NT News Bush Summit
Speech by Gina Rinehart AO
Monday 1 September 2025
Darwin, NT
Good morning,
Please listen to the farmers and pastoralists. If they can’t afford to grow food here, we’ll be relying on imports from countries that care about their own people trying to earn a living, not about emissions or environmental standards.
As clearly explained in the videos we did for this Bush Summit, including with farmers, the Daubneys of the multi-award-winning Bannister Dairy, net zero is making farming in Australia more difficult, more expensive, and increasingly so as the net zero demands and government paperwork burdens increase.
And what does this mean, it means higher food and wine prices for everyone. Plus, higher prices for those who use farm produce like cotton and wool and leather, and manure.
Net zero doesn’t just hurt farmers, it hits our nation’s dinner plates.
And the non-synthetic clothes you wear, bed linen and soft furnishings, etc, and leather products. I say this quickly, but let’s think of many of the things that we use Leather alone for, horses’ bridles, saddles, chairs, couches, shoes, boots, sandals, in case anyone wants to walk?
Anyone like music? musical instruments, not only drums, even bagpipes! Bible covers, motorbikes and bike seats, wallets, purses, handbags, work clothing, tool belts and protective gear, are we still wanting safety these days? For those who like pets, dog and cat collars and leads, even Aussie footballs! And cricket gloves!
And other great Aussie sport, and so many more things you and I like to have and use. We shouldn’t forget, net zero won’t just hurt farmers, and those in the bush, but all of us.
Our farmers are among the most efficient and environmentally responsible in the world. They are more than just food providers; they are an important part of our history and our DNA. High proportions of those from the bush, enlist for Australia when conflicts arise.
Aren’t they fantastic Australians? I’m from generations of farmers and pastoralists, I know them, they are hurting, they are rightly upset, I listen to them, I respect and love them! Yet they are being punished with higher power, fuel and fertiliser costs, loss of productive land, even in areas, loss of rights to their land, stress and increasing government admin burdens, because of net zero policies. You can’t keep hitting farmers, expecting their resilience, they are leaving the farms.
This means solid country people are thin on the ground, for bushfires and other emergencies. Farmers are saying “no more.”
Do we want food security and higher living standards, or the Paris accord and all of its consequences?
Small businesses are the backbone of Australia, but we can’t escape the truth, net zero is breaking them.
Politicians talk about “green jobs.” but why, why are they closing their minds to record business failures, meaning job losses, and the reality that net zero destroys real jobs in the industries that keep our country’s economy alive.
Vast fields of solar panels or towering wind turbines and transmission lines are essentially “build and run” projects. They create a short burst of jobs during their unnecessarily environmentally destructive construction, but once the ribbon is cut and the photo opportunities done, they generate very few long-term jobs. Perhaps some people to bury the birds and bats the wind towers kill.
Let’s hear the reality from countries leading the change to wrongly called “renewables” and the so called much needed green economic vision.
In Germany, industry has been complaining about higher domestic energy costs for years and with even several trade unions joining the concern by warning of the serious consequences of rising energy costs in the country, saying hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk due to high electricity prices that exceed international standards.
In a recent open letter from leading German unionists to the Chancellor they said:
“We are in the most severe economic crisis since World War II.
“Just last year, at least 100,000 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 contribute no more to supply security than they did three decades ago. Instead, they generate 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.
Market prices for fuel and electricity have adjusted accordingly, triggering double-digit energy inflation. Soaring energy prices combined with runaway inflation have severely curtailed Europeans’ livelihoods.
Net zero doesn’t mean more jobs and opportunities, it means less. We can’t afford to keep letting net zero help to kill the very businesses that employ millions of Australians and provide billions of revenues to our governments.
Record business failures and lower investment in Australia, does not mean great management, nor does a trillion or more of government debt with massive wasteful interest bills, rising government employees and government tape and regulations and rising expense of all this, not contributing to revenue or productivity, nor does increasing crime so our families are less and less safe, and inadequate defence, what is meant to be governments most important duty, to keep our country safe.
