Leave the children alone!

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One Nation attempted to refer “gender affirmation” treatment to a Senate inquiry to expose the harm that is being done to our children.

The gender cult is hell-bent on confusing our kids and leading them down the path of irreversible changes for no medical outcome. We must protect our children from these predators.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support Senator Hanson’s motion to refer the issue of treatment options for young people with gender dysphoria to an inquiry. It’s a simple fact that the model of gender affirmation is completely experimental, and that’s at best. More likely, it’s mutilation and debasement of children. Gender affirmation treatment is putting children who feel confusion about their gender at a young age on the pathway to life-altering hormone blockers and irreversible surgery. It’s butchery when children need something else.

People seem to have difficulty accepting this, but some feelings of confusion are completely normal as teenagers make their way through puberty and experience many new changes to their bodies. Left alone or dealt with by counselling and therapy—and love, in the severe cases—these feelings almost always resolve themselves. That is fact. Children need love, compassion, support and respect.

I have a relative who had gender dysphoria much of her life. She contemplated gender surgery. She decided to start the process. She made the decision, and, before doing so, she decided she would not adopt chemicals or surgery. She and her doctor wife came to accept her dysphoria. They are now proud parents of a lovely young child, and we accept and love her regardless of her decision. I have a friend who did change gender the opposite way, from male to female—another lovely person. These people need to be accepted, but children need support, counselling and love, not chemicals and scalpels.

As I said, the alternative to this gender affirmation is leaving kids to work through their issues lovingly, with support, counselling and therapy. The alternative is gender affirmation. Gender affirmation involves telling children that sex is just an arbitrary concept—that’s a lie—and that you can choose to be a boy or a girl whenever you want; with a click of the fingers, you can change teams with little to no consequence. Introducing this idea around the time of puberty and of other feelings of confusion is a dangerous, risky cocktail. Right at the time children are feeling most confused, they’re told that nothing is real and that everything will be fixed if they simply switch teams. The gender affirmation witchdoctors won’t tell children that fully committing to pretending to be a boy or a girl, if they weren’t born that way, simply isn’t simple. Basic biology gets in the way.

The only way to try and eventually effect this change is through a potent, permanent and dangerous cocktail of drugs, they are told, often prescribed off label in addition to permanent, irreversible surgery to lop off bits of people’s bodies. Gender affirmation advocates claim these treatments are reversible. That is a lie. Many children who were pressured into the gender affirmation pathway are coming to regret those choices as adults. De-transitioners are a growing community of adults who now find they will never fully embody their target gender yet are unable to return to the gender they were born due to the irreversible effects of gender affirmation drugs and surgeries. Instead, they’re left dependent on expensive cocktails of gender hormone drugs for the rest of their lives.

The real winner out of the gender affirmation pathway is big pharma, being delivered waves upon waves of medication-dependent consumers for life. It’s worth billions of dollars, despite the small number of people. The victims of the gender affirmation pathway, though, are left destitute, with no accountability for the outcomes that extremists in the gender cult pushed onto them from an adolescent age—extremists like senators in this chamber—for whatever reason.

It’s important to keep in mind the issue that’s trying to be fixed here: feelings of confusion or stress in children going through adolescence. There’s no longitudinal evidence that the gender affirmation pathway leading to gender reassignment fixes the core issue. There’s much evidence that it does not and that it does enormous harm. In fact, the transgender community is at the highest risk of suicide of nearly any community in the world. Why? Because so many young people come to regret their change and are trapped—trapped for life, in being unable to change back to their birth gender, which they’ve come to accept. They are trapped for life, unable to have children themselves, unable to live a normal life and regretting their decision for the rest of their life because they made their decision as an impressionable child. Whether they’re simply predisposed to psychological distress or that distress is created or compounded by the failed gender affirmation pathway is difficult to say. What can be said, however, is that if reassignment surgeries and drugs are meant to be a cure for psychological distress in children, they have absolutely and obviously failed. They’re failing many, many children.

