Infrastructure of national significance such as power transmission lines, substations and water systems should remain in the hands of the government, on behalf of the people, which will prevent corporate monopolies and price gouging. While power generation can be privately owned, it needs long-term supply price controls.
Privatisation of water in South Australia in 1996 failed and was brought back under government control in 2012. Not only was it poorly maintained, water went from being amongst the cheapest to the dearest. Similarly, Western Australia privatised water in 1996 and likewise, was brought back under government control in 2019. The Western Australian government discovered that managing complex private contracts was actually costing more than doing the work themselves. This saved taxpayers $5 million a year.
Rather than learning from the costly mistakes of other states, Victoria is pushing ahead with plans to lease VicWater assets to the highest bidder. The result? Victorians will face higher water bills only to inherit degraded infrastructure when its handed back.
Privatisation leads to monopolies, profit maximisation and price gouging. By contrast, I generally support the free market because it gives consumers choice, driving accountability, efficiency, and productivity.
Given Australia’s small population and vast size, duplicate critical infrastructure cannot exist, meaning private ownership inherently creates unregulated monopolies that maximise profit through gouging.
The Solution? Competitive Federalism. State-owned critical infrastructure avoids private monopolies because it operates within a system of “competitive federalism.” Citizens have freedom of movement between states, creating a “marketplace in governance” where states must remain accountable, efficient, and responsive to citizens, driving positive policy reforms across the country.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: I thank Senator McKim for moving this motion, which One Nation supports. It’s One Nation policy that infrastructure of national significance should remain in the hands of the government on behalf of the people—not under government control but on behalf of the people. This includes power transmission lines and substations. Power stations can be privately owned and operated under a long-term supply price, which prevents price gouging in times of power scarcity, which happens all the time with weather-dependent solar and wind power. It’s a travesty that the business model for Snowy 2.0 hydro seeks to justify the $42 billion price tag using a projection for power prices which suggests they too expect a profit from price gouging. AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator, is frequently forced to intervene in the market at $600 per megawatt hour, which is a staggeringly high price, because new gas-firming plants are not being required to accept a feed-in tariff. If it existed, it would be $60 to $80 per megawatt hour. Consumers are paying peak pricing which is 10 times the price they would pay if we built our baseload power stations with sensible supply contracts—fact.
Privatising infrastructure of national significance has failed. South Australia privatised water in 1996 and brought it back under government control in 2012. This was after the operator failed to maintain a sewage treatment works and Adelaide endured months of what was called the ‘big pong’. Adelaide water went from being amongst our country’s cheapest to our country’s dearest. Western Australia privatised water in 1996 and brought it back under government control in 2019. The outcome in Western Australia was interesting. Perhaps Premier Carroll could pay attention there. During 25 years, the Western Australian government realised that managing complex private contracts was actually costing more than doing the work themselves. Moving Western Australian water back to government ownership saved taxpayers $5 million a year. Now Victoria is the latest bankrupt state selling off the silverware—VicWater. The plan is called Project Nerva and circumvents the Victorian constitution through leasing the $18 billion in assets of VicWater to the highest bidder. Victorians will pay more for their water and receive back an asset in a worse state than when it was leased. Such is privatisation. It leads to a monopoly, which leads to profit maximisation, which leads to gouging. I generally support the free market because it gives consumers choice, and choice leads to accountability, and choice leads to efficiency and productivity. Given Australia’s small population, though, and huge area, we cannot support two sets of critical infrastructure for roads, water and electricity. We cannot place monopoly power in corporate hands, where profit maximisation is the goal and leads to gouging.
What of government monopolies? Our forefathers, the founding fathers of our Constitution, thought of that and came up with a solution—actually, they borrowed it from the American constitution. The solution is embedded in our Constitution. States provide infrastructure and critical services. That comes under competitive federalism. One state competes with another state. That’s a marketplace in governance. There is choice. If South Australia is stuffing things up, South Australians can move to New South Wales or Queensland. It doesn’t matter what it is. Whether it’s education, infrastructure, water, electricity, roads—whatever it is, there is no monopoly, because the states have competition under competitive federalism. That provides a marketplace in governance, which leads to choice. If you don’t like the state you’re in, you can move to another state. Freedom of movement leads to accountability. So state ownership of critical infrastructure is part of a marketplace solution.
There’s not enough time to tell you about Sir Joh, but Sir Joh abolished death duties in Queensland, and people moved to Queensland so that they could leave their children more money. That led to other states doing the same. Warren Buffett, the most successful investor ever, said his ideal investment is the sole drawbridge on a wide river. When you put it in private hands, infrastructure becomes a mechanism for gouging. We must protect national infrastructure and national services like water. They’re key resources.
Reflecting on a decade in the Senate, it’s clear that every major issue facing Australia — from energy and water to economic decline — stems from the “uniparty” status quo.
We’ve fallen from the #1 highest per capita income a century ago to now hurtling toward 20th. Despite having the world’s richest natural resources per capita, poor policy choices have left us dependent on foreign powers for manufacturing, energy and fertiliser.
We need to restore Australia’s independence.
We need to drill and refine at home, keeping our oil, gas and manufacturing within our borders from start to finish.
We need to secure domestic supply by rebuilding local production for essentials like fertiliser.
I support Senator Bell’s inquiry to get the real data on how this happened and how we fix it.
Australia deserves better than managed decline.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: I was elected in 2016 in May-July. I started in July. I’ve had more than 10 years since I first joined the Senate. I’ve been elected once and re-elected twice. In that 10 years, I’ve learnt that every major problem in this country is due to the uniparty. Your policies on energy, your policies on climate fraud, your policies on water—disgraceful. You’ve done everything you can to hammer workers into subservience. You’re both guilty of mass immigration.
Australia has fallen from having the No. 1 highest per capita income in the world a hundred or so years ago to now being headed out the back door. We’re heading for 20th thanks to you lot. We are still the richest nation in the world for resources per capita, yet now we’re dependent on communist dictatorships and the unstable government for much of what we need in this country. Our manufacturing has been shot, thanks to you lot, so we’re now dependent. We must have new capability restored within our borders—we drill for oil or gas within our borders, process it, refine it, transport it, and put it in bowsers, then into cars, trucks and tractors, with the whole process in our country. What’s the matter? You have abandoned that. You’ve both caused it.
