The Cashless Debit Card is controversial. Last week One Nation voted to extend the trial of the system. Controversial because activists, Labor and the Greens are ignoring the facts and confusing the public with mistruths.

Firstly, it’s not a cashless program. Recipients still have between 20% and 50% in cash. Secondly, this is a program that was requested from communities to help protect children and families. This system stops people from using their entire taxpayer funded welfare payments on alcohol, gambling, drugs and cigarettes.

Reports from those on the system and their communities are already claiming that there are less hungry children and less violence and crime. This program protects children and families and taxpayer welfare payments. There are no plans to extend this program to the pension. This is a scare campaign by the left. And we wouldn’t support it anyway.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I’m in Parliament House, Canberra. And I want to discuss the cashless debit card or it’s actually the less-cash debit card because it still comes with cash. Why are we doing it? And why do we support the government’s trial? Because it’s all about kids and families, protecting kids and families.

Making sure that kids get a belly full of food and it’s not just consumed, the money is not just wasted on alcohol and booze from their parents. So it’s about the future of our country because kids learn better at school. They develop better physically when they’ve got full bellies and not starving. It’s about kids and families.

Making sure that the money from taxpayers goes to people who deserve the welfare. So that leads me to my second point. And that, that as a Senator, I have responsibility not just to the people who need welfare and support, but to the people who pay for the welfare and the support, the taxpayer. So we have to make sure that the taxpayer’s money provides value for the taxpayer.

‘Cause it’s a lot of money for taxpayers, who have worked hard to get that money and to see it wasted on booze and drugs and gambling and cigarettes, is just not on. The third thing is that, I hinted to it earlier. It’s a less-cash card, it’s not a cash-less card. There’s cash still involved, the proportion of cash varies from 20% through to 50%, depending upon the community.

This is a trial and they’re trialling many different parameters. And that means that as people learn from the trial, and the trial has now been going for a few years. As people learn, they tweak the trial because they learn from their mistakes and let’s remove the mistakes, and they see other opportunities. And so they wanna make sure that people benefit from that.

And remember, the less-cash card came out of requests from communities where there was massive abuse of kids and families. Waste of money, tearing up the communities. Those communities approached government and wanted help. Liberal National Party Government, and the Labour Party Government under Gillard.

So this is about protecting our future, and protecting taxpayers, and above all, protecting kids. So it is a difficult issue, an emotional issue. It’s been distorted by various people using lots of lies and slang, but it is about protecting kids, protecting families, and protecting taxpayers, and making sure that Australia gets value for its money.

Transcript

And now on Marcus Paul in the Morning, Senator Malcolm Roberts.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, welcome back. At 19 to eight, 19 to seven in Queensland. Malcolm, good morning!

[Malcolm Roberts]

Good morning, Marcus. How are you?

[Marcus Paul]

No bad at all, not bad. How are things in Canberra?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Foggy.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Because we didn’t get much sleep last night, we debated the cash ban, the cashless debit card until gee, I don’t know, I guess 12:30, something like that.

[Marcus Paul]

And you still didn’t come up with the right result?

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, we did, mate, we did. We’ve gotta protect taxpayers as well as welfare recipients-

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah?

[Malcolm Roberts]

And vulnerable kids in in some of these communities.

[Marcus Paul]

True, true.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And then that’s, so I’ve got dual responsibility, and that’s what we did. We looked after the taxpayer-

[Marcus Paul]

I understand.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And people who are receiving welfare.

[Marcus Paul]

Are you not concerned like I am, Malcolm, that this will give a green light to the government in the future to privatise our welfare system?

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, I’m not concerned about privatising welfare. I don’t think that’ll happen. It’s just too-

[Marcus Paul]

Well, this is exactly, what is this?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Too great a responsibility.

[Marcus Paul]

But hang on, Malcolm. This is exactly what is happening. In the guard-

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, it’s not.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, of course it is, Indue, who do you think Indue was operated by?

[Malcolm Roberts]

That’s the people operating the actual transfer of the cash, but the welfare system is still under the federal government.

[Marcus Paul]

Yes, but we’ve outsourced it to, oh, I dunno, to a mob that apparently is linked to the Liberal Party and donate to the Liberal Party. And we’ve got, what, when does it, since when does the federal government take advice from a mining magnate?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Now, now you’re onto something. That’s, there are questions we’re going to be asking because I’m not at all happy about that arrangement. We haven’t seen that, that hasn’t been transparent, mate, and I think you’ve got a very good question there. But this is a trial and as trials go, we learn things and then it becomes more and more flexible, so we’ve gotta change the trial in certain ways as we learn and that’s been done, and I think it’s been done in a very responsible way. But yeah, the question’s about who runs it, that is it.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah, all right, but don’t you think, Malcolm, that it’s, you know it’s painting a lot of people with the same brush. I mean, we’ve been very critical of the government in relation to the Brereton Report and essentially just saying that, oh, well, you know, and we’ve got the minister doubling down now over the last 24, 48 hours on alleged atrocities in Afghanistan.

And you know, they’re talking about pulling meritorious citations from the 3,000 people who served, even though only a fraction of them, not even at a tiny minute percentage, have been alleged of these atrocities. And again, they’re all being branded with the same brush. Not everybody who’s on welfare, even in these regions where it’s being trialled, Sudener and otherwise, not everybody on these welfare cards drinks, takes drugs, or spends money on gambling.

What happens if they wanna go to the local markets? What happens if they need to get cash out to, I dunno, buy something at the corner store because they won’t take the Indue card?

[Malcolm Roberts]

These are good questions, and that’s what the purpose of the trial is, to understand how to resolve that. But you know, there are various proportions of cash in some of the trials, it’s 50:50 cash and credit and card. In others, it’s 80:20, 20% cash. But we have to remember that the future of Australia is literally at stake here because we’re having kids grow up with no food. How can they be educated? How can they survive? How can they grow into in the future leaders of our country, future leaders of our communities-

[Marcus Paul]

Fair enough.

[Malcolm Roberts]

With that experience? This is really about a very humanitarian approach, anyway.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah, I get that and look, I’m not, I don’t, I don’t have an issue or a problem with the thought behind it. Of course, we need to try and protect children. We need to ensure they’re receiving everything they need to get the best start in life and to live up to their potential. I worry that it’s just a one size fits all approach and that some people who genuinely, and I’ve received correspondence from many people who are on this card, saying that, you know, it’s unfair.

I feel like a criminal and, you know, people look at me when I produce this card at the local shopping centre, and I can’t, you know, anyway. But I guess that’s discussions for another time because it’s now been extended for two years and the trials will continue. Am I right in saying that perhaps they’re looking at doing it in the Hunter in the Newcastle region?

[Malcolm Roberts]

I don’t know where they’re looking at doing it. It was extended into Cape York and other parts of the territory there. They’re making changes to some of the ways of operating, the ways and distributing it.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah, true.

[Malcolm Roberts]

So, you know, it comes out in the trial markets. Now, I’ll give the government, remember that some of this was implemented by the Rudd, Gillard government, some of it was foreshadowed by the Howard government. But the most important thing I think of all to remember is that these were done as a request to help income management, to protect kids, to protect families, especially in the territory and in parts of Queensland.

So, you know, and we all have a responsibility to make sure that the taxpayer’s money is used wisely and not used for, you know, booze and gambling and drugs.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, I think we all agree on that. All right, speaking of cash money, $10,000 cash ban is dead, dead, dead. That’s a big win.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes, very big win. We moved that motion to remove that cash ban bill, the government’s cash ban bill, from the Senate legislation list. And you may remember that when that was introduced quietly, it was my office in particular that raised the hell about that.

And we got an alliance from right across the coal, the crossbench senators, and then we attacked the Labor Party on it, we went to Stephen Jones, the shadow minister for finance in the Labor Party, and still, the Labor Party passed it in the lower house along with the Liberals, a lot of things happened in parliament with Labor and Liberal working together.

And these things that are hurting, hurting people, everyday Australians, especially rural people who can’t get access to cash, mate, and especially all the people.

[Marcus Paul]

All right.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And so what happened was we actually got it sent to a committee in the upper, in the Senate, and then it came out of the committee, there were a whole list of serious problems about it, but the committee still, because it was dominated by Labor and Liberals, still recommended passing the bill. But we created such a fuss that it actually became an embarrassment and the government, I think, was relieved to have us push it off.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, good because cash is legal tender and it should never be refused by merchants. But Woolworths have announced some stores will no longer accept cash. I mean, this war on cash being used in our country needs to stop, Malcolm.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes, you’re absolutely right. And that’s what we’ve been pointing out. We’ve got a fabulous response to the petition we started on our Facebook page, Marcus. And it’s very important to understand that the cash ban bill was binned as a result of a very, very strong wave of of public support for getting rid of that cash ban.

[Marcus Paul]

Yes, all right, the tensions with China. Is it just a trade spat? Or is there more to this, do you think?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Much more to it, and it really points to our governance in this country under both Labor and Liberal and the Nationals. Because China is a totalitarian communist party that’s leading that country and they’re just bullies. And bullies go for the weak link. And so, we must stand up to it, but why are we considered weak?

When if you look at China, we export our iron ore and coal to China so that they can make wind turbines and solar panels. They come back to Australia, they export wind turbines and solar panels to our country. We then subsidise the construction of solar generators and wind turbines, and we subsidise that and that drives up our electricity prices.

So we end up exporting jobs to the Chinese, because a lot of the construction companies on the unreliables, on the alternatives to coal-fired power stations, that was the solar and the wind, they’re Chinese-owned. So the Chinese are making profits out of our raw materials and they’re destroying, they’re not destroying, but our government, state and federal, are destroying our electricity sector.

And Marcus, the fundamental thing with electric, with manufacturing these days, and we want a recovery from COVID, and go beyond that is electricity prices. Electricity prices are greater in the bigger cost in most manufacturing than Labor. So what we’re doing is we’re destroying our manufacturing sector and some of our agricultural sector and we’re subsidising the Chinese to do it. I mean, but that’s, the Chinese are not doing anything wrong there, we’re the bunnies-

[Marcus Paul]

Well, we’re the ones who have allowed it, yes.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, that’s right, and what the Chinese can see is that they have signed a Paris agreement commitment that says they will do nothing, and they can see us. They can see us signing over our sovereignty to the UN in so many areas now since 1975, that’s 45 years, half a century. And they’re thinking these people, the Australians, contradict their own values. They destroy their own sovereignty. What is the matter with these people?

