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.
The Albanese government is deliberately opposing my motion to disclose the infrastructure review it’s using to justify slashing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of critical infrastructure projects around Australia. These projects include dams for towns and agriculture, transportation and visionary nation-building projects. These cuts will impact critical areas where investment is necessary, all while sending substantial funds to the United Nations and Tedros the Terrorist at the WHO.
Australia requires productive infrastructure to cultivate its competitive and productive edge, reducing its dependence on other nations that purchase our raw materials, like iron ore, for steel and other construction materials. Why should we export raw materials only to buy back finished goods instead of manufacturing the entire product domestically? Australia possesses all the necessary resources to achieve self-reliance, lacking only a government with common sense to facilitate it.
How many more instances must we uncover before this Labor government reveals the secrets it’s concealing from Australian taxpayers? Australians deserve the transparency and accountability they were promised, and the infrastructure that this country badly needs.
Transcript
The Albanese government is making secret cuts to infrastructure projects. Twice now the Senate has passed my motion, forcing the government to hand over the full infrastructure review that they used to justify cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in projects. Twice, the government has opposed transparency and accountability about its secret infrastructure cuts. How many more times will the Labor government keep secrets from Australian taxpayers?
This is the Labor review that concluded the Emu Swamp dam at Stanthorpe should be cancelled. Only three years ago, this southern Queensland town was in severe drought and ran dry. They had to cart in millions of litres of water by truck just to survive. Up to 50 trucks carted water hundreds of kilometres every day for 15 months. On what basis did the Labor government conclude Stanthorpe doesn’t deserve a dam? We might never know. The government has so far refused to hand over the review that justifies the decision. If Stanthorpe doesn’t have water, Stanthorpe will die. The Labor government needs to answer why they believe Stanthorpe should be left to die in the next drought. It has literally been hung out to dry. One Nation will keep fighting for those answers and we will fight for more dams across Queensland. What we need in Australia is productive infrastructure to build our competitive advantage—our productive competitiveness. We need dams that agriculture can use to boom. We need cheap power, from which the entire economy will benefit. We need functional roads that don’t have potholes big enough to destroy a car’s suspension.
Australia needs visionary, nation-building projects—infrastructure projects like the Iron Boomerang. Right now, every year, we send 900 million tonnes of iron ore and 360 million tonnes of coal overseas. We ship it overseas. Those are two essential ingredients to making steel, which we largely import. We put that dirt on a boat, places like China buy it, they turn it into steel, they make things like unproductive wind turbines out of the steel, they put them on a boat and they ship the wind turbines back to Australia in the form of steel, where our dopey government buys it off them.
We should let private enterprise build the Iron Boomerang track linking our iron ore and coalmines, so we can make the steel right here in this country. The government doesn’t even have to build Iron Boomerang. They just have to promise they won’t get in the way, and then private money will pay for it. That money is already knocking on the door. These are the kinds of nation-building infrastructure projects that would be on the horizon if One Nation had our way. We certainly wouldn’t be cutting productive infrastructure, like dams, in secret as the Labor government is doing. Before all of that we need accountable and transparent government. Labor continues to prove it will never be transparent. Their secret infrastructure cuts are just the latest example of a government that’s afraid of explaining itself to the voters.
I spoke on Green Senator Whish-Wilson’s motion that the Great Barrier Reef is dying — again. This fear-mongering is used to justify the exorbitant amount of money being transferred from hardworking Australians to parasitic billionaires promising to “fix” the climate. Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef is a natural cycle. Media and politicians are exaggerating the extent of damage to the reef and in so doing, they are causing economic harm to businesses that rely on tourism for their survival.
Human civilisation and the environment are not mutually exclusive and industrial progress, supported by hydrocarbon fuels, has actually benefited the environment by reducing reliance on resources like whale oil and timber. If the Greens want a real environmental cause, they should campaign against the wind turbines that are being built across northern Queensland, which involves blowing the tops off mountains and permanently destroying the natural environment.
This is more than just aesthetics. Green energy is creating sediment that is full of arsenic, which has been locked away in the rocks for millennia. This runoff flows through underground aquifers and ends up in the ocean, poisoning the reef. The Greens are silent on this vandalism to our natural environment and make up rubbish stories about the reef so that they can “pretend” they are an environmental party.
