Coronavirus and Australian Economic Stimulus
Transcript
Thank you mister acting deputy president. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I advise that One Nation will support the government’s measures tackling COVID-19, Coronavirus.
We don’t agree with them all, yet now is when the government that the people elected must be allowed to govern. I will raise serious questions about the government’s approach to fulfilling its three core responsibilities.
Protecting life, protecting property and protecting freedom. All three are relevant tonight. We are well aware of the devastating effects and the human tragedy that this virus is leaving in its wake around the world.
Now it is taking a hold and its attack on Australia and on Australians. Many people have died, and unfortunately, many more will die or be scarred. The World Health Organisation says that of the people who contract the virus, 3.4% will die, yet there are many factors, including transmission rate and whether or not a nations health care system is overwhelmed.
Experts tell us that everyone will eventually get Coronavirus. Using these figures simplistically means that 850,000 Australians would die. That’s staggering, yet we must remain calm though, because such broad figures cannot be applied so simply, and we can do much better when we are committed.
Italy’s early figures show a fatality rate much higher than this 3.4%. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, much, much lower around one tenth. The first step is to protect people, to prevent deaths.
That means stopping or reducing the transmission, and that means in part stopping human interaction. This virus easily transmits itself from human to human. Secondly, preventing overwhelming of our health care system, so that everyone can get effective treatment.
Thirdly, identifying economic impacts, serious economic challenges, because without human interactions, economies contract. Fourth, identifying which industries, sectors and individuals will need assistance.
Fifth, what are the sources of funding and the areas for reducing peoples expenses. And finally, we need to consider how to restore our economy afterwards. That involves short term and long term factors to restore our nation’s productive capacity and economic resilience.
Let’s return to the first step. Some foreign governments acted swiftly to stop the virus. They immediately closed borders and sent people home to protect them and to help isolate and stop the virus.
They proactively quarantined, including closing schools while infection numbers were low. They took immediate action to help curb the spread of this killer. We may or may not know who shares this deadly virus with us, a friend, a relative who does not know they even have the virus themselves, yet the death rate isn’t the only determining factor regarding how deadly a pandemic can be.
It will be the impact on our families, our businesses, on the economy, and on our way of life. Who knows what life will be like after this storm passes. Minister, every day Australians are more and more concerned, and we rely on our governments to protect us, yet in Canberra yesterday we saw shoppers mingling normally, the same in Brisbane restaurants.
It’s time for decisive action to protect our health, our children, our jobs and their countries future. The sooner we act to stop transmitting the virus and isolate it, the safer Australians will be, and the fewer will die.
The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was the deadliest flu season we know, killing around 50 million people. The Coronavirus, COVID-19 is no less a killer, and it is easier for humans to catch than 1918 Spanish flu.
Now I base my facts, my data on reports from Taiwan, South Korea, China and Singapore, and from the western countries that are currently floundering like Italy, the UK, the USA and more.
I have become very concerned that we need decisive action, and that we need a stronger, broader, deeper response now. The question is which is more important, peoples lives or the economy?
It’s not appropriate to try a balancing act. The high priority is to protect peoples health, and I commend the government for acting, yet we have to be both dynamic and aggressive in attacking this enemy, and base decisions on data.
From a strategic point of view, our choices in combating this deadly virus are either mitigation or suppression, yet what does this mean? Mitigation involves voluntary isolation and trying to reduce the impact like Italy, France, Spain, Britain and the USA, yet this has the potential that very soon we will see overwhelm of our healthcare system, destroy the economy and needlessly cost Australian lives.
Mitigation takes time, and experience overseas, as in Italy, says it is killing more people. Suppression though is preferred, and is the enforced isolation of the population as in Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea.
It involves aggressive testing and then managed treatments. Suppression could cut this horrendous mortality rate from five percent in Italy to point six of a percent in South Korea.
The harsh enforcement of suppression is against our democratic ideals, and our friendly outdoors lifestyle, yet doing it will save potentially hundreds of thousands of Australian lives, and this does not include the collateral damage, where people in need are not able to get into intensive care units.
