Treasury officials dodge basic questions about Australian power station coal prices while claiming they “monitor” them for inflation forecasts. Despite promising to get back to me on notice, the officials refused to provide how much coal for generating electricity costs.
Australian coal prices for our power stations remain stable under long-term contracts, yet Treasury keeps pushing the narrative of high international prices to justify soaring electricity costs. Why hide the real numbers? Because cheap domestic coal exposes the true cost of the renewable energy transition to Australian families.
Time for transparency, Australian families deserve to know the real cost of their electricity and it’s not because of Ukraine.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: This is for the Treasury, on coal pricing. The Treasurer said in March, regarding Australian power station coal prices, that thermal coal burned in power stations in Australia was ‘more or less tracking’, according to Treasury’s December forecast, to be down about a third from a year ago. Do you track the price of thermal coal burned in power stations in Australia?
Mr Yeaman: We look at overall market movements in coal prices both for export and for generation, yes, as part of our CPI forecast.
Senator ROBERTS: How do you get that information on thermal coal prices in Australia for domestic use?
Dr Heath: In tracking coal prices on a regular basis, the most publicly available coal prices tend to be shipped coal. So if you’re looking—
Senator ROBERTS: Exported coal?
Dr Heath: Exported coal—that’s what is publicly available. The arrangements that individual coal-fired power plants have to access their coal means that the prices they pay could be quite different to those public prices. That’s not publicly available information, so we would have to basically go directly to the coal-fired power stations to find that information.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand the local price is much lower because they’re locked into long-term contracts. So it’s a vague process. When you’re talking about power stations, is it only power stations that buy their coal or is it also the power stations that are at the mine mouth—where it just goes straight from the mine into the power station?
Dr Heath: I think that’s getting to a level of detail that I don’t have.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you take that on notice, please?
Dr Heath: We can take that on notice, but I’m not sure—
Senator ROBERTS: I’d like to know how you get that price—or, if you don’t get that price, that’s fine.
Mr Yeaman: I am aware that we have in the past. Our colleagues at the department of climate change and also the department of industry, along with our colleagues at the Australian Energy Market Operator, look at prices by facility, and I think that does include those that get coal directly from the mine.
Senator ROBERTS: So you get that information from those other agencies?
Mr Yeaman: I’m not sure how systematised that is, but I’m aware we have in the past drawn information from those sources.
Senator ROBERTS: What’s the latest figure you have for the price of thermal coal burned in Australian power stations?
Mr Yeaman: If it’s that specific a question, I’ll take it on notice, if that’s okay.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Are you aware that the CSIRO uses a coal price of $11.30 a gigajoule in its GenCost studies to say that wind and solar are cheaper than coal?
Mr Yeaman: We generally look at the GenCost report, but, for our purposes, we don’t tend to go down to that level of detail around their assumptions.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’re not aware that CSIRO uses the coal price of $11.30 a gigajoule in GenCost?
Mr Yeaman: I haven’t been aware of that and I’m not sure that my colleagues would be.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, I can accept that. Are you able to provide the aggregate figures for coal prices over the last five years, please?
Mr Yeaman: We can certainly have a look and see what we can provide.
Despite urgent Senate warnings in August, The Albanese Labor Government allowed telcos to proceed with the disastrous 3G shutdown, leaving over 1 million critical devices at risk. While other countries like France delayed until 2028, our government chose telco profits over public safety.
Many 4G device owners were surprised to wake up on the morning of the 3G shutdown to find their phone wasn’t working either.
I warned about this in August, yet the government did nothing. This is what happens when proper regulation takes a backseat to corporate interests.
Transcript
That the Senate take not of the explanation.
I’ll now explain to the chamber what it just heard. The Albanese Labor government is putting multinational telco company profits above human life, above Australian lives. For many people this is a matter of life and death. The Senate has pulled the minister in front of the chamber to explain:
… why the Government has failed to place a single condition on the 3G mobile network shutdown …
So 1,041,282 is the number of devices the telcos have told us will not function as sold when they shut the 3G network in just two months, yet the communications minister is sitting back and letting telcos Telstra and Optus just do it. That’s thorough for the Labor Party.
If our Senate had not fulfilled its role as the house of review and instead stood back and not intervened, telcos would have shut Australia’s 3G network in 10 days time. Revelations from our Senate inquiry into the 3G shutdown led to a two-month delay. In two months, the communications minister will let telcos switch off the 3G network, even if a million devices still rely on it.
I have simple questions for the communications minister: How much are telco companies, like Telstra and Singapore owned Optus, making from shutting down the network early? How much is an Australian life worth? Who will be responsible if telcos are allowed to flick the switch in two months and someone dies? There are Australians with 4G phones, not 3G phones, who will not be able to call triple 0 when the 3G network is shut down. There are emergency phones in lifts that will not work when someone gets stuck—and they didn’t know that until a couple of weeks ago. Many fall alerts, medical alarms and pacemakers use 3G to alert an ambulance. This isn’t just about upgrading old phones, although the telcos will certainly make more money from forcing people into new phones. There are non-mobile devices that will be affected as well.
Telcos gave us the figures at the inquiry. Together they estimate there are 68,000 3G mobile devices still in use. These are old phones. An argument could be made that it’s time for them be replaced. Yet the 4G phones are where it gets really interesting. There are 4G mobile devices that will be affected when 3G shuts down. Some 4G phones piggyback on the 3G network. They use 4G for data and default to 3G to make calls. These are referenced as non-voice-over LTE, or non-VoLTE. Telcos tell us there are 311,000 of these. When the 3G network is shut off, there will be 311,000 4G phones that won’t make a phone call. Then for the final category, 4G phones that have VoLTE and will be able to make calls yet default to 3G for triple 0 calls, there are 52,000 4G devices that will appear fine until someone tries to call triple 0 and it doesn’t work. Across the phones that are 3G only, 4G non-VoLTE and 4G VoLTE with no emergency calls, there are 432,000 mobile devices that won’t work properly, and that’s only half the story.
There are non-mobile devices that will be cut off and will stop working. There are an estimated 608,329 of them. No-one really knows how many because telcos can’t directly contact the users—that’s thorough, according to the minister. These non-mobile devices include fire alarms; 200,000 medical alarms; emergency phones in elevators; warning systems; EFTPOS terminals; agricultural equipment like water pumps, water trough monitors and tractors; Internet of Things enabled products; routers; scanners and survey equipment; water meters; power meters; and much, much more. As the department said at the inquiry:
… it’s fair to say that we are learning new things as we reach out to different stakeholders.
That was just a few weeks ago—thorough, huh? That means they have no idea how big the non-mobile device problem is.
