The COVID Inquiry Report highlighted the need for greater transparency in decision-making around pandemics.  The same criticism also applies to transgender care. Suppressing critical information has led to physical harm being committed to our children.

Australia must implement a moratorium on irreversible treatments for gender dysphoria and conduct a exhaustive and thorough public review of the science behind these practices.

Our kids deserve care based on data, not by the profits of the medical industry.

Photo credit: Gender Dysphoria Alliance

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/science/puberty-blockers-olson-kennedy.html

Electrification is an essential component of the Albanese government’s net zero strategy. It involves turning every device that consumes energy to electric: replacing petrol cars with electric vehicles, swapping gas cook tops for electric ones, removing gas hot-water systems in favour of electric, and even making barbecues electric. Everyday Australians will bear the costs of this insanity. To me, it’s unwise to place all our eggs in the electricity basket when we are reimagining our grid to depend entirely on weather-dependent generation. Yet, to the government, such heresy is “disinformation.”

Achieving electrification will require a massive upgrade to our electricity transmission network to meet the higher demand, especially from electric vehicles. However, even this alone will not achieve electrification, as there just isn’t enough generation capacity from wind and solar to ever meet the heightened demand. Consequently, the government is pursuing companion strategies.

First, people will be incentivised to purchase wall batteries to go with their rooftop solar systems, which will connect to the grid. To manage evening and morning peak demand, the government plans to draw power from these batteries, restricting users from operating power-intensive appliances like air conditioners and pool pumps.

If you have an EV, this strategy means the power stored in your wall battery—intended for overnight charging—will also be taken. There’s even a plan to plug EVs directly into the grid to draw any charge you may have managed to store in your battery if required to keep the grid working.

This won’t be enough on its own, so the government has introduced a new building code mandatory for new homes, which will add about $50,000 to construction costs. These changes include completely sealing homes to keep heat out, which may lead to moisture build up and mould.

Ceiling fans will replace air-conditioners, while rooms and homes will become smaller, ceilings lower and spaces more compact, with no garages and narrower streets, as people will not have cars.

Welcome to your future under electrification. Watch the video for more on this madness.

Transcript

Electrification is an essential part of the Albanese government’s net zero strategy. Electrification consists of taking every device that consumes energy and making it electric: petrol cars replaced with electric cars; gas cooktops replaced with electric ones; gas hot-water systems ripped out and replaced with electric; barbecues only electric—which is no fun at all. Everyday Australians pay the cost. 

To me, it’s unwise to put all our eggs in the electricity basket when we are reimagining our electricity grid to rely entirely on weather-dependent generation. To the government, of course, such heresy is mere ‘disinformation’. I’m sure Minister Bowen is champing at the bit to declare any online critics of net zero as threatening the environment, leading to a ban on ‘disinformation’. 

The truth is that electrification is something we must debate. There are real risks to the public, and the price tag is astronomical. So let’s start with safety. The internet is reporting that China has banned electric vehicles from underground car parks, following a Daily Telegraph story on the weekend. The inference is that the ban was from the government, when in fact the Telegraph made clear the ban was from car-park owners and from apartments above the car parks. It’s businesses acting to protect themselves and their customers. Local news reports that property owners were spurred into action after 11 intense battery fires in Hangzhou. The reports have revived fears in China that the new low-carbon-dioxide technology is more trouble than it’s worth. Definitely—yes, it is. One viral social media post involved a Hangzhou car showroom catching fire after a display car spontaneously combusted. It was a brand-new vehicle. There was no issue of faulty maintenance or handling. As has been correctly reported, the science is clear: ‘when EV batteries do overheat, they’re susceptible to something called thermal runaway,’ says Edith Cowan University academic Muhammad Zhar. This article goes on to say: 

That’s when physical damage— 

or a manufacturing fault— 

triggers a chemical chain reaction within the battery. 

It can be a short circuit. It can be a puncture. Or an external heat. 

Such damage can lead to a high-temperature fire or toxic gas explosion. 

