The Hon. Murray Watt

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry

MG 61

Australian Parliament House

Dear Minister

Minister I am writing to ask you to reconsider answers given during question time on Wednesday July 27th and ask you to consider how your answers were not misleading the Senate.

Last Wednesday July 27th in questions without notice, my first question was in respect of the Foot and Mouth Disease vaccine being held in the UK and read in part “If foot and mouth disease arrives in Australia the short-term response would be to start vaccination”.

Your reply included the statement “the reason you don’t vaccinate is that you are then deemed by the rest of the world as having foot and mouth disease”.

I did not say vaccinate livestock now, I said IF foot and mouth does arrive then start vaccinating.

As a result of your reply I have had to contend with suggestions on social media I was advocating for a measure that would destroy our export industry. I said no such thing.

  1. Please correct the record.

Minister my first supplemental question went to the adequacy of the vaccine stockpile. Your reply included the statement “what we are actually prioritising in relation to the supply of vaccines at the moment is providing them to Indonesia, to keep the disease out and that is why we want to support the vaccine rollout in Indonesia.”

I of course support assisting Indonesia with their Foot and Mouth disease response. However I might make the observation this response presupposes we now know the strain in Indonesia and can access a vaccine that is suitable.

  1. If we know the Bali strain then why are we not placing the same vaccine we are giving Indonesia here in Australia in case one of the travellers returning from Bali has brought FMD with them?

If we ultimately do not need those vaccines I am sure Indonesia will be appreciative of receiving our stockpile to assist with their outbreak. One Nation are happy to be good neighbours.

Minister your reply to my second supplemental, which asked why the FMD vaccines could not be stored in Australia ready for an outbreak, included the statement “we don’t necessarily know what strain of the disease we would have in Australia and (paraphrasing), we need to know the strain before we order the vaccine”.

  1. If as you said, we do need to know the strain before making the vaccine what are the million doses we already have in the UK?

I acknowledge the call from your office on Thursday advising we would receive an answer to the question you took on notice regarding how many vaccines we have in the UK – to which you gave an indicative answer of one million.

  1. This response has not been received yet and I would ask that it contains details of strains for which we have completed vaccines stored in the UK together with respective quantities.

On page 18 of the FMD AUSVETPLAN Edition 3 it states that vaccination is recommended to start within 48 hours of the first detected case, and this may include protective vaccination of livestock in the area surrounding the infection;

  1. Minister why did you suggest the vaccines could be here from the UK in 7 days and this was sufficient, when your own manual indicates vaccination would be an appropriate option after just 48 hours?
  2. Australia is currently holding tens of millions of vaccines for COVID in complete safety. If we are unable to hold FMD vaccines in a similar manner please provide an explanation as to why.

Minister, I make the observation that it is proving easier to get a human vaccinated in this country than a cow.

I thank you for your attention to this matter and would request a response by COB Monday 1st August 2022.

Yours Sincerely

Malcolm Roberts

Senator for Queensland

Great to chat to Turning Point Australia about the return to Parliament, with the Government already up to dirty tricks.

🏛 Parliament Resumes: LABOR already playing games

  • LABOR defund staff to Freedom Senators
  • Building Union Shenanigans
  • Climate policy on the horizon

Despite promises of being one of the world’s largest batteries for only $2 billion dollars, Snowy 2.0 is shaping up to cost over $10 billion and only supply a fraction of promised capacity.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak about the Auditor-General’s performance audit titled, No. 33—Performance audit—Snowy 2.0 governance of early implementation: Snowy Hydro Limited.

Some background for those who may be new to this project: Snowy 2.0 is an extension of the Snowy Hydro project, hence the name. In 2017, Prime Minister Turnbull announced the cost of Snowy 2.0 as $2 billion. This report states that the cost is now $5.1 billion plus billions of other costs, totalling well over $10 billion. The completion date is out to 2025, so we can expect further cost blowouts. The project involves using electricity from unreliable sources like wind and solar to pump water from a lower reservoir, Talbingo Dam, through underground pipes to an upper reservoir, Tantangara Dam. Water is then sent back down to Talbingo Dam, generating electricity on the way. Snowy 2.0 is referred to as a ‘big battery’ because water is stored in the top reservoir until it is needed. The same turbine is either pumping water uphill or generating electricity from the water coming down. The total pipe length is 27 kilometres. Generally, water is pumped up during the day—provided the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. The water is then released down the pipe to generate electricity in the evening peak, when it’s most needed. As the sun does not shine and wind goes quiet at night, pumping water back up the hill overnight, ready for the morning peak, will need coal power. The upper reservoir may hold multiple days worth of water and, at some point, the dam must be refilled, especially as Tantangara Dam is currently only 17 per cent full.

Pumped hydro only works when the dam has water in it. For every megawatt of power generated by water coming down the hill, the turbine needs 1.3 megawatts of power to get the water back up, because of losses. In total, 30 per cent more coal is used in Snowy 2.0. Pumped hydro, put simply, entails generating electricity 2.3 times to be used by consumers once. This is not cheap electricity; it’s actually really expensive electricity. The solar and wind fairy tale needs pumped hydro as a way of storing unreliable wind and power generation, which occurs mostly during the day, and moving that capacity to the evening peek, when unreliable solar and wind can’t provide baseload power.

Maximum generation for Snowy 2.0 is an impressive 2,000 megawatts, but here’s the catch: annual generation is listed in this report as 350,000 megawatt hours. Running at full capacity, Snowy 2.0 will generate electricity for only 175 hours a year. To put that into perspective, my home state of Queensland used 68 million megawatt hours last year. Snowy Hydro will contribute the equivalent of half of one per cent of Queensland’s power each year, one-tenth of one per cent of Australia’s annual generation, at a cost of $5 billion and rising—and that doesn’t include all the costs. This madness will send us broke. There’s a far better way: a 2,000-megawatt coal-fired power station is able to run at 2,000 megawatts 98 per cent of the time, 24/7. Liddell in the Hunter Valley generated nine million megawatts last year.

For less than the cost of this green fairy tale called Snowy 2.0, a coal plant can produce at least 25 times the amount of electricity. That’s why Germany’s Greens coalition government is turning Germany’s coal-fired power stations back on. Shutting ours down when we see what’s happening in the rest of the world is criminal irresponsibility. Prime Minister Albanese is promising reduced electricity prices while at the same time building horribly expensive power generation. The Prime Minister’s agenda will fail, and he will take Australia down with him. Instead, One Nation will build baseload power stations, reduce the cost of electricity, restore grid reliability, restore grid stability, restore Australian manufacturing and restore the income of working Australians.

There is a fundamental problem with climate change alarmism. In the two recessions of the last two decades where carbon emissions were hugely reduced, there was no difference to the CO2 in the air and temperature of the world.

Transcript

As an engineer, I respect and consult scientists, because lives have depended on it, and still do. As an engineer educated in atmospheric gases and as a business manager, I was responsible for hundreds of people’s lives, based on my knowledge of atmospheric gases. I listened to scientists, I cross-examined scientists and I debate the science. I have never found anyone with logical scientific points based on empirical scientific evidence that shows we have anything to worry about at all.

The basics are these: when you burn a hydrocarbon fuel, you burn molecules containing carbon and hydrogen with oxygen and they form CO2, carbon dioxide, and H2O, water vapour; that’s it. Carbon dioxide is essential for all life. But let’s go beyond the science and have a look at natural experiment. We’ve had two natural experiments, global experiments, in the last 14 years. The first was in 2009, when the use of hydrocarbon fuels reduced in the recession that followed the global financial crisis. There was less carbon dioxide produced from the human use of hydrocarbons. What happened to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? It kept increasing. What happened in 2020, when we had a major recession, almost a depression, around the world as a result of COVID restrictions put in place by governments? We saw the same reduction in hydrocarbon fuel use by humans and the same cut in carbon dioxide output from humans, and yet carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued to increase.

