The purpose of this Bill is to abolish the current Administrative Appeals Tribunal and establish a new tribunal with improved criteria for member appointments, ensuring a transparent process.
Under the new system, positions would be advertised and candidates selected based on their qualifications and experience, with an appropriate interview process.
This approach seeks to alleviate concerns regarding past politicisation of tribunal membership.
Transcript
The Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2024 and the associated bills, which relate to the replacement of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with a new administrative review tribunal, are long overdue.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal has developed a reputation for inefficient and delayed decision-making, holding up the highly emotive process of considering mostly visa reviews and applications. The appointment process of tribunal members has been less than transparent, with many appointments being clearly politically based and with many appointees being barely qualified for their positions. That has raised a number of questions and a lot of talk. The new tribunal will offer transparent appointments based on merit and will ensure that decision-making will be less questionably based on perceived biases or lack of understanding of the issues. That’s a clear issue in the profession. Positions will be advertised and appointments made based on record and performance at an interview. Applicants must have relevant knowledge, skills and experience, and their qualifications need to be stated.
A significant problem in considering the bills, though, has been the time involved in assessing the voluminous amount of material, which something that previous speakers Senator Shoebridge and Senator Scarr both mentioned. That is particularly so in terms of accessing the voluminous amount of material in the context of the huge number of consequential amendments that need to be made to more than 138 acts and the consideration of the impact of these changes. That’s no light task; it’s not a five-minute task.
It’s been suggested that the new bill does not adequately offer persons with immigration challenges enough access to legal support when presenting their case for review. The bills reintroduce the Administrative Review Tribunal. This is generally considered a good move as it can assist in avoiding long and expensive court actions. It’s hoped that the Administrative Review Tribunal will be sufficiently resourced to avoid the enormous backlogs that have prevented timely and final resolution of primarily .migration and refugee matters. It’s been said that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal merits review system was failed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal which did not function effectively, efficiently or transparently. In 2022-23, more than 19,000 migration and refugee matters came into the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This represented 46 per cent of all applications that came into the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. There were over 54,000 matters still outstanding at the end of the financial year. It’s hoped that this backlog will be more effectively dealt with by the new Administrative Review Tribunal.
I need to point out that the mass of material within these bills that we’ve had to go through has been difficult to take in at short notice. Sadly, this is becoming a standard practice of this Albanese Labor government, making it difficult for crossbenchers to efficiently and, sometimes, effectively perform their functions. We heard about the hoops that Senator Scarr had to jump through. That’s not acceptable. Senator Shoebridge also mentioned the same problem. The process of developing this bill and getting it through scrutiny has been catastrophic, as one of them said. We have also seen a number of bills guillotined under the Labor-Greens-Teals-Senator Pocock coalition. That coalition has been pushing things through this parliament, suppressing orders for the production of documents and guillotining debate. We’ve had bills with enormous consequences for this country—some of the most far-reaching ever—rammed through this parliament with not one word of debate. I’m talking now particularly about the digital identity bill, which went through recently. That bill was amended quite substantially, and there was not one word of debate about the bill, nor about any of those amendments. So the process of coming to where we are with the Administrative Review Tribunal was flawed. Senators Scarr and Shoebridge echoed that. But the changes are needed. As servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, my team and I have weighed the pros and cons. Based on all of this, I somewhat reluctantly decided to support the bill. Having listened, though, to Senators Scarr and Shoebridge, who are lawyers and who I respect, I will be reflecting and may change my mind. But, at the moment, we are highly critical of the government’s process in developing this bill and putting it through what amounts to less-than-perfect, inadequate scrutiny. I do say the changes are needed at the moment. I reluctantly support the bill.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/qNn49wl12hU/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-29 12:18:452024-05-29 12:18:49Let’s Have More Transparency
In trying to please everyone, the Treasurer’s third budget will please nobody.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ third budget fails to deliver affordable houses, cheaper power bills and groceries, and any hope for the future. That’s what a good budget should deliver.
A better way is putting Australians first and using our natural resources to drive wealth, abundance and opportunity for all.
Transcript
Cheap houses, cheap power bills, cheaper groceries and hope for the future—that’s what a good budget should deliver. Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s third budget fails to deliver on all of these issues. Once his short-term coupons expire, inflation will fire up. Handouts and subsidies don’t bring inflation down; they just hide it temporarily. The Treasurer even admitted as much in his budget speech last night. He said:
Electricity prices would have risen 15 per cent in the last year if not for our efforts—
the Treasurer means his handouts—
instead, they rose two per cent.
Has there ever been a greater admission of failure of the net zero pipe dream? With the most wind, solar, batteries and green schemes on the grid in our history, actual power prices rose 15 per cent in just 12 months. When the last budget’s power relief ran out, Australians would have faced that entire price rise in one hit. That’s right: Treasurer Chalmers has been forced to extend another round of power bill relief. Australians would have rejected what the net zero lunacy has done to our once cheap power. Cheaper houses—with 2.3 million visa holders needing housing in the country right now, Australia is in the grip of a terrible housing crisis. Good working families, Australian families, are sleeping in tents, in cars and under bridges. Treasurer Chalmers tells us to prepare for another 280,000 migrants. Given his track record on immigration predictions, we should prepare for more. With no hope of building enough homes to house those new arrivals, rent, house prices and homelessness will only get worse.
How about hope for the future? There is little hope. The Treasurer tells us to expect crippling, worse deficits for the next 10 years, starting with this year. A better way is possible with One Nation, by putting Australians first and using our natural resources to our advantage. Then we can again become the best in the world.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/3w4hd_-2evU/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-29 07:45:212024-05-29 07:45:26Labor Fiddles Around the Edges With its Election Budget
I support this Modern Slavery Bill because slavery is repugnant to me and to Australians across our country. It’s inhuman.
