Malcolm’s Official Speeches in Parliament

Racism – The Cashless Debit Card

Transcript

[Malcolm Roberts]

Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts and I’m in Parliament House in Canberra. I’d like you to watch a few clips coming up from a debate last night in the Senate. They’re clips of Senator Hanson and I addressing the word Racism and the word Racist. We’ve noticed that, over the last few years, people use those terms when they don’t have facts, don’t have data, and don’t have a logical argument to counter us.

So what some of the Greens were doing, some of the weaker greens and some of the weaker people in the Labor Party, they were diverting attention from the merits of the Cashless Debit Card and calling its supporters racists or invoking racism so Pauline and I decided to launch into that. Have a look at these clips and see what you think.

[Malcolm Roberts]

To the minister. It’s very sad to see and disappointing to see the term racist and racism used as an excuse because whenever I’ve seen it, it’s been an excuse covering the lack of facts and solid logical argument. And it seems to be meant to intimidate and silence and divert. It won’t silence people who have the facts. Has there ever been any targeting of groups, either under Labour or the Liberal National Party governments, or is this initiative broadly based upon people’s needs and protecting children?

[Deputy President]

Minister.

[Minster]

Thank you, thank you very much Senator Roberts. The measure is targeted at the people that are on income working age, income support within geographical areas.

[Deputy President]

Senator Roberts.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Thank you. Minister, just seems to be continuing on this racist theme. My understanding of racist and racism is where one group, a particular race, is classified or thought of as inferior or superior. Is there any discussion at all, or labelling of any group within the department as inferior or superior or is this based on needs?

[Deputy President]

Order, order. Order. Minister.

[Minster]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy President. As I have stated on a number of occasions, the cashless debit card is in places where the community have sought for the support and help of the government through the implementation of this card and other associated measures. And there were quite a number of them including, many of the wraparound services and support services that exist as well. But the card is in places on the basis of the request of the leaders within a geographical community area.

[Pauline Hanson]

Thank you very much. Well, I’ve listened to the debate and I’ve listened to some of the questions that have been asked to you tonight and really disturbs me. The question being asked is this about racism? Is it racist and the policies of where you pick theories, this- I asked the minister directly, how did it come about and the areas that were picked.

The areas were picked just because of community whether it be the mayors, the councillors, the community themselves, the business leaders, or even community leaders have asked for this trial. Whether – and the whole fact is yes, the same because the population and Senator Wong asked the question about the percentages and we got and high 40% of one area are indigenous and yet another area got 80% indigenous so where you have the majority are non-indigenous.

We as a parliament need to look at and leaders of this nation we need to actually look at what is the best interest of the people. This was a trial that was put out. These are communities that asked for this trial, it’s a card that is actually going to restrict the spending of the money to 80% has to be spent on central services, meaning paying the rent, buying food, clothes for the kids, and it’s actually ensures there’s food on the table.

Isn’t the basis of what we’re all should be concerned about is the wellbeing of the children. Adults can take care of themselves, children can’t, children rely on the parents. If we have a problem in our society where the parents are tied up in alcohol or drug abuse or gambling, that the money doesn’t get to where it should get, isn’t that the basis of why we are looking at this card. And it doesn’t matter what race or colour of your skin is we have problems right across our whole society we have this problem and especially in regional and rural areas there’s a huge drug problem. I hear it constantly all the time.

The thing is that you talk about is it racist? I can go into many areas that I can say we have racist policies in Australia.

[Deputy President]

Order.

[Pauline Hanson]

That is purely based on the fact that because if you’re indigenous you get extra funding, you get care taken for you. So I’m not gonna head down that path as many Australians know that. I don’t think that’s the basis of what we should be looking out here. I’ve travelled these indigenous communities I’ve been there and I’ve seen the problems that we have there, but it’s not only in the indigenous communities we got in other areas in Australia that needs to be addressed. But we as the leaders of this nation we must look at what are we trying to achieve here? It’s the benefit of the future generations. Kids in these communities are not getting schooled, they are not getting the care that they need, they’re not getting fed. So the fact is that that’s what we need to address. We actually have to also look at the fact that the communities have asked for this, I’ve listened to the indigenous leaders that have begged for the card.

[Deputy President]

Order.

[Pauline Hanson]

That they wanted this card. We have people opting in for this card. We have people in communities are saying we can’t control our money because our family and friends come to us and they force us to hand over the money to them. Now they have control of their money. What are you actually worried about? They’ve got 20% of their money they can still spend as they wish, 80% is going to the needs that they need for their household, for the children to look after children. If you look at the stats and reports and I haven’t got the figures in front of me.

