Malcolm’s Official Speeches in Parliament

Our Parliaments should be serving the people.

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This week, we heard Labor raise the issue that “Mr Morrison is considered to be “the Prime Minister for Morrison and no one else.” While that is increasingly heard in the media, among members of the government, among members of the Liberal and National parties and among the people, I reflect on an additional, more significant and rapidly growing conclusion among the people.

That is, the people are saying the Parliament of Australia is for the parliament – meaning, the parliament is working for both the tired old parties. That is, the Liberal-Nationals and Labor. And the people of Australia are paying the price because the people are serving the parliament, when it should be our parliaments serving the people.

Transcript:

This matter of public importance states:

The reported views of members of the NSW Liberal Government, including that they consider Mr Morrison to be “the Prime Minister for Morrison and no one else”.

While that is increasingly heard in the media, among members of the government, among members of the Liberal and National parties and among the people, I reflect on an additional, more significant and rapidly growing conclusion among the people, and it’s allied to the one this MPI debates.

That conclusion is that the parliament of Australia is for the parliament. By that they mean the parliament is working for both the tired old parties—that is, the Liberal-Nationals and the Labor Party—and the people of Australia are the ones paying the price, because the people are serving the parliament, when we need to get back to the parliament serving the people.

I’m very positive about Australians—our resources, our opportunities, our potential—yet I’m very worried about Australia, because of shoddy governance for many decades, and so are the people—for example, the truckies. The truckies recently blockaded a highway south of Brisbane.

Truckies are the salt of the earth—regular people, real people. There’s nothing that hasn’t been on a truck, whether during processing or after it has been made and sent to market. Truckies interact with everyone—all ways of life, all callings and all needs. Now they’re calling out the politicians—and not just those from the government; truckies are calling out politicians generally.

Why? Because they’re feeling doubtful, confused, afraid, overwhelmed and hopeless, and they’re getting angry and feeling very frustrated. Why? Because of their need for a livelihood, which is being threatened; their need for survival; their need for truth and honesty—a basic need; their need for consistency and ease, predictability; their need to be heard by the members who are supposed to represent them in parliament; their need for leadership, trust, integrity, credibility.

Let’s have a look at some of the data. We’ve now had hundreds of days of lockdown in Victoria, months in some of the other states. It’s capricious: smacked on and taken off suddenly. People’s lives have been ruined. There has been stress, isolation, poverty, suicide, domestic violence.

There have been cruel restrictions. One of a pair of twins was lost because their parent was denied access to a Brisbane hospital because she came from northern New South Wales. Fancy losing a twin because of some capricious government or bureaucrat!

Parents are dying without the comfort of their kids. Kids in cancer treatment are alone because their parents have to go into lockdown. Then we have curfews. We have local government authorities in areas of Sydney calling on people to show their papers before they can move from one LGA to another.

There is child suicide, domestic violence, alcohol abuse. There are kids at boarding school unable to go home for the holidays and see their families. There are now threats and bribes to get people to vaccinate, and those threats are undermining vaccination itself.

The World Health Organization says that lockdowns are to be used only initially, to get control of the virus. Well, 18 months is not ‘initially’. Every time a government slaps on a lockdown in this country it is admitting, for the whole world to see, that it does not have control of the virus.

Clearly, there is no plan—people can see and feel that—but politicians lack the strength of character to admit their error. They’re locked in, gutlessly, to save face in front of the people. The Liberal-National and Labor governments, state and federal, are pushing this rubbish on the people of Australia.

The people, though, are starting to get the Liberals to backpedal. What is happening is that the data is starting to come out: people are feeling the pain, and they’re saying, ‘To hell with you lot.’ They want to sort out parliament. But the politicians still won’t back down, because of the fear they have drummed up, the fear that they have ingrained in our society and that is killing people.

What we see now, for the first time ever, are the Liberal, Nats and Labor pushing an untested and unproven vaccine. For the first time in history we see governments injecting healthy people with something that can kill them, and is killing many. At the same time, we see Ivermectin, a now proven, safe, effective and affordable treatment—and a preventative; a prophylactic—and the Liberal, Nats and Labor are stopping this treatment.

There’s a complete lack of a plan, a bias away from the data and a contradiction of the data. All the truckies want are simple, basic needs met—end damaging lockdowns and curfews; vaccine only by choice; and children back to school—so they can get on with their lives and their livelihoods and protect their family.

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Mining is keeping Australia out of a depression.

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The industry the ALP and Greens want to phase out – mining – is driving a record $10 billion a month balance of trade surplus. This money is going into the local economy, creating jobs and increasing Government revenue. Without the contribution from mining each month Australia would be in a depression.

One Nation supports the mining industry and the ability of Australians to get ahead through their own hard work and endeavour.

Transcript:

The national accounts figures published yesterday carried great news for our community and very bad news for those in the Senate for whom ‘mining’ is a dirty word. Australia’s balance of trade surplus is now at a 10-year high, just over $10 billion in June, up from $9 billion in May.

Every dollar of surplus is $1 of growth for the Australian economy, generating jobs and economic security and making Australia more resilient. Every $10 increase in the iron ore or coal price adds $1 billion to government revenue. Overall, metal ore exports reached a record high in April of $16½ billion.