While this bill is a positive step, it is not as strong as my Child Labour Bill, which has been introduced to the Senate and is currently under review by the senate committee. My bill adopts a stricter definition of ‘child labour’ and imposes severe penalties on companies that exploit child labour in their supply chains.
Australia must commit to ending all forms of slavery, particularly child slavery, because it is the right thing to do.
Transcript
As a servant to the fine people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the Modern Slavery Act 2018 establishes the Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner as an independent statutory officeholder within the Attorney-General’s Department. The role of this new commissioner is to bring together the different initiatives the government has taken since the Modern Slavery Act was enacted. These include a unit inside the Attorney-General’s Department and other agencies, including Border Force, to monitor the existing anti-slavery legislation, and an ambassador to counter modern slavery, people smuggling and human trafficking. The Modern Slavery Amendment (Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner) Bill 2023 clarifies the commissioner’s ability to share information with the Australian Federal Police and other law officers. That will be useful where slavery is brought to light. The definition of slavery in the Modern Slavery Act, which the commissioner will be relying upon for their actions, is wide enough to include that which everyday Australians would consider slavery. There is an issue with the definition of ‘child slavery’ that I will return to in a moment. Noting the absence of penalties in this bill and the modern slavery bill, I hope the commissioner does receive the level of cooperation necessary to eliminate slavery in the supply chains of corporations doing business in our country and of course eliminate slavery as it exists in Australia, which is mostly sex slavery. Senator Shoebridge has advanced an amendment which should improve cooperation with the commissioner. One Nation will support the amendment.
The commissioner will provide an independent mechanism for victims and survivors and business and civil society to engage on issues and strategies to address modern slavery. This is the area of the bill that was dialled up following the committee report. There seems to be a strong emphasis on telling the stories of those workers who are being exploited and preparing material to inform business and the public on the issue. While One Nation will be supporting this bill, I believe Australians across our country consider slavery repugnant, and the best option is to proceed to criminal and economic sanctions right now for businesses that include slavery in their supply chains. Deal with it now and stop slavery now. Businesses have had more than three years to establish whether or not they have slavery in their supply chains. That should be plenty of time. Simply reporting on it—and self-reporting at that!—is not an effective solution. That approach is nearing its use-by date.
One Nation looks forward to the commissioner stepping this up and clearly communicating sanctions to business and working with the Attorney-General and the Minister for Trade and Tourism on further sanctions and penalties. It’s essential that an Australian consumer can buy goods or services in our country and be safe in the knowledge that they are not rewarding the use of slavery. It’s useful for people who see something to have somewhere to say something. For that reason I look forward to the commissioner operating a telephone and web function that allows people to report suspicions they have around the use of, or the keeping of, slaves. That could be used for reports of child slavery and child labour.
For all the talk about child labour, we still have children in the Congo digging up lithium so that urban elitists can buy their electric vehicles, install their power walls and pat themselves on the back about how worthy they are. This has to stop. Stop turning a blind eye to these kids dying in the Congo and other places. The mechanism in place so far has failed miserably to help child labourers, and One Nation has legislation already before the committee. It’s our measure to prevent goods being made with child labour from entering Australia. A problem that continues to exist—in part due to the definition of ‘slavery’ used in the Modern Slavery Act, which the parliament passed in 2018—is that the commissioner will be operating under the definition of ‘child slavery’ which traps only ‘the worst forms of child slavery’, not all the forms of it. Article 3 of the International Labour Organization Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour includes in part (d), ‘work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children’.
After all these years of talk about child slavery and all these Australian government actions, these poor children are still digging up cobalt with their bare hands when they should be at school. The International Labour Organization has a far better definition of ‘child labour’, which my office is using. Their definition of ‘child labour’—not child slave labour; it’s more encompassing—is ‘a child under 14 who misses school, or would miss school if it were available, in order to perform work’. So it is when work takes them out of school. That definition captures people who are caught in a never-ending cycle of poverty and misery, with children who are working to bring home a tiny income to support their families and who never receive the necessary education to break out of that cycle of poverty. They are trapped in poverty and misery for their very short lives. These children work until their bodies are broken, and then their children take their place. Child labour may provide large corporations with extra profits from cheap minerals, coffee and textiles, amongst others, yet it’s just plain wrong. It is inhuman.
I framed my bill to relate to child labour only because the Modern Slavery Amendment (Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner) Bill 2023 has been on the drawing board for some time. My bill covers what this bill does not cover. Having seen the final version of this bill, I will provide the committee with an update on an amendment to my bill to allow the Anti-Slavery Commissioner to be the point of reporting of child labour on imported goods in addition to child slavery. One Nation will support this bill, and, as servants of the people of Queensland, I will continue to pursue this issue.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/rIuuW8SXbuE/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-29 07:38:532024-05-29 07:38:58The Modern Slavery Bill
The Treasurer handed down his third budget tonight (14/05/2024). These were my predictions earlier today in the Senate. What do you think of what he has handed down?
Transcript
As Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down his third budget tonight, many Australians simply don’t care. All the talk about surpluses, deficits, subsidies and balance of payments is very low in the average Australian’s priorities today. The biggest budget concern across dinner tables is skyrocketing mortgage costs, rents, grocery bills, insurance premiums and power bills. Australians don’t need Treasurer Chalmers to tell them times are tough; they’re living through tough times. Unfortunately, this budget shows the government isn’t coming to help; in fact, to compensate for its poor decisions it’s going to have to have its hand deeper in your pocket, taxing more of your salary for years to come.