Those who understand the science understand that it is fundamental: humans cannot and do not affect the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; it’s controlled by nature entirely. I’ve cross-examined the CSIRO three times now in the last few years. Under my cross-examination, which is the first of its kind in this country and the only one of its kind in the world, the CSIRO admitted that they have never stated that carbon dioxide from human activity is dangerous—never stated it. This is all rubbish that’s being talked about. Secondly, they admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. Thirdly, they never quantified, in three meetings, any specific impact of carbon dioxide from human activity. Never! That is the fundamental basis for policy. What’s more, they showed their sloppiness because they withdrew discredited papers which they initially cited to me at their choice as evidence of the unprecedented rate of temperature change and then failed to provide the empirical scientific evidence. They withdrew the two papers they put to me on temperatures, the two papers they put to me on carbon dioxide.

There is no danger. Temperatures are not unprecedented. We need to come back to the science, not the so-called experts the Greens talk about, not the pixies at the bottom of the garden. We need to come back to the science, the empirical scientific evidence, and base policies on that.

Yesterday the Minister for Agriculture Murray Watt gave Parliamentary members a briefing on the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) threat to the $80 billion Australian livestock industry.  The threat assessment from FMD has been raised from 9% to 11% because the disease has arrived in Bali.
 
One Nation is concerned that the measures at airports to ensure FMD does not come through arrivals is insufficient.  Minister Watt has announced that our measures are 90% effective but are based mostly on passengers’ self-assessment honest.
 
We are concerned that vaccines needed to control the outbreak are stored in the UK and, despite Agriculture Minister Watt’s misleading answer during Question Time, we do know the strain likely to arrive in Australia.  We have no reason not to place vaccines in Australia now so we can be ready for any outbreak.
 
Under Australian regulations it is perfectly safe to eat the meat from livestock that have been vaccinated against FMD.  If FMD does enter Australia, our meat and related exports will be prevented from leaving the country for many years.  The viability of the industry is at risk and under threat.

Transcript

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Watt. Thank you for your briefing this afternoon on foot-and-mouth disease. Minister, if foot-and-mouth disease does enter Australia, the short-term response would be to start vaccination. Food and Safety Australia and New Zealand says vaccines are safe for human consumption. Having said that, Australia owns foot-and-mouth disease vaccines located in the United Kingdom. How many vaccines does Australia own in the United Kingdom?

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management) (14:39): Thank you, Senator Roberts. I’m pleased that you were able to come along to that briefing. The feedback that I had was that it was very informative for the members who attended. We are approaching this in a bipartisan manner, and we would welcome the opposition joining us in that, as I know you are, Senator Roberts.

Opposition senators interjecting

The PRESIDENT: Order!

Just to pick you up on one point: if, God forbid, foot-and-mouth disease were to enter Australia despite the measures that we are putting in place, we have a well-developed plan known as AUSVETPLAN, which is prepared between the federal government and states and territories, about how we respond to biosecurity outbreaks. Biosecurity outbreaks are managed and led by state governments with the support of the federal government, and we have seen that occur in relation to the Varroa mite outbreak recently, where we have been supporting the New South Wales government. The point about vaccines is that biosecurity advice that I have received is that we would not immediately vaccinate all livestock or even a large segment of livestock immediately in Australia, and that is because if you vaccinate your livestock—

Opposition senators interjecting

Senator WATT: It’s unfortunate that the opposition don’t want to understand and listen to the measures of preparing for the outbreak. The reason you don’t vaccinate, Senator Roberts, is that you are then deemed by the rest of the world as having foot-and-mouth disease, and that is what prevents the export of our product overseas. It’s effectively the same as having the outbreak here when you vaccinate. The idea would be that in the first instance you would impose a 72-hour livestock standstill to limit the movement of animals, and only if the outbreak got further would you consider vaccines. My advice, and I will get this checked, is that we have approximately one million vaccines available to us in a stockpile and they are available within one week’s notice.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:41): We have 25 million cattle and 2.5 million pigs. How is one million enough?

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management) (14:41): As I said, the first move, should we have an outbreak here, is not to just run out and vaccinate every herd of cattle, sheep, pigs or goats across the country—or buffaloes, for that matter. What we would actually do is try to control the outbreak in the localised area that it is in so that it didn’t spread further afield. If it did spread further afield, that is when we would look to vaccinations as an alternative. It is not the only alternative that we would have, but it is certainly one, and we would be able to access other vaccines at very short notice. What we are actually prioritising in relation to the supply of vaccines at the moment is providing them to Indonesia, and the reason we are doing that is that, if we can bring that outbreak under control in Indonesia, not only is that in their national interest; it is in our national interest. We have continued to have very productive discussions with the Indonesian government about what other vaccines and other assistance we can provide. But my priority right now is keeping the disease out, and that is why we want to support the vaccine rollout in Indonesia.

he PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:42): Why are these vaccines not already in Australia? We are one of the largest cattle and related product producers in the world. Speed of response is critical to protecting our biosecurity. Why are these not being brought to Australia now as a precaution?

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management) (14:42): As I said, vaccination is not the first measure that you would undertake if there were an outbreak, but there are a couple of other reasons why we have got those vaccines here now, the first of which is that there are sometimes issues about the bringing of live virus into a country, and the responsible members of the opposition understand this. In addition, though, we don’t necessarily know what strain of the disease we would have in Australia, and we want to make sure that the vaccines that we obtain would actually be effective for the strain of the virus that we would get if we were to get it. In fact some of the technical support we have started providing to Indonesia was actually to help them diagnose the strain of virus that they had so that we could then go out and procure the vaccines that would deal with that particular strain. There’s no point sending vaccines to people if they don’t work for a particular strain of the virus, and we would need a little bit of time to diagnose the strain that we have here in Australia so that we could then very quickly obtain the correct vaccines to deal with the version of the virus that we got.

An interview with Andrew McColl from Family Voice and Robbie Katter, Queensland State MP. Gender dysphoria is affecting our teenage girls in huge numbers. Adolescence is a tough time, and some teens experience distress with their biological identity and then claim they are transgender. This has become a quick path to puberty blockers, hormone injections and surgical interventions.

This is not the miracle solution for this distress. State legislation has been introduced that alienates parents from supporting their children, and medical profession have been intimidated into abandoning our kids and sending them on this destructive medical pathway. There is hope as the tide is turning in many of the gender clinics around the world, with hormonal and surgical interventions no longer automatically available to children presenting with gender dysphoria.

A shout out for some common sense prevailing on this issue of gender neutral language. Bill Shorten has reversed the use of the dehumanising term “birthing parent” and will re-replace it with “mother”. Interestingly the term “father” is still used and there is no talk of it being changed to “sperm donor”.

Transcript

Andrew:

Welcome to the Family Voice zoom session this morning. My name is Andrew McColl. I’m the Queensland Director of Family Voice Australia. Our subject today is the transgender controversy and I’m joined today by the Queensland Senator, Malcolm Roberts and I hope at any minute to have Robbie Katter, the Queensland State MP from North Queensland, joining us as well. That will be good. Good morning, Malcolm.

Malcolm:

Good morning, Andrew. How are you?

Andrew:

I’m well, thank you. In the absence of Robbie being with us, I’ll direct some questions straight to you.

Malcolm:

Sure.

Andrew:

That will be good. We’re talking about the transgender controversy. I happened to note Malcolm that you’d interviewed Dr Andrew Orr recently who made reference to the term, gender dysphoria. Is this how this whole matter began?

