On the panel with week we discuss ‘The Great Reset’, where billionaires, celebrities and the worlds elites wants you to give up all YOUR possessions and claim you will be happy. We also discuss the United Nations and the US election.

Transcript

Proof transcript only – E&OE

Good day, good evening and welcome to the programme. Well, what another week. And the language is starting now to creep in, isn’t it? You turn on the TV news, right across all the networks, you’re picking up the papers, you’re turned on the radio stations, you hear the words. The words that are meant to create some comfort for us but don’t be conned, the great reset, the great reset. It sounds like everything that was bad is gonna go and everything that’s in front of us is gonna be good. It’s been sanctioned by the Royal Family, I mean, Prince Charles has said, “Let’s have a great reset.” It’s being promoted by the world, the left worldwide. I mean, this big great reset is actually going to be a bigger virus than COVID. It’s gonna have more of an impact on your lifestyle than you could imagine. It’s been publicised by the social media elite and you’ve got minds like build back better, I think just seeing her don’t use that as her line, when she received the government in New Zealand and Joe Biden so we had build back better. And then we’ve got this sort of post COVID world, the new normal, all this mantra, don’t let it con you. What does it actually mean? And do we actually get a site? Well, the bottom line is we might. This is a deal that is being done by the elites and is being foisted upon the weak, the weak governments of the world. And frankly, at the moment, it looks like the Australian government falls into that category as well. But maybe you can have a hand on trying to change it, but at the same time this week, we’ve heard that China, now a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, has taken time to have a close look at the human rights violations of, yes, America. They’ve decided amongst about 10 things that they wanna see in the end to the political polarisation in the United States. Now that’s all very well and good for the Chinese Communist Party, one party state ’cause there can’t be any other party, but you do know that in America, there’s two great forces at work. There’s the Democrats, their colours tends to be blue and the Republicans and they tend to be red. And Donald Trump is red and Biden is the blue side. But you know that if he is elected president of the United States, what we’ve heard from places like China in this UN declaration on human rights and this review of America’s human rights is the sort of marching orders that Joe Biden will of course, if we ever see him out of the White House bunker, will of course be attending to, I mean, we haven’t seen him for very much in the last six months, and he’s about to become the most powerful man in the world if all the rhetoric and all of the social media tweets are to be believed. The Chinese have also said they don’t want the United States to interfere in any other countries’ internal issues. And what I mean by that is Hong Kong and of course Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a democracy, the free China, the people of the People’s Republic of China see Taiwan as a Renegade province. So of course, if the United States says anything about Taiwan, it’s a fundamental breaks of the human rights of the Chinese people. This is just absolute rubbish. So over the last week, as we’ve gone through Remembrance day, I stopped and I thought like any other decent person would, 11 o’clock on the 11th last Wednesday, and I realised that we should be concerned, lest we forget that our freedoms that we enjoy are in fact being secured by those prepared to defend it. And the five oldest continuous democracies in the world, the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand have always defended freedom. Have always been amongst the first to answer the call when there’s tyranny in other places. But now we have so many people within each of these countries, including our own, that seem to be out to weaken our efforts, pull down our traditions, change the way we think. And the world is in fact right now doing, and in a lot of ways, it is history repeating what we saw in pre World War 2 Europe. If you think about 2022 China, if this is passing, putting a big dark shadow over the rest of the world, China, maybe a country that in fact many are saying we should boycott when it comes to the 2022 winter Olympics that are occurring there. But of course, plenty of people in the sporting world would say, no, no, no, keep politics out of sport. Let’s face it, sport is full of politics, there’s political operatives who are active in sport. There are sporting operatives that are active in politics. There’s political decisions that are taken in sport every day, there are political choices, there are political sponsors in sport, local sports organisations, state organisations, the national organisations are all highly political. And so the Australian Olympic Committee of course, is the Olympic size version of this highly political environment. And naturally enough, because I live in a rarefied atmosphere of self-importance, the last thing they want to see is us boycotting on principle, there’s that word again, principle, the People’s Republic of China and the winter Olympics and the entire PR spin that will come for the PRC. So if only sport was just about sport, it seems, if you look at the last week, we’re seeing more and more reasons to know the elite speed, are they big tech, be they the big media, be they big Royals, or be they the big Chinese and Marxist left us elites around the world role, choosing to reset your lifestyle. The last thing they’re gonna do is touch these, care to know what you think, hashtag Hardgrave@skynews.com.au, you can also email me directly at gary.hardgrave@skynews.com.au, still a panel, we always try and do that on a Friday night, as we fight for freedom here. Malcolm Roberts is the Senator for Queensland for One Nation, he joins me here in the Brisbane, Citadel in the city. You use Santa the great and the powerful and very, very wise Bronwyn Bishop, former speaker of the House of Representatives, from Advanced Australia Liz Storer, who’s never afraid to hold back on anything when it comes to fighting for freedom. Great to have you all with us tonight. The big reset, should we be worried, Liz? how do you feel about this great reset nonsense?

Well, nonsense sums it up Gary, sums it up perfectly. What frightens me most about this, and firstly, I should mention I’m no longer with Advance Australia, I am lead advisor with GT Communications and very glad to be surfaced. Thank you, thank you. What frightens me most about this reset is that younger generations are completely unaware of what’s happening. We’ve seen the left for decades now infiltrate our schools, infiltrate out unis, and these kids, now young adults, actually, a lot of them wouldn’t know Marx if he slapped them in the face, have never picked up the Communist manifesto. And yet we’ve got Kamala Harris, who can I say is not vice president elect. I am just as much vice-president elect as Kamala is this evening. We’ve got Kamala.

[Gary] Congratulations on your victory.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes, yes, it’s been wonderful. We’ve got Kamala tweeting, you can’t make this stuff up, talking about a reset, tweeting just before the election, a small video that she did the voiceover of literally espousing the virtues of socialism. You can’t make this stuff up, she didn’t say socialism, but the little video was literally talking about the fact that there is no equality in the world unless equality of outcome is what we’re all experiencing here. Not equality of opportunity, and so we’ve created this culture now as the left so artfully does, where it’s understood to be compassionate, et cetera. And so on being synonymous with this, literally communism is what her video was espousing. And this is the woman make no mistake about it, unless the Trumpians are successful, this is the woman who will be president of the United States. Joe Biden will just fill the seat for a little time and total on off.

Yeah, I suspect to be in the White House basement the whole time, we’ll just get him wheeled out a bit like sort of weekend at Bernie’s. He’ll just get wheeled out every so often from Fido opportunity, if in fact he actually even gets installed, sorry, aren’t I lacking in grace, Bronwyn Bishop, you can deal with me accordingly, but seriously we’re being conned. I mean, if you look at Salton, it’s in the whole Gulag archipelago, that enormous idea of the last man clapping, no one wanted to be the last man clapping in this sort of scenario, that Gulag archipelago, you know that there’s a lot of lessons not being taught, the young people, they’re making mistakes, simple.

Well, Gary of course the trouble again, when the rich and the powerful elites of the Western world, privileged elites of the West, supported Lenin and Stalin, and I’m talking about the likes of George Bernard Shaw, of Sydney and Beatrice Webb of John Maynard Keynes and of lady Aster. These people supported these things going on, and absolutely refused to see what the truth was. Solzhenitsyn came along and really exposed it all, and showed the cruelty and the brutality of what the Communist regime was. Now that’s steamed the tide and the march of Socialism for right up to the time that the Berlin Wall came down. But then George Bush weakened. And instead of saying, we have to keep fighting to show that people know what socialism is, so we don’t repeat those mistakes, he went all week and he said, oh, there’s going to be a peace dividend. And we stopped teaching people what socialism was and what we had to stand up for with the principles we believed in to have a free people who had rights and liberties. Well, we then get the Neo Fabians, and they are the Neo Fabians who go to Davos and the world economic forum. They are the ones preaching the great reset, and this is the way to socialism. But in the interim, we got Donald Trump and he was prepared to fight back and fight he did, which in the eyes of the Neo Fabians made it necessary for them to destroy him. And that’s the pattern that we have followed to this very point we’re now at, and we can only hope, and I do not give up on Donald Trump being successful at this point in time. I think it was a mistake for our Prime Minister to be congratulating Mr. Biden, because Mr. Biden said himself that he would not even attempt to claim victory until it was properly certified. When there are a lot of legal ways to go yet, and it is not being properly certified. So we have to hold firm. Donald Trump has led the way he has changed, there are what? 73 million people in America who are prepared to fight back and they need the voice and the support of those of us who believe in freedom of the individual and freedom of opportunity and equality of opportunity, not outcome as Liz said.

Yeah, and I agree. I mean, Malcolm Robinson’s to the point, this great said it’s a, you know, a three word slogan always pretty, pretty popular, but this is not a great thing. This is damaging. People’s freedoms, people’s lifestyles. This is something that is worth fighting for. When you hear it, the people saying it, you should condemn them. That’s how I read it.

I agree with you and Tali that’s once you get past the fact that this great reset is claimed to be supporting, fixing the world’s climate, it’ll fix poverty, it’ll fix in, in inequality. It’ll fix control. It’ll fix everything. Gary, why shouldn’t we wait for it? Because it is just another slogan to hide the reality that this is socialism on the March. And socialism is always about control. We’ve had this so many times and you know, in the past, people have controlled others using physical force. Now, if you grab me around the throat, I’ll put a rifle, bat in my head, Gary, people can see what you’re doing. The insidiousness of socialism this way and slogans is that they sound so nice and people don’t really see what’s going on. And next thing with the gradualism, you know, you’re in slavery. And so the essential, the essential debate, the essential theme that runs through all of the articles that you’ve introduced tonight, and your email and tonight in your editorial is control versus freedom. And that control versus freedom is a battle we all have within us, but we all thrive when we actually are free ourselves and free from our own shackles, but also the planet thrives and the nations thrive when they’re free. That’s society has proven that time and time and time again.

Yeah. Well, look, I mean, the great, the control that the battle that’s on in China, there is a battle in China, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, the Chinese Communist party authorities in Beijing, don’t have as much control of China. It’s the money. That’s actually changing things. The richest man in China, though, has been set down on his backside. He has tried to do a float of this massive Alibaba organisation, and they’ve taken him down. They’ve said, no, you can’t do that anymore. So suddenly the idea of free capital floating around and creating opportunity for everyday Chinese to actually be part of a glow. A growing world economy has been controlled by the Politburo in Beijing. This is nasty. It’s a Brahman. You see, this is a foretaste of what could come. And if, if Joe Biden heightened Biden as many are calling him and others are calling him Beijing, Joe, I mean, there’s, I, I’m not trying to be pejorative here. Although maybe people say I am, but if this plug is actually going to become the president of the United States, he cannot be encumbered to a group of people who actually hate the kind of society that we are used to having.

Well, that’s the point, Gary, you say, if Trump is not reelected, then the two most powerful pit men in the world are Putin and President Xiu. It is quite clear the President Xiu wants to rule the world. He wants to be the dominant power. And as long as Trump was there, he knew if he moved Taiwan, that Trump would act, but he knows that if Trump is gone, Biden will do nothing. So you can watch what’s going to happen to Taiwan. What’s what’ll happen in the middle East, where Trump had actually managed to have countries of the middle East, come to an agreement with Israel. And yet you will have the Biden and those people behind him will probably go back to the Obama policy of getting into bed with Iran. So the problem is that we’re going to face and what is it risk from this election? And I deliberately call these people, the Neo Fabians, because the Fabian society was founded by the webs and George Bernard Shaw to implement the change to socialism, gradually their symbol. And they stained glass window that was commissioned is a Wolf in sheep’s clothing. And that is why I think we have to identify these people for what they are. They preach my sounding things, but there’s a Wolf in there who will eat the sheep very, very easily. And we have to stop being sheep. We have to stop putting not only putting up the hook in her own mouth, we’re now about to swallow that hook. And we’ve just got to learn that that’s the end of us if we do. So, it is a very troubling time. And Mr. Ma came out in that speech, which President Xi objected to so strongly made the point that there is no such thing as a system of, of in the finite financial system in China. They make it up as they go along. And that’s why we can never believe any of the data that comes out of China, but we can believe they are building a force where they wish to conquer large parts of the world and be the dominant power controlling the lives and us and Australia. We would be the vessel state with bearing the knee and bury our back to our Chinese masters as they took our food and our iron off. That is not what I, well, that is not what my father fought for. It’s not what I believe I served in the parliament for. And you served in the parliament for, to leave to our children, grandchildren. We’ve got to fight hard.

Now, why not? Now? Why not? And I’m gonna lose store. You’re only going to look at the Y. The China is being signed to Australia. We are grossly interfering in China because we’ve raised questions about the democracy in Taiwan. We want Taiwan to be protected. We used to recognise until 1973, Taiwan as China and following Richard Nixon’s lead, we then changed our allegiance to the Beijing authorities. Boy, that’s rewarding. And then equally in Hong Kong, you’ve gotta look at what’s happening in Hong Kong, where you’ve got legislators and actually resigned from the parliament. They said, democracy is dead in Hong Kong. If I want to tackle Taiwan, they’ve told Australia to, I’ll tidy it up, shut the hiccup. You know, that that in itself should be a warning to each of us that value the opportunity to speak our and listen to about the views that the bite is not alive and not allowed. It’s not alive in China.