Let’s step through the budget and what it means for Australians. Firstly, the big headline: Labor wants everyone to know the budget is in surplus—$9.8 billion. It sounds good, doesn’t it? Anyone who’s ever had their bills laid out on the dining room table knows a good budget needs more money coming in than going out. Unfortunately, this budget surplus is terrifyingly small, given that fairies have kissed Treasurer Chalmers with good luck.
The government has won the biggest lottery prize we could ever have hoped for, yet it has just a tiny surplus. It would be like a family winning division 1 of Powerball and having $100 left over at the end of the year—and calling it a win! There should be rivers of gold flowing into the budget. Instead we have a miserable trickle because Labor doesn’t resist spending every bit of its lottery winnings.
Commodity prices for our exports like oil, gas, coal, metal minerals and agricultural produce have all been near or at record highs over the previous few years. That means huge amounts of extra money flowed into Treasurer Chalmers’s budget. ‘Oil’, ‘gas’ and ‘coal’ are all dirty words to this Labor government and the Greens, and they’re too embarrassed to admit they have, in large part, saved the budget.
The second lottery win is the Australian workers. They’re working more jobs, longer hours and harder than ever. All of the extra work is reflected by the record-low unemployment rate. That means more taxes from hardworking Australians are going into the budget coffers than ever before—a record. That’s the story of this budget: three years of some of the largest tax intakes government has ever recorded, yet Labor can only squeak out the tiniest of surpluses.
Despite Australians working multiple jobs for more hours, they’re still going backwards because of inflation. Inflation is the secret debilitating stealth tax on all Australians. It’s the reason Australia had the largest collapse of disposable income in the OECD. If you feel like you’re going backwards, it’s because you are.
The only way to get ourselves out of this infrastructure mess is by spending on productive assets that allow Australia to make more here. We need to raise our productive capacity. We need more dams so that Australians can have more food and exports. But don’t expect to see any dams in Labor’s budget. We need cheaper electricity so that small businesses can thrive and hire people in their local communities. Instead, Labor will continue to throw us down the path of the net zero pipedream, which is guaranteed to bring higher energy prices, whether Australians pay for it on their power bill or with more taxes.
Unfortunately, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Labor-Greens are a uniparty on net zero—all united in their commitment to kill our electricity grid. We need nation-building projects like the Iron Boomerang project to make millions of tonnes of the world’s best quality steel right here in our country.
One thing I can guarantee is that there won’t be enough action on immigration in this budget. The Prime Minister has leaked that they expect net overseas migration to come in at 300,000 next year—300,000! This is a horrifyingly large number. It’s excessive. Prior to COVID there were 1.9 million visa holders likely to require housing in the country. There are now 2.3 million plus 400,000 tourists. That’s causing the terrible rental and housing crisis. Now the government wants to make that 300,000 people worse again. Where will these people sleep, Prime Minister?
That sums up what we can expect from this Labor budget: more Australians sleeping in cars, under bridges, in tents and in caravans; first home buyers destroyed by their mortgage repayments, while inflation runs out of control; small businesses being strangled by power prices. Does this sound good? This is hopeless. There are many more shocking stories of how the Australian dream has been ruined by decades of the Liberals-Nationals-Labor-Greens uniparty, acting together to implement the agenda of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.
A better way is possible. A much better way is possible, and One Nation will reveal how in our response to the budget this week.
Labor has been caught red-handed with a cheat sheet to circumvent democracy. The media has received a leaked copy of a manual from the office of the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. This clearly shows more damning evidence that Labor is seeking ways to side-step the responsibility and accountability of government.
Instead of respecting the role and powers of the Senate, the Prime Minister’s Office sends out a secret manual on side-stepping senate estimates’ questions.
This is nothing less than contempt of the senate from the PM’s office and reveals premeditated attempts at concealing the truth from the Australian people. This is a government that talks up transparency while writing the ‘How-To’ guide on hiding the facts. We will review this in more detail and will provide a detailed response on the manual.
Transcript
I speak to this motion to take note. I have yet to read the document in full and in detail, yet its existence is very disturbing, as other speakers have already said. At Senate estimates, Anthony Albanese’s office is putting words in the mouths of department heads. How can we trust their answers? We cannot trust this government. Repeatedly we’re getting the suppression of democracy—repeatedly—and we’re seeing arrogance. Let’s have a look at some data, and then I’ll come back to talking more about this document.
As of the end of December 2023—7 December, specifically—after 94 Senate sitting days in the 47th Parliament, Anthony Albanese’s parliament, 14 guillotine motions have been agreed to. Under the previous Morrison government, in the 46th Parliament, 14 guillotine motions were agreed to. Now we start to see the difference. A total of 87 bills have been subject to the guillotine in the 47th Parliament under the Labor-Greens-teals-Pocock coalition led by Anthony Albanese. In the 46th Parliament, under the Morrison Liberals, there were 59. So we have seen almost 50 per cent more under this government, under the coalition that Labor formed with the teals, Senator Pocock and the Greens, quite often with Senator Jacqui Lambie’s support.
They promised transparency and accountability. Instead we get the suppression of democracy, repeatedly. Arrogance—that’s what we say it is. Arrogance. We see that the suppression of democracy is a form of control.Always beneath control there is fear. Of what is the Albanese Labor-Greens-teals-Pocock coalition afraid? It’s afraid of truth and afraid, fundamentally, of an informed citizenry. They don’t want people to know.
The media has seen copies of the document. ‘The PMO’s secret manual on sidestepping Senate estimates questions’—that’s the headline in Capital Brief. The article says:
Capital Brief has seen a document sent by Anthony Albanese’s office advising departments on how to handle questions on notice from Senate estimates. Current and former senators say the edict represents contempt of the Senate.