That’s $16.5 billion in mining exports in one month. Consider all the employment this is creating—the breadwinner jobs, the families supported by individual labour rather than by government handouts. Investment in mining is an investment in our future security—it’s that simple. Iron ore is now at $154 a tonne and coal is at $171 a tonne—both against budget projections of $40 a tonne.

The government has a windfall here. Copper is up 23 per cent, steel is up 24 per cent, nickel is up 15 per cent and cobalt is up 57 per cent. Our mining recovery is broadly based and sustained. This revenue must go, in part, to building Australian infrastructure, which is our future, and, in part, to paying back our profligate deficit, caused by temporary COVID measures that now somehow appear permanent. Yet Labor and the Greens are telling miners, ‘Bad luck,’ because both want to ban any new mines and extensions of existing mines.

Their policy will devastate the economy and the government revenue base. Entire communities will be reliant on government welfare and any rules imposed on them in order to keep the benefits. No wonder the Greens and Labor hate mining. There will be none of this supporting of ourselves under a government Anthony Albanese and Adam Bandt lead.

We are one community, we are one nation, and mining will keep us free.

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Gender Neutral

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The youngest child in Australia to undergo transition surgery was 15 years old. If you’re over 18 you can call yourself whatever you like, but telling teenagers gender isn’t real while they battle with all the changes of puberty is a recipe for tragedy.

Transcript

The Morrison-Joyce government has yet again dragged Australia into the misguided and dangerous United Nations parallel universe. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has signed Australia up to a communique from the UN Human Rights Council that endorses radical intersectional gender theory. This is the theory that gender is a social construct and that one’s decision about gender is based not on biology but on feelings. There is no agreement in Australia that gender is a social construct. There is no agreement that minors should be able to nominate their gender based on self-identification alone. Worldwide, the momentum is shifting back the other way, towards greater caution, especially on the use of experimental treatments and irreversible surgeries. The youngest child in Australia to undergo transition surgery—in this case a double mastectomy—was 15 years old. How can a child of 15 know their mind? The vast majority of minors sort out their gender identity by adolescence. Gender fluidity is easily dispensed as nonsense. If gender is fluid, then no-one can be trapped in the wrong body, because fluidity dictates that person’s views of their gender could change with their next mood.

One Nation agrees that pink and blue do not define gender and that biology need not confine us to traditional gender norms. Nonetheless, children growing up must have certainties to hang onto. Telling children there is a plethora of genders they can pick from exacerbates confusion and anxiety and weakens their sense of self. I was surprised to learn that Australia has an international ambassador for gender equality, who is employed to advance these agendas. The decision by Minister Payne was not an aberration. It was deliberate government policy. Our supposedly Christian Prime Minister and this entire parliament are out of touch with everyday Australians. We have one flag, we are one community, we are one nation and we want our children protected from UN lunatics.

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Election Integrity – What has the government got to hide?

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Suspicion about the results of our elections is an existential threat to our country. Confidence comes from having strict auditing and checking procedures. We’ve seen that these auditing, checks and system are not fit for purpose. One Nation is asking for those deficiencies to be rectified.

Senate Estimates Questioning:

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, here we go again. Yet again the Labor Party are about to sit comfortably in the laps of the Liberals and Nationals to vote through measures that are in both of their own interests. Just yesterday I spoke of this parliament being dysfunctional to the point of being a crime scene. The very next day here we are watching the proof unfold again before our very eyes.

For those watching at home and wondering why One Nation did not use these electoral bills to introduce actual electoral reform, the answer is simple: the way these bills were written. There is one bill per topic and they include a long description that prevents One Nation from introducing amendments that move outside of that very narrow, restrictive scope.

If the government and Labor wanted to join three bills together and vote in one line, they should have produced the three bills as an omnibus bill that One Nation and the crossbench could have amended—and the legislation badly needs amendment. Senators Wong and Birmingham are once again making a mockery of the democratic process—dodgy siblings doing another dirty deal behind closed doors. When are we going to start writing numbers on the perspex screens so we can distinguish between the Liberal-Nationals and Labor! The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters made 27 recommendations towards more fair and effective elections. The ‘Lib-Lab duopoly’ has again rushed legislation before the Senate to implement a grand total of three of those recommendations, none of which does anything to ensure the integrity of our electoral process.

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Offences and Preventing Multiple Voting) Bill 2021 pretends to do something about multiple voting. In the last three elections, the Australian Electoral Commission reviewed thousands of case of multiple voting and referred a few hundred of those to the Australian Federal Police for prosecution, who made the decision to prosecute none of them. Not one person has been prosecuted as a result of the ordinary operations of the Electoral Act despite recommendations to do so and despite that law being on the books for a very long time. That may be why the government has chosen to abandon the legal system and refer multiple voting to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Yesterday we saw cybercrime warrants being moved from the criminal court system to the administrative court system; today we have multiple voting moving over as well. One Nation is uncomfortable with the growing power of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and with the whole concept of having two court systems. Criminal courts are founded in biblical and common law; administrative courts have no such higher purpose to be called on for guidance.

