Posts

Everything has gone up. Food, fuel, electricity. Why?

Australian supermarket and petrol profiteering is not being addressed by this government nor the consumer watchdog, the ACCC, which is asleep at the wheel.

Manufacturing costs however have risen and are implicated in the cost of living crisis.

Shutting down cheap, reliable, baseload coal power and replacing it with unreliable and expensively subsidised wind and solar has forced up electricity prices along the entire supply chain. From farmers’ cool rooms to warehouses and supermarket chillers, the costs are rising.

One Nation knows, because we listen around the country, that every problem facing the people are due to excessive government decisions. The solution is to set the people free from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and crippling Net Zero policies and Australia will thrive.

Transcript

During the 2022 election campaign, the now Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, promised my Queensland constituents that life would be easier under Labor, a metaphorical land of milk and honey. I think the Prime Minister oversold his policies by a football field or two.

Milk and honey have turned out to be baked beans on toast, except baked beans are up 50 per cent, so it’s more bread and margarine. Except margarine is up 40 per cent, and supermarket bread is up from $1.90 a loaf to $2.70 a loaf.

That loaf of bread is made from 98 per cent Australian ingredients purchased from Australian farmers on a long-term supply agreement.

The government cannot blame the war in Ukraine for price rises on a product made here. I do, however, know where to place that blame.

The Australia Institute has correctly pointed out that our supermarket oligopoly is exploiting their market share to rip off consumers for record profits. The government has not acted on supermarket or petrol profiteering, despite having the power to do so, and the ACCC is asleep at the wheel. Manufacturers’ costs have increased, especially thanks to the UN 2050 net zero madness that started under the previous Liberal government and is now pursued enthusiastically by the champagne socialists on the left in the Labor party.

Closing down cheap base-load coal power and replacing it with unreliable and expensive wind and solar has forced up electricity prices along the entire supply chain. Farmers’ cool rooms and packing sheds are costing more to light and to refrigerate. Warehouses are more expensive. Supermarket fridges are more expensive.

One Nation know, because we listen around the country, that every problem in this country is due to excessive government, especially central government. We know the solutions are with the people.

Set the people free from this UN rubbish and we’ll get everything right.

See you there!

The scariest words in the English language: “I’m from Labor and I’m here to help with the cost of living”.

Inflation, mortgages, fuel prices, power bills: Everything’s going up and Labor are going to make it worse.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: President Ronald Reagan once said, ‘The top nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”‘ The words ‘I’m from Labor and I’m here to help with your cost of living’ are even more terrifying. Labor lied and promised the world to get elected to government on less than a measly third of the votes. Instead of a Labor utopia with rainbows and unicorns, Australia is waking up nearly a year later with the mother of all hangovers.

Inflation is roaring out of control. Mortgage payments have skyrocketed. Fuel is still $2 a litre—we’ve just grown to expect it. Electricity bills are positively shocking, driven higher by climate policies pushed by both major parties. We said it wouldn’t be easy under Albanese. I don’t think anyone thought it would get this bad this fast or be this arrogant this fast.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Fawcett): Senator Roberts, remember you need to address members of the other chamber by their correct title.

Senator ROBERTS: One Nation advocates getting back to basics on energy, taxes, manufacturing, food production and value-added mining. We are the richest country in the world. Let’s use the resources for the people. (Time expired)

No you’re not going crazy, life is getting far too expensive.

It’s not going to get any better. Albanese is pouring fuel on the fire, putting more of your taxes into green projects that will make your electricity bill more expensive.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people across Queensland who make up our amazing Queensland community, I’m speaking to Senator Canavan’s matter of public importance motion. This MPI quite fairly criticises the Albanese Labor government for their record of promises already broken, including a promise not to raise taxation and a promise not to change superannuation.

The Prime Minister is now raising tax on unrealised earnings of large superannuation funds. Way to go! Labor are running a two-for-one sale on broken promises, just in time for the New South Wales state election, where 5½ million voters are going to ask themselves: ‘Do I trust Labor with government? Will they keep their promises?’ 

