Australia used to have one of the highest household incomes in the world. What has happened since then?
Decades of weak leadership under Liberal and Labor governments, and it doesn’t look like it will get better anytime soon.
Transcript
The government at the moment is proposing industrial relations reform. It is tinkering. That’s all it is. What I want to do is discuss the bigger picture that we need to consider. First, let’s look at the decline of our country. Look at the decline since 1944, with the stealing of property rights from 1996 onwards and with the destruction of the electricity sector, the guts of our manufacturing sector and our agriculture sector. And yet, at a time when other countries have been reducing their electricity prices, Australian electricity prices have doubled or even tripled. We’ve got a taxation system that’s counterproductive, and there’s the neglect of our water infrastructure. Overregulation is decimating our manufacturing sector and, in fact, all sectors, especially small business—our biggest employers. Now let’s look at the recent devastation from the COVID restrictions, or rather government restrictions imposed as a result of COVID. They’re capricious, unsafe and devastating on small business and employees. If you look at Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, COVID is managing us. Pretty soon JobKeeper ends—in fact, it ends at the end of next month—and then what will happen?
Let’s come back to what we need. We will work with the government to fix a bad bill—that is, its latest proposal. We will work with them in an attempt to do that. The three aims guiding us are: protecting honest workers, protecting small business and restoring Australia’s productive capacity. But not just to recover back to where we were last February before the COVID restrictions from government but to recover back to where we were when we were at the top of the world. We were literally number one for per capita gross domestic product. If I had a wish list, these are the things that would be on it—at least some of them.
I would want an inquiry into local government corruption in Queensland. Right across the state the waste of federal funding runs into the billions, with the fraud, the extortion, the corruption, the threats and the intimidation. We want to end that.
I would wish for a Commonwealth integrity commission, especially now that, during the last week, we’ve learnt what happened in this building. We need a proper corruption-ending system in this parliament and in this building. We need to restore integrity. We also need proper industrial relations reform—not the tinkering, the increased complexity nor the abandonment of small business. We need proper reform that looks after all employers and employees. We need proper reform that enables, first of all, employers and employees to restore their primary relationship without the IR club dipping into their pockets and putting handcuffs on them. We need to restore primary workplace relationships. We need to make it easier for people to work. We need to remove the complexity and remove the lawyers and the vultures.
We need to reform taxation. We need proper taxation reform—not tinkering and not adding more complexity to tax. We need to make it simpler for companies and small businesses to employ people. We need to make it easier for employees, honest workers, to keep more of their pay for their families.
We need reform of the family law system. We need reform of water. We need to do much, much better with our water. We need to return environmental water management to the states. We need to introduce a water register—it’s 14 years overdue. We need to introduce a weirs-for-life program and turn around drains in the south-east. We have a comprehensive plan we’re going to release soon about what we would do with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and water right across the country.
We need to restore farmers’ property rights that were stolen in 1996 by the John Howard-John Anderson government. We need to make sure we have lower energy prices. We need to restore coal-fired power stations in this country—build a new one at Collinsville and build a new one in the Hunter Valley. We need to address the PFAS problems that are gutting so many areas. We need to look at infrastructure—the national rail circuit, Inland Rail, the Bradfield Scheme—and do it properly. Above all, we need a government with vision that provides real leadership, not tinkering. Get back to basics.
Electric vehicles might be okay for suburb hopping in big cities, but I doubt there is a farm in Australia that would be able to run without any petrol or diesel. The Greens’ calls to ‘rapidly transition to electric vehicles‘ for their net zero economy by 2035 shows they have no clue of the energy requirements in transport, industry and agriculture.
Transcript
Let’s have a bit of fun with some facts. Neither H2O, water, nor CO2, carbon dioxide, is a pollutant. Neither water nor carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The two products from burning hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil, natural gas—are water and carbon dioxide. We have carbon in every cell of our bodies. The term ‘organic’ refers to something that contains carbon. Earth: the thing that makes our planet so livable, the thing that makes our planet so unique, is the fact that we have more carbon concentrated on our planet than is the case across the universe.
Carbon is essential for life, but the Greens don’t understand that carbon is not carbon dioxide. They tell us that we need to cut our carbon dioxide from the use of coal, oil and natural gas, but then they talk about carbon. Carbon dioxide is a gas. Carbon is a solid in every cell of your body.
So let’s deal with some facts. Let’s have a bit of fun. Carbon dioxide is just 0.04 per cent of Earth’s air. That is 4/100ths of a per cent. Carbon dioxide is scientifically classified as a trace gas, because there’s so little of it. There’s barely a trace of it. Now, some people are going to say, ‘Oh, but cyanide can kill you with just a trace.’ That’s true. That’s a chemical effect. But the claimed effect of carbon dioxide from the Greens of global warming, climate catastrophe and the greatest existential threat that we now face is a physical effect. A trace gas has no physical effect that can be recorded, as I’ll show you in a minute.
Next point: carbon dioxide is non-toxic and not noxious. It’s highly beneficial to and essential for all plants on this planet. Everything green that’s natural relies upon carbon dioxide, and it benefits when carbon dioxide levels are far higher than now. Carbon dioxide is colourless, odourless and tasteless. Nature produces—and this is from the United Nations climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—97 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced annually on our planet. That means that nature produces 32 times more than the entire human production of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide does not discolour the air. Carbon dioxide does not impair the quality of water or soil. None of what I’m talking about is new. I’ve compiled it, but none of it’s new. Carbon dioxide does not create light, create heat, create noise or create radioactivity. It doesn’t distort our senses. It does not degrade the environment, nor impair its usefulness, nor render our environment offensive.
