Malcolm’s Official Speeches in Parliament

Government ignores shocking adverse event study

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A peer-reviewed study has analysed Pfizer and Moderna’s own trial data and found significant risks of adverse events from its vaccine.

This study finds the risk of a serious adverse event is as high as 18 in 10,000, much higher than any government has ever warned.

The Government keeps telling us to “Trust the Science”. Well the real Science is starting to be uncovered and they continue to ignore it.

The peer reviewed study is available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22010283

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:30): My question is for Senator Gallagher, for the Minister for Health and Aged Care. A peer reviewed paper last week in the establishment scientific journal Vaccine examined Pfizer’s COVID vaccine randomized phase 3 clinical trial data. It used the World Health Organization’s framework made for this purpose, the Brighton Collaboration on adverse events of special interest. Authors include virology and pharmacology experts from UCLA, Stanford, the University of Baltimore and Queensland’s Bond University. The paper concluded that the Pfizer’s vaccine was associated with a 36 per cent increase in serious adverse events. The most common were coagulation disorders and acute cardiac injury. In every 10,000 people injected, 18 will experience a life-threatening or life-altering medical complication. Serious adverse events from Pfizer’s COVID vaccine are four times higher than any benefit in reduced hospitalisation. Minister, is Pfizer’s vaccine safe, and do advise Australians to continue taking it?

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) (14:31): I haven’t read the paper that Senator Roberts is citing, but, in answer to his question ‘Are the vaccines safe?’ yes, they are. The successful deployment of vaccinations across the world has prevented probably millions of deaths from COVID-19, particularly in those vulnerable populations such as older people, people who have a disability or people who are immunocompromised.

We’ve done very well here in Australia. We’ve got some more to do in terms of fourth doses, where it’s still only about 40 per cent of eligible people who have received their fourth dose. But the vaccine is safe. It’s been an incredibly effective health measure to manage the pandemic, to protect lives and to protect economic loss that would have otherwise occurred from such a serious global pandemic.

We have put our trust in the health experts in Australia from the beginning of this pandemic. Their advice hasn’t changed. ATAGI have considered all the matters, the scientific panel has looked at them and the TGA has approved the vaccines. They have been through rigorous processes to ensure that they are safe, and where there have been adverse events—and there have been, unfortunately, including serious adverse events and the loss of life—the advice has changed and the vaccine program was changed to deal with that. Where there have been adverse events, they have all been reported publicly on the TGA website, so that people are able to see the data and see the changing health advice around the vaccines. But, yes, they are safe and people should have their vaccine, including their fourth dose. (Time expired)

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, your first supplementary question.

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:33): Sixty-three million COVID injections means up to 113,000 Australians suffered serious adverse events. Since the vaccine’s release, all-cause mortality, after allowing for COVID deaths, is at record highs. This paper proves COVID vaccines cause serious side effects—in 13 cases, fatal ones. ATAGI admits children are being given myocarditis and pericarditis. Where is the royal commission that your own COVID committee called for?

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) (14:34): We didn’t call for a royal commission into vaccine safety; let’s be clear on that. As chair, there was a recommendation about looking at all aspects of the pandemic response. But it is different, and I don’t want to be involved in any conspiracy about vaccines, thanks very much. They are safe. The evidence has been provided and the data is available on the website. And I would say to Senator Roberts—because I do have time for you, Senator Roberts; we have good discussions, and have had through the pandemic—if you are concerned by this paper you’ve read, I would urge you to refer it to the TGA or to the AHPPC or to ATAGI, and get their considered opinion on it to see, and perhaps listen to, the other side from those experts who’ve been working on vaccines and vaccine safety.

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:35): The vaccines are causing coagulation disorders, and this will show in our reduction in live births. The Australian Bureau of Statistics receives live-birth data six weeks post-birth, so we should be seeing live-birth data to June 2022, yet the ABS data stops at December 2020. Minister, why is this government holding back 2½ years of live-birth data? What are you covering up?

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) (14:35): For a start, just to answer your question directly, we’re not covering up anything. Secondly, on issues of births, live births, maternal deaths or deaths of babies, usually that data is reported, and it’s reported at a state and territory level, so I’m sure that data does exist, if you are interested in it. Where there have been side effects from the vaccine, and there have been some—I’m sure many in this chamber got them—like headaches, feeling a bit tired and escalating into more serious conditions, they have been appropriately managed, and advised on by all of those experts. When there were some concerns about blood clotting and myocarditis in young men, I think in teenage boys particularly, those issues were addressed and were managed, including by providing advice to anyone who is a vaccination provider, to keep an eye out for any conditions like that. And you’ll see from the data that the TGA— (Time expired)

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Labor’s Job Summit scores as a big flop

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The Jobs Summit last week was a wasted opportunity. A key decision from the Albanese government was to increase the immigration cap to 195,000 new immigrants a year. When there aren’t enough jobs for Australians right now how is importing another 195,000 hopeful employees going to help?