In total, 1,041,000 devices will be affected, potentially more, and the Minister for Communications is ready to let it happen in two months. Why the rush? It’s a good question. Why not delay it further until Australians won’t be put in danger? It’s all about profits for these huge corporations, and the minister’s ongoing timidity or apathy to not protect Australian lives.
I thank the Liberal, Nationals and Greens senators for supporting my motion for this inquiry, especially Senator Canavan as chair. I note and appreciate James Parker’s outstanding submission and testimony.
The solution is simple. The communications minister must intervene and set safe, practical criteria or thresholds for the number of devices affected, before the shutdown can proceed. Instead of leaving Australians high and dry, put the onus on the telcos to take care of Australians.
This is a matter of life and death. What value will the minister place on Australian lives?
The government’s COVID inquiry: * No power to compel witnesses * No ability to take evidence under oath * No power to order documents * Only talked to people who volunteered for interviews
Australians deserve a full COVID Royal Commission with: * Power to compel testimony * Evidence under oath * Full document access * Complete transparency
Even Health Minister Butler admitted there was ‘lack of transparency’ and ‘lack of evidence-based policy.’ Australians deserve real answers and accountability, not a toothless inquiry.
It’s time for a proper COVID Royal Commission so that charges can be laid.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for attending today. Going to the government’s COVID-19 response inquiry, the panel only talked to people who volunteered to talk to it, didn’t they?
Ms Hefren-Webb: Senator, there was no compulsion. People weren’t compelled to talk.
Senator ROBERTS: You must be a mind reader; that was my next question. It was an inquiry that had no ability to compel witnesses, order documents or take evidence under oath—correct?
Ms Hefren-Webb: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: The then government put in place the largest economic response in history, dropping money from helicopters. We had some of the worst invasions of Australian civil liberties, between surveillance, vaccine mandates and lockdowns. The supposed health advice relied on to do this has still not been published, yet Australians are meant to just accept the results of an inquiry that can’t even take evidence under oath. Is that right?
Ms Hefren-Webb: The inquiry had excellent cooperation from a wide range of people. They spoke to nearly all the state premiers who were premiers at the time of COVID. They spoke to nearly all the chief health officers. They spoke to groups representing people impacted by the pandemic in particular ways—for example, aged-care groups, people with disability, CALD groups. They spoke to and received submissions from people who were not supportive of the use of vaccines et cetera. They received evidence from and spoke to a wide range of people, and their report reflects a broad set of views that were put to them. They have assessed those and made some recommendations in relation to them, and the government is now considering those recommendations.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, I had the opportunity to listen to Minister Mark Butler, the health minister, discuss the report. He said there was a lack of transparency on rationale and evidence around decisions that have profound impacts on people’s lives and freedoms. He said that there was a lack of a shift from precautionary principle at the start of the response to the COVID virus—which we accept—and that there was a lack of a shift from precautionary to evidence based; it never occurred. There was no balancing of risks and benefits. There was no taking account of non-health impacts of decisions imposed on the community and in a non-proportionate way. He said this was compelling insight from this report. There was a lack of evidence based policy, yet we were told repeatedly at state and federal level, ‘This is all based on evidence.’ The evidence changed from day to day, week to week, within and between states. We were lied to, and there was a lack of transparency—as the minister admits. Then he said it’s driven a large decline in trust and that the measures are not likely to be accepted again. This is a serious problem. Health departments across the country are in tatters, yet there’s no recommendation in this report that says we should establish a royal commission; correct?
Ms Hefren-Webb: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: How are we going to restore accountability, Minister, and trust without holding people accountable for the tragic errors they made?
Senator Wong: This was a very comprehensive inquiry into the multifaceted aspects of Australia’s response. Whilst I’m not the minister responsible, it was something we considered. I think it is a very good piece of work that is very honest about the things that Australia did very well—and we did do some things extraordinarily well. We didn’t see the overwhelming of our hospital systems and the death tolls we saw in some other developed countries. There are also things which we didn’t do as well and things which we weren’t set up to do. Where we differ from you, in terms of the last part of your question, is that we want to be constructive about the failings as opposed to simply pursuing those who might have made the errors. The inquiry goes through, as you said, the precautionary response in a lot of detail. There is a question about whether some of the findings about what was evidence based or partially evidence based—that is perhaps not as black and white as your question suggests.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m paraphrasing the minister.
Senator Wong: Yes, but that’s a matter for discussion. I think it’s also true to say that you don’t get a global pandemic of that ilk very often in most people’s lifetimes, and so, understandably, you are going to make mistakes as a nation as well as do things right. That’s what the inquiry shows. The minister has been clear that we need to learn from this, and the Centre for Disease Control was one of the key recommendations which the government responded to.
Senator ROBERTS: I wrote to the then prime minister and the then premier of my state, Premier Palaszczuk, and said, ‘We’ll give you a fair go in the Senate.’ I said that with their response in March and their second response in April, for JobSafe and then JobKeeper—and I told them I would hold them accountable. I wrote letters to the Premier and the Prime Minister in May. I got no evidence back at all.
I wrote to them again in August and September, and, again, no evidence; I was seeking evidence. The Chief Medical Officer gave me evidence in March 2023 that the severity of COVID was low to moderate. When you figure in the overwhelming majority of people, it was very, very low when you removed the people who had high severity. We did this all for a low-severity virus. There was no pandemic of deaths. We’re expecting Australians who have lost trust in the health system and who see no accountability to just accept it. This is dancing away from responsibility and accountability in the health system.
Senator Wong: I think it’s a very accountable report, with respect. It’s many hundreds of pages, which go through in great detail a lot of the aspects of the nation’s response to the pandemic—Commonwealth, state, territory, the medical sector, how we handled borders, how we handled hospitals, the community. I think it is a very comprehensive report, so I don’t know that I agree with the assertion about the lack of accountability. I also would say to you, if you want to talk about evidence bases, that I don’t think the evidence supports the proposition that this was simply—I can’t recall the phrase you used.
Senator ROBERTS: Low-to-moderate severity.
Senator Wong: I don’t share the view of some who say that it was—
Senator ROBERTS: That was the Chief Medical Officer.
Senator Wong: I don’t share the view of some that look to what happened in the US, what happened in Italy and what happened in Spain in terms of what we saw there and the hospital systems and the consequent rates of death. I don’t dismiss those as made-up news. The fact that we averted that kind of scenario in Australia is something we should reflect upon.
Senator ROBERTS: I agree.
Senator Wong: You and I have different views on the vaccines. I’d say to you that there were mistakes made, yes, and people have to accept that and front up for that. But I hope we can use this to make sure we equip the country better because, given the more globalised world, we know from most of the experts—WHO and our own experts—that pandemics have become more likely.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s go to New Zealand. We had a Senate inquiry as a result of a motion that I moved in the Senate that developed the terms of reference for a possible future royal commission. The terms of reference are wonderfully comprehensive. Nothing has been done. The Prime Minister won’t even share them with the people.