We need the same for fertiliser. We need to restore Australia. We have the world’s highest per capita resources, yet we’re heading down the road to poverty, thanks to you lot. We need to get the data on why this has happened. We need to get the data on what we need. We need to get the facts. That’s why I support this inquiry that Senator Bell has had the courage to put forward.
I strongly supported Senator Colbeck’s motion regarding the sale of Rushy Lagoon, Tasmania’s largest agricultural property.
The Albanese Labor government, through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, used $69 million of YOUR money (nearly half of the $142 million purchase price) alongside foreign investment firms to price local farmers out of the market. The new owners, Tasmania Natural Asset Trust (TNAT), plan to destroy 9,000 hectares of prime dairy and beef land to plant 12 million pine trees for “carbon credits”.
Rushy Lagoon was a thriving property with a rich history of agricultural production, including the Ringarooma River irrigation pipeline, supporting 30,000 head of livestock, dairy operations, and grain and potato storage.
The government provided an additional $8.8 million grant to help turn prime food-producing land into a timber plantation, all to generate carbon dioxide credits and woodchips.
This project sacrifices regional communities and food security for city-centric climate ideology. The promised jobs are mostly short-term, while real breadwinner jobs are 25 to 30 years away.
Australia already has 1.6 million hectares of timber plantations. The real crisis in the timber industry is driven by soaring energy bills caused by net-zero policies, red tape and intrusive bureaucracy.
This purchase is part of a broader ideological war on red meat, dairy and farming, compounded by water policies destroying agricultural productivity.
With 99% of the local community opposing the sale, One Nation will do everything in its power to unwind this deal and ensure Australia’s best farmland is returned to food production.
One Nation will bring this “green” agenda to a halt on day one of our government.
Transcript
I thank Senator Colbeck for his motion, which One Nation strongly supports. Rushy Lagoon is Tasmania’s largest agricultural property, covering 21,745 hectares in the north-east of Tassie. The property sold recently for $142 million, with settlement due last week. The new owner is a special-purpose vehicle called Tasmania Natural Asset Trust, TNAT, with three shareholders. The federal government, through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, contributed $69 million—almost half. This is taxpayer money, not government money. The remaining $73 million came from UK investment companies Gresham House and Aviva Investors. The latter has BlackRock as its largest shareholder.
The previous owners were New Zealand’s Pye family, who held the property for 30 years. In that time, the Pye family built the Ringarooma River irrigation pipeline, which, with dams and 11 centre pivots, provided irrigated cropping across 1,100 hectares. What an amazing achievement. This supported a massive dairy operation, with two automated milking parlours and substantial storage vats. The shearing sheds and stockyards supported 30,000 head of livestock. Improvements included grain and potato storage sheds to feed the world. The property has a main homestead and workers cottages. In short, until the Albanese Labor government got its dirty hands on Rushy station, the property was actively involved in growing food to feed Australia and the world with foresight and ingenuity.
This sale is a perfect example of the Albanese government hollowing out the bush, including by covering prime farmland with industrial solar and wind installations, transmission lines and, in this case, pine plantations. For those who don’t know—I learned this recently—nothing native grows under pine. Over the next five years, the new owners plan to plant roughly 12 million radiata pine seedlings across 9,000 hectares of the farm to generate an estimated 3.2 million carbon dioxide credit units—try eating them!—each production cycle.
There it is. This ideology driven, delusional, dishonest Labor government is turning Tasmania’s largest agricultural producer into a subsidised farm for carbon dioxide credits. In case the government wants to pretend this was nothing to do with them, the Albanese government provided an $8.8 million grant under the Support Plantation Establishment program before the land sale had been approved by the Foreign Investment Review Board. It was a taxpayer funded grant. Turning productive farmland into a timber plantation was planned and financed through deliberate Albanese government policy. Taxpayer money is being used to destroy productive farmland. It is a measure in part justified through the timber production, which will eventually be used for housing, so they say, which could happen in 25 to 30 years time when the trees are ready for harvest. That’s not going to help the people sleeping in cars, sleeping under bridges, sleeping in tents and sleeping in caravans right around Australia because of this government’s policies. Given the miserable performance of this Albanese government in providing for the housing industry, we might still need the timber in 30 years time.
By the way, those jobs Labor is claiming will be created are largely short-term jobs ripping out 100 years of farm improvements and then planting seedlings. That’s it. The real, breadwinner jobs will occur during harvesting, and those jobs will be 25 to 30 years away. The local community will not survive until then, but Labor and the Greens don’t care about that. This agenda is about sacrificing the bush to win votes in the city. It’s about sacrificing the regions, which feed Australia, which are crucial for the income of this country, to satisfy the city. Until the trees are mature, all the Tasmania Natural Asset Trust will produce is woodchips, most likely to be burnt for electricity to earn Albanese government issued large-scale generation certificates.
Let’s review it so far. The Labor government spent $69.9 million to force the price of Tasmania’s largest agricultural producer so high that local farmers could not afford to buy it. It knocked them out of the market. Then they spent another $8.8 million to encourage the new owners to grow timber, not food. Then they will spend more taxpayer money giving certificates for woodchipping those trees and in turn burning them for power. This is insane. Under this arrangement, the government is giving money to itself and destroying our best farmland and productivity in the process.
The truth is that Australia does not need this timber. According to ABARES, there are already 271,000 hectares of timber plantation in Tassie alone, part of 1.6 million hectares of timber plantation right around Australia. Nine thousand hectares of timber going into the national estate of 1.6 million hectares is not going to make any difference to timber supply. This is a lie. If the government were serious about increasing our plantation area, it would look to the 800,000 hectares of native plantation forests that have recently been locked up to prevent logging, despite there being seven million hectares of suitable forests. It just gets worse and worse.
Logging has never taken a large percentage of the national timber estate—just 10 per cent—and logging does not destroy those forests. They remain habitat for native fauna and flora because they’re selective. Of course, this does not include old-growth forests, which One Nation would protect. I note the Greens and the Labor Party are actively clear-felling old-growth forests for industrial wind and solar installations and the related access roads and transmission lines, yet non-destructive logging is the problem, so they say. The real reason Australia’s timber supply is falling is that timber mills can’t pay their power and energy bills. Net zero power costs and intrusive bureaucracy are killing our precious timber industry. One Nation will lower power prices—we’ve given you the policies—remove the red tape, remove the green tape and remove the blue UN tape and encourage the Australian timber industry and the jobs it creates. We want jobs now, not in 30 years.
