Join me as I break down the famous QandA session from 2016 with Brian Cox.
Have my arguments stood the test of time? Have the warnings of certain disaster by 2024 come true?
I go into depth to explain the full story behind this exchange that captured millions of views.
I talked the Middle East, Misinformation, COVID Royal Commission, the Immigration Housing Crisis and Net Zero Madness on ADH TV.
As the middle east descends into war again my concern is making sure we don’t send Australian sons and daughters to another conflict in far away lands again.
Thanks for having me on Chris.
Chris Smith: Well, the federal government’s latest stance on Israel’s war with Hamas, Hezbollah. And now Iran has put Australia at odds with its number one ally, the United States, as well as with Israel, the United Kingdom and Canada. It seems as if labor is redrawing Australia’s military and diplomatic position in the world. And, as I mentioned earlier, does taking such a solo stance no longer guarantee reciprocal support from those countries?
If or when Australia is faced with aggression from, say, China or whoever in the Indo-Pacific? Let’s bring in Queensland One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts on that and more. Senator, welcome back to TV. Thank you Chris. Good to be back. Thanks for the invitation. Israel’s most recent attacks on Hezbollah were aimed at preventing a repeat of the October 7th massacre.
Is Peter Dutton right to say the Prime Minister should be condemned for falling out with our allies?
SENATOR ROBERTS: This is a big escalation on Israel’s part. It’s almost all at war, but it’s something that I think that Israel has a right to defend and defend itself. The history of this, this area, this region of the world is rife with lies, complexities, contradictions. And, you know, the first casualty in war is the truth. So we’ll never know.
But Israel has a right to defend itself, but we must keep Australia out of it. We must keep Australia out of it. We followed the Americans into just about everything, without question. They’re an important ally of ours. But we must hold them accountable as well.
Chris Smith: Do you sense that Anthony Albanese is trying to appease voters in those Muslim concentrated seats in south western Sydney?
SENATOR ROBERTS: Yes, without a doubt. Anthony Albanese has shown a distinct, lack of respect for Australia’s position in in his deliberations. What he wants to do is promote the Labor Party that the the national interest is not in Anthony Albanese’s calculations.
Chris Smith:There are some good signs among crossbenchers, Malcolm, that Labor’s information, misinformation and disinformation bill will struggle. That’s a sign of good news.
SENATOR ROBERTS: It’s a very good sign of good news. We put, a motion out, matter of urgency thus Monday of the sitting in the Senate. And there were quite a few signals coming across to us that people wouldn’t support it. So that’s why we did that. That matter of urgency had forced a vote on it. But just remember, it’s not labor’s, misinformation.
Disinformation bill. The Morrison Liberal National’s with Morrison Littleproud in charge introduced it into the into the parliament. Labor brought it back and and he’s now putting it into the voting regime process. And now the liberals are saying they will come up with their own before the next election. The liberals just don’t get it. No one wants this bloody censorship bill.
And One Nation makes a promise they will never introduce such a bill. The best, best defense of truth is to let debate happen. And then we’ve got the largest perpetrators of misinformation and disinformation is the government. This Albanese government takes the cake. It’s all about control and censorship and they haven’t got the guts to do it themselves.
They’re trying to intimidate the, search engines and platforms into doing it for them and putting them in a position where, as someone said recently, they’ll be fined if they if they don’t exercise enough control, enough censorship, but they will not be fined if they if they exercise excessive censorship. This is just about getting government control over the over the debate in this country and suppressing free speech.
That’s all it is. One nation will never, ever introduce such a bill.
Chris Smith: I couldn’t agree more. As a matter of fact, if an opposition or a government wants to do anything about what we say freely, I think they should win back the restriction that exist right now, because the Esafety czar is out of control. I agree with you. And this this compounds the the problem.
SENATOR ROBERTS: As I said, the best the best defense of truth is to let open free debate continue. That’s the best way of finding out the truth. And you can never take responsibility for someone’s opinions. That’s their responsibility. They formed it. This will just make more victims in society and suppress free speech. It’s just a road to tyranny. That’s all it is.
Chris Smith: Okay. Another subject. Labor has delayed the public release of its Covid 19 review. What is the government afraid of to show, do you think?
SENATOR ROBERTS: Review? You’d hardly call it a review. Chris, I think you’re being very, very kind. Look, the panelists were biased. They were lockdown supporters. They’re not allowed to look at the state responses. They’ve got no investigating powers. Investigative powers. They’ve got no compare to compel. Compel evidence, compel documents, compel witnesses. This is just a sham. It is to get at Morrison and Morrison should be got out.
He deserves to be really hammered on this. But he’s no more guilty then than, he’s just as guilty rather as the state premiers who will mostly labor. This is a protection racket for the labor premiers and the labor bureaucrats. We need a royal commission now
Chris Smith: Now you say, I would have thought the Royal Commission needs to look at two things that that so-called review is not even touching the states, as you mentioned, and their role when it came to lockdowns and all kinds of freebies that were handed out to the public. But also on top of that, the deals that were done with big Pharma over those, those damn vaccines that have proved to be a con themselves.
SENATOR ROBERTS: I agree with you entirely. There are, in fact, there are many, many areas that need to be looked at. Chris, we, I moved a motion to get one of the committees, two in the Senate, to investigate and develop, a draft terms of reference for a possible royal commission. And that that was passed through the Senate, that the committee did it.
And I want to commend former barrister Julian Gillespie for he pulled an enormous team together and developed a phenomenal submission, 180 pages. I think it was 46,000 signatures. It was the people’s submission. And they covered it. Was it it turned it into a de facto inquiry into Covid. And it covers everything. And the royal and the, the chair, Paul Scott, I must say, the committee did a phenomenal job, along with the Secretariat, of pulling that into something that’s very, very workable.
A draft terms of reference ready to go. And they’re completely comprehensive, cover every topic imaginable.
Chris Smith: Let’s get on to energy. Now, a report from the US Energy Department is saying that with nuclear electricity, prices will drop 37%. Chris Bowen says renewables will always be cheaper. This is basically a blatant lie, isn’t it, Malcolm?
SENATOR ROBERTS: Well, you stole the word right out of my mouth. It is a lie. It is fraud. Fraud is the presentation of something as it is not for personal gain. Chris Bowen has been pushing this bandwagon the lies fraudulently to get political capital. He is telling lie after lie. Solar and wind are the most expensive forms of energy that’s repeated everywhere. You know, AEMO doesn’t even cost the lowest price system.
What they did with the relying on GenCost in the first place was false assumptions underpinning their calculations for solar and wind to make them look favorable and negative assumptions, and under coal to make it look unaffordable. That is completely false. And now we’ve got a circular argument that’s baked in, that’s beaten back to us all the time.
Now, it doesn’t cost the lowest price systems. It’s forced to exclude the cost of calculating coal or nuclear disaster. Rubbish stuff that comes out of the south end of North Band bull.
Chris Smith:Yeah, well, the CSIRO should be condemned completely for their reliance on that gen cost report. Malcolm.
SENATOR ROBERTS: That is fraud as well Chris. That was a deliberate misrepresentation of the energy structure. It was politically driven to achieve a political objective the same as their climate. The CSIRO has admitted to me the politician’s quoting them as saying that there’s a danger in carbon dioxide from human activity. The CSIRO has denied ever saying that and they said they would never say it. They admitted to me that the temperatures today and not a not unusual, not, unprecedented.
So the whole thing is based on the stuff that comes out of the south end of North Bound book. The CSIRO is guilty of misrepresenting climate science, misrepresenting nature and misrepresenting climate presenting energy. It’s just a fraud to extract money, to make billionaires richer, and to make, foreign multinationals richer.
Chris Smith: Spot on.
SENATOR ROBERTS: We pay for it
Chris Smith: You’re not wrong. I think it’s fair to say to Malcolm that Australia’s immigration program is now officially out of control, and the worst it has ever been.
SENATOR ROBERTS: Without a doubt. Completely agree with you. We have more than 2.4 million residents, excluding tourist million residents who are not citizens. Excluding tourists. Rent is up 52% in five years. Now, just remember that, the Albanese promised a after the last financial year where we got 518,000 net immigrants, by far the largest ever, almost double the previous record.
Albanese comments. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll cut it. Immigration is coming in this year is higher than the record from last year. Higher. These people are just telling lies after lies. Lies. And the thing is they’re hiding over a per person per capita recession. That’s what they don’t want to be.
The government that was in place when the recession occurred. They would rather see people sleeping under bridges, in tents, in cars. I mean, working families. Kids are going home at night to their kids and sleeping in cars. Where do they shower? Where do they toilet? I mean, we got the richest state in the world, potentially in Queensland, and we got people living under bridges, families, working families.
And because the government, it just wants to look good by by lifting up GDP to make sure we don’t have a recession, we would be in a recession now without large scale immigration fudging the numbers.
Chris Smith Fudging the numbers. That’s exactly what large scale immigration does. It’s terrific to have you on the program. Senator Malcolm Roberts, thank you for your time.
SENATOR ROBERTS: You’re welcome Chris, any time. All right. Queensland Senator Malcolm Roberts,
For years, net-zero campaigners have refused to admit that wind and solar cannot keep the lights on during the evening and morning peaks. Climate realists using the phrase “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow” have been mocked for years.
That ridicule has now gone down the memory hole and net-zero advocates are now acknowledging the truth of that statement by introducing a policy called “firming.” This involves the process of storing electricity generated during the day for use during peak demand in the evening and morning—exactly what I’ve been saying for 15 years.
The issue here is the cost: batteries and pumped hydro costs a fortune and batteries only last 10 to 15 years before needing replacement. There’s also an energy loss to consider—batteries lose about 10% of the energy put into them and another 10% on the way out, while pumped hydro uses more electricity to pump water uphill than it generates on the way down.
I asked the Minister about the cost of “firming,” and her answer was quite embarrassing — she didn’t know. It’s likely to exceed $100 billion.
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister. Minister, during evening and morning peak hours, electricity generation from industrial solar and wind averages just 10 per cent of rated capacity, because solar doesn’t work in the dark, and wind goes quiet at night. Big batteries can transfer electricity from daytime to the evening peak. Minister, how much battery capacity is your government planning to build to maintain electricity supply between sunset and sunrise?
Senator McAllister: I thank Senator Roberts for the question. The senator is right to point to the fact that Australia’s electricity system is changing. We have, as I think most senators understand, a fleet of ageing coal-fired power stations that require replacement. I can tell you: they are not getting any more reliable. In fact, over the last year, I don’t think there’s been a day when we haven’t had a circumstance where at least one of the coal-fired power generators in the national electricity market has been offline for one kind of maintenance or another. Of course, this arises because we went through nearly a decade when the coalition, while in government, did not land an energy policy. They had 22 policies; none of them landed. Our task as government—
The PRESIDENT: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts?
Senator ROBERTS: I have a point of order. Standing order 70 (3) (c) says, ‘Answers shall be directly relevant to each question.’ I asked about how much battery capacity your government is planning to build to maintain electricity supply between sunset and sunrise.
The PRESIDENT: I will draw the minister to your question.
Senator McAllister: Of course, our task is actually to restore some measure of order to the energy system so that the investors who build the generation capacity that is necessary to power homes and businesses have the confidence to invest. And that is what the Capacity Investment Scheme has been designed to do. We have just been through a round of the Capacity Investment Scheme where we received very significant commitment to underwriting very significant battery capacity. We do understand the significance of this technology. What the experts tell us is the most cost-effective way to establish a national energy market that can meet the energy requirements of Australian homes and businesses is a combination of wind, of solar, of batteries and of gas, and that is the policy setting that we— (Time expired)
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, you couldn’t tell me the battery capacity your government is planning to build, so you may not be able to answer this question. But let’s just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, please. What is the capital cost of that battery backup, and how much of that bill will taxpayers pay? Simple.
The PRESIDENT: I will just wait for silence, particularly on my left. This is Senator Roberts’s question.
