One Nation and Pensioners on the Cashless Debit Card – Misinformation

Misinformation has been spreading that One Nation, Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts support putting pensioners on the cashless debit card. This is categorically untrue. My position on this is very clear in the HANSARD.

During debate on the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Continuation of Cashless Welfare) Bill 2020 an amendment was moved which stated:

At the end of the motion, add “, but the Senate calls on the Government to provide a commitment that no recipient of the Age Pension or a Veteran or Service Pension will be placed on the Cashless Debit Card, with the exception of those who volunteer or are referred by the Family Responsibility Commission, child protection workers, social workers or the Alcohol Mandatory Treatment Tribunal in the Northern Territory”.

Senate HANSARD, 9 December 2020

I voted YES for this amendment protecting pensioners and veterans which is shown in the official HANSARD division (voting) data, as did the Government, indicating that this commitment was accepted by them.

Senate HANSARD, 9 December 2020

With a Federal Election approaching some disingenuous actors are trying to stir up fear based on lies about One Nation. Pensions are not welfare like JobSeeker (formerly the dole) payments are.

I do not support pensioners being put on the Cashless Debit Card. My voting record on this issue couldn’t be more clear. This scare campaign against pensioners appears to have been led by Labor and activist groups aligned with them. Early in 2022, QLD State Labor MP Brittany Lauga had to apologise for misleading Parliament when she said there was a plan to put all aged pensioners on the Cashless Debit Card.

One Nation supports a raise in the Aged Pension. While the major parties will continue to play politics with the Aged Pension only One Nation can be trusted to stick to its word.

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Letter to UQ chancellor and Senate – Vax mandates destroy University credibility

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28 January 2021

Dear Mr Varghese

Your attention as a member of the University of Queensland senate is drawn to the accompanying copy of my letter to the Prime Minister discussing matters of considerable risk and concern to students and staff for whom you provide governance.  You are responsible.

Similar letters were sent to the state Premier and to state and federal health ministers.

As a board member you are a person conducting a business for the purposes of Workplace Health and Safety compliance.  Given the complete lack of longitudinal studies, ineffectiveness in stopping transmission and serious documented conflicts of interest and adverse events in relation to the COVID vaccines, your university’s vaccine mandate places UQ and you, as a member of the Senate, in a challenging position.

I wonder if you have been afforded independent or critical advice on the risks of the university’s policy of banning students and staff from campus based on Covid-injection status?

Has the UQ Risk Assessment and Management Plan identified that mandating vaccination is necessary and there are absolutely no alternatives to reducing the spread of COVID?  How could it be necessary when COVID vaccines do not stop the transmission of COVID?  Why is a Rapid Antigen Testing regime not an acceptable alternative to reduce the spread of COVID, given that a vaccinated person with a positive test result can still transmit COVID, presenting a bigger transmission risk than an unvaccinated person with a negative test result?

These are questions that UQ has not adequately answered and which you must answer to satisfy your duty of care.

A finding of misconduct on some students can mean they will effectively never be able to pursue a career in their chosen field.  What justification is there for such a heavy-handed punishment for the supposed behaviour of a student or teacher entering land and buildings which taxpayers have funded for the purpose of providing a tertiary education?

Having seen one of the surveys and the Vice-Chancellor’s letter dated 20 December 2021 to students, I am deeply concerned with the process that led to an apparent 80+% implied “acceptance” of these mandates.  The process, pressure and leading questions that the university applied to achieve this are a betrayal of critical thinking and an excursion down the slippery path of propaganda. [1]

It seems that feelings and appeals to ‘safety’ rooted in media and political statements have replaced health data, facts and objectivity.  Your students and staff have raised with me their fear that their university is destroying the original aim of university as a place for rigorous thinking, and honest and vigorous debate.

The strongest indicators of COVID mortality rate appear to be old age and pre-existing co-morbidity conditions, not vaccine status.  Perusal of Queensland’s reported COVID deaths confirms this.  Despite a vaccination rate over 90%, transmission is occurring at the highest rate ever, with Israeli studies suggesting that even four injections are not enough to stop the Omicron variant. 

Specifically, there is a distinct lack of COVID deaths among young people of tertiary student age and almost all of the few deaths in that age group are reportedly due to underlying health factors.

I know that several senior members of your university’s medical faculty are aware of significant concerns among the university community, at all levels, about the university’s mandatory vaccination policy.

Please refer to the attachment containing remarks and questions associated with the Vice Chancellor’s letter of 20 December 2021, the Risk Assessment and Management Plan and the Policy 2.60.09 COVID-19 Vaccination.

I ask, what have you done to satisfy yourself that the university’s vaccine mandates are soundly based on independent and objective empirical scientific evidence and that the mandates respect the aim of universities to be places of independent thought and critical analysis?

Our political leaders now tell us every day that we need to simply live with COVID, signalling that we are no longer in an emergency requiring declarations and mandates such as the punitive mandate that the university is enforcing.

On behalf of my constituents among the university’s students and staff, I ask that you please provide your students and staff with the respect and courtesy of a reasoned and proportionate policy that appropriately and accurately reflects quantified age-appropriate risks to students and to staff.

In view of the risk of serious adverse health effects, including death from the COVID injections, personal informed choice must be returned to students in place of your imposed risks.  This is particularly important because COVID injections are publicly acknowledged among health professionals to not offer protection from transmission to those around them on campus.

It is a hallmark of our human civilisation’s values, and notably of our health system, that wherever there is risk, there must be choice.

In regard to the COVID injections, the federal Minister for Health, Mr Greg Hunt stated, quote: “The world is engaged in the largest clinical vaccination trial.” [2] The COVID injections have been granted provisional approval based on a literature review of overseas data that pharmaceutical companies provided.  Australian health authorities have done no independent testing.  Yet on that basis the University under your governance is mandating a medical procedure with no longitudinal studies and forcing students and staff to participate in a trial – against their will. You are forcing them to inject themselves with something for which nobody knows the long-term effects.  It is essentially experimental.

Instead of being punished and exiled from your community, students who choose to analyse their individual risk profile and make their own choice should be respected and their individual autonomy and critical thinking encouraged.  I implore you to take action to oppose and dismantle the vaccine mandate at UQ and to respect individual autonomy as part of the critical thinking process necessary to every university in Australia.

There are alternatives that enable students and staff alike to be safe and to complete their studies, research and work.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely

Malcolm Roberts

Senator for Queensland

c.c.         All UQ Senate Members

[1] https://about.uq.edu.au/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccination-requirements

[2] Interview with David Speers on ABC Insiders

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The Malcolm Roberts Show – 22 January Par