Rushy Lagoon is about hollowing out the bush and hollowing out the regions. It’s about this Albanese government’s ideological war on red meat and dairy in the name of saving the planet from nature’s harmless trace atmospheric gas, carbon dioxide. Importantly, the war on cows is based on supposed science that is fundamentally wrong. The methane cycle has no impact on the environment. It’s a closed loop. A more important question is this: what are people going to eat if this Labor government continually destroys Australia’s agricultural capability? Only last week, SunRice laid off 78 workers in the Deniliquin and Leeton food processing plants because this government is knowingly, deliberately, deceitfully taking irrigation water off farmers and sending it out to sea. Listen to this: last year, over 4,000 gigalitres of water were sent out to sea against a basin plan target of 2,000 gigalitres—double the target wasted into the ocean. Why? It was so irrigators could not use the water to grow food and fibre to feed and clothe the world. Go for it, Labor! You’re destroying farming in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
Labor is just one part of the uniparty. The other part of the uniparty, the Liberal-Nationals coalition, introduced the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in their 2007 Water Act, which has a list of aims for the act, one of which is to enforce international agreements. What the hell is that doing in our water act? Farming industry body TasFarmers strongly condemned the buyout of Rushy Lagoon, calling it a ‘disgraceful outcome’ that locks up prime dairy and beef country into a ‘monoculture pine plantation’. They nailed it on both. It is just so they can ‘tick a carbon abatement box’. A TasFarmers survey revealed that 99 per cent of local community respondents oppose the sale—99 per cent. For this reason, the new owners are now talking about undertaking ecotourism and community projects to moderate the fallout, and the state Liberal government is now holding an inquiry into its own stupid decision to allow the purchase. I mean, this is farcical. One Nation will do everything in its power to unwind this deal and ensure Australia’s best farmland is devoted to food production—to food.
Australia’s farmers have had enough of the Liberal-Labor-Greens war on the bush in the name of saving the environment, killing the environment in the name of saving the planet. One Nation will bring this agenda to a halt on day one of our government.
The Albanese government’s reckless May budget is an anchor on our economy, overtaxing productive Australians to fund a woke, bloated public sector and wasteful infrastructure like Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop.
Slapping new taxes on small scale investors, such as Crypto, punishing business owners and fuelling inflation through overspending is stifling wealth creation, driving record small business bankruptcies and pricing young Australians out of the housing market.
To fix this mess, One Nation will rebuild Australia’s real productivity through a clear, common-sense model:
➤ Invest $30 billion annually, backed heavily by eager private finance, into cheap, reliable Australian energy, high-speed regional rail, roads, ports, and fuel security.
➤ Slash petty red tape alongside UN-driven green and blue tape to restore the freedom to take risks and keep what you earn.
➤ Respect private enterprise to generate real, non-taxpayer-funded jobs, while expanding funding to the ACCC and the Administrative Review Tribunal to protect worker rights and maintain fair competition.
One Nation will build real wealth and opportunity for every business and worker across Australia.
Polls confirm what we already know: working Australians trust One Nation to deliver.
Transcript
Taxation is an anchor on productivity growth, reducing wealth creation for all Australians. The Treasurer has produced a budget that overtaxes and undersupports productivity. The social alliance—the Labor Party, the Greens and teals—have never seen a dollar they don’t think belongs to the government to finance their woke UN social agenda. The Treasurer learnt, from the weight of public opinion, that his new capital gains tax threatened future productivity within the business sector and the investment market. He fails to understand that when you take too much of people’s wealth, they stop creating new wealth.
One example is young people using small-dollar investments in things like crypto to grow their home deposit faster and get into the housing market before they get too old to pay off a 30-year loan, which is what most young people said they intend to do with their capital gains. Because of these new taxes, young people will purchase fewer homes. It’s one example of stifling economic growth in favour of short-term tax grabs.
The government has disincentivised productive risk-takers: investors. Business owners are punished, and overtaxed workers are conditioned to blame their employers for economic hardship. This sets workers against workers—more division from a divisive government. Instead, the true culprit is government’s acute failure to contain inflation and tighten its own belt. In fact, the Treasurer is still spending money he doesn’t have on things this country does not need, such as $3.8 billion for Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop—billions that, like the billions before, will disappear into the pockets of organised crime and eventually produce a railway from nowhere to nowhere that nobody wants, and, according to Victoria’s Parliamentary Budget Office, will cost over $200 billion. That cost is in addition to the fraud and corruption in Big Build projects. The Commonwealth government is just getting started shovelling money into the Allan government’s black hole.
Meanwhile, businesses are collapsing at record rates, and small business bankruptcies are at record levels. The public sector is bloating; two thirds of full-time equivalent jobs that the Albanese government conjured since 2022 are taxpayer funded through some arm of government, notably the NDIS. For years I’ve said that for every job created in solar and wind—so-called renewables—two jobs are lost in the productive economy. Data now verifies this. That’s not sustainable. No wonder the government refused to support my motion to implement indexation of tax brackets to stop bracket creep. This government needs higher taxes to pay for this level of public service growth. Private enterprise can no longer provide the jobs needed to grow the economy and create new wealth for our huge number of new arrivals.
At some point, this Ponzi scheme will come crashing down and a One Nation government will have to clean up the mess. This is how we’ll do it. Real productivity comes from cheap, reliable, Australian sourced energy. It’s good roads connecting regions with cities. It’s high-speed rail lines and Australian controlled ports. It’s fuel refineries guaranteeing supply when the world is in crisis. It’s a competitive construction industry. It’s cutting petty, unnecessary red tape, and green and blue tape from the UN and foreign agencies. It’s high-speed, reliable internet everywhere, including along highways and in regional areas. It’s the freedom to take risks and earn a reward. It’s a reliable nation of stable economic rules to encourage investment. This will be life under a One Nation government; real, breadwinner jobs and the freedom to keep more of your own money to enjoy life.
