Yesterday I spoke on an amendment to the Native Title legislation. While I support anything that removes complexities, the government still hasn’t promised to give farmers restoration or compensation of their property rights.
Make no mistake, farmers property rights have been stolen by governments to comply with international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement. They must have restoration or compensation.
Yesterday I attended a hearing into the Inland Rail project. The massively expensive project will see up to 40 heavy freight trains a day travel through southern Queensland to Acacia Ridge. (20 into Brisbane and 20 out)
Inland Rail uses passenger lines through south west Brisbane that local residents were promised would never be upgraded to heavy freight. That promise, by Labor Premier Beattie has now been broken by Premier Palaszczuk.
It is telling that neither Premier Palaszczuk nor any of her administration had the courage to front the inquiry to respond to the criticism of the route her Government is promoting.
The Mayor of Logan City Darren Power testified that within 20 years more than 50,000 residents would live with 1km of the train line, putting up with noise and vibration from 1.8km long heavy freight trains 24 hours a day.
The current plan is to terminate the line at Acacia Ridge, and not upgrade the rail link to Brisbane Port until 2040. This stupid idea will put hundreds of additional A double heavy freight trucks and related traffic onto local roads that can’t handle the traffic they have now.
Inland Rail’s preferred alignment also goes across the Condamine floodplain near Millmerran. Building a 2m railway embankment across a major floodplain is a really bad idea. The small culverts being built into the embankment will quickly block during heavy rain and flood out thousands of local residents and businesses.
The much better route through Warwick, along mostly existing freight rail lines was not seriously considered by the ARTC, this is a poor decision.
The budget for Inland Rail now stands at $20 billion and will go much higher. At this cost Inland Rail will never pay for itself. Our investigations into this and listening are going to continue. The more I hear, the more concerned I am about this project.
[Marcus] Malcolm Roberts, good morning to you, Malcolm?
[Malcolm] Good morning, Marcus, how are you doing?
[Marcus] I’m okay. First thing first. I wanna play you something back from a couple of weeks ago when you and I had a discussion on this radio programme, are you ready?
[Malcolm] Yes, I am.
[Marcus] Okay.
[Malcolm] Trump is in the box seat, he knows what he’s doing.
[Marcus] All right, you wanna bet me a bottle of wine on this? Australian wine.
[Malcolm] I definitely do but not yet, I’m very happy to send you a bottle of Stanthorpe wine if you win, but Trump is still in the box seat, mate.
[Marcus] Oh, Malcolm.
[Malcolm] Trump is coming home.
[Marcus] Hang on, Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm. No he’s not in the box seat.
[Malcolm] Yes, I haven’t seen the other, any headlines tonight, but he has got a process in play that’s been done before in the United States, it’s been upholding the constitution, it’s all proven and that’s underway and it will be unfolding in the next few weeks.
[Malcolm] I’m serious, Marcus.
[Marcus] I know you are, that’s the worry.
[Malcolm] I love the bet but I’m serious.
[Marcus] All right, let’s get on to some other issues. The Northern Australian agenda, the Torres Straits, Horn Island, Thursday Islands, Senate Select Committees on the Government’s agenda for Northern Australia in a nutshell, not going anywhere and deeply disappointing. What are the issues preventing development in Northern Australia, Malcolm?
[Malcolm] Have a listen to these, energy prices, property rights and land tenures, infrastructure, water, transport, telecommunications, a hopeless jumble of government services, all three layers of the government that’s state, federal, and local are not working together, there’s massive duplication, massive waste, huge gaps in service delivery. Now those things are occurring right throughout Australia.
And so how can we expect a development of productive capacity here in the North where there’s low population and lack of infrastructure, when the Southern areas of New South Wales, the rest of our country are being gutted by the same things, the destruction of productive capacity. And so what we’re really seeing up here, I mean, you, you’ve got problems in New South Wales I understand with ferries and trains that are built overseas and we have the same.
In Brisbane Queensland, we’ve had trains built overseas by both the liberal and labour governments in the past, they’ve come here with faults in them that had to be fixed. We have the ability, we just have lost the productive capacity because our governments, state and federal have destroyed that productive capacity.
[Marcus] I heard something, yeah, sorry, Malcolm, I heard something really interesting yesterday. In Victoria, and I know that Dan Andrews has copped a fair bit this year, trying to keep his constituents safe, but in Victoria to their credit, they have public transports, whether it’s buses, various trams, whatever, running around saying, “Proudly manufactured in Victoria.” Why is it that in Victoria, they can make their trams and their trains and their public transport infrastructure there but in New South Wales, in Queensland, we cannot.
[Malcolm] Well, I wonder how old those trams are because you know, our productive capacity is being destroyed over the last few decades, Marcus and I just wonder how long, how old those trams are. They still got the ability to make those trams? I don’t know. And you know, Victoria lost the Ford production facilities for cars, they’ve lost the Toyota production facility for cars, had lost various General Motors facilities, we haven’t got that productive capacity anymore. And so Victoria has done a very bad job.
Victoria has shut down it’s large power stations, which now make it vulnerable and dependent on New South Wales. I mean, this is a mess, our whole country and it’s a security issue, and it is a dead set security issue.
[Marcus] JobSeeker, my understanding from some stories floating around this morning, again, JobSeeker is blown out. In relation to costs, it’s gonna cost our economy billions of dollars more. I don’t know who’s doing the maths or the accounting treasury, but again, we see that job seekers, JobSeeker, the federal government’s plans through COVID 19 will end up costing more in the longer term.
[Malcolm] One of the things we have to start facing is the reality that state and federal governments have made a mess of the coronavirus, real mess of the way they’ve handled it. And I’ll give you some examples about JobSeeker in a minute up here in Queensland and especially in the North. But you know, Taiwan, Marcus have done by far the best job in the world, they’ve had no decrease in their economy, they’re bubbling along at the same rate as normal.
Our economy has been smashed and same with most economies. Taiwan, what they’ve done is they’ve tested people rigorously, they’ve traced people and they’ve quarantined people. They have isolated the sick and the vulnerable. We have shut down everyone. I mean, that is not the way you handle a pandemic. Now, initially, because it looks so bad because remember the people dying in Italy, we had to do something like that.
So we said to the government, “There is your open cheque, “just go for it, “do whatever you want.” That’s what we need to do when under such a crisis. When we realised, and we, but we said to them, “We’ll come looking for you “and holding you accountable,” when we realised that it wasn’t as bad as thought and then the total number of deaths in many countries around the world has not increased, the age deaths in Australia is lower than in the past years, so the total deaths have not increased, it’s not been what we’ve, what we were afraid of and that’s welcome news, the government hasn’t changed the tact.
And we’re still locked where we were until very recently locking down people. And we’re now, the coronavirus is still out there, we haven’t got a plan for managing the damn thing, and we’re still being managed by the Coronavirus. Victoria is still doing that. So what we have to do is actually look at what’s going on and come up with the plan. Never has the state or any federal government come up with the plan, never.
[Marcus] All right, the UK Climate Ambition Summit, we know that Scott Morrison was refused, well, basically, our nation is in the cold and all of these summits, you and I will disagree on the reasons why we’ve been cheating our way through our Kyoto agreements now for all- God, probably the best part of the last decade. But you and I differ on this, but just your thoughts on it.