“About 95 per cent of battery fires are classed as ignition fires, which produce jet-like directional flames. The other 5 per cent involve a vapour cloud explosion.” 

That was written by Edith Cowan University academic Muhammad Azhar. 

Recently, five cars were destroyed when a damaged battery fell from an EV parked at Sydney airport. A Tesla went up in flames on the road after contacting debris that fell from a truck near Goulburn. No ways have been developed of smothering a lithium-ion fire. The safest place for an EV is in the open air, where any fire can be contained until it burns out without destroying the property of others in the process. 

Secondly, when it comes to electrification, the elephant in the room is cost. The process consists of rebuilding the national electricity grid, generation and transmission. Energex and Powerlink have identified emerging limitations in the electricity networks supplying the Brisbane CBD. The power grids in Brisbane and across Australia were not built for our modern population density and certainly weren’t built to take the full load of energy that’s now required to electrify houses, cars and businesses. They note corrective action is required to avoid network overload and to avoid load shedding—known as ‘brownout’—which is when the power is selectively switched off to houses and businesses to prevent a wider blackout. Smart meters will make brownouts easier, providing the ability for power companies to remotely turn off air-conditioners and power to living areas, leaving the kitchen circuit functioning to keep the fridge on. New houses are being built with that circuit arrangement. It’s control. 

The cost to rewire the grid to convey solar, wind and pumped hydro from the point of generation to the cities and then rewire the city and suburban grid for the higher electricity demand has not been costed. I have asked the minister repeatedly in the last few weeks for those costings, and it is clear that none exist. Let me help the government. Visual Capitalist consultancy has done independent costings showing that the cost of rewiring the grid and adding firming—back-up batteries and pumped hydro—is about 30 per cent of the overall electrification cost, or $300 billion, on the consensus figure of Australia’s $1 trillion cost—which I think is about half of it. 

In the electrification agenda, cost concerns relate to the national building code. The idea is to avoid having to rewire at least parts of the grid through lowering household electricity usage to make room for charging EVs in the existing power grid. The targeted production is 50 per cent less power—half of what you’re using. Remember that Australians are already using 10 per cent less power than five years ago. The Australian Building Codes Board has a rating system called NatHERS which rates housing standards from one star to 10 stars. The current code requires seven stars. The code includes a measure of whole-of-house energy efficiency, which rates your home compliance with a net zero ideology, including heating and cooling, hot water systems, lighting, pool and spa pumps, cooking and even plug-in appliances. Our Big Brother is poking their nose into every aspect of your home in the name of saving the environment. 

The actual building code component of the building code calls for the sealing of homes to prevent outside air coming in. This creates issues with condensation, meaning mould, which other aspects of the code may alleviate—may. Clearly nobody involved in this new code has lived in a Queenslander-style home that relies on airflow to keep the house cool. The new ideology-driven code will add $50,000 to the cost of construction of a new home, partially offset through lower electricity costs. The reduction in electricity costs will not be a lot because your energy bill is composed mainly of a fee for poles and wires, margin fees and admin fees, not electricity usage. As I have explained, the poles and wires charge is going higher than Elon Musk’s spaceship. 

The cost of the new code to everyday Australians will be massive. We have 11 million homes in Australia and, so far, only recently built inner-city apartments meet the code. A quick calculation: $50,000 per home times 10 million homes is a $500 billion theoretical cost. Not all homes will be done. Many will just be bulldozed and replaced with tiny apartments to house Labor’s new arrivals. Economies of scale may result. Yet the actual cost of building upgrades is expected to be 15 per cent of the transition cost. With a transition cost of $1 trillion, that’s building upgrades costing $150 billion. On the more likely $2 trillion transition cost, building upgrades will cost $300 billion. That’s money everyday Australians will have to pay or will lose when they sell a non-compliant property for a reduced price. In all the time I have heard net zero debated, the shocking cost of converting buildings has never been mentioned 