Absolutely. This is a communist party. That seems to be a very simple fact that so many people just don’t seem to understand, perhaps in the 21st century, they think even the communist party looks a bit different. It does not. This is the same regime that has countless millions of innocent blood on their hands. Let’s, let’s be abundantly clear on that when I was watching the American election, as I’m still watching it, because it’s still happening. Gary, as I was watching the American election, I kept saying to myself, if Americans knew nothing more than the fact of China’s plans for the Pacific, and just how intrinsically linked both Kamala and Joe, it’s not just Joe are in the pockets of the CCP. They wouldn’t vote Democrat, not in a million years, not in a million years, but people don’t understand what will take place. They don’t understand the strength of that Alliance. and it’s actually frightening to think that that may yet become something that the rest of us will have to look on and witness, as it unfolds, China is not going to change. It is a communist regime. It is hell bent on world, world supremacy, no matter what. And I think anyone who listens to that and says, that’s fear mongering, I would urge them pick up a history book for heaven’s sake, or even just Google comments that the president is on record saying that we will bend these democracies to our will. We think that China will become more like us as the world advances and you know, democracies around the world. Now outnumber communist dictatorships. They have no such plan. Let me tell you.

Well, I don’t. And I mean, Malcolm Robinson people think you’re wearing, you know, we’re wearing a tinfoil hat putting in, you know, rising this sort of stuff. They think we’re, you know, mad conspiracy theories. We’re not I’ve simply. And I don’t mind being proved wrong. Not one part of me minds being proved wrong about this, but the questions have gotta be asked. And, you know, when I saw that national cabinet, unfortunately, I didn’t make this decision, but national Kevin we’re considering including China in a travel bubble to Australia, I would have thought that the simple way of making that travel bubble work would have been to included the democracies of our region. The flavours Ling democracies in the Pacific that are leading Australian tourism back into it. The, the, the democracy in Taiwan, the democracy in Japan, the democracy in South Korea, before we to put some people from a totalitarian regime onto a plane in and out of Australia, I would have thought that was a simple thing. But anyway, state borders is still shot. It’s pretty distressing. Isn’t it? Australia is still split in so many ways.

Yes, Gary, you make a very, very good point because China is the country that unleashed the COVID virus on the world. Not only that, it made it possible for the COVID virus to get a heads-up because it denied its existence for so long. And then have a look at the country that has done the best of any on earth and that’s Taiwan in the same time as we’ve had, and actually longer period, it’s been exposed longer. It’s had seven deaths from COVID. We’ve had over 900. We have destroyed our economy doing that. Taiwan has simply isolated the sick, isolated, the vulnerable, and let everyone else get back. Stay at work. And their economy has barely ended into negative. I think it’s about 0.5 of a percent negative growth. That’s phenomenal. And, and our prime minister said we should be attacking China. Now the national Kevin does saying, let them mainland Chinese in and ignore Taiwan. This is insane, but let me give, just go back to a point. You mentioned a little while ago to tell you a little bit of a story. I met, I connected with a blood called Ron kitchen. He’s dead now many years ago. And he loaded the, the works of Frederick Hayak and at Ludwig Von Meese and the Austrian school of economics. And he told me a story, and this is firsthand or secondhand actually, because he, he met up with a professor from Princeton and this professor had Chinese heritage. And he was, was a Chinese, even though was an American citizen. And I think it was in the eighties. And I can’t remember the, the name of the Chinese president at the time. Ginger ping, maybe. But anyway, the habit, the Princeton professor with visiting his original roots in, in China and the president of China got wind of this. So he said, could I have a couple of hours of your time? And the Princeton professor said, sure. So he started off this conversation and remember Ron met this Princeton professor and had a good long conversation. And the Princeton professor said that the Chinese president, his opening comments were look at the wealth of our country. Yeah. But look at the state of it. It’s, it’s destitute, it’s poor. And, and he said, can you tell me how we can fix it? And the Princeton professor told him, and then he said, can you give me a couple more hours? I think to cut a long story short, he gave him days. It kept asking him to come back and that opened up China. But the fundamental thing with China is they still want to control people buttoned up the economy, but, but they’ll never be strong because always beneath control, Gary, there is fair. These people are terrified of losing control. And so what we need to do is focus on our strengths. Don’t worry too much about China, focus on our strengths and, and, and lift them because we are destroying our own country. Internally.

Now, as strengths have to be gotta be, have gotta be built around our values, our principles as a, the things that we over the 120 years, Australia has been a nation have earned us the right to say, we are the sixth oldest continuous democracy in the world. And it’s only, it’s only the UK and the USA and Canada that has stood with Australia and New Zealand, the seventh oldest, continuous democracy to defend those freedoms, Switzerland and Sweden have a five just for the record. But my understanding is they actually haven’t necessarily fought any angry shots at any stage of the last hundred years. Got to take a break. I want to come back and talk about how the country is split off the whole side of the impact on the IDF on shocked by what’s occurring. And we’ll talk about that more interest among them.

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Thanks so much for your company. We’re in conversation with Brahma, Bishop, Liz store, and Senator Malcolm Roberts national cabinet made a gain to die briefly. A whole bunch of announcements. Everybody’s going to open up except for Western Australia. Perth remains the most isolated city geographically, and it seems politically in the world lead store. I also note that I said a couple of weeks ago, and people thought our Gary, your gilding, the Lily here, that the Queensland border wide open up until the Suncorp site of origin match was dealt with everybody from new South Wales, except Sydney siders can comment today. They announced the softened and the Queensland government said 52 and a half thousand people can come to Suncor. There’s no dress code, but all by the way, Liz, there’s no dancing allowed in Queensland. Still. We can have 52 and a half thousand at the grand stand, but on the 200 at a funeral or something. So go, go, go figure. It’s all crazy. Isn’t it.

These rules are doing my head in Gary, especially when cases are so low. Now, I think we’ve even got Victoria zero day, zero days, every single day. Now where we’re well past the point, you’d think of these ridiculous restrictions. And when you’re talking about a state that is now hosted a game of tens of thousands of people still throwing out these random restrictions. I mean, I’m a gal in, in, in WUA, you know, leaving the state cabinet today. Like he had don’t worry team. I’ve kept GSA. It is utterly ridiculous. This, this has gone past absurdity. These is ridiculous. And when we’re watching countries like the UK still, you know, devastating, devastating, what they’re seeing unfold there, here in Australia, we’re still acting like we’ve got some sort of pandemic on our hands. The truth of the matter is we really don’t. And yet nobody seems to be calling out the fact we’ve got States with zero cases, closing their borders to States with zero cases. And people like McGowan are really just playing politics with this. Now he saw it go well for Anastasia pallor, Shea. He’s got his election coming up in March. And I think he’s doing exactly the same now going, okay, this pandemic protectionism goes well at the polling. Both. I’ll take another crack.

Yeah. He wants to keep it going as long as possible in Victoria, it’s basically declared that an experiment and the way the bureaucracy operates, Brahman produced a mission failure. The public servants are starting to be filtered out the door, sacrificial lands, but it still strikes me in the deck of cards about 10 or a dozen people that really did Muff up this hotel, quarantine fiasco. There is a whole bunch of people who’ve got to go including the joker himself, Daniel Andrews, but people still liked him. I still thought, you know, we like, we like being punished sort of, you know, bondaged and disciplined Victorian style down there. I think.

I said right from the beginning that China not only exported the disease, it also exported fear. And it is that fear factor that has allowed these premiers to control their population. And it’s, I mean, people pick perfectly normal people who you might think would think properly are cowed into fearing it and saying, well, we need to be locked down. We need to be kept cocooned and so on. So it’s, it’s a real problem. But the, the rest of the problem of course is how do we restore a functioning Federation that high court judgement in Western Australia was absolutely of no use at all. We don’t know what they’ve said. All they’ve said is that they referred the facts of the case to the federal court to determine what facts for high court would make their determination upon. They’ve said no, it was okay to put them in place. Well, was that at the time that the action was begun, we haven’t seen a judgement . We haven’t seen the reasons for the judgement . So there’s a failure in the judiciary to, to uphold the section that was put deliberately into the constitution to stop this sort of behaviour by premiers. And then we look at what premiered chairman Dan is doing down there in Victoria, and talking about setting up a centre for, for communicable diseases, just like the one in New Hampshire that was just part of the belt and road initiative. Are they going to bring some of those viruses here and develop them here with the next outbreak? And believe me, if you think we’ve seen the last, last outbreak of pandemics, you can think again, when the next one happened here, because the bar’s has been brought here. I mean, there are serious questions that have to be asked and, and it doesn’t seem that there is no action on it. It’s not, we we’ve got statements coming out that, Oh, well we’ve met today. And the, in, in the federal cabinet, whatever that’s supposed to mean, elevate the premiers and talk what rubbish we will. Everyone will be up and by Christmas. Well, all the bookings are all too late. Except wh I just find that the, the problems that are being created by the way in which we’ve gone about dealing with these matters are huge and waiting for us to have to be dealt with.

Yeah, look, Brahman. And I really want to support Scott Morrison, but I got to tell you a schema. I’ll buddy, all pal flying down to Victoria to hold hands with Daniel. Andrew is next Melbourne. Next, next week is not exactly what I would call the photo opportunity of 2020. Just a little bit of rough advice for you there, pal, but you can ignore it at your own peril. Meanwhile, in Victoria, over 700 people have died because of the incompetence of the Andrews government, their industrial manslaughter laws should kick in. We’ll see what happens, but there’s been accusations made against the Australian defence force. Now, Malcolm Roberts, I am pretty old fashioned about these things. I support those who are going to put their body on the line. In my name, in a uniform of my country to defend our values in a foreign place. I put my support behind them. Accusations are made. I get it. I understand rumours have been at the heart of some of these things, but there’s no heavy inquiry like Scott Morrison has announced this week into what’s happened in Victoria, 700, 800 people that have died. And yet we’re going to go and pick on our finest in uniform. The way we’re doing it is I think of horrid. I really don’t like it at all.

Gary, this is a very difficult circumstance, very difficult situation because on the one hand, these people, as we all know, and Andrew hasty has said it really well himself. You can see the pain on Andrew Hastie when he raised this topic three years ago, people returning from war have been changed. And, and we haven’t gone in, I haven’t gone into battle. I don’t know if you have never heard, but it is a completely different scenario. There’s enormous pressure that we will never, ever come to grips with. We can never understand that. So that’s the first thing. But the second thing is these, these men, in this case, it is all men have gone into battle to uphold their values. And that means they have to be held accountable for their actions. Maybe that means, first of all, making sure that they get very, very good defence. Maybe it also means that they get a right. They get a very, very fair inquiry. Ben, Robert Smith himself said he welcomes this. Yeah, even though he’s been through the mill himself, he welcomes this because it will clear the air once and for all. So I think we can take a lead from Ben Robert Smith, who has got a, it’s got to been awarded a VC for his, a Victoria Cross for his Valour. And now he’s had the courage to do go through this in public. And now he’s saying out, let’s have the inquiry, let’s clear the decks, but I think we also have to, and in any, in any, if anyone is found guilty of something that they shouldn’t have done, Gary, then they need to be treated with compassion and understanding. And I, I cannot understand the, the minister of defence saying, we’ll strip the metals off them. Well, hang on. They might’ve done something after two years after they’ve won the metal for some definite Valour, we can’t do things like that. We’ve got to be understanding of these people as well as uphold the values that we asked them to fight for.

Yeah. Look at least I have not because of the efforts of so many and generations before me, some of them family members who stood in my name in other places, I have not had to face that kind of circumstance. And I’m grateful for that. I just simply say, I am troubled by the idea of academics will qualify to bureaucrats well qualified and some military you’re going to have going to inquire it, all this sort of thing. I hope they get the values and the principles and the support for these guys ride. I just find the whole thing, sad and demeaning and very sad and demeaning.

Indeed. I actually questioned over the last few days just to myself, whether this is actually in the national interest, if this is in the, in the public interest to be brought out and have this dirty laundry ed, we know this is, this is not something systemic in our ADF. This, this is something there’s a small group of individuals. Clearly we don’t yet know the details that have committed atrocities, but I would, I’d love to echo what Fitz given said. And he himself is a former minister of defence. And he said, these guys were deployed for too long and on back to back deployments. And as you’ve said, Gary, you and I, and, and millions of Australian civilians have absolutely no idea what that’s like. And we have no idea what that’s like thanks to these men and women who go and do it for us so that we can sleep in our beds every night, knowing that we’re safe. And even I though I being a civilian as I am, I’m not above one drink. I don’t think any of us can be above saying, I would never, I would never do this. Or I would never do that after what these people have been through, Mr. Senator Roberts just raised Andrew hasty member for canning. And I remember reading years ago, it would have been because he was quite new to parliament at the time. And he won’t mind me sharing. Cause this is on the public record. He shared it himself. That even as he was doing his training, these gruelling days and days on end, that they’d be sent on, have to undergo unspeakable, not only temperatures, but conditions, no sleep for days on end all the rest of it. And he shared coming back from this particular training trip, just sobbing on the end of the line to his lovely wife, Ruth, this, this stuff, these guys go to go through, breaks them. It absolutely breaks them. And I’m not making excuses for atrocities. They may have committed in, in the line of line of duty, but it, we have to, we have to keep that in mind that human beings cannot go through prolonged periods of these high pressure, no slate, adrenaline running through your veins, 24 seven, that kind of fear that the environment we can’t even imagine for days on end and then still function properly. They, they just can’t.

