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During this session, basic answers were provided, but little interest was shown in understanding the potential environmental catastrophe at hand. I was simply referred to the department’s submission to the fire ant inquiry. When I posed questions, Officials showed minimal interest in providing answers. They frequently redirected questions to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and appeared unaware of the gravity of the issues raised. Some of the questions were taken on notice, but I was offered little substantive information.

It was clear that they were not fully informed on their responsibilities and showed little genuine concern for environmental protection.

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript

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

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

The Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024 aims to end live sheep exports from Australia by May 2028. This bill, despite offering $107 million in compensation for rural and regional communities, fails to adequately address the economic impact on the sheep export industry and local communities.

The bill is seen as a pretext for further restrictions, potentially extending to live cattle exports, under the guise of animal welfare. This will harm Aboriginal communities reliant on cattle farming and exacerbate economic hardships in rural areas.

The bill’s flawed consultation process and ideologically driven policies overlook the real impacts on people and communities. It will cause significant losses for farmers, disrupt food supply chains, and benefit city-based animal welfare activists while ignoring the human cost.

Transcript

Keep the sheep! Keep humans! We need to stop this live export ban. There are no grounds for it. We’ve seen a truncated, sham inquiry. The Labor Party has not gone out and listened. They’re just pushing the Greens ideology to get the Greens voters’ preferences in inner-city electorates. What about the effect on the human environment: the devastation to local communities and to people overseas who need food and good animal protein? 

The Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024 amends the Export Control Act 2020 to prohibit the export of live sheep by sea from Australia on 1 May 2028. The bill also includes money to paper over the cracks—the devastation that this measure will cause to rural and regional communities—for a limited period. That money is going to be made available only under severe limits. One would have thought that providing that money anyway, to assist in an orderly transition in a suitable timeframe, would have made more sense. Then, again, sense has no place in the feelings driven policy development from the Albanese Labor government—political, not economic—regardless of the impact on humans. 

As it stands, the $107 million fund is little compensation for an industry that generates $120 million a year directly and hundreds of millions more in flow-on effects to rural communities. Of the money, $60 million will be used to lay the groundwork for the next round of the government’s plan, which is to eliminate live cattle exports. Specifically, the mechanism is the specious animal welfare argument, including welfare of animals in transport. Sheep and cattle welfare during transport will be used as an excuse to limit the movement of animals. 

Who benefits substantially from that trade? It’s not the Aboriginal communities in remote areas of Australia who currently support themselves raising cattle and then need to transport their cattle a long distance to get them to market. This transport welfare measure will remove the opportunity for Aboriginal communities to support themselves, in turn making those communities reliant—dependent—on government handouts. Aboriginal communities are heavily represented in red meat production. In areas of Western Australia, they will be devastated by the loss of this trade. The industry is attracting homeless from the cities, coming bush in search of work and accommodation. 

What a high price everyday Australians in rural areas are paying for the dirty deal from the Labor government for preferences from animal welfare groups and the Greens. Labor can’t, and doesn’t, deny this dirty deal. The announcement of Labor’s policy on live animal exports came not from Labor but from one of the animal welfare groups. This bill lets city activists pat themselves on the back while ignoring the animal and human suffering caused by this ill-informed and poorly consulted bill resulting from a sham, partial inquiry that didn’t consult everyone. 

While the government talks about the bill being a product of consultation, the process was one of working backward from the desired outcome: how can we be seen to get this outcome? The correct process, according to the Office of Impact Analysis, is to conduct ‘meaningful consultation that considers the views of affected stakeholders’. That’s not what happened. As I said, it was a sham inquiry in the lower house. The National Farmers Federation submitted to the committee that they had to fight each step of the way for producers to have a fair hearing with the independent panel. The National Farmers Federation saw the industry’s advice to the panel go unheeded in the final report. What was the point? 

Then we saw the minister go even further, rejecting key elements of the panel’s advice and adopting even more radical ideas than the panel itself had recommended. Welcome to government under the Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese MP! Ideology and dodgy preference deals with ill-informed fanatics is how the Labor Party rolls. To hell with the human devastation! Look good; don’t do good. The entire consultation and parliamentary process is a mockery of due process. It’s an indictment of those in this chamber who go along with this sham for reasons that escape me. The Greens of course want to cause more hardship among the red meat industry with their amendment from Senator Faruqi—if successful, bringing this bill forward to 2026. I’ll bet that’s the deal done between the Greens and the Labor Party: to bring it forward to 2026 and set immediate limits to export. 

