News & Media

Hello, everyone. I’m sorry I’m not with you to meet you in person. Usually, I’m asked to speak to discuss economic matters. Economic matters are important. And you have every right to be asking: is our government managing the economy well so that we can have a good future? But why are so many important things in our economy going wrong? Why is our productivity declining? Why is our international competitiveness declining? Why is our country having record business failures? Why are industries failing? Why are taxpayers having to pay to keep previously profitable industries functioning? Why are taxpayers having to pay for thousands of kilometres of extra transmission lines and pay for secretive, significant subsidies to green energy, plus the ever-increasing billions for the Snowy Hydro scheme. With the thousands of kilometres of extra transmission lines and Snowy Hydro and green energy-related handouts, how can we expect cheaper energy? Why are we importing toxic solar panels to destroy prime agricultural areas, which panels can’t provide electricity at night and on average are only able to provide less than 20 percent electrical capacity? Do both unreliable electricity and high-cost electricity effect the future of industries requiring reliable and low-cost electricity such as AI? Why are we in record debt and wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars on interest because of this record debt? Why is real investment declining in our country? Real investment that is not ignoring inflation or taxpayer-funded government investment? Does declining investment lead to declining living standards?

Well, before I start sharing reasons for all that, may I ask you to put your hands up, ignoring whatever you’ve learned at schools or tertiary education. Do you think this means good economic management? And another question. Do you think that bad economic management now will affect your future? Thanks to all this, it should be obvious that we’re on the way to declining living standards and with record debt and excessive government spending, long-term high taxes for you and your families.

Now let’s get into the reasons why. No matter what you may have heard elsewhere, the truth is that this is due to poorly considered government policies. Excess government tape and regulations with difficult, time consuming, expensive, long and uncertain approval processes which delay or stop projects; even delay housing.

Floors of non-productive staff, filling out government forms, writing reports for government, processing applications for approvals and permits, delaying projects for years or causing their loss, do zilch to help productivity or international competitiveness, or businesses to stay afloat. They only add cost and high-spending government dedicated to more vote buying, rather than paying down the trillion-dollar debt, means hundreds of millions of interest has to be paid by taxpayers each year, plus taxpayers’ money being wasted overseas, plus many examples of government not being able to manage their own infrastructure projects like the Snowy Hydro Scheme, which has escalated from $2 billion to $12 billion, but expected to reach $20 billion or more. And the Whopper – and I don’t mean Hungry Jack’s – is net zero.

We’ve entered this without being told how much net zero will cost. Figures of a trillion dollars have been estimated, but we don’t know the secret subsidies. And we sure don’t know, because it seems our government may not have thought about this, the big whopper costs to change defence, defence, industries, agriculture, critical minerals, mining and refining, etc. and all services to meet net zero requirements. Plus the costs of losses of manufacturing, refining, smelting, AI, none of which can function on unreliable electricity. They must have 24 by 7 reliable electricity. And as these industries need lots and lots of electricity, it cannot be high-cost electricity either.

You don’t have to look far to see heavy industry and other manufacturers concerned about the too high cost of energy in the last few weeks, on top of a 500-company survey confirming energy costs is the biggest challenge we have seen. Tomago Aluminium, Mars Confectionery and BlueScope Steel point to energy costs and reliability as a risk to their future in Australia. To make agriculture compliant, farmers cannot afford net zero, especially as most are on low margins and/or struggling with debt. Where is the money to come from so they can pay the extra non-productive staff they will need to deal with net zero tape? And to pay for new EV bikes, vehicles, trucks, sprayers, tractors, loaders, telehandlers, excavators, bobcats, harvesters, bulldozers, graders, self-propelled large mowers and more, also needed to meet EV targets. And to pay for the solar panels and massive batteries to enable part-time electricity for their workshops, sharing sheds, homes, and refrigeration.

Plus, there’s the requirement to make essential services net zero like ambulances and fire brigades. Ambulances. Have you heard about the battery-using ambulances overseas? They have a known problem: hills. Batteries are not sufficient for them to climb up hills. Hope you and your family live somewhere flat. Fire brigades’ massive expense to change these. Less water carrying capacity, less equipment and check Google, you should be able to find some have caught fire and have been recommended not to be near fires. Hmm. Fire trucks that can’t be near fires.

