Net Zero was sold as a path to prosperity. Instead, it’s exporting Australian resources, enriching foreign companies, and leaving Australians to pick up the bill.

This is Net Zero in practice.

Dig up Australia’s resources. Fast-track the project. Wrap it in green rhetoric. Then ship the benefits offshore.

According to The Australian, a $10 billion silica project, backed and accelerated under Labor’s Net Zero push, was supposed to power Australia’s solar manufacturing future. That was the promise.

The reality is very different.

The silica won’t stay here. It’s being locked in for export to China, home to the world’s dominant solar manufacturing industry.

No guaranteed supply for Australian industry. No domestic manufacturing boom. Just raw materials leaving our shores so foreign companies can rake in the cash and sell the finished products back to us.

This is the Net Zero economy.

Australia digs while foreign companies profit.

And while that happens, the insiders clean up.

The company behind the project is chaired by former Labor deputy prime minister Wayne Swan. A senior party figure who is a shareholder and a direct beneficiary of a project handed fast-track status by a Labor government.

At the same time, the project is deeply tied into foreign capital and export markets, with major Chinese-linked investors and long-term supply arrangements offshore.

So let’s be clear about what Net Zero is delivering:

Energy independence is slipping further out of reach.

We’re outsourcing capability instead of building it.

And Australian resources are propping up foreign jobs, not our own.

All while Australians face rising power bills, a strained grid, and a cost-of-living crisis made worse by energy policy choices.

This is what Net Zero is.

Australians are told to sacrifice; to pay more, forced to accept change, and to trust the plan.

But the benefits are flowing elsewhere.

Net Zero is not and never has been about national prosperity. It’s an ideological crusade built on dollars and destruction.

Australians deserve an energy policy that builds here, invests here, and delivers here.

Right now, Net Zero is doing the opposite.