Sheep have a five-month gestation and need to grow for seven months before export. This means that sheep that are under gestation now will not be able to be exported under the Greens amendment unless markets can be found at the last minute. The parent animals were bred specifically for the export trade, and these will be bound for the abattoir. Meat contracts are let out years ahead because of the breeding cycle. So, selling these animals is not likely. In fact, the cull has already started, with prices as low as 50c a kilogram, through the saleyards in Western Australia, and many lots are unsold, causing farmers to leave unsold animals at the saleyards for euthanasia. Perhaps city senators like Senator Faruqi and Senator Tyrrell, who is in support, can come over to Western Australia and help with the cull, look these farmers in the eye, look these sheep in the eye. 

The idea that this bill and the Greens amendment is predicated on humane treatment of animals is Orwellian doublespeak. It will have the reverse effect. Rural communities are being hollowed out as a result of the policies of the Labor-Greens government. The endgame is to move protein consumption to lab-grown meat owned by Prime Minister Albanese’s friends Bill Gates and BlackRock’s Larry Fink, whom the Prime Minister has met with during this parliamentary term. Farmers have no place in the Labor-Greens vision of a dystopian world of fake meats and fake food. This bill denies the truth that live sheep exports suffer a loss of life at exactly the same levels as animals in the field, if not better. The object of this bill is not the welfare of animals; it’s an ideological objection to a diet that includes red meat—ideology over humanity. And what of the land currently under grazing? Well, I’m sure the climate carpetbaggers are already out in the bush measuring up for solar panels. Beautiful countryside will be covered in silicon cancer, and somehow this is environmentally friendly? The Labor-Greens government is not fit to govern. 

I want to pass on some personal thoughts from Senator Pauline Hanson, who was in Western Australia recently to listen, and the farmers spontaneously invited her to speak off the back of a truck. As Pauline does and as I do, she did so. The farmers mentioned the independent study that was done—no deaths on ships. Of course, other senators have mentioned the MV Awassi Express, on which was perpetrated the cash-for-cruelty scam: hundreds of thousands of dollars apparently paid to a foreign stockman from a developing nation to treat animals cruelly, to kill an industry—and that’s what Labor did, fell for it, killing an industry, the damage to farmers, communities and nation already done: 100,000 sheep especially bred for the live export overseas market, not suitable for the local market, as I’ve said. The market for live sheep is already down because overseas buyers are looking elsewhere. They know what’s coming from this government. They’ve seen the socialists operating, and they’re seeking other suppliers. It hurts farmers across the whole of Australia, because, for example, Tasmanian sheep farmers are sending sheep to WA to make up shipments. 

Remember the Gillard Labor government’s cattle export ban? It belted the whole of Australia’s beef grazing industry—the whole country. It had effects everywhere, because of the flow-on. Farmers told Senator Hanson in Western Australia recently, ‘We’ll have to shoot the animals we especially bred.’ She told me about the look in their eyes—shattered for the waste of the animals they cared for. Communities over there are worried about farmers’ mental health. If the government has any humanity, it won’t force the farmers to shoot their own animals; the government can kill the sheep. 

Here’s a question for government. The European Union is the world’s biggest exporter of sheep, not Australia. What free trade agreements has Australia signed with the European Union? Has this Albanese Labor government done an agreement with the European Union? We’ve all seen so-called free trade. It’s not fair trade at all. It hurts our country. We’ve seen that from both sides of the uniparty, Labor and the Liberal-Nationals. As I’ve said, the real reason for shutting down this export industry is to get Greens’ votes and preferences in inner-city eastern electorates. 

I want to talk briefly about why I’m very pro human, and I’ve spoken about it many times. I need to counter 80 years of anti-human propaganda, especially that of the last 60 years since the Club of Rome got into bed together with the United Nations and then the World Economic Forum, all to control people, to control property and to transfer wealth. There are three or four main assumptions that this anti-human campaign propagates. Firstly, they say humans don’t care. We’ll talk about that in a minute. They say we’re greedy, rapacious, uncaring and irresponsible—we just don’t care. 

Secondly, they say humans are destroying our planet when, in fact, the reverse is true. They say civilisation is the environment’s enemy. They say civilisation and the environment are mutually exclusive. I’ll address that in a minute. They say civilisation and the environment are incompatible, so we need to cease development—because that’s what they want: they want to stop human development. Senior leaders of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, including the late Maurice Strong, have said that. They want to deindustrialise Western civilisation. They say our duty is to protect our planet. They say nothing about humans. They imply that humans need to be sacrificed for that. 