One Nation protects the natural environment – Greens destroy it!
Transcript
Once again those who worship the sky god of global boiling are using their religion to scare the public into holding the line on the great climate boiling scam. Is it still global boiling or have we now moved to global scalding? This fearmongering, this scaring, as I’ve been explaining for many years, involves taking money from hardworking Australians and giving it to parasitic billionaires to fix the climate.
Senator Whish-Wilson’s latest motion reheats an old, debunked scare: the Great Barrier Reef is dying. In 2016 the Washington Post ran an article titled ‘”And then we wept”: Scientists say 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now bleached’. In 2022 the Washington Post ran an article titled, in part, ‘Great Barrier Reef has the most coral in decades’. In 2024 they ran an article titled ‘Fatal heatwave strikes unspoiled swath of Great Barrier Reef’. It went on to say:
Water temperature data suggests the toll of this event could approach that of 2016, when some 30% of the reef’s corals died after suffering through what were then unprecedented levels of heat stress.
Can’t they see it’s cyclical?
Hang on. Wasn’t that 93 per cent? No. That’s just the mainstream media scare figure used at the time to appease their owners: the same predatory billionaires that profit from the global boiling scam. It was never an accurate figure, never credible, yet the Greens repeatedly peddled it.
In summary, the reef had a serious bleaching event in 2016, and within a few years the coral extent was back to normal. By the way: the first scientifically recorded bleaching was in 1926. Scientific records show that bleaching has been a natural part of the Great Barrier Reef cycles and other reef cycles for millennia. That is fact. This is not some esoteric discussion. These Chicken Little claims from the Greens have consequences. Scare stories about the reef dying cause tourists, including international tourists, to cancel their holidays on the Great Barrier Reef, destroying livelihoods in Great Barrier Reef communities on the Queensland east coast. People instead go to a country where the politicians are not scaring off the tourists. Jobs are lost every time the Greens use the Great Barrier Reef as a political football. There’s not even any science behind their claims.
At times the reef can be a naturally fragile ecosystem. We know that. Certain naturally occurring events can impact it. The greatest danger for the barrier reef is flooding. Tropical cyclones dump fresh water into a river catchment system that carries rainwater hundreds of kilometres onto the Great Barrier Reef. Freshwater plumes kill saltwater coral polyps, and the event is declared a bleaching event—all natural, all cyclical, quite common.
What did we have three months ago in Queensland? A severe flood event—entirely natural. What do we have now? Coral bleaching—entirely natural. Don’t take my word for it. Please read James Cook University’s article titled ‘Back-to-back cyclones and flood plume impacts on the Great Barrier Reef’, which confirmed freshwater coral bleaching was recorded along the reef.
Now the climate boiling scammers are trying to blame this on natural climate variability, so let me give you the inconvenient truth about that. I want you to reference the study titled ‘Great Barrier Reef study shows how reef copes with rapid sea level-rise’ from the University of Sydney website. I’ll publish the link. To quote from the study:
Using unprecedented analysis of 12 new drilled reef cores with data going back more than 8,000 years, the study shows that there have been three distinct phases of reef growth since the end of the Pleistocene era about 11,000 years ago.
It goes on to say:
‘We wanted to understand past reef resilience to multiple environmental stresses during the formation of the modern reef,’ said the lead author Kelsey Sanborn, a PhD student at the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney.
It continues:
The study was an international collaboration published in Sedimentary Geology, which revealed a period around 8,000 and 7,000 years ago when the reef growth slowed as it was exposed to multiple stressors, including likely increases in sediment and nutrient flux on the reef.
I wonder what could cause the sediment and nutrient flux that damaged the reef 8,000 years ago. Well, it can’t be coal fired power stations, it can’t be internal combustion engines or people living in freestanding homes on quarter-acre blocks, and it certainly couldn’t have been air travel. What could it be? Of course, I have it, eating meat! That’s it! If the local Aboriginal population had just stopped eating red meat and instead grew soybeans, those tropical storms would not have dumped nutrient-rich floodwaters onto the reef.