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Transcript

Speaker 1:This is a Malcolm Roberts Show. On Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT.  
Ian Plimer:Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live.  
 This is Senator Malcolm Roberts from down under, fresh from my COVID bed. Yes, I had COVID. Now I have the world’s most powerful immunity, natural immunity.  
 Thank you very much for having me in your car, your lounge room, your men shed, picnic. I hasten to say that I’m not contagious. I know that some people think that telemarketers and telehealth people have to get injected before they can speak over the phone, but I can assure with 100% confidence that you will not catch anything from me over the phone, other than a dose of the truth and some outspoken speech.  
 My session on the radio is governed by two things, freedom. Specifically, freedom versus control. That is basic for human progress and livelihoods. And we’re going to have a very special guest today to talk about that.  
 The second thing that drives me is personal responsibility and the importance of integrity. That’s the basics for personal progress and livelihood.  
 Before getting to our guests, let’s just cover my show’s aims, themes, and the focus. I’m fiercely pro-human. Yes, you heard that. I am fiercely pro-human. I believe in humanity. I am tired. I’ve had a gutful of the media and politicians ragging on humans and humanity. I am proud to be one of our planet’s only species capable of logic, and capable of love and care, and quite often giving that love and care.  
 I’m also fundamentally positive. I get excited by good things that are happening, and I want to contribute to that. While we are dealing with issues that people face today, and they’re concerned about, I will encourage guests to provide solutions, lasting meaningful solutions. Instead of what’s wrong with politics, what’s needed in politics? Instead of what’s wrong with politicians, and there’s plenty, what we need in politicians? Instead of what’s wrong with the media, what’s needed in media? And we can start that with the truth.  
 We will get to the core issues, whats and all to develop solutions, because it’s only by getting into the real issues can we have real faith in the outcomes.  
 We’ll cover the human aspects, strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, failings, highlights. What makes people real?  
 The second thing about anything I do, it’s got to be data-driven. It’s got to be factual, truthful, and honest.  
 And the third thing, be blunt. We will be speaking out, calling it like it is. And I’ll be welcoming talkback callers in the near future. Currently, tntradio.live is betting down many systems. This is a truly global operation. It’s a gift to the world from the world. We’ve got hosts all over the globe, broadcasting from Belfast, London, Los Angeles, New York, Tel Aviv, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, The Bush in Australia.  
 And I want to express my deep and sincere appreciation to Mike Ryan for restoring integrity to media and to politics.  
 This radio network, this global radio network will serve the people, not control and con the people. We will serve with truth, and we will be blunt.  
 Before getting to my first guest, let’s just cover a couple of things that have happened today in the news. First of all, right around Australia, to all the people taking part in freedom marches, whether it be in Newcastle din-making, or people in Brisbane, people in Melbourne, people in Sydney, people all over, country towns, regional towns, thank you very much. And, Robert F. Kennedy, and your supporters in Washington, D.C. tomorrow on their freedom marches.  
 I have brothers-in-law coming from the Southern United States and the Northern United States meeting in Washington. They’re going to tell Biden what we think about his mandates and his coercion.  
 I’ll see people in Maryborough tomorrow because we’re having a peaceful protest in Maryborough.  
 I want to express my condolences to the family of Meat Loaf. Meat Loaf was a big part of my life. He had such a wonderful voice. He could go down so low, and then belt it out so strongly, so powerfully. He brings back many, many fabulous memories of my time listening to his music and with friends.  
 For those listening outside Australia, you probably don’t know that it’s Australia Day this coming Wednesday. That’s when we celebrate our country, or some people try to.  
 A friend of mine sent me this. “On the Mornington Peninsula, this year, they have cancelled Australia Day celebrations, yet they have not cancelled the Invasion Day celebrations. Invasion day events …” he goes on to say, ” … are free for the indigenous and $39 for the non-indigenous. They’re setting up two countries, one against the other.”  
 Another news item. China coal production in the month of December alone, 384 billion tonnes in one month. China is by far the world’s largest producer of coal now, and it’s thriving because of it. Australia producers just under 500 million tonnes in a year. Our production is around 11% of what China’s is, basically, one tenth, yet we’re trying to gut our economy, thanks to the Liberal Labour Nationals and Greens. What the hell is going on? China will produce 10 times as much coal as we will. And our politicians want to gut our country. This is ridiculous. And my first guest will be talking about this and many other things.  
 Then we’ve got news that the Bureau of Meteorology has, wait for it, remodelled Australia’s official temperature record for the third time in nine years, and found things to be warmer than thermometer readings had measured.  
 The Bureau did not announce the changes, but details of them were published on the Bureau’s website. So we’ve got to sneak around trying to catch them out, because they won’t talk about it boldly.  
 Jennifer Marohasy, a noted scientist in this country, a fighter for truth has said this, “The bureau has now remodelled the national temperature data set three times in just nine years.” Do they have no confidence in their own revisions and modelling? They have to keep cooling the past and warming the present? Why aren’t they doing an independent open transparent scrutiny of all of this work that they’re supposedly doing to fabricate global warming?  
 My first guest, fittingly, is a true scientist and a remarkable human being with a remarkable sense of humour, and engaging lively real personality, and a wicked sense of humour. He’s won many international awards and recognition, but this man is no ivory tower preacher, no ivory tower academic. He’s a real world man, who gets down in the mud, wrestles, argues, debates in the bush, pubs, exploration camps, politicians offices, street corners, corporate headquarters, media, academics, anywhere. He’ll take on anyone anywhere. This man, Professor Ian Plimer has dismantled frauds wherever they appear. Welcome, Ian.  
 Well, thank you for having me, Malcolm.  
Malcolm Roberts:Always a pleasure, mate. I’ve known you for a few years now. I always start with something, and we’ll talk about the reasons for this later, what do you appreciate?  
Ian Plimer:Being alive. I’ve had many chances to die, but I think the devil has taken a good look at me and thought, “My God, the competition’s too great, so I’ll leave that one.”  
Malcolm Roberts:Right. Now, you are famous as a scientist, and as a speaker, and as a fighter for humanity. What is science?  
Ian Plimer:Science is married to evidence, and that evidence comes from experiment, it comes from observation, and it comes from calculation. It comes from, basically, collecting data. Now, that data, if it’s collected in Peru, or Poland, or Chad, or Canada, it makes no difference. It is data. And that data has to be reproducible. It has to be in accord with all other validated data.  
 And if it’s not in accord, then any conclusions based on the data are rejected. So science has a habit of rejecting old theories and building stronger, more valid theories. It is a way of understanding how the world works. And it is very much different from religion, which is an understanding of the world within, and science is an understanding of the world without.  
 And scientific ideas are always challenged. There is no such thing as consensus in science. There is no such thing as agreement in science. There are fads, and fashions, and fools, and frauds in science, the same as in any other area. And just because someone arrogantly struts around with a white lab coat, stroking their beard, and trying to look intelligent, doesn’t mean that what they’re promoting is correct.  
 Now, science is always changing, and so, to have a scientific concept wedded over time is non-scientific. And I argue that there are many things in today’s world that are not scientific.  
Malcolm Roberts:Well, Ian, fabulous discussion by the way. But perhaps we can bring it back to every-day lives these days, because a typical person today living on welfare, a welfare recipient … that’s not being denigrating, that’s someone saying is down on his luck at the moment, or her luck … a typical person on welfare today lives better than a king or queen did 200 years ago, longer lives, easier lives, healthier lives, safer lives, more comfortable lives, more entertaining lives, more diverse lives. Science gave us this, didn’t it?  
Ian Plimer:Yes. By every measure, we are living better than we did hundreds of years ago. The world’s gross domestic product and per capita GDP has gone up. The global population in absolute poverty’s gone down. The food supply has gone up. The tree cover’s gone up. The global urban population has gone up. Democracies, a number of democracies around the world has gone up. The deaths from natural disasters has gone down. And the list is a very, very long one.  
 We are living in far better times now than our great-grandparents did. And the reason for this is, that we’ve created potable water, we’ve created good sewage systems, we’ve created employment such that animals and humans don’t do the backbreaking work, that we have machines to do that now.  
 And so, we are living in an age where we have benefited from science … and you are an engineer, trained as an engineer … and from the application of science, which is engineering. And we are living in a far, far, better world than any generation has.  
 Now, we’ve had about 20,000 generations of humans on planet earth, and it is only the last four generations, where we’ve had an increase in longevity, and that is due to better science. But, not only medicine, due to the fundamentals by having a sewage system, by having drinking water that doesn’t kill you, these are the fundamentals.  
 And for people that moan and grown about how terrible the planet is, and how we’ve ruined it, should actually take a look at history. We have never, as humans, lived in better times, we’ve never eaten better, we’ve never had more shelter, we’ve never had more ability to travel. And that doesn’t matter, whether you live in Africa, or India, or the West, we are living in the best times ever to be a human.  
 And, yes, we have plenty of humans that need to be dragged up to the level that those in the West have, but the best way to get out of poverty is to get wealthy. And one of the ways of getting wealthy is to have a very cheap and reliable energy system. The West has done this, the UK, the U.S., and Europe have all gone from miserable poverty to living comfortable lives by having cheap reliable energy.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, science to me is something profound, something beautiful. It’s done, not only what you’ve just said in terms of our health and our opportunities, but it’s given us something even more fundamental, and that is freedom through objectivity. It is fundamental for freedom, isn’t it? Science.  
Ian Plimer:I think so. It provides you with the absolute tools that you need for freedom, and that is criticism, analysis, argument, and these must be unconstrained. And this doesn’t happen in some areas of science today. And we see that with the science on COVID, the science on climate. There is no freedom there. There is no ability to be able to express different views. That’s what we had in the past.  
 And we saw that with Lysenko, in Russia. Lysenko was a peasant. He managed to get into the establishment, and he established a concept called vernalization, and this is where seeds of plants must be persuaded to take on the communist characteristics, where they’re all equal.  
 And Stalin absolutely fell in love with this idea. The end result of that was that tens of millions of people died in famines. Those people who were engaged in genetics, those people who were engaged in trying to create better plant yields by using science were banished to the Gulags, some of them were killed. And this is a very good example of where science has not allowed freedom, where we’ve had one concept rule, and the end result was poverty, and tens of billions of people starving to death quite unnecessarily.  
Malcolm Roberts:I think we’re going for an ad break now, Professor Plimer, and we’ll be back in just a minute or so.  
Malcolm Roberts:This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, coming to you from Gold Coast in Queensland’s remarkable playground. And I have with me a special guest, Professor Ian Plimer.  
 Ian, science is more than just a word, it’s a process, a method, and as you’ve said, it never ends. We used to have science-driven policy, we now have, as you alluded to, policy-driven science, can you explain why that’s dangerous?  
Ian Plimer:Well, I think it’s extraordinary dangerous, because you do not get an independent conclusion on reality. And a lot of policy is driven by fairly young people in government offices who have gone straight from university into a government office, or into a union, or into a political office, and these people have absolutely no life experience.  
 And science is a constant questioning. Once you have a policy set in concrete, you are incapable of questioning it. The system doesn’t allow you to do it. And we have that with a couple of aspects in today’s modern world. So I very much reject the idea of policy-driven science. I would rather have facts, and I would rather have facts that are underpinned by the scientific method.  
 Now, policy-driven science is, in fact, having an opinion. I don’t have an opinion, I don’t have an opinion at all. I have facts. And if you want to challenge me on the facts, then we come to an argument about how we collected those facts, who collected those facts, where they were collected, what instruments were used, what was the order of accuracy? What corrections might have been used in collecting these facts.  
 So, I think we are facing fairly bad times when we are not looking at facts. When we have one group of people saying, “Oh, well you have your facts, and I have my facts.” I’m sorry, facts. There’s only one thing. It’s a fact. And that fact is reproducible. That fact can be validated. And if it’s not validated, then it gets thrown out. That is the basis of science.  
 And we have abandoned the scientific method in so many areas of our life. Medicine would be one of them, climate change would be another one of them. And if we had policy-driven engineering, you can imagine how many bridges would fall down, or how many aeroplanes  would crash. I mean, this is just absolute nuts.  
Malcolm Roberts:So you’re a scientist of the real world. Now, you are one of the most qualified scientists in the world. You’re esteemed. You’ve been given awards. You’ve been showered with praise for, not only your scientific integrity, but your guts, because you are a scientist who gets out in the pubs, and actually talks to people, listens to people. Above all, listens, because that’s another form of observation. You get into debates … you don’t hide from these things … you get into debates, where you flesh ideas out. What are your greatest qualifications, life qualifications, Ian?  
Ian Plimer:My greatest life qualifications is that I’ve worked underground. I absolutely love working in underground mines. And, there, you’ve got safety constantly in the forefront of your mind, but you are dealing with real people, and you can’t afford to be dealing with anything else. But, reality, when you are underground, these are real people, these people know how you convert a rock into money. It’s the same as if you’re on a farm, you’re converting soil into food or fibre. These are the real people. And I spent a lot of my time with real people.  
 Yes, I spent a lot of my life in the academic world, but that was also pretty uncomfortable because I was a square peg in a round hole. And none of the academics loved me, but the students absolutely loved me because I told it as it is.  
 So, when you’re underground, you’re in a totally different world. It’s a three-dimensional world. If you want to find some more oil, you have to use basic principle of physics, and chemistry, and geology. You have to understand how the rocks move. When you’re underground there’s always a bit of noise, the rocks are creaky and groaning. The miners say the rocks talk to you. So that was probably the greatest learning experience for me.  
 The other was working out in the bush and getting my hands dirty out in the deserts. And I have a great affinity for desert. I have a couple of places, houses out in the desert, and I absolutely love the desert. And this is unforgiving, if you make a mistake, you are dead. If you make a mistake underground, you are dead. If you make a mistake as a climate scientist, you get promoted.  
Malcolm Roberts:What an absolutely amazing explanation. And I share it with you, because when I graduated as a mining engineer with honours in 1976, I decided I better go and learn something. So I’ve worked as an underground coal miner and one open cut mine, but mainly underground around the country, mixing with people, learning about people, learning about underground.  
 And it is such a challenging place to be. It is such a wonderful teamwork environment to be. Surface mining, large open cuts, that’s just dirt shifting, Ian. We know that. But underground, that’s real mining.  
 And where did you learn to have your love of argument, because you just love argument. I’ve seen you run away from nothing. Why do you love an argument?  
Ian Plimer:Well, that, of course, goes right back to my childhood. I was always a little bit of a rebel with a number of things. I had relatives, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers who were scientists, but also quite argumentative.  
 And my life was opened up when I was married, and my wife saw the potential, and gave me the freedom to argue and to fight. And this is how freedom, and argument, and science all come together.  
 Now, in terms of having debates, the one group of people who will not debate me are climate scientists. They will not debate me because I don’t use political policy, I don’t use opinion, I use facts. And you cannot get a climate scientist to stand up in public, and debate me, and then face questions after the debate. They will not do it. And I know why, because they are being funded to pursue the biggest scientific scam we’ve ever seen in the history of the planets.  
Malcolm Roberts:Correct. And I saw you and Viscount Monckton dismantle two members of the media in Brisbane several years ago. I think one of the poor fellows, Graham Readfearn, I think that was his name, just absolutely hopeless, you just tore him to shreds, so much so that his employer, The Courier-Mail, I think sacked him not long afterwards. Absolutely disgraceful presentation from him.  
Ian Plimer:But he’s still employed. He’s employed by The Guardian, and still writes the same codswallop that is going on with there. So there is the warning, no matter how hopeless you are, there is always something for you. And if you’re really hopeless, the left will look after you. If you’re absolutely extraordinarily unbelievably hopeless, the extreme left will look after you. And that’s what’s happened to Graham Readfearn.  
Malcolm Roberts:That’s absolutely so accurate, what you’ve just said. You have mentioned empirical evidence, the hard data, the observations, because your advice sometimes leads to the expenditure of billions of dollars, and your employers are not happy if it’s wasted. And you are held accountable because you’re working in industry, you’re working in academia, and you’re working in the community at large. You’ve worked in the global community.  
 What we’ve seen now is that science has been reduced to a label. It’s no longer a process, it’s no longer a methodology. It’s a label to justify policies that contradict hard data.  
Ian Plimer:Well, let me give an example. We have had trillions spent globally dealing with human-induced global warming. And what you do in science, is ask really simple questions. You don’t need to use nomenclature, you don’t need to use complex words, you don’t need to hide behind a lab coat and pretending you’re important. Just ask a simple question. And you’ve got to be polite. The simple question is, can you please show me that the human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming?  
 Now this has never been shown. You have pursued that in senate’s estimates committee meeting with Australia’s premier scientific organisation, the CSIRO.  
Malcolm Roberts:Premier?  
Ian Plimer:Well, they were ones-  
Malcolm Roberts:Bloody hopeless on climate, Professor Plimer.  
Ian Plimer:They were once a premier organisation in things like genetics, and wheat, and water, but they have now suffered from being woke, and they have suffered from being dragged into getting extra funding by following the climate line.  
 Now, that question, can you please show me that the human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming, it has never been answered. I have asked people who claim to be scientists, just give me half a dozen scientific papers showing that? I have asked journalists, can you please show me that? They can’t.  
