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.
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.
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.
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.
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/M8kZIFN_7B4/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-12-01 13:27:002020-12-03 13:35:33The governance of our country is appalling
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.
Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. I thank Senator Polly for this opportunity to discuss job creation. In Australia, we accept that the government should provide the infrastructure and then get out of the way and let the employers create jobs. The less red tape, green tape and blue tape, nobbling free enterprise, the more real breadwinner jobs will be created. The labor Party, has brought us Queensland’s notorious reef regulations, which are in the progress, or the process of strangling the life out of agriculture across thousands of kilometres of Queensland coastline. The loss of jobs in agriculture and agricultural communities along our coastline is a disaster, that Labor’s green tape has caused. Australia’s Water Act though was the product of an unholy alliance between the Nationals, liberals and labor. It has driven family farmers off their land and decimated rural communities. Green tape is killing agriculture and killing jobs. United Nations blue tape, is having the same effect on industry. This insane idea that power generation should not produce carbon dioxide, a harmless trace gas that does not cause climate change, has destroyed heavy industry and manufacturing in Australia. China is now producing what Australia would not. labor, the Greens and the Liberal-National parties, have all championed this transfer of jobs from Australia to China. China and India are now building, 500 new coal-fired power stations to keep up with the demand for Chinese and Indian steel and manufactured goods. Renewable energy or as I call them, unreliable energy, does not create jobs. For every one new job, in so called renewables, 2.2 jobs are lost in the productive economy. Yet labor, the Greens, the Liberals and Nationals are out there everyday touting a renewable led economic boom. The only boom here is in the cost of taxpayers. Every new wind turbine costs Australian taxpayers, $536,000 in subsidies every year. That’s $13 billion dollars a year in subsidies, and that costs every household $1300 a year. Blue tape, is not about environmentalism, it’s about wealth redistribution. Large foreign companies win and small Australian businesses lose. One nation will withdraw from international agreements that harm Australia’s interests, and we will bring these jobs home. Senator Polly blames the Morrison government for poor job creation, I blame the labor, Nationals, Liberals and the Greens.
Senator Roberts your time has expired, we will now—
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/BbYHBOCaoM0/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-11-11 12:55:572020-11-23 14:48:14Removing red, green & blue tape to create jobs
Thank you Mr. Acting, deputy president. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak to the JobMaker Hiring Credit Amendment bill. JobMaker was announced in the budget with much fanfare. The treasurer announced his headline. JobMaker will support 450,000 jobs. Why didn’t the media think to ask the treasurer to define the word support? His own treasury doesn’t agree with the word support, means what the treasurer thinks it does. Treasury indicated in Senate estimates hearings, that JobMaker will create not 450,000 jobs, but a meager 45,000. 1/10th. This inconsequential measure will not make a noticeable difference to the prospects of everyday Australians. And yet the government is treating JobMaker as a headline grabber. Here’s a brochure from the government, the centrepiece of their quote “Economic recovery plan for Australia, JobMaker. Creating jobs and rebuilding our economy.” It’s right here on the cover, must be true. It’s glossy. Once again, this liberal national government is misrepresenting announcements as achievements. A well-worn ploy that many marketers use and coupled with a glossy brochure. And with diagrams and with high vis vests and headlines and lots of colour. JobMaker is budgeted to cost $4 billion. Yet with only 45,000 jobs likely to be created the cost is actually only $400 million. To put that into perspective the government will spend $400 million on job keeper, in one day, $400 million is one day’s job keeper and then turn to the number of jobs and training places created in this budget. When they’re added up, they exceed the number of people unemployed. The budget,this budget is a hoax. According to the treasurer’s