Study co-author Associate Professor Jody Webster said:
We need to understand the past in order to predict the future. This paper and Kelsey’s broader research examine how sea level, surface temperature, sediment in the water, nutrient influx and energy inputs into the reef system affect its vulnerability to environmental change.
It goes on:
The reef system survives because of a delicate balance these environmental factors.
All natural.
Whenever the balance of the reef is disturbed, a bleaching event occurs. It’s entirely natural. It’s in a symbiotic relationship with other organisms. There’s no doubt that when an unusually hot day corresponds to an unusually low tide, the reef will bleach, and it will bleach from a cyclone event and many other disturbances. That reminds me, I went scuba diving with some media off Keppel Island. We said, ‘See the corals recovering from a cyclone.’ The journalist said, ‘But you haven’t seen the real bleaching a thousand kilometres north.’ There was a thousand kilometres of reef between where we were, with the healthy reef, and their claimed bleaching event. They just ignore the healthy reef.
For the Greens to use mother nature to promote their climate change scam is wrong—it’s utterly wrong. For reef researchers to pretend reef damage is due to climate boiling and then ask for more money to research climate change is wrong. It’s dishonest and it’s scientific fraud. The truth is that the ocean is warmed primarily from the sun, with a secondary contribution from geothermal activity—fact. The atmosphere—the thing being blamed for heating up and bleaching the reef—only warms the top millimetre or so of the ocean surface. That’s not enough to cause any harm and, by the way, we can see that in the seasonal impact.
The climate boiling scammers can blame their sky god of warming all they like. They can demand large homes, big cars, aeroplanes, cattle, sheep, clothing, cheap power and so much more be sacrificed on the altar of their climate boiling beliefs. Saying a lie does not make the claimed science real. Repeating a lie doesn’t make the claimed science real. Our weather patterns are normal—entirely natural—and so are the patterns on the reef.
If the Greens want to be useful, they should campaign against wind turbines—the installation of which requires whole tops of mountains being blown off mountains across northern Queensland right now, disturbing sediment and arsenic that flow through underground aquifers and winds up on the Great Barrier Reef, making these natural flood events even worse. One Nation care about the natural environment because we value the natural environment. That’s just one of the many reasons why we oppose wind turbines in pristine bushland and, for that matter, near human beings. We oppose industrial solar on farmland and on bushland. We oppose national parks being carved up for power lines, especially the Snowy 2.0 abomination. And we oppose land clearing of old-growth forests for any purpose, including grazing. One Nation is now the party of true environmentalism. And the Greens? Well, they’re the party of promoting the political agendas and the pockets of parasitic billionaires over the best interests of the natural environment. The Greens peddle the United Nations World Economic Forum’s antihuman agenda, which is in turn based on a lie—a false assumption. That lie, that false assumption, is that human civilisation and the environment are mutually exclusive. That is the opposite of reality.
The reality is that, for human civilisation to have a future, we must have a healthy natural environment. History over the last 170 years shows that the health of the environment depends on human civilisation because industrial civilisation minimises human impact on the natural environment. What has human civilisation produced that is so beneficial for the environment? High-energy, low-cost, ultrareliable hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas. Before these hydrocarbon fuels, humans needed whale oil for lighting, killing whales. Before these hydrocarbon fuels, heating and cooking needed timber from chopped down trees. The area of land in the developed continents covered by forest over the last 100 years has increased by 30 per cent because we’re no longer chopping down trees to cook and to heat. The best friend of whales and the best friend of forests is hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.
As a servant to the fine people of Queensland and Australia, I cherish human progress. I cherish human flourishing. I cherish hydrocarbon fuels: coal, oil and natural gas. I admire human progress and human initiative. I appreciate human progress.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/EeZ6uI3nK68/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-02 15:00:162024-05-02 15:00:22The Great Barrier Reef Is Not Dying
In the middle of a housing crisis, why are we handing out hundreds of thousands of visas?
During Question Time, I asked Minister Watt about the number of homes that are required to house the 549,000 people who arrived on permanent visas in 2023, as well as the number of schools and hospitals that will be needed over the next five years to accommodate these new arrivals.
