Podcast: The Ark with Joel Jammal

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Transcript

Joel Jammal: Ladies and gentlemen welcome to episode 25 of the Ark podcast. I have missed you guys. Just come back from the US watching exactly what happened at CPAC USA in Washington DC, my first time being to America – my first time seeing snow. It was amazing. It was actually really cool. I’ll get into a bit of that later in other videos where I’ll go into a bit more depth, but today I’m joined by a very special guest – The Honorable Senator Malcolm Roberts. Malcolm, welcome to the Ark Podcast.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you very much Joel. Good to be here at last now.

Joel Jammal: Malcolm, I mentioned to a few people that you were coming on and I was obviously very keen to have our chat and people know we’re friends. People know we like to have chats every now and then on your Friday Q&A’s, which are very popular, but the big elephant in the room that I’ve addressed previously about the the hate speech bill. I wanted to give you first the opportunity before we get into it. Mate, what happened to that because a lot of people I’m coming up to in the Freedom Movement they’re like – why did Malcolm and Pauline not show up for that vote, for that hate speech Bill vote. Mate, what happened with that?

Senator ROBERTS:  Well it was difficult.  We had a discussion as to whether we oppose or abstain and I’ll explain why we abstained.  But before doing so, the pile on that resulted from Senator Rennick’s lie when he said that we joined with the Liberal and Labor parties in supporting the hate crimes bill was a complete lie.  Then the pile on from the Libertarians and the pile on from other parties was just disgraceful, but I want to compliment five people, yourself included, because you took a neutral stance and there are others – Topher Field, John Ruddick, Ralph Babet and Jim Wilmott – for their civility and their honesty.  They didn’t pile on.  They showed some character in abstaining from criticising us.  So normally Joel, what happens is that if, as in happened in this case, the Labor party or the Liberal Party bring something in, rush it in, don’t have proper committee scrutiny of it, don’t have proper time for us to scrutinise it then guillotine the vote, then we just straight oppose it.  It’s got to be very very outstanding to support a bill that goes through that mess. So, we were inclined to oppose it and then Ralph and a couple of others came up to me and said what are you doing. I said we’re abstaining. What? You’ve got to support it – got to oppose it and I said no mate, there’s a logic to what we’re doing.  Because as you know, Pauline’s pretty strong on this kind of stuff as am I and it’s important to understand that it’s the Hate Crimes Bill – not the hate speech bill.  It’s the Hate Crimes Bill and we said we cannot support it – this is just a discussion between Pauline and myself – we just cannot support this because of the language, because some of the assumption, some of the context of the bill, we just could not support it. It was a dog of a bill, plus it was bulldozed through the Senate and then Pauline said – you know, we got to be careful, because we were clearly going to stand on our own.  That didn’t bother us.  It doesn’t bother Pauline and me to be the only two in the Senate. So, we had – it was a stitch up. The Liberal and Labor had about 60 and the Greens all combined, and the Nationals combined to have about 66 of the 76 votes, so there’s no way we could win, no way we could influence the vote at all, so without having said anything, we wanted to send some signals because we believe, and I think most Australians would believe, that the use of physical force or the threat of violence or the threat of physical force is abhorrent and Australians don’t put up with that, so we couldn’t let that go just by opposing it, but we couldn’t support the bill so we had to oppose the way it was done and the way it was introduced. So we said okay let’s send a signal to Australians because we know there are people, the groups, and I haven’t got my notes with me, but there are many groups including people who are disabled, here they are. There’s sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, disease, religion – many groups in Australia who are currently under threat, physical violence and physical threats.  We’re not going to accept that.  Hate crimes are real and they are being exercised on people, and so we wanted to send a signal saying we do absolutely support the protection of those people. Every Australian has a right to live in security and safety. So we wanted to say that, but we couldn’t support the bill because of the reasons I just mentioned – the language, the looseness – so we said well bugger, everyone’s going to expect us to oppose it, but we have to send a signal to those people that are looking for support, right?

Joel Jammal: So you do actually believe that there needs to be, there was a lot of good things about the bill now, but there’s a lot of bad about the bill as well.  So you were sort of in an awkward position where it was like look, we don’t support the worst kinds of excesses on this bill on free speech but at the same time, you actually needed some work and the government wasn’t really working with you – they just sort of guillotining through.  Is that right?

Senator ROBERTS: Correct. So normally what would happen is sometimes I’ll get up in the Senate and talk about some of the positive aspects of a bill – not this bill – but positive aspects of a bill and then say however, we’re going to oppose it for this reason.

Joel Jammal: Right.

Senator ROBERTS: Or I might say there’s some merit in this bill, there’s some dogs in this bill, we’re going to abstain. 

Joel Jammal: Right.

Senator ROBERTS: We didn’t get a chance to speak.

Joel Jammal: No speeches.

Senator ROBERTS: No speeches at all.

Joel Jammal: No speeches, right.

Senator ROBERTS: And the core part of the bill is – a person commits an offense, if the person threatens to use force or violence against a group.  The targeted group is distinguished by race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability including disease, nationality, national or ethnic origin, or political opinion, so it also applies to political opinion, and a reasonable member of the targeted group would fear that the threat will be carried out and the threat if carried out would threaten the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth. Well that makes sense to me, but then the language was so sloppy and so loose.

Joel Jammal: Yeah.

Senator ROBERTS: And we couldn’t support it.  It was too vague. 

Joel Jammal: Like you didn’t have to prove intent of the actual person that’s saying something as well, you just had to prove that the person felt hurt that received that comment.

Senator ROBERTS: Well no, that the person would genuinely feel fear that the threat will be carried out.  So it can’t be just a reckless –

Joel Jammal: Right. That’s insane. That’s insane!  So Pauline’s comments, when you guys were at that press conference, because from an outsider –

Senator ROBERTS: I was there.

Joel Jammal: You were there. From an outsider’s perspective, from me just sort of following what was going on, we’re about to kick off a campaign, we’re about to kick off a campaign for a big election, and it kind of has already started. Albanese and Dutton –

Senator ROBERTS: They’re copying our policies already.  Both the two tired old parties are copying four of our policies. Pretending to.

Joel Jammal: Yeah exactly, like the alcohol excise.

Senator ROBERTS: Immigration, student caps.

Joel Jammal: So and they’re already campaigning on the public dime. What it seemed to me on that day – you guys, as part of your campaigning, had a press conference.  You had, in my view, more pressing things actually going on that day and that’s what I remarked to people in the last episode before I left.  I said look, Malcolm wasn’t sipping pina coladas in his office, it’s not like he was not doing anything else.  He just knew that this vote was going to go 41 to 6, which is I think what it ended up being, which is not possible guys, it’s not possible to win that.  It’s just not. And guillotining debate, guillotining –

Senator ROBERTS: And opposed all the guillotining which sends a very strong signal. Sometimes guillotine is necessary because people don’t understand why it’s done, but the Senate is the controller of what happens in the Senate and so sometimes a guillotine is necessary when it’s been debated plenty and it’s just one party trying to talk it out and stop the vote, so we will, everyone will sometimes support a guillotine but it’s very very rare. So, when you do something like this with a serious bill with …. to it, then you just, we opposed all the bills, so basically we were sending a signal. We opposed the guillotines. We basically opposed the bill. We were sending that signal right the way through.

Joel Jammal: Right. So when Pauline, who was doing a press conference for something completely unrelated, was asked an off-the-cuff question which, you won’t say this but I will say this, she doesn’t do off the cuff very well.  She tends to get her back up a little bit about it.  She’s not, she’s not a Rhode Scholar. I’ll put it that way.

Senator ROBERTS: She’s very bright.  I’ll take exception to that. She is extremely intelligent.

Joel Jammal: I totally agree, but in terms of debating techniques and like I’m just saying, she’s no Rhode Scholar in that sense, she’s actually more a street smart sort of person.  It’s a compliment in a way, but I can see how that answer she gave was misunderstood by people and I’m just watching this slow motion train crash knowing Pauline’s intent on that and I can see she wanted to deliver some actual results for some of those groups you were talking about and I can see how this bill with a few amendments could actually be quite a good bill.

Senator ROBERTS: It needed a lot of work on it.

Joel Jammal: It needed a lot of work.

Senator ROBERTS: Basic thrust is fine because it’s a Hate Crimes Bill not a hate speech bill, which is what Clive Palmer misleadingly reported it as and others in the debate.

Joel Jammal: No absolutely and so I look at this whole situation and I’m just like okay so this is what happened, this is the miscommunication between people and I feel very, this is going to come out very strange coming from a 27 yr old but I do feel very fatherly and protective of this sort of Freedom Movement including all of the freedom senators.  And you know the different organisations and groups and podcasters and so when I see everyone fighting, it hurts, it actually feels like your family’s fighting, your mom and dad are having a fight.  It’s terrible to see and so, then I see the opportunism from these other parties and these senators and these potential senators and candidates running and I’m just like this is a disaster. I mean we are not looking like a winning side.  We’re going into an election, we need to be consolidating our efforts, consolidating our energies so that we can be one force just like the Greens are on the left.  We need to become one force.

Senator ROBERTS: Exactly.

Joel Jammal: And that’s why I didn’t appreciate that whole saga with everyone and that’s where I’m coming from when I’m looking at all this because like I’ve just come back from America. I’ve seen the sense of coming together. They had Trump build an amazing coalition between RFK and Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswarmy. 

Senator ROBERTS: They all want the truth and they all want to fix America. That’s why RFK came in.

Joel Jammal: Absolutely and I’m looking at that spirit of camaraderie and coming together against this Goliath of a foe and I’m like okay great, so that’s the winning attitude we need to have, where are we at, and then this is what we’re doing and I’m like –

Senator ROBERTS: I could tell you’re concerned and I appreciate the way you spoke. It was very well done.  So I don’t look at you as a 27 yr old, I look at you as a human, a mature human, very understanding of politics but you raised two points that I’d like to cover.  One was the mandatory sentences.  I can read out something from Pauline but I was there standing next to her – we actually posted about this – and by the way, I’ll get to that other point in a minute, but Pauline, our policies were introduced into the News Corp papers in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and maybe Adelaide I think and they were phenomenally well received and the comments below the articles from everyday Australians were amazing, just stunning and that caused a lot of turmoil amongst some other minor parties who were quite frankly jealous.  We worked that out.  They were like, what the hell do we do now they?  They were thinking that, but Pauline she’s never one to back away from something and the policies were so well received that it was a funny conference, media conference, because no one was asking a question about the policies.  Pauline gave a little speech, I said a couple of words and then she said “where are your questions” and there are only two journalists and they arrived late.  The rest were all cameramen and so one of the cameraman, Pauline looked at the cameraman and when you have Pauline’s eyes on you, you do something you know.  He asked a couple of sensible questions because they’re no journalists and we worked out later why the journalists weren’t there and that was because how could you possibly tear holes in these policies.  So anyway, the cameraman asked a couple of questions and then the two journalists arrived Probin and somebody else from Sky I think, and they asked questions about Gaza and about, what was the other one?  Oh, mandatory sentencing. Not the Hate Crimes Bill, just the mandatory sentencing and Pauline has long thought that mandatory sentencing is not good except for terrorism, where it’s necessary because some judges are just weak and so she explained that and she said yes I support it under certain circumstances but she basically said that she would – the bill had just been thrust upon her, been rushed through, and she had no time to look at it which is the absolute truth.  Our office was still dissecting it and so she left it open because that was the only thing she could do.  So that was one thing.  The second thing that I want to talk about is we agreed exactly with you, so even though there were lies being told by the Libertarian party and by Senator Rennick and Clive Palmer later that day, we said we’re not going to get into a dust up because this is just a, come on it’s just a shit fight – everyone loses in a shit fight, so we zipped our lip and said just let it all subside a little bit but it didn’t stop me talking about it on Saturday night 2 days later at a function, nor the following week.  We just waited for the heat to come out of it because no matter what we said the people who are incensed by Senator Rennick’s lie and some of the comments that the Libertarians were making, there’s no way you could pacify them. It’s just stupid. You don’t argue with it, with people who are crazed and then bit by bit we started realising and people started realising and they’re waking up and they’re saying hang on a minute, you guys have been lied about here and then we saw the people waking themselves. But then we came out and explained it in full. So, I’m happy to do that.

Joel Jammal: It’s astonishing to me –

Senator ROBERTS: I mean we did not want want to cause a fight in the Freedom Party. So we abstained. Because we also knew that it would be like talking to a madman.

Joel Jammal: It’s astonishing because I look at this and I’m just like Malcolm and Pauline between them, I don’t know how long – how many years have you guys both been serving in the parliament?

Senator ROBERTS: Pauline served three in the House of Reps, then she served six and one that’s seven, that’s 10 years for her. I’ve served one and 7 and a half.