Malcolm:

I don’t know if it began there, but I think it really owes its roots to some people who are pushing this hard to disrupt our kids. Gender dysphoria is real. It’s a sense of discomfort or distress or incongruence with their own biology. I make the point that sex is not assigned at birth. It’s assigned at conception and historically children are feeling very confused over gender and that was primarily in young boys around three to five years of age. We’ve all seen boys and girls playing as the opposite sex, but in the last 10 years, there’s been a… Before getting onto the last 10 years, I think it’s also important to recognise that the brain in adolescence, both boys and girls go through enormous changes, huge changes, radical rewiring of the brain and this is a very important time for the development of the human brain.

Malcolm:

It’s also a time when hormones are flushing throughout the whole body and so it’s a very complicated time for many people and adolescence is not easy for most people. It’s a time of stress. What we’ve seen in the last 10 years, Andrew, is an exponential growth explosion in teenage girls experiencing gender dysphoria, discomfort with their own bodies, their own gender. Most of them with no history of gender dysphoria at all. Adolescence is challenging, but this is not a problem to be fixed. Instead, we’ve got people jumping on the bandwagon to create a problem, so what we’ve seen now is hormonal and surgical interventions are not a miracle solution to the challenge of adolescents. They in fact make things worse and then if they go wrong, they’ll make things worse for that person’s life for the rest of their lives.

Malcolm:

You’ve got to recognise the normal discomfort, unease, stressors of adolescents and separate that out because it is a real issue, but most people at the end of adolescence, are happy with who they are. They realise, okay, I’m a boy, and I’m enjoying being a boy. If I’m a girl, I’m enjoying being a girl. That’s what we’ve got to be very careful of and gender dysphoria has been jumped on by a few people to take advantage of it.

Andrew:

Thank you. Good morning, Robbie. How are you getting on today?

Robbie:

Yeah. Good morning. Sorry I was running late.

Andrew:

That’s all right. Thanks for joining with us and we’re getting into this matter of the transgender as you would’ve figured out by now. You spoke fairly recently, Robbie, in the Queensland Parliament, and I congratulate you for your speech regarding the fact that you have daughters who will be teenagers soon. Why was that important in the context of the transgender controversy?

Robbie:

I think the challenge for us as politicians interested in this subject is inserting it into the consciousness of a switched off public who are mostly buying the idea that people’s choice is people’s choice. What impact is this going to have and even when they start entertaining the thought of transgender, they think that’s a tricky debate. “I’m going to have to get my head across this and that’s going to probably put me in arguments amongst my friends.” That to me is the real enemy for people on our side of the argument. That’s the challenge, I think. We want to find areas where we can break that debate back down to something that’s meaningful and we’ll cut straight through to them.

Robbie:

That was what was put to me was, I think parents will care about the welfare of their kids and I think that sport is a really good manifestation of that conflict. Whilst I think the issue is a lot bigger than just women’s sport, my girls could be playing sport against these people and I’m worried about their health being made to compete against them. I wouldn’t be real happy if my girls were playing rugby league, but speaking hypothetically, if they do they’ll be up against some big bloody Pacific Islander girl that could belt the bejesus out of them. I thought that was good imagery to put [inaudible 00:05:30]

Andrew:

Yeah. Malcolm, just getting back to Dr Orr again, he mentioned that as children moved through puberty, as you were indicating somewhat earlier, many were incongruent or confused about their gender, but that will probably desist. Does that make sense to you?

Malcolm:

Yes, it does. It certainly does. I think everyone on the planet knows that children going through adolescence are under stress just because there are so many hormonal changes, so many new things in our brains going on. There is stress, but there are also children who suffer from physiologic, psychological comorbidities, including anxiety, ASD, ADHD, depression, trauma, eating disorders, and many more. What we need to do is to get to the core of those issues. I don’t dismiss this as an issue. I’m not saying it’s a non-event. It is an issue for some people. For the majority of children, they will just grow through it and we just have to be with them and love them, but for some, there is a serious issue there, but it’s not to do with their gender.

Malcolm:

It’s other underlying comorbidities, so we need to understand the diagnoses and appropriate therapeutic support and what we really need is family based therapeutic care. Much like Robbie’s doing. He’s caring for his daughters. That’s what’s driving him, but what we see are some blockages to parents getting involved and I noticed that you’ve got a question for Robbie coming up along those lines. We’ve got to be very careful because… I’ll maybe comment more after Robbie’s answered that question, but basically with parents being shoved to the side, unlike Robbie, for fear of being criticised, parents are letting go their kids and that’s not right. Kids need their parents at this critical time in their life, even if it’s just adolescence they’re facing. If they’re facing other issues, they need even more support from their parents so we cannot afford to abandon our kids at this time, just like Robbie’s not abandoning his daughters, all parents should not abandon their children. They should stay with them and care for them.

Andrew:

Yeah. Robbie, just thinking in terms of this term that people use. Some people say that it’s very important that we affirm the choices that children make. If the parents feel that their choices that their children are making are plainly ridiculous, doesn’t that mean that it’s time to say something to the child.

Robbie:

Yeah. I’ll shoot straight from the hip on that. I believe true compassion comes in trying to guide people in what you think, based on your experiences. I think it’s such a common practise in life that we rely on the past experience of others to give us some help on what’s the best outcomes for us on whether it’s on diet, staying away from McDonald’s food or whether it’s mental guidance or spiritual guidance and why would you allow parents to be giving kids advice on what’s good to put into their stomach and help them in nutrition, but you can’t help them in what’s going to guide them in the best way for the outcomes later in life.

Robbie:

If the kids are running around acting like a fool and playing up and punching kids, you pull them into line, or if they’re starting to trying to indulge in multiple personalities or something, you might try to stop it, but you at least try and put some guidance around that to help for the best outcome. If the kid is indecisive about something, I think it’s negligent as a parent to hands off approach and let the kid work it out without saying, “Crikey, that could lead them down this path and let’s just try and put them down here, because it’ll be the best outcome for them as best we can tell.” I think that’s part and parcel of true compassion and nurturing and granted, not everyone always gets it right.

Robbie:

How could you deny doing that? Me? I can’t see how you separate that because it seems to me that in this transgender debate, I think what we’re talking about is if the kid says, “I’m starting to feel like a girl,” I would say as a parent, “Crikey, maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, but let’s not just entertain that too much yet,” and see if this is just a bit of a passing phase or it’s a popular thing at school and get him through it. Of course, you should be allowed to do that and I think that’s one of the big problems now is there’s no capital in that and it’s just let the kid make all the decisions for themselves. We don’t do it with their diet or any other parts of life, but why would you allow them to do it on this?

Malcolm:

If I could jump in there.

Andrew:

Yeah, sure.

Malcolm:

Thank you. I agree with Robbie. It is a time when children need compassion from their parents. They also need genuine care, which I think Robbie ties care in with compassion. They also need understanding and you can’t have compassion without understanding. These are the things that are important, especially when children are going through adolescence and they’ll come out of it believing that they belong in the body in which they were conceived. There will be others who are suffering genuine distress and they need to have support and counselling. As a parent myself, but knowing other parents, we want parents to be with their children and to support them through it, not just say, “Yes, little Johnny, you’re correct,” or “Yes, little Mary, you’re correct.”

Malcolm:

That’s rubbish. That’s abandonment. I would line up there with Robbie, very strongly. Robbie, in my experience is a very practical down to earth person. This is a very difficult topic for all of us, but I agree with Robbie, it is the parents’ responsibility to be the guardian of that child, from all kinds of things that are going to come into that child’s life up until about the age of 18 or 21. It’s our responsibility as parents to protect, to support, to have compassion and care as Robbie said, but we are responsible for that young person and we are responsible for how they mature. I agree with Robbie. We don’t just stand by and affirm. We actually support, but we stand ground and look after our responsibility.

Andrew:

Yeah. This is the issue that this whole thing hangs upon because there’s this group in society who get some power over children who think that we must affirm children come what may, whether we agree with what they’re thinking or not. It seems to me, we’ve got to ask ourselves a question in the whole transgender debate. Do we feel obligated to affirm a child’s decisions or their views or their feelings, even if that affirmation flies in the face of biology. That to me is where it’s going to get interesting, isn’t it, Malcolm?