Great. If you don’t mind me jumping in, I think there’s something that I think there’s another factor here too, that we must.

Right. All Malcolm, just get one last line, one line, you know?

Yeah. That’s something you mentioned in the material you send out and that is that there’s a catch and release policy for it. For people you can’t hold them, you can’t detain them. So some of these people were at the kill soldiers, they catch them. So SSL just catch them and then have to let them go again, because there’s not a proper theatre of war. I know that if I was under that scenario, I’d be thinking twice about letting them go and there’s nowhere to keep them. What else are you going to do? You know, when, when people’s minds under that much stress Brahman, Gary, you know, we’ve got to be understanding and compassionate about that.

I think, and I don’t mean to domain my sincerity at all, but I, I, you know, I think about Jack, Jack Nichols, Jack Nicholson’s line in a few good men, you know, can we handle the truth? I mean, it’s kind of, I guess, yeah, if they’ve done the wrong thing, the system will out, but I am concerned.

Gary. I sat in that parliament in the house of representatives, as we stood again and again, mourning the death of a soldier in Afghanistan. And we made great speeches about their, their, their sacrifice for us, the way they represented us. We as a people, our government, both labour and liberal sent those men to fight for our principles in a foreign land. And as I said, we eulogise and spoke of them. I even attended ramp ceremonies when those bodies were returned to Australia. And yet the same government that sent them, we sent to fight for us is now attacking our own people, our own soldiers. I worked as hard as I could not to have Australia sign up for the international criminal court because I could see how it could be used against us as a matter of international propaganda. But the reality was that Alexander data had virtually committed us. But one thing I did get added was a footnote that said we would never hand over any of our soldiers to that court, which is the thread that is held over. If we don’t investigate, they’ll do. But I insisted that that went in now. Let’s look, what’s happened mr. Justice, the gay Britain, major general, the gay Breton, a former commander of the fifth brigade. The second division has spent four years investigating these issues for years, that investigation actually advertised in Afghanistan for Afghanis to come forward and testify or give still evidence against soldiers. We paid for people to go there to try and find people who would either tell the truth or to lies. How do we know unbelievable for years, this has gone on and those men have lived with that for these four years. We are now told that there was a report that’s going to be released, which we will find shocking. Peter Jennings has very wisely walled that this will be used by ISIS in a recruiting programme for them to say, they’re justified in taking the lives of Australians. And that will be civilian, as well as military people. We are hanging these people out to dry and saying that responses, we will have a further investigation and that investigation we’ll see whether or not there should be any prosecutions in line with the requirements under the ICC. We will never hand over any of our soldiers to that court for them to make the investigation. And if you take a look at who sits on it and would be sitting and just judgement on us, I just get anger, which is beyond belief. So I say that we have a huge obligation to the men and women who serve 29,000 people have served in Afghanistan. When I was minister for defence industry science and personnel, we didn’t send many people overseas at all. It was into Bosnia then and they had to go viral being succonded into the British army. And then they could go across and fight. But the long and the short of it is, is that they have worn our uniform and our flag to support our values. Our values are important, but for the government to turn on our soldiers and to hold them up through this period, we have had something like we have lost more soldiers in the years. We’ve been in Afghanistan to suicide than we lost in combat. So just understand the stresses that they’re under and understand one more point the rules under which they fight are called terms of engagement. And they literally write down what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do. And then there is a definition of what is an atrocity or what is a war crime set out the ICC. And this is what is almost like being told you go there to fight with one arm behind your back. I can only say, as I sat in that parliament and heard the eulogies of these men and the others who are equally served with great Valour and attending that ramp ceremony to receive those bodies back. And first now to be putting the hall about 80th under some sort of additional pressure, I find very difficult to come to terms with indeed, we are these here.

Oh, I, I, I congratulate you on what you’ve just said. And I thank you for your eloquence, but the substance of your argument. And I also make this very plain observation. We did this, the Australian government did this, my, these announcements, the week of remembrance day, I find it just sickening to my core. And I hold all of my freedoms in the Palm of my hand and at the tip of my tongue, purely off the back of those, who’ve served this nation and I feel very emotional about it as well. I’m going to take a break. We’ll come back. We’ll stand up for the workers of Australia. Somebody has to.

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Thanks so much for your company on a roll in. This will be hit with Newsnight. After the top of the hour with Liz Stora, we brought my Bishop was Senator Malcolm Roberts. Well, it seems that the labour party, whiteness, the inner city, people who just love everything that involves lattes and nothing to do with coal fire power losing the working VIG who’d thought. I mean watching and Joel Fitzgibbon, I thought bill the cat rather. Well this week, Malcolm Robinson, he said, you know, I’m watching people showing up with one nation, how to vote cards and with liberal national party hat of icons and not live ahead of icons and even branch members of the labour party at doing that, a lot of of potty have lost the worker vote. And I said this back in 2007 27 in the parliament where I said that they were looking after the nonproductive elements of societies, not the workers are recognised was right. Then you are, you are.

And it’s significant to remember one thing, Joe Fitz given was not worried about blue collar jobs until his job was threatened. Then he’s terrified and that’s good. And he should be terrified because we have an outstanding candidate down the Institute, bones articulate, smart. Savvy, and very, very dedicated to the country and very honest and straight. And he’s raised a number of issues with us. The whip we’re prosecuting Stuart is a wonderful man and Joel needs to be concerned because his party has abandoned him. Even if what Joel is doing is, is a sincere, then his party is still abandoned him because it’s abandoned blue collar workers and the labour party is all about wokeness. That’s all it is. Write them off.

25 Years. Next is instal was elected. His dad. Eric was there for a dozen years before that this is a Fitzgibbon thing. Liz Stora the seat of Hunter. But unless you actually start to get the workers of Australia front and foremost, you’re not going to get invited. And I actually think, look what the Republicans are doing in America, where they’ve broadened the base of their appeal. This certainly must be what the liberal party, the national party. I know one nation they’re doing it. I mean, we just need to know that the workers don’t vote labour anymore. I can understand why.

So can I look? I honestly don’t understand how the ALP isn’t just agreeing with everything. Fitzgibbon has said, got to say, Joel broke my heart this week, stepping down from the front bench. And then more recently saying that it’s, it’s not for a run at the leadership. I’m like, please feds do it for the country. Body look, everything. This guy says resonates now. And I take the senator’s point that maybe he wouldn’t have said the same prior to the last election, but here he is trying to speak truth to power within his own party. And labour has been getting crucified due to this, this new urbanisation that it’s found in literally in Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, it has no seats outside of the cities. When, when did this happen? It’s happened since 2007, as this seats outside of city areas have dwindled. These don’t like wokeness. They’re telling labour, they screamed at labour at the ballot box last year. Labor’s not paying attention. I can’t explain it for the life of me.

Well, I brought my Bishop today and I know you’re not on Twitter, but take my word for that. Anthony, Albanese actually tweeted about how our climate is dying and the smoke is killing us. And you know, the great reset kind of narrative. And I was thinking, at the Franklin who I know well is his media office who gonna re retweeted it. And I was thinking, Aw, come on Alba, come on, Franklin. You know, this is just like manifests a heaven for the real Australians who think the labour party have completely lost the plot.

Well, the problem is of course, and this happened some considerable time ago in the 90s that the so-called rusted on workers to the labour party, cease to be rusted on. And they ceased to be someone who was sort of on the, under the boot of the, of the employer, which is the picture that the labour party used to paint, but they became aspirational people. They became small business people. They became in charge of their own, their own destiny. They could see that they could have a better future for their kids if they got these opportunities, which liberal governments offered. And so what the labour party missed out on was to see that the attitude had changed of people who were their traditional rust add-ons that they had become the aspirational people who are the heart and soul of small business. And it used to the liberal party that they came. A similar thing happened in the United States with Ronald Reagan. When the, the Reagan Democrats sort of became a phenomenon it’s happened here. So what we have to understand and what the, what the government liberal governments have to understand is that you have to give those people the things that they need. And that’s why the issue of cheap electricity is so vital because to be successful in those endeavours, they need cheap electricity. It is the only competitive advantage they have against imported goods, and they need to be able to produce here in Australia, to set, as we pivot away from China, as we have to do and become more self-reliant, that’s why we need base power. And that’s why we can’t flood our power lines with the, the so-called with wind and solar, because you get all sorts of problems with delivery of power. And I, and I’ve said before, I can remember being in Manila in the 1980s, and they would be Brown out periods. They’d call them. And every time all the lights went on in the palace at Malecon yang, all the surrounding suburbs, they lost their power because they didn’t have enough. What will happen to us the only way you did enough and always be enough for the green elites for the labour elites, three people out of it. If we don’t get some base power.

Look, the bottom line is we need people with trade skills and nice and building skills. When they plumbers, when they’d spot Ks, we need people who know how to build stuff with their hands or with really clever use of machines. They can be women. They can be men, they can be young, they can be all that. We need those people. We need coal-fired power. We need water where, and when we want it, it’s not hard to work out. I want to hear this from the prime minister. I want to give a shout out before I finished. Cause we got to wind up, but good on your Dominic parity. One of the greatest places of public policy, I’m never in favour of new taxes. The idea of texting paper with electric cars is a beauty of all in favour of electric vehicles, but the infrastructure to make it possible for people, Jimmy Barnes and his a hundred thousand dollar plus, you know, electric car to, to really feel should be paid for an, a tax by the people who own the cars. Surely it shouldn’t be just doing me driving around in other cars. I would’ve thought that was a good piece of public policy. Dominic pyrrhotite well done to you. Malcolm Roberts. Thanks so much for your company tonight. Ramen, Bishop, Liz, Stora, brilliant to have you on tonight and kudos to you, Brahman for standing up for our defence force personnel list. We forget. Well, that’s it for another week back again. Next week, look forward to your company. Have a great day.

CSIRO has been caught out relying on discredited scientific papers and unvalidated models as the basis for advice to government on climate policy, which is a multi-billion dollar drag on the economy. 

Senator Roberts said, “This is shameful, and I call on the CSIRO Chief Executive, Dr Larry Marshall, and executive Dr Peter Mayfield, to resign. 

“Both have been complicit in the economically destructive policies based on CSIRO’s misplaced climate research.” 

The controversial, but central claim, that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut, was the focus of Senator Roberts’ cross-examination of CSIRO. 

When CSIRO was asked for evidence of anything unprecedented in climate due to human carbon dioxide, and despite nearly 50 years of climate research, it could only provide the discredited Marcott (2013) paper on temperatures and the discredited Harries (2001) paper on carbon dioxide. 

Both papers wilted under scrutiny, with CSIRO representatives in agreement with the concerns raised, resulting in CSIRO withdrawing the papers. 

Astrophysicist and Geoscientist Professor Willie Soon was scathing in his assessment of CSIRO’s use of Marcott (2013) by saying “Two weeks after publication this paper was completely destroyed and yet, someone as high up as CSIRO trying to say this paper is legitimate and can be used as a supporting scientific evidence, is scientific malpractice”. 

Senator Roberts stated, “Robust science reflecting the highest standards of integrity and transparency should be the core business of CSIRO. 

“How could it be that climate scientists were unaware that the evidence being used for significant policy-making was based on poor quality and discredited scientific papers. 

“CSIRO’s lack of understanding of the papers they cited shows laziness and lack of intellectual rigor. Clearly, CSIRO cannot honestly claim that human activity is causing climate variability.” 

When pressed further regarding the view of CO2 being dangerous, CSIRO were quick to point out that they never claimed CO2 was dangerous, rather that it was politicians that assigned the word danger to human CO2. 

CSIRO also agreed that temperatures today are not unprecedented. 

In a last ditch attempt CSIRO referenced the United Nations’ reports relying on unvalidated computer models, despite freely admitting CSIRO had not done due diligence on any UN work. 

CSIRO also admitted it had not done due diligence on data from the Bureau of Meteorology. 

Senator Roberts added, “In my discussions with eminent international scientists, Professor John Christie stated he has closely examined CSIRO’s Access Models and found them below par, as the projections simply do not match what we actually see in the real world.” 

Professor Christie added, “Climate is so complex, our ignorance of the climate system is enormous, and the myriad of models have not even agreed on a key variable, CO2 sensitivities. 

“The CSIRO models are running overly warm and this has been proven when comparing real data of the last 40 years with the climate model projections.” 

Dr David Evans, one of the world’s top computer modellers, states, “CSIRO climate models should not be used for policy as they are not right yet. 

“The performance of all climate models, including CSIRO’s, are not sufficiently validated and consistently overestimate warming.” 

Senator Roberts added, “It is the duty and responsibility of politicians to base costly policies and economic structural change on robust scientific evidence, not discredited papers and deficient models.” 

Senator Roberts calls for “a halt to all climate policies and spending until credible empirical evidence is provided to justify the spend, and for an Office of Scientific Integrity to scrutinize science used for policy. 

“The onus is now on parliament to provide the empirical scientific evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut, and until that is provided, government must immediately stop wasting billions of dollars on vested interests riding the climate gravy train.” 

Transcript

[Marcus Paul]

Maybe we need people like Senator Malcolm Roberts in positions of greater power. Malcolm’s with us on the programme. Hello mate, how are you?

[Malcolm Roberts]

I’m well, thanks Marcus. How are you?

[Marcus Paul]

Pissed off.