Here’s the reality to counter 80 years of bull. These are observations. Everyone in this chamber right now and everyone watching on TV is here because someone cared. When a foal is born to a mare, it pops out of the mare, struggles for about 20 minutes and then starts cantering and put its head down and starts grazing with the herd. When every one of us, as humans, was born, we were completely helpless. The fact that anyone is in this room or watching means they are alive and that they were cared for. We are completely helpless for a number of years. Whether our parents were good or bad or whatever, the fact that you exist means that humans care. Humans care, and they’re based on care. The most caring humans got to propagate. 

Here’s the second thing. Visit any country in the world and you’ll see that developed continents have a lower impact on the environment than the undeveloped continents. For example, a person in a remote, undeveloped area of Africa will defecate in the creek because he or she is too busy scrounging for their child’s next meal. Yet what we do is mine black rock called coal and red rock called iron ire, and we make steel, build dams, build water pipelines and get sanitation and water to our communities. Developed nations have less impact on the natural environment. That means human civilisation and the natural environment are mutually dependent. We all know that our civilisation won’t have a future if we don’t protect the environment. It’s also clear that the environment has no future if we don’t develop and civilise. That is clear, yet we’re told the opposite. 

Our duty is to enable humans to flourish. Right throughout history, every generation has taken care of the younger generation and tried to make a better world for its younger generation. When we develop our country and civilise, we actually protect the environment. Our goal is not to protect the environment. Our goal is to protect humans and to civilise—for humans to flourish and civilise. That’s why I’m very proud about speaking about our species. 

I also want to say that we need to have an aim to restore our country and our planet for humans to abound, thrive and flourish. The goal is for humans to thrive. Farming is essential for civilisation. Farming needs to be protected. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘For cities to exist, we need farms; for farms to exist, we don’t need cities.’ As I mentioned briefly, the objective here is cultured lab meat. That’s one of the globalist aims of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. Humans need real meat, animal fat. Who knew that the Greens were helping to sell cancerous cultured meat grown in slop in a bioreactor? People just want to be left alone to get on with their lives and to get the government the hell out of our lives. Humans deserve food here and overseas— (Time expired) 

Inflation, unemployment, mortgages, rents, and the cost of living—including energy and grocery prices—are all on the rise.

One Nation policies promise growth and prosperity for everyone, ensuring a secure future.

Transcript

The response from Treasurer Jim Chalmers to yesterday’s increase in the inflation rate was, ‘There’s more work to be done.’ Oh, really? I would think the Treasurer has done quite enough already, thank you very much. Inflation is increasing, unemployment is increasing, mortgages and rents are increasing, the cost of living—including energy prices and grocery prices—is rising, and building costs are increasing. Bankruptcies are at a record high, with construction companies heavily featured. GDP per person is falling, and the economy as a whole is almost in the red.  

Taking these indicators together shows that Australia is in the early phases of stagflation, the scourge of the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke governments. A One Nation government would immediately reverse the economic mismanagement of recent Liberal and Labor governments. We would grow Australia out of stagflation. We would shut down the department of climate change, withdraw from the UN Paris Agreement and rebuild our energy infrastructure with the lowest-cost power generation: hydro, coal and nuclear. We would terminate environmental and economic vandalism coming from pumped hydro and offshore wind by refusing industrial wind and solar generation on productive farmland and in native forests. We would take the government’s jackboot off our farmers’ throats and support our agricultural sector to once again feed and clothe the world. 

We would immediately freeze the issue of new permanent visas and review the skills list, to ensure those who arrive have the skills we need to support economic growth, and we would send home some people who are currently on resident visas. We would build Inland Rail to the Port of Gladstone, build a national rail circuit and a national shipping fleet, and push steel parks at Abbot Point and Port Hedland. We would close down insane pumped hydro projects and green energy subsidies. We would use the east-west rail line to support Aboriginal communities, mining and agriculture across the Top End and Central Australia. 

The government can only offer stagnation and decay. One Nation policies, though, represent growth and prosperity for all, for a secure future. 

The UN-WEF menu plan for the West is about power over the necessities of life — food, energy and water. This unelected socialist bureaucracy, with their loyalty directed to foreign power centres, are busy punishing you and the Australian economy using this made-up concept of a carbon footprint.

The truth is, our agricultural footprint in Australia does not contribute to global “emissions” — not that this would be a problem anyway. Australia has so many trees, grass and crops that every atom of CO2 and methane we produce is re-absorbed into the environment, producing higher growth and heathier soils.

During question time, I asked Senator Wong to provide the figures used to justify the Albanese Government’s nation-killing environmental policies. No sensible answer was received. This debate must be about science and data, not scare campaigns and hubris.

The war on farming is not about the environment, it’s about control. It creates a false sense of food scarcity to make lab-grown, food-like substances a profitable industry for the predatory billionaires.

