Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has been warning of the impact of high migration on Australia for 25 years. We have been talking about the strain on health, housing, transport, crime and schools in particular.

All of those warnings have now come true. Australians can no longer afford housing, their mortgage or rental payments, or their electricity bills. Jobs are hard to find and breadwinner jobs are even harder to find.

All of this comes back to the rate of immigration over the last 25 years. It did not need to be this way.

Had the government listened to Pauline, we would have seen money going into schools, hospitals, police stations and housing to meet the demand from new Australians. This did not happen and now look at the problems we have.

One Nation will get the economy going again to create breadwinner jobs, get housing construction and infrastructure underway, and secure a future for all Australians.

Transcript

I want to turn my attention to another topic.

In 1996 Pauline Hanson named her new party ‘One Nation’ as an expression of her heartfelt belief that this beautiful nation must include all Australians, fairly and equally. She and I serve the people of Queensland and Australia. No single group should be favoured over another and no-one should be denied opportunity.

One Nation is committed to the belief that we must give all Australians the same opportunity to lift themselves up through their own hard work and endeavour. And we must provide a safety net for those who can’t provide for themselves. Where one group in our community is trailing behind, then the solution is not arbitrary or forced inclusion. That didn’t work in the Soviet Union and it will not work in Prime Minister Albanese’s soviet republic of Australia. Why? Because it doesn’t actually solve the problem of why people have fallen behind in the first place. It does, though, let politicians and compliant community leaders off the hook. ‘See here,’ they go. ‘Look at this thing we are doing. Aren’t we wonderful, vote for us and you too can feel good.’ Not solve anything, just feel good, look good. Not do good, just paper over the problems and pretend to do good. 

One Nation stands for solutions not feelings. We will build the east-west corridor across the Top End, bringing power, water, rail transport and the internet to remote Aboriginal communities, opening up markets, expanding job opportunities, educational opportunities and tourism, which we know exposes the world to Aboriginal culture. And that’s a good thing. One Nation will build the Great Dividing Range project to bring environmentally responsible hydropower—cheap power—and water to North Queensland to drive agriculture and tertiary processing, adding tens of billions to our national wealth. One Nation will build the Hughenden Irrigation Project, the Urannah dam and hydro project, the Emu Swamp dam and the Big Buffalo dam in Victoria. All of these will make more productive use of land already in use for agriculture so as to grow more food and fibre to feed and clothe the world. This is the difference between One Nation and the parties of feelings. We offer Australians natural wholesome food and natural fibres, while the tired old parties in this place offer you bugs and used clothes. 

What I don’t understand is the black armband view of prosperity that permeates the policies of the old parties in this place. Abundance is not a dirty word. Abundance is not mutuality exclusive with environmental responsibility. The attack on the food and manufacturing sectors is one of ideology, not environmentalism. It’s about controlling us using deliberately created scarcities. Food scarcities and energy scarcity are deliberately created and can be easily corrected by a One Nation government. Soviet politics of oppression are not the Australian way. 

Australia is a place where a coalminer born in India can become a senator, where the daughter of a migrant from a war-torn country can come to Australia and find not only peace and prosperity but a place amongst the leaders of our beautiful country and where a refugee from the fall of Saigon can come to Australia stateless and take her place in the House of Representatives. There are so many examples just in this parliament of how Australia’s proud history of equality of opportunity has lifted up those who have chosen to embrace the opportunity given to them. Equality of opportunity though does not mean equality of outcome. I remember a story about a wise old Russian, just a regular citizen of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet approach to mandatory equality. The wise old Russian drew a series of stick figures of different heights on a piece of paper, and then he said, ‘In the Soviet Union everyone is equal,’ and proceeded to draw a line across the page to the height of the smallest figure. The heads of the successful were chopped off to bring everyone down to the height of the worst performing. That’s, indeed, how socialism works. That’s why the Soviet Union failed, and it’s why left-wing ideology permeating this government is failing and will fail. 

What people do with the opportunity they’re given is their own business. Governments cannot provide an equality of outcome, because governments cannot control how people handle the opportunity we are all given. As a government, we can only ensure every Australian has access to a breadwinner job, a home that suits their needs, a safe community, transport, education, health care and, of course, a safety net. The rest is up to the individual. But mark my words: depriving Australians of these core government functions, no matter the geography or the background, will not be tolerated. 

Sadly, deprivation is exactly what is happening not just in remote Australia but in our cities as well. After attending public forums across Queensland in the last few weeks, it’s obvious there is a failure to deliver basic government services by Premier Palaszczuk and by successive federal governments. Feelings will not fix failure—they just lead people into false security. Ideas, vision and hard work will fix Australia. One Nation is ready to take up the challenge. We have the policies, and Senator Hanson stands ready to lead. I must say the fire burns as strongly as ever in the heart of Australia’s favourite redhead.