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Rejecting the UN Scam

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A question I asked Minister Don Farrell back in March.

From the start, One Nation opposed the UN’s net zero policies and will continue to oppose.

Will the Uniparty fully embrace coal, oil, and gas as being essential for modern civilisation and commit to true national self-sufficiency across our entire hydrocarbon supply chain, from drilling to the petrol pump?

I doubt it!

— March | Senate Debate

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, from the start, One Nation has completely opposed the United Nations net zero scam. Only One Nation has said from the start and continues to say, ‘Scrap United Nations’s net zero.’ The Nationals say, ‘Scrap net zero by 2050.’ They support the net zero concept but want to delay implementation. The Liberals say the same. They still support UN’s net zero; they just want to drop net zero by 2050. The Liberals started net zero under Prime Minister Morrison after he’d promised at the election just 18 months earlier not to adopt it. The Nationals went along with it blindly. The Labor Party has adopted One Nation suggestions— 

Senator Canavan: Barnaby did! 

Senator ROBERTS: He now realises he was wrong, and he’s probably said so, to his credit. That shows his integrity and courage. Labor has adopted One Nation’s suggestions. We were the first to raise the looming fuel crisis back on Monday 2 March, three days after the Israelis attacked Iran. We were ridiculed for that—called far-right-wing extremists, I think—by the Labor Party. I can distinctly visualise Senator Tim Ayres over there saying that as he pointed towards me. It doesn’t bother us, because we know that he was desperate. But we thank you for adopting so many of our policies over that last four weeks, and you’re still adopting them. Thank you. Will you adopt our advice to scrap UN net zero? Will you at least acknowledge that the hydrocarbon fuels coal, oil and natural gas are essential for modern civilisation—in particular, oil for transport? Will you acknowledge that we need to be self-sufficient in the entire hydrocarbon supply chain, from drilling rig through to petrol pump?

Senator Farrell: I thank Senator Roberts for his question. I should congratulate you on your result in the South Australian elections, Senator Roberts. I know you came down and campaigned, certainly in the seat of Colton. I saw you down there with your candidate.

I have an apology to make to Senator Canavan. When I was answering one of his questions last week, I referred to the fact that, in his first outing as leader of the National Party, where he was going to take on One Nation, your candidates got 22 per cent of the vote, and I said in the Senate that the Nationals had got one per cent. I have to apologise to Senator Canavan; that was not correct. It was 0.7 of one per cent, not one per cent. So, in his first outing as leader, espousing all of the policy positions he’s just explained to this Senate, that was the result.

We do produce gas in this country, Senator Roberts, and we’ve produced it under this government. I’ve referred, in an earlier answer to Senator Canavan, to some of the places where we’re doing it. We’re doing it in the Barossa. We’re doing it in the Beetaloo. One day we might do it in Narrabri. We’re certainly increasing production in the Cooper Basin in South Australia. But we do have a commitment to net zero. That is, as you say, a commitment that both the Nationals and the coalition, at certain periods of time, have been committed to. Gas, in particular, is a transition fuel, Senator Roberts. It’s the way in which you get to net zero.

But right now we have an emergency. We need to ensure that our stocks of petrol, diesel and airline fuel continue to be available to businesses and consumers in this country. There is an emergency about dealing with this. What happens on the sea is that there are ships containing oil, petrol and airline fuel. They become available for purchase, and sometimes you’re only given 24 or 48 hours to make that purchase. The reason we have decided to use the facility of Export Finance Australia to bid for these products is that they’re a very nimble organisation, they’re very experienced in this space, they are run really well by a fellow called John Hopkins, they regularly report to me, and we see them as the best organisation to ensure that we act quickly on this.

Minister Bowen has ensured that, in combination with me and Minister King, we have taken all of the steps that we need to take to ensure that Australians continue to have access to all of those fuels that I just mentioned. But there is an urgency about this legislation. Despite everything Senator Canavan said, I’m not sure that he appreciates that urgency. We do need to get on with this, and the quicker we pass this legislation, the quicker we can get some certainty to businesses and consumers about the reliable supply of those fuels.

The TEMPORARY CHAIR (Senator Scarr): Senator Roberts, there’s only seventeen seconds left for the debate, but you have the call.

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, will you support One Nation’s initiative in recommending the conversion of gas to liquid fuels? You mentioned gas. 

The TEMPORARY CHAIR (Senator Scarr): I’m sorry, Minister, but, pursuant to the order agreed to yesterday, the time allotted on this bill has expired. 