And wait; there’s more! Converting transport—trucks, shipping and aviation—is not mentioned. It’s another seven per cent—$70 billion. Eight per cent of the cost is made up of hydrogen development, carbon dioxide scrubbing and industry conversion costs. Add another $80 billion. The cost of new generation to replace affordable and reliable coal power with weather-dependent solar and wind fairytale power is the remaining 40 per cent, or $400 billion. Remember, we already have this coal generation. Electrification requires us to shut down the generation we already have and build it over again in solar and wind. The problem climate change carpetbaggers are now running into is simply this: the best places for these things have been taken. New installations are going further out, requiring higher transmission costs and higher maintenance costs. Residents are starting to see the environmental damage caused to our native forest and animals, and to farmland. The resistance has started. 

Let’s not forget wind and solar last for, at best, 15 years and then have to be replaced again and again and again. This means that every single industrial wind and solar installation will need to be replaced at least once before 2060, and more likely twice. The replacement process will be never-ending. Every 15 years the whole lot gets replaced again and again and again. The transmission network will require constant maintenance. Having added an additional 10,000 kilometres of poles and wires, the extra maintenance costs will remain in electricity bills forever. The truth is the public will never finish paying for net zero electrification. 

The good people over at Visual Capitalist have given calculating the cost of net zero a fair crack based on data on US National Public Utilities Council. Their total cost to electrify Western countries before 2060 is US$110 trillion. Insane! Australia’s share of that is currently estimated at $1 trillion; however, looking through the US data, which is more advanced than ours, a cost as high as $2 trillion is much more likely. 

The costings I’ve presented tonight are not firm. I hope they encourage the government to come clean with the costings they have to allow for an open, mature debate—one which asks: is it time to walk away and try something else? Like emission-free coal, for example. For a fraction of this money, we can simply retrofit coal plants with new technology that captures and converts carbon dioxide to useful products like fertiliser. Or stop collecting this because carbon dioxide is beneficial. For some reason, the government doesn’t want to talk about new coal plants. Hmmm; I wonder where that list of ALP donations is again? I suggest journalists go looking. 

This energy fairytale is going to cost so much money it’s never going to happen. Australia can’t afford it. How can Australians who are struggling with the cost of living under Labor afford trillions for electrification? The further we get into this, the more stupid and the more dishonest the idea looks. Ideology-driven bureaucrats, politicians, academics and journalists have put us on a path to ruin. Climate change carpetbaggers will be this country’s death. The rorting, the boondoggles and the waste of taxpayer money is just getting started. One Nation will end the net zero electrification scam and make Australia affordable again. Net zero is a scam, and One Nation is the only party that will stop it. 

In October, the Climate Change Authority released its roadmap for achieving the “net zero transition,” which effectively is the destruction of our industrial and agricultural base and introduces communist level controls over every aspect of our lives.  Named the Sector Pathways Review, this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It should be compulsory reading for every Australian who is intent on joining the migration of lemmings over the net zero cliff. 

The authors claim to have consulted widely, presenting this document as a consensus on the way forward, but this is far from the truth. Their so-called “consultation” consisted of a whip around at universities and government departments that financially benefit from the net zero scam. Unsurprisingly, these stakeholders welcomed the prospect of more money, power, and self-importance. 

The climate change narrative has been structured to work backwards from the goals outlined in this report, which functions as a mechanism for Communist control. The unfounded confidence and hubris displayed is based on scientific fraud, data tampering and cherry picking. 

The link to the report is on my website at:  

One Nation is committed to ending the net zero destruction of our economy and way of life. 