Carbon dioxide doesn’t harm ecosystems and, in fact, is essential for all ecosystems. Carbon dioxide does not harm plants and animals, nor humans. In fact, we put it in our kids’ soft drink. We put it in our champagne. We put it in our beer. We put it in soda water—we carbonate it by putting carbon dioxide in there. It’s essential for all plants and animals. Carbon dioxide does not cause discomfort, instability, wooziness or disorders of any kind. It does not accumulate. It does not upset nature’s balance. It’s essential for nature and life on this planet. It remains in the air for only a short time before nature cycles it into plants, animal tissue, the oceans and natural accumulations. It does not contaminate, apart from nature’s extremely high and concentrated volumes of carbon dioxide from some volcanos and even then it’s only locally and briefly under rare natural conditions when in concentrations and amounts are far higher than anything humans can produce.
Carbon dioxide is not a foreign substance. In the past, on this planet, under the current atmosphere, there have been times when carbon dioxide levels were 130 times higher than the concentration in the earth today. In fact, in the last 200 years, scientists have measured carbon dioxide levels up to 40 per cent higher than they are today. But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, from the UN ignores those measurements, which were taken, in some cases, by Nobel Prize winners—science prize winners. All they do instead is take one reading from one place over the last 70 years.
As you can see from the list I’ve just read, carbon dioxide is not pollution. The Greens are talking about doing an inquiry into carbon, yet they say it’s the carbon dioxide that’s causing this climate change that’s supposedly going on. Let’s look at something else then, as carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
Let’s have a look at this climate change crisis that the Greens are talking about. I’m unique in this Senate for holding the CSIRO accountable. All of the other senators have not done their jobs. Former Senator Ian Macdonald, from the Senate in 2016, pointed that out to me. He pointed out that no-one in this parliament ever debated the science until I arrived. We still haven’t had the debate, because I’ve challenged the Greens and they have gone without responding to my challenge for a debate more than 125 days. Senator Waters has gone more than 10¼ years without responding to my challenge for a debate. They won’t debate me, because they haven’t got the science. Let’s listen to the people that the Greens rely on for their science.
I have cross-examined the CSIRO. I’ve had three presentations and several sessions at Senate estimates. In their first presentation under my cross-examination the CSIRO admitted that they had never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a threat or a danger. Never. That means we don’t need any of these policies. Let’s go to the next session we had with the CSIRO. Each of these sessions were 2½ to three hours long. The CSIRO said that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented—that’s referring to the blip that ended back in 1995. We have had stasis of temperatures since then—no warming in the last 26 years. The current temperatures are not unprecedented.
My third point is that the CSIRO admitted that they and other bodies around the world rely, for their predictions, on unvalidated, erroneous computer models. That says two things. Firstly, the models are wrong. They’re erroneous and invalidated, yet they’re using them to make projections. Secondly, it confirms they don’t have the evidence. If they had the evidence, they would have presented it. Instead, they’ve come up with some lame models, which have already failed.
The fourth thing that I will mention about the so-called science is that, when they failed to provide me with the empirical evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects the climate and needs to be cut, I gave them a very simple test. I asked them to show me anything unprecedented in the earth’s climate in the last 10,000 years. They failed that. I then gave them the absolutely simplest goal of providing me with empirical scientific evidence showing that there has been a statistically significant change to any factor in earth’s climate. They failed that. They can’t even point to a change in climate, because we all know that climate varies quite naturally, most of it cyclically, but sometimes a combination of cycles makes it look like it’s highly random. That’s the point. Not only that, there are scientists whom I’ve communicated with directly, including members who are lead authors for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, such as Dr John Christy. He was a lead author until he left the United Nations climate body because of the corruption. He was disgusted and sickened by it. These and many other scientists have confirmed to me that nowhere in the world has anyone ever presented any empirical scientific evidence showing that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut—not NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, not the UK Met Office, not the Bureau of Meteorology, not the CSIRO, not any university, not any academic, not any science paper and not any journal. Check for yourself and tell me if I’m wrong.
The third thing I want to say is that the Greens lunatic policies are not based on science. You’ll notice that Senator Rice, in her comments, never once mentioned any proof of causation. Instead, as substitutes for science, they use emotion, stories, fantasies, dreams and promises. That’s all they have. Policy needs to be based on specific, quantified cause and effect—this much carbon dioxide is growing because of humans, and this much is the impact. That has never been presented anywhere in the world. The CSIRO’s failed three times with me, and it has never been done by anyone. Once we have that measured effect, which no-one has produced so far, then and only then can we shape a policy. Then and only then can we measure the progress along the road of implementing that policy. Without that, it’s fundamentally flawed. Then, if we had the connection, specified and quantified, we can cost it to see the benefits of Senator Rice’s dreams and fantasies versus the impact on our human species of this climate madness that people are going on with. As a result of this madness, both the Liberal-National government and the Labor Party have driven our electricity prices from being the lowest in the world to the highest in the world, all on unicorn farts and rainbows, and nothing else—nothing substantial; claims of carbon pollution.
Then we have this telling factor. The No. 1 factor that drove the rapid improvement in human’s standard of living over the last 170 years was the relentless decrease in the price of energy from 1850 until the mid-nineties. Since then, in Australia, we have gone the other way. We’ve started to increase prices. We’ve now doubled and tripled prices for electricity in some areas and nothing has changed. Coal-fired power stations have become more efficient. Yet we have an increase in price because of the artificial regulations and the artificial impediments on the most productive and efficient source of electricity generation and the subsidies for the dreams of solar and wind, which are inherently high and will never catch up with coal, hydro or nuclear.
We had a relentless decrease in the price of electricity over 170 years until 25 years ago. That relentless decrease in the price of electricity and energy meant an increase in productivity and an increase in wealth. That’s what has led to humans now living lives that are longer, safer, easier, more comfortable and more healthy and having far more choices than anyone could ever have imagined. This Greens lunacy, calling carbon dioxide a ‘carbon’—calling a gas a solid—is driving a decarbonisation that is, in effect, deindustrialisation. Look around us. What will disappear is all the material benefits we’ve had over the last 150 years.