Transcript

President, two minutes is more than enough to review Labor’s Jobs and Skills Summit.

Allowing pensioners and student visa holders to earn more WILL help small businesses in the city and in the bush.

This has been One Nation policy for some time.

$40 billion in development funding through to 2030. $5 billion a year sounds good until we realise private investment spending in Australia in 2022/23 alone will be $143 billion.

$5 billion is a drop in the bucket. Just enough to provide the Labor with endless media photo ops.

This was the best opportunity in years to talk about growing our employment base – mining, agriculture, manufacturing, value adding. Creating breadwinner jobs.

Opportunity NOT taken.

25% of the delegates, one quarter, were union bosses. Yet there was no tangible job creation that may benefit union members. No wonder Red Unions are booming.

What did come out of the summit?

1.      Additional vocational training places, for jobs that don’t exist;

2.      Preferential employment schemes for women and Aboriginals, for jobs that don’t exist;

3.      195,000 new migrants every year, for jobs that don’t exist.

How will our crumbling health care system provide for all these new arrivals?

Victoria is treating patients in tents and Queensland in the back of ambulances.

Where will the housing come from? 100,000 Australians are homeless and that rate is rising. Rental prices are up 18% this year alone.

Inflation is 6% on the way to 10%. Life for everyday Australians is getting very hard, very quickly.

Labor will make all of these things worse with increased immigration adding more pressure on health and housing, while diluting the power of workers. That will reduce workers’ wages and living conditions even further.

Just who are Labor working for?

We have One flag. We are One Community. And One Nation is now the workers’ party.

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The cost of living keeps getting worse

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Feel like the grocery and fuel bill has gone up? Working just as hard and feel like you’re going backwards?

It’s because you are. The major parties are the cause.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak to this matter of public importance—and it is a crucial and real matter of public importance. Well may a former assistant minister in the previous government debate the cost of living. This cost-of-living crisis now facing everyday Australian families and small businesses rests on the shoulders of both sides of this chamber. For more than two years, the Liberal and National government and the then Labor Party opposition were on a unity ticket to conjure money through electronic ledger entries and spend for short-term electoral benefit. They conjured up $500 billion and spent it on recurring government expenditure. These turned out to be handouts to Liberal, Labor and National party sponsors. Much of it went into corporate profits, not job support. Now we have runaway inflation. Who pays for the government’s mistakes, the Labor Party’s mistakes? The people, as always.

Let me be clear. It’s possible to conjure up money through electronic journal entries and not create inflation. It’s been done for centuries. In these cases, the spending must be on something that will grow the economy, grow our productive capacity and absorb the extra money—something like infrastructure. It’s impossible to get the tired old parties or the new climate mafia to talk about important infrastructure projects like the Bradfield Scheme, Copper String 2.0, Tully-Millstream hydro, Big Buffalo dam, the national rail circuit and the boomerang steel project, amongst other One Nation priorities. Meanwhile, the climate mafia are setting out to destroy our standard of living through many ill-conceived policies not based on science, contradicting the evidence.

Let me start with high electricity prices. Electricity prices are an input to business costs right through the production cycle, from the farmer running a cold room to the manufacturer running a factory to the wholesaler running a warehouse to supermarkets trying to keep their fridges cold and their lights on. When the cost of electricity rises, the cost of everything rises. Food, clothing, hardware, consumer goods, services, energy, and service sector examples such as optometrists, hairdressers, solicitors—pick a service, any service. All have electricity as a business expense. The cost of living is going up because the price of electricity is going up. Australian wholesale electricity prices are up 300 per cent in the last year. And what is the reason? It is unsustainable, unreliable wind and solar paying subsidies to billionaires in the Chinese Communist Party who are running these things. They’re the owners. The majority of large wind and solar complexes are owned by foreigners, including China and the Chinese Communist Party. Those who laugh are ignorant and condemned to suffer more.

This is combined with manipulation of the energy market by unscrupulous energy companies that should never have been allowed to buy important infrastructure. The National Electricity Market is actually a national electricity racket run by bureaucrats; it’s not a market at all.

The third element of higher electricity prices is the cost of transmission lines, poles and wires, to bring power from where the industrial solar and wind blight complexes are located to where the electricity is needed.

Our immigration rate affects prices. The more new Australians arrive, the more electricity, water, medical care and education they consume. These things are supply and demand. The more demand, the higher the price. Of course, governments can plan ahead and build out extra power generation, extra hospitals, extra dams and schools, but we don’t. Long-term planning in Australian politics means the next election, or nowadays, in the last decade or so, it means the next budget. This is no way to run a country. When One Nation talks about reducing immigration to net zero, we mean bringing in around 100,000 new arrivals each year to balance out the 100,000 who leave. Net zero is zero total immigration, easing the strain on infrastructure. This takes pressure off our economy, reducing demand and inflation, and making the essentials of life cheaper.

