ADJOURNMENT
Senator HODGINS-MAY (Victoria) (19:40): Our democracy is under immense stress. We are at risk of importing the worst of American politics—less trust, less truth and more division. If we want to understand how we got there, we need to follow the money.
Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest person, is a huge fan of Donald Trump. She celebrated with him at Mar-a-Lago on election night. She looks at the politics of fear and division and climate denial and thinks, 'Yes, that'll do here in Australia.' So what does she do?
She bankrolls Pauline Hanson. She buys her a private plane to fly from fundraiser to fundraiser. Let's be clear.
This is Gina Rinehart's One Nation. Whether you call it PHON or you call it GRON, this movement did not appear out of thin air. It's feeding off a very real crisis in this country.
Australians are doing an incredibly tough. Wages haven't kept up with prices. Rents keep rising.
Families are being squeezed at the supermarket and at the bowser and at the banks. Many people have lost faith in the establishment parties. I get it.
The Greens get it. For too long, governments have allowed inequality to grow while corporate profits soar. People are angry.
They're frustrated. They're demanding change. They have every right to be frustrated.
But Pauline Hanson and GRON are not the answer. At the National Press Club, she unveiled a vision straight from Donald Trump's playbook: scrap net zero, abandoned climate action, privatise the ABC, shut down the SBS, withdraw from international institutions and walk away from multiculturalism. This is not a plan to lower rents, to raise wages or to make life more affordable.
It's politics of fear and division dressed up as a solution, and it serves a purpose. If we are busy blaming migrants and vulnerable communities, we won't ask who's really benefiting. If you want to know who took all the money, look at who's got all the money.
It's not migrant families trying to get by. It is the billionaires, and until we take on that concentrated wealth and corporate power, working people will continue to fall behind while billionaires and the politicians they bankroll keep calling the shots. The same corporate power is on display in the fight over Browse.
The Browse to North West Shelf project must not join the growing list of coal and gas projects approved under this Labor government, a legacy of climate failure that generations will pay for. Woodside wants Australians to believe that Browse is about energy security, but it is not. It is not about energy security.
This project will not lower power bills. It will not make life more affordable. Browse is about one thing: increasing Woodside's profits.
In fact, Woodside has made it clear that this project only works if Australians hand their gas to Woodside for free. That is why the gas industry is spending millions of dollars fighting against a gas export tax. They know exactly where the wealth from our gas is going, and it's not flowing back to the Australian people.
Woodside plans to drill dozens of gas wells alongside Scott Reef, one of Australia's most pristine and ecologically significant marine environments home to endangered blue pygmy whales and vulnerable green sea turtles. Traditional owners are fighting to protect this sacred sea country because they understand what's at stake, and all of this happening when Australians continue to endure floods and bushfires, extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent and more destructive.
Yet Labor continues approving new fossil fuel projects. You cannot be serious if you claim to protect the climate and to tackle climate change while expanding the very industries causing it and driving it. The benefits of Browse will not flow to traditional owners, to taxpayers, to local communities or to future generations.
The winners are clear—not Australians, not Scott Reef, just Woodside shareholders. But this fight is not over. Australians can have their say.
They can tell the government that our reefs are worth more than Woodside's profits. Let's send these gas corporations a clear message: our reefs are not for sale, our oceans are not for sale, and our future is not for sale. Tax gas exports now.