We should not assume that there is a hospital bed waiting for us if we get sick or injured. The data suggests that using mitigation strategies, only one in 30 infected people will be able to get into an ICU bed in Australia.
That means that intensive care units and the health care system will be completely overwhelmed. Patients will be lying in hospital corridors. Nurses and doctors will decide who survives and who dies, and that’s a terrible, scary responsibility for professionals who care.
Media reports from Italy say that people over 80 years of age are now not treated. Some victims of Coronavirus, and there could likely be many, will need intensive care units, because COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, and many people will need intubation.
What is going to happen to those who would normally be referred to an ICU unit for other causes, like major trauma, or severe burns, respiratory failure, organ transplant, car accidents?
Sick or injured Australians may not find a bed that does not already have a Coronavirus patient in it, and that means more deaths. According to the experts and overseas data, suppression is best, but we’re not doing it.
After that, it’s going to take an effective vaccine, which is up to a year away, and then herd immunity, which blocks out the virus when we become immune from already having had COVID-19.
The overseas data seems to show that right now, we need a suppression strategy until we develop a vaccine. Our government isn’t there yet, and complacency kills. Reportedly in South Korea, comprehensive testing for body temperature is followed with testing high temperature people for COVID-19.
Those with the virus are isolated, as are those with weaker immunity. The majority of people stay at work and keep going, that means much less economic disruption to the economy.
Until the government takes stronger action, we’re all going to need to practise social distancing to help minimise the number of people who contract the virus. In simple terms, we all need to keep our distance from others, practise good hygiene, including regular hand washing and surface cleaning, eating well, resting and being considerate of others.
We’ll need to work together to limit exposure to one another, especially with older adults and people with underlying illnesses who have the greatest risk of developing severe symptoms.
Though we do need to take action to contain the spread, and to protect our most vulnerable Australians, we all have to take responsibility for the health and welfare of ourselves and others.
It is time to be care and be kind. We have every reason to stay calm and make decisions based on data and facts.
Minister, a matter of importance is that every day Australians are calling now for detailed and regular information and updates, and people want information when and where we need it, often.
Australians deserve to know the data and the facts about what the government is doing, and what is happening to us here and overseas. Television and the internet may not be available or enough.
The government must engage effectively to keep us all up to date with facts. I especially want to express Australia’s thanks and best wishes to all of our health care professionals, our heroes, for what they are doing, and for what they are going to do in the tough months ahead.
Some have talked about bringing health professionals out of retirement. This may be a good idea, provided the older professionals themselves are not in a high risk group to get this sinister virus.
To all those who step up to the challenge, and to those who support our health care heroes, we thank you. Who knows what Australia and indeed the world will look like after this menace is overcome.
I just hope that the actions that our national and state governments are taking today will be quick and decisive, and ensure that we are saving as many Australian lives as possible. The sooner we are through this event, the sooner we can all get back to normal.
One Nation has scrutinised the bill, and in the interest of speedy action and support for people across our country, will vote in favour. I do those want to address two measures we appose strongly.
Firstly the business growth front. Recently the cross bench came together to appose this legislation. We raised many, many problems with how this terrible legislation would work in practise.
We pointed out that there is already a patient capital industry in this country. This legislation will eliminate it. That will reduce competition for the major banks. That will increase returns for the banks.
We pointed out that Australian tax payers would now subsidise the local arm of foreign corporations to the detriment of Australian owned businesses. We said that the government has no place trying to pick winners in the venture capital space, no place eliminating competition for the banks.
All these objections and more have been ignored. Now I find the bill has been included in the rescue package, so we can no longer appose it. The Liberals, Nationals and Labour worked on this together.
The Liberal, Labour duopoly will do whatever it takes to transfer wealth from everyday Australians to their mates in the banks, even at the cost of wiping out our entire venture capital industry.
I thought this was a rescue package, not a wipe out the banks, wipe out the competition to the banks package. I do find one thing interesting, mister acting deputy president, one of the suggestions by Senator Patrick was to turn this fund into an underwriting fund.