own numbers, this budget will put everyone back into a training place or a job before the next election. Zero unemployment. Didn’t the treasurer add up all these wild claims in the budget and realise that these numbers just don’t add up? The government has led hyperbole run a muck. Then again, working a calculator has never been treasurer Frydenberg’s strong suit. Job keeper itself was out by just $60 billion. The coalition’s restart programme was announced in 2014, as a $10,000 subsidy to help 30,000 older Australians back into the workforce every year. Six years later, And this scheme has helped only 9,000 older Australians a year. less than a third of the 30,000 a year the government announced. Even worse,almost half of those workers terminated, once the minimum employment period ended. That leaves just 4,500 per year. On top of that, many of the businesses that claimed restart we’re not serious about putting on a new employee. Instead those businesses were serious about free money from the government. And that’s the problem with corporate welfare. It turns businesses into subsidy farms, reliant on the government. It creates phoney jobs not sustainable jobs, not breadwinner jobs. It creates weaker accompanies, not stronger companies. It replaces the profit motive with a handout mentality. One nation opposes corporate welfare a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to large corporations. This government’s economic recovery plan for Australia is more corporate welfare more printing money to give to the banks more pumping up the housing bubble. That’s it. That’s the whole plan. If the government was fair dinkum about creating jobs, it would create the right business environment for growth. It would invest in restoring our country’s productive capacity. The productive capacity that’s been destroyed, by a lack of infrastructure by decimation of our electricity sector which is driving manufacturers overseas. We’ve gone from the lowest electricity prices in the world to the highest and manufacturers are leaving in their droves and taking with them their jobs to China, India, and Asia. So restoring our productive capacity includes building dams, new power stations, roads, bridges, and transmission lines. And it involves cutting red tape, cutting blue tape and cutting green tape. And it would involve if the government had courage, comprehensive tax reform. So that we have a proper honest, effective, and efficient taxation system a transparent taxation system. And then let the economy get on with the business of creating jobs and wealth for all Australians. Instead ,this government chooses to promote a casualized workforce. JobMaker is not about creating full-time work. It is the reverse. It motivates indeed drives businesses to replace one full-time employee with two casual employees. Replacing one real breadwinner job, with two junk jobs. The JobMaker protections around higher payroll and head counts allow for this casualization process. This is an attack on breadwinner jobs, jobs that can support families, jobs that can put kids through school and universities. So kids have another option for a better life than did their parents. Remember that Australia. Remember when kids faired better than their parents? under successive Liberal National and Labour Greens Governments. That’s a thing of the past. Our generation is the first generation to pass on less to our kids, not more. Less wealth, less opportunity, less freedom. And the Liberal National Party have form on this. Prime Minister Howard’s Government spent 11 years breaking up full-time breadwinner jobs into junk jobs, casual and part-time work. Jobs that have no bargaining power low wages, less entitlements and less security. And I’ve talked about that many times in the Senate. I’ve got so much data and evidence on that. There is no wealth creation in these low paid casual subsistence jobs. As a result Australia’s median wage has gone backwards over the last 30 years. And why some union bosses have gone along with this is beyond me. But we can talk about that another day. Today we’re talking about the liberal party declaring war on families, war on holidays, war on workers home ownership and war on everyday Australians. trying desperately to accumulate wealth, just to stash a bit away for the future. JobMaker is another nail in the coffin of Australian families. Courtesy of the corporate greed, hubris and arrogance that has overtaken the liberal national party. One nation opposes this legislation, this marketing ploy instead of trying to look good, governments should do good. We need to get our country back to basics. Invest in restoring our country’s productive capacity. That’s what decides our country’s future.
Is leave granted? Leave is granted for one minute, Senator Roberts.