Joel Jammal: So you know we’re we’re looking at you know almost 20 years of service and voting records and this one vote, this one vote, you know people were just so willing to just throw it out. I’m just like guys if this is how we treat our veterans for God’s sake, for God’s sake. And it’s just, cause –

Senator ROBERTS: Well, the other thing –

Joel Jammal: And again, it wasn’t the politicians that, I kind of expect from MPS and Senators that are trying and candidates that are trying to get votes out of one nation being the biggest fish out of the minor parties I get that but some of the podcasters, me being one, I was like guys why are you just spurring this on, why are you going hard.

Senator ROBERTS: There are a lot of trollss in there working for the, we believe, the Libertarian Party and a couple of bots as well, just spurring it on. So a lot of it was was orchestrated. It was orchestrated and it was coordinated across several different parties.

Joel Jammal: Mmm. And again, guys for those people thinking this is a One Nation love fest, you know Malcolm knows –

Senator ROBERTS: You can be pretty blunt with me at times.

Joel Jammal: Yeah exactly and you know and everyone knows that you know that Turning Point Australia we don’t support you know just One Nation blindly across the board. It certainly has not been the case with the elections and all of, Craig Kelly, Gerard Rennick, a lot of these candidates that were alluding to they’re actually coming on to this podcast at some point as well before the election, because I’m trying to help the movement and that’s kind of the whole point about this thing but you asked this question and so –

Senator ROBERTS: And we’re happy to answer it.

Joel Jammal: So, I’m being honest you know.

Senator ROBERTS: We’re happy to answer it and would we do it again? Well Pauline will always be true to herself and I will always be true to myself. Now as I said, I was conflicted. On the one hand we had a couple of people saying you should oppose it. Yes, but that’s leaving people vulnerable people alone and isolated. We need to send them a signal so that’s why. So would we do it again? We probably would do it again because it was a right thing to do and one of Pauline’s staff came up to me, he’s a very sensible politically astute person and he said I am so proud to be in One Nation because you did stand by principle and that was wonderful. And the other thing is that not only was One Nation a short-term casualty, but the English language was a casualty because the dictionary meaning of abstain was completely thrown out the window. The word abstain suddenly meant support which is completely wrong. The dictionary meaning of abstain is to “hold oneself back voluntarily especially from something regarded as improper.” Hello!

Joel Jammal: Well they made it sound like you proposed the bill yourself Malcolm, that’s what they made it sound like.

Senator ROBERTS: And it was improper because I’ve voted due to the rushed vote and a guillotined debate and the second definition is to “refrain from casting one’s vote” and that’s what we did. We couldn’t support it. No way we could support it but we want to send a signal but the other thing that’s really important for us is that within about 2 weeks, we got the highest polling numbers we’ve ever got right. Within two weeks we got more volunteers signing up than we’ve ever had before. Within two weeks we got an increase in membership with the party and we got a lot of people starting to change and say oh we can see who the villains are here and it’s just so sad that people who I e had a lot of time for and I wouldn’t have thought would tell a lie, told a blatant lie and when I pointed it out to Gerard, he acknowledged it and then I said you need to retract it and he acknowledged that and left it up there. You know that’s inexcusable in my opinion.

Joel Jammal: Yeah well look, I think people that, generally people that are listening to this right now and getting you know this end to end answer will appreciate it and I think they’ll see it in the perspective of – you know I want to see these parties work together a lot more. I don’t want to see my mom and dad fighting per se in the parliament. You know, I want to see them getting on.

Senator ROBERTS: Yeah.

Joel Jammal: And that’s the truth. I think that is the truth of the punters that are out there that are watching politics and that are voting and that are volunteering for these different parties. They want to see more collaboration.

Senator ROBERTS: One of the things that’s left a bit of taste in my mouth, not about this, back three years ago was that I was one of the most vocal in the country and so was Topher Field. He was a bloody good but we said, let’s work together, Libertarians, United Australia Party, One Nation and other freedom parties – let’s work together. We had joint candidate forums in an electorate and in the Senate. We would have a candidate from each of those people conducting a forum together and it was on the basis that we would support each other. We would recommend the other minor parties, we’re going to recommend One Nation 1 and then UAP, Katter, Libertarians, 2 3 4 etc.

Joel Jammal: There was 10 of them I think in the last federal

Senator ROBERTS: So that’s what we said we would do and Clive Palmer came out and said put the majors last and we then started saying put the majors last, and so we were wondering what happened to Clive Palmer’s party up in Queensland, why their ‘how to vote’ cards weren’t out. And then the day of the prepoll, not – it didn’t come out the couple of days beforehand, it came out on the day of the prepoll – we found out why. Because it was 1 United Australia Party, 2 LNP.

Joel Jammal: Yeah.

Senator ROBERTS: So he completely sold us out.

Joel Jammal: Yeah that’s right.

Senator ROBERTS: So we can’t trust someone like that.

Joel Jammal: Yeah. Look I God, I was in America when I, I haven’t said a thing on the Trumpet of Patriots thing but I was in America when it came out, just landed, and I went and gave a speech at the America for Tax Reform. It was huge. Amazing, it was amazing. It was, like they had 50 different groups, each person was the head of a group and you go to this thing if you’re trying to pitch yourself or just introduce yourself and I’m like hi everyone, I’m Joel Jammal, head of Turning Point Australia. You know, I teach people who’s punching them, why they’re punching them and how they can punch back and I just gave my two minute speech and whatever. I get out after –

Senator ROBERTS: It would have gone down well. It would have gone down very well.

Joel Jammal: You know how I am Malcolm. You know how I am. I’m a very shy person.

Senator ROBERTS: They love, the Americans love that when someone stands up and they love it when someone stands up in a country like Australia that was perceived during COVID to be the worst country in the world.

Joel Jammal: Yeah. No, you’re absolutely right and you know they did ask about that. But I got off stage and you know, I said don’t be shy, come up to me and give me your business cards or whatever. A few of them came up to me and said what’s this about the Trumpet of Patriots. I mean why would they pick such a stupid name and I’m I just, and I think it was because they were trying to back like you know, be like have Trump in it or something. I think that’s what Clive Palmer remarked in the press conference you know. Trumpets of Patriots! And I don’t mean any offense to that new party or Suella who’s obviously the head of it with Clive but it’s silly, the whole thing is silly and the idea that you know, in the news it came out that they were going around basically offering different parties to buy the parties and apparently they offered One Nation $10 million but Pauline wasn’t for selling.

Senator ROBERTS: We are not for sale. That was made very very clear to Clive.

Joel Jammal: Yeah and that’s what’s bizarre and maybe I should ask you about this you know back in December and most people missed this story, but I saw that Clive registered and trademarked the name The Clive and Pauline Party, as well as The Teal Party and a few other things. How –

Senator ROBERTS: I think that was before he approached Pauline and James.

Joel Jammal: That was before.

Senator ROBERTS: I think so, but I don’t know.

Joel Jammal: Look the story came out on the 26th of December so I think it was, this story came out after but maybe they had the –

Senator ROBERTS: Someone’s been reading the patents, not the patents the registrations.

Joel Jammal: The registrations right and it was just bizarre that he would like The Clive and Pauline Party? I mean how can he trademark the Clive and Pauline Party without her permission. It just struck me as odd.

Senator ROBERTS: Well, it’s a crazy name. You know, could you imagine the Pauline and Clive Party? It just does not make sense.

Joel Jammal: No.

Senator ROBERTS: I mean, I’m not saying that they shouldn’t get together. I’m not saying that at all but having that as a as a party name?

Joel Jammal: Yeah well it’s like what do you stand for?

Senator ROBERTS: Exactly.

Joel Jammal: Clive and Pauline?

Senator ROBERTS: Exactly. So you know, One Nation is Pauline Hanson because she’s got the name and then one nation. Let’s face it Joel and you know this. She’s been around since 1996. Everyone has tried to have a go at her. The Liberals and Labor have tried to jail her. She has stood firm. She has stood in truth the whole time and she survived and they’ve done everything they can to her. They’ve called her a racist which is the worst thing you can call an Australian woman and that was done deliberately to shut down people talking about her and that worked for a while until people started to wake up in the last couple of years and she’s not at at all a racist. Asian people who’ve come here for the Australian culture and Aboriginals love our work so they think very highly of us. So she’s not at all a racist but what I’m saying is they’ve thrown everything at her and she’s still standing. She’s still got two senators.

Joel Jammal: Yeah.

Senator ROBERTS: Her candidates are the seventh, next in line, the seventh senator in every state except for Queensland where I came fourth, so we’re primed – with just a very small increase in votes to get another senator in every state and so I guess, and I don’t know what’s in their mind but if I was Libertarians, if I was another Freedom Party, I’d be trying to take votes off the Liberal Party because if you get 2% off the Liberal Party, that’s a lot more votes than getting 2% of us and and I’d be trying to work with One Nation because we are so close to getting you know five or so senators in the parliament which will give us the balance of power and the conservatives in Australia the balance of power. There’s no one else capable of doing that, no one. No one at all, not even close.

Joel Jammal: Yeah, everywhere you run you get 5% in your back pocket. That is just a matter of fact.

Senator ROBERTS: And look look at the quality of the people. Warwick in New South Wales, Warren Pickering in Victoria. Warren’s amazing, a veteran, really switched on, energetic. We’ve got Jennifer Game – don’t argue with her mate, she’ll clean you up even you.

Joel Jammal: Oh, I believe it.

Senator ROBERTS: She’s highly intelligent, and in Western Australia we’ve got Tyron and you know they’re really solid people.

Joel Jammal: Yeah, yeah.

Senator ROBERTS: So it just doesn’t make any sense. If you would want to destroy the party with the best chances of actually getting conservatives into the Senate, go ahead and destroy One Nation.

Joel Jammal: Yeah look I remember making this argument to the Victorians in their state election in 2022 – it’s hard to believe we’re coming up on another state election for them next year but I made the point to them I said guys there are nine Freedom parties for your state election and your freedom vote is about 11.6% so you need 14% to become a senator, that’s a full quota.

Senator ROBERTS: Yeah.

Joel Jammal: Maybe you need about 9 or 10% you know, kick it over a bit with preferences. There’s nine parties splitting that 11.6%

Senator ROBERTS: And as you pointed out, One Nation’s got a very solid bedrock of 5 to 8 and sometimes, probably in South Australia it’s around about 13% so nationally we got up to 9% so we’re at about 9% I think.

Joel Jammal: Yeah.

Senator ROBERTS: Which is a pretty damn solid base, foundation. No one can come close to that.

Joel Jammal: No, I totally agree.

Senator ROBERTS: So no wonder Clive wanted to try and buy us but Pauline has never been for sale, she never will be for sale. She’s that kind of woman. You know when she asked me to to stand beside her, she got wind in 2016 of me doing some work on opposing the climate fraud and she she said to me one day at a forum when I finished speaking she said will you come on the Senate ticket with me and I said well I’ll think about it, I’ll talk with my wife first. So I talked with my wife and she said yes and, it’s always good to have her onside, and then I said to Pauline – right my wife’s fine with it, she’s comfortable with it and Pauline said sign up and I said no no no no, now I talk with you. We went out there and she was thinking maybe a couple of hours. 11 and 1/2 hours later I left and I came away so thoroughly impressed and I’ve done a lot of recruiting, I’m not a not a sloppy recruiter, very impressed with her. There’s no way anyone could have pulled that thing together but the fact that here she was 20 years later in 2016 leading this party and putting her own money, I’m talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bank loans into that and putting it all on the line, she’s just phenomenal. She has never ever told me a lie and neither has James Ashby, never, both of them together. If James was not honest Pauline would have got rid of him straight away but she’s had you know colorful people around her, some people who haven’t been worthy of the trust but she gets rid of them very quickly.

Joel Jammal: So Queensland, you know it’s alluded it’s a very hotly contested election in terms of the parties that are running and you know it’s a hot contest between yourself and Senator Gerard Rennick and I’m excited to see how the campaign unfolds with that, both being great incumbents that have both had a great voting record.

Senator ROBERTS: And there’s a chance that both of us can get in.

Joel Jammal: That’s right, that’s right.

Senator ROBERTS: Depending upon the liberal vote.

Joel Jammal: Absolutely and I pray that you do kick off that third Liberal that’s on the candidate, the candidate there. I pray that you guys do knock him off.

Senator ROBERTS: So I’m going to be parochial but I think also factual in saying putting me 1 and Gerard 2 is the best way to get us both in because I’ve got the solid base of One Nation behind me, Gerard and I have got a similar level of personal support, social media as well as just in general in the public, both recognised, so I think that so long as I get in first then our leftover votes, our preferences can, not our preferences but our voter’s preferences can go to Gerard and get him in, so that would be phenomenal, get us both back in.

Joel Jammal: So a few people have mentioned to me they’ve said all right, because whenever I, I ask a lot of people every time I come across a Queenslander I say okay, I’m putting a gun to your head figuratively you have to answer this question. I say this to every one of them and you can’t say no and they’re like okay just give me the question Joel, what is it? Gerard or Malcolm? And they’re like oh no and it’s a compliment I mean they love both of you, they love both of you, you know and that’s really good to see because you you both, as I said you both had a phenomenal voting record over the years that you’ve had respectively but you got to pick one and it’s pretty much dead even with the vote, with the two of you.