One Nation will always stand up for Australia’s farmers and rejects the UN-WEF goals of food supply control.

Transcripts

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator Wong. Minister, what percentage of Australian greenhouse gas emissions result from agriculture in Australia? 

Senator Gallagher: Could you repeat the question? We missed the last 15 seconds of it. 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, what percentage of Australian greenhouse gas emissions result from agriculture in Australia? 

Senator WONG (South Australia—Minister for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the Government in the Senate): Senator, I am awaiting statistics as we speak, but what I can say to you, and as someone who was the climate change minister, is that there is opportunity in agriculture to deal with climate change. As you know, for many years the National Farmers Federation had a much more forward-leaning policy than the coalition when it came to agriculture and climate change. I’m advised it’s in the order of 16 to 17 per cent. Thank you very much, Senator Watt. For the year to June 2023, the agriculture sector was responsible for 17.7 per cent of Australia’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions. 

Modelling by ABARES shows that climate change over the last 20 years has reduced the profitability of Australian farms by an average of 23 per cent, or around $29,200. I recall that one of the early reports I read which made me so much more acutely aware of the risk to agriculture of climate change was a report which CSIRO did many years ago, before we won government in 2007. It modelled that Goyder’s line would move south of Clare. For anybody from South Australia—and I know that would be very bad news for Senator Farrell in particular—who knows what the mid-north is like, that is a very frightening prospect. We do think it is important to look at how it is that our food and fibre producers can best adapt to a changing climate. Many are already doing so and are obviously involved in the discussions with government about climate policy. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a first supplementary

Senator ROBERTS: As the World Economic Forum were meeting in Davos last month, the United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, stated that agriculture accounts for between 26 and 33 per cent of world emissions and will account for half a degree of warming by 2050. He further stated that a warming planet will grow less food, not more, and so farming needs to be a major focus of reducing human carbon dioxide production. Minister, how do you reconcile the production of food accounting for between 26 and 33 per cent of emissions with your figure of 17.7? 

Senator WONG: There’s a different denominator, Senator. One is as a percentage of Australian emissions, and one is as a percentage of global emissions. I also am unclear from the context and detail of the quote you gave me whether or not Special Envoy Kerry was dealing with food production further downstream as well. I don’t know what he’s referring to. But I certainly agree with what he was saying about the implications for food security. 

What is also true is that not only is that a substantial issue for Australia, because it will affect our capacity to produce the levels of grain production we have, which is obviously very important for our economy, but also the nations on who this will fall most hard are those nations who have the least capacity to be resilient to this change. If you look at countries like Bangladesh— (Time expired) 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS: The methane cycle, soil carbon sequestration and forest carbon sequestration absorb all Australian agricultural emissions, meaning Australian agriculture contributes nothing to global emissions. Minister, is the war on farming not about the environment but rather about creating a false scarcity of food to force the adoption of laboratory-grown food-like substances that predatory billionaires own for their profit and control? 

Senator WONG: Senator, there’s a lot in that question, but I want to go back to the fundamental proposition: climate change is already affecting our agricultural production now. I read to you the figures earlier: ABARES modelling shows that climate change over the last 20 years has reduced the profitability of Australian farms by an average of 23 per cent, or around $29,200. No, you don’t like the facts, and we know— 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Rennick? 

Senator Rennick: A point of order, Madam President: models are not facts. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Rennick, that’s a debating point. Minister Wong, please continue. 

Senator WONG: Senator Roberts, I understand your views on this. I disagree with them. What I would say to you is this: if you go and talk to a lot of Australia’s primary producers, if you go and talk to primary producers in the Pacific— 

Senator Canavan interjecting— 

The PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Canavan. 

Senator WONG: or South-East Asia, the truth is that people are already experiencing the impact of climate change on agricultural production. We might want to wish it away for ideological reasons, as Senator Canavan does, but— (Time expired) 

Honourable senators interjecting— 

The PRESIDENT: Order! I’m going to wait for silence. 

Opposition senators interjecting— 

The PRESIDENT: Order! I’m going to call an opposition senator, so those senators interjecting are wasting her time. 

In 2016, I stood in the senate for the first time and warned that the United Nations wanted to reduce everyday Australians to the status of serfs through climate policy. I said back then we need an #AusExit, that our values and way of life were at risk from the dangerous socialist agendas of the UN. And here we are now.

Here is more legislation being pushed through Australia’s house of review, the Senate, without proper scrutiny or debate. Labor is doing more dodgy deals on behalf of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Labor has also introduced a Motion to allow the Greens to amend the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act as part of this Bill. This allows the Greens to put a Bill of their own making onto the end of the government’s Bill then vote it all through in one go. A Bill that we cannot review, amend or debate. This isn’t conventional parliamentary process. This is undemocratic dictatorship.