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Labor Trapped Young People

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RBA cash rate rises create serious concern for 5% home deposits

Labor’s ‘Big Australia’ mass migration project, designed to shore-up Albanese’s vote at the next election, has created a catastrophic housing shortage.

Everyone knows it.

Even if the media and self-interested uniparty choose to deny the facts.

Young people across the country know it too. They are the ones standing in rental lines behind 50 people who cannot speak English, trying to decipher rental signs written in a foreign language and clearly pitched to everyone except Aussie kids.

They feel upset. Betrayed. Left out. And ignored.

These Australians know they are competing against Labor’s migration agenda, not organic competition like their parents and grandparents faced. This is not, in any way, a ‘fair’ housing market.

When these young Australians decide to ditch the soul-crushing rental queue and take on the dream of home ownership that changed their parents’ lives – they discover an even worse situation.

The price of homes, including small city apartments in the areas they need to live to keep their jobs, are unattainable.

Some of this price increase is to do with greedy government fees and charges, while the rest is a consequence of too much demand from people who live outside the Australian economic cost-of-living crisis. Foreign buyers often have the means to push prices well above what they should be.

In Australia, house prices have advanced much faster than the average wage. Even those earning $100,000 per year – once considered a mark of success – feel that home ownership is financially impossible. These people are no longer considered to be ‘doing well’. They are struggling.

Not to mention that the average worker has a considerable amount of their wage taken as ‘super’ and given to union funds to play the stockmarket. This makes union super funds rich and pushes huge volumes of investment money into projects – usually in the green industry – that otherwise would never receive private funding. $4.5 trillion has been taken out of people’s pockets and locked away. This money remains untouchable until someone turns 65. 8-10% of Australians will die before they access their super (or 56% of Indigenous Australians). That money used to be used for home investment and there is good reason to believe that compulsory super is one of the contributing factors to a major drop in home ownership amongst the middle and working classes.

There are ways to immediately improve the housing situation – the most obvious being the deportation of visa overstayers and a severe cut to migration. This would immediately free up hundreds of thousands of properties for domestic buyers and renters.

That would benefit Australians and massively hurt the political class and their major financial backers.

Instead of doing the right thing, Chalmers & Co have designed a system to turn a profit from the hardship and desperation of young Australians.

In August of 2025, the Labor government introduced their 5% deposit scheme for first home buyers. There is also another version of this for single parents to buy a home with a 2% deposit.

Labor described this as ‘helping more Australians realise their dream of home ownership’ where the government (taxpayers) ‘guarantee a portion of a first home buy’s home loan with a lower deposit and not pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance’.

Their argument is this:

‘All first home buyers will have access, with no caps on places or incomes limits. Property price caps will also be set higher in line with the average house prices, providing access to a greater variety of homes.’

Predictably, this did not unlock more desirable homes – it created an almost immediate increase in home prices. Labor said it would be 0.6% over the medium term. Instead, it was 3.6% in the first quarter. The developers win. Ministers in Canberra with property portfolios win.

Finder says the average loan amount for first home buyers in December 2025 was $607,624. This is a huge sum of money. In 2015, you could expect a first homebuyer to take on $333,500. Westpac says first homebuyers are typically over 40. This shows you how much harder it is to get enough financial security to consider buying a home.

And while the ‘average wage’ is listed as $104,000, it’s suspected that this figure is skewed and the real average is probably closer to $88,000. After tax that’s around $69,000.

If you think this whole thing sounds like a bad idea, you’re right.

To translate it into economic reality, Labor is encouraging and actively changing the rules to allow young Australians to take on loans they cannot realistically afford (and would not be normally given) right when the RBA has warned it will continue to raise the cash rate – which it has done multiple times since the scheme began.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he did his degree in ‘Paul Keating’ – now he is in danger of re-creating Keating’s gravest mistake.

A person with a normal mortgage that they attained under strict rules is already suffering under the RBA rate rises. Individuals who took on a 95% mortgage are at a very serious risk of defaulting. It only takes a small rate rise on a sum of money this large to lead them into disaster.

An entire generation of vulnerable, trusting Australians have been led into imminent economic ruin by a government that thought 5% deposits were nothing more than a vote-buying game.

It isn’t a game.

It’s people’s lives.

People’s futures.

This isn’t about ‘votes for Labor’ for people who think the government is ‘gifting’ them a house, it’s about Australians watching their savings burn and homes taken off them in a time of economic uncertainty.