Contempt of the Senate is a very serious matter. Another article in Capital Brief says:
Current and former senators, lawyers and a former top judge have said the drafting of the document could result in contempt of the Senate. … …
Anthony Albanese’s office has stood by a document it issued to senior bureaucrats which advised them how to sidestep Senate estimates questions on the basis that inquiries have “skyrocketed” since Labor came to government.
Well, that’s your job! I don’t care if they have skyrocketed. We’ll keep asking questions. I’ll get to the Prime Minister’s office’s manual—what we’ve seen of it so far; I haven’t dissected it.
When the interests of several departments are involved, the Government Guidelines for Official Witnesses before Parliamentary Committees and Related Matters call for departments to consult with other departments as part of the drafting process. This includes instances where the same or similar Senate estimates questions on notice are asked of all or multiple departments and agencies. Why are you worried about different answers from different departments? Look at some of the topics covered—well, we’ll go through that another time.
I know this is not a motion by leave to seek a variation of standing orders, but One Nation normally opposes them because the Senate should be focused, firstly, on Senate responsibilities and, secondly, on government business. We want the government to govern. Senate estimates, though, are a vital part of holding governments and bureaucrats accountable for taxpayer funds. Why do you hide from that? Anthony Albanese’s department wants to hide the truth from the people.
We have seen the Fair Work Commission and the Fair Work Ombudsman stumbling through an answer to my questions attempting to get to the bottom of their complicity with the CFMEU and major multinational labour hire firms in stealing $30,000 to $40,000 per miner each year from thousands of casual miners in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley. They hide the facts wilfully. The Fair Work Ombudsman office relies on fraud, repeatedly.
The Labor minister for workplace relations ignores and diverts. It’s embarrassing for departments. We look forward to reviewing the formerly secret document in detail, because democracy is at stake.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/ki6XPZvIIyo/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-24 11:55:032024-05-24 11:55:06Labor’s Guide on How to Avoid Answering Questions in Senate Estimates
On 15 May the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, was shot in an attempted assassination. Thankfully he’s out of surgery and no longer in a critical condition. On behalf of One Nation, I send our prayers for his continued speedy recovery.
Slovakia recently re-elected the Fico Government for the fourth time. His political longevity stands against globalist influences, including those from the EU and the United States. This platform includes opposing the World Health Organisation Pandemic Treaty and any measures that compromise Slovakian sovereignty.
The attempt on the President’s life reflects a desire to maintain control over Slovakia, as seen in Hungary under President Orban. President-elect Peter Pellegrini called the shooting an unprecedented threat to democracy, emphasising the importance of expressing political opinions through voting, not violence.
This sentiment resonates with Australia’s current political climate, where we must remain vigilant against the erosion of democracy.
Prime Minister Albanese’s government has been pushing through bills with little oversight, including the Digital ID bill.
One Nation wants to know — who is influencing these decisions? It clearly isn’t the Australian people.
Transcript
Overnight the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, was shot in an attempted assassination. He’s in a critical condition. On behalf of One Nation, I send our prayers to the Prime Minister and hope for his speedy recovery and return to work. Slovakia has only just returned the Fico government, on a platform that stood out against globalist influence on Slovakia from the EU and the United States.
This platform includes opposing the World Health Organization pandemic treaty, opposing the international health regulation amendments and any measure that takes away Slovakian sovereignty. Clearly, the attempt on the Prime Minister’s life is the work of someone who feels the Slovakian people should not be allowed to break away from the controlled state being constructed in Europe and make their own way in the world, just as their neighbour Hungary has done under Prime Minister Orban.
President-elect Peter Pellegrini called the shooting an ‘unprecedented threat’ to democracy and warned against expressing political opinions with pistols in squares instead of voting in polling stations, a sentiment true for our divided country. As Churchill said, ‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.’ Prime Minister Fico displayed such vigilance in standing against unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels, Geneva, London, Europe and New York. Australia must be vigilant against the continued subversion of our democracy by these same people.
Under Prime Minister Albanese, Australia has seen a procession of bills designed to subvert Australian democracy. Today we see yet another guillotine. Thursdays have become ‘guillotine Thursday’ as the government rams one freedom-destroying bill through after another to avoid oversight. Indeed, as we speak, the government is doing exactly that with the Digital ID Bill in the House of Reps. The Senate is the house of review. This government, the Greens and some crossbench senators are making a mockery of our solemn duty. One Nation wants to know who’s pulling this government’s strings. It’s clearly not the Australian people.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/9-hnr-zbaZg/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-23 16:35:282024-05-23 16:35:33Gloves Are Coming Off Against Populist Leaders
Queensland residents can’t find a home because there are simply more people than homes. Our hospitals are ramping because there are too many patients and not enough healthcare staff, and the number of kids in Queensland classrooms are rising not falling, despite many parents opting to home school.
The COVID response era actually provided a great opportunity to catch up on building infrastructure while immigration was frozen and people were out of jobs. Instead the government paid people to stay at home and NOT contribute to or build social infrastructure.
I asked Minister Watt, who is a Queenslander himself, if the Government opened the floodgates on immigration without the necessary social infrastructure being ready. His answer confirmed the government has not done the sums on the impacts of our record level of immigration and, quite honestly, is not fit to govern.
Transcript
I move:
That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to social infrastructure.
For three years, from 2020 to 2022, with the nation mostly out of work, we had an opportunity to catch up on social infrastructure: hospitals, schools, transport, water and housing. Instead, we paid money that could have been used to build those things to people to sit at home and not build those things. It was a trillion dollar wasted opportunity. With a new Labor government in power, the immigration floodgates then opened without the social infrastructure to accommodate the new arrivals. What’s worse is that there are not enough land re-zonings, building applications, approvals and starts to ever make a noticeable improvement in housing.