[Malcolm Roberts]

I know, you’re cranky and frustrated, I just heard-

[Marcus Paul]

I’m really annoyed-

[Malcolm Roberts]

You should be too-

[Marcus Paul]

I’m really, really annoyed. Anyway, let’s get to some of the issues. I’m sorry, but did you just hear what Premier Annastacia Palaszcuk said today?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yeah, I did, and what she’s doing is just playing the Queensland card. Queenslanders are very proud to be Queenslanders, but we’re also proud to be Australians. And Palaszcuk is running off the old trick, of just trying to isolate. And that’s what a desperate leader does.

They try and build a circle around themselves, and everyone outside is bad, and that’s what she’s doing. But she’s actually misrepresenting the situation. We’ve got two tertiary care hospitals in Queensland, we’ve got a couple in Brisbane, and we’ve got one centre in Townsville.

Now the Townsville looks after all the way from Townsville, right through to Papua New Guinea. It looks way out into the east, into the islands. It looks way west into the Northern territory, and south to about Central Queensland.

The hospitals around Brisbane, they take care of Central Queensland, north of the hospitals, and south of the hospitals into Northern and New South Wales. That’s our responsibility. We get paid federal money for doing that. And Anastasia Palaszcuk is misrepresenting the truth.

She has actually now, people are starting to wake up Marcus. She has stopped two twins in birth, in the womb, from coming to Brisbane for treatment. That mother would have had a helicopter flight in half an hour to the hospital. Instead she took 16 hours, to get on a royal flying doctor’s services plane-

[Marcus Paul]

Why is it you can say all of this Malcolm, but we’ve got a prime minister, who says stuff all! Does nothing, says nothing to call this woman out, says nothing about what’s going on with the border debacle.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, I believe we have a prime minister who’s doing a marketing job, and Scott Morrison is very much in favour of building facades and then selling them. Look, he’s caused a real problem with this cabinet, this so-called cabinet that he’s established.

I believe that one of the motives of that cabinet was to pull people together, that’s good. But the other motive was, if it went pear-shaped with their response, he would have had the cabinet to blame.

And so, what we’ve now got is we’ve got rampant premiers, and Dan Andrews not fulfilling his responsibilities, Anastasia Palaszczuk, not fulfilling her responsibilities to the country and to Queensland, and harming both those states, and who pays mate?

The prime minister pays, the taxpayer pays. So when Victoria has as a sloppy response, and has more cases of COVID, and has to shut down to a stage four, who pays the bill for the extra job keeper, the extra job seeker?

[Marcus Paul]

Well-

[Malcolm Roberts]

The federal government does. So, what we’ve got now is the complete reversal of our constitution which is based on competitive federalism, and we’ve got competitive welfarism. The more the Queensland, and New South, and Victorian Governments fail, the more money they’ll get. It’s ridiculous.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Look, again, I don’t understand why they’re so quiet on this and look, and I know the way the system works, I get it, but I’m sorry, you’re right.

He’s just hiding behind marketing slogans. He thought he hit a home run yesterday with this announcement, this grandized announcement of vaccines, and then he tripped over the words when he went down the whole mandatory line.

[Malcolm Roberts]

This is just a repeat-

[Marcus Paul]

Then having to backtrack-

[Malcolm Roberts]

This is just a repeat of what happened with the COVID tracking app. You know, he came out, and three times he refused to rule out that it would be compulsory. So I jumped in on a radio station and said, “No, we are not gonna support it, if it’s compulsory.

“We’re just not, you can’t do that.” He was very quickly backtracking as soon as that happened. Now Pauline did the same with this declaration of compulsory vaccines. And she belted him and he quickly retreated. He doesn’t stand for anything, and that means he’ll fall for anything.

And that’s Scott Morrison summarised in a nutshell. But that’s typical of the Liberal and Labor parties these days. They don’t stand for anything and they fall for anything.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, what about compulsory superannuation? This 50-year experiment continues, we’re now 30 years into the super experiment, and without getting bogged down in any of the financial detail, is it working, and can we afford the increase the government has promised Malcolm?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, you know, the reserve bank governor has come out and said the rising super would reduce wage growth, and spending.

And he’s right, because what people fail to realise is this super has to be paid from somewhere. The extra super contribution has to come from somewhere, and it comes out of an employer’s revenue.

And so, the employer then has less opportunity, less affordability, to give wage increases in the future. So the money doesn’t come out of nowhere. It goes either into super, or it goes into increased wages.

Take your pick Marcus. And so the reserve bank governor is sensible in saying that. So I’m saying that we need to really consider this, and have a good look at it, because the contribution from super, the tax concessions on super fund earnings is now costing us 38 billion a year.

The cost in saved pensions is only $8 billion a year. That means there’s $30 billion being transferred somewhere else. And we know that it goes to the banks and the super funds and fees.

[Marcus Paul]

Of course it does.

[Malcolm Roberts]

So this means that what’s happening, is that the rate we’re going, the return to members would be below the projected return if it were not for taxation concessions.

So we really have to think about what we’re doing with super and we have to stop making it increasingly complex. Have to really look at it in a solid way, and then come back to having a solid strategy on super and stop changing it all the time.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah, I mean if business is forced to increase super in order to survive, then unfortunately they may just take that out of wages.

We know that real wage growth has basically flat-lined over the years, and they can’t probably afford, given the fact that we’ll be in hopefully recovery phase by then with COVID-19, with all borders open and all economies chugging away.

So while business survives, perhaps individuals if you like, may be worse off. I mean it’s, I don’t know whether the economy can sustain a rise in compulsory superannuation.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, you’re absolutely correct. And it points to not only the confusion and the concern that people have with continual meddling with the super, but also it points to what we discussed last week and the week before Marcus.

And that is that our economy has been debilitated from about 1923 onwards, and then especially from 1944 onwards, with signing the Lima Agreement, the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol and all these things that have destroyed our economic sovereignty, our economic sustainability, so we’ve had a reduced economy now, and even before COVID, it was floundering.

So, as a result of COVID, it’s collapsed. What we need to do, when Morrison and Albanese are talking about lifting the economy back to where it was, we don’t need to think about February this year Marcus, we need to think about getting back to being number one in the world, which is where we were in the early part of last century, right through to 1920.

We had the number one income per capita in the world. And that’s what we need to get back to. And what’s happened is that the Liberal Labor policies of pushing UN policies has failed. And we need to get back to really aiming for being top of the world again.

We’ve got the people, we’ve got the resources, we’ve got the climate, we’ve got the opportunities and the potential, we’ve just got wombats running the show in Canberra. That’s what we need to change.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, good to have you on the programme as always Malcolm. Calling a shovel a bloody spade. Appreciate it, we’ll talk to you next week. Thank you.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Thanks Marcus.

The following is Senator Roberts’ submission to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry into the Senator’s Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020. See the media release in relation to this submission here.

Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020

I would like to thank the almost 200 submissions in support of the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020 (the Bill). Opposition from the financial establishment has been to maintain the ambiguous wording in the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2018 (the Act).

I would advise the Committee as follows.

Summary by section

  1. The $250,000 FCS guarantee triggers once a bank fails.  A bail-in is designed to save a bank from failing, meaning the FCS does not prevent a bail-in because the bail-in comes first.
  2. APRA’s submission requires the phrase “any other instrument” to remain to meet future developments in financial products. I agree, this bill retains that wording and adds a single modifier – ‘except retail deposits’.  APRA’s objection is moot.
  3. Some submissions suggest a bail-in conflicts with Section 2A of the Banking Act which protects deposits.  This argument flounders on the effect of a bail-in, which is to save the bank.  In turn this action protects some deposits immediately and the rest are restored years hence.  The wording of 2A does not preclude a bail-in, it precludes an unsuccessful one.  
  4. The IMF are on record as indicating the Crisis Resolution Powers of the 2018 Act have primacy over the general banking directions (S2A) provided in the Banking Act. These crisis powers allow APRA to order a bail-in before the FCS guarantee would start.
  5. Some submissions relied on the absence of a provision in account Terms & Conditions as the explanation for why bail-in provisions do not apply to retail deposits. As banks are adding this clause to their Terms & Conditions, I would consider this objection moot.
  6. APRA have indemnified bank executives for actions they may take in the implementation of emergency powers, including a bail-in.
  7. Bail-in involves banks issuing new shares in exchange for the funds they take out of depositors’ accounts. This double hit – reduced goodwill towards the brand and dilution of share prices – will comprise a massive hit to our Super Funds, self-managed retirees and the more than one million Australians with bank shares.
  8. Australia is obligated by membership in international banking and financial agreements to have in place a deposit bail-in capability that specifically prevents taxpayers’ money being used to save a bank. It is likely that this clause will prohibit the Treasurer from activating the FCS guarantee should a bail-in fail, simply because that is taxpayers’ money as well.

There is no doubt that the existing legislation allows for a bank bail-in. My bill asks all Senators a simple question – is this what you want? Millions of super fund members and bank shareholders await your answer.

1. The $250,000 FCS Deposit Guarantee

The Financial Claims Scheme (FCS) deposit protection was an excellent initiative from the Rudd Labor Government back in 2008.  However, things have changed since then.

The FCS is not active, and therefore “The Scheme is activated at the discretion of the Australian Treasurer”.[1] As confirmation, in 2018 APRA Chair Mr Wayne Byres addressed the Economics Legislation Committee, regarding the FCS: “Well, it’s not currently activated in the sense that it’s only activated when a bank fails…the FCS is there to make sure that particularly retail depositors but also depositors with amounts up to $250,000 are not at risk of losing their money, should a bank fail.”

The Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2017, EM states: “In the unlikely event that a bank fails the Treasurer may activate the FCS…these specific depositor protections would generally only apply as a last resort, once an ADI* cannot be resolved.”

The ABC in their article on this bill raised the spectre of a run on the banks if, for instance the real estate market melts down.[2] The Government seems to have considered the impact of a bank run on the effectiveness of a bail-in, and recently added secrecy provisions to the Act so that the public would not be alerted prior to a bail-in.

Melissa Harrison’s submission 60 used the IMF’s 2019 assessment of the FCS: “The Banking Act does not compel APRA to make the appointment of a statutory manager public… As the authorities are well aware, the statutory management power should be used very cautiously as the appointment of a statutory manager could destabilize the bank by triggering or exacerbating funding runs.[3]

A bail-in would occur prior to the FCS guarantee being authorised, with the new secrecy provisions leaving customers in the dark until their money disappears from their bank account.

A few other issues with the $250,000 guarantee are:

  1. It is organised by bank by account holder. This means accounts owned by foreign citizens or entities would be bailed-in using Australian taxpayers’ funds;
  2. The FCS is unfunded;
  3. The FCS is limited to $20bn per bank. The Commonwealth Bank, for example, has 16 million account holders. $20bn will only cover 80,000 of those to the full $250,000. Alternatively, cover could be extended to all 16 million account holders but only for the first $1250.  

2. APRA: We need ‘any other instrument’ in the Act

From APRA’s submission 197: “We agree that if the intention of the Act was to only cover Additional Tier 1 and Tier 2 capital, an addition of ‘any other instrument’ would have been unnecessary. However… ‘any other instrument’ was included in contemplation of further classes of capital which may be added in the future.…the reference to ‘any other instrument’ was neither intended to, nor does it in fact extend to, deposits.”

*ADI = Authorised Deposit Taking Institution. For accessibility this submission uses “bank” wherever possible.

I agree with APRA that this reference is needed for future developments. This is why the wording of the bill does not remove the phrase “any other instrument”. It simply applies a single modifier “not including a deposit account” and then defines what a deposit account is.

As this clause still operates in the manner requested by APRA, their argument is moot.

Treasury have also objected to including this definition in the Act because it introduces a definition not in use elsewhere in the Act. While I feel this is clutching at straws, Treasury are free to introduce an amendment to prevent our definition being used more widely.

3. Bail-in is inconsistent with depositor protection (S2A)

From APRA’s submission 197: “APRA has broad directions powers, all of which must be used consistent with the objects of the Banking Act (particularly the paramount objective of protecting depositors). As such, APRA could not direct the insertion of a conversion or write-off provision into customer deposit accounts given such a direction would be inconsistent with the objective of depositor protection. Such a direction would be found to be invalid.”

This argument flounders on the effect of a bail-in, which is to PROTECT depositors’ funds by:

  1. Converting some part of depositors’ funds to a security (forced purchase of shares in the bank) that can be converted back to funds upon sale at a future time; 
  2. This saves the bank from failure and in turn, protects the remaining depositor funds;
  3. 2A does not prevent a bail-in, it prevents a failed bail-in.

This bill is necessary because of the loss of amenity in the period between the funds being seized and many years down the road, when the share price recovers and the shares redeemed.  Small business, retirees, low income earners will lose homes and businesses in a bail-in.

4. IMF statements conflict with Treasury and APRA submissions

The IMF disagrees with APRA on the strength of S2A protections. An IMF report states:[4]

“The new ‘catch-all’ directions powers in the 2018 Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill provide APRA with the flexibility to make directions to the ADIs that are not contemplated by the other kinds of general directions listed in the Banking Act.”

In a February 2019 assessment of Australia’s bank resolution and crisis management, the International Monetary Fund noted:[5]

“[APRA’s] Direction powers are also a key element in the resolution process for a distressed ADI; directions can be used to implement a range of resolution options, including facilitating recapitalization. Hence, the framework allows for the possibility that a problem bank could be resolved while under private control as APRA could order an ADI to recapitalize.”

