My Priorities for Australia’s Future

It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying what I don’t agree with. Today I set out the policies I do agree with. These are policies I have worked hard in the Senate to promote and will continue to do so.

Australia has natural advantages in mineral resources, agricultural land, water, sunshine and a moderate climate that in years past has made Australia the richest country in the world per capita — which is the wealth of the country divided by the number of inhabitants. Yet in recent years life has become so hard, not just under this Albanese Government but under successive Liberal and Labor Governments.

Income per capita is going backwards and opportunities we took for granted in our youth are now out of reach for today’s young Australians. Unemployment is much higher than the published rate, Australians can’t afford housing, electricity or even their groceries. Higher education is slipping from the reach of the middle class and many Australians are now unsafe in their homes and on the streets.

It does not have to be this way.

I spoke here in the Senate Chamber about the steps One Nation would take to solve the many problems Australians are facing after too many years of bad governance. Some of these steps include solving infrastructure issues, increasing productivity and wages, bringing back a people’s bank and ensuring cash continues to be available, and more.

Join us in helping our country to rebound and flourish.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I am often asked by people why life under Labor has become so damn tough so quickly and how a One Nation government would help. Australians are decent people and can see through government and media misinformation and disinformation. We all know when life is harder than it should be and when governments are screwing up. Out of control cost of living has resulted from a screw-up resulting from the actions of Liberal, National, Greens and Labor parties during COVID, when our government turned to the use of excessive authority instead of respecting human rights and choice. During COVID, One Nation did advocate for human rights, including quarantining the sick and letting the healthy get about life. Countries that did that are now back to normal. Life in those countries is easier because there’s no massive COVID bill to pay. Australia has a huge inflation problem now due to printing $500 billion—half a trillion dollars—to cover COVID expenses, including JobKeeper and pharma products that are now past their use-by date. Money printing causes inflation. One Nation said so at the time. 

One Nation now stands ready to rebuild our economy and deliver wealth and opportunity to all Australians. We will reduce new arrivals to a level where arrivals equal departures. That’s called zero net migration, leaving room for about 130,000 new migrants each year. We will limit student visas to a level at which we can accommodate and teach students properly. We will not import more labour until those who’ve arrived have found a job. We don’t need new arrivals being handed Medicare cards, driving up government spending on health and on schools and infrastructure. We will decline to renew the visa of any new arrival who has failed to find a job or make a contribution during their visa period. 

We will license construction of new and efficient coal plants, which will bring electricity bills down 50 per cent. We will cancel any weather dependent generation project that we can legally terminate, and we will ensure that wind and solar sponsors pay into a bond account to pay for the removal of those monstrosities at the end of their short life. Electricity generation should be based on the cheapest source, not the dearest, and the dearest is wind and solar. We will fast-track mining approvals and port upgrades. We will terminate the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and leave everyone’s water where it is to ensure farmers are free to grow food and fibre to feed and clothe the world, and we’ll then get together with the states to review the actual data on river health, environmental outcomes and the social and economic costs of the basin measures taken so far. More work may need to be done, though only after a full basin review. We will build infrastructure projects like the Queensland tropics water and hydro project, the northern Australia’s east-west rail line, the Abbott Point and Pilbara steel parks and the inland rail to the port of Gladstone without crossing the Condamine. 

At the moment, Australia’s internet traffic from our east coast to Western Australia and vice versa routes through China. So, if you want to connect with Western Australia, it goes through China. We will build a direct connection instead and upgrade pinch points to lift our internet out of Third World status and make it First World. Human error being what it is, the recent Optus failure may happen again. Once there is network redundancy and proper planning, outages should not happen. The Optus failure is on the government’s infrastructure and communication ministers, who clearly have not done their job to ensure the redundancy we need to keep Australians connected. And we need to keep cash as a payment option, as should every business. These are just some of the many opportunities for infrastructure to harden our economy and provide wealth and opportunity for all. 

Infrastructure improves economic efficiency and underscores the productivity improvements that fuel wage rises. Workers don’t need to work harder to get a productivity rise. People are already at breaking point. Government needs to work harder—faster internet, faster ports and rail, better highways, cheaper power and more water. This is how we increase productivity and, with that, the wages of everyday Australians, without inflation. We will purchase the Suncorp Bank and operate that as a model bank to provide a full range of services, including cash through Australia Post outlets. Under One Nation you will have a real local bank branch that handles cash. 

We will stop foreign interests owning Australian land and residential property. The bounty of this beautiful land should accrue to those who call Australia home. Large corporations need to be held to account. For 30 years the share of the economy coming from wages has fallen, yet for 30 years the share from corporate profits has grown. There’s a point where a fair return on risk and investment has become a perceived entitlement to ever-increasing profits from rapacious and unprincipled merchant banks investing money on behalf of predatory billionaires, billionaires like Bill Gates, who we discovered just after the election is best mates with the Prime Minister. 

In response to running out of other people’s money to spend, the Treasurer, in a recent media appearance, walked back his responsibility to harden and grow the national economy. One Nation does not shirk from responsibility. Join us in restoring our country for people to abound and flourish.