It’s rare to find a government that cares so little about young people – although we know exactly why they did it.

Mass migration is a vote buying operation for the Labor Party. They cannot give it up, even though home ownership is the leading election topic among their rising young demographic that is in danger of being taken by the Greens. Labor has made a wager on a short-term vote winner with no regard for the coming disaster.

Even the Daily Mail warned of an impending catastrophe after the latest RBA cash rate rise highlighted a significant rise in risky mortgages (4% of the total market!)

To quote:

‘While the banks are insulated by the government guarantee, which covers the first 15% of any losses from these loans, households are exposed. The banks are fine. The main risk falls on individuals.’

It’s widely expected war in Iran, and the high petrol prices and fuel insecurity that flow on from this scenario, will increase inflation and lead to even more rate rises in the near future.

Government debt – also known as Chalmers’ spending spree – is the main driver of inflation and the interest repayments on this blackhole are climbing every day.

When debt passes $1 trillion – which it is expected to do shortly – interest payments will cost $60 million per day or $41,667 every minute.

Every Australian – whether they are an infant or retired – owes $806.65 every year in just interest. And that’s if Chalmers stops spending right now. And to pay off the $1 trillion debt tomorrow, it would require every person to cough up $36,850.01.

If fuel prices increase (or fuel rationing starts), we can expect a catastrophic loss of businesses and, therefore, jobs. How many young people will lose their jobs and be unable to service these mortgages?

The uniparty doesn’t care. The government never loses.

It raises taxes. It tightens your belt so it can eat more money.

Remember, if you think the LNP are any better, they have their own reasons for supporting ‘Big Australia’. The Howard government marked the start of mass migration. All Coalition governments since have done nothing to change it and they never will.

One Nation are desperately worried about the future young people face.

We have a comprehensive policy to cut immigration by over 570,000 and to deport 75,000 migrants visa over-stayers, illegal workers, and unlawful non-residents who threaten our national security. We also have a housing policy to ensure unnecessary fees, charges, and taxes are cut to get homes built without destroying our green spaces or cultural heritage.

One Nation is here to make a genuine difference for you, not Canberra.

Labor TRAPPED young people by Senator Malcolm Roberts

RBA cash rate rises create serious concern for 5% home deposits

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Running on Empty

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How Labor is turning fuel security into another Net Zero scam under the banner of ‘national security’

Despite decades of warnings, Australia has been exposed to an incredibly dangerous situation.

We have 20-ish days of fuel security, much of it hosted offshore, and all of it draining away as war escalates in the Middle East.

As for a backup plan? That doesn’t exist.

‘In a time of conflict, this government is running a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude.

‘There is no need to panic-buy petrol…’ insisted our reckless, over-spending Treasurer, Jim Chalmers.

Chalmers was simultaneously trying to blame the war in Iran for his dodgy budget accounting while pretending there’s ‘nothing to see here’ with the fuel situation.

Prime Minister Albanese’s Energy Minister, who has forgotten about carbon emissions, backed Chalmers’ comments, insisting that panic buying would ‘just make the situation worse’.

It’s impossible for Australian taxpayers to make the fuel situation ‘worse’ after successive Labor and Coalition Unitparty governments left us in a catastrophic position. We import 90% of our liquid fuel – this includes our requirements for domestic transport, industry, agriculture, and military defence.

To save money on storage, the vast majority of these imports come as ‘just-in-time’ deliveries.

Even the fuel we import from Asia is sourced largely from the Middle East – and we can expect China to lean heavily on this supply now that its import network is severely disrupted after what happened in Venezuela, Iran, and the wider Middle East.

Other nations are forced to rely on dicey international transit routes, and Australia has chosen to do the same. This is a monumental political failure.

Over 20 years, six of our eight refineries were closed or substantially wound down with ‘competition from Asia’ cited as the reason. Two of these critical refineries met their demise under the watch of the then-Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who now seeks to present himself as the salvation of conservatism.

At the time of ExxonMobil’s decision to close the Altona refinery (constructed in 1946), Angus Taylor said this ‘will not negatively impact Australian fuel stockholdings’.

This was simply wrong. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.

Successive Coalition-Labor governments have sold Australia’s national security off to free up cash in the budget or because they could not be bothered to argue the case of national security when it mattered.

We still have minimum reserve supply rates, which are designed to buffer against natural disasters and temporary disruptions – they are not satisfactory for extended periods of global conflict nor do they make provisions for the fuel-guzzling behaviours of our geopolitical partners. This means that earlier war-gaming by the government, which insists Australia can buy its way out of a shortage, lack the real-world probability that nations will protect their own needs above our contractual arrangements.