[Deputy President]

Order.

[Pauline Hanson]

But a lot of the figures were 40% plus were actually saying there’s less drug use, there is less gambling, there is less domestic violence. The replace report that came in said there’s less domestic violence and promise to having more kids are going to school, they’re actually being fed before they go to school. These are the actual facts just sit here and argue over the fact is it racist policy is not what this is about. And I’m sick of people, some people in this chamber calling themselves as if they’re the victims. Our job is to make sure good policy for all people, all Australians, that they actually have the benefit of our wise decisions.

[Deputy President]

Order.

[Pauline Hanson]

Because they are relying on us to make the right decisions in this parliament,

[Deputy President]

Senator Wong, oh, sorry I thought you finished.

[Pauline Hanson]

I hadn’t.

[Deputy President]

Continue, Senator Hanson

[Pauline Hanson]

Thank you very much. Also, the fact is that on websites we are seeing and the scaremongering that is going on on the opposition side parliament telling it is the elderly who are going to be affected by this people ringing up my office and saying, “Well, it is the age pensioners “that are going to be losing this due to the card.” There is no talk about that whatsoever, that question has been asked by the government it is not going to include the aged.

So I’m sick of the scaremongering that’s going on with people because I’m getting that and it is up on the website but you clearly say it is the elderly. And so people think and the veterans that you’re gonna tie them up in this and it’s got nothing to do with them. This has been completely blown out of proportion by people telling lies and not telling the truth to the Australian public to know the benefits of this card, minister then I asked you the question clarify here in this chamber to the people of Australia are aged pensions going to be involved on this card?

Are the people who are on disability pension going to be included on this card? Who is it actually going to affect? Do you intend, and I think the Australian people need to know have a direct answer, is this going to be rolled out in this term of parliament till the next election to all Australians? Because that is what is been said to all the Australians in lies to the putting out by the opposition and lies have been put out by the Greens Party.

I want the people have to have an honest answer that is recorded here in the parliament is this going to include the elderly, is this going to include those in disability pensions, is it going to be rolled out to all Australians before the next election? And what do you intend to do with your policies after next election minister?

[Deputy President]

Minister.

[Minister]

Thank you very much.

[Deputy President]

Order

[Minister]

Madam deputy present, I’ll try and answer all the components of the Senator Hanson’s questions and contribution. And I apologise if I miss some of them but I’m more than happy to come back to them.

Firstly, I acknowledge the second reading amendment of Senator Patrick which did give us the opportunity to put on the record that the government has provided a commitment through that second reading, supporting of that second reading amendment that no recipient of the age pension or a veteran or services pension will be placed on the cashless debit card. There are however, a couple of exceptions to that and I wanna put that on the record very, very clearly, very, very clearly.

[Deputy President]

Order.

[Minister]

With the exception, and there are two main categories of exemption, people on the age pension are able to voluntarily seek to go on to the card whether it be the Basics Card or the CDC. And we know in the Northern Territory around two and a half thousand people that are on the Basics Card in the Northern Territory are actually, have gone on so voluntarily. And of those two and a half thousand people that are on voluntarily are over 800 of them are actually aged pensioners.

The second category of people who could be on income management who are of pension age or also on a pension, are those that have been either referred by the Family Responsibilities Commission and for those who are listening and don’t know what the Family Responsibilities Commission is, it is the group of commissioners in the Cape York that make the decisions in relation to the people of that community, and it’s also contained in this bill.

Where child protection workers, social workers, or Alcohol Mandatory Treatment Tribunal in the Northern Territory has requested on the basis of safety, either safety of the individual or safety of those in their care that they go on to the card. There are only a very few people who are on the card for that reason. However, I just wanna be very, very clear they are the only two categories of people on the age pension that are on a subject to income management.

In relation to your comments around, the information and the data around what we’re seeing is improvements as a result of the cashless debit card and income management. As I said, in and of itself they are not the single silver bullet. You sort of remedy all for some of the problems that they are, the cashless debit card and the Basics Card we’re seeking to reduce.

They are but one component of a suite of measures that needs to be put together to bring about the kind of change that the communities who have sought access to the cashless debit card have requested. And in reading the letter of support that I received from the community leaders in Ceduna there were many things that these communities that observed over the time that the cashless debit card has been in place in that community and I’ll just read just a little bit of the letter that I received, Senator Hanson.