The ‘Nature Repair’ Bill allows large corporations to greenwash their image by leveraging the PR benefit of Nature Repair Projects they buy. It provides the means to restrict productive capacity through taking productive farmland and returning it to Gaia. It will prevent Australians and visitors to our country from being able to get out and generally enjoy our magnificent national parks because it hands more control over to traditional owners.

The globalist agenda is being rolled out in the self-interest of the world’s predatory investment funds. It’s delivered through the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum and implemented in shoddy, rushed legislation like this bill proposes.

One Nation proudly stands against everything this Bill represents and I offer the same advice as I did in 2016. We must exit the United Nations #AusExit!

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (20:06): As a servant of the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, it’s my duty to ensure I deal with every bill that comes before the Senate fully and properly. All too often, this government does dodgy deals with the Teals, the crossbench and the Greens to get legislation through without scrutiny. This is legislation that’s written for reasons of ideology, not human need, and that as a result makes things worse. This is legislation that must get through without debate, lest the electorate be informed about what the government is really doing to them in the name of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

I’m speaking about the Nature Repair Bill 2023, only 30 minutes from when the vote will be taken, yet I’m speaking to an interim bill. The massive amendments to this bill, which I know now are substantial, had not been revealed to the Senate just an hour ago. It appears to be the government’s plan to provide the amendments and then require an immediate vote. That was exactly what we saw. That’s not how the house of review, our Senate, works.

Even more troubling is that the government now has a motion that would allow the Greens to amend the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act as part of this bill—news to us until an hour ago. What that means is the Greens, with Teal Senator Pocock’s support, are being allowed to put a bill of their own making onto the end of the government’s bill and then vote it all through—a bill we can’t read, can’t amend and can’t debate. There’s a longstanding convention in the Senate that we do one bill at a time and amend only the bill at hand, a rule the government are happy to ignore when they get desperate enough numbers to do a deal with the Greens and Teals. This isn’t parliamentary process; it is undemocratic dictatorship. What a joke, and the people will be paying for it. When we call the Greens watermelons—green on the outside and red on the inside—this is why. Soviet Russia would pull a stunt like this, not democratic Australia.

I’ve spoken on several occasions recently on how this Labor government is best friends with the world’s predatory parasitic billionaires. This bill is a perfect example of that. Like the failed national electricity market, which is really a racket, this bill allows large corporations to greenwash their businesses. To explain, greenwashing allows a business—most likely a foreign multinational company—to make a claim such as being ‘net zero friendly’. That’s simply not true. They’re deceiving investors and customers in the process. They get to net zero by purchasing green certificates or carbon dioxide credits to balance out the environmental costs supposedly incurred in their business operation. A European Union report found that 95 per cent of carbon dioxide credits came from projects that did not make a difference to the environment, and Europol just a few years ago said 95 per cent are crooked. In other words, it’s all a con.

The mining industry have come out in favour of offsets, which they call ‘avoided-loss offsets’. These offsets occur after purchasing and improving an area of land with the same habitat as that which is destroyed or damaged in the development. This may appear to be mining-friendly, yet it’s really more expense and more green tape that would best be handled through the existing system of remediation—put it back the way you found it, or better, which is what is happening.

Indeed, one could be concerned that these avoided loss offsets are an alternative to remediation. I certainly hope not.

The bill helps wind turbines with the horrible problem of clubbing koalas on the koalas’ property—clubbing them to death! They could literally club 10 koalas to death and then buy a national biodiversity certificate for 10 new koalas bred somewhere else. As we speak, the Australian Carbon Credit Unit’s review is underway. The review is looking at a thousand carbon dioxide credit generating projects to see if they were fair dinkum and have been kept up. The lessons from that review were going to be added to this bill to ensure the national biodiversity certificate system was legitimate. Bringing forward this bill actually ruins that process.

One Nation opposes greenwashing, although, in most cases, we would suggest that the better option would be for our mining and manufacturing industries to first use environmentally friendly techniques, as they usually do. Then, having done that, be proud of their role in developing the economy, providing jobs and supplying materials that people need for a life of abundance. Perhaps that’s just we conservatives taking care of the natural environment and taking care of people. Some submissions to the Senate inquiry called on the government to purchase the certificates themselves to provide certainty that, should a project be completed, there would be someone to buy the resulting certificate. Minister Plibersek has ruled this out—the only decision in this whole process One Nation can support.