The IMF are saying that the 2018 Crisis Resolution Powers have primacy over the general directions statements in the Banking Act. These allow APRA to ‘facilitate recapitalisation’ which is the definition of a bail-in and “under private control” means before it goes bust and the $250,000 guarantee starts.

If APRA and Treasury’s submissions are correct, then the IMF is wrong.

5. Banks can’t change their Terms & Conditions to allow a bail-in

APRA submission: “While an ADI may unilaterally change terms and conditions for customer deposits, it may not do so where the change is to facilitate a conversion or write-off of customer deposits. This is because to do so would be inconsistent with unfair contract terms legislation under the ASIC Act. A term allowing an ADI to write off or convert a retail deposit would amount to an unfair contract term. Moreover, even if an ADI was not prohibited from changing its terms in this way by unfair contract terms legislation, APRA would use its powers under the Banking Act to protect depositors and prohibit an ADI from changing these terms to insert write-off provisions.”

Treasury’s submission contained the same argument.The legislation referenced actually states: “Only a court can decide whether or not a term is unfair.  “ So the legislation does NOT prevent bail-in provisions being added to Terms & Conditions. The protection comes from:

  1. APRA using their oversight powers to unwind such an attempt; or
  2. Affected depositors taking the might of the Australian banks to Court to get a ruling that this was indeed an unfair contract term.

Neither of these has happened. APRA has however had an opportunity to intervene when our banks started adding bail-in provisions to their Terms & Conditions. Please view submission 166 from Adams Economics, Annexe C for more.

APRA and Treasury are relying on a protection provided by APRA’s regulation powers that only exists if those powers are used.

6. APRA indemnifies bank executives who carry out a bail-in

In its 2019 assessment the International Monetary Fund noted:[6]

“Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill, provides for clearer immunity for an institution, its directors, management, employees and agents when taking reasonable steps to comply with an APRA direction…the Bill provides that a person is not liable in an action, suit or proceeding (whether criminal or civil) in relation to anything done, or omitted to be done, in good faith by the person if it is done for the purposes of complying with a direction given by APRA.”

This indemnity protects bank executives from legal action over their decision to conduct a bail-in.

7. Super Funds and self-funded retirees will be devastated

Our banks are some of the most valuable, even beloved brands in Australia. The financial damage to their share price from the loss of goodwill from a bail-in will be in the billions.

A greater loss though will come from the issuing of new shares to depositors in exchange for their savings. This dilutes the share price for existing shareholders. This is the reason for a bail-in given by the IMF – the cost of the bail-in must be worn by shareholders, not taxpayers.

Who are these shareholders if not taxpayers? Fourteen million Australians have superannuation accounts which contain a significant exposure to bank shares. There are more than a million everyday Australians who own bank shares directly.

Australia privatised our State Bank (The Commonwealth Bank) by giving everyday Australians discounted shares. Bank share ownership in Australia is the highest in the world, and our compulsory super ranks third in the world for number of people covered in percentage terms.

The IMF/G20 can champion a bail-in over a bail-out to protect taxpayers all they like. In Australia our taxpayers and our bank shareholders are one and the same.

The Government has looked the other way while banks have lent to the real estate market at the cost of compromising their loan book diversity. If it all melts down that is on the Government, not shareholders.

Government intervention by recapitalisation financed with Government bonds transferred over to the banks over time will, in the long run, not cost taxpayers money but it will avoid millions of everyday Australians getting done over by the IMF.

8. Further notes on our international obligations

Depositors are considered ‘unsecured creditors’ to a bank. This is apparent in the RBA publication ‘Depositor Protection in Australia’, which comments on “…other unsecured creditors, including depositors”.[7]

The Australian government’s 2014 ‘Financial System Inquiry Final Report’ acknowledged:[8]

“Inevitably, failures can and will occur, the system will be exposed to crises and, at times, unsecured bank creditors will be exposed to loss.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system. The Board includes all G20 major economies. Australia is a member and participates in the process.

The Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Key Attributes recommend that a resolution regime should “allocate losses to firm owners (shareholders) and unsecured and uninsured creditors (depositors)”.[9]

Australia is represented on the FSB by the Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasury and we have endorsed the FSB’s ‘key attributes’.

A further look at the ‘key attributes” reveals this provision:[10]

The TLAC standard has been designed so that failing G-SIBs [banks] will have sufficient loss-absorbing and recapitalisation capacity available in resolution for authorities to implement an orderly resolution that minimises impacts on financial stability, maintains the continuity of critical functions, and avoids exposing public funds to loss.

From submission 166 from Adams Economics: At the 2010 G20 Seoul Meeting, the Australian Government committed Australia to the Summit Document13, which included paragraph 30: 

“We reaffirmed our view that no firm should be too big or too complicated to fail and that taxpayers should not bear the costs of resolution.”

9. Conclusion

If I may give the last word to Queensland LNP Senator Amanda Stoker. On the 5th November 2018, Senator Stoker explained in a letter to a constituent her view of the Act: 

“The legislation facilitates bail-in as a type of resolution power which is available for dealing with financial institution distress. This was done after the G20 leaders endorsed a new Financial Stability Board standard for Total Loss-absorbing Capacity.”

I thank the Senator for that clarity. Clearly the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2018 was in fact an implementation of the Financial Stability Board’s requirements for member nations to have legislation that allows a bank bail-in as a way of preventing public funds being used to bail out a bank.

Could it be that as our international agreements require bail-in rather than taxpayer funded bail-out and the Government, The Treasury and APRA have spent two years hoping nobody notices? I wonder because New Zealand have enacted their bail-in laws in the open, based on the same agreements we are signatory to.

The Government has a simple choice:

Either: Oppose our bill and admit the wording of the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2018 was indeed to give APRA the power, and the banks the right, to bail-in depositor funds. Then be honest with the electorate that banks have been given bail-in powers under a smoke screen of ambiguous wording.

Or: Pass the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020 to give depositors confidence in their bank deposits and provide clarity for stakeholders.


[1] Grant Turner, ‘Depositor Protection in Australia’ [2011] (December) Reserve Bank of Australia Bulletin 45-55, 51.

[2] Nassim Khadem, ‘Coronavirus crisis heightens fears bank deposits could be wiped out under ‘ambiguous’ laws’, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (online, 16 July 2020) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-16/coronavirus-crisis-heightens-fears-bank-deposits-could-be-wiped/12458462.

[3] International Monetary Fund – Monetary and Capital Markets Department, ‘Australia: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Bank Resolution and Crisis Management’ (Country Report No. 19/48, 21 February 2019).

[4] International Monetary Fund – Monetary and Capital Markets Department, ‘Australia: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Bank Resolution and Crisis Management’ (Country Report No. 19/48, 21 February 2019).

[5] International Monetary Fund – Monetary and Capital Markets Department, ‘Australia: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Bank Resolution and Crisis Management’ (Country Report No. 19/48, 21 February 2019).

[6] International Monetary Fund – Monetary and Capital Markets Department, ‘Australia: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note-Bank Resolution and Crisis Management’ (Country Report No. 19/48, 21 February 2019).

[7] Grant Turner, ‘Depositor Protection in Australia’ [2011] (December) Reserve Bank of Australia Bulletin 45-55.

[8] The Australian Government the Treasury, Financial System Inquiry(Final Report, 7 December 2014).

[9] Ulf Lewrick, José María Serena Garralda and Grant Turner, ‘Believing in bail-in? Market discipline and the pricing of bail-in bonds’ (Working Paper No. 831, Bank for International Settlements, December 2019).

[10] Financial Stability Board, ‘FSB issues final Total Loss-Absorbing Capacity standard for global systemically important banks’ (Press Release 74/2015, 9 November 2015).

Stop banks in financial trouble from stealing our savings is the message of Senator Roberts’ submission to the Bank Bail-in inquiry.

“The Australian people and small business owners need to know that their savings, whether for mortgages or quarterly tax payments, right now are not safe if a bank faces financial hardship,” said Senator Roberts.

The disappointing and inaccurate submissions from Treasury and APRA claim there is no provision for a bail-in of depositors’ money, in spite of Australia being signatories to international agreements that demand a bail-in strategy.

“This is a blatant lie. Australians need to know that our politicians have ratified the IMF (2008) operating agreement  and the G20 financial management guidance which both clearly state that if a bank fails, taxpayers’ money cannot be used to save it (a bail-out), and instead banks must use a bail-in, which steals depositors’ money.”

The Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2018 that allows banks to take your deposited money and convert to devalued bank shares, was waved through with only nine senators present.

“That Bill legalises a bail-in that international agreements demand happens. My Bill, the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020, stops this happening.

“New Zealand has openly acknowledged the same international agreements that Australia has signed and has passed legislation that allows depositors’ money to be taken as a bail-in, so why are Treasury and APRA pretending this can’t happen here?” added Senator Roberts.

A bank bail-in has already occurred in Cyprus and Iceland and many countries now have these provisions as part of their banking system.

Only One Nation is prepared to stand against the international agreements that intrude into the lives of Australians and the banks taking our money to save themselves. “Government bonds issued for the purpose of saving a bank are a much better way to save that bank without costing taxpayers any money,” Senator Roberts stated.

Senator Roberts’ submission can be read in full here:

This week I appeared on BUSINESS NOW ASIA PACIFIC to discuss the different approaches to COVID19 and how Australia needs to change course.

Transcript

[Mike

Senator Malcolm Roberts from Pauline Hanson’s One nation believes the lockdown in Victoria will succeed. However testing needs to be quicker. He also believes that government needs to be more truthful. Now, Victoria has serious problems with infection control will a harder breakdown be effective if they don’t know the source of so many infections.

[Malcolm]

Well, I think there are two things I need to say in response to that Mike. And that is that first of all, this is a very difficult issue. We said that right from the start on the single day sittings on 23rd of March and eighth of April, when we said, there’s no manual for this, it’s entirely new.

We’ve gotta give the government lots of room. We voted in favour that we supported them on their packages and away we went, but we said, you’ve got to get the data. And you’ve got to look elsewhere and start to manage this in accordance with the best practise around the world.

So we might come back to that more later, but what we’ve learned is that quite often, the places where people have prolonged contact in close quarters is where the virus is transmission is highest and that’s the family unit and workplaces. So the family unit in Melbourne is older than in any other city.

And that’s significant because I also saw these figures on one of the radio stations. I heard the figures rather than one of the radio stations. The other thing about Melbourne is that it’s flat and people travel very easily and they travelled to watch football matches, sporting events, games, social venues, et cetera.

So I think that it is difficult. And number one priority is life, securing life, making sure people are healthy and secure and safe. And so a lockdown is essential because they’ve lost control of their borders. They’ve let it go and sorry, lost control of the virus within, in I think multi, foreign, where people are speaking foreign languages.

So they’ve lost control of that because people have not been able to understand the messages about the virus. So that’s where the outbreaks have been. And so I think the lockdown will be effective because it’ll stop families The extended family visits and it’ll stop work obviously.

And so I think the lock downs will be successful in Melbourne. The other thing is that they need to get testing done more quickly because some people are basically having a test and not getting the result back for about 10 days. Now they’re not gonna stay cooped up for 10 days if they don’t believe they’re sick.

And many of these cases that they’re asymptomatic. So I think that while it will work, the government has got to do its bit and getting testing to be more responsive and get results back in two or three days rather than 10. So yeah, there’s potential.

[Mike]

It’s interesting. In South Korea, the testing, from the testing to getting the results back now 12 hours and that’s what it should be when I was talking to professor Justin Fendos in South Korea last week, and he was saying that 12 hours and I mentioned that we have at times up to 10 days and I could hear his jaw hit the table. That’s just atrocious. What should the authorities be doing though?

[Malcolm]

Well, let’s come back to Taiwan if you don’t mind, because South Korea has done a marvellous job. They actually, do you mind if we talk about that?

[Mike]

Yeah, for sure.

[Malcolm]

Okay, South Korea has done a marvellous job. They actually let go let it go. And they had to recover. So given that, and by the way, I’ve watched your interview with professor Fendos. Fabulous interview, very well spoken man knows his facts. And he has been on the same track we’ve been from the right from the start on Monday, March 23rd and April the eighth, in the Senate single day hearings.

We also said, make sure that you get the data to the federal government when we gave them our support. And we said, make sure you looked at Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asian nations, Taiwan, especially South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, have done a marvellous job.

Singapore with the exception of Singapore, all the other three and Israel, which had also done a good job, Mike, they have eternal vigilance and they’re ready to do respond quickly to threats because they’re constantly under threat. So that is something we don’t have.

But the, in Taiwan, their population is about the same as Australia. They have 24 million we have 25. The population density in Taiwan is far, far higher than us because their 24 are crammed into a small Island. And they also had an earlier and stronger exchange with China because they’re Chinese themselves.

And so they had a lot more travelling between Taiwan and mainland China. And so they had a much greater problem. Now what the Taiwanese did, and we need to recognise that Australia has had 130 deaths and that’s good, but the Taiwanese have had seven, even despite they had an earlier virus, earlier contact with the virus, seven.

And the other significant point with the Taiwanese is that they didn’t lock down their economy. They actually kept their economy going and they gave responsibility to the people. Now, there are three things that they have done really well. First of all, their basic strategy was to isolate the sick and isolate the vulnerable.

That’s what real quarantine is. Quarantine is not isolating everyone into lockdown. Quarantine is isolating the sick and the vulnerable and separating them out. The second thing they did was that they implemented massive testing and they have a screening process for the testing. And I think South Korea is the same.

