Malcolm’s Official Speeches in Parliament

One Nation is the True Champion for the Environment

,

As I travel through Queensland, visiting communities affected by industrial wind and solar projects, it’s increasingly evident that Greens’ politics are rife with hypocrisy and the public know it. While they present themselves as champions of the environment, they support the massive environmental vandalism involved in the push for net-zero energy.

Tops of mountains in native forests are being blown off to accommodate massive wind turbines and permanent access roads, which require blasting, are being constructed to transport enormous wind turbine blades—some over 100 meters long—around corners and up the mountain. Additionally, thousands of kilometres of forest are being clear-felled to make way for the transmission lines that will deliver the power to the cities, where Green supporters can pat themselves on the back for using “green” energy.

In reality, there’s nothing green about green energy and there’s nothing green about the Australian Greens. One Nation is the true champion of the natural environment now.

Transcript

And what do the Greens do? After finally showing their true colours as the party of Hamas; as the party of left-wing union thuggery, donations and bribes; as the party of communism; and as the party of environmental destruction in the name of net zero energy, they have a problem. Their traditional base of decent Australians concerned about the natural environment is turning away from the watermelon Greens. So here’s the Greens’ answer: resurrect a bill which was already defeated because it’s a stupid bill, and use this to pretend the Greens still care about our precious natural environment. 

The intention of this bill is in the name: ending native forest logging. Regional forest agreements will be made subservient to environmental regulations which will tie logging down in the courts and bring logging to an end—end logging. All those workers, many of them fine union members, will be out of a job. It is logging that produces timber for, amongst other things, the very seats the Greens are sitting in today, right now, which were made from logged native timber—Western Australian jarrah and Tasmanian myrtle. 

Putting aside their hypocrisy, it’s clear the Greens think their supporters can be gullibly convinced by a superficial virtue-signalling stunt. After all, who would oppose protecting native forests? Actually, the Greens oppose protecting native forests. Greens’ energy policies are blasting the tops off mountains in old-growth forests to erect 300-metre-high wind turbines. They’re clear-felling thousands of kilometres of forest for access roads and the power transmission lines to get the power hundreds of kilometres back to the city—thousands of kilometres, in fact, back to the city. Thousands of hectares of native forest are being permanently destroyed.  

Blasting has released arsenic previously locked in sandstone into our waterways and aquifers. In the case of the Atherton Tableland in pristine North Queensland, aquifers contaminated with arsenic will eventually come to the surface in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, through underground basins.  

Unlike forest taken for logging, forest damage from net zero energy is not regrown. The access roads are required for maintenance for the life of the turbine. The transmission lines are permanent. Unlike coalmines that are remediated at the end of the mine, there’s no remediation bond on industrial wind, solar and transmission lines, so these things will be a rusting blight on the landscape for a hundred years, for the community to pay for, for taxpayers to pay to rehabilitate and for farmers to rehabilitate. The Greens are environmental vandals. 

I tell you who does support protecting native forests: One Nation. We would end the environmental destruction from net zero energy measures and would restrict solar panels to built-up areas where the energy is needed. We would end any new wind turbine subsidies and instead promote vertical wind technology. One Nation will prevent logging in old-growth forests. 

Regional forest agreements are an accord between the federal, state and local governments to supervise the timber industry. This means the Greens believe they know better than the state governments—all six of them—who have been managing their forests for 200 years. Aboriginals have been managing Australia’s forests for tens of thousands of years, including through the use of burning off. Each state government consults with Aboriginal communities in the development of regional forest agreements. Aboriginal voices only matter, though, to the Greens when they can be exploited to advance Greens technology and lock Aboriginals into victimhood and dependency.  

Generations of ongoing development of forestry agreements, planning out supply and demand, protecting sensitive habitats and protecting old-growth forests—all that great work involving communities, industry and government is torn up and thrown away because the Greens think they know better. They are playing God, playing tsar. What an ego—and to what benefit? 

The Greens are proclaiming their love of housing and promising to build more houses than anyone else. The question arises: out of what are they going to build those houses? The Greens want to shut down the Australian forestry industry, the conventional steel industry, the gas industry, the diesel industry and the cement industry. The Greens are proposing to build houses without timber, steel or concrete. Well, the last time I looked, pixie dust was not a building material. Does the CFMEU know they’re hopping into bed with a political party that would remove from the market all the materials tradies need to build a new home and build new apartment towers while also removing diesel for tradies’ generators and utes, which they now propose to tax out of existence? 

I don’t want to confuse the feelings coming from my left with facts, yet that’s what I do. I deal in facts. At last mapping, there were 131½ million hectares of native forest in Australia, which is 17 per cent of Australia’s land area, and there were 1.8 million hectares of commercial plantations, including pines and eucalypts. This is where most logging occurs, yet it’s not enough to sustain Australia’s demand for timber. There are 30 million hectares of land, most of that privately owned, which can be logged under the careful management of regional forest agreements. Last year, two per cent of those 30 million hectares were logged, meaning Australia is logging 600,000 hectares out of the 133 million hectares available, less than one half of one per cent of our native forests. 

What happens when a forest is logged? Is it clear-felled, never to grow anything again? Of course not. Forestry is about renewal. That’s the whole point of regional forestry agreements. The logging industry is allowed to go in and take the productive timber, remove the stunted and useless timber and then leave that forest to regenerate for 10 years or so before returning to repeat the cycle. Habitat is not destroyed; it’s enhanced. Forests are not destroyed; they’re enhanced. Rather than helping our forests, this Greens bill will harm them. 

Logging removes the fuel from the forest. It thins the trees and protects native forest from bushfires. There are huge areas of this country that have never fully recovered from the bushfires during the drought because some native forests contain so much fuel they burned like hell. What happened to the wildlife the Greens profess to care so much about? They were incinerated—agonisingly, cruelly incinerated. The damage to native flora and fauna caused in those bushfires resulted directly from restrictions on burn-offs, something sensible forest management would have mediated. They tried to, but the Greens stopped it. This is the problem with communists. They think imperious proclamations are a substitute for good government facts and data. They are wrong. 

Let’s be clear: it has been illegal to log old-growth forests for the entirety of this century. I know there has been some intrusion into old-growth forests. This bill from the Greens won’t deal with that problem, though, because the intrusion is mostly coming from the construction of wind turbines, access roads, solar panels and transmission lines, which the Greens adore and love and drive. Illegal logging, logging that damages old-growth forests, must be prosecuted, and One Nation will prosecute offenders. 

One Nation opposes this bill, because we are the party of the environment and we know the current system is best for the environment. As someone who has personally planted thousands of trees, rehabilitated land and protected coastlines, I know One Nation is now the party of the natural environment. 

/by

One Nation’s Plan to Restore Australian Farming : End Net Zero Madness

,

In this video I outline One Nation’s plan to restore Australian farming – within the 60 seconds I was allotted to debate the Nationals’ motion on the issue. 

It’s an easy solution: end the net zero madness! 