The truth is that putting children on the gender affirmation pathway is a pathway to butchering people for no healthy clinical outcome. Many medical whistleblowers have raised these concerns. I’ll say that again: many medical whistleblowers have raised these concerns, yet have been shouted down by the powerful big pharma and transgender cult that holds power at the moment. The United Kingdom has seen this problem and lived this problem. After whistleblowers blew the lid on medical abuse happening at Tavistock gender clinic, the entire clinic was shut down—the entire clinic that was once held up on a pillar and treated as a god. Now it’s facing class action suits and people are recognising the hideous crimes that they have committed.

At the very least, these issues need to be referred to a committee for inquiry. Those who support the gender affirmation pathway shouldn’t be afraid of the truth through an inquiry. What’s wrong with knowledge? If I’m wrong, then an inquiry will prove you right. Of what are you lot afraid? Greens use labels. Labels are the refuge of the ignorant, the dishonest or the fearful. They support big pharma. Please stop demonising children with gender dysphoria and those who have a different view. I suspect the gender cult knows that the truth is not on their side and that’s why they’re running scared of looking underneath the hood on this issue—an issue affecting children.

One Nation will stand against sending children down a path of drug dependency and body mutilation to appease the gender cult. I’m never caught up in gender, race or national heritage. Every human, regardless of skin colour, for example, and regardless of heritage, has red blood running through their veins—every single human.

We are one. I am very, very pro-human.

Send this to an inquiry and get to the facts and find out what will actually help children. Until then, leave our kids alone.

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The Budget – Malcolm Roberts on Sky News

I joined the Sky News panel last night to discuss the budget being handed down and what it means for Australians.

The most important thing to remember is that booming Agriculture and Mining saved the budget this year, not Jim Chalmers. If Labor keeps demonizing these industries and trying to send them broke the country will very quickly get worse.

Transcript

Kieran Gilbert: Welcome back to Budget Night Live. Our crossbench panel of Senate kingmakers are with me now ready to reveal how they’ll vote on the budget’s most polarising policies. Joining me at the desk independent senators Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock, One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts and Greens senator and finance spokesperson, Barbara Pocock. Great to see you all. Thanks for being here.

Senator Lambie, first to you. We’ll get some initial thoughts. What were your overall assessment of the budget?

Jacqui Lambie: It’s great that you’re helping the vulnerable in a certain way, although we’ll come back to that. But what bothers me more than anything, it’s those middle income earners. They are struggling themselves and a lot of them will just be over that threshold, where they won’t receive anything and those interest rates coming up continue to go up. That’s really bothering me. There is nothing for them at all. It’s something like we’re trying to push them further down and therefore a further gap between the rich and the poor. And that bothers me terribly.

The other thing that bothers me too, is when you give rental assistance out, and I know the Greens have been calling for this, for further rental assistance, and you have interest rates going up, that person that’s renting that house to you, has also got to cover their own. I’m not sure that that is going to benefit where it’s meant to go. It’s going to go to the homeowner and that’s what bothers me.

Same with childcare. When you give extra to childcare, unless you cap the fees you are paying that they’re allowed to charge you, guess what’s going to happen on the 15th of June? Every childcare centre that’s out there going to say, “We’re actually putting our fees up.” Okay, it’s great to throw money out there, but you’ve got to put caps on stuff so people don’t continue, so the greed doesn’t go to the top.

Kieran Gilbert: Yeah. Senator Pocock, your thoughts on the efforts tonight? You’ve been pushing for a JobSeeker increase across the board. They’ve delivered on that.

Jacqui Lambie: Is that what you call it?

David Pocock: I mean, the big take takeaway is health, investment in health. Clearly, I think this is an acknowledgement that our universal healthcare system is no longer that universal and there are so many people out there who aren’t seeing their GP, because they simply either can’t get in or can’t afford it. So, great to see investment in health.

Kieran Gilbert: You give a tick on that.