Malcolm:

That’s exactly the point that we don’t automatically affirm what a child comes up with. A child is a child is a child. They don’t have the life experience. They don’t have the intellectual capacity at times, especially when they’re confused, going through adolescence when their brains are literally being rewired. This is a time of enormous confusion. Sure. We listen to them, we respect them, be with them, support them, have compassion for them, care for them, but we don’t just simply agree. That’s abandonment, that’s abdication. That’s not affirmation, that’s abdication. Andrew, I noticed you’ve got a question coming up later about international organisations. A lot of this is driven by international organisations that are trying deliberately to smash the family, because when you smash family, people turn to the government and that’s what they want. They want to use control. They are happy to smash up the family and this is one of their many ways of trying to smash the family, but they’re crippling children and some of these children who have interventions, hormonal or…

Andrew:

Surgical.

Malcolm:

…surgical, thank you. They are crippled for life and then when they realise later on they’ve made a mistake as has been happening, then there are very serious mental health problems and leading to suicide. We have got to protect these children. Affirmation is rubbish in this sense.

Andrew:

Robbie, would we say that in this whole controversy, what’s really needed is good old fashioned common sense.

Robbie:

Yeah. I’ve had the belief that common sense is there latent. It exists in the majority of people there, but I think a growing number of people and still probably not the majority, but a growing number of people are unwilling to voice that intuition where they know it’s common sense, but they won’t say it because they don’t want to be unpopular in their peer group. That’s a growing number and the challenge is to find those, like the women’s sport issues, find those and put it right back in people’s face so there’s a very clear delineation of the pathway. We can head down the two pathways. We can head down in society with these things and what the sort of outcomes they can expect because it’s that slow, incremental creep of all these things that is the biggest enemy, I think.

Robbie:

That’s where it’s successful. This transgender stuff is just where it slowly incrementally comes in. That’s the biggest challenge is to keep bringing it to a head where it’s… I think as a politician, from my point of view, it’s not being too confrontational in general because a lot of people just don’t give it a second thought. It’s trying to invite them into the conversation rather trying to force it down their throat, which I think requires a fair bit of finesse and often more than I’m capable of. It’s pulling what I think is a really big issue and making it seem, in a way, not as big because people don’t want to take on a big issue, but they need to recognise just in common sense terms, what it means and the implications on their life and their future and draw that into their consciousness and apply it to their everyday life and make it relevant to them.

Andrew:

Yeah. I’ve heard the statement made by some of the latest people in this and this is not so much in Australia, but certainly overseas that says, “The child has this sex, but their gender is something different, and just because a baby is born with a penis, doesn’t make him a boy.” I look at it and think, I can’t believe people are going to say something as stupid as that, because this is a radical rethinking of how we do just about anything in our society where a child is born with the body of one sex, but it is alleged that it’s actually something different. This is why I’m simply saying we just need some common sense here. The child is either a boy or a girl. They can’t be swapping over every Thursday afternoon to the other one, because I just feel like it today.

Andrew:

It seems as if, whether it’s peer group, whether it’s social media, whether it’s just a trend or a fad, but when people go down these roads and as Malcolm was alluding earlier, and we go and do hormonal treatment or surgery that actually removes the organs, part of the difficulty is that what we don’t always understand is that males and females are diametrically different. They have to be so that we can reproduce. Obviously I’m a male, but there are components with my wife that I share lots of things. We have a human body. We have a heart and kidneys and legs and feet and brains, but compared to my wife, I’m diametrically different. That’s not something that we should be ashamed of or think that’s something wrong. That’s not wrong. That’s actually right, otherwise we can’t have children.

Andrew:

It seems as if we’ve lost track of a few things here and Malcolm, you were alluding earlier, or you made comments about these international organisations that have got some kind of agenda that they’re pushing. That’s not something that lots of people really are aware of. Maybe you could tell us some more about that.

Malcolm:

I will. Can I just jump in and make some comments on the topic you just finished discussing first?

Andrew:

Yeah, sure.

Malcolm:

Okay. Warren Entsch, the member for Leichhardt in Northern Queensland, I don’t agree with much of what he says, but he got my respect when he talked about a friend that he grew up with who was a boy and later on changed his gender. He became a woman. What I’m saying with that is, there is a very, very small minority. It’s tiny, tiny, tiny. It’s a minuscule minority of people who have that. When we look at the human being, Andrew, we pop out about this big from our mother. We’re completely helpless. Male and female. We’ve got enormous differences at birth, between male and female.

Malcolm:

Then we go through planes of development every three years, six years, three years, six years, those planes of development and physical as well as mental, emotional, spiritual maturation and then we get to about 90 and we maybe have some adequacy when it comes to maturity. Along that way, there are so many chemical things that happen with a person’s development and some people are born with lesser skills physically. Some people are born with lesser skills mentally. What I’m saying is it’s a very complex transition to go from a process to go from birth to the age of 90 or a hundred. Along that time, many influences. We’re expecting the human being to be perfect and the human being is perfect, but it’s not perfect in the sense that everything physically is fine. Everything chemically is the same. Hormonally is the same. Mentally is the same. Emotionally is the same.

Malcolm:

There are some people who actually genuinely need to change their sex. I get that, so I’m not putting them down. There are other people who are confused through adolescence. There are other people who are confused through adolescence and need support because they’ve got other things going on in their development. The majority of people go through that within a wide range and they’re fine. I agree with you that while we have compassion for the people who are genuinely confused about what their gender is, and while we have compassion for those people who go through adolescence with that confusion and emerge from that, which is the majority of people are fine, we do have to celebrate the fact that men and women are different.

Malcolm:

What the feminist movement has done at times is tried to say we’re equal and that is complete rubbish. What we do, instead of saying, “We need to have women in positions, because it’s only fair, it’s only equal.” No, we need to say, “We need women in positions because they’re different, because they bring a different perspective, a different view.” Then we’re all richer for it. You are not as rich as you and your wife together. Same with my wife and me together. We are far richer in terms of our outlook, our abilities, our perspectives, because we are different. We need to celebrate that difference. We do need to recognise the diversity of humans though, along that sphere. What you’ll find amongst these people in international organisations, to an answer your questions, Andrew, is that they’re not interested in human beings.

Malcolm:

They’re not interested in individuals. What they want is machines that do what they’re told and they’re wanting to corporatize us, they’re wanting to indoctrinate us, they’re wanting to control us, suppress us because we are just cannon fodder to them. These international organisations want to remove individual thinking. They want to remove individual responsibility. They want to remove individual initiative. They want us to be dumbed down and all be the same and just conform and that’s not the way the human is meant to be. God didn’t mean us to be like that. He made us so that we are diverse and compliment each other and we belong with each other.

Malcolm:

These international organisations want to strip us down of our individuality and make us robots, but at the same time, Andrew, what they do is they make us conform and then they put pressure on us to conform and they split us. You either conform or you’re one of the nonconformists and if you’re a nonconformist, then they get stuck into you because they want us all to conform or they put so much peer pressure on parents. They say to parents, “You must affirm your child, otherwise you’re not caring for your child.” Complete rubbish. They want us to abandon our responsibilities and that’s the biggest threat that I see of all of these people. They want us to abandon our responsibilities.

Andrew:

Yeah. Robbie, we know that what’s happened in Victoria, they’ll use this term, the anti conversion therapy whereby there is now power in government to prosecute people who fall foul of government. That is they’re trying to not go along with these attempts to somehow convert a child from one sex to another. Do you think this is contributing to our problems today?

