Malcolm’s Official Speeches in Parliament

Australia turning into a spiderweb of high voltage transmission lines

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It’s estimated that 28,000km of power lines will be required to help the government’s net-zero pipe dream.

In many places, these powerlines are being proposed over prime agricultural land with the owners having their property compulsorily resumed.

I spoke in support of a inquiry to give affected landowners a voice as the government bulldozes over them on their way off the wind and solar cliff.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to acknowledge the people in the gallery. My brothers and sisters in Queensland amongst the rural sector were at a property rights conference just last Friday. The stories about the so-called green power—wind and solar—are well and truly horrific.  

People are just starting to wake up to the blight that is coming upon this country. And it’s not just the city people paying for power; it’s rural landholders and farmers losing their land, losing their livelihoods and losing their health. The social, economic and moral impacts are enormous and devastating. And the anti-human Greens are responsible.  

I want to compliment the farmers who have come here today. Thank you so much, because what you’re showing is democracy in action. You’re putting pressure on the people down here in this chamber. We are paid by these people. We serve them.  

Recently I was in the wonderful Widgee community to listen to people about the Queensland government’s plan to destroy their national park and communities in order to build a high voltage powerline. Electricity transmission has become a controversial topic in recent years. The UN’s 2050 net zero—next to zero—needs a huge spend on wind turbines and solar panels, inevitably located in the bush and requiring tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines to bring the power all the way to the cities. 

Long transmission lines were not needed when coal power kept lights on and fridges running, lifting our beautiful country into a period of prosperity and stability. 

The woke Left—the socialist Left—are destroying what works and replacing it with a short-lived, unscientific exercise in feelings. Net zero will need $50 billion spent just on transmission lines, every cent of which will come out of the pockets of everyday Australians and electricity users, including manufacturers. Queensland Premier Palaszczuk’s plan for a big battery in the Pioneer Valley calls for peak generation of five million kilowatts of electricity to be delivered into a 275-kilovolt transmission line. It’s absolute insanity, deceit and arrogance. Premier, where’s the costing on the several thousand kilometres of additional lines necessary to carry that amount of power into the grid without melting the wires? Are you forgetting that melted wires is exactly what happened when the Kennedy renewables project was connected to the grid, and that was less than one per cent of the Pioneer project? 

It’s a fact that Katherine Myers from Victoria addressed the Property Rights conference in Gympie on the weekend. She told us that 80 per cent of solar and wind in western Victoria is not connected to the grid. You guys have blown that money and now you’re wanting to tear up farms to get it to the cities. Once wind and solar wear out, which takes only 12 years—and that’s the reason they’re called renewables, by the way—and taxpayers become jack of this ruinous drain on public finances the bush will be left a wasteland of glass, toxic chemicals, rusted steel towers, concrete and fallen wind turbines full of oil and dangerous chemicals. Do you know why they’re called renewables? Because you have to renew the bloody things every 12 years. In the space of building one power station you need to build four generations of solar and wind. That’s why they’re renewables. 

Wires melting is exactly what happened when the Kennedy renewables project was connected to the grid, and that’s less than one per cent of the Pioneer project. Nothing stacks up—nothing. Their owners are Bahamian shelf companies and Chinese shelf companies, which have no intention of remediating this inevitable environmental disaster. Who will be left with this legacy of blown toxic panels and wind turbines? You will be. That’s why we need this inquiry to explore this issue. 

One Nation stands opposed to green vandalism underway in rural Australians’ backyards just so that wealthy, ignorant and uncaring inner-city anti-human Greens and teals can feel better about their inhuman energy consumption myths. Why do the Greens hate nature? Let’s look at their track record. They chop down trees to make way for steel and fibreglass monuments to the sky god of warming, who is celebrated with religious fervour by people who think themselves too clever for religion. Tens of thousands of hectares have been cleared and devastated for electricity interconnector easements. It’s a permanent scar across the landscape for no reason.  

The seabed is marked with two new interconnectors to get hydropower from Tasmania to energy deficient Victoria. Suicide is what’s going on with the Victorian government. They’re suiciding their state. Productive farmland and native grasses are covered in a carpet of glass and silicon reflectors. The sea is supposed to shine, not the countryside. Productive land is dug up as a graveyard for expired wind turbine blades. There’s strip mining of the seabed for rare earth minerals to make EVs and big batteries. Beautiful natural lakes in China are polluted with toxic chemical run-off from the processing of rare earths. The Greens look the other way with this environmental vandalism because ignoring environmental standards is essential to bring the price of solar down so that they can claim the price of solar is falling. 

This is the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull. So there’s China’s environmental standards and the health of the locals, but who cares about children being devastated? Our beautiful bird life is sliced and diced in wind turbines across the country. If oil were the culprit, they would never shut up about birds. But with wind turbines: ‘Shoosh. No-one mention the dead birds.’ 