Transcript

I move to take note of the Climate Change Authority’s Sector Pathways Review, which is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It should be compulsory reading for every senator and every journalist intent on joining this migration of lemmings over the net zero cliff. Net zero is not some feel-good agenda; it’s a fundamental destruction of our productive capacity, our businesses and our freedom to rebuild in the image of the bureaucrats, academics and carpetbaggers that produced this report. The report authors hide behind the term ‘consultation’ yet consulted within their own urban bubble and got the answers they wanted—yes to more money, yes to more power and yes to more self-importance. The climate change narrative has been constructed to work backwards from the goal detailed in this report—I’ve read it with my own eyes—a Communist control mechanism, a control mechanism that I’ve never seen so clearly explained as in this document, with such unfounded confidence, such hubris, based on scientific fraud, data tampering and cherry picking. 

Let’s go through it. Firstly, replacing petrol and diesel powered vehicles, appliances and industrial equipment with electric versions—that’s your car gone. The government will force you to buy an electric vehicle or have no vehicle at all. Gas heaters and hot water systems: gone. Gas cooking: gone. Gas barbecues: gone. Commercial kitchens: put over to electric, which will force many to close, as the cost is prohibitive. For families already struggling with the cost of living under Labor, these measures will mean losing their possessions without being able to afford a replacement. This will become reality once the circular economy arrives in full, requiring a much higher build standard and repairability and high levels of recycled components. That sounds great—just wait until we see the price tag. Appliances would have to be rented because most people won’t be able to afford them. Remember the famous promise from the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, ‘You will own nothing and be happy’? Are you seeing it yet? Secondly, we will need to generate more wind and solar power than ever before. For Australians living outside the urban bubble, this will mean every mountain and hill will have a wind turbine on top and even more farmland will be covered in solar panels and fractured with transmission line corridors and access roads where none were previously needed. Every home will need a solar installation connected to a wall battery—$15,000 right there. Yet the power is not yours; it’s theirs. To keep the grid on, your power company will take the charge out of your wall battery or your electric vehicle—yes, your electric vehicle. This is what the report means when it says ‘grid integration’. It’s sometimes called a virtual power plant. It’s not virtual power; it’s your power. 

Thirdly, the report accepts that, while some technologies, like solar and storage batteries, are now proven, many other necessary technologies are not. They have no clue what’s coming. The decision to rely on unproven, speculative technology across much of their sector analysis—punctuated as it is with weasel words like ‘could’ and ‘may’—will inevitably underperform. The report says: 

The authority has not attempted in this report to examine how, where or when such future breakthroughs could occur. 

It’s hard to believe they’re jeopardising the whole country on this. We are spending between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, destroying everything we have, on the promise of a better future based on breakthroughs that we know don’t exist yet and are not even imagined. That’s criminal malfeasance—and, given the strong flow of money from net zero carpetbaggers into the climate change nomenklatura, a stronger word may be appropriate. As the Age reported today, the Clean Energy Regulator: 

… has failed to manage conflicts of interest or properly investigate fraud … and … staff … concerns about its relationship with the companies it regulates. 

Under net zero cronyism, the suffering of everyday Australians and their employers has only just begun. The last thing abattoirs will slaughter is farming itself. The plan uses the discredited claim that ‘livestock accounts for half of agricultural emissions’. This ignores the methane cycle. That’s high school science. I know the disciples of the sky god of warming have rewritten the methane cycle and discredited those using it and advancing it, yet science can’t be rewritten—only lied about, as this report does. 

The reason for this spurious war on cattle is clear in the report: reducing our emissions will ‘require the conversion’ of agricultural land to forested areas, and ‘the supply of suitable land for reforestation is limited’. The farming sector must realise that the bad guys are coming to steal more of your rights to use the land you own. The people who will have the money to buy red meat and naturally grown produce after 2050 are the same people writing this elitist, antihuman garbage. The same people who gorge on filet mignon and champagne at Davos tell everyday Australians they will have to eat less. And you will have less, being forced into city high-rise homes and eating lab-grown meats and fast-cycle hydroponic greens with next to zero nutritional value. Based solidly on science and with every fibre of our being, One Nation opposes this agenda. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. 

Leave granted; debate adjourned. 