David Pocock: When it comes to JobSeeker, $2.85 a day, it’s a bit laughable, to be honest. It’s embarrassing. This is something that is keeping people in poverty. This is a decision that will leave people in poverty. We hear all this talk about getting people back into the workforce. Experts are saying that when you’ve got people living in poverty, it’s an impediment, it’s a barrier to them getting back into the workforce. So, I think we missed a massive opportunity to actually lift people out of poverty and allow them to get their lives back together, get back into work.

Kieran Gilbert: Isn’t one of the challenges, Barbara Pocock, is the inflationary environment we’re in at the moment? So, the government was cautious about increasing payments too much right now.

Barbara Pocock:

I think there are a lot of people looking to this budget hoping there would be help to let them deal better with the inflationary environment, with the cost of living crisis. I think there’s a lot of disappointment. That trivial increase, I mean $40 a fortnight is not nothing, but it’s not what people need. The rental assistance rise is very small and we’ve got people, it won’t even touch the sides of the rental increases we are seeing in my city, in Adelaide, and across country areas as well. So, a real missed opportunity to fix some of those really pressing questions at the bottom of our income scale and a widening inequality, because there’s some real benefits up the top of the income scale for people who are quite wealthy.

Kieran Gilbert: Malcolm Roberts, did you think the increase in the incentive for bulk billing for GPs was a good move?

Malcolm Roberts: Well, I think it’s fundamental that people understand there’s only one reason why these increases can be paid. That’s the mining industry and the agricultural sector. Jim Chalmers mentioned that we can do this because of the things we export. He won’t mention coal, he won’t mention iron ore, he won’t mention bauxite, he won’t mention agricultural products. That’s the only reason this budget is in surplus, and it shows yet again that the Treasury forecast low prices, but they’ve been saved again by high prices. The mining sector needs to be supported, not vilified.

What we need to do is open more coal mines instead of Plibersek shutting them. So, we need to build more coal-fired power stations and keep those low energy prices, because the other thing is, he’s raised the flag up the pole on energy prices, because he’s admitted that he’s failing 2050 net-zero. The UN’s policy is failing us and energy prices are rising and what we need is cheap power. Just dump the UN 2050 net-zero.

Kieran Gilbert: Been a substantial increase in migration, 400,000 people this year, 315,000 next. Is it time to back the Housing Future Fund, as the government says, because quite clearly more accommodation will be needed, Malcolm?

Malcolm Roberts: More bureaucracy, more bureaucracy, more bureaucracy. What we need to do is get the fundamentals of the economy correct, improve taxation, comprehensive taxation reform. Get rid of the red tape, the green tape, the blue tape. Set the industries free, and then we can have homes built in the right place for the right price.

At the moment, we’re getting to see more bureaucrats just adding. We’ve got three new agencies coming in the housing bill in the parliament right now. I mean, this is absurd. What we need to do is recognise the highly inflationary impact, as Warren just talked about here, of 400,000 people wanting a house. That is fundamental. That will drive up the cost of renting, the cost of housing phenomenally.

Kieran Gilbert: I know that you’ve done a deal with the government, you and your colleagues, for the housing fund. How critical is it now, given those numbers and given what the treasurer said in his speech, reiterating his commitment to it. They want it legislated this week, that fund, and given the increase in migration, sounds more critical than ever.

Jacqui Lambie: Yeah, we hadn’t taken the increase in migration into account. We just wrote about the people here right now that are living here that are without a house. We also know from experience in Tasmania, by doing that housing deal, I can tell you now, by the time you do the greenfield sites, find them, you get state to put in their money to put new pipes and that, out to suburbs and do that infrastructure underneath, it’s a two-year turnaround before you start seeing foundation put in the ground. That’s the truth of the matter. It will take two years and those approvals to do that, it takes about that time. So, that is a concern.

My concern is if you are going to bring migration into this country, and we don’t have a problem with that, the problem is where are we going to put them? This is my question, where are we going to put them? We’ve already got thousands out there screaming for houses. We can’t keep up with that demand. We are never going to catch that demand, mate, that I can see. In the meantime, we don’t have the right tradies. How do we fix this, when we don’t have enough tradies on the ground and how do we bring more immigration in, if we don’t have the houses there?