Why am I speaking so frankly? Because this affects you much more so than oldies like me. They affect your future, leave you with high tax burdens while you will want to be saving for a home or paying off your home mortgages, car repayments, maybe helping support your families. All made massively more difficult with high taxes and leave you with far less opportunities for your future and a lower standard of living than our generation enjoyed with smaller government and no Paris Accord and net zero.

How do I know this? In case your teachers have not said this, let’s look at what happened to other countries who tried the big government, massive government tape and regulations, usually called socialism, like Argentina and Sri Lanka have done. Argentina more than 100 years ago, thanks to its primary industries, was one of the eight wealthiest countries in the world. Socialism changed that. Socialism brought increased government spending and wastage and more interference in the market. Consequently, inflation spiralled out of control into the hundreds of percent and consequently home ownership was a futile dream with very, very few exceptions. Consequently too, living standards plummeted. Argentinians had to choose to bar up their windows and hide their meagre savings in pillows or under their mattresses, as banks were not safe places to invest one’s savings. No longer was Argentina one of the wealthiest in the world. And once your country gets into such an unhappy position and yes, it is very unhappy for those living there, it’s not easy to reverse. Argentina had suffered under socialism for more than 100 years until the election of a non-socialist, President Milei.

Milei has cut the size of government, slashed the number of departments, and brought in sound economic reforms. Just one example is he has gotten rid of government interference in the property rental industry and terminated rent price control. What has this meant to Argentinians? More properties came on the market, increased availability led to rental prices going down, which was a huge benefit for the Argentinian people, as few had been able to achieve their own homes under socialism. They had to rent, and rent was one of their biggest expenses.

Back to Australia. State taxes that were to go when the GST came in two decades ago still haven’t. Excess taxes don’t help businesses or their employees. Excess taxes limit companies’ ability to invest and grow. Limit the money available for employees, their wages, training, and other benefits. Record business failures. Three words said quickly, but let’s pause. Many of these are small mum and dad and family businesses with horrible effect on them and their families. We are an export-led country. If we can’t export competitively, our revenue falls. And ditto the tax revenue we derive from exports, which tax revenue pays for benefits for students, veterans, many nurses, pensioners, police and much more. There are too many who think let’s just spend more government money, add to the already record government debt and saddle your generation with the taxes to pay back the debt and many more billions in interest, too. And let’s make it even worse than that. The mining industry provides more revenue than all other industries in Australia combined, and on average provides the highest paid jobs in Australia but government policies and environmental tape make it near impossible to start new mines or expand existing ones.

According to detailed research by the Minerals Council of Australia, the peak mining body, 80 percent of new mines in the pipeline are now on the casualty list. Eighty percent. And that’s before the ongoing net zero target increases. I honestly believe that Australians, young Australians especially, would be far better off if government reined in its tape, wastage and spending and let Australians choose how they want to spend the money they have earned rather than government, especially when government’s efficiency rate for its expenditure is around 12.5 percent, meaning that for every one dollar they spend, they have to raise eight dollars from taxpayers.

Taxpayers’ money is going towards increasing the number of bureaucrats; 80 percent of all new jobs in Australia last year were taxpayer-funded roles. How does that help productivity? When you view the world through academic eyes, socialism may seem like a good system, but as the then-British Prime Minister, Baroness Margaret Thatcher once said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.”

You may wonder what is the worst of the government policies that will affect my future? What is going to drive down investment? Drive down productivity and international competitiveness and export revenue? Increase business failures, drive down opportunities, drive down your generation’s living standards? Not having reliable 24 by 7 internationally competitively priced electricity. In short, the massive growth of more government tape and regulations, plus billions and billions and billions and more of taxpayers’ money and shareholders’ money to be wasted, caused by net zero. How can I dare say this to you? How can I forget the so-called “moral” position of pursuing net zero, ignoring if that even has the facts to support that it is a moral position. One of the world’s largest economies are building almost one new coal fired power station a week to help their people adding more emissions by far than Australia’s estimated 1.1 percent contribution to the world’s emissions. Does it actually have any impact to the world’s emissions if we wreck our economy and living standards and pursue net zero? Even if we achieve net zero at massive cost, it’s a figure so minuscule that it could be written off as a rounding error.

Our politicians and all Australians should consider the need for a compromise path. Leave net zero to all those who want to pursue without compulsion. The term “renewable energy” is untrue.

