Australia is firmly on the path towards a dystopian future with households having their access to electricity taken out of their hands and monitored, controlled and restricted by governments.

One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson said that while the nation’s world-leading energy reserves should have created a legacy of abundant cheap power for Australian households and industry, we were instead heading for a class-based third-world system in which only the wealthiest households would have 24-hour access to electricity, and in which power supplies could be denied to households as a punishment or to enforce emission reductions.

“The wide rollout of remotely controlled energy meters or ‘smart’ meters gives retailers and governments the ability to closely monitor and completely control our energy usage,” Senator Hanson said.

“It’s only a matter of time before energy retailers start using these remote meters to switch off our power to ration dwindling domestic supplies, widely introducing ‘economy’ tariffs which restrict energy use to limited hours every day, and widely introducing pre-paid energy plans similar to those rolled out in developing African countries with limited electricity supplies.

“And there’s just no telling how far it will go. With governments in complete control of your electricity connection, what would stop them from punitively switching you off if you couldn’t pay a traffic fine on time? What would stop them imposing individual or household restricted carbon budgets and turning you off when you’ve emitted your annual allotment? What would stop them making more generous electricity tariffs contingent on buying an expensive electric vehicle or using public transport?

“It’s already happening right here in Queensland, with thousands of low-income households in regional areas using pre-paid ‘power cards’ or ‘economy’ tariffs in which the retailer only provides power for a few hours each day. Only the wealthiest households will be able to afford the premium tariffs which give them 24-hour access to electricity – this scenario is already playing out in developed countries like the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

“It won’t stop at remote meters on houses. They’ll go into all our big appliances – they’re already in air conditioners – with governments and retailers able to switch them off at a whim. As always, the cost of the meters will ultimately be passed on to consumers.

“It will of course be sold to Australian households as a helpful measure to manage the cost of living and reduce carbon dioxide emissions but in reality it will lock in a class-based energy market of rich and poor, and hand even more control over our lives to our governments.

“Electricity bills are tipped to increase by 50% - and gas prices by 40% – within two years, and Australia faces more crippling energy shortages in the near future as cheap reliable generation is continually replaced with costly unreliable renewables at enormous taxpayer expense, and energy exports leave Australia desperately short of domestic supplies.

“In the meantime, more and more Australians find themselves in energy debt or having their gas and power disconnected. According to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), more than 262,000 Australians are dealing with energy debt on retailer payment plans and from December 2021 to March 2022, household disconnections in Australia rose from 3977 to 9146.

“We all saw the extraordinary powers and control Australian governments were able to exert during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how reluctant they were to relinquish them with some of those draconian powers now permanently enshrined in law. With Labor and the Greens in power, it’s not a stretch to imagine them declaring a national energy emergency – which they themselves largely created in the first place – and imposing this dystopian nightmare of coercion and control over Australian energy consumers.

“It amazes me that Australians are being led blindly into the destruction of their way of life and standard of living by Labor, the Greens and the Coalition in their treacherous obsession with Australia saving the whole world from climate change.

“This generation of Australians is the first in our history to face a reduction in living standards from the previous generation thanks to the big lie that anything this country does will make an actual difference to global emissions.”