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Party Registration Integrity) Bill 2021 is clearly an attempt by Lib-Lab to knock out smaller parties and entrench the power of the status quo. I hear the anger on social media over this measure, yet I have some questions in return. Should a multimillionaire be allowed to use his wealth to buy political influence through the United Australia Party? The requirement to have 500 supporters is not going to slow down a very wealthy individual, yet a requirement to have 1,500 supporters will—unless that party actually has grassroots support. This legislation is saying to Clive Palmer, ‘Put your supporters where your mouth is, not where your money is.’ There is criticism from some new parties who should be more worried about themselves. If you start fact-checking the memes you are spreading, and start offering voters evidence based policy, perhaps 1,500 may be more achievable. I understand that Senator Lambie too is in opposition to this bill. This raises a good question for the government—oops, the Lib-Labs—to answer: why is it 1,500 voters for registration in a populous state and 1,500 in Tasmania? Shouldn’t it be some percentage of registered voters in that state?

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Counting, Scrutiny and Operational Efficiencies) Bill 2021 makes a number of small changes to voting. These have been mentioned by other speakers and I will not review those here. How will all these changes affect the integrity of our elections? Well, we don’t know. We don’t know now and we won’t know afterwards because our elections are not audited. My interest in election integrity started in January 2021, following the US presidential election. My office was inundated with people asking about whether election fraud, such as it was in the United States, could be happening in Australia. The problem is not whether election fraud is happening; the problem is that people think it is happening. Confidence in election outcomes is central to democracy.

The restrictions around COVID have people at boiling point. Small business closures, job losses, high-handed bureaucrats and politics have reduced many people to desperation. The next election will be a powder keg. It is essential to ensure that, whatever the result, the public can accept it and move on. Suspicion of the outcome can be easily fuelled and turned into violence by those who seek to manipulate the result for their own ends. We cannot let this happen. It is for this reason that New South Wales and Western Australia have provisions in their electoral acts to audit state elections.

New South Wales conducts an audit before each election to ensure systems are fit for purpose and then audits again after each election to ensure integrity and to see what can be improved for next time. Western Australia audits after every election.

The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 does not have audit provisions. In February, I started asking questions of the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC. To be honest, I expected to hear that auditing was under control given the reputation the Australian Electoral Commission claims it has. That’s not what I found. The Australian Electoral Commission told me in Senate estimates that the Australian Signals Directorate had conducted an audit of the Australian Electoral Commission’s software. The next day in Senate estimates I asked the Australian Signals Directorate if they had done that audit and the answer was a clear no. The Australian Electoral Commission tried to conflate the security audit conducted by the Australian Signals Directorate with an audit of software and systems to pretend our software was being audited and, by extension, was fit for purpose. It has not been audited. The election software is not fit for purpose.

So why did the Australian Electoral Commission make a false statement or imply a false statement? The Australian Signals Directorate looked at potential intrusions into the system, both electronic and physical. Following the audit, the Australian Signals Directorate proceeded with an uplift program designed to harden the AEC network. I call that a fail. If your systems were audited for cybersecurity and the outcome was a comprehensive uplift program to improve your security then clearly the system failed the audit. What else would fail an audit at the Australian Electoral Commission?

In the May Senate estimates I asked the Australian Electoral Commission simple questions. When did the Australian Signals Directorate audit happen? The Australian Electoral Commission declined to answer. What was actually audited? The Australian Electoral Commission gave no useful response. What was the result of the audit? The Australian Electoral Commission declined to answer. What changes to the Australian Electoral Commission’s systems have been made in the uplift program? The Australian Electoral Commission declined to answer. Could the Australian Electoral Commission guarantee that the uplift program would render the Australian Electoral Commission computer system fit for purpose? The Australian Electoral Commission responded that nobody could ever guarantee their systems are fit for purpose. Let that sink in. Nobody could ever guarantee their systems are fit for purpose—the Australian Electoral Commission admitted it.

It is disturbing that such an audit could happen behind closed doors without direction or without structure. It is more disturbing still that this program has no legal basis in the Australian Commonwealth Electoral Act. We should not have to rely on the admirable conscientiousness of the Australian Signals Directorate. We should be able to rely on the completeness of our legislation. We need it fixed. It must be fixed.

Then I looked at other issues around election integrity. First up was a simple question: is the electronic data file containing each vote ever compared back to the paper ballot after the vote has been adjudicated? That answer is no. At no time is the electronic record of a vote checked back against the paper ballot. Senator Birmingham and the Australian Electoral Commission have assured us that there is a check, yet when we peer through the veil of language deliberately calculated to obfuscate no such check is happening, contrary to the minister’s response. The only time this happens is when a ballot is disputed and a paper ballot is pulled out for scrutiny. After the ballot is adjudicated, there is no further check.

These votes are sitting for up to a month in a system that failed an Australian Signals Directorate security test. Data integrity requires that a final audit be conducted immediately before declaration of the poll by pulling paper ballots out at random and comparing them back to the electronic record and vice versa. It’s one day’s work for all the counting staff as they finish their regular counting. It will not delay the result. It will guarantee that the system has not been compromised accidentally or by a malicious party.

My second question was on the accuracy of the voter rolls. The Australian Electoral Commission used to check the accuracy of their rolls by conducting residency checks.

Before this system was discontinued in 1995, those checks revealed a significant number of false registrations: people who had left the country, people who had died and people who had moved. Most of the incidences of multiple voting stem from voting in their old location and their new location: double voting. This legislation does not address that problem. How can anyone say that the voter roll is accurate if they never check it?