Senator McAllister: As I have indicated previously to questions asked by Senator Roberts in this chamber, the cost of the transition is regularly estimated out to 2050 by AEMO, and it is included in the Integrated System Plan, which is regularly published and updated. Different states have different arrangements in terms of the ownership and investment in generation, and so the investment that will take place will look different depending on the ownership arrangements that are in place across the national electricity market. However, we understand that there is a measure of support required from the Commonwealth government, and it is why we have put in place the Capacity Investment Scheme which aims to provide support for those who are seeking to invest in new capacity, whether it is in batteries or other forms of generation in the national electricity market.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: So the minister cannot tell us the battery capacity required, nor the capital cost of that battery backup. So, Minister, AEMO is working off a figure of 60 gigawatt hours of storage at around $1 billion an hour, which is $60 billion. How much will electricity prices and supermarket prices rise as a result of having to spend that staggering amount of money?
Senator McAllister: Well, the one thing I can say is that we will take advice from the experts about the optimal investment that’s necessary to build out the national electricity market. It’s a different approach to the one taken by those opposite, because right now we have a coalition government whose plan is to invest taxpayers’ money in the most expensive form—
The PRESIDENT: Minister, please resume your seat.
Senator McKenzie: You can’t tell us how expensive yours will be!
The PRESIDENT: I’m waiting, Senator McKenzie! Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: A point of order on relevance. I didn’t ask about the coalition government, as you said. I asked about the Labor government now.
The PRESIDENT: I will draw the minister to your question, Senator Roberts. And while I have the attention of the chamber, I will ask senators, particularly those on my left, to listen in respectful silence. Minister McAllister.
Senator Thorpe: You lefties need to listen!
The PRESIDENT: Senator Thorpe, that includes you! Order! Minister, please continue.
Senator McAllister: Thanks very much, President. The senator asked about our plans. The Capacity Investment Scheme will deliver 32 gigawatts of renewable and clean dispatchable capacity to fill emerging
reliability gaps. The truth is that will put downward pressure on prices, because one of the consequences of the failed policies of those opposite is that we do have capacity capabilities that need to be filled because energy capacity is leaving the market and it has not been replaced. We are taking steps necessary to replace it. (Time expired)
I move:
That the Senate take note of the answer from the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister, to a question without notice I asked today relating to energy.
My question was quite simple: how much is the government’s net zero policy going to cost just for firming? Firming is the provision of what used to be called stable, synchronised baseload power to keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. Firming wasn’t needed when we had coal power because coal plants provide stable, synchronised baseload power day and night. Solar and wind don’t.
AEMO estimates Australia will need 65 gigawatt hours of firming to guarantee grid stability. Depending on the time of year, that storage will need to be refilled each day to get the grid through the next night, including most of the evening and morning peak hours. Australia’s energy consumption in 2023-24 shows that, in summer, for the morning peak hours we needed 36 gigawatt hours of power and for the evening peak hours 28 gigawatt hours. So AEMO’s figure of 65 gigawatt hours of firming is about right. The $64 billion expense—billion dollar expense—will be added to every Australian’s power bill, or it will go onto your taxes. Either way, under the Albanese government you will pay.
The $64 billion cost is just for one night. These batteries need to be refilled the next day with power from the grid. That means that every day we need a huge amount of solar and wind just to charge the batteries. One wet day preventing large-scale generation from solar and wind means the batteries will not be recharged, resulting in blackouts and energy management that I’ll discuss tomorrow. It’s clear that 65 gigawatts of capacity at $64 billion is not enough to avoid blackouts. We’ll probably need twice that, as well as having to build extra solar and wind just to charge the batteries.
Everyday Australians are up for hundreds of billions of dollars just for firming. That’s in addition to the electricity needed on any day. This is an insane impost on every Australian struggling with paying for their groceries and insurance and with the cost of living under Labor. End the net zero mandates now.
Question agreed to.
I recently succeeded in a Senate motion to bring in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to explain how their inflation statistics (CPI) is calculated. Their answers show that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is not a measure of how much it costs everyday Australian to live. Instead, it serves more as an indicator of where prices in the economy are heading, a useful tool for the Reserve Bank and Treasury.
The ABS also provides a set of other indicators, known as Cost of Living Indexes, which give a clearer indication of how price increases affect different groups. The largest of these is aimed at wage and salary earners, which encompasses 16 million Australians. This indicator shows that inflation for this group is running at 6.2%, rather than the official inflation rate of 3.8%.
The cost of living for most Australians is much higher under Labor than what Prime Minister Albanese and the Treasury acknowledge. If it feels like you’re working harder and going backwards, it’s because you are.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing here. CPI has been discussed informally as something that is very important to a lot of people around Australia. A lot of things are based on it. So let me just check my understanding. The Australian Bureau of Statistics produces a set of indices called living cost indexes. These are designed to show the inflation facing specific demographics within the Australian population. As I understand it, your latest indexes, released on 7 August, showed the following. Pensioners and beneficiaries have a living cost index of 4.1 per cent. Employees have a living cost index of 6.2 per cent. Age pensioners have a living cost index of 2.7 per cent. Other welfare is at 4.6 per cent, Self-funded retirees are at 2.8 per cent. I don’t know if they are getting self-funded in part or wholly or whatever. Perhaps we can explore that. And the consumer price index is 2.8 per cent. Are they all correct?
Mr Goldsworthy: They are all correct, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: My concern is this, Mr Goldsworthy. Is your CPI representative of the inflation that adult working employee Australians are experiencing? The ABS dataset 6336 working arrangements as at August 2023 shows there are 14 million people working for a wage or salary in Australia, including owner-managers of their own business entity. Does that mean small businesses are included in that figure of 14 million and, if so, how many?
Mr Goldsworthy: Sorry, I might need you to repeat the question.
Senator ROBERTS: The ABS dataset 6336 working arrangements as at August 2023 shows there are 14 million people working for a wage or salary in Australia. That includes owner-managers of their own business entity. Does that mean small businesses are included in that figure of 14 million?
Mr Goldsworthy: I’m not sure off the top of my head. We don’t have those figures to hand.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you know how many small businesses there are?
Mr Goldsworthy: No. We came prepared to talk about questions in relation to the consumer price index.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, that’s where I’m heading. I’d like to know how many people depend upon the CPI figure.
Mr Goldsworthy: We can certainly take that on notice for you.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Does the employees figure include the one million contractors as listed in your characteristics of employment page?
Mr Merrington: The employee households represent wage earners.
Senator ROBERTS: Purely wage owners, no small businesses or self-employed owner-managers?
Mrs Marquardt: It’s wherever the main income of households is. If you are a household and you maybe have a wage earner and somebody who receives a pension, if the main income for the household is wages then they would be counted in the living cost indexes for employees.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I will just go through the living cost indexes again. The jargon gets me, so just bear with me, please. There’s pensioner and beneficiary. So there’s no small business in that.
Mrs Marquardt: That is a household whose main source of income is government pensions.
Senator ROBERTS: Then there are employees who are adult working employees. Is that including owner-managers of their own businesses?
Mrs Marquardt: No, I think it would be employees, not business owners.
Senator ROBERTS: In the figures I’ve got—one of my staff has done the research—there are 14 million people working for a wage or salary in Australia, including owner-managers of their own business entities.
Mrs Marquardt: We can come back to you on it, but I believe it’s just whether or not they are earning a wage or a salary as an employee, not—
Senator ROBERTS: As an employee of somebody else?
Mrs Marquardt: As an employee of somebody else, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. So we may be wrong there. Then the next group is age pensioners.
Mrs Marquardt: They receive an age pension from the government. That’s the main source of income for that type of household.
Senator ROBERTS: Then there’s other welfare and self-funded retirees. As I said, I don’t know if that’s partial income or it is their main source—
Mrs Marquardt: It is their main source of income if they are a self-funded retiree—that is, they are not on the age pension.
Senator ROBERTS: So where would small businesses, owner-managers and contractors fit?
Mrs Marquardt: They don’t really fit into the consumer price index or the living cost indexes because it is about households. It’s not about businesses; it is about expenditure by households.
Senator ROBERTS: What about a small business owner that has a house? How do you capture them?
Mrs Marquardt: I’m not sure. I’d have to check.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m trying to get a feel for how many Australian people are in an employee category and then where the other working people, including small businesses, owner managers and contractors, fit. I’m trying to get a feel for how many Australians are affected by these figures, the CPI—
Mrs Marquardt: Or covered by them.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Mrs Marquardt: From memory, off the top of my head, I think it’s about 24 per cent. Let me take that on notice. I’m not 100 per cent certain.
Mr Goldsworthy: We can come back to you. It’d certainly be the vast majority. My understanding of the origin of these indices is we have sought to capture the major household types dependent on their main source of income, as Mrs Marquardt went through and, indeed, you went through in asking your question. The main source of income is the pension for many people. For others it might be earning a wage or salary. Others might be retired but don’t use the pension and are self-funded. Others rely on government welfare payments. They are the main categories of income for household types. We have built the selected living cost indices around those. But we are certainly happy to take on notice if we can provide you with a detailed breakdown of the composition of Australian households.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, if you could, please. I’d like to know about owner-managers, because they are employees but they are not in any of the other groups, and contractors and small businesses who pay themselves. I’d like to know how many people are in that employees group. How many Australians are affected? When they hear that their living cost index is 6.2 per cent, how many people does that apply to?
Mr Goldsworthy: Certainly.
Senator ROBERTS: You don’t know that offhand? I’m not necessarily expecting you to. I know you’ve got a lot—
Mr Goldsworthy: No.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. So it doesn’t include contractors, which are listed in your characteristics of employment page, but purely employees?
Mrs Marquardt: I need to check because I haven’t looked into that for a while. I need to check where those people are classified or whether they are just not covered by any of those indexes.
Senator ROBERTS: As I said, the dataset 6336 on working arrangements shows there are 14 million people working for a wage or salary in Australia. That, I presume, is the largest group within your living cost indexes. Is that correct?
Mrs Marquardt: That would make sense.
Mr Goldsworthy: Yes, I would assume so.
Senator ROBERTS: What’s the next largest group of the ones I called out—pensioners and beneficiaries, employees, age pensioners, other welfare and self-funded retirees?
Mrs Marquardt: Again, I’d have to check because that information actually comes from the Household Expenditure Survey and the Survey of Income and Housing. In those surveys we go out and ask people what they earn from a whole bunch of different income sources. That might be superannuation or it might be wages or it might be all the different sorts of income you can have. Then, from there, we aggregate all those things together to see what the main source of income is for that household. So I’ll have to go back and have a look at those particular surveys to figure out what the actual numbers that fit into each of those categories are.
Senator ROBERTS: We’ve agreed that the employees category of the living cost index contains the largest number of Australians—that’s 14 million. What would be the second largest, roughly? Would it be pensioners and beneficiaries, age pensioners, other welfare, self-funded retirees or small businesses? There are millions of small businesses?
Mr Goldsworthy: Rather than taking a stab at that, I think it’s probably better, if you’re comfortable, for us to give you the figures on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: I value accuracy, so I’m happy with that. This is not a trap or a gotcha. So it would be around—I’m just pulling a number out of the air—14 million people plus other pretty large groups. So three-quarters or two-thirds of the Australian adult population is looking at the CPI, which is 3.8 per cent, and thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ because their inflation rate is actually 6.2 per cent.
Mr Goldsworthy: It might be useful, I think, if we take a step back and just briefly talk through the differences between the CPI and the selected living cost indices. I’ll get my colleagues to expand on the detail, but I think one point to keep in mind is that no single index will serve every purpose. Indeed, that is why we produce many different indexes of inflation. What the CPI does is measure the change in the prices of goods and services purchased by households. A lot of people use that as a proxy for change to the cost of living, but the concepts are actually a little bit different. That’s precisely why we produce these separate selected living cost indices. I think we’ve been doing that since the late 1990s.
