MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (17:07): A culture of hiding behind secrecy, spin and broken promises—the Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, operates our entire electricity grid. It sounds like a government agency, yet, somehow, it's a private body. No-one's allowed to lodge a freedom-of-information request with them.

They don't turn up to parliamentary hearings or Senate estimates. They hide from scrutiny. That's a key word for this government and for net zero: hide.

Hide the costs, hide the lack of a policy basis, hide the environmental damage, hide the economic damage, hide the social damage and hide the lack of a plan. They're taking us blindfolded over a cliff. Where did it start?

It started in the years from 1996 to 2007 under the LNP and John Howard's prime ministership. He started this insanity, based, they assured us, on science. Yet six years after getting the boot in faraway London, John Howard confessed that 'on the topic of climate science I'm agnostic'.

He didn't have the science. The whole parliament has been hijacked for the last 30 years—three decades.