Yes, we do have the best miners, but as the Minerals Council of Australia says, 80 percent of projects in the pipeline are now on the casualty list! What does all this mean, it means that we are a nation in crisis.
We have to stop thinking, it’s ok, it’s only the Aussie farmers hurt by net zero. Well in the last few days, the largest iron ore and mining companies have reported their biannual dividends. The lowest for 7 or 8 years.
How many mums and dads are hurt by this? Yes, the excuse is anticipated iron ore price reduction while some of the majors invest billions bringing on stream more iron ore mines overseas, but why don’t the media report, they are also spending billions and billions of shareholders money on that great green incinerator?
A gigantic incinerator that does nothing to add to extra production, improved productivity, frankly for many reasons brings on lower productivity, and zilch for improved competitiveness. Please refer to my last 2 Bush Summit video addresses with 3 of my knowledgeable CEOs.
Mum and dad shareholders, please demand answers to just how many billions of shareholders money, money you could otherwise enjoy as dividends, are these big companies spending on the great green incinerator, buying new expensive EV vehicles and putting in charging stations, plus paying for wrongly called renewables, storage batteries, and transmission lines, modifying equipment, studies into all sorts of green things including hydrogen.
And call for all those mining execs enjoying lux green gabfests at Davos and elsewhere, to pay that money back, and pay for this personally. If you don’t stand up at shareholder meetings and elsewhere, that great green incinerator will keep going, so don’t look forward to the dividends you deserve, and don’t forget about the investment in your superannuation funds either.
As net zero burdens increase, worse is yet to come. It’s easy for city politicians to talk propaganda, but what have they actually done to listen and truly help struggling businesses and those in agriculture. Where is the state that has dropped payroll tax, licence fees and stamp tax? Taxes they were meant to drop 2 decades ago when GST came in!
We have a great divide, a divide that is largely not between city and country, but between country and governments. We’ve held the Bush Summit, let’s make it mean something to those in the bush, and small businesses too, let’s now call for until successfully actioned, the dropping of these old state taxes, and not only on small businesses, as bigger businesses pass on these government costs to smaller businesses and those in the bush.
Australians were promised cheaper power, from the so-called renewables, but instead we’ve ended up with the highest prices in the world, and massive government spending of taxpayer’s money, and companies spending of their shareholders money.
Bush Summit should call for these figures to be made publicly available. And we will have increasingly intermittent electricity, given the sun doesn’t shine overnight, or when lessened by clouds and volcanoes too, and the wind doesn’t always blow at the speed required.
Intermittent high-cost electricity doesn’t mean Australia can have a great future with many industries, including AI, which requires reliable electricity. How is that going to help our declining productivity, or our chance to try to lower some costs, and be able to compete internationally?
Families, pensioners and others on low incomes are being forced to choose between heating, food, and medicines, while politicians and bureaucrats disgracefully ignore the cruelty to millions of Aussies, from pensioners to veterans, to students, to the disabled, not letting them work more than a few cappuccinos a week.
We hear governments say their duty is to represent or look after all Australians, if that’s what they truly mean, we need to hear now that they will let all these people work if they wish. Let them work to ease the government caused cost of living increase, and while working, add to the national revenue by paying taxes on their earnings.
Again, let’s see some results from this Bush Summit, let’s see these socialist burdensome restrictions, both parties have enforced, lifted.
And let’s see our government do further action to look after all Australians, and do something that would actually decrease living costs, remove its huge excise tax on fuel. This would help not only those who drive cars, but all producers who require fuel, hence the goods they sell, all transport of goods and services, in short would help all Australians. Bush Summit let’s act on this until the government delivers.
We’re in record debt, we can’t just keep asking for more and more spending, even on worthwhile things, which much of this summit has focused on, especially when we are attacking the very industries where the revenue needed to provide, comes from.
Let’s not forget, governments can’t give us anything they don’t take from us first. A very wasteful circle, and one that is mortgaging the next generations future. And just offering farmers to be saddled with more debt, more interest to pay on government loans, is no “key win.”