There are two principal differences at a higher level between the selected living cost indices and the CPI. One is the weights we use to aggregate the prices of individual goods and services into an index. For the CPI, we use weights based on household spending patterns in the eight capital cities. Whereas, for the living costs indices, we use weights that reflect the spending patterns of the particular household type. We went through those different household types. The other big difference—and it gets a little bit technical—is about using an acquisitions approach for the CPI versus an outlays approach for the cost-of-living indices, but the key point of difference is the treatment of housing. I think we might have discussed this at estimates previously.
Senator ROBERTS: And I’ll come onto that again.
Mr Goldsworthy: For the CPI, we separate the cost of housing. We think about there being two components. One is land, which is an asset or an investment which isn’t included in the CPI. The other is the cost of building new structures, so a new house. That’s what we capture in the CPI. We also, of course, capture the rents for those that are renting properties. The living cost indices, as I said, follow the outlays approach. For that we include the outlay a household needs in order to acquire the house, and for many households that involves a mortgage. So we include the mortgage interest costs in compiling the—
Senator ROBERTS: But not the cost of the house, just the mortgage interest costs?
Mr Goldsworthy: That’s right, just the mortgage interest costs. I don’t know whether you want to correct the record or expand on any of that detail.
Mrs Marquardt: No, I think that’s fine. One concept is that you’ve bought it at the time. You bought the house in the first period that you’re trying to measure and comparing to the next period, and the assumption is that you’ve bought the whole house then, but obviously most people don’t pay for the house upfront. That’s the difference in the living cost indexes, because the living cost indexes are how much you are paying to continue to have that asset. People who’ve bought it using a mortgage have to pay interest charges on that mortgage. They are the big differences, as Brenton said.
Senator ROBERTS: Am I right in thinking that it’s misleading for so many people? I’m guessing two-thirds, three-quarters, 80 per cent of the Australian population is actually facing a 6.2 per cent cost increase, whereas the CPI tells them it’s 3.8. When they go to the supermarket they think, ‘This is not right,’ and when they think about their home payments they think, ‘This is not right.’
Mr Goldsworthy: I certainly wouldn’t say it’s misleading. They measure different things. So, when it comes to supermarket prices, for example, they’re measured the same because CPI and living cost indexes—
Senator ROBERTS: No, I accept that. But most people, overwhelmingly, would say that CPI tells them how much it’s going up by, but they’re saying it’s going up by way more than 3.8 per cent. Without an explanation of the CPI versus employee living cost index, most people are saying that this is not right.
Mr Goldsworthy: One way I think about it is that, when mortgage interest rates are stable, CPI and living cost indices broadly move in line with each other. But, because of the different treatment of housing, when mortgage interest rates are either going up or going down, there will be a divergence between the two indices.
Senator ROBERTS: Without explaining it to people so that they understand what’s going on, how can we justify using a measure that does not reflect the actual inflation rate for a significant proportion of the population?
Mr Goldsworthy: Like I said, it really comes down to the purpose behind the particular index. One way of thinking about the CPI is that it’s a macroeconomic measure to inform government and the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Senator ROBERTS: These are economists and people making policy decisions in the industry.
Mr Goldsworthy: That’s right. And what we try and pick up there is the pure price change. Previously, we’ve talked about how we capture things like shrinkflation and other quality adjustments.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll come back to that one again, too.
Mr Goldsworthy: So, it’s very important that we capture the pure price change, which is what the CPI tries to do. We’ve gone through the different treatment in housing as well. Which indices you should use really comes down to what question you’re trying to answer.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m guessing most Australians would think, ‘I want to know how much it’s affecting me,’ so they’d go to the CPI, but the actual living cost index is much higher.
Can we come to something else that’s a big cost burden on people and also joy: children? Looking through your methodology, we didn’t see a lot there about children. The Australian Institute of Family Studies put out a measure in 2018 of how much it costs to raise a child, finding that it cost $340 a week to raise a six-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. Was that Australian Bureau of Statistics data, and is there any inflation time series around the cost of raising children?
Mr Goldsworthy: I’m not personally familiar with that data.
Senator ROBERTS: So, the ABS doesn’t—
Mrs Marquardt: I think you gave us the source, and it wasn’t the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Senator ROBERTS: No, it was the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Did they rely upon you?
Mrs Marquardt: They may do. Again, I’m not sure without looking at their thing. I go back to the price indexes. This doesn’t have a level of spending in it; it’s obviously about the change in prices. So, to the extent that people are buying things for their children like toys, child care or anything like that, all of that is covered by the CPI and the living cost indexes.
Senator ROBERTS: But you can’t tell how much inflation is around the cost of raising a child? You can’t pull that out?
Mrs Marquardt: No. We don’t put out a separate index that’s just for things that are bought for children.
Senator ROBERTS: How does your data help a family quantify how much the inflation rate is impacting on their household?
Mrs Marquardt: If you really wanted to, you could pick out different parts of the index and combine them together. So, if you wanted to combine food, childcare expenses and toys or whatever else it is that’s related to having a child, then you could do that. But, really, the bottom line is that the CPI is not actually about individual types of households or individual people; it represents the whole household sector.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m just wondering how parents judge their spending forward plans, wage and salary demands, and decisions around having children on that measure of how much kids cost. How do parents understand their inflation rate from your data? I would think it would be a very good KPI for politicians to assess how much it costs to raise a child, but that’s not possible.
Mrs Marquardt: There are two different things. There’s how much it costs to raise a child, which is the dollar amount of things—that’s kind of a level; it’s that you pay $20 for a toy—versus the price index, which is saying how much the price for that toy has changed. So there are two different things.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand.
Mrs Marquardt: One of the things that you can do is look at your household budget. If your household is spending X per cent of its budget on food, then you could use our indexes to show how much the prices that your particular household is paying are changing.
Mr Goldsworthy: To expand on that, we have 11 groups and 87 expenditure classes in the CPI, so you can certainly look up the ABS website and look through the price change for each of those 87 expenditure classes. I think I’m right in saying that we also publish the weights for each of those classes, so you can see the weight that is used in the CPI, and people can make their own assessment as to whether how much they spend is higher or lower.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on to housing. The ABS dataset entitled ‘Residential property price indexes’ has been discontinued. I can see an index called ‘Total value of dwellings’, with the emphasis on ‘value’. The summary page doesn’t provide any usable information to anyone trying to find out how much the average price has gone up. We can get that data if I download the spreadsheet 6432 and work it out for ourselves, yet that’s not reported. Is there a simple visual representation of house price inflation in each state to which the people can refer?
Mrs Marquardt: We discontinued that because there are a number of other sources that give that very similar type of information. CoreLogic is one; Domain is another.
Senator ROBERTS: They’re private companies, aren’t they?
Mrs Marquardt: That’s right, but they use the same methodology as we used to use when we did the residential property price indexes. So, effectively, they were putting out the same information a bit earlier, so we were getting all of our information from them and then republishing it.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you republish it now?
Mrs Marquardt: No. We’ve discontinued the residential property price indexes publication.
Senator ROBERTS: Why did you stop? Could they do it more quickly?
Mrs Marquardt: That’s right.
Senator ROBERTS: What are the hurdles there? I would have thought that no-one would be able to do it more quickly or better than the ABS.
Mrs Marquardt: They get information from all of the sales that are made either through the valuer generals or other data sources like realestate.com.au. They basically were able to put it together much faster than us. In fact, the source of the information in the residential property price indexes and the total value of dwelling stocks is CoreLogic.
Mr Goldsworthy: It’s also the case that we need to make prioritisation decisions, and we make a judgement as to where we can add the most value. Given the private sector sources available for residential prices, we made the judgement that we could add more value by reallocating resources.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ve got no problem with the government saying, ‘Leave it to the private sector,’ if that’s the way they see it. If the mean price of a home in Queensland in 2020 was $524,000 and that same figure in 2024 is $815,000, per your dataset 6432, column AE, line 42, has that housing price inflation been captured in the CPI? I’m guessing not.
Mr Goldsworthy: A large component of that price inflation would reflect the increase in land prices, and, as I said before, land is treated as an asset or investment, so that component isn’t captured in the CPI.
Senator ROBERTS: Can we break out land from housing construction or housing prices? You said that it’s not captured.
Mrs Marquardt: We price project homes—
Mr Goldsworthy: We price the cost of building a new home, and the change in the price of building a new home reflects changes in the cost of building either through materials or through labour.
Senator ROBERTS: I remember running an economic summit in my office. We hired a room in the Queensland parliament building in 2017. Dr Alan Moran gave us some figures. He said that the cost of building a house in Houston, Texas, at that time was the same roughly as the cost of building a house in Sydney. The huge differential in house prices was due to land. Is there some way that people can capture that? The mean price of a home in Queensland in 2020 was $524,000, and that same figure now in 2024 is $815,000. That’s a hell of an increase.
Mrs Marquardt: There’s another part that goes to this. The CPI is about the changes in prices of the household sector—for example, what the household sector is purchasing from the business sector or the government sector—so the sale of existing houses between one household and the next effectively nets out. There’s no weight. They’re not in the CPI because they’re being sold, for example, from me to Brenton.
Senator ROBERTS: So what you’re saying is that someone gets more money for selling it and someone has to pay more money for buying it?
Mr Goldsworthy: That’s right.
Mrs Marquardt: That’s right. But they’re both household—
Senator ROBERTS: But the one who’s now buying a property for the first time, compared to 2020, is now facing a 55 per cent increase compared to their peers in 2020.
Mrs Marquardt: But there’s somebody else in the household sector who sold it to them, so it nets out.
Senator ROBERTS: I get that.
Mrs Marquardt: What remains are brand-new houses, which are what we price. We price brand-new project homes and exclude land, as Brenton said, because that’s an asset. Existing houses are excluded because the sale is between one household and another household, and new households are represented by pricing project homes but not the land.
Senator ROBERTS: What about someone who bought a house in 2020 for $525,000 and sold it in 2024 for $815,000? So someone’s paid the extra money, and they’ve received the extra money for selling it, but then they have to go and buy another place. It’s going to be captured anyway. It needs to be captured anyway.
Mrs Marquardt: It just keeps netting out because it’s between households. You need to think about the CPI as representing price change for all households.
Senator ROBERTS: So it’s not really representative of the individual.
Mrs Marquardt: That’s right.
Senator ROBERTS: The CPI is not representative for an individual.
Mrs Marquardt: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: I think that would be a surprise to many Australians. It’s not a criticism. If that’s the way your formula works, that’s fine. But a lot of people are relying on your CPI figure.
Mrs Marquardt: It’s not because, for example, it has rents and new homes by owner-occupiers. Conceptually, you can’t actually rent and buy a house for yourself. So, conceptually, the CPI does not represent any individuals because it represents what all households in Australia are spending.
Senator ROBERTS: But it’s in the aggregate of all Australian households.
Mrs Marquardt: It’s in the aggregate. That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: So some people are doing really well, or not suffering, and other people are suffering and sleeping under bridges in Queensland. That’s not your fault. I’m not trying to imply that. But you do capture mortgage cost changes. Let’s consider that. If the average mortgage in the employee living cost index in 2020 was $500,000 and in 2024 is $800,000, do you show that as an increase in interest charges?
Mrs Marquardt: Yes, to the extent that mortgages have gone up, so that would mean that you need to pay more interest. There are two things that can make your interest payments higher: one of them is the interest rate and the other one is the size of your mortgage. To the extent that people’s mortgages have gone up or the interest rates have gone up, both those things show up in the changes in the mortgage interest charge costs.
Senator ROBERTS: So both the interest rate and the higher mortgage?
Mrs Marquardt: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, thank you. Moving on to land tax. Victoria has increased their land tax by creating a $975 surcharge—wow—and a 0.1 per cent increase in the rate. Does that increase factor into the CPI or LCI?
Mr Merrington: Yes, we include property rates and charges in the CPI and living cost indexes.
Senator ROBERTS: So not just rates but all government charges stay with the local council?
Mr Merrington: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, let’s move on. In the June Senate estimates I asked about the change to the weighting for recreation and culture. Mr Gruen took that question on notice and I have not received an answer, so I’ll ask again. I’ll read the question as I stated it back in June. In the last change of weighting, the weighting for the category of recreation and culture increased by 16 per cent. That category happened to be one of the leading disinflationary categories dragging down the CPI figure. Is the ABS telling Australians that, in the middle of the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades, they’re spending 16 per cent more on recreation and culture than a year ago?