[Malcolm] Well, it’s just another gabfest. The fortunate thing is that unlike all the other gabfests, there isn’t a huge transport demand pushing all these leaders together and producing carbon dioxide, which I know is got no problem, but they’re producing a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide to get to where they’re going and nothing comes out of it of any good.
And what we see is the United Nations pressuring nations to increase their carbon dioxide cast, which is insane, there’s no data to drive that, and Scott Morrison is now being pushed, and I think he’s relented and he is no longer going to use the Kyoto credits, that John Howard, stole, John Howard’s government, stole these credits, stole farmers’ property rights to get those credits, now we’re not even gonna use them. So we’ve got farmers owed somewhere between a hundred and $200 billion worth of compensation, or we need a restoration of their property rights right around the country.
[Marcus] Yeah.
[Malcolm] And so what we’re seeing is that the UN drove that stupidity from John Howard’s government, drove the state government in New South Wales and Queensland in particular to decimate their farmers, no compensation paid, and now we can’t even use them?
I mean, this is insane. And China’s commitment under these UN agreements is zero. They will continue in not only at their current levels of carbon dioxide output, they will continue increasing them. And so what they’ve got is their productive capacity continuing to grow by using our coals for their steel in the construction
[Marcus] Well I don’t know whether they’re gonna use, they’re going to use our coal considering what we’ve heard in the last week, Malcolm?
[Malcolm] Well, I think they will have to get back to it because they use coal for power generation, which is thermal coal exports. They’re about half of Japan’s intake of coal from Australia. Japan buys about almost $10 billion worth of coal from Australia, thermal coal for power stations, and China only buys 4 billion, but the key is in the metallurgical coal exports from Australia.
India has, buys $10 billion worth of coal, China just a fraction under that 9.7, Japan $7.4 billion worth. China needs our coal because our metallurgical coal for steel-making markets is the best in the world.
[Marcus] All right, I just want to move on to trade with China. It’s not getting any better, you know, we know that we’ve got a number of tariffs and a number of blockades if you like placed or put in place by Beijing, we’ve got Barley exports, we’ve got tariffs on other major exports including now, as I mentioned just before, the possibility that our coal will sit idle off the coast of China and not be allowed into the country. When is it gonna stop and what can we do about it, it’s not getting any better?
The reason China is picking on us I believe is that we have been very, very weak to ourselves. I’m not talking about standing up to China anyway, I’m talking about the Chinese are a totalitarian dictatorship, they are bullies. They’re being very subtle in the way they’re bringing people into the fold around the countries, through their belts and roads initiative, which Victoria has signed up to.
But what they can’t see, a bully always picks on the weakest first and the most vulnerable. Now China sees Australia as being allied with the United States. But China also sees Australia wrecking our own productive capacity. They see Australia kowtowing to UN agreements, ceding our sovereignty, giving up the control of our resources, the control of our productive capacity in this country.
China has said to the UN, “To hell with you lot, “we are going to continue our industrialization, we are ceding our jobs. we’re actually sending our jobs to China as we destroy our productive capacity. The Chinese also see us exporting coal and burning coal at very high cost in this country because of artificially inflated regulations that have destroyed the price of coal in this country, coal fired power.
And so what China is saying is we’re destroying ourselves. We’re subsidising the Chinese to build expensive renewable energy, solar, and wind in this country, which is destroying our electricity network even more, and then we’re seeing, they’re seeing us see that and they’re saying, “These people are contradicting “their own sovereignty, “they’re destroying their own values. “These people don’t know “what the hell they’re doing. “They have weakened their right.” And that’s what they’re doing. They’re sending us a very strong signal, “Get your house in order.”
[Marcus] And the human face of this, of course, 66 ships, 500 million to a billion dollars worth of coal currently sitting idle. We’ve got a thousand seafarers stuck out there. I mean, they’ve got families but hopefully, there’ll be some sort of a breakthrough. We need cool heads to prevail and I mean, I see, I tend to agree with you Malcolm, I can see, I can’t see China holding out for much longer.
[Malcolm] You know, it’s a very good point you’ve raised though the human face of it, but it’s true, but they’re not players in the trade dispute, the victims. Many haven’t been allowed to disembark apparently for about 20 months due to COVID, Marcus I think and the maximum time legally for seamen to be at sea is 11 months. The situation is deteriorating apparently for physically and mentally for these people.
There’s a limited supply of food and medicines and so, yeah, good on you for bringing up the human aspect. These people are caught in the middle and they’ve done nothing wrong.
[Marcus] All right, just wanna finish with lobster seafood. I mean, that’s how I plan on, well, look, to be honest, I plan on washing down a bit of lobster and a couple of prawns and some crab over Christmas with the wine you’re going to send me, but tell me, how can we help out our rock lobster industry?
[Malcolm] Marcus, the election date will be settled when the vice president, Mike Pence selects the candidate, selects the votes in
[Marcus] All right, so
[Malcolm] On January 6th
[Marcus] I’ll be having
[Malcolm] That will be A new year celebration
[Marcus] A new year one I like it, fair enough. All right, but let’s talk lobsters, mate.
[Malcolm] Yes, it was predicted that customers would eat more than 35 tonnes of lobster this year compared to just six and a half tonnes in the previous year. But now apparently, you need to get in early, there’s a limit of four per person I’ve been told. They’re now a bargain at $20 each because the Chinese are not taking our lobsters, so what we’re saying is get into the lobsters and go for it. Now I’m not a lobster fan, I prefer the Queensland mud crab, best seafood you can get,
[Marcus] Fair enough.
[Malcolm] But that’s my deal, but yeah, grab, go for the lobsters and wash it down with some Hunter Valley wine or some Stanthorpe wine from Queensland and enjoy your Christmas.
[Marcus] And shop Australian over Christmas too. And that’s something that Pauline and I talked about on the programme on Tuesday, we need to ensure that we buy up as much Australian wine as much Australian seafood and beef and support Australian industries during this time.
[Malcolm] So right, thank you very much for, for reminding us of that, Marcus. And I’d like to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and happy new year
[Marcus] Thank you.
[Malcolm] And the same to all your team, Justin and everyone, and all your listeners, a very happy new year and a very Merry Christmas.
[Marcus] You too, mate. We’ll talk again in 2021, we’ll finally settle the issue of Trump V Biden and I look forward to, I dunno a case or a bottle of something from you Malcolm.
[Malcolm] If Mike Pence goes away, I think he will and the constitutional precedence then I think you’ll be sending me a bottle of the wine, mate but if I’m wrong, I’ll be very happy to send it to you.
[Marcus] All right, mate, great to chat to you. Thank you so much for your time this year, we’ll catch up again in 2021.
[Malcolm] Look forward to it, thanks very much, Marcus and Merry Christmas.
[Marcus] All right, you too, mate. There he is, Malcolm Roberts, One Nation Senator, and look obviously, you know, me and a number of my listeners don’t always agree with everything Malcolm comes up with. But he does talk sense on, I think when it comes to things like industrial relations, reform, our trade issue with China and all these sort of stuff. I think he’s a little more moderate on that than say Scomo and his mob are, and I just enjoy Malcolm, my chats with him. We, we’re not always gonna agree. But gee that wine, will taste nice.