I make this offer to the Greens: come camping with me. Let me show you the beauty of this amazing countryside and then perhaps then you will be less likely to chop it down; cover it in glass, steel and concrete; pollute it; and lock it away so nobody but a chosen few can appreciate the beauty. One Nation is now the party of the environment. 

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Albanese Government Housing Bill is a Sham

What is Albanese’s solution to the housing crisis? He won’t slow down the 400,000 new immigrants arriving this year. He won’t stop foreign investors snapping up property. He won’t stop short term rentals.

Instead, they will invest a maximum of $2.5 billion over five years into a property market in Australia that is worth over $10 trillion dollars. A drop in a bucket is bigger than the 0.025% this bill represents.

If we want to fix housing in this country we have to cut red tape and stop the 400,000 arrivals this year pushing up rental and house prices, not just create another layer of bureaucracy.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I say the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and related bills introduce a seriously flawed concept—many flawed concepts. The Housing Australia Future Fund Bill establishes the Housing Australia Future Fund to make funds available for Housing Australia to make grants and loans in relation to acute housing needs, social housing or affordable housing—more bureaucracy. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023 renames the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation to Housing Australia—more bureaucracy. This is a clear difference between the Liberal and Labor parties. The Liberal Party name their reckless, wasteful market interventions as corporations. The Labor Party give their reckless, wasteful market interventions grander names. ‘Housing Australia’ sounds so big, so comforting and so reassuring, yet it falsely implies the Prime Minister has the housing crisis sorted when he is way off target. He’s making it worse.

Prime Minister Albanese’s solution is not to slow down the obscene level of immigration pouring into cities without homes for people to occupy. His solution is not to address foreign investors buying and locking up new homes so they can be sold as brand-new in a few years time when values increase. His solution is not to address short-term rentals pushing the long-term rentals out of the housing market. No, his solution is an investment fund that will make no noticeable improvement to the housing crisis.

Here’s the data around that. The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts the number of Australian dwellings at 10 million. This bill pretends to add 30,000 new dwellings, or a 0.3 per cent increase. The total value of Australian dwellings is just under $10 trillion. We need as much as $1 trillion worth of new housing by 2030 to meet the needs of everyday Australians, including migrants. This government is offering $2.5 billion. That’s 0.025 per cent.

The government can’t build enough homes to fix this. Only private enterprise can meet Australia’s needs. What created this mess? Red tape, green tape and blue tape created this mess, and high interest rates from a flawed Reserve Bank strategy and inflation from bad government management created the mess. The only thing that will work is getting government out of the way and letting free enterprise fix this mess. Anything else is dishonesty—reckless dishonesty. The Housing Australia Future Fund Bill is dishonest. Not only does this bill not solve the housing problem for people who are already here; it does not solve the housing problems for the millions that will arrive by 2030. Either that Albanese government is deliberately misrepresenting the outcome of the bill or there is more here than the paperwork suggests.

Let’s see what else we have here. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023 streamlines the functions of Housing Australia—oddly, by making it bigger—establishes an annual review mechanism for the National Housing Infrastructure Facility and extends the Commonwealth guarantee of the liabilities of Housing Australia to apply to contracts entered into until 30 June 2028. This last one is interesting. In Queensland a number of construction companies have gone broke recently. The main reason is that, thanks to the government, we have high inflation and home builders use fixed-price contracts. The last thing you want in a fixed-price contract is high inflation taking the profit margin and pushing the builder into a loss on every home they build. Who is going to build the homes now that private enterprise can no longer shoulder their fair share of the burden? Well, the government, of course—so it says—or is it? I’m sure Anthony Albanese’s mates in those big union superannuation funds are out there recruiting builders as we speak.

The Acting Deputy President: Order, Senator Roberts! Remember to refer to the Prime Minister by his correct title.

Senator Roberts: Prime Minister Albanese’s mates in those big union superannuation funds are out there recruiting builders as we speak, ready to open their construction division to build and own Australian housing. If the project runs over budget, who cares? It’s taxpayer money. After all, the government is giving a liability guarantee, so just shovel that government money right in there.

The bill will distort the housing construction market. On one hand, suppliers are under pressure to hold costs down to make private-sector construction affordable for everyday Australians to build and own their homes. On the other hand, Housing Australia will be out there paying top dollar to get their materials and labour to deliver the homes to keep their jobs. What could go wrong with that? The Albanese government could have worked with the supply chain and with banks to put in place supply chain security to keep existing builders in business. Instead, it went the Soviet route again, pushed the private sector aside and let the government build it.

The third part of this package is the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023. That streamlining thing I mentioned earlier apparently extends to creating a whole new advisory body called the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council to advise the Commonwealth government on matters related to housing supply and affordability. It’s more bureaucracy. We already have the Productivity Commission and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to provide this economic statistical data. We have a federal department to advise the minister on housing. Now we have a whole new body as well—more bureaucrats. Where is the corresponding reduction in the department’s budget allocation, reflecting a substantially reduced workload? Bigger government is the Labor Party’s answer to everything. History would disagree.