Minister Watt sidestepped my questions and instead underscored the government’s efforts to tackle migration-related challenges, notably reforms to the international student visa system. He once more criticized opposition parties for obstructing housing-related legislation and emphasised the government’s investments in health and education.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs and the Minister representing the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Senator Watt. Minister, what is the number of homes required to house the 549,000 people who arrived on permanent visas in 2023? How many houses?
Senator WATT: Thank you, Senator Roberts, for your question. I know you asked a very similar question last week, and, as I pointed out to you last week, it is understood and expected that migration levels in Australia have peaked, that they peaked in 2022-23, and they are forecast to drop in half by next year. That is as a direct result of the changes made by the Albanese government to particularly to tackle the rorts that were occurring in the international student visa system that we inherited from the former government. The changes we made late last year are already having a significant and immediate impact, with student visa grants down by more than 35 per cent on last year’s level.
We are obviously strong supporters of the international education system. It’s a very important export industry for Australia. It provides a wide range of benefits to Australia and the countries from which students come. But the reality is that the system unfortunately was being rorted by a number of companies and that needed to be tackled. It wasn’t tackled by the former government, but we are tackling it and that is having an effect.
Senator ROBERTS, one of the things I also pointed out to you last week was that it’s a little bit ironic getting a question from a One Nation senator, a coalition senator or, at times, a Greens party senator about what this government is doing about housing numbers, because what we have seen over and over again is a coalition between the Liberals, the Nationals, One Nation and the Greens party teaming up to block action on housing by the Albanese Labor government. We saw it with the Housing Australia Future Fund. Senator ROBERTS, if you were actually sincere in your concern, you would have voted for the Housing Australia Future Fund to build more homes. If you were sincere in your concerns, you would be voting for the help-to-buy legislation that we’re currently trying to get through this parliament but which is being blocked again by the Greens party, One Nation, the Liberals and the Nationals. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, what is the number of schools and hospitals required over the next five years to meet the needs of these 549,000 new permanent arrivals last year? How many schools and hospitals—a number, please?
Senator WATT: It obviously stands to reason that Australia does need more hospitals and more schools in order to deal with a growing population, whether that be a population growing through natural increase or a population growing through migration. Again, Senator Roberts, we are trying to tackle 10 years of under-investment by a coalition government in our health system and in our education system. That’s why Minister Jason Clare has only just recently reached agreements with a number of states and territories to increase education funding to them and why, through National Cabinet in the last few months, the Prime Minister has reached agreements with the premiers about increased funding for health care across Australia.
Opposition senators interjecting—
The PRESIDENT: Order!
Senator Henderson interjecting—
The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Henderson!
Senator WATT: We know that 10 years of coalition government, propped up by One Nation, saw underinvestment in health care, underinvestment in hospitals, underinvestment in our schools—
Senator Henderson interjecting—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Henderson, I called for order and I called you personally. I would ask you to come to order and stop being disrespectful.
Senator WATT: Senator Roberts, one of these days you and your colleague, Senator Hanson, might like to back in a government that’s actually delivering on health and education. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, planning for immigration requires planning for the houses, schools, hospitals, transport, food and drinking water that new arrivals need. We won’t let you dump 2.3 million long-stay arrivals on the states and then wash your hands of them. This is the second time this sitting I’ve asked for the numbers and the second time you have failed to provide them. If you have them, please provide them. If you don’t have them then clearly this government is not up to the job of running Australia.
Senator WATT: Senator Roberts, for starters, I would take issue with your description of migrants as people who are dumped on the community. I think that is an offensive way to describe the contribution of millions of Australians who come from a migrant background.
Senator ROBERTS interjecting—
Senator WATT: It’s not funny, Senator Roberts. It’s not funny to talk about dumping people or people being dumped.
The PRESIDENT: I’ll come to you, Senator Roberts. Minister, when answering the question, please direct your answers to the Chair.Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: On a point of order: I’m not laughing at immigrants. I am laughing at the minister.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, that’s not a point of order. Minister Watt.