Net zero is a policy of the Liberals, the Nationals, Labor, the Greens, and the Teals. Their collective commitment to net zero is destroying farming through the death of a thousand regulatory cuts, strangling farmers with restrictions on water use, farm chemicals, fertilisers, on their soil. This is choking the life out of rural Australia in the name of reducing carbon dioxide, which helps grow the very food these net zero ideologues eat. 

In reality, net zero means net zero food, net zero clothing, net zero freedom and net zero travel. The UN and the World Economic Forum are pushing for food to be produced in near-urban intensive food manufacturing facilities producing cultural lab-grown meat, forced greens with no cell structure and bug protein. It’s time to let Australian farmers once again feed and clothe the world.  

Let’s end government driven by ideology and restore common sense to farming. 

Transcript

How would One Nation restore Australian farming—explained in the 60 seconds the Nationals have allocated me? It’s easy: end the net zero madness. Net zero is a policy of the Liberals, the Nationals, the Labor Party, the Greens and the teals. Each committed to destroying farming through the death of a thousand regulatory cuts, strangling farmers with restrictions on water use, on farm chemicals and fertilisers and even on their soil. This is strangling the life out of rural Australia in the name of reducing carbon dioxide, which fertilises the very food these net zero ideologues eat. 

Net zero really means net zero food, net zero clothes, net zero freedom and net zero travel. We’ve been told by the UN and the World Economic Forum that food will be produced in near-urban intensive food-manufacturing facilities producing cultured laboratory meat, forced greens with no cell structure and bug protein. Allow Australian farmers to once again feed and clothe the world. It’s time to end government by ideology. 

/by

Labor Rejects Call for Royal Commission into COVID-19 Response

,

Last year I was successful in having the Senate inquire into the prospective terms of reference for a Royal Commission into the government response to COVID-19. The Inquiry was held in good faith by Senator Scarr and I thank everyone concerned for their work, which produced a 128 page report full of honesty, decency and common sense. After hearing and reading testimony from multiple highly qualified witnesses, every one of whom called for a Royal Commission.

The Committee recommended a Royal Commission be held and included a comprehensive Terms of Reference that would have uncovered the truth. Last week, the Government provided a response to the Inquiry Report, which stated that the Government does not support a Royal Commission, does not support working with the States to review COVID, does not support the proposed terms of reference and does not support you, the public, having further involvement in the inquiry process.

This is the same Labor Party that took one million dollars from the pharmaceutical industry in 2022/23, including large donations from Pfizer and Astra Zeneca.

Do we have the best government money can buy? You decide.

Transcript

I move: 

That the Senate take note of the document. 

I wish to comment on Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee report COVID-19 Royal Commission. Last year, I was successful in having the Senate inquire into the prospective terms of reference for a royal commission into the government response to COVID-19. The inquiry was held, and I thank Senator Paul Scarr for his even-handed treatment of the process and for producing with the secretariat at an excellent report—outstanding! After hearing and reading testimony from multiple highly qualified witnesses, every one of whom called for a royal commission, the committee did, in fact, recommend a royal commission be held. Their report was 128 pages of honesty, decency and common sense. 

Last week, the government provided its response to the report—one-and-a-bit pages. Here’s what it says: ‘The government does not support a royal commission. The government does not support working with the state governments on an inquiry. The government does not support the proposed terms of reference. The government does not support any further public involvement in the inquiry process.’ How can we have an investigation when the government says it does not support working with the state governments, yet it’s got an inquiry underway right now that is not considering the state governments. Instead, the Albanese Labor government will continue with their cover-up inquiry, comprised of two bureaucrats and a university academic closely involved in the COVID response. Shame! The government is letting bureaucrats and academics investigate themselves. What a disgrace! It is betrayal. It’s inhuman.  

During the last election campaign, the Prime Minister promised a royal commission or similar inquiry. A Senate select committee inquiry would fit that description. Then Senator Gallagher promised us a royal commission. No wonder the public distrust politicians, when two promises that were as clear as day were broken the minute the Labor Party came to power. It does raise this question, though: what was the motivation for the government to proceed with a cover-up instead of its promised judicial inquiry? Could it be the donations the Labor Party received from the pharmaceutical industry in the last election?  

Here’s the list from the Australian Electoral Commission of donations made to the Australian Labor Party in 2022-23: AbbVie, the makers of leuprorelin, a puberty blocker, $14,000; Alexion Pharmaceuticals, $33,000; Amgen biopharmaceuticals, $27,500; Aspen Medical, $83,000; AstraZeneca, $33,000, and isn’t there a huge conflict of interest in refusing to investigate them; Bayer, $33,000; Bristol-Myers, $52,000; HA Tech pharmaceuticals, $54,000; and Johnson Johnson pharmaceuticals, $36,000. Kerching, kerching, kerching! The cash register at the Labor Party is ticking over. Here are more donations: Merck Sharpe Dohme, $66,000; Navitas, $33,000; Pfizer, $25,000—another cash register kerchinging. There was Roche, $66,000; Sanofi-Aventis, $42,000; Pharmacy Guild of Australia, who enjoyed years of profit dispensing high-paying COVID injections, $154,000; and Medicines Australia, the peak lobbying body for the pharmaceutical industry, which just gave the former head of the TGA, Professor Skerritt, a job as a director, donated $112,000 to the Labor Party campaign funds—kerching! Including smaller donations, the Labor Party raked in almost a million dollars from pharmaceutical companies and associated favours bought. It’s not just big pharma, either. Remember when you couldn’t get COVID at Bunnings, yet you could get it at your neighbourhood hardware store? Governments forced many hardware stores to stop business during lockdowns, and they went broke while Bunnings grew its market share. Then they set up vaccination stations in their car parks. I know many people thought that was odd, so let’s look at this list of donations. The owners of Bunnings, Wesfarmers, donated $110,000. For completeness, let me list One Nation’s pharma donations in 2022-23: none! There was not one donation from the pharmaceutical industry, the banking industry, the healthcare industry or the net-zero industry. Why? It’s because One Nation is not for sale. 

I will now review what the government is covering up with their refusal to hold a COVID royal commission. This is based on expert witness testimony to the committee inquiry and on peer-reviewed papers and data analysis which have come out since the inquiry. Firstly, testimony before America’s congress proves SARS-CoV-2 was the product of gain-of-function research, with funding from Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health, managed through Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance. The research started in the USA, and when President Obama banned gain-of-function research, it was moved to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. But the research continued secretly and illegally in North Carolina. We know that. In 2021, Australia’s CSIRO confirmed it assisted in the Wuhan research. We’re complicit. 

Secondly, the official timeline for COVID is wrong. The University of Siena in Italy sequenced COVID on 10 October 2019. Unconfirmed reports persist of three lab technicians from Wuhan lab presenting with flu-like symptoms to a hospital in Wuhan in mid-September 2019. Those three were COVID patients ‘zero’. Wuhan has 90 direct overseas flights a day, including five a day into Italy and five a day into Australia, where symptomatic infections started showing up around the end of December 2019. This means that, in October 2019, when the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored the COVID-themed Event 201 war game that the World Economic Forum organised, COVID was alive in public. Note that the Nobel Prize winning virologist Luc Montagnier sequenced COVID in April 2020 and found: ‘It is not natural. It’s the work of professionals and of molecular biologists—a very meticulous work.’ Luc declared the virus was a combination of the original man-made SARS virus, parts of the HIV virus and a bat virus which was there to fool the body’s immune system into thinking it had never seen the virus before and as a result had no immune response to it. 