Mrs Marquardt: First of all, I’d say: apologies for not answering that question. I’m not quite sure how we missed it, but the main driver of that increase in the weight for recreation was people’s travel overseas. During the COVID pandemic, obviously not very many people were travelling overseas, so its weight came right down. But, if you look at the overseas arrivals and departures data that we publish, it shows that levels of overseas travel have returned to almost the same level as they were before COVID. Consequently, the weight for travel has gone back up to being similar to what it was before COVID.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s gone up off a low base because of COVID?
Mrs Marquardt: Yes, that’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: So in that sense it is misrepresenting what’s going on. I’m not questioning your methodology, but, just for people to understand, it would be better to compare it with something just before COVID. It’s difficult what you’re doing, I take it.
Mr Goldsworthy: I don’t know whether you’ve got a copy of the submission we provided to this hearing, but we’ve—
Senator ROBERTS: No, I haven’t. My apologies.
Mr Goldsworthy: When you get a chance to have a look at it, we’ve got a table that shows the weights.
Senator ROBERTS: One of my staff is up the back; we didn’t get it.
Mr Goldsworthy: It’s on page 5.
CHAIR: While you’re comparing that, can I take the opportunity to share the call?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes. I’d like to come back on shrinkflation.
*** *** ***
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll come back to that in a minute, but I’d like to ask you some questions about shrinkflation. Food is an important element of how the public perceives the cost of living. Can you tell me what percentage of the CPI basket is occupied by food, and how has that weighting changed over the last five years?
Mr Merrington: Our food and non-alcoholic beverages category represents around 17 per cent of the CPI.
Senator ROBERTS: Seventeen?
Mr Merrington: Seventeen. That includes restaurants and take-away food as well.
Senator ROBERTS: I said all food, so that’s good, thank you. Food has been subject to what is commonly called shrinkflation. This is where the pack size reduces but the price remains the same. If, for example, a product in your basket reduces in size from 500 grams to 400 grams but the price remains the same, is that 20 per cent inflation recorded as 20 per cent inflation in your index? It’s actually 25.
Mr Merrington: Yes, that’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s recorded?
Mr Merrington: As a price increase, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Clothing, I understand, is also tracked like for like—for example, a 100 per cent cotton dress, or by utility, such as an adult female dress. I’m curious how do you track clothing over time.
Mr Merrington: We do make attempts to price the same item each period. When the quality of that item changes, we make an attempt to adjust for that quality change, whether it’s an improvement or a decrease in quality. It is very challenging and something we put a lot of effort into. But, as my colleagues have said, we’re trying to capture the pure price change, which removes any change in quality.
Senator ROBERTS: If someone is buying a cotton dress regularly and the price of cotton dresses or dresses generally increase, they could change to polyester. Would that be captured?
Mr Merrington: We would look at it on a case-by-case basis, and we would make an attempt to adjust. You’ve got to try and quantify a quality change. It’s not always possible but we do make an attempt to adjust for quality changes.
Senator ROBERTS: So it would be hard to say, ‘We’ve noticed that,’ that the price of clothing is increasing—as are groceries and housing—and people are buying polyester instead of cotton. It would be hard to know that, wouldn’t it?
Mr Merrington: It would be, yes. We wouldn’t have that level of information on the type of spending at that level of detail.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ve always just accepted the CPI. It’s a per cent. That’s good. It represents things. It represents the cost increase. But it all depends upon your product—you’ve got a difficult job, so I’m not criticising you for this. Is the ABS thinking about the fact that your CPI is different things to different people? If someone is on a living cost index—for employees it’s 6.2 per cent, from memory—they’re finding a lot more inflation than someone who’s just looking at the CPI.
Mrs Marquardt: That’s correct.
Mr Goldsworthy: The CPI has always been a macroeconomic measure of inflation or an economy-wide measure of inflation, so individuals will have different experiences of inflation.
Senator ROBERTS: This is possibly a policy question. Is there any thought given within the ABS as to whether your product is suitable, as it’s evolved over the years to various different uses that it’s now being put to? It’s used by journalists, either to create headlines or to smash the government or smash the opposition or whatever. It’s used by politicians to justify or to attack. It’s used by parents who are thinking, ‘How the hell can we afford to live?’ It’s used by businesses. There are many different users and many different customers. Is there any consideration in the ABS to amend that or explain the different indexes?
Mr Goldsworthy: From time to time, we do reviews of the CPI, as you’d be aware. We are in the process of producing a full monthly CPI, which we’re on track to deliver by the end of next year. As a part of that, we had a consultation period, towards the end of last year, from memory. We engage with a wide range of stakeholders whenever we release the CPI. Certainly, the feedback we’ve had through the reviews and the informal feedback through the casual consultation we have when we release the CPI is that everybody is very supportive of the current practice.
Senator ROBERTS: How much do they know of the current practice? I appreciate what you’re saying. They like the full monthly one; it’s a good product. But if they don’t understand that it might not represent their reality, they’re just going to rubberstamp it and say it’s good.
Mr Goldsworthy: We’re extremely transparent about the methodology we use to produce not just the CPI but also the other indexes. The information is certainly on our website, and we try to make it as easy to understand as possible.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s not easy. What do you think the chances are of employees knowing that they’re facing a living cost indexes increase of 6.2 per cent when the CPI, they’re being told, is 3.8 per cent? They’re thinking, ‘No, it’s much more than 3.8 per cent.’
Mr Goldsworthy: We tell employees, through the release of the selected living cost indexes, the different rates of inflation for the different household types. All that information is released in the public domain. The CPI is measured appropriately for its primary use as a macroeconomic measure of inflation used by government, RBA and others.
Senator ROBERTS: I think most people would be surprised with what you just said. I know I am, and I’m fairly well informed. I’m told by a member of my staff that the employees category, facing a 6.2 per cent cost-of-living index, includes owner-managers. I want to know the answers to the other questions. How many people in Australia are facing 6.2 per cent in their living cost index?
Mr Goldsworthy: Yes, certainly, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s all I had. Thank you very much.
A reputable study says that 70-80% of carbon credits “are devoid of integrity”. This is a market that is costing Australia roughly $5.5 billion based on carbon credit units that even the Greens agree is a scam. This is driving up prices even higher in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
It’s time to stop the corruption and cancel these ridiculous net-zero policies.
Carbon dioxide credits are a scam and an absolute fraud, and the Greens agree with One Nation on this. Yes, you heard that correctly. It’s difficult to believe. Australians may wonder what we agree on Granted, the Greens and One Nation have come to the same conclusion for very different reasons. Nonetheless, we share the conclusion that carbon dioxide credits are a scam. They are rife with opportunities for fraud.
The Clean Energy Regulator has issued 140 million carbon dioxide credits. At the current spot price of $35 each, this represents a racket potentially worth $4.9 billion. That’s expected to grow by 20 million credits, or $700 million, this year alone, making it $5.6 million.
The Greens and One Nation aren’t the only ones to criticise Australian carbon credit units, or ACCUs. In 2022 Professor Andrew Macintosh, environmental law expert at the Australian National University, and his colleagues published a series of papers absolutely tearing apart the ACCU system. Keep in mind that this is a $5.5 billion market that’s being fabricated, in part to give the UN income, ultimately. As usual, they enlist parasites who benefit while pushing UN policy for them. For example, the major banks. Rothschild Australia, the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch had on their advisory boards in this country at the time the CSIRO chief executive, Dr Megan Clark—a conflict of interest?
Back to the study of ACCU carbon dioxide credits. The study was done under Professor Andrew Macintosh, who said:
The available data suggests 70 to 80 per cent of the ACCUs issued to … projects are devoid of integrity …
So 20 to 30 per cent may have some integrity. Remember, this is a $5.5 billion market. Here’s another quote:
What is occurring is a fraud on the environment …
‘A fraud on the environment’, I say to the Greens. This is what Dr Macintosh said:
What is occurring is a fraud on the environment, a fraud on taxpayers—
Australian taxpayers—
and a fraud on unwitting private buyers of ACCUs …
In response to these revelations, the government commissioned what they call the Chubb review. The government should just have been honest and called it what it really was: a whitewash, a distortion and misinformation. Actually, the Chubb review is disinformation. In the past, when Professor Chubb has been requested to provide empirical scientific data within a logical scientific point backing up claims of climate change due to human carbon dioxide, he has repeatedly failed to produce it. He has never produced it, yet he’s often advocated for it. He’s part of the climate fraud industry and has received a lot of money to push climate fraud. He has been heavily rewarded by both Liberal-National and Labor Party governments. The Chubb review, in this case, addressed nothing of substance and provided no evidence for its claims that problems have been fixed, yet the government held the report up as proof that everything’s fine. As Professor Macintosh and his colleagues outlined in their response to the Chubb review, it spent less than six pages discussing the ACCU rules, which relate to a $5.5 billion market. They say:
The–
Chubb—
report does not contain references to the evidence relied upon to reach its conclusions …
I’ll say that again:
The–
Chubb—
report does not contain references to the evidence relied upon to reach its conclusions, and includes very little analysis to support its findings. And importantly, the panel does not address key questions around the integrity of the scheme’s rules.
What use was that? This is ‘a fraud on the environment, a fraud on taxpayers and a fraud on unwitting private buyers of ACCUs’. Here is another quote:
Bewilderingly—
I don’t find it bewildering; it’s straightforward, as I’ve been watching this scam unfold for years–
in its assessment of the methods, the panel does not refer to the findings of a review it commissioned from the Australian Academy of Science … The academy … found numerous flaws in the methods and the associated governance processes.
There were ‘numerous flaws in the methods and the associated governance processes’. This is so typical of this government. It is so typical of the Liberals, the Nationals and Labor, pushing the climate fraud. Here is another quote:
The—
Chubb—
review … acknowledged the scientific evidence criticising the carbon credit scheme, but says “it was also provided with evidence to the contrary”. Yet it did not disclose what that evidence was or what it relates to. The public is simply expected to trust that the evidence exists.
Maybe the dog ate the evidence for breakfast. This is what the government says is assurance and integrity for taxpayer money.
While the Greens, Professor Macintosh and I may agree on the integrity issues with carbon dioxide credits, here’s where I leave them behind: there is no reason to reduce our output of carbon dioxide or trade credits for it. Carbon dioxide credits can never have integrity because they are a scam designed to transfer wealth from the pockets of everyday Australians and their families and small businesses to the bank accounts of billionaire net zero scam artists and parasitic multinationals sucking on the financial payout from climate fraud and associated financial scams. I note some of these points. I won’t go into them in detail. The government that introduced the renewable energy target, a scam, and the national electricity market that is really a national electricity racket—it’s not a market; it’s a bureaucratic controlled entity—stole farmers’ property rights across the country so that they could comply with the UN’s Kyoto protocol. They put in place the first policy—not legislation—advocating for a carbon dioxide tax. It wasn’t Julia Gillard. It was the Howard government that did all these things. The Howard government laid the foundation for all of this. It went around the Constitution to steal farmers’ property rights around the country. Then, six years after being booted from office and after the Liberals and Nationals in the Howard government told us that it was all based on science, John Howard, in a major lecture to sceptic think tank in Londan said that on the topic of climate science, he was agnostic. He didn’t have the science, and now our electricity sector has been crippled because of the renewable energy target, the national electricity market and an alphabet soup of bureaucratic agencies.
There has never been—there never is—any empirical scientific data and logical scientific points that human carbon dioxide is warming the planet. There is not any from the CSIRO—I’ve done freedom of information requests and held them accountable in the Senate—nor from their publications ever. There is not any from the Bureau of Meteorology. It’s the same deal. There is not any from the United Nations. It’s the same deal. There is also no policy basis. There is no documented effect per unit of human carbon dioxide on climate factors such as air temperature, rainfall, heat waves, drought severity and frequency or storm severity, frequency and duration—none at all. There is no basis for the policy on which the carbon dioxide credits are based. There’s been no cost benefit analysis. There’s been no business case. Ross Garnaut, who produced a report for the Rudd-Gillard government, said in his report on the science that there basically was no science and he was going on the consensus. Yet he is parasitically sucking on solar and wind subsidies, driving up electricity prices and putting Australians into poverty. Remember, the money that goes to the extra costs of electricity in this country is a highly regressive tax on the poor in our country.
