STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator HANSON (Queensland—Leader of One Nation) (13:17): I want to place on the Hansard record an abridged version of a very important article by Chris Uhlmann from last weekend that is well worth repeating. He wrote: At the turn of the 20th century Australia and Argentina were among the richest countries on Earth. One would broadly fulfil its promise.

The other would endure a century of economic pain. Bad politics played no small part in the difference. Call it Argentinisation, where politicians contrive to beggar a rich country.

This would be yeoman's work in 21st-century Australia because we have such a rich inheritance. … … … We could afford to do that because Australia was blessed with abundant and cheap energy. Victoria built an electricity system on vast, dirt-cheap brown coal reserves and tapped the oil and gas in Bass Strait. NSW and Queensland have enormous amounts of high-quality black coal.

Later, Western Australia harnessed massive gas reserves. The wheels of industry hummed. … … … Squandering all this would take time and almost supernatural ineptitude. But with dedication it could be done.

So, how would you set this nation on a highway to hell? Well, begin with wilfully increasing the cost of energy and making it scarce. To ensure serious harm, embed rising costs in the architecture of the electricity system by replacing dense, predictable generation with a vastly larger agglomeration of taxpayer-subsidised, wildly dispersed, weather-dependent energy gatherers.

String it together with thousands of kilometres of transmission lines hooked up to a life-support system of batteries and stability services. Then build enough dispatchable backup to meet 100 per cent of demand for those in inevitable times when the wind does not blow, the sun does not shine and the batteries run flat. The total system cost of this electricity Frankenstein is almost impossible to calculate but it must be paid.

And that's what drives the retail energy bill ever higher. … … … Then attack the businesses that produce energy and those that make and move things. This is best done by turning carbon emissions into a cost for large miners, manufacturers, transport operators and oil and gas producers. Then watch those costs work their way through every supply chain they touch.

Create government-issued carbon credits that businesses can buy, sell and surrender to meet their obligations. Call the whole apparatus something comforting, purposeful and planet-saving, like the safeguard mechanism. Best not to ask what, precisely, is being safeguarded.

This instrument of self-harm works best when Australian producers face carbon costs that competitors overseas do not. That way local industry gets the expense while foreign companies get the advantage. … … … Then attack the nation's comparative advantages. If you have enormous mineral resources, make developing them absurdly difficult.

Lengthen approvals, multiply conditions, increase charges and create a minefield of environmental laws. … … … Make every mine, factory, apartment block, road, transmission line, data centre and major project slower, harder and more expensive to approve. No single regulation need be fatal. No one regulation to rule them all, just a million rules to bind them. … … … Housing is rich with opportunity.

Promise to make houses more affordable while reassuring homeowners that their houses won't lose value. Try not to dwell on the contradiction. Then constrain supply while subsidising demand and marvel as prices rise.

Pour more money into helping people buy houses without ensuring there are enough houses to buy. … … … Call the whole shebang a housing affordability strategy. … … … Make sure the population grows faster than productive capital, housing and infrastructure. This produces a particularly useful statistical trick. Headline GDP rises while GDP per person stagnates.

Clever governments can boast that the economy is growing while the people living in it wonder why they feel poorer. … … … None of these measures alone will ruin a rich country. That is the beauty of the plan. Each regulation has a justification.

Each subsidy has a beneficiary. Each spending program serves a worthy purpose. Each tax raises necessary revenue.

Each environmental restriction protects something valuable. Each sounds progressive in a press release. The trick is accumulation.

Thanks, Chris. Great article. One Nation is the only party that gets it and will put the brakes on stopping Australia.