The fact the virus escaped before it could be perfected has saved billions of lives. What they tried to do was evil personified. Here is an example. The RNA genome of SARS-CoV-2 consists of 30,000 nucleotides and 11 major coding genes. Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna took the 4,284 nucleotides constituting the spike protein. At positions K986P and V987P, they introduced mutations to stimulate increased production of human antibodies. Those spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 are involved in receptor recognition, viral attachment and entry into the host cells. The last part is significant. Both COVID itself and the mutated vaccine material enter human cells. There’s certainty on this point. These COVID vaccines are gene therapies yet are not regulated as such. No safety testing was done on the long-term effect of introducing a mutated COVID DNA strand into the human genome. 

Secondly, Oxford University investigated brain injury from COVID. It mapped the brains of 785 participants and waited for them to get COVID; 401 obliged, creating a control of 384. All were scanned a second time, and any brain function difference was attributed to COVID spike proteins. Oxford University found: ‘significant longitudinal effects, including a reduction in grey matter thickness and tissue contrast, changes in markers of tissue damage in regions functionally connected to the olfactory function and a reduction in global brain size in the SARS-CoV-2 cases. The participants who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 showed on average a greater cognitive decline between the two time points.’ The paper concluded these results may indicate degenerative spread of the disease through olfactory pathways through the nose. Doctors who advocated for nasal preparations were actually right. The nose turns out to be the key. One study found 471 bacterial agents in 171 face masks, many of which had high resistance to antibiotics. This was an important issue for the royal commission to understand. Thirdly, Yonker et al. from Massachusetts General Hospital tested young people presenting with chest pains and found free spike antigen was detected in the blood of adolescents and young adults who developed post-mRNA-vaccine myocarditis, linking the shots with heart disease in the young. Fourthly, we knew as early as November 2021 that spike protein could build up in the lungs, heart, kidney and liver, causing an inflammatory response, yet we kept injecting spike proteins into people, including children, over and over. Now they’re dying suddenly and doctors are baffled—the hell they’re baffled. 

Fifthly, SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins, meaning most likely the shots as well, have serious effects on the vasculature of multiple organ systems, including the brain. Outcomes include fatal microclot formation and, in rare cases, encephalitis. Wait a minute. Isn’t New South Wales now urging parents to vaccinate their children against a sudden outbreak of encephalitis? COVID and COVID shots are the same man-made poison, yet we never tested the shots long enough to reveal that. Now people are dying and suffering life-altering disease while we continue to inject the public with boosters containing the very substance that is causing these deaths and injuries. 

Today I’m announcing that, in the first week of December, I will be conducting the third of my full-day reviews of COVID, to be called ‘COVID in trial’. I promise to hound those responsible— 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Allman-Payne): Thank you, Senator Roberts. Do you wish to seek leave to continue your remarks? 

Senator ROBERTS: Yes, I seek leave to continue my remarks. 

Leave granted. 

References

https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing‐wrap‐up‐dr‐fauci‐held‐publicly‐accountable‐by‐select‐subcommittee/

https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2021/june/response‐to‐the‐australian‐25‐june‐2021

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8778320/

https://www.weforum.org/press/2019/10/live‐simulation‐exercise‐to‐prepare‐public‐and‐private‐leaders‐for‐pandemic‐response/

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020‐04/21/c_138995413.htm

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/prca.202300048

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586‐022‐04569‐5

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9883076/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36597886/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003‐021‐02856‐x

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33053430

/15 Comments/by

Labor’s LGBTIQA+ Agenda for Kids

,

At the same time Prime Minister Albanese is floating a proposal to ban children under 16 on social media, the Victorian ALP is promoting an LGBTIQA+ agenda to children 5 years old and up.  This includes using libraries to carry “educational” books like ‘Welcome to Sex’, which are in fact sex instruction manuals. 

Additionally, the guidelines promote drag queen story time and involve asking 5-year-olds about their preferred pronouns. Even more concerning, library staff are instructed to actively inquire about the children’s pronouns and even if known, offer them the opportunity to discuss their gender preference. At 5 years of age! 

When the Prime Minister talks of keeping children safe, he clearly isn’t talking about keeping them safe from groomers who want to introduce adult concepts to young children in ways that can only lead to confusion. 

In this speech, I review the literature on transgender surgery and highlight how this agenda is harming children with no medical benefits. 

Transcript

I note that staff in libraries across Victoria have been given a new LGBTQIA+ instruction called the ‘rainbow libraries toolkit’, which requires libraries to ask the gender and pronouns of children as young as five. Five! The Allan Labor government launched the toolkit. It advises library staff that adding books on gender diversity to their collections and promoting the drag queen story events to children will make them more LGBTQIA+ friendly. The toolkit advises library staff not to assume the gender pronouns of primary school age children. The explanation for this is: 

It is also important to recognise that, especially for young people, gender identity and sexuality can shift or evolve over time. 

Children in particular may want to experiment with different gender expressions through dressing up, and we can support them by avoiding mapping our expectations of gender onto them. 

Library staff are told that even if they are “familiar” with a child who visits their library, they should “leave room for them to express a change in their identity”, including by prompting them if they still go by the same pronouns. 

Checking in casually about their pronouns (“Do you still prefer he/him pronouns?”‘; “Do you still go by Sam, or is there something else you’d like me to use?”) … 

What the hell is going on? When these books—written for children, supposedly—are opened, it’s easy to see that they’re actually instruction manuals for sex. Who puts gender propaganda into libraries for primary school age children to access? Who runs drag queen shows for children? Who talks to children as young as five about their gender identity? Groomers do. The Australian Labor Party does. Who knew that the ‘P’ in ‘ALP’ stands for ‘perverts’? 

The inevitable outcome of this childhood grooming will be an increase in gender dysphoria in children, leading to increased pharmaceutical interventions. Here is what we know about the drugs used in gender dysphoria, commonly called puberty blockers. According to the TGA product assessment for leuprolide, the purpose of the approval is for the treatment of cancer. The drug reduces the production of hormones on which cancer feeds—fair enough, for adults. This reduction in hormones causes ‘atrophy of the reproductive organs’. What are the side effects? DAEN case 816594, 26 July 2024, female age nine years: side effects included pain and fat necrosis. Fat necrosis, according to the Cleveland Clinic in America, is the death of fat tissue in the breast or other organs. The damaged fat may be replaced with a cyst or scar tissue—nice! DAEN shows that there have been 42 reports of adverse events from leuprolide among children aged 10 or less. Less than half of the reports include age, so the real figure will be much higher. 