And I quote, this is actually a quote, “Since the introduction of the cashless debit card, “we have observed positive changes in our communities. “Fewer vulnerable people have been harassed or humbled” These are their words, “To hand over cash to others. “More children are attending school, “families have money to spend on groceries “and alcohol fueled violence has decreased. “Our communities are safer, “people are saying they have the money they need “to provide for the basics of life “such as buying clothes and food and paying rent and bills.”

And this does not flow there’s more in between it, but the final statement that these community leaders across the whole of Australia and we have community leaders that have signed this letter to me today Senator Hanson from all of the 12 sites around Australia, the final sentence.

And I think is, “In order to create stronger, safer, “and healthy communities now and for generations to come “we call upon a parliamentary representatives “to pass the Social Security “Amendment Bill 2020.” So they are in the words of the people who are at the coalface, these are the people whose communities this card serves.

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Ban PM from attending the Climate Ambition Summit

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Scott Morrison is due to attend another climate jamboree where he will no doubt promise to implement more of the United Nations agenda destroying more of our economy.

Well I have an idea. I can go in his place.

Transcript

One Nation opposes this motion. I for one, would be happy for our Prime Minister not to speak at the Climate Ambition Summit. Our prime minister has demonstrated that he will not put the interest of Australia first.

On the international stage under pressure, the prime minister turns to jelly and adopts the agenda of the United Nations without regard for the damage it does to our Australian economy or the lives of Australians.

If Australians want someone to represent and fight for Australia, may I suggest Senator Hanson or I would be happy to take the prime minister’s place. The greens won’t debate me, so maybe some of their globalist masters will.

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Extend Kogan Creek power plant

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Transcript

One Nation supports this motion. Cheap reliable hydrocarbon fuels have led to the greatest improvement in human progress in the past 150 years.

One Nation supports Senator Rennick’s proposal to extend the Kogan Creek coal power plant.

Climate policies and renewable subsidies have led to Australia having one of the most expensive power prices in the world and becoming more unstable. Senator Rennick’s proposal is good for Queensland and good for Australia.

Who could possibly vote against it?

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China take advantage of weak Australian governments

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Transcript

 I move:

That the Senate notes that the current dispute between China and Australia is more deep-seated than a trade spat involving wine, coal and timber.

The motion I moved is the opening paragraph in Robert Gottliebsen’s newspaper article in The Australian yesterday, and I’ll quote it again:

When China declared that Australia had been “evil” it suddenly became clear that the dispute between the two nations is more deep-seated than a trade spat involving wine coal, timber etc.

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia who is involved in the governance of Australia, I want to focus on Gottliebsen’s meaty fourth paragraph:

From President Xi down, there has been little respect for Australia for a long time and many in China believe we are a foolish country that makes mistakes at almost every turn, led by defence.

He then details serious flaws in the governance of three Defence projects, the submarine ‘shemozzle’, as he calls it, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and the Hunter frigates. We obviously are ‘a foolish country’ based on this, and the obvious point of his article is our shoddy governments over many decades, both Liberal-National and Labor.

People in this country are feeling concerned about the seriously deteriorating state of our country. We have lost our economic sovereignty. We’re losing our national sovereignty. We’re plunging towards catastrophe economically, and dependence with a complete loss of security. People are fed up and, across many communities and industries—and I mean right around the country—people are feeling dispirited, hopeless, confused, aimless, wary, concerned and even fearful, because most can sense our country’s destruction. Yet, 100 years ago Australia was No. 1 in the world in income per person and had the highest GDP—gross domestic product—per person.

There’s a worse aspect beyond economic demise though. Bullies like China prey on those perceived as being weak. Gottliebsen rightly says that, due to poor, and even stupid, decisions, we’re rightly perceived as being weak in defence. Yet he barely scratches the full extent of the deterioration of our security, because our productive capacity has been dismantled, and our economic security has been smashed, destroyed. We are vulnerable. Now, as a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, that is what I will discuss, because, like bullies in a schoolyard or in a workplace, China preys on those it perceives as weak or foolish. By the way, when I raise China, I refer to the Chinese Communist Party and not the millions of Australians of Chinese descent now in our country, descendants of those who came during the gold rushes almost two centuries ago, and those who immigrated more recently.

Not only does the Chinese Communist Party assess other nations against China’s values and standards; the Chinese Communist Party assesses our country against our own values, and from that it finds out: Does our government have courage? Does our government have integrity? Do the politicians in this country and this parliament have the strength of character needed to lead a country? I’ve been thinking about this for some years now and I’ve made a list of Australian values: mateship; a fair go; support; loyalty; being fair dinkum; telling the truth; honesty; fairness; freedom to live; freedom of speech; freedom of thought; freedom of belief; freedom of religion; freedom of faith; freedom of interaction; freedom of exchange; democracy; our flag; our nation; family; care; respect for people; respect for community; respect for the law; respect for the environment; making sure government fulfils its three primary roles, which are protecting life, protecting property and protecting freedom, and stays out of everything else; and our Constitution. We value our Constitution, especially competitive federalism, and we value human progress. Australia has led that improvement in progress in the past 150 years. It has been amazing progress, right across the world.