The terms of reference were so comprehensive that they were adopted, largely, by the New Zealand royal commission. The New Zealand royal commission that was underway thanks to Jacinda Ardern was a sham. It had one commissioner and very limited terms of reference. The terms of reference developed by the Senate committee in this country have now been adopted by the New Zealand royal commission. They have expanded it to three commissioners. That came about because Winston Peters—who initially was in a coalition with the Labour Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern—went and listened to the people in Wellington at a large protest, and he realised that so many people had died due to the vaccines and so many people were crippled due to vaccines. He also realised that so many people were gaslit, saying, ‘It’s not a vaccine injury; it’s just a mental health issue.’ He then formed a coalition with the current National Party government, and the condition was that they have a proper, fair dinkum royal commission. The terms of reference have been expanded, broadened, extended and detailed; they’ve now brought vaccines and vaccine injuries into that. Isn’t that the least that we can do for the people who’ve been injured? Tens of thousands have died as a result of the vaccines; we know that from the statistics and the correlation. We also know that hundreds of thousands have been seriously injured, and they’re being laughed at. No health department in this country—
CHAIR: Senator Roberts—
Senator ROBERTS: Why can’t we get justice for those people?
CHAIR: I don’t think that’s a question.
Senator ROBERTS: I just asked a question.
Senator Wong: If you want details about vaccines, Health would probably be the place to go in terms of the estimates process.
Senator ROBERTS: We’re going there, Minister!
Senator Wong: I’m sure you will; I think you regularly do! I’d make this observation: I know you don’t accept the medical evidence, but that is the medical evidence both governments have received—
Senator ROBERTS: On the contrary, I do accept the medical evidence.
Senator Wong: Well, I don’t think you accept the weight of the medical evidence. The second observation is that I am concerned—I think the inquiry might have gone to this. We’ve had a pretty good history in this country of vaccination across measles, whooping cough et cetera, and the concern about vaccines means that we are dropping below herd immunity for diseases which we had largely won the battle against. I don’t think that is a responsible thing to do.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s another matter altogether.
Senator Wong: I would say we have a responsibility in this place to understand where our words land, and I don’t think it’s a good thing if we’re not vaccinated against whooping cough or measles—
CHAIR: Or HPV.
Senator Wong: or, frankly, COVID.
Senator ROBERTS: The fact is that people were vaccinating their children for whooping cough and so on. The fact is that so many people have lost complete trust in the health system; they’re saying, ‘Stick your vaccines.’ That’s why it’s so important. How will you restore accountability?
Senator Wong: How will you? If you said to them, ‘You should get your kids vaccinated for whooping cough’, that might actually cut through.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ve done some research on that.
Senator Wong: You don’t want them vaccinated?
Senator ROBERTS: I didn’t say that. It should be the parents’ choice.
Senator Wong: I disagree with you. I think parents always choose medical treatment for their children, but I disagree with you that people can choose their facts. The facts are—
Senator ROBERTS: I think it’s fundamental.
Senator Wong: that we know what whooping cough does, and what it does to kids.
Senator ROBERTS: I think it’s fundamental—
Senator Wong: Alright. We’re not going to agree.
Senator ROBERTS: that parents have responsibility for the health of their children.
Senator Wong: Fair enough, okay. We’re going to disagree on the issue of vaccinations.
Senator ROBERTS: The Australian people deserve transparency and answers. They deserve a COVID royal commission now, and some people deserve to be in jail for the overreach and damage inflicted on Australians. How is your government going to restore trust without accountability?
Senator Wong: I think we’ve just been discussing this, haven’t we?
Senator ROBERTS: I raised it earlier on, but you didn’t answer the question.
Senator Wong: Which bit do you want? We don’t think we need a royal commission because we’ve had a—
Senator ROBERTS: How can you restore trust without accountability?
Senator Wong: I’m inviting you to help us restore trust, but you don’t agree with many of the vaccinations. My point is—
Senator ROBERTS: No, I didn’t say that.
Senator Wong: That is what you said. You had your own views on whooping cough.
Senator ROBERTS: I said parents have the right to choose what to do. Parents are responsible for their children. That’s fundamental.
Senator Wong: Yes, that is true, but what I meant was that parents should not be given incorrect facts by people in a position of authority.
Senator ROBERTS: I agree entirely.
Senator Wong: I’m saying to you that I think it is not responsible to be telling people that they shouldn’t have their children vaccinated for whooping cough.
Senator ROBERTS: I didn’t say that; I said that it’s the parents’ choice. I recommend a book, Fooling Ourselves, written by a statistician in Queensland. That’s evidence. I give that to parents and say, ‘Decide for yourself.’
Senator Wong: So you don’t think the medical evidence and—
Despite campaigning on honesty and transparency, Labor is using every trick to keep Australians in the dark about their decisions. After 18 months of delays, Labor are protecting their mates while blocking Senate oversight on lobbying done by CBUS Super. The connections between CBUS Super and Labor run deep, with former Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan now chairing CBUS.
Despite ordering the government to hand them over, these documents were only unveiled through a separate Freedom of Information claim decided by an independent commissioner.
So much for transparency and accountability from the Albanese government.
Transcript
Here we are this morning in the house of review, and we hear cloaks of cover-up from the Labor Party when we’re trying to do our job. Labor responds, first of all, to Senator Bragg by hiding behind the gender argument. What that’s got to do with this is beyond us. Then Senator Walsh cloaks it as an attack from the coalition on super. How is making sure that we have probity on superannuation funds an attack on super? It’s protecting superannuation. Senator Bragg is just doing his job, as am I as a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia. We need questions answered.
The Labor Party’s defence this morning has not focused on Senator Bragg’s comments; it has focused on furphies and distractions, which are condemning the Labor Party. I’ve had the comedy of watching Senator Ayres respond twice in the last two weeks of sittings in this Senate—10 minutes each time of just nonsense, misrepresentations and labels. Labels are the refuge of the ignorant, the incompetent, the stupid, the dishonest and the fearful—no response based on fact. Instead we have distortions and labels.
To recall what Senator Bragg talked about, he wanted to know why the Treasurer told the Senate mistruths and false statements. That’s it. My question now is: why is the Labor Party trying to dodge and divert from that? We have a document from Cbus to the Treasurer. Cbus objected. Is Cbus running the country? They’re claiming commercial in confidence for not giving Senator Bragg the documents, while giving Mr Bragg the documents. What are they hiding by hiding behind commercial in confidence? It’s taken 18 months to get documents in this house of review—18 months. He had to use alternative channels as well. Labor’s behaviour in response to Senator Bragg is now rising to one of contempt—holding the Senate in contempt.