The climate mafia do not want to allow new dams and new electricity generation to be built, while at the same time wanting to bring in half the world as immigrants. Talk about inflation! You haven’t anything yet. Agriculture is under threat. A 43 per cent carbon dioxide reduction means culling livestock and shutting down cropping, returning that land to nature in a process called rewilding. What they call rewilding One Nation calls ‘starving people’. The less food that gets grown, the higher the price will be. One Nation will stop the madness and return Australia to good government.

We are one community, we are one nation.

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Minister Watt continues to duck and weave on Foot and Mouth Disease

The PM has made a mistake in giving the Agriculture ministry to an accountant and lawyer from the Gold Coast. Even so, the country still needs to be ready for the worst. Our agriculture and economy depends on it.

Transcript

In serving the people of Queensland and Australia, my intention in advancing this motion was to protect the people’s interests from the economic devastation that will result from foot-and-mouth disease if it enters Australia. There is no time to waste. It is a distinct possibility that, given the substandard response from this government, foot-and-mouth may be in Australia before the next sitting. Suspending standing orders to debate this matter today was essential, and I thank Senator Gallagher and the government for this.

Senator Whish-Wilson yesterday suggested that this matter could wait for discussion at the inquiry into the government’s foot-and-mouth response. No, it can’t. That’s weeks away. We need to act now to get these vaccines into Australia.

I know the minister appeared on radio earlier this week and alluded to the ‘scaremongering’ coming from some people around this issue. It is not scaremongering to want to save the life blood of hundreds of communities in rural Australia. It is not scaremongering to want to preserve $80 billion in exports. It is not scaremongering to want Australia to provide our beautiful red-meat protein into the international market to feed the world. It is not scaremongering to want to protect the thousands of jobs, including union jobs in transport, that the livestock industry supports.

Why on earth did the Prime Minister give the job of agriculture minister to an accountant and lawyer from the city? That decision was a gross insult to the Australian agriculture sector. The minister’s actions in his very first test show that the minister hasn’t a clue. The minister misleads and uses false slurs to cover up his own deficiencies and to divert attention from his deficiencies. The minister misled the Senate and the public when he answered my question on bringing vaccines to Australia just in case. The minister replied that this would cause Australia to be considered as ‘having foot-and-mouth disease’—rubbish! Having the vaccines here is not considered having foot-and-mouth. Using them is, and clearly these vaccines would not be used unless we had an actual outbreak. I’ve repeatedly called on the minister to correct his reply, and he continues to ignore that request. Truth doesn’t matter.

The minister misled the Senate when saying vaccine production had to wait until we knew the strain that had arrived in Australia. That specious reply ignores the likelihood that the strain we could have in Australia is going to be the same strain present now in Bali. If we’re making vaccines for Bali, make some more for us and store those vaccines in Australia, ready for any outbreak that comes here from Bali. Minister Watt’s answer ignores the simple question: if we need to know the strain before making a vaccine, what are the million doses of foot-and-mouth vaccine Australia is storing in the UK right now that he told us about?

The minister called into question my support for vaccines yesterday in another diversion. The minister was clearly not listening. In my question last Thursday, I did reassure the public that these vaccines are safe. The first thing I did in drafting my questions was to check that and to add the fact that it does look after people’s safety. I have never spoken against vaccination. I have spoken strongly against, and will continue to speak strongly against, experimental gene based treatments for humans, with grossly inadequate safety testing. Experimental vaccine injections have caused so many horrendous human injuries and deaths the government has had to implement a compensation scheme. In contrast, the foot-and-mouth vaccine is not an mRNA gene based vaccine. It is a normal vaccine, a real vaccine. According to New Zealand health authorities, it’s safe to consume meat and milk from a vaccinated animal.

So once again for clarity, before the minister misrepresents me again, I’m suggesting we get these one million doses of vaccine that we already own, and any others we need to produce for this strain, stored here in Australia, ready to vaccinate 48 hours after a foot-and-mouth outbreak occurs, should one occur. Taking this precaution will meet the procedure in the minister’s own manual. It’s on page 18 of the foot-and-mouth AUSVETPLAN edition 3 manual, in case the minister wants to look it up.

I asked the minister to explain why these vaccines are being stored in the UK rather than Australia. The minister has failed to explain this very strange decision, despite repeated requests. In the event of an outbreak, it will take seven days to get the vaccines here from the UK. Yet vaccination is supposed to start after 48 hours. After one week it will be too late. The livestock industry will be done for. He said he had tabled a response. He did, but it was scant and did not answer my basic questions. Was he really badly advised or did he lie? We need the truth. People need the truth. There are two issues now thanks to Senator Watt: foot-and-mouth and trust and truth, because of what he has done and not done and what he’s said and not said.