Our policies detail how One Nation will invest $30 billion a year in Australia’s infrastructure to drive productivity and increase wealth for everyday Australians without having to work harder. Everyday Australians are working hard enough. Polls show One Nation is the most popular party amongst working Australians. We will fulfil your faith in us. A lot of this infrastructure is private finance, not taxpayers. In working with companies promoting new infrastructure projects, I’m amazed to see how much finance is available for these projects. Merchant banks and investors are jack of so-called solar and wind renewables. They want bricks and mortar investments again. We’ll give it to them.
One Nation knows private sector productivity requires placing trust and respect in businesses, freeing them of unnecessary cost burdens to hire staff, reward the hardest workers and voluntarily pay above the minimum wage. To ensure this does not turn into a corporate free-for-all, we have a system of industrial relations tribunals and competition protections. Our policy is to grow the economy, to create wealth and opportunity for all—businesses and workers. This is why our policy is to expand funding for the ACCC and the Administrative Review Tribunal, to protect workers rights. Polls show, as I said, One Nation is the most popular party among working Australians. We will fulfil your faith in us.
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!
https://img.youtube.com/vi/lBIffN2-Kao/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-09-01 16:18:212026-09-03 08:18:51Drill, Refine, Secure: Solving the Fuel Crisis for Good
During Question Time, I asked Finance Minister Katy Gallagher for the real bottom line on Snowy Hydro 2.0.
Not just the construction cost. I asked for the true total to taxpayers: interest on the debt, transmission lines, endless maintenance, and the required wind and solar replacements.
The response? Labor admits they don’t even know how much it will cost or when it will be finished. A recent ANAO audit confirmed there is no reliable system to track future costs, no completion baseline, and no quality data.
Originally pitched as a $2 billion project, it’s already blown out to $42 billion — and that’s just a fraction of the final bill. When you factor in the full life cycle costs and the massive grid overhauls needed, taxpayers are staring down at $100 billion plus in costs for a project that will lose money every year, and provide a tiny amount of electricity at a totally unaffordable price.
Yet, Labor refuses to cancel it.
Reliable, low-cost clean coal power stations could secure our energy grid today without bankrupting the nation, however Labor remain fixated on Net Zero at all costs and hardworking Australians are paying the price.
It’s time to stop the waste and put cheap, reliable power first.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister for Finance, Senator Gallagher, regarding the cost to taxpayers of the Snowy Hydro 2.0 scheme. Minister, can you inform the Senate how much Snowy Hydro 2.0 will cost to complete, including cost of construction; capital costs through to the end of the financing cycle, meaning interest on the debt; maintenance through the same period; the cost of transmission lines dedicated to this project, including maintenance; and, finally, the industrial wind and solar installations, including cyclical replacement, needed to generate the power? In short, if it’s built and it’s paid off, how much all up is this thing going to cost?
Senator Gallagher: I’m happy to update the chamber with the information that I have available to me on Snowy 2.0. I think you’ll remember that, when we came to government, we inherited a project that was having significant difficulties. If you remember, I think former prime minister Turnbull announced this project and said it would cost $2 billion. It had not had a business case done. There had been no scoping done. There had been no surveys done of the geological environment that the project was going to be built in, and so there was a significant reset probably in the first couple of years of our government, and that increased the project total cost to in the order of $12 billion. Currently, the Snowy board is undertaking a cost reassessment for the total project cost. We have not received that work yet. It is due to the government towards the end of July. I would say that Snowy 2.0 is more than half built. It is an important project for the nation in terms of the security and stability of our energy grid. It is an important project, but, as to any further reassessment of the costs, the information that I have are the ones where we took that initial reset to properly scope the project, get it back on track and work with the organisation to deliver the project when it was raised to $12 billion.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The Australian National Audit Office audit released this month found significant shortcomings, including no reliable system to track future costs, no base line for project completion and no quality data with which to work these things out. In short, we don’t know how long it’s going to take and how much it’s going to cost. Just like the uniparty’s net zero, there’s no plan. Minister, will you cancel this project?
Senator Gallagher: No, the government will not do that. As I said, it is an important project. I think I saw a figure that said it was 72 per cent complete, but I will correct that if I am wrong. I can’t find that number in front of me, but I was reading some documents about Snowy Hydro on the weekend. In relation to the ANAO report—I should say this because you didn’t—it did say that the management of the project has been partially effective and there were, I think, five or so recommendations which outlined deficiencies in some project governance arrangements. Snowy 2.0 has accepted, I think, the vast majority of those recommendations. It is an important project for the stability and security of our energy system. It’s an important project to get done, but it has been a troubled project from the beginning, including when it was so poorly implemented initially by those opposite.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: Labor appears to be upset about Senator Whitten signing a contract to sell his shares in September 2023, almost two years before his Senate nomination. Minister, at what point do you accept that a clean coal power station provides cheaper power, much more of it, than this fantasy project costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps a trillion, before it’s paid off? When will you give up this fantasy?
Senator Gallagher: Again, Senator Roberts, this project is important for the security and stability of the energy grid. In relation to coal-fired power stations, there have been none built in this country for decades, and, indeed, under the former government, I think there was $3 million allocated to Collinsville to explore that. I don’t know what happened to that and where that project ended, but we heard nothing from it. The market is not building new coal-fired power stations. They’re not. If they were able to deliver the energy that you say they would be able to do in a way that you want them to do, the market would be investing in them. They’re not. The market is investing in renewables because it delivers cheaper and more reliable energy. We’ve seen that, indeed, in some announcements that Minister Bowen has made in recent times about the wholesale price of electricity coming down because of the amount of renewables in the system.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/prBzMouEYrc/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-08-20 10:11:442026-08-20 10:54:48Clean Coal vs. Snowy Hydro: Which One Makes Sense?
I asked Minister Gallagher a simple question about the true cost of Snowy Hydro 2.0. Unsurprisingly, I got a response, just not an answer.
Economic analysts like Robert Gottliebsen projects that this project could cost taxpayers over $1 trillion by the time it’s finished. While One Nation believes this figure is far too high, the lack of proper planning, financial analysis, cost control and transparency makes an accurate analysis impossible.
How much will electricity have to cost for taxpayers to get their money back? They don’t know. They are making this up as they go along!
One Nation will:
❌ Close down Snowy 2.0 before it sends the country broke.
❌ Remediate the environmental damage.
❌ Build clean, reliable coal-fired power to slash the cost of living.