This is the way Cbus treats its members—hiding. This is the way this government treats the people of Australia—hiding. The government is protecting the CFMEU and Cbus. The government is doing more than just protecting it on superannuation. The government is protecting the CFMEU in Australia’s biggest wage theft case. The Senate has instructed the workplace relations minister to do an investigation into wage theft involving thousands of miners from Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley, up to a $211,000 claim from one person. It’s over a billion dollars in total, we believe, with miners being owed on average up to $41,000 per year of work. The Labor Party are burying it, hiding it, not doing what the Senate is telling them. Then we’ve got CFMEU directors involved in Coal Mines Insurance, Coal Services and coal long service leave, and they’re all protecting each other and protecting the CFMEU.
My position on super, just so the Labor Party is clear, is that I believe people should have a choice—to access their money or to have it in a super fund that is also of their choice.
My last point is that I proposed a fair way of adjudicating these matters of withholding documents due to commercial in confidence and public indemnity. That has been rejected. That is still available. I also make the point that the Labor Party, as I disclosed last night, has almost a million dollars in donations for the last election from big pharma, and it is hiding, under the cloak of commercial in confidence, the contracts from the people who paid $18 billion for COVID injections. That’s what we want. It’s hiding tens of thousands of homicides.
Confidence in Labor is plummeting. Support for Labor is plummeting. The truth has vanished, and that’s the reason you’re losing the confidence and support of the Australian people.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/lSViqRvaiF4/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-12-19 10:17:352024-12-19 10:31:52Superannuation Bosses Team Up With Labor to Hide Dodgy Deals
We live in an age where mainstream education is often overloaded with irrelevant social engineering and is taught impersonally. External forces, including the political opinions of teachers, increasingly influence, pressure and distract students. As a result, Australia experienced a staggering 111% increase in homeschooling over just five years, from 2018 to 2023. In 2018, there were 20,260 home school registrations, a number that surged to 43,892 by 2023. Queensland increased the most with a remarkable 210% increase.
Home schooling offers an excellent alternative for many families, providing a learning environment that prioritises children’s welfare and provides more holistic development. During the COVID-19 school lockdowns, many parents were horrified to see how far mainstream schools had deviated from solid education. As a result, many opted to homeschool, finding it a better option to avoid public institutions’ involvement in raising their children while nurturing stronger family bonds.
I took the opportunity to announce One Nation’s policy to shut down the Federal Department of Education. Education is a State responsibility and federal involvement in this area has proven counterproductive. Under a federal led education system, Australia continues to slide backward in international league tables. This decline is largely due to an education system more focused on Marxist indoctrination than on actual genuine learning.
Closing down the Federal Department of Education, including eliminating the National Curriculum and NAPLAN, will not remove a single teacher from a single classroom. Instead, it will save billions in pointless bureaucracy—money that can be returned to the taxpayer, allowing you to keep more of what you earn.
Transcript
We live in an age when mainstream education is often packed tight with irrelevant social engineering and is taught impersonally. External forces, including the teachers’ political opinions, increasingly influence, pressure and distract students. As a result, Australia witnessed a 111 per cent increase in homeschooling in just five years, from 2018 to 2023. In 2018, homeschool registrations were 20,260, compared with 2023’s 43,892. Queensland has the highest increase, 210 per cent, tripling. The second highest is New South Wales, at 127 per cent, followed by Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tassie.
Homeschooling presents an excellent alternative for many families, providing an academic setting that prioritises children’s welfare and provides more holistic development. Anecdotally, during COVID school lockdowns, many parents were absolutely horrified to see how far mainstream schools had deviated from solid education, and they pulled their children out of school, preferring to homeschool. Educating children at home means avoiding public institutions’ involvement in their raising while nurturing strong family bonds. In traditional school settings, children spend most of their day away from home, leaving little room for connecting with family members. In contrast, homeschooling can not only facilitate academic growth but foster emotional stability and the family’s core values.
One of the biggest misconceptions about homeschooling is that it does not allow interaction with other children, which is needed for developing social skills. On the contrary, parents can choose a variety of social experiences in which the child can engage, such as community groups, sports, homeschooling co-ops, and visits to live community events and businesses. In this way, parents can guide such interactions, avoid influences not aligned with the family’s values, avoid negative influences and ensure the development of healthy relationships, free of the peer pressure and bullying that today often characterise traditional school environments.
Furthermore, socialisation takes place every day within the family unit, and the bonds created in interactions throughout every day are incredibly beneficial for the child’s mental and emotional wellbeing. In a traditional educational setting, though, children spend most of their time at school, leaving little time for deep and meaningful interaction with family members. Home education allows the development of trust among family members through shared experiences, activities and discussions—and connections and safety. Ultimately, the presence of a supportive family is an invaluable asset in children’s lives, especially during developmental stages, enduring strengthening of bonds fundamental for children’s wellbeing.
A notable benefit of home education is the program, which can be personalised and delivered in a way that suits the children’s learning styles and interests in ways not possible in traditional, overcrowded classrooms. Homeschooling’s flexibility ensures a stress-free learning environment and allows enough free time for extracurricular activities and personal interests, employing an allistic development approach. Lessons on emotional intelligence and social responsibility, for example, can be added along with core subjects and life skills such as financial literacy, household management and practical problem-solving, which is what adults need. There will be the exploring of peace within the child, regardless of the child’s surroundings. As a result, children grow up as well-rounded individuals with skills and knowledge which can be absent in their traditionally educated counterparts.
As said earlier, in the five years from 2018 to 2023, homeschooling more than doubled across Australia, with rates in Queensland more than tripling. This trend reflects parents’ distrust of educational institution. Several social and political factors drive this growing distrust, leaving parents increasingly feeling uneasy and concluding that traditional schooling is no longer the best environment for their children’s academic, moral, emotional, physical, spiritual and social development. Research on homeschooling shows that reasons parents take a step towards home education include the elements of dissatisfaction with the government, with conventional schools and with the curriculum. All these remained consistent pre and post COVID, as well as children’s needs and family lifestyles, which include religious or family values, for example.
Educational institutions are perceived as increasingly ideologically driven. To put it bluntly, they’re woke. Their purpose is to indoctrinate, not educate, and to create serfs who cannot think critically. As John Rockefeller said, these are factory fodder for his business empire, which is now global. Cross-cultural priorities of race and sustainability are integrated into the curriculum along with other aggressive narratives of gender and identity. I’ll give you a story about my son and daughter, who attended a school with many different races. One day I asked my son, as a four-year-old, how he enjoyed the Ethiopian twins in his class. They were two wonderful little kids. He said he didn’t know. I mentioned their names—Thomas and Anthony. He didn’t know. I mentioned they had black skin; he didn’t know. He really didn’t know. Then I mentioned their short, frizzy hair, and he said, ‘Oh, great, I play with them all the time.’ They played well together. Playing, working and studying with diverse groups builds tolerance experientially—the way people learn. Students discover for themselves.