Thank you. I support this motion concerning the need to create a credible and effective integrity commission. The integrity commission once established must offer the features as identified by the Centre for Public Integrity, which I firmly support. I’ve also had the opportunity to see the government’s recently released draft Commonwealth Integrity Commission Bill and note that in its present state it requires considerable amendment prior to receiving full support. A sound Integrity Commission would maintain a broad jurisdiction to investigate corrupt conduct within the public sector with strong investigative powers. It should be empowered to hold public hearings whenever this was in the public interest to do so. This is fundamental to the operations of an effective integrity commission. The commission should be able to investigate corruption independently on its own initiative, even if based on tip-offs from the public and their referral process should be broad. There should be no limitations on the possible findings of corrupt conduct of parliamentarians or public servants. The bill must be able to operate retrospectively so as to deal with recent alleged anomalies in the conduct of persons managing the Great Barrier Reef fund and Murray-Darling water buybacks
I serve the people of Queensland in Australia. Yet, I’ve lived, worked and studied for five years in the USA and travelled through all 50 states. And I know that under the United States Constitution, the declaration of the polls in a presidential election is not made by the media nor by political parties and certainly not the commentariat. The Declaration of the poll is made by each state legislature. Pennsylvania has ordered a recount. Other states will follow because state legislatures are committed to counting every legal vote. As of today, not one legislature has declared a result and several states have now been precluded from declaring due to legal challenges to voting irregularities. This election won’t be resolved for weeks, so congratulating former Vice President Biden is premature. Now I understand the greens are getting excited that a Biden or Harris presidency will advance the socialist green agenda. What will this socialist green agenda do to the United States? It’ll raise power prices as unreliable solar and wind energy expands and destroys baseload power generation wiping out small and medium businesses and heavy industry. Under President Trump, heavy industry returned to the United States and brought high paying breadwinner jobs back for American workers. The Democrats green new deal will destroy those jobs forever. Americans thrown out of work by green policies will be forced onto a subsistence allowance from the government for the rest of their lives. This the greens have euphemistically named a universal basic income and basic it will be. According to Stanford University, these policies will destroy 4.9 million jobs and reduce America’s GDP by 2.9 trillion US dollars every year of a Biden or Harris presidency. This is news to most people that I talked to which is a damning indictment of the news media. The presentation of news is worse than just fake news. Mainstream media has devolved to being propaganda. President Trump’s greatest achievements, have been ignored by fake news. So let me remind every one of these the lowest black unemployment rate in history the lowest Hispanic unemployment rate in history, the lowest female unemployment rates since World War II, the highest number of black led business startups in history, the highest number of female led business startups in history, the first president in 30 years to not start a new war, five Nobel Peace Prize nominations for peace deals. The socialist takeover of America will destroy these gains And end in misery.
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/y4ptGUgkT28/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-11-11 10:23:162020-11-23 14:49:36Media has no authority to call US election
Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I’m delighted to say that this bill holds enormous promise. For far too long, cannabis and hemp have been suppressed for reasons that have everything to do with established interests, and nothing to do with the merits of the plant.
That has hurt people for years and is hurting hundreds of thousands of people now. This bill addresses one area that has been holding back the Australian cannabis and hemp industry. Currently, there is no formal system for providing approvals for the export of medical cannabis and hemp.
The approval must apply, the producer, sorry, must apply to the minister for an ad-hoc approval. While approvals have been granted, the volumes are a fraction of the potential that this crop offers. The Export Control Act, 2020 came in this year and it allows the minister to make rules that govern the issue of exports certificates.
If a substance is on the list, rules are issued to regulate the export of that substance. Now cannabis and hemp were not originally included in that bill. This amendment corrects that. Cannabis and hemp growers and manufacturers can now have certainty about the rules for export.
Every grower is on the same footing. All who meet the rules can get an export licence and sell the product into the world market, and what a market that is? The cannabis and hemp market in Australia is expected to grow to a billion dollars in just four years and double that to $2 billion by 2028.
And at that time, our near neighbours in Asia, in the Asian market will exceed $10 billion. This is a wonderful opportunity, the start of a wonderful opportunity. Australia’s reputation as a high quality, safe supplier of food and medicine will help our producers take a significant share of that huge market.
And I must compliment the government’s decision to require all cannabis producers to follow the International Safety and Quality Standard known as the GMP, good manufacturing practise. Quality processing has been instrumental in growing our reputation for trusted product and that means a lot to people overseas and in Australia.
Internationally, the world market for cannabis and hemp is expected to reach $50 billion by 2030. Some of this growth is from the trend to legalise recreational cannabis, which I need to make clear, One Nation does not support.
We do support natural, Australian whole plant medical cannabis by way of doctor’s prescription to any person with a medical need, supplied by a pharmacist, subsidised on the PBS. I note that the government is also looking to reschedule low THC cannabis into schedule three as an over-the-counter, chemist-only medication.
One Nation supports that reschedule. We have long pushed for this. The Liberal government talks about market efficiency but in the cannabis market, we have nothing but over-regulation and disincentives to enter the market. This bill will help but there is much, much more to be done.