The Albanese government created a problem it cannot solve. Australia needs to get a refund on that plan we heard so much about from the Prime Minister in the last election because it’s a dud. It’s not up to the minister in his answer to blame the previous government repeatedly. For three years a so-called National Cabinet of Liberal and Labor leaders ran the country, so failure is on both your hands. It’s true that the neglect of social infrastructure goes back through 30 years of Liberal and Labor governments—the uniparty.
The message from the last two weeks of elections in Queensland and Tasmania is simple. Voters worked out the link between immigration and social infrastructure and voters are not happy. Voters are angry with Minister Watt and the Albanese government for creating a housing crisis that’s rapidly escalated to now be a human catastrophe. The public are noticing the disparity between those benefiting from the property market and those falling behind. It now takes everyday Australians on a median salary up to 14 years to save for a deposit for their own home. The housing crisis the Morrison government started and the Albanese government multiplied is disenfranchising the young. The irony is that the Labor government—supposedly, once the party of the workers—is making inequality of wealth far worse. Before the thread of social cohesion unravels in this country, this government must turn off the immigration tap and start building social infrastructure.
Why? That’s one question that I want to ask repeatedly in this speech. I see the government’s changes as a welcome step, but it’s a tiny, tiny step and we need many, many more. It could be one of my footprints, Senator Ayres! We see the government’s previous tax changes. They weren’t cuts; they were changes. As a result of those changes, we will see the government increase revenue by about $38 billion over the next four years—so much for tax cuts. They’re tax changes that will lead to an increase in tax for mums and dads.
Why are politicians scared of tax reform, and why do they place the burden on families and individuals to pay tax and let multinationals off the hook? Why are politicians scared of tax reform, but they continue tinkering with the system to affect mums and dads, who end up by paying, by far, the lion’s share of tax in this country? Why did Senator Sharma, in a very good speech, say that he wants to end bracket creep and the Liberals want end to bracket creep, yet, three weeks earlier, they voted against ending bracket creep with my amendment? They want enduring bracket creep. Why do the Labor Party say they want to end bracket creep—I remember Senator Gallagher said at the time, ‘We want to end bracket creep’—but vote against it? My amendment to abolish bracket creep once and for all was defeated.
Why is taxation not transparent? I’ll tell you why. It’s so that governments can continue to steal money from families to pay for their uncosted bribes. The Senate and the House of Representatives have turned into auction blocks using taxpayers’ money to buy votes. That’s what they’ve turned into. That’s how the governments of this country work, the uniparty of Labor and the Liberals. Why is the uniparty looking for new ways to tax people? Cars and utes—the foundations for tradies—are now going to be taxed. Clothing is going to be taxed under the Labor Party. Food will be taxed with a new biosecurity levy. Inflation was caused by the Labor and Liberal uniparty during the COVID response—the COVID mismanagement. State premiers were largely Labor, and the federal Prime Minister was Liberal-National. Inflation is a tax, especially on the poor and those with low incomes. Inflation is a huge tax burden. Greenwashing requires corporations to buy carbon dioxide credits. How do they pass the costs on? They pass them on in the form of higher prices.
Why do they require diversity, equity and inclusion and ESG reporting, which are ridiculous and unfounded? No-one has provided the evidence for that policy. It’s a compliance tax. Where will the cost of that compliance tax go? Onto the things that mums and dads and families pay for. Whole departments have been created in corporations, and that adds to the prices families have to pay. Why more tinkering? Why more complexity and less productivity? Think about the behaviours this drives with regard to allocation of resources and the behaviour of executives and decision-makers. Why is it that every problem in this country comes out of this building, like housing and excessive immigration, which is putting inhuman catastrophic pressures on people now? People are living in tents, cars, caravans, out in the street and under bridges in Brisbane in one of the richest states in the world. This is happening in our regional cities right up and down the east coast of Queensland. It’s a long coast. The Murray-Darling Basin is a disaster. It’s climate fraud, a lie and a scam. It’s a hoax. Stealing farmers’ property rights—the Liberal-National government did that from 1997 to 2007.
We’re still living with COVID mismanagement. I had a gentleman in my office today who is vaccine injured. It’s been stated by doctors We had to turn the lights off because of the glare. He couldn’t look straight at the windows. He had to look down. This was a vibrant healthy person now with COVID vaccine damage. He’s almost incapacitated. This was a lively human being now pulled up.
We’re still living with the COVID mismanagement. There’s inflation from the money supply, as I mentioned. There’s inflation from crippling the supply chains during the COVID restrictions. Crippling our supply chains led to higher prices.
Senator Bilyk: President, I raise a point of order on relevance. We’re here to speak about the Treasury Law Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share—Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023. Not once has the senator mentioned anything to do with that bill, and it’s been five minutes. I’m just wondering if you could draw to the attention—
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Polley): Thank you, Senator Bilyk. I will remind Senator Roberts of the topic, but as you and other senators know, it’s a broad-ranging debate.
Senator ROBERTS: For those senators with poor hearing, let me say again: we support this bill. That’s what I opened with. We support this bill—I’ll repeat it. I said that.
I’ve just laid down a litany of problems that are coming from this building in betrayal of the people in this country, my fellow Australians. I’m now getting to the point of that betrayal. The most destructive system in government under the uniparty for the last 70 years has been the taxation system. It focuses our brightest and best people, some of our lawyers and accountants, not on serving our country in competition with foreign companies overseas—the Koreans, the Japanese, the Taiwanese, the Chinese, the Europeans and the Americans—but on screwing the government and getting away from complex, ridiculous taxation systems. They’re focused not on competing with foreign owned corporations but on competing with our government. Think of the behaviours that are driven at the corporate level, the allocation of resources, the inefficiency of resources and the behaviour of executives.