 Now, of course, the next question is, if they could, you would then have to ask the next question. And 3% of all emissions of carbon dioxide are from humans, the other 90% is natural. And you then have to ask the next question, can you please show me why the 97% of natural emissions do not drive global warming? So it’s checkmate before the game even starts.  
 Now, these people who call themselves climate scientists, and these can vary from anything, from influencers, to lawyers, to sociologists, to historians, to mathematicians, and on we go, the whole basis of human-induced global warming has never been challenged. And as a result of that, we’ve had this massive waste of trillions of dollars.  
 Now, what flows on from that are these monstrosities like wind turbines. Now, to make a wind turbine, the amount of energy to make that is more than it will ever deliver in its workable life.  
 The second thing is, that the amount of carbon dioxide to make it and maintain it, is more than it will ever save. So why bother? And then when you’ve got these wind turbines, which have a fairly short life of about 15 years, they need to be disposed of after their working life.  
 And when you dispose of turbine blades, you start to contaminate the environment with some dreadful toxins. So you cannot claim that these burden, bat munching, scenery destroying monstrosities have anything to do with the environment. And the way to understand the way that climate industry works is follow the money. Just have a look at who is behind these wind turbines. If one country starts with C and finishes with A.  
 And then we look at the solar PV systems. Now these destroy huge amounts of [inaudible], and you have to clear a lot of [inaudible], that’s surely not environmental. To make them, again, use far more energy than they will ever release. They also emit, in the making of them, more carbon dioxide than they’ll ever save.  
 You can’t have solar power 24 hours a day. We can, but I’ll come to that in a second. When you dispose of those, you start to contaminate the environment with all sorts of toxins, of gallium, and germanium, and arsenic, and selenium, and tellurium. All the things that, of course, make your hair curl and kill you.  
 But just to show you what a scam, the whole business is, we have solar power generation in Spain at night. Now, the Spanish are absolutely wonderful, but to generate solar electricity at night? And you scratch yourself, and you think, well, how the hell do we do that?  
 The answer’s simple. In Spain, the solar panels are illuminated with floodlights from diesel generators because the subsidies are so great that they can make money out of generating solar power at night. And that demonstrates that we have got a total scam in solar and in wind power generation. Now that scam is coming towards the end of its subsidy life and solar and wind power don’t generate electricity. They generate subsidies.  
 And towards the end of the life, now the boys have got to think of something else. So they’re thinking of offshore wind, which is wonderful, you reduce the life of the equipment even more with the saline attack. You also now see people saying, “Hmm, I wonder if we can use this gas, hydrogen?”  
 Now people have tried to use hydrogen 100 years ago and it failed. It failed for three reasons. First, it’s super expensive. Secondly, there’re massive energy losses in making hydrogen, which doesn’t occur in large quantities naturally. And, thirdly, it has to be transported at -253 degrees Celsius and 700 times atmospheric pressure. Now, that is a bomb waiting to happen.  
 So the same people who are scamming on wind and solar, are the people now who are shifting into hydrogen saying, “Oh, we’ve got to try this wonderful new fuel.” Well, it has been tried and it has failed.  
 And in my latest book called Green Murder … and check it out on greenmurder.com … in my latest book, I go into all the details on this and other scams.  
 And this is how we’ve wasted trillions of dollars, and it’s been a slimy approach, every single person who’s paying an electricity bill gets a little slice taken off, and that goes to the scamsters. And this ends up in trillions of dollars in subsidies, trillions of dollars getting paid to people who are only interested in making money rather than providing long-term stable electricity.  
 And if it’s cheap, then it generates employment. And if you have employment generated, then you have less people on the dole queues. And if you have fewer people on the dole queues, then your economy thrives. It’s pretty simple. And we have been conned because we’re so wealthy, because we’re so comfortable, and people have said, “Oh, I can afford to pay a few more dollars because it makes me morally feel better.”  
 And in this book, Green Murder, I argue about the morality of The Green position. And I will give you just one or two examples. For example, if you are wanting to put in wind or solar, then the solar panels have a very good chance of being made by slave labour in China.  
 The wind companies and wind turbines are made by Chinese companies who are destroying the long-term, stable, cheap electricity, be that nuclear, be that coal, be that gas, be that hydro, and replacing it with what they call renewable energy, and I call it unreliable energy, because we once had cheap reliable energy. So there is a scam. And that is weakening the West, and it’s seriously weakening countries like the U.S., and the UK, and Germany.  
 And we can see now the disaster that has occurred in Germany. This is one of the G20 countries, yet we have people getting cut off from their power source because they can’t afford to pay the exorbitant prices. They are now going foraging in the forests to get wood, to keep themselves warm, and to cook. That’s in Germany.  
 In England, you have a choice, do I have a hot shower, or do I heat the house, or do I have a warm meal? I can’t have all three, I can only have one of them. That is a G20 country that’s committed suicide on this green murder path they’ve chosen.  
 And if you, as a wonderful Green, if you think, oh, I want to save the environment and drive an electric vehicle, well, start to look at the resources you use. We haven’t found them yet. And I’ve spent a lot of my time in exploration in a lot of countries, and we have not found the resources we need to put all of the U.S. hydrocarbon-driven vehicles off the road and have them as EVs. We haven’t found the resources. We haven’t got the copper, we haven’t got the lithium, we haven’t got the nickel, we haven’t got the cobalt.  
 But assume you are living in Los Angeles, and you want to be a moral virtue signaler, and get yourself an electric vehicle, well, you’re only constrained to the city, you can’t drive any further. You couldn’t drive to Nevada in an EV. You just couldn’t charge it up. And if you did, for a 500 mile trip, you’d have to stop 3 or 4 times to charge up the vehicle. It’s just totally ineffective.  
 But if you are going to moralise about driving electric vehicle, you have to ask a few questions. Where does the cobalt for your electric vehicle come from? About 80% of the world’s cobalt comes from the Congo, and it’s mined by Black slave children underground, in conditions that are extraordinary dangerous, and where there are toxins everywhere.  
 And if you want to claim that you are moral in driving electric vehicle, you also have to be aware that you are supporting Black child slave labour in the Congo. You can’t have it both ways.  
 So I argue that there is no science behind The Greens position on climate, and I argue that there’s no morality behind The Greens position on climate. You can’t have it both ways. And so, we have to, I think, be fairly blunt, and fairly robust when we argue with people who claim that they want to save the planet. What are they saving it from? Who are they saving it from? Follow the money and follow the morality causes.  
Malcolm Roberts:Ian, the fundamental thing, as I understand it, for driving human progress, there are eight of them. First of all, is freedom. That is determined by science because science gives us objectivity. The second one is rule of law. Third one is constitutional succession, so that we have a smooth ongoing form of government and elected democracy. The fourth one is secure property rights. The fifth one is cheap, abundant, affordable, electricity, or energy, both forms, hydrocarbon and electricity. The next one is family. A strong family network. The next one is honest money. And the last is, of the eight, that I carry around in my head, is, a fair, efficient, honest taxation system.  
 This climate scam, as you have talked about it so accurately, is an assault on every one of those eight fundamentals of human progress. In particular, what we’ve seen in the last 200 years, last 170 years, in particular, is a relentless reduction in electricity prices and energy prices, to the point where each reduction in real terms leads to an increase in productivity.  
 That was until about three decades ago, when the lunatics in the West fared by China, pumping wind and solar generators at us, have destroyed our electricity sector. Australia has gone from being the cheapest electricity in the world, to the most expensive. That means that we export our jobs to China, our future to China, our independence to China. We become dependent on China. Isn’t it a fundamental travesty against generations not yet born, to destroy our country’s manufacturing capability, to destroy our country’s economy, when the Chinese themselves are pumping out almost 10 times as much coal as we produce in total each year? This is insane.  
Ian Plimer:Well, there’s a couple of points here. We have a coal-rich country called India. And, yes, they have some rather shabby transport systems, but they have a lot of coal. And there has been a huge amount of pressure on India and on Africa not to have coal-fired power generation. And so, people live in huts, they burn dung, and twigs, and leaves for heating and for cooking. And, as a result, there’re millions of women and children, every year, die because of that form of energy. So the cheap electricity that people in Africa and India deserve is denied by moralising greens, who are actually killing people by their policies.  
 The second thing is that, I’m very pleased that countries like China have had the industrial revolution. The UK, the Europe, and the U.S. have had their industrial revolutions that brought people out of poverty, that enabled people to live longer, that gave a lot of meaningful work. It actually created all sorts of new jobs. China is undergoing that industrial revolution, and undergoing it very, very quickly. And, in China, we’ve probably had the greatest movement of people, and the greatest economic rise that the world has ever seen. And I think that’s fabulous for the average Chinese person.  
 But the greens tell us the downside is the pumping out of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Well, have I got news for you? We have had a slight increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 30 years. And satellite information is showing us that the planet has greened up. Our crops have become more prolific. Now, that’s partly due to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because carbon dioxide is plant food, but it’s partly due to better fertilisers, and better farming techniques. So we have very good evidence that carbon dioxide is good for you.  
 We have evidence from the Second World War, from the global financial crisis, and from the COVID crisis, when we’ve had a backwardation of economic activity, that we’ve had carbon dioxide continue to increase. So there’s been less carbon dioxide coming out of industry, yet we’ve had a global increase in carbon dioxide. And that’s telling us that the dominant source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is from degassing of the oceans, it’s not from industry, it’s not from human activities.  
 And, thirdly, in the geological past, we’ve had times when the atmospheric carbon dioxide was up to 100 times higher than now. And what did we have then? We didn’t have runaway global warming, we actually had ice ages. And six of the six ice ages, this planet has enjoyed, was started when we had more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now. So you cannot ignore that huge body of evidence from the past telling us that in geological times, carbon dioxide was much, much higher, and we yet we had ice ages during these periods of high carbon dioxide.  
 And the fourth point is, ice core drilling, it’s shown on one scale that is a correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature. But when you look on a much closer scale, we see something that we all know from chemistry, but it tends to get ignored, and that is, that, when we have a natural warming event, anything from 650 to 1600 years later, we then have an increase in carbon dioxide. So it’s not that carbon dioxide drives the temperature increase, it’s the exact inverse, the temperature is actually driving a carbon dioxide increase.  
 And this is why I argue, that those who call themselves climate scientists are milking the taxpayer to keep themselves in a job because they’re in effect unemployable. And we are being frightened as humans to accept this concept that we are going to fry and die, yet we’ve had periods of time when it’s been much warmer, yet we’ve had periods of time we’ve had much higher carbon dioxide.  
 And just during the time when we humans, Homo sapiens, have been on the planet, we have experienced many periods of cooling in glaciation and warming in interglacial. And in the last 20,000 years, we have gone from the zenith of a glaciation, where most of the U.S., most of all of Canada, most of Northern Europe, and England were covered by ice. A lot of the southern hemisphere was covered by ice.  
 Those areas that weren’t covered by ice were deserts with howling winds, bring salt-laden air, and shifting sand dunes. And these are the great Loess plains of Asia. There’s a great sand dune country of inland Australia.  
 And we humans have endured that. And we came out of that great glaciation event about 12,000 years ago. And temperature increased, it then suddenly plummeted, and then went up again by about 15 degrees in about 10 years. Now that’s real global warming. Then it stayed static for a while, then it dropped again, then it went up again.  
 And then we had, what was called the Holocene optimum, from about 7,000 to 4,000 years ago. And it was a couple of degrees up to 5 degrees warmer then than now. Sea level was higher than now. And over the last 5,000 years, global temperature has been decreasing. We are coming out of the interglacial into the next inevitable glaciation. We’ve actually been cooling. But during that cooling period, we had warm spikes like the Roman Warming in the dark ages when it was cool. Then another warm spike in the mediaeval warming, then a cool period in the little ice age, and then the modern warming. And we’re coming out of that modern warming into another cool period.  
 So if you ignore the past, and if you ignore all the sciences that deal with the past, you can come up with an unvalidated idea that human emissions drive global warming. I say that is false. I say that the promotion of that is done by people who are modellers, who do not look at the science of the past. And we know, that from 30 years of models, not one of these models is in accord with what we measured over the last 30 years.  
 And if I have the choice as a scientist, between a model and a measurement, I will take a measurement any day because a model is a garbage in, garbage out process. And a model, basically doesn’t deal with the unknown unknowns, whereas measurement can be replicated measurement. We argue about the order of accuracy, but it’s still measurement. So, that’s the answer to your question. God knows what the question was.  
Malcolm Roberts:That was fabulous. I want to remind you of two recent episodes in human history. The first occurred in 2008, the global financial crisis. It led to a downturn around the world. Australia wasn’t hit because we were living off the Chinese minerals boom, but most of the world was hit. And it’s certainly a global recession, very severe recession.  
 So the actual use of hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil, gas decreased in 2009 compared with 2008 in the recession. That meant there was less carbon dioxide produced in 2009 than in 2008. And yet, Professor Plimer, as you have so accurately stated, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued to increase.  
 Then we marched forward to 2020 when we had a global, almost a depression due to the COVID restrictions, the government imposed COVID restrictions, not due to COVID, due to government-imposed COVID restrictions. We saw, again, a reduction in the use of coal, oil, and gas compared with the previous year 2019, we saw a decrease in the human production of carbon dioxide, and yet the global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continue to increase, which just shows two things.  
 First of all, we have no say in what is the level of global carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. None at all. We can gut our economy and it will have no effect on it whatsoever. So we can gut the West and let China keep producing carbon dioxide, let India keep producing carbon dioxide because they have a duty to their citizens to lift them out of poverty, and to give them the trappings of modern civilization, there’ll be nothing we can do. And besides that, carbon dioxide, as you’ve said, is a plant fertiliser it’s plant food. It is essential to all life on this planet, is it not?  
Ian Plimer:Yeah. Just to add to that, these two examples you gave are examples of the scientific method. We’ve had two great unintentional global experiments, global financial crisis, and COVID, and these were great global experiments. So it’s not that we’ve done the experiment once, we’ve actually replicated it. And in both cases, we have shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide do not drive global temperature. And in fact, global temperature depends upon whether you measure it on the ground, and if it’s measured on the ground, then what a wonderful opportunity you have to cook the books and change results. And that’s what happens almost universally with cooling the past and warmingly the present.  
 But when you look at the satellite measurements, and there are three basic sets of satellite data, it shows a very different story. So I would much prefer to have a uniform measurement at all altitudes around the whole planet that tell me about the temperature rather than having selected people entrusted with looking after a surface measurement, and then changing it over time. And as you mentioned, the Bureau of Meteorology has done that three times over the last nine years, which creates all sorts of uncertainty about whether they’re worth a million dollars a day.  
 So we’ve had these two great global experiments, which in my mind prove that human emissions of carbon dioxide did not drive global warming. So, why bother? Why bother? Why don’t we, as Western countries, say, we are very happy to look after our environment. And the only countries with good environmental policies preserving the environment [inaudible] have become wealthy due to the industrial revolution.  
 And this thing you can do for our environment [inaudible] what you consider is worth preserving. We should be very pleased China [inaudible] ahead and becoming a wealthy country. As a result, they will [inaudible] pollution. And I think China and India should [inaudible] people.  
Malcolm Roberts:What you’re saying, Professor Plimer, is that, we need to restore scientific integrity to protect freedom, to protect our natural and environment, because scientific development and understanding has enabled us to protect our natural environment.  
 Science also then is vital for sound sustainable policy, which impacts people’s economies, and lives, and livelihoods, and security. And it’s also to protect the human spirit by ending the unfounded climate fear and guilt while restoring our connection with nature.  
 Something I think is really important to human progress is strength of character. You display it in spades. Whenever you speak, you’re fearless, but you’re also passionate. Why are you so proud of being a human, and what traits in humanity, are of concern to you?  
Ian Plimer:You’ve asked me 17 questions there, so let me just comment on a couple of things. You spoke about protecting the environment. I’m a great supporter of that, because I’ve bought a considerable acreage of land to protect it. But I’m not conserving it, because how can you conserve the environment on a planet that’s dynamic and it’s always changing? So we can protect what we have and let nature do its bit.  
 In terms of fear, we, humans, are hardwired to fear that grizzly bear that’s behind you and is going to come and get you. We are hardwired to have an adrenaline rush to save ourselves. This is a fundamental trait of humans and of many, many other animals. So fear is still hardwired into our system. And the fear that has been induced in populations, by governments on matters such as COVID or climate, they have been exploiting that fundamental human characteristic of fear.  
 And in many cases, you fear because you do not understand. Science gives you a method of being able to understand. And if you can understand, then you are not nearly as fearful.  
 Now, I am very passionate because my early life I started being interested in the planet and geology, when I was about four. And I had some very good mentors, and I’ve been guided well through life. And I’m mentoring, I think 8 or 10 people now, giving back the same way it was given to me.  
 But if you can understand how the planet works, if you can understand the past, then this is far more exciting than-  
Malcolm Roberts:We’re going to have to call it off, Professor Plimer. This is Professor Ian Plimer, guest of Senator Malcolm Roberts.  
 