They’re vulnerable, they’re weak. And our governments under Labor, Liberal, and Nationals have been absolutely pathetic now for around 45 years. Ever since we signed that stupid Lima Declaration that by Whitlam’s Labor government in 1975 and it was ratified the following year by Fraser’s Liberal-National government. I mean, they’re selling out our country and the Chinese can see that, and they can see we’re weak and gutless, and they just running over the top of us. They think that they can bend us.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, well, speaking of maybe the Chinese running over the top of us, as you’ve put it, Keswick Island, just off the coast of-

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes.

[Marcus Paul]

We’ve got the Queensland government signing a lease with China Bloom until 2096 for 117 hectares. They wanna build a tourist resort to accommodate some 3,000 people. And it would appear that locals are not involved in this process. They’re not allowed to access their beach, their jetty has gone. People who were renting there have been turfed off the island with just given 48 hours to leave. Is this Australia or where are we?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Exactly, this should be Australia, but it’s not under the Queensland Labor government and under the federal Liberal-National government. And the important thing here to remember is that some of these places on Keswick Island are public places, public spaces, and what the Chinese are doing, the Chinese owners are denying Australians access to those public spaces, that is wrong. And we’re gonna raise hell about this.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah, well, I’ve seen the stories and there’ve been some good reports on this. I can’t believe that we allow ownership by overseas interests to be able to, isn’t a lot of this land national park?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes, that’s correct. And they denying people access to that. You know that, Pauline and I raised an amendment in a bill that improves foreign investment review board control.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Roberts]

We raised the need to put tighter controls on things in a national interest, the national interest test.

[Marcus Paul]

That’s right.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Being one of the tests for giving others, giving foreigners control over some of our assets. And that was turned down, pulling over the only ones, Labor, Liberal, Centre Alliance, Greens, National Party all voted against putting that national interest as a test for firms. The other thing, Marcus, is that they even rejected our amendment to have a register of foreign ownership of water.

[Marcus Paul]

Oh, well, yes, we’ve gone through that in New South Wales with the shooters and fishers, I mean, poor Helen Dalton, our warrior, water warrior, who’s a frequent caller on this program’s been trying to get a fully transparent water register up in New South Wales for God knows how long, but the, you know the Nationals, who are supposed to be looking after people in the bush, don’t want a bar of it, including Melinda Pavey, the water minister.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, it seems to me the Nationals are looking after farmers in the northern parts of New South Wales. And there’s unlimited floodplain harvesting. And you know, that needs to be regulated.

In Queensland, it is regulated, and Cubbie Station, even though it’s been vilified, has done an absolutely marvellous job, highly, highly responsible, the way it does it. But northern New South Wales, they’re just tearing the guts out of the water. And that’s, you know, what happens, Marcus, is that the northern basin, the Murray-Darling Basin, is quite different from the southern.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah, of course.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And the southerners pay when the north can’t deliver water because the northern areas are intermittent water providers. And so, the southerners always end up paying. But the other thing that’s happening is the South Australians are basically telling lies about what’s happened to water in their state.

They have destroyed their environment in the Coorong through their own stupid policies, and they’re expecting people in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria to pay the price. And then when the water doesn’t come down from the floodplain harvesting in northern New South Wales, the southerners in southern New South Wales and northern Victoria, they’re paying, they’re paying dearly. Very, very serious issue.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, Malcolm, always good to chat back. We’ll catch up again next week.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Have a good weekend. Thanks Marcus.

[Marcus Paul]

Thank you and all of this, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts on the programme. Okay, four and a half minutes away from eight o’clock news on the way. Marie, are you there?

Last week in Canberra I was unable to give this speech in the Senate so I recorded so you could hear. The government is proposing changes to the the Industrial Relations system and I wanted to put my views on the record and say to the government that the IR system is broken and needs fixing. And simplifying.

Transcript

I serve the people of Queensland & Australia and want to discuss our shared need for:

  • Improving industrial relations to protect honest workers and employers
  • the bigger picture and a vision for a secure future.

And I will shine a light on the Industrial Relations Club, known as the IR Club. The root cause of most IR conflict.

We have listened to workers – casual and permanent – across Queensland and Australia. From Thursday Island to the Hunter to Tasmania, from Brisbane to Perth. We have listened to union bosses and union bodies. We have listened to small and medium sized businesses. We have listened to employer and industry groups.

We have listened to the government and to the opposition. I’ve worked underground at the coalface in five regions across our country, managed mines and negotiated and introduced IR changes improving safety, productivity and security. As a mining executive I introduced the Australian coal industry’s first radically new enterprise award, one proudly based on matching employees needs and employers’ needs.

Our people set records that stood for decades with extremely high worker retention and Australia’s best safety performance for large underground coal mines. Listening reveals that across our country, people are hurting, feeling vulnerable. Afraid for their jobs, afraid of the future.

Add to that Australians are hurting from the economic fallout from COVID with restrictions and lock-downs keeping us away from our jobs, businesses and loved ones. People feel confused, often despairing, even hopeless. Many feel powerless to improve their situation or their business, frustrated that this government didn’t listen and just listens to the IR Club.

And people like HV miner Simon Turner crippled, exploited and discarded due to abuses proving the complete failure of current Industrial Relations laws. People are angry. The “Industrial Relations Club, the IR Club” is alive and well. It keeps its members fat, well paid and secure – lawyers, courts, employer peak bodies like the BCA, major UB’s.

Driven to perpetuate conflict so they have something to “fix,” a reason for staying in existence. Using complexity to conjure issues that need lawyers and UB’s to sort. The primary workplace relationship between employee and employer has been shoved aside. The IR system is broken. And that’s destroying Australian industry and exporting jobs to China.

The IR Club perpetuates artificial restrictions that needlessly destroy productivity and job security and suppress wages. Restrictions hurting workers and employers. The Building & Construction General On-Site Award is almost 150 pages long with 80 separate allowances on top of the prescribed wage schedule.

Australia’s cabotage is another IR Club casualty – and guts national security, sovereignty and tax revenue. The IR Club’s other victims are small and medium sized business. Our economy’s engine room. The IR Club insists on a one size fits all from large multinationals with huge teams of lawyers through to small businesses. Queensland’s 445,000 small businesses are now under even greater pressure as a result of the govt’s COVID response.

And, as a result of the IR Club, small businesses are left with complex, unworkable IR rules that are not fit for purpose. The IR Club is one reason why small businesses and honest big businesses are angry. We need honest, competent leadership making decisions based on solid data and facts with strength of character and a willingness to serve our country’s people, Australians. A Prime Minister who tries to do good, not just look good.

One Nation protects workers’ rights and knows that only employers, entrepreneurs, small businesses and workers create jobs. The govt’s COVID restrictions have done enormous damage. Yet the govt-induced collapse is not an excuse to cut pay or job security. Instead, let’s reform IR together properly.

One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts’ motion to bin the Cash Ban bill received triumphant support in the Senate today.

The Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill would have banned the use of cash for transactions over $10,000 and put in place hefty fines and jail terms for breaches.

Senator Roberts said, “This is a fantastic win for all Australians, particularly rural and elderly Australians where the use of cash is still prevalent.”

“Even the Government’s own Committee Inquiry said that the bill was out of step with Australian values and was totally impractical.”

Senator Malcolm Roberts has been persistently vocal in the fight against this bill since August 2019.

“This bill was never about tackling crime or money laundering, and instead criminalised the use of legal tender, cash, for everyday Australians.

“Australians now retain their right and freedom to use cash with the bill now officially dead,” added Senator Roberts.

One Nation received a ground swell of support from a wide range of Australian communities for whom the use of cash is cultural.

Senator Roberts said, “I would like to thank the many groups who organised community campaigns against the cash ban bill including the Citizens Party, the John Adams and Martin North show, Heise Says, Nugget’s News, Taxpayer’s Alliance, Bank Reform Now and The Bitcoin community.”

While cash transactions over $10,000 must still be reported to AUSTRAC, it is timely to remind retailers with Christmas on the horizon that cash is legal tender and ought to be accepted from consumers. “One Nation’s resolve and persistence to stand in defending the rights of everyday Australians has won the day.”

Transcript

[Marcus Paul]

All right, welcome back to the programme on this Thursday, December 3, where it’s 22 minutes away from eight o’clock, New South Wales, daylight saving time. And Senator Malcolm Roberts joins us on the programme. Good day, Malcolm.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Good morning, Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus Paul]

I’m okay. I think you’d still be disappointed with the bank bail-in voted down this week. I know you’ve done a lot of work on it.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes, we were disappointed, but we were expecting to get, have it defeated. We were mildly hoping the labour party would wake up, But they abandoned their core, but what has been very good, Marcus, is that as a result of my speech and as a result of the work, one of the liberals came up to me later and he organised a meeting with me and our staff and himself and a senior advisor from the treasurer’s department.

And they now acknowledge that there is a problem and that they have promised to remedy it. So it looks like it’ll be taken care of, anyway, thanks to the effort we’ve done.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, just remind my listeners, What this is all about, what is the bail-in?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, let’s talk about a bail-out first. A bail-out is when a bank gets into trouble and the government gives it taxpayer money. So basically a bail-out is where the taxpayer money goes from the taxpayer through the government, to the bank, save the banks, even though the taxpayers didn’t cause the damage and bail-in is where the bank takes the depositors’ money and converts into shares.

So they get their money, they get the depositors’ money and get out of trouble. And in exchange, the depositors get worthless pieces of paper called shares because the bank is so close to collapse, it won’t be of any value.

So then that means that the depositors have a worthless piece of paper or they can hang on for a few years and hope that the bank comes back, which it probably will in our system, but a bail-in takes money, steals money from the depositors of the bank.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, and you’re hopeful that eventually after further discussions, even though it was voted down earlier this week, you’re hopeful that you will get this passed?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, not passed, but modified by the government itself. So it’ll take care of it. So either we’ll get the corrections that we wanted, the modifications we wanted in the government’s bill, so that there’s no bail-in. Or if there is a bail-in possibility, then at least it will be honestly portrayed.

And so everyone can make up their own mind what to do, but we think a bail-in would be better ruled out because it then instils confidence in the banks. We’ve had something like $20 billion in notes go disappearing in the last 12 months because people are scared of what will happen to their cash if there is a bail-in.

Because they’ve had bail-ins in Greece and other countries, we see this as a magnificent opportunity to clarify and to make it very, very clear to people what is happening.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, you want more of us to drink Australian wine?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yeah. I didn’t know if you knew it, but 30% of our wine export goes to China.

[Marcus Paul]

Oh, yeah I knew it, well used to.

[Malcolm Roberts]

That’s double the UK, double the UK, double the US but an inter parliamentary alliance on China, our friends in parliamentarian and parliaments and congresses around the world showed support for Australia. And they’re really annoyed with the bullying of China against Australia.