Sector Pathway Review 2024 (Full Report)

https://www.climatechangeauthority.gov.au/sector-pathways-review

Sector Pathway Review 2024 (At a Glance)

I joined Ben Dobbins on Rural Queensland today to talk about the Government releasing their COVID cover-up report. There were more holes in this inquiry than a block of swiss cheese, we need a Royal Commission to get the evidence so charges can be laid.

Transcript

Ben Dobbins:

Welcome back to Rural Queensland Today. I normally don’t get two politicians in one day, but this is very important. Malcolm Roberts joins us this morning, the One Nation Queensland senator, and rightly so, is pissed off. Now, the federal government have released a report after holding an inquiry into the COVID-19 response. Well, it was meant to come out in September, but their delay is typical. But gee whiz Malcolm, a lot has come out now to show that, jeez, we handled this poorly. We handled it so poorly and a lot of what everybody was saying was wrong from the government. Good morning.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Good morning Ben, and thank you for having me on. You’re absolutely correct.

Look, let’s face it, mate. This is a whitewash inquiry. And despite the fact that it was a whitewash and a cover-up, they couldn’t suppress some key points that you just very clearly articulated. The inquiry members were three supporters of lockdowns. They’re insider appointments from the government. They choked the terms of reference, they had left out the states, and yet the states were so egregious in the handling of this virus that they couldn’t help but condemn the states. There was no power in this whitewash inquiry to compel witnesses and to compel the giving of evidence.

And Ben, it’s so ironic. I moved a motion that was successful in the Senate last year, about this time last year, to have an inquiry into developing … Drafting the possible terms of reference for a possible future Royal Commission. That was an outstanding inquiry. We have got terms of reference, and I must commend Senator Paul Scarfe and the Liberal Party, who was chairman. Gave us free rein. And mate, we developed a phenomenal, and he in particular developed a phenomenal set of terms of reference, and that work has been used by the Kiwis in now extending their royal commission and making it a fair dinkum Royal Commission, and yet here we are in Australia with no Royal Commission.

Ben Dobbins:

Okay. What do you want to see now happen? Because it caused a lot of heartache for a lot of people, financially, emotionally. The whole thing has been a disaster. What would you have liked to have seen and what were the recommendations that come out of this report?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well, first thing I’d like to see is a proper fair dinkum Royal Commission. A judicial inquiry that can compel witnesses, compel, evidence. The bureau of-

Ben Dobbins:

What are we going to get from that, Malcolm it’s a dog’s breakfast.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

What we going to get is details around what was a dog’s breakfast. For example, I’m just going off some of the words from Minister Butler, the Labour Party minister and the Senate Health Minister in Canberra, who introduced the report from these commissioners yesterday. There was no shift. Listen to this. There was no shift from precautionary principle, which was used at the start, and we accept that, to a more evidence-based approach, including non-health aspects in a proportionate response. He is basically saying, in nice words, that was not evidence-based, it was not data-driven. It was disproportionate and completely over the top. That’s what we need to understand why and how that happened.

Then he said there’s a lack of transparency about the profound effect, exactly as you just said, on the lives of Australians and the loss of freedoms, their words from the report and from the minister. And then he said that there’s been a massive decrease in trust because a lack of real-time evidence-based policy. In other words, the policy was not based on real-time evidence. It was not based on data. And he said, “There’s been a huge decline in trust,” and that’s what the committee has said. We need to go into the details of all this and hold people accountable.

Ben, you will not get people to trust again until we know what went wrong in detail. You’ve got to have accountability. The government did not … And he also pointed out the government did not trust the people. So what we’ve got to do is restore basic freedoms, restore basic trust from the government and the people and get the details about this.