My third question is on the software algorithm at the Senate scanning centre that allocates preferences. The Australian Electoral Commission publishes what is basically a data dump of the raw vote count. Leading cryptographers, led by Dr Vanessa Teague, from the Australian National University, have written a check routine to test the preference flow against the published result. Their finding was that the Senate preference flow was correct, so we know this this aspect of the Australian Electoral Commission software works. Why it is up to the university academics to write complicated software at their own expense and on their own time to audit our elections? Since when did the government decide to crowdsource its job? So, what next? A GoFundMe page to pay for it?

This is why next week I will introduce into the Senate the Commonwealth electoral amendment (integrity of elections) bill 2021. This bill requires a preaudit of the Australian Electoral Commission systems prior to each election to ensure the systems are fit for purpose. It requires an audit after the election, as New South Wales and Western Australia require and as the ACT proposes. We propose an audit of the electoral roll and voter ID: voter identification. In short, this bill will audit the elections and the voter. Then we will all have confidence in the next election result.

After decades of this Lib-Lab parliament, people are starting to see how parliament is failing our country. The Lib-Lab duopoly, though, is desperate to continue its hold on a parliament that has a record of decades of not serving the people of Australia. We, though, are keen to restore parliamentary democracy. We have one flag, we are one community, we are one nation.

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THIS IS NOT A PARLIAMENT: IT’S A CRIME SCENE

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Sports rorts, carpark scandals, corrupt water trading, crooked disaster funding projects, AusPost CEOs being forced out for not pleasing government party hacks. This government disrespects the people of Australia so they can look after their corporate mates.

Transcript

Earlier this month in my flag speech I spoke of parliament’s duty to serve the people. Today I’m asking: who does this parliament really serve? I’ll review the Morrison government’s actions and this parliament’s actions that carry the stench of cronyism and corruption.

I’ll start with changes to water policy that Malcolm Turnbull and John Howard introduced in 2007. Those changes turned ownership and the trading of water rights into a $20 billion industry. Large corporate interests, trade union bosses controlling industry super funds and National Party powerbrokers have rushed to take advantage of this new wealth. And by taking advantage, I really mean make out like bandits at the expense of family farms that can no longer afford water for their crops. I’m raising this issue first up because it illustrates how things are done in federal parliament.

The Water Act requires a transparent water-trading register. The government tried to introduce one in 2012, stuffed it up and then gave up. I thought asking the government to take another run at it—to reveal who was lining their pockets with the proceeds of water speculation—would be straightforward. How naive was that! My amendment was opposed. The same parties, the Liberals and Nationals, that passed the legislation in the first place requiring a water-trading register, opposed my amendment that sought to ensure compliance with the parliament’s legislation. The Senate, with Labor’s support, passed my amendment. It proceeded to the lower house, where Labor rejected it. What happened in the 100 metres between the Senate and the House of Representatives? The fix happened—the fix to protect corporate water traders. Labor agreed to cover for its Liberal and Nationals mates and they returned the favour. That’s how this parliament works. Cronyism is an art form.

The same pattern of immoral behaviour occurred with the legislation One Nation introduced to stop banks bailing-in depositors’ funds to save banks in a crisis, stealing customers’ hard earned deposits. In 2018, parliament passed legislation to allow a bail-in as part of emergency financial measures. The Labor, Liberal, and National parties teamed up to oppose my bill and justified that action with a complete lie: that the emergency provisions did not give APRA the power to order a bail-in. My legislation to protect the one trillion dollars in bank deposits of everyday Australians was defeated, despite the Treasury admitting, in a briefing to my face, that those emergency provisions do allow a bail-in. The Liberal-National and Labor duopoly lied so their donors in the major banks can keep the right to steal your money to save themselves.

The same cronyism was in place over the Christine Holgate watch scandal at Australia Post. As we now know, those watches were given to management as a reward for completing a very profitable deal for Australia Post. Australia Post executives accepted the watches and agreed to forgo much larger bonuses. Why would the Prime Minister and the parliament misrepresent a measure that saved Australia Post money? It’s because Christine Holgate had negotiated a fee with the banks of $20 million a year for the provision of banking services through licensed post offices, but the banks wanted a bigger share of those profits. Christine Holgate made the mistake of costing the big four banks money, and an example had to be made of her. What a show Scott Morrison put on! After Ms Holgate was sacked, and Australia Post was placed back into the hands of friendlies, the deal was renegotiated. The banks are now only paying half that, $10 million per year, and 4,000 licensed post office franchisees got screwed. How much did it cost the banks to get the outcome they wanted from this parliament?

In the last election cycle Australian banks donated $500,000 to the Liberal and National parties and $400,000 to the Labor Party.

There’s more. The Australian people can see that cronyism extends to pharmaceuticals. Most people don’t know who funds the body that approves pharmaceuticals in Australia—the Therapeutic Goods Administration, known as the TGA. The big pharmaceutical companies applying for approvals themselves fund the TGA. The expert committees that advise the TGA on what to approve are comprised largely of university academics, whose departments receive funding from pharmaceutical companies. That doesn’t pass the pub test, nor does this. In the last election cycle the pharmaceutical industry donated $276,000 to Labor and $400,000 to the Liberals and Nationals.

Earlier this year One Nation combined with the Greens to extend the licences of community TV stations C31 in Melbourne and Channel 44 in Adelaide, after Malcolm Turnbull in 2012 confiscated those free-to-air transmission rights to force viewers back to commercial TV owned by his mates. C31 and Channel 44 survived on the back of large public campaigns. Why was it so hard to get an extension for community TV to use a spectrum that’s not needed until 2024? Could it be because the commercial stations, through Free TV Australia, donated $17,000 to Labor and $13,000 to the Liberals? That, of course, is the problem.