So we actually saw a video that was made up of people from Japan, parliamentarians, from Japan, who said, you know, we like our saki better mate, but Aussie wine, go and buy a bottle of Aussie wine, and then the Italian saying we’re the number one wine exporters in the world, and we make the best wine, but go and get a bottle of Aussie wine.

So we’re encouraging Australians to go and spend a bit more time in the wine rose and liquor store and get stuck into some Aussie wine and show the Chinese that we will carry on regardless of their threats.

[Marcus Paul]

Well that’s right, there’s no 212% tariffs here at home with our domestic wine. I mean, we know that wine, the sector itself valued at $4 billion in September, 2020, before these ridiculous over-inflated tariffs were imposed. Maybe we can, I know we export around 15 and 14% respectively to the United Kingdom and to the United States of our wine products maybe we could up their share of exports and not worry too much about China.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Exactly, and I think this is a problem that’s coming home to roost Marcus, we’ve gone to China because it’s the easy way out. We haven’t done the hard yards in this country of fixing the tax system, reducing our energy costs. We’ve instead inflated our energy costs.

We’ve doubled in, some places tripled our electricity costs for example, instead of doing the hard yards to fixing that energy sector and stopping the rort on climate and the subsidies, and instead of fixing the taxation system to make manufacturing more competitive, we have taken a lazy way out and just exported iron ore to China, coal to China, raw materials to China, agricultural products to China and just bought, whatever we can from China, very lazy way.

We’ve destroyed our manufacturing, let China supply us, and we’ve got to stop that. We’ve got to rebuild this country, bring it back to basics.

[Marcus Paul]

You’re not still betting on a Trump win, are you?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Oh yes, definitely. Definitely.

[Marcus Paul]

Malcolm, you still haven’t woken up.

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, no. The fact they’re coming in now there’s clear corruption, Marcus. And I think that Trump has recognised this. In fact, one of the Republicans said that we know there’s been corruption from the Democrats, especially for many, many years.

And Trump, to his credit has set the eyes in motion and the monitors in motion. And now it’s all coming home to roost for the Democrats. There’s serious corruption out there. And there’s a path for Trump to the White House. He’s definitely in.

[Marcus Paul]

Not till 2024, though.

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, no, it’ll be this year. You watch.

[Marcus Paul]

This year?

[Malcolm Roberts]

So much corruption going on that the constitution and the laws in America provides for this kind of circumstance. And Trump is in the box seat. He knows what he’s doing.

[Marcus Paul]

You want to bet me a bottle of wine on this? Australian wine

[Malcolm Roberts]

I definitely do.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Now the Australian federal integrity commission, you know, that toothless tiger that’s been suggested, the centre for public integrity called a press conference to highlight the extensive inadequacies of the government’s draught Commonwealth integrity commission bill, 2020.

There were plenty of people present, including previous members of the high court, former judges from the Victorian court of appeal and a former judge of the New South Wales court of appeal. Now, Helen Haines MP has introduced a better version. The Australian federal integrity commission bill 2020. What do you say to this?

[Malcolm Roberts]

We actually like Helen Haines’s version much better. We’ve had a couple of presentations on it. We listened to Helen herself, came over to Pauline’s office and I joined them. It’s quite good. The Australian centre for public integrity endorses it. And the government’s bill is a shocker.

It’s just a lazy well, it doesn’t even work properly because politicians are treated differently from everyone else. They’re treated far too softly. And, that’s, you know, that’s the worst thing you can do to restore public confidence in the integrity in parliament.

The second thing is that the government’s proposal has a very high threshold for referrals. You have to be, have a lot of evidence there before you can even get through. And the third thing is that the Attorney General has powers to limit information that can be considered by the corruption commission.

[Marcus Paul]

Well as I said, it’s toothless.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes, that’s basically it, they can hide, they can still hide. And the other thing, Marcus, is it’s not retrospective meaning that we won’t be able to investigate any of the past dodgy dealings.

[Marcus Paul]

That’s right. And you know, we may never know why the government thought it was a great idea or a great investment to, you know, overspend on land at Badgerys Creek Airport, and the rest of it. Malcolm, I’ll have to leave it there today, but thank you very much, mate. We’ll catch up with you again next week.

[Malcolm Roberts]

I’ll look forward to drinking your wine.

[Marcus Paul]

He’s still in lala land over there. All right, mate. Good on you, we’ll talk soon.

[Malcolm Roberts]

See you, mate.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, there he is. Senator Malcolm Roberts.

On the panel with week we discuss ‘The Great Reset’, where billionaires, celebrities and the worlds elites wants you to give up all YOUR possessions and claim you will be happy. We also discuss the United Nations and the US election.

Transcript

Proof transcript only – E&OE

Good day, good evening and welcome to the programme. Well, what another week. And the language is starting now to creep in, isn’t it? You turn on the TV news, right across all the networks, you’re picking up the papers, you’re turned on the radio stations, you hear the words. The words that are meant to create some comfort for us but don’t be conned, the great reset, the great reset. It sounds like everything that was bad is gonna go and everything that’s in front of us is gonna be good. It’s been sanctioned by the Royal Family, I mean, Prince Charles has said, “Let’s have a great reset.” It’s being promoted by the world, the left worldwide. I mean, this big great reset is actually going to be a bigger virus than COVID. It’s gonna have more of an impact on your lifestyle than you could imagine. It’s been publicised by the social media elite and you’ve got minds like build back better, I think just seeing her don’t use that as her line, when she received the government in New Zealand and Joe Biden so we had build back better. And then we’ve got this sort of post COVID world, the new normal, all this mantra, don’t let it con you. What does it actually mean? And do we actually get a site? Well, the bottom line is we might. This is a deal that is being done by the elites and is being foisted upon the weak, the weak governments of the world. And frankly, at the moment, it looks like the Australian government falls into that category as well. But maybe you can have a hand on trying to change it, but at the same time this week, we’ve heard that China, now a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, has taken time to have a close look at the human rights violations of, yes, America. They’ve decided amongst about 10 things that they wanna see in the end to the political polarisation in the United States. Now that’s all very well and good for the Chinese Communist Party, one party state ’cause there can’t be any other party, but you do know that in America, there’s two great forces at work. There’s the Democrats, their colours tends to be blue and the Republicans and they tend to be red. And Donald Trump is red and Biden is the blue side. But you know that if he is elected president of the United States, what we’ve heard from places like China in this UN declaration on human rights and this review of America’s human rights is the sort of marching orders that Joe Biden will of course, if we ever see him out of the White House bunker, will of course be attending to, I mean, we haven’t seen him for very much in the last six months, and he’s about to become the most powerful man in the world if all the rhetoric and all of the social media tweets are to be believed. The Chinese have also said they don’t want the United States to interfere in any other countries’ internal issues. And what I mean by that is Hong Kong and of course Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a democracy, the free China, the people of the People’s Republic of China see Taiwan as a Renegade province. So of course, if the United States says anything about Taiwan, it’s a fundamental breaks of the human rights of the Chinese people. This is just absolute rubbish. So over the last week, as we’ve gone through Remembrance day, I stopped and I thought like any other decent person would, 11 o’clock on the 11th last Wednesday, and I realised that we should be concerned, lest we forget that our freedoms that we enjoy are in fact being secured by those prepared to defend it. And the five oldest continuous democracies in the world, the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand have always defended freedom. Have always been amongst the first to answer the call when there’s tyranny in other places. But now we have so many people within each of these countries, including our own, that seem to be out to weaken our efforts, pull down our traditions, change the way we think. And the world is in fact right now doing, and in a lot of ways, it is history repeating what we saw in pre World War 2 Europe. If you think about 2022 China, if this is passing, putting a big dark shadow over the rest of the world, China, maybe a country that in fact many are saying we should boycott when it comes to the 2022 winter Olympics that are occurring there. But of course, plenty of people in the sporting world would say, no, no, no, keep politics out of sport. Let’s face it, sport is full of politics, there’s political operatives who are active in sport. There are sporting operatives that are active in politics. There’s political decisions that are taken in sport every day, there are political choices, there are political sponsors in sport, local sports organisations, state organisations, the national organisations are all highly political. And so the Australian Olympic Committee of course, is the Olympic size version of this highly political environment. And naturally enough, because I live in a rarefied atmosphere of self-importance, the last thing they want to see is us boycotting on principle, there’s that word again, principle, the People’s Republic of China and the winter Olympics and the entire PR spin that will come for the PRC. So if only sport was just about sport, it seems, if you look at the last week, we’re seeing more and more reasons to know the elite speed, are they big tech, be they the big media, be they big Royals, or be they the big Chinese and Marxist left us elites around the world role, choosing to reset your lifestyle. The last thing they’re gonna do is touch these, care to know what you think, hashtag Hardgrave@skynews.com.au, you can also email me directly at gary.hardgrave@skynews.com.au, still a panel, we always try and do that on a Friday night, as we fight for freedom here. Malcolm Roberts is the Senator for Queensland for One Nation, he joins me here in the Brisbane, Citadel in the city. You use Santa the great and the powerful and very, very wise Bronwyn Bishop, former speaker of the House of Representatives, from Advanced Australia Liz Storer, who’s never afraid to hold back on anything when it comes to fighting for freedom. Great to have you all with us tonight. The big reset, should we be worried, Liz? how do you feel about this great reset nonsense?

Well, nonsense sums it up Gary, sums it up perfectly. What frightens me most about this, and firstly, I should mention I’m no longer with Advance Australia, I am lead advisor with GT Communications and very glad to be surfaced. Thank you, thank you. What frightens me most about this reset is that younger generations are completely unaware of what’s happening. We’ve seen the left for decades now infiltrate our schools, infiltrate out unis, and these kids, now young adults, actually, a lot of them wouldn’t know Marx if he slapped them in the face, have never picked up the Communist manifesto. And yet we’ve got Kamala Harris, who can I say is not vice president elect. I am just as much vice-president elect as Kamala is this evening. We’ve got Kamala.

[Gary] Congratulations on your victory.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes, yes, it’s been wonderful. We’ve got Kamala tweeting, you can’t make this stuff up, talking about a reset, tweeting just before the election, a small video that she did the voiceover of literally espousing the virtues of socialism. You can’t make this stuff up, she didn’t say socialism, but the little video was literally talking about the fact that there is no equality in the world unless equality of outcome is what we’re all experiencing here. Not equality of opportunity, and so we’ve created this culture now as the left so artfully does, where it’s understood to be compassionate, et cetera. And so on being synonymous with this, literally communism is what her video was espousing. And this is the woman make no mistake about it, unless the Trumpians are successful, this is the woman who will be president of the United States. Joe Biden will just fill the seat for a little time and total on off.