I was amused with the submission from champagne socialists in the Byron Shire Council, who submitted that— quote—’free market alone may not facilitate rapid uptake of this scheme,’ and called on the federal government to kickstart the market by committing to purchasing certificates itself. It will never stop. I would think that the federal government would be better off spending money on tax cuts for working Australians and paying off our debt so that interest rates come down, but that’s just conservative values again—human values; real environmental values.

Minister Plibersek has described this bill as creating a ‘green Wall Street’. Wall Street provides a means for financing businesses to expand productive capacity. This bill provides a means to restrict productive capacity
through taking productive farmland and returning it to Gaia. I don’t see the comparison with a genuine financial product, unless the minister was making a comparison to Bernie Madoff. That would be accurate in that case. The product itself, biodiversity credits, is subjective and, over time, will require more and more personnel to conduct compliance on an ever-increasing number of projects, just like the National Electricity Market—the racket. This does not increase productive capacity. It does increase bureaucracy at the public’s expense, of course. Many submissions opposed the use of these certificates for environmental offsets, including the Greens’, and I note their amendments remove the offsets for the purpose of these certificates. This would seem a significant conflict between the minister’s intent and the Greens’ intent. What a mess! The Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 is a solution to a problem that has not yet been defined and does not meet real needs, just like the failed National Electricity Market.

The government is working on an update on the entire Environmental Protection and Biosecurity Conservation Act—the EPBC—informed by the Samuels review into the legislation from three years ago. Those amendments will frame the problem this bill is supposedly solving. This is something that Senator Thorpe has correctly pointed out in the second reading amendment, which I will support. How do you pass a bill like this ahead of the implementation of the Samuels review? How do we know which projects should be supported and which are not needed, or, worse, which projects are a load of bollocks, like the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull, as most climate projects are—climate fraud?

In relation to ensuring integrity around the use of offsets, the Australian government is working to introduce a new national environmental standard for actions and restoration contributions. This new standard is expected to include a requirement that offsets must deliver net gain for impacted protected matters and that biodiversity projects certified under the Nature Repair Market Bill will only be able to be used as offsets if they meet the new standard. What new standard? Oh, wait, you haven’t written it yet! Great. Minister Plibersek is trying to pass a bill that implements a standard that hasn’t been written yet. Can someone please give the government’s legislation chocolate wheel back to rotary and we’ll go back to doing things properly—you know, in the correct order.

This legislation implements something called the Nature Positive Plan. That sounds good. This is the government’s overarching environmental blueprint. I notice that, on page 32, this plan includes a provision that
traditional owners will have more control over Commonwealth national parks. More control!

Australians who are used to bushwalking, camping and generally enjoying the beautiful national parks Australia offers are flat out of luck under this Labor government. ‘No nature for you. Get back to your 15-minute cities.’ That’s exactly what the United Nations sustainable development goals do—they reduce everyday Australians to the status of serfs, imprisoned in their 15-minute cities, locked in a digital identity prison, owning nothing and eating bugs instead of real food. I first said that in the Senate in 2016, and the sniggers were obvious. Well, nobody’s sniggering now. Now you’re all trying to justify the abomination your globalist masters are working to impose.

Over the remainder of the Albanese government, those in this chamber will be required to face the reality of this government’s globalist agenda. It’s not an agenda written for the benefit of everyday Australians or for the Labor heartland. It’s an agenda that serves the self-interest of the world’s predatory investment funds, delivered through lobby groups like the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum and implemented repeatedly in legislation like this. It’s an agenda that will make life a misery for everyday Australians, sending them back to serfdom. One Nation stands against everything this bill represents. It proudly stands against everything this bill represents.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying what I don’t agree with. Today I set out the policies I do agree with. These are policies I have worked hard in the Senate to promote and will continue to do so.

Australia has natural advantages in mineral resources, agricultural land, water, sunshine and a moderate climate that in years past has made Australia the richest country in the world per capita — which is the wealth of the country divided by the number of inhabitants. Yet in recent years life has become so hard, not just under this Albanese Government but under successive Liberal and Labor Governments.

Income per capita is going backwards and opportunities we took for granted in our youth are now out of reach for today’s young Australians. Unemployment is much higher than the published rate, Australians can’t afford housing, electricity or even their groceries. Higher education is slipping from the reach of the middle class and many Australians are now unsafe in their homes and on the streets.

It does not have to be this way.

I spoke here in the Senate Chamber about the steps One Nation would take to solve the many problems Australians are facing after too many years of bad governance. Some of these steps include solving infrastructure issues, increasing productivity and wages, bringing back a people’s bank and ensuring cash continues to be available, and more.