Yesterday in the Senate the Liberals-Nationals and Labor duopoly teamed up to stop the measures that One Nation and Senator Rex Patrick jointly proposed to make Woodside Petroleum pay for the $2 billion cost of cleaning up their environmental damage in the Timor Sea. Woodside easily evaded its responsibilities to the people of Australia. It simply sold the little bit of extraction left in the gas field, including its clean-up liability, to a small company for a few million dollars. That company was then wound up. Taxpayers are now on the hook for the clean-up. One Nation’s amendment would have restored the liability on Woodside. The crossbench supported that. Labor and the Liberals and Nationals opposed it. Then I discovered that Woodside donated $135,000 to Labor and $148,000 to the Liberals and Nationals. What a surprise!

Then there’s the Beetaloo basin. It’s in the news this week because the government passed legislation to allow cash payments to its mining mates to frack the Beetaloo basin. Guess who funds the cost of the exploration—some $7 million per well? Taxpayers via a grant, yet the gas extraction company owns the well and keeps the profits from the extraction. This little earner is called socialising the risk and the costs while privatising the profits. The first recipient of this cronyism was Empire Energy, a Liberal Party donor. But you didn’t hear this from the opposition, because Empire Energy donated $25,000 to the Labor Party. In echoing Senator Hanson’s repeated calls, Senator Patrick rightly pointed out that the oil and gas industry exported $62 billion in 2018-19 and paid taxpayers just $1 billion in royalties. The taxpayers are getting royally screwed by this crony capitalist approach to government.

One Nation support free enterprise; we do not support cronyism. Earlier this year One Nation introduced a motion to refer to a Senate inquiry the misuse of federal government disaster relief funds. Millions, possibly billions, of dollars are being misappropriated, with no suitable work being conducted. The Liberals-Nationals and Labor duopoly rode to the rescue of their mates and voted down our motion—no inquiry.

The car park scandal has seen the Morrison government give $420 million of taxpayer money for commuter car parks in areas that don’t need commuter car parks, including three in the Treasurer’s electorate and one for a train station that’s closing. I assume that even this government is not stupid enough to build a car park at a train station that is not there anymore, so I wait to see which of the government’s mates just got free car parks. The sports rorts scandal, the Inland Rail infrastructure grants, the Kimba radioactive waste dump, the Murray-Darling Basin’s upwater program and ‘watergate’ are all corruption scandals that a federal corruption commission, if we had one, would have dealt with. Parliament rubberstamps decisions and policies, costing the people trillions of dollars so mates can feed off taxpayers, bludge off taxpayers and transfer wealth from taxpayers. The people are rightly angry.

Decisions taken in the parliament must not only be honest, they must be seen to be honest and be justified with hard, solid data.

Australian voters will shortly be asked to pass judgement on this sorry parliament. Make no mistake, voting for the Liberal Party with their sellout sidekicks, the Nationals, or voting for Labor and their ticket to power, the Greens, will represent business as usual for the Liberal-Labor duopoly that has ruled this parliament for decades. It’s now time, at the next election, to break this cycle of abuse. Stop repeatedly alternating Liberal-Nationals with Labor and expecting anything to change. It’s now time to change the parliament.

There are many third parties putting their hands up in this election, and none have a track record of achievement greater than One Nation. I’m very proud of the contribution Senator Hanson, Mark Latham, Steve Andrew, Rob Roberts and I have made and are making to restore governance to Australia. Despite the Liberal, Labor and Nationals parties’ many dishonest attempts to destroy her, for 25 years Senator Pauline Hanson and One Nation have remained true to the Australian people, and we will continue to be so. In conclusion, I make an observation regarding the perspex security screen that now protects the Leader of the Government in the Senate from the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and vice versa. This screen sends a powerful message to the Australian people: the Senate chamber now resembles a visitation centre at one of Her Majesty’s prisons. How very appropriate! This is not a parliament; it’s a crime scene.

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Government declares war on peaceful protests

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Earlier in the pandemic, State Premiers let Black Lives Matter protests happen without a whisper of criticism. Now that protests criticise their attempts at tyranny, they crack down on them. Banning protests has been a hallmark of dictators for all of history. Let’s not follow them down that path.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, my remarks will be on the most basic of human rights: freedom to protest. State premiers have declared a war on peaceful protests against their policies, including the ‘freedom day’ rallies, yet they allow protests they agree with such as Black Lives Matter.

An ethical nightmare over human rights is brewing between the parliaments and the people. It’s the fault of blind political ambition, leveraged off a virus that has turned out to be, according to government health experts’ own data, no more harmful than a bad flu. It’s time we cancelled the COVID apocalypse. It’s time to end the use of COVID as an excuse to implement all-powerful legislation that exempts itself from proper scrutiny. Both the Biosecurity Act 2015 and the National Emergency Declaration Act 2020 make a mockery of 120 years of legislation and 800 years of common law. Both pieces of legislation are being used in ways never put to the people. Together, these acts trespass unreasonably on the rights and liberties of everyday Australians.