The minister’s briefing on foot-and-mouth last Tuesday appears to have made a factual error. It was in a casual reply, so I’m only going to mention this in passing. The comment was made that foot-and-mouth disease stays resident on hard surfaces for hours. The American College of Veterinary Pathologists briefing sheet on foot-and-mouth puts the residence period at one month. Between hours and one month, there is a hell of a difference—a huge difference. If it’s indeed one month then the protocols we’re following for foot-and-mouth need to be much stronger, more like the disinfectant protocols the government rushed to implement for COVID.

Some of these issues can be covered during the Senate inquiry. Vaccines, though, cannot wait. We must have them here now. We must have stronger airport screening now. How can it be that, after all these weeks the virus has been in Indonesia, we still have several international flights arriving directly from Indonesia all at the same time and then no flights for hours? If you do not have the staff to check every passenger from infected areas, Minister, here’s an idea: work with the airlines to stagger their arrivals so we can screen every single person.

I have no confidence that this minister, in being in charge of the department, is working from a set of protocols that are designed to stop foot-and-mouth. Rather, these protocols seem to be about looking as if government tried to stop foot-and-mouth. Perhaps this has something to do with the Left’s policy to reduce livestock to save on carbon dioxide production. A 43 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide output below 2005 levels by 2030 must include substantial reductions from agriculture. I’ll speak to this absolute nonsense, this garbage, on many occasions in the years ahead. For today, let me say that cows are not climate vandals. Graziers are wonderful custodians of the land, as Senator Nampijinpa Price just pointed out. The government is not a wonderful custodian of the land.

I’m aware there is work that suggests that foot-and-mouth will not spread amongst feral pigs and other feral animals that can get foot-and-mouth because of the sparse population. What utter rubbish! These researchers-for-hire clearly have not been to the national parks I’ve have been to. Nobody in the government seems to care that infestations of pests in national parks encroach on farmland, putting hardworking farmers under enormous strain, when all they want to do is grow food and fibre to feed and clothe the world. Why the political Left want to stop farmers feeding and clothing the world is beyond me—and it’s clearly beyond Senator Nampijinpa Price. I know your climate gods need the ritual sacrifice of farmers to reach a target that makes no scientific sense, no moral or ethical sense, no human sense. And, really, how can rewilding productive farmland be more desirable than feeding and clothing the world and the people on our planet?

This agenda dovetails very nicely with Premier Andrews’s recent agriculture bill, which allows the Premier to declare quarantine on part or all of rural Victoria based on the threat of a disease outbreak. Animals can be culled on the threat of getting a disease. Farmers can be told what they can and can’t produce. Lockdowns can be hard border lockdowns extending for years. Victoria is coming for their graziers in the name of sustainability. All it will take is one disease outbreak. What could that outbreak be? If every rural media outlet in the bush is not getting onto their local Labor member or Greens candidates and asking them, ‘What is the go here?’ then I don’t know why they’re not doing it.

There’s a story here. It’s a story that is so much more than an inexperienced minister with no knowledge of his portfolio tripping over the first hurdle. It’s more than a minister who refuses to accept he’s made a mistake and, as a result, refuses to fix it. That’s not honest. It’s more than Australian farmers being thrown under the sustainability bus by wealthy city dwellers anxious to make others pay for their climate religion. It is about the very future of our Australian agricultural sector, and that’s terrifying.

Minister Watt made this an issue by misleading the Senate. Quoting others about foot-and-mouth disease does not change a thing with what’s happening with the government. Continually derailing the discussion and diverting the discussion onto what other people are doing or not doing does not answer questions. It shows the man lacks accountability and responsibility. And I will continue to do my job for the people. I’ve been elected by the people—not the people that Senator Watt quoted. It’s easier to get a human being vaccinated in this country than to get a cow vaccinated. We have one flag above this parliament. We are one community and we are one nation. Labor, in its policy on foot-and-mouth disease, is a clear and present danger to agriculture.

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The Great Barrier Reef is not dying!

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Climate alarmists have continually claimed that the Great Barrier Reef is dying because of Climate Change. Unfortunately for them, record coral cover and growth over the last two years is shooting a hole in that narrative.

Transcript

The Australian Institute of Marine Science annual report has found that the Great Barrier Reef central section and northern section now have record coral cover. A natural event, a crown-of-thorns starfish outbreak, prevented the southern section reaching record coral cover too. For millennia the reef has witnessed natural events causing coral bleaching. Bleaching results when periods of high solar activity coincide with low tides, when the water cover is insufficient to protect the coral polyps and they die, meaning the reef bleaches. And then it recovers just as quickly, every time. Tropical cyclones bleach the reef and floods deliver fresh water plumes onto the reef, killing saltwater coral polyps. Once the plume dissipates, marine life consumes the nutrients in the floodwaters and the sediment turns into sand. The reef and the coastal environment are renewed.