Meanwhile, imposing welcome to country chants and calls to pay respect to the custodians of the land loses people. Adult teachers telling students they can change gender is ludicrous, with children having absorbed like sponges since birth the innate difference between ‘mum’ and ‘dad’, male nurses and female nurses and male teachers and female teachers. They’re all the better for it. Children are being taught about gender identity and pronouns and in some cases are made to apologise for the sins of their forebears, encouraged in the abrasive gender and transgender ideology. Children are in fear daily with climate fraud and lies saying we have only five years to live unless we stop driving cars, which will stop the global boiling. Unfounded guilt damages children. All this builds distrust in children and disrespect for woke teachers. Parents and increasingly people across society have had a gutful.
Meanwhile, between 2003 and 2015, the Australian academic landscape has been in steady decline. One in three students failed reading proficiency. Fifty per cent of students failed science literacy tests. Half are scientifically illiterate. No wonder the climate fraud and climate fear have taken hold! The average in mathematics declined 26.7 points. All these factors accounted for, taking back the lead on their own children’s education makes sense for parents. This sentiment was clear when Queensland Labor’s education minister put forward legislation enforcing the national curriculum in home education. Through the public pushback, with 900 submissions and a petition of almost 22,000 signatures, parents have made their feelings about education clear. Parents are unhappy with public educational institutions and with the national curriculum. Some are angry. More and more parents are re-evaluating educational choices for their children. From here, home education will only grow because it offers an academic pathway that’s more well rounded and allows for learning that is tailored and delivered in a way which takes into account the child’s or family’s interests, values and needs. When this speech is posted on my website, I’ll put in links to assist any Australians considering home education.
Whilst speaking of education and the growing home school revolution, I’ll comment on two more factors. Firstly, charter schools. This is an American term used in states where schools are started from community initiatives. The state provides funding per student and the money follows the child. Simplistically, to illustrate the concept: if parents withdrew their child and placed them in a public state school, the money goes to the public school. If the parents enrol their child in a private school, the money goes to the school. This gives choice. Principals have real authority to improve their school’s delivery of education to attract more students and more funding. Parents have real choice. Choice breeds competition and fosters initiative for improvement. Choice drives accountability.
Secondly, abolish the federal department of education. Reportedly, this bloated department employs 4,000 people, yet it has no schools. Constitutionally, education is a state responsibility, not a federal one. Now it’s become a wasteful duplication of resources. It has destroyed a fundamental tenet of our Constitution: competitive federalism. It’s destroying accountability and wasting taxpayer money. It destroys accountability because underperformance in schools leads to states blaming the feds and the federal government blaming the states. Worse, it enables a single gateway for UN initiatives to be ingrained into one national curriculum that then infects all states. When six states and two territories are responsible for education, globalist agendas have to be driven through six gateways, not one. If states alone return to managing and directing primary and secondary education, then we would restore competition between states—competitive federalism—improve accountability and improve efficiency. Universities can be regulated as businesses, which is what they now are.
Aligned with closing the federal department of education is abolishing the national curriculum, an initiative of the Howard Liberal-National government. I’m told New South Wales has just abandoned the national curriculum. The ACT is claiming it cannot be taught, because it’s too packed with politics and not enough reading and writing. Every parent’s top job is raising their family’s children. One of our nation’s most important tasks is educating children. We must support homeschooling, reform education and give parents choice. (Time expired)
Next election, Queensland voters will face a clear choice: the Liberal-National and Labor parties’ approach of ever-expanding government, or One Nation’s approach to shrinking government to fit the Constitution.
When Australia federated in 1901, the Commonwealth Constitution granted the federal government powers necessary to run Australia as a single country rather than six states – which included defence, immigration, currency, and taxation. Over the past 120 years, bureaucrats have expanded their reach into areas that are rightly the responsibility of the states, such as health, education, housing, and more.
A One Nation government will close down any Commonwealth department that lacks constitutional authority. This will not affect funding for frontline services. The federal government collects taxes on behalf of the states and One Nation will ensure that funding for schools and hospitals is not reduced. However, billions of dollars in savings will be achieved by eliminating the bureaucracy involved in this duplication of government services. One Nation in government will shrink the federal government to align with the Constitution and return these savings to taxpayers, allowing you to keep more of what you earn.
Transcript
As frequently happens, the Senate is dealing with a tangled mess of legislation that is flawed in design and will have unintended consequences. That’s inevitable when pressure groups run the government. It is a process that never involves the word ‘no’. Too many Australians think governments should solve all their problems, and too many in government think they can. One would have thought both would have sooner seen this folly.
When Australia federated in 1901, the state ceded only the powers necessary for the operation of Australia as a single country rather than six states. Today’s twisted, concocted federalism has given overlapping state, federal and local governments a bureaucratic tangle of incompetence and waste with no accountability and no consequences. It has allowed the Commonwealth government acquisition and abuse of power to go beyond anything our wise founding fathers envisaged. One Nation will honour our Constitution, withdraw the Commonwealth from areas that are none of the federal government’s business and return to competitive federalism, as Australia’s founding fathers designed.
This week I’ve called again for the abolition of the Commonwealth Department of Education, a move that will not take a single teacher out of a single classroom. I’ve called for abolition of the national curriculum, which is riddled with woke virtue signalling, victimhood and social engineering. Headmasters should determine and decide what’s best for students, not woke bureaucrats thousands of kilometres away. I’ve called for abolition of the department of climate change, along with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Regulator, the Climate Change Authority, the Australian Climate Service and the Net Zero Economy Authority. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation will be rolled into a people’s bank, and there’s more to come. One Nation will shrink government to fit the Constitution and to serve the people.
On Wednesday of the last sitting week in November, Senator Shoebridge proposed a bill to legalise cannabis. While support for legalising cannabis is growing strongly across Australia and Queensland, it’s essential to approach the topic with care, data, and diligence. It’s important to understand that despite claims by the TGA and the Lib-Lab UniParty that medicinal cannabis is freely available, the reality is quite different. The plant is artificially expensive and restricted in availability.
In an honest and effective way, we need to make medicinal cannabis easy and affordable to access for millions of Australians. One Nation will continue to lead the way in taking this first, humane step.
While we welcome much of Senator Shoebridge’s bill, there are three key sticking points that One Nation cannot accept:
1. One Nation cannot support home grow at this time. The trial of home cultivation in the ACT has shown it’s not widely adopted. A licensed commercial system would benefit more people than home grow at this stage
2. The fines and jail sentences proposed in the bill are excessively high. One Nation believes in ensuring that the punishment fits the crime, and this bill strangely gets that balance wrong.