This drug cost taxpayers $271 for a low-dose and $1,370 for a high-dose prescription. At a time when taxpayers are struggling with the cost of living, why is the Albanese Labor government choosing to spend taxpayers’ money on this? The propaganda around this very expensive drug is that these changes are not permanent, and the transgender lobby repeat this as a mantra. It’s a lie. The condition that is reversible is precocious puberty, where a child goes into puberty at a very young age. Puberty blockers do indeed prevent that child from going into puberty, until they are removed from the drug, usually at around 11 years of age. The extension of that safety data to any child is the great lie of childhood transgender experimentation. There is no proof that these drugs are safe for a child who is not suffering the raised hormone levels associated with precocious puberty. 

This is not my opinion; Britain’s National Health Service has changed their guidance on children and puberty blockers, preventing their use for the gender dysphoria on the basis that: ‘Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. The effects of bone density in children whose central precocious puberty is arrested with puberty blockers are considered unknown, as they have not been studied.’ Why the hell not? Why are these things handed out like confetti and like candy when we don’t know their long-term health impacts? That is not responsible. It’s criminal. It’s inhumane. 

A groundbreaking documentary from the state-run television channel in Sweden has revealed a shocking case of bone damage in one child, Leo. He’s one of 13 children treated at the Karolinska University Hospital who are known to have suffered catastrophic injuries from puberty blockers. Their ailments include liver damage, mental health problems, skeletal damage and a failure to grow. From that investigation: 

Leo is in pain most of the time. His back hurts badly when he stands up or walks. It is a hard life for a teenager, and he has no idea if the agony will ever go away. 

And: 

He has spinal fractures and a condition called osteopenia, which weakens the bones, making them more liable to break. It is a disease that you often see in people aged 60 or 70 and is almost impossible to reverse.’ 

The overwhelming evidence is that this atrophy, this damage to the reproductive organs of children, is permanent. We are administering this to children under 10, and it’s sterilising them. It’s this evidence that has seen 25 American states ban the pharmaceutical mutilation of children. 

Likewise, the transgender lobby will tell you that a cross-gender-identifying child has a greater risk of suicide without puberty blockers. A comprehensive literature review published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society found said there was no statistical signal that suicides increase or decrease from pharmaceutical gender intervention. So, before the Munchausen-by-proxy brigade and the lining-their-pockets brigade come after me, I suggest you take a long, hard look at yourselves. In Senate estimates hearings I asked the TGA if they had conducted safety testing and approved these drugs for use in children, and I was advised they had. I have a motion in the list for tomorrow calling for the release of that data, which is not on the TGA website. 

In good conscience, One Nation cannot support the continued harming of our children for a condition that can be treated successfully with counselling and love. One Nation will continue to defend the family and children from the perversions of the Labor Party and, bizarrely, from Victorian librarians. 

Tonight I ask whether this Senate can have confidence in the integrity and competency of investigations of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, ASIC. It was only a few months ago that the Senate Economics References Committee handed down a scandalous inquiry report which documented how ASIC has comprehensively failed the Australian people. Now further information has come to light which shows ASIC has once again failed to protect everyday Australians. This failure is ASIC’s criminal investigation into a precious metal dealership, ABC Bullion, that occurred between July 2022 and August 2023. 

Over the course of 13 months, ASIC spent approximately $300,000 to investigate serious allegations regarding ABC Bullion’s storage services, including whether the physical gold and silver bullion of Australian investors was missing. ASIC closed its investigation on 10 August 2023, stating it would take no further action. This is a decision I disagree with on the basis of information I have at hand, and it’s troubling that current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took the unprecedented step of holding a national press conference with the directors of ABC Bullion and its parent company, Pallion group, and providing them an explicit personal endorsement. This press conference occurred while the ASIC investigation into possible fraud was underway. 

Pallion is Australia’s third-largest private company, and I’m sure that carries weight with ASIC and the office of the Prime Minister. This endorsement was despite the Australian Taxation Office’s highly publicised pursuit of Pallion over the past decade. This tax office investigation cost millions of dollars and covered alleged involvement in an elaborate GST fraud scheme and an illegal phoenixing activity. This saw the tax office succeed in a legal bid to appoint liquidators to the phoenix Pallion group while continuing to pursue the current Pallion entity. The Prime Minister endorsed a company that was under two separate government investigations, from ASIC and the ATO, both of which should rightly have been known to the office of the Prime Minister. 

Why would the Prime Minister endorse a company under two government investigations? Recently, independent investigators have found more troubling information about the millions ABC are charging mum-and-dad investors to hold bullion in their secure facility in Marrickville. Firstly, ASIC did not physically inspect any ABC Bullion or Pallion group facility for 9½ months, providing ample opportunity for the Prime Minister’s mates to physically alter the evidence. 

Secondly, on 31 July 2022, a mere 3½ weeks after the ASIC investigators tipped off ABC Bullion that it was under investigation, ABC Bullion moved an undisclosed quantity of physical bullion from a tiny room in the Sydney CBD to an industrial building located in Marrickville. This building did not then, and does not now, have a valid occupation certificate, meaning that ABC Bullion and its sister company, Pallion Equipment, have been, under New South Wales law, illegally occupying a building for more than two years. In the past month Inner West Council has officially declared this occupation to be, in their words, ‘unlawful’. 

Thirdly, this unlawful occupation was never disclosed to ABC Bullion’s insurers, despite it being required under law. Such nondisclosure provides the insurer with a legal right to void any insurance contract, thus exposing investors to significant risk without their knowledge. 

In summary, ASIC investigated the Prime Minister’s mates and gave them a clean bill of health, even though easily identifiable illegal activity was occurring under their nose. (Time expired) 

/7 Comments/by

One Nation’s Plan: Making Homeownership Possible for All Australians

,

Australians deserves to be able to afford a house. Only One Nation has the guts to propose real solutions to make sure the Australian dream is a reality for all Australians.

It’s time to kill the policies that are destroying Australians’ chances at home ownership.

Transcript

Last week’s Courier Mail is reporting: ‘New tent cities have been set up near some of Brisbane’s busiest intersections as Queensland emerges as the epicentre of the housing crisis. The latest tent city to hit Brisbane is at E.E. McCormick Place, where tents can be seen sitting on the edge of a major arterial road, with clothes hanging on lines and camp showers draping off trees.’ The chief executive of Queensland Council of Social Services—QCOSS—Aimee McVeigh, said the housing crisis was not being properly addressed, going on to say: ‘It’s incredibly heartbreaking but unfortunately pretty predictable that we’re continuing to see people, including families with children, who don’t have a safe place to call home.’ 

I’ve visited large tent cities in South Brisbane on the Brisbane River banks, in Mackay and in Townsville, and I’ve seen smaller tent cities in far too many provincial centres to list. Speaking with those residents, I was horrified to find just how many were families with children. The really sad part is that mum and dad may both have jobs. Yet, without a home for the children, one parent has to give up working to look after their children, because a tent is no place for a child. There are children living in tents. Losing that income guarantees that family will remain homeless. Thank you, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. 