Ben Dobbins:

Yeah. I absolutely, absolutely agree with you 100%. I think it’s imperative that this happens, and something that I think needs to happen more and more. I absolutely fundamentally think that this should be something long-term that we look at even more and more. It’s important that we do this. It’s important that we have a long-term plan to make sure that this never happens again. We absolutely never go down this same road. So is that the reason why you want to get this … So if it does happen again, we never get locked up, vaccinated, our liberties absolutely taken away from us, families seeing loved ones die in the hospitals and not having any say of seeing them goodbye. Is that what you’re trying to get to so we never see this happen again?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Correct. But bit more than that. The minister himself and this Whitewash committee has confirmed that it was a disproportionate response along the lines you just said. For example, the panel has said, apparently, many of the measures taken in COVID are unlikely to be accepted by the population again. That means until the trust is restored, there will be no compliance, and there’ll be no voluntary adherence to it.

But Ben, we need to go further. I’m not going to talk about what you just said because you said it very, very well. We need to go further. Remember, in the early days of COVID we couldn’t get masks, we couldn’t get a lot of other things? We need to develop … One of the recommendations from this whitewash inquiry is to develop a whole of government plan to improve domestic and international supply chain resilience. Mate, we know that the food production is being interfered with in this country. The regions are doing their best to provide food, and the government is undermining their policy. We also know that you cannot manufacture and process without cheap energy, and our energy policies have been destroying our country’s productive capacity. We need a royal commission to get into the details of what is needed for complete recovery of our country. It’s on a highway to hell.

Ben Dobbins:

Yeah, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Malcolm, thanks so much for being with us. We might actually get this report up. One Nation Senator, thanks so much for being with us.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

You’re welcome, Ben. Thanks for telling the truth.

Ben Dobbins:

Good on you. We’ll take a break. Come back. This is Rural Queensland Today.

Thanks mate.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

You’re welcome, Ben. Keep doing what you’re doing, mate.

Photo credit: Home Security Online

The Government is letting greeting telco companies charge ahead with the “3G shutdown”. This is deceptive because it is really a 4 and 5G shutdown as well.

The government quietly published a new rule that will force telco companies to block up to 250,000 perfectly functioning 4 and 5G mobile phones under the cover of the shutdown. This is a disaster and the government is letting telcos make billions while they abandon their customers.

⚠️ Attention

For people with some 4G and 5G phones or 3G phones and devices including health and safety monitors – the federal government is serving multinational corporations and risking hundreds of thousands of lives.

My successful senate motion initiated a senate inquiry into the Telstra-Optus shutdown of 3G networks. The inquiry exposed the fact that more than a million devices and phones would not work once 3G is shutdown, including emergency health devices and monitors – many 4G phones that depend on 3G network for 000 emergency calls.

The inquiry exposed that Labor Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland and her Department and Australian Communication & Media Authority (ACMA) were hopelessly ignorant of the threat to so many lives in Australia. And did not care.

The inquiry exposed the lack of standardisation and the incompatibility of 4G phones – a Telstra-Optus rort worth billions of dollars. It stops competition, limits customer choices and compromises safety.

In response to facts witnesses presented and were never refuted, the shutdown was delayed a token month. We learned that many other countries including the UK have decided to keep the 3G networks running for several more years. The premature 3G shutdown here is going ahead in just a few days!

A telco expert sent me a text message:

Just letting you know that Telstra has started blocking devices that actually work perfectly for 000 on 4G.

My devices were kicked off around 10 AM EST. I can’t even make an emergency call on Telstra’s network anymore with those devices. Just with Optus.

Telstra only notified customers about their devices being totally blocked on midday Friday with an SMS.

Many customers are now unable to contact anyone as they have no Data or SMS either.

Disgraceful. Inhuman. Irresponsible.

The federal government is serving corporations and risking lives.

Labor refuses to call a Royal Commission into COVID, because they’ve already been given $1 million in donations from Big Pharma.

One Nation is calling for a COVID Royal Commission now, to ensure we never repeat the same mistakes.

The world’s predatory billionaires are continuing their quest to rule the world for their own benefit, with vassal states like Australia recently signing onto their latest power grab – the United Nations Pact for the Future.

Before this Pact can take effect in Australia, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties will need to conduct an inquiry, followed by both Houses of Parliament voting for ratification. The public still has time to bring to heel the globalists running the Albanese Labor government.