Thank you madam acting deputy president. I was told in meetings with defence last year that the PFAS task force was working on the problem with PFAS contamination by applying a whole of government response. So I asked for the minutes of their meetings to see what a whole whole of government response looked like. I was refused. I did a document discovery. Still no minutes arrived.
This third attempt has succeeded. It should not have been this hard to get hold of a simple set of minutes. Having read them, I do understand why they had to be prized away from the task force. The Morrison government’s PFAS response is all talk. It is a process that has no destination and as a result is achieving nothing. It seems to be aiming to stall and to avert. The last concrete action by this government was in 2018 to award $55 million for a drinking water programme for affected areas and $73 million for research into PFAS.
There are now over 900 PFAS sites around Australia. The government is remediating four defence sites. Bases at Williamtown, Oakey, Edinburgh and Katherine. Four down, 896 to go. While the PFAS task force is sitting around holding meetings and reissuing old guidances, the residents of the red zones continue to live with the nightmare every day.
Residents are trapped in homes that are unsaleable. One resident that I’ve spoke with many times and visited his house on a number of occasions, David Jefferis and his wife Diane Priddle from Oakey in Queensland purchased their property in 2004 for a combined $2.4 million investment. At that time, the defence department knew his land was affected by PFAS and yet they kept quiet.
Once the contamination was made public the property became unsaleable. Dave and Diane’s successful cattle breeding and grazing business had to close because nobody wants to buy contaminated cattle or genetics. They have a stud property. A very clean, tidy operation. David and Diane’s property and business was recently valued by a registered valuer at just $400,000.
A $2 million loss through no fault of their own. It’s an outrage that the Morrison government is allowing these residents to remain trapped in red zones while the PFAS taskforce drifts around from meeting room to meeting room in search of direction. While a recent class action lawsuit was settled, Dave and Diane received just $120,000 compensation and he hasn’t got the money yet.
The government’s own PFAS subcommittee has made the same recommendation in the last two update reports which called for remediation, compensation and like for like relocation. That’s fair. I hope the third head of that subcommittee in just two years, Senator McCarthy, has more success in getting their recommendations implemented.
The way forward now must be to remove residents out of the contaminated red zones, install remediation units and treat the groundwater before these toxic plumes spread further and ruin yet more lives.
Now last year, I asked the then Minister for Agriculture Senator McKenzie if it was safe for producers like David and Diane to send their cattle to auction and Senator McKenzie replied, quote,
“There is no reason why farmers cannot send their produce to market.”
End of quote. Well, let’s examine that statement. Food standards Australia specify a safe level for PFAS exposure of 20 nanograms for PFAS and 160 nanograms for PFOA. These can be present together for a total PFAS level of 190 nanograms per kilo of body weight. On the 19th of September 2020, The European Food Safety Authority set a new safety threshold for PFAS contamination.
The limit which now applies across the EU, is just 4.4 nanograms per kilogram of body weight per week. A fraction of what Australia allows. The European body considered the decreased response of the immune system to vaccination to be the most critical human health effect of PFAS exposure.
So I ask. Has the PFAS task force considered that the Morrison government is about to introduce a vaccine for COVID that might be put at risk through our tolerating PFAS levels that are 40 times higher than the new European Safety Standard. Cattle in the red zone from RAAF Base Richmond have been tested at over 1000 nanograms per kilo.
Newborn calves are testing at over 300 nanograms. This is the product that former Minister McKenzie says is safe to sell and consume. It is not safe to sell. By sending contaminated products to the EU, we’re risking food and livestock exports of $2 billion a year. This is not just affecting Oakey, this is affecting the whole beef industry.
The Morrison government can find billions to give to its big business mates for corporate welfare in the name of COVID but can’t find a lesser amount a much much lesser amount to find a like for like relocation and compensation scheme for everyday Australians caught up in the nightmare of the government’s making despite the committee recommending it do so. It’s time for the prime minister to fix this problem. And I seek leave to continue my remarks.
The Kyoto carryover credits were created by stealing property rights from farmers. Farmers lost the rights to manage their land and vegetation without compensation. The purchase of freehold land has been turned into a leasehold agreement with government controlling the land use through overburdensome and crippling regulations.
The decision by the Howard government to steal property rights without compensation remains to this day an unjust and morally reprehensible decision that the Morrison government refuses to reverse.
It has been estimated that to compensate farmer for their loss of rights would cost in excess of $200 billion. If this government is unwilling to compensate then they must IMMEDIATELY restore full property rights to farmers so they can recover their productive capacity.
Farmers are the best custodians of their own land.
The governance of our country is appalling. My adjournment speech.
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I draw attention to the Australian parliament’s failure to protect the interests of the Australian people. In the Senate yesterday, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Labor Party united in standing beside big banks against the interests of everyday Australians. Together they voted down my bill to prevent bank deposits being bailed in—meaning that when banks get into trouble they can steal depositors’ money.
Their madness is simple: Australia has the world’s safest banks; the only thing that could bring our banks down is a loss of confidence; that’s the very thing my bill was designed to stop. Not once has the Treasurer, the Prime Minister or APRA, the banking regulator, come out and said, ‘We will not bail in your deposits.’ It’s time the Australian people heard those words.
The right to use a banking service without losing our money is just one of many rights that everyday Australians have lost—another is the loss of property rights. Prime Minister John Howard’s government’s response to the UN’s Kyoto Protocol in 1996 was to use the deceitful trick of protecting junk vegetation from destruction. The carbon dioxide that this saved counted to our UN Kyoto targets and it still does.
It enabled his government to bypass its constitutional duty to compensate farmers for stealing their property rights. This is a perfect example of mad climate policies that are about bowing to unelected, unrepresentative foreign UN bureaucrats, rather than showing actual environmental outcomes. The land that John Howard’s capricious actions supposedly protected was not something worthwhile like an old-growth forest or repairing vegetation, no, it was agricultural land that was stolen.
John Howard’s government stole our farmers’ rights to clear junk vegetation that grows on a field not used for a few years. It prevents farmers making productive use of their land. To this day the general public think this ban on land clearing relates to actual forests. This conjures up images of evil farmers chopping down virgin forests and sending koalas of to their deaths.
The reality is this ban stops farmers clearing salt bush and junk vegetation that’s stopping productive agriculture on land that has been farmed many times. The old parties never let the truth stand in the way of virtue signalling. The Liberal-National government with John Howard as Treasurer is largely to blame for banking misconduct. It was John Howard who deregulated banking.
This exposed bank customers to the atrocious behaviour that was found during the Senate inquiry into rural and regional lending that I chaired. Our inquiry led to the banking royal commission finding even more wrongdoing. The Morrison government recently demonstrated another failure in looking after small business. Aussie company CuDeco operated the Rocklands copper mine near Cloncurry in Queensland.
It was driven into insolvency from the actions of the minority Chinese owners. The mine was sold to a local Chinese company who promptly onsold it to a Chinese government entity. China now owns an important Australian copper mine thanks to the ineffective Morrison government. The mine’s workers will never get their missing wages and local contractors are out of pocket $60 million.