Taxation is highly complex. How many pages are there in our taxation act? It’s highly inefficient directly in terms of allocation of resources and indirectly in terms of the behaviours that are driven. It’s directly inefficient in terms of the way taxation is levied in this country. James Killaly was a former deputy commissioner of taxation in charge of large companies and foreign matters. He said in 1996 and 2010, ‘Ninety per cent of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and, since 1953, have paid little or no tax.’ This bill does go a little way towards addressing that, but we need to address it full on.
Why does that happen? Why are foreign companies getting let off the hook? I’ll tell you why. It’s because many of even our large Australian companies are part-owned and controlled by foreign corporations. The major predators are Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street and First State. They own 10 per cent of the four banks combined and they own the controlling interest. They tell the banks what to do—BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, First State and others in that little cohort of multinational predatory organisations. We don’t have four main banks. We have one main bank that is hiding behind four logos. That’s what we have. They have the same policies, principles, strategies, products and services.
Coles and Woolies, again, are part-owned by BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard. If you go right through our corporations in this country, the corporations we thought were Australian owned, they’re foreign owned and controlled, and where does the money go? The profit goes overseas. What did the Morrison government do, along with the state premiers? They loaded it up so that foreign multinationals that own the large companies in this country made a killing out of COVID at the expense of small companies and small businesses.
On the other hand, look at Qatar and Norway. They have bountiful natural resources, just like us—not as much as we have, in fact, and yet they make so much more. Qatar made $78 billion out of its gas exports. We export more and we made a tiny fraction of that, around one per cent of that.
So why are we doing this? What I’m saying and have been saying for many years, ever since I got into the Senate, is that we need comprehensive, proper and honest tax reform. Let’s have a look at the person who introduced GST into this country. Paul Keating was the Treasurer and, I think, Deputy Prime Minister under Bob Hawke. He came so close to introducing the GST, and, at the last minute, the Prime Minister at the time, Bob Hawke, fell over and lacked the courage to do so. Paul Keating was very upset with that. A few years later, John Hewson introduced the GST as part of Liberal Party policy, and who smashed him over it? Paul Keating, the man who introduced the concept of GST to this country.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Polley): Senator Roberts, I will remind you to use people’s correct titles when referring to former prime ministers.
Senator ROBERTS: He was the Treasurer at the time. What I’m saying is that the taxation system was mooted for change, and the person who introduced the GST actually smashed the GST, for purely political reasons.
On another aspect of comprehensive tax reform, Treasurer Peter Costello—who has been admired as a Treasurer—found out that Senator Pauline Hanson, who at the time was a member of the lower house, was keen on the transaction tax. As a way of trying to destroy her, he destroyed the transaction tax, even though he had previously said publicly that it had a lot of merit.
The point I’m getting to is: taxation has become a political football. It’s not an honest debate anymore; it’s about smashing a system. So what I propose is that, instead of proposing a system, we should look at basic principles. We should first of all agree that the taxation system is one of the most destructive systems in this country, if not the most destructive, which is my opinion of it. Once we get agreement on that, we should then put forward a set of principles that we can agree on.
I’ve been putting some thought to principles. First of all, a fair, efficient and honest taxation system would enable us to receive far more income because the multinationals would be paying their fair share of tax. It should be fair and equitable to all people and to all economic entities, including Australian businesses, and with no exemptions for foreign companies, which are now largely exempt. Making foreign companies and speculators pay their fair share of tax would quickly end the budget deficit and overseas debt and fund future infrastructure without borrowing. The second principle: it should be in the national interest.
The third principle—and this is very, very important for a country, and the reason why I went through the problems that are coming from this building: it should be incorruptible and impossible for politicians to fiddle with. A major source of political power is the ability of politicians to make legislation that punishes or advantages particular groups. This ability gives politicians from the uniparty enormous power over others because they can enact, for example, taxation provisions that assist their supporters or hurt their supporters’ competitors. An honest tax system removes this blatant abuse of power.
The fourth principle: it should comply with and support our Constitution’s intent and written provisions—not contradict our Constitution but comply with it. The fifth principle: there should be simplicity in understanding, administration and accountability. It should be completely transparent, unlike the current taxation system, which is deliberately opaque. There should be an objective basis for levying tax. Instead of assessing tax on profit and loss that can be fiddled, use objective measures. These do exist and include, for example, market sale price or straight-out unit cost.
The taxation system needs to be constructive, not punitive. It needs to be efficient to administer, with low administration costs, not the unwieldy behemoth that is administering, or mismanaging, tax at the moment. It should increase people’s purchasing power. A good taxation system, an efficient taxation system, will increase people’s purchasing power so people are economically far better off, because the burden will be shifted more towards multinationals.
The next principle is: there should be minimal disruption to the economy, with no ability for politicians to manipulate the tax system across industry sectors or industry groups. The taxation system could be a wonderful way of getting aggregate economic data and detailed data.
The next principle is arguably one of the most important: accountability. When properly designed, a tax system develops accountability in the government and in the people, through being a restraint on the cost of government. Taxes are necessary to pay for the cost of government, but what happens at the moment, because politicians from the uniparty can ratchet taxation up freely, is that they tend to abuse it and neglect their accountability to the people for managing costs. Politicians will have to manage within the country’s means. The next principle is: it should help people to become independent of government.
What I want to do in wrapping up is say, again, to the senators who didn’t hear me in my opening comments: we support this bill. But it is far too little. Why is it too little? We have got plenty of money in this country for investment. We have got super funds holding enormous sacks of gold, from rivers of gold. I’m asking the government to change your ways. Put families before large, foreign multinationals—Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, First State. Put national interest before large, foreign multinationals. Reclaim our national sovereignty, and put it before large, foreign multinationals. Put Australia and Australians first.