The truth is the housing and rent crisis is out of control. In August 2020, the national average rent was $437 a week. It’s now $627. That’s an increase of 40 per cent over just a few years. The national rental vacancy is at just one per cent, which is far below the three per cent rate that is considered a healthy market. In 1987, the average house cost 2.8 times the average income. Today a house is 9.7 times the average income. Additionally, under this government, real wages in Australia have gone backwards six per cent. Not only are houses more expensive; working Australians are further away from being able to afford them. Many people under 30 have given up hope of ever owning a home. What a failure of governance under Labor! Surely the prime directive of a government is to leave this beautiful country in a better state than you found it in. The reverse is happening; it’s worse. 

Over the past two decades, under the Liberal and Labor ‘uniparty’, wealth inequality in Australia has increased dramatically and substantially. According to the University of New South Wales, the wealth of the top 20 per cent of people increased 82 per cent, and the wealth of the bottom 20 per cent only increased 20 per cent. That, though, does not stop the university grabbing just as much of that wealth for themselves as they can. The university lobby group, Universities Australia, recently sent my office a press release stating they could prove that 702,000 foreign students didn’t put strain on the housing market. Actually, they didn’t say 702,000; the release rather dishonestly spoke of the 200,000 new students who arrived this year rather than the total number of foreign students, which is 702,000, all needing a bed and a roof. 

To achieve this feat of denial, Universities Australia use a simple statistical trick. They use the vacancy rate as an indicator instead of rental price. Like any supply-and-demand industry, rental prices will rise until demand matches supply. This means vacancy rates should be constant across different areas, because the balancing factor is not vacancy rates; it’s rental price. Rentals are higher near a university, as landlords price into their rents the ability to have three or four students per bedroom. And, knowing how those rates are being paid with so many tenants, local councils hike up rates to exploit overcrowding. 

The national vacancy rate across Australia has fallen from 2.42 per cent in 2021 to 1.09 per cent in January 2024 because of the housing catastrophe. Why? In part because foreign students all need a bed, and more so because two million new arrivals all need a bed. Universities couldn’t care less about everyday Australians sleeping in tents, in public parks and under bridges. Universities are motivated to grab the money foreign students pay towards obscene multimillion-dollar university salaries. University fees are on average eight times what they were when the Hawke Labor government reintroduced tertiary fees in 1989. 

I’m pleased to see racketeering mentioned in this motion. So many Australian industries are being controlled for the benefit of well-connected and mostly foreign wealth funds, acting against the financial interests of everyday Australians. Racketeering could be a separate inquiry, so entrenched has the practice become. 

When it comes to ignoring working families, Labor has form. It’s clear. The reason I’m raising this in a housing speech is quite simple: university affordability is no better than it was before HECS, except now children of everyday Australians are left with a debt so high that they can’t ever afford their own home. So many young people contact my office—Australians who have done everything society has asked of them. They have studied hard, worked hard, stayed out of trouble and got a university degree, and now have a good job, only to find they were lied to. Real wages in Australia are back to 2010 levels, while houses are twice as expensive as they were in 2010. HECS debt comes off a person’s ability to repay a loan, which means its reduces their borrowing power below the price of an entry level home. They can’t borrow. Meanwhile, rents are so high that they have no ability to even save a deposit. Society is lying to our young Australians. This is not on the Labor Party alone; these problems date back to the Hawke Labor government and were made far worse under the Howard Liberal government—the uniparty at work! The message I have for recent graduates is one of hope. One Nation’s housing policy looks to the future, offering commonsense solutions to help more Australians purchase their own home while at the same time reducing rent. 

Let’s have an overview of our housing policy. One Nation’s housing policy includes lowering immigration to sustainable levels to reduce housing demand; in fact, I will go further and say, with 2.3 million people on residence visas, we need to send some home. We would ban foreign ownership of residential property to increase housing supply; allow a portion of a person’s superannuation to be invested in home purchase; ditch Labor’s housing future fund and invest those funds into creating a new people’s mortgage scheme, offering a five per cent deposit and a five per cent interest rate; allow people with a HECS debt to roll their debt into a people’s mortgage account, improving their ability to obtain and service a loan—this is common sense and humane; and implement a five-year moratorium on charging GST on the materials used in new home construction, which will make new homes more affordable, taking $1.4 billion off the sale price of new homes over the next four years. 

Here are some more details. Non-bank financial institutions stand ready right now to take on the mortgage market and administer our people’s home loans. They’re ready. Indeed, some are in the market now in company with aggregators. It’s One Nation policy to create a people’s bank to provide Australia’s obscenely profitable banking cartel with real competition. We don’t have four major banks; we have one major bank with four different logos, with the same controlling interest—BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and First State. Efficiency in banking, including in the housing market, will not come from more regulation; it will come from more competition, driving real accountability. That’s exactly what the original Commonwealth Bank did when it was formed in 1911. 

The cost of building a house now is a massive problem. One of the reasons costs keep going up is Australian construction codes. Construction codes are meant to make sure our houses aren’t made of straw and won’t blow down if the big bad wolf, or a cyclone, huffs and puffs. Unfortunately, Australia’s construction codes have gone woke; they’re no longer just about safe houses. The National Construction Code was amended in 2022 to require all new buildings to be NDIS compliant—every single building to be NDIS compliant. Alan Kohler reports that global construction consultant Rider Levett Bucknall estimates that this adds up to $49,500 to the cost of a dwelling. Why should a young family have to shell out an extra $50,000 on features they’ll never need in order to buy their family home? Some of the requirements border on ridiculous. There must be a stepless entry to the front door, so the days of steps are over—even a handful up to your front porch. You’d have to pay for a ramp or potentially face having your home deemed illegal. 

Remember, this applies to every new building. All new homes must be built with heavy-duty, reinforced walls and a toilet. These are ostensibly so grab rails can be installed, even though they may never be installed. Where did you want to put the toilet? You didn’t think you could just put it where you wanted and where it’s convenient, did you? Are you considering skipping a toilet on the ground floor and only having one upstairs to save on plumbing? Think again. The construction codes say no. You’re forced to have one on the ground floor whether it’s cost effective for you or not and whether you need it or not. The codes now dictate where the toilet must be placed. It must be against a wall, with huge spaces left around it. As the price of land continues to go up, many houses simply don’t have the floor space to accommodate these new requirements without sacrificing others. 

Young people are paying for this, even though they don’t need it. No doubt these criteria are helpful for people with a disability, yet there’s no reason to make them mandatory in every new house for people without a disability. Many in government claim that, when it comes to housing, the problem is supply. When these changes to the construction codes alone are costing an extra $50,000 a house, there’s no hope of boosting supply, because Australians can’t afford to build. Construction codes are getting so long and complex that we practically need to be lawyers to decipher them. That’s no slight on our tradies. Most are far smarter and more useful than lawyers anyway. Our tradies should be using their hands on power tools and paintbrushes, not having to turn over pages and pages of regulations telling them how to swing a hammer. The same applies to our farmers, who are buried in paperwork. 