So let’s assess governments against these values and their impact on our productive capacity. Productive capacity depends on many things, but particularly energy costs—the primacy of energy. An ever-decreasing cost of energy has led to 150 years of human progress. Australia has gone from having the world’s lowest electricity prices to having the world’s highest, yet we’re now the world’s largest exporter of energy—gas and coal. China imports a lot of our coal, but the production of coal in their own country is eight times our total production—not just our exports but our total production. They make us look like small producers of coal. They have the largest coal reserves in the world, along with the United States. They use our coal. They’re building steel power plants out of our coal, and they’re building hundreds of coal-fired power stations.

We legislate to use their wind turbines and their solar panels. We subsidise them. It drives up the cost of our electricity, and we pay them for unreliables—their solar and wind generators. We pay them for components of electric vehicles, which we also subsidise. And then we have Chinese companies, affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, owning electricity networks in our major cities. Then we have the Queensland Labor government stealing $1½ billion a year through the generators. All of this destroys jobs and destroys competitiveness.

Then taxpayers pay people, quite often foreigners, to come in and squat on the land, just to get carbon dioxide credits. It’s called carbon dioxide farming. It takes good farmland and destroys it with noxious weeds and feral animals—pests—and then that has to be reclaimed at some later date; who knows when. Then we have Angus Taylor, the Minister for Energy and Emissions, a farmer. He knows that the EPBC Act is hurting him—I’ve had conversations with him—but he just smiles, rolls his eyes and puts up with it. He is a sceptic on climate change—sceptical that we are affecting the climate. He’s been slammed, and he’s now coming back into parliament and driving up electricity prices. Matt Canavan, Barnaby Joyce: strong sceptics in their beliefs. Barnaby Joyce was the Deputy Prime Minister. The Chinese know that. They watch him. They saw him come into cabinet and they saw him run for election in New England, when he moved out of the Senate and into the lower house. And Malcolm Turnbull, to get Mr Joyce elected, showered $400 million of taxpayer funds on unreliable wind power. Then Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce were both in the cabinet, and they suddenly became alarmists, spouting alarm about carbon dioxide.

So I asked Matt Canavan in the Senate one day where his evidence was, and he just slid away from me. Now that he’s out of cabinet and Mr Joyce is out of cabinet, all of a sudden they’re becoming a little bit sceptical again in their words. But the Chinese Communist Party see this and that tells them a lot about the lack of leadership in this country.

The Chinese have their own agreement within the Paris Agreement. It says, ‘We will continue doing whatever we want, continue growing our economy, continue constructing our country, developing our country and putting in place infrastructure, and then in 2030 we may consider something.’ Meanwhile, this parliament in this building has legislated to destroy our economy to comply with Kyoto. That’s not an agreement; that is stupidity and economic suicide. The Chinese Communist Party watches us pay academics to tell lies about climate and to misrepresent the climate science. We even put some of them in charge of or in senior places in the CSIRO and pay them $800,000 a year to destroy our country. Dr Andrew Johnson went from head of the climate research agency department in the CSIRO to become head of the Bureau of Meteorology. Under him and his predecessors, the Bureau of Meteorology has been shown to be concocting the data and misrepresenting temperatures.

We pay people like Ove Hoegh-Gulberg and Ian Chubb, former chief scientists, to destroy the science, to misrepresent the science. In 1975, Whitlam signed an agreement saying we’ll comply with the Lima Declaration to shut down our manufacturing and export it. The following year, Liberal Prime Minister Fraser ratified the deal. In 1992, Paul Keating’s Labor government signed the Rio Declaration, which is about 21st century global governance. Then we had the Kyoto protocol destroying our country, stealing our farmers’ property rights. And now we have the Paris Agreement exporting jobs and shutting manufacturing.

Then the current Prime Minister has the temerity to say, ‘We will fiddle with the industrial relations system to bring back manufacturing.’ How the hell can you bring back manufacturing when you have the highest electricity costs in the world and a big component of manufacturing—the largest component, usually—is the cost of electricity? How the hell can you do it with a tax system that favours multinational companies and lets them off scot-free? How the hell can you do it with overregulation? How the hell can you do it with a lack of water? How the hell can you do it with a lack of infrastructure? The Chinese are watching this and they’re helping us destroy our electricity sector and export even more jobs, because our prices for electricity are going up, businesses are shutting and then the jobs start up in China.