Senator WATT: I think that is especially the case now that Australia—I think the figures are approximately one in two Australians is either born overseas or their parents are born overseas. We know migrants make a great contribution to our country. The reality is, though, that as a result of the increase in migration after the pandemic and as a result of the rorts in the international student system that were left behind by the coalition, action did need to be taken and that is what we’re doing. But what we’re also doing is investing in the houses that Senator Roberts and his colleagues in the Liberal-National Party and, most of all, the Greens party want to keep blocking. If you want more housing, there is a really simple thing you can do: vote with Labor for more housing, instead of always opposing it.
The Labor Albanese Government is destroying proven, low-cost coal power plants under the guise of “retiring them” and replacing this stable, secure, safe and affordable power with land-grabbing solar and wind installations which are proven now to be unreliable, environmentally-damaging and expensive.
If Labor’s ideology means that it won’t consider new generation coal, which China and other countries are busy putting in place, then why doesn’t it consider the nuclear option? Is it so blinkered that it refuses to see the data from around the world which demonstrates nuclear as a proven reliable, stable, secure, safe, environmentally-responsible and affordable source of power?
Why is Labor being dishonest about this? Are the solar schemes and subsidies so important to their mates that they would sell out the regular working Australian families for their mates at the WEF? What happened to the party of the workers?
Transcript
My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister. The government has ruled out adding nuclear electricity to our energy mix based on the government’s calculations showing a higher cost of nuclear energy as against wind and solar. Minister, can you please inform the Senate of the levelised cost of generation of wind, solar and nuclear that informed the government’s position?
The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Roberts. I will just remind you that questions need to go to ministers, not assistant ministers, so I’m directing the question to Minister Gallagher.
Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Finance, Minister for Women, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Vice-President of the Executive Council): Thank you for the question. The advice the government has—and I think this is understood by everyone who’s been following the energy discussion—is that nuclear energy is very slow to build. It’s the most expensive form of new electricity generation. It cannot beat renewables, which are the cheapest, fastest and cleanest form of new electricity generation. The analysis that was done showed that there was a significant cost burden. Our position is about cost. We are looking for the cheapest form of energy generation, which is renewables, which includes wind and solar. Australia obviously has a very significant comparative advantage when it comes to that form of energy, with more sunlight hitting our landmass than any other country. We also don’t have a workforce to support that nuclear energy generation. So the time involved means it would be decades before anything became operational and it would do nothing to reduce the energy costs for Australian households and businesses in the meantime.
So our position—and I think there is a lot of support for that position—is that this transition to renewable energy is the quickest and cheapest path as we shift away from fossil fuel generation. That is the path that the government was clear about before the election. That is the path that we are implementing under Minister Bowen’s and Minister McAllister’s leadership, leading for the government, and we will continue on that path. We will leave the nuclear energy debate for those opposite to convince people of.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, is the figure for nuclear based on real-world data from the 440 nuclear power stations around the world or even from the last 10 stations completed in the last few years? If not, on what is it based?
Senator GALLAGHER: As I understand it—and I will see if there’s anything I can provide—the government analysis that looked at the cost of nuclear energy was looking at how to replace the retiring coal-fired power station fleet. That figure resulted in about a $25,000 cost impost on each Australia taxpayer, based off 15.1 million taxpayers. So, according to many of the experts in the energy field, it’s more expensive, going to take decades to build and, in the meantime, will do nothing to reduce the power costs of households, which are clearly going to benefit from the shift to renewable energy generation and technology. That is the path the government will continue on because we are focused on cost of living and a sensible and orderly transition away from fossil fuels to new forms of energy.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The government is using a figure for the cost of modular nuclear power that’s not based on any real-world data. Rather, it is mere speculation about a type of generation that doesn’t exist.
Government senators interjecting—
The PRESIDENT: Order on my right!
Senator McKim interjecting—
The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator McKim! Senator Roberts has the right to ask his question in silence, and I will ask senators to respect that right.
Senator ROBERTS: The government’s data is based on speculation about a type of generation that does not exist and completely misrepresents the cost of nuclear power. The government is spreading misinformation again. Minister, why didn’t the government use the real-world data from 57 conventional nuclear power stations currently under construction around the world, and why is the government not being honest about nuclear? (Time expired)
Senator GALLAGHER: I don’t accept the question that Senator Roberts has put to me. We are providing information to the community, and that information is that renewables remain the lowest-cost new-build generation technology. That is clearly a fact.
