Gallagher could not resist. Oblivious to the irony of her comments, Minister Gallagher said Senator Rennick had ‘belled the cat’, admitting to ‘slush funds and rorts galore’. ‘The Bell and the Cat’ is a medieval fable—a cautionary tale on the nature of impossible tasks. Admittedly, it’s an appropriate choice, given the impossibility of the Liberals ever running government for the benefit of the people.
But the irony of the minister’s decision to engage the Liberals on the issue of rorting is tone deaf, considering that this bill was on the Notice Paper at the time. The minister’s words are suggestive of a quite different fable—the pot calling the kettle black, which is 16th-century Spanish homily in which somebody accuses someone else of a fault which the accuser shares and, therefore, is an example of psychological projection—that’s a polite way of saying ‘hypocrisy’.
The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023 is 100 per cent pork barrel—the very thing of which the minister accuses others. This bill creates a $15 billion fund to oversee Australia’s reconstruction. It would have been helpful to define the word ‘reconstruction’, Minister. Minister Husic must have overlooked the fundamental reason for this bill. The word ‘reconstruction’ does not appear in this bill. At a guess, reconstruction must involve infrastructure spending, right? Wrong. The word ‘infrastructure’ does not appear in this bill either. The word was added by the crossbench in the other place, the House of Representatives, as part of their amendment banning—banning!—certain types of infrastructure spending.
The Greens and teals were helpful, as usual! For clarity, that was sarcasm.
The bill does provide for spending on priority projects, yet there’s no definition of what a priority project actually is. I understand these will be manufacturing projects. Why, then, does the bill not mention the word ‘manufacturing’?
Not once is manufacturing mentioned. This is significant because the bill allows the minister to fill in all these details later. Yet if these much needed initiatives—reconstruction, manufacturing and infrastructure—were the purpose of this bill then section 5 would define these concepts and set out what is and what is not ‘reconstruction’, ‘manufacturing’ and ‘infrastructure’. It does not. It fails to do this basic step.
I expected to see a statement of fairness, ensuring projects are funded based on the needs of the region in which the projects are located, having mind to the overarching concept of national interest. There’s a novelty! It doesn’t do that, either—which is not a novelty, because that’s the way this parliament works. It’s not in the national interest.
This bill does have a section on consultation, requiring the corporation to consult with the Australian Banking Association—Minister Jones’s best mates are the first ones on the list; what a surprise!—and the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Investment Council, Industry Super Australia and the Law Council of Australia. What an odd list. If this was about infrastructure, the requirement would be to consult with Infrastructure Australia; it’s not there. If this was about manufacturing, then you could consult with Manufacturing Australia, or, to drive manufacturing into a new era, one could consult—one would consult—with the Australian Advanced Manufacturing Council, but no. Taking Australian industry into the emerging space industry offers the prospect of billions in new sales and high-paying breadwinner jobs. The Space Industry Association of Australia should have been on that list; it was not.
There’s $15 billion in funding without once mentioning the fundamental purpose of the spending—$15 billion, without once requiring consultation with the bodies that could help direct this spending to the national interest.
There are no checks, no balances, no guidance to the minister, no guidance to the board of the corporation and no KPIs—key performance indicators. There’s no measure of success, no measure of failure. To call this bill a blank cheque is an insult to blank cheques. And it’s an insult to taxpayers, whose money is being spent.
The Senate Economics Legislation Committee’s inquiry into the bill does cast some light on where this money will be spent. The inquiry heard from multiple witnesses advocating for spending the $15 billion on solar and wind energy boondoggles—more carpetbagging. Australia already has the clean energy fund, spending $25 billion on unreliable, weather dependent power to take us back to before the industrial revolution. If the transition to weather dependent power was actually in the national interest and was dictated by market forces, these solar and wind carpetbaggers would not be buzzing around reconstruction funding like flies in search of excrement. I foreshadow that I will be moving an amendment in the committee of the whole which requires that a corporation cannot invest in an energy project that meets the criteria for funding by the Clean Energy Council—no double-dipping. There is no justification for using this $15 billion of taxpayer money to make Australia’s energy capacity worse.
The title of the bill raises an important question: what exactly are we reconstructing from? Are we reconstructing from three years of ruinous COVID lockdowns and restrictions that gutted the economy—destroyed the economy?
Are we reconstructing from a generation of ruinous net zero measures that have seen cheap, reliable base-load power replaced with expensive and short-lived materials-heavy wind and solar power? Are we reconstructing from the exporting of Australia’s manufacturing sector to China under the Hawke-Keating Labor government in the eighties?
Indeed, discussion on the nuclear subs purchased last week shows that former prime minister Keating has lost none of his loyalty to China. Are we reconstructing from a generation of oppressive development constraints provided across the range of government?
Is it red tape from an out-of-control bureaucracy that demands more and more power with less and less oversight in pursuit of a war against common sense, freedom and basic decency? Is it green tape, designed to make rich, pampered inner-city luvvies feel better about their own environmental footprint while destroying any chance the rural sector has for a profitable business? Or is it blue tape from the mountain of unelected, unaccountable foreign bureaucrats spreading a gospel of everyday Australians having less so that predatory billionaires can own it all? It’s about Australians having less so that predatory billionaires can own it all. That’s their ideological bible. It is not the economy that needs reconstruction; it is the government that needs reconstruction.
Here’s One Nation’s reconstruction plan: just stop it. Stop it. Stop strangling the life out of the private sector. Stop strangling the life out of small business. Stop strangling the life out of families and taxpayers. Stop using taxpayers’ money to pick winners and losers amongst new business ventures, when that task should rightly be performed by the free market and by personal enterprise and initiative, leading to personal responsibility. Stop rewarding your mates in the solar and wind sector, who have spent tens of millions of dollars earnt from renewable solar and wind boondoggles to get pet parliamentarians elected who now have seriously conflicted loyalties. Stop rewarding party donors with taxpayer money dressed up as reconstruction funding. Stop the cronyism.
Australia is not and never will be a centrally planned economy. In fact, no economy will be centrally planned; they all collapse. We have a trillion-dollar deficit, and the Albanese government is throwing around $15 billion like it were Monopoly money. It’s time that the government got out of the way of the private sector, personal enterprise, and let the profit motive and free enterprise competition decide what gets built and what does not. Let the customers decide.
The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023 is last-century Soviet thinking, a product of the comrades deep in Trades Hall who do not seem to have noticed that the Soviet Union has fallen, because it failed to maintain the standard of living of everyday people. Standards of living in Australia are decreasing—the reverse of what is happening to energy prices. That is one of the many causes. This bill is ideological rubbish designed to reward businesses who promote joining union bosses. That is the sentence the minister will put in later.
Subject to amendments, One Nation opposes this bill.