The numbers on this bill do not add up. The Housing Australia Future Fund, HAFF, will receive $10 billion to fund the delivery of 30,000 social and affordable homes and allocate an additional $330 million to acute housing needs over the HAFF’s first five years. Oh, really? I noticed, though, that the budget line item for this bill is $15.2 billion. The explanatory memorandum states the Housing Australia Future Fund ‘would be credited with $10 billion as soon as practicable after establishment.’ Where’s the other $5 billion going? Once invested, the Housing Australia Future Fund would provide up to $500 million per year to support social and affordable housing. That’s a five per cent return on investment, which is nice if you can get it in the current investment market. The Future Fund can’t. Their return on funds invested in the 2022 calendar year was negative 3.7 per cent. The fund would be reduced and no houses built—borrowed money, interest costs, lost money, no homes built. Even at a five per cent return on investment, a $500 million dividend for five years—that’s $2½ billion—divided by the 30,000 homes is $83,300 per home. One may speculate that these are going to be really tiny homes, yet the truth is likely far worse than that.

What would a home built by this Labor government actually look like? Subdivisions will be of the modern design, with narrow streets, because cars are an environmental sin, and we will never have the generation capacity for everyday Australians to use electric cars. Those are for the city elites, in the nomenclature. Eliminating excavation for obsolete parking garages will save money. Residents will instead walk or ride children’s scooters. Shopping will be delivered by drone from BlackRock and Vanguard-owned businesses like Amazon, Coles and Woolworths. Cameras will keep you safe and inside your 15-minute allocated region. Are cameras coming out of the $83,000 for each house or are local governments paying for those?

Home units will be constructed to the four corners of each block, and the landscaping which used to soften these buildings will no longer be allowed, because pointless plants waste water. Canberra’s posh Red Hill suburb, where senior bureaucrats live, gets beauty while everyday Australians get utility. They get cell blocks, really. Ceilings will be lowered, walkways narrowed and walls made thinner to squeeze additional units into low-rise blocks without lifts, with a daily water allowance of 120 litres per person. I remember receiving a presentation on that target back in 2019. A standard bathtub holds 180 litres, so baths are every bit as much the environmental vandals as gas stoves. Don’t laugh, Senator Duniam. Toilets will be half flush only. I don’t get this one. Is there a little electric charge that zaps you if you flush twice? How does that save water? Smart water meters will police water limits and make home and balcony gardens impossible to keep watered. So purchasing food from corporate supermarkets and corporate takeaways will be the only way to eat. Smart electricity meters will police our daily energy allowance and remotely switch off unapproved appliances.

All of these things are the current ideology of modern urban design, stated in writing. Many of these are already evident in council building codes. Smart meters are being deployed as we speak. Once the reality of having to sell a home built to these standards is removed by government ownership, all of these measures will be standard. Even if you apply Hive home ideology, can the cost come down to $83,000 per house? I doubt it. But to use a yardstick of $400,000 or more is to ignore the real intent of the bill. It is a principle we are hearing a lot, lately: you will own nothing and be happy, or else.

After the bill passes, the minister will decide where and how the money will be spent. After the bill passes, we’ll get the details. Disbursements, including grants made under the scheme, will be a budget measure, meaning the Senate can’t disallow them. The legislation does not include the rules around who can and can’t get a grant or disbursement, so this bill is really a $2.5 billion blank cheque. Clause 49 would allow the future fund board to use derivatives for certain purposes. This could include using derivatives as a risk management tool or to achieve indirect exposure to assets that it could not otherwise achieve. That sounds terrifying. I look forward to the minister’s explaining the intention of this section in the committee stage. We have questions for you.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 ‘establishes the council as an independent statutory advisory body to inform the Commonwealth’s approach to housing policy by delivering independent advice to the government on options to improve housing supply and affordability’. This is more bureaucracy. Does this suggest that the bureaucrats have been giving poor advice to the government? We already have a Commonwealth department of housing. What’s gone wrong with that department that we need this whole new additional body? Or is this just another opportunity for jobs for your mates among union bosses and among the union superannuation industry?

This bill should have been about getting people into their own homes. That requires making life easier for private-sector homebuilders and for private homeownership, which will take demand out of rental accommodation and free up homes at more-realistic prices for those who can only rent. Instead, Prime Minister Albanese is using government construction to push private homebuilders out of the market and entrench renting over owning. There is a lot of additional bureaucracy and a lot of economic and social harm for proportionally little benefit, for almost no benefit.

One Nation opposes this Soviet-style reckless, wasteful market intervention. One Nation proposes getting down to basics: cutting immigration until housing and infrastructure catch up; cutting red tape, green tape and blue UN tape; comprehensively reforming taxation to give Australians a fair go; shrinking government to fit the Constitution; and getting the government the hell out of people’s lives, enabling people to make choices that suit people’s and families’ needs. We do not need more bureaucrats and more waste; we need more houses, real houses. We need a return to basics. Let the tradies of Australia get on with the job.