The Pact is essentially a comprehensive wish list for global governance. On the upside, it lacks detail, firm language, and binding commitments. These were in the original draft but were removed to push the diluted document through. Even then, nine nations voted against moving towards a vote, and 40 more abstained. The UN doesn’t have the support it needs to press ahead with any significant theft of national sovereignty. However, that won’t stop some traitors in our Parliament and bureaucracy from handing it over, claiming that “the UN told us to.”

Only One Nation is committed to standing against the transfer of wealth and power to the world’s predatory billionaires and their lackeys in the United Nations, World Health Organisation and World Economic Forum.

Transcript

Last week the United Nations passed its Pact for the Future. Before the pact can come into effect in Australia, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has to do an inquiry, and then both houses of parliament vote for ratification. The public have time to bring to heal the globalists running the Albanese Labor government.

The pact is a comprehensive wish list for world governance with no detail and no implementation plan. There are 56 bold actions—really, they’re fluffy motherhood statements. For example, action 2, which I will quote in full, is:

Action 2. We will place the eradication of poverty at the centre of our efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda.

21. Eradicating poverty, in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is an imperative for all humankind. We decide to:

(a) Take comprehensive and targeted measures to eradicate poverty by addressing the multidimensional nature of poverty, including through rural development strategies and investments and innovations in the social sector, especially education and health;

(b) Take concrete actions to prevent people from falling back into poverty, including by establishing well-designed, sustainable and efficient social protection systems for all that are responsive to shocks.

That’s the entire section on eliminating poverty. It looks like the AI author trained only on children’s picture books.

Do you remember Labor’s failed slogan: ‘By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty’? The pact is not a pandemic treaty. The word ‘pandemic’ is not mentioned. COVID is not mentioned. The World Health Organization is not mentioned. There are no penalty clauses for noncompliance. There is no dispute clause, because the pact does not include anything tangible enough to dispute. In the formal vote to adopt, 45 nations opposed it or abstained. What happens now is that our globalist government will sign up to any and every theft of Australian sovereignty it can while saying, ‘The United Nations made me do it.’ No, the United Nations did not. Whatever nefarious attack on agriculture, standard of living, education and human rights the government is planning is entirely this government’s responsibility.

The Consumer Price Index shows inflation at just 3.8%, but how accurate is that figure? Every time I shop, it feels much higher.  

Recently, I was successful in getting a Senate Inquiry into how the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) maintain the inflation index and the answers were interesting—inflation is worse than the official figure suggests.

The ABS actually produce several different measures of prices changes. The media often cites one of them – the CPI, which serves economists, bankers and the treasury, who use it to see how the economy is going as a whole, but it’s not an accurate measure of price changes that affects consumers.  

To address this, the ABS produce the Living Cost Index (LCI), which looks at how much the cost-of-living has changed for different groups. The largest of these groups is for employees, which covers about 70% of Australians and reveals that inflation is actually 6.2%, significantly higher than the CPI figure of 3.8%. This difference largely stems from how house price increases are included in the index.

So, it’s clear: people are struggling more than the CPI suggests. If you feel like you’re working harder and getting nowhere, it’s because you are.  

One Nation is committed to reducing government spending, reducing inflation and making your pay stretch further.