Yeah, I suspect to be in the White House basement the whole time, we’ll just get him wheeled out a bit like sort of weekend at Bernie’s. He’ll just get wheeled out every so often from Fido opportunity, if in fact he actually even gets installed, sorry, aren’t I lacking in grace, Bronwyn Bishop, you can deal with me accordingly, but seriously we’re being conned. I mean, if you look at Salton, it’s in the whole Gulag archipelago, that enormous idea of the last man clapping, no one wanted to be the last man clapping in this sort of scenario, that Gulag archipelago, you know that there’s a lot of lessons not being taught, the young people, they’re making mistakes, simple.

Well, Gary of course the trouble again, when the rich and the powerful elites of the Western world, privileged elites of the West, supported Lenin and Stalin, and I’m talking about the likes of George Bernard Shaw, of Sydney and Beatrice Webb of John Maynard Keynes and of lady Aster. These people supported these things going on, and absolutely refused to see what the truth was. Solzhenitsyn came along and really exposed it all, and showed the cruelty and the brutality of what the Communist regime was. Now that’s steamed the tide and the march of Socialism for right up to the time that the Berlin Wall came down. But then George Bush weakened. And instead of saying, we have to keep fighting to show that people know what socialism is, so we don’t repeat those mistakes, he went all week and he said, oh, there’s going to be a peace dividend. And we stopped teaching people what socialism was and what we had to stand up for with the principles we believed in to have a free people who had rights and liberties. Well, we then get the Neo Fabians, and they are the Neo Fabians who go to Davos and the world economic forum. They are the ones preaching the great reset, and this is the way to socialism. But in the interim, we got Donald Trump and he was prepared to fight back and fight he did, which in the eyes of the Neo Fabians made it necessary for them to destroy him. And that’s the pattern that we have followed to this very point we’re now at, and we can only hope, and I do not give up on Donald Trump being successful at this point in time. I think it was a mistake for our Prime Minister to be congratulating Mr. Biden, because Mr. Biden said himself that he would not even attempt to claim victory until it was properly certified. When there are a lot of legal ways to go yet, and it is not being properly certified. So we have to hold firm. Donald Trump has led the way he has changed, there are what? 73 million people in America who are prepared to fight back and they need the voice and the support of those of us who believe in freedom of the individual and freedom of opportunity and equality of opportunity, not outcome as Liz said.

Yeah, and I agree. I mean, Malcolm Robinson’s to the point, this great said it’s a, you know, a three word slogan always pretty, pretty popular, but this is not a great thing. This is damaging. People’s freedoms, people’s lifestyles. This is something that is worth fighting for. When you hear it, the people saying it, you should condemn them. That’s how I read it.

I agree with you and Tali that’s once you get past the fact that this great reset is claimed to be supporting, fixing the world’s climate, it’ll fix poverty, it’ll fix in, in inequality. It’ll fix control. It’ll fix everything. Gary, why shouldn’t we wait for it? Because it is just another slogan to hide the reality that this is socialism on the March. And socialism is always about control. We’ve had this so many times and you know, in the past, people have controlled others using physical force. Now, if you grab me around the throat, I’ll put a rifle, bat in my head, Gary, people can see what you’re doing. The insidiousness of socialism this way and slogans is that they sound so nice and people don’t really see what’s going on. And next thing with the gradualism, you know, you’re in slavery. And so the essential, the essential debate, the essential theme that runs through all of the articles that you’ve introduced tonight, and your email and tonight in your editorial is control versus freedom. And that control versus freedom is a battle we all have within us, but we all thrive when we actually are free ourselves and free from our own shackles, but also the planet thrives and the nations thrive when they’re free. That’s society has proven that time and time and time again.

Yeah. Well, look, I mean, the great, the control that the battle that’s on in China, there is a battle in China, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, the Chinese Communist party authorities in Beijing, don’t have as much control of China. It’s the money. That’s actually changing things. The richest man in China, though, has been set down on his backside. He has tried to do a float of this massive Alibaba organisation, and they’ve taken him down. They’ve said, no, you can’t do that anymore. So suddenly the idea of free capital floating around and creating opportunity for everyday Chinese to actually be part of a glow. A growing world economy has been controlled by the Politburo in Beijing. This is nasty. It’s a Brahman. You see, this is a foretaste of what could come. And if, if Joe Biden heightened Biden as many are calling him and others are calling him Beijing, Joe, I mean, there’s, I, I’m not trying to be pejorative here. Although maybe people say I am, but if this plug is actually going to become the president of the United States, he cannot be encumbered to a group of people who actually hate the kind of society that we are used to having.

Well, that’s the point, Gary, you say, if Trump is not reelected, then the two most powerful pit men in the world are Putin and President Xiu. It is quite clear the President Xiu wants to rule the world. He wants to be the dominant power. And as long as Trump was there, he knew if he moved Taiwan, that Trump would act, but he knows that if Trump is gone, Biden will do nothing. So you can watch what’s going to happen to Taiwan. What’s what’ll happen in the middle East, where Trump had actually managed to have countries of the middle East, come to an agreement with Israel. And yet you will have the Biden and those people behind him will probably go back to the Obama policy of getting into bed with Iran. So the problem is that we’re going to face and what is it risk from this election? And I deliberately call these people, the Neo Fabians, because the Fabian society was founded by the webs and George Bernard Shaw to implement the change to socialism, gradually their symbol. And they stained glass window that was commissioned is a Wolf in sheep’s clothing. And that is why I think we have to identify these people for what they are. They preach my sounding things, but there’s a Wolf in there who will eat the sheep very, very easily. And we have to stop being sheep. We have to stop putting not only putting up the hook in her own mouth, we’re now about to swallow that hook. And we’ve just got to learn that that’s the end of us if we do. So, it is a very troubling time. And Mr. Ma came out in that speech, which President Xi objected to so strongly made the point that there is no such thing as a system of, of in the finite financial system in China. They make it up as they go along. And that’s why we can never believe any of the data that comes out of China, but we can believe they are building a force where they wish to conquer large parts of the world and be the dominant power controlling the lives and us and Australia. We would be the vessel state with bearing the knee and bury our back to our Chinese masters as they took our food and our iron off. That is not what I, well, that is not what my father fought for. It’s not what I believe I served in the parliament for. And you served in the parliament for, to leave to our children, grandchildren. We’ve got to fight hard.

Now, why not? Now? Why not? And I’m gonna lose store. You’re only going to look at the Y. The China is being signed to Australia. We are grossly interfering in China because we’ve raised questions about the democracy in Taiwan. We want Taiwan to be protected. We used to recognise until 1973, Taiwan as China and following Richard Nixon’s lead, we then changed our allegiance to the Beijing authorities. Boy, that’s rewarding. And then equally in Hong Kong, you’ve gotta look at what’s happening in Hong Kong, where you’ve got legislators and actually resigned from the parliament. They said, democracy is dead in Hong Kong. If I want to tackle Taiwan, they’ve told Australia to, I’ll tidy it up, shut the hiccup. You know, that that in itself should be a warning to each of us that value the opportunity to speak our and listen to about the views that the bite is not alive and not allowed. It’s not alive in China.

Absolutely. This is a communist party. That seems to be a very simple fact that so many people just don’t seem to understand, perhaps in the 21st century, they think even the communist party looks a bit different. It does not. This is the same regime that has countless millions of innocent blood on their hands. Let’s, let’s be abundantly clear on that when I was watching the American election, as I’m still watching it, because it’s still happening. Gary, as I was watching the American election, I kept saying to myself, if Americans knew nothing more than the fact of China’s plans for the Pacific, and just how intrinsically linked both Kamala and Joe, it’s not just Joe are in the pockets of the CCP. They wouldn’t vote Democrat, not in a million years, not in a million years, but people don’t understand what will take place. They don’t understand the strength of that Alliance. and it’s actually frightening to think that that may yet become something that the rest of us will have to look on and witness, as it unfolds, China is not going to change. It is a communist regime. It is hell bent on world, world supremacy, no matter what. And I think anyone who listens to that and says, that’s fear mongering, I would urge them pick up a history book for heaven’s sake, or even just Google comments that the president is on record saying that we will bend these democracies to our will. We think that China will become more like us as the world advances and you know, democracies around the world. Now outnumber communist dictatorships. They have no such plan. Let me tell you.

Well, I don’t. And I mean, Malcolm Robinson people think you’re wearing, you know, we’re wearing a tinfoil hat putting in, you know, rising this sort of stuff. They think we’re, you know, mad conspiracy theories. We’re not I’ve simply. And I don’t mind being proved wrong. Not one part of me minds being proved wrong about this, but the questions have gotta be asked. And, you know, when I saw that national cabinet, unfortunately, I didn’t make this decision, but national Kevin we’re considering including China in a travel bubble to Australia, I would have thought that the simple way of making that travel bubble work would have been to included the democracies of our region. The flavours Ling democracies in the Pacific that are leading Australian tourism back into it. The, the, the democracy in Taiwan, the democracy in Japan, the democracy in South Korea, before we to put some people from a totalitarian regime onto a plane in and out of Australia, I would have thought that was a simple thing. But anyway, state borders is still shot. It’s pretty distressing. Isn’t it? Australia is still split in so many ways.

Yes, Gary, you make a very, very good point because China is the country that unleashed the COVID virus on the world. Not only that, it made it possible for the COVID virus to get a heads-up because it denied its existence for so long. And then have a look at the country that has done the best of any on earth and that’s Taiwan in the same time as we’ve had, and actually longer period, it’s been exposed longer. It’s had seven deaths from COVID. We’ve had over 900. We have destroyed our economy doing that. Taiwan has simply isolated the sick, isolated, the vulnerable, and let everyone else get back. Stay at work. And their economy has barely ended into negative. I think it’s about 0.5 of a percent negative growth. That’s phenomenal. And, and our prime minister said we should be attacking China. Now the national Kevin does saying, let them mainland Chinese in and ignore Taiwan. This is insane, but let me give, just go back to a point. You mentioned a little while ago to tell you a little bit of a story. I met, I connected with a blood called Ron kitchen. He’s dead now many years ago. And he loaded the, the works of Frederick Hayak and at Ludwig Von Meese and the Austrian school of economics. And he told me a story, and this is firsthand or secondhand actually, because he, he met up with a professor from Princeton and this professor had Chinese heritage. And he was, was a Chinese, even though was an American citizen. And I think it was in the eighties. And I can’t remember the, the name of the Chinese president at the time. Ginger ping, maybe. But anyway, the habit, the Princeton professor with visiting his original roots in, in China and the president of China got wind of this. So he said, could I have a couple of hours of your time? And the Princeton professor said, sure. So he started off this conversation and remember Ron met this Princeton professor and had a good long conversation. And the Princeton professor said that the Chinese president, his opening comments were look at the wealth of our country. Yeah. But look at the state of it. It’s, it’s destitute, it’s poor. And, and he said, can you tell me how we can fix it? And the Princeton professor told him, and then he said, can you give me a couple more hours? I think to cut a long story short, he gave him days. It kept asking him to come back and that opened up China. But the fundamental thing with China is they still want to control people buttoned up the economy, but, but they’ll never be strong because always beneath control, Gary, there is fair. These people are terrified of losing control. And so what we need to do is focus on our strengths. Don’t worry too much about China, focus on our strengths and, and, and lift them because we are destroying our own country. Internally.