Senator ROBERTS: So the personal level is there for both of us, it’s similar and I’ve got the One Nation run underneath me.

Joel Jammal: Yeah, so now one of the big concerns though with some of the people that have said to me that they would prefer Rennick and I’ve asked the question, some of them have said to me I like Malcolm but I’m not sure that he wants to serve the full six-year term and I guess that’s my question to you. Is that something you know, are you going to serve the full 6 years or do you see yourself just serving half of it and passing it off to someone else in One Nation because this is a concern some people have. They want to know. Alright you know Malcolm is committing to this. I know Gerard’s going to do you know another term after this and he’s trying, he’s going you know, he’s saying a lot of things, he’s saying “I’m going to build the party, I’m going to democratize a party” and this and that, and again I’ll believe it when I see it because only the Libertarians –

Senator ROBERTS: No runs on the board. Libertarians haven’t done too much of that either.

Joel Jammal: Well they’re democratized.

Senator ROBERTS: Yeah they’re democratized.

Joel Jammal: And they’re setting up branches and the branches of voting rights and that that’s good to see, but I guess going back to the point is –

Senator ROBERTS: But some of their branches Joel are more akin to One Nation policies.

Joel Jammal: Yeah.

Senator ROBERTS: Immigration and so on, so they’re not a united party.

Joel Jammal: Yeah, but let’s go back to it, do you see yourself running –

Senator ROBERTS: Yes.

Joel Jammal: Full six years -100%

Senator ROBERTS: Yep

Joel Jammal: Right.

Senator ROBERTS: And the other thing is that I’ve come into politics in the Senate based upon my opposition to climate fraud and I’ve done a better job of researching that and the connections I’ve made. I knew, I won’t go into the details, but I knew three different topics about climate fraud before I got into the Senate and because I’ve been dealing with other MPS and Senators, I had a fair idea of what I’d find in the Senate. Well what I’ve done is I’ve confirmed those but I’ve also identified more of the climate fraud animal through the CSIRO, through the Bureau of Meteorology, through the way the agencies work and I’ve also become very very solid on COVID. okay the first three months we were everyone was saying just give the government a go because we all the videos and we had to look after the people of Australia first then we realized it was it was a con uh serious problems with it but what I’m what I’m about to say is that in the next term I don’t have any niceties about me. I don’t- I’ll still be treating people with respect I’ll still tell the truth but they can go to hell because we are after them in a big way I’ve said to my staff we’ve chased a lot of different um topics as part of our agenda supported a lot of people we will continue to do that but we are going to go Rogue on climate and COVID. We are going to tell the truth but we are going to go really really hard on that, we’re going to.

Joel Jammal: You alluded earlier that um you know some of these parties are adopting- the major parties specific adopting your policies

Senator ROBERTS: Sort of.

Joel Jammal: Sort of, alcohol for example.

Senator ROBERTS: Yeah, we’ve been given the pat on the back immigration, foreign ownership, but they’ve been committing to it in weasel words they’re not really committing to it but they know that our issues are top of the tree.

Joel Jammal: Right, so when um- so I saw Pauline came out with a video I think yesterday she was on her farm and she mentioned that uh Albanese has announced a freeze to the uh –

Senator ROBERTS: Yeah –

Joel Jammal: The alcohol excise?

Senator ROBERTS: After just raising it. It currently raises every 6 months.

Joel Jammal: Right, it’s insane. I think it’s like half of your drink uh alcoholic drink is like Government taxes or something crazy it’s insane. um so on um immigration I was listening to Pauline on a podcast uh where she was very- you know- I know I didn’t describe her as a- and we’ll wrap this up in a sec I know I didn’t describe –

Senator ROBERTS: I’ve got another podcast straight after this.

Joel Jammal: That’s right, I’ve got Steve Tripp, Steve’s a friend of the show he sent me the the link and yeah –

Senator ROBERTS: I need to be early for that as you know

Joel Jammal: No worries. um I guess my last question is you know I described Pauline earlier as no Rhodes um Scholar um but I listened to her on a podcast um previously um about immigration and her analysis of the statistics and the facts, which is brilliant, I mean the numbers and recalling the percentages of okay but how many are actually tradies that are coming in for example was blown away by and and if the fact that no one’s clipped that yet is beyond me I should I should probably clip it

Senator ROBERTS: 0.6% are tradies 99.4% are not tradies and they’re going to have 0.6% of the people building houses for the other 99.4%, absolutely lies.

Joel Jammal: Right, and how do we get that out more? because people still are saying “ah well Aussies they don’t want to do the jobs so we need immigrants to do the jobs”, but that’s not who’s coming in.

Senator ROBERTS: No, they’re unskilled people, you know One Nation- Pauline talked about immigration from the the start. um she talked about two things she talked about numbers and she talked about because- John Howard is the first person to- first Prime Minister to have brought in massive immigration he doubled it in his term and every prime minister since, pretty much, has increased it. Pauline talked not just about numbers Joel she talked about the quality of the people and that’s something we’ve been talking about, I’ve been talking about the numbers and the quality ‘cos’ both need to be spot on. We need to bring in people who will contribute not take away, contribute through hard work and be productive immediately uh not go welfare not come soak up our pensions, we need to put time limits on people so they need to be here 8-15 years before they can qualify for a pension for example. So these are the kinds of things because our country has been fooled by the Liberal and Labor Prime Ministers making it so easy to come in here get our benefits get our welfare; Medicare fraud PBS fraud people getting cheap Pharmaceuticals based upon taxpayer through the PBS shipping them overseas and selling them overseas. Medicare Medicare cards without photo ID so that- not digital ID photo ID- um so that so that we can protect against fraud we’re just getting extorted. We’ve got to be very very much stricter on who we let in the country, I mean letting people into the country after one- from Gaza, a known terrorist Hotspot with HAMAS, after 1 hour of vetting?! come on. Letting 750,000 people into the country in one year?! come on. Letting uh students come in here, bring their Partners in here, bring their families in here, working well above the hours uh and then exporting $11.1 billion per year back exporting it out of the country which is money gone from our country then we’ve got 75,000 illegals at least in here what the hell have Liberal and Labor been doing? only one nation talks about this! only one nation, it’s the quality and the quantity of people that we we need to challenge.

Joel Jammal: That’s completely mad. Malcolm, um I’m glad that we- this- we’re about to cut this short now um because um I’m still feeling a bit under the weather since I got back but I want to thank you for making the time to come on here and um I appreciate that we’ve gone through that question at the with regards to the –

Senator ROBERTS: I’m not going to abstain from the question

Joel Jammal: no, not at all not at all, and that’s what I love about politics um and podcasts um I’m glad we addressed that hate um not hate speech bill but the hate the hate –

Senator ROBERTS: “Hate Crimes” Bill

Joel Jammal: Hate Crimes Bill thank you, I got to fix it myself that’s right um because I think a lot of people did have the concerns around that and it means that we don’t have to deal with that again people can watch it and it’s done

Senator ROBERTS: Well you know if I’d seen the lies that were told about us blatantly I would have had very big concerns about us but having been in the discussion with Pauline about what signals sent I am completely happy with we did

Joel Jammal: Sure, and that’s why we got to- we have to not leave it to um Liberal and Labor we need to work together to get these parties to combine their efforts combine their votes everyone that left a like even now a comment saying “Malcolm’s full of crap!” no worries, no worries, or you know maybe you don’t like what Rennick did it’s like “yeah that Renick’s he shouldn’t have gone after Malcolm in this way!” great go to both of their websites whoever, whichever one you like go volunteer get off your asses and hand out some ‘how-to-vote cards’ at the election and build the pie, build the freedom vote, do what the Yanks did, if you want- if you like what you’re seeing every day in your TV where Trump’s going after Zelensky you want that sort of thing in Australia, get off your asses and make it happen because no one’s coming to save you all right and that’s what I have to say to people that’s the truth of it and that’s why I don’t have time for um you know these sort of childish- I’m meant to be the child of the movement –

Senator ROBERTS: You’re the mature one, the sage.

Joel Jammal: It’s like ever since I left school I’ve just been like okay I’m excited to join the world of the adults and I’m still looking or the adults, I haven’t yet found them –

Senator ROBERTS: Well don’t go to Canberra

Joel Jammal: No, and don’t go to America ‘cos’ you know they’re great but they’re still not- they’re still kids. um but anyway Malcolm, thank you so much I’m looking forward to having you back on very soon so we can get a bit more into the policy because I know that is actually where your strength is and I’m itching to you know go even more into the migration data –

Senator ROBERTS: I would love- look I’ll come down especially for that it would be love to do that long as we can have a really good Go at ’em because there’s nothing like the policies in this country, my team did most of the work for it and the analysis, every one of them costed uh properly uh Pauline came in and some of her stuff added to it, it’s a real solid team effort. I am extremely proud of one policies for this election campaign there’s no nowhere that I’ve seen any party anywhere and I’ve been around a few years now that’s come even close to what we’re doing.

Joel Jammal: yeah, no absolutely –

Senator ROBERTS: And I they came from listening to you.

Joel Jammal: Yeah, and it was brilliant that podcast she did with those with those gentlemen where they put it into an app and an AI and the AI generated a podcast of the entire One Nation policy I thought that was just brilliant.

Senator ROBERTS: I didn’t even know about that

Joel Jammal: Yeah, this is what was amazing about that podcast and uh- she rocks up they’re like “yep, if you want to go to the website we’ve designed this whole website it’s got all of One nation’s policies on there. We even went and made a podcast, it generated a podcast, where two people they literally go through the entire One Nation policies it was talk about value rocking up- I’m sorry Malcolm like you’ve rocked up here, all I’ve got this is this bubble ahead for one of your staffers

Senator ROBERTS: That’s not even for me –

Joel Jammal: It’s not even for you like, here I am trying to give you value and that’s what they’ve gone and done

Senator ROBERTS: You just keep speaking up mate that’s the best way you can give value to to me, to the country, that’s it just keep going

Joel Jammal: No look my pleasure, and so look thank you for showing up and uh ladies and gentlemen there is a debate in Queensland uh virtually online uh between Malcolm, uh Gerard Rennick, uh a Greens candidate, and one other candidate

Senator ROBERTS: Legalise Cannabis –

Joel Jammal: Legalise Cannabis, and uh that’s that’s certainly one to watch.

Senator ROBERTS: Is it Greens or Libertarians? I think it’s Libertarians –

Joel Jammal: It’s Libertarians, ok maybe it’s Libertarians –

Senator ROBERTS: I don’t think a Green would be in front of a debate with me –

Joel Jammal: No –

Senator ROBERTS: I don’t think a Labor party (candidate) would either.

Joel Jammal: I think they’re shy, I mean in Victoria uh Warren Pickering he’s got a debate the Socialist, I mean the Socialist uh Alliance guy is debating so that’s going to be interesting –

Senator ROBERTS: I’ve challenged Larissa Waters, the head of the Greens party in Queensland, to debate three times and repeated the third time constantly in the Senate, no show. She’s even said publicly to me in front of an audience she will not debate me. Anyway.

Joel Jammal: So look 6News is doing that we we’re going to be streaming that so that it gets out to everyone so I want to thank Leo from 6News but Malcolm, without further Ado, thank you very much ladies and gentlemen if you enjoyed this podcast please go to uh subscribe in the description on uh on ‘Buy me a coffee’ to support the show thank you so much for listening uh Malcolm did you have any any other final –

Senator ROBERTS: No, just thank you for what you’re doing keep speaking up freely and independently, we need the truth.

Joel Jammal: Very good thank you guys, I’ll see you guys later, have a good one.

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One Nation’s View of “The Future Made in Australia” Bill 2024

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The Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024 is a perfect example of legislation that One Nation would abolish. For 30 years, Australia has been held hostage to the green climate scam. This Bill continues wasteful spending, now with a hint of desperation. 

The Bill introduces a hydrogen production tax credit of $2 per kilogram, aiming to meet net zero targets. However, if hydrogen were commercially viable, companies and banks would be investing, but they aren’t. One Nation believes in the profit motive, not subsidies. 

Recent withdrawals from hydrogen projects by companies like ATCO and Shell highlight the unviability of green hydrogen. In contrast, One Nation supports practical projects like the Port of Gladstone’s container-handling development, which will bring thousands of jobs and $8 billion in private investment. 

The Bill also offers tax incentives for refining critical materials used in renewable energy, costing $7 billion over 11 years. This benefits processors, not taxpayers. One Nation proposes infrastructure projects to support critical minerals development instead. 

Lastly, the Bill changes borrowing rules for Aboriginal communities without actually specifying the new rules, creating uncertainty and potential debt for unviable projects. One Nation cannot support this lack of transparency. 

The net zero transition is destroying Australia with absolutely no benefit to the natural environment.  