In 2009 and 2020 we had two global experiments showing that human carbon dioxide has no effect on carbon dioxide levels in the air. We had a major downturn with the global financial crisis in 2008. We then had a recession in 2009. COVID hit us. It arrived on our shores—it didn’t really hit us; the government hit us—in 2020, and then 2020 was almost a depression because of the restrictions and lockdowns. In both years, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued rising unabated. Yet we’ve been told for decades now that by cutting back on human production of carbon dioxide we would see the levels in the atmosphere start decreasing and go down. We had a major reduction in industrial activity and a severe recession in 2009 and 2020. The production of carbon dioxide from human use of hydrocarbons, coal, oil and natural gas decreased dramatically, yet nothing happened. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere kept increasing.
I asked the CSIRO why. They said that there is an inflection. I asked them for the details of that inflection, to characterise it statistically. They failed to do it. I asked the Bureau of Meteorology, and they said, ‘Senator Roberts, it would take years for that to come through.’ Here is the CSIRO saying that we’ve already seen it and the Bureau of Meteorology saying that we will see it eventually, but it will take a long while to come. You can’t make this stuff up! What the experiments in 2009 and 2020 showed is that the production of carbon dioxide from human activity will not affect the level of carbon dioxide in the air. Once you understand Henry’s law—the quantities of carbon dioxide dissolved in the ocean are 50 to 70 times more than the entire atmospheric carbon dioxide—then you start to understand why that’s the case. But not content with climate science fraud, the CSIRO is perpetrating gen cost, which is energy fraud based on bogus assumptions that have been completely debunked. Aidan Morrison has done a marvellous job; others have done a marvellous job.
There’s no basis for this scam, this fraud, but let’s return to the fraud. A report in the 2010s said Europol found 95 per cent of carbon dioxide trading credits were suspicious. That’s easy to believe because there’s no physical basis to the measurement of reductions to carbon dioxide produced. They’re all projections. They’re all based on guesses. They’re formulae based on estimations. They were never quantified and are still not quantified. China is producing record quantities of carbon dioxide, and so are Russia, Brazil, the United States and the European Union—Australia are a small player—yet temperatures are flat and have been flat since 1995. That’s almost 30 years of flat temperatures. I urge senators to establish this inquiry so that we can get to the bottom of how taxpayer money is being fraudulently abused.
This is another of my ongoing questions into understanding the cost of net zero. The Sun Cable project is an insane proposal to cover 12,000 hectares of the Northern Territory with solar panels, at a cost of over $30 billion. There are multiple problems with this project, including environmental damage, power loss during transmission and site remediation once the panels reach the end of life.
These large energy companies are not required to, and don’t set aside funds for remediation. This means Australian taxpayers will end up footing the bill for billions of dollars in cleanup costs when this project inevitably fails.
Despite this being the world’s largest solar project and carrying significant sovereign risk, the Minister had no clue what I was talking about.
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister, and it’s regarding the SunCable industrial solar project in the Northern Territory. Minister, please advise the Senate of the total value of guarantees and, as a separate figure, the total value of subsidies available to the project.
Senator McAllister: I am aware that the Minister for the Environment and Water has recently provided approval for the SunCable project. This is a project that, as I understand it, seeks to establish renewable generation capability in the Northern Territory and also significant transmission capability, which will allow that generation to be used within the Australian grid but potentially also to be exported to our Singaporean neighbours. This is potentially an extremely important project. It is also one that is first of kind in the Australian context—
Senator ROBERTS: I have a point of order, under standing order 72(3)(c): ‘Answers shall be directly relevant to each question.’ I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies. What are they? If you don’t know, please just say so.
The President: I will draw the minister to that part of your question, Senator Roberts.
Senator McAllister: The senator asks me to comment, I think, on policies that exist in the Australian context to support the rollout of reliable renewables, and of course—
The President: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts, on a point of order?
Senator ROBERTS: I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies. That’s it.
The President: Senator Roberts, the minister barely said seven words, so let’s just hear the answer. I have reminded the minister of the question, and I will continue to listen carefully.
Senator McAllister: The Australian government takes our advice about the future of the energy system from experts, and all of the advice that has been provided to us is that the most cost-effective form of new generation to replace the older, ageing assets that are shortly to retire is reliable renewables.
Senator CASH: He just wanted to know what the figure is.
The President: Order! Senator Cash, this is not your question.
Senator McAllister: We take our advice from experts because we believe that Australians deserve the most cost-effective form of energy that is available to us. We can’t actually go back to doing things the way that they were done under the previous government.
The President: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts, on a point of order?
Senator ROBERTS: I remind the minister that I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies.
The President: I have reminded the minister of the question, and I will remind her again, Senator Roberts.
Senator HENDERSON: It’s okay to say you can take it on notice.
The President: Order! Thank you, Senator Henderson.
Senator McAllister: My advice is that this project has been— (Time expired)
The President: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The project proposes to generate electricity in the Northern Territory and send it to Singapore using a 4,300-kilometre-long cable, mostly undersea. This is five times longer than Norway’s 760-kilometre Viking Link, the current longest cable. Viking Link loses 3.5 per cent of its generation through transmission loss. What percentage of the project’s Australian generated electricity will be lost in transmission to Singapore?
Senator McAllister: The senator asks about, essentially, the economics of the project that has been approved, and what I can advise the senator is that this is a matter for the project proponent. The government’s role is not to assess the economics of this project. The minister has made a decision in relation to its environmental approvals. This is part of a broader transformation of the Australian economy. We are blessed with abundant sunshine, wind and land, with skilful engineers and skilful personnel, with a mature commercial and legal environment and with a natural electricity system that many other countries seek to talk to us about because of its strengths. These are strengths for Australian communities. They are strengths for Australian regions and they are potentially a source of significant economic opportunity for Australians living in regional communities. (Time expired)
The President: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The minister can’t or won’t tell me about guarantees and subsidies nor a core project assumption, so, Minister, my second supplementary question is: how much is SunCable lodging as a rehabilitation bond for the 12,400 hectares of land that will be covered in solar panels?
Senator McAllister: The senator asks about the terms on which the approval for the SunCable project has been provided. I can tell the senator that Minister Plibersek applies the terms of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to all of the matters that come before her. This is a project proposal that intends to establish a significant source of new generation in the Northern Territory, as you indicated in your first supplementary question.
The President: Senator Roberts, on a point of order?
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, is there a rehabilitation bond in place to cover the desecration of the environment?
The President: Senator Roberts, it’s your responsibility to seek a point of order, not to re-ask your question. If you have a point of order, I invite you to make it. If you don’t, I’ll ask the minister to continue.
Senator ROBERTS: President, the point of order is one of relevance.
The President: I believe the minister is being relevant. She has outlined to you the approval processes. So I will ask her to continue.
Senator CASH interjecting—
The President: Order! Order! Senator Cash, which bit of ‘order’ doesn’t apply to you? Minister McAllister, please continue.
Senator McAllister: The minister’s responsibility, of course, is to apply the law when a project is put before her. Since coming to government we have sought to do so in relation to all of the projects before us, but we are pleased to see new renewable projects coming online. Since coming to government, we have given the green light to more than 55 of those under the
Dr. Raphael Lataster is a former pharmacist and hospital administrator turned university researcher, focused on COVID misinformation due to his personal battle against the vaccine mandates.
Dr. Lataster’s interests are now centred around misinformation, disinformation and fake news, particularly in health and politics.
He runs Okay Then News – https://okaythennews.substack.com/ – a platform dedicated to counter-narrative news pieces and journal articles, aiming to provide truthful perspectives amid widespread misinformation and is the only Australian to testify before Congress regarding COVID.Dr. Lataster’s shift in focus to COVID-related misinformation was not a choice, but a necessity, as he seeks to clarify the truths surrounding health and political narratives.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Well, good day. Welcome to the Malcolm Roberts show. Our aims are to restore our country and our planet for humans to flourish. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts in Queensland, Australia.
Thank you for having me as your guest in your car, your kitchen, your shed, your lounge, your barbecue, or wherever you are right now, sitting, standing, driving, walking, running, laying, exercising, whatever you’re doing.
Today, we’re going to get down to some truths that may surprise, with a guest who researches misinformation and disinformation and fake news in health and politics. And I haven’t got time for many quips or overblown introduction because he’s only got 30 minutes with us, and he’ll tell you why he can only spend 30 minutes. It will explain much about why our country is where it is and their loss of sovereignty.
And if there’s time, hopefully we’ll get into what we need to do to restore our governance, our integrity, our leadership, our truth, respect and security. Always truth is reality. It’s the best place to live. Our show’s two themes are freedom, specifically freedom replacing control, the eternal human struggle between people, between groups, between nations. Our second theme is responsibility, specifically personal responsibility and integrity. History repeatedly proves that both freedom and responsibility are essential for human progress and people’s livelihoods.
Human history, when we look beyond the few villains and exploiters that get publicity, we see a wonderfully positive story. I am very, very pro-human. Now, I’m not suggesting we ignore the villains and the exploiters, nor the pain they wreak, yet look into them and look beyond them to understand the bigger picture in human evolution and progress.
I’m going to get straight into introducing our guest because Dr. Raphael Lataster was a pharmacist and a hospital administrator. He became a university researcher who focused on misinformation, mostly teaching at the University of Sydney, and largely because of his personal battle against COVID vaccine mandates. And he’s won. He has won.
He recently turned his attention to misinformation around COVID and COVID vaccines. Not because he particularly wanted to, but because he bloody well had to. Dr Lataster holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and occasionally lectures there and at other institutions, and his PhD may surprise you. It’s why they picked the wrong guy to take to the cleaners. His main academic research interests include misinformation, disinformation and fake news in health and politics.
Raphael has a Bachelor of Pharmacy, a Masters of Applied Science and several postgraduate research degrees in the arts. Initially focusing his academic efforts around misinformation in religion, he shifted focus to misinformation in politics and health. Wow, that’s plenty of fertile ground, particularly around COVID-19. He currently runs OK Then News, which highlights counter narrative news pieces and journal articles. In other words, the truth.
What’s your background, Raphael? Where were you born?
Dr Raphael Lataster: So, I’m Australian, born and bred, and I have a very diverse ethnic and racial background. I have European background, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, British, Scandinavian, but also non-European background as well, North African and South Asian, East Asian, Polynesian, Native American, so quite a bit in there.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: You’re what they call a mixed blood, a real mixed blood.