Kieran Gilbert: It’s a huge task ahead.

Jacqui Lambie: It is a huge task.

Kieran Gilbert: I know the Greens want the government to be more ambitious, but is it time to at least take what you can get and let that bill through?

Barbara Pocock: No, the bill that is there on the table doesn’t even keep up with the growth in people who are looking for housing. It cannot solve the problem. We need to grow supply, but we also most importantly have to deal with renters. One in three Australians are renting. They are really struggling to find-

Kieran Gilbert: There’s an increase in the rental assistance announced today.

Barbara Pocock: It’s very, very small. It’s $1.18 a day. I mean, it’s a tiny increase and we know people can’t find rental properties and they can’t afford it. The price of rental has gone up so much. We’re very unhappy with that bill. We feel like the government has the capability to do much more. I know as an economist, it’s about growing the supply and that bill will not do it fast enough to keep up with what’s projected.

Kieran Gilbert: Even with Jacqui Lambie’s amendments, where there’s going to be a minimum amount?

Barbara Pocock: Well, Jacqui’s amendments create a minimum, but it’s inadequate for my state and it’s inadequate for many parts of the country.

Jacqui Lambie: But the thing is, if you don’t start building these houses now, you’re going to have more people out there. You need to start doing something now. You have the biggest balance of power in that bloody senate up there. That’s what you have and you can’t keep doing deals for more housing. You’ve got to be kidding me. You have to start today. Those people need roofs over their head today.

Barbara Pocock: We need to make sure we get the rental support for the people now.

Jacqui Lambie: You can do that with your balance of power. You keep pushing that. You’ve got that big balance of power. You’ve got more than what Tammy and I have, I can tell you. And you’re not using that.

Barbara Pocock: Well, I think we’re using it very effectively.

Jacqui Lambie: Well, you want to stop people from having a roof over their head. That is disgusting.

Kieran Gilbert: Well, David Pocock, some move is better than nothing. That’s your view, isn’t it?

David Pocock: Well, I think the thing that we’re hearing is we’re facing some enormous challenges as a society. Everything from climate and the environment, people know things are getting bad, to housing, to cost of living. I think people were looking to the government for a big plan, a longer term plan, but we’ve really seen a pretty safe budget, not a lot of tough decisions. In particular around revenue, they’ve really just kicked the can down the road. The changes to the petroleum resource rent tax, it’s just tinkering at the edges. To date, the PRT hasn’t seen a cent from offshore gas projects. The way that they’ve changed it, it’s simply going to bring forward some of those projected flows of money and create some sort of really base royalty. It’s not the sort of reform that we need when we’ve got a budget that has been in structural deficit for so long and we’re just so reliant on personal income tax as a country. That needs to change and it’s going to take some really tough conversations for government.

Kieran Gilbert: Well, with that personal income tax, the stage three tax cuts, Malcolm Roberts, they don’t get a mention in the budget. The treasurer says it’s old news, that the decision’s an old one, it’s done. Government hasn’t changed its position. Do you see that as the government reinforcing their support for it?

Malcolm Roberts: Well, I’d like to build on what David said because what we’re seeing is some fundamental contradictions here. They’re just tinkering at the edges. But the fundamental contradictions are that the Reserve Bank of Australia wants to increase interest rates to send people broke so they stop spending money. Jim Chalmers, on the meantime brings in 400,000 immigrants in one year, which will drive up the price of housing, increasing the cost of living pressures and also splashing cash around, which will drive up inflation. He’s madly stuffing cash back into people’s pockets, and we’re seeing the fundamental contradictions. We need to understand the basics of what’s happening in this budget.

Kieran Gilbert: There’s a huge challenge on the NDIS front as well, Jackie Lambie. 200 people every day going onto the NDIS. They’ve put in an 8% target cap. It’s only a target, but are you worried about the sustainability of that programme?