No parliament that wishes to call itself a democracy can grant indefinite, absolute and unscrutinised power. State premiers have entered into a COVID arms race with each other, leaving Australians trapped in the middle of the crossfire—huge increases in suicide attempts, children phoning helplines in unprecedented numbers and small businesses in ruins. And what created this? Federal parliament’s failure to hold the line against fear and misuse of power.

‘Emergency’ should not mean a dissolution of rights, especially when a state of emergency can be stretched out for months, years or even indefinitely. COVID policy has turned into a parallel legal system, embraced by a Prime Minister that has encouraged health orders that permanently alter the landscape of work and travel. Death has become a matter of politics and mismanagement, used to prevent the sacred freedom to assemble and protest peacefully. If Australians cannot protest, parliaments will never be held accountable for errors in judgement.

One of parliament’s many mistakes is in the presentation of COVID data. Given without context, they tower over us. Viewed in context, COVID harm barely deviates from normal. Parliaments cannot promise safety. Safety is an outcome of parliaments following policies that protect our freedoms and our rights. Instead of handling COVID with a view to these important guiding principles, politicians have suffocated Australia under the weight of biosecurity powers, resulting in displays of cruelty that have shocked the whole world.

The fact is we are not safe. We are not safe from our own parliaments. Freedom protests are a criticism of COVID policies and parliaments’ atrocious governance. Like the manufacturers of vaccines, parliaments do not want to hear any complaints about the quality of their work. Despite this parliament’s best attempts to control people, we are blessed with a nation full of people who refuse to live under the coercion of fear. This may be considered civil disobedience—I call it commonsense.

The Prime Minister’s role is to perform his duty with pragmatism and calm. Instead, Scott Morrison has rattled the cage of fear and enticed state politicians to do the same. Instead of focusing on trust, this parliament endorses spending tens of millions of dollars advertising COVID fear. Operation COVID Shield is now an attempt to use military to force the behaviour associated with trust without any attempt to create the meeting of the minds necessary for trust. Abused people may well may obey their captors, but they do not trust them. The more rights parliaments steal from Australians, the less likely people are to trust.

Australians asked for choice in COVID treatments, and the government suppressed peer reviewed and internationally accepted alternatives like Ivermectin. Australians asked for vaccine manufacturers to accept liability for their products, and instead were denied any recourse in the event of personal harm. Australians tried to report fatal side effects, and for months the parliament, the legacy media and social media silenced them. Australians took to the streets to tell this parliament and state premiers that the health orders were destroying millions of lives, and the states hunted them down like criminals. To enforce compliance, parliaments will need more policies like Operation COVID Shield, more police and more Defence Force members in our streets. Force will still fail, because fear and intimidation are a terrible plan. The damage done to the sacred trust between the people and parliaments is catastrophic. Parliamentary policy has destroyed trust in vaccines, creating two classes of people in Australia—those who profit from the pandemic and those who suffer from it. Policy, not COVID, has destroyed trust in vaccines. COVID Shield seeks to repair it with the rhetoric of war. Everyday Australians are not buying this nonsense. Australians know what the parliaments, the military and the health bureaucrats do not know—we will not be divided, we have one flag, we are one community and we are One Nation.

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Government has destroyed your right to say no

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Respect people’s rights and restore informed consent—a basic human right. Is it any wonder millions of people now question everything state and federal parliaments say and have reached breaking point?

Transcript

The safety of everyday Australians should never be a race on a political scoreboard. Instead, it must be about health and accountability. Yet this government and most people in parliament hastily rammed COVID injections on people. The vaccines are not fully tested and are only provisionally approved. These are vaccines with serious side-effects—they’re even killing people—and with plummeting efficacy. The injections are already losing their effect. We’ve been told that we do not need 100 per cent vaccination to protect. Why, then, do governments, parliaments and big businesses continue to persecute people rightly concerned about this injection? A constituent, Ben, asked a simple question that many are asking: if your vaccine works, why does he need one, and, if it doesn’t work, why should he get one?

Secondly, Australians have a right to sit this race out. Instead we’re hearing democracy choking—the death of our right to say, ‘No, this is not for me.’ Without blush or hesitation, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce threatens the jobs of people who are concerned about COVID injections. Yet the same man signalled the need for IR reform now, supposedly to protect workers from abuses of power. Respect people’s rights and restore informed consent—a basic human right. Is it any wonder millions of people now question everything state and federal parliaments say and have reached breaking point? No, it’s expected. The ongoing protests must be heard. Australians have legitimate concerns for health and safety, jobs and livelihoods, and rights and freedoms. The unions and Queensland Labor—old Labor—used to defend the right to protest. They’re now a symptom of the problem of taking away people’s freedoms, jobs and livelihoods. In turn, state and federal governments must get back to basics and focus on the virus, not the symptoms. Whether we came here before Captain Cook or came from Europe or from Afghanistan, we Australians have one flag, we are one community and we are one nation.

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Government doesn’t create prosperity, free citizens do

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Our country has been ruined by governments trying to pick and choose winners instead of letting people be free to invent new and innovative solutions. We used to lead the world, inventing the refrigerator, electric drill, tanks, pacemakers, ultrasounds and wifi. Not anymore.

The right to raise ourselves up through hard work and enterprise is a freedom that must not be compromised. It must be protected.