Recently, in June 2008, record cold temperatures in Queensland caused coral bleaching. For millennia, natural solar, lunar and rain cycles have caused bleaching. What is new is the late 20th century environmental movement hijacking the perfectly normal climate cycle for their own political benefit. If your party’s real objective is to control every aspect of life on the reef and along the coast, then be honest and have that debate. The only argument the climate fraudsters can advance in favour of onerous reductions in farm output is ‘save the reef’. Well, the reef does not need saving and never has. The public has been deceived.

The left are seeking to shut down agriculture and transfer food production to near urban, intensive-food-production facilities manufacturing food-like substances. Who will own these facilities? Predatory billionaires, the same predatory billionaires who own and drive the environmental movement for their own benefit—not nature: predatory billionaires who own and drive the environmental movement. We have one flag, we are one community, we are one nation and we will continue to stand up for our farmers’ rights to feed and clothe the world.

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Forestry is the real renewable industry

Sustainable, regenerative forestry is the true renewable resource in Australia. It is ironic that the Greens try to ban timber from Parliament House which is covered in beautiful, durable hardwoods.

Transcript

Our Australian forestry industry is one of Australia’s largest manufacturers, employing around 80,000 hardworking people across the value chain and contributing more than $24 billion of economic turnover to our economy every year. A further 100,000 people are in jobs supported through flow-on economic activity. Yet now the people’s wealth is under threat. Green ideology working for globalist predators seeking to control people threatens all this wealth going into the pockets of everyday Australians and regional communities.

Timber—look around—is a natural material with great warmth and versatility. In this beautiful building, Australia’s seat of government, native hardwoods are used throughout the building, chosen for colour and durability. The Sydney Opera House uses timber in the public areas for the same reason. The use of timbers from all over Australia expresses our national identity. That’s probably why the globalist Greens are trying to destroy the Australian timber industry. Under globalist policies, there is no national identity—only unrelenting oppression of individual sovereignty and slavish adherence to a woke agenda that borders on evil. Regional forestry agreements preserve the important principle of competitive federalism and states’ rights. Regional forestry agreements protect our timber industry, and One Nation will defend the right of states to defend their timber industry.

One Nation strongly supports the Australian plantation industry and the workers, communities, regions, states and nation that it supports. Timber is the original renewable building product. We will hear about a circular economy in this parliament where the elites that own and use the green movement get to buy expensive new things while everyday Australians are left with second-hand and recycled goods to rent—supposedly in the name of sustainability. Like hell!

We are one community, we are one nation and plantation timber is an amazing, beautiful, durable building product that should be available to everyone.

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Minister to front up and explain potentially misleading the Senate – Foot and Mouth Disease

https://youtu.be/SkE4j44_wcw

If Foot and Mouth disease enters Australia it will cost the industry an estimated $80 billion. Minister Watt’s response to foot-and-mouth disease has been half-baked and dangerous.

Transcript

I move:

That—

(a) the Senate requires the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to attend the Senate at 9.30 am on Thursday, 4 August 2022 to provide an explanation of not more than 10 minutes as to:

(i) answers provided to Senator Roberts after question time on Thursday, 28 July 2022 which appear to have misled the Senate, as detailed in Senator Roberts’ letter hand delivered to the Minister on Friday, 29 July 2022,

(ii) the failure by the Minister to bring foot and mouth disease vaccines to Australia ready for an outbreak should one occur, and

(iii) the failure by the Minister to provide suitable biosecurity precautions at Australian airports to prevent foot and mouth disease entering Australia;

(b) any senator may move to take note of the explanation required by paragraph (a); and

(c) any motion under paragraph (b) may be debated for no longer than one hour, shall have precedence over all business until determined, and senators may speak to the motion for not more than 10 minutes each.

Motion moved by Senator Roberts 3 August 2022 and agreed to by the Senate

Foot-and-mouth disease is a clear and present danger to the Australian livestock industry. If foot-and-mouth disease enters Australia, our exports will be suspended for several years, which will cost the industry $80 billion. This will be devastating to rural communities. Farmers will not survive. Regions will be decimated. The country will suffer as a whole. The federal government will be on the hook for huge social security and assistance packages, as well as for compensation for culled animals. The animals would like to express their desire to not be shot and burned.

This will not only bankrupt farmers; it will negatively impact the affordability of meat protein. If you think meat is expensive now—once we destroy a large part of the Australian beef industry, prices will go beyond the means of everyday Australians to afford meat. This is not a rural issue. Foot-and-mouth disease will affect every Australian through the cost of meat and dairy and through the additional burdens on the taxpayers to meet compensation and social security expenses.