The only way we will see CuDeco’s copper again is if we buy that copper inside Chinese manufactured electronics. Chinese corporations continue to cherrypick their way through our resources sector. China is buying mines, real estate, farms and even our water. I do compliment Treasurer Frydenberg though on his recent decision to block the sale of PURA milk to the Chinese, resulting in the Australian company Bega buying PURA.
It’s a welcome break after the Liberal-National and Labor parties selling Australia out for a generation. Since my return to the Senate last year the Liberal, Labor and National parties have been acting together and have voted down One Nation’s motions—many motions—to restore farmers’ water rights.
The 2007 Water Act takes their water rights and forces Aussie farmers, family farmers, off the land. Even now with all the rain this year farmers are on as little as 39 per cent allocation. Who passed the 2007 Water Act? Prime Minister John Howard. Who introduced the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in 2012? Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
The whole point of the Water Act was to remove family farms from the land, then to remove their water rights to new irrigation areas on cheap land belonging to corporate agriculture. Windfall profits all round. Australian farmers and local communities being gutted. The Australian parliament must decide whether it represents the interests of big business or the interests of everyday Australians.
This week I appeared on BUSINESS NOW ASIA PACIFIC to discuss the different approaches to COVID19 and how Australia needs to change course.
[Mike
Senator Malcolm Roberts from Pauline Hanson’s One nation believes the lockdown in Victoria will succeed. However testing needs to be quicker. He also believes that government needs to be more truthful. Now, Victoria has serious problems with infection control will a harder breakdown be effective if they don’t know the source of so many infections.
[Malcolm]
Well, I think there are two things I need to say in response to that Mike. And that is that first of all, this is a very difficult issue. We said that right from the start on the single day sittings on 23rd of March and eighth of April, when we said, there’s no manual for this, it’s entirely new.
We’ve gotta give the government lots of room. We voted in favour that we supported them on their packages and away we went, but we said, you’ve got to get the data. And you’ve got to look elsewhere and start to manage this in accordance with the best practise around the world.
So we might come back to that more later, but what we’ve learned is that quite often, the places where people have prolonged contact in close quarters is where the virus is transmission is highest and that’s the family unit and workplaces. So the family unit in Melbourne is older than in any other city.
And that’s significant because I also saw these figures on one of the radio stations. I heard the figures rather than one of the radio stations. The other thing about Melbourne is that it’s flat and people travel very easily and they travelled to watch football matches, sporting events, games, social venues, et cetera.
So I think that it is difficult. And number one priority is life, securing life, making sure people are healthy and secure and safe. And so a lockdown is essential because they’ve lost control of their borders. They’ve let it go and sorry, lost control of the virus within, in I think multi, foreign, where people are speaking foreign languages.
So they’ve lost control of that because people have not been able to understand the messages about the virus. So that’s where the outbreaks have been. And so I think the lockdown will be effective because it’ll stop families The extended family visits and it’ll stop work obviously.
And so I think the lock downs will be successful in Melbourne. The other thing is that they need to get testing done more quickly because some people are basically having a test and not getting the result back for about 10 days. Now they’re not gonna stay cooped up for 10 days if they don’t believe they’re sick.
And many of these cases that they’re asymptomatic. So I think that while it will work, the government has got to do its bit and getting testing to be more responsive and get results back in two or three days rather than 10. So yeah, there’s potential.
[Mike]
It’s interesting. In South Korea, the testing, from the testing to getting the results back now 12 hours and that’s what it should be when I was talking to professor Justin Fendos in South Korea last week, and he was saying that 12 hours and I mentioned that we have at times up to 10 days and I could hear his jaw hit the table. That’s just atrocious. What should the authorities be doing though?
[Malcolm]
Well, let’s come back to Taiwan if you don’t mind, because South Korea has done a marvellous job. They actually, do you mind if we talk about that?
[Mike]
Yeah, for sure.
[Malcolm]
Okay, South Korea has done a marvellous job. They actually let go let it go. And they had to recover. So given that, and by the way, I’ve watched your interview with professor Fendos. Fabulous interview, very well spoken man knows his facts. And he has been on the same track we’ve been from the right from the start on Monday, March 23rd and April the eighth, in the Senate single day hearings.
We also said, make sure that you get the data to the federal government when we gave them our support. And we said, make sure you looked at Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asian nations, Taiwan, especially South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, have done a marvellous job.
Singapore with the exception of Singapore, all the other three and Israel, which had also done a good job, Mike, they have eternal vigilance and they’re ready to do respond quickly to threats because they’re constantly under threat. So that is something we don’t have.
But the, in Taiwan, their population is about the same as Australia. They have 24 million we have 25. The population density in Taiwan is far, far higher than us because their 24 are crammed into a small Island. And they also had an earlier and stronger exchange with China because they’re Chinese themselves.
And so they had a lot more travelling between Taiwan and mainland China. And so they had a much greater problem. Now what the Taiwanese did, and we need to recognise that Australia has had 130 deaths and that’s good, but the Taiwanese have had seven, even despite they had an earlier virus, earlier contact with the virus, seven.
And the other significant point with the Taiwanese is that they didn’t lock down their economy. They actually kept their economy going and they gave responsibility to the people. Now, there are three things that they have done really well. First of all, their basic strategy was to isolate the sick and isolate the vulnerable.
That’s what real quarantine is. Quarantine is not isolating everyone into lockdown. Quarantine is isolating the sick and the vulnerable and separating them out. The second thing they did was that they implemented massive testing and they have a screening process for the testing. And I think South Korea is the same.
They test for high temperature knowing that that’s not always reliable, but they test for high temperature. If someone has a high temperature, then they go and get tested for COVID. And if they test negative, but they still have, for COVID, but still have a high temperature, then they’re allowed to go to work.
So they put responsibility on the workplaces, and what we’ve got in those countries is the responsibility on the individual citizens. And when you have that responsibility, there’s a far greater sense of accountability rather than when it’s imposed.
And the other thing that they’ve done, and I’ve only learned about this recently is they’ve got a much stricter tracing regime, but the tracing apparently doesn’t go right into people’s whereabouts it goes into their localities, and that helps the authorities then get one step in front.
So what I think the, what I think now with those lessons from Taiwan, and we encourage the government to look at Taiwan and South Korea. What I think that we should be doing now is we should be in Australia revising and reviewing our current work. How effective have we been? Where have we not been effective?
We need to recover and plan for recovery in two areas. First of all, to get our economy back to pre COVID, which is February, but then we need to aim far, far higher Mike, we need to get our economy back to, so to the point where we have our sovereignty, restored, our economic sovereignty and economic security and our independence.
We’ve been following this nonsense from the United nations now for almost 70 years. And it’s destroying our sovereignty and our economic independence. And so what the UN has been preaching and our governments have been preaching is interdependence, which means that we are dependent on other countries.
And so what we need to do is to get back at productive capacity, especially for manufacturing and agriculture. And then the third thing we need to do is to plan for future viruses, because this won’t be the last one. And so the biggest thing of all Mike, that we’ve learned is that the Taiwanese, the South Koreans, the Israelis, the Singaporeans, they trust their government.