Transcript

Later this year we will pass an amazing milestone when an Australian designed and made satellite will be launched into space using an Australian designed and made rocket and launch facility. We now have a domestic end-to-end space capability, creating jobs and injecting new wealth into our economy. Government has not achieved this, private enterprise has, proving once again that governments do not create wealth; free personal enterprise creates wealth. For many years, we led the world in innovation, inventing the refrigerator in 1856, electric drill in 1889, military tanks in 1912, pacemakers in 1928, ultrasounds in 1961 and wifi in 1992. But that’s where the list ends, 30 years ago.

Australia once led the world in patents; now China registers four times the patents per capita that Australia does. This is partly the fault of the big banks, whose tight hold on the capital sector funding for business development is throttling investment, suffocating beneath our banks greedy obsession with real estate. The government, through its future growth fund, has taken upon itself the role of picking winners and losers amongst start-ups, making private sector growth beholden to government bureaucrats. Lockdowns have decimated small business and forced medium and large businesses to shelve research and development plans.

Australia is going backwards and is losing the ability for citizens to support themselves through their own hard work and enterprise. Reliance on government handouts appears to be a design feature of Prime Minister Morrison’s socialist version of Australia. Instead, One Nation will shrink the government to fit the Constitution, we will get government out of the way of free enterprise, we will let the Australian spirit out of [inaudible] to then invent and create to carry this nation forward, even to space. We have one flag, we have one community, we are one nation. The right to raise ourselves up through hard work and enterprise is a freedom that must not be compromised. It must remain.

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Indoctrination curriculum sent back to the drawing board

https://youtu.be/hXynA4dlLEo

Our education standards have been slipping for years, yet ACARA’s draft curriculum was more focused on erasing facts about our judeo-christian heritage and implementing Critical Race Theory.

Curriculum should be focused on ensuring our kids are skilled in reading, writing and numeracy first, not political ideas.

The ditching of the draft curriculum follows two successful One Nation motions on heritage and critical race theory drawing attention to the draft’s shortcomings.

Transcript

With the steady downward trend of education all standards for reading, mathematics and science for Australia’s children over the last 20 years, ACARA needed to deliver a curriculum review that reflected proven teaching methods.  Rather than provide a robust review that would turn the tide, ideology got the better of ACARA and their efforts have been binned, as it deserves to be.

One Nation put forward two successful motions which highlighted significant fundamental flaws in ACARA’s reviewed curriculum.  Instead of focussing on proven methods for teaching mathematics and reading, ACARA thought it more important to demolish out our Judeo-Christian heritage and the role of Western civilisation in Australian society, laws and customs. 

Australia is proudly a liberal democratic society and these values should be at the very basis of our national curriculum.

I acknowledge that Minister Tudge has ditched the reviewed curriculum.  He has recognised that ACARA has tried to turn our curriculum into a tool for indoctrination for left-wing ideologies that denounce Western civilisation as something to be ashamed of, by promoting notions of imperialism and re-packaging significant and defining Australian historical events.

There is an urgent need to lift the educational outcomes for our children and One Nation will continue to monitor the efforts of ACARA to ensure that our cherished western liberal democracy is enshrined in the national curriculum.

It is not by accident that Australia is one of the most sought after places to live.  Safeguarding our way of life comes from the teachings we give our children, either at home or through the curriculum, which reminds them of what Australian men and women have defended in past decades – our right to a free society with laws and customs of Judaeo-Christian origins, and only when our children know that can they defend and uphold those values.

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CLOSING THE GAP HAS IT ALL WRONG

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A prominent islander who earned my respect through our hours of discussion expressed it well when he said bluntly that “focusing on the gap perpetuates the gap because there is a whole industry that exists only while the gap exists.”

Billions of dollars are poured into the Aboriginal industry every year but we aren’t seeing results on the ground.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I acknowledge all people of our nation. Earlier this month, I returned from more than two weeks listening to the people on the ground in all communities across Cape York—communities like Coen, Laura, Lockhart River, Port Stewart, Bamaga, Seisia, Umagico, Injinoo, New Mapoon, Thursday Island, Saibai Island, Badu Island, Weipa, Mapoon, Napranum, Aurukun, Pormpuraaw and Kowanyama. That followed previous visits to cape communities, to Northern Territory Aboriginal communities and to Aboriginal community gatherings in southern Queensland.

I now turn my comments to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I acknowledge people like Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price, and Jacintha Priscilla Rose Geia, who has taken responsibility for her life and recently graduated from university after battling with domestic violence. I acknowledge Bruce Gibson, Hope Vale business owner and a leader on the cape. I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the NRL and the AFL, whose participation at elite levels of their sports exceeds their proportion in the general population of all Australians. Aboriginals and Islanders are excelling in this country at times—just like other members of the community. And I acknowledge and wholeheartedly endorse Senator Pauline Hanson’s speech and comments earlier this morning.

Now, I’m no expert on Aboriginal and Islander matters, yet I am a human and I know what I see in any community, regardless of race, colour or religion. Let me share some insights. What is happening on the ground in Cape York are some exciting new improvements, yet there is a perpetuation of the misery and squalor that for too long has characterised some Aboriginal communities.

