Sky News host (Rita Panahi)
Today, The Australian newspaper hosted the Bush Summit in conjunction with Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting. Let’s hear from Australia’s leading businessperson, who made some very astute observations about the push for Net Zero and its impact on Australian farmers.
Gina Rinehart
Farmers have it hard enough as it is. They are struggling. If you add net zero costs and tax burdens, buying equipment that doesn’t exist, unreliable, inadequate, and more expensive electricity, inflating costs overall — how can our farmers survive?
Sky News host (Rita Panahi)
Prue, how much longer can Australia afford this economic self-harm? We’ve got households suffering, businesses suffering, and the Labor Party seems to be oblivious to that pain. They’re just pressing ahead with this agenda.
Prue Macsween
The only solution they seem to have is a talk fest. They haven’t got any vision, any policies, so they invite the usual suspects to Canberra, and it’s all optics. There’s no real solution. We all know — I mean, I think Blind Freddie knows — that they need to cut government spending. They’re spending on building government, and that’s not productive. So why are they talking about productivity when, on the one hand, they are doing something so counterproductive? They’ve got an energy policy that is killing this country, not just the bush — everyone. Business is leaving or going broke because they know that it’s impossible to make a profit. And all their policies, whether it’s IR or elsewhere, everywhere you look, this government is clueless. But now they’re hitting up these poor farmers, not just with this environmental disaster with all the windmills, etc., but now with this superannuation cost, where half of them are going to have to sell their farms for unrealised capital gains. It’s really an attack on Middle Australia.
Teena McQueen
Oh, Rita, look, all I can say is thank God for the Bush Summit. It really highlighted the plight of farmers today and pointed out how disastrous these policies are for them. I know there was one farmer in the presentation from an area I know very well, west, where the soil is so black and rich you could eat it. That place is now covered in wind farms. It’s disgraceful. And good on Sky, and thank you, Mrs. Rinehart, for showing the country what the farmers are going through.
Sky News host (Rita Panahi)
Well, Teena, are we going to come to a policy decision from the Libs anytime soon? They’re still contemplating their position on net zero. We know where Andrew Hastie stands — he wants to sink it, and he says he thinks he’s got majority support for that position in the party room. Is he a future leader? And by future, I mean hopefully within the next few months.
Teena McQueen
Oh, exactly. Look, no one is more frustrated than me. It’s disgraceful. We are this close to the election and still have no policies out there.