They don’t give them carte blanche, but they do trust their government. And the government’s lead. In this country governments are too busy, fabricating policies and making and misrepresenting the circumstances.
We haven’t seen the truth on this from the prime minister. We haven’t seen the truth on this from Daniel Andrews, nor Annastacia Palaszczuk. We wrote to Annastacia Palaszczuk and said, “where’s your data. “We want to have a look at it.” She said, it’s in two locations, we went to both locations.
There’s no data. So Scott Morrison right up front. He was saying, six months hibernation, six months hibernation, six months hibernation. We knew there was no plan. And now we know there’s no data driving that plan. These governments are not trusted in this country on a range of issues, electricity, agriculture, stealing farmers property rights.
I mean, you could go on forever, selling ourselves out through international agreements, selling ourselves out the free trade agreements that are giving the other parties the power, we have got to establish trust in our government. And that can only become, can only come with reliance on data and reliance on telling the truth its time Australia got back to that.
[Mike]
Just wondering about the data to have the data we need all the input. We actually have that at our fingertips with credit cards and with Apple, for example, and the other Android devices. And we can, we can actually find out where people have been. The problem we have at the moment, according to professor Fendos, was that it’s reliant on us being honourable or telling the truth. So by having all that data available, it’s going to impact on inverted commas ‘civil liberties.’
[Malcolm]
Well, I get, I go back to my experience when I graduated from university with a mining engineering degree, I thought I’d better go out and start learning something that really mattered. So I worked as a miner for about three years, various mines around the country. And then I went overseas and worked in mines overseas.
So I’ve worked at the coalface and I developed a very healthy respect for miners for all people. And then when I became a mine manager, I would go underground a lot, not to do people’s work, but just to have, listen, and to look so that I can understand what they were going through and what their needs were.
And I can remember turning up at one mine brand new and the workforce detested the mine management because the mine management told lies and it took me a few months, but people started to trust me and that’s extremely important. And then what I was able to do was also to hand over responsibility and authority to the people doing the job.
I mean, not everything we can’t expect the miner to make every decision for the business, but their own jobs. And when people are given that responsibility and that authority they usually come good. And so what’s happening here is government tries to impose things in a crisis.
And we think we’re, a lot of Australians then distrust that, but in, Southeast Asia they’re already practising those things. And we’ve gotta give those governments credit because they’ve had SARS before. So we understand that that’s made it easier, but they’ve learned from that.
And they put it into practise and people are now trusting the government. So if the government tells the truth, if the government hands over responsibility to business owners, venue managers, then they’ll see the people respond because then people take accountability.
But when it’s shoved on them under threat and under control, it’s not taken that accountability is taken when there’s freedom for people to make decisions that autonomy is really important. And we’ve gotta keep giving trust back to people in this country and get the government the hell out of people’s lives.
[Mike]
What about state government? When we have this, where, we’re all Australians, but we have, the new country of Queensland, the new country of Victoria, the new country, new South Wales, South Australia, blah, blah, blah, blah. And each state has its own, not agenda, but it its own approach.
And maybe an agenda also it becomes a little bit political because where the Joan of arc of WA, with a Joan of arc of Victoria, Tasmania. So how do we get all the States working as one country instead of being a number of different countries within this terrible state of Australia?
[Malcolm]
Well, first of all, the thing that unites strategies is data. When everyone’s got the correct data, you’ll end up seeing strategies similar, but across every state, but they will be fine tuned for each state because Queensland is the only state in the country. Yes, that’s correct.
It’s the only state in the country where there are more people outside the capital city than inside the capital city, we’re more decentralised. We’re more spread up the coast with the sparse population inland. And so that’s different from Victoria. That’s different from Tassie.
That’s different from new South Wales and then Western Australia is different again. So I’m very much a believer in our constitution, federal constitution, which is based on competitive federalism, giving a huge amount of sovereignty to the independent States.
Only on national issues should we come together that’s defence, border security, foreign affairs, those kinds of things. And so I’m in favour of letting the state run, but the States themselves also need to get the data so that they can manage effectively. And they need to manage trust in a trustworthy way.
The fundamental thing that we did wrong in this country, I believe with COVID was that we looked automatically to Britain and to a man called Neil Ferguson. And that was a mistake. This Neil Ferguson has done I’ve forgotten the name of the school in medical school, medical college in Britain, but he’s in there and they’ve done a lot of modelling and his models have been proven to be completely wacky.
They have exaggerated the consequences of just about every virus they’ve cared to model every disease they’ve cared to model. Foot and mouth disease they cost the British government way back then when a billion was worth a billion, $10 billion, they cost the British farm economy. They have completely exaggerated.
They forecast millions of deaths, when out of the virus out of the disease in Britain when there were only 120 deaths. I mean, it’s completely ridiculous. We looked to them went straight to lockdown. We didn’t look to Asia. We should’ve looked at Taiwan as well as Britain and worked out where the reality is.
Donald Trump himself started calling out the British. And I don’t think he named Ferguson, but he that’s what he was implying. And we should be coming up with our own strategy, but looking at Taiwan, looking at everywhere in the world and then developing our own. So it’s up to the state governments.
I believe they should be independent. They should be working independently. That’s what gives us greater accountability. It worked up until about 1923, and then that’s been smashed and we’ve centralised more and more. So we need to get back to that competitive federalism, independent States working together. And when they’ve got data, they will have a solid plan. We’ve got to get back to truthful government that relies upon objective data.
[Mike]
Very interesting times we must continue more discussions. There’s so many questions or conversation pieces such as border control, the forthcoming Queensland elections in Australia, the economy and even football. So we can do that next time.
[Malcolm]
I look forward to it Mike. Happy to contact me anytime.
[Mike]
Senator Malcolm Roberts, thank you very much.
[Malcolm]
Thank you, Mike. All the best.
[Marcus] Minutes away from eight o’clock Senator Malcolm Roberts joins us on the programme, from One Nation, morning Malcolm, how are you mate?
[Malcolm] Good morning Marcus, I’m very well, how are you?
[Marcus] Yeah really good, look I’ve spoken a lot on the programme this week about our manufacturing sector. Look we need to make our economy capable of recovering from COVID-19, it’s, look it’s a complex issue I understand that but, I mean what do you think we should be doing mate?
[Malcolm] Well, you know it is a sad and scary story actually because it’s now recognised internationally that we’ve lost our economic security. We can’t make make protective equipment, we can’t get our supplies for handling the virus, we don’t make cars anymore, basic manufactured goods, tools, construction and mining equipment.
What we need to do is to harness the power we have in this country with our people and our resources. And to revive manufacturing and agriculture, the government needs to get back to doing its job to serve the people, and to create an environment for investing and making. Instead of just simple relying on digging and shipping
[Marcus] Yeah
[Malcolm] Which we need to continue to do, minerals and energy. We need to reform tax, we need to cut regulations, we need to build infrastructure, and we need to restore skills, particularly apprenticeships and restore the TAFE system.
[Marcus] Well absolutely, and what we do need to do Malcolm, is we need to value add the stuff we take out of the ground, otherwise we’ll fall further and further behind. I mean the latest indicator for manufacturing 2020 the manufacturing self-sufficiency index, ranks Australia almost, in fact, last among developed countries for God’s sake.