Part 2
 

Speaker 1:You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on today’s News Talk Radio TNT.  
Malcolm Roberts:Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT radio.live. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts from the Gold Coast broadcasting globally. Fresh from my COVID bed a week ago, I had COVID, now I have the world’s most powerful immunity, all natural. I want to call out to the people marching around our country today. And in fact, around the world for protesting or reinforcing freedom. I’ll see you in Maryborough tomorrow for the protest at Maryborough. And I look forward very much to being up in Maryborough. I want to express my condolences to the family of Meatloaf who died last night. He brings back very fond memories. I love his music, that the way he can go from something, belting something out to just something so soft and tender.  
 We have Australia Day coming up this Wednesday in our country, celebrating our national day. On the Mornington Peninsula, friends send me this: on the Mornington Peninsula this year, they have cancelled Australia Day celebrations, yet not cancelled Invasion Day celebrations. Invasion Day events are free for indigenous and $39 for a non-indigenous. See what people are doing? They’re setting up division. That’s quite often what’s happening around our planet. The globalists are pushing division.  
 Last hour, I had the honour of having professor Ian Plimer as my guest, a highly intelligent, very practical man. I, now introduce another highly intelligent, very practical man. John McRae, his voice is known all over Sydney, all over New South Wales, all over Australia. He’s even tied up Alan Jones in arguments at times. This man has got the knowledge about our country and about our potential and our history. I have enormous respect for John, his knowledge, his passion for Australia. His memory; it’s like an iron trap. I can remember meeting John for the first time around about 2011 and what a character.  
 He opened up to me Australia’s successful past in so many fields. His memory would just showered me in facts. He gave me an introduction to books from people like Anthony Sutton, who wrote three books about Wall Street and the damage that Wall Street does. Above all though, his diverse stories, his practical knowledge of factories in Sydney, banking, his knowledge of farming, his knowledge of our history, his knowledge and introduction to people like Graham Strachan, who has done so much to publicise what the globalists are trying to do to our country to destroy it. He’s made public presentations informing residents across New South Wales. He’s worked in so many diverse industries. He shares with me a time and working as an underground coal miner. John, welcome to the show.  
John McRae:Thank you very much, Malcolm.  
Malcolm Roberts:Mate, first simple question. [crosstalk] First simple question for you, John, what do you appreciate?  
John McRae:I appreciate what you’ve just done. One thing, what you’ve just done a moment ago, having that brilliant man on radio, expanding the truth, the fact and the science, as opposed to the lies and the deceit that we are being fed from parliament and from so-called academics that are on the gravy train payroll. And he exploded all their theories and I enjoyed it immensely. I should have been brushing up with my own memory, but I enjoyed it. You’ve got to get him back on. You’ve got to advertise it, that he’s on there, so people can get the truth.  
Malcolm Roberts:John, you’ve always been pushing the truth. You just like professor Ian Plimer. You never run away from an argument. You know how to deal with people because you apply same basic strategy that Ian does. You use facts and data. Could you tell us something about past accomplishments? I’m thinking particularly about the Kalgoorlie pipeline and look, mate, we know that sometimes Sydney Radio tries to shut you down because you’re just too good for them. I want you to talk. I want you to spill the goods on this country. So, just do what you’re doing. Just tell it as it is. Away you go, mate.  
John McRae:You want to know about the pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie?  
Malcolm Roberts:Yes.  
John McRae:Firstly, I’ll say this. Australia is the richest country in the world with 75 of the 77 minerals our world requires we’ve got them in abundance, but we’ve a crazy wombats running the joint. The Perth to Kalgoorlie pipeline exemplified that. 1896 to 1903, it is still regarded as the greatest hydraulic achievement ever in the world. They pump water from Perth to Coolgardie originally, because a bloke, they found gold at Coolgardie, but then Patty Henon found it in 1892 at Kalgoorlie. And that started the gold rush. And people came from everywhere to get money out of the gold rush and people were dying because they had no water and things like that. So, they were condensing water and it’s replication of what’s happening in Australia today, the money people started condensing water to supply the people at the goldfield, but it was wasn’t enough because it needs a thousand gallons of water to refine one tonne of ore.  
 So, they were opposing the pipeline, the men that come up with this idea , John Forest. So John Forest was the premier and he borrowed money from England, 2,500 Pound… 2,500,000 Pound. Now remember that figure because I’m going to give you a figure later on as we go, that’ll shock you. And they got Alberton O’Connor to do it. He was an Irish engineer and they brought him over to do the railway lines. And they said, “We need water.” Now you’ve got to get over the Flinders Ranges into Barron land desert, but it’s not desert. It’s rich, red basalt soil. Let’s say you’re up in Queensland, you’ve got black basalt soil, that’s the indication of the volcanic reaction and the formation of Australia.  
 He then put together some smart people. This is 1896. It’s got to go 500 kilometres and the first pump up was 390 metres. In actual fact, Kalgoorlie is about four or 500 feet higher than Perth. So it’s going to be pumped all the way over the Flinders Ranges. 3000 people worked on it. Population of Australia was about four and a half, 5 million. So they had 70,000 plates of steel was imported from England and Germany, but what he had to do was build the harbour first to get the ships, in the sailing ships and the steam ships with all the supplies, then he had to design and build the dam, then they had to manufacture the pipes. Then they had to get the pipes from Perth all the way to Coolgardie. But then they found out that they can go to Kalgoorlie, and this whole pipeline was built on budget and on time. So away they go. It all has to be done by man, pick and shovel, horse and cart and camel train.  
 Now, the dam has to be built first and completed first before the rest of the pipeline is completed and the pumping stations and everything. 5,000 boxes of pump parts came out in containers and had to be built along the way. The pipe were built in two halves, 180 degrees, you know a full pipe and cut in the middle, you’ve got two pipes. They had to be sealed. And that’s where the Australian inventor started.  
 They invented the ceiling sleeve that goes along it. Then you’ve got to seal it. There’s no welding back then, only rivets. But this is what people got and said, “No rivets, no welding, no dynamite, only black powder. And you’ve got to build a dam, extract rocks out and everything else.” So they’ve got to make these ceiling machines, make this sleeve.  
 Three Australian… Me and Ferguson, Hodson, and a fellow from Sydney called John Hoskins, the start of the steel mills in Australia. The first steel plates of steel were built down in Murgon, there’s a park built there, Fitzroy Park. That’s where Fitzroy Steel started. He made the first plate steels in Australia and the first piece of plate of stainless steel. They got together and invented how to bend the steel by making the pipes. They had this steel bending machine and they redesigned it. They were making the pipes in the finish in 11 minutes, put the ceiling sleeve on it, it was sealed by lint and rope. And blacksmiths had to make the ceiling rings. They tested them between 320 and 400 pound PSI. The pipes were 23 foot long and 3 feet in diameter. Now that’s the pipe bit going.  
Malcolm Roberts:Excuse me, John. Excuse me, excuse me, John. What you’re really saying there, and I want you to get back to your story as quickly as possible, but what you’re really saying is that they started this project with a vision and with no understanding of how to do some of the details? They relied upon their intuition to come up with solutions and dammit, they did.  
John McRae:They did. They did. Hey, hey, listen, in the overall scheme of things, what I’m about to tell you about doing the dam, that they’d nearly pile into insignificance. So, they’re going to build the dam, they’ve got to build the dam. In the meantime, everyone’s against him because of the sale of the water. Now, there was two senators in the government, on the 26th of the 6th, 1898, G. T. Simpson said, “It is the height of madness to mortgage the future of our state with two and a half million Pound for just one silly project. The gold will run out and we’ve wasted all the money.” And Alberton O’Connor said, “This is rich fertile soil. So who’d want to go there?” The next bloke Wilson said the same thing. No government can justify pledging so much money to plunges into debt, for this.  
 So, they’re going to build the dam. So this is all done with pick and shovel. So they’re building the dam, and when they’re building the dam, they run into what they call a floater. Now, when you get the sandstone bedrock, that’s where you start your foundations. You can’t be on slippery, shifty ground or shifty… They’ve got to get this grounded boulder out. They had to dig down 90 feet further than the original depth. 90 feet hand, pick and shovel, hand drills, and everything else. Out they came again, stopped the project. “This bloke’s an imbecile. You can’t have this going on. It’s going to be further behind time. We’ll never get the job done, or anything else.”  
 What did he come up with? He’d come up with a carbon arc light. That’s the same as what you do with the search light, carbon arc. He rigged it all up. They worked 24-7. I’ve got photos of the vicarious stuff out, how they did it. They dug that granite out. I’ve sent you a photo of them down in the hole. You can hardly see the blokes down in the hole.  
Malcolm Roberts:Yeah.  
John McRae:Nd there’s no shoring up between the granite sandstone that they dug down. They extracted the granite boulder out, crushed it all up, reintroduced it back as the foundation with the carbon arc. How’s that for ingenious? How is that?  
Malcolm Roberts:Mm.  
John McRae:There’s no electricity over there, no Boeings to get an extension cable and a generator. None of them existed. And they got it back on time. They worked 24-7, and that’s what they did. If he hadn’t done that, they raised a dam wall, remind me to tell you about how they raise a dam wall. So, that dam had to be built, that pumping station had to be built because where the dam is, is 24 kilometres away from Perth, where they’ve got to pump the first pump over the Flinders Ranges. So there’s two pumps there at the dam to go to the pump at Perth, the reservoir in Perth to pump it.  
 Then they’ve got to get all the pipeline going. Then the first lot of pipes that were delivered, were delivered by horse and cart and camel trains. Then he built the railway line and then they could go on the railway. Now they had to… There’s an invention, how he got the rock out. He built a ramp for a steam shovel. You wouldn’t pass his test today because they’d say it would fall in, but they did it. No dynamite, no dynamite. I know they had black powder then, but I don’t know how they would… There would’ve been hand drill, one bloke held the drill and wriggle it, another bloke banged with the sledgehammer, they dug it out.  
Malcolm Roberts:So let me just reframe this for people who’ve just joined us, this is in the days of horses and carts, camels, predated the railway to some extent in some areas. And it was the man who proposed it was vilified for his 2,500 Pound investment. Are you going to tell us about the success of this investment?  
John McRae:Well, the 2,500,000 Pound, it was built in… This only took six years with no machinery. What do you think we could do today? What do you think we could do? We could do it overnight with the will of Australians, because they had the will do, can do and want to. The 2,500 million Pound they borrowed, three years after it was finished, the goldfields, the water, they made 25 million Pound.  
Malcolm Roberts:So that’s 10 times as much. So not only that, John and I’m talking with John McRae here from, used to be Sydney, now it’s central New South Wales Coast. They opened up the gold mining, which continues to this day in one of the richest gold mining areas in the world-  
John McRae:Recognised the biggest goldfield in the world, and it opened up the whole mining industry of this country that we’ve benefited by for all those years. And we still are, but we’re not getting the value that we should have, as Ian Plimer has just told you, we’re not getting the value, we just kept holding our arms up and let them rape us for our money.  
Malcolm Roberts:Didn’t they also open up a farming area?  
John McRae:Oh, there’s 8,000 kilometres now a pipe, 8 million acres of cropping land, sheep and wheat and everything else. And when the English migrants came out here, they put it on the share market and there was a stampede to get shares in this joint and Kalgoorlie mine and everything else. The English migrants come in, they said, “You could grow anything here.” They’ve grown vegetables, everything, everything there.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, so let’s-  
John McRae:You only need heat and water. That’s all Australia needs, water and electricity as we were supplying the whole world commodities, the whole world.  
Malcolm Roberts:Thank you. Thank you, because energy is the key to productivity, which is the key to prosperity, which is the key to wealth generation for everyone in the country. And what we are doing, we’re destroying our energy. But listen to some of these figures, I’ll go through them again. I noted them as you were talking. John McRae, the initial cost was 2,500,000 Pounds.  
John McRae:Yes.  
Malcolm Roberts:Within two years, it was 10 times that much paid back.  
John McRae:Yeah. Because you have just identified the component that we need was energy and water is energy because their whole body is 82% of water.  
Malcolm Roberts:Yeah.  
John McRae:So don’t worry about the water out in the grass. The water in your own body is 82% to give you the energy. So all these wombats that are running around, talking about climate and everything else that the climates just destroyed, they better go back and read this. It’s not very hard to read. I’ve never been to university, but I can read. And most people can read. Don’t listen to the crap they’re telling you. And when they start telling you all this say, “Don’t tell me, show me.” And they can’t.  
Malcolm Roberts:No, they can’t. And we’ve had that repeatedly. Now in addition, they had to lift that water 390 metres to get it over the range. [crosstalk] They then had to continue pumping it uphill for 500 kilometres to Kalgoorlie. I mean, this is in 1896 with no machinery. No machinery. And we can’t even do that now. This would be, with the technology we’ve got these days, John, that would be so easy. Why can’t we do it?  
John McRae:Oh, oh, look, look, Malcolm. It is equivalent to you driving around T Model Ford as opposed to a Mercedes-Benz. That’s the advancement. But what Malcolm, I failed to tell you one thing, there was eight pumping stations and it relied on the push-and-pull system. The same as the sewage does. So sewage is not done with pumping, it’s done with suction. So to get to the first reservoir and they held about a hundred thousand gallons, I think. And then it might go downhill to the next bit, now it’s got to be pumped up to the next reservoir. It’s got to go over the Flinders Ranges. If you see the Flinders, it’s more up and downhills than what the Luna park Ferris Wheel is.  
 And they had to do that. They pumped it. There was pumping stations all along, they had to build pumping stations. They had to build schools. They had to build hospitals. They had to have nurses and everything else going along there. And all the people in the town that were getting money out of this water condensers, they were jumping up and down because they’ve lost their gold mine. Their gold mine was water. They were more interested in water than gold.  
Malcolm Roberts:They wanted to preserve their monopoly rather and open up the country for Australians.  
John McRae:Of course.  
Malcolm Roberts:Yes.  
John McRae:Same thing. What do you think they do with the Murray–Darling water now? Same thing. It’s superannuation for the fire brigade, superannuation fund in New York and a massive amount of water rise. Who did they get the water off in the first place to sell to?  