Opinion and emotion are not science. There is no need to have this reference to the committee, because there is no science underpinning the Greens’ call for this reference. We need to get back to the facts, get back to straight logic, stop dreaming, think about the many people who benefit from the wonderful hydrocarbon fuels—natural gas, coal and oil—and look after the people of this planet.
Workers should be concerned that Labor and some union bosses have abandoned them. Casual workers are being abused and the needs of small business—Australia’s largest employer of workers—have been all but ignored by everyone except One Nation.
Transcript
In serving the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that Labor is fixated on the problems not the solution. The facts are that the government listened to One Nation’s legitimate concerns for employers and employees and it booted out the BOOT. One Nation achieved that. One Nation is doing more for Western Australian workers and employers than Labor. That is, in part, thanks to our Western Australian team, Robin Scott, an ex-Freo sparky who works hard for the people of the mining and pastoral region in WA, and Colin Tincknell, the One Nation WA state leader who proudly represents the South West region. Workers should be concerned that Labor and some union bosses have abandoned them. Casual workers are being abused and the needs of small business—Australia’s largest employer of workers—have been all but ignored by everyone except One Nation.
I have stood up to put a stop to these abuses for casual workers that the unions, the Labor Party and politicians like Joel Fitzgibbon knowingly ignored for years. Recently, the CFMEU mining division agreed with me that their union has ignored casuals for many years. I applaud that person in the CFMEU for having the courage to do that, and lawyers for the ETU and CFMEU confirmed that, in their opinion—and I agree with them—the IR system needs to be free from lawyers. For Labor to say that it’s going to be easier for employers to cut wages and conditions is not enough. Labor need to step up and show everyday Australians what Australia’s IR problems are and what they would do better. Labor, like Joel Fitzgibbon, are all talk and no action.
One Nation wants genuine industrial relations reform for the benefit of employees and employers, especially for small business and their employees, and the best way to do that is to listen and contribute to a better system. We have been listening widely and hearing the concerns from industry, union bosses, employer and employee groups, welfare groups, casual and injured workers, and small business. I care and I will fight to protect workers’ legal and moral entitlements, just as I am doing in Queensland and I am doing in the Hunter Valley, even though it is not in my state. One Nation stands for the workers that Labor and Joel Fitzgibbon continue to ignore.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/zNzLHEPw3to/hqdefault.jpg360480Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2021-02-25 16:59:002021-02-25 13:30:56One Nation doing more for workers than Labor
The government voted down my inquiry into local government corruption despite concerning evidence being presented to them.
Recent royal commissions into aged care, institutional abuse and banking practices only came about after much opposition. Look how much evidence surfaced when people were able to come forward to tell their stories. This inquiry is urgently needed.
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I wish to further discuss the corruption that continues in Queensland local government. This corruption is ripping off hundreds of millions of dollars of Commonwealth and state taxpayers’ money. These moneys are being redirected, not spent on their intended purposes, not spent at all or corruptly provided to persons in exchange for overvalued materials and services. Emergency Management Australia, EMA, administers the National Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements, the NDRRA, and the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements, the DRFA, funding on behalf of the Australian government. Seventy-five per cent of the funds are from the Australian government, and the remainder is reimbursed by the Queensland state government. The Queensland Reconstruction Authority, QRA, and Emergency Management Queensland, EMQ, coordinate disaster funding in Queensland. Queensland councils received $5.4 billion in NDRRA funds from 2011 to 2019. This may be a billion-dollar scandal.
Recent royal commissions into aged care, institutional abuse and banking practices only came about after much opposition. Look how much evidence surfaced when people were able to come forward to tell their stories. This inquiry is urgently needed. The councils and the Local Government Association of Queensland facilitate a system where contractors make huge profits from road-building by fraudulently claiming payments and stripping 40 to 60 per cent out of NDRRA funding as private profits. These practices are widespread across Queensland. At the heart of this local government corruption has been the Local Government Association of Queensland, the LGAQ, a private company that has a special relationship with the Queensland government and is not obliged to go to tender when contracting with councils.
This lack of transparency breeds corruption. What makes the LGAQ unique is the special statutory provisions that make the LGAQ virtually unaccountable for their actions. Under rule 234 of the Local Government Regulation 2012 a council is exempt from calling contracts to tender or calling quotes if the contract is entered into under an LGA arrangement. Can you imagine that? This includes a contract made with the LGAQ. Every contract the LGAQ enters involves a substantial fee being paid to the LGAQ. I will say that again. Every contract the LGAQ enters involves a substantial fee being paid to the LGAQ. It is classic cartel arrangement prohibited in any other state except Queensland, where it is legalised by rule 234.
Some of this information has been disclosed in the Queensland state parliament and directly to the CCC, which inexplicably declined to investigate. Many complaints to the CCC about a council are sent back to the council to investigate itself; actual CCC investigation is rare. A research paper prepared by Professor Timothy Prenzler into the complaints sent to the CCC found that less than two per cent of complaints were investigated and the other 98 per cent largely disappeared. Why?
After I alerted the Senate that I wished to put a motion to support a Senate select committee inquiry into this corruption, the LGAQ sent representatives to Canberra to try to stop the inquiry. Some mayors contacted the office of the local government minister, Mr Coulton, objecting to the inquiry. What are they afraid of? What do these mayors all have to hide? What do they think an inquiry will reveal? Is this an admission of guilt? A council with nothing to hide would welcome an opportunity to show how well it uses public money. Yet, when the motion was put to the vote, the government, Labor and the Greens voted against this anticorruption motion.