It’s a cold, hard reality that if Australia were to be cut-off from its fuel deliveries, the wheels of our nation would fall off in early April.

A 2018 report commissioned by the government suggested Australia maintain domestic refinery capabilities. It did not foresee simultaneous disruption to Asian, Middle Eastern, and South American fuel markets. It did not foresee conflict zones and regime changes in Europe, the Middle East, and South America. It did not foresee the largest refinery in the Middle East going up in flames, or Iran deliberately targeting the entire energy structure of its neighbours. And it did not foresee the oil politics taking place between Russia, Ukraine, and neighbouring nations such as Hungary.

In other words, the government report failed to properly gauge future risk and assumed a world that no longer exists.

…even after US President Donald Trump gave everyone the hint with his, Drill, baby, drill! push to bolster domestic supply.

As the Maritime Union of Australia said earlier this week:

‘This is not a distant geopolitical drama, but a direct threat to Australian workers, families, and industries.

When a fifth of the world’s oil moves through a single maritime corridor and that corridor is shut by war, the consequences are immediate.’

It’s in this environment that our party leader, Pauline Hanson, put forward a proposal for an immediate inquiry into fuel security. To this we would also request full transparency on how long it would take and how much it would cost to construct domestic self-sufficiency in fuel refineries.

These are things we need to know.

And what did Labor and the Greens do?

They voted it down.

They put party politics ahead of Australia’s security and your future survival.

Their dislike of Pauline Hanson, who they wasted time censuring for a second time, overrode their responsibility to the people of this nation. This is the type of politicking that must end.

While we take fuel security seriously, there is evidence mounting that Labor and the Greens intend to use public panic as a means to prop-up their dying ‘Net Zero’ industry.

The Climate Catastrophism narrative has well and truly worn off, with most Australians – and nations around the world – realising that it was a scam designed to line the pockets of mining operations and foreign energy companies with public money. A lot of politicians found very rich private sector jobs after legislating in favour of all things ‘green’.

Now, ‘national security’ has become the next unquestionable buzz word that can be invoked by the Prime Minister, Treasurer, and his Energy Minister to justify another pivot toward decarbonisation.

The outrageous propaganda is already starting.

News.com.au ran a story at the beginning of March, Why your next car is a matter of Australia’s national security.

It was one of many pieces caught up in the ‘EV to save us from the Iran war’ frenzy.

If you wouldn’t drive an electric car for yourself, would you do it for your country? Conflict in Iran is a stark reminder: an EV is more than a personal choice – it’s a matter of national security. Choosing an EV makes you, me, and our wider community less reliant on fossil fuels.

The Australian Electric Vehicle Association also put out a press release: EVs have always been about fuel security. Really? I thought they were about ‘saving the world’?

AEVA argues that the full electrification of transport remains the single most effective strategy the nation can enact to improve fuel security.

Of course, there is no explanation as to how relying on communist China – which uses Middle Eastern oil to build EVs and Middle Eastern diesel to ship them to Australia – solves any of our problems.

Nor is there a reliable answer to the transport industry, which is incompatible with electric trucks. And there isn’t even a faint ‘nod’ to where China sources the materials for the construction of our renewable grid – those being volatile African nations which operate under a mixture of debt-trapping and despot corruption, abuses of human rights, and traversing regions of the world prone to terrorism and war.

Even if we were to replace our domestic fossil fuel energy grid with solar, wind, and batteries – there is nothing more vulnerable in a time of conflict than a giant solar industrial complex or thousands of kilometres of transmission lines running through undefended forests and open ocean.

Strategically, it’s madness.

In reality – it’s impossible.

Yet attempting to achieve this lunacy is a ‘national security’ narrative with which the Prime Minister and his mates will likely try to appease the Greens.

The Greens have come out in open defiance in recent weeks and their voters will see it as an ideological victory and anti-war protest. Their support will join huge corporations already gorging on taxpayer dollars and unions protecting Net Zero-inclined funds.

Money and opportunism are about to hijack public fear over the war to revive the Net Zero industry.

And it will do so at the expense of Australia’s national security.

One Nation believes this to be one of the most dangerous fake news narratives an Australian government has ever sold. A short-sighted, selfish political move that could leave Australia open to a very real logistic catastrophe.