Malcolm Roberts:John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull and John Anderson.  
John McRae:Yeah but they’re about as helpful as ashtray on a camel.  
Malcolm Roberts:Yeah. Water Act of 2007, thanks to Malcolm Turnbull, John Howard and John Anderson. And we’re still crippling.  
John McRae:And under our constitution, no one is to be denied water. And that’s what the thing should be taught in the school, our constitution and our rights, our civil rights and what you’ve just been speaking about, it’s music to my ears.  
Malcolm Roberts:John, John, you’ve always impressed me with your knowledge, your depth and your passion for this country. You’ve also struck me, I mean, you’re not a technically educated man. You’ve got a trade certificate. There’s no doubt about that. But you’ve read widely. Where did this love of humanity, this inquisitiveness, where did it come from? Was it your mother? Was it something happen in Kids?  
John McRae:It was my mother. Malcolm, what happened to me when I was little, I got polio and I was crippled. And you are ostracised by society back then, this was in 1948, 49. People didn’t want know you, even my own cousins were not told I had polio because people think you could catch it. You can’t catch it. You can breathe on, you do what you like. You’ve got to ingest it. And it comes from poor hygiene, exactly what Ian Plimer was talking about, poor hygiene. You got to lift people out, give them water and lack of water and end and lift them out of their hygiene standard and their living standard. Look, they are saying, pulling hands and juices a lot of times teach. Give a man to feed of fish today, he eats it. Teach him how to fish and he’ll feed himself for life. Now that’s what you’ve got to do.  
 We’ve got to get the hygiene and everything. Anyway, what happened after that? I crippled up and they operated on me, but I had the most beautiful mother that anyone could ever have. She was talented and not only talented, she was a good looker. Fair Dingham, she looked like, it’s either Susan Hayward or Vivien Lee, one of them, she looked like a one of them. She was a concert pianist, dress maker and milliner, and then become a psychologist. And I went to a lot of her, I was in lucky, I went there. But anyway, one of my grandfather’s best friends was Sir William McKell, the Governor-General. The man that got us-  
Malcolm Roberts:Tell me about that because you have a lot of respect for McKell, why?  
John McRae:Oh, it’s unbelievable, man. Unbelievable. He started off as a five and six fiddly a week boiler maker because his dad, they come from down the South Coast and he was a butcher and his dad died. They lived at Redfin and he detested people calling Redfin congested areas-  
Malcolm Roberts:John, I just want to point out, we’re going to an ad break fairly soon. So I might have to cut you off suddenly, but we’ll come back if I do, so please continue.  
John McRae:That’s okay. That’s okay.  
Malcolm Roberts:Please continue.  
John McRae:Anyway, he started off as a five and six fiddly boilermaker of Maud Stock. That was the place where they first shipped the fresh meat, the over frozen meat to England. Then he went to Eveleigh Workshops. He educated himself. Then he went and become a lawyer. Then he got into local government, then a pilot, and he became the premier of New South Wales. And he was the instigator through with Chifley and Kurton to get the Snowy Mountain Scheme going. But that person they think was a great bloke, Menzies was verdantly against it because he wanted to, I don’t know what he wanted to do, but he just didn’t want to do that because he said, “You’re going to deny people of water in Victoria, South Australia.” He said, “No, they’ll get more water.” He said, “Well, I’m going to stop you with The Constitution.” And McKell said, “Well, you do your best because I’m going to invoke the Emergency Powers Act and see how you travel with that.” He’s a fellow that explained a lot to me, and he explained the Taxation Act to me and things like that. But he-  
Malcolm Roberts:So, McKell did this for you?  
John McRae:Yes.  
Malcolm Roberts:Wow, wow.  
John McRae:Just after I left school-  
Malcolm Roberts:What a blessing.  
John McRae:In 1953, that Tax Act that was after Robert Menzies introduced that, and I asked him about the Snowy Mountain Scheme, and he was good enough… He got me an introduction to Sir William Hudson, the engineer. What a genius, what a genius. We had Alberton O’Connor, but what people have got to understand, all that project over in Western Australia, all the knowledge and empirical knowledge and-  
Malcolm Roberts:Okay, John, we’re going to go to an ad break. We’ll be back straight after to hear this continuation of your story. Thank you.  
Speaker 4:If it feels like it’s hot enough to fry an egg on a sidewalk, it probably is. When it’s 86 degrees outside, asphalt can reach a sizzling 135 degrees. Hot enough to cook an egg and your dog’s feet. Be safe. Test the sidewalk with your hand. Avoid midday walks and walk in the grass. Bring along water and rest in the shade at the first signs of heat exhaustion, including heavy panting and stumbling. Go to peta.org for help and information on how to keep your dog safe in hot weather.  
Speaker 5:Good day. Fast Ed here. As a chef, you know what I hear a lot? Wow. That smells really good. Is it done yet? For certain foods it’s important to cook properly rather than how they look or smell. Those foods include hamburgers, sausages, chicken, and leftovers. The rule of thumb is pretty simple: cook those foods to 75 degrees Celsius. Listen, I’m no Einstein, so I use a food thermometer and I reckon you should too. That way you’ll know it’s done without guessing. And no one will get sick.  
Speaker 6:A message from the Food Safety Information Council.  
Speaker 7:The bush fire was so unpredictable. It was important to have a plan.  
Speaker 8:[crosstalk] We stayed up to today with our phones and the radio. We knew it was coming.  
Speaker 9:I never thought it would actually happen. I’m glad we had a plan.  
Speaker 10:You have to prepare your property and your family.  
Speaker 11:And there was nothing we could do. [crosstalk]  
Speaker 13:Hence, why I always had a plan.  
Speaker 14:We can all be bushfire ready. Do a five minute Bush fire plan today.  
Speaker 15:Unlike other health concerns, mental illness is not always easy to see. Depression won’t show up on an eye chart and you won’t find PTSD by looking at a thermometer. Sorting out a mental health concern takes professional diagnosis and treatment. Anxiety won’t just go away under a bandage. If you or a loved one has a mental health concern, call 1-8-0-0-6-6-2 HELP for free and confidential information and treatment referral. Learn more samhsa.gov/support.  
Speaker 1:Today’s News Talk Radio TNT.  
Malcolm Roberts:Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT radio.live. And I’ve got a special guest with me, John McRae. John, continue please with McKell.  
John McRae:Okay. I’ll finish that brief thing with McKell because I’ve got to give you some more information on that pipeline. And I was, speak to McKell about politics and everything else and different things had happened. And he explained to me how we were the supplier for the world, which I knew, after the war because I was aware of it, and the great farmers and the great things we’ve done. Then I learned a little bit about the pipeline. He invigorated that in me. Now, and I spoke politics to him. He gave me forecasts of politics. Malcolm, in this pipeline, there was 60,000 joints they had to seal. 60,000, and there was 63,000 pipes and they had to be done, it had to be sealed with cork, with lead and rope, and they invented a corking machine and that invention, this sleeve situation and they couldn’t be done without blacksmiths because blacksmiths used to make this shrink seal that pulled the pipes together onto these two ceiling sleeves.  
 Remember the pipes are 23 feet long anda metre in diameter, three feet. And they had to be all man handled. And they made this with pipe, this steel bending machine, they got one and modified it. They made the sleeve machine. Then they tested them. It’s between 320 and 400 pound PSI. I don’t know how they did that. I’ve lost that documentation. Off they went. Then what was happening, they started the belly ache because when they started to do them by hand, by 1901 they’d only done 90 miles. And oh, it’s going to fail. It’s going to fail. It’s going to fail. Then the three engineers that I told you about, me and Ferguson, Hodson, and another fellow, can’t remember his name, Stuart Sternum, some name like that. And Hoskins, they come up with this ceiling machine. Well, they could do 30 joints a day then. Why, it went like a rocket. Off they went.  
Malcolm Roberts:So John, this remarkable pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie basically opened up the west, developed so much for the country as well in terms of our steel industry, the technology we use. But ultimately, there was another dam project, the Snowy Mountain Scheme, which was more than one dam, wasn’t it?  
John McRae:Oh, yes.  
Malcolm Roberts:And McKell saved that from being cancelled by Menzies. Is that what you were saying?  
John McRae:Yes. Yes. What happened, Menzies was against it. Chifley was the prime minister and he gave, well, New South Wales has got snowy mountains in New South Wales, but the Murray, the Snowy river and that filters into Victoria and into South Australia. And they thought it was going to cripple their water supply. And he guaranteed they wouldn’t. And Menzies said, “Fight him on the constitution,” I think section 101 or 190, how no one is to be denied water. He said, “Well, I’ll take you on and I’ll invoke the Emergency Powers Act and you won’t beat me.” And McKell is there, you can see photos of when they first started, he pushes the detonator to do the first blast.  
 He was Governor-General then. He was so brilliant as a Governor-General, he was a labour appointee. When he was appointed Governor-General, by the Labour Party, when Menzies won the election 49, it was a stitch up job that. He still retained him. Then he was going to retire and Menzies said, “You can’t retire. I need you.” This is a bloke that’s fought him in the first place, then he admires him in the second place, because he could see at the end of the section, I’m going to get the brownie points for finishing this job.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, Menzies could take credit?  
John McRae:So Menzies could take credit, but initially he’s against it. There was a big strike there once. I’ll also tell you about Sir William Hudson and what a visionary, he was like that Ian Plimer, like that, and they shut the joint down. So William Hudson went to where the strike was and said, “What’s going on here?” And it’s all up, all hell has broke loose. They said, “The moots blown,” and everything else. And he said, “This place should have fly screens and they’re contesting. Why hasn’t that been done?” That was an interference from parliament. We won’t go into that. You can work out where it had come from.  
 He said, “Get the carpenters wherever they are, the air conditioner. I want it all done immediately, right now. Get them all.” Wherever he was, he went there. “You won’t be docked for your day off. You’ll still be paid. Go back to work.” Menzies told him and he said, “I never want you to do that again.” He said, “Otherwise, I’ll take your commission off you,” because he said, “I’ve got to beat the unions. I’ll get too strong. And I’ll lose the election.” See? Money again.  
Malcolm Roberts:Whereas Hudson, what he wanted to do was fix the workers problems so they just get back to work productively.  
John McRae:Yes, and they did. And by the way, all the big mob come out from America, Utah Mining, and all that. And the other mob and from England and everything else. And they thought we rode kangaroos and all this business here, and we have no chance on doing tunnelling and all this has never been done in Australia before. Four blokes come down from Queensland, their name was Feis. They broke all the tunnelling records and they built 25% of the Snowy, they built the largest earth and rock fill dam ever.  
Malcolm Roberts:And they said it was impossible to build an earth and filled dam that big. And yet they did it.  
John McRae:They did it. It was all done. This is Australian initiative. Look, I could go on for hours with what Australia’s done with inventions and how it’s benefited the world.  
Malcolm Roberts:Tell us about a few.  
John McRae:That is the hardest concrete in the world down there, Malcolm. The hardest. And I said to William Hudson, I was fortunate enough to meet him. A lot of people can meet him, when they had tools, you could go and talk to him. He said, “It was pretty simple. We had the best people.” And I said, “But how did you work out the mixtures?” Because if they had to make their own sand. Now, that sounds funny, doesn’t it? They had to make their own sand. Now, I’ll tell you how they did it. They got sandstone and you grind it up. But in sandstone, there’s impurities like silica and mud and you can’t mix with it because it goes like jelly.  
 So that had to be extracted, which they did. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it. And then they’d have to be mixed. Now, when they were mixing it, they mixed it with hot ice and ice. And they put other additives in it. But the granite and stuff they used there, they worked out what aggregate would be the best. And that’s how they did the formula, working out the earth and rock fill dam and that concrete is the hardest concrete in the world and it made Australia world leaders in concrete and highway engineering and things we’ve done with highway engineering and concrete lead the world.  
 I ask people, “Where’s the largest concrete span bridge in the world?” Because they got all the information from the Snowy, how they mix concrete. 25 countries, they tell you. I said, “You don’t even might know what you’re talking about. It’s in Sydney, called the Gladesville Bridge.” At that time it was built, it was the largest concrete span bridge, reason being, they got empirical knowledge and statistic and science from the Snowy, which they got when they did the Perth to Kalgoorlie pipeline doing the… So, it keeps revolving along, Malcolm.  
Malcolm Roberts:Can I share a story with you, John? I’m reluctant to interrupt you because you’ve just got so much. But when I was in America, I travelled through all 50 states. I was fascinated by the country and I came across a story about the development of their early space exploration. And John Kennedy had just become the president in 1960. And he commissioned NASA to do a study on the chances of getting a man to the moon and back safely by the end of the decade. In other words, by 1969. And I’ll always remember this, I bought a poster of it. It’s in every office I’ve ever worked in. I carry it with me. The result from NASA’s assessment of the possibility of getting a man on the moon and back again within nine years, wasn’t yes, it wasn’t no, it was these words: We have a sporting chance. And with that, and I’m getting a little bit teary here, John F. Kennedy said, “We go to the moon.”  
 And then you think about the technology that’s come out of that from electronic ignitions, from medicine-  
John McRae:Everything.  
Malcolm Roberts:So many things, even Velcro. I mean, so many things.  
John McRae:Yeah.  
Malcolm Roberts:And what you are saying to me, John, is that we had people like John F. Kennedy in this country who had vision, people like McKell, people like Connor. And they said, “Get out of my way and let me get on with the job.” And as a result of that, they had so much technology developed in this country that then gave us our steel industry, our concrete industry, so many opportunities and what we’ve got now, we’ve got this whole thing smashed.  
John McRae:Well, the reason being is because people haven’t had the privilege that I’ve had or ignorant and don’t want to do it. See, when I wasn’t allowed to go to school or to go to the pictures.  
Malcolm Roberts:Oh, that’s right. You had polio with your mother. Yes.  
John McRae:I went to older people and I’d ask questions and that’s what I do all my life, ask questions.  
Malcolm Roberts:Can I just interrupt there for a minute? Just want to interrupt there. I want to just tell the listeners here while they’re sitting at home or in their cars or at the picnic, wherever they are, that John is not exaggerating a bit here. I’ve watched this man. He treats people with enormous respect. If he disagrees, he’ll let you know. But he walks up to people and he takes an engaging interest. Doesn’t sacrifice his principles, his morals. He just takes an imbibing interest and people share things with John. That’s why he’s become such a magnet for facts and data. Keep going, John. I just had to share that with you. You’re you’re so impressive, the way you deal with people.  