Join us in helping our country to rebound and flourish.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I am often asked by people why life under Labor has become so damn tough so quickly and how a One Nation government would help. Australians are decent people and can see through government and media misinformation and disinformation. We all know when life is harder than it should be and when governments are screwing up. Out of control cost of living has resulted from a screw-up resulting from the actions of Liberal, National, Greens and Labor parties during COVID, when our government turned to the use of excessive authority instead of respecting human rights and choice. During COVID, One Nation did advocate for human rights, including quarantining the sick and letting the healthy get about life. Countries that did that are now back to normal. Life in those countries is easier because there’s no massive COVID bill to pay. Australia has a huge inflation problem now due to printing $500 billion—half a trillion dollars—to cover COVID expenses, including JobKeeper and pharma products that are now past their use-by date. Money printing causes inflation. One Nation said so at the time. 

One Nation now stands ready to rebuild our economy and deliver wealth and opportunity to all Australians. We will reduce new arrivals to a level where arrivals equal departures. That’s called zero net migration, leaving room for about 130,000 new migrants each year. We will limit student visas to a level at which we can accommodate and teach students properly. We will not import more labour until those who’ve arrived have found a job. We don’t need new arrivals being handed Medicare cards, driving up government spending on health and on schools and infrastructure. We will decline to renew the visa of any new arrival who has failed to find a job or make a contribution during their visa period. 

We will license construction of new and efficient coal plants, which will bring electricity bills down 50 per cent. We will cancel any weather dependent generation project that we can legally terminate, and we will ensure that wind and solar sponsors pay into a bond account to pay for the removal of those monstrosities at the end of their short life. Electricity generation should be based on the cheapest source, not the dearest, and the dearest is wind and solar. We will fast-track mining approvals and port upgrades. We will terminate the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and leave everyone’s water where it is to ensure farmers are free to grow food and fibre to feed and clothe the world, and we’ll then get together with the states to review the actual data on river health, environmental outcomes and the social and economic costs of the basin measures taken so far. More work may need to be done, though only after a full basin review. We will build infrastructure projects like the Queensland tropics water and hydro project, the northern Australia’s east-west rail line, the Abbott Point and Pilbara steel parks and the inland rail to the port of Gladstone without crossing the Condamine. 

At the moment, Australia’s internet traffic from our east coast to Western Australia and vice versa routes through China. So, if you want to connect with Western Australia, it goes through China. We will build a direct connection instead and upgrade pinch points to lift our internet out of Third World status and make it First World. Human error being what it is, the recent Optus failure may happen again. Once there is network redundancy and proper planning, outages should not happen. The Optus failure is on the government’s infrastructure and communication ministers, who clearly have not done their job to ensure the redundancy we need to keep Australians connected. And we need to keep cash as a payment option, as should every business. These are just some of the many opportunities for infrastructure to harden our economy and provide wealth and opportunity for all. 

Infrastructure improves economic efficiency and underscores the productivity improvements that fuel wage rises. Workers don’t need to work harder to get a productivity rise. People are already at breaking point. Government needs to work harder—faster internet, faster ports and rail, better highways, cheaper power and more water. This is how we increase productivity and, with that, the wages of everyday Australians, without inflation. We will purchase the Suncorp Bank and operate that as a model bank to provide a full range of services, including cash through Australia Post outlets. Under One Nation you will have a real local bank branch that handles cash. 

We will stop foreign interests owning Australian land and residential property. The bounty of this beautiful land should accrue to those who call Australia home. Large corporations need to be held to account. For 30 years the share of the economy coming from wages has fallen, yet for 30 years the share from corporate profits has grown. There’s a point where a fair return on risk and investment has become a perceived entitlement to ever-increasing profits from rapacious and unprincipled merchant banks investing money on behalf of predatory billionaires, billionaires like Bill Gates, who we discovered just after the election is best mates with the Prime Minister. 

In response to running out of other people’s money to spend, the Treasurer, in a recent media appearance, walked back his responsibility to harden and grow the national economy. One Nation does not shirk from responsibility. Join us in restoring our country for people to abound and flourish. 

Without mining and agriculture our country would be toast. Yet Treasurer Jim Chalmers couldn’t bring himself to mention them once in his budget speech. I guess ‘coal’ and ‘iron ore’ are scary words to him.

Transcript

What are the two words too scary for the Treasurer to mention even once in this budget? They are mining and agriculture.

Ladies and gentlemen of Australia, booming mining and agriculture have yet again saved Australia’s economy. The budget surplus is due to mining and agricultural exports, not to the Treasurer.

Is he keeping it secret because Labor wants to continue to destroy these vital industries? We should be opening more coal mines, not blocking them. We should be building more coal-fired power stations, not blowing them up. And we should be setting our farmers free to feed and clothe the world.