To be fair, the Albanese government has not resorted to dividing promises into core and non-core promises—yet. But wait; it’s early days. Their promise to bring down the cost of living is already broken. Today, Brisbane’s Courier Mail newspaper reported that an average household in Queensland now has to spend an additional $1,150 a month to pay their bills and keep a roof over their head. That is a hell of a lot of money for everyday Australians to find every month.

The Labor government is wrongly trying to blame international pressures for gas price rises. Gas was already increasing rapidly before the Ukraine conflict. The gas price rise has nothing to do with war between countries and everything to do with the war on coal. As the government closes down energy-intensive coal power and introduces more weather dependent solar and wind power, the grid needs more and more gas to firm the supply and maintain reliable power. 

Household gas is costing more as large electricity generators bid in the market for the gas they need to keep the electricity grid functioning. Increasing gas prices are demand inflation. Housing price rises are demand inflation. Four hundred thousand new Australians arrived in the last 12 months—$400,000—all needing houses in which to live. Of course the price was going to rise. No wonder the Albanese government changed their election promise from ‘cheaper power’ to ‘power going up less quickly’.  

Every coolroom in every farm and dairy, and every Coles store and every other supermarket is now more expensive to run. Every bakery, restaurant, butcher, store and shopping centre is passing on huge increases in power prices. Mortgage repayments are rising because the previous government’s money printing caused increasing interest rates. Labor went right along with those measures and is equally to blame for the inflation that that’s now caused.

Last week, Treasurer Jim Chalmers recklessly, wrongly, uncaringly, claimed the worst of inflation is over. Really? On what basis? New South Wales voters should not believe that for a moment. Inflation is a direct result of this government’s core energy and spending policies.

And this government is not going away until 2025.  

May be an image of 1 person and text
$969 represents the total rise in repayments on a $500,000 mortgage since Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been in office.

While rate rises may have been foreseeable, they are only happening because of the Government’s incompetence causing inflation in the first place.

The government printed hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air, leading to massive inflation which the RBA is trying to bring under control with a sledgehammer.

Australians who bought a house under the RBAs promise that rates wouldn’t rise until 2024 are struggling with more pain to come.

The cost of everything is going up, but the Albanese Labor government is pouring more fuel on the fire by tipping billions into policies that will make electricity prices even higher. With more wind and solar in the grid than ever before power bills have never been higher. Time to give up on this pipe dream.

Transcript

President the Albanese Government’s behaviour goes well beyond a broken election promise to give cost-of-living relief. The Government is actively making inflation worse.

The inflation rate is 8% and will remain at 8% into the future, on the back of increases to energy prices. Electricity, gas, diesel and petrol are all inputs into every corner of our economy.

Forcing energy prices up to appease the sky god of warming will force up input costs right across our economy and lead to more inflation.

Weather-dependent solar and wind power will never provide baseload power. Doubling down on more solar and wind, before the added cost of changing out every wind turbine and solar panel with new ones before we even get to 2050 will lead to more inflation.

Taxpayers pay for these things twice: once in taxpayer subsidies to wind and solar and through higher inflation. Energy inflation.

Not only do we have a lack of wage rises, we have a lack of wages. Businesses are closing all over Australia as inflation wreaks havoc in the productive economy and energy costs drive manufacturing overseas.

This Government has no answers. We have just seen a child care bill that gives handouts to millionaires but fails to create a single job.

Failing to use government policy to create jobs while allowing 220,000 new migrants into Australia every year will create a pool of unemployed, resulting in reduced market power for labour. That can only mean lower wages, even before losing 8% a year off their pay packet through inflation.

One Nation believe the way to break the inflation cycle is a comprehensive root and branch review of the taxation system, to return bracket creep to wage earners while forcing big business, especially foreign corporations to pay their fair share.