A One Nation government will stop this madness, balance the budget and put Australians first.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: Thank You. I take note of Minister Gallagher’s response—it wasn’t an answer—to my question regarding the urgent need to close down Snowy Hydro 2.0 before it sends us broke. Robert Gottliebsen, not a man to be taken lightly, has projected the cost of this project at over $1 trillion after allowing for capital costs, maintenance, transmission line construction and maintenance costs, industrial solar and wind installations necessary to provide the power, and regular renewal of these renewables—because they only last 15 years—from now until the project is finished and paid for, likely in 2060. Then add in the annual subsidies, because Snowy 2.0 will always run at a loss and you’ll be paying for it. How much will the power have to be priced at to get our money back? They don’t know. They’re making this up as they go along. What a metaphor for the whole so-called net zero transition, a transition to poverty! One Nation will close this project down, remediate the environmental damage and replace the generation of power with beautiful, clean coal-fired power, lowering the cost of living for all Australians and helping us balance the budget.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/Uk6AbbFJ_vw/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-08-20 09:30:272026-08-20 10:02:48Time to Pull the Plug on Snowy 2.0
This exchange is about the Australian Border Force’s (ABF) response to asbestos found in the lift brake pads of imported wind turbines.
Mr Reynolds of the ABF explained that after discovering the issue, the ABF “doubled down” on efforts by implementing a specific screening profile to target at-risk shipments. From 1 December to 1 April, 42 matching consignments were intercepted.
35 were cleared via document-based risk assessment; 4 were referred for laboratory testing (all returned negative results), whilst 3 were held pending further documentation.
While Mr Reynolds could not explain how the original contaminated brake pads slipped past the border, he noted that the ABF relies on a combination of self-assessment by importers, risk-based targeting and severe financial penalties to deter illegal imports.
Fines for deliberately importing asbestos without a permit can reach up to $330,000 for individuals and $1.65 million (or 15 times the value of the goods) for companies.
Resolving the issue for contaminated turbines already operating in Australia falls under state government jurisdiction, not federal.
Mr Reynolds took several questions on notice, promising to look into whether the original importers committed a deliberate or accidental offence, whether any fines or prosecutions have been levied against them, and if any current prosecutions are outstanding regarding the operational turbines.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: This is about wind turbines that have been imported into Australia containing asbestos. Now that the asbestos in imported wind turbines has been identified, what’s been done to remedy the problem and prevent recurrence?
Mr Reynolds: The issue was asbestos in the brake pads in lifts inside the wind turbines. What we put in place was what we call a ‘profile’ on the border to look for these products. Between 1 December and 1 April, the Australian Border Force recorded 42 consignments matching against profiles introduced a target asbestos risk because of that wind turbine issue. Of the 42 consignments, 35 were cleared by risk assessment of the documents by ABF officers. The Australian Border Force referred four shipments for laboratory testing. All four returned negative results and were subsequently released. The remaining three consignments are, as of 1 April, held pending provision of further assurance documentation. We’re actively managing that risk on the border.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you actually inspecting the wind turbine brakes when they come in, or is it just done by risk assessment?
Mr Reynolds: It’s both. We’ll make a determination based on that initial risk assessment, and, where required, where we have concerns, then we will refer those for the testing.
Senator ROBERTS: Who does the testing?
Mr Reynolds: I don’t have the name of the laboratory, but it is a nationally recognised laboratory.
Senator ROBERTS: Your officers go to the site where the turbine brakes are stored, pending clearance, and then, if necessary, notify the testers.
Mr Reynolds: What we’ll do is we will provide a direction that that consignment is to be tested. Then the consignment will go to the laboratory to conduct the testing. Depending on the results, we may seize that particular consignment or it will be released.
Senator ROBERTS: How did this problem slip past the Australian Border Force?
Mr Reynolds: Once we became aware of it, we were absolutely onto it. We’ve been testing for asbestos over a number of years. How these particular brake pads made it into the country, I could not tell you. What I can tell you, however, is that for any individual there is a $330,000 fine or three times the value of the goods and for any companies who are deliberately importing asbestos products without a permit it’s a fine of $1.65 million or 15 times the value of the goods. There are significant penalties under the customs regulations for bringing asbestos into the country without a permit.
Senator ROBERTS: An importer of wind turbine brakes could just look at that and say to themselves: ‘What’s the risk assessment involved here? What’s the risk of getting caught?’ If it’s tiny, then it’s worth trying to flout the fines because they won’t get fined. They’ll do a risk assessment the other way.
Mr Reynolds: What I’d offer to you is the fact that we have intervened with 42 consignments which came into the country in that five-month period between 1 December and 1 April. This would indicate that we’re absolutely applying all that we can at the border to look for asbestos coming into the country, including for the wind turbine lift brakes and any other asbestos product.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s subsequent to them coming in without detection and being put into operation. You can’t tell me how that slipped past you. If you can’t tell me how, how do you know that what you’re doing now will get it all? I can understand you can’t possibly inspect every piece of equipment, every good and every item that gets imported by individuals or on major shipments and commercial loads. You have to use some kind of intelligence assessment and a risk assessment. I understand that. Have you changed practices?
Mr Reynolds: Yes, that’s precisely what we have done.
Senator ROBERTS: With the 42?
Mr Reynolds: That’s exactly it. Because we recognised that there clearly were some asbestos products that made it into the country, we doubled down on our efforts to reduce the risk of any asbestos brake pads for wind turbine lifts getting into the country. I think the figures I’ve provided for you demonstrate that we are being effective in getting after it.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m wondering how many other lapses there are, not just wind turbine brakes. Going back to this case: was there an offence committed by the importers or the purchasers by misdescription or omission?
Mr Reynolds: You’d need the details of the importers for those particular lift brake pads, so I don’t have that for you here. I could take it on notice if that would be of assistance.
Senator ROBERTS: If you could please. I’d like to know if it was deliberate or if it was sloppiness on the part of the importer.
Mr Reynolds: Certainly.
Senator ROBERTS: Have all contaminated wind turbines had the problem alleviated, Minister?
Senator Watt: I don’t know that I can give you an across the board answer. I’m not sure whether the commissioner has any further information on that.
Senator ROBERTS: Would that be your responsibility? I would have thought—
Mr Reynolds: It’s a state responsibility to deal with that issue.