It’s time we returned to reliable coal and gas fired power stations.  This measure will put more money back in Australians pockets and end further suffering. 

Transcript

The Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024 is a perfect example of the garbage legislation a One Nation government would abolish. For 30 years, Australia has been held hostage to the green climate scam/climate fraud. With this legislation, the boondoggles continue—this time with a hint of desperation.  

The bill has three schedules. The first introduces a hydrogen production tax credit of $2 a kilogram of hydrogen. This is supposedly to encourage the production of hydrogen for use in processes that contribute to the meeting of net zero targets. There it is again, raising its ugly head: net zero targets. There is a reason that green hydrogen is going up in flames faster than the Hindenburg. If hydrogen was commercially viable there would be a queue of companies producing and using hydrogen, but there aren’t. There would be a queue of bankers lending for new hydrogen production. That isn’t happening either. In fact, the reverse is true: companies and banks are pulling out. One Nation has a different strategy to encourage production. It’s called the profit motive.  

Eighteen months ago Canadian gas giant ATCO scrapped plans for one of the first commercial-scale green hydrogen projects in Australia, despite strong funding support from the government. Why? Because the numbers did not add up. In a sign of the times, Shell withdrew from a project to convert the Port Kembla steelworks into a hydrogen powered green steel project in 2022. Only last week BlueScope announced a $1.15 billion upgrade to the same Port Kembla plant to produce steel for another 20 years, using coal. The Hydrogen Park project in Gladstone, in my home state, was suspended after the Queensland government and the private partner withdrew. Despite the hype, this project would have only produced enough hydrogen to power 19 cars, while employing a handful of people. On the other hand, the Port of Gladstone’s container-handling development, a real project, which One Nation has championed for years and which will be starting construction shortly, will bring thousands of jobs to Gladstone, with $8 billion of private sector investment—real breadwinner jobs, real future productive capacity. 

Now, there have been some promising developments in hydrogen powered cars, mostly from Japanese makers. With zero tailpipe emissions, a longer range and faster refuelling, they contrast with the high cost and impracticality of EVs, electric vehicles, to achieve the same outcome. But the Japanese are trialling these on the basis that they may be legislated. The Japanese are covering their options. It should be noted that this research is being conducted in the private sector, acting out of a profit motive. Nothing our government has done will develop this technology. Consider Honda, for example. It is a disciplined, respected car maker—one of the leaders in the world—with an amazing culture. It is a leader in hydrogen. It’s marking time. It has hydrogen powered vehicles on the road, but it’s using it’s shareholder money to support them, prudently, just in case they’re legislated.  

There’s nothing in the hydrogen schedule of this bill that will provide Australian taxpayers with value for money—nothing—and it’s a bloody lot of money: $6.7 billion over 10 years. I can just see Chris Bowen and Mr Anthony Albanese tossing out another few billion, $6.7 billion, to add to their trillions that will be invested eventually in this net zero madness. One Nation opposes schedule 1 of the bill, and if the bill is passed it will be repealed when One Nation repeals all of the green climate-scam legislation.  

Let’s move to schedule 2. Schedule 2 of the bill creates production tax incentives for transforming critical materials into a purer or more refined form. The materials in question are those that are used in wind, solar and batteries, used to firm unreliable, unaffordable, weather-dependent power—more money being thrown down the sewer. This section of the bill is directed at an industry that already receives government support through other schemes, including the Critical Minerals Facility, which offers loans, bonds, equity guarantees and insurance; the National Reconstruction Fund, which offers concessional loans, equity and guarantees; the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, which offers concessional loans, equity and letters of guarantee; and the Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub, which offers in-kind support via free research and development—not free to the taxpayers funding it, but free to the company—which is separate to the normal research and development tax incentives from the Australian Taxation Office. We’re tossing money at these people, and it’s wasted. How much assistance does one industry need? How much, government? After all this assistance, who gets to keep the profits generated from all this taxpayer largesse? The processors do. The critical minerals proposal in schedule 2 will cost $7 billion over 11 years—another $7 billion. ‘What’s a billion here or there?’ says the government. 

The Albanese government is socialising the costs and privatising the profits. We pay for their development and the costs, and the companies take the profits. Worse, there’s no requirement that the recipients are Australian owned. What are you doing with people’s money? What would actually help critical minerals in Australia is One Nation’s proposal for a northern railway crossing from Port Hedland in the west to Moranbah in Queensland to open up the whole Top End and provide stranded assets like critical minerals with access to manufacturing and export hubs. 

Let’s move on to the third schedule, the final schedule. It’s even worse. The bill changes the rules in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act to allow Aboriginal communities wider borrowing powers. The new rules are not specified. Those will come later from the minister. Not only is this a failure of transparency, it creates a second round of debate when the rules are released. It creates more uncertainty. Rules written under proposed legislation should be included with the legislation so the Senate knows exactly what it is voting on and how the powers will be used. But we don’t, and yet you’re going to vote on this. Without those rules, One Nation cannot support this schedule either. 

In One Nation, we support the people. The Liberal-Labor-Greens, though, have decades of serving masters outside the party—globalist, elitist, parasitic billionaires, foreign corporations, non-government organisations, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum alliance. The Senate is open to conclude, given the location of this provision within a bill about injecting money into the net zero scam, that net zero is the destination for this extra borrowing—financing Aboriginal corporations to create their own government subsidised businesses and doing things private enterprise won’t touch. 

Minister for Climate Change and Energy, otherwise known as ‘Minister for Blackouts’, Chris Bowen, member of parliament, is behaving like an addicted, compulsive gambler who has done all of his own money and is now dragging his friends into his black hole. If this bill is passed, the Aboriginal community will be shackled with debt for pointless financial boondoggles that have no chance of commercial success—none. If this is not the intention, then the minister must table the rules. Let’s see what the government does intend.  

The net zero transition is destroying Australia and doing nothing for the natural environment. It is hurting the natural environment. The public are turning against the whole scam now that they realise the cost benefit is not there. It’s costing them money and needless suffering. Business is turning against net zero because its carrying the full cost of soaring power prices and extra green tape. It’s now coming out in the papers—the mouthpiece media. Minister, give it up, turn on the coal- and gas-fired power stations and save Australia from more suffering. 

I’m now going to raise some additional points, related points, explaining what underpins the hydrogen scam and climate fraud. The Senate seems to be populated, mostly, with feeble-minded, gutless senators. Never has any empirical scientific data been presented as evidence, within logical scientific points, proving that carbon dioxide from human activity does what the United Nations and World Economic Forum and elitist, fraudulent billionaires claim—never, anywhere on earth. Or do such uninformed, gullible proponents in parliament have conflicts of interest? For example, the teals and possibly the Greens, it seems, receive funds from Climate 200, which spreads money from billionaire Simon Holmes a Court, who rakes in subsidies for solar and wind. Are the teals, including Senator Pocock, and the Greens gullible, or are they knowingly conflicted and pushing this scam? Only One Nation opposes the climate fraud and the net zero scam. One Nation will pull Australia out of the United Nations World Economic Forum’s net zero target. One Nation has a plan to put more money into Australian pockets, giving you choice on how you spend your money rather than letting these people here waste it for you with the needlessly high cost of living. 

Why do electricity bills keep skyrocketing when we switch to LED lights and star appliances, and when we get power from huge solar and wind generators? The people have been conned by the energy relief fund, which has suppressed what they see in their electricity bills. When that fund comes off soon, you’re going to be in for a nightmare, a shock. Only One Nation has the policies to put more money into people’s pockets now. For some insight from overseas, President Trump says it so well in his 20 January executive order: 

The United States must grow its economy and maintain jobs for its citizens while playing a leadership role in global efforts to protect the environment. Over decades, with the help of sensible policies that do not encumber private-sector activity, the United States has simultaneously grown its economy, raised worker wages, increased energy production, reduced air and water pollution … 

That’s exactly what we’ve been saying for years, for decades in fact, in One Nation. And that’s exactly the opposite of what the Greens, the teals, the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Nationals are pushing with net zero. 

I have one final point. I remember Scott Morrison as prime minister at the time, a few years ago, introducing some green hydrogen scheme incentive, with more subsidies from taxpayers to foreign, predatory billionaires. He said at the time that a price of $2 per kilogram for hydrogen would be fine. We worked out that the price of electricity at that price for hydrogen is $200 per megawatt hour, which is exorbitant. It’s almost 10 times what the fuel costs are for coal. What he didn’t tell you at the time, and what Labor has blindly followed, was that the actual price of hydrogen was $6 per kilo. Pipedreams are now becoming nightmares for people across Australia. 

Only One Nation opposes the climate fraud and the net zero scam. Only One Nation will pull Australia out of the United Nations World Economic Forum’s net zero target. We are importing ideology from the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, and we are importing poverty and deprivation. One Nation, though, has a plan to put more money into Australians’ pockets, to give you choice on how you spend your money. 

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TGA Dodges Simple Vaccine Questions

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This is a great session to demonstrate how far Estimates has fallen. I asked a perfectly simple question: if a person followed the TGA’s COVID-19 “vaccine” schedule, how many shots would they have had by now? Watch as they bob and weave to avoid answering this simple question.

Part of the reason for this is to use up time. The TGA session attracts a lot of interest, and my time is limited, so the longer they can draw out the answer, the fewer questions they have to answer.

I then asked about a new study showing that the COVID-19 jabs produced spike proteins for almost two years after injection, despite being told that the vaccines stayed in the injection site and passed out of the body in a matter of hours.

Professor Lawler tried to discredit the research, which was conducted by Yale, and refused to acknowledge that the spike proteins from the “vaccine” were being produced for years after vaccination, despite the paper stating exactly that. A substantial amount of my time was spent on them saying very little that they could be held accountable for later.

I also asked about other studies linking vaccines with autism and received a similar response: the link between vaccines and autism has been discredited—nothing to see here, move on. The link between autism and vaccination has been well established, even with the small number of papers that have survived the bullying from big Pharma to protect their sacred cash cow.

I will not stop pursuing the truth about vaccine harm.

Note: This video combines two separate sessions into one video file.

Transcript 1

CHAIR: Senator Roberts.  

Senator ROBERTS: My questions are all to do with the TGA. Technology is marvellous, isn’t it? Potentially hundreds of doctors and constituents are watching. The TGA approach to COVID has been based—correct me if I’m wrong—on two original shots, then boosters to maintain currency, because MRNA technology offered waning protection over time. If a person had taken the recommended COVID shots at the time they were recommended, from March 2021 until now, how many COVID injections would the person have had?  

Prof. Lawler: I’m not sure, necessarily, whether that’s a TGA question. The role of the TGA is very much to—  

Mr Comley: I think we have an appropriate officer joining the table, Dr Anna Peatt, who I think can help you on this because I think she’ll need to go to the nature of ATAGI’s advice for vaccines for individuals. I think it would also go to the question about different categories of individuals receiving different recommendations over that period of time, reflecting the risk profile for those individuals. Dr Peatt, would you like to, perhaps, have a crack at this?  

Dr Peatt: Yes, I will. It’s actually quite a difficult question to answer because the eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines has changed over the course of the pandemic. So, really, you can’t actually answer the question unless you know the specifics of the individual that you’re referring to. Someone who was aged 75 years or over at the start of the pandemic may have had upwards of eight vaccines over that course, but it really depends on the individual circumstances. In Australia we don’t have vaccination mandates at the moment, so it also comes down to people’s individual choices. But, ultimately, it comes down to vaccinators’ advice.  

Senator ROBERTS: So eight in total, most likely. Can you confirm the TGA is still recommending boosters every six months for immunocompromised people and every 12 months for adults under 64.  

Prof. Lawler: I can’t confirm that, because the TGA’s role is not to recommend immunisation. The TGA’s role is to assess the safety, quality and efficacy of therapeutic goods.  

Senator ROBERTS: But you do monitor the injections, the results and the DAENs, don’t you? Do you have a role—  

Prof. Lawler: That’s correct.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Good.  

Prof. Lawler: No. That’s correct, but that’s not the same as what you asked previously. The difference is that the role of the Therapeutic Goods Administration is to assess pre-market therapeutic goods for safety, quality and efficacy, and, where appropriate, to undertake post-market monitoring. That’s why we undertake pharmacovigilance activity and assess adverse events. That is not the same as monitoring and recommending specific immunisation schedules. That’s the role of ATAGI.  

Senator ROBERTS: I understand that. But surely you would monitor the number of doses that people have because, as I understand it, don’t you monitor DAENs? Isn’t the monitoring super critical, especially when you have provisional authorisation for these injections?  

Prof. Lawler: As I think we provided previously, the vaccines that we’re discussing are not provisionally registered. They have transitioned to full registration. But, as I said, the role of the TGA is to monitor adverse events as and when they occur, and as they are reported.  