The first topic is native title. Recognition of previous occupancy is needed. White and black people on the cape speak with a common voice, saying that native title has added another layer to negotiations for development and people largely accept that. What is not accepted is the inability of Aboriginal people to have rights to use their land due to the Native Title Act. I quote from a member of my staff, who visited with me on the cape: ‘An unusual feature found in the preamble to the Native Title Act is a significant overemphasis on the influence of United Nations principles, which do nothing to tangibly benefit Australia’s Indigenous people.’ The Native Title Act, as told to me by Indigenous leaders and community members, is recognition but otherwise offers little more than window-dressing. It is hindering Indigenous people from advancing their interests in our society. Aboriginals are not able to achieve ownership of their own homes if the area falls under native title. It’s hurting the very people it was meant to serve. Maybe the meaning is beyond the Aboriginals and the whites in this country and has everything to do with the United Nations. It’s locking up land. The Aboriginal leaders and members of communities say, ‘What is the point of having native title when Aboriginals lack the right to use the land and cannot use it as collateral for starting a business?’

The next one is closing the gap. In my experience, we tend to achieve that on which we focus. Instead of focusing on a gap, which will perpetuate the gap, we need to focus on standards applicable and expected in every community and measure progress towards that. A prominent islander who earned my respect through our hours of discussion—and he’s involved in government—expressed it well when he said bluntly that focusing on the gap perpetuates the gap because there is a whole industry that exists only while the gap exists. Those people—consultants, agencies, lawyers, politicians and ministers—exist only because of the gap. They have an interest in perpetuating the gap, and they do perpetuate the gap. The money, authority and power needs to be taken out of the hands of the Aboriginal industry and given to the Aboriginals and islanders in the communities. This Aboriginal industry—by the way, Aboriginals use those exact words for the people holding them back—makes money from people’s misery and perpetuates the misery.

The next point is on data and facts. Some in the Aboriginal industry exist because of poor data and the lack of consulting people on the ground in communities. Some exist because they misrepresent the data. Misrepresenting the data, altering the facts, hides the problem, and that prevents a suitable, robust solution. When data is accurate, we need to use it in context and convey it accurately. Above all, we need to dig down to the core problem. That’s where the opportunities for advancement lie. Those who misrepresent data in the belief that they need to exaggerate the misery to get something done about it, in fact, derail efforts and perpetuate the misery because they cause further new miseries. For example, deaths in custody tell a story about our whole nation and need to be dug into properly, not taken out of context.

The core issue on the cape is shoddy governance and a confusing mismatch and alphabet soup of federal, state and local government programs that are riddled with waste, duplication and, from what we’re told—and it seems entirely plausible—corruption. As a result, taxpayer money is wasted. Taxpayers are funding billions of dollars each year for Aboriginal programs, yet only a fraction reaches the Aboriginals and islanders on the ground in communities. Much is lost in waste. Much apparently is stolen or selfishly redirected, as is power, as are resources and as is control, for personal benefit.

We need to improve governance to ensure everyday Aboriginals receive and efficiently use the money and ensure that taxpayers get value for their money. Those funds will be more effective when granted with sound intent, instead of patronising paternalism. We need to give more autonomy to those communities to take responsibility. These people in the communities are crying out for authority over their own lives and communities. I remind the Senate of something I’ve said many times. Maria Montessori said, ‘Whenever one sees a lack of responsibility, there is a lack of freedom.’ Across the cape, to varying degrees depending on the community, people are crying out for self-determination. People and communities need self-determination. Australia needs these communities to have self-determination. Aboriginals in many communities are ready for freedom because that brings accountability.

One further issue needs to be mentioned—past injustice. The murdering of Aboriginals and islanders, the capricious, heartbreaking stealing of land and destruction of houses, and the fracturing, relocating and deaths of families in large numbers, as recently as the 1960s: this is a blight on our history. Yet that is what it is—history. It is to be remembered but not used politically nor to foment guilt today. Guilt is a negative energy and, when used to drive, it ultimately drives negative consequences. In some of the communities, and with some individuals and groups, we could feel and I acknowledged the deep sorrow, continuing sadness and ongoing grief amongst Aboriginals and islanders. While past injustices to Aboriginals still weigh heavily, the current generation of Australians are not responsible for this. We are, though, responsible for the poor state and federal governance. That is our responsibility as voters.

I turn to Indigenous voice. Only one community said that it was adequately consulted on the Indigenous voice to parliament. Others had not even heard of it. Those who had heard of it reported to us that either the consultation was shallow and brief or the proposal will divide communities. Councillors said, for example, ‘That voice will be for Aboriginals and not for islanders.’ That spurred the thought in them that if Aboriginals have a voice then islanders need a voice. They could see what was happening. At its heart, a special voice for a specific group only separates and alienates that group.

I want to talk about culture. The first step in assisting Aboriginals to lift communities is to understand the Aboriginal culture. I do not understand many aspects of Aboriginal and islander culture, yet I can see and know that I do not know and that I do not understand the culture. I can see that cultural aspects are crucial for lasting solutions and progress. This is fundamental. It is the arrogance and ignorance in this building that proclaims solutions without understanding culture. After listening closely to the people across the cape recently I was shocked by the patronising paternalism heard in the other chamber last week. Instead of politics denigrating other parties, or exaggerating and sometimes falsely representing an initiative of the speaker’s party, we need to focus on the data, core issues and solid plans, with unity between state and federal governments that puts people’s lives and livelihoods ahead of the party politics that is again infecting some of today’s speeches. We need a focus on Aboriginal and islander issues with the intent of freeing these people to be accountable and proud. That starts with real listening, real understanding and real involvement with authority. 

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