They test for high temperature knowing that that’s not always reliable, but they test for high temperature. If someone has a high temperature, then they go and get tested for COVID. And if they test negative, but they still have, for COVID, but still have a high temperature, then they’re allowed to go to work.

So they put responsibility on the workplaces, and what we’ve got in those countries is the responsibility on the individual citizens. And when you have that responsibility, there’s a far greater sense of accountability rather than when it’s imposed.

And the other thing that they’ve done, and I’ve only learned about this recently is they’ve got a much stricter tracing regime, but the tracing apparently doesn’t go right into people’s whereabouts it goes into their localities, and that helps the authorities then get one step in front.

So what I think the, what I think now with those lessons from Taiwan, and we encourage the government to look at Taiwan and South Korea. What I think that we should be doing now is we should be in Australia revising and reviewing our current work. How effective have we been? Where have we not been effective?

We need to recover and plan for recovery in two areas. First of all, to get our economy back to pre COVID, which is February, but then we need to aim far, far higher Mike, we need to get our economy back to, so to the point where we have our sovereignty, restored, our economic sovereignty and economic security and our independence.

We’ve been following this nonsense from the United nations now for almost 70 years. And it’s destroying our sovereignty and our economic independence. And so what the UN has been preaching and our governments have been preaching is interdependence, which means that we are dependent on other countries.

And so what we need to do is to get back at productive capacity, especially for manufacturing and agriculture. And then the third thing we need to do is to plan for future viruses, because this won’t be the last one. And so the biggest thing of all Mike, that we’ve learned is that the Taiwanese, the South Koreans, the Israelis, the Singaporeans, they trust their government.

They don’t give them carte blanche, but they do trust their government. And the government’s lead. In this country governments are too busy, fabricating policies and making and misrepresenting the circumstances.

We haven’t seen the truth on this from the prime minister. We haven’t seen the truth on this from Daniel Andrews, nor Annastacia Palaszczuk. We wrote to Annastacia Palaszczuk and said, “where’s your data. “We want to have a look at it.” She said, it’s in two locations, we went to both locations.

There’s no data. So Scott Morrison right up front. He was saying, six months hibernation, six months hibernation, six months hibernation. We knew there was no plan. And now we know there’s no data driving that plan. These governments are not trusted in this country on a range of issues, electricity, agriculture, stealing farmers property rights.

I mean, you could go on forever, selling ourselves out through international agreements, selling ourselves out the free trade agreements that are giving the other parties the power, we have got to establish trust in our government. And that can only become, can only come with reliance on data and reliance on telling the truth its time Australia got back to that.

[Mike]

Just wondering about the data to have the data we need all the input. We actually have that at our fingertips with credit cards and with Apple, for example, and the other Android devices. And we can, we can actually find out where people have been. The problem we have at the moment, according to professor Fendos, was that it’s reliant on us being honourable or telling the truth. So by having all that data available, it’s going to impact on inverted commas ‘civil liberties.’

[Malcolm]

Well, I get, I go back to my experience when I graduated from university with a mining engineering degree, I thought I’d better go out and start learning something that really mattered. So I worked as a miner for about three years, various mines around the country. And then I went overseas and worked in mines overseas.

So I’ve worked at the coalface and I developed a very healthy respect for miners for all people. And then when I became a mine manager, I would go underground a lot, not to do people’s work, but just to have, listen, and to look so that I can understand what they were going through and what their needs were.

And I can remember turning up at one mine brand new and the workforce detested the mine management because the mine management told lies and it took me a few months, but people started to trust me and that’s extremely important. And then what I was able to do was also to hand over responsibility and authority to the people doing the job.

I mean, not everything we can’t expect the miner to make every decision for the business, but their own jobs. And when people are given that responsibility and that authority they usually come good. And so what’s happening here is government tries to impose things in a crisis.

And we think we’re, a lot of Australians then distrust that, but in, Southeast Asia they’re already practising those things. And we’ve gotta give those governments credit because they’ve had SARS before. So we understand that that’s made it easier, but they’ve learned from that.

And they put it into practise and people are now trusting the government. So if the government tells the truth, if the government hands over responsibility to business owners, venue managers, then they’ll see the people respond because then people take accountability.

But when it’s shoved on them under threat and under control, it’s not taken that accountability is taken when there’s freedom for people to make decisions that autonomy is really important. And we’ve gotta keep giving trust back to people in this country and get the government the hell out of people’s lives.

[Mike]

What about state government? When we have this, where, we’re all Australians, but we have, the new country of Queensland, the new country of Victoria, the new country, new South Wales, South Australia, blah, blah, blah, blah. And each state has its own, not agenda, but it its own approach.

And maybe an agenda also it becomes a little bit political because where the Joan of arc of WA, with a Joan of arc of Victoria, Tasmania. So how do we get all the States working as one country instead of being a number of different countries within this terrible state of Australia?

[Malcolm]

Well, first of all, the thing that unites strategies is data. When everyone’s got the correct data, you’ll end up seeing strategies similar, but across every state, but they will be fine tuned for each state because Queensland is the only state in the country. Yes, that’s correct.

It’s the only state in the country where there are more people outside the capital city than inside the capital city, we’re more decentralised. We’re more spread up the coast with the sparse population inland. And so that’s different from Victoria. That’s different from Tassie.

That’s different from new South Wales and then Western Australia is different again. So I’m very much a believer in our constitution, federal constitution, which is based on competitive federalism, giving a huge amount of sovereignty to the independent States.

Only on national issues should we come together that’s defence, border security, foreign affairs, those kinds of things. And so I’m in favour of letting the state run, but the States themselves also need to get the data so that they can manage effectively. And they need to manage trust in a trustworthy way.

The fundamental thing that we did wrong in this country, I believe with COVID was that we looked automatically to Britain and to a man called Neil Ferguson. And that was a mistake. This Neil Ferguson has done I’ve forgotten the name of the school in medical school, medical college in Britain, but he’s in there and they’ve done a lot of modelling and his models have been proven to be completely wacky.

They have exaggerated the consequences of just about every virus they’ve cared to model every disease they’ve cared to model. Foot and mouth disease they cost the British government way back then when a billion was worth a billion, $10 billion, they cost the British farm economy. They have completely exaggerated.

They forecast millions of deaths, when out of the virus out of the disease in Britain when there were only 120 deaths. I mean, it’s completely ridiculous. We looked to them went straight to lockdown. We didn’t look to Asia. We should’ve looked at Taiwan as well as Britain and worked out where the reality is.

Donald Trump himself started calling out the British. And I don’t think he named Ferguson, but he that’s what he was implying. And we should be coming up with our own strategy, but looking at Taiwan, looking at everywhere in the world and then developing our own. So it’s up to the state governments.

I believe they should be independent. They should be working independently. That’s what gives us greater accountability. It worked up until about 1923, and then that’s been smashed and we’ve centralised more and more. So we need to get back to that competitive federalism, independent States working together. And when they’ve got data, they will have a solid plan. We’ve got to get back to truthful government that relies upon objective data.

[Mike]

Very interesting times we must continue more discussions. There’s so many questions or conversation pieces such as border control, the forthcoming Queensland elections in Australia, the economy and even football. So we can do that next time.

[Malcolm]

I look forward to it Mike. Happy to contact me anytime.

[Mike]

Senator Malcolm Roberts, thank you very much.

[Malcolm]

Thank you, Mike. All the best.

Transcript

[Marcus] Minutes away from eight o’clock Senator Malcolm Roberts joins us on the programme, from One Nation, morning Malcolm, how are you mate?

[Malcolm] Good morning Marcus, I’m very well, how are you?

[Marcus] Yeah really good, look I’ve spoken a lot on the programme this week about our manufacturing sector. Look we need to make our economy capable of recovering from COVID-19, it’s, look it’s a complex issue I understand that but, I mean what do you think we should be doing mate?

[Malcolm] Well, you know it is a sad and scary story actually because it’s now recognised internationally that we’ve lost our economic security. We can’t make make protective equipment, we can’t get our supplies for handling the virus, we don’t make cars anymore, basic manufactured goods, tools, construction and mining equipment.

What we need to do is to harness the power we have in this country with our people and our resources. And to revive manufacturing and agriculture, the government needs to get back to doing its job to serve the people, and to create an environment for investing and making. Instead of just simple relying on digging and shipping

[Marcus] Yeah

[Malcolm] Which we need to continue to do, minerals and energy. We need to reform tax, we need to cut regulations, we need to build infrastructure, and we need to restore skills, particularly apprenticeships and restore the TAFE system.

[Marcus] Well absolutely, and what we do need to do Malcolm, is we need to value add the stuff we take out of the ground, otherwise we’ll fall further and further behind. I mean the latest indicator for manufacturing 2020 the manufacturing self-sufficiency index, ranks Australia almost, in fact, last among developed countries for God’s sake.

We’re ranked 59th, we’re somewhere between Kazakhstan and Lebanon, we’re not adding value to our primary production.

[Malcolm] Yeah you’re absolutely correct, and the reason why is in part because of the things I’ve mentioned, the tax that favours multinational companies, and also, that’s the company tax, and also the ridiculous regulations.

But what we’ve done is we’ve gutted our energy system, we’ve still got the world’s cheapest, high quality coal, very good, clean coal, and what we’re doing is we’re raising our energy prices artificially through these stupid regulations and this climate nonsense, and what we do now is we export our coal to China, and they sell electricity using our coal at eight cents a kilowatt-hour.

What we do here is we sell it at three times that price, our same coal that’s got less distance to travel. What we need to do is build coal fired power stations, end the ridiculous subsidies on intermittent energies, and that’s what they are, wind and solar, are intermittent, unreliable and expensive.

We need to remove these climate policies, we need to build a hybrid Bradfield Scheme in Queensland, because that comes with a hydro power system, and we need to stop the Queensland state Government for example, stealing one and half billion dollars every year, from every energy user, and that’s just basically a tax, they make that as a profit, and they just, it’s really a tax, so that’s crippling our manufacturing and crippling our ability to add.

We’ve now got aluminium smelter’s have shut, near your way down in Kurri Kurri and the Hunter. Looks like it’s under threat at Tomago, also in the Hunter, certainly in Geelong, and possibly now in Boyne Island. So what we’ll do is we’ll dig the bauxite out of the ground and then ship it off to overseas, and we won’t even get the aluminium out of our country, I mean it’s just ridiculous.

[Marcus] Well that’s right, that’s the value added that we’re talking about that we seem to be essentially either pricing ourselves out of, or basically because we’re lazy and we don’t want to look at any other way of perhaps taking advantage of this rich, mineral nation and land that we have here in Australia I mean, look manufacturing, back in the 1980’s, manufacturing was one of our biggest, if not the biggest employer at 17% of the total employment pie.

Now, it’s sadly just sitting down there at 6%, no wonder our economy’s hungry, I mean that’s how much less of the pie it’s getting.

[Malcolm] That’s right, 50 years ago, Marcus, and it’s so pleasing to see you using hard data. 50 years ago manufacturing was 30% of our gross domestic product, now it’s just 6%, and blue collar workers must be shaking their heads in absolute disbelief at what’s going on.

But I reckon every middle class person in this country, all blue collar workers, all small businesses, need to be very, very scared and worried about the Labor Party in particular, because it’s driving

[Marcus] Well hang on yes

[Malcolm] The agenda for renewables.

[Marcus] Well that was my next point, Labor are supposed to be supporting the blue collar worker, what are they doing about it?

[Malcolm] Well you know, Senator Sterle and Gallacher, Sterle, Glenn Sterle’s a wonderful guy and Alex Gallacher from South Australia, Sterle from Western Australia, they’re genuinely trying to stand up for workers like old Labor, and in One Nation, Marcus, we always give credit where credit’s due. But Fitzgibbon now, Joel Fitzgibbon

[Marcus] Yeah?

[Malcolm] A member for the Hunter, has stood up and said “the Green’s have infiltrated Labour.” Hello Joel, we’ve been saying that for decades, and what’s happening now is we’ve got new Labour, which is not like old Labor, and now we’ve got a confirmation of new Labor, because Albanese is rebuking Fitzgibbon,

And confirming that Labor will continue to abandon workers, in selling out to the Green’s, Labor has completely confirmed that it opposes coal mining jobs, opposes manufacturing jobs opposes blue collar jobs. They just want to go off and bend genders and all the rest of it, it’s completely absurd.

[Marcus] All right look, go easy on my mate Joel, I mean he’s the hope for the side. I think with Mr Fitzgibbon I’ve been very adamant, I mean I like Anthony Albanese but, I mean Anthony is simply too nice.

I really believe that, and Joel, perhaps I think he should have higher aspirations considering he speaks better sense than a number of his colleagues on the future of our energy sector and resources and mining and you know, he’s one of those that you’re right, will not be infiltrated by a Green ideology thank God.

That’s why I say that Joel Fitzgibbon is the hope for the side, and as soon as Anthony perhaps, realises this, he maybe needs to get out of the way.

[Malcolm] Well that’s the problem, that’s the problem you’ve identified Marcus, doesn’t matter what Joel thinks, because Anthony Albanese has gutted and cut the legs out from underneath Joel Fitzgibbon and no one stood up to support Joel publicly, no one, and they just let it all slide through.

So, basically what Albanese’s done is undermine the Hunter Valley, undermine all industry and undermine small business in this country, because he’s pushing absurd policies that are driving up energy pricing ridiculously.