Jacqui Lambie: What I’m worried about, and I want to be very careful how I say this, but what I’m worried about and what I do know is I’ve got veterans out there and elderly out there, and because the NDIS pays more for services right across the board, for medical services, for gardening services, it means the elderly and the veterans are going without or waiting months and months and months for those services and treatment. That’s what I know because it pays a lot more in the NDIS. Now, I’ve spoken to Minister Shorten about this since he got got in and I’ve seen no change, nor have I seen him raise those amounts for both the elderly and the veterans, so they at least match the NDIS so we have a fair go, because right now, we’ve been pushed down the line with services and medical services, and that is a problem in itself. And yes, the NDIS was always going to blow out. There’s no doubt about that. And we need to find where we can make some savings here, and who really should be on the NDIS and who should not.

Kieran Gilbert: Well, $5 billion growth every year, Barbara Pocock, are you worried about that sustainability, even with the 8% target cap?

Barbara Pocock: It is really important for us to properly fund and properly manage the NDIS, and this budget represents a really significant cut on the projected increases that we need for that programme. So I’m concerned about that. And you mentioned the stage three tax cuts. They are very real in the way that they could be used to fund the things that we need. We need to expand our care economy, pay our childcare workers, the people who didn’t get a real increase in this budget so that we can build the care supports that we need in a population where more and more women are working. And we’ve got a demographic shift where a lot more people, as Jackie says, are getting older and need support as well as properly fund the NDIS.

Malcolm Roberts: And yet we’ve got a 10% shortfall in aged care workers.

Barbara Pocock: Yeah, we need to pay them properly, keep them there.

Malcolm Roberts: 450,000 jobs needed, 45,000 short.

Kieran Gilbert: What’s your read on the NDIS as well, on top of that?

Malcolm Roberts: The NDIS needs a hell of a good look at. We’re going to spend another 700, $800 million on increased staffing to the NDIS. The NDIS fundamental problem is that it was started as a vote catcher, with no real thought behind it. Same with the NBN, same with Gonski. That’s one of the things in this country. The governments do not have the discipline to get the data and make the right decisions. They just come up with floating bubbles every now and then, just to get some headlines.

Kieran Gilbert: David Pocock, to you on the NDIS, they’ve got that target now, that cap of 8% growth every year. But even with that, to this point, it’s been $5 billion growth every year. As someone who supports it, do you also recognise the government’s concerns about the sustainability?

David Pocock: I thought Kurt Fearnley the other day, talking on RN, really nailed it, saying, “We’ve got to remember this is talking about people in our communities who desperately need the support to be able to live lives where they can be included in our society and they can contribute.” And I think that needs to be the basis of this discussion. But we clearly need to be looking at sustainability of a programme like this, and ways that it can be run efficiently and effectively to ensure that it’s there into the future.

Malcolm Roberts: Well, they’re nice words, David, but we need to get the money, and we need to have the discipline and how we spend it. At the moment, people are trying to kill the mining industry, which is the single greatest source of revenue for this country, number one and number two exports come from mining, and they’re trying to kill it. So it just does not make sense.

Kieran Gilbert: Malcolm Roberts, Barbara Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, David Pocock, thank you all. Appreciate your time on budget night and thank you for your company tonight.

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Motion to publish vaccine contracts defeated by Labor/Greens

Today I joined Senators Hanson, Antic, Rennick and Canavan in sponsoring a motion that would have forced the government to publish the Pfizer contracts. These contracts have cost taxpayers billions of dollars and include unspecified indemnities for harm big pharma’s products cause.

Ironically, the “my body my choice” greens teamed up with labor to block this motion that would have ensured transparency and accountability around the products that were mandated into people’s bodies.

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Fishing industry under threat

Transcript

Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts and I’m in Rockhampton with David Swindells and Rob Pie. They’re both fishermen, they’ve been fishing for many years. And I am absolutely stunned and shocked with the stories I’ve heard in the last hour and a half. So we’re just gonna pick a couple of really startling stories. Can you tell us what’s involved when you catch Black Jewfish?

Well, just for me to go and catch a Black Jewfish, which has a quota on of 20 tonne for the commercial sector.