Dr Raphael Lataster: Yeah, mongrel.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: A mongrel, but mongrels are the fittest usually, and that’s why they shouldn’t have taken you on if they’d known what you could do to them.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: That’s right.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: So tell us, where were you born specifically? Whereabouts in Australia?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: So I was born in Sydney, New South Wales.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: How long were you in Sydney as a child?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: I was there for most of my early childhood. And then I went to Queensland. And that’s where I first, generally as a teenager, that’s where I first encountered Pauline Hanson and absolutely fell in love with what she was doing and One Nation. And, of course, that’s where I started supporting the Mighty Maroons as well. Up the Maroons.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: You’re not just doing that because we won up in the first series. You’re doing that because you’re a true Blue Maroon.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: That’s right.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: So we’ve only got 30 minutes. Have you got the clock on for your 30 minutes?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Yeah, yeah.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Okay, so we’ll let you tell us when we need to end. Tell me, what were some of your formative years? What were some of the things that shaped who you are and why you had no choice but to stand up to these COVID mandates? Tell us what formed you? What made you tick?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Well, university. When I went to pharmacy school, basically, that gave to me the scientific process, scientific evidence, and started me on the path for logic, for logical reasoning, Bayesian reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, as well as just being part of the Western education system and having been influenced by Western liberalism, classical liberalism. But in terms of science, I was a pharmacist. I went to pharmacy school and we learned all sorts of uh science yeah science scientific facts scientific reasoning scientific method all of this biology chemistry physics and I ended up working and then I did some other things. I worked in finance for a while as well. And then I went back to university to do …
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: You worked in finance?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Yeah, I was a financial advisor as well. And I ended up going back to university and doing degrees in the arts. And even though it was in the arts, it was basically scientific because it was analytical philosophy. Basically everything I did up until now in the academic world was analytic philosophy.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: So what is analytical philosophy?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: It’s basically the foundation of science. Science comes from philosophy. There’s that battle now between science and philosophy, how science is all great and philosophy is pointless and all that sort of thing. But science actually came out of philosophy. It’s natural philosophy. And I’m talking real philosophy. That’s analytic philosophy. So… no offense to all those people that endorse the continental philosophy, but that’s really quite pointless. Analytic philosophy is where it’s at. Analytic philosophy deals with things like logic and reasoning. And it’s the stuff that basically leads the science and justifies science because the scientists doing their work – how do they justify it? How do they justify how they interpret their results and so forth? That’s where you get the theoretical basis, which comes from philosophy and analytic philosophy. So basically I’ve spent many, many years not only learning science, how to do science, but also how to be logical, how to analyze arguments, how to look at methods and scrutinize them. And that’s basically what I’ve been doing the last few years with all the COVID stuff, with everything, including the vaccines.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Well, that’s wonderful. One day, perhaps we can have a longer conversation because there’s very little logic, there’s very little data used in politics. It’s quite disappointing, quite annoying, and it’s destroying our country. It’s destroying the West. But I’d like to know just one thing before we get onto your topic specifically. Just something you appreciate, anything at all.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Something that I appreciate. Well, it’s Western culture. It’s Western liberal values. I think that’s been key for our culture, for our civilization. If you look at the best, I mean, you’re not the person I’d have to convince of that, being the party you are, One Nation, being a nationalist party. But if you look at the countries in the world and sort of rank them based on the things that we generally like, I think our country is pretty high up there, us and a lot of European countries and the US. And there’s a reason for that. There’s a reason for that. I’m very appreciative of Western liberal values. And like yourself, I do think they’re under attack. And I think a lot of the things that’s happened, especially with COVID, has been working against that, has been working on dismantling what we’ve built over the past few hundred years. So I’m very much interested in joining the fight and defending our culture and our values.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: And I do have to say, I agree with you that Australia is perhaps at the forefront of that was about forty years ago, maybe fifty years ago, because we had Western civilization’s values. We also had that unique Australian lifestyle. Take it easy as it goes, as it comes and goes. But we’re not that anymore and we’re a long, long way from our potential. And that’s what I’d like to take people to, our potential, because Australia’s got enormous potential. But now that we’ve understood what you appreciate and we’ve understood a bit about your background, what’s your story with the COVID vaccine mandates? Tell us about what happened, please.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Yeah, sure. I just wanted to add to this long introduction as well. Just to get it out there, my pronouns are Prosecute Fauci. All right. So, I’ll explain what happened with my fight against the vaccine mandates here in New South Wales. I was working for, I think, the biggest children’s hospital in the country, New South Wales Health, Westmead Children’s Hospital. And what happened? The vaccine mandates came in. So, I had to decide. I thought, I better not. I don’t want to risk it. I’ve got a family history of heart disease. I know these vaccines could potentially cause cardiovascular problems. um I don’t want to take the risk I want to know more about it and the hospital asked me to make my case they said make your case for why you shouldn’t be fired and I said oh brilliant because you know what I have an easy case to make I work from home at the moment I’m doing only administrative work from the hospital I work from her hundred percent of the time all the training all the meetings it’s all done digitally uh like what we’re doing right now so there’s no point there’s no point in forcing me and then firing me over not taking the vaccines so I made that case I used logic I used evidence and that started me on the on the path to doing research on this topic on covert on the vaccines and I made my case and all they did with it was say see you just don’t want to take the jab we’re going to fire you so that uh yeah that basically destroyed my life it destroyed me um psychologically and financially and that of course led to physical manifestations as well so it wasn’t I wasn’t in a good place um I’m still trying to put it all together and eventually I stumbled on thanks to someone like you sharing stuff like you do on social media I found out about Diane Dawkin’s win in The Guardian of all places. And Diane Dawkin won a workers’ compensation claim against New South Wales, or against the Education Department, actually, I believe it was. And I read the article, saw who the lawyer was, contacted the lawyer and said, yeah, let’s go. So there’s a bunch of cases now that’s happening here in New South Wales, Education Department.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Are you able to tell us who the lawyer was?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Yes, it was Dave McCabe.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Okay.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: And yeah, he’s been very helpful. And we won. So, we fought and we won. So I got an ongoing payment. Now what my win actually means, it’s important to clarify what it actually is, not make too much of it and not make too little of it either. I think it’s very significant. It’s been great for me, but it also sets great precedent our multiple victories now. What it is, it’s a recognition that people have been harmed by the vaccine mandates, people like myself, and that we deserve compensation for that, because they’ve caused harm, they’ve caused psychological injury, so forth, other manifestations as well. And so, I won the main case, then I won just recently a second action against them for back pain. For some reason, even when they promised to pay the back pay, they wouldn’t so we had to take him to court, or actually it’s the commission and we won that and we’re going to go for a few more bites of the cherry before finally seeing what we can do – maybe wrapping it all up, we’ll see how it goes. But yeah, it was a heck of a time. It still is. And as part of my case, I ended up doing a lot of research, which is why probably some handful of your readers and listeners may have heard my name because I’ve ended up getting some articles published in medical journals based on all stemming from the case I had to make, the case the hospital told me I had to make and then ended up you know, being legal action and me having to research for that as well.
So, it’s been quite a journey and there’s still quite a bit more to go. But the good thing is we actually won. It can be done. My lawyer now has several victories. So that’s for the education department and the health department. So, people out there who are struggling and who could use such help as well, consider doing something like I did. It was a really good way to go because unlike most legal actions, this was all free and there was no chance of a cost order. That’s one of the problems when you go for, when you try and sue somebody, when you try and get some justice in this country, it costs a lot of money. But this was a very, very good way to do it. Very, very efficient way to do it.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Thank you. That’s a very good explanation and pretty concise. So, I take from that, that there’ll be more legal actions.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Yeah, we’re going for a few more bites of the cherry under workers’ compensation law. I would like to do more. I would like to look at civil cases, even criminal cases. But that, yeah, the cost involved in that would be prohibitive. I think we could only do that if we have a certain billionaire, a certain eccentric billionaire who seems to be on our side, joins the fight a bit more.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Have you made contact with him or his party?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: I’ve tried to. It’s quite difficult to get directly in touch with him. There’s people around him that seem to protect him from just random people contacting him, of course. And I’ve had a few people. say that they’d like me involved in in that party and so forth and then a few people apparently don’t want to so it’s been it’s been really hard to get in touch with him I’ve been trying but I think he’d be quite interested in some of the things we’re doing.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: I think he would be. So let’s talk about another very well-known person – Dr Robert Malone and what he did for you and what he did for the Senate in the United States.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Yeah, so I ended up with having to make my case and then fight my legal case. I ended up doing research, as you said. I shifted focus to research on COVID and COVID vaccines. And some of the studies we’ve come up with are pretty significant. So Peter Doshi is one of the editors of the BMJ, one of the top journals in the world. He got an article …
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: British Medical Journal, BMJ.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: He got an article published in another journal and I followed up with an article and then he did another article and I followed up again. So we’ve got four articles. in this journal – Journal of Evaluation Clinical Practice – that actually show that the observational studies, for the observational studies and the clinical trials, the effectiveness and the safety of the vaccines are likely highly exaggerated. And one of the things they did that really contributes to that is playing around with the definition of vaccinated and unvaccinated. So, you know, that period where you’re not fully vaccinated, you’re only partially vaccinated. They’ve been ignoring COVID cases during that period. And they found, Doshi’s team found that that exaggeration could be something like forty eight percent of effectiveness. And then I piled on and said it’s actually more than that, because not only are those cases ignored, they’re often ascribed to the unvaccinated. which obviously I don’t like as an unvaccinated person. So I figured it out using the same sort of numbers that we’re looking more like sixty five percent exaggeration. And there’s a few other dodgy things as well. So it’s quite plausible that the vaccines never were effective to begin with. And that might explain why they go down in effectiveness to zero and beyond so quickly is because, well, maybe they were never effective to begin with. So that research, yeah, was deemed quite important. And Robert Malone was one of the people that looked at it and thought, yeah, this is really good. He invited me to America, which is good because my treating team, they suggested I go on an international trip anyway. So I thought, okay, let’s do it.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Your what team? Your treating team?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: My treating team, yeah my uh psychologists and things like that uh dealing with my psychological injury caused by the former employer and Dr Robert Malone was was impressed with all that he got me in front of the senate hearing as well held by senator Johnson ron Johnson so I presented there I was the only Aussies there representing the country and that went that went pretty well And then, yeah, now I’m back and I’ve been doing where I can. I’ve been doing bits of research again, try and bolster the case and helping with other people’s cases as well. And yeah, the research coming out is… is, I think, pretty significant. So, I mean, that stuff is already huge. Effectiveness and safety has been highly, highly exaggerated. Now we’ve got articles in the proper journals, in the medical journals saying that. And there’s other stuff as well. There’s a lot of great papers by all sorts of people. Some of the work I’ve been involved in is quite interesting as well. One is on negative effectiveness, and that’s going to be coming out very soon in an Aussie journal, an Aussie medical journal that goes out to doctors, to family doctors, GPs, So that’s gonna be quite important. And that talks about negative effectiveness. There’s quite a few studies, quite a few sets of government data that show not only are the vaccines losing effectiveness really quickly, like within months even, but they also turn negative. So that means it increases your chance of getting COVID and even dying from COVID. Now, obviously there’s no point to taking the vaccine if that’s what it does. And that’s not even talking about the other side effects, your myocarditis, blood clotting and so forth. Now there’s links to cancer. So very, very concerning development, negative effectiveness where The vaccinated apparently are suffering more from COVID than the unvaccinated and long COVID as well. That’s been part of this new series of articles in this Aussie journal. So more on that soon. That should be published very soon. And I’ve also got an article.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: When you say very soon, how soon do you think? Anytime this week?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Next month. Next month.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Okay. All right. Yeah.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: And there’s another journal article coming out on excess deaths in Europe. I’d like eventually to do one for Australia as well because we’ve noticed some really interesting things in Australia. But yeah, in Europe, I did some correlations with the data and it’s very clear. Vaccination is positively and significantly correlated with excess deaths. And it seems like the countries that didn’t vaccinate so much, like Romania and Bulgaria, they’re doing very well. They don’t have.