John McRae:So I would go and ask him things. And everyone used to say to me, “John, look after your pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.” And the director of one of joints, the directors at the glassworks in Sydney, it’s Sydney in Maude Park, largest glassworks in the Southern hemisphere. He said, “Never denounce anyone.” Even the bloke sweeping the street can give you information and tell you something that you don’t know. And I’ve lived by that. When I was growing up, I’d go into engineering, “Why do you do this? Why do you do that?” I was taught how to read a micrometre at the age of 11. By 13 or 14, I knew how to do dynamic balancing. My mate’s father was an engineer, I’ll tell you his name. And-  
Malcolm Roberts:Dynamic balancing of wheels?  
John McRae:I beg your pardon?  
Malcolm Roberts:Dynamic balancing of wheels, lathes?  
John McRae:That’s nothing. Wheels are nothing. No armatures in motors and things like that.  
Malcolm Roberts:Right, thank you. So complex stuff by the time. So complex stuff by the time you were 13?  
John McRae:Yeah, I could work lathes and everything. I helped the bloke build a speedway engine. At 14, I did all the rough turning and I used to, I asked questions, if I go somewhere… Look, this is off the track. I went down to Stéphanoise and I used to go to Shepherd a lot. And I went to visit, [inaudible] They lovely people, these Italians. And they’d telling me different things. They going over the machines, breaking down. I invented this machine that could extract eight types of oil out of the apricot kernel, eight types of oil and one oil can harness one type of cancer a bit.  
 Guess what happened? John Howard sold it to Pakistan. So, we invented this machine. You should have seen it. Unbelievable. So they’re the sort of things, and I’d say, Charlie Bennett taught us dynamic balancing, when you’re balancing an armature… See I’m going from subject to subject.  
 When you’re balancing armature, if you turn it over and balance one end and then balance the other, it’s out of balance again, because you’ve got to keep the harmonics in unison. No one was doing dynamic balancing this way. He invented a machine that could balance the armature at both ends at the one time. And he balanced thousands. And he did it for the army, the Navy, the Heart Research and everything. We learned all that.  
 The rolls in the paper mills, in the newspaper bill, they get out about… He rectified that for them. How does that work, Charlie? How does this work? I worked on overhead valve at T Model Ford Motors. How does this work? How does that work? How does something else work? And I that’s how I got knowledge, but I’ve been blessed with a memory and I’ve been told that come from polio, but I was blessed with the encouragement of my mother.  
 My father was a violent, alcoholic gambler, so that didn’t give me much of an opportunity in life. So, that’s how I’ve learned things. And I appreciate, and when I see someone like Ian Plimer, I pull him up and I’d ask him a heap of questions. And that had enhanced my knowledge. And that’s what people have got to, interaction. From interaction, you get reaction. From reaction, you get action. And that’s what we’ve got to get. And we’ve got all the knowledge in this country here. I could name a few of the great Australians, what they’ve done, that settled the world on their heels. They couldn’t believe it. And then the medical inventions that we’ve had here. Hugh Victor McKay invented the wheat stripper with Headlie Taylor, feed the world, everything. I could just rattle them all off for you. And I knew Jack Brabham and I’ve even got a photo of myself sitting in the car. And that was a handmade motor in his car.  
Malcolm Roberts:Tell us, tell us more about Brabham because the likes of him has never been seen before and probably will never be seen in motor sport.  
John McRae:Never, never, never. There’s been no one ever. No one ever won the World Driver’s Championship and the Manufacturer’s Championship. In the car they helped build, mate, designed himself and raced himself. Now you’ve got to take into consideration, Australia back then, we were only making the whole motor car. So we’ve got to go up against the world of finesse, Mercedes, Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, Jaguar, Honda, Lago-Talbot, Elvis, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Renault, Citroen, Peugeot, all European. And how do they get their success? On Grand Prix racing. And they built on that Ferrari win. Michael Schumacher and Pangio, driving the 250F Maserati that Pangio drove and everything like that.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, Brabham’s up against the world?  
John McRae:He’s up against it. And they said, “Where did this billy cart come from? From Australia? It’s got a V8 motor. Where does this the local yokel come from?” The same bloke went to American in Indianapolis with a car under powered and showed him a new trick over there with a rear engine car. They’ve never seen a rear engine car before. And it was underpowered and still finished ninth. Other blokes with their big Offenhausers and everything else. Going back to that motor, when he started in the Speedway, Offenhauser was built especially for… That was a racing engine, especially for the Indianapolis. And they built a smaller motor for Speedway. Now, the Americans come out here with the most beautiful looking cars you’d ever see because all our cars were made out of junkyards and bits and pieces.  
 And this car of his was a little, air cooled motor, a Harley Davidson crank case off a motor bike and you build the rest yourself and it beat the Offenhausers. With that technology and his driving ability, he then transferred that into his car racing thing and with the help of the two Australians, Ozzy and Ronnie [Toranecko] another bloke, Ronnie Ward and Repco of Australia. They designed the engine off the 308 Holden Motor aluminium, designed their own heads and everything else. What did he do? Blew them to pieces. And they said it could never be done. Same as Ken Warby. They said they’ll never, never-.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, who was Ken Warby? [crosstalk] Ken Warby’s World Water Speed Record.  
John McRae:Yeah, 1977. It hasn’t been broken ever since.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, so the World Water Speed Record still stands and it’s held by an Australian?  
John McRae:Yes. And he put the first wind curl on a boat. Then Ben Lexcen then copied it, but hang on, here’s the clincher. He had the Naval apprentices from the Naval College, and University of New South Wales, helping him with technology, science, exactly what you’re speaking about with Ian Plimer. And the science they relied on was the temperature of the water, the atmospheric pressure and everything else when they went for the world record. He still said his only chance his son’s going to have an attempt on it in May. Now, Brabham set a world record with a car, never been equaled, built in Australia. Anywhere else in the world, they had to build an industry around it. But what do we do here? Give it away. Same with what they’ve done with all our minerals.  
Malcolm Roberts:John, speaking of giving away industries, tell me about Sydney. I mean, we drove one night and you took me through an area where we had factories after factories, after factories. And we had seafood canneries and fish canneries in Sydney and all of that’s gone.  
John McRae:Well, look, I showed where the glassworks were, that was Georgian’s bit. That was the biggest glassworks in the Southern Hemisphere. There was Crown Crystal. In that area where I took you, there were seven companies making setda lathes, drill shapers and things, and couple of turret lathes.  
Malcolm Roberts:Hang on, hang on. For people to understand, their fundamental for metal working, which is fundamental to manufacturing machinery, fundamental to making any kind of machinery. And we had all of that technology. In fact, some of our technology was world leading, wasn’t it?  
John McRae:Of course, it was. Yeah. Malcolm, before we go any further. Nothing, you’ve got, you clothes, your car, your cooking, utensils, anything has got to be made… Jigs have got to be made by a tool maker. He’s the man, the upper echelon machine in engineering. And if we can’t make the jigs, you’ve got nothing. And we had all that here. There was seven, there was seven lathes. I can name them for you if you want. Seven lathe manufacturers and machinery manufacturers in that area where I showed you. After the war, all those machinery places were working 24-7, supplying Europe and everywhere else to rehabilitate them. When we could go out near Mascot, Botany, up that way, there was all the cotton mills, the tanneries, the woollen mills and working 24-7. We made milking machines. We made shearing machines. We made wall presses. We made everything.  
 Canneries making the tins, the stuff to go in for the canning fruit. We exported all that. We had all that, but that all went by the wayside when we started to lump ourself in with the United Nations. And we signed all these agreements, especially the Lima Declaration. But we still have, all we’ve got to do is get leadership of honesty and morals and with Botany the attitude, we have done it, can do it and will do it. And all we’ve got to do is get water, forget all of this global business, because there’s no country in the world that can produce rural produce 365 days of the year of every variety, every variation, and of every thing you need, no one. They built the Ord River, there’s more tonnes of rice coming out there than what Japan can do with their special rice for their religious ceremonies.  
 We’ve got mangoes growing up there. They get five or $6 a head, a piece of fruit. We get more tonnes per wheat off our ground than anyone else in the world. No one can grow the variation of Barley wheat, corn, that we can. No one, because the Northern hemisphere is constrained by weather constraints. And we are not here. All we need is the power. And the power is water. We’ve got the place, the farmer, we’ve got the greatest farmers in the world, they know that. Look, they brought the sheep in from the Marino. We get more yield per pound per sheep than what they get. Same as the Hereford cows, the Aberdeen Angus. We get more here. There’s a bloke up there in Queensland, Peter Hughes, he’s got 190,000 breeding Wagyu cows, Japan can’t get over how he’s succeeded. And that’s one of their breeds.  
 He’s worked out how to cross breed them. Australian ingenuity, Australian ability, we’ve got them here. We’ve got the scientists. We’ve got every… We’ve got the best machinists. We’ve got the best of everything. Look at the bloke that built our machine gun. Saved Australian up the Owen Stanley Ranges, 1,500 raw recruits went up with the eight and nine divvy and drove back 7,000 jungle hardened Japanese. Why? Because they had the will to win. They had the machine gun. They had what we built. We built aeroplanes  here during the war. Even in the fifties, we built Sabre jets for the Korean War. And they tell you, we can’t do things here.  
Malcolm Roberts:John, John, Australia has a history of punching well above our weight when it comes to war, comes to industry, comes to inventions, comes to sport, comes to arts, comes to science. We’re punching way above our weight. What the hell happened?  
John McRae:What the hell happened? Because follow the money. Follow the money. See, that’s what people have got to understand. Banks are credit creators and asset strippers. And boy, we’ve got to do this and we’ve got to get into the global economy. We don’t have to get into anything. We’re the only totally self-sufficient country in the world, put a moat round us. And we could trade with one another and live.  
Malcolm Roberts:That’s a really important point I want to jump all over for a minute there, John, because Australia was independent. We could stand on our own. We could make our own armaments. We could make our own ammunitions. We could make our own everything, everything. And yet what happens now, is we are dependent on other countries. [crosstalk] Our politicians have fallen for this crap that says we must be interdependent. That was the con job to get the UN agreement signed, which you can talk about, the Lima Declaration, the Rio Declaration, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris agreement. All of these declarations and agreements have undermined us. We are no longer independent. We are now dependent because when you are interdependent, you depend on someone else which makes you dependent. We’ve lost our independence as sovereignty, our economic sovereignty, our manufacturing sovereignty, our economic security. Because politicians in this country have sold our soul.  
John McRae:They have, Malcolm. By the way, I should have included this. We built that pipeline for 1896 to 1903. After that, we achieved the greatest achievement, can’t be equaled. The longest railway line in the world from 1912 to 1917 from South Australia over to West Australia, Northam 2,500,000 railway slip, hand cut.  
Malcolm Roberts:2 million?  
John McRae:140,000 tonne of rail line, all hand laid. Start at one end, start at the other, and they said they won’t meet. It wasn’t even a half inch out. On the 17th of the 10th, 1917, the last secure inch spike on the place that held the dam was put in. Five days later, the train arrived in Western Australia. They never even put a test run on it. They tell you we can’t do it. We built all the trams in Sydney for the tram service in Sydney, it was the largest tram network in the world. We built 2,800 trams. We built the buses and everything else. We built the ferries. We’ve done everything.  
 Now we’ve got to buy more off China and they’re not worth three and six pence, they can’t ever be used. And they tell you we can’t do things. I’ve got a history of stuff. I wish I could get a chance to debate some of these wombats because I’d blow up the pieces, because we’ve got the greatest people with the greatest initiative. And we’ve got the greatest will to win and achieve. All we need is the opportunity to exhibit it.  
Malcolm Roberts:Well said, well said, John McRae. Well said. What we’ve got is we’ve got the people. We’ve got the resources. We’ve got the energy resources, the metal resources, the climate resources, the soil resources, the water resources. What we have is huge potential. We have huge opportunity. We have got the world’s biggest market on our doorstep to the north. And what we’ve got is parliaments that have abandoned the people in favour of UN agreements, seeded our sovereignty. The parliaments no longer work for this country. John, I’m convinced of that. The state and federal parliament have abandoned the people. How do we get them back to serving the country?  
John McRae:For a start, we’ve got to fix up our voting system and our taxation system and our voting system is rigged so that you can tell lies and fraudulent. The best, we could go into that another day. But here’s what we did with our industries. Now, not everyone signed this Lima Declaration. That was in 1975. Whitlam was the bloke that in inaugurated Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm Fraser ratified it in 76.  
Malcolm Roberts:Okay, John, we’ve got one minute to go.  
John McRae:Okay. This is Section 35, that Australia transfer technical and financial resources, as well as capital goods to accelerate industrialization of underdeveloped countries. As Ian Plimer said, “All they do is go into those other countries and rape and build, then walk off.”  
Malcolm Roberts:So basically, the UN’s Lima Declaration that Whitlam signed as Labour prime minister in 1975, and that the liberal national’s prime minister, Malcolm Fraser ratified the following year 76, basically said, “Take our technology, take our leadership, take our manufacturing prowess and set it up overseas and gut our country.”  
John McRae:Well, the bottom line of that is, Malcolm, liberal and labour, it’s either Tweedle Dumb or Tweedle Dumber.  
Malcolm Roberts:And we might just leave it on that because the core message, John, you’ve just told me the answer, and we’ll explore that. I’m going to have you back. We’re going to explore that is fix the taxation system that favours foreign countries’ companies at the moment and fix the voting system. So this is Senator Malcolm Roberts. I remind you how I opened the first show this morning. I am staunchly pro-human. I am proud to be of service to you. Remind you, be human, be proud, be loving, care, listen, and appreciate. Thank you very much, John. We’ll have you back anytime. Thank you very much. And thank you for having us as guests in your living room, car, factory, wherever you are today. Thank you so much for listening.  
John McRae:Thank you, Malcolm.  
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Big Pharma is no better than Big Tobacco | The Spectator Australia