We have also done some analysis, and I think you will find it hard to find any expert that says nuclear isn’t expensive or isn’t going to take too long to build, including how you generate a workforce around this and the time it will take to do that based on the work that we need to happen now. We can’t delay this for decades. The transition was already delayed for a decade under those opposite, with 22 failed energy policies. In 18 months we have been getting on with it. We are in that transition. We will focus on renewables as the lowest-cost form of energy generation that will help households with those cost-of-living pressures. (Time expired)
https://img.youtube.com/vi/MaSa7ugVHYs/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-04-11 20:34:362024-04-11 20:34:40Disinformation From Labor on Nuclear Energy Costs
Community TV provides a vital service to small business, to communities, and to developing future workers in the broader TV & Radio sector. It provides a training ground for emerging talent and provides programmes with heart. If it didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have this ‘free’ hands-on training ground for students.
Across refreshingly propaganda-free community television and radio, 17,000 volunteers and almost 1,000 employees generate $250 million in value each year. The federal government contributes $43 million each year towards the cost, or rather, the taxpayers do. I wish more recipients of government (taxpayer) funding demonstrated such a positive return on investment.
The bipartisan approach of the Lib-Lab Uniparty is jeopardising the future of Community TV. Why? Because mainstream TV desires the viewership, and telecommunication companies covet the bandwidth.
Welcome to Australia, where the power lies in the hands of foreign shareholders of television and telecommunication companies. If the government genuinely intended to counter the powerful financial sway of telecommunication and broadcast companies, it would have supported my amendment, which sought a guarantee that Community TV would always have free-to-air bandwidth.
The impending digital restack will involve moving broadcast television channels closer together to free up a sizable, contiguous band section of bandwidth, which will then be sold to telecommunication companies. Taxpayers stand to make over a billion dollars from the sale, while telecommunication companies will profit significantly more.
Community TV is likely to disappear permanently due to the interests of telecommunication companies and mainstream mouthpiece media.
Transcript
One Nation supports the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Community Television) Bill 2024. Across community television and radio, 17,000 volunteers and almost 1,000 employees generate $250 million in value each year, every year. The federal government contributes $43 million towards the cost—or, I should say, the taxpayers do. I wish there were more recipients of government funding—taxpayer funding—with that good a return on investment.
In 2017, the national network of community TV stations was attracting more than one million unique viewers a week. Top programs were attracting 400,000 viewers, including off-peak repeats in the week of release. In 2024, those ratings would rank in the top 20 of free-to-air and cable shows. That’s why Malcolm Turnbull destroyed community TV, moving channels off free to air to an online model where a commercial business plan was impossible, thus returning a million viewers a week to commercial television, which was suffering from falling ratings and advertising revenue. Channel 31 and C44 in Adelaide resisted and were saved as a result of work by One Nation and the Greens. Ratings on free-to-air television have fallen since 2017 in terms of the percentage of available screens because mainstream television is mostly absolute rubbish, completely lacking in the creativity and anarchy that attracted such a large and loyal following to stations like C31. Community TV is at times weird and wonderful. Programs with heart and soul have been replaced with commercial programs devoid of those very qualities.
The small cost of community TV must be considered in the wider context. Community TV provides a training ground for talent, scriptwriters, make-up artists, producers, directors, sound and lighting. The former TVS in Sydney was based out of the University of Western Sydney school of media in Kingswood, offering students both theoretical and practical tuition. C31 is based out of RMIT in Melbourne. The now closed C31 in Brisbane included programming using students from the Queensland University of Technology. Mainstream television look for graduates of community television when hiring staff. If community TV did not exist then the taxpayers would be on the hook for vocational education training places to teach those skills.
As a result of the closure of all states except Melbourne and Adelaide, small businesses across the country have been deprived of the opportunity to access advertising on broadcast television. Many brands have grown their business and community TV and now find advertising on commercial TV is unaffordable. Often small business can’t even get a TV advertising salesman to return their calls.