Labor’s energy relief plan is an admission that net-zero policies cannot lower power prices. Today we have the highest ever amount of wind and solar, yet the Treasurer needs to step in and use taxpayer money to cover up how high they are driving power bills.

On inflation, how inflationary will 400,000 new migrants be? Every single one of the 400,000 people arriving this year will need a roof over their head, a home. That’s inflation.

Government wants to cut red meat production so you’ll have to “eat zee bugs”. Like lots of globalist claims however, demonizing red meat falls over as soon as you look at the facts.

Why on earth does the government want to tax cow farts?

Transcript

Australian beef and, best of all, Queensland beef are here to stay as Australia’s main source of protein. A recent CSIRO paper published in the journal Animal, found that pasture fed beef returned 1,597 times more human edible protein than it consumed. What a wonderful way to produce natural, nutritious and affordable protein to feed our world.

The CSIRO, though, couldn’t help themselves of course and went on to denigrate the cattle industry for its methane production. This fearmongering fails on the most basic of tests: the biogenic carbon cycle. Methane in the atmosphere combines with oxygen to produce water and carbon dioxide which are then reabsorbed into pastures through photosynthesis, encouraging plant growth. For those who swallow the United Nations’ climate rubbish and think that nature’s trace atmospheric gas, essential to life on earth, needs to be sequestered: it is being sequestered!

There’s no environmental harm from cattle methane production. Cattle can be raised in a sustainable manner that not only protects but improves soil health. The war on red meat doesn’t have a leg to stand on! I call on Meat & Livestock Australia to dump its Red Meat 2030 plan—a plan designed to create a false scarcity of red meat in order to double meat prices and increase profits for a lucky few large beef producers. Red Meat 2030 will end grazing in lower rainfall areas, which will then be returned to nature in a process called ‘rewilding’. This land is where affordable meat is grown. Meat will become an elitist food; everyday Australians will be forced to source protein from food-like substances grown in labs or concocted on a process line from bugs, nuts and chemicals—lots of chemicals! Pick up a pack of fake meat and check the ingredients.

Meat & Livestock Australia must stop pandering to the climate change fraud and globalist elites. We are one community, we are one nation and climate change delusion is a danger to people’s cost of living and to our very food supply and security.

Yesterday the Minister for Agriculture Murray Watt gave Parliamentary members a briefing on the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) threat to the $80 billion Australian livestock industry.  The threat assessment from FMD has been raised from 9% to 11% because the disease has arrived in Bali.
 
One Nation is concerned that the measures at airports to ensure FMD does not come through arrivals is insufficient.  Minister Watt has announced that our measures are 90% effective but are based mostly on passengers’ self-assessment honest.
 
We are concerned that vaccines needed to control the outbreak are stored in the UK and, despite Agriculture Minister Watt’s misleading answer during Question Time, we do know the strain likely to arrive in Australia.  We have no reason not to place vaccines in Australia now so we can be ready for any outbreak.
 
Under Australian regulations it is perfectly safe to eat the meat from livestock that have been vaccinated against FMD.  If FMD does enter Australia, our meat and related exports will be prevented from leaving the country for many years.  The viability of the industry is at risk and under threat.

Transcript

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Watt. Thank you for your briefing this afternoon on foot-and-mouth disease. Minister, if foot-and-mouth disease does enter Australia, the short-term response would be to start vaccination. Food and Safety Australia and New Zealand says vaccines are safe for human consumption. Having said that, Australia owns foot-and-mouth disease vaccines located in the United Kingdom. How many vaccines does Australia own in the United Kingdom?

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management) (14:39): Thank you, Senator Roberts. I’m pleased that you were able to come along to that briefing. The feedback that I had was that it was very informative for the members who attended. We are approaching this in a bipartisan manner, and we would welcome the opposition joining us in that, as I know you are, Senator Roberts.

Opposition senators interjecting

The PRESIDENT: Order!

Just to pick you up on one point: if, God forbid, foot-and-mouth disease were to enter Australia despite the measures that we are putting in place, we have a well-developed plan known as AUSVETPLAN, which is prepared between the federal government and states and territories, about how we respond to biosecurity outbreaks. Biosecurity outbreaks are managed and led by state governments with the support of the federal government, and we have seen that occur in relation to the Varroa mite outbreak recently, where we have been supporting the New South Wales government. The point about vaccines is that biosecurity advice that I have received is that we would not immediately vaccinate all livestock or even a large segment of livestock immediately in Australia, and that is because if you vaccinate your livestock—

Opposition senators interjecting

Senator WATT