Senator ROBERTS: Last week, I understand that Yale School of Medicine released a preprint of a study titled ‘Immunological and Antigenic Signatures Associated with Chronic Diseases after COVID-19 Vaccination’. That study found that spiked protein remained in patients who had received at least one COVID vaccine for, in one case, 709 days and counting. When did the TGA realise that spiked protein from the mRNA technology could stay in the body for years?  

Prof. Lawler: Can I clarify, because I have previously indicated there are quite a lot of studies out there, is that the Bhattacharjee article from Yale last week? I think it is.  

Senator ROBERTS: Last week, Yale School of Medicine released a preprint of a study titled—  

Prof. Lawler: Thanks. So that is, as you say, an article in preprint. I would like to reflect on that article. The first line of the abstract reads: COVID-19 vaccines have prevented millions of COVID-19 deaths. And the intro says: The rapid development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines have been pivotal in mitigating the impact of the pandemic. These vaccines have significantly reduced severe illness and mortality associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Additionally, vaccinated individuals experience a lower incidence of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 … or long COVID, thus highlighting an additional potential benefit of receiving the COVID-19 vaccines. It might seem like I’m not answering your question in reading those first few lines out, but I think it’s really important that a feature of the public debate on this matter has been the convenient picking out of individual findings from papers. I think it’s really important to note that. In terms of the paper itself, it was a small study, with 42 cases that reported post-vaccination syndrome after COVID vaccination and it had 22 controls with no symptoms. There are some challenges with the article. There was a very small sample size, which included insufficient subgroup numbers to adequately assess the effect of previous infection. There was a lack of analysis of potential confounders, such as other medical conditions and medication use, and a lack of standardised case definition for PBS—noting that the symptoms of PBS are general and are associated with a range of other conditions. I think that there is some really interesting information in that article. I particularly like the introduction where it clearly indicates the benefits of vaccination. But I would also say that it is challenging, potentially, to draw too much of an inference from its findings.  

Senator ROBERTS: Professor Lawler, I don’t know which question you answered but let me ask my question again. When did the TGA realise spiked protein from the mRNA technology could stay in the body for years?  

Prof. Lawler: We will inform you when we have evidence that that is the case.  

Senator ROBERTS: So you are not aware of it at the moment?  

Prof. Lawler: We will inform you when there is evidence that it is the case that spiked protein persists in the body for years. I think one of the things that is most notable—  

Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on then. You’ve answered the question. For clarity, if a person has spiked protein in their system years after injection, something must be making that spiked protein and renewing it in their system. Is that correct?  

Prof. Lawler: I might ask Professor Langham to respond to that.  

Prof. Langham: I think what Professor Lawler is trying to say is that we are not aware of any robust evidence that supports the presence of spiked protein being in the system of recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine for years. When we do undertake reviews of relevant studies—and I might add, this as an ongoing process that the TGA undertakes for every single product that is registered on the ARTG—our robust and thorough review of evidence is such that should there be a finding that we would consider scientific, then that absolutely would be accepted. That is the case for the question that you are asking. We are not aware of any scientific and robust findings that demonstrate prolonged circulation of spiked protein in the human body.  

Senator ROBERTS: Let’s continue. If a person already has spike protein in their system, and they need more mRNA technology—more spike proteins—and if, for that person, those are long lived as well, could there be people walking around with dangerous levels of spike protein as a result of following ATAGI’s guidelines? Surely you’ve considered this.  

Prof. Lawler: Thank you for the question. As we discussed previously, one of the roles of the TGA is to undertake ongoing post-market pharmacovigilance. As a result, we continually receive and accept reports of adverse events. We use those to work toward the identification of safety signals. We take more of a phenomenological approach to identifying risky safety profiles, as has been highlighted previously. We’re firmly of the view that the risk-benefit ratio of these vaccines is overwhelmingly positive.  

Senator ROBERTS: Let’s continue. The Yale study examined 64 vaccinated subjects. One in 64, in this case, retained spike for almost two years and counting. Extending that sample to Australian consumers, doesn’t that indicate, certainly, that tens of thousands of Australians are dealing with spike protein build-up in their body? Does even the possibility of that concern you?  

Prof. Langham: I think what we’ve been trying to say is that not all of the research that is published is of a high level of scientific quality.  

Senator ROBERTS: Excuse me, Ms Langham—  

Prof. Langham: I’m sorry, Senator. We’ve been here before. It’s Professor Langham, thank you.  

Senator ROBERTS: Sorry, Professor Langham—I mean that sincerely. I wasn’t trying to cast any aspersions. Professor Lawler just read glowingly, in response to one of my questions, about aspects of this study.  

Prof. Lawler: I’m not sure that ‘glowingly’ would describe by situation. I think there was a balanced argument. However, one of the things we do undertake when we scientifically review a paper is to look at the rigour of it. It is acknowledged within the paper that there are certain limitations to the study. Some of the findings include the fact that there were potential differences in the immune profiles of individuals with PBS and that PBS participants had lower levels of spike protein antibodies. There was serological evidence suggestive of recent Epstein-Barr virus reactivation. But I think it’s quite important—and it’s actually quite challenging to convey this in this forum—to note that the presence of a study saying something should not be taken as meaning that without a robust analysis of the rigour of that study. It’s important to note that this was a small case study. There were 42 cases and 22 controls. That means the ability to extrapolate from that in the way you suggested is actually really limited and potentially misleading. I don’t mean it’s deliberately misleading; it can lead to misleading outcomes.  

Senator ROBERTS: Let me understand from the previous Senate estimates and from this one. Are you saying that spike proteins are harmless?  

Prof. Lawler: No, I don’t believe we said that last time or this time.  

Senator ROBERTS: That’s why I asked the question—for clarification. The Yale study found immune cell— in this case T cell—exhaustion. Do you accept the science that mRNA technology has caused T cell exhaustion in some consumers, leading to a condition that causes chronic tiredness, brain fog, dormant conditions like Epstein-Bar and cancer becoming active again, and in general an increased susceptibility to new infection? 

Prof. Lawler: Part of the challenge in responding to that is that we’re responding to a definition outlined within the study as a post-COVID-19-vaccination syndrome that is characterised by a wide range of symptoms which have been, as far as I can determine, selected by the authors. They include such things as you’ve mentions, like exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness, brain fog, neuropathy and others. But the authors themselves note that PBS is not officially recognised by health authorities, and there’s no consensus definition of the syndrome. One of the things I was trying to say—and, again, I wouldn’t characterise it as a glowing endorsement of the article—is that it is encouraging that even small studies are looking at these things. One of the things that has been levelled at the TGA previously is that we are blind to science or not interested in hearing new ideas. It’s actually very encouraging to see this kind of research, but it needs to be taken within the context of rigorous research methodology.  

Senator ROBERTS: ‘Long COVID’, a phrase that Dr Skerritt used at estimates in May 2022, was the theory tested by Yale in a literature review entitled ‘The long COVID puzzle: autoimmunity, inflammation, and other possible causes’. That was published in May 2024. This studied viral persistence, inflammation, autoimmune damage and latent viral reaction following exposure to COVID, naturally or by injection. Minister, is your government ignoring a ticking time bomb with these mRNA vaccines, one that you are making worse by still recommending that people take these products? You’re still recommending it.  

Senator McCarthy: We certainly, through the health minister, look out for all Australians in relation to their care, health and wellbeing, but I will refer to officials in terms of the technical aspects of your question.  

Prof. Lawler: I’m not sure if I’m answering your question here, so I’m happy to hear it again if I’m not. One of the things that we do find that has been supported by multiple studies—in fact, studies that are cited within the Yale article—is that COVID vaccination actually leads to a decreased incidence of both the post-acute sequelae of COVID and also the prevalence of long COVID. So we know that those are not only protective for hospitalisation and death, as are their indications within the Register of Therapeutic Goods, but also protective for some of the long-term sequelae of COVID infection.  

Senator ROBERTS: Okay, let’s move on to vaccine harm generally. An article in Science, Public Health Policy & the Law—there’s an interesting combination; science, public health and law—titled ‘Vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders: a study of nine-year-old children enrolled in Medicaid’ found: … the current vaccination schedule may be contributing to multiple forms of NDD; that vaccination coupled with preterm birth was strongly associated with increased odds of NDDs compared to preterm birth in the absence of vaccination; and increasing numbers of visits that included vaccinations were associated with increased risks of ASD. For those at home, an NDD is a neurodevelopmental disorder such as autism or OCD, and ASD is autism spectrum disorder. This study of 41,000 nine-year-olds in Florida came out this month and finds, with statistical certainty, that childhood vaccines are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders and autism. Have you seen this paper? And, if not, why not?  

Prof. Lawler: I’m familiar with the journal that you outline; I’m familiar with the nature of the articles that are provided for publication and the level of peer review that occurs. I’m not familiar with that journal article specifically, and it would probably be inappropriate of me to comment on it without it in front of me.  

Senator ROBERTS: The autism vaccine link is the most contentious issue in medicine right now, based on the number of people affected. Is this wilful ignorance on your part? Prof. Lawler: That is an interesting question. It’s not a contentious link. There was an article some years ago that drew links between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the incidence of autism. That has been serially and profoundly debunked; it’s been retracted from the media. There’s no evidence currently that there is a link between vaccination and autism. Unfortunately, the continued promulgation of such a link is suspected to be one of the drivers of vaccine hesitancy and falling vaccine rates.  

Senator ROBERTS: I would argue, based upon the timing, that the COVID shots, the mandating of COVID shots and the adverse effects of the COVID shots would have done a lot of damage to the credibility of vaccines in general. If I give you the link, Professor Lawler, will you undertake to review the study and come ready to discuss the connection between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, at the next estimates?  

Prof. Lawler: I’m very happy to receive any link and read any article, and to come back and have a comment. I do have with me Dr Sophie Russell, who’s the acting director of the Pharmacovigilance Branch.  

Dr Russell: Thanks for the question. I’ll just make one small comment about the Yale study. The Yale study that you refer to was not able to properly account for previous COVID-19 infection due to insufficient case numbers. We would, of course, be happy to provide on notice a broader critical analysis, but I’ll reinforce what Professor Lawler has said—that, to date, the TGA has not found a causal association between any vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorder—and I would like to reassure you that we are continually monitoring for those particular adverse events in COVID-19 vaccinations.  

Senator ROBERTS: In that paper, entitled ‘Vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders: a study of nine-year-old children enrolled in Medicaid’, I’ve seen a graph. The multiplier for ASD is 3.14—the vaccinated have 3.14 times more ASD than the unvaccinated; for hyperkinetic syndrome it’s three times; for epilepsy or seizures it’s 4.2 times; for learning disorders it’s 9.8 times—almost 10 times; for encephalopathy it’s 7.7 times; and, for at least one of the listed neurodevelopmental disorders, it’s four times. Let’s move on—  

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, just before you do, in a couple of minutes I’ll be seeking to rotate the call, as I understand Senator Rennick has some more questions. You still have the call, but I’m just giving you some early warning that I’ll be seeking to rotate in a few minutes.  

Senator ROBERTS: I understand from previous testimony that the TGA has a lab with more than 100 staff, which is a lot. Can you tell me what steps you have taken to monitor spike protein activity amongst Australian consumers of the mRNA technology used in COVID?  

Prof. Lawler: I’ll ask Dr Kerr to join us at the table. I would probably contest the comment that that’s a lot of staff. We have staff that are appropriate to the role of ensuring qualities and standards within our therapeutic goods.  

Senator ROBERTS: I wasn’t casting aspersions that way, Professor Lawler; I was saying that that’s a lot of staff to do some of the work that I’ve just raised.  

Prof. Lawler: We have a lot of work to do. I think the numbers are quite appropriate.  

Dr Kerr: May I have the question again, please?  

Senator ROBERTS: I understand from previous testimony that the TGA has a lab with more than 100 staff. Can you tell me what steps you have taken to monitor spike protein activity amongst Australian consumers of the mRNA technology used in COVID?  

Dr Kerr: The subject of our testing is actually the vaccine itself. We have spent a lot of time ensuring that the vaccine complies with the quality requirements. We do look at the expression of the protein from the vaccine in vitro, but we do not take samples from Australians to test for the COVID spike protein. That is not our role.  

Senator ROBERTS: So you don’t monitor it in that way?  

Dr Kerr: We’re not a pathology laboratory. We don’t take samples from Australians—from humans.  

Senator ROBERTS: So the answer to my next question: have you been actively testing people to check spike protein levels and to test for antigens indicating myocarditis, Guillain-Barre, Epstein-Barr—which is also called herpes 4—and the other 1,240 other known side effects of mRNA technology, as provided by Pfizer? Have you been testing for anything to do with that? These are known adverse events from Pfizer. Have you been testing?  

Dr Kerr: I might defer to my colleague Dr Russell.  