Robbie:

Yeah. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that and it’s a really scary thought. It’s one of those signposts on the road that control from government that you don’t want to see. That to me is a sign post saying you’re going to fall off a cliff shortly. I’d even wind it back to saying that the mental trauma that puts back on parents and the pressure it puts back on parents, it’s hard enough holding a family together under normal circumstances. Now you’ve got a bit of a troubled kid and you are trying to do your bit as a parent to pull them back in line or give them advice that you think will help them through life and here’s yet another signal, even if it doesn’t affect all parents, it’s a signal to them to say you don’t really have control. We’re assuming the rights of some of this critical decision making for your kids. What an absolutely scary thought. If that’s not a red flag for politicians or people to stand up against, I don’t know what is.

Andrew:

Yeah. It does seem to be a totalitarian move, doesn’t it, where the task of raising a child is actually being taken away from the parent and taken over by some third party. You were going to say something there, Malcolm.

Malcolm:

Yes. I just wanted to compliment Robbie because I’d never realised that and this complex situation can be boiled down to really simple, basic things. Robbie just pointed out that these people who are pushing this anti conversion legislation, they’re actually putting a lot of stress on parents and that’s hurting the children again. At a time when the parents are vulnerable, the child is vulnerable, they’re trying to increase the stress on parents by saying to parents, “You shouldn’t get involved or you should affirm.” Everything in the parents’ heart, in their gut is saying, “No, I’ve got to get involved,” and that’s completely wrong.

Andrew:

Absolutely.

Malcolm:

A lot of these international organisations, I’ll name them, United Nations, the World Economic Forum, Green Peace now. Sadly, it started off very, very well in the hands of Patrick Moore, but it was completely hijacked by Maurice Strong for the UN. WWF. These are hideous anti-human organisations, and they’re deliberately putting pressure on people and trying to use peer pressure to try and get parents to shut down. Imagine a parent who wants to get involved, wants to have the compassion and care and doesn’t do so because of peer pressure from these people. At the end, their daughter has bits of her body chopped off as hormonal treatment. What would that parent feel then? What would society pick? The price society pays picking up the pieces from this mess. This is deliberate anti-human practises and it needs to be confronted and I agree with Robbie. These people are putting enormous pressure on parents at a time when they can least handle it. It’s disgusting. It’s inhuman.

Andrew:

Yeah. Robbie, when you…Go on, Robbie.

Robbie:

Sorry. It just triggered another thought. There’s also a heavy dose of contradiction, I think, in the philosophical approach of, let’s say in this case the Victorian Government, the proponents of all this transgender stuff. If you looked at the abortion debate in Queensland, they expanded it to 22 weeks which was a period that you could then start detecting defects in the child. If you could make a presumption then, as Malcolm said before, that kid’s imperfect and I have a niece who has a condition and she’s perfect to me. She’s perfect to her parents, but those people would find that acceptable that you terminated the pregnancy because you see there are imperfections here, but I think there’s a fairly heavy dose of contradiction here where it’s like, no, these imperfections are good. You’ve got to nurture that and celebrate it and quickly, we’ve got a child that’s different here so let’s give them the opportunity to change their sex because we’re celebrating the fact that they’re imperfect. I just think there’s a bit of contradiction in the approaches there of the other side.

Andrew:

Yeah. Yeah. Malcolm. What we find evident here is that doctors used to sign up to the Hippocratic Oath and one part of that says to do the patient no harm. Being fairly blunt with my listeners today, if a 13 year old girl is perfectly healthy and well and decides she wants her breasts removed by a surgeon, is that surgeon ever justified in doing such a thing and isn’t that an uncaring and an unloving and a foolish and utterly unprofessional thing to do?

Malcolm:

Yes, it is. Doctors are no different from parents. Many doctors are parents. Politicians are no different from everyday people in Australia. Many of us want to belong, so we belong to a family, we belong to a sports club, we belong to a workplace, we belong to a political party, we belong to social clubs. Belonging is extremely important and it’s part of our makeup because those who didn’t belong among our ancestors let the tribe down and were booted because you just didn’t have anything. Humans are very vulnerable individually because we are very weak as compared to some of the more aggressive animals on the planet. We have a superior intellect, we have a superior caring system and we have a superior social system and so very important to belong. What I’m saying is that doctors are no different from politicians, no different from the people at large, that there’s so much pressure to belong.

Malcolm:

Doctors will go against their better judgement and just do that operation, but also some doctors just don’t care. We’re entrusting our children to professionals who don’t care enough to make a stand on behalf of the children with gender dysphoria. A child is troubled, gender dysphoria. The child needs a therapeutic approach, psychological therapy, psychotherapy approach, not a knife, not some hormones and adults are too scared to safeguard the children from harm and that’s cowardly behaviour, but there’s so much pressure on parents as Robbie just mentioned. A much more cautious approach would be watchful waiting, getting therapeutic advice and assistance. What we need is doctors who are using the scalpel or the hormones to back off and to really look at what the child needs, because paramount in this is what the child needs and children and adolescents, especially those who are under stress and other mental health issues, that’s not the time to let them loose. That’s the time to give them compassion and care, as Robbie mentioned.

Malcolm:

The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, their gender clinic, in 2012, they had 18 new referrals. In 2021, eight hundred and twenty one new referrals. That’s largely because of peer pressure amongst girls. In 2021, they had 1120 patients. In 2020, the year before, they had 538 so there literally is an explosion of gender dysphoria, or people presenting with that. What we need is the doctors to be educated and the doctors to really be strong and honest and as Robbie said, compassionate. To look after these children with the right therapy, rather than a scalpel and a hormone, because there’s growing evidence of regret amongst people later on. There’s a 2021 transitioner study by, let me just check the name here, Dr Lisa Littman and showed only 24 percent of her 100 sample reported their regret back to the clinic. In other words, there’s an explosion of people later who regret what’s happened and we’re not considering them.

Andrew:

That’s a serious matter and I happened to come across a Jordan Peterson YouTube just last month called, “Arrest them,” and Peterson says, and I quote, “We are sacrificing our children on the alter of far left wing ideologies. This is worthy of a prison sentence. The Hippocratic oath has been replaced with a delusion.” That’s a very serious statement to make, but it does seem as though there has been some kind of an attempt to hijack, even the term, what is therapeutic? Is it therapeutic for a 13 year old girl to have her breasts cut off? How can that be? If we are talking about a woman with breast cancer, I can understand of course, but we don’t go to a healthy well child with a knife simply because the child thinks it might be a good idea today. It’s utterly unprofessional. Robbie, you made your speech quite recently in the Queensland Parliament and there were one or two labour MPs who criticised your speech that day. Do you regret any part of that?

Robbie:

Yeah. I regret not bringing up something because my colleague, Nick Dametto put a question in parliament earlier that morning about why the inquiry on domestic violence hadn’t consulted any of the men’s groups in Queensland and the Attorney-General’s response in question time that same morning was that unfortunately with domestic violence, we have to apply gender lens and was very explicit on that point. That afternoon, we were debating that you can’t refer to gender, that it didn’t exist and I forgot to cover that point. I was disappointed I didn’t. I don’t think anything the opposition said upset me because there was just no substance to it. As usual, every counter argument seems to be emotive.

Robbie:

They use the word hate speech. This is hate, this creates conflict and it’s hate speech and it’s disgusting that we’re even, and they always say, why are we even talking about this, and which is what I was referring to my initial comment is that they try and pretend it’s not relevant and it’s nothing. The challenge is to say it is, it does have implications and beyond that, they’re supposed to put up six speakers for the debate. I think they put up two speakers and the Greens contributions were just ridiculous. Again, all emotive, no substance. I actually think I did a bloody terrible job with my contribution, because I kept looking at the facts that I had to put forward and part of the speech was dedicated to going through the Olympic records in different events between men and women to provide evidence or demonstrate that there’s a built in advantage to the males versus the females.

