GRIEVANCE DEBATE

Mr JOYCE (New England) (12:32): Today is an absolutely genuine grievance. I had the displeasure in the last couple of days to return to my electorate and once more see the infliction on us by the intermittent power industry—the wind towers, the solar panels. It is an absolute swindle that is on not only regional Australia but also the people of Australia, with power prices they can't afford pushing people, through poverty, into their cars, decimating heavy industry, destroying such things as the Tomago smelter, putting major industry at risk and making our nation poorer.

I also had the capacity to go to England, where I saw a country that has been completely destroyed by their ludicrous following of the intermittent power swindle and their quest for net zero. They now have basically deindustrialised England. As I went around, I met people who just couldn't run their air conditioners.

I remember going to a hotel, and one of the things that you noted everywhere was that there were no air conditioners. We asked the hotel whether they could put on the air conditioning, and they said they'd have to take it to the management. Even when we offered them 50 pounds, they wouldn't put it on.

The last hotel I stayed in was the Radisson. It's hardly a cheap place, but no air conditioning. Why?

Because England has butchered their power grid system, and now they're suffering the sins. It is economically a whole basket case. Their social security bill is about equivalent to their total tax take.

And guess what? We're doing it to Australia. We are doubling up.

There are other countries that have done the same. Obviously Germany has managed to deindustrialise itself, and it now, by reason of their bizarre view, will also follow intermittent power of wind towers and solar panels. So we can look beyond Australia to see what's coming our way.

We've had the promise from the intermittent power industry, the swindle factories, of local employment. In my area there's a town called Kentucky. It's a village of 301 people, which is getting a little bit of an influx of people.

They're going to come in demountables; we call them dongas. That's 1,200 beds going into a village of 301 people, none of them local. A large proportion—and good luck and God bless them—are from the Philippines and Bolivia.

I don't know how that's going to go in Kentucky, but my suggestion is 'not very well'. Then down the road is Walcha—Walcha Road—another village probably of around about 50 people. They're getting 800 people coming in demountables.

Our district is losing its mind over what is being done to us. You are dividing us up with transmission lines. You are basically devastating the landscape with wind towers and solar panels.

You can go to other areas, such as Barley Fields near Armidale, where so many people have said that we used to look out over paddocks, cattle and the countryside, but now we look over a black sea of photovoltaic cells. The value of our place has crashed. It doesn't have the value any more.

Yet we have the absurdity of these liars turning up, telling us, 'The value of your place will increase.' We put it to them and say, 'Why don't we get a valuation now and a valuation after your swindle factory goes in, and you can pay us the difference?' Of course they won't do that, because it's premised on a swindle. It's premised on the same swindle which is the secret capacity investment schemes—secret taxpayers' money.

But it's secret; no-one's allowed to see it. There are even the budget papers not for publication. What other forms of spending do we have, away from defence, that the Australian taxpayer pays for but is not allowed to see the details of?

Of course, we now have even more. I have as an example—because they ring me up—one person who is living in a house that they have leased off the council for years on a place. The transmission line people turn up with two bodyguards to remove them from their place.

This is what you're doing to Australia now. There were two bodyguards to remove them from their house. This is the benevolence of the intermittent power industry, the renewables.

This is how beautiful it is. In another place in the Upper Hunter, a family I can give a name to, the Crouches, found the intermittent power swindle factory industry's transmission lines actually on their place. They'd gone through the sign that said 'no trespassers'.

They'd gone past the sign, saying it was a biosecurity issue. They'd driven over their fences and cut them. They found them on their place and said, 'What on earth are you doing on private property?' And they said, 'We're working out where the transmission lines are going to go.' They said, 'Did you ask permission?' No, they don't.

That's what's happening to us. That's why we hate it. It wasn't just that.

The other people have said, 'We just arrived back at our house, and here were complete strangers, uninvited.' It was the transmission line company Energy Co. Now we're getting reports back about this swindle factory. The way the swindle works is they invest the money, then the Commonwealth taxpayer—us—pay them a guaranteed return of about 80 per cent of their costs.

They're building as large as possible and just cutting the corners on some of the fundamental parts of it. The cabling in some of the swindle factory's solar precincts is not up to specification. And, as it's not up to specification, it's causing fires and has to be dug back out and replaced.

There are whole sections of these swindle factories that just don't work, but it doesn't worry them, because the Capacity Investment Scheme covers for it. Why do people hate Australia so much to do this to us? What did regional Australia and Australia in general do to deserve this happening to them?

How on earth is this better than a coal-fired power plant? How on earth is this better than the alternative? If you want swindle factories, you can put them on North Head.

You can put them on Middle Harbour. They'll work there perfectly well. You can put them off your beaches.

They'll work there. But you don't want them, because you know what a blight, what a parasitic industry and what a parasitic piece of infrastructure they are. And this is the hypocrisy of it.

You want it for somebody else, and you want somebody else to pay for them. That's the taxpayer. You demand that we use that product.

You create legislation so we have to use that product. I don't know how much worse socialism can get, but that's about the pinnacle of it. Anybody who stands behind the swindle factories is a socialist.

They believe in socialism. They believe in the power of the government to determine the outcome explicitly of one of the fundamentals of your economy, which is energy. The only reason we don't have coal-fired power stations is we created the legislation to put them out of business.

Additionally, I went to the Hunter Valley, where the Labor Party are going to take a total bath. They are going to take a total bath in seats. They know it, Chris Minns knows it and the polling knows it.

They're going to absolutely take a bath because they've gone to those people and said: 'Your industry is evil. Coalmining is evil.' The Safeguard Mechanism has created an environment where they have to shut down coalmines. So people who had houses, had kids in their local Catholic school, had a car—they're all, apparently, evil, and they're going to be put out of a job.

The Labor Party is putting labourers out of a job. This is the idiocy of the swindle factory and the idiocy of the intermittent power industry. What I can say is all these secret agreements—wink, wink, nod, nod. 'We won't tell anybody about it.

We'll be down here as lobbyists. We're all righteous. This is all about global warming.' It's got nothing to do with global warming; it's about a select clique of people making an extraordinary amount of money.

That is secret. And, if it's funny, table it. Let's see it.

Let's see the transparency of it. But you'll never do that. You'll never do that, will you?

You should, but you won't. When it's all over, because it's so above board—you say it's above board—you'll have no problem with us having a royal commission into it. You'll have no problem having a royal commission into it.

There are already people who died constructing the wind towers; you've got no problems with that—no. So let's have a royal commission. You're on notice.

All these secret agreements are going to come out, and you'll have to stand behind them and explain them. How did you get that return? Who did you know?

What was behind that agreement? Why did that happen? Why did it go that way, not this way, in your path?

How did you formulate this? Why did you keep it secret? You're on notice.

So get involved with the swindle industry—go up to your eyeballs in it—but be ready to go before a royal commission and explain it. If a brief can be put together by a royal commission that suggests corruption, then you'll be able to spend some time at His Majesty's pleasure in a facility of somebody else's choosing.