Minister Watt’s response to foot-and-mouth disease has been half-baked and, quite honestly, dangerous. He has also, I believe, misled the Senate. I gave the minister a chance to correct and clarify his remarks, in a letter hand delivered to the minister last Friday requesting an attendance by close of business last Monday. The minister ignored that letter. The minister must attend the Senate to explain answers that he has given to my question without notice; they could constitute a misleading of the Senate.

Last Wednesday, 27 July, in questions without notice, my first question was in respect to the foot-and-mouth disease vaccine being held in the UK and read, in part: ‘If foot-and-mouth disease arrives in Australia, the short-term response would be to start vaccination.’ The minister’s reply included the statement: ‘The reason you don’t vaccinate is that you are then deemed by the rest of the world as having foot-and-mouth disease.’

As a result of that misleading reply from Minister Watt, I have had to contend with suggestions on social media that I was advocating for a measure that would destroy our beef industry. I said no such thing. The minister was given an opportunity to correct the record, and he has not.

Minister Watt also stated that ‘what we are actually prioritising in relation to the supply of vaccines at the moment is providing them to Indonesia to keep the disease out, and that is why we want to support the vaccine rollout in Indonesia’. I of course support assisting Indonesia with their foot-and-mouth disease response. They’re neighbours of ours. We need to support them. We also need to support them for humanitarian reasons. However, I might make the observation that this response presupposes that we know the strain in Indonesia and can access that vaccine if suitable. If we know the Bali strain, then why are we not placing the same vaccine we are giving to Indonesia here in Australia right now, in case one of the travellers returning from Bali has brought foot-and-mouth disease with them?

Minister Watt went on and made the statement that ‘we don’t necessarily know what strain of disease we would have in Australia’ and that we need to know the strain before we order the vaccine. If we need to know the strain before ordering the vaccine, then what about the million doses we already have in the UK? What strain do they protect us against, and at what cost? I received a call from the minister’s office last Thursday advising that we would receiver an answer to the question the minister took on notice regarding how many vaccines Australia has stored in the UK, to which the minister gave an indicative answer of one million. That answer did not arrive, and it’s been a week now.

Why are these vaccines being stored in the UK? How much are we paying to store them in the UK, when they should be stored here in Australia? Page 18 of the foot-and-mouth disease AUSVETPLAN, edition 3, states that vaccination is recommended to start within 48 hours of the first detected case, and this may include protective vaccination of livestock in the area surrounding the infection. In question time Minister Watt suggested that the vaccines could be here from the UK in seven days and that this was sufficient. However, the government’s own manual indicates that vaccination would be an appropriate response after just 48 hours. Australia is currently holding tens of millions of vaccines for COVID in complete safety. If we are unable to hold foot-and-mouth vaccines in a similar way, then why not? It seems to be proving easier to get a human vaccinated in this country than a cow.

I’d just consider some other points as well. I note that the briefing last week by Minister Watt’s staff said that the virus stays for just hours on surfaces. Other sources in the United States reliably say that the virus stays on surfaces for a month. Therefore, if quarantine measures are not adequate—and it means they are not—then we need the protection of a vaccine. This is about food security for the people in this country—fellow Australians. It is about food prices and cost of living. It is about humanitarian support for the Indonesians. It is about support for our farmers, for our whole agricultural sector. As I said, if foot-and-mouth disease breaks out here it will cost us a suspension that is estimated to be around three years, costing $80 billion in lost exports. It also will gut our agricultural sector and tarnish our reputation—all because we are not being told the truth and we are being misled, and that compares with a few million dollars on a vaccine, which is the lowest-cost option for us to protect our farming industry and our farmers.

How much does it cost us to store these vaccines in the United Kingdom? This is about Minister Watt looking good, not doing good—all mouth and no substance.

Minister forced to explain potentially misleading Senate about Foot and Mouth disease
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Band-aids aren’t going to help Small Business

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I spoke this week on the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Self-Employment Programs and Other Measures) Bill 2022. Bills like this are only bandaids.

The only way to really support small business and make the country flourish is to have cheap electricity and simple regulation, two things Australia is in desperate need of.

Transcript

As servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, One Nation stands for veterans and small business. But I want to address the root cause. This is a bandaid; it’s very necessary but it’s not addressing the root cause.

Senator Gallagher has stated that self-employment is ‘an excellent alternative to traditional employment for Australians who want to use their existing skills and experience in a work environment of their choice’. We agree. Yet Labor is really anti-self-employment and soon intends to stifle small business and self-employed Australians under gig laws that could strangle the sector. They devastated California, for example, and sent people interstate. There’s nowhere to go beyond the shores of this country if Labor gets its way.