I asked this question at the start: why? I ask this question now: why not?
It’s time for a Royal Commission into COVID – as recommended by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee Inquiry.
Before the last federal election, Anthony Albanese promised to hold a Royal Commission into COVID, yet once elected into government, he changed his attitude and now seeks to cover up government actions during COVID.
One Nation secured a Senate Inquiry to write Terms of Reference for a COVID Royal Commission. I am proud to say the Committee agreed this was the right course of action and recommended a Royal Commission be called. The Committee also set out an appropriate terms of reference – which are excellent – covering all aspects the public would expect to be examined.
It is time for the Prime Minister to stop shielding bureaucrats, the media and multinational pharmaceutical companies. The Prime Minister is making a mockery of the Labor Party’s legacy. PM Gough Whitlam initiated thirteen Royal Commissions during his tenure, and PM Bob Hawke called for eight. This current Labor government has only called for one, despite public opinion polls indicating over 70% support for a Royal Commission.
It’s time for the Labor Party to prioritise people over its donors in the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s time for the Labor Party remembered who they are.
It’s time for a Royal Commission into COVID now!
Transcript
On behalf of One Nation, I thank the committee and the secretariat for their marvellous work during this inquiry into a COVID-19 royal commission, work that resulted from a One Nation motion. Many submissions were received and witness testimonies taken. The report that Senator Scarr has just tabled is a faithful representation of their evidence and reflects some amazing work by the secretariat, him and the committee.
Australia now has the recommendation that a royal commission into Australia’s response to the COVID pandemic be called, and it has appropriate terms of reference. So what happens now? To this point, the process has been one of which I’m proud. This Senate has held true to its fundamental function as the house of review. The Australian Parliament House website says of the powers of the Senate:
Democratically elected, and with full legislative power, it is generally considered to be, apart from the Senate of the United States of America, the most powerful legislative upper chamber in the world.
It’s time to use that power. Indeed, it’s our duty to use that power. It’s time to remind health care, the military and the bureaucracy: they do not run this country; the Australian people do. It’s long overdue to remind the crony communist establishment: they do not run this country, the Australian people do. And it’s time to restore trust in government and confidence in our healthcare practitioners, hospitals and medications. A royal commission is the only way to get to the truth, punish wrongdoing, praise the noble and set a future direction for pandemic preparedness in which the public can have complete confidence.
Support for a royal commission came from every witness at the inquiry—a rare and overwhelming display of consensus and unity in what has been until now a highly contentious debate. The inquiry submission from Professor Scott Prasser was most helpful in guiding debate around a royal commission. He said:
As then Justice Holmes, who chaired the 2011 Queensland Flood Commission of Inquiry observed there is an expectation in Australia for such inquiries following disasters:
… contemporary society does not countenance a fatalistic approach to such inevitabilities, even if their occurrence is unpredictable. There is an expectation that government will act to protect its citizens from disaster, and that all available science should be applied so that nature and extent of risk is known, and appropriate action taken to ameliorate it—
to protect people. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Remember these facts on Australia’s COVID response: half a trillion dollars was spent, economy and family livelihoods were smashed, freedom and human rights were stolen, and there were tens of thousands of deaths from injections approved yet not tested in Australia, with approval based only on Pfizer’s trial that was cut short after thousands of deaths and without the TGA seeing the patient-level data.
The AstraZeneca vaccine was withdrawn last week. How the hell do the injected withdraw it from their bodies? The department of health still approves AstraZeneca now. Overnight, a peer reviewed journal published proof that the Pfizer vaccine was contaminated with mutant DNA at levels that are hundreds of times higher than safe levels. The Pfizer vaccine must be withdrawn on safety grounds immediately. This is all for a virus which the Chief Medical Officer advised me in writing in March 2021 was of low to moderate severity, less than some past flus, and had transmissibility similar to that of flu. That was in writing. Australia will not stand for repeating our COVID mistakes and COVID deceit.
As I travel through Queensland and listen to everyday Australians, I continue to hear of COVID harms. It’s clear that COVID may be over, yet the harm from our response continues. Businesses weakened during COVID and kept alive with JobKeeper payments are now failing in the recession that inevitably followed the big spend. Victorians have been hit with a COVID tax to pay for the state’s response, a tax making it harder for homeowners to keep their homes in the face of rising interest rates. In turn, rising interest rates are a function of the inflation caused when the Reserve Bank printed $508 billion to fund COVID measures.
Our COVID response affected every life in this country and every corner of our economy. A quickie cover-up whitewash pseudo-inquiry into bureaucratic performance during COVID will not get to the truth of matters into which it’s not even looking. issues like unexplained deaths, which have started to increase again and are currently sitting at around 13 per cent, or 25,000 deaths a year. These are people who should not be dying—young people. In part, these people are dying of the side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine that Craig Kelly specifically called out in 2021. Our health authorities claimed it was safe and effective until court cases caused AstraZeneca to withdraw the product worldwide, citing a fatality rate of 3.8 per 100,000 cases. Australia bought 56 million doses.
The official death figures from COVID injections are a fiction. Evidence of this is the TGA’s refusal to provide independent verification of their case analysis. Reports of deaths and serious injuries from COVID jabs stopped being made in full early in the rollout. Medical practitioners who reported adverse events were inevitably harassed and threatened with punitive action from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, who acted as the pharma police. Their actions in suppressing the truth of vaccine harm must be of special interest to the royal commission.