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There are Jail cells underneath Parliament House, let’s use them

I’ve got a suggestion, if Labor wants to keep disobeying direct orders of the Senate we can show them why there are jail cells underneath Parliament House.

Transcript

I like Senator Farrell. He’s a good bloke. We don’t always agree. I accept that he’s overseas right now. Yet his repeated non-responses are not acceptable. His behaviour is not acceptable, because answering questions is important for accountability. The people that we serve deserve honesty and accountability. There’s only one word to describe this government’s attitude to Senate estimates, to questions on notice and to orders for the production of documents. That word is ‘contempt’. They continue to treat this chamber with contempt. Almost every order by this Senate to produce information is met with contempt from this government, and it is appropriate that we begin to treat appropriately the ministers who treat this Senate with contempt.

We have had explanation after explanation after explanation from ministers. Ministers are all too happy to come into this place and cop a lashing for an hour and continue to refuse to produce the information that this Senate has ordered. The explanations are not good enough. They are intentionally inadequate. It is not good enough that this Senate continues to accept them without any further action. It’s time for this Senate to use its constitutionally enshrined powers to hold ministers to account, and that must be through charges of contempt when they continue to disrespect this Senate’s orders.

I remind senators that it is this Senate, not the government-dominated privileges committee, that makes the final determination on matters of contempt. If this Senate is not happy with a minister’s disobedience of a direct order, then the Senate itself can vote on contempt, which we would do and which should happen. The time for meaningless, hollow blather, in explanation after explanation, is over. Start serving the people or face contempt motions. There are jail cells in the basement. It’s time for the executive government to be reminded why they’re there. That’s not a joke. That is fact. It’s time for the government to be reminded why there are jail cells in the basement.

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Labor wants to kill the industries that just saved their budget

Without mining and agriculture our country would be toast. Yet Treasurer Jim Chalmers couldn’t bring himself to mention them once in his budget speech. I guess ‘coal’ and ‘iron ore’ are scary words to him.

Transcript

What are the two words too scary for the Treasurer to mention even once in this budget? They are mining and agriculture.

Ladies and gentlemen of Australia, booming mining and agriculture have yet again saved Australia’s economy. The budget surplus is due to mining and agricultural exports, not to the Treasurer.

Is he keeping it secret because Labor wants to continue to destroy these vital industries? We should be opening more coal mines, not blocking them. We should be building more coal-fired power stations, not blowing them up. And we should be setting our farmers free to feed and clothe the world.

Labor’s energy relief plan is an admission that net-zero policies cannot lower power prices. Today we have the highest ever amount of wind and solar, yet the Treasurer needs to step in and use taxpayer money to cover up how high they are driving power bills.

On inflation, how inflationary will 400,000 new migrants be? Every single one of the 400,000 people arriving this year will need a roof over their head, a home. That’s inflation.

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Cancel HECS debt for students cancelled by Vaccine Mandates

Halfway through long and expensive degrees, universities implemented vaccine mandates on students. Those students who stuck to their principles and didn’t take the vaccine had to quit their degree yet still carry the HECS debt for that degree.

Taking an experimental vaccine wasn’t a requirement when they signed up to the degree and debt, the rules were changed on them. That HECS debt should be cancelled.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: The Greens want to talk about cancelling HECS debt. Well, let’s talk about the HECS debt of students who started their degrees and then were forced to abandon them because of COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Any student who started studying their degree at university before COVID-19 arrived and subsequently was forced to abandon their studies because of an inhumane COVID-19 injection mandate, whether the mandate was at the university or at a placement that they were required to undertake as part of their degree, should have that HECS debt immediately cancelled. When they signed up to their multi-year degrees, there was no requirement for them to take an untested, experimental, gene therapy based injection.

The President: Senator Roberts, if you could resume your seat for a moment. The substance of your response needs to focus on the motion put forward by Senator Faruqi, which is to suspend business to debate the bill the Greens want to put forward, so you do need to respond to why you agree or disagree or make other comments around the urgency of that suspension motion.

Senator Roberts: Thank you. I’m getting to that point right now. Halfway through their degrees, that rule was changed on them, and they had no say over it. Their debt should be cancelled immediately.

That’s why One Nation will be opposing this motion to suspend standing orders: we want a proper debate. We want a royal commission. We want it dealt with properly so that students who have been kicked out of university, stopped their studies or stopped their placement get a fair say and have their HECS debt cancelled.

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Why we need a COVID Royal Commission Now

When predatory billionaires and their trillion-dollar investment funds murder a beautiful, vibrant 21-year-old Australian in their unquenchable thirst for profit, it shows corporate ownership and influence have gone too far.