This article was originally published in The Spectator Australia, here.

As I stated in my speech On Freedom in August 2021: ‘On many occasions in the last year I have addressed the Senate in regard to freedom as a counterbalance to medical tyranny.’

The speech was given in relation to the Covid lockdowns unleashed on Australia from March 2020 onward in the name of ‘public health’. During this time another significant, but largely unknown, medical tyranny was inflicted on Australians.

For ‘public health’ reasons, nicotine vaping products (NVPs) came under strict regulation after instruction from the state and federal governments. Vaping products – which now require a prescription – are commonly used as a replacement for harmful alternatives such as cigarettes and cigars.

Despite being widely acknowledged in global studies as a way to quit smoking, they were put under prescription-only use to, ‘balance the need to prevent adolescents and young adults from taking-up nicotine vaping (and potentially smoking).’ Oddly, young adults can still take up smoking directly without a prescription.

There is no guarantee a prescription will be issued, even to existing smokers looking to quit. The comments made alongside the regulatory change make it clear that doctors are ‘under no obligation to prescribe a nicotine vaping product if they do not think it’s appropriate’ and add a strong preference for using existing gums and patches.

‘From October 1, 2021, consumers require a prescription for all purchases of nicotine vaping products, such as nicotine e-cigarettes, nicotine pods and liquid nicotine. This includes purchases from Australian pharmacies and from overseas. It remains illegal for other Australian retailers, such as tobacconists, ‘vape’ shops and convenience stores, to sell you nicotine vaping products, even if you have a prescription.’

from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)

This risks establishing a ‘Nicotine Vaping Cartel’.

Cartels act like monopolies, and whether this was intentional or accidental by the state and federal governments, consumers will find the price of vaping products kept artificially high. At the same time, quantity and quality are likely to fall.

None of this appears to be in the interest of ‘public health’. Vaping products are primarily used by smokers to help them quit, with vaping being 95 per cent less harmful (according to the Royal College of Physicians in the UK).

Smoking and vaping are entwined industries – being substitutes, not complements – of each other. The responsiveness of these interlinked industries is known as ‘elasticity’ by economists.

There have been dozens of studies in the past decade, including the 2021 Canadian study which found: ‘The literature on cross-price elasticity emerging from the analysis of massive data banks [supports] that the two product types are substitutes rather than complements.’

A 2021 American study inter alia further quantified that: ‘A $1.00 increase in e-cigarette prices reduces e-cigarette sales by roughly 29 per cent, while a $1.00 increase in cigarette prices reduces cigarette sales by roughly 7 per cent.’ While a 2018 Australian study concluded: ‘Countries with less restrictive NVP policies would be associated with lower cigarette demand.’

In short, when a government encourages vaping, it eats away at the tobacco market share. Surely, this would be in the interest of ‘public health’?

The question has to be asked why both Australia’s state and federal governments are going out of their way to demonise vaping when their stated objective is citizen health. Cui bono, or who benefits?

Financially, the producers and tax beneficiaries of cigarette sales stand to lose the most from a thriving vaping market. In particular, Australia’s ‘sacred’ Therapeutic Goods Administration – who imposed the regulation – relies on these industries for funds. The TGA states, ‘the vast majority (around 96 per cent) of [their] funding is generated through [industry] fees and charges.’

This 96 per cent translates into around $178 million out of their $185 million 2020-21 revenue. While not all of it comes from the smoking industry, some of it does.

The new laws are already in force, with a $170,000 worth of fines issued to vaping advertisers and importers by the TGA in November, one month after they were implemented. Included in this figure were eight infringement notices worth $106,560 given to Mason Online regarding alleged advertising breaches.

The TGA’s 2020 Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) formed the basis for the Medical Vaping Regime (MVR). It had all the hallmarks of a predetermined outcome in favour of a Monopoly Medical Model. That is, it did not seriously consider any practical alternatives like a Competitive Consumer Model, there were no proper cost benefit analysis performed, and the regulator undertook their own review.

The latter is the most concerning, given it does not align with the Australian standard of best practice since the formation of the National Competition Policy (NCP).

The TGA vaping hub has a web page regarding the next scheduled review of the MVR where it says: ‘The regulatory reforms will be reviewed in the second half of 2022.’ There is really only one organisation in Australia capable of undertaking a well-rounded, unbiased, and inclusive review of MVR: the Productivity Commission (PC) – more specifically in terms of the Productivity Commission Act 1998 (PC Act).

I am naturally very suspicious of any overly big institutions and businesses, but the TGA’s hypocrisy on ‘freezing out’ Big Tobacco whilst unashamedly ‘being in bed’ with Big Pharma really does go ‘beyond the pale’.

The TGA always justifies this through Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control requiring that: ‘In setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law.’

Firstly, Australia is sovereign, not controlled the WHO and their overlords in Beijing. Secondly, ‘public health policies’ should not be about ‘tobacco control’ and prohibition, but about Tobacco Harm Reduction for free and consenting adults. Thirdly, Big Med, Big Pharma, Big Public Health, and Big Government are just as much ‘commercial and vested interests’ as Big Tobacco. All of them have jaded pasts with despicable political regimes.

Thus, given Big Pharma is no better than Big Tobacco, the TGA must let the Productivity Commission do their job in 2022. May the best model win.

Malcolm Roberts is a One Nation Senator for Queensland. This article was co-authored by Darren Brady Nelson – Chief Economist at LibertyWorks Brisbane and a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute.