Wind turbines and solar panels require massive amounts of mined minerals to produce. In total, approximately 34 minerals are needed across these three non-renewable green technologies. Plus, intermittent energy doesn’t last. They need to be decommissioned and disposed of, meaning more massive amounts of non-renewable minerals will be required for replacements. If your teachers are describing this intermittent energy form as “renewable energy”, maybe they are under-informed, but they should at least be informing you that the wind power only produces around 30 percent of electricity each day, and the sun less, only around 20 percent, and batteries only store energy for around four hours. Hence, even on days with favourable conditions, these expensive green energies only supply power for approximately 16 hours. What do we do for the other eight hours when electricity is still required?

Yes, a government-caused national energy crisis is approaching, which will impact all of you with higher costs and unreliable electricity. Some spreading the renewable cult will point to hydrogen, no matter how many taxpayers’ dollars are being made available for this trough. Have a look on our National Mining Day website, you’ll see many of these hydrogen dollar pits are being “delayed, failing, or have failed”.

A recent poll showed most Australians were okay to support net zero, providing it doesn’t cost them more than $60 a year. Well, let’s look closer at that. I think you’ll find if you really consider all the expenditures and consequences, that it will cost you far, far more. Perhaps you are being told, well, it’s only the poor farmers who are getting their farms and lives disrupted by toxic foreign made solar panels, bird and bat killing wind towers and expensive extra transmission lines across their properties. Smashing through the environment like we in primary industries are not permitted to do. Well, upsetting that that is, that’s the little tip of the iceberg. But that alone reducing farm size and production and causing farmers to desert the agricultural industry means less supply, which will affect the price of food on your dinner plates and the cost of materials like cotton and wool for your clothes and soft furnishings, and leather. For the many things we use leather for well beyond just handbags, shoes, and belts.

Let’s divide the impact of net zero into two main categories affecting productive industry be that agriculture, mining, defence, manufacturing, AI and the second category,  services. While every one of these should be looked at carefully, let’s focus on the biggest revenue supplier, the mining industry. Starting at the mine, most use ore trucks to carry the ore efficiently refuelled currently by fuel. If we were to switch those trucks to EV battery operated, that would reduce all carrying capacity by approximately one third. This would require not only the battery and modification and multi charging stations expense, but three times more trucks, a massive expense, an expense that does nothing to add to capacity, revenue, productivity or international competitiveness. The last two sadly the very opposite. But that’s not all the net zero wastage story. The battery takes longer to charge than refuelling a fuel operated truck, so nearly four times as many trucks would need to be acquired for net zero. Fly in, fly out workers won’t enjoy intermittent solar and wind power for around half the day, so more massive, expensive batteries will be required for FIFO. Currently, these massive batteries only store and hence provide energy for four hours, so there’s still approximately an eight-hours no power gap. The big mines usually run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, requiring massive expense for net zero, including more massive batteries for workshops and massive equipment. Crushers, conveyors, stackers, reclaimers loaders, train, then port end more massive equipment unloaders, conveyors, stackers, reclaimers, more conveyors, more sampling, assaying ship loaders, tugs. Yes, billions and billions and billions of shareholders money required for these net zero changes. Which you can begin to understand, is why the huge mining companies like Rio and BHP gave their lowest dividends in seven or eight years. While I repeat adding nothing to capacity or productivity. international competitiveness. Instead of letting the shareholders benefit from more dividends. Of course, the thousands and thousands of employees must travel to work, and all those transport emissions have to be added to the respective companies’ emissions and government paperwork burden and be loaded with expensive electric vehicles and charging stations, and similarly with all contractors and all suppliers. The net zero expenditure for miners is massive and will increase as net zero demands increase. And what happens to the miner’s product? To pay for this, miners will have to increase their prices. Or if not internationally competitive, close their businesses or worse, put their hand out for Aussie taxpayers’ subsidies.

Look at every detail of every productive industry and add on costs for their entire staff, contractors, and production process. Plus, add on costs where appropriate from other industries, net zero expenses, and you can begin to understand that you will be paying far, far more than an extra $60 per annum for net zero. Meanwhile, the unfortunate taxpayers continue to pay for those great carbon emitters – international luxury net zero gabfests, and even for billionaires and foreign companies to unsuccessfully study hydrogen, that flammable gas that’s well known to be able to pass through multilayers of metals.