3. One Nation does not support creating a new government entity to maintain a cultivar database. Instead, we would work with existing entities to achieve this purpose.
That said, the approach of removing cannabis from the control of pharmaceutical company salespeople at the TGA and establishing a new unit led by people who understand the plant, the industry, and can advance medicinal cannabis—is an excellent idea that One Nation fully supports.
A vote for One Nation is a vote for Australian, whole-plant, natural medicinal cannabis for anyone with a medical need. It would be accessible via a prescription from a doctor, nurse practitioner, or cannabis specialist, and filled by a pharmacist or qualified dispensary under the PBS.
This plan will not increase costs to taxpayers. Evidence from countries that have adopted this model shows that cannabis reduces healthcare spending, as it’s cheaper than many expensive pharmaceutical alternatives—if implemented correctly.
Transcript
There’s much in the Legalising Cannabis Bill 2023 which would make the regulatory environment for cannabis in Australia much, much fairer, so I thank Senator Shoebridge for bringing this bill before the Senate. I feel very pleased to speak, excited about some things and disappointed about others. For too long, the government of the day, both Liberal and Labor, have acted to defend the pharmaceutical state from the competition that medical cannabis represents. Indeed, our regulatory body, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, is funded from the pharmaceutical industry that it purports to regulate. The result is regulatory capture.
In recent years the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA, has taken decisions that defy logic and that breach integrity—decisions that have placed 90 per cent of Australian adults at great risk of harm and death, decisions that have led to excess deaths it refuses to address, because the cause is the TGA and our health authorities. The TGA is a failed experiment; that is abundantly clear. It’s time to shut down the TGA and its apparatus of expert committees and agencies which act in concert to support the pharmaceutical industry to the detriment of the Australian people. It’s time to return control of drug and medical device approvals to the department, where the parliament will be able to exercise oversight and ensure accountability and transparency, which are sadly missing with the TGA.
The department can be downsized. Health is the state responsibility. Centralised regulation of drugs in the hands of the Commonwealth makes sense, and the states should be charged the cost of doing it or do it themselves, as they used to. Cannabis was removed from medical options in Australia following the Menzies government’s passage of the National Health Act 1953. This legislation placed the British Pharmacopoeia as the primary source of standards for drugs in Australia. Cannabis was a stalwart of pharmacopoeia. In 2024 the only pharmacopoeia that still includes medicinal cannabis is the European version. My point is that cannabis was widely used and accepted as a legitimate medical option across a wide range of profiles for a wide range of conditions. Without a doubt, pharmaceuticals have been a boon for modern society in many ways, although for many people modern pharmaceuticals don’t work, or the side effects can exceed the benefit. There’s a simple reason for this: medical cannabis has thousands of versions, with different combinations of cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids, steroids and other elements of the plant. There are thousands of elements. The Australian cannabis cultivar repository has almost 1,000 live cultivars of cannabis and is adding more all the time.
The significance of this is that it allows a patient, under the right guidance, to match their strain of cannabis—known as the profile—to the condition that they have. Modern pharmaceuticals employ and promote the opposite approach, matching a pharmaceutical product to a condition—one size fits all, if you like. That’s not the way health should be. But both approaches should be available to the Australian people.
I know the government and the opposition will point to the number of prescriptions written under the pathway scheme for medical cannabis and use that to mislead the public about the success of the current system. Before they make that ill-informed statement, I ask for an answer to the question the TGA refuses to answer: how many people who received a prescription for medical cannabis actually filled it? I’ll ask that again: how many people who received a prescription for medical cannabis actually filled it? My office is hearing from patients who could not afford the prescription, who could not find a chemist to fill it—often because supply was not available—and who paid out big money to get supply that was stale or even mouldy. I want to know how many people who used a medical cannabis product then suffered a side effect. I received a response to a question on notice around this last year. The answer, though, did not differentiate between legal and illegal supply.
So many people have trouble with price or availability and they fill their prescription on the black market. Some of the black-market players run rings around the quality of the legal supply, and many others do not. On the volume of prescriptions written, though not necessarily filled, the rate of harm from medical cannabis is substantially below the rate of harm for many pharmaceutical drugs. Yet cannabis has not been embraced as an alternative treatment. It used to be the leading medicine in the medical almanac in the 1930s in America; it was No. 1. So why hasn’t it been embraced? Why has it been knocked out? Money talks.
Restrictions to medical cannabis are more than directly regulatory. Other subtle hurdles make it difficult to access and use affordably, and that’s to the detriment of Australians’ health. Cannabis will never be approved because the cost of navigating the TGA system is so high that no cannabis supplier can afford it. The Legalising Cannabis Bill 2023 contains a new regulator which could function as a unit with the department. The Cannabis Australia National Agency, CANA, would employ people who know the plant and who know how it should and should not be used. That’s a blessing. CANA would set standards for use, sale, promotion, production and importation without the need for a sponsor. CANA could work with the department to understand the supply needs of the pathway scheme to issue formal guidance on profile and volume until such time as the industry develop the critical mass to do that themselves. This solves the pathways scheme’s biggest hurdle: the supply is patchy and the quality is often rubbish. CANA would license strains of cannabis and issue guidance for use through a new agency. I suggest the Greens could have used the existing Australian cannabis register, although that’s a small point. Regulation is necessary. Some of these insane new varieties of cannabis coming out of the United States have THC levels above 30 per cent. The cannabis that came to Australia during the Vietnam War was only three per cent THC. Over 30 per cent THC is insane, though perhaps useful for palliative care at best.
At this point, One Nation and the Greens diverge. The bill allows home cultivation of six plants. One Nation cannot support home grow. There is a qualification here: our opposition to home grow can exist only if Australians have access to safe, cheap, tested, licensed and accessible product, with a prescription from a doctor or nurse practitioner filled through a chemist or other suitable agent and supplied on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the PBS. One Nation introduced a bill which would have done just that, and it was roasted, including by the Greens, can I say. In an interesting example of karma, their bill met the same fate.