Now, as strengths have to be gotta be, have gotta be built around our values, our principles as a, the things that we over the 120 years, Australia has been a nation have earned us the right to say, we are the sixth oldest continuous democracy in the world. And it’s only, it’s only the UK and the USA and Canada that has stood with Australia and New Zealand, the seventh oldest, continuous democracy to defend those freedoms, Switzerland and Sweden have a five just for the record. But my understanding is they actually haven’t necessarily fought any angry shots at any stage of the last hundred years. Got to take a break. I want to come back and talk about how the country is split off the whole side of the impact on the IDF on shocked by what’s occurring. And we’ll talk about that more interest among them.

[Announcer] John Howard’s got some beat ideas.

That mine sing in public life is to get the beat things, right?

[Announcer] This Saturday is special. One-on-one chat with John Anderson.

You don’t need to pursue the identity. If you have the right policy, the inspiring things of United certain things that divided and missionary John Howard, I felt I had an opportunity to do some good things and improve the country in conversation with John Anderson, Saturday 8:30 p.m.

I need a holiday for Australia. The Outback. Yes. Yes. We could catch her in lunch. I know exactly what you mean. We should just go somewhere. We’ve always wanted to go. Yes. Oh honey. I can teach the kids to surf. Yeah. I mean, obviously.

It’s me. And then I would pass on the Western plan. Holiday. His issue.

Yeah. For Australia. So you want to learn to write, write a book, write a movie, write a law.

Cut. Oh, you want to learn the right things? The go shake the right paycheck, make dinner just the right way. Do the right thing by you. More of an overachiever. You had to own the room, own a presentation on a business, start a business, be a busy. We know some things. Well, at least people know things. Thank the thing is even though it was a thing they know, and all right here, when for you to see the day’s a day.

Manufacturing has never been more important to Australia than right now. That’s why visa has just invested almost $1 billion to acquire the largest glass bottle maker in Australasia, bringing out total green collar workforce to 7,200. Visy manufacturing Straussian jobs, these hot drive.

Thanks so much for your company. We’re in conversation with Brahma, Bishop, Liz store, and Senator Malcolm Roberts national cabinet made a gain to die briefly. A whole bunch of announcements. Everybody’s going to open up except for Western Australia. Perth remains the most isolated city geographically, and it seems politically in the world lead store. I also note that I said a couple of weeks ago, and people thought our Gary, your gilding, the Lily here, that the Queensland border wide open up until the Suncorp site of origin match was dealt with everybody from new South Wales, except Sydney siders can comment today. They announced the softened and the Queensland government said 52 and a half thousand people can come to Suncor. There’s no dress code, but all by the way, Liz, there’s no dancing allowed in Queensland. Still. We can have 52 and a half thousand at the grand stand, but on the 200 at a funeral or something. So go, go, go figure. It’s all crazy. Isn’t it.

These rules are doing my head in Gary, especially when cases are so low. Now, I think we’ve even got Victoria zero day, zero days, every single day. Now where we’re well past the point, you’d think of these ridiculous restrictions. And when you’re talking about a state that is now hosted a game of tens of thousands of people still throwing out these random restrictions. I mean, I’m a gal in, in, in WUA, you know, leaving the state cabinet today. Like he had don’t worry team. I’ve kept GSA. It is utterly ridiculous. This, this has gone past absurdity. These is ridiculous. And when we’re watching countries like the UK still, you know, devastating, devastating, what they’re seeing unfold there, here in Australia, we’re still acting like we’ve got some sort of pandemic on our hands. The truth of the matter is we really don’t. And yet nobody seems to be calling out the fact we’ve got States with zero cases, closing their borders to States with zero cases. And people like McGowan are really just playing politics with this. Now he saw it go well for Anastasia pallor, Shea. He’s got his election coming up in March. And I think he’s doing exactly the same now going, okay, this pandemic protectionism goes well at the polling. Both. I’ll take another crack.

Yeah. He wants to keep it going as long as possible in Victoria, it’s basically declared that an experiment and the way the bureaucracy operates, Brahman produced a mission failure. The public servants are starting to be filtered out the door, sacrificial lands, but it still strikes me in the deck of cards about 10 or a dozen people that really did Muff up this hotel, quarantine fiasco. There is a whole bunch of people who’ve got to go including the joker himself, Daniel Andrews, but people still liked him. I still thought, you know, we like, we like being punished sort of, you know, bondaged and disciplined Victorian style down there. I think.

I said right from the beginning that China not only exported the disease, it also exported fear. And it is that fear factor that has allowed these premiers to control their population. And it’s, I mean, people pick perfectly normal people who you might think would think properly are cowed into fearing it and saying, well, we need to be locked down. We need to be kept cocooned and so on. So it’s, it’s a real problem. But the, the rest of the problem of course is how do we restore a functioning Federation that high court judgement in Western Australia was absolutely of no use at all. We don’t know what they’ve said. All they’ve said is that they referred the facts of the case to the federal court to determine what facts for high court would make their determination upon. They’ve said no, it was okay to put them in place. Well, was that at the time that the action was begun, we haven’t seen a judgement . We haven’t seen the reasons for the judgement . So there’s a failure in the judiciary to, to uphold the section that was put deliberately into the constitution to stop this sort of behaviour by premiers. And then we look at what premiered chairman Dan is doing down there in Victoria, and talking about setting up a centre for, for communicable diseases, just like the one in New Hampshire that was just part of the belt and road initiative. Are they going to bring some of those viruses here and develop them here with the next outbreak? And believe me, if you think we’ve seen the last, last outbreak of pandemics, you can think again, when the next one happened here, because the bar’s has been brought here. I mean, there are serious questions that have to be asked and, and it doesn’t seem that there is no action on it. It’s not, we we’ve got statements coming out that, Oh, well we’ve met today. And the, in, in the federal cabinet, whatever that’s supposed to mean, elevate the premiers and talk what rubbish we will. Everyone will be up and by Christmas. Well, all the bookings are all too late. Except wh I just find that the, the problems that are being created by the way in which we’ve gone about dealing with these matters are huge and waiting for us to have to be dealt with.

Yeah, look, Brahman. And I really want to support Scott Morrison, but I got to tell you a schema. I’ll buddy, all pal flying down to Victoria to hold hands with Daniel. Andrew is next Melbourne. Next, next week is not exactly what I would call the photo opportunity of 2020. Just a little bit of rough advice for you there, pal, but you can ignore it at your own peril. Meanwhile, in Victoria, over 700 people have died because of the incompetence of the Andrews government, their industrial manslaughter laws should kick in. We’ll see what happens, but there’s been accusations made against the Australian defence force. Now, Malcolm Roberts, I am pretty old fashioned about these things. I support those who are going to put their body on the line. In my name, in a uniform of my country to defend our values in a foreign place. I put my support behind them. Accusations are made. I get it. I understand rumours have been at the heart of some of these things, but there’s no heavy inquiry like Scott Morrison has announced this week into what’s happened in Victoria, 700, 800 people that have died. And yet we’re going to go and pick on our finest in uniform. The way we’re doing it is I think of horrid. I really don’t like it at all.

Gary, this is a very difficult circumstance, very difficult situation because on the one hand, these people, as we all know, and Andrew hasty has said it really well himself. You can see the pain on Andrew Hastie when he raised this topic three years ago, people returning from war have been changed. And, and we haven’t gone in, I haven’t gone into battle. I don’t know if you have never heard, but it is a completely different scenario. There’s enormous pressure that we will never, ever come to grips with. We can never understand that. So that’s the first thing. But the second thing is these, these men, in this case, it is all men have gone into battle to uphold their values. And that means they have to be held accountable for their actions. Maybe that means, first of all, making sure that they get very, very good defence. Maybe it also means that they get a right. They get a very, very fair inquiry. Ben, Robert Smith himself said he welcomes this. Yeah, even though he’s been through the mill himself, he welcomes this because it will clear the air once and for all. So I think we can take a lead from Ben Robert Smith, who has got a, it’s got to been awarded a VC for his, a Victoria Cross for his Valour. And now he’s had the courage to do go through this in public. And now he’s saying out, let’s have the inquiry, let’s clear the decks, but I think we also have to, and in any, in any, if anyone is found guilty of something that they shouldn’t have done, Gary, then they need to be treated with compassion and understanding. And I, I cannot understand the, the minister of defence saying, we’ll strip the metals off them. Well, hang on. They might’ve done something after two years after they’ve won the metal for some definite Valour, we can’t do things like that. We’ve got to be understanding of these people as well as uphold the values that we asked them to fight for.

Yeah. Look at least I have not because of the efforts of so many and generations before me, some of them family members who stood in my name in other places, I have not had to face that kind of circumstance. And I’m grateful for that. I just simply say, I am troubled by the idea of academics will qualify to bureaucrats well qualified and some military you’re going to have going to inquire it, all this sort of thing. I hope they get the values and the principles and the support for these guys ride. I just find the whole thing, sad and demeaning and very sad and demeaning.

Indeed. I actually questioned over the last few days just to myself, whether this is actually in the national interest, if this is in the, in the public interest to be brought out and have this dirty laundry ed, we know this is, this is not something systemic in our ADF. This, this is something there’s a small group of individuals. Clearly we don’t yet know the details that have committed atrocities, but I would, I’d love to echo what Fitz given said. And he himself is a former minister of defence. And he said, these guys were deployed for too long and on back to back deployments. And as you’ve said, Gary, you and I, and, and millions of Australian civilians have absolutely no idea what that’s like. And we have no idea what that’s like thanks to these men and women who go and do it for us so that we can sleep in our beds every night, knowing that we’re safe. And even I though I being a civilian as I am, I’m not above one drink. I don’t think any of us can be above saying, I would never, I would never do this. Or I would never do that after what these people have been through, Mr. Senator Roberts just raised Andrew hasty member for canning. And I remember reading years ago, it would have been because he was quite new to parliament at the time. And he won’t mind me sharing. Cause this is on the public record. He shared it himself. That even as he was doing his training, these gruelling days and days on end, that they’d be sent on, have to undergo unspeakable, not only temperatures, but conditions, no sleep for days on end all the rest of it. And he shared coming back from this particular training trip, just sobbing on the end of the line to his lovely wife, Ruth, this, this stuff, these guys go to go through, breaks them. It absolutely breaks them. And I’m not making excuses for atrocities. They may have committed in, in the line of line of duty, but it, we have to, we have to keep that in mind that human beings cannot go through prolonged periods of these high pressure, no slate, adrenaline running through your veins, 24 seven, that kind of fear that the environment we can’t even imagine for days on end and then still function properly. They, they just can’t.