This was quite stunning. The government wishes to introduce an integrity bill, yet voted against an anti-integrity motion. The Greens believe the lies that complaints brought to the CCC had been investigated and found to be without substance. This is false. Key witnesses were never contacted, let alone questioned. Key locations were never inspected or visited. How could the Greens say this constituted an investigation? Crossbench senators Jacqui Lambie and Rex Patrick know I’m right and supported my motion. I thank these senators for their integrity. The mechanics of the corrupt practices are known and have been brought to the attention of the authorities. I call on the Senate to do the right thing. I will continue exposing this corruption and continue to seek a Senate select committee to protect taxpayers’ money and to restore integrity.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/TcX3M0qnFIA/hqdefault.jpg360480Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2021-02-25 14:58:002021-02-25 11:57:49Corruption in Local Government must be investigated
The Energy Minister must be asleep at the wheel if he hasn’t even looked at the States’ plans to wipe out reliable coal fired power with unreliable renewables. The WA Liberal-National’s plan is to build 4,500 megawatts of wind and solar to replace the 1,050 megawatts of base-load power that coal provides. This puts the unreliables at a disgustingly low deliverability of just 23 per cent of rated capacity.
Labor has no claim to the high ground on industrial relations, they have abandoned the working class. A graph of our median and average wages over time is untroubled by changes in government.
Liberal, National, Labor or Greens, it makes no difference; workers just keep going backwards. Only One Nation has a vision for the future that returns our productive capacity, manufacturing and better wages for Australians.
Transcript
This motion is one of the least self-aware that I’ve seen out of the Labor Party. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the median wage has not increased in real terms over the last 30 years after adjusting for dramatic increases in the cost of housing, health care and education, yet Australia’s gross domestic product per capita has increased over that period from $13,600 to $65,400 in real terms—as are all my figures today. Gross domestic product is up by a factor of five, and the wages of everyday Australians have not increased. Where’s the money gone? Average wages for Australians at the upper end of the scale have seen an increase of 50 per cent, and at the very top end the increase is over 100 per cent. A graph of our median and average wages over time is untroubled by changes in government. Liberal, National, Labor or Greens, it makes no difference; workers just keep going backwards.
Wages as a share of GDP have fallen from $116 billion to $96 billion over 30 years. The share of our gross domestic product being paid to Australian workers is at an all-time low yet corporate profits have grown from $20 billion to $120 billion—six times. Globalist economics has crushed the wages of everyday Australians and deposited the spoils from an expanding economy into the pockets of the big end of town in salaries, bonuses and dividends. Globalist free trade agreements have seen more than one million high-paid, skilled manufacturing and heavy industry jobs moved overseas. Labor is a big fan of globalism—voting in favour of every one of these free trade agreements.
Recently the Senate voted for a UN funding bill to direct money into funding economic development in countries with which we have a free trade agreement. This facilitates increases in their productive capacity to take yet more Australian jobs. One Nation was the only party to oppose the funding bill. The Labor Party voted in favour—in favour of losing yet more jobs overseas.
COVID restrictions have had a role to play as well. The government’s COVID restrictions measures have moved consumer spending away from small businesses who employ everyday Australians to corporate retailers who pay minimum wage. Online growth has gone to Amazon, owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos. Social media are calling the COVID restrictions on businesses ‘a war on capitalism’; it is no such thing. In corporate Australia, the biggest crony capitalists have record sales, record profits and have paid higher dividends and bonuses. As a result of government coronavirus restrictions and measures, the world’s 400 richest people have increased their wealth by $1 trillion. Much of this new wealth is money that was once spent in local communities—in hardware stores, community supermarkets, butchers and grocers. This was money that held up real wages paid by local businesses to their loyal staff. Now those businesses have been forced to close or to sack workers. So the real outcome from coronavirus measures has been the largest transference of wealth from small businesses to foreign-owned or controlled corporations in Australian history. We expect this sort of thing from the globalist Liberal Party and their sell-out sidekicks—the Nationals—yet this has been brought to you by Labor in Queensland, Labor in Western Australia and Labor in Victoria. Almost every government measure during the COVID period has been waved through the Senate by the Labor Party, working in conjunction with the Liberals and Nationals.
Labor don’t get to complain now; they should have seen this coming. The only thing that was not in this profligate spending was a permanent increase in JobSeeker. The constant pressure from One Nation in this place directly with the government across many years has today had a result. One Nation will continue to stand up for everyday Australians. The destruction of wages and entitlements for Australian workers has many other causes. At the heart of the problem is supply and demand for workers. At the same time that Australia is sending jobs overseas, we are importing workers. Over the last 30 years, Australia has added 10 million new Australians. While many of these do not go into the productive economy, the bottom line is simple: we are importing workers for jobs that have already been exported to lower-cost destinations, especially China. There are more workers than jobs and that can only have the effect of reducing wages. Labor defend Australia’s high immigration rate and suggest One Nation are racists for wanting a reduction in the rate of arrivals. The use of the word ‘racist’ means they have no argument to counter us. All One Nation are doing is standing up for everyday Australians who will never get a decent pay rise a as long as the government keeps bringing in more new arrivals than there are jobs. The Rudd Labor government and the Gillard-Rudd Labor-Greens government increased permanent migration from 160,000 in 2007 to 205,000 in 2013. Labor cannot pretend to care about workers when it was Labor that initiated the largest spike in arrivals in the last 30 years.
The other issue around stagnation in real wages is foreign temporary workers. The Senate inquiry into temporary work visas found temporary migrant workers experienced widespread wage theft and gross violations of Australian minimum work standards including: failure to pay minimum wages, long work hours and lack of health and safety training leading to workplace injuries. Temporary work visa holders are being exploited to drive down wages and conditions. Indeed Bill Shorten, as minister, set the record for temporary work visas in this country, a record that Labor still holds. I don’t hear Labor complaining about this.