This legislation, which extends C31 and C44 licences into the future is welcome. Yet it’s half a solution. Community TV deserves to get their broadcast rights back in the upcoming digital television restack promise for 2024 and now apparently some years away, so it’ll survive for a while. The restack will involve moving our broadcast and television channels closer together to free up a large contiguous section of bandwidth that would then be sold off to telcos. The taxpayers will make north of $1 billion out of the sale; telcos will make much much more.
There we have it. Community TV is likely to disappear permanently because the interests of mainstream mouthpiece media and telcos have aligned against it. Mainstream TV want the viewers; telcos want the bandwidth. Welcome to Australia where the power is in the hands of foreign shareholders of television and telecommunication companies, and everyday Australians just don’t matter. Our kids are getting free hands-on tuition in television production does not seem to matter. Having a channel that doesn’t offer propaganda and prurient rubbish doesn’t seem to matter.
It’s disappointing that Minister Rowland declined to support my second reading amendment, which I had intended to foreshadow to guarantee bandwidth for community TV in the upcoming digital restack. I understand the argument the government is using. There’s an inquiry into the future of free-to-air broadcasting—also called over-the-top broadcasting. Committing to community TV now though does get ahead of the inquiry findings. But, so what? If there was any real intention on the part of the government to go against the powerful financial influence of telcos and broadcast stations, the government would have supported my amendment.
The government, sadly, is not prepared to guarantee one tiny little bit of bandwidth for community TV. One Nation is prepared to make that guarantee because we are not beholden to the foreign predatory billionaires and their wealth funds. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I urge community TV and radio to continue broadcasting. As the people’s media, you perform a vital service. Thank you.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/bZemDwKHxrw/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-04-11 20:33:122024-04-11 20:33:16Speaking in Support of Community TV
The recent admission by Minister for Home Affairs, Clare O’Neil, that the Labor government has lost control of Australia’s borders is deeply troubling. A government’s primary responsibility is to ensure the security of its citizens and this revelation is a national disgrace.
It seems that the government has ceded control of our borders to the courts. The hasty release of dangerous criminals into the community following a High Court decision last year was a direct consequence of this failure to prepare.
Labor’s mismanagement is further underscored by the recent statistics from the ABS, revealing a record influx of 125,410 permanent and long-term arrivals in January 2024 alone. This represents a 40% increase over the previous January record, placing immense strain on infrastructure and services.
This government’s actions that include reissuing visas to released detainees – murderers, rapists and child sex offenders – demonstrate a profound inability to govern effectively and responsibly. Labor has proven itself untrustworthy and incapable of fulfilling its duties to the Australian people.
Transcript
On immigration, this government is lost. Its failure to prepare for the anticipated High Court NZYQ decision last year enabled the rushed and ill-considered release of dangerous criminals from detention straight into the community. With no backup plan, Labor lurches from one disaster to another. Labor issued invalid visas to the released criminals. Labor charged at least 10 of those criminals for breaching visa conditions. Labor were forced to withdraw the charges because the visas were invalid. Labor then reissued new visas to all released detainees, including murderers, rapists and child sex offenders. It now appears that potentially another 150 criminal detainees will soon be released into the community without appropriate safeguards. Some detainees maintain that, if they do not cooperate with deportation processes, they cannot be deported and should be released into the community.
The revelation from the Minister for Home Affairs, Clare O’Neil, over the weekend that the Labor government has lost control of our borders is a national disgrace. A government’s principal role is to provide security for its citizens, and the minister’s admission is terrifying and absolutely damning. It appears that the government has relinquished to the courts the power over our borders.
Most recently, two boatloads of illegal immigrants made it to our shores, getting past border security, making a mockery of national security. There was the rushed issue of visas to Palestinian refugees from Gaza, some visas taking only an hour or so to issue. What about the cancellation of the visas in transit, then the reissue of most of the visas? This is a hopelessly inept government trying to look good, not do good. ABS statistics for January reveal a staggering 125,410 permanent and long-term arrivals. Accounting for departures, the net growth in permanent and long-term arrivals in January was 55,330, 40 per cent higher than the previous January record intake way back in 2009, putting enormous strain on infrastructure and services. This Labor government does not know how to govern. This Labor government cannot be trusted.