I remember what Labor, the union bosses and some dishonest, disrespectful, antihuman multinational corporations did in the Hunter Valley. Labor joined them in enabling the exploitation and abuse of casual coalminers in the Hunter, and when I tried to stand up for them the Labor member of parliament for the Hunter at the time, Mr Joel Fitzgibbon, misrepresented me and the problems, apparently to hide the problems. That perpetuated the abuse of workers and the hurting of workers. Labor does not care about workers. Modern Labor cares about getting Green votes in the inner cities.

Everyday Australians are now suffering from 2½ years of COVID mismanagement, and it is ongoing. Labor wasn’t the federal government during that time, but Labor was in power in the states, and the states and the federal government worked together, hand in hand, to destroy the productive capacity of this country, not only over the last 2½ years but over the last 78 years, since 1944. Labor wants to phase out the coal industry and jobs in the coal sector and related sectors. The Labor-Greens coalition in the Senate is hell-bent on doing that. Labor is in favour of eroding our rights and freedoms and increasing rents, house prices, energy prices and debt. There is a lack of much-needed tax reform and economic reform. That needs to be comprehensive reform. As I said a minute ago, Australia’s productive capacity is being destroyed and has been in the process of being destroyed for 78 years.

In uncertain times, such as I’ve just described, much, much more needs to be done to support small business and the self-employed. Yes, we agree that starting a new enterprise or a self-employment assistance program is a help to some people, particularly hardworking vets who have earned the support, but they’re up against it in the form of the taxation system, energy prices, lack of infrastructure and capricious overregulation. All workers—not just vets—are suffering because the productive capacity of our beautiful country has been destroyed.

The economic environment has been destroyed. The government’s job is not to employ people. The government’s job is to create an environment that favours employment through people taking risks with investment and hiring workers. That’s where real jobs—sustainable jobs—come from. That’s known throughout civilisation. We must give Australians the opportunity to be free, to be their own boss and to own a business that offers them secure work and financial independence. They should be free to create, initiate and innovate, and that requires cheap energy. Labor, with its mates in the Labor-Greens coalition, are raising energy prices. We went from having the cheapest electricity sources in the world to having amongst the highest electricity prices in the world. It’s not due to resources and it’s not due to Mother Nature; it’s due entirely to mismanagement under the Liberal-Labor-Nats-Greens circus.

Not only do we need affordable, reliable and secure energy but also we need fair reward. That means we need a comprehensive reform of the tax system. Why are we letting multinational corporations off the hook, as we did with Robert Menzies’s bill in 1953 and Prime Minister Hawke’s legislation on the petroleum rent resource tax in the 1980s? Both sides have done it. Jim Killaly, the former deputy assistant commissioner of taxation in this country, who was responsible for large companies and international matters, said—and he said it in 1996 and in 2010—that 90 per cent of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and, since 1953, have paid little or no company tax.

Meanwhile individuals in this country are paying exorbitant tax rates. The median income in this country now is $51,000. After tax, that’s around $45,000 or $46,000. The additional cost of Labor, Greens, Nationals and Liberals policy on energy—the additional cost of solar and wind subsidies and climate subsidies—is a staggering $1,300 per year. How the hell can someone earning $45,000 or $46,000 a year afford that additional cost? That’s not the cost of electricity; that’s an additional cost for solar and wind subsidies. We’re sending the country broke because of the people in this building lacking the courage to do what is right and tell the truth. Veterans need more support, and this bill is just not enough. When will Labor and the Greens do something about housing, rent, veteran suicide, agriculture, energy and inflation? Who will protect the economy and jobs? Who will create the economic environment that will enable people to invest, innovate, create and to be entrepreneurs? Who will do that? When will Labor and the Greens do something about this very issue? Who will restore the productive capacity of our country, the economic environment of our country? Labor and the Greens don’t understand.

In fact, while I enjoyed listening to Senator Allman-Payne yesterday, sharing her emotions freely, she was crying at the plight of the poor and then congratulating Senator Larissa Waters for her 12 years in the Senate when Senator Waters is directly responsible for raising the cost of electricity which is destroying the poor and raising prices through the roof in terms of inflation. That’s what’s going on: it’s complete ignorance. Contrary to that, we understand. One Nation understand the root causes and the solutions to the root causes of these problems. We are one people, we are one community and we are one magnificent country with enormous potential. We just need to become, again, one nation.

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Medical Transitioning of minors is child abuse

Medically transitioning children is experimental. Long term benefits are not clear and detriments are mounting. Our children are not fodder for experimentation and advancing research outcomes for the medical profession.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I’m speaking to the answers Minister Gallagher provided—or, rather, failed to provide—to my questions on gender dysphoria treatment.