This may be because their beloved free trade agreements facilitate foreign workers. The Indonesian free trade agreement section 12.9 removes labour market testing and allows additional contract workers across 400 skilled occupation. It allows for 4,000 temporary working holiday-maker visas per year, and these workers are highly exploited because they’ll be deported if they lose their jobs. Wage theft is not entirely restricted to vulnerable foreign workers, although it does account for most of the cases. The problem of falling real wages, job insecurity and wage theft, which Senator Walsh mentions in this motion, results from Labor Party policies. One Nation is accused of wanting to wind the clock back. Well, on this issue we do want to wind the clock back, back to when workers got a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. We need to start putting Australia and Australians first, back to when workers settled here, became Australian citizens and contributed to the future of our marvellous country.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/O435B7KWL5Y/mqdefault.jpg180320Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2021-02-25 10:50:452021-02-25 10:55:53Labor has no solutions for IR problems
I spoke on the National water reform 2020: Productivity Commission draft report. There have been way too many desk audits from bureaucrats in the big cities, falsely declaring the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is working just fine.
I ask our rural supporters listening to this speech: when was the last time you saw someone from the Productivity Commission on your farm, asking you about how agriculture really works?
Transcript
In serving the people of Queensland and Australia, tonight I will review the National water reform 2020: Productivity Commission draft report, dated February 2021, a periodic review of the operation of the National Water Initiative. Put simply, this report is a celebration of profit over people. Let’s go through the many failings of this report.
Failing No. 1: the National Water Initiative has resulted in water being taken from family farms that were producing food and fibre for the world. Instead, large corporate agriculture purchased that water. The result has been a huge reduction in the number of family farms growing varied crops that support a wide range of local services and local communities. Commercial agriculture, also known as monoculture, uses large acreage devoted to crops like almonds, grapes or oranges. These properties are highly mechanised, reducing local employment to just a handful. Compared with family farms, corporate agriculture puts a fraction of the wealth back into local communities. The profits from corporate agriculture are moved to capital cities and then to overseas tax havens. There’s nothing in corporate agriculture for everyday Australians and their communities. The Productivity Commission celebrates this increased profit, even though it comes at a massive cost to employment and the health of regional Australia.
Failing No. 2: corporate agriculture uses its ability to run at a loss during the growth phase to purchase water at whatever price it takes. That’s forcing family farms out of the water market and ultimately off the land. This water is then moved downstream through natural constraints like the Barmah Choke in search of cheaper land. Water has to be stuffed through these constraints to meet downstream irrigation requests. The environmental devastation in the Barmah Choke, the Goulburn River and elsewhere in the connected basin is not included in the Productivity Commission’s calculations, yet protecting the national estate matters. The extra profits accruing to the big end of town must be balanced against the environmental damage that the creation of these profits causes. Money might be all that matters to the Productivity Commission. One Nation suggests it goes back and factors environmental damage into its calculations now, not at some point in the future. These natural constraints can’t wait for the next review in 10 years, as suggested on page 13, table 2. By then, the damage will be irreparable.
Failing No. 3: the Productivity Commission failed to quantify the risk to Australia’s economy from shifting agricultural production from diversified family farms to monoculture. For example, one negative movement in the price for almonds, for oranges or for table grapes—and that has happened before—will decimate billions of dollars of agricultural production. The Productivity Commission might not understand risk; One Nation does. Before the National Water Initiative corrupted the water market, Australian agriculture was resilient and diversified; not now.
Failing No.4: the report praises water trading as transparent. This government tried to introduce a transparent water scheme register in 2012, and it failed. Following this sole attempt, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority simply gave up. We do not have a national water register. Water trading is a feeding ground for ruthless water traders and speculators. If the Productivity Commission considers this system to be transparent, the Productivity Commission must be using X-ray glasses. It’s not transparent; it’s broken. Shortly, the Senate will be asked to vote on a bill to create the office of the inspector-general for water compliance. The key responsibility of this office will be to investigate water trading. Since its inception in 2007, the Water Act has provided for a water register on which to record these trades. No such water register has ever been created. The Liberal-National government continues to break its own laws. How does the inspector-general inspect water trading when there is no register of water trades? It doesn’t and it can’t. A complete, transparent, basin-wide water register is 14 years overdue and should be started immediately.
Failing No. 5: water licences, once taken from family farms through unequal economic power, are then being traded into different valleys. The Productivity Commission report applauds this. There’s no analysis in the report of the effect on the land of this changed distribution of agricultural production. Corporate agriculture is buying up marginal farmland cheaply, then miraculously it’s brought to life with water transferred from traditional agricultural areas.
This is not for cropping purposes where the land can rest. These new areas are being devoted to permanent plantings that require continuous watering and continuous run-off. The result is massive salination and environmental damage. This is a time bomb with a short fuse. Just a few years of this irresponsible agriculture due to unrestrained water trading and the issue of salination will be back in the headlines. At that time we’ll ask: how did this happen? Well, it happened because we listened to the Productivity Commission. We valued corporate profits and so-called market efficiency over careful custodianship of the land, custodianship that family farms practised for almost 200 years successfully.
Failing No. 6: custodianship of the land goes back much further than just 200 years, and the Productivity Commission has ‘provided some views on Aboriginal submissions for consideration by the committee’. Meaningless nothing words is all the Productivity Commission has to offer, because Aboriginal use of water can only be quantified by volume, not by utility. Soon after my return to the Senate in 2019, I flew over the whole Murray-Darling Basin and then toured the whole Basin, including the northern Basin, which is northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. In Wilcannia, I spoke with Aboriginal community leaders, Wadi and Eddie Harris. I thank Eddie and Wadi for explaining that their people are a river tribe. At the heart of their culture is their connection to the river, the Darling River. Kids used to spend the day in the river entertaining themselves in a healthy and constructive way. Sometimes there were fish or yabbies for dinner. Elders used to take the young ones and sit in the river and tell Dreamtime stories to encourage respect for themselves and their culture. When mismanagement drains the river, these things are not possible. River tribes can’t move downstream chasing the water; they need water where they are—there.