So that’s for a year, the whole commercial sector gets 20 tonnes of Jewfish. Just 20 tonnes for the whole year. I think this year it took 48 days to catch that quota. After that, we were not allowed to go and catch any more. But, while I could got and catch ’em, just to go and catch this fish, I had to ring up fisheries every morning before I left the boat ramp.

Were they in Brisbane?

Oh, gotta ring up Brisbane, on an automated system, which isn’t real good. Then, once I go out there fishing, or I catch a fish, when I come home I’ve got to ring ’em before I get to the boat ramp, let ’em know how many fish I’ve got. I’ve got to the boat ramp, then I have to take ’em to the wholesaler. And when I go to the wholesaler, all this period of time I cannot let that fish outta my sight.

So you can’t even have a leak?

Oh, I wouldn’t want it to be for too long. But anyway, then I can’t let it outta me sight. Then, once I’ve sold it to the wholesaler, I then have to do what they call a CDR, docket to the wholesaler. Then he can have it. Then I have to ring up Brisbane once again and tell them who I’ve sold it to and the weight and the number of fish. And I thought that would be enough. Then I go home again, I then have to put it into my normal logbooks, to send that to Brisbane again. And I have to send that to Brisbane within seven days of entering it in of catching the fish. Now, these regulations are over the top. Now, the State Government has to come and do something for the fishermen. I’m sick and tired of the fishermen being the lower class. It happens all the time. We are not to be stood on. It’s about time the public and the State Government got up and stood up for us.

Now, fishing is one of the biggest, I think it’s the world’s biggest recreational sport, maybe apart from golf. So, you’re not opposed to recreational fishermen. But, if a recreational fisherman catches a Black Jewfish, does he have to do this?

No, if a recreational fisherman catches a Black Jewfish, all he has to do is bring it in whole. He is not allowed to gut it or anything, same as we’re not allowed to gut ’em.

Doesn’t have to report it?

He doesn’t have to report it.

So, just one thing, before we move off your topic and go onto one of Rob’s. The 48 days of catching Black Jewfish for the whole industry, 20 tonnes, last year it was 48 days. So the rest, the other ten and a half months, there’s no Black Jewfish caught?

There’s no Black Jewfish caught commercially, so the public doesn’t get any fresh fish, once again. Like the net free zones, when they brought them in, they stopped 36% of the wild caught Barramundi being fed to the Queensland consumer. Now, don’t our Queensland consumers have some rights? Or is it only the recreational fishermen that they’re looking after? And as far as I’m concerned, they’re only there to get votes. Votes do not put feeds on the table.

Rob, can you tell us quickly about the costs involved? You’ve got what I would call a dinghy, it’s a big more than that, but it’s a dinghy. We’ll get some photos of it. And it costs a recreational fisherman or anyone who wants to buy that same boat with the outboard motor about $25,000. What do you have to pay for it?

Well, if I was to tear the backside out of it now, and to replace that boat it would cost me upwards of $70,000, without me putting equipment on it to shoot away and retrieve trawl nets, as they class the net with fisheries.

And even though the fish take notice of the moon and the tides and what have you, and the weather and the climate, they don’t pay attention to whether it’s weekend or not as far as I know.

No, no.

But you can’t fish on the weekend, even if the tides are suitable and the moon’s suitable.

I can fish in certain parts of the river, but with the net free zones, when there was nets in the river allowed, that was classed as weekend closure, which allowed the commercial fishermen only to work until 6 p.m. Friday night. It was closed from 6 p.m. Friday night to 6 p.m. Sunday afternoon. And then that was open again on 6 p.m. Sunday night for the commercial to set their nets. So, on the weekend, if you called it weekenders and pros clashing, they saw that weekend clash as a way of softening the blow on it and avoiding the fights or whatever may be. Now the net free zones have been declared, the net free zones still have the trawl areas. The big trawl area here is still closed for weekenders for no apparent reason.

No data, nothing.

No.

A lot of these regulations are not based on data, they go against the data. We haven’t got time now, but you’ve given me phenomenal examples of how this is actually hurting the fish that they’re supposedly trying to protect.