Great. If you don’t mind me jumping in, I think there’s something that I think there’s another factor here too, that we must.

Right. All Malcolm, just get one last line, one line, you know?

Yeah. That’s something you mentioned in the material you send out and that is that there’s a catch and release policy for it. For people you can’t hold them, you can’t detain them. So some of these people were at the kill soldiers, they catch them. So SSL just catch them and then have to let them go again, because there’s not a proper theatre of war. I know that if I was under that scenario, I’d be thinking twice about letting them go and there’s nowhere to keep them. What else are you going to do? You know, when, when people’s minds under that much stress Brahman, Gary, you know, we’ve got to be understanding and compassionate about that.

I think, and I don’t mean to domain my sincerity at all, but I, I, you know, I think about Jack, Jack Nichols, Jack Nicholson’s line in a few good men, you know, can we handle the truth? I mean, it’s kind of, I guess, yeah, if they’ve done the wrong thing, the system will out, but I am concerned.

Gary. I sat in that parliament in the house of representatives, as we stood again and again, mourning the death of a soldier in Afghanistan. And we made great speeches about their, their, their sacrifice for us, the way they represented us. We as a people, our government, both labour and liberal sent those men to fight for our principles in a foreign land. And as I said, we eulogise and spoke of them. I even attended ramp ceremonies when those bodies were returned to Australia. And yet the same government that sent them, we sent to fight for us is now attacking our own people, our own soldiers. I worked as hard as I could not to have Australia sign up for the international criminal court because I could see how it could be used against us as a matter of international propaganda. But the reality was that Alexander data had virtually committed us. But one thing I did get added was a footnote that said we would never hand over any of our soldiers to that court, which is the thread that is held over. If we don’t investigate, they’ll do. But I insisted that that went in now. Let’s look, what’s happened mr. Justice, the gay Britain, major general, the gay Breton, a former commander of the fifth brigade. The second division has spent four years investigating these issues for years, that investigation actually advertised in Afghanistan for Afghanis to come forward and testify or give still evidence against soldiers. We paid for people to go there to try and find people who would either tell the truth or to lies. How do we know unbelievable for years, this has gone on and those men have lived with that for these four years. We are now told that there was a report that’s going to be released, which we will find shocking. Peter Jennings has very wisely walled that this will be used by ISIS in a recruiting programme for them to say, they’re justified in taking the lives of Australians. And that will be civilian, as well as military people. We are hanging these people out to dry and saying that responses, we will have a further investigation and that investigation we’ll see whether or not there should be any prosecutions in line with the requirements under the ICC. We will never hand over any of our soldiers to that court for them to make the investigation. And if you take a look at who sits on it and would be sitting and just judgement on us, I just get anger, which is beyond belief. So I say that we have a huge obligation to the men and women who serve 29,000 people have served in Afghanistan. When I was minister for defence industry science and personnel, we didn’t send many people overseas at all. It was into Bosnia then and they had to go viral being succonded into the British army. And then they could go across and fight. But the long and the short of it is, is that they have worn our uniform and our flag to support our values. Our values are important, but for the government to turn on our soldiers and to hold them up through this period, we have had something like we have lost more soldiers in the years. We’ve been in Afghanistan to suicide than we lost in combat. So just understand the stresses that they’re under and understand one more point the rules under which they fight are called terms of engagement. And they literally write down what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do. And then there is a definition of what is an atrocity or what is a war crime set out the ICC. And this is what is almost like being told you go there to fight with one arm behind your back. I can only say, as I sat in that parliament and heard the eulogies of these men and the others who are equally served with great Valour and attending that ramp ceremony to receive those bodies back. And first now to be putting the hall about 80th under some sort of additional pressure, I find very difficult to come to terms with indeed, we are these here.

Oh, I, I, I congratulate you on what you’ve just said. And I thank you for your eloquence, but the substance of your argument. And I also make this very plain observation. We did this, the Australian government did this, my, these announcements, the week of remembrance day, I find it just sickening to my core. And I hold all of my freedoms in the Palm of my hand and at the tip of my tongue, purely off the back of those, who’ve served this nation and I feel very emotional about it as well. I’m going to take a break. We’ll come back. We’ll stand up for the workers of Australia. Somebody has to.

I spent my life building this company journey across the world with the man who built Westfield. When I think back of my childhood as a young Jewish boy fleeing the Nazis. It’s hard to imagine how I ended up there. Blood was gushing out of him. Of course he died on the spot. There was no, there was no pushover meeting him was my new rifle. The inspiring, true story. What will become of us November 29?

I need a holiday. Do you? Yeah. For Australia? What about the Outback? Yes. Yes. We could catch our lunch. I know exactly what you mean. We should just go somewhere. We’ve always wanted to go. Yes. Oh honey. I could teach the kids to surf. I mean, obviously someone would teach me and then I would pass on the Western plan. The holiday here this year for Australia studies show that being overweight can impair your immune system. So there’s no better time than now to be healthy, be strong. They, whatever you want to be Opti slim has your back with delicious shakes, bars and soups. The Apttus lamb weight-loss range can help you take that control of your body. Lose weight, improve your immune system and be your version of better order online at optislim.com.au or chemist warehouse today never been more important to make every dollar count. That’s why millions of bodies use finder to help them save money on now, exclusively print $4,999. Get up to a thousand bucks to spend on food retail, but every frame guaranteed to prove out with AA batteries, the world’s longest lasting. We tested it against our competitors. Best battery Energizer, ultimate lithium wins again. Energizer backed by science max by no one. It leaves it first light wherever we push ourselves. When we pull together, that leaves over the door. At the end of every paintbrush, after the sun is set, it leaves in going for a six where it lives in every square inch of this place. And because we live here, your thoughts attract things with a force where you cannot see what is definitely real understand what’s happening here now on Foxtel’s store, he’s called grave.

Thanks so much for your company on a roll in. This will be hit with Newsnight. After the top of the hour with Liz Stora, we brought my Bishop was Senator Malcolm Roberts. Well, it seems that the labour party, whiteness, the inner city, people who just love everything that involves lattes and nothing to do with coal fire power losing the working VIG who’d thought. I mean watching and Joel Fitzgibbon, I thought bill the cat rather. Well this week, Malcolm Robinson, he said, you know, I’m watching people showing up with one nation, how to vote cards and with liberal national party hat of icons and not live ahead of icons and even branch members of the labour party at doing that, a lot of of potty have lost the worker vote. And I said this back in 2007 27 in the parliament where I said that they were looking after the nonproductive elements of societies, not the workers are recognised was right. Then you are, you are.

And it’s significant to remember one thing, Joe Fitz given was not worried about blue collar jobs until his job was threatened. Then he’s terrified and that’s good. And he should be terrified because we have an outstanding candidate down the Institute, bones articulate, smart. Savvy, and very, very dedicated to the country and very honest and straight. And he’s raised a number of issues with us. The whip we’re prosecuting Stuart is a wonderful man and Joel needs to be concerned because his party has abandoned him. Even if what Joel is doing is, is a sincere, then his party is still abandoned him because it’s abandoned blue collar workers and the labour party is all about wokeness. That’s all it is. Write them off.

25 Years. Next is instal was elected. His dad. Eric was there for a dozen years before that this is a Fitzgibbon thing. Liz Stora the seat of Hunter. But unless you actually start to get the workers of Australia front and foremost, you’re not going to get invited. And I actually think, look what the Republicans are doing in America, where they’ve broadened the base of their appeal. This certainly must be what the liberal party, the national party. I know one nation they’re doing it. I mean, we just need to know that the workers don’t vote labour anymore. I can understand why.

So can I look? I honestly don’t understand how the ALP isn’t just agreeing with everything. Fitzgibbon has said, got to say, Joel broke my heart this week, stepping down from the front bench. And then more recently saying that it’s, it’s not for a run at the leadership. I’m like, please feds do it for the country. Body look, everything. This guy says resonates now. And I take the senator’s point that maybe he wouldn’t have said the same prior to the last election, but here he is trying to speak truth to power within his own party. And labour has been getting crucified due to this, this new urbanisation that it’s found in literally in Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, it has no seats outside of the cities. When, when did this happen? It’s happened since 2007, as this seats outside of city areas have dwindled. These don’t like wokeness. They’re telling labour, they screamed at labour at the ballot box last year. Labor’s not paying attention. I can’t explain it for the life of me.

Well, I brought my Bishop today and I know you’re not on Twitter, but take my word for that. Anthony, Albanese actually tweeted about how our climate is dying and the smoke is killing us. And you know, the great reset kind of narrative. And I was thinking, at the Franklin who I know well is his media office who gonna re retweeted it. And I was thinking, Aw, come on Alba, come on, Franklin. You know, this is just like manifests a heaven for the real Australians who think the labour party have completely lost the plot.

Well, the problem is of course, and this happened some considerable time ago in the 90s that the so-called rusted on workers to the labour party, cease to be rusted on. And they ceased to be someone who was sort of on the, under the boot of the, of the employer, which is the picture that the labour party used to paint, but they became aspirational people. They became small business people. They became in charge of their own, their own destiny. They could see that they could have a better future for their kids if they got these opportunities, which liberal governments offered. And so what the labour party missed out on was to see that the attitude had changed of people who were their traditional rust add-ons that they had become the aspirational people who are the heart and soul of small business. And it used to the liberal party that they came. A similar thing happened in the United States with Ronald Reagan. When the, the Reagan Democrats sort of became a phenomenon it’s happened here. So what we have to understand and what the, what the government liberal governments have to understand is that you have to give those people the things that they need. And that’s why the issue of cheap electricity is so vital because to be successful in those endeavours, they need cheap electricity. It is the only competitive advantage they have against imported goods, and they need to be able to produce here in Australia, to set, as we pivot away from China, as we have to do and become more self-reliant, that’s why we need base power. And that’s why we can’t flood our power lines with the, the so-called with wind and solar, because you get all sorts of problems with delivery of power. And I, and I’ve said before, I can remember being in Manila in the 1980s, and they would be Brown out periods. They’d call them. And every time all the lights went on in the palace at Malecon yang, all the surrounding suburbs, they lost their power because they didn’t have enough. What will happen to us the only way you did enough and always be enough for the green elites for the labour elites, three people out of it. If we don’t get some base power.