Robbie:

I started looking at my notes and thought, I can’t even say that. It’s so self-evident, it’s ridiculous that I even have to go through it, but I kept catching myself on all the material parts of the argument. You think, this is all self-evident. I don’t even think that’s being agnostic on the issue of transgender. It’s just going through facts. The entire other side of the argument was almost completely absent of any facts at all. I think the only half reason was Sterling Hinchliffe, Member for Sandgate mentioned something about women’s sport that you thought, okay, that’s sort of a point to make, but the rest of it was purely emotive.

Malcolm:

That’s the same in the Federal Parliament, Robbie. It’s exactly the same. What happens is they can’t resort to a logical argument. They can’t resort to data, so what they resort to is name calling and smearing. When they use that on us, we just turn around and say, “Thank you for confirming my point, because if you had any data, you would’ve presented it. Instead, you’re calling me names, so that just vindicates the fact that you haven’t got any data.”

Robbie:

Yep. Andrew, if I can put some context on what Malcolm just said, put some further context around that. Bearing in mind, the same as State Parliament, the labour government has 220 parliamentary staff operating for them because the LNP gets exactly 10 percent of that, so we know they’ve got 22 staff, so you must assume labor’s got at least 220 staff or more assisting them with their parliamentary debates. We’ve got one staff, three total for KP and so it’ll be similar numbers for Malcolm in Federal Parliament. You think about this, there’s only Malcolm there and maybe one other with you in the Senate trying to back you up on these debates and same with us in Parliament. We only had Steve Andrews from One Nation backing us up so there’s only four of us versus the other 90.

Robbie:

They’ve got all that wealth of resources and all those people working for them. They’ve got an opportunity to make an absolute fool out of us and smash us with data and evidence. That’s their opportunity to put us to the sword and all they could come up with is a few lazy emotive arguments. What does that tell you? There is nothing there. Time and time again, they come up with nothing.

Malcolm:

They just call you names and I just laugh at that because it means they have lost the debate, but Andrew, the significance, not only for children in this issue, it mirrors the significance for parents, the significance for families, the significance for the energy debate, cost of living, climate change, family law, all of these things are being driven by the same people and they have been driven by the same people since the UN was formed in 1944. They are all on an anti-family agenda, an anti-human agenda and an anti-national agenda. They want to smash the national borders. They want to create just a one world global governance, and you don’t have to take my word for that. It’s in their own statements. What they have to do is smash two things, smash national sovereignty, and that’s what they’re trying to do through smashing the borders and putting in place a one world global governance.

Malcolm:

If you look at the things I’ve talked about, COVID, climate change, energy policy, these are echoed around the world. The second thing that they’re trying to do is to smash the family because when you smash the family, people turn to government and they become dependent on government. At the moment, these people who are pushing these agendas, global agendas are pretending they’re doing things to help people, but they’re just making people dependent. What they’re also doing is they’re creating victims and when you have a victim, you have someone who loses responsibility for themselves. That’s exactly what these people want. They want us to be family-less. They want us to be victims. They want us to lack responsibility. That means we lack personal accountability, lack personal authority.

Malcolm:

Victor Frankel said in his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, “You can strip everything from a man in a concentration camp in Holocaust, Germany, except for one thing, the ability to choose his attitude.” That’s what these people are trying to do to intimidate humans and smash us everywhere. They want to smash religion. They want to smash families. They want some smash nation’s states. It’s just hideous what they’re doing. They’re inhuman and they’re anti-human.

Andrew:

Thank you, Malcolm. Thank you, Robbie. Perhaps I could ask Robbie to begin with a concluding statement and Malcolm, you can follow him if you would.

Peter:

Robbie’s muted.

Andrew:

Okay. Perhaps, Malcolm, you’d like to step up to that?

Malcolm:

I’m very, very pro-human and what these people are doing is anti-human. I’m pro-human because humans have a very strong sense of care. Humans have a very strong sense of belonging to the human race. There is only one race and that’s the human race. We have a very, very powerful intellect that’s capable of creative thought and capable of independent thought. These are the reasons why I’m very pro-human. What we have to do is to be very careful about following these agendas. We have to pick them apart and recognise the tactics they use both propaganda and also social tactics, social engineering, to try and divide us and to separate us and make us powerless. Every human being, male and female has enormous power within themselves so long as we hang onto that and that’s what I’m asking people to do.

Malcolm:

The other thing I’m asking people to do is to truly forgive in the sense that Christ and Buddha and many sages throughout history have taught us. True forgiveness, the absence of value judgement . Don’t hate these people, actually truly forgive them because when we forgive, we clear our heart, we clear our mind. That’s a better way for us to think and to respond using our intuition and our common sense, as Robbie said a little while ago. That common sense we’re blessed with, just use it and help our kids and above all love our children, because that’s what they need to get through these challenging times that we all face in adolescence.

Andrew:

That’s true, Malcolm. Thank you. Robbie, do you have any conclusion to make for us this morning?

Robbie:

Yeah, I guess the conclusion from this discussion for me, and it’s probably solidified a bit more in my head as well, and it sort of taps into that sentiment that Malcolm just expressed is that I have strong views on this. I have personal strong views on where I think the morality sits on the list, but even to dial back from that to try and communicate with others and make them aware of where this road can lead us. It’s important to find those touch points and invite people into this space, not trying to jam it into them, because I think there’s a fair bit of resistance. I think there’s a huge enemy. People are disengaging from critical thinking on anything and questioning and challenging, so I think the pathway forward from my perspective is trying to hit those people on the margins that I think they’re intuitive.

Robbie:

They have buy in on this issue in their heart, but they’re not willing to so openly engage and trying to just bring them in softly but it’s also being relentless in doing that as well. You can’t be too passive to the point of being ineffectual. I think the consequences couldn’t be more important to our future as a society but the challenge right now is to make it relevant to people and bring it into their consciousness. I think that’s where the real challenge exists right now.

Andrew:

Sure. Thank you, Malcolm and thank you, Robbie. Did you want to say something else?

Malcolm:

Yes, if I could just add something. If you look at what happened. Rugby union was against transgender males playing sport against female rugby union players. Back in 2020, they ruled that out. It wasn’t taken up. FINA, the world’s swimming body did it just recently as you know, and that larger body did it very professionally. They had three separate experts. They had psychological, health and also athletes and they went right through it and they came away with a somewhat sensible policy and have you’ve seen what’s happened since? Many other organisations have followed them. Once you stand up, as Robbie is, and we are in the Federal Parliament, once you stand up once and then it slowly builds, people say it’s okay to be different. It’s okay to speak out against these people and so then the whole thing starts crumbling, so thank you very much for speaking out in State Parliament, Robbie, and I’m pleased Steve Andrews, I knew would back you. We’ve just got to keep doing this.

Andrew:

Yes. That’s the thing and it doesn’t really matter. I can put my Toyota up on a hoist and take off the wheels and put on Ford wheels and if I spray paint my Toyota badge and put a Ford badge on there, it hasn’t really changed the car, all it’s done is changed some externals. That’s the thing we have to contend with here. You simply can’t change people by changing certain parts of their body. They’re just not made that way. As I said earlier, we are diametrically opposed, males and females, and us men are not the same as women and we will never be like women in many, many things. We’re much better off being content with those differences and actually being thankful for them so we can do the things that we do as men and that women can do the things that women can do successfully.

Andrew:

Thank you once again, gentlemen, for your contributions today, and I trust you engage in further success in your careers on this subject. Thanks again to all those who have been watching us today and we trust you have an enjoyable weekend. Thank you. Bye bye.

Parliament is back. It’s time for Australian politicians to put Australia first.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, this is One Nation’s address in reply to the Governor-General’s opening speech for the 47th Parliament, a speech on behalf of his government. The reviews on social media were underwhelming. Everyday Australians struggling with cost of living were looking to the government for a real plan to bring inflation under control. None was forthcoming. No plan.

The truth is we have a new government that has a long list of sponsors that it needs to placate. Everyday Australians, sadly, are not on the government’s list. One Nation is ready with bold nation-building ideas to deliver breadwinner jobs, lower inflation, and energy security. So let me start where all good governments should start, with the people.