Yes.

It’s making it worse for the Barramundi and other fishes.

Yeah, well not only the Barramundi. Like, the Barramundi, they have problems, they eat their own young. And up to a fair size, actually, I’ve caught fish years ago, like probably a 30 pound Barra, probably had three fish up to 10 inches long in it.

So, you’ve actually noticed

Yes.

That there are fewer fish now with the restrictions that you’ve got on you, with fewer fish now than before when there were no restrictions because what you did was keep the balance.

Yeah, well what we used to do, we’re allowed to keep, until the new logbooks came in, and they threw the logbook from the offshore fishery at us for the trawl fishery and out of about 20 different species that you can catch in the offshore trawl fishery, we only catch about five here. So, it’s a useless piece of gear that we’ve gotta fill in that doesn’t reflect what we can catch. What we can catch is prawns, we catch different varieties of prawns. We catch small mullet, herrings, gar and similar fish. If we catch the prawns, we can keep them. But if we catch herrings or gar or small mullet, we’ve gotta return them to the water.

The people are being heard here. Not only the fishermen, but everyone who eats seafood in Queensland, because we’re bringing in more imported seafood because the locals can’t catch it. And it’s just absolutely insane.

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Government has nationalised the fishing industry

Australia has the largest continental shelf fishing zone in the world yet we import close to 75% of our seafood. Why?I had a chat to a couple of fishermen in Mackay to learn about their lives and the problems in the industry.

Transcript

Okay, we’re in the harbour in Mackay with lots of fishing boats behind the camera and I’m with Steve Andrew, the state member from Mirani, a One Nation member of Parliament, Ben Smith, who’s a fisherman out of Bundy.

Yep.

Bundaberg and Paul Newman who’s from Cairns, but you guys fish just about anywhere, don’t you?

Yeah.

Along the East Coast.

Travel the coast, yeah.

Wherever the money, or we think we can do the best.

Get the prawn.

Yeah.

So you’re based in Cairns but you’re in Mackay, you’re based in Bundy, why’re you in Mackay?

It’s just the time of year, we generally, over Christmas, work down home and then from first of March, which season opens here first of March, from then on, we work north of here, sort of thing, from here through to Cairns.

And how long to do you go out at a time?

Oh look, average would be 25 nights.

25 nights in a row.

Anything up to 40, yeah.

And you are up to 100?

Quite often we do a 100 day stint, yeah. From Cairns North, we’ll use some other ship’s services and do 100 days straight.

Wow. And how much fuel do you take on, what does it cost you to fuel up for a month?

$25,000 roughly a month.

$25,000 in fuel a month?

Yeah, that’s roughly, you know.

Do you have to pay excess on that?

No.

No, okay. Well, you do and then you can claim it back.

And what does it cost every week? A thousand bucks or something in insurance you said?

Oh look, between, say, 700 and 1000 a week.

Wow.

With the two boats, I think, 16, 18, a quarter or something like that, and I’ve actually had to tone down my insurance ’cause the premiums keep stepping up so much.

So you’ve got very large costs. What’s your turnover a year?

Look, you generally aim for about a million dollars.

Wow.

Generally, you need that, you need that.

So, for example, a new main engine in one of my vessels is about $120,000, $130,000.

Then you’d put a gearbox on the back of that, that’s $80,000 like it’s–

The fella helping you put that engine in, he’s often $100 to $150 a hour and the slipways where you might do said job can be as much as three or four hundred dollars a day.

So getting a prawn onto our plates is an expensive venture, and it’s risky?

That’s where the insurance comes in, yeah.

Well, it is, it’s a risky game.

It’s like anything, it’s as risky as, you know, there’s ways to manage the risks basically.

‘Cause you’ve got X amount of knots, you can go at X amount of knots?

Weather?

And then after that, your insurance is null and void, that’s what you’ve gotta be careful of.

Not necessarily, no.

Not exactly, no.

But it’s up to the captain as to what he sees fit and most of us are smart enough.