Now is the time to take stock, to end all private and government mandates, suspend all hasty approvals and re-examine every fake vaccine and every drug approved using emergency approval. Now is the time to call the royal commission Minister Gallagher promised last year. Now is the time to start the painful-yet-necessary process of taking power from those who misused it and taking liberty from those who manipulated the response for their personal profit.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, One Nation has today advanced a matter of public importance calling for a royal commission into Australia’s COVID response. The rush of real science in the last few months makes it clear that COVID-19 has been a tragic and criminal exercise in stakeholder government. The stakeholders have milked COVID for their own personal and corporate benefit, at the expense of everyday Australians, destroying confidence in our health system. For corporations, the objective was profit from the sale of tests, PPE and fake, deadly vaccines that government and private mandates maximised. This profit accrued from fast-tracked TGA approvals that saved pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars and caused a new cost in human suffering, death and injury.

Nothing could illustrate this point more than the heartbreaking testimony last week of Deborah Hamilton at the Senate inquiry into Senator Hanson’s bill to ban COVID injection mandates. Deborah lost her daughter immediately after her COVID injections, which her employer mandated for her to keep her job. Her employer and their parent company had Vanguard investment fund as a leading shareholder and financier. Vanguard is the leading corporate shareholder in Pfizer. Vanguard mandated vaccines they make a profit from. When predatory billionaires and their trillion-dollar investment funds murder a beautiful, vibrant 21-year-old Australian in their unquenchable thirst for profit, it shows corporate ownership and influence have gone too far.

For media the payoff was advertising accepted in return for government’s aggressive propaganda-level promotion of the COVID narrative, messaging broadcasts to citizens who were captives in their own homes. Academics took their research grants and delivered the outcomes they were asked to deliver. So much science in the COVID period was delivered with a high degree of confidence, yet in recent months much of the science underpinning our COVID response has been proven to be dodgy, deceitful and dangerous—inhumanly so. Bureaucrats saw the opportunity to spread their power in a way that was previously never allowed. Bureaucrats who were there to oversee drug companies failed in their duties so badly that malfeasance must be a term of reference for a royal commission.

We know the TGA did not check the Pfizer clinical trial data. The TGA took Pfizer’s word for the trial results, and Pfizer lied repeatedly. When leading international virologists analysed the trial data in a peer reviewed and published paper they found the Pfizer vaccine caused 14 per cent more harm than it saved and should never have been approved. Our politicians—Australians elected to have nothing but the best interests of their constituents at heart—engaged in policy decisions that did more damage to Australians than any foreign enemy has ever achieved.

To emphasise why our COVID response cannot be allowed to go without scrutiny, let me review the COVID developments that have come to light in just the last month. One: ivermectin won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2015 and was shown over and over again to be a remarkably effective, safe treatment for early-stage COVID. It would have saved thousands of lives. Ivermectin was never horse paste. It was an obstacle to drug company profits, and our authorities sided with drug companies over the best interests of the people.

Two: COVID injections cause eye damage. Stanford University published a study in Nature journal last month using medical data from 4.5 million people showing that retinal vein occlusion, including blindness, significantly increased during the first two weeks after injection and persisted, in the case of Pfizer and Moderna, for two years. Our vaccine approval process was bypassed. It was smashed.

Three: Hamburg and Munich universities’ investigation of long COVID using mouse and human post-mortem tissue found an accumulation of spike protein in the skull marrow and parts of the brain months after infection or injection, leading to a conclusion that spike protein damages the brain and contributes to long COVID, whether the source is the COVID infection or a vaccine. The TGA has now approved the Moderna injection, which uses spike protein, for permanent use. What the hell are they doing!

Four: COVID injections harm menstrual cycles. A study published last month in the British Medical Journal studied three million women in Sweden and concluded the Pfizer vaccine contributed to a 41 per cent increase in menstrual complications. This information was first collated in 2020 and was simply ignored when the fake vaccines were approved.

Finally, the World Health Organization took time out from promoting child grooming to declare COVID no longer a global health emergency. Now is the time to take stock, to end all private and government mandates, suspend all hasty approvals and re-examine every fake vaccine and every drug approved using emergency approval.

Now is the time to call the royal commission Minister Gallagher promised last year.

Now is the time to start the painful-yet-necessary process of taking power from those who misused it and taking liberty from those who manipulated the response for their personal profit.

Jail the bastards. We want justice.

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Is the UN trying to groom our kids?

Exposing underage children to sexually explicit material is grooming. Why is the United Nations saying nine year olds should be taught about about masturbation and view pornography?

My article in the Spectator provides more detail on the UN WHO’s disgusting plans: https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/children-targeted-by-who-standards-for-sexuality-education-in-europe/

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people that make up our one Queensland community, I draw the Senate’s attention to the United Nations World Health Organization’s current attempt at child grooming. This speech is part of my longer essay on this topic, which was published yesterday in the Spectator online. The World Health Organization has orchestrated a framework for health and education policymakers called Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe. Only last month, the World Health Organization tried to expand this agenda worldwide and failed to get the numbers—for now. Not to be outdone, the UN has a complementary framework called the International technical guidance on sexuality education.