Unions like the CFMEU endorse these complex additions because it means more work for them. Meanwhile, quotes to build a new house leave Australians gobsmacked. The people who can afford these expensive houses are millionaire foreign buyers. There’s no doubt that foreigners are buying houses here, and that comes at the expense of an Australian who can’t get into a house. Where are the Labor government’s union mates when it comes to the issue of foreign buyers? They’re completely silent. The government calls it foreign investment. Wrong, it’s not investment. This is foreign ownership. Worst of all, Australians can’t believe what the government tells us about how many foreigners are buying houses. The Foreign Investment Review Board says foreigners buy less than one per cent of houses, yet the New South Wales state government charges a foreign purchase tax, a surcharge, and records that the number is more than double that. Surveys say it’s much higher. 

When you ask real estate agents who they are selling to, as the NAB property survey does, they say the number of foreign buyers is 10 per cent. What about shelf companies, trusts with beneficial interests or so-called dark money in foreign retail purchases? Are foreign buyers of housing sneaking through the cracks? I’ve been trying to get this question answered since November with a series of technical questions to the Australian Taxation Office. They run a data-matching program which matches the 2.4 million names of every seller and purchaser of every house in the country against ATO records. Theres’s a simple question about those records: how many of those 2.4 million names are Australian citizens, and how many aren’t—how many are foreign? Trying to get the ATO to answer that question is like trying to get blood out of a stone, yet we’re still selling houses en masse to foreigners. 

To be frank, whatever the answer, one house a foreigner buys is one too many, especially in the housing crisis. We’re in the middle of a housing crisis, a catastrophe, when there should be zero foreign ownership of Australian housing. It’s in Australia’s interest to make it zero foreign housing, just like Canada and New Zealand have recently done, yet where are the Labor government and unions like the CFMEU? They encourage more immigration and more foreign ownership and push the price of houses higher, as do the Greens, and then want a rent ceiling. 

When Labor and the union-backed super funds aren’t encouraging foreigners to snatch homes away from Australians, they’re making sure renters will have multinational corporations as landlords—BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. The concept is known as ‘build to rent’. It’s about letting huge corporations like BlackRock and Vanguard build housing estates and unit blocks so that people will be stuck renting from them forever. The government touts this as a solution to the housing crisis. Creating forever renters who are paying corporate company landlords is not a fix; it’s serfdom. 

A real solution is One Nation’s policies to get more Australians owning their own home. The Albanese Labor government is responding to a problem of their own making. Housing approvals are falling as red and green tape slow down the approval process and as building codes put developers off. Housing approvals are the lowest they’ve been for many years. Construction is falling as costs rise both from an increase in raw materials and from an increase in interest rates—and from an increase in the number of bureaucrats that you’ve appointed instead of tradies. Sales are falling in line with falling real wages and increasing home prices. A labour shortage is correctly blamed, yet we had 2.3 million new arrivals, and only a few thousand of those were builders. 

As I said, it is a problem of the government’s own making. The only response the government has is to throw taxpayers’ money at the problem. Without blocks of land, without builders, without tradies, without building materials and without buyers, money can’t achieve anything. One Nation’s housing policy will get young Australians into their own homes—even those with a HECS debt that is preventing them saving for their own home and those working families living under bridges, in tents, in caravan parks, in showgrounds and in city parks. It’s time for new, commonsense ideas. If people care about Australians, then it’s time for One Nation. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Pratt): The question before us is that the motion moved by Senator Cash be agreed to. A division having been called, we will defer that division until tomorrow morning. The debate is adjourned accordingly. 

/5 Comments/by

Former Minister Matt Kean’s Conflict of Interest Exposed!

,

Corruption and conflicts of interest are rife in Government. Very few are as blatant as former Minister Matt Kean, who will be chairing the agency helping to set the price of carbon credits while getting paid by an investment company that makes money out of carbon credits!

End the net-zero pipe dream and this will all go away.

Transcript

The chair of the agency that helps set the price of carbon credits is paid a government salary as the federal adviser and regulator and will simultaneously be on the payroll of a company that makes money out of carbon credits.

In June the Albanese Labor government appointed Matt Kean as the Climate Change Authority chair. Given his track record, how can Matt Kean be considered a qualified choice? As New South Wales Treasurer, his last budget tripled their deficit and put them on track for a $160 billion debt. As energy minister he left their grid facing blackouts with the proposed shutdown of Liddell and Eraring power stations.

Matt Kean’s glaring incompetence, though, pales beside his conflict of interest. The Climate Change Authority that Kean chairs, from which he advises the government, influences the price of carbon credits. Two months after getting the job, Matt Kean accepted a second job. The Climate Change Authority mustn’t be doing too much if the chair has time to shop himself around for other part-time jobs. When the chair is chasing other careers, do we really need a Climate Change Authority? That second job is with Wollemi Capital, who will make millions from investing in carbon credits. Matt Kean is chair of the government agency that helps set the price of carbon credits while he works for a company that will make money out of carbon credits. It seems that Australia has the best politicians that money can buy.

What does the Albanese Labor government say about this blatant conflict of interest? Nothing. Silence. The government is happy to put the fox in charge of the henhouse, and Australians will continue to pay.

The government’s appointment confirms that climate fraud is all about transferring wealth from us the people to corporations and to billionaire parasites taking solar and wind subsidies while fleecing carbon dioxide credits. Only One Nation will end the wind and solar subsidies rort, ditch the net zero plans and rorts, and fire Matt Kean.

/2 Comments/by

Government Strips Medals Over Brereton Report Allegations

,

One day after the anniversary of 9/11 and three days after the Royal Commission into Defence and Veterans Suicide, the government has decided to strip medals from some junior and mid level officers over war crime allegations in the Brereton Report. Despite this, the former Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Campbell, is wearing a medal for commanding those same people he has said should be stripped of their medals.

Accountability starts at the top. Defence Minister Richard Marles stands condemned for his decision and its timing.

Transcript

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Defence, Senator Wong. Minister, on the recommendation of the then Chief of the Defence Force General Angus Campbell, the government will strip distinguished service medals from soldiers for allegations of war crimes that have not been proven in a criminal court, yet the government will not strip the Distinguished Service Cross medal off General Campbell. Minister, why do soldiers under General Campbell ‘s command lose medals while he keeps his medal for commanding them?

Senator WONG: I thank the senator for his question. Senator Roberts, as the Deputy Prime Minister has stated to the House of Representatives today, we finalised our commitment to close out the recommendations of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan inquiry report, known as the Brereton report, which was commissioned in 2016. The report found credible information of alleged unlawful killings of 39 individuals in 23 separate incidents. Further, there was credible information of a subculture of elitism and deviation from acceptable standards. It made a broad range of findings and 143 recommendations. As the Deputy Prime Minister has outlined, we have taken final action as a consequence of that report resulting in the closure of 139 of these recommendations.

Two recommendations of the report related to command accountability and the treatment of honours and awards given to commanders during the relevant period. These recommendations relate to a small number of individuals who held command positions during the period in which the inquiry found evidence of unlawful conduct. The Deputy Prime Minister has written to—

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts?