We’re ranked 59th, we’re somewhere between Kazakhstan and Lebanon, we’re not adding value to our primary production.
[Malcolm] Yeah you’re absolutely correct, and the reason why is in part because of the things I’ve mentioned, the tax that favours multinational companies, and also, that’s the company tax, and also the ridiculous regulations.
But what we’ve done is we’ve gutted our energy system, we’ve still got the world’s cheapest, high quality coal, very good, clean coal, and what we’re doing is we’re raising our energy prices artificially through these stupid regulations and this climate nonsense, and what we do now is we export our coal to China, and they sell electricity using our coal at eight cents a kilowatt-hour.
What we do here is we sell it at three times that price, our same coal that’s got less distance to travel. What we need to do is build coal fired power stations, end the ridiculous subsidies on intermittent energies, and that’s what they are, wind and solar, are intermittent, unreliable and expensive.
We need to remove these climate policies, we need to build a hybrid Bradfield Scheme in Queensland, because that comes with a hydro power system, and we need to stop the Queensland state Government for example, stealing one and half billion dollars every year, from every energy user, and that’s just basically a tax, they make that as a profit, and they just, it’s really a tax, so that’s crippling our manufacturing and crippling our ability to add.
We’ve now got aluminium smelter’s have shut, near your way down in Kurri Kurri and the Hunter. Looks like it’s under threat at Tomago, also in the Hunter, certainly in Geelong, and possibly now in Boyne Island. So what we’ll do is we’ll dig the bauxite out of the ground and then ship it off to overseas, and we won’t even get the aluminium out of our country, I mean it’s just ridiculous.
[Marcus] Well that’s right, that’s the value added that we’re talking about that we seem to be essentially either pricing ourselves out of, or basically because we’re lazy and we don’t want to look at any other way of perhaps taking advantage of this rich, mineral nation and land that we have here in Australia I mean, look manufacturing, back in the 1980’s, manufacturing was one of our biggest, if not the biggest employer at 17% of the total employment pie.
Now, it’s sadly just sitting down there at 6%, no wonder our economy’s hungry, I mean that’s how much less of the pie it’s getting.
[Malcolm] That’s right, 50 years ago, Marcus, and it’s so pleasing to see you using hard data. 50 years ago manufacturing was 30% of our gross domestic product, now it’s just 6%, and blue collar workers must be shaking their heads in absolute disbelief at what’s going on.
But I reckon every middle class person in this country, all blue collar workers, all small businesses, need to be very, very scared and worried about the Labor Party in particular, because it’s driving
[Marcus] Well hang on yes
[Malcolm] The agenda for renewables.
[Marcus] Well that was my next point, Labor are supposed to be supporting the blue collar worker, what are they doing about it?
[Malcolm] Well you know, Senator Sterle and Gallacher, Sterle, Glenn Sterle’s a wonderful guy and Alex Gallacher from South Australia, Sterle from Western Australia, they’re genuinely trying to stand up for workers like old Labor, and in One Nation, Marcus, we always give credit where credit’s due. But Fitzgibbon now, Joel Fitzgibbon
[Marcus] Yeah?
[Malcolm] A member for the Hunter, has stood up and said “the Green’s have infiltrated Labour.” Hello Joel, we’ve been saying that for decades, and what’s happening now is we’ve got new Labour, which is not like old Labor, and now we’ve got a confirmation of new Labor, because Albanese is rebuking Fitzgibbon,
And confirming that Labor will continue to abandon workers, in selling out to the Green’s, Labor has completely confirmed that it opposes coal mining jobs, opposes manufacturing jobs opposes blue collar jobs. They just want to go off and bend genders and all the rest of it, it’s completely absurd.
[Marcus] All right look, go easy on my mate Joel, I mean he’s the hope for the side. I think with Mr Fitzgibbon I’ve been very adamant, I mean I like Anthony Albanese but, I mean Anthony is simply too nice.
I really believe that, and Joel, perhaps I think he should have higher aspirations considering he speaks better sense than a number of his colleagues on the future of our energy sector and resources and mining and you know, he’s one of those that you’re right, will not be infiltrated by a Green ideology thank God.
That’s why I say that Joel Fitzgibbon is the hope for the side, and as soon as Anthony perhaps, realises this, he maybe needs to get out of the way.
[Malcolm] Well that’s the problem, that’s the problem you’ve identified Marcus, doesn’t matter what Joel thinks, because Anthony Albanese has gutted and cut the legs out from underneath Joel Fitzgibbon and no one stood up to support Joel publicly, no one, and they just let it all slide through.
So, basically what Albanese’s done is undermine the Hunter Valley, undermine all industry and undermine small business in this country, because he’s pushing absurd policies that are driving up energy pricing ridiculously.
[Marcus] Don’t hold back Malcolm okay? Don’t hold back, whatever you do. Tell me about this, a 23 year old university student is suing the government for failing to disclose the risk climate change poses to Australian super and other safe investments in government bonds, what?
[Malcolm] Yeah it’s ridiculous, you know this is just the ABC putting out another story, but unfortunately it’s true, but putting out another story in favour of their climate alarm crusade, but you know what Marcus?
You know where I stand on this, but I actually welcome this woman doing this, this young lady, 23 year old, because we need to bring this issue to court, because in court, they have to give hard evidence, empirical data, under oath. We’ve never had that in this country, and the second thing that she wants, she wants to change the way the government handles climate.
We want them to do exactly that, we want them to start using data, and you know, the third thing, so I actually support her getting into court, but what a ridiculous thing she’s doing because, it shows her entitlement mentality, she wants government to protect people from their own investment decisions, it’s just another stunt, again without the data.
[Marcus] All right and look I know you’re really chomping at the bit to get into this, the New South Wales police commissioner as we know, has fined BLM protestors.
It is pleasing, the law has been enforced, including Mr Patrick, who, the leader of the so-called BLM movement, here in New South Wales, at least, he was, well, I thought he was thrown in the back of a paddy waggon, but he was basically given a green carpet ride into the bowels of Parliament House don’t press, you know, don’t pass –
He certainly bypassed jail he got a thousand dollar fine, but I don’t know, what do we make of this Malcolm?
[Malcolm] Well didn’t he get the help from Green’s MP’s David Shoebridge and Jenny Leong to get into Parliament house?
[Marcus] Well I didn’t see Mr Shoebridge, but definitely Jenny Leong and she was there on the news last night, justifying this, well at least trying to justify it. It even had the New South Wales premier, who’ll join us on the programme soon, I mean, Gladys was even shaking her head, she didn’t quite understand how that could happen.
[Malcolm] But there is a wonderful positive side to this because the New South Wales police commissioner stood up last week and said that he will be enforcing the law and requiring police to enforce the law, and that’s exactly what the police force need to do. You know up here in Queensland, we have a premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who is soft on criminals, and hard on farmers and producers. And you know, she just invites people, and we got 30,000 people turning up to a black lives march protest last month, just crazy.