Another benefit if let Aussies work, we then won’t need the massive increase in immigration, causing huge problems with our inadequate infrastructure for such massive increases, from hospitals to housing, to roads and car parks, to increased costs and crime without sufficient increases in police budgets.
Net zero was sold as a dream, even to give us lower energy prices, but the reality, a nightmare Australians cannot afford. Albeit not for some enjoying the taxpayer funded green energy trough and luxury gabfest trips at taxpayer and shareholder expense. If our country is as energy rich as it is, why aren’t we using more of our coal and gas, that were proven to give us cheap and reliable electricity for decades, and decades?
Net zero and wrongly called renewables, are driving us into energy inadequacy and insecurity. While we profit mainly overseas businesses to supply toxic solar panels and wind towers and batteries, and build additional electricity lines upsetting farmers, and their farms, and destroying large parts of our environment.
We even hear that this has “benefits” for farmers, why leave the so called benefits with farmers, let’s share the “benefits” with city electorates, so they can appreciate the destruction, stress and expense along our cities beach lines, swimmers and surfers could swim and surf around the wind towers and transmission lines, and can enjoy the changed view. And city folk can pay for the endless replacement and storage of these toxic, minerals glugging “renewables.” Not at some distant time either.
Energy is the foundation of everything – farming, mining, the 2 industries that not only support many other businesses, but also provide the most revenue to government for the expenditure government does, from its prime responsibility of defence and police to keep Australians safe, to infrastructure, hospitals, elderly, and much more.
Plus, energy is the foundation for everything that manufacturing, transport, hospitals, ambulances, hotels, restaurants, offices, even household living requires.
We are an energy rich nation, are closing down or delaying coal and gas here while China builds new coal fired power plants almost every week. Not using our resources doesn’t reduce global emissions – exporting them just shifts emissions overseas while leaving us weaker, poorer, unsecure, and dependent. It’s madness to cripple ourselves and lower our living standards while other nations keep growing stronger.
Every time a factory or business shuts here or a mine delayed, because of high energy costs, and government burdens, others open overseas. Hence, our saving of emissions, is not “us doing our part.” as the emissions simply transfer to other countries. Net zero is already lessening our industries, sending jobs offshore and leaving Australians behind.
But don’t forget, if this policy or cult continues, it will get worse, much worse. Earlier speeches and panels have given examples of the massive investment and costs of net zero requirement increases. Green investment that does not add to our production capacity, productivity or competitiveness.
Net zero , higher cost intermittent unreliable energy doesn’t just hurt our industries , businesses and economy, it hurts our living standards, it hurts the forgotten ones, our pensioners, our veterans, our students and their future, our disabled, and all on lower incomes, it hurts people , even noisy green activists, relying on emergency services, our ambulances and fire brigades, hospitals too. It hurts national security.
If we can’t produce steel, fertiliser, refine oil for the fuel we need, or produce electricity reliably here, we’ll be increasingly forced to rely on imports. That makes us vulnerable and dependent and does nothing to keep our living standards. What can you do, get onto your online comments, your letters to the editor and pollies, and supporting those who do stand up.
Let’s make this Bush Summit genuinely successful, and let more people support the end to the Paris accord Australians can’t afford, and the end to net zero.
Let’s also call for Special Economic Zones (SEZ) across our north, with astonishingly less government tape and updated tax rebates for all working north of the 26th parallel.
Why SEZs? as thousands have been helping countries successfully around the world, but not in Australia.
Let’s get back to living within our means and never forgetting, all we call for from government, must firstly be provided by us taxpayers.
Why am I bothering to stand up and say it’s time for the truth, when those benefiting from taxpayers and shareholders money, plus the unthinking ones, often this means the far left, will do all they can to tear me down.
It is because I’m truly concerned about the dangerous road our country is on, and the millions of Australians who will suffer if the 34.5 percent mandate continues to lead us down the net zero, intermittent, unreliable, high-cost electricity, road to ruin.
A road other countries have already shown is one we should have the sense to avoid.
We need more intestinal fortitude to fix this. Not a huge expensive green slush trough, wasting taxpayers’ money, that does nothing to add to productivity or competitiveness.
It’s time for the truth.
Thank you.