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Yes. And, and just, you, you probably already know this Raphael, but, uh, in Queensland and I think in, in Western Australia, sorry, Queensland and Western Australia, but definitely Queensland. Um, and I think possibly South Australia to some extent, but in Queensland, the vaccines, the injections, I won’t use the term vaccine with these things. They’re experimental gene therapy-based treatments. So the COVID injections were introduced before COVID got to Queensland. We had a huge spike in deaths before the virus arrived. So they can only be attributable to the COVID injections. And then we had the COVID arrival in this state several months later. So, we’ve got a clear, clear signal. It meets quite a few of the criteria. Is it Bradford Hill criteria? So, yes, continue, please.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: A hundred percent. And I’ve got that one on European XSS coming out soon. I would love to, again, limited by what I can do, but I would love to do an article on Australia, particularly the smaller Australian states. So New South Wales, Victoria, there’s sort of an out to explain Australia. know the rise in excess deaths maybe it’s covered maybe it’s the lockdowns but when you look at the smaller population states even if we leave Queensland to the side and we start looking at WA, South Australia, Northern Territory what you said is exactly what’s happening you’ve got this excess deaths when the jabs came in but they didn’t really have covert until later and their lockdowns are basically non-existent I think in in western Australia the worst was a three or four day long weekend and that’s that’s about it We know what a lockdown is here in New South Wales and especially our cousins in Victoria. They know what a lockdown is. You could blame it on lockdowns, that people weren’t seeing their doctors as much and so forth, not picking up all the cancers and heart problems.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Not a sudden increase.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Smaller states. So I really want to do something focusing on those smaller population states because it’s quite clear the only rational explanation is that it’s got something to do with the vaccine. And if you look at what’s driving the excess deaths, like cardiovascular problems, well, we know that. The evidence keeps coming out more and more that the vaccines cause cardiovascular problems. And one thing is this stream of evidence coming out about myocarditis. I saw from one article, the myocarditis rate was one in a few thousand. So for every few thousand people that take the jab, you’re looking at one case of myocarditis. Well, UK data indicates that you need to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of young, healthy people to get a single prevented case of severe COVID, a severe hospitalization. So, when you’re comparing hundreds of thousands with a couple of thousand, and that’s just the one side effect, it looks like, at least for young, healthy people, it looks like the benefits absolutely do not outweigh the risks. The risks outweigh the benefits, and by a lot. And that’s just one side effect.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: And also, Raphael, from the little bit I know, you’ve done a lot more research in this specifically, the… The so-called benefits of the COVID injections last only for a short while, and then they turn negative quite often. But the adverse events or the adverse effects of the COVID injections last for a long, long, long time, if not the entire life, if it doesn’t kill you straight away.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: That’s the real scary thing is that the more time that elapses, the more adverse effects we’re finding and more adverse events, the more we’re finding. So, this is all limited. The figure I just gave you, which is already quite concerning, every few thousand people gets myocarditis, that is based on a limited timeframe, something like forty two days after the vaccine. What if we start looking at many months after? What if we look at a few years after? We’re just going to find more and more adverse events and adverse effects, but effectiveness was already gone within a couple of months. And as I pointed out, it’s quite plausible that there never was any effectiveness to begin with, or that even it was negatively effective from the very beginning. When you look at those articles that Doshi’s team published and I published in that journal, Journal of Evaluation Clinical Practice, you can get a summary of those articles on my site, okthenews.com. If you look at those articles, it’s quite plausible that the vaccine was never particularly effective from the very beginning. And that’s dealing, when you look in the clinical trials, that’s dealing with the very first, most deadly strains of COVID. So obviously, there’s fewer benefits to be had from the vaccines now that we’re dealing with a billionth generation of Omicron. So, the benefits keep going down and down and down, but the adverse effects apparently look to be going up.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Well, not only that, just as a brief sideline, Dr. Jayanthi Kunar Hassan from Melbourne, she was an anaesthetist and very good researcher, she’s delved into details into the COVID injection trials that Pfizer held. And she’s found hundreds of deaths amongst those trials just in the trial period and the trials weren’t completed properly because when they were killing so many people with the COVID injections, they quickly injected everyone so that there could be no comparison anymore. And then she also found a number of other anomalies in it. What were some of the others that the Covid injections some of the deaths of the people injected were not called in and not documented and there were more people who died from the covid injections than from the then from the virus in the in the control group so that’s quite startling but what’s even more startling not surprised though given Pfizer’s record is that they covered up these deaths they did not report them so imagine if the public had been told right up front The more people died if they were injected in the Pfizer trials than if they weren’t injected. More people died from the injected rather than the non-injected. How many people would have stood up and said, I’m not taking that? Far, far more. How many politicians would have said, we’re not going to inject it?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Even the stuff that was reported in the trials is super concerning. Even beyond that, if you just look at the clinical trials as written and you look at the analyses that Doshi’s team did and I did, there’s more deaths in the vaccinated groups. More deaths, more total deaths. It’s not statistically significant but imagine what you would do if you had a bigger population sample. But there were actually more deaths, and there was no statistically significant decrease in COVID deaths. And total deaths, there were actually more. One of the things driving those extra deaths was cardiovascular problems. and the researchers you know behind the mRNA vaccine clinical trials they said well it has nothing to do yeah there were those kind of deaths but that has nothing to the vaccine first of all you have no right to say that if you’re running a clinical trial then when there’s a discrepancy if you’ve run it well when there’s a discrepancy between the groups you attribute that to the to the product to the treatment So they had no right to say that. And also, we’ve got all this evidence coming out now that actually the vaccines do cause cardiovascular problems, blood clotting, myocarditis, pericarditis, strokes, haemorrhages, the lot. So, if you go back to the trials, if you go back to Peter Doshi’s original article and then the four in general, if Peter Doshi was listened to from the beginning, these probably wouldn’t have been approved because you’re looking at effectiveness of maybe twenty percent or less. And that doesn’t meet the fifty percent FDA requirement for approval. So yeah
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: the FDA well let’s take another step back I asked the therapeutic goods administration head at the time professor john scarett what testing they did in this guy oh we didn’t do any testing senator roberts we relied upon the fda at the time he said that and admitted that I think that was march twenty twenty three at the time he said that Raphael The Food and Drug Administration had previously said they did no testing and they relied upon Pfizer’s own test results. The TGA did not even look at the patient level clinical data from Pfizer, did not even look at it. I mean, this is the stuff and now we’re finding out that… Sorry?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Our regulators are relying on their regulators, their regulators are really just relying on Big Pharma. And arguably, they’re owned by Big Pharma.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Well, that’s correct. That’s a discussion for another day. So what will you do now? How much time do you have left? Three or four minutes?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Yeah, yes.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Explain why you’ve got a time limit on you.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: So that’s because of my case, ongoing legal mumbo-jumbo, things like that. The damage they’ve caused to me, psychological injury that I’m working on treating as well. So all those places, limitations on exactly what I can do. But what I’m trying to do now is just focus on myself, working on getting better, fighting my cases, getting a few more wins on the board, helping other people. I get constant invitations to help people with their cases as well, providing evidence and so forth. I got invited by you guys as well, the Australian Senate, to provide evidence for the upcoming inquiry on excess deaths. So, I’m just trying to just fight my cases, get better, and bit by bit where I can, I’ll do this research and get it out there.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Excuse me just a minute, Raphael. Did you make a submission to that Inquiry into Excess Mortality in the Senate?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: I did indeed. You might not find it there yet because for some reason it’s not up there, but I did make a submission, yeah.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Okay, that’s good because you weren’t called as a witness and I’d like to find out why. So I’m going to ask that question.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: You can maybe do something about that and maybe get me in touch with the big man up in Queensland, our wealthy friend, and maybe we can get some more things happening because I think there’s a lot of room. I think if you have some people that are willing to do it, I think you need to really take advantage of that opportunity and do something if necessary. yeah we can get the right people together we can actually make some changes.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: so before you uh you’ve got a time limit of thirty minutes I think you said uh how many minutes have we got left
Dr. Raphael Lataster: oh we’ve got a couple minutes okay okay just tell me when you need to go I don’t want you to breaking any conditions of the court or anything like that
Dr. Raphael Lataster: yeah yeah
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: how do people connect with you how do they learn more about you Raphael doctor this is dr Raphael lataster l-a-t-a-s-t-e-r
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Yep. The best way is to contact me through, well, I’ve got my main outlet now where I share updates of my cases and little bits of research that I’ve done and some interesting research from other people. I share that on my page, okthenews.com. That’s a Substack page. And yeah, people can comment on there and get in touch through there. And I’m happy for people to get in touch about maybe some advice on how to approach fighting for justice. Maybe they have a case they think they can make and also to provide evidence for their own cases and things like that. I’m happy to do that where I can.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: So one of the things, we have a wonderful barrister in our team in the Senate office here who told us right from the start, just taking action in court, prosecuting people or departments because of breaches of law don’t cut it. You need to have some cost incurred that you need to be compensated for. So, you need to have something that’s cost you your health or cost you something, your income. In your case, it was potentially both. And also, the papers you’re talking about, the articles you’ve written, the papers that you’ve had officially published in peer-reviewed scientific journal, they’re available through your Substack as well, are they?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: That’s right, yeah. In fact, the first thing people should see if they go to okthenews.com is a pinned post which summarises some of the most relevant research, the stuff on the vaccines, yeah, going back to the clinical trials, probably having huge exaggerations on their effectiveness and safety. That’s right there on the front page.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Okay, let’s get the spelling right for okay. It’s not okay. It’s O-K-A-Y-T-H-E-N, Then News, N-E-W-S.com. O-K-A-Y-T-H-E-N-N-E-W-S.com. Correct?
Dr. Raphael Lataster: That’s it. Yep. So, yeah.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Okay. Let’s finish off before we say farewell and thank you. Let’s finish off with some of the things that you think need to be done as solutions for, for going into the future.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Solutions. Oh, I don’t know about solutions. I’m more the kind of person that points out all the problems. While sitting from my armchair. But solutions, I find that quite interesting, the idea of solutions, because I feel like we already had so many things in place that were really good. We’ve just been dismantling those and ignoring those. It’s about going back to the basics. When I went to pharmacy school, one of the things that seered into my brain, my tutor told me, and he’s the head of the department now, he’s done very well for himself, but my tutor back then in pharmacy school said, you can never say a drug is safe. Ever. All you can say is that at the moment, you don’t have the evidence that it’s unsafe. But you can never say it’s safe. And of course, the classic example back then was thalidomide. Back when I was working, it was rofococcib. And now just a few years ago, we’ve had fulcidine taken off the market. That was safe and effective for about seven years until it wasn’t, until it started killing people. So, yeah, it’s incredible that the things we already did and the things we already believed, they’ve sort of gone by the wayside. We need to go back. And maybe that’s the general problem in general with our culture and so forth. We already had all the great ideas and all the great processes. We just need to go back. and do what we were doing back then. But one thing I think we definitely need to do is get money out of the equation, big money, big pharma. We are relying on the drug companies and the pharmaceutical companies to run their own studies Right. For their products. And then the regulators in America, the regulators here, they’re all relying on that. Now, clearly, there’s a huge conflict of interest there, especially for something of massive public interest and public concern like the COVID vaccines that we were forced to take. Right. We’re relying on a profit driven, you know, for profit company. doing this so that’s one thing and the regulators are basically funded by the pharmaceutical companies even in Australia something like ninety five percent and I don’t care how many times someone says but bro it’s just the funding it’s just it’s just grants and application fees bro I don’t care it’s ninety five percent of the funding is coming from big pharma so the regulators are basically owned by Big Pharma. And you can go back further, who owns Big Pharma, it’s the same few people who own basically everything nowadays.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Yes, and not only that, we see Professor John Skerritt, who gave provisional approval when he was head of the TGA, Therapeutic Goods Administration, to Pfizer’s injections, to the Moderna injections, to the Astra Zeneca injections, which were withdrawn globally, I think to also Novavax, but… what he did eight months after he retired, he retired in April last year. And eight months within eight months, he was signed up as a member of the Board of Directors of Medicines Australia, which is big pharma’s lobbying group in this country.
Dr. Raphael Lataster: Anyway, that’s a good place to leave it. I think we’ll have to have another chat another time
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: Okay
Dr. Raphael Lataster: cover some some more of these issues but that’s yeah well.
SENATOR Malcolm Roberts: okay well you’ll have to sign up because sign off because of your time but hang on a minute because we need to upload your your material so I want to take this time we won’t get you to do any more talking first of all thank you so much Dr Raphael Lataster.
Malcolm Roberts: Thank you for your courage in telling the truth. Thank you for your battles in giving testimony in America and also here in Australia, your writing, your research. I agree with you that science is based on hard data and hard logic and people don’t understand that, but I really commend you for that.
Until our next show, this is Senator Malcolm Roberts, staunchly pro-human, fiercely proud of who we are as humans and a believer in the inherent goodness and care in human beings. I want to acknowledge the pain and then take a minute to appreciate the abundance and potential in and around all of us. All of us have pain at times, acknowledge that, but take a minute to appreciate the abundance and potential.
Please remember to listen to each other, love one another, and cherish one another. Until next time, thank you.