[Marcus] Don’t hold back Malcolm okay? Don’t hold back, whatever you do. Tell me about this, a 23 year old university student is suing the government for failing to disclose the risk climate change poses to Australian super and other safe investments in government bonds, what?

[Malcolm] Yeah it’s ridiculous, you know this is just the ABC putting out another story, but unfortunately it’s true, but putting out another story in favour of their climate alarm crusade, but you know what Marcus?

You know where I stand on this, but I actually welcome this woman doing this, this young lady, 23 year old, because we need to bring this issue to court, because in court, they have to give hard evidence, empirical data, under oath. We’ve never had that in this country, and the second thing that she wants, she wants to change the way the government handles climate.

We want them to do exactly that, we want them to start using data, and you know, the third thing, so I actually support her getting into court, but what a ridiculous thing she’s doing because, it shows her entitlement mentality, she wants government to protect people from their own investment decisions, it’s just another stunt, again without the data.

[Marcus] All right and look I know you’re really chomping at the bit to get into this, the New South Wales police commissioner as we know, has fined BLM protestors.

It is pleasing, the law has been enforced, including Mr Patrick, who, the leader of the so-called BLM movement, here in New South Wales, at least, he was, well, I thought he was thrown in the back of a paddy waggon, but he was basically given a green carpet ride into the bowels of Parliament House don’t press, you know, don’t pass –

He certainly bypassed jail he got a thousand dollar fine, but I don’t know, what do we make of this Malcolm?

[Malcolm] Well didn’t he get the help from Green’s MP’s David Shoebridge and Jenny Leong to get into Parliament house?

[Marcus] Well I didn’t see Mr Shoebridge, but definitely Jenny Leong and she was there on the news last night, justifying this, well at least trying to justify it. It even had the New South Wales premier, who’ll join us on the programme soon, I mean, Gladys was even shaking her head, she didn’t quite understand how that could happen.

[Malcolm] But there is a wonderful positive side to this because the New South Wales police commissioner stood up last week and said that he will be enforcing the law and requiring police to enforce the law, and that’s exactly what the police force need to do. You know up here in Queensland, we have a premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who is soft on criminals, and hard on farmers and producers. And you know, she just invites people, and we got 30,000 people turning up to a black lives march protest last month, just crazy.

[Marcus] Yeah well, and then she closes borders, and worries about the importation, if you like, of COVID-19, meanwhile you’re right, that strange lily-livered, I guess mentality of preferring people’s civil liberties and their rights to protest over everybody’s health.

You know that’s, you’re gonna fester in your own nest I think up there, look I don’t know, maybe, I think as far as Queensland’s concerned, there needs to be a much stronger opposition Malcolm, because Annastacia seems to be able to be doing what she wants and she’s completely blocked out Sydney now as we know with the latest news that’s come through and off she goes mate, she’s on a tirade up there.

[Malcolm] Well we haven’t got any strong opposition here in the LNP because Deb Frecklington is really just the previous opposition leader Tim Nicholls with a skirt, you know, and what’s happening is the LNP are pushing similarly absurd policies to energy and climate policies as the Labor party.

And the Nationals are now following our lead, and pretending, we are actually opposing the UN and what it’s doing in this country, the Nationals realising that we’re stealing their votes are now pretending to oppose the UN. But the same people in the National Party are meekly following the LNP which signed the, which the coalition signed the Paris Agreement, which is gutting energy.

John Howard and the Nationals at the time, John Anderson, signed the, sorry committed to, committed our country to complying with the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s Kyoto Protocol and that’s decimated farming

[Marcus] We’ve all been sold a dud, we’ve all been sold a dud on this climate change, we know that. Malcolm good to have you on the programme, let’s talk again next week thank you.

[Malcolm] Look forward to it, thanks Marcus

[Marcus] All right there he is Senator Malcolm Roberts

Transcript

[Marcus] Look, as you know this program is a PC and snowflake free zone. If you don’t believe in free speech well, feel free to tune out now. Senator Malcolm Roberts joins me on the program. Good morning, Malcolm how are you?

[Malcolm] I’m well thanks Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus] I’m okay. Look I know that you’ve been a little unwell of late and I’m glad that we could finally get you on to have a chat, ’cause there’s a lotta things to mull over. You’re well though?

[Malcolm] Yes, I’m very well thank you, very, very well.

[Marcus] Good, okay. There is a reason why the U.S. Black Lives Matter use the clenched fist. Their leaders openly admit they are Marxists, and they promote anti-capitalism, dismantling the nuclear family, defunding police. I mean this is almost like communism, hiding in plain sight, is it not?

[Malcolm] What do you mean almost like? It is, it is Marcus. And you know they don’t go off data, they go off ideology. Because they run off the same thing that people are doing here in Australia. What they do is they fabricate a problem. It contradicts the data, which I’m happy to go into if we have the time. They fabricate a problem, then they concoct a victim, and then they conjure an oppressor, and then they pretend a solution. And then what they do is they disarm minds, by invoking PC, so people are afraid to speak up. And they are afraid to think. And so many, many people disagree with what these Marxist mobs are doing in America. Trump has rightly called them out as Marxist, and wanting to destroy the country. What they then do is they anoint and align other beneficiaries to get them onboard and then they kill debate, stop discussion, it’s intimidation, and then what they do is they use gutless politicians to fabricate systems that put in place their policies. And their policies are Marxist, they’re communist policies. And all they’re interested in Marcus is control. They’re interested in control and nothing else.

[Marcus] And they do it as we know, through things like riots, protests, acts of vandalism, not only in the United States, but I mean gosh, this thing has been infected, well it’s infected Australia sadly. And we know that they’ve targeted a number of our cultural assets, including statues of Captain James Cook and the like. I mean yet many Australians still don’t realise that behind this tricky name BLM it’s ridiculous. It’s almost like they’re tryin’ to pull the wool over our eyes. I’m lucky, and we are lucky in our community that we have people like yourself and Pauline Hanson and others, that notice that this is going on and call it out for what it is.

[Malcolm] Well you’re absolutely correct. And I wanna compliment you Marcus because I saw a comment on your Facebook page, a quote attributed to you and you said, “I don’t want to tell you what to think, I just want to help you think.” So let’s get to the data. I’ve a strong belief in data, because the facts are the facts. So, I moved a motion in the Senate, about the Institute of Criminology, the Australian Institute of Criminology, the 2020 report into deaths in custody in Australia. Notice I said deaths in custody. I didn’t say black, white, indigenous, non-indigenous. Deaths in custody. Here are the facts. The 2017, ’18 rate of death in prison custody for indigenous people was 0.14 per 100 prisoners. And for non-indigenous persons was 0.18 per 100, slightly higher. Now because of the small sample size, you know we don’t have millions of deaths in custody, you can’t say that there’s a difference there. But you certainly can say that the non-indigenous is not lower than the indigenous. The indigenous are not higher. So that’s very, very clear.

[Marcus] Yes.

[Malcolm] There’s no difference. You want me to give you some more figures?

[Marcus] Well, just before you do, it’s important to outline these figures, because you can’t argue with facts. I mean you could try as hard as you can, but at the end of day, you won’t win an argument unless you produce relevant facts like you’ve just done, like Jacinta Price has done on this programme before, and of course like Pauline Hanson’s done. Look, I think what happens, and you’re right, you mentioned gutless politicians. Strong words, but it cuts to the core of really what the problem is. Why is it that here in this country, we only have people like yourself, or Pauline, or Jacinta Price, a few other commentators, who are happy to call it out for what it is and happy to speak their mind, and happy to stand up for free speech, and yet I guess some of the mainstream media, we saw what happened with Pauline last week on Nine Network. Maybe some of what she said was unpalatable Malcolm, but it was the truth.

[Malcolm] Correct.

[Marcus] A lotta the people that were holed up in these apartment complexes don’t speak English. Some of them do have drug addictions. And some of them haven’t been practising social distancing and you can’t argue with the facts. That’s why Daniel Andrews, he said the same thing, the health officer down there in Victoria, said virtually the same thing, But when somebody like a Pauline Hanson, or yourself, or Jacinta Price says it, you’re dragged over the coals for it. What happened to free speech Malcolm?

[Malcolm] Well it’s really simple, when people try to control, which is what the media does, and the media are doing when they’re telling lies, or when they’re misrepresenting things, always beneath control Marcus, there is fear. They’re afraid of facts. Now, you know those facts I just quoted to you, I tried to move a motion in the Senate, just simply to announce those facts. And the facts came from a 2020 Australian Institute of Criminology report into deaths in custody. The publisher of that report is the Australian government. Now this’ll shock you. And probably won’t shock, maybe not shock you because you’re aware of what the real problem is, gutless politicians. But I was stopped from that motion. I was not allowed to put forward the motion that would simply table the data, that’s all it did. All I wanted to do, I didn’t wanna say who was right or wrong, I just wanted to put the data out. The government and the Labor Party colluded to stop me putting out the data. And that’s the problem, we’ve got gutless politicians who are afraid of data, and what they do is they use their own emotions, their own biases to sway people. And people are sick of this because, I’ll make it very clear, I represent the people of Queensland and Australia. Every speech in the Senate I start with the words, “I am a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia.” I listen, I speak up, I push, and I pursue to support the people. I serve the people. That’s what’s wrong in this country. We have politicians thinking the people serves the government, the people serve the politicians. That is complete rubbish. And that is the fundamental error in this country now. We have got government controlling things instead of government serving things. Governments shouldn’t be fixing the economy. Governments should create an environment in which small businesses, large businesses, employees, individuals, can contribute. That’s how we were in the 1900s, right through the 1920s when Australia had the number one, highest position for gross domestic product per person. Highest per capita income in the world. And we have slowly decreased that until we’ve become a shell of ourselves early this year. And then we slammed that in the COVID response. We need to get back, not just to where we were in February, we need to get back to where we were in 1920s, in terms of being the leaders in the world for per capita income. Australians are capable of doing that. All we need to do is fix the damn systems that the governments have put in place over the last 80 years.

[Marcus] Why do the governments in this country kow tow to Beijing, China? And why is it that our economy isn’t set up to be more self-sufficient Malcolm?

[Malcolm] Well it’s really simple, We have number of things, I haven’t got time to go into all one at the moment, but I’m happy to do that one day in the future if you want. But we had a number of changes that have been put in place, under the global approach the elites are pushing, since the formation of the UN. I can rattle them off, there are many. If you just look at some of them. The Lima Declaration in 1975, that was signed by Garth Whitman’s Labour government. The following year his arch enemy Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal prime minister, ratified the damn thing. That destroyed our manufacturing markets. In 1992, we had the UN’s Rio Declaration, for 21st global governments. It was masqueraded supposedly under UNIDO, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Sorry that was Lima Declaration. But the Rio Declaration put in place an agenda to push climate change, which will get control, which is getting control of our energy which is fundamental, our water, which is fundamental, our property rights, which is fundamental. And that was signed by Paul Keating’s Labour government. In 1996, John Howard’s government said, we won’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but we will comply with it. And that stole our productive capacity, in that it took our property rights off our farmers. That’s what happened, and now we’ve got basically nationalised farming that is controlled by regulations over their imports, and sometimes the way they do their very farming. We have nationalised farming now. Then we have the Paris Agreement in 2015. And a lot of international trade agreements and other agreements that have destroyed our productive capacity, destroyed our governments, destroyed our sovereignty. We don’t control our country any more, foreigners do. They control some aspects of our immigration. This is why Liberal and Labour are pushing policies that are helping foreigners, and foreign entities, unelected bureaucrats, and we are opposing them. We need to get our country’s control back in the hands of Australians.

[Marcus] What will it take? The passion that you’ve garnered, I can hear it quite clearly, you and Pauline and others, who fight for the sovereignty of Australia. How do we generate more passion within the community? I know that obviously the One Nation Party, yourself and others, do have a strong following. But how do we make this go? I mean it should be mainstream. This thought pattern that you’ve so eloquently described for us the last couple of minutes, this thought pattern should be prevalent. It should be first of mind, top of mind for all Australians. How do we overcome the barriers, the obstacles, to get this front of mind for hard-working Australians, who basically just want their country back, wanna be able to go to work, want to see the hard work they’re doing pay dividends, be able to afford to buy their own property, to pay fair prices for things like fuel and energy costs, electricity, and utilities, and also, also more importantly, to be able to look back on the history of our country with pride and feel respect for our flag without being made so bloody guilty, or to feel so bloody guilty, the fact that we may be white and we may be Australian for God’s sake?

[Malcolm] Well I love your passion too. Have a look at these basic facts. Pauline Hanson came outta the Liberal Party. And Mark Latham came outta the Labor Party. Half of our voters are former disgruntled Labor voters. Half of our voters are former disgruntled LNP voters. And our votes are going up, every election we have a higher vote for One Nation. And what we need to do is to keep speaking the facts Marcus, keep using the data. Put more pressure on the Liberal, Labour duopoly, because fundamentally the bureaucrats run this country and they’re pushing policies that unelected bureaucrats from the UN pushed. Now Scott Morrison came out and said something in October last year, October the 3rd in Sydney at the Lowy Institute, he said, he will have a review into the unaccountable, internationalist bureaucrats. And we all knew that he was talking about the UN. But I also knew that he would not do anything about it. He was saying those words because he knew that we are resonating with the people over the UN destruction of this country. We also know that I came out first and called the Coronavirus what it really is. The Chinese Communist Party UN virus. The UN’s World Health Organisation colluded with the Chinese Communist Party to suppress the news of this virus, which enabled it to get a gallop around the world. Now Scott Morrison, after I did that, and after we continued to bash Chinese Communist Party, Scott Morrison came out and talked about the communist party and started to hold them accountable with words. But, he turned around and said we need to give the World Health Organisation, a UN body, more power, the power of weapons inspectors. They say one thing and they do another. That’s why he’s got the tag now Scotty from Marketing. We’ve got to get away from people who are marketing people, they build facades and then sell them and get back to the basics of serving the country. And that means we need to speak about the facts and use the data.