While I’ve already touched on ambulances and fire trucks, let’s move on to other essential services. It would be great to think net zero doesn’t affect hospitals, wouldn’t it? But let’s start with all the staff and contractors required to service hospitals. Who’s going to provide the money to change cars, buses, ferries, and trains to EVs and add charging stations? You are, of course, nurses, caterers, cleaners, laundry people, admin trainees, service people for air conditioners, lifts, refrigeration, medical equipment and many more. Lots for you to provide the funds for EV transport and charging stations for. Plus, the net zero electricity expense, plus include something to include the missing eight hours. Has anyone told you how much net zero is going to cost you, add to you and your family’s hospital bills, why not ask. If life-saving equipment cannot run blood, get analysed, pharmacies not able to supply essential medicines 24/7. That’s life threatening. Batteries can help with short term supply, but they are not capable of replacing continuous base load power needed for hospitals and the rest of our country. Let’s take another, the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Their planes and the ambulances they use, plus staff transport, all have emissions. When their net zero emission allowance is up, should they tell patients in agony or patients who may lose their lives “sorry, we can’t help you given emissions requirements”. Think of all the services you may use or your family: ambulances, fire brigades, veterinary clinics, police, funeral parlours, ports, airports, ferries, buses, trains, strains all the costs of net zero requirements that have to be passed on to you and your family and other taxpayers and service users. Have you asked the government how much all of this will cost you? Young Australians don’t need platitudes or propaganda or cult naivety. You just need facts on real costs.

Let’s look at another country whose countrymen were also promised electricity, wouldn’t cost more, would be reliable, wouldn’t lose jobs, wouldn’t increase their cost of living, or hurt their living standards, who pursued net zero ahead of us, how this actually turned out? In Germany, industry has been complaining about higher domestic energy costs for years, and trade unions have joined this concern, warning of the serious consequences of rising energy costs in the country, saying hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk due to the renewables and high electricity prices. In a recent open letter from German unionists to the Chancellor, they said: “We are in the most severe economic crisis since World War two. Just last year, at least one hundred thousand industrial jobs were eliminated altogether. The political promises of the previous federal government for a green economic miracle have amounted to smoke and mirrors. In reality, never before have so many well-paid jobs been under threat as they are today. If the energy transition is, as some say, an operation on the open heart of our economy, then so far this operation has failed miserably. We must admit, the patient is in danger of dying on the operating table for 35 years. Solar and wind power have been legally privileged and subsidised, but to this day they contributed no more to supply security than they did three decades ago. Instead, they generated hundreds of billions in grid costs.” The unions stress that energy intensive sectors such as steelmaking, chemicals and building materials all central to the German economy, are vulnerable and struggling. Yet almost all we hear in our media, devoid of real investigative journalism, is what percent should our net zero commitment be? Why can’t we learn from a country that has gone down the net zero path? When bodies, even bodies you may think like many science bodies should not be incorrect, are watered just one way, i.e. to support the earlier quote “global cooling” propaganda, then the opposite climate “global warming”, now, quote “climate change”. Sadly, that influences what’s said or written.

Geologists as a science body without the addition of such watering, who have in general not been swayed given the Earth’s history is recorded in its rocks. There have been multiple ice ages and global warming without man being on the planet, so could not have influenced such massive changes, changes being from natural causes like volcanoes, Earth’s orbits and the sun and noting when there was abundant CO2, far higher than today, plant life flourished. The rocks support this. Strangely, the earlier then-abandoned message of “global warming” has re-emerged after “global warming” has been shown was not supportable and that very well-funded fear movement had to change to quote “climate change”. But despite global warming being abandoned and dismissed, it is back again, at least in headlines in Australia reporting from authorities funded by our government.