[Marcus] Yeah well, and then she closes borders, and worries about the importation, if you like, of COVID-19, meanwhile you’re right, that strange lily-livered, I guess mentality of preferring people’s civil liberties and their rights to protest over everybody’s health.
You know that’s, you’re gonna fester in your own nest I think up there, look I don’t know, maybe, I think as far as Queensland’s concerned, there needs to be a much stronger opposition Malcolm, because Annastacia seems to be able to be doing what she wants and she’s completely blocked out Sydney now as we know with the latest news that’s come through and off she goes mate, she’s on a tirade up there.
[Malcolm] Well we haven’t got any strong opposition here in the LNP because Deb Frecklington is really just the previous opposition leader Tim Nicholls with a skirt, you know, and what’s happening is the LNP are pushing similarly absurd policies to energy and climate policies as the Labor party.
And the Nationals are now following our lead, and pretending, we are actually opposing the UN and what it’s doing in this country, the Nationals realising that we’re stealing their votes are now pretending to oppose the UN. But the same people in the National Party are meekly following the LNP which signed the, which the coalition signed the Paris Agreement, which is gutting energy.
John Howard and the Nationals at the time, John Anderson, signed the, sorry committed to, committed our country to complying with the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s Kyoto Protocol and that’s decimated farming
[Marcus] We’ve all been sold a dud, we’ve all been sold a dud on this climate change, we know that. Malcolm good to have you on the programme, let’s talk again next week thank you.
[Malcolm] Look forward to it, thanks Marcus
[Marcus] All right there he is Senator Malcolm Roberts
[Marcus] Look, as you know this program is a PC and snowflake free zone. If you don’t believe in free speech well, feel free to tune out now. Senator Malcolm Roberts joins me on the program. Good morning, Malcolm how are you?
[Malcolm] I’m well thanks Marcus, how are you?
[Marcus] I’m okay. Look I know that you’ve been a little unwell of late and I’m glad that we could finally get you on to have a chat, ’cause there’s a lotta things to mull over. You’re well though?
[Malcolm] Yes, I’m very well thank you, very, very well.
[Marcus] Good, okay. There is a reason why the U.S. Black Lives Matter use the clenched fist. Their leaders openly admit they are Marxists, and they promote anti-capitalism, dismantling the nuclear family, defunding police. I mean this is almost like communism, hiding in plain sight, is it not?
[Malcolm] What do you mean almost like? It is, it is Marcus. And you know they don’t go off data, they go off ideology. Because they run off the same thing that people are doing here in Australia. What they do is they fabricate a problem. It contradicts the data, which I’m happy to go into if we have the time. They fabricate a problem, then they concoct a victim, and then they conjure an oppressor, and then they pretend a solution. And then what they do is they disarm minds, by invoking PC, so people are afraid to speak up. And they are afraid to think. And so many, many people disagree with what these Marxist mobs are doing in America. Trump has rightly called them out as Marxist, and wanting to destroy the country. What they then do is they anoint and align other beneficiaries to get them onboard and then they kill debate, stop discussion, it’s intimidation, and then what they do is they use gutless politicians to fabricate systems that put in place their policies. And their policies are Marxist, they’re communist policies. And all they’re interested in Marcus is control. They’re interested in control and nothing else.
[Marcus] And they do it as we know, through things like riots, protests, acts of vandalism, not only in the United States, but I mean gosh, this thing has been infected, well it’s infected Australia sadly. And we know that they’ve targeted a number of our cultural assets, including statues of Captain James Cook and the like. I mean yet many Australians still don’t realise that behind this tricky name BLM it’s ridiculous. It’s almost like they’re tryin’ to pull the wool over our eyes. I’m lucky, and we are lucky in our community that we have people like yourself and Pauline Hanson and others, that notice that this is going on and call it out for what it is.
[Malcolm] Well you’re absolutely correct. And I wanna compliment you Marcus because I saw a comment on your Facebook page, a quote attributed to you and you said, “I don’t want to tell you what to think, I just want to help you think.” So let’s get to the data. I’ve a strong belief in data, because the facts are the facts. So, I moved a motion in the Senate, about the Institute of Criminology, the Australian Institute of Criminology, the 2020 report into deaths in custody in Australia. Notice I said deaths in custody. I didn’t say black, white, indigenous, non-indigenous. Deaths in custody. Here are the facts. The 2017, ’18 rate of death in prison custody for indigenous people was 0.14 per 100 prisoners. And for non-indigenous persons was 0.18 per 100, slightly higher. Now because of the small sample size, you know we don’t have millions of deaths in custody, you can’t say that there’s a difference there. But you certainly can say that the non-indigenous is not lower than the indigenous. The indigenous are not higher. So that’s very, very clear.
[Marcus] Yes.
[Malcolm] There’s no difference. You want me to give you some more figures?
[Marcus] Well, just before you do, it’s important to outline these figures, because you can’t argue with facts. I mean you could try as hard as you can, but at the end of day, you won’t win an argument unless you produce relevant facts like you’ve just done, like Jacinta Price has done on this programme before, and of course like Pauline Hanson’s done. Look, I think what happens, and you’re right, you mentioned gutless politicians. Strong words, but it cuts to the core of really what the problem is. Why is it that here in this country, we only have people like yourself, or Pauline, or Jacinta Price, a few other commentators, who are happy to call it out for what it is and happy to speak their mind, and happy to stand up for free speech, and yet I guess some of the mainstream media, we saw what happened with Pauline last week on Nine Network. Maybe some of what she said was unpalatable Malcolm, but it was the truth.
[Malcolm] Correct.
[Marcus] A lotta the people that were holed up in these apartment complexes don’t speak English. Some of them do have drug addictions. And some of them haven’t been practising social distancing and you can’t argue with the facts. That’s why Daniel Andrews, he said the same thing, the health officer down there in Victoria, said virtually the same thing, But when somebody like a Pauline Hanson, or yourself, or Jacinta Price says it, you’re dragged over the coals for it. What happened to free speech Malcolm?
[Malcolm] Well it’s really simple, when people try to control, which is what the media does, and the media are doing when they’re telling lies, or when they’re misrepresenting things, always beneath control Marcus, there is fear. They’re afraid of facts. Now, you know those facts I just quoted to you, I tried to move a motion in the Senate, just simply to announce those facts. And the facts came from a 2020 Australian Institute of Criminology report into deaths in custody. The publisher of that report is the Australian government. Now this’ll shock you. And probably won’t shock, maybe not shock you because you’re aware of what the real problem is, gutless politicians. But I was stopped from that motion. I was not allowed to put forward the motion that would simply table the data, that’s all it did. All I wanted to do, I didn’t wanna say who was right or wrong, I just wanted to put the data out. The government and the Labor Party colluded to stop me putting out the data. And that’s the problem, we’ve got gutless politicians who are afraid of data, and what they do is they use their own emotions, their own biases to sway people. And people are sick of this because, I’ll make it very clear, I represent the people of Queensland and Australia. Every speech in the Senate I start with the words, “I am a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia.” I listen, I speak up, I push, and I pursue to support the people. I serve the people. That’s what’s wrong in this country. We have politicians thinking the people serves the government, the people serve the politicians. That is complete rubbish. And that is the fundamental error in this country now. We have got government controlling things instead of government serving things. Governments shouldn’t be fixing the economy. Governments should create an environment in which small businesses, large businesses, employees, individuals, can contribute. That’s how we were in the 1900s, right through the 1920s when Australia had the number one, highest position for gross domestic product per person. Highest per capita income in the world. And we have slowly decreased that until we’ve become a shell of ourselves early this year. And then we slammed that in the COVID response. We need to get back, not just to where we were in February, we need to get back to where we were in 1920s, in terms of being the leaders in the world for per capita income. Australians are capable of doing that. All we need to do is fix the damn systems that the governments have put in place over the last 80 years.