The German government tried for two years, through 2022 and 2023, to introduce legislation which was similar to mine—sensible down-regulation of cannabis. They spent two years fighting entrenched interests, their own department and the Bundestag, the German parliament, and then lost patience. In a decision which could be characterised as ‘Stuff the lot of you’, the government simply legalised cannabis. That came into effect on 1 April this year. I’m pleased to inform the Senate that, in a country which is directly comparable to our country, Australia, legalised cannabis hasn’t caused the world to end. In fact, nothing harmful has happened. This was the same result in the Australian Capital Territory, which allowed home grow three years ago with the same result. No harm happened. In fact, nothing happened. And that is a problem. Legalising cannabis is supposed to help people treat medical conditions, reduce drug and alcohol addiction, reduce the presence of organised crime and chill. None of that appears to have occurred. Homegrown appeals to the small number of Australians within the cannabis community who know what they are doing and who have the land to home grow. For most Australians, regulated supply works better. At this point in the development of cannabis in Australia, regulated supply will help more Australians than home grow will. I’ll say that again. At this point in the development of cannabis, which is continuing, in Australia, regulated supply will help more Australians than will home grow.
The cannabis community makes a mistake that I find quite frustrating. They judge the plant on the basis of their experience and knowledge. They advocate for open grow and use like it were nothing more than a herb. It’s not just a herb. As I said earlier, there are 1,000 different profiles, and that number is increasing. How does an average Australian, a typical Australian, with no or limited knowledge know which one is right, how to grow it properly, how to prepare it properly and how to store and use it correctly? A typical Australian doesn’t know that, and that suggests smoking the plant, which One Nation suggests is the worst way to take medicinal cannabis. The most scientific, the most accurate and the safest is to purchase a cannabis vaping solution and vape it. But I won’t go there further today.
The other aspect of the bill One Nation cannot accept is the fines and jail sentences for minor breaches of the regulations. Seriously, six months in jail and 200 penalties earned, which is $36,000? On the other hand, children under 18 get off without a penalty at all. I get that the Greens are trying to raise the age of criminal responsibility, but a 17-year-old who starts a business growing and selling cannabis gets no penalty at all. One Nation questions that. This has not been thought through properly.
Let me finish with a warning and an invitation. Increasingly, One Nation is tending to the German response. If you won’t allow sensible regulation, then no regulation it is. We need sensible regulation. One Nation is prepared to engage with the government and others across the Senate to achieve a sensible regulation of cannabis, including on the PBS. We continue to listen to the community, to the people, Queensland and Australia, because we want to achieve a sensible regulation of cannabis including on the PBS.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/v-EreIqXC8s/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-12-12 15:13:502024-12-12 15:13:55Affordable Medicinal Cannabis Needed for Millions of Australians
Australia can easily be the richest country on earth with the resources we have. Instead, we’re being told to turn off air-cons and dishwashers because there’s not enough electricity. This is only possible because the people in charge hate you. There’s no other explanation for a country that sits on thousands of years of energy supply to be in the situation Australia is.
One Nation will put Australians first, and will fight for a wealthy, prosperous Australia.
Transcript
The Greens are continuing their war on natural gas, their war on humanity. Gas keeps the lights on when their wind turbines and solar panels aren’t working, and that’s often. This afternoon, New South Wales is facing blackouts, as wind and solar supplied less than a quarter of energy needs. They’re facing blackouts!
With the abundance of coal, oil and natural gas under our feet, Australia is an energy superpower. Hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas—are the energy miracles, the human development miracles, the human progress miracles. Australia is among the top three gas exporters and the top two coal exporters. We are the largest exporter of energy in the world. Now, though, Australia is facing blackouts and energy rationing like we’re a Third World country. Thank you!
The New South Wales government has asked households to turn off their air-conditioners, pull the blinds down, turn off the dishwashers and turn off the lights this afternoon. Third World—thank you! Next they’ll probably ask everyone to just curl up in the fetal position on the floor. The anti-human greenies are winning. Coal is being shut down, as they want, and this is the result: east coast Australians suffer. You’re not going to believe the Greens’ brilliant solution to this. Just wait for it. They want to ban gas. Your gas stovetop and hot-water heater are going to be forcibly converted to electric, and you’ll be banned from turning them on when wind and solar don’t give the grid enough power. You can’t make this up!
Think about this: electricity prices are at record highs thanks to solar and wind. They’re three times what they used to be—trebled. Now we’re having less electricity, because we’re relying on solar and wind more, and we’re having increased demand, because we’re switching from gas to electricity. What will that do to prices? You can’t make this up. I guess you don’t need to turn your dishwasher on anyway, if you can’t turn on your electric cooktop to cook dinner. This is the green dream: no gas, no light, no cooking, no red meat, no fun.
It’s the hypocrisy that’s the worst part, though. The Greens want to ban us using coal here, yet it’s perfectly fine to ship coal over to China. China uses that coal to make wind turbines and solar panels, and our dopey government buys them back off China. We subsidise the Chinese to do it. We subsidise the Chinese to install them and we subsidise the Chinese and other parasitic billionaires and corporations to run them. Who pays for those subsidies? The people who use electricity do. The Greens are fine with that. Buying coal products from China—solar and wind turbines—is fine, but using coal here is not. One Nation says: unleash the resources we have in our country for the benefit of all Australian people. Talk to Queenslanders about the services and infrastructure being built from coal royalties.
China gives token signals about solar and wind, while using coal, nuclear and hydro. China produces 4.5 billion tonnes of coal a year, heading for five billion. They’re the world’s largest producer by a long way. Australia produces 560 million tonnes, and a lot of our coal is exported. Some of it goes to China, because they can’t get enough with their 4.5 billion. India produces around 1.4 billion tonnes of coal—three times what we produce—and buys more from Australia. Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s because they want what we have: a developed nation, with people living longer, safer, easier, more secure, more prosperous and more comfortable lives. They know the secret to these is affordable hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas. Britain started its climb to development using coal. America continued using coal and added the benefit of using oil and gas. High energy density fuels released us from using animals as beasts of burden, stopped us using slaves and reduced exposure to harsh work conditions and work environments.
Why are hydrocarbon fuels—so powerful, so effective and lifting us to higher standards of living—repeatedly proven around the world? I’ll tell you why: high energy density, which lowers unit energy costs—more energy, lower costs. That gives us productivity. That’s why coal, oil and natural gas are so important. The largest component of manufacturing costs today is electricity. We are now uncompetitive because our electricity costs are amongst the highest. That hurts jobs. The Greens are antijobs, antidevelopment, anticivilisation and antihuman. Only One Nation will end net zero and pull us out of the UN Paris Agreement to restore affordable secure energy.
The government is promoting their Help to Buy scheme where they will own 30-40% of your home (instead of you). While it might sound good to Australians desperate to get into a house, the details are terrifying. One of those details that didn’t get much media attention was the structure of the mortgage. Government won’t be a co-owner of the house, they’ll be a second mortgagor. That means they are behind whichever Big Bank gives you the main mortgage.
This is bad news because if house prices go down at all (they are currently at record highs) the Big Bank gets first priority to recover all of their losses, leaving the homeowner and the government (aka taxpayers) out of pocket. That means the banks will probably be getting risk free profits at our expense. This is just one of the many problems with “Help to Buy” which means it won’t help at all.