Dr Russell: As Professor Lawler highlighted earlier, we take a broader approach to postmarket safety issues. Published literature and clinical testing are all part of our assessment. When we are looking into safety signals in the postmarket space, we’re looking at that in the Australian context. We are looking at the number of cases that are reported to the TGA and the number of cases that are reported to the World Health Organisation database; we’re liaising with our comparable international regulators and looking at published literature. There’s a variety of areas that we look to, to consider the strength of the evidence between a clinical condition and vaccination, and that informs our regulatory actions.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, but how do you know about the incidents if you’re not actually testing?  

Prof. Lawler: Sorry—the incidence of clinical episodes?  

Senator ROBERTS: Adverse events, yes—actively checking people for spike protein levels.  

Dr Russell: Just to clarify, I’m not aware of any evidence that correlates spike protein levels with a clinical syndrome or diagnosis. What we are looking for in the postmarket space is clinical symptoms or conditions that are caused by the vaccine.  

Senator ROBERTS: Wow. Thank you.  

Prof. Lawler: If I could just add to that, we’ve endeavoured to be clear previously—and I won’t on this occasion read out the SQoNs that we’ve answered—that our pharmacovigilance program, in keeping with the standard and accepted practice of regulators around the world, is based on clinical adverse events. As Dr Russell has highlighted, there is not a correlation that is currently identified between spike protein levels and clinical events. Our adverse event monitoring process, our pharmacovigilance process, in keeping with the actions and practice of regulators globally, is to capture, analyse, understand and, where necessary, respond in a regulatory fashion to safety signals identified through clinical events. So those clinical events are identified. As I’ve mentioned, we have many events—I don’t have the number in front of me, but certainly over 100,000—of variable severity that we have analysed and responded to, and we have made significant regulatory changes in response to that. The clinical approach that we take to adverse event monitoring is entirely in keeping with the pharmacovigilance practices of global regulators.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Professor Lawler. So you don’t do testing, so you presumably rely upon adverse event notifications. Ahpra have ensured those reports were not made. You can’t possibly be relying only on the few doctors with the courage to stand up against Ahpra—or was ‘rare’ the outcome you worked back from? Did you just assume it was rare and work backwards to justify it?  

Prof. Lawler: It’s unfortunate that Ahpra isn’t here to respond to that. I think it’s pretty clear that—  

Senator ROBERTS: It’s well known.  

Prof. Lawler: Sorry, Senator. What’s well known?  

Senator ROBERTS: It’s well known that Ahpra has been suppressing doctors’ voices. 

Prof. Lawler: I would make the distinction if I may—and, again, Ahpra is not here to respond and defend itself against that comment—that what you are characterising as misinformation around vaccine and the disease is very different to the reporting of adverse events. I would also contend that the volume of adverse events that were reported would indicate the threshold for reporting adverse events is quite low, and that’s exactly where we want it to be. We want to be detecting adverse events.  

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I am due to rotate the call, but if there’s time we we’ll come back to you. We have about 25 minutes, so can I just get an indication of who has further questions?  

Senator Rennick, Senator Kovacic and Senator Roberts, you have further questions?  

Senator ROBERTS: Yes, please. 

Transcript 2

Senator ROBERTS: I want to go back to continue the discussion we had about testing, or the lack of testing. In estimates in May 2022, I asked whether the mRNA from the vaccines, the injections, transcribed into the patients’ own DNA, permanently modifying their DNA. In light of the work that has been done since, including the latest Yale study that I quoted, could a plausible theory be that the mRNA technology does indeed transcribe and the mRNA technology does permanently alter the human genome in some people?  

Prof. Lawler: We did have an exchange with Senator Rennick earlier around the incorporation of DNA and RNA into the human genome. There was a comment made around it being down to a series of highly improbable steps. The challenge that I think we face—and I’ll ask Dr Kerr to add to that—is that there is a point at which a plausible theory requires supporting evidence. In the absence of that supporting evidence, it needs to be rejected. We’ve had 50 years of biotechnology in this field, there have been many billions of doses of these vaccines and other vaccines of similar technology administered, and there’s been no evidence of such incorporation. As to the plausible theory, there are some mechanisms that you could arguably say lead to that in very unusual circumstances, but there is no evidence and no real-world data to support that. Dr Kerr.  

Dr Kerr: Thank you. I’ll add to Professor Lawler’s statement that there’s a very rigorous regulatory framework that operates globally to ensure that any residual DNA in biotechnology products or the mRNA vaccines is adequately controlled and the risks are adequately managed.  

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, will you review the legal position of the TGA, specifically the issue of them committing malfeasance in office due to their wilful ignorance of harms from the pharmaceutical industry products they promote?  

Senator McCarthy: I reject, outright, your question in this regard, and I’m sure the government does have great faith in the TGA.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I want to move on to a major anti-hydroxychloroquine study published in Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy under Dr Danyelle Townsend. It has been retracted after its dataset was exposed as unreliable, bordering on outright fraudulent. The paper, titled Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis, found that treating hospital patients with HCQ, hydroxychloroquine, resulted in an increased mortality rate and led to health authorities banning hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID. This was the reverse outcome to what many practitioners were experiencing prescribing hydroxychloroquine for COVID. Minister, did your government issue restrictions against using hydroxychloroquine for COVID on 24 March 2020—I know the Liberal Party was in office at the time. Did the government issue restrictions against using hydroxychloroquine for COVID on 24 March 2020 to make room in the market for the vaccines, despite a body of evidence saying hydroxychloroquine was effective?  

Senator McCarthy: I’ll defer to the officials.  

Prof. Lawler: I was not in this role at that time; I had a different role in a different place. My understanding, though, is that the decision on hydroxychloroquine was based on a position supported by global regulators that there was a lack of efficacy in this and, similarly, concerns that individuals seeking to use the treatment might potentially perturb them and deter them from validated effective treatments. I’m certainly not aware that there is any underlying motivation to benefit any other treatment on a commercial basis.  

Senator ROBERTS: So it was an internationally agreed position?  

Prof. Lawler: In terms of our established relationship with regulators, it is my understanding that it was a fairly agreed position that hydroxychloroquine was not an effective treatment for COVID.  

Senator ROBERTS: So now it’s a ‘fairly agreed’ position. It didn’t rely on the science; it was just fairly agreed? 

Prof. Lawler: Senator—  

Senator ROBERTS: Were there any studies done—any basis for this in fact, in data?  

Prof. Langham: It absolutely was an evaluation of the science and the concerns for public safety that led to changes in the restriction in the prescribing of hydroxychloroquine. There was no supportive evidence for its efficacy and, as there was a concern that people were—and absolutely were—moving towards taking hydroxychloroquine in the false belief that it was going to help them with COVID, there were fewer people that were being vaccinated and there was also a greater risk of a poor outcome. That restriction was removed on 1 February this year. 

Prof. Lawler: I also highlight that we’ve answered this question about hydroxychloroquine before, in SQ22- 000147 and also SQ21-000687.  

Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Let’s move on. In Senate estimates in May 2021, Professor Skerritt, your predecessor, the former head of the TGA, said of the COVID vaccine injection technology: … the idea is to introduce sufficient spike protein to activate the immune system so that it mimics a COVID infection so that your B cells and T cells can start to mount an immune response to protect the person from catching COVID. He also said: … it’s the messenger RNA that’s translated into protein which is a spike protein. Messenger RNAs are inherently unstable. In fact, that’s why the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require this little lipid coat, this little lipid nanoparticle. … … … And the lipids are hydrolyzed, destroyed by the body fairly rapidly … Is this still an accurate statement of the technology behind COVID MRNA vaccines?  

Prof. Langham: The specifics of your concern around that statement?  

Senator ROBERTS: Is it accurate? Is Professor Skerritt’s statement accurate still?  

Prof. Lawler: The process of immunogenicity as described by Professor Skerritt absolutely is. There’s the central dogma that MRNA is translated to protein. It’s the mechanism by which proteins are created. The MRNA is coded for spike protein. It’s created within the cell and expressed on the cell’s surface. That then engenders an immune response through antigenic presentation. That is the standard process for vaccine utilisation. As Professor Skerritt highlighted, the MRNA is inherently unstable and readily broken down. That’s why it’s encapsulated with a lipid nanoparticle which contains four different types of lipid. That enables its introduction to the cell, where it can exert its cellular effect.  

Senator ROBERTS: Is it true, as he said, that the lipids are hydrolysed and destroyed by the body fairly rapidly?  

Prof. Langham: Yes, that’s correct.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. 

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Government Gaslighting on Inflation: One Nation Promises Real Relief

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Does it feel like inflation is going down to you?

The government claims it’s winning the battle, yet out in the real world everything is still getting more expensive and nothing is anywhere close to the price it was 5 years ago.

You’re not crazy – the government’s just trying to gaslight you and tell you things are better than they are heading into an election. Only One Nation would make the real changes to put more money back in your pocket.

Transcript

One Nation supports this matter of urgency. During 2024 alone the living cost index for wage and salary earners rose four per cent, down from a high of six per cent earlier in the year. The reduction has been caused, in large part, through electricity subsidies. The government is paying your bill for you! The underlying inflation rate is still there, ready to reappear after the next election, when the government stops paying those subsidies. 

Rising electricity prices for business are not being subsidised, increasing prices in supermarkets, retail, wholesale and manufacturing. The public see the price rises and don’t realise they are, in large part, the result of net zero measures, which One Nation will bring to an end, reducing power bills by 20 per cent immediately, and by much more over forward estimates. 

Alcohol and tobacco costs rose due to the five per cent excise indexation and a cash grab the government calls AWOTE, where the more workers earn, the more the government increases the excise. One Nation will freeze all excise increases for three years. Watch for further announcements on this subject. 

Insurance and financial services costs rose 13 per cent due to higher premiums for house, home contents and motor vehicle insurance. Insurance companies are becoming increasingly concentrated. Queensland’s Suncorp owns AAMI, GIO, Bingle and Shannons among others. Over the last five years Suncorp’s cash earnings rose from $59 to $108, and their share price rose from $9 to $17. One Nation will fund the ACCC, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, to ensure insurance companies are not ripping off consumers, including using fraudulent flood and bushfire maps to hike premiums. One Nation will remove the GST on insurance premiums. 

Finally, the fall in inflation coming from a small reduction in the petrol price is significant. It proves One Nation’s policy to cut fuel excise by 26c per litre, and our other measures, will reduce inflation to make room for an interest rate cut. One Nation means more money in your pocket.

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Net Zero is Robbing Your Wallet

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The claim that solar and wind energy are cheaper because the wind and sun are free is not supoprted by the evidence. In reality, adding more solar and wind to the grid increases electricity costs. The reason is straightforward: while the wind and sun are free, the infrastructure—wind turbines, solar panels, backup batteries, 15,000 kilometers of extra transmission lines, and access roads—is very expensive to produce, transport, install, and maintain. 

Unlike modern coal or nuclear power plants that last 60 years, solar panels, wind turbines and backup batteries only last 15 years. The $1.9 trillion investment will only get us to 2050. After that, every 15 years, solar and wind infrastructure will need to be replaced at a cost of hundreds of billions more. This madness must end!

One Nation will abolish the federal department of climate change along with all related agencies and programs, including net zero measures and mandates. This will return $30 billion a year to the Treasury, contributing to One Nation’s pledge to reduce $80 billion plus in government spending in our first term. More importantly, it will put billions of dollars back into the pockets of Australians and businesses, making everything more affordable. That’s how we solve the cost-of-living crisis. 

It’s time to end the net zero scam. One Nation will make it happen.

Transcript

For the last 30 years Australia has been hostage to the supposedly green movement’s great climate fraud, designed to create an all-purpose excuse to do whatever the government wants—an excuse that’s reusable, recyclable and fungible, not only for the government’s benefit but for the benefit of their donors, stakeholders, bureaucrats and associated carpetbaggers, such as Bill Gates and BlackRock’s Larry Fink. We know who these people are from watching the meetings Prime Minister Albanese has and refuses to explain. Nothing says, ‘I’m doing dodgy deals behind the Australian people’s back,’ like refusing to publish detailed records of what was said and agreed in these meetings. This evening I’ll examine the green climate fraud and make a major One Nation policy announcement. 

Let’s start with the war on farming. The climate scam seeks to replace fresh, healthy, field-grown Australian produce from family farms with fake foods in near-urban intensive production facilities—synthetic meat-like products cultured in bioreactors in a process that mimics the way cancer cells grow, with just enough artificial nutrients added to pass as food. Fake meat from plants remains on life support, with 18 ingredients, now including cocoa, and they still can’t make people eat it. Billionaires can’t make money out of conventional farming; they can make money, they think, out of industrial food. Who owns vegetarian meat supplier Beyond Meat? Surprise, surprise: predatory global wealth funds BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street lead their share registry. 

Both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California Davis have found the environmental footprint of these Frankenfoods is worse than that of naturally grown pasture raised beef. Bill Gates has declared cattle an existential threat because of their methane farts. Rubbish. Cattle have been on this earth for two million years. Leading methane producer India domesticated cattle 9,000 years ago, and nothing has changed. Another leading methane producer, the United States, had bison for 150,000 years. Three hundred years ago, there were 50 million bison, or buffalo. Now they’re gone, the USA’s 28 million cows are suddenly causing ‘fartageddon’. 