We are now reversing the last 170 years of human progress, because the key to human progress is decreasing the price of energy, which raises productivity, raises wealth, raises the standard of living. That ended in this country 24 years ago. We have ceded governance to the UN: Lima, Kyoto, Rio, Paris and many other agreements. How does this comply with Aussie values? How does it comply with being fair dinkum? Worse, the granddaddy who concocted this climate change rubbish was Maurice Strong. He concocted it when he created and then took over as head of the United Nations Environment Program. He pushed that program, starting from the 1970s, and in the 1980s he ramped it up. In 1988 he formed the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a fraudulent organisation. And the Liberals, Labor, the Nationals and the Greens have fallen for it all. Maurice Strong was a crook. He was wanted by the police in America and died in exile in China. Who’s the beneficiary of all this destruction of Western civilisation? The Chinese government.

That’s what the people in this chamber and the chamber across the hall there have done to this country by blindly following the UN diktats. How does that comply with our values? It doesn’t. It breaks our values. What about water ownership? Destroyed by separating water ownership from property ownership. What about the Murray-Darling Basin and the corruption that is rife? What about the family farms shutting down? What about water projects? What water projects? That’s it; there aren’t any. And yet look at what amazing water projects the Chinese Communist Party has put together to develop its country.

What about infrastructure? Hardly anything built and no plan. The north is exposed without the Bradfield scheme and we see floods destroying Townsville. There is destruction and a waste of water flowing out to sea. We see the state governments joining in. The Labor Party in Queensland has reef regulations which are shutting down agriculture. Vegetation protection legislation is destroying agriculture. Firebreaks aren’t allowed and are being destroyed when farms are under fire. We put animals and fungus ahead of humans.

The Queensland Labor government put a Chinese company in charge of the electoral roll and then there is Queensland local council corruption linked to the Labor state government. This extends well beyond Ipswich and Paul Pisasale; it is systemic and it is widespread. We have foreign banks that were deregulated under John Howard and we saw the result of that through the Hayne royal commission. We see Adani frustrated by both the Liberal-National and Labor governments in Queensland and by the federal government, which was weak. That’s one man from India, which has a booming, growing economy, who wanted to spend $17 billion in our country. He was thwarted for eight years. That’s a blight on us that not even the Chinese can miss—that no-one in the world can miss. We go on and on and on.

I give Senator Rex Patrick credit for moving a motion to get an inquiry into the relationship between China and Australia six times—and I supported him every time. Both the Labor Party and the Liberal-Nationals squashed it. This is what the Chinese are seeing, yet Australians are wanting far more. Australians want leadership. Australians want security, reassurance, confidence, leadership, trust, pride and freedom—a restoration so that we can be No. 1 in the world again. What does Australia need? It needs principled leadership based on values. It needs disciplined leadership based on data and facts instead of ideology paying off donors. It needs honest leadership and strength of character. It’s the simple ability to say: ‘I’m wrong, I’m sorry—can you help me? Please explain.’ We need visionary policies, and that is what will take us back to being No. 1.

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Greens Climate Emergency MOU

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Transcript

Thank you Mr. Acting Deputy President. And there we have it, a motion and hyperbole, not one bit of science. In serving the people of Queensland and Australia, I wanna firstly point out that The Greens last week wanted to declare a climate emergency because New Zealand did.

Not because of the science, but because New Zealand did. The Greens wanted to declare its climate emergency because Japan did. Yet Japan is building coal-fired power stations hand over fist. Now The Greens want to pledge to increase 2030 targets in line with the science.

Yet listen to what the CSIRO has divulged. I asked them where’s the danger? They said, they’ve never said there’s any danger due to human production of carbon dioxide, never. And they said they never would. So why the policy? Why The Greens rants? Secondly, the CSIRO admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented.

That means we didn’t cause the mild warming that cyclical natural warming that ended in 1995 And it’s been flat since. Then ultimately the CSIRO relied not on empirical scientific data, It relied on climate models. Models unvalidated and already proven wrong. What’s more, the reliance on models means that they have no critical scientific evidence.

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Kyoto carryover credits stolen from farmers

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Transcript

The Kyoto carryover credits were created by stealing property rights from farmers. Farmers lost the rights to manage their land and vegetation without compensation. The purchase of freehold land has been turned into a leasehold agreement with government controlling the land use through overburdensome and crippling regulations.