[Marcus] Why do the governments in this country kow tow to Beijing, China? And why is it that our economy isn’t set up to be more self-sufficient Malcolm?
[Malcolm] Well it’s really simple, We have number of things, I haven’t got time to go into all one at the moment, but I’m happy to do that one day in the future if you want. But we had a number of changes that have been put in place, under the global approach the elites are pushing, since the formation of the UN. I can rattle them off, there are many. If you just look at some of them. The Lima Declaration in 1975, that was signed by Garth Whitman’s Labour government. The following year his arch enemy Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal prime minister, ratified the damn thing. That destroyed our manufacturing markets. In 1992, we had the UN’s Rio Declaration, for 21st global governments. It was masqueraded supposedly under UNIDO, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Sorry that was Lima Declaration. But the Rio Declaration put in place an agenda to push climate change, which will get control, which is getting control of our energy which is fundamental, our water, which is fundamental, our property rights, which is fundamental. And that was signed by Paul Keating’s Labour government. In 1996, John Howard’s government said, we won’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but we will comply with it. And that stole our productive capacity, in that it took our property rights off our farmers. That’s what happened, and now we’ve got basically nationalised farming that is controlled by regulations over their imports, and sometimes the way they do their very farming. We have nationalised farming now. Then we have the Paris Agreement in 2015. And a lot of international trade agreements and other agreements that have destroyed our productive capacity, destroyed our governments, destroyed our sovereignty. We don’t control our country any more, foreigners do. They control some aspects of our immigration. This is why Liberal and Labour are pushing policies that are helping foreigners, and foreign entities, unelected bureaucrats, and we are opposing them. We need to get our country’s control back in the hands of Australians.
[Marcus] What will it take? The passion that you’ve garnered, I can hear it quite clearly, you and Pauline and others, who fight for the sovereignty of Australia. How do we generate more passion within the community? I know that obviously the One Nation Party, yourself and others, do have a strong following. But how do we make this go? I mean it should be mainstream. This thought pattern that you’ve so eloquently described for us the last couple of minutes, this thought pattern should be prevalent. It should be first of mind, top of mind for all Australians. How do we overcome the barriers, the obstacles, to get this front of mind for hard-working Australians, who basically just want their country back, wanna be able to go to work, want to see the hard work they’re doing pay dividends, be able to afford to buy their own property, to pay fair prices for things like fuel and energy costs, electricity, and utilities, and also, also more importantly, to be able to look back on the history of our country with pride and feel respect for our flag without being made so bloody guilty, or to feel so bloody guilty, the fact that we may be white and we may be Australian for God’s sake?
[Malcolm] Well I love your passion too. Have a look at these basic facts. Pauline Hanson came outta the Liberal Party. And Mark Latham came outta the Labor Party. Half of our voters are former disgruntled Labor voters. Half of our voters are former disgruntled LNP voters. And our votes are going up, every election we have a higher vote for One Nation. And what we need to do is to keep speaking the facts Marcus, keep using the data. Put more pressure on the Liberal, Labour duopoly, because fundamentally the bureaucrats run this country and they’re pushing policies that unelected bureaucrats from the UN pushed. Now Scott Morrison came out and said something in October last year, October the 3rd in Sydney at the Lowy Institute, he said, he will have a review into the unaccountable, internationalist bureaucrats. And we all knew that he was talking about the UN. But I also knew that he would not do anything about it. He was saying those words because he knew that we are resonating with the people over the UN destruction of this country. We also know that I came out first and called the Coronavirus what it really is. The Chinese Communist Party UN virus. The UN’s World Health Organisation colluded with the Chinese Communist Party to suppress the news of this virus, which enabled it to get a gallop around the world. Now Scott Morrison, after I did that, and after we continued to bash Chinese Communist Party, Scott Morrison came out and talked about the communist party and started to hold them accountable with words. But, he turned around and said we need to give the World Health Organisation, a UN body, more power, the power of weapons inspectors. They say one thing and they do another. That’s why he’s got the tag now Scotty from Marketing. We’ve got to get away from people who are marketing people, they build facades and then sell them and get back to the basics of serving the country. And that means we need to speak about the facts and use the data.
[Marcus] And less spin. Malcolm it’s been great talking to you this morning. Let’s do this more often please.
[Malcolm] I’d love to mate, love to.
[Marcus] Okay, we’ll talk soon, thank you.
[Malcolm] Thanks Marcus.
[Marcus] There he is, Senator Malcolm Roberts. What do you make of it, give me a call
This week I visited farmers in and around Oakey who have had their lives and livelihoods destroy by PFAS contamination from the nearby Army Aviation Centre in Oakey. One Nation is calling for affected resident to receive like-for-like compensation as soon as possible so they can get on with their lives. PFAS FACT SHEET https://tinyurl.com/ya877sqy
Hi, I’m Malcolm Roberts and I’m a senator for Queensland, and I’m near the Oakey Army Base here in just west of Toowoomba. We’re going to show you a clip of some water flowing overland and it’s going through this water course here, and it shows PFAS contamination.
And what annoys me is that governments in this country, both liberal, national and labor, just ignore the damn data. They just completely ignore it. Now, I happen to have worked in an industry where if you ignore data, people die, so I’ve become very conditioned to data and I understand its power.
Now, the European Union has set a new limit for PFAS contamination in beef. It’s eight nanograms per kilogram of body weight, it’s much, much lower than in Australia. And, in fact, the Department of Defence and some other departments in this country don’t even recognise any damn level at all is significant.
So what happens if we continue to ignore this data, we continue to ignore the plight of people? What will happen if someone in the EU is inspecting our meat and they come across highly contaminated PFAS? The whole of our beef industry will be shut down, that’s what’s at stake.
So we need the government to come clean, look at the data and admit what they’ve been doing for 40 years knowingly in this country. I’m so sick and tired of this, and we need people here who in this country, who have been belted and smashed, livelihoods, future for their retirement completely destroyed, and the Department of Defence has known about it.
We need like for like compensation, we need those people to be relocated and we need those properties to be declared unsafe. That’s all we want, but we want people to abide by the data. For goodness sake, these are people’s livelihoods at stake, whole lives at stake.
And it’s not only the people involved in the PFAS contamination zones like this one, this is where overland flows are contaminated, overland flows are coming from the base, but it’s also mums and dads because they are not being told that some of the beef is contaminated and they’re feeding contaminated beef to kids.
It’s all over Australia, that’s what we want fixed. The people in this land, in this land here, are taking responsibility, but they need to be compensated for that, like for like compensation, and we need to have healthy, safe food levels for production in this country.
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