A recent, approx $23 million report written by bureaucrats and not well known academics alarmed us with more than 400 percent increase in heat-related mortality in Sydney if temperatures increase by three degrees above pre-industrial levels. Has this considered air conditioning? Why isn’t the rest of the finding mentioned? The large loss of lives from cold-related deaths, which if you look at both warming and cold overall, there is less mortality if there is global warming. Yes, that can be deduced from the report, just not in the headlines. Up to 2.7 million days of work being lost by 2061 because of heat waves. This idea goes back to the modelling for “global warming” but couldn’t be substantiated. Lower productivity and cascading shocks to the financial sector caused by disruptions in supply chains, asset write downs and loan defaults with potential ripple effects for households and businesses by reducing access to finance. The value of investments for superannuation net zero policies will regrettably be bringing this about. What factual support is offered for each of these? Even if correct, these alleged financial costs are not a smidgen of the increased costs of net zero; $1 trillion or more for the renewables to add to our national debt plus interest, loss of revenue from agricultural lands, the huge cost of billions and billions and billions to shareholders as companies scramble to meet the government’s net zero requirements, the extra costs for services, the huge costs that these extra costs will then pass to the consumers. That’s you.

How can students get to the cost of net zero and scientific truth? I’d suggest question and question, then apply critical thinking. Don’t be swayed by propaganda and please don’t ignore the geos, even though what they say may not currently be popular.

And while battling all the above, there is another very important battle surrounding us. For example, in the USA, if we have the left encouraging violence even against leaders, where recent poll of Democrats has found 55 percent support the killing of their President, and after the killing of Charlie Kirk, they try to support with, well, it’s not just the left encouraging violence and killing, alleging both sides support violence. They try to excuse with two things: the President’s resolve to crack down on crime, which crime hurts innocent people, blaming the police and other enforcement agencies for successfully lowering crime, and also the President’s policy to send illegal immigrants out of the USA, which illegal immigrants include some of the worst violent criminals in this world and who had already undertaken their hideous crimes against innocent children, women and more in the USA. The left claiming, using the enforcement agencies to make American citizens safer from illegal immigrants is violent. As the left attempt to justify their encouragement of violence and assassinations of leaders like this, even cheer at the killing of Charlie Kirk – a good man who loved his country, was a very good husband and father, but was not left. Where is the morality? Let’s recognise in Australia that this is not okay. Violence is not okay. It is not moral.

I feel I would be letting you all down if I limited my speech to economic matters, fundamentally critical as this is to your living standards and opportunities when your whole future is so important. If your education has not included Charlie Kirk’s books, I encourage you to read them. I can only do injustice to his work and endeavours trying to encapsulate it in a few sentences so please look at his important Turning Point work and books. Charlie believed that if his reasoning was listened to, it would win, and he could make a difference. He addressed 2000 or so campuses and got to know what was going on there, probably better than any political party does in USA or here and presenting non-socialist, patriotic, pro-family ideas as better. He offered paths important to the future of young people everywhere. Charlie asked radical and elite school students, what do they want? He usually got the response “equality”. He asked, do you mean equality or equality of outcomes? They meant the latter. Please think about this. What would this mean? Governments having more power over your lives to ensure equality of outcomes. For instance, many of you would work diligently to get good grades in good faith, hoping in so doing, you would be taking steps to better your own futures. What does equality of outcome even mean for equality of outcome? It means taking the high marks you earned and averaging them across those who chose to party and demonstrate and not put in the hard yards that you did, or in the realm of sport, taking your scores and times and averaging the hard training and resulting good scores for those who didn’t sacrifice and put in those hard yards. Let’s look at how the left departs from the truth and uses the truly horrible history surrounding the word “Nazi” to engineer hate against those with non-left political views, such as President Trump and Charlie. But to do this, they have to ignore the truth and reinvent history. The word “Nazi” describes the Nazi Party in Germany, a party that was socialist, the very opposite of what the USA President and Charlie stand for. Truth matters.

I know you need courage to stand up against the socialist indoctrination at many high schools and universities. There are very few Charlies, but please always try to search for the truth. A search that is getting harder, I know. Please don’t be swayed by those who espouse otherwise. In my view, it will be helpful for your future if you developed a Turning Point across your campuses. Socialism is obviously dreadful for those on low incomes, making it very difficult for them to rise from the misery of poverty. As students, you are only permitted by big government to earn up to $264 per week before your Youth Allowance payments get cut. Why? I don’t understand, as I’ve long argued, why not let you have youth allowance payments and be able to work? As much as you may want paying income tax on your earnings only without big government looking over your shoulder and denying you to work as much as you may want to choose. Let you work if you want for a safer car, or to be able to rent in a safer or more convenient area, or to be able to save for a home of your own in the future. Does big government act in your best interests, denying you such opportunity to work as much as you may want? No.

Thank you.