Look, the bottom line is we need people with trade skills and nice and building skills. When they plumbers, when they’d spot Ks, we need people who know how to build stuff with their hands or with really clever use of machines. They can be women. They can be men, they can be young, they can be all that. We need those people. We need coal-fired power. We need water where, and when we want it, it’s not hard to work out. I want to hear this from the prime minister. I want to give a shout out before I finished. Cause we got to wind up, but good on your Dominic parity. One of the greatest places of public policy, I’m never in favour of new taxes. The idea of texting paper with electric cars is a beauty of all in favour of electric vehicles, but the infrastructure to make it possible for people, Jimmy Barnes and his a hundred thousand dollar plus, you know, electric car to, to really feel should be paid for an, a tax by the people who own the cars. Surely it shouldn’t be just doing me driving around in other cars. I would’ve thought that was a good piece of public policy. Dominic pyrrhotite well done to you. Malcolm Roberts. Thanks so much for your company tonight. Ramen, Bishop, Liz, Stora, brilliant to have you on tonight and kudos to you, Brahman for standing up for our defence force personnel list. We forget. Well, that’s it for another week back again. Next week, look forward to your company. Have a great day.

Marcus Paul from 2SM and I discussed our support for JobMaker, Joel Fitzgibbon on losing support of blue collar workers and renewables destroying our productive capacity.

Transcript

[Marcus Paul]

Ah look, interestingly I noticed that One Nation have kinda changed course. If we’ve got time, we can put it up now. They’ve changed course a little in relation to JobMaker and JobKeeper and issues in the Senate allowing the passage of the change of legislation. We’ll talk to Malcolm about that in just a couple of moments and also I mean, JobMaker itself, the legislation’s very important. It involves subsidies for employers to hire two groups of unemployed people, et cetera. I mean they supported two of the labor Green’s 11 amendments and so an extension is now happening. What do you make of it? One Nation itself, how it operates, I mean they’ve copped a little bit, certainly in Queensland of late. So anyway, let’s speak to Malcolm now, we’re good to go.

And now on Marcus Paul in the Morning, Senator Malcolm Roberts.

There he is, hello Malcolm.

[Malcolm Roberts]

G’day Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus Paul]

I’m well, thank you very well. So JobMaker, tell me what’s happening here.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, as you pointed out that Pauline and I both opposed this when we first spoke about it on Tuesday but you know we have the courage and the integrity to change our mind when we get new data and there are two pieces of data that are really important. 10.4% and 4% and Pauline had a talk with the treasurer yesterday then consulted with me and we changed their mind on JobMaker because the people under 35 years of age have an unemployment rate of 10.4% but people over 35 years have only, well only 4%. And that means we need to get young people back to work, they’ve been hit harder by the COVID restrictions, we need to get them back to work, prevent the life of drugs and crime, get them on the right path quickly. So that’s why we changed their mind.

[Marcus Paul]

Okay, I mean look, obviously with younger people, they’re generally involved in the industry’s hardest hit by the pandemic, whether it’s hospitality, in retail and that’s, yeah it makes perfect sense to me. That’d be why the unemployment rates for those under 35 is so much higher than those over.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes and you know the impact of COVID restrictions on the unemployed in Australia double the unemployment. In other words, have increased unemployment by a hundred percent. But the unemployment of people under 35 went up by 150%. So whichever way you look at it, the young need a lot of help and there’s protections already with JobSeeker and JobKeeper that are already available. But we have to have to get hold of the young and we have the courage and the integrity to change our mind, we’re not worried what people say because it was the right thing to do so we did it.

[Marcus Paul]

Well that’s right and that’s the beauty of having One Nation and others there. I mean, I don’t think you’ll find any disrespect because it’s obvious you’re a minor party but you do make a lot of difference. That’s why it’s important to get key legislation across the line to have people like you and Pauline who are able to listen, analyse the data and then make decisions accordingly.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes and we don’t get into fights like we saw the labor Party and The Greens yesterday trying to pit young people against old people. That kind of division is just pure politic and it’s rubbish, it hurts our country. We’ve gotta work for the benefit of the country, work in the national interest.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Now I spoke to Fitzy yesterday on the programme and I’ve been very strong in my editorial stance on this this morning. I’ll just tell you my stance and then you and I can have a blue about it, okay? Look, what I’m saying is I believe that labor is imploding a little at a federal level. For labor to have any chance if you like, at the next federal election, the party needs to be more pragmatic about its climate change targets and policies, that’s not to say that climate change isn’t important but it needs to be tempered with the realisation that the party can’t leave blue collar workers behind. Now whether Albo and other senior labor members accept it not, I mean they should, they need to look at what happened with the last federal election. Blue collar workers, those in mining, manufacturing and other sectors relying on strong power supply, believe the party has forgotten them. And also Joel Fitzgibbon obviously he’s stuck between a piece of coal and a hard place up there in the Hunter. Well, I mean he believes that mine workers and blue collared workers in his constituency have been forgotten about by labor. What do you make of it all?

[Malcolm Roberts]

What did you, you said we were gonna have a blue about this. I agree with you, I agree–

[Marcus Paul]

That’s to come All right, we’ll do it the next time. We’ll fight over the US election, okay?

[Malcolm Roberts]

labor has lost its way and that’s absolutely correct because they’ve abandoned the blue collar workers. And Joel is not the only one who’s taken this path in labor. We know there are a number of senators, I’ve spoken with them. They think that the, what the labor Party is doing is lunacy not just abandoning miners, but abandoning blue collar workers across all sectors. And labor Party, but you know what really Marcus? labor Party’s fault is just not looking at the data. It’s exactly the same with the Liberal, Nationals and Greens. They’re not looking at the data. The data says you do not need to do anything about carbon dioxide from human activity. You do not need to stop burning coal, oil, natural gas, it’s all rubbish. And Joel Fitzgibbon he’s on the right path to try and drag his party back but it looks like a path that’s gonna be very difficult for Joel because his party is just resolved to abandoning people, abandoning blue collar workers. It’s just insane.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, I mean, obviously Albo’s a part of the extreme left if you like of the labor Party, Joel is the head of the right faction and never the twain shall meet which isn’t good when you need to have a united front hitting into a federal election and the will to- See the problem is that’s why I believe that labor need to be a little bit more pragmatic about this, be realistic. You can’t make any changes from the wilderness of opposition and that’s where they’ll find themselves in the next federal election unless they alter their stance on it. Unless they accept that, look setting targets in 2050 is, well it’s just unrealistic. I mean, look what’s happened with, We’re supposed to be going into a federal budget surplus and then comes COVID-19. You can’t predict bush fires, you can’t predict droughts, you can’t predict floods. You can try and do everything you can to mitigate them in some respects but at the end of the day, if we stop burning coal, it doesn’t mean there won’t be any more bush fires, it doesn’t mean there won’t be any further droughts and other issues. The climate does change.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yeah, you’ve nailed it, you’ve absolutely nailed it. And the thing is, there’s one other point that I would add to what you’re saying. 170 years of human history has shown us, the last 170 years from 1850 onwards, the industrial revolution, one clear trend. Ever decreasing prices in real terms after inflation of energy. And when you have that, you have a dramatic increase in productivity. When you have that, you have dramatic increase in wealth and general community prosperity. And that is what’s driven human progress. Think of how far we have come in the last 170 years. That’s an eye blink in the history of this planet an eye blink in the history of human civilization. And yet we have come so far and now labor Party and the Liberal Party and the National Party and the Greens want to destroy that and it’s just insane. In the last 20 years, we’ve reversed human progress and increased the price of electricity through stupid regulations that are not necessary.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, maybe this is where we start our blue but that does not mean Malcolm that we can’t look at newer, greener technologies in the future to include in the mix. Now I’m one of those, I’m a pragmatist, I understand we need baseload power and the only way to get that and the only way to keep the lights on is to continue on the path we’re at. But down the track, we do need to have private investments, let them take the risk in more wind field, more wind farms and solar farms and other renewable sources of energy and include them in the mix. Because I think we do need to at least acknowledge that there are some things we can do to look after our environment.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Marcus after we’re gonna have a blue, I happen to agree with you. Again on this one. You still can’t get me into a fight because I agree with you mate. But you know there’s just something really simple to remember. The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, it ran out, the stone age ended because we got better metals and materials. And each of the ages has not ended because we ran out of something. The Copper Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the Coal Age will end because we’ve come up with a better form of electricity generation and energy generation and that will probably be some form of nuclear. But fundamentally, the second point I’d make is that fundamentally with physics, you cannot get sufficient energy density out of wind and solar, absolutely impossible. That’s why they will always take more resources to make a wind turbine, more resources to make a solar panel than you will ever get out of the damn thing. And so that’s why they’re very expensive and there’s no end to that, they will always be expensive. But there will be other things developed and I agree with you, let the private sector do that, let them take the risk.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Speaking of the Stone Age, when is the caveman going to vacate the White House? The time’s up, I mean–

[Malcolm Roberts]

Now we’re getting a fight.

[Marcus Paul]

You can do it, you can recount as many states as you like but Donald needs to accept that he’s on the outer and off he should trot.

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, not at all. The presidency, the presidential elections are not declared by the media, not declared by one of the candidates, not declared by the political parties, not declared by the commentary. The presidential election is declared by each state legislature. Not even a governor in the state, but each state legislature and that’s not even close to being declared. And what we’ve seen now is a hell of a mess in America with the Democrats, all of the, I think almost all of the changes that they’ve found that need to be made in vote counting has gone away from the democrats. And that’s because there’s a lot of corruption involved and Trump is absolutely right. And he’s not gonna walk away from this. I think he will bow gracefully once the count is finished but we’ve got–

[Marcus Paul]

Hang on, that’s almost sounding a little like conceding a bit. I know we know Donald won’t concede are you conceding that he may concede eventually.

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, no, not at all.

[Marcus Paul]

But I think he might be Malcolm, I think he might be. You just said–

[Malcolm Roberts]

I honestly think Trump’s got it. I think Trump will win this but we won’t know and what I’m then saying is that, that Trump if he does lose, he will vacate.

[Marcus Paul]

He’ll have no choice. The Secret Service will wander in there, lift him up and throw him out by his big boy pants which he fails to wear every day, get out.