One Nation has the real solutions to the housing crisis. Start with cutting record immigration, banning foreign ownership and letting tradies do their job, not pumping up Big Bank profits.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Minister. Just to confirm, the bank or the lender would be the first mortgagor and the government would be the second?
Senator AYRES: Yes, that’s exactly right, and there are, of course, other arrangements that people have in the private sector that that will look very similar—that is, for the participant, the relationship with the approved lender and the second mortgage will be exactly the same as other Australians have, but there will be a lower mortgage threshold and lower repayments for that group of Australians who satisfy the criteria.
Senator ROBERTS: In the event of a default or price fall, is the bank entitled to recover its losses before the government does? That would seem to be the case.
Senator AYRES: Yes. Just like in an arrangement that you might have or any other Queenslander might have with their lender, there are shared risks and shared benefits.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/gqLhhTQEDwU/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-12-10 15:52:412024-12-10 15:52:44“Help to Buy” is Actually “Help the Banks”
The Australian Human Rights Commission has previously argued for minors to be given life changing surgeries and puberty blockers under the ‘gender affirmation’ model. They claimed these treatments could be reversed, weren’t risky and were supported by science: none of these are true.
The UK Cass review has completely discredited ‘gender affirmation’ for children. It’s time for the taxpayer funded Human Rights Commission to rule out ever supporting children being put onto puberty blockers or sex-change surgery ever again.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing tonight. I’ve got questions on gender—sex change. My questions are to the commissioner who looks at gender-affirmation care and children. That may be Dr Cody; is that right?
Dr Cody: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: I want to make clear, from the start of these questions, that I support adults doing whatever they like if they want to transition or attempt to transition. However, I draw the line at children. Previously, the commission has argued in court that puberty blockers were ‘reversible’, the risk of a wrong decision to give a child puberty blockers was ‘low’ and the outcome of a wrong decision would not be ‘grave’. My questions to the commission are: do you still stand by that position completely, and why the hell are you in court arguing to put children on puberty blockers?
Dr Cody: I believe that you are referring to family court decisions in which we have intervened as amicus. I’m not aware of the details of those specific cases. I would have to educate myself around exactly what our argument was. We do not have any intention to—or any cases in which we are intervening, or have sought to intervene, as amicus in relation to the use of puberty blockers or gender-affirming care with children.
Senator ROBERTS: But your words are significant. Are you a medical doctor?
Dr Cody: I’m not.
Senator ROBERTS: There’s no good evidence that puberty blockers are reversible, and the effects of puberty blockers on the developing brain of a child are simply unknown. Why should the Australian taxpayer be funding the commission to argue for children to make irreversible changes to their body that we have no good clinical evidence for?
Dr Cody: One of the fundamental human rights that we all have is a right to health care. That includes children—the importance of all children having the appropriate access to health care from the moment they are born right through until they turn 18. Gender-affirming health care is a part of that access to health care.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, let’s continue. The Cass review in the UK—have you heard of that?
Dr Cody: I have.
Senator ROBERTS: It was one of the most sweeping and intensive inquiries into puberty blockers for children. The Cass review said that the evidence for puberty blockers is so poor that they should be confined to ethically controlled clinical trials, and cross-sex hormones for minors should only be used with extreme caution. The Cass review had the gender affirmation treatment protocol used at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne independently evaluated for the scientific rigour in development. Do you know what it scored?
Dr Cody: I’m sorry, what scored? I didn’t catch the first part of that question.
Senator ROBERTS: It had the gender affirmation treatment protocol used at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne independently evaluated for the scientific rigour in development. It scored 19 out of 100—very low rigour. Are you aware that, in the United States, there was a US$10 million report over nine years that was not published because the lead author didn’t want the results to be public? Those results were that there were no improvements in the mental health of children who received puberty blockers after two years. Are you aware of that?
Dr Cody: I’m not aware of that study in the United States. In relation to the Cass review, one of the findings of that review was recognising the importance of having a holistic approach to health care—which we have in Australia—that includes a psychologist’s treatment, social work treatment and having wraparound services with a GP and psychiatric assistance for any child who has any issues around their gender. One of those recommendations is something that we actually have within Australia and that we’re lucky to have within our healthcare system.
Senator ROBERTS: Until recently, it’s been almost automatic in some areas to put children who suffer from gender dysphoria, which is not uncommon in adolescents, on affirmation to change their gender. I can’t remember the name of the institute—it’s either the Australia-New Zealand society of psychiatrists or psychologists that has come out recently saying gender affirmation is not recommended. When are you going to stop going to court at taxpayer expense arguing for these experimental, life-changing, irreversible, mentally damaging chemical treatments to be given to children.
Dr Cody: At the moment, we are not intervening as amicus in any cases before the Family Court.
Senator ROBERTS: I think this question will probably go to the president. In your opening statement, you say:
Human rights are the blueprint for a decent, dignified life for all. Human rights are the key to creating the kind of society we all want to live in …
Could you tell me what is the field of human rights? What rights are encompassed in the field of human rights?
Mr de Kretser: The modern human rights movement started after World War II with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where the international community, after the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust said, ‘No more. These are the basic standards that everyone, no matter who they are or where they are, needs to lead a decent, dignified life.’ They have then been expressed in two key international treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and various other treaties have codified aspects of rights since then. The human rights in those treaties have only been partly implemented in domestic Australian law, which is why we’re calling for a human rights act to properly implement Australia’s international obligations and to properly protect people’s and community’s human rights in Australia. Is there a specific human right or aspect that I can address for you?
Senator ROBERTS: I’d just like to know what you see as the core human rights that humans have and that you’re overseeing in this country?
Mr de Kretser: The legislation that we have—our discrimination laws—implements the obligations to protect aspects of the right to equality, for example. We have seven commissioners. Six of the seven are thematically focused on different rights: Commissioner Cody, obviously, is focused on equality rights; Commissioner Hollonds is focused on child rights; Commissioner Fitzgerald is focused on the rights of older persons—and the like. The key international treaties are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights.
CHAIR: I don’t want to interrupt this really helpful lecture on human rights law. If you’ve got a punchline question, you should get to that now.
Senator ROBERTS: Is freedom of speech seen as a human right?
CHAIR: Yes. Good question.
Mr de Kretser: Absolutely. Freedom of expression—our freedom of speech—is an aspect of that. Freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of religion and the like are critical human rights.
CHAIR: That’s all the questions we have for you this evening. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for the work that you did on the framework and delivering that in the last couple of days. I know it’s taken an enormous amount of work.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/IwYtODBw25U/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-12-10 15:19:272024-12-10 15:19:30Children Deserve Care and Love – Not Life Changing Surgeries