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MEDIA RELEASE: Palaszczuk government must get kids back to school with no delay

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The Palaszczuk government must get kids back to school with no delay to keep their future safe.

Palaszczuk will delay the start of the school term by two weeks on the back of health advice claiming the omicron wave will peak at the end of January, similar to advice at the start of the pandemic that pandemic restrictions would only last two weeks to flatten the curve.

Over the past month government has rapidly shifted gear in what they say but not what they do. They say we need  to live with the virus, but prove with the cancellation of schools that they are unwilling to do so.

The government is unwilling to give up control, again relying on secret “health advice” to throw parents everyday lives into chaos and hamstring students who have already suffered with years of disrupted learning.

Parents know that the logistical nightmare of not being ready for remote learning is detrimental compared to having their kids in school at a proper learning environment.

We hold the formative years of a child’s life sacred for a reason, sometimes you don’t get a second chance at them. There is no reason to mandate either students or their teachers to receive COVID vaccines.

Many teachers know this, which is likely why over 20,000 of them reportedly won’t be returning to work this year after the Palaszczuk government mandated injections for them and they were sacked or resigned.

Palaszczuk claims this is about safety. It’s not. The premier is trading short-term pretend safety for the long-term detriment of our children’s lives and learning journey to try to get Labor elected.

I’m calling on the Premier to drop the mandates, return kids to school without delay and live with the virus as politicians have promised us.

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The ACT COVID Bill – Letter to Health and Community Wellbeing Committee

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10 January 2022             

                                                                                                                                                           

Hon. Johnathan Davis MLA

Chair, Standing Committee on Health and Community Wellbeing

ACT Legislative Assembly

GPO Box 1020

Canberra ACT 2601                   

                                      

Dear Mr Davis

Submission – Public Health Amendment Bill 2021 (No 2)

Our constituents are shouting their concern and need for the immediate restoration of basic human rights and freedoms and lifestyle.  Yet this Bill proposes to entrench the removal of these rights from everyday Australians and therefore it must be opposed.

Constituents want an end to the mismanagement that has caused segregation, discrimination and unwarranted damaging control under vaccine mandates.  They want an end to the contradictions, hypocrisies and confusion engulfing politicians and health advisers.

Constituents see that restoring freedom, choice and personal responsibility is the way to make 2022 the year people get on with their lives.  I agree.

Specifically, we refer you to and oppose the following provisions:

  • Section 118Z – represents a breach of what Australian’s regard as our rights and freedom of choice for a once in a century event.
  • Threatening a worker’s job is a manifestly excessive response to the management of COVID-19, yet this Bill would enable job losses threatening jobs and families.
  • Legislating for what should be an emergency response for a short time is inappropriate.
  • Review processes must be free and quick and must be independent of the ACT government.
  • Reversal of the onus of proof is wholly inappropriate and must be removed.
  • Australians who have informed themselves and elected not to be vaccinated should not be punished.  Yet it is foreseeable that this Bill would enable this undemocratic outcome.
  • The Australian Government has elected not to mandate vaccination and therefore the ACT should likewise abstain.

The Greens and Labor have again shown that Australians cannot trust them by proposing such an undemocratic law which fundamentally conflicts with our basic human rights, freedoms and lifestyle.

Australians now want the return of our Australian way of life free of coercive and debilitating lockdowns and vaccine mandates.  People want honesty and accountability. I ask you and the Standing Committee on Health and Community Wellbeing to oppose and reject this Bill.

Yours Sincerely

Malcolm Roberts

Senator for Queensland

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Letter to Scott Morrison: Let Australians Free

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7 January 2022

The Hon. Scott Morrison MP

Prime Minister of Australia

PO Box 6022

House of Representatives

Parliament House

CANBERRA  ACT  2600

Dear Prime Minister

Our constituents are shouting their concern and need for the immediate restoration of basic human rights and freedoms, lifestyle and safety.

Constituents want an end to segregation, discrimination and unwarranted damaging control under vaccine mandates and an end to the contradictions, hypocrisies and confusion engulfing politicians and health advisers.

Constituents see that restoring freedom, choice and personal responsibility is the way to make 2022 the year people get on with their lives.  I agree.

Australian health advisors and politicians have had almost two years to review the data and the research, and to understand people’s needs on COVID-19 vaccinations.

Robert Kennedy Jr’s authoritative, detailed, validated book “The Real Anthony Fauci” documents the inhuman corruption among senior USA health bureaucracies overseeing COVID-19 vaccine provisional approvals.

In brazen conflicts of interest, taxpayer-funded health agencies have become money-making arms for major pharmaceutical companies. Some senior bureaucrats overseeing pharmaceuticals benefit financially from vaccine research and approvals.  This is also true in Australia, with no ongoing independent validation and oversight for conflicts of interest.

Kennedy documents America’s perversion of medical governance over four decades based largely on many repeated false or exaggerated claims of virus/disease threats.  This led to corrupt approval of ineffective and dangerous COVID “vaccines” in America, bypassing proper testing and approval processes while hiding massive adverse effects, including many deaths.

The litany of American fraud, corruption and human atrocities over the last forty years has cost many thousands of lives and adversely affected millions of people in the USA, Australia and globally.  Robert Kennedy Jr’s book authoritatively raises the spectre of genocide and of racist killing of African-American, African, Indian, Hispanic and other babies and children in “testing” of vaccines.

Yet the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) hastily and provisionally approved the major pharmaceutical companies’ COVID “vaccines” based merely on a literature review, seemingly weighted heavily to the deliberations and verdicts of American approval agencies.  Australian health agencies did no independent testing and evaluation before granting provisional approvals.

Yet on this basis state governments implement vaccination mandates that the federal government enables and effectively supports, despite your false claims that there are “no vaccine mandates in Australia”.

A second corrupt American tactic to drive vaccine profits has been the banning of proven safe and effective early treatment, drugs and protocols.  Your government and agencies have similarly been complicit in banning such treatments instead of proactively seeking, proving and assuring supply of these medicines for early treatment and prevention to keep Australians safe.  Other nations’ governments have taken such action to safely protect their citizens.

You and your departments have said the benefits of COVID vaccines outweigh their risks, yet a growing international body of evidence points with increasing confidence to the need for you to reassess your assumptions.  Despite this strong evidence you are still pushing people toward early death.

In mandating COVID vaccinations using the coercive threat of denying people’s livelihoods and basic human rights and freedoms, you are culpable for needless deaths and serious injuries to thousands of Australians. Yet you continue to persecute Australians who have informed themselves about the life-threatening reality of COVID-19 vaccines having severe adverse effects despite limited and rapidly declining vaccine efficacy.

I urge you to immediately stop the vaccine mandates that Premier Palaszczuk says are in line with your so-called “national cabinet”. I urge you to instead develop an honest and comprehensive plan letting people get back to work while providing focused treatment and protection for the sick and vulnerable in ways already proven in other nations – yet negligently not adopted in Queensland or Australia. People need and deserve a proper comprehensive long-term plan for real care.

There are no scientific or medical grounds for the division of our society, communities and businesses based on “vaccine” status.  Vaccine mandates are a tool for coercion to condition and control people.

You, the Premiers and health officers have said we need “to live with COVID-19”.  Health officers have made similar statements. That means there is no need for emergency declarations whose only purpose is to enable coercive mandatory vaccination.

After two wasted years, people’s lives and livelihoods are being decimated.  Vaccine mandates are crippling hospitals and health care, emergency services, jobs, businesses and communities because governments have been ignorantly reacting to the virus and not managing the virus. Instead of controlling the virus, governments have controlled people – and have done enormous damage.

Australians want the return of our Australian way of life, free of coercive and debilitating lockdowns and vaccine mandates.  People want honesty and accountability.  I ask you to take action to end the divisive and harmful vaccine mandates immediately.

Yours sincerely

Malcolm Roberts

Senator for Queensland

PDF – Letter to Scott MorrisonDownload

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Unvaccinated lockdown in Northern Territory inhumane and baseless

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Original Story: Unvaccinated people in the NT will be subject to tough new measures.

Our political leaders are telling Australians that we have to live with COVID, yet Chief Minister Gunner’s latest whole of NT lockout for the unvaccinated epitomises the ongoing disastrous COVID mismanagement.

Australians and Australian businesses need to get back to work, yet Gunner, completely out of step with a national effort to live with COVID, is locking out NT residents who are not vaccinated.

There is no legal or medical evidence for discriminating against unvaccinated residents.

The Prime Minister needs to use every opportunity to intervene and show some urgent leadership to protect the NT residents from their own tragic Chief Minister.

Our Chief Health Officers have made it clear that we are all going to get COVID, and that being vaccinated is no guarantee to escape the virus. Gunner is going rogue and crucifying his citizens, which is the pervasive theme of all Labor premiers.

Like the flu, COVID is here to stay whether we like it or not, and we have to adapt and learn to live it. Australians want the Australian lifestyle back, yet our premiers are persistently dragging their feet, caught up in their own cycle of ineptness and self-serving political rhetoric.

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Allied Troops immune in Australia? Not True

Last year the Defence Legislation Amendment (Enhancement of Defence Force Response to Emergencies) Bill was passed. Some have said it will allow foreign tanks to roll down Australian streets and be immune to liability. This is simply untrue. When reading all of the bill, we see that this is more about fighting bushfires than foreign troops and they DO NOT get immunity for any act of aggression against Australians.

Section 123AA (1) of the Bill states – a “protected person” is “not subject to any liability (whether civil or criminal) in respect of anything the protected person does or omits to do, in good faith, in the performance or purported performance of the protected person’s duties”.

This operates as a limitation on the immunity. Someone will only have immunity where they are, in good faith, carrying out their duties to respond to the emergency (e.g. acting in good faith to conduct back-burning to help fight a bushfire). If someone were to act in bad faith in the performance of their duties to respond to the emergency (e.g. purposely harm or assault an Australian) the immunity would not apply and they would be liable, either criminally, civilly or both.

Transcript

My office has received many questions regarding the Defence Legislation Amendment Enhancement of Defence Force Response to Emergencies Bill 2020. It passed both houses of federal Parliament on the 8th of December, 2020. As Senators, we’re obliged to fully understand all legislation before taking a position and voting. And we cannot just look at one clause at a time in isolation. We need to scrutinise all clauses together because some clauses may modify other clauses. This is particularly relevant to this legislation.

The banter on social media around the Foreign Trips Bill is an excellent example. The most common yet false claim is that this bill allows the government to bring foreign armies into Australian soil to control Australians with complete immunity from criminal or civil liability. This is completely false. There is no cause for alarm. Let me give you some background. During 2019, 2020, eight foreign nations provided assistance to Australia to help fight the bush fires.

You may remember the US Coast Guard came out here and were water bombing the bush fires. Tragically, four crew members lost their lives when their water bombing plane crashed. Under the existing laws, if the plane crash damaged Australian property, or even worse, took a life on the ground, the pilots would have been liable for that damage, if they survived. Or if they died, then their estates would have been liable for that damage.

We don’t believe this is reasonable, as these people are over here helping save Australian lives and property, It’s only fair they have the same level of indemnity that Australian troops and emergency service personnel have when they’re fighting natural disasters. It’s worth remembering that the Commonwealth government, has always had the ability to call on Australian defence forces and foreign personnel to help in emergencies when quote, “immediate action is necessary to save human life or alleviate suffering, prevent extensive loss of animal life, prevent widespread spread loss or damage to property or to prevent environmental damage and when state or territory resources are not adequate,” end of quote.

The immunity granted to foreign troops is only given in relation to the conduct of the individuals in the performance of their official duties, connected with the natural disaster emergency. What that means is they can’t grab a truck, not belonging to them or back burn someone’s property to carry out their duties or to protect the greater good.

Therefore, quote, “immunity only applies when the duties are carried out to assist either the ADF or Defence Department in preparing for, or responding to a natural disaster or other emergency. Should force, coercive powers or a criminal offence occur against anyone in our Australian community, the foreign troops lose this indemnity immediately, as would our own troops. Those people then are held accountable under our existing laws. Only Australian Defence Force members and foreign personnel, who act in good faith in the course of their duties are offered this immunity. Social media speculation about this bill is false.

It needlessly worries people for no reason. It’s important for all people to diligently research legislation, to ensure messages are accurate. Remember, Pauline and I have consistently called out corrupt, unelected, overseas organisations, interfering with Australia and with our policies. I will never support anything that’s not in the best interest of Australians. You can be absolutely reassured that I would never support a bill that would let foreign armies onto Australian soil to control Australians and with complete immunity from criminal or civil liability.

There are times when we need international support to battle natural disasters and those serving troops, performing their duty, deserve the same immunity as our own troops and emergency services.

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