The preferred framework of the World Health Organization and the UN demands that sex education begin at birth and be under the state’s guidance—not the parent’s. In their own words, this framework aims to empower children and young people to develop respectful sexual relationships. It says:

These skills can help children and young people form respectful and healthy relationships with … romantic or sexual partners.

By age four, the child will have knowledge of biological reproduction and sexuality sufficient to differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual behaviour and will be taught about consent—under four! By age six, children will be exposed to education on intercourse, masturbation and pornography. By age nine, these will actually be taught, with the intent of achieving an adult knowledge and the assumption these nine-year-olds would have had their first sexual encounter. Well, they will now! By the time children are aged 12, the World Health Organization will have placed all this knowledge into the appropriate political context, thereby destroying our kids’ chances of ever having a loving, monogamous relationship.

Children are impressionable and in their early, formative years can be scarred for life. Adult sexual content has no place in a child’s education in the way these monsters propose. It’s time to get out of the pervert’s paradise that the UN and its agencies have become.

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Senator Roberts’ Easter Message to Australia

I hope you will be having an enjoyable easter with family or friends and have time to reflect on the things that matter.

Stay safe on the roads.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, this Easter I refer to Luke 23 describing governor of Judea Pontius Pilate’s trial of Jesus.

Under the custom of thou shalt pardon, Pontius Pilate offered the Jerusalem Passover crowd a choice between pardoning two people convicted of sedition: Barabbas or Judas.

Barabbas was a violent revolutionary who rebelled against Rome and killed indiscriminately. Jesus, though, was convicted of sedition following his Palm Sunday arrival, which led to Pontius Pilate fearing for his own power. As history records, the crowd chose to spare Barabbas in the hope he would protect them from the Romans. The crowds shunned Jesus, who had spoken against violence and in favour of quiet endurance in the knowledge that better times would come.

While Luke 23 is a parable about Jesus dying for the sins of others, there is another interpretation. The crowd chose a person who they falsely hoped would protect their physical selves over someone who fought for their spiritual selves. In a decision that mimics the Jerusalem crowd, during COVID many Australians abandoned spiritual values of love, family and fellowship to achieve what we now know was a false sense of physical safety.

Australians embraced the message from the Pfizer empire’s modern day Pontius Pilate. It was a message broadcast in daily brainwashing sessions from politicians, health bureaucrats, media mouthpieces and over shopping centre public address systems, all with the same billionaire owners as Pfizer. They were messages designed to turn society against those who stayed true to spiritual beliefs.

This Easter let’s reflect on Pontius Pilate’s faith. Emperor Caligula recalled Pilate to Rome, accused him of cruelty and oppression and then executed him. As it turns out, washing one’s hands of blame does not work. In the end, God always wins.

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Parliament passes $15 billion slush fund

The National Reconstruction Fund is a slush fund that makes sports rorts look like chump change.

We have a trillion-dollar deficit, and the Albanese government is throwing around $15 billion like it’s Monopoly money.

It’s time that the government got out of the way of the private sector and personal enterprise.

Transcript

Queensland community, I speak to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023.

One Nation has, on occasion, pointed out that Labor will run a government for the benefit of their union boss mates, the Liberals for the benefit of their big business mates, and the teals and the Greens for the benefit of their sugar daddies, the billionaire climate-change carpetbaggers. So it was with amusement that I saw an exchange between Minister Gallagher and Senator Rennick on social media over the weekend. Senator Rennick mentioned in a speech that he did not agree with the slush funds that the Liberal-Nationals set up during their government.

I appreciate and compliment Senator Rennick for his integrity. He has shown that repeatedly in this parliament and outside.

Senator Gallagher could not resist. Oblivious to the irony of her comments, Minister Gallagher said Senator Rennick had ‘belled the cat’, admitting to ‘slush funds and rorts galore’. ‘The Bell and the Cat’ is a medieval fable—a cautionary tale on the nature of impossible tasks. Admittedly, it’s an appropriate choice, given the impossibility of the Liberals ever running government for the benefit of the people.

But the irony of the minister’s decision to engage the Liberals on the issue of rorting is tone deaf, considering that this bill was on the Notice Paper at the time. The minister’s words are suggestive of a quite different fable—the pot calling the kettle black, which is 16th-century Spanish homily in which somebody accuses someone else of a fault which the accuser shares and, therefore, is an example of psychological projection—that’s a polite way of saying ‘hypocrisy’.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023 is 100 per cent pork barrel—the very thing of which the minister accuses others. This bill creates a $15 billion fund to oversee Australia’s reconstruction. It would have been helpful to define the word ‘reconstruction’, Minister. Minister Husic must have overlooked the fundamental reason for this bill. The word ‘reconstruction’ does not appear in this bill. At a guess, reconstruction must involve infrastructure spending, right? Wrong. The word ‘infrastructure’ does not appear in this bill either. The word was added by the crossbench in the other place, the House of Representatives, as part of their amendment banning—banning!—certain types of infrastructure spending.