Senator Roberts: President, on a point of order: the question was very specific about Angus Campbell’s Distinguished Service Cross. Why won’t it be stripped?

The PRESIDENT: The minister is being relevant to your question, Senator Roberts. Minister, please continue.

Senator WONG: Senator Roberts, I was seeking to respond by way of explaining how we are dealing with the recommendations of the report which relate to command accountability. I understand that the Minister for Defence, the DPM, has written to those whose awards were referred for consideration to advise that there has been a conclusion to that consideration of those awards. Decisions that have been made in relation to those awards are consistent with the findings and recommendations of the Brereton report. Decisions around command accountability are consistent with those same findings. Obviously we’re not in a position, given the Privacy Act, to disclose the details— (Time expired)

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a first supplementary?

Minister, the Brereton report specifically excluded any findings on command accountability. The implementation oversight panel, though, provided independent advice to government that the Brereton report, in doing this, was inappropriate and that senior command accountability must be examined. Why are Defence’s most senior leaders being let off scot-free on allegations in the Brereton report and why is your government ignoring the oversight panel’s advice?

Senator WONG: I will see if I can get any further information to respond to the assertion in relation to the panel because I don’t recall the facts being quite as you assert them, Senator Roberts, but it isn’t in my portfolio and so I will certainly have a look at that. But, as I read out in my primary response, two of the recommendations of the Brereton report did relate to command accountability and the treatment of honours and awards given to commanders during the relevant period. There was an alternative assertion in your question, and that is not the advice to me. We have acted on the basis of and in a manner consistent with those recommendations.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a second supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, the criterion for the Distinguished Service Cross at the time General Campbell was nominated required him to be ‘in action’, meaning in direct contact with an enemy, yet there are no records of General Campbell being in action. Why does your government refuse to have the honours and awards appeals tribunal examine his award?

Senator WONG: Senator Roberts, I think that is a slightly different question to the one you asked me, which related to the Brereton report. In relation to the actual awarding of those honours, that’s obviously not a political decision but a decision that is governed within that honours and awards system. I would make the point that these matters have been canvassed at length by, I think, Senator Lambie in a number of estimates, and I’d refer you to those answers, including direct answers—to my recollection, including before the change of government—from General Campbell himself.

/3 Comments/by

Ditch the Net Zero Nonsense!

,

We need to protect the environment from the absolute destruction that is being inflicted on it by wind and solar projects.

It’s time to force these projects – that are pushed by billionaires – to pay in advance for the environment they are disturbing and commit to restoring it. In reality, they’ll never commit because they know the damage they are causing will take millions to repair.

Let’s ditch the net-zero nonsense before we’re left with zero environment for our children.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Unlike with coalmines, there’s no obligation for industrial wind and solar sites to rehabilitate the land. The cost of pulling down wind and solar sites is left completely with landowners and farmers who have no idea what they’re signing up for. Minister, does your wind and solar plan rely on saddling farmers with the entire cost of disposal, or will your government legislate rehabilitation bonds for wind and solar projects?

Senator Wong: Senator, what I would say to you is that there has been a lot of investment and a lot of interest from Australians, in terms of both investors and landowners and landholders, to be part of this transition. It is true that there are a lot of challenges associated with it, including investment in transmission, which is one of the reasons why the government is working on both increasing the flexibility of the system and also ensuring that more capacity is delivered across the country. For example, our Capacity Investment Scheme has delivered over 32 gigawatts of capacity. We’ve had the largest ever single tender for renewable energy, which is currently open for bids.

In relation to your issues, I don’t have advice on— (Time expired)

/by

Net Zero Policies Plays a Part in High Inflation

,

The Greens’ and Labor’s net zero policies are a large part of why we have high inflation. By replacing low cost coal with expensive industrial wind and solar, power prices rise, which then drives up prices across the board.

The Motion from Greens’ Senator McKim to introduce price controls to combat inflation is an example of “feel good” politics. Price controls often lead to companies withdrawing from the supply chain, leading to inevitable shortages and black markets.

In what was once the “lucky country,” this would be a tragedy!

Transcript

Inflation is out of control across the Australian economy. It’s disgraceful though for the Greens to leverage this human disaster to advance their green communist ideology. Advocating price controls is the economics of wishful thinking—a victory of feelings over facts, common sense, historical experience and basic economics. Price controls don’t work. They have never worked and will never work, and they make things worse. 

The price of an item is not some magical creature with a life of its own that government can control. Price is an outcome of other factors—material costs, input costs and retailer margins, to name a few. In recent times, the Greens have talked about the lack of competition in retailing, especially in food retailing, but they have missed the point. The answer to poor competition is not price controls; it’s more competition. It is Harris Farm Markets opening new concept stores that rival Coles and Woolworths. It’s the Reject Shop, which increasingly undercuts Coles and Woolies by significant amounts. It’s your local butcher or produce store, which now sell products cheaper than Coles and Woolies. 

To a degree, the Greens are using misdirection. They’re asking Australians to look over here at profiteering instead of looking at the root cause of inflation, which is the increasing cost of business inputs, starting with the Greens’ own net zero energy policies. Net zero fairytale power is pushing up power prices, and, if power goes up, everything goes up. Farmers need power to run their coolrooms, they need diesel to run their farm equipment and they need fertiliser, which is made from natural gas. Manufacturers and wholesalers need electricity, gas and diesel for every aspect of their operations, yet the Greens are over there on my left—on everyone’s left, really—advocating for no new oil or gas projects. Scarcity causes the price to rise. Their own net zero policies are a major cause of inflation. Now the Greens want to fix that with price controls. Controlling the price causes producers, wholesalers and retailers to go broke as their input costs exceed their selling price. To stay in business, these companies will most likely stop selling anything they sell at a loss. 

This is exactly what happened in Venezuela and Sri Lanka, where price controls led to food shortages and black markets appearing for food staples. Criminal gangs moved into those black markets. I know Coles and Woolies are bad, but I would take them over criminal gangs. Sri Lanka is especially relevant here. Their food crisis was caused by forcing farmers to abandon the use of hydrocarbon fertilisers and pesticides in the name of net zero—inhuman. Farm productivity fell and prices rose, as farmers tried to make enough money to feed their families. The government intervened with price controls. The result was food shortages, starvation and then rioting that forced the government to back down and, once again, allow modern production techniques to feed the people. Another problem with price controls is that investment moves away from industries that are rendered unprofitable with price controls. Investment in buildings, equipment, software and staff training will fall in price-controlled industries. That is fact that has been proven repeatedly throughout history. This leaves long-term supply deficits that will keep prices higher for longer and hurt everyday citizens. 