Pfizer conducted aborted safety testing on a version of the vaccine they never used. The shots they did use were never safety tested, and this was the big lie: that the vaccines were tested and proven safe—a lie. ‘Safe and effective’ was not one lie; it was two. Pfizer are currently settling their lawsuits out of court, but for how much longer, as one successful lawsuit leads to another? Australia offered taxpayer funded immunity on these products. Remember: if criminal behaviour is detected from Pfizer, the immunity can be voided—behaviour like baiting and switching the test vaccines, covering up adverse events in the testing phase and erasing anyone with a serious adverse event from the trials as though they were never a participant. Ghost test sites were used, along with ghost participants who, miraculously, never had an adverse event. Window shifting was employed. Adverse events in person that was single dosed were counted against the unvaccinated, because one is not classified as fully vaccinated until after the second dose. How’s that for deceit? Likewise, even a person who was double dosed had their adverse event counted against the unvaccinated if it occurred within the first seven days for Pfizer and within 14 days for Moderna.
Behaviour like this is why we have royal commissions with powers to compel witnesses and obtain documents that have been hidden behind redactions. There have been 54 royal commissions since the Menzies era. The Hawke-Keating government called eight and the Whitlam government called 13. The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government called eight. After so long in opposition, the Albanese Labor government has only found cause to call one. What a compliment to the quality of the last government! In all of that time, only one thing was done badly enough to call a royal commission. You on this side must be so proud!
Prime Minister Albanese has turned his back on Labor Party history and seeks now to cover up for bureaucrats, multinational pharmaceutical companies and crony capitalist companies like Woolies and Coles. These companies implemented onerous staff vaccine mandates, required customers to behave like they were diseased and blasted out pro-vaccine anti-human propaganda over their PA non-stop for three years. It’s no surprise that their share register includes names like BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. These same names appear in the share register of the pharmaceutical companies that profited from killing people in this country.
These foreign predatory wealth funds appear on the share register of Australian media that contributed unending fear to drive the pharmaceutical response to COVID. The media also policed public opinion, destroying the careers of presenters, medical professionals and politicians, despite those opinions now being proven correct. Even worse, their opinions were known to be correct at the time these brave people were speaking out against the official narrative during COVID. Was COVID an evil exercise in crony capitalism, in racketeering for the benefit of foreign predatory wealth funds, or crony communism? Yes, it was. Those funds have ripped $5 trillion—trillion—from the pockets of everyday citizens around the world in the name of keeping us safe. What an eye-watering transfer of wealth, unprecedented even in wartime. Thanks to COVID, the rich are richer, while everyday citizens struggle with reduced wealth, unprofitable businesses and poor health.
And yet the Labor government refuses to call a royal commission. You don’t care! Is this who the Labor Party has become—protectors of racketeering wealth funds and their parasitic, predatory billionaire owners? Is that it? One benefit of misinformation laws is that they may stop you calling yourselves the party of the worker when you are clearly the party of predatory billionaires—parasites.
Prime Minister Whitlam called 13 royal commissions, Prime Minister Hawke called eight and this Labor government has called one. Talk about not being able to handle the truth. Your position defies history, it defies the will of the Senate and it defies the will of the people. Talk to anyone in the street; they’ll tell you they want this. Your position defies history. I urge the Senate to send a clear instruction to the Prime Minister that his quickie cover-up inquiry has fooled nobody—nobody. It’s time to begin the royal commission; it’s time to care about people, not corporate profits; and it’s time for this Labor Party to remember who they should be. I seek leave to continue my remarks.
When discussing coral bleaching, the assumption these days immediately defaults to blaming mythical “climate change” instead of looking for the real cause.
There are many causes of bleaching, including changes in salinity, UV radiation, sedimentation, and pollution. Coral bleaching is a response to environmental stress, not just temperature fluctuation.
Studies have shown evidence of bleaching dating back centuries, long before any “claimed” influence on the weather was caused by humans. Coral has shown resilience and adaptability to different conditions and reefs have recovered from bleaching events for millennia.
It’s time the climate carpetbaggers were called out for their selective pseudo-science that is designed to protect their taxpayer funding. It’s time to recognise the resilience of our coral reefs and bring the tourists back to Queensland.
When discussing coral bleaching recently, the assumption defaults to blaming claimed human climate change instead of asking what actually caused it. Coral bleaching in simple terms is a loss of colour in coral, most often due to symbiosis dysfunction, a severing of the join between the coral polyp and the host tissue—the calcium carbonate that gives coral its white colour. Bleaching is a response to environmental stress. It has many causes, including changes in salinity, ultraviolet radiation, increased sedimentation and high nutrient levels after flooding or pollution.
Kamenos from the University of Glasgow found evidence of Great Barrier Reef bleaching in the 1600s. His paper has been contested, yet the many citations used to support his paper have not been. Hendy documented two hiatuses in coral skeleton growth, associated tissue death and subsequent regrowth in eight multicentury coral cores collected from the central Great Barrier Reef accurately dated to 1782 to 1817. This period was before humans are claimed to have influenced the weather.
Dunne recorded bleaching on the reef in 1928. Woolridge documented the bleaching caused by floodwaters carrying nutrients impacting on the reef. Kenkel found coral has plasticity to adapt to different environmental conditions and is more resilient than previously thought. Maynard found that coral adapts to bleaching by becoming more resilient. During the past 2.5 million years, there have been 40 glacial maximums and 40 interglacial periods. Eighty times, coral has had to rise or fall by up to 140 metres, and our coral reefs are still there. How resilient they are.
Our reefs have been subjected to bleaching for millennia, and they always recover, as they did in 2022, when the Greens were telling us the reef was dead, and tourists believed them. Tourist numbers are below the long-term average, COVID excluded.
It’s time climate carpetbaggers were called out for selective pseudoscience designed to protect their taxpayer funding. Bleaching is a part of nature. It recovers. It’s cyclical.