We call on the entire Parliament to put fuel security at the top of the agenda, and to restore Australia’s energy grid to self-sufficient network as a matter of urgency.

One Nation will immediately buy whatever supplies we can obtain in the market, which the Albanese government is still not doing. Then we will work with fuel companies to get new oil refineries in Kurnell and upgrade the Lytton plant in Brisbane, and Geelong in Victoria.

We will immediately start construction on gas-to-fuel plants and legislate a domestic gas reservation so we have cheap Australian gas to convert to fuel. We will build the missing link in the national gas network – a pipeline to connect the East coast and West coast gas networks.

This violation of national security can never be allowed to happen again.

‘Running on empty’ by Senator Malcolm Roberts

How Labor is turning fuel security into another Net Zero scam under the banner of ‘national security’

Read on Substack

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Climate Bureaucrats Squirm When Questioned in Senate Estimates

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Watch as these climate change bureaucrats deflect and squirm when trying to answer basic questions about what their department has been doing.

This session looked at why they sold millions of barrels of oil held in the United States and Labor’s new tax on petrol and diesel cars. Like always, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW) is completely out of touch with reality while trying to tell you what you can and can’t do.

Abolish the net-zero goals.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. Can we just continue with this strategic reserve? So Australia sold all of the oil reserves in the United States strategic reserve?  

Mrs Svarcas: Correct.  

Senator ROBERTS: That was 1.7 million barrels, around June 2022?  

Mrs Svarcas: Correct.  

Senator ROBERTS: What was the sale amount? $220 million?  

Mrs Svarcas: I would have to take that on notice. I don’t have that in my folder.  

Senator ROBERTS: Who was the oil delivered to?  

Mrs Svarcas: I would have to also take that on notice, Senator.  

Senator ROBERTS: How much was paid in seller’s fees, commissions or whatever it is? 

Mrs Svarcas: I’m happy to break that down for you on notice.  

Senator ROBERTS: How much is the continuing empty lease in the US strategic reserve costing?  

Mrs Svarcas: We do have an ongoing contract for that. I will, again, come back to you with the leasing costs on that.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. That’s all I had there. I’d like to move to the ute tax, please.  

CHAIR: I think you’ll find it’s not called that, Senator Roberts. 

 Senator ROBERTS: Sorry?  

CHAIR: We don’t have such a thing. Would you like to refer to the correct program?  

Senator ROBERTS: Your new car tax.  

Senator McAllister: We don’t have a new car tax, either.  

CHAIR: No new car tax?  

Senator ROBERTS: You know what I’m talking about.  

CHAIR: How about you just say it, Senator Roberts, so we can get the right people to the table.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’d like to know the new fees for petrol and diesel vehicles.  

Senator McAllister: It’s possible you’re referring to the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you very much.  

CHAIR: Yes, that sounds a bit more familiar.  

Senator ROBERTS: Yes, that’s another way of saying it. Minister, why were you so secretive about it? You passed it under guillotine with no debate. Yet again, another bill with no debate.  

Senator McAllister: The New Vehicle Efficiency Standard brings Australia into line with the very significant majority of the international vehicle market. It’s a policy—  

Senator ROBERTS: Excuse me, Minister. The people of Australia elected your government to govern. They didn’t elect the United Nations World Economic Forum, the United States, Great Britain, or other global players. They wanted you to govern this country—not on behalf of others.  

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, could you allow the minister to finish answering the question?  

Senator ROBERTS: Sorry, Chair.  

Senator McAllister: The government was very clear and we had extensive public discussion about the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard. I believe there were Senate hearings, although I did not participate in them. We discussed it here in the estimates forum and also in the neighbouring committee at the last estimates hearings as well. Officials can talk to you about some of the public consultation that took place, including the position papers that were released. And senators had many opportunities to express their opinions about this particular policy initiative through the course of the Senate’s work.  

Senator ROBERTS: So we don’t need to debate anymore in the Senate?  

Senator McAllister: We do need debate in the Senate, Senator Roberts. These were important—  

Senator ROBERTS: Second reading, third reading and committee stages?  

Senator McAllister: I thought you had asked me a question.  

Senator ROBERTS: I am! But I was continuing—  

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I’m going to ask you again to allow the minister to answer the question you have just posed and to not speak over her.  