Unlike the Greens’ policies, One Nation’s policies will solve the cost-of-living and housing crisis without making either problem worse. We will do the opposite of the Greens, which is always a good policy. We will reduce red, green and blue tape. We will reduce new arrivals until the market can fairly provide for those who are already here. In housing, we will prevent homes being owned by those outside of Australia and allow councils to impose penalty rates on vacant homes or on those being used for casual letting which conflicts with the zoning. We will review the federal government housing code, which imposes unnecessary requirements, including making every house wheelchair friendly despite there being no wheelchair users in the house. I understand that that adds about $40,000 to the price of every new house. We will allow Australians to use their super to invest in their own home. We will create a people’s bank to provide mortgages at five per cent interest over 30 years on a five per cent deposit and allow a HECS debt to be rolled into the mortgage so that people can get a home loan. This policy means that an Australian with a good job, even if they have a HECS debt, will be able to afford their own home now and start paying it off. 

There are many, many ways to solve the humanitarian disaster that the policies of successive Liberal and Labor governments have created. Price controls and green policies on housing, immigration, the environment, mining and farming are the exact opposite. One Nation wants to free up the people and free up our markets. 

/by

Net Zero Policies Fuel Rising Cost of Living

,

The cost of living continues to skyrocket out of control.

This government is pouring fuel on the fire with its net zero policies making everything in the economy more expensive. The true scale of how crazy their plans are is apparent with some simple figures. Yet this government is ignorant to the damage they are causing.

Fix the cost of living and bring down inflation – ditch the net zero plans.

Transcript | Part 1 – Question Time

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister. For every 100 megawatts of installed coal-fired power station capacity, the production of electricity average is around 95 to 98 megawatts. For every 100 megawatts of installed solar and wind generation capacity, though, the actual production of electricity average is just 23 megawatts, with wind itself being just 21. This means that to achieve design capacity, more than four times the installed rated capacity is required—almost five times for wind. Minister, is this included in Labor’s transition costs?

Senator McAllister: Thanks very much for the question, Senator Roberts. In terms of costings, we take the advice of the experts. We’ve had this conversation more than once, in fact, in the context of estimates and in other forums. AEMO works through a range of scenarios and configurations for the National Electricity Market and makes an assessment of the optimal pathway to meet our energy requirements at the optimal cost. They do consider, of course, the capacity factors of the different options that are available to us. There’s actually quite a lot of work to do. The truth is that we inherited a mess in the energy system. When we came in, the average wholesale energy price was $286 a megawatt hour—

The PRESIDENT: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts?

Senator ROBERTS: Point of order on relevance: standing order 72(3)(c) says that answers shall be directly relevant to each question. Can we get on to whether or not Labor is aware—

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, as I’ve reminded other senators in this place, make your point of order but don’t follow it up with a statement. The minister is being directly relevant to the points of your question. Minister McAllister, please continue.

Senator McAllister: Thanks, President. As I was saying, we came to government with a lot of work to do because the previous government had 22 energy policies, all of which failed. None of them landed. During the period when they were in government, four gigawatts of dispatchable capacity left the system and only one came on. We actually need to take steps to sort that out, because the previous government was repeatedly warned by the market operator that a failure to deal with the impending closure of coal-fired power stations was going to cause a reliability problem. We have sought advice from the experts at the market operator to help us design the policy settings that will actually allow us to replace that exit in capacity. It’s a lot more than anything that was ever delivered by the people opposite. The very great shame is that, for a person who I know seeks to represent people in Queensland, you show an odd lack of interest in the opportunities that come about as a consequence of making and facilitating these investments, which have the potential to bring jobs and new industry to the communities that you claim to care about.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS: During morning and evening peak hours, for every 100 megawatts of installed solar and wind generation capacity, the actual production of electricity averages just 10 megawatts. This means that achieving design capacity requires 10 times the installed rated capacity. Minister, what impact does this massive additional cost have on solar and wind installation capital costs and on electricity prices?

Senator McAllister: Senator, your question actually omits a really important part of the advice that we received from the market operator. The advice that we received—and it’s based on very significant economic modelling and engagement with a whole range of market participants and experts in the energy system—is that the optimal configuration of technology for a future grid involves renewables, firmed by storage, including batteries, and supplemented by gas. That’s the plan that has been recommended to us, and the policy settings that we’ve put in place are designed to allow investment in those kinds of technologies to be brought forward. As I indicated in my answer to your primary question, there is a problem because there was an extended period
when the lack of certainty in the policy settings of the previous government meant that the necessary investment didn’t take place, and we are taking steps to remedy that problem.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS: A modern coal-fired power station is expected to last 60 years. Solar panels and wind turbines are expected to last 12 to 15 years—at most, 20. Over the 60-year life of a coal-fired power plant, the combination of wind and solar cobbled together to replace a single coal plant will need to be replaced four times. Minister, when will Labor release its system cost of the 2050 grid system?

Senator McAllister: As the senator would know if he’d examined the Integrated System Plan, it does include a costing for the capital costs associated with building the grid out to 2050. So the answer is: it is released and updated on a regular basis by way of the Integrated System Plan. That’s the basis on which we establish our policies to deal with the transition that’s underway in the electricity system. The truth is that it is underway, Senator Roberts. I know that that is a proposition you don’t agree with, but in just two years we’ve seen a 25 per cent increase in our national grid in the cheapest and cleanest form of energy that there is, which is reliable renewables, and we’ve ticked off enough reliable renewables projects to power three million homes. Those things matter. Establishing a clear pathway for the electricity supply that’s necessary to meet the needs of households and businesses is an absolute priority for this government and should be for every other government as well.

Transcript | Part 2 – Take Note

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy (Senator McAllister) to a question without notice I asked today relating to the cost of the net zero wind and solar transition.

With this so-called transition, both major parties are artificially increasing the cost of energy, pouring fuel on the inflation and cost-of-living crises. Labor and the Liberals planning to run the grid on net zero is trying to smash a square peg into a round hole.

In question time I used simple, proven facts and figures to show these plans are ridiculous. It comes down to something called ‘capacity factor’. That describes how much electricity we actually get from various types of power stations. A coal-fired power station runs at nearly a 95 per cent capacity factor or higher. That means, if we install a 100-megawatt coal-fired power station, on average, including downtime for maintenance, we get about 95 megawatts out of it over time.

Wind and solar are far lower. Their average capacity factor is just 23 per cent. That means that to replace 100 megawatts of coal-fired power we need to build 400 megawatts of wind and solar. Even if we do this massive and costly overbuild, it’s not guaranteed that wind and solar power will be available when we need it. At peak hours, morning and evening, when most people turn on devices and appliances, the capacity factor of wind and solar is just 10 per cent. We’re up for 1,000 megawatts of wind and solar to replace each 100 megawatts of coal-fired power, plus the billions of dollars in batteries and the tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines.

A coal-fired power station lasts 60 years—four times longer than wind and solar, which must be replaced after 15 years or so. That’s another four times the expense for solar and wind, making it a total of 4,000 megawatts to replace each 100 megawatts of coal power—40 times more expensive.

This supposed plan is not a plan; it’s lunacy. It’s costing trillions of dollars. This insanity and deceit are driving up the cost of living. Only One Nation will stop subsidising large-scale wind and solar to bring down power bills for all Australians.

Question agreed to.

/by