Wilcannia has the same problem many country towns have; their town weirs are insufficient. Wilcannia’s weir is in the wrong spot and frequently suffers blue-green algae blooms. The New South Wales government has been promising a new weir for 30 years yet still construction has not started. What a metaphor that is for the way in which the Nationals have abandoned their so-called country constituency. That’s why One Nation’s weirs for life program will build new weirs in country areas to increase water storage for human needs. One Nation listens to and engages with rural Australians, with family farms. I ask our rural supporters listening to this speech: when was the last time you saw someone from the Productivity Commission on your farm, asking you about how agriculture really works?
In summary, the Productivity Commission report into water policy does not consider the damage to rural communities. It does not consider environmental damage in a meaningful and responsive way. It does not consider the risk to Australia’s economy and exports of having billions of dollars of production tied to monoculture. It does not consider employment lost from monoculture. It does not consider the final mile of the financial transactions, where the money winds up and who pays tax on the income. It does not consider that water-trading accountability must have a transparent accurate water register. It does not consider custodianship of the land, in particular, salination from corporate agriculture’s permanent plantings in areas that are not suitable for permanent plantings. Finally, it does not consider or factor in the dislocation of Aboriginal river tribes for whom water is the centre of their culture.
There have been way too many desk audits from bureaucrats in the big cities, falsely declaring the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is working just fine. They are audits that cannot quantify environmental damage, damage to rural communities and deprivation of Aboriginal cultural use of water. These things are ignored, and a glowing report card issued—falsely. Meanwhile, the Nationals, the self-proclaimed party of the bush, is busy chasing city votes and saying ‘yes, Sir’ to the Liberals. Rural Australia can’t take this. Rural Australia has had a gutful. If the final report does not widen its calculations to include the full issues, One Nation will move to reject the report.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/WPhbpfl6fI8/mqdefault.jpg180320Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2021-02-23 14:41:352021-02-23 14:41:43NATIONAL WATER REFORM: DEAD IN THE WATER
I have little sympathy for big tech, who have been systematically censoring and silencing conservative voices for years.
However, the government has no place getting involved in a fight between the billionaires in legacy media and the billionaires in new media, yet it looks like that is exactly what our parliament is doing.
Transcript
The Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2021 is a masterclass in self-interest from both the tired old parties. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, my view is that this bill should more rightly be called the ‘Getting the News Media On Side Before the Next Election Bill’. It’s apparently co-sponsored by every party in this place that seeks to replace data based policy, fact based policy, with cynical political expediency and public gutlessness. The government has no place getting involved in a fight between the billionaires in legacy media and the billionaires in new media, yet it looks like that is exactly what our parliament is doing.
One Nation spoke with Google and we spoke with them again this morning, and it seems now that this matter has been resolved in private meetings with the government where assurances were exchanged. So Australia is now governed behind closed doors, and the people’s house, the house of review, the Senate, is simply here to rubber-stamp what is put in front of us. One Nation does not own a rubber stamp. Our many reservations about this bill remain, even if Google has found a way to work with them. It’s true that there are no clean hands in this debate.
When Facebook banned conservatives last year, the Left, or the control side of politics, applauded the move as the legitimate actions of a private company. Left or Right are useless terms; really it’s control versus freedom. The Left likes to control. Yet, when Facebook banned Australia’s left-wing news media last week, there was outrage. ‘They’re a public utility; they can’t do this to us,’ shrieked the left-wing commentariat. Perhaps Facebook got the idea of deplatforming from Channel 7 and Channel 9, who deplatformed Senator Hanson last year. Conservatives must now deal with the political Left and with a left-wing media that is so convinced of its own moral superiority that the suppression of dissenting opinions is now celebrated. The Left, the control side, have clearly not considered the norms they have created to destroy their opponents and that those same norms could one day be used against themselves.
Google is right on board with this agenda, demoting conservative websites in Google search results simply because they advocate values that everyday Australians still share and value. YouTube has cancelled thousands of conservative channels and demonetised many more to suppress our voice. Google has decided that conservatives and patriots are the enemy of their brave new world and must be silenced. Google propaganda is clearly on display in image search, where they operate to portray our world not as it is but as they wish it to be and judge that it should be. That is not their job. It’s no surprise, then, that many Australians, especially on the conservative side, have left Facebook and Google. They had it coming.
Let me be clear: One Nation is a trenchant critic of the Orwellian nightmare social media has become. Our left-wing legacy news media, though, are no better. Some sections of the left-wing legacy media print very little material that could be described as journalism and a great deal of material that could be described as propaganda. The ABC spent two years conspiring with a foreign power to prepare a story that misled viewers as to the intent of One Nation’s visit to the United States. We demanded the raw footage from the ABC to prove the story was manipulated, and the ABC refused. Truth and honesty are strangers to left-wing controlled media in this country.
One Nation is concerned about the small businesses this bill will hurt. Two examples are the Glasshouse and Maleny Country News and the Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper—small businesses that are resisting the takeover of country news by the media oligarchs and printing truth without fear or favour. These papers are not protected by this bill, which is only concerned with protecting large media organisations, who will receive extra money to continue their buy-up of country news. The National Party seem to be happy with this, once again turning their backs on their rural constituents to woo the urban bubble, marching to the Liberal wets.