If everyday Australians today feel like they’re working harder and going backwards, it’s because people are.

This month’s Treasury financial data shows that the share of our GDP going to people, that’s wages and salaries, is at an all-time low. Yet the percentage going to corporate profits is at an all-time high. Over the last 30 years, education, healthcare, and housing have increased 300%, far outstripping wages growth.

Next, One Nation continues to pursue our commitment to workers’ rights across the course of this Parliament. Today we re-introduced our Fair Work Amendment Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill 2022. This bill ensures casuals on labour hire contracts in industries that do not have provision for casual employment receive the same pay as the full-time worker alongside doing the same job. Our bill covers black coal, airline crew, and stevedoring. In anticipation of any future exploitation of workers, the bill is worded to allow additional awards to be added.

Next, energy. It’s unbelievable that a nation as resource rich as Australia has plunged its people into an energy crisis. Our governments should be able to guarantee affordable and reliable energy, yet in 2022, state and federal governments are failing. I remind the Senate, Australia has enough coal and uranium reserves to last hundreds of years, yet we have the highest electricity prices in the world. The highest in the world.

We’re the world’s largest exporters of energy. Number one in gas, number two in coal.

Yet due to government subsidies for unreliable wind and solar, we have the world’s highest domestic prices of gas and electricity. Australian families bear the cost of the unreliable wind and solar fairytales with our living standards declining and electricity bills climbing.

The inefficiencies and consequences of unreliable and expensive wind and solar are breathtaking, devastating, and totally unchecked against reality. Small and medium businesses are struggling to keep the doors open in the face of frightening electricity bills causing supply chain inflation. Large corporations with dominant market power are able to simply pass on higher energy prices. Small businesses are not. Small business employs 4.7 million Australians who are struggling because their employers are struggling.

This government has signalled their intention to use unreliable wind and solar to lead an attack on the living standards of everyday Australians. Or more accurately, unreliable, unstable, unscientific electricity. Let me break it down for you. It’s simply impossible to build the volume of wind and solar and batteries needed to meet the 2030 deadline. Wind and solar constructed so far in Australia operate at just 23% of rated capacity because relying on nature’s variability gets you just 23%, not 100%.

To meet the Prime Minister’s 43% target,

for every one megawatt of reliable baseload coal power that’s shut down, Australia will need to build 4.3 megawatts of unreliable wind and solar power.

For example, replacing the 2,000-megawatt Liddell coal-fired power station will require 8,600 megawatts of wind or solar. Even this will only deliver power reliably if matched with a big battery having a similar capacity. Absurd.

To build the volume of unreliable wind and solar and batteries needed by 2030 is simply impossible. So the 2030 carbon dioxide reduction target of 43% is not a target for the construction of unreliable wind and solar electricity generation. We know that’s impossible. Rather, it’s a sneaky target for reducing electricity usage. In 2010, Australia’s electricity consumption was 213 terawatts. It’s already fallen in 2021 to 188 terawatts, 11% decrease, despite Australia’s population growing from 22 million to 26 million, almost a 24% increase.

At 10,071 kilowatt hours per capita, Australia ranks 14th in per capita electricity consumption. Now, it’s a legitimate argument to say that Australia should reduce our electricity consumption further only once the rest of the world reduces theirs. Anyway, why should we reduce electricity consumption? High prices are not an unintended or transitional outcome of unreliable energy. High prices are designed to deliberately reduce electricity consumption. That’s why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already abandoned his campaign promise to cut electricity bills.

That was never real. It was hollow tokenism. A deliberate lie. Parliamentarians, corporate leaders, and their media mouthpiece in protected ivory towers live in a parallel reality where cost of living price hikes like fuel and electricity are a mild inconvenience, not the bloody difference between eating dinner or staying warm that confronts many people in Australia today. Destroying baseload power with reckless abandon is hurting the people who must make the choice between food and warmth. Where’s the humanity in that? Where is the care?

The fairytale climate contradictions making electricity production dependent on nature’s variable wind and solar is a nightmare. There’s no happy ending.

Increasing numbers of businesses are failing, jobs are vanishing, families are being torn apart, and communities, especially regional centres, are being destroyed.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that there are currently 24,000 people directly employed in unreliable energy. To contend that these same unreliables will cause an increase in jobs of 600,000 is the lie of the century.

It will never happen. Indeed, the reverse will be true because studies overseas show that for every unreliable wind and solar job, there are 2.2 jobs lost in the real economy. They are facts. One only has to understand the inherent inefficiency of wind and solar and the low energy density to understand, and their high consumption of resources in being built. That is basic.

Baseload power, though, and jobs go hand in hand. The Prime Minister and the Labour Party, after nine years in opposition, have admitted they have no idea how to create jobs for everyday Australians. Instead, the Prime Minister will host a stage-managed talkfest on job creation. Why? Where’s his plan we heard so much about before the election? The Albanese plan is revealed to be a plan to ask other people what the plan should be. One Nation, though, does know how to create jobs. Get back to basics. Today, the biggest cost in manufacturing is electricity, not the cost of employing workers, not the labour cost. High energy prices have destroyed jobs, and with that, gutted workers’ power. And what drives wages? Supply and demand drives wages.

Australia has significant reserves of iron ore, bauxite, copper, and rare earths, yet we import our electronics, our whitegoods, our finished products made from these same materials.

If Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was serious about job creation, he only needs to safeguard our baseload power through coal and nuclear.

That will bring down energy prices and supercharge our manufacturing sector.

A One Nation government will do that. Get back to proven, common-sense basics, fundamentals. Why has the Albanese government agreed to increase immigration when the Prime Minister has admitted to having no idea how to create the jobs for these people? High immigration without addressing jobs, housing, and energy sells out workers. It sells them short and creates disadvantaged groups. It’s that simple.

So let’s turn to infrastructure. An ambitious infrastructure programme will deliver the jobs growth needed to restore workers’ rights and restore secure employment. Real infrastructure, not the green fairytales that we hear from the government and the previous government. One Nation will advocate for: a national rail circuit; North West Queensland’s CopperString 2.0 high-voltage power transmission; the Tully-Millstream hydro project; Urannah Dam; the Bradfield Scheme conditional on the business case; and many more nation-building projects.

Let’s turn to the Reserve Bank. During COVID, the Reserve Bank admitted conjuring up $500 billion using electronic ledger entries called quantitative easing. The Reserve Bank’s words, electronic journal entries.

We now have, as a result, the highest inflation since the 1980s. Quantitative easing is undoubtedly related to the current spike in inflation. It’s driving it.

Money conjured out of thin air and spent on recurring expenses rather than nation building is inflationary. Both sides of this chamber took the decision to conjure so much money and spread it on economic, and spend it on economic sherbet.

Now we have the Albanese Labor Party, while in opposition, was complicit in this economic catastrophe, so they inherit the consequences of their complicity. But don’t point fingers across the chamber on this. Work together. If this Parliament gets it wrong, everyday Australians will suffer through inflation, or worse, stagflation, for decades.

And instead of working together to push Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum plan based on United Nations policies, work together instead for our country. Klaus Schwab’s life by subscription, quote, is really serfdom. It’s slavery. Billionaire globalist corporations will own everything, homes, factories, farms, cars, furniture, and everyday citizens will rent what they need if their social credit score allows.

The plan of the Great Reset is that you will die with nothing. To pull off this evil plan, Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum will need to take more than just material possessions from Australians. Senators in this very chamber today who support the Great Reset threaten our privacy, freedom, and dignity. Yes, they’re in this senate chamber.

One Nation vehemently opposes the Great Reset, the Digital Identity Bill, theft of agricultural land use forcing farmers off their land, and all of the Great Reset. One Nation has a comprehensive plan to bring our beautiful country back to sustainable prosperity. And in the months ahead, we will be rolling that plan out. Instead of Lib-Lab pushing Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset with the tagline, you will own nothing and be happy,

One Nation advocates the Great Resist.