Transcript

I rise to take note of the Economic References Committee report into the Australian Bureau of Statistics production of inflation statistics. This inquiry was called on a Senate motion that One Nation introduced. I thank the committee for their time and I thank the Australian Bureau of Statistics for their honest, direct and professional answers. In an answer to my question in Senate estimates, the Reserve Bank governor advised that it uses many other indicators to get a clearer understanding of the cost of living affecting everyday Australians, not just the CPI. This was the comment that led to last week’s inquiry. Many people assume the CPI is an accurate picture of the cost of living for everyday Australians. What we learned from the ABS, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, is the consumer price index is a macro economic indicator useful to the government, Reserve Bank and industry to show how much prices have changed. That’s not the same as asking how much cost-of-living spending has increased for everyday Australians. That cost-of-living data is trapped using other indexes called selected living cost indexes. These are produced for subsets within the economy based on source of income. The largest group is employees, comprising 15 million current wage and salary earners. This is more than 70 per cent of the Australian adult population. This index shows the rate of inflation affecting the largest cohort of the adult population in Australia is actually 6.2 per cent. That feels much more accurate than the official CPI rate of 3.8 per cent. Even at 6.2 per cent, the figure is not entirely representative. The living cost index for most Australians does not include the insane increases in house prices, as Senator Rennick and I pointed out in questions. 

The ABS traps the increase only in building costs, not the increase in land cost. The average home price in Queensland in 2020 was $524,000. In 2024, it’s now $815,000. Most of that inflation is in the land price. Unless home price inflation is included in the living cost index then Australians are quite honestly being misled—badly misled. The ABS is not misleading; it’s producing the statistics the government asked it to produce. 

So I wonder who decided to use the CPI rate as the official picture of inflation in Australia, because it’s wrong. Why don’t the media report the living cost index showing 6.2 per cent inflation affecting most Australians, and that it doesn’t represent costs including houses? All except one of these living cost indexes shows a higher rate than the 3.8 per cent CPI. Why is the media misleadingly reporting the lowest figure instead of the real figure covering most Australians? 

I have been using adult Australians here for a reason. This inquiry confirmed the Australian Bureau of Statistics does not collect data for inflation affecting the cost of raising children. The latest data my office could find was from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which found it cost $340 a week to provide for two children, a girl aged six and a boy aged 10. That data was from 2018. We don’t know what it is today. There’s not time-series data, no inflation rate over time for children and that seems pretty poor. There are 5.7 million children under 18 here in Australia. It would be useful to know how much the cost of raising those children is increasing. 

As I travel around Queensland I hear so many parents saying how expensive life is becoming—the cost of living under Labor—and how expensive raising children is becoming. The failure to provide data to government on the outcome of government policies on the cost of raising children and an accurate figure for the cost of running a family is a massive failure, a failure which rests with the minister, not the Australian Bureau of Statistics. I call on the government to task the ABS with providing an accurate figure for inflation affecting families. It worries me that it is the figure of 3.8 per cent, not the much more accurate figure of 6.2 per cent, that’s used for wage increases. According to the OECD’s economic outlook report, real wages in Australia are now five per cent lower than they were in 2020. 

Remember, those house prices I mentioned, up from $524,000 to $818,000 in Queensland in four years? After adjusting for inflation, everyday Australians looking to buy their first home are trying to afford that mortgage on five per cent less income. No wonder homeownership seems an impossible dream for young wage and salary earners. Wages should reflect the real cost of living under Labor. Government spending and handouts reduce the inflation rate yet this money started in the hands of employees, who paid that to the government in tax, and the government gives it back to people in subsidies, less the government’s cut for administration. Is this the much-touted Greens circular economy? 

I’ll finish with an idea. Reduce the size of government. Let people keep more of their own money. If everyday Australians feel they’re working harder and going backwards, it’s because they are. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. 

Leave is granted; debate adjourned. 

I sent a letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese supporting Russell Broadbent’s request for him to address the concerning findings in a recent scientific report prepared by Canadian virologist Dr. David Speicher.

My Letter to Prime Minister

Report Prepared by Dr. David Speicher

Russell Broadbent MP’s Letter to the Prime Minister

Special Council Meeting | 11 October 2024

Council Meeting Details » Town of Port Hedland

The Labor-Liberal UniParty’s massive immigration is driving up house prices, making mortgages bigger and unaffordable, and “risky.”

This is a misleading attempt to mask six quarters of negative per capita economic growth, which has turned into overall negative growth (recession).

It’s a dishonest manipulation of the numbers, leading to a human catastrophe where thousands of families are left without a roof over their heads.