For years, the Government has subsidised rooftop solar and, more recently, wall batteries. This isn’t so you can have cheap power, it’s so they can have YOUR cheap power.
Half of Australia’s solar energy is generated from rooftop systems. During the morning and evening peak hours, when the sun isn’t shining and wind energy reduces by 90%, the government will take the charge from your wall battery and EV to keep the grid going. This is called “grid connectivity”. Under net zero policies, you will receive only as much electricity as the officials in Canberra decide you can have.
One Nation will end the net zero scam, build new high efficiency coal plants and restore wealth and prosperity to Australia.
I thank Senator Van for this matter of public importance. Without criticising the science, cost and impracticability of net zero, which I did last night and will do again tomorrow, it’s certainly possible to talk about wasted capacity in the electricity sector. The ad hoc stance towards solar power in Australia has meant that a lot of people have fitted solar panels without battery storage. This is a distortion in the market as a result of government interference—subsidising solar panels early on while only subsidising wall batteries much later. In fact, the distortion in the energy market as a result of government interference is exactly why energy prices in Australia are out of control. In the most energy rich country in the world we should have the cheapest retail electricity in the world; it should not be amongst the dearest.
Remember, though, that One Nation is the party of free enterprise. If an Australian homeowner, body corporate or business wants to spend their own money to install solar power, connect it to a battery and then use that investment to start trading in electricity, all power to you. In fact, homeowners organising themselves to direct the output of their solar panels into community batteries is a way of getting into the energy business.
The government promised community batteries, and I know it has so far funded 370. Only one of the 370 grants went to a community organisation. The other 369 were to either government departments or energy companies. Why are we giving grants to energy companies to build big batteries when the proceeds of those big batteries will be sold back to the grid? Can’t they finance themselves? The Albanese government are handing out taxpayers’ money to their big business mates at a time that everyday Australians need the money for themselves.
Electric vehicles are another area where energy trading could be an option. Modern EVs use a battery which can hold 100 kilowatt hours of electricity. If charged from the owner’s own solar panels during the day, selling that electricity into the grid during peak hour will help stave off blackouts. Instead, all of these measures fracture energy generation and make the task of maintaining the reliability of the grid harder and more expensive.
There is a better solution. Modern clean-coal technology allows for the retrofitting of a device which captures all of the gas coming out of a coal fired plant and converts the gas into useful products like fertiliser, AdBlue and ethanol. In the language of the woke, that means zero emissions. This process costs less than $100 million per power station and works best using sea water. Instead of spending more than $1 trillion and up to $2 trillion to simply replace our electricity generation and convert to electrification, clean coal will achieve the same objective for a few hundred million dollars. Clean coal is the real wasted resource in the Australian energy market. Clean coal will reduce the cost of living under Labor.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Hughes): The time for the discussion has expired.
I thank my fellow Senators for their participation in a successful debate on my Motion in defence of free speech and peaceful freedom of association. I’m not sure if some understood how the Government’s “Misinformation and Disinformation Bill” (MAD for short) will limit the right to protest. As demonstrated during COVID, posts promoting protests were banned and organisers arrested. This Bill would allow the Government to ban posts that promote protests as a threat to public order, which is why my motion mentioned both free speech and the right to protest.
In my speech, I drew attention to the bigger picture – that predatory foreign billionaires have bought Australia, and this Bill prevents us talking about it.
One Nation will continue to fight for human rights and I am pleased to know we will not be alone.
I move:
That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:
Freedom of speech and peaceful freedom of assembly are inalienable rights which the Senate must defend.
What do the billionaires who run the world do when we, the people, realise how much has been stolen from us—how much money, how much sovereignty, how much opportunity?
In the next few minutes, it will become obvious what this has to do with the misinformation and disinformation bill—’m-a-d’ or ‘mad’, for short. The world’s predatory billionaires do not wield their power directly; they hide behind wealth funds such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and First State. These funds act in concert with political change agents, including large superannuation and sovereign wealth funds such as Norges. The racket these subversive elements are running really is racketeering. They use their wealth to buy shares in companies that are then required to follow the agenda. This is not my opinion; these are the exact words of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. Buying out Western civilisation is an expensive business. The never-ending quest for more money, more power and more control is being noticed and resisted. Much of that resistance has been a result of Elon Musk buying X and allowing the truth to live in one mainstream forum.
The minute the BlackRock racketeers walk into a boardroom, any notion of public interest is abandoned. A case in point is Coles and Woolies, who used to pride themselves on providing the necessities of life—food and clothing—at the lowest possible price through competition. With the presence of an almost complete set of predatory wealth funds on their share registers, in recent years, Coles and Woolies no longer compete against each other. Instead, they collude to pursue a pricing strategy designed to maximise profit from our necessities of life, profit that’s sent overseas into the coffers of these sovereign wealth funds, leaving Australians permanently poorer.
In 2022-23, around an election, Woolies donated $110,000 to the ALP. In 2022-23, other industries under the control of these predatory wealth funds, including the big pharmaceutical industry, donated a million dollars to the ALP. What do they get for their money? Last Tuesday, I spoke in favour of the community affairs committee inquiry report into a prospective terms of reference for a royal commission into COVID response. Despite me simply agreeing with the committee report and despite my using only peer reviewed and published science to support my position, Senator Ayres from the Labor Party chose to describe my words as—listen to this:
… damaging misinformation and disinformation … there is a reason why the ASIO director-general highlights the role of extremist misinformation and disinformation in terms of its corrosive effect. It does lead to some of the acts of violent extremism here and overseas, motivated by the same vile conspiracy theories that we’ve just heard …
Wow, what a rant! No data, no argument; just empty labels.
Our New Zealand friends started their royal commission into COVID in December 2022. New Zealand has now decided that the royal commission unearthed so much behaviour that was cause for concern they’ve expanded the royal commission to include looking into COVID in much greater depth, including vaccine harm. The New Zealand royal commission now closely resembles the royal commission the Senate standing committee on community affairs recommended following their inquiry initiated on a One Nation referral. For Senator Ayres to say this is extremist misinformation and disinformation likely to lead to acts of violent extremism is a complete slap in the face to New Zealand’s royal commission and one that Senator Ayres would be well advised to reconsider.
This is the trouble when the government panics that $1 million in donations is at risk and brings on a bill that will shut up any opposition to the rule of the billionaires through their front companies—in this case, pharmaceutical companies—a rule that is, quite simply, a threat to the future of our beautiful country. With total clarity, Senator Ayres has drawn the battle lines here. What’s the truth in New Zealand parliament is ‘extremist misinformation and disinformation’ in Australia, if the Ayres government says it is. This bill has no protections, no checks and balances—it should rightly be renamed the ‘crush any opposition to the billionaires’ bill.
While the Labor Party’s desire for totalitarian censorship is no surprise, the people need to be aware that the Morrison-Littleproud Liberals and Nationals introduced this bill. Opposition leader Dutton makes no indication of whether he intends to oppose the bill, I guess because when he gets in he’ll be happy to use its onerous provisions. While I don’t have time to go into the Liberal Party’s donations from companies under the control of the world’s predatory billionaires, the same issue affects both parties. The Morrison-Littleproud government kept the COVID vaccine contracts hidden from our requests to make the contracts public for those who paid for the injections—taxpayers. The temptation to have extra money to spend in an election campaign has proven far too much for the major parties, and their independence, their objectivity and their common sense have been compromised. The world’s predatory billionaires’ downfall will be their hubris. The question is: who will go down with them?
On August 29th, The Australian newspaper reported that a government-owned bank, created out of Australia Post, may be back on the Labor government’s agenda. This move is seen as a response to the recent closures of numerous bank branches in regional Australia. If this report is accurate, I applaud the Government for this welcome development.
Years of regulation have not succeeded in forcing the banks to act with honesty, decency, and compassion. Additional regulation is not the answer, as large banks typically have access to superior legal resources compared to the Government. The answer lies in establishing a People’s Bank that can provide competition to the Big Four banks oligopoly, or more accurately, the cartel.
A People’s Bank could rewrite their Banking Code of Practice, restoring protections that successive Liberal Governments have removed—such as face-to-face banking, cash transactions and a guarantee of banking services to prevent the problem of political de-banking. People’s Banks worldwide have proven their ability to be secure and profitable, and to hold commercial banks accountable, as outlined in my speech.
The Australian newspaper reported on 29 August that ‘a government owned bank created out of Australia Post is understood to be back on the Labor government’s agenda’ and that it is ‘seen as a response to the closure of numerous bank branches in regional Australia’. I hope this report is well founded, and, if it is, I applaud the government for this welcome development.
Years of regulation have failed to force the banks to behave with honesty, decency and compassion. More regulation is not the answer. Big banks will always have better lawyers than the government. The answer is a people’s bank offering competition to the big four bank oligopoly—or, more accurately, cartel. As someone who participated in the inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia, I attest that there is a desperate need for a public bank to revolutionise Australia’s banking system, the way the original Commonwealth Bank did, which the Fisher Labor government established in 1912.
Today the big four cartel controls 80 per cent of the market and dominates banking. They’re acting together to remove face-to-face banking, which doesn’t stop customers from needing face-to-face services. It just forces customers to travel further. It’s not just in the regions; it’s as difficult for the elderly in the city to travel to the next suburb for their banking as it is for a regional customer to travel to the next town.
We saw numerous instances of the banks’ dishonesty when closing branches, and we’re seeing it again right now with ANZ’s closure of its Katoomba branch. The ANZ treated Katoomba as a regional branch until it promised to not close the regional branches as a condition of its merger with Suncorp Bank. Lo and behold, suddenly ANZ claims Katoomba is not a regional branch so is proceeding to close it. The big four have concentrated close to 70 per cent of their lending into residential and investor mortgages, with more money fuelling the increase in house prices, while neglecting small business lending and regional communities.
All four are aggressively pushing customers away from cash and into digital banking and transacting so they can surveil and harvest your data and collect fees on all non-cash transactions. They now gouge Australians out of more than $4 billion per year in transaction fees and surcharges. In short, the big four serve only themselves and use their oligopoly power over a captive market to exploit their customers.
There’s a dire need for a public bank that can set standards of service and break up the banking cartel. A post office bank is the perfect way to do it, operating under a modified banking code of practice to restore protections to customers that successive Liberal-National governments have removed and guaranteeing cash and banking services, face-to-face banking in a branch, best interests of the customer and protections against politicisation of banking.
The Commonwealth Bank originally started in post offices in 1912, from which it provided banking services to all parts of Australia, even remote areas. It raised loans for the government at one-tenth the cost of the private banks. In the panic of 1914, it protected deposits in all the banks. It supported Australia’s agricultural production in World War I and funded the emergency purchase of a fleet of ships in the war, which became Australia’s first national shipping line. It made development loans to local councils all across Australia for crucial infrastructure, and it made affordable housing loans to returned soldiers. It accomplished all of this in its first decade, before its political enemies reduced its ability to compete with the private banks, until later when another Labor government unleashed it again in World War II.
Public and post banks are very successful around the world. The Japan Post Bank is one of the world’s biggest banks and was the secret to Japan’s postwar economic miracle, funding their government’s investments in infrastructure and industries. France’s post bank, La Banque Postale, started in 2006 and is already Europe’s 18th biggest bank and the biggest lender to local councils in France. Kiwibank started as a post bank in 2002, quickly growing into New Zealand’s fifth largest bank and the only bank that can compete with New Zealand’s big four banks, which Australia’s big four banks own. Its first achievement was injecting competition which stopped all branch closures in New Zealand for seven years. In the global financial crisis, Kiwibank was the only bank to increase lending while the private banks all reduced lending. Listen to this: the Bank of North Dakota, not a postal bank but a brilliant state owned bank, supported North Dakota’s public finances and its farmers for more than a century, making a profit in every year of operation. In the 2008 financial crisis, North Dakota was the only United States state to stay out of crisis.
I applaud the news that the government is in talks with Australia Post on this solution, and I urge the government to have the vision to create a powerful bank that can once again serve the people of Australia.
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