We stand for a world where individuals and communities have primacy over predatory globalist billionaires and their quisling bureaucrats, politicians, and mouthpiece media. One Nation accepts the challenge to provide a better future for everyday Australians.

We have one flag, we are one community, and we are One Nation.

One Nation’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill 2022 ensures the rate of pay for casual labour hire workers are the same as or better than full time workers doing the same job.

Senator Roberts said, “The exploitation of casual workers stops here and now, and my Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill will ensure casual workers are remunerated fairly.

“Companies need to re-invest in traineeships and apprenticeships for their future labour requirements, rather than contracting casual positions on lower wages.”

My Bill applies to the Black Coal Mining Industry Award 2010 and the Aircraft Cabin Crew Award 2020, both of which have a history of claiming flexibility requirements but undercutting wages.

This Bill will include the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Enterprise Award 2016, the Fire Fighting Industry Award 2020, the Maritime Offshore Oil and Gas Award 2020 and the Seagoing Industry Award 2020.

Senator Roberts said, “While some of these industries do not have a history of casualisation, they all inherently need to maintain high and consistent standards of safety using a stable workforce.”

One Nation accepts the need for casuals to cover sudden spikes in labour demand.

Senator Roberts said, “We need to make sure casual workers are just that, a short-term requirement to address business demands, and that employers in these specific industries shift their perspective to an investment in longer term workforce planning and permanent employment.

“The overuse of casualisation has driven down wages, making it a struggle for a sole breadwinner to provide for their families.”

One Nation has achieved many positive changes for casual workers in the black coal mining industry, along with introducing casual to permanent conversion rights and protecting small business from red tape when implementing casual conversion. “This Bill is award-based and allows for wage negotiation between the employee, union and employer, which is an investment in the employer and employee relationship,” added Senator Roberts.

Update 3/8/22: ATAGI has now approved the Moderna vaccine for under 5 year olds, meaning the vaccine rollout will proceed to toddlers.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has provisionally approved the Moderna jab for children aged 6 months to 5 years.[1] Provisional approval is given to drugs where research is still being conducted, research that might uncover adverse effects not initially apparent.[2]

The risk to 5 year olds from the more fatal, early variants of COVID was as low as 0.0024% or roughly 1 in 40,000.[3] This does not reflect the risk of Omicron, the dominant strain across the world right now, which is estimated to be 78% less fatal.[4] On the other hand, the risk of vaccine caused myocarditis is around 1 in every 10,000 for 12-17 year old boys.[5]

There is simply not enough information on the long-term effects to decide on the risk benefit calculation like the TGA claims to have. The TGA has abandoned the precautionary principle in provisionally approving Moderna for use in toddlers and children when it has no longitudinal, years long research.


[1] https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-vaccine-spikevax-elasomeran

[2] https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-vaccine-information-consumers-and-health-professionals#:~:text=Sponsors%20may%20apply%20for%20full%20registration%20when%20there%20is%20more%20clinical%20data%20to%20confirm%20the%20safety%20of%20the%20vaccine

[3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02867-1/fulltext#:~:text=0018%E2%80%930%C2%B70043)-,5%20years,-0%C2%B70024%25%20(0

[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971222002284#:~:text=We%20found%20that%20the%20high%20relative%20transmissibility%20of%20the%20Omicron%20variant%20was%20mainly%20due%20to%20its%20immune%20evasion%20ability%2C%20whereas%20its%20infection%20fatality%20rate%20substantially%20decreased%20by%20approximately%2078.7%25

[5] https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/vaccine-myocarditis-risk-reaches-1-in-10-000-for-a

Alan Finkel is right when he says we are at a turning point in history. There are two paths for Australia to choose between. One leads to a country where manufacturing thrives and everyone, including the poor, enjoys better living standards on the back of affordable and reliable power. On the other, power prices continue to rise, and the stability of our grid is at risk.

With the highest amount of wind, solar and battery power feeding into the grid in history, Australia’s wholesale power prices have never been higher. All Australians are going to feel the brunt of these price increases. This is a primary cause of our current inflation and it will only get worse, as I have been warning for two years.

Despite net-zero rhetoric, there is an unavoidable truth. Wind and solar cannot solve high power prices and inflation.

Committing to net-zero means that  Government has signed a blank cheque to the wind, solar and battery industry whose only solution is more of the same power shortages and high prices.

For example, the closure of the Liddell coal fired power station will be a loss of 2000MW of dispatchable power.

With unreliable renewables operating on average at 23% of their rated capacity because wind and solar take days off, Australia will need hundreds of square kilometres of solar panels to replace Liddell.[1]

Those hundreds of square kilometres of panels, even running at full capacity, won’t guarantee power is being made when needed. Solar power peaks at midday, far away from the peak demand in the early morning and evening. Wind droughts lasting months have wreaked havoc in Europe.[2] Batteries cannot and won’t fix the gap.

The largest battery in Australia can supply 300MW for an hour and a half, a pittance compared to the 2000MW Liddell could produce.[3] That’s even before we consider that because of transmission and power conversion, battery storage might waste around 20% of the power we use to charge them.[4]

What does all this mean? Wind and solar subsidies force other, more reliable sources of power out of the market. Coal generators are forced into early retirement. Nuclear can’t even be investigated.

Wind and solar are inefficient and intermittent. There is less supply of electricity and it is more unreliable. That makes power more expensive and risky for businesses, employers and wage-earners.

Wind, solar and battery advocates claim that a ‘plan to transition the grid’ can solve all this. What is rarely said is that the plan to ditch coal could cost $320 billion, a cost that one way or another Australians will have to pay from their hip pocket.[5]

Australia is facing down the barrel of a cost of living and inflation crisis. We must abandon the ill-advised forced uptake of wind and solar that is going to keep making power bills more expensive.

Instead, we must stop demonizing coal and build coal fired power stations to cover our transition. Power companies must know that the government won’t force coal to go broke so they can freely invest to maintain their existing assets and build more.

Wherever possible we must build dams with hydro power and retro fit hydro. Snowy Hydro 2.0 has laid bare the false promises of pumped hydro.[6]

And finally, we must investigate nuclear power. Australia has had a nuclear reactor running in Lucas Heights, Sydney since 1958.[7] Australia’s ban on nuclear power is no longer fit for purpose. Everything must be on the table to be investigated if it means bringing Australia’s power bills down.

Although electricity from nuclear is typically more expensive than coal and hydro, in places such as South Australia with its massive uranium reserves and low thermal value coal, nuclear needs to be considered.

It may be years before some of these solutions take effect, but it will be even longer if we do not start them now. Decades of politicians making decisions for the next election instead of the next generation has left Australia with this cost of living and inflation crisis. We must act today with a vision for the future, rooted in reality and with the sole focus of making Australian living cheaper and easier while being environmentally responsible.


[1] For example, 1800Mw Liddell output at 90%, 10-30% capacity factor of solar, estimated 2-3ha (0.02-.03sqkm) per MW of solar power

[2] https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-winds-mean-for-the-future-energy-grid-170135

[3] https://www.energy-storage.news/victorian-big-battery-australias-biggest-battery-storage-system-at-450mwh-is-online/#:~:text=The%20Victorian%20Big%20Battery%2C%20a,for%20the%20state%20of%20Victoria.

[4] https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=1y&interval=1w Battery (Charging) vs. Battery (Discharging)

[5] https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/why-it-will-cost-320b-to-ditch-coal-in-three-maps-and-a-chart-20220608-p5as3t

[6] https://www.smh.com.au/national/five-years-on-snowy-2-0-emerges-as-a-10-billion-white-elephant-20220310-p5a3ge.html

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Flux_Australian_Reactor