In avoiding the answer to my questions, the minister tried weakly to say, ‘Nothing to see here.’ Yet the world is waking up to the profoundly inhuman medical and psychological harms that children with gender dysphoria are experiencing when referred to gender clinics. The international trend is moving away from prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children under 18 years. Britain’s infamous—and the world’s largest—gender clinic, Tavistock, is now closing, following a review that found it failed vulnerable under 18s: it failed vulnerable under 18s! It follows the clinics in Finland, Sweden and France suspending the availability of puberty blockers and sex hormones to children unless under strict clinical trials.

How did we get to this place, where the power of ideology and trans activism is greater than the rightful duty and obligations of parents, and of the medical and legal professions to provide whole-of-person care for children with gender dysphoria? This woke ideological movement is suffering binary dysphoria. Apparently, for some, a binary world is not sufficiently colourful. Some parents are now forced to abrogate their parental responsibility to the power of the medical state. Fundamental facts are being ignored about children and child development. Fact: contrary to some views, sex is assigned at conception—not birth. We all know that adolescence is a highly challenging time, marked with a preoccupation of the discovery of self. It’s okay that a percentage of both genders don’t conform to traditional stereotypes. This doesn’t need correcting through irreversible medical treatments.

Ideologically-driven activists have intimidated the medical profession into silence and compliance with the affirmation model rather than making a stand for our children who are in distress during adolescence and who need holistic or whole-of-person care. When puberty blockers are administered we know, firstly, that a child cannot develop fertility—the latter stages of puberty do that—and, secondly, that they will not have full sexual function. Essentially, this child’s body becomes frozen in the early stages of puberty, with testosterone or oestrogen treatment adulterating the child and committing the child to a lifetime of hormones and drugs. It’s unknown what effect puberty blockers have on brain development, and only now is The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne conducting research in this area. Too bad for all those children who have already passed through, and those currently receiving treatment. Endocrinologists traditionally treated diseases, yet in gender clinics they take perfectly healthy children with no diseases and inject them with puberty blockers to suppress normal hormone levels to treat, not an endocrine disease but the mental distress the child is experiencing.

How has this gone unchecked for so long? Why are these medical professionals not subject to disciplinary action for deliberately harming our children? What are governments doing while this is going on? Endocrinologists know the importance of puberty to the full development of a healthy human being. Today gender clinics give medical professionals a licence to offer up puberty as an option to children. The transgender lens has compromised the full care of our children. Gender clinics in Australia need to close and follow the lead of the Tavistock clinic in anchoring whole-person-care back to localised clinics within the mental health system.

Our children are making decisions that they can’t possibly understand—decisions with lifelong consequences. They are being sterilised and denied full sexual function, and their brain development is likely compromised. They are being made sick when they’re not physically sick. They are being denied the therapeutic support they need to help them with their distress. Instead of asking why there has been an explosion of girls presenting with gender dysphoria in Western countries, the medical profession has bowed down to the trans activists and grabbed the opportunity to create profits and research outcomes at the expense of our children—inhuman!

Adults in Australia’s gender clinics must not be allowed to hide behind a statement of operating to the standards of care. There is no care when the medical profession does not fully deal with the mental health issues that children are experiencing. There is no care when the medical professional takes physically healthy children and sends them on a pathway of drugs, infertility and arrested physical, sexual and neurological development for the rest of their lives. There is no care when state government legislation denies parents their rightful place in support of their children in distress. Our children are not fodder for experimentation and advancing research outcomes for the medical profession. Our children are not profit centres for pharmaceutical companies.

We are one community, we are one nation and this child abuse must stop now.

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A united country is evil’s worst nightmare

Together we can achieve prosperity and peace. The globalists, the warmongers and the evil doers among us only seek to divide Australians. A united, caring country is their worst fear.

Transcript

I often end my speeches with the words, ‘We are one community, we are one nation,’ for a reason. Oneness is a fundamental teaching of Christianity. I quote I Corinthians 12:14:

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.

Verse 26 says:

If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

The Bible reminds us that a body of people working together can achieve that which people divided never will.

One Nation will continue to embrace all who share this beautiful land. One Nation embraces First Australians, and we embrace those who have come since. All are important. All make each of us greater than we could ever become by ourselves. Indeed, all have made us greater than we once were.

As a community, we do face evil. That battle is as old as time itself. That’s why humanity has evolved to consider community the basic building block of safety and prosperity. Those who seek to divide do so because they seek to destroy. Instead, together we can overcome the ravages of Mother Nature in a harsh but bountiful land. Together we can achieve abundance for all Australians. Surely, if our bounty is not being shared fairly, we must correct that. Together we can defeat predatory billionaires who believe they should own everything and we should own nothing. Together we can change the lives of First Australians in remote communities who deal with conditions that, today, no human being should ever have to. We can and must start on that today.

Evil is fought together, not apart. One Nation will continue to hold our hand out to those captured by intolerance and hate. I live in hope that one day our hand will be taken. In the end, love and courage will win. Most Australians feel the same way.

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