Senator ROBERTS: How can I go about finding that out?
Senator Watt: Well, you’ve got some MPs in the South Australian parliament; that might be a good place to start.
Senator ROBERTS: And WA.
Senator Watt: Oh yes; I forgot about that.
Senator ROBERTS: And soon New South Wales.
Senator Watt: I’m not sure they agree with you on fracking and a few other things, but, anyway, that’s another issue.
Senator ROBERTS: We’re always listening to constituents, Senator Watt. We don’t just go blanket.
Senator Watt: ‘Drill, baby, drill’ except in South Australia?
Senator ROBERTS: Except in one electorate.
CHAIR: If we could get back to questions, that would be really helpful.
Senator DUNIAM: This is the entertainment.
CHAIR: No, I am not here for the entertainment.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m just going through my questions. The commissioner has answered most of them. What penalties or fines have been assessed for identified breaches? You’ve already told me the heftiness of the fines. Have any been levied on the importers in court?
Mr Reynolds: To date, all of the consignments that we have reviewed and have referred for testing have been found not to contain asbestos.
Senator ROBERTS: What about the ones that have been found and were in operation?
Mr Reynolds: I’ll take that on notice and do my best to answer that question for you.
Senator ROBERTS: In general, you’re there to apprehend illegal goods coming in illegally?
Mr Reynolds: That’s right.
Senator ROBERTS: If they get through the border and are put into operation, who is then responsible for enforcement? Is it someone else or is it you?
Mr Reynolds: We can still apply the Customs Act for goods that have made it through the border.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you have any prosecutions outstanding?
Mr Reynolds: For asbestos related issues?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Mr Reynolds: Not to my awareness.
Senator ROBERTS: Was anyone prosecuted for the ones that were discovered in operation?
Mr Reynolds: I think that is something that we can take on notice for you.
Senator ROBERTS: The self-assessment of components by the importers is appropriate given your limited workforce and the extent of imports coming into Australia—the extent in terms of not only dollar value but the complexity of things today?
Mr Reynolds: All importers have responsibilities as far as ensuring that they meet the legal requirements for the importation of goods into Australia, but we will conduct compliance checks on any goods over which we have a suspicion that it may be an illicit or prohibited product.
Senator ROBERTS: So your way of protecting the borders, keeping the borders secure is to do inspections. That can’t cover everything, so you use risk assessments, put responsibility on the importers, and then try to protect that with hefty fines if someone is caught to make the cost of criminal or illegal imports prohibitive.
Mr Reynolds: That’s a good summary.
Senator ROBERTS: When I retire I’ll come and get a job with you.
Senator Watt: There’s a merit process, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll pay that one. You were rejected, were you?
Senator Watt: I thought you were going to ask me to be a referee.
While I agree that protecting our natural environment is a duty of government, I completely disagree with Senator Pocock’s definition of “protection.” The rush toward net zero is not saving our environment; it’s state-sponsored vandalism.
Here is the reality of what net zero is doing to Australia:
✖️ Creating unmanaged havens for pests that will devastate native flora and fauna while destroying food production because of “carbon-dioxide farming.”
✖️ 205,000 hectares of farmland and native forests will be required to be cleared for wind turbines, 1.25 billion solar panels installed and the carving out of 20,000 kilometres of 75-metre-wide transmission easements through national forests.
✖️ Transmission line costs have blown out from an initial $8.5 billion estimate to upwards of $120 billion, and likely over $200 billion. When you add the generators, the total net zero cost sits at around $350 billion. Financed with high-cost loans over 35 years, this will ultimately burden taxpayers with a bill exceeding $1 trillion.
I have stood in these forests myself. I have seen developers blowing the tops off mountains to install massive concrete turbine bases. Offshore wind is no better. Data shows these marine turbines slow the wind, trap heat at the sea surface, disrupt marine life (including whales) with sediment and noise, shed microplastics and kill birds.
It’s not possible for anyone to look at Australia’s beautiful landscapes scarred with wind turbines, solar panels, access roads and transmission lines and think: no damage here; this is beautiful? No, it’s not. It’s vandalism.
We cannot put the tops back on the mountains that have been destroyed by this insanity.
This is literally killing the environment to save it.
One Nation will protect our beautiful landscapes from net zero vandalism.
One Nation is the true party of the environment.
Transcript
One Nation agrees with Senator Pocock that protection of the natural environment is a fundamental duty of any government. I do, though, disagree with Senator Pocock on the definition of environmental protection. ABARES executive director Dr Jared Greenville said last December that research indicates that projected land-based carbon sequestration goals for our net zero transition will require sequestration projects across 18 million hectares by 2050. While some of this land is co-used, agricultural land locked up for carbon credits is not environmental land. Inevitably it becomes a refuge for pests which infect local farms and devastate native fauna and flora. Carbon dioxide farming is the enemy of the natural environment and the enemy of food production.
Add to this total the 205,000 hectares of farmland and native forests which are being clear felled for the construction of wind turbines and access roads, plus the land for the 1.25 billion solar panels needed to reach net zero—that’s billion with a ‘b’. Then add the 20,000 kilometres of new transmission lines necessary to take power from where it is being generated to where it is needed. Each transition line runs through an easement, usually 75 metres wide, of clear felled land. In 2020 the AEMO cost estimate for most of the transmission line projects was $8.5 billion. Now the transmission line cost is estimated to be at least $120 billion and is more likely to blow out beyond $200 billion. Add another $160 billion for wind and solar generators and we have a $350 billion net zero cost being financed with high-cost loans, which in turn blows out the total 35-year outlay to above $1 trillion.
For environmentally destructive projects like Snowy 2 and for most of the wind projects in North Queensland, those transmission easements run through forests of national significance. I’ve been there, in the very forests this motion is calling to protect. They’re the same projects in which so-called green environmentalists are installing wind turbines and blowing the tops off mountains to make space for the huge concrete bases of massive wind turbines.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Here’s a sensible motion about the need to protect our beautiful environment, yet the motion ignores the massive environmental damage from net zero measures. How can anyone look at one of Australia’s beautiful landscapes scarred with wind turbines, solar panels, access roads and transmission lines and think: no damage here; this is beautiful. No, it’s not. It’s vandalism. This is not just happening on land. Offshore wind turbines harm the environment. A new study in Science Advances shows that offshore wind turbines actually warm the sea surface. Turbines slow the wind. This weakens mixing, shuts down upwelling and in turn traps heat at the surface. This changes the microclimate for more than 10 kilometres behind and stirs up sediment which interferes with marine life, including whales. Add this to bird kills, underwater noise and microplastic shedding and the picture is clear: offshore wind isn’t solving an environmental problem; it’s creating one. This does not even take into account the environmental cost of manufacture, transport, insulation, maintenance, decommissioning, disposal and remediation of massive wind turbines.