The Greens and teals were helpful, as usual! For clarity, that was sarcasm.

The bill does provide for spending on priority projects, yet there’s no definition of what a priority project actually is. I understand these will be manufacturing projects. Why, then, does the bill not mention the word ‘manufacturing’?

Not once is manufacturing mentioned. This is significant because the bill allows the minister to fill in all these details later. Yet if these much needed initiatives—reconstruction, manufacturing and infrastructure—were the purpose of this bill then section 5 would define these concepts and set out what is and what is not ‘reconstruction’, ‘manufacturing’ and ‘infrastructure’. It does not. It fails to do this basic step.

I expected to see a statement of fairness, ensuring projects are funded based on the needs of the region in which the projects are located, having mind to the overarching concept of national interest. There’s a novelty! It doesn’t do that, either—which is not a novelty, because that’s the way this parliament works. It’s not in the national interest.

This bill does have a section on consultation, requiring the corporation to consult with the Australian Banking Association—Minister Jones’s best mates are the first ones on the list; what a surprise!—and the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Investment Council, Industry Super Australia and the Law Council of Australia. What an odd list. If this was about infrastructure, the requirement would be to consult with Infrastructure Australia; it’s not there. If this was about manufacturing, then you could consult with Manufacturing Australia, or, to drive manufacturing into a new era, one could consult—one would consult—with the Australian Advanced Manufacturing Council, but no. Taking Australian industry into the emerging space industry offers the prospect of billions in new sales and high-paying breadwinner jobs. The Space Industry Association of Australia should have been on that list; it was not.

There’s $15 billion in funding without once mentioning the fundamental purpose of the spending—$15 billion, without once requiring consultation with the bodies that could help direct this spending to the national interest.

There are no checks, no balances, no guidance to the minister, no guidance to the board of the corporation and no KPIs—key performance indicators. There’s no measure of success, no measure of failure. To call this bill a blank cheque is an insult to blank cheques. And it’s an insult to taxpayers, whose money is being spent.

The Senate Economics Legislation Committee’s inquiry into the bill does cast some light on where this money will be spent. The inquiry heard from multiple witnesses advocating for spending the $15 billion on solar and wind energy boondoggles—more carpetbagging. Australia already has the clean energy fund, spending $25 billion on unreliable, weather dependent power to take us back to before the industrial revolution. If the transition to weather dependent power was actually in the national interest and was dictated by market forces, these solar and wind carpetbaggers would not be buzzing around reconstruction funding like flies in search of excrement. I foreshadow that I will be moving an amendment in the committee of the whole which requires that a corporation cannot invest in an energy project that meets the criteria for funding by the Clean Energy Council—no double-dipping. There is no justification for using this $15 billion of taxpayer money to make Australia’s energy capacity worse.

The title of the bill raises an important question: what exactly are we reconstructing from? Are we reconstructing from three years of ruinous COVID lockdowns and restrictions that gutted the economy—destroyed the economy?

Are we reconstructing from a generation of ruinous net zero measures that have seen cheap, reliable base-load power replaced with expensive and short-lived materials-heavy wind and solar power? Are we reconstructing from the exporting of Australia’s manufacturing sector to China under the Hawke-Keating Labor government in the eighties?

Indeed, discussion on the nuclear subs purchased last week shows that former prime minister Keating has lost none of his loyalty to China. Are we reconstructing from a generation of oppressive development constraints provided across the range of government?

Is it red tape from an out-of-control bureaucracy that demands more and more power with less and less oversight in pursuit of a war against common sense, freedom and basic decency? Is it green tape, designed to make rich, pampered inner-city luvvies feel better about their own environmental footprint while destroying any chance the rural sector has for a profitable business? Or is it blue tape from the mountain of unelected, unaccountable foreign bureaucrats spreading a gospel of everyday Australians having less so that predatory billionaires can own it all? It’s about Australians having less so that predatory billionaires can own it all. That’s their ideological bible. It is not the economy that needs reconstruction; it is the government that needs reconstruction.

Here’s One Nation’s reconstruction plan: just stop it. Stop it. Stop strangling the life out of the private sector. Stop strangling the life out of small business. Stop strangling the life out of families and taxpayers. Stop using taxpayers’ money to pick winners and losers amongst new business ventures, when that task should rightly be performed by the free market and by personal enterprise and initiative, leading to personal responsibility. Stop rewarding your mates in the solar and wind sector, who have spent tens of millions of dollars earnt from renewable solar and wind boondoggles to get pet parliamentarians elected who now have seriously conflicted loyalties. Stop rewarding party donors with taxpayer money dressed up as reconstruction funding. Stop the cronyism.