There’s no science to justify this nonsense. As the University of California Davis explains: 

After about 12 years, the methane— 

from cattle— 

is converted into carbon dioxide through hydroxyl oxidation. That carbon is the same carbon that was in the air prior to being consumed by an animal. It is recycled carbon. 

Cows don’t harm the environment. The methane cycle they perpetuate has been with us for two million years, at times in greater quantities than now. 

Plants are more powerful than scientists admit. A recent finding from the US government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory found: 

Scientists Were Wrong: Plants Absorb 31% More CO2 Than Previously Thought. 

Climate scammers refuse to talk about the role of forests and crops, especially hemp, in sequestering carbon. Australia is already carbon neutral. Our forests and crops sequester much more carbon than Australia produces. So let’s stop chopping down trees for industrial wind and solar assess roads and transmission lines, and we can stay that way. 

The next lie is that global boiling will kill us. Fact check: it’s false. Between 1998 and 2023, global temperature variation osculated between minus 0.4 degrees and 0.6 degrees as carbon dioxide, CO2, levels in the air rose from 0.036 per cent to 0.042 per cent. Then the Tonga eruption occurred, and temperatures rose by 0.7 degrees centigrade more. I’ll share a link on this topic when I post this speech on my website. It includes some excellent gifs of the fraudulent data tampering and fake temperature stations that have concocted warming where none exists. Japanese data, which is not tampered with, shows no warming in the last 50 years. 

Next, carbon dioxide levels do not drive temperature. CO2 levels are a result of temperature changes. There has been a lot of obfuscation on this aspect of climate fraud. I urge anyone who actually believes nature’s trace gas can change the world’s temperatures to look more closely and more carefully. The seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2 correlates very well with the temperature, not with the human production of carbon dioxide. CO2 does not drive temperature. Temperature variation drives CO2 levels. It’s the reverse of what the UN is claiming. Global temperature itself is a product of atmospheric pressure, albedo, cloud cover and many other factors. 

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the UN IPCCC—computer models downplay the factors, especially cyclical variation in solar radiation, which the UN assumes to be minor as compared to changes in CO2. Unvalidated UN IPCCC climate models replace the most powerful modes of heat transfer—conduction, convection, latent heat of evaporation and condensation—with just radiation. In other words, UN IPCCC climate models are rigged to blame CO2 because the real factors are minimised in the construction of these models. No wonder these fake models have already been proven comprehensively wrong. 

The next lie is that the Great Barrier Reef is dying. Great Barrier Reef coral cover was the highest on record in 2024. The reef is healthy, yet the scare stories continue. Every time the green scammers claim the Great Barrier Reef is losing coral to scare you, the phones start ringing in north Queensland with tourists cancelling their bookings. Tour operators and the communities they support suffer, staff lose their shifts and their livelihoods, and businesses close, all for a political lie, a fraud. The reef covers 344,000 square kilometres. That’s five times the area of Tasmania. There will always be an area on the reef where an unusually low tide on a hot day causes localised bleaching with still winds. That damage repairs naturally and quickly, as it has for 14,000 years. There will always be a flood dumping fresh water onto the reef and killing the saltwater coral polyps. It’s happening right now in Far North Queensland. So stay tuned for scare stories just about coral bleaching blamed on climate change when the cause will actually be these floods in time for the election. 

The next lie is that the sea levels are rising. Since the end of the mini ice age 200 hundred years ago, ocean levels have risen a tiny amount. In 1914, the mean sea level at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour was 1.11 metres. In 2014, 100 years later, it was 1.12 metres—one centimetre, 10 millimetres. That is natural variation. 

The next lie is that the polar ice is melting. In Antarctica there will always be an area of unusual warming associated with underground volcanos and hot springs, of which the Earth has thousands. Pressure builds up and they let off heat. They melt the ice above, and then they go dormant again. In 2009, John Kerry predicted, ‘In five years scientists predict we will have the first ice-free arctic summer.’ It didn’t happen, along with the other failed scares. The arctic ice cap floats and moves with natural varying wind and ocean current directions. In fact, after 40 years of unprecedented man-made global boiling, there’s more Antarctic sea ice now than there was 40 years ago. 

It’s time to acquit carbon dioxide. The great climate scam is about submitting to the world’s predatory billionaires delivering up our agriculture, transport, energy, manufacturing and industrial base, food, and property rights in the name of saving the planet. In reality, it’s just greed—less for you and more for them—and it’s control. 

One Nation saw through this scam in 1996, and we’ve opposed the agenda ever since. We have opposed the $200 billion wasted so far on net zero measures. Bloomberg now puts the cost of completing Australia’s transition to net zero, including the electrification of cars, homes and appliances, at $1.9 trillion. That’s a terrifying figure. The few hundred billion dollars spent so far have added so much to our electricity costs that bills are doubling or tripling. The pain is only just starting. 

The lie that solar and wind are cheaper because the wind and sun are free is not supported with evidence. To the contrary—the more solar and wind are added to the grid, the dearer our electricity becomes. The reason is simple. While the wind and sun are free, wind turbines, solar panels, back-up batteries, 15,000 kilometres of extra transmission lines and access roads are very expensive to make, transport, install and maintain. While a modern coal or nuclear power plant lasts 60 years, solar panels, wind turbines and back-up batteries only last 15. The $1.9 trillion will only get us to 2050. After that, every 15 years, solar and wind will need to be replaced at a cost of hundreds of billions more. 

Enough of this madness, this fraud. If elected, One Nation will abolish the federal department of climate change, all their related agencies and programs, including all net zero measures and mandates. This will return $30 billion a year to the Treasury, forming part of One Nation’s pledge to reduce $80 billion in government spending in our first term. More importantly, it will return billions of dollars a year into the pockets of homeowners and businesses, making everything you buy cheaper and more affordable. That’s how to solve the cost-of-living crisis. It’s time to end the net zero scam. One Nation will end the net zero scam. 

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Battery Storage Projects Face Delays and Cost Increases

Wind and solar don’t work at night or when the wind isn’t blowing. Australia is told the solution is batteries! Real world experience shows that batteries are too expensive, too slow to build and don’t last long enough to support a grid.

During this session with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), I revisited the status of the eight large-scale battery storage projects funded in 2022, noting that $176 million had been allocated but none had completed construction by February. I was told that while all projects are progressing, some face challenges like grid connection issues. I highlighted the significant cost increase from $2.7 billion to $3.1 billion and questioned the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of these batteries compared to coal-fired power stations.

I also raised concerns about the stability and reliability of renewable energy sources like solar and wind, and the additional costs associated with making them grid-compatible. Additionally, I asked ARENA about their responsibilities and the financial transparency of their operations. I emphasised the high cost of electricity in Australia compared to countries like China and criticised the impact of net-zero policies on manufacturing.

We need to ditch net-zero. Use the cheap resources we have in Australia’s ground for Australians first!

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: I return to the eight batteries in the large-scale battery storage funding round from 2022. In February you told me that you had put $176 million into it. None had completed construction as at that time and only two of the eight were under construction. Have any completed construction? What is the status of the others in the round of eight?

Mr Miller: They have progressed. I don’t have the precise figures to hand—unless my colleague finds a brief on that in the notes—in which case I can provide that information on notice. But they’re all progressing. Some have challenges around grid connection and various studies that have to be completed. They’re not all there yet, but I think the vast majority have reached their targets for the ARENA funding and would be either close to construction or close to financial decision.

Senator ROBERTS: I would have thought with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency this would have been one of the biggest projects and most important aspects of what you do; is that correct?

Mr Miller: It’s important and is amongst many other important things that we work on.

Senator ROBERTS: In December 2022, the portfolio cost of the eight batteries was $2.7 billion. That increased to $3.1 billion, which is roughly a 16 per cent increase. What is the latest cost of the portfolio? What is the updated figure?

Mr Miller: What are you talking about?

Senator ROBERTS: The portfolio cost of the eight batteries was $2.7 billion. What’s the latest cost?

Mr Miller: That information that you had that was publicised would be the most up-to-date information that we have.

Senator ROBERTS: Is that the $3.1 billion?

Mr Miller: Some of the batteries increased in capacity. Since we announced the program, the proponents who were developing those batteries actually increased the size of the batteries, given that the economics were improving and that they could get the job done and actually build more. That capital cost increase would be in relation to an increase in the capacity of the batteries that are being developed.

Senator ROBERTS: We’ve gone above two gigawatts and 4.4 gigawatt hours?

Mr Miller: As I said, if you want precise information I will get you that on notice.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. That would be good. That seems like a hell of a lot of money for a bunch of batteries that only last two hours and lose 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the power to charge them?

Mr Miller: That’s not accurate.

Senator ROBERTS: Could you tell me the accurate figures?

Mr Miller: The minimum size in that portfolio is a two-hour battery. Some of them are three and I think one of them has gone to four hours. Again, I’ll check that just to make sure. The batteries are playing a very important role. The project as described by ARENA and the innovation that’s in this portfolio is around what’s called grid-forming capabilities. It’s the ability for these batteries to essentially replace the very important system services that coal- and gas-fired power stations provide.

Senator ROBERTS: Stability of the grid?

Mr Miller: Stability of the grid, voltage frequency.

Senator ROBERTS: What we call ‘firming’?

Mr Miller: I think firming would traditionally be thought of as providing the energy that’s required to fill gaps. These batteries are providing power quality services. Firming would be about the quantum of energy and power services, or these system security services, are about performing the very important electronic functions that the grid needs to remain stable and at the right frequency.

Senator ROBERTS: My understanding is that solar and wind are asynchronous, inherently unstable and therefore you need to provide an additional service so that the grid maintains stability?

Mr Miller: Again, that’s not also strictly true. There is technology around solar and wind, inverters, that converts the DC electricity into AC and that can provide grid-forming capabilities as well. The latest wind turbines coming out of Goldwind, for example, in China have system security services built into those inverter technologies. It’s not only the batteries that are advancing; it’s actually the solar inverters and the wind technology inverters as well that’s advancing to provide the services.

Senator ROBERTS: Is that at an additional cost?

Mr Miller: It may or may not be. It may be integrated into the technology that’s put forward.

Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on to the next one. On a very conservative cost of $4.5 million per megawatt installed and a capacity factor of 90 per cent, a $3.1 billion coal-fired power station would produce 15 gigawatt hours of data capacity versus just 4.4 gigawatt hours for the batteries. Unlike the batteries, the coal station actually generates power. It doesn’t lose power on charging. Doesn’t that seem like a much cheaper investment for Australians, just coal-fired power stations?

Mr Miller: You’re fundamentally misunderstanding the different role of those coal-fired power stations that you mentioned in the old world and the role of these kinds of batteries in supplementing wind-solar transmission system demand flexibility. The new world we are well underway, progressing into and entering requires a variety of technology. These batteries provide a very specific set of technologies and services that in combination with wind, solar, transmission and all the other things I mentioned, provides you with a system that is stable and can do the job.

Senator ROBERTS: At inherently higher component costs. There’s a lot of confusion amongst constituents and amongst MPs and senators. Among the various agencies charged with some responsibility or accountability over energy transition, could you as simply and as specifically as possible tell us what ARENA does? What are your basic accountabilities and, specifically, what is the uniqueness of that? There’s accountability that no other agency has.

Mr Miller: That’s a good question. We are an agency that is specifically around to improve the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies, to increase the supply of renewable energy in Australia and to facilitate the achievement of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Our functions include the provision of financial support in the form of grant support and the sharing of knowledge, which is very important to ensure the money we spent is leveraged and available to more than just the proponent we fund so that Australia’s energy transition can happen in an accelerated and stable fashion.

Senator ROBERTS: Specifically with regard to the people at the table, apart from Senator Ayres—and he’d be happy that I’m leaving him out—what is the total salary package of each of the people at the desk here? I’ll exempt anyone who’s not at Senior Executive Service level, but if you are at executive level I’ll ask for the band you’re in and the total remuneration package, including on-costs?

Mr Faris: I’m a band 1 officer, seconded across from the department. I think I’m at band 1.6. I don’t have my salary figures off the top of my head, but they’re actually in our annual report. I’m listed as one of the key management personnel in our annual report, which was tabled last week. You can find that information specifically.

Senator ROBERTS: Could we have them on notice, please?

Senator Ayres: I think what the officer has said to you is that they’re in the annual report. If there’s anything in addition to the annual report, we are happy to provide that on notice.

Senator ROBERTS: What is the total wage bill for all employees, including casuals and contractors, at ARENA? Could you give me a breakdown of the numbers, please?

Mr Miller: Again, I might follow Senator Ayres’s lead and refer you to the annual report, which has this information for the last financial year.

Senator ROBERTS: Numbers, breakdown into permanent employees, casual employees, contractors?