We’re here now, we’re only in town now ’cause with the risks of safety with this–

Because you understand the weather events are impending but even if it was just a normal weather event, you could work behind the reef in that league, in the league of the reef or the oils.

Can I just say, those of us left fishing today, numbers are only 250 odd east coast trawlers now, the safety of our vessels and the fact that we’re still here speaks for itself.

You’ve got about seven or eight different licencing with all your monitoring as well on top of that, so the red tape’s huge in Queensland and you’ve, you know, the vessel monitoring, all your satellite stuff, of course.

So what was the fishing fleet, say, 20 years ago?

1,500.

1,700.

1,700, and what is it now?

At any one time, I think there’s less than 200 of us active licencing.

So you’re down to about 12% of what it used to be 20 years ago?

Absolutely, yeah.

And yet, now, we’ve got the largest continental shelf fishing zone in the world, okay? And yet, we import, and we’ve only got 25 million people, we import almost three quarters of the seafood we eat, and where do we import it from? Number one place is China.

Yeah.

Which has got a tiny coastline compared to ours, massive population, and yet, they send their seafood down here, and then the second biggest place that sends us seafood is Thailand, but here’s the killer, guess which country has 36% of the world’s marine parks?

Us.

Us. The UN directly manages some of our coastal areas, the rest are UN guidelines that state and federal governments manage, so we’ve got a hell of a lot of our fishing zones shut down.

Shut off, yeah.

So now, one question, and you guys chime in if you want to, so we bring prawn into Queensland, it says in there, and the government tells us you can eat these prawns but don’t take them fishing.

And isn’t that just crazy?

Is that serious?

That’s the white spot related thing.

The bar for our export product is here.

I know.

The bar for our import product is here, and I have to do battle with it to sell it, to sell my good product to the people of Australia

So you can eat the white spot prawn, but you can’t feed them to the fish?

You’re not allowed to go fishing with them.

You can’t put them in the environment ’cause it can–

I’m sorry, have you heard anything so ridiculous in your life.

What we’re doing, the government is actually allowing us to import disease and destroy our bio-security area ’cause not everyone’s gonna take heed to that. Those words are so cheap.

It’s only a guideline.

Exactly.

So that brings us to the last point, and that is that you guys have been jerked around a lot by government regulations, and they’re not based on science.

No, they’re not. There’s groups that get on the government’s case obviously, whether it’s environmental, recreational fishers, GRMPA, there’s just that many of them. They’ve gotta listen to them and see they’re listening, but I mean everyone’s got their own agenda.

And we’re such a minority.

Yeah.

You know, we’re not great numbers.

If you’ve got 200 businesses left, and we’re fishermen, we’re not scientists, we’re not any of those things, all we want to do is go and do what we’ve paid our money to do, and that’s basically all–

There are really decent scientists who agree with what you’re saying that the fish are not being depleted, they’re not being over-fished, it’s bullshit.

Yeah, that’s right, yeah. And what they’re actually doing is, everywhere they close off, they’re squeezing us into a smaller area.

So what do you think happens?

But you’re not only getting squeezed into a smaller area, you’re getting squeezed in the area with the recreations as well.

How big is this coastline for him from Bundaberg and me from Cairns to meet here?

Yeah, exactly.

Because we’re pushed into one area.

Your dad would have taught you, and I know Jim Edwards and the old fellas taught me, you go out there, you take what you need or you just take that bit, and you know where to come back, doesn’t matter what you’re doing.

It controls itself to a point, and yeah, we don’t need all the overregulation.

It sort of comes back to common sense, you know, you protect what you’re trying to get

You know what the real problem is, and we’ll finish on this one, the real problem is that we’ve got a state government that goes looking for votes in the southeast and spreads misinformation about what’s happening and then people in the southeast think that they’re doing good for the reef when they’re not.

And the recreation sector compared with us, we’re so small, we have votes.

They’ve got quite a big voice compared to us.

Anyway, thank you very much for going out there so often and getting us good fish, healthy fish and prawns. Thank you very much.

No worries, all right.

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