The decision by the Howard government to steal property rights without compensation remains to this day an unjust and morally reprehensible decision that the Morrison government refuses to reverse.

It has been estimated that to compensate farmer for their loss of rights would cost in excess of $200 billion. If this government is unwilling to compensate then they must IMMEDIATELY restore full property rights to farmers so they can recover their productive capacity.

Farmers are the best custodians of their own land.

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Greens call for more destructive renewables

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Motion 874 – Greens call for more destructive renewables

Speech

One Nation does not support this motion. Australia’s Chief Scientist stated that, if Australia were to reduce its entire carbon dioxide output to zero, it would have virtually no effect on the global temperature.

It’s time that the Liberal-National and Labor-Greens parties acknowledge that implementing layer upon layer of destructive climate policies and renewable energy schemes cannot change the global climate.

If people were serious about reducing the world’s carbon dioxide output, they would be pressuring China, which accounts for 30 per cent of the world’s output and renegotiated its Paris Agreement, allowing China to increase output until 2030 and then only slow the increase. There is no agreement. Yes, you heard that right: China will be increasing its carbon dioxide output for the foreseeable future, while climate policies here in Australia decimate our economy.

What’s more, we are subsidising China to build the appliances that will be installed here and will raise our electricity prices.

This is insane.

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Greens call for a climate emergency

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Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to respond to Senator Waters’s speech in which she claimed the need to declare a climate emergency. She’s acting. Her opening statement says it all—’The Greens are moving this motion because the New Zealand government has declared a climate emergency.’ That’s it!

There’s no data, no empirical scientific evidence and no scientific reasoning with a framework proving cause and effect, just, ‘We’re going to do it because the Kiwis have said it.’ That’s it. That is the summary of climate change in this country and globally. Then she raised pollution, meaning carbon dioxide as a pollutant. At the same time, she was exhaling 100 times the concentration of pollution of carbon dioxide that she was taking in.

This is absurd. She’s always exhaling. Does that mean she’s always polluting? It’s nonsense. I see Senator Sterle laughing, as indeed I know he should be, because this is absurd. Nowhere on this planet, under any government, is carbon dioxide defined as a pollutant. There are no criteria specifying it as a pollutant.It is a misrepresentation instead of data. There is no data, just a false statement.

Carbon dioxide, nature’s trace gas, is essential for all life on this planet. Then Senator Waters went on to talk about ‘megafires on a scale never seen before’. False. In the 1930s and the 1970s there were bigger fires, wider fires, and more damage. And then she said the fires were due to a deep drought. That is partially correct. But, in the past, we have had more severe droughts and we have had more severe fires.

The fires and the droughts are not due to human use of hydrocarbon fuels. In fact, the drought we’ve just gone through—and it’s still in place in some places—is confirmation, is evidence, that the weather is behaving naturally. There is natural variation. And then Senator Waters said Fraser Island ‘had a massive bushfire,’ as it does every now and then, and—wait for it—’a 1,000-year-old tree is threatened’.

Really? I know a 10,000-year-old civilisation that is being threatened globally—with no data, just false statements and fear.I remind the Senate that my questioning of CSIRO, my holding of the CSIRO to account, has shown these things. The CSIRO has admitted to me that they have never said there is danger from carbon dioxide from human activity. Never. So why are we going through this nonsense?

Secondly, the CSIRO admitted to me that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. That means we didn’t cause them. There were warmer temperatures in the past.

Thirdly, when they couldn’t respond properly with evidence to my questions, they said they rely upon climate models. Their climate models show that they are not based on data. Their climate models are invalidated and have proven erroneous. The fact that they have to resort to them—their fabrications—means they don’t have any data.

We have 17 scientists from leading organisations around the world who have shown that the CSIRO is wrong and I am right that the CSIRO has no evidence.Senator Waters talked about the government’s role in letting the country down by not having adequate policies on climate. The government has three basic roles. The first is to protect life. There is no threat to life from current climate variability.

The crippling energy threat destroying our energy sector is a threat to life. Ask anybody who is old and poor. Secondly, government has to protect property. With no data and for no reason, the government has stolen land from farmers, stolen their property rights, and that is a huge threat. The third role of government is to protect freedom.

Again, there is no data, no reason; they are just putting into place arbitrary regulations and policies that have complete control over people. Then Senator Waters said we need 10 years to get climate under control. Oh really! King Canute claimed he could part the waters in the Red Sea. Senator Waters is claiming to be able to control the climate.