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, maybe I could help you out. If you were to grab a copy of that and have a look through, you could potentially put any further questions on notice. There is a breakdown in their annual report.

Senator ROBERTS: We’ll do that. Future Made in Australia—Senator Ayres raised that. The No. 1 cost category in manufacturing today around the world is no longer labour, it’s electricity—with very few exceptions. China uses coal-fired power, sometimes including alcohol, but produces almost 10 times in terms of alcohol production. They have a production rate of $4.5 billion, heading for $5 billion, a year. They produce electricity and sell it, I am told, for 8c a kilowatt hour. Australia is at 25c a kilowatt hour, thanks largely to the transitioned components. Why is Labor so hostile towards manufacturing? Clearly, net zero destroys manufacturing. You also said that there’s no risk. That’s just a slogan. There’s huge risk when you’ve gone from being the cheapest electricity provider in the world to amongst the most expensive. I don’t know why you keep letting down Australian workers.

Senator Ayres: There’s a series of propositions in that we could—

Senator ROBERTS: They’re facts.

Senator Ayres: You assert that they’re facts.

Senator ROBERTS: Eight cents a kilowatt hour versus 25c a kilowatt hour.

Senator Ayres: As I said, you assert that they are facts. It may come as news to you, but the economy in the People’s Republic of China is structured a little bit differently to the Australian economy.

Senator ROBERTS: Eight cents a kilowatt hour—

Senator Ayres: There are some differences between our political and economic systems and the way that the government interacts with the electricity generation system and indeed the way the industry works is different. Our job here in Australia, if we’re acting in the national interest, is to secure Australia’s position. It is very clear that we have a series of forces acting upon our electricity system and our energy system more broadly. Firstly, most of our ageing coal-fired generators announced their closure under the previous government. There are many of them.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s cheaper to replace them new coal-fired power stations.

Senator Ayres: Many of them are coming to the end of their operational life. Some of them have been extended by state governments. The cheapest form of future energy for Australia is renewables and storage.

Senator ROBERTS: Only if you omit coal, hydrogen—

Senator Ayres: I did not interrupt you. I interrupted Senator Cadell earlier when he was being obnoxious, but I didn’t interrupt you.

Senator ROBERTS: Does that mean you want me to get obnoxious?

Senator Ayres: I don’t want to interrupt you. I don’t like interrupting people.

CHAIR: I’m going to interrupt you both and say that we are coming very close to the lunchbreak. I’ll ask you to wrap up. To be clear, Senator Roberts, you’ve had 11.5 minutes.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you very much. That was my last question.

CHAIR: Do you feel like you’ve had a sufficient answer?

Senator ROBERTS: Very.

CHAIR: Excellent. I’m glad to hear it.

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eSafety Commissioner’s Actions Questioned

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The Office of the eSafety Commissioner does commendable work in protecting children and adults from bullying and, most importantly, removing child abuse material. I praised the Office for this work.

However, in my opinion, the eSafety Commissioner has brought the office into disrepute with her personal vendetta against Twitter/X and her attempt to become the world internet police.

Last year, the Commissioner finalised investigations into 9,500 pieces of violent and extremist content. I asked what these were. The answer provided was that the Commissioner was taking down material from anywhere in the world, detecting it in part because they actively searched for it, even without a complaint.

Given that the Commissioner is positioning herself as the world internet police at our expense, I asked what benefit removing the 9,500 pieces of material had for Australians.

The answer relied on one incident, and there was no proof it actually caused a terrorist incident. I asked why there was no explanation of what the other material was, such as a transparency register so we can see what material they are requiring to be taken down to check for political bias. The question was ignored.

I also asked what direct benefit her actions had in addressing terrorism and violent material. The Commissioner answered regarding child material, which I had already praised.

The Commissioner is avoiding scrutiny of her takedown notices for violent and extremist material, and I believe it is because they follow a political bias.

One Nation calls for the eSafety Commissioner to stand down.

Transcript

Coming Soon

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Podcast: Become Your Own Super Hero

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I had the pleasure of joining Laban Ditchburn on the Be Your Own Super Hero podcast! We delved into my current world perspective, offering straightforward explanations of both current and past Australian politics. Plus, I shared my tips on staying sane in a world that often feels completely at odds with common sense.

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Mutual Recognition of Degrees: Opportunity or Risk for Australia’s Skilled Migration?

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I asked about the mechanism for the Mutual Recognition of Qualifications between Australia and India, which recognises that an Australian degree awarded here is equivalent to an Indian degree awarded in India. It also allows Indian colleges, including private ones, to offer degrees to anyone globally, which can then be used to improve their chances of getting into Australia as skilled migrants.

However, there are concerns about the integrity of this system, given that India is notorious for exam cheating. This raises the risk of admitting individuals who may not possess the skills their degrees suggest.

Transcript

The mechanism for the mutual recognition of qualifications between Australia and India recognises an Australian degree awarded to an Australian as being equal to an Indian degree awarded to an Indian, including online study. It’s not only degrees. It’s everything from school certificates to doctorates, although some further work may be required for occupations having professional associations, like medicine, although there is no requirement to do so. This is despite the level of cheating and selling qualifications that goes on in India. I await the legal challenges to being refused a job based on a degree the employer knows is rubbish but which the government has decreed is equal to an Australian degree. 

The agreement allows an Indian visa-holder to apply for any job in Australia for which having a degree makes their chances of success higher. That’s almost anything. In other words, the vast majority of these new migrants will not work in their area of qualification, which might be a good thing. One Nation opposes this agreement. Twenty per cent of HECS debts in Australia are for amounts over $40,000. Our children listen to their parents, the media and politicians. They study hard, go to university, get saddled with a near insurmountable HECS debt, and then they head out into the workforce to pay it off only to discover they’re competing with an Indian degree of questionable origin that cost a fraction of their own. Of course, Indian graduates can work cheaper than our graduates can afford to. 

One Nation will tear up this agreement. We’ll offer mortgages through a people’s bank to young Australians that include the option of rolling their HECS debt into their mortgage with just a five per cent deposit at five per cent fixed interest over 25 years with the homebuyers own super account allowed to provide the deposit and share in the capital appreciation. While Labor is selling out young Australians, One Nation offers real solutions to young Australians. I note in the seconds I have left that every year $11.1 billion was sent home by foreign students, with Indians being the second largest on the list. 

Question agreed to. 

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Federal Police Drop Vaccine Mandate

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The Federal Police have finally dropped their vaccine mandate for workers, yet won’t apologise to the people who have been persecuted and lost wages for years.

It’s been known from the very start it didn’t stop workers getting COVID, and it didn’t stop transmission of COVID to others. That hasn’t changed, so why this change four years later?

It’s not good enough! One Nation calls for an apology, backpay, compensation and immediate rehiring of anyone who lost a job because of a vaccine mandate.

Transcript

CHAIR: I also note the time. Can we give Senator Roberts the call for a moment? Senator Roberts, do you have questions for the AFP? 

Senator ROBERTS:  Yes, I do. Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for appearing tonight. Just before the last break, Commissioner, did you say you revoked the COVID vaccine mandates on your police yesterday? 

Ms Van Gurp :  I can answer that. Thank you for the question. You might recall last time we appeared at this committee back in November, we did disclose that we had undertaken a review of the COVID Commissioner’s Order 10 policy, which related to COVID vaccines. That review, as of November, had been completed and supported by our enterprise operations board. I mentioned at our last hearing in November that the next phase for us to do, as per the legislation, as per the Work Health Safety Act, was to undertake genuine workforce consultation. So throughout December and January we have undertaken that genuine consultation with the workforce, which included comments back that were supportive and not supportive. In consideration of that consultation, the commissioner, yes, he has determined that Commissioner’s Order 10 is to be revoked, and that was announced to the workforce. Our internal website has a range of frequently asked questions and information for staff to address the issues that were raised across that consultation process. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Am I accurate in saying they were revoked yesterday? 

Ms Van Gurp :  No. The Commissioner’s Order 10 was signed off as revoked by the commissioner on 13 February. It was announced to the workforce this week. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Why did you revoke the vaccine mandates? I know you have been through a process—I don’t need to hear about that again, with respect—but what was the reason they were revoked? 

Ms Van Gurp :  Throughout the process since the Commissioner’s Order was put in place, we did undertake regular reviews looking at that policy. As we talked about before in this forum, it was an important policy for us at a time to protect both our workforce and the community, particularly the vulnerable communities that we are working with across the Pacific and other areas of the globe. But the most recent review in relation to reflecting on the health advice from our Chief Medical Officer as well as ATAGI and others, we determined that that risk posed didn’t necessitate a specific Commissioner’s Order anymore because, rather than it being a global pandemic, the status of COVID had been downgraded, so we made that determination through that internal review and through doing an updated risk assessment treatment plan. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Given that nothing has changed arguably in recent years—certainly in many, many, many, month many, months—why did it take long to revoke the vaccine mandates? 

Ms Van Gurp :  As we have talked about here previously, while for some other agencies the advice had changed around the risks of the community, we were conscious that we have a workforce that we need to be able to readily deploy at any time and we are deploying to vulnerable communities, so our assessment was not just to follow the general community advice; it was to undertake our own internal assessment, so we held that policy in place for a longer period of time to protect both our workforce and the community, but we have determined now is the time to revoke that policy. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Given the injections did not stop people getting COVID and did not stop people transmitting COVID, why were the mandates implemented? 

Ms Van Gurp :  Based on the health advice both from government and our Chief Medical Officer, it was to minimise the risk to both our members and to the vulnerable communities, so acknowledging, yes, of course, Senator, you are correct—the COVID vaccine didn’t prevent people getting it or prevent people transmitting it but it did mitigate that risk. 

Senator ROBERTS:  So was that on the evidence of the Chief Medical Officer and ATAGI health agencies? 

Ms Van Gurp :  Yes. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Did they provide you with the evidence? I am asking: on what evidence? 

Ms Van Gurp :  I will have to take that on notice, but essentially we considered the advice coming from ATAGI and others externally. We considered the risk to our people by undertaking our own risk assessment treatment plan internally and that was in consideration of the way in which we deploy staff, where we are deploying to, the nature of our operations et cetera. So, for some time, our internal position was that we needed to maintain that vaccination requirement that the safety of our members and for the safety of the communities were dealing with. But as I said, we have revised that risk assessment treatment plan now and have determined that Commissioner’s Order 10 can be revoked. 

Senator ROBERTS:  On notice, could I have a copy of the advice from the Chief Medical Officer and ATAGI, please? 

Ms Van Gurp :  I will take that question on notice. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Also in your own deliberations within the AFP, I would like to know what drove the conclusion, particularly your risk assessment. I would like to see the risk assessment. 

Ms Van Gurp :  I will take that on notice. 

Senator ROBERTS: The inefficacy of the COVID injections in stopping transmission was known well before yesterday. Why did it take so long to revoke? 

Ms Van Gurp :  As I mentioned, our decision to have that Commissioner’s Order in place was not just based on ATAGI and other advice; it was our internal position as well in consideration of our own risk assessment treatment plans. We went through a thorough process to make sure that, before we revoked it ,we were being thorough in our assessments. As I previously talked about, we did an internal review that Deputy Commissioner Gale’s team led. That review came to our internal enterprise operations board for consideration. We supported the position of the review and then, as per the WHS Act, we undertook workplace consultation prior to making a decision, and that is a requirement under legislation. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Could I, on notice again, have any evidence that you considered within the AFP in making the decision and on why it took so long? 

Ms Van Gurp :  Yes, Commissioner. I’m happy to take on notice to provide that plan. 

Senator ROBERTS:  I haven’t been promoted yet! 

Ms Van Gurp :  Senator, sorry! 

Senator SCARR:  It’s coming now—just hold off! 

Ms Van Gurp :  It’s past my bedtime! 

Senator ROBERTS:  It’s past my bedtime too. I have two more questions, very briefly. Did you mandate the AstraZeneca shots that were later withdrawn? 

Ms Van Gurp :  Our Commissioner’s Order 10 required that staff had to have two vaccinations. We didn’t mandate which vaccination that needed to be. But I’m happy to take it on notice if you need more clarity around that. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Thank you. Commissioner, will you apologise to police who were basically forced to take the AstraZeneca shot? 

Mr Kershaw :  I don’t know what evidence you have there, Senator. I’ll have to take that on notice. 

Senator ROBERTS:  They were withdrawn from use in the UK and other countries, I believe, on the basis of a court case in Britain. They were also withdrawn in this country, although I understand the federal health department did not withdraw them until quite some time later. I’d like to know why they were mandated. 

CHAIR: Do you mean that type of vaccination, Senator Roberts? 

Senator ROBERTS:  Yes, the AstraZeneca brand. 

CHAIR: I’m not going to answer for the commissioner, but I think he has taken it on notice. 

Senator ROBERTS:  Yes, he has. Thank you all for appearing. 

CHAIR: I hope you’re enjoying whatever regional town in Queensland you seem to be joining from. I’m sure it’s a fabulous place.  

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