GRIEVANCE DEBATE

Mr YOUNG (Longman) (12:51): I rise to speak on behalf of the forgotten Australians. These are those who, in the main, through common sense and practising the values of our Judaeo-Christian heritage, have made our country great. These values include putting the needs of others before your own, environmental stewardship, personal responsibility, the family unit, respect and honour for those who have gone before us and paved the way with toil in adverse conditions or fought in wars to protect our sovereignty, and, of course, reward for effort or, in other words, hard work.

Those forgotten people, with their eroding but timeless values at work, are constantly sharing their frustrations with me at where our once great country is headed. Many of them won't be badly affected by the crazy policies and ideologies of mental governments like the one we currently have, but they are deeply concerned for their children and their grandchildren.

They fear that the great foundations that have been laid will be squandered by a government simply focused on fulfilling its own ideologies and fantasies, whatever the cost to the very people it is supposed to be serving, the Australian people. These socialist ideals, some bordering on communist, fail—although some may have the best intended outcomes—as they have been developed by people who have had little to no life experience in the real world outside this place.

Most of the members opposite have had the majority of their work experience in the public sector, the union movement or the political bubble, so how could they ever have an understanding of where money comes from or how to manage it or what it is like for the average Australian? Let's look at some of these ideals. Let's look at quotas.

This ridiculous practice is supposed to ensure fairness, but of course in reality it creates more problems than it solves. As a husband and a father to three daughters, I'd be filthy if any of them didn't get a job because of their gender. But I'd be just as filthy if they got a job because of their gender.

I simply cannot understand why we just cannot accept that men and women have vocations that the majority of each gender is drawn to. Men tend to be more drawn to vocations that involve maths and physical exertion like construction and trades, whereas women in the main tend to be drawn to careers that involve women and care and other people. Vocations like hairdressing, nursing, social work and the like will always be more female dominated.

Now, we need to ensure that those of the opposite sex who aren't wired in this way have the same opportunity as everyone else. That is only right. The days of posters of half-naked women in lunchrooms need to be put away.

Wolf-whistling and ogling members of the opposite sex should never be tolerated. A workplace needs to be just that: a place of work with tools and equipment so all people can do their job in a non-threatening environment. The problem, of course, is that the socialist way demands the unachievable equal outcomes theory instead of celebrating the fact that, in the 21st century, in the vast majority of cases, we have achieved what should always be—equal opportunity while understanding we will never achieve equal outcomes in the real world.

One of the other problems created by this well-meaning but deluded ideology is that many who achieve positions on their own merit have no respect from work colleagues, as many of them say they got the job because they're this gender or that sexuality or are Indigenous. Over the years, in the various businesses I have run or owned, I've never concerned myself on account of any job applicant's gender, sexuality, race or spiritual beliefs.

I simply hired or promoted the best person for the job. I would suggest that any person who was stupid enough not to hire or promote the best person for the job is a fool and won't be in business for long at all. In other words, the market takes care of itself.

Quotas say women, Indigenous people or any other cohort aren't good enough to get a position on merit, and so a quota is created for them. This is demeaning and insulting to these people, and it should never be. It should always be based on merit.

Many of these forgotten Australians are sick and tired of the government trying to run their life and tell them what they should believe in. Policies such as the ute tax, which kicks in next January, will see those who made the democratic choice to buy a petrol, diesel or even hybrid vehicle, because they weighed up all of the options and decided that this suits their household's lifestyle the best, slugged with an extra tax for making that choice.

It is just another example of the government telling people what is best. If people do research and decide to buy an EV because that best suits their lifestyle, so be it. That's their choice.

But don't penalise others who don't. This will affect the market for second-hand cars as well, as they will also rise in price, affecting the Aussie that's doing it tough at the moment. Our sovereignty is being destroyed by agreements being considered and signed that once would have been considered a fantasy.

We've always managed the balance of being part of a global community and maintaining our sovereignty. Organisations such as the UN, the WAF and the WHO have their opinions, and that's what they should always remain: opinions. Australians must always make decisions that impact Australians.

We simply cannot be signing agreements to give authority and power to any agency that is not wholly run by Australians. I often wonder if this government and Prime Minister are afflicted with hero syndrome or Munchausen syndrome by proxy. That's where an individual or group of people inflict pain or disaster upon others and then come to the rescue expecting thanks and accolades for solving a problem that they in fact created.

Take as an example the energy crisis. Through their crazy renewables-only policy, we've seen prices going through the roof and then seen them using taxpayers' money to subsidise the very issue that they created. They expect thanks for one interest rate decrease after causing 12 increases with their irresponsible economic management.

Another example is the current housing crisis. Have there always been homeless people? Yes, of course—but never to this extent.

I don't need stats to tell me there is a housing crisis—just a set of working eyeballs. As I drive around my community, I have never seen as many tents and people living in cars in my life. Housing is simple.

You can't allow triple the amount of immigrants, going from 500,000 to 1.5 million in the last three years, and expect there not to be a problem. Make no mistake, Australia: this housing crisis has come about for no other reason than a reckless, vote-grabbing policy of this government, and you and your kids are paying the price with little housing available and what is available simply being unaffordable for most Aussies.

Inflation was out of control due to their terrible economic management and wasteful spending, so HECS debt went up by 16 per cent in three years, and they had to use the taxes of all Australians, including those on a minimum wage, like retail and hospitality workers, to give a 20 per cent discount on HECS to fix the very problem that they created, not to mention bad luck for all of those who start uni next year or have just paid off a HECS debt.

There is no handout for you. The hypocrisy of this Labor government is also astounding. Thousands of acres of Australian bush and farming land have been destroyed by large solar farms and wind turbines, with entire mountain ranges literally blown away so wind towers won't be in flight paths, with zero regard to the flora and fauna that inhabit these once-beautiful parts of Australia.

These places are now defaced by this ugly renewables infrastructure that, when it reaches its expiry date, will end up falling where it stands or in landfill, polluting the ground and rendering it useless, all in the name of saving the environment. Let's not get started on EVs that run on lithium batteries, one of the most volatile elements on the planet, with a propensity to catch fire and nearly impossible to put out.

At the end of an EVs' battery life, where will it go? No-one is going to put a new battery in a 10-year-old car; it's not economical to do so. So they will end up in landfill—really environmentally friendly!

This is not to mention the way lithium is mined. The conditions of the miners, mainly in Third World countries, is horrific, but there is no care or attention paid to them. Again, ideology is put before common sense and, in this case, people's safety.

You wait and see: the insurance companies will be onto this soon. Watch premiums rise on EVs and on homes that have lithium batteries installed—and rightly so, because they're a greater risk. But it won't be the government that bears the cost; it will be the Australian people, who trusted their government and bought the spin.

This government will continue to destroy aspiration and the incentive to work hard or have a go. Their policies of taxing the unrealised gains on super accounts, their lack of policy to stimulate small business, which drives people to enter either the Public Service or large corporates that are easily unionised, and their relentless obsession with an unreliable, expensive renewables-only energy grid based purely on ideology and not on economics or science shows the path they want this country to go down—and, as long as they are the government, go down it this country will.