I draw the government’s attention to the review of the Narcotic Drugs act conducted by Professor McMillan, which reported almost 12 months ago, July 2019. Professor McMillan made 26 recommendations to improve the commercial efficiency of the cannabis market in Australia.
None, none of those recommendations have currently been implemented. Many of those recommendations dovetail nicely with the intent of the Export Control Legislation Amendment to develop an Australian export industry for cannabis and hemp.
The report calls for a reduction in the onerous conditions being applied to the industry and to people who work in it. These restrictions are an unnecessary and costly barrier to efficient quality production. They’re holding our farmers back, they’re holding everyone in the supply chain back and holding customers back.
Professor McMillan has recommended that a single licence be issued for all or some of cultivation, production, manufacture and research. This is instead of the individual licences currently being required at each step. The report also suggested licences be valid for five years rather than 12 months.
Now most exported cannabis and hemp is value added, allowing one producer to now grow, process, manufacturer and research new products and a five year licence guarantees the security of their investment, which improves the return of their investment.
By encouraging vertical integration, our producers can benefit from multiple profit centres and insulate against fluctuations in one area of this emerging market. Export opportunities will be enhanced by a wider range of products offered for sale. Volume and diversity resulting from export markets will benefit domestic patients as well.
So let me explain. Currently medical cannabis is prohibitively expensive. This is in part due to the high administrative, regulatory and security costs imposed on each stage of the process from cultivating or importing through to selling the product to a patient.
This high cost is spread across low volumes because of restricted access making each prescription too expensive for patients to afford. And that creates an ongoing cycle of high prices and low affordability leading to low volume which leads to high prices. It’s a vicious cycle.
This bill represents a way out of that self-defeating cycle by allowing for the current small domestic demand to be met from high volume, low cost export production. Medical cannabis is best used when the plant has been processed as little as possible. It is a wonderful natural product.
Conversion into vaping solutions, patches, topicals and capsules does not disturb the compound profile of the plant. It is a wonderful product. Since medical cannabis has been legal for many years in well, most nations on the planet, we are seeing an explosion in new hybridised varieties of medical strains of cannabis.
I’ve seen some of them myself. These have been developed to provide an optimum profile for a specific medical condition. This wonderful plant, and it has many varieties can be tailored to specific needs of patients. And there are many patients in desperate need of this.
Hundreds of different varieties are now available to the world market, hundreds. The more of these varieties that can be grown in Australia to support export demand, the greater the variety that will be available to supply domestic patients. People can have this marvelous natural plant tailored to suit their specific medical needs.
With a professional, efficient, and profitable export industry, Australian patients will be able to access the exact cannabis profile for their particular health condition at much reduced prices, much greater value. So as a senator from Queensland, I’m excited that we have a growing centre for cannabis excellence in Southport.
Our beautiful climate is perfectly suited to growing hemp for food, textiles, cosmetics, oil, building products, and so much more. Queensland will be on the forefront of this multi billion dollar export industry for both hemp and cannabis.
One Nation’s policy of restoring property rights for farmers and building more dams will deliver to our farmers the capacity to grow Australia’s agricultural capacity through hemp and cannabis. Before closing, I want to reiterate what our party leader, Senator Hanson said and express my thanks to Senator Coleman from the Liberal Party and Senator Kitching from the Labor Party.
It was them who made it possible because Senator Hansen and some of our staff have been pushing for this for years vigorously and it’s wonderful to see this step. Tiny though it is, it is a wonderful step. So thank you. In closing, may I suggest that the success of this bill will depend upon what the export rules for cannabis are.
To date, rules on medical cannabis and hemp have been so damn onerous. People were left wondering if the government was fair dinkum about a plant that has so many proven applications, and so many successful runs on the board overseas.
We look forward to the government proving through fair and effective regulation, that they are indeed genuine about implementing this bill’s attention, thank you.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Capture-1.png?fit=551%2C308&ssl=1308551Harriet Blackhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngHarriet Black2020-06-17 15:15:002020-07-07 15:16:19Medical Cannabis & Hemp export industry given green light