Queensland Labor’s Health Department still mandates COVID injections for health professionals. Injection mandates must be abolished now. Let anyone who wants to work, work.

We are one community, one nation and Labor are a threat to breadwinner jobs.

Feel like the grocery and fuel bill has gone up? Working just as hard and feel like you’re going backwards?

It’s because you are. The major parties are the cause.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak to this matter of public importance—and it is a crucial and real matter of public importance. Well may a former assistant minister in the previous government debate the cost of living. This cost-of-living crisis now facing everyday Australian families and small businesses rests on the shoulders of both sides of this chamber. For more than two years, the Liberal and National government and the then Labor Party opposition were on a unity ticket to conjure money through electronic ledger entries and spend for short-term electoral benefit. They conjured up $500 billion and spent it on recurring government expenditure. These turned out to be handouts to Liberal, Labor and National party sponsors. Much of it went into corporate profits, not job support. Now we have runaway inflation. Who pays for the government’s mistakes, the Labor Party’s mistakes? The people, as always.

Let me be clear. It’s possible to conjure up money through electronic journal entries and not create inflation. It’s been done for centuries. In these cases, the spending must be on something that will grow the economy, grow our productive capacity and absorb the extra money—something like infrastructure. It’s impossible to get the tired old parties or the new climate mafia to talk about important infrastructure projects like the Bradfield Scheme, Copper String 2.0, Tully-Millstream hydro, Big Buffalo dam, the national rail circuit and the boomerang steel project, amongst other One Nation priorities. Meanwhile, the climate mafia are setting out to destroy our standard of living through many ill-conceived policies not based on science, contradicting the evidence.

Let me start with high electricity prices. Electricity prices are an input to business costs right through the production cycle, from the farmer running a cold room to the manufacturer running a factory to the wholesaler running a warehouse to supermarkets trying to keep their fridges cold and their lights on. When the cost of electricity rises, the cost of everything rises. Food, clothing, hardware, consumer goods, services, energy, and service sector examples such as optometrists, hairdressers, solicitors—pick a service, any service. All have electricity as a business expense. The cost of living is going up because the price of electricity is going up. Australian wholesale electricity prices are up 300 per cent in the last year. And what is the reason? It is unsustainable, unreliable wind and solar paying subsidies to billionaires in the Chinese Communist Party who are running these things. They’re the owners. The majority of large wind and solar complexes are owned by foreigners, including China and the Chinese Communist Party. Those who laugh are ignorant and condemned to suffer more.

This is combined with manipulation of the energy market by unscrupulous energy companies that should never have been allowed to buy important infrastructure. The National Electricity Market is actually a national electricity racket run by bureaucrats; it’s not a market at all.

The third element of higher electricity prices is the cost of transmission lines, poles and wires, to bring power from where the industrial solar and wind blight complexes are located to where the electricity is needed.

Our immigration rate affects prices. The more new Australians arrive, the more electricity, water, medical care and education they consume. These things are supply and demand. The more demand, the higher the price. Of course, governments can plan ahead and build out extra power generation, extra hospitals, extra dams and schools, but we don’t. Long-term planning in Australian politics means the next election, or nowadays, in the last decade or so, it means the next budget. This is no way to run a country. When One Nation talks about reducing immigration to net zero, we mean bringing in around 100,000 new arrivals each year to balance out the 100,000 who leave. Net zero is zero total immigration, easing the strain on infrastructure. This takes pressure off our economy, reducing demand and inflation, and making the essentials of life cheaper.

The climate mafia do not want to allow new dams and new electricity generation to be built, while at the same time wanting to bring in half the world as immigrants. Talk about inflation! You haven’t anything yet. Agriculture is under threat. A 43 per cent carbon dioxide reduction means culling livestock and shutting down cropping, returning that land to nature in a process called rewilding. What they call rewilding One Nation calls ‘starving people’. The less food that gets grown, the higher the price will be. One Nation will stop the madness and return Australia to good government.

We are one community, we are one nation.