Australia is not and never will be a centrally planned economy. In fact, no economy will be centrally planned; they all collapse. We have a trillion-dollar deficit, and the Albanese government is throwing around $15 billion like it were Monopoly money. It’s time that the government got out of the way of the private sector, personal enterprise, and let the profit motive and free enterprise competition decide what gets built and what does not. Let the customers decide.

The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023 is last-century Soviet thinking, a product of the comrades deep in Trades Hall who do not seem to have noticed that the Soviet Union has fallen, because it failed
to maintain the standard of living of everyday people. Standards of living in Australia are decreasing—the reverse of what is happening to energy prices. That is one of the many causes. This bill is ideological rubbish designed to reward businesses who promote joining union bosses. That is the sentence the minister will put in later.

Subject to amendments, One Nation opposes this bill.

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Only $80 billion of $1.2 trillion in deposits protected

Our banks are bastards, but they are well capitalised. Yet, if they were to run into trouble as is happening overseas, our government is only guaranteeing 7% of Australian money in the bank.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister for Finance, Senator Gallagher. Last week I asked questions about the funding for the deposits guarantee scheme, which was designed to protect the money in the bank accounts of everyday Australians—capped at $250,000 per account, $20 billion per bank and $80 billion total. Minister, when the scheme was brought in, the eligible deposits being protected were $650 billion. According to statement 9 of Budget Paper No. 1 of the October 2022 Labor budget—your budget—eligible deposits are now $1.2 trillion. How can $80 billion possibly protect $1.2 trillion in deposits?

Senator GALLAGHER (ACT—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): I think this question goes to some of the concerns that we’re seeing in global financial markets at the moment, and the impact on some banks overseas and some concerns that Senator Roberts is raising about the potential for impact here in Australia. The answer is the same as I gave last week.

Senator Rennick: You don’t know how to count.

Senator GALLAGHER: Thank you, Senator Rennick. Would you like leave to speak to this question or am I allowed to? You’d like to, would you?

The PRESIDENT: Minister Gallagher, address your comments to those opposite through the chair. Senator Rennick, resume your seat.

Senator Watt: Tell us about your Masters in Applied Finance!

Senator GALLAGHER: I know responding to interjections is disorderly, but Senator Rennick’s got verbal diarrhoea, it seems, this question time. He can’t keep it in. As I said last week, this is something the government is monitoring closely. In fact, the Treasurer is being briefed twice a day on what’s happening overseas, and is also being provided with feedback from regulators and from the banking system here. I think it is very good, and I would think that it’s something that this Senate would welcome, that our financial markets and our banking system are well regulated, well led and well capitalised, with good liquidity, and we are not seeing the issues that are being seen overseas. I did undertake, and I’m not sure if we’ve done this, to provide you with a written response to the question that you raised last week. I’ll chase that if it hasn’t got to you, as well as anything further I can provide in relation to the answer I’ve just given.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, your first supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS: My constituents, as I expressed last week and in the last question, are concerned. Minister, the protected amount is not indexed and, because of inflation, would need to be increased to $380,000 per account and $115 billion overall just to cover the same amount as the scheme did in 2008. Minister, will you increase the caps on the bank deposit guarantee to make up for inflation since 2008?

Senator GALLAGHER: In line with the answer I gave last week, of course the government would respond in relation to concerns that were raised about the operation of our banking system and the impact it was having here. We are not seeing that. I think Australians should be reassured that the Australian banking system is resilient and that all of our banks, as I said, are well capitalised and have strong liquidity coverage. The Treasury and regulators are closely monitoring the situation about potential impacts for Australia—and when I say that, I mean very closely monitoring. I can understand that people watching what has happened with Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse would have raised concerns. I can understand that. The response is that since the GFC and since the banking royal commission there are measures in place to ensure the strong performance of our banking system, and we don’t have any concerns about it.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a second supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS: Reviewing the minister’s answers, I have five questions on the guarantee so far. Firstly, the guarantee has not been adjusted for inflation, and so it offers 34 per cent less protection than when it was legislated. Secondly, the guarantee is not funded. There is no money available to implement it. Thirdly, the scheme only covers 7c in the dollar of deposits. Fourthly, the minister has refused to commit to activating the scheme if it was needed. Minister, can you explain why constituents should not conclude, as many have, that the bank deposit guarantee is a fraud and a lie?

Senator GALLAGHER: I don’t agree with that representation by Senator Roberts at all. I have answered the question in a general sense by saying that, if there were concerns as we saw in the GFC, of course the government, and I presume the parliament, would act. The point I’m trying to make is that at this point we don’t have concerns. We do not share the concerns. In fact, we’ve been given very strong reassurance by the regulators, by the banks themselves and by the systems that have been put in place by this place and the other place to ensure that we have a strong, well regulated, well capitalised banking system to precisely insulate from some of the financial instability that we’re seeing elsewhere. Yes, of course, the government would respond if we had to. At this point in time we are assured that that’s not the case.

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