One Nation will care for the natural environment. We will ensure that the land is in the hands of the best stewards: farmers. We will cancel the entire project and protect those beautiful landscapes from net zero vandalism, returning land, where possible, to its best use, be that farming or native forests. Unfortunately, we can’t put the tops back on mountains. That damage is there for eternity—a testament to hubris and the tragedy of the paradox of virtue. It’s the killing of the environment in the name of saving the environment. One Nation is now the party of the environment.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/14qDPVETo1U/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-05-29 14:55:132026-05-29 14:55:25Saving the Planet or Destroying It? The Ugly Truth
In our Budget Reply, we had so much to say about saving this country that Senator Hanson ran out of time to deliver it all.
One Nation is offering a fundamentally different direction for Australia — one rooted in proven, common-sense economic principles.
➡️ Cheap, Reliable Energy: Ditching the “green” agenda to invest in coal and nuclear.
➡️ Real Wealth: Backing the local industries that actually build this nation.
➡️ Lower Taxes: Putting money back into the pockets of hard-working Australian families.
➡️Less Bureaucracy: Listening to engineers and physicists, not climate bureaucrats.
Transcript
For all the talk about this budget, many issues are all too familiar. Revenue is up from $773 billion to $815 billion. Expenses are up from $812 billion to $833 billion. Gross interest payments are at $27 billion, rising to $40 billion over the forward estimates. Budget deficits are forecast to balloon by another $100 billion over the next four years. Interest-bearing debt will climb another $300 billion to $1.3 trillion. Businesses are collapsing at record rates—almost 50,000 insolvencies since Labor took office. Productivity is stuck at six-decade lows. Eight out of 10 new jobs are now created by government because the private sector has become so disillusioned. Business confidence and domestic investment have fallen to 1990s recession lows. Our inflation remains the highest in the developed world.
Australian families have endured 15 interest rate hikes, pushing more than one million households into extreme mortgage stress. GDP per capita has fallen in 10 of the last 13 quarters, and 337,000 households can no longer pay their energy bills—double the level of five years ago—as power prices continue to surge.
Labor will introduce the working Australians tax offset. It’s less than $5 a week in relief and doesn’t kick in until next year, an election year. The government wants you to be grateful for 68c a day off your tax. That tax offset will be completely rubbed out by bracket creep. Bracket creep means working Australians will pay more in tax because of inflation. The government profits from higher inflation. It’s a stealth tax, a trap for the next election and an advertising slogan for 2028. They used the same trap in their election advertising in 2022. If anyone dares to refuse passing a useless, less than $5 tax cut, they will be accused of not supporting tax cuts. While Australians will receive just $2.6 billion back in the one-off WATO, they’ll pay tens of billions more in taxes because of bracket creep.
One Nation tried to end bracket creep by indexing income tax thresholds to inflation, ending the stealthy tax increases. Labor, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens refused to support it. Instead of the measly $250, ending bracket creep would put thousands of dollars a year back in working Australians’ pockets. We don’t need Labor to protect Australians; we need to protect Australians from Labor.
The tax changes in this budget, including on discretionary trusts, will suppress investor appetite and speculative capital, forcing these businesses to set up in jurisdictions with no impediments. Capital will always, always follow to where it is most loved.
This budget reveals a political culture that relies evermore heavily on centralised bureaucracy, dependency on the state and short-term intervention. That is the Labor way. Forget the spin about intergenerational equity; it’s being used as an excuse to break election promises. True equity does not punish those who worked hard, took risks, built businesses and paid their taxes. It does not resent aspiration or success. Real intergenerational equity means giving young Australians the same opportunities their parents had—the chance to own a home, raise a family, start a business and get ahead through hard work. Young people are not struggling because older generations succeeded. They are falling behind because governments have chosen subsidies and wealth redistribution over allowing free enterprise to flourish.
On the forward estimates, our total liabilities will exceed $1.9 trillion—a burden to be repaid by our children and grandchildren. That is not equity. That is hypocrisy. Changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax will further dampen economic activity, push rents higher and reduce housing supply. As a self-proclaimed scholar of Paul Keating, the Treasurer might have reflected on what happened in 1985 when these same policies were tried and had to be reversed two years later.
Housing is a national crisis only since Labor took office, and I say ‘crisis’. More than 40 per cent of the cost of building a new home is government taxes and unnecessary compliance costs. One Nation will take a different approach. We will slash the GST to zero on building materials for homes up to a value of $1 million for the next five years. Rapid population growth without matching supply is a recipe for declining living standards. This is not about blaming migrants. It’s about recognising limits. But this government has no interest in reducing migration, for all the talk. It expects to increase visa application fees from $4.7 billion today to $7.1 billion by 2029-30. Elevated migration is a money spinner. Canada cut migration sharply from 2024 and has now enjoyed 18 straight months of falling rents and easing house prices, something we have strongly advocated for.
We will introduce income splitting for every family with at least one dependent child. A single earner on $120,000 with a stay-at-home partner would be around $9½ thousand a year better off. We will exempt insurance from the GST, and we urge the states to drop stamp duty on it as well. Affordable insurance ultimately reduces burdens on taxpayers. We will allow aged pensioners and veterans to work as much as they want without losing any of their pensions or health card benefits.
For more than a decade, One Nation has consistently argued that Australia must strengthen domestic resilience, including strategic fuel reserves, reliable energy systems, food and water security, and sovereign industrial capabilities supported by true nation-building infrastructure. The current liquid fuel crisis has not only exposed our domestic unpreparedness but signalled to adversaries how vulnerable we would be in a conflict. Building a strategic reserve is a step in the right direction, but it is still not enough to build resilience and liquid fuel independence. The total cost of not having sufficient supplies will always outweigh the net cost of having them in a crisis.