Senator McAllister: The government’s view was that this was an important reform, and that there was some urgency to this reform. It was a reform that had been proposed under a previous government, during a previous parliament, and not progressed. The consequences of that were that Australians continue to pay more than they need to at the bowser because the vehicle fleet in Australia is less efficient than it could be, because the range of vehicles available to Australians is considerably less than we expect it will be under the standard. We think it’s an important policy. We wanted to progress it, and we judged that there was a majority of support in the Senate for that, so we brought it on for consideration.  

Senator ROBERTS: You’re afraid of letting the people participate through their views, expressed through senators in debates in second reading and third reading and committee stages, and assessing amendments?  

Senator McAllister: I wouldn’t characterise it like that at all. 

Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Minister, are you aware, with an increasing amount of smart metres being installed—despite some people saying they don’t want it—and electric vehicle charging happening overnight offpeak, that’s when coal-fired power is supplying most of the electricity. So there’s potentially going to be an increased demand on coal-fired power stations as petrol and diesel vehicles are set aside in favour of electric vehicles. So you’re actually increasing the carbon dioxide intensity of energy.  

Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, I will ask some of the officials to talk you through the expectations that we have for demand on the grid. But the Integrated System Plan, which is produced by the AEMO, includes demand that is predicted to arise from the introduction of greater numbers of electric vehicles into the Australian fleet, along with a range of other changes. It also, as you know, shows a very significant shift to renewable energy, so the emissions intensity of the National Electricity Market is expected to decrease over time, of course.  

Senator ROBERTS: So, are they like the projections where you told us we would be having lower power costs, and instead we’ve got far higher?  

Senator McAllister: Do you want to talk about the issue that you originally asked me about, or do you wish to move on?  

Senator ROBERTS: I just wanted to know what your projections were like and how accurate they are.  

Senator McAllister: The Integrated System Plan is a long-established piece of analysis undertaken by the Australian Energy Market Operator. Officials at the table can talk to you about the expectations there and any other information we have of that expected demand on electricity.  

Mr Ryan: To start with, I’ll talk about some of the different charging solutions we’re seeing and what impact that’s having. ARENA, who I know will be appearing, will certainly be able to tell you about some of the investment and some of the innovations they’re looking at in charging. You’re right, a lot of charging is done at home—80 per cent, we think—but that’s not just from the grid. A lot of those people—not all, but a lot of them— actually have batteries that charge and store solar energy from during the day. So when they’re charging overnight—it might be from a battery but it also might be from the grid—note that the grid is slowly decarbonising as well. So that’s increasing, day to day. There are other innovations where we’re seeing EV charging being provided at places people visit on a regular basis, whether that’s at carparks during the day or the workplace during the day, whether it’s at the kerbside, at the local gym, at the movies—places where there’s charging, more and more. Sometimes that’s in the evening, but a lot of the time that’s during the day. So we’re seeing some innovation, and there’s certainly been funding—not just from the Commonwealth but from the states and territories—to develop that innovation and look to maximise the solar in there. The last thing I’d say on the projections is that I do know that they take into account the grid and the impact on the grid for the uptake of EVs. So they are in the figures that are provided each year when they do the projections.  

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, do you still maintain—  

Mr Fredericks: Senator, sorry; could Ms Rowley just give you 30 seconds on that, because it is quintessentially the answer to your question about how all of the emissions impacts are brought to bear.  

Senator ROBERTS: Sure.  

Ms Rowley: In relation to the annual emissions projections, we look at the change in the vehicle fleet, including the uptake of electric vehicles, which is helping to reduce the direct emissions from transport. But we also take account of the electricity required to meet the growing share of electric vehicles. Just by way of example, for 2030, in last year’s emissions projections, we estimated that there was a seven-million-tonne reduction in transport emissions and a one-million-tonne increase in electricity emissions to meet that additional demand from electric vehicles, so the net effect in 2030 was an estimated six-million-tonne reduction in Australia’s emissions, taking into account both transport and electricity.  

Senator ROBERTS: Sure, but I remind you you can’t tell me the impact on climate of that, so you’re basically going with a policy of spending money but not realising the benefit. Minister, do you still maintain—  

Ms Rowley: I would note that the new vehicle efficiency standard is projected to save consumers money and reduce the impact of things like health costs on the Australian economy.  

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, do you still maintain—  

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, we’re going to rotate the call.  

Senator ROBERTS: Last question?  

CHAIR: Last question. 

Senator ROBERTS: Do you still maintain, Minister, that punishing manufacturers of petrol and diesel vehicles won’t reduce the number of petrol or diesel cars available to Australians?  

Senator McAllister: Senator, I don’t accept that characterisation of the policy setting.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thanks, Chair. 

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