These things come and go. This is sheer arrogance, insanity and stupidity.Al Gore claimed that the northern polar ice cap would disappear by 2013. He said that back in 2008. It is still there, as big as ever. There is a joke in which Al Gore is complaining about someone who has just made a statement that there will be no life on the planet, no polar ice caps, in five years.

He says: ‘Really? I’ve been saying that for 30 years. That’s my statement!’ This is absolutely stupid. And then we are told we will have 50 million climate refugees by 2010. That was said in 2005. We have had zero climate refugees, absolutely none. This is just a propaganda tool to scare people. Again, the use of propaganda confirms the lack of data and the lack of empirical scientific evidence.

Then Senator Waters talked about pure physics as her evidence—no data, no empirical scientific evidence, not even a claim of the relationship that is supposed to be underpinning this. She had no data, just false statements and fear. And then she talked about ‘abundant, cheap, clean renewable energy’—her words. Let’s look at that. Solar and wind are none of these things.Abundant? No. Intermittent? Unreliable. Cheap? No—the most expensive.

Without subsidies, as Warren Buffett said, they’re dead; they only live on subsidies. Alan Moran, the noted economist, has estimated the costs, using the government’s own figures, of climate subsidies and renewable energy subsidies as being $13 billion every year. That is $1,300 per household per annum in Australia. For nothing! This is on top of energy prices. And for every clean energy job there are 2.2 real jobs lost.

As for clean: they rely upon rare earths that come from child Labor in Africa. They’re talking about the Kilcoy solar panels; cadmium and selenium will leach into the soil and the waterways—into Brisbane’s water supply—if that solar plant project goes ahead.And what about afterwards? What do we do with these windmills after their 15-year life? They’re burying them in Wyoming right now.

That’s extra cost and extra pollution—real pollution: solar panels are a real pollutant and they’re now an environmental legacy. Again, there’s a reason why windmills didn’t last. Again, Senator Waters relies on no data, just false statements and fear. Then she cited nations declaring a climate emergency. Let’s look at some of these. Japan is building coal-fired power stations.

France relies on nuclear energy. Britain relies on the French nuclear energy through an interlinked cable and Britain also relies upon wood pellets burned in an old coal-fired power station—they cut down American forests and transport them across using hydrocarbon fuels. And Germany is now building coal-fired power stations.

Then Senator Waters quoted socialist Christiana Figueres, who is a senior bureaucrat in the UN in charge of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—the governing body for this nonsense.She says openly that the aim of the whole climate campaign is to convert the world to socialism and to change the economic system—change the economic system!

Those are her words, not mine—again, no data, just misrepresentations and fear. That’s all that Senator Waters is relying upon.We don’t have time to go into the motion itself; it’s easily torn apart. But I will remind the chamber that 10 years ago, on 7 October 2010, I challenged Senator Waters in a public forum that we both attended as panellists to debate me on climate science and the corruption of climate science.

She jumped to her feet faster than I’ve ever seen her move and said, ‘I won’t debate you’. Five years later, in May 2016—almost six years later, or 5½ years later—she again refused my public request to have a debate. Four hundred and forty days ago, on Monday 9 September 2019, I challenged her again, and Senator Di Natale. But they continued; they refused to debate me and they refused to provide the evidence to the Senate—no data and no proof.

There was no debate, just shouted alarm—false statements and alarm.If the Senate keeps making decisions without data then this Senate ceases to be the people’s house of review and continues to be the circus of useless gestures—the big top of virtue signalling and the ministry of silly walks. Senator Hanson and I will continue to use the empirical scientific evidence, the hard facts, to continue to respect and restore the house of review for the people of Australia.

There is no climate emergency, there is a governance emergency.

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The governance of our country is appalling

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The governance of our country is appalling. My adjournment speech.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I draw attention to the Australian parliament’s failure to protect the interests of the Australian people. In the Senate yesterday, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Labor Party united in standing beside big banks against the interests of everyday Australians. Together they voted down my bill to prevent bank deposits being bailed in—meaning that when banks get into trouble they can steal depositors’ money.

Their madness is simple: Australia has the world’s safest banks; the only thing that could bring our banks down is a loss of confidence; that’s the very thing my bill was designed to stop. Not once has the Treasurer, the Prime Minister or APRA, the banking regulator, come out and said, ‘We will not bail in your deposits.’ It’s time the Australian people heard those words.

The right to use a banking service without losing our money is just one of many rights that everyday Australians have lost—another is the loss of property rights. Prime Minister John Howard’s government’s response to the UN’s Kyoto Protocol in 1996 was to use the deceitful trick of protecting junk vegetation from destruction. The carbon dioxide that this saved counted to our UN Kyoto targets and it still does.