One Nation will cut the red, green and black tape that is strangling projects and fast-track major approvals, especially energy, to a maximum of six months. We will ditch net zero, exit the Paris Agreement and axe the climate change department, saving $30 billion in the process. We will back coal and gas and support bringing nuclear power to bring down prices, restore reliability and guarantee national energy security. Next week, I will introduce a bold new gas policy that underwrites our vast sovereign resource assets for decades to come. It will provide real equity investment and genuine skin in the game, where our healthy dividend will help pay down the debt racked up by successive governments.
We have listened extensively, and we will work with industry, not against it, in genuine partnership. We will bring back our mining and resources industries, the bedrock that funds schools, hospitals, roads and defence. A strong nation leverages its natural advantages. It does not demonise them. One Nation will swiftly move to get rid of impediments in an increasingly competitive global environment and restore our status as a nation that rolls out the red carpet in resources rather than roll it up. We are backing the Capricorn steel project, to connect coal in Queensland’s Bowen Basin to iron ore in Western Australia’s Pilbara region with a rail line that will open northern Australia to development. The project is strongly backed by Australian investors and is aimed at making Australia a major global supplier of high-quality steel. It will require the Inland Rail project, now abandoned by Labor, to be completed and extended to the more suitable Port of Gladstone, in Queensland. It will be the foundation for a national rail circuit that effectively circumnavigates the Australian continent, providing freight efficiencies and improved defence logistics. These are no longer abstract debates. They are national security imperatives.
In agriculture, we will ban the further sale of controlling interests in freehold farmland to foreign investors and limit the sale of leasehold farmland to a maximum of 25 years. We will ban foreign ownership of water and return balance to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. One Nation strongly supports the modern hybrid Bradfield scheme to improve water security, open new areas to farming and improve food security and exports. We will build new dams and water infrastructure, reintroduce drought payments and re-establish a federal government backed rural lending fund to protect farmers through other natural disasters.
Importantly, we will restore accountability. Australians work hard for their money, and they deserve a government that shows the same discipline. Successive governments have failed to tackle a culture where people in charge of creating multiple white elephants pay no price for their commercial illiteracy. Snowy 2.0, which has blown out 21 times—to $42 billion—is but one egregious example. One Nation will ensure past, present and emerging failures will no longer be transaction free for those responsible.
We will abolish divisive cultural departments and race based programs that divide Australians by skin colour or ancestry. Every Australian will be treated as equal under one flag and one culture. Help will be given on the basis of genuine need, not race. No more special privileges—equal rights for all, and special rights for none. There will be no more taxpayer-funded welcome to country rituals. Unity builds strength; division destroys it.
Our Defence Force must focus on operational readiness, capability and deterrence, not morale-sapping identity politics. One Nation will restore pride in wearing the uniform and give them the latest equipment to carry out their duties. We won’t sell off our historic sites of symbolic significance to cover irresponsible spending.
Australians are not asking for miracles. They are simply asking for a country that works again. One Nation continues to attract practical Australians with real world experience—people from finance, investment, trade, engineering, farming, small business, building, energy, manufacturing and defence. These are men and women who have built things, employed people and delivered results outside the Canberra bubble. Australia does not need more career politicians serving vested interests. One Nation believes the government is there to serve you. This budget only goes to prove yet again that this government believes you are there to serve it.
In closing, Australia stands at a crossroads. For too long, Labor’s failed experiment of reckless spending, crippling regulation, net zero ideology and wealth redistribution has driven businesses to the wall. It’s crushed living standards, saddled our children with debt and stolen the Australian dream from an entire generation. A nation loses hope when it loses vision. Australia now has near a trillion dollars in debt and nothing to show for it. One Nation will break the green, red and black tape that has tied us down. We will work with the natural strengths of the assets on our balance sheet. We have iron ore, coal, gas, cattle, rain, cotton, gold, copper, oil and so much more. Australia should be a powerhouse, but the major parties lack the management skills for us reach our potential. It is perverse that a government and an opposition believe they can change the weather, and are prepared to waste ultimately hundreds of billions to do it, while they mock the idea of a version of the Bradfield scheme that would open the massive potential for irrigation of the rich but dry soils of the western districts. It is perverse that a government and an opposition that came up with the biggest construction fiasco on earth, the $42 billion Snowy Hydro 2.0, cannot complete the Inland Rail from Melbourne to Brisbane, which would open up the intermodal efficiencies and commercial potential of the inland corridor.
We are covering the land with windmills and solar panels and, in turn, delivering— (Time expired)
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Hanson, are you seeking the call?
Senator Hanson: I seek leave to finish my speech.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Is leave granted? Leave has not been granted, Senator Hanson.
Senator Hanson: I seek leave to table my speech.
Leave granted.
“We are covering our land with windmills and solar panels and in turn delivering the dearest and most precarious electricity grid our nation has ever had, when we had the cheapest coal fired power and sitting on one of the greatest coal resources in the globe.
One Nation does not care about major party sneers. We care about handing our children a better opportunity than was handed to us by our parents, currently it is the other way around.
One Nation will reallocate the resources from the fool’s errand of Australia changing the weather to invest in coal fired power, nuclear, irrigation, freight, rail, ports and roads. We will work with businesses as partners in these projects.
One Nation will listen to civil engineers, nuclear physicists, and research scientists in medicine instead of climate change bureaucrats. These assets on our nations balance sheet allows us to pay for expenses on the Profit and Loss. These assets build a nation that can repay its debts. One Nation is offering a fundamentally different direction -one rooted in proven, common sense economic principles. We’ll lower taxes on working families, slash regulation that strangles enterprise, deliver abundant and affordable energy, and back the industries that actually create real wealth and opportunity.
We will never pretend we know better than you how to run your own lives. That is why we are determined to hand power back to the Australian people where it belongs.
We will reward hard work and aspiration, restore fiscal discipline, and put Australian families and businesses first once again.
One Nation’s word is our bond – and we have three decades of unwavering policy consistency to prove it.
We hope to earn your trust to implement the bold change Australia desperately needs.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-21-215100.jpg?fit=676%2C336&ssl=1336676Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-05-22 05:32:242026-05-22 05:32:36Budget Reply: One Nation’s Blueprint to Put Australians First