[Marcus] And less spin. Malcolm it’s been great talking to you this morning. Let’s do this more often please.

[Malcolm] I’d love to mate, love to.

[Marcus] Okay, we’ll talk soon, thank you.

[Malcolm] Thanks Marcus.

[Marcus] There he is, Senator Malcolm Roberts. What do you make of it, give me a call

This morning I was interviewed by Marcus Paul on 2SM and discussed:

  • The US BLM movement and their openly Marxist agenda.
  • The war on free speech.
  • Why isn’t our economy self sufficient?
  • What will it take to restore our sovereignty?

Transcript

[Marcus]

Look, as you know this programme is a PC and snowflake free zone. If you don’t believe in free speech well, feel free to tune out now. Senator Malcolm Roberts joins me on the programme. Good morning, Malcolm how are you?

[Malcolm]

I’m well thanks Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus]

I’m okay. Look I know that you’ve been a little unwell of late and I’m glad that we could finally get you on to have a chat, ’cause there’s a lotta things to mull over. You’re well though?

[Malcolm]

Yes, I’m very well thank you, very, very well.

[Marcus]

Good, okay. There is a reason why the U.S. Black Lives Matter use the clenched fist. Their leaders openly admit they are Marxists, and they promote anti-capitalism, dismantling the nuclear family, defunding police. I mean this is almost like communism, hiding in plain sight, is it not?

[Malcolm]

What do you mean almost like? It is, it is Marcus. And you know they don’t go off data, they go off ideology. Because they run off the same thing that people are doing here in Australia. What they do is they fabricate a problem. It contradicts the data, which I’m happy to go into if we have the time.

They fabricate a problem, then they concoct a victim, and then they conjure an oppressor, and then they pretend a solution. And then what they do is they disarm minds, by invoking PC, so people are afraid to speak up. And they are afraid to think.

And so many, many people disagree with what these Marxist mobs are doing in America. Trump has rightly called them out as Marxist, and wanting to destroy the country. What they then do is they anoint and align other beneficiaries to get them onboard and then they kill debate, stop discussion, it’s intimidation, and then what they do is they use gutless politicians to fabricate systems that put in place their policies.

And their policies are Marxist, they’re communist policies. And all they’re interested in Marcus is control. They’re interested in control and nothing else.

[Marcus]

And they do it as we know, through things like riots, protests, acts of vandalism, not only in the United States, but I mean gosh, this thing has been infected, well it’s infected Australia sadly. And we know that they’ve targeted a number of our cultural assets, including statues of Captain James Cook and the like.

I mean yet many Australians still don’t realise that behind this tricky name BLM it’s ridiculous. It’s almost like they’re tryin’ to pull the wool over our eyes. I’m lucky, and we are lucky in our community that we have people like yourself and Pauline Hanson and others, that notice that this is going on and call it out for what it is.

[Malcolm]

Well you’re absolutely correct. And I wanna compliment you Marcus because I saw a comment on your Facebook page, a quote attributed to you and you said, “I don’t want to tell you what to think, I just want to help you think.” So let’s get to the data. I’ve a strong belief in data, because the facts are the facts.

So, I moved a motion in the Senate, about the Institute of Criminology, the Australian Institute of Criminology, the 2020 report into deaths in custody in Australia. Notice I said deaths in custody. I didn’t say black, white, indigenous, non-indigenous. Deaths in custody. Here are the facts.

The 2017, ’18 rate of death in prison custody for indigenous people was 0.14 per 100 prisoners. And for non-indigenous persons was 0.18 per 100, slightly higher. Now because of the small sample size, you know we don’t have millions of deaths in custody, you can’t say that there’s a difference there.

But you certainly can say that the non-indigenous is not lower than the indigenous. The indigenous are not higher. So that’s very, very clear.

[Marcus]

Yes.

[Malcolm]

There’s no difference. You want me to give you some more figures?

[Marcus]

Well, just before you do, it’s important to outline these figures, because you can’t argue with facts. I mean you could try as hard as you can, but at the end of day, you won’t win an argument unless you produce relevant facts like you’ve just done, like Jacinta Price has done on this programme before, and of course like Pauline Hanson’s done.

Look, I think what happens, and you’re right, you mentioned gutless politicians. Strong words, but it cuts to the core of really what the problem is.

Why is it that here in this country, we only have people like yourself, or Pauline, or Jacinta Price, a few other commentators, who are happy to call it out for what it is and happy to speak their mind, and happy to stand up for free speech, and yet I guess some of the mainstream media, we saw what happened with Pauline last week on Nine Network. Maybe some of what she said was unpalatable Malcolm, but it was the truth.

[Malcolm]

Correct.

[Marcus]

A lotta the people that were holed up in these apartment complexes don’t speak English. Some of them do have drug addictions. And some of them haven’t been practising social distancing and you can’t argue with the facts.

That’s why Daniel Andrews, he said the same thing, the health officer down there in Victoria, said virtually the same thing, But when somebody like a Pauline Hanson, or yourself, or Jacinta Price says it, you’re dragged over the coals for it. What happened to free speech Malcolm?

[Malcolm]

Well it’s really simple, when people try to control, which is what the media does, and the media are doing when they’re telling lies, or when they’re misrepresenting things, always beneath control Marcus, there is fear. They’re afraid of facts.

Now, you know those facts I just quoted to you, I tried to move a motion in the Senate, just simply to announce those facts. And the facts came from a 2020 Australian Institute of Criminology report into deaths in custody. The publisher of that report is the Australian government.

Now this’ll shock you. And probably won’t shock, maybe not shock you because you’re aware of what the real problem is, gutless politicians. But I was stopped from that motion. I was not allowed to put forward the motion that would simply table the data, that’s all it did.

All I wanted to do, I didn’t wanna say who was right or wrong, I just wanted to put the data out. The government and the Labour Party colluded to stop me putting out the data. And that’s the problem, we’ve got gutless politicians who are afraid of data, and what they do is they use their own emotions, their own biases to sway people.

And people are sick of this because, I’ll make it very clear, I represent the people of Queensland and Australia. Every speech in the Senate I start with the words, “I am a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia.” I listen, I speak up, I push, and I pursue to support the people.

I serve the people. That’s what’s wrong in this country. We have politicians thinking the people serves the government, the people serve the politicians. That is complete rubbish. And that is the fundamental error in this country now.

We have got government controlling things instead of government serving things. Governments shouldn’t be fixing the economy. Governments should create an environment in which small businesses, large businesses, employees, individuals, can contribute.

That’s how we were in the 1900s, right through the 1920s when Australia had the number one, highest position for gross domestic product per person. Highest per capita income in the world. And we have slowly decreased that until we’ve become a shell of ourselves early this year.

And then we slammed that in the COVID response. We need to get back, not just to where we were in February, we need to get back to where we were in 1920s, in terms of being the leaders in the world for per capita income. Australians are capable of doing that.

All we need to do is fix the damn systems that the governments have put in place over the last 80 years.

[Marcus]

Why do the governments in this country kow tow to Beijing, China? And why is it that our economy isn’t set up to be more self-sufficient Malcolm?

[Malcolm]

Well it’s really simple, We have number of things, I haven’t got time to go into all one at the moment, but I’m happy to do that one day in the future if you want. But we had a number of changes that have been put in place, under the global approach the elites are pushing, since the formation of the UN.

I can rattle them off, there are many. If you just look at some of them. The Lima Declaration in 1975, that was signed by Garth Whitman’s Labour government. The following year his arch enemy Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal prime minister, ratified the damn thing. That destroyed our manufacturing markets.

In 1992, we had the UN’s Rio Declaration, for 21st global governments. It was masqueraded supposedly under UNIDO, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Sorry that was Lima Declaration.

But the Rio Declaration put in place an agenda to push climate change, which will get control, which is getting control of our energy which is fundamental, our water, which is fundamental, our property rights, which is fundamental. And that was signed by Paul Keating’s Labour government.

In 1996, John Howard’s government said, we won’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but we will comply with it. And that stole our productive capacity, in that it took our property rights off our farmers. That’s what happened, and now we’ve got basically nationalised farming that is controlled by regulations over their imports, and sometimes the way they do their very farming.

We have nationalised farming now. Then we have the Paris Agreement in 2015. And a lot of international trade agreements and other agreements that have destroyed our productive capacity, destroyed our governments, destroyed our sovereignty.

We don’t control our country any more, foreigners do. They control some aspects of our immigration. This is why Liberal and Labour are pushing policies that are helping foreigners, and foreign entities, unelected bureaucrats, and we are opposing them. We need to get our country’s control back in the hands of Australians.

[Marcus]

What will it take? The passion that you’ve garnered, I can hear it quite clearly, you and Pauline and others, who fight for the sovereignty of Australia. How do we generate more passion within the community? I know that obviously the One Nation Party, yourself and others, do have a strong following.

But how do we make this go? I mean it should be mainstream. This thought pattern that you’ve so eloquently described for us the last couple of minutes, this thought pattern should be prevalent. It should be first of mind, top of mind for all Australians.

How do we overcome the barriers, the obstacles, to get this front of mind for hard-working Australians, who basically just want their country back, wanna be able to go to work, want to see the hard work they’re doing pay dividends, be able to afford to buy their own property, to pay fair prices for things like fuel and energy costs, electricity, and utilities, and also, also more importantly, to be able to look back on the history of our country with pride and feel respect for our flag without being made so bloody guilty, or to feel so bloody guilty, the fact that we may be white and we may be Australian for God’s sake?

[Malcolm]

Well I love your passion too. Have a look at these basic facts. Pauline Hanson came outta the Liberal Party. And Mark Latham came outta the Labour Party. Half of our voters are former disgruntled Labour voters. Half of our voters are former disgruntled LNP voters.

And our votes are going up, every election we have a higher vote for One Nation. And what we need to do is to keep speaking the facts Marcus, keep using the data. Put more pressure on the Liberal, Labour duopoly, because fundamentally the bureaucrats run this country and they’re pushing policies that unelected bureaucrats from the UN pushed.

Now Scott Morrison came out and said something in October last year, October the 3rd in Sydney at the Lowy Institute, he said, he will have a review into the unaccountable, internationalist bureaucrats. And we all knew that he was talking about the UN.

But I also knew that he would not do anything about it. He was saying those words because he knew that we are resonating with the people over the UN destruction of this country. We also know that I came out first and called the Coronavirus what it really is.

The Chinese Communist Party UN virus. The UN’s World Health Organisation colluded with the Chinese Communist Party to suppress the news of this virus, which enabled it to get a gallop around the world.

Now Scott Morrison, after I did that, and after we continued to bash Chinese Communist Party, Scott Morrison came out and talked about the communist party and started to hold them accountable with words.

But, he turned around and said we need to give the World Health Organisation, a UN body, more power, the power of weapons inspectors. They say one thing and they do another. That’s why he’s got the tag now Scotty from Marketing.

We’ve got to get away from people who are marketing people, they build facades and then sell them and get back to the basics of serving the country. And that means we need to speak about the facts and use the data.

[Marcus]

And less spin. Malcolm it’s been great talking to you this morning. Let’s do this more often please.

[Malcolm]

I’d love to mate, love to.

[Marcus]

Okay, we’ll talk soon, thank you.

[Malcolm]

Thanks Marcus.

[Marcus]

There he is, Senator Malcolm Roberts. What do you make of it, give me a call after seven, “Marcus Paul In the Morning.”

Senator Roberts calls on the government to lift the onerous restrictions on the fishing industry and increase fishing quotas within our waters as part of an economic stimulus package.

“Successive governments have destroyed our once profitable fishing industry with self-imposed fishing limits well below international sustainability levels and introduced vast net-free zones,” stated Senator Roberts.

The World Resource Institute’s research shows that a well-managed sustainable harvest from a coral reef is 15,000kg per square kilometre annually. The Great Barrier Reef harvest is set at an outrageously low 9kg per square kilometre, which is 0.06% of the recommended sustainable harvest.

Our fishing industry hamstrung with bureaucratic and unscientific green tape, means Australians have to import approximately 80% of our seafood.

“It is unbelievable that Australia, which has the world’s largest continental shelf fishing zone, imports so much of our seafood from Thailand and China.”
The COVID19 crisis highlighted the unnecessary green tape that hobbles so many Australian industries. Rebuilding our fishing industry requires scientific-based quotas, revisiting current and future restrictions and reducing the net-free zones.

“Australia should have one of the world’s most profitable fishing industries and supply Australians with the majority of their seafood. Instead they are drowning in green tape and the industry is facing ruin.”

He added, “The Lib-Lab duopoly through unfair trade agreements and needlessly signing United Nations’ agreements has decimated our fishing industry.”

“The COVID19 crisis has sent us a stark reminder that unfettered globalisation has left Australia vulnerable and our sovereignty diluted”.

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