Australian Associated Press—AAP, as most people would know them—are not protected by this bill, since their model is copyright based and this bill only concerns itself with financial outcomes. AAP, though, employ 80 staff, and their newsfeed supports 250 rural news organisations. The increased revenue from Google will remain with the legacy media services and not feed back to AAP. This might have something to do with the Murdoch news media’s new wire service, NCA NewsWire. They are just waiting for AAP to fall over so they can have a monopoly on news wire too. This will lead to a further consolidation of news ownership in Australia and yet more power to News Corp. Labor are supporting a process that will lead to more power for Rupert Murdoch. Kevin Rudd will be upset, won’t he! When TheBetoota Advocate sounds more like a real news site than an actual real news site does, Australian media must accept they are the agents of their own demise.
Television is also on the nose. The highest rating program on television since the Sydney Olympics was the Australian Open final way back in 2005, attracting 4.3 million viewers. The MasterChef final in 2010 rated 4.1 million. In 2020, the MasterChef final rated just 1.6 million—60 per cent less. Tent-pole programming is attracting half the audience it used to despite Australia’s growing population. When Malcolm Turnbull destroyed community TV 10 years ago, it was to force their million-strong audience back to commercial TV. That strategy has been a complete failure and must be unwound.
Print newspaper circulations are also falling. Listen to these figures, Madam Acting Deputy President. Over the last 10 years, the Herald Sun has gone from 550,000 to 303,000, a 45 per cent fall. One Nation’s great friends at Brisbane’s Courier Mail, who bash us, are down from 211,000 to 135,000, a 36 per cent fall. And, wait for it, The Sydney Morning Herald is down from 210,000 to just 78,000. That’s a 63 per cent collapse.
With a lower audience, our conglomerate media companies are in search of more revenue and now want to take Google’s. Is this the business of the Senate? This bill demonstrates a complete failure to understand how the internet works.
Let me give you an example. A startup media company trying to establish a user base would submit their news stories to Google. In return, that company, that startup, would pay Google so much per click for every person who clicked through to the startup news site. News stories cost between 20 and 50 cents a click in the Google advertising network. Over the last 20 years, Google has sent seven billion visitors to Australian news sites who, in turn, have used this traffic to monetise by showing advertising and encouraging subscriptions. If the Australian news media were paying for their traffic from Google, this bill would run into billions. This relationship, though, benefits both parties equally. So the basic assumption of the bill that there is a power imbalance is simply wrong. It is false.
Legacy media could have opted out, at any time, simply by adding a metatag to their header advising Google and other search engine crawlers to not index a page, section or entire site. News sites are not using that metatag, even though they could, because they want Google to index their stories in order to send them more traffic. Rather than paying Google for that traffic, legacy media now wants Google to pay them. We’re only having this fight now because internet search has reached the top of the exponential growth curve. The market has reached maturity, as have digital advertising and online subscriptions. The $18 billion advertising industry is now equally split between digital and real world, with little opportunity for significant growth in a post-COVID economy.
To read this bill, one would think that real-world advertising and digital advertising were interchangeable. That’s nonsense. They’re not. Online advertising is suited to short messages. Legacy media is still king of longer format advertising. For over 200 minutes of advertising consumed online, 300 minutes is consumed in the real world. Both have their role in the economy.
As with any maturing market, Australian media has narrowed ownership so much it has effectively become a cartel. This bill represents nothing more than the billionaires in the media cartel thinking they have more power than the billionaires in the social media cartel, and, with an election looming, the government has decided to pick a side—because Mr Murdoch picks sides and decides who wins. That is the history of elections, in federal parliament, in Australia. The Liberals and Nationals want that, and Labor can’t afford to let them have it. That is a terrible basis upon which to formulate public policy and legislation. The Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2021 is a solution in search of a problem and should never have come before the Senate.
Instead of propping up the industrial relations club with excessive, needlessly complex legislation, we need to simplify it. Regulations are written at the moment for the few people, employers and employees, who do the wrong thing.
They should be written for the majority of good people, the fine Australians, with severe penalties for the bad.
We need to turn it upside down: instead of penalising the 100 per cent with the ridiculous workplace arrangements, we need to penalise the real shonks, the real criminals.
Transcript
As an Australian who has been elected to serve the people of Queensland and Australia, I’m very proud to say that I have worked in many countries and I am genuinely proud of Australian workers. We have a phenomenal human resource in this country, unequalled anywhere in the world—the initiative, the hard work, the honesty and the integrity of workers in this country, and of many businesses in this country, especially small businesses, which are the engine room of our economy. More people are employed in small business than in any other sector of the economy. We need to get back the dynamism that has been lost in Australia—lost largely because of the decisions that come out of this building.
The MPI is ‘The Morrison government’s failure to address job security is giving companies that exploit workers an unfair advantage against honest employers.’Let me talk about the example in the Hunter Valley of the exploitation, the abuse and the casual discarding of people who are tossed on the scrap heap when they’re burnt out. Casuals have been exploited in the Hunter Valley by BHP, a major mining company, and Chandler Macleod Group, one of the world’s largest labour hire firms, an offshoot of Recruit Holdings from Japan, with the complicity of the Hunter Valley division of the CFMEU. It would not have happened without all three being complicit and working together.
But let’s go back to the root cause. The root of casualisation started in small business because employers were so confused by the complexity of hiring people and so confused by the complexity when there was a problem to discuss, so they went to employing casuals because it became too hard to deal with disciplinary issues in small business.
Quite often we see a small business having problems with an employee who’s stolen something from their business, and the small business owner then simply trying to address that ends up just paying $8,000 or $10,000. We heard last week from COSBOA, the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, about some companies, some small businesses, paying $20,000 in shut-up money for problems to go away. One of the root causes of the insecurity in this country is the highly complex, needlessly complex and destructive industrial relations situation.