[Malcolm Roberts]

No no, I think Trump is actually, he’s got America at heart and he will do what’s right for the country and he’s got to pursue these illegal votes from the democrats. There’s a lot of fraud going on, he’s absolutely correct and we’ve known that for years in the Democrat Party in America. This is the first time a Republican has stood up and I think Trump anticipated this, he planned this before months.

[Marcus Paul]

Here we go. All right mate. Malcolm, it’s always great talking to you. Look, I’ve gotta go, next week let’s concentrate on the bail in situation and the legislation that certainly does need to be changed. We don’t want banks taking our money just to keep themselves afloat. We’ll talk about that next week mate, okay?

[Malcolm Roberts]

All right mate, thank you very much.

[Marcus Paul]

Have a wonderful day. There he is, Malcolm Roberts, see he’s become a bit of a sparring partner and I love it.

Transcript

Hi, one nation has voted to approve the government’s JobMaker scheme. You know, at first with JobMaker we had concerns and raised these openly in the Senate as we do. As senators, it’s our job to get the facts straight. So Pauline met with the treasurer and discussed the concerns we received from people about JobMaker.

The treasurer to his credit provided solid data and we have the courage and integrity to change our view and I want to tell you why. Firstly, it became clear that our youth have been hit particularly hard in terms of access to jobs. After the COVID-19 workplace restrictions started, the unemployment rate for 16 to 35-year-olds is 10.5%, 10.5. And for over 35, it’s 4%.

When we learned that it disturbed us and I’m sure it’ll trouble all Australians because we need our youth in jobs as soon as possible. They’re our future. And they’re also our future taxpayers for decades to come. And it costs our community and economy dearly when they disengage and languish at such a critical time in their lives.

You know travelling around Queensland, I’ve had many conversations with local business leaders and citizens who highlight that when our young people are not employed trouble follows, drugs, crime. Secondly, our concern was that jobmaker will allow a company to sack an older worker and replace them with a subsidised younger worker on JobMaker.

The treasurer showed us, this is not the case. The government has addressed this by ensuring an employer can only get JobMaker if the number of employees goes up. So there is simply no point in sacking an older employee to put on a younger worker, as this will not lead to any increase in the number of employees.

JobMaker would not be available and therefore would not motivate or drive this behaviour. Plus, there are serious penalties for such behaviour built in to the legislation. Finally, there were concerns that workers are worried that they will have their hours cut back so that a new worker can come in under JobMaker.

The protection put in place by the government is the requirement that states the number of hours must go up. It’s clear that JobMaker is only available to a business that can demonstrate extra hours being worked. There’s no point in cutting back hours of an existing employee to give to a new employee because JobMaker would not be available.

Plus there are serious penalties for such behaviour. Now we accept and we know that some employers don’t do the right thing. And that’s why there are financial penalties for employers who do the wrong thing.

And if a person feels they have been fired or had their hours cut back unfairly because of JobMaker, then that person can ring the tax department hotline anonymously to report the situation and have it investigated. Any employee is also free to report an employment matter to the fair work ombudsman for either a permanent reduction in hours or a dismissal.

Those protections have always existed for every Australian worker and one nation will ensure they always exist. One nation are for workers of all ages and we believe JobMaker will tackle the task of job recovery at its most critical point for our future economic prosperity.

Now I’m sure all people young and old care, really care and want to ensure the young are supported in this challenging period with very high unemployment for the young. All Australians care about our country’s future.

On Tuesday we supported 2 of 11 amendments to the JobMaker scheme but on receiving new information on Wednesday afternoon we changed our position. We listen and when we get new data we have the courage and integrity to review our position.

There was concern that employers would put off older workers and only employ younger workers to receive the JobMaker scheme.We now know this is not the case. The legislation only offers JobMaker for businesses who increase their payroll & head count. Sacking an elderly employee & hiring an under 35 wouldn’t qualify for a subsidy.

The Treasurer advised Pauline that unemployment in people 35 years of age or younger is 10.4%. In people older than 35 is 4%.There is a crisis for those in our community under 35. A job can make all the difference. When Covid restrictions came in unemployment increased 100%. And unemployment among younger people increased 150%.

Transcript

Hi, we just had a bit of a kerfuffle in the Senate about the job makers scheme. It’s to subsidise hiring of two groups of people. Those from 16 to 29 years of age, and those from 30 to 35 years of age. Yesterday, I spoke strongly opposed to it. And we then supported two amendments, two of 11 amendments. We rejected nine of Labor greens amendments, rejected nine, we supported two.

One was on reporting and the other one was on duplication. Here’s some new data. And when we get new data, we look at it, because we use these things, this thing, and our heart, and we assess the data honestly, and we don’t care what people think just because we changed our mind. We have the courage and the integrity to change our mind.

So here’s some of the data we got from the treasurer through Pauline today, she went in to see the treasurer, and we were told that the unemployment rate for those under 35 years of age is 10.4%. The unemployment rate for those over 35 years of age is just 4%. So that means the young have been really hammered. We’ve got to get those people back to work.

Another set of figures, the increase in unemployment, across all of Australia, due to the COVID restrictions, was 100%. The increase in unemployment due to the COVID restrictions on people under 35 years of age was 150%. So it’s really savaged the young. And we have to help these people back to work. Now, the treasurer gave us this data, and as I said, that caused us to rethink.

He also reassured us about the two amendments that we had previously supported. One was about reporting, and he assured us that the ATO will do that. And we also were reassured that the data will be reported to the COVID inquiry, the COVID committee. The second amendment was about duplication. We’ve been reassured on that too. The treasurer gave us the facts.

We have the courage and the integrity to change our position. Sadly, the Labor party and the greens are pitting old versus young. We know that that’s crap. That’s complete rubbish, because Australians care. And Australians who see those figures will do exactly what we’ve done. They’ll try and help the young and everyone. We know that all Australians care and will want this fixed.

And this programme is necessary to get the young back to work quickly. There are other programmes for other groups, and they’re at work already and have been at work in some cases for months. So that’s why we changed our position, because we’re honest and straight. No deal done, simply facts. Labor and the greens can’t understand that, because everything they do has to be grubby.

Yesterday, Joel Fitzgibbon stepped down as the Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources. This seismic decision is traced back to the 2019 election when One Nation’s Stuart Bonds won close to 22% of the vote causing Joel’s first preference vote to collapse by 14%. The blue collar workers in the Hunter sent a very clear and blunt message to the Labor party – you no longer represent us.

The Labor party have committed to a net-zero 2050 climate policy which means the end to coal and gas use and the end of tens of thousands of mining jobs across Australia. Joel has taken the blue collar workers in the Hunter for granted for the past 24 years, popping his head up before each election while doing nothing to stop the Labor party from slipping into the hands of the cultural elites and inner city Greens.

Stuart Bonds is a miner and the voice of the Hunter Valley. It’s time to elect a representative who will serve the people rather than someone who expects the people to serve him.

Transcript

[Malcolm Roberts]

Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I’m in our Canberra office on the Senate side of Parliament House. And I’m with Stuart Bonds, our One Nation candidate in the seat of Hunter last election, last year. Stuart, your campaign is still causing tremors around the place.

[Stuart Bonds]

Yeah, yes. Well, it was one of the untold stories, I think, of the last election. And it’s come home to roost with Joel Fitzgibbon. I think it’s shaken him out of bed. And I think it’s, you know, it’s woken him up. Before this, he’s been strong. As soon as the election was finished, he was, bang, he was out there, he was the biggest friend to coal. And I think he’s made too many waves and he’s been pushed out.

[Malcolm Roberts]

It seems strange that he didn’t really care about blue collar workers’ jobs and miners’ jobs in the Hunter until his job was threatened by you.

[Stuart Bonds]

Oh, absolutely. That’s one of the funny things, is that until someone comes for your job, right, you’re happy to sell everybody else out, you know what I mean?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, I don’t think you would.

[Stuart Bonds]

No, no, absolutely not. But I mean, you see this with the ABC, that they, they’re hammering the coal miners and then when they get threatened to have their funding cut, it’s the worst thing in the world. I mean, it’s terrible to have people gunning for your job.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And Joel’s now a backbencher. He’s resigned and gone back to the backbench. He was Shadow Agriculture and Resources Minister.

[Stuart Bonds]

Yep.

[Malcolm Roberts]

So if he couldn’t help the Hunter from the front bench, how the hell is he going to do it from the backbench?

[Stuart Bonds]

I have no idea. I mean, if you’re in the prime position, they’re meant to come to you for counsel, and they’re obviously going to Joel and then ignoring him, right? Because everything that he’s saying is the opposite of what the party’s saying.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yeah, and people who are supposed to be in the Labor Party, are supposed to be from the blue collar, and support the blue collar, but they’ve abandoned Joel in place of the Chardonnay sippers and the latte sippers.

[Stuart Bonds]

Yep.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And we’ve got no real connection with the blue collar worker, the producer in Australia anymore in the Labor Party.

[Stuart Bonds]

No, no, and Joel was one of, if not the last members that were sitting from the Labor Party in a rural area. So they’re really losing their voice. Rural Australia is losing their voice, the hard working coal miners, gas, the oil producers. The miners in general are losing their voice from the Labor Party.

[Malcolm Roberts]

What should he do, mate?

[Stuart Bonds]

He should step down, he should resign. I mean, if he’s going to stand there and have no voice whatsoever, he should put it to a by-election and let people have a choice. Have their voices heard.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And would you stand?

[Stuart Bonds]

Absolutely, I would stand. Because the reason I stood in the first place was Labor’s policies. It was never Fitzgibbon’s policies, it was Labor. And they have not changed their policy. They still want to see the end of mining. Albanese’s on the television today, which I reckon might have been the thing that tipped Fitzgibbon over the edge, was when the scenes of the Biden results come in in America, and he won it, first thing Biden did, 2050, zero net emissions. And Albanese’s seen a crack, and he’s straight in there.

[Malcolm Roberts]

They’ve already got that policy, 2050 net zero.

[Stuart Bonds]

Yep.

[Malcolm Roberts]

So that’s the end of the coal industry.

[Stuart Bonds]

Yeah, I mean, and nobody to this day has come out and told us what a 2050 economy looks like. To this day there is no meat behind the policy.

[Malcolm Roberts]

I can tell you. It’s going back 150 years to without electricity. That’s what it is. Because you won’t have reliable electricity. But in the meantime, we wanna make sure that if there is a by-election, and you’re saying bring it on–

[Stuart Bonds]

We should do it.

[Malcolm Roberts]

That you’re there.

[Stuart Bonds]

We should do it, right now. He should call it now-

[Malcolm Roberts]

I’ll be there. I’ll be there to support you, mate.

[Stuart Bonds]

Excellent.

[Malcolm Roberts]

All the way.

[Stuart Bonds]

Thank you, Malcolm.