I recently joined Melinda Richards on TNT Radio to discuss pressing issues facing Australia today. I emphasised the importance of independent media.
Our conversation turned to the Digital ID bill, which echoes the Australia Card proposal from the 1980’s—a proposal Australians firmly rejected.
We also discussed the erosion of conservative values within the Liberal Party and the urgent need for strong leadership to uphold these conservative principles.
Transcript
Melinda Richards: I’m joined by Senator Malcolm Roberts, one of the few politicians in Australia standing up for Australians and puts Australians first and his country first. Thank you again, Senator Roberts for joining me today.
Senator ROBERTS: You’re welcome and thank you for doing what you do on TNT because we need an independent news media. Part of the problem is that the governments are owned by major corporations who are in the media and that the messaging is false.
Melinda Richards: Yeah, it’s interesting. I just spoke about that this week that the government has now invested nearly $33 million into Channel 10 and had a little bit of a rant about that. And having government owned media is the worst idea that could possibly be put forward to a supposed free society. Senator Roberts, I wanted to talk to you about also the Australia card. You’re of the age, and I’m of the age, where we can remember the Australia card being proposed by Bob Hawke back in 1985 and he was intent on doing what the digital ID is going to do now. Of course, the digital ID would be 1000 times worse because we have the technology now, but back in the 80s, Australians said a resounding no to the Australia card and then they talked about it again a couple more times and Australians said a resounding no each time it came up. So of course, Australians probably would say a very loud, resounding no to the digital ID. Should this have gone to a referendum to the people? Because of course, this is going to be the biggest change that society’s going to have in the next coming decades.
Senator ROBERTS: Well, that’s one way certainly of doing it. We’ve got a One Nation policy – Citizens Initiated Referendum, which means that the people – it operates in some countries, Switzerland for example, and it brings accountability to the federal parliament. That’s where a citizen can say I don’t like a bill, he or she can make a petition, get sufficient signatures. Then the bill is put to, even if it’s been passed by the parliament, is put to the people and the people can say go to hell, remove the bill.
They can also hold politicians accountable and say we don’t like what you’re doing, Melinda, you’re out. You know that’s what we need, accountability. So yes, it should be put to the people. But the Australia card is a really important lesson because I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. But as I understand it, Melinda, that was about making sure that people receiving welfare payments from the government, which is really from the taxpayer, were accountable and there’d be no cheating. And we see a lot of cheating on welfare these days. So that’s the intent. But even with that intent, the taxpayers say no, I’d rather lose my money than have the government watching over us.
Melinda Richards: We’d rather have people cheat then have people track US, have people follow, follow the ID number, have our ID number continuing to go through different aspects and parts of our society. The people of Australia at the time understood the implications. Are we a little bit more apathetic now or is it just that we are not really understanding what is being passed through parliament because it’s not being talked about much in the mainstream media?
Senator ROBERTS: You’ve, you’ve nailed it. The mouthpiece media, the legacy media, the Big Brother media, whatever you want to call it, do not talk about it because their masters are wanting this Digital ID to go through because they’ll be part of the corporations that it’ll be widened up to in the future.
Melinda Richards: I mean, we’re still looking at the money train then. We’re still looking at the people that are going to profit from this by controlling us and then pushing through different things and different subsidies and different parts of bills and ideas and things that we won’t even have a say in either.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s correct. Remember the three words, two points – control and wealth transfer. This is what it’s about. We’ve got the identity verification, which is a bill that went through earlier, a couple of months before, or a few months before the digital ID bill – that was about enabling biometric data to be used. Digital ID bill came up. The Misinformation-Disinformation bill was introduced by the Morrison Government, and it has been retracted or withdrawn – paused in its process through this parliament. So that’s coming up as well. That’s where they will control what you say and what you then do. So, this is all heading for control and enabling wealth transfer. Because we also know, thanks to my questioning at Senate estimates, that the Reserve Bank of Australia has been working on a digital currency and has been tying that up to work overseas on a global digital currency. I mean the Reserve Bank admitted it. So, this is putting everything in place for social credit score. And there were several amendments considered in the – it wasn’t a debate – in the passage of the bill through – the hijacking of the bill through the parliament. And not one word of debate was allowed on any of those amendments.
Melinda Richards: That’s incredible.
Senator ROBERTS: Yeah. And then the media doesn’t even report this going on. But this is typical of what the UNI party is doing. It’s not just the Labour Party. All of these bills, including the Digital ID bill, were introduced by the LNP, the Liberal National Party government.
Melinda Richards: I mean, do you think this is a really big problem for the conservative movement in Australia? I just had Andrew Cooper on earlier today talking about CPAC, talking about where the conservative movements going in Australia, particularly in light of what’s just happened in the UK election. I mean, the digital ID has got to be something, hasn’t it, that that the politicians, the conservative politicians in Australia and the conservative citizens of Australia should now be rallying behind almost as strongly as they did with the Voice referendum. I mean we know with the positive outcome that happened there that when we do rally, when we do understand things, when we look a little deeper into what’s going on, we can actually get a great result.
Senator ROBERTS: You’re absolutely correct. And there are a few conservatives, true conservatives in the Liberal Party, but most of them are in One Nation and Libertarians these days.
Melinda Richards: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Alex Antic, for example, he drafted a bill that’s called, I think the Repeal Digital ID Bill. He invited genuine conservatives to cosign it and co-sponsor it. So, he invited me, Pauline Hanson, Ralph Babet, Gerard Rennick and Matt Canavan. And so, the six of us are all co-sponsors of the bill. And the bill’s very simple. It just says repeal the Digital ID bill – that’s it. And then there’s the consequential amendments, which is repealing any changes of the digital ID caused in other legislation. So, it can be done. You look at the Liberal National Party, Gerard Rennick is one of the best senators and he’s been put in an unwinnable position pre-selection. You look at the true conservatives, Kevin Andrews from Victoria – gone, not pre-selected. You look at the senators they’ve appointed recently, they’ve been from the left wing of the Liberal Party. You see Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Eric Abetz – genuine conservatives sidelined and taken out of federal politics. So, what we see now is a Liberal Party that is a clone of the worst parts of the Labor Party. You’ve got factions now within the Liberal Party, you’ve got very, very few Conservatives and so what we’ve got now is a Uni-Party and we know that every major energy bill, for example, climate and energy policy was introduced by the Liberal National Party, not the Labor Party. The Labor Party came in and ramped it up and that’s what they’ve done across the board.
Melinda Richards: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s been a shocking revelation for a lot of conservatives over the last probably 15 years or so that the conservative movement is not being represented by the Liberal Party, the Liberal National Party and this has been a bit of a wake up call for the conservative movement in Australia and certainly in the UK – they’ve woken up. It took them 3 elections. I think we need a strong conservative leader in this country to bring us back to some of our core values. And there are things that the conservative movement is going to have to, as I said earlier, grab a hold of and fight back pretty strongly. And the group of politicians you mentioned, Senator Roberts, you are the true heroes of our political movement at the moment in Australia because you are putting Australians first.
Thank you so much for joining me today, Senator Roberts. I certainly hope we can talk again very soon. You’re listening to Melinda Richards on TNT.