Then what we saw was large companies taking the small business model and using casuals for a ‘try before we buy’. In other words, they would watch the casual worker on their mine site, in their business, and if he or she came up with the goods then they would hire them. That has led to extreme abuse of workers in this country. It’s led to safety hazards, which I have complained about in my submission to the Grosvenor inquiry. But in the Hunter Valley it led to miners being intimidated and being threatened with the loss of their jobs if they reported safety incidents. How stupid is a company when that happens? They’re losing that prime source of information about their company.
I want to give Mr Bukarica, the national legal adviser for the CFMEU mining division, a huge compliment. In Townsville he had the guts, the integrity and the courage to acknowledge that the Hunter Valley CFMEU is part of the problem at those mines in the Hunter Valley because they enabled casualisation to happen. I also want to give him praise because he said that the CFMEU has not done enough for casuals. Indeed, they have caused the casual issue in the Hunter Valley and the casual abuse of casuals. And he’s admitted that his union will need to do more about it.
So what we see is the mess that’s been created in the past by labour laws that have become far too complex and by the Liberals not addressing this issue in 2016 when they should have. Casuals show us the pain of people at work. Casuals are also a sign of the failed industrial relations situation—no getting away from it. What the government is doing in its latest industrial relations legislation, proposed to come before the Senate next month, is shifting the liability for that mess from large business to small business. They’re helping a couple of large companies manage their risk.
We’ve approached this differently. We’ve gone out to listen. We’ve written to 80 different organisations—employers, employee groups, unions, union bosses, welfare associations, organisations, small business groups—and we’ve asked them for their advice, their views. They have come and given us their advice. They said no-one else has invited them to do that; we’re the only ones. In addressing this legislation, we have three aims that ensure security for Australian workers, whether they be in small businesses or large businesses, and security for small businesses and large businesses.
Our three aims are to protect honest workers, to protect small businesses and to restore Australia’s productive capacity. We see the employer-employee relationship as fundamental. It is the primary workplace relationship, and that’s what’s needed to empower workers. We’ve got the best workers in the world. What’s needed is for employers and employees to work together—empowered employees and empowered employers—because that is the only way to create jobs. Government doesn’t create jobs. As much as the Labor Party and the Liberal Party talk about it, government does not create jobs. Honest workers create jobs. Small businesses create jobs. Large employers create jobs. The government creates the environment. Labor and Liberal governments have stuffed this country’s workplace environment.
The Morrison government talks about security and recovery from COVID. How can that be possible when we’ve destroyed our electricity sector? How can it be possible when we’ve got one of the worse tax systems in the world? How can it be possible when we’re not supplying the right infrastructure? How can it be possible when we haven’t got the skills development needed? How can it be possible when we’ve got overregulation? Just go and talk to people, not only small or large business employers but also employees, who are sick to death of energy prices, which have gone from the cheapest in the world to the highest in the world under this government and its predecessor, the Labor Party.
Instead of propping up the industrial relations club with excessive, needlessly complex legislation, we need to simplify it. In fact, I put that to Peter Strong when he was in my office last week. I said to him that regulations are written at the moment for the few people, employers and employees, who do the wrong thing. They should be written for the majority of good people, the fine Australians, with severe penalties for the bad. We need to turn it upside down: instead of penalising the 100 per cent with the ridiculous workplace arrangements, we need to penalise the real shonks, the real criminals. Instead of assuming people are bad—employees are bad, employers are bad—we need to free people to produce. We need to penalise and handicap those who deserve it. That’s what we need in this country: empowering, not frightening.
What we see at the moment is an IR club of big employers, big industry associations, large unions, employee consultants, employer consultants, industrial relations consultants and, above all, lawyers. Again I come back to the ETU legal adviser in Townsville, Michael Wright, and Mr Bukarica from the CFMMEU, who both said that we have far too many lawyers involved in industrial relations and that’s why it’s a mess. They both said they want fewer lawyers, that they want to remove the lawyers. Full credit to the CFMMEU mining division and full credit to the ETU for saying that. The big companies and the crooks are the ones who do the best out of the industrial relations club, because they have deep pockets and they can afford to fund the lawyers and others who live off the backs of Australian workers.
What we need to get back to is a simple workplace relationship. Will Labor make a commitment to properly and honestly reform IR? Will you? Will the Liberal Party and the National Party make a commitment to properly and honestly reform IR, to free people so that they’re free to compete with the people in Korea, China, India, Africa, Malaysia and Singapore? That’s the way to get security of employment: by empowering people. One Nation is the party of energy security and affordability. One Nation is the party of job security.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/iwyCIN3FiDk/mqdefault.jpg180320Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2021-02-23 13:35:232021-02-23 13:36:10Will the government make a commitment to actual IR reform?
My motion successfully carried today in the Senate.The government has admitted they know that our energy grid is at a critical status because of the influx of renewable energy into the system. Despite this, they continue to chase stupid green-left policies for solar and wind that will destroy the country without reliable, coal fired power.
Motion: The Senate-
notes that:
the Energy Security Board stated in January 2021 that the system security of the power grid is at a critical status after the influx of renewable energy into the system,
in February:
the River Thames froze for the first time in over 50 years,
hundreds of United States cities recorded their coldest temperatures in decades,
wind turbines in Texas froze solid, and
solar panels in Germany were blanketed in snow,
naturally variable weather events place serious strain on power grids,
relying on weather-dependent power generation to save us from weather events is a recipe for power failure, and
reliable baseload power is essential to provide safety and security for Australians; and
calls on the Government to urgently commence the construction of reliable, baseload power generation.
https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.png00Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2021-02-22 15:18:262021-02-22 15:18:26Government admits power grid is critical after influx of renewable energy