That would allow the existing venture capital market to make loans the government underwrites. This is a much safer bet for the tax payers. Our risk ends as soon as the loan is made.
Imagine my surprise when I opened the rescue package and saw the guarantee of lending to small and medium enterprises bill, a 20 billion dollar fund, not an underwriting fund, a guarantee fund.
The tax payers will be guaranteed 20 billion dollars worth of loans. My first thought was, doesn’t this fund make the business growth fund moot? What has the venture capital industry done to bring the wrath of the banks down on them?
The Liberal Labour banking cheer squad have moved the risk for 20 billion dollars worth of small business loans from the banks to tax payers, yet risk is what the banks deal in. If the government is now picking up the banking sector risk, is that government becoming a bank?
So let me take that a step further, it is One Nation policy to create a peoples bank, to give the big four banks some real competition in the areas in which they are complete failures. Failures in talking about honesty and integrity and accountability.
A peoples bank would be really handy right now, at least we would be propping up a bank we own. The second area that causes us alarm is the 115 billion dollars this government and the reserve bank is about to spend on securitized mortgages.
At senate estimates earlier this month, I asked the reserve bank if they had actually checked the 300 billion dollars they’re already holding in securitized mortgages. By checked, I mean picked a trench at random, cracked it open, made sure the paperwork was in order, the properties were correctly valued, and the mortgaging income and assets were correct.
The reserve bank admitted to me that it has never opened any of these trenches. Now I know from banking victims, cases that flood my office, that mortgages are being altered after being issued.
The scam is to make a mortgage look better so it can be securitized. This government must check these things before it buys them with tax payer money. Now let me turn to the one thing that is missing from this package, and that is simply the future.
Can this government really only think a few months ahead? Where is the vision in this rescue package? Why are we not getting cracking today on nation building schemes to create new productive capacity to power this nation to a future?
To create fresh wealth for every day Australians. Where is the Bradfield scheme? Where are the dams, the power stations, the ports and airports? Where are the railways to places that need them?
We’re selling off our farms, shrinking rural Australia, shredding jobs and sending the profits from this new corporate agriculture to the Cayman Islands. Where are the governments measures to save rural Australia?
Wait, Liberal Labour governments are the ones killing rural Australia for 30 years. Where is the billion dollars for South Australia’s South East drainage project? To turn the drains around and send 400 gigaliters a year of fresh water back into the Coorong.
This will save our Ramsar listed wetland, with all the tourism and commerce that brings. It will save the Menindee Lakes wetland from being drained again. It will free up hundreds of gigaliters of water for irrigation, to grow billions of dollars of food and fibre for the world and earn us exports.
Where is the government’s response to the PFAS contamination? Yes that will be expensive to fix, yet it will inject billions into regions right across Australia, as we move effected residents out into like for like properties, and remediate the environmental damage. What a perfect time to be doing that.
What about restoring land rights, land use rights to farmers who bought them, yet the Howard Liberal government and many state Labour governments since have stolen without compensation.
If not under our constitution, farmers, if not restored under our constitution, farmers need to be compensated. Restoration or compensation, so our farmers can get on with the job. What about stopping the waste of billions on subsidies for expensive, intermittent solar and wind power?
Bring jobs back to Australia with affordable energy using our abundance of energy currently exported to our competitors for cheap energy. The minister of age care today told us that a major global source of personal protective equipment for healthcare and age care workers is, wait for it, Wuhan, the virus epicentre.
This virus has taught us about the stupidity and the cost of the globalist elites in United Nations preaching interdependence. This virus shows that interdependence is really dependency.
We need to restore our productive capacity, our economic resilience and our economic independence. One Nation would build for our future and put people to work, not just put the entire nation onto unemployment benefits.
For this, we rely on our government to protect us, to help protect our health, our economy, our jobs and our way of life. In all respects, we need decisive action and we need it now. People need reassurance, confidence, hope, support and care.