It enabled his government to bypass its constitutional duty to compensate farmers for stealing their property rights. This is a perfect example of mad climate policies that are about bowing to unelected, unrepresentative foreign UN bureaucrats, rather than showing actual environmental outcomes. The land that John Howard’s capricious actions supposedly protected was not something worthwhile like an old-growth forest or repairing vegetation, no, it was agricultural land that was stolen.

John Howard’s government stole our farmers’ rights to clear junk vegetation that grows on a field not used for a few years. It prevents farmers making productive use of their land. To this day the general public think this ban on land clearing relates to actual forests. This conjures up images of evil farmers chopping down virgin forests and sending koalas of to their deaths.

The reality is this ban stops farmers clearing salt bush and junk vegetation that’s stopping productive agriculture on land that has been farmed many times. The old parties never let the truth stand in the way of virtue signalling. The Liberal-National government with John Howard as Treasurer is largely to blame for banking misconduct. It was John Howard who deregulated banking.

This exposed bank customers to the atrocious behaviour that was found during the Senate inquiry into rural and regional lending that I chaired. Our inquiry led to the banking royal commission finding even more wrongdoing. The Morrison government recently demonstrated another failure in looking after small business. Aussie company CuDeco operated the Rocklands copper mine near Cloncurry in Queensland.

It was driven into insolvency from the actions of the minority Chinese owners. The mine was sold to a local Chinese company who promptly onsold it to a Chinese government entity. China now owns an important Australian copper mine thanks to the ineffective Morrison government. The mine’s workers will never get their missing wages and local contractors are out of pocket $60 million.

The only way we will see CuDeco’s copper again is if we buy that copper inside Chinese manufactured electronics. Chinese corporations continue to cherrypick their way through our resources sector. China is buying mines, real estate, farms and even our water. I do compliment Treasurer Frydenberg though on his recent decision to block the sale of PURA milk to the Chinese, resulting in the Australian company Bega buying PURA.

It’s a welcome break after the Liberal-National and Labor parties selling Australia out for a generation. Since my return to the Senate last year the Liberal, Labor and National parties have been acting together and have voted down One Nation’s motions—many motions—to restore farmers’ water rights.

The 2007 Water Act takes their water rights and forces Aussie farmers, family farmers, off the land. Even now with all the rain this year farmers are on as little as 39 per cent allocation. Who passed the 2007 Water Act? Prime Minister John Howard. Who introduced the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in 2012? Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

The whole point of the Water Act was to remove family farms from the land, then to remove their water rights to new irrigation areas on cheap land belonging to corporate agriculture. Windfall profits all round. Australian farmers and local communities being gutted. The Australian parliament must decide whether it represents the interests of big business or the interests of everyday Australians.

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Labor Preference Destructive Greens

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Labor preference destructive Greens Today, Labor’s Murray Watt put forward a Motion claiming that the Greens and One Nation’s Queensland State policies would do great economic damage to Queensland. Why then did the Labor party preference the Greens? Queensland’s economy is a basket case, certainly nothing to be proud of.

One Nation want to remove unnecessary and costly red and green tape from Queensland businesses which will drive jobs and wealth for all Queenslanders.

Transcript

[President]

Senator Roberts.

[Senator Roberts]

I seek leave to make a short statement.

[President]

Leave is granted for one minute.

[Senator Roberts]

Thank you, One nation does not support this motion. We first of all do congratulate Steve Andrew for his enhanced majority in the seat of Mirani. After three years of solid work. However, gloating over the Queensland election result, that was based on Labor scaremongering.

[President]

Senator Watt.

[Senator Roberts]

Inflicted upon the people of Queensland is unworthy. The economic damage from Labor over the last six years has been further entrenched during COVID because Labor couldn’t work out that responding to a virus is not a simplistic choice between our health or the economy. Queensland boasts the highest unemployment.

[President]

Order Senator Roberts stop the clock. Senator Watt, please, numerous times today. Senator Roberts.

[Senator Roberts]

Queensland boasts the highest unemployment, the highest rate of business closures, the lowest business confidence and the largest state debt at $110 billion. And that was before COVID. Queensland is now an economic basket case and still the premier and our government offer no coherent plan for recovery.

If the Labor party are so worried that the greens would, “Do great economic damage to Queensland at a time when every job is vital.” And by the way I agree, “Then it beggars belief that Labor continues to preference the greens.” Let’s also remember that Labor relies on greens preferences. In summary, the outcome of the Queensland election was fear won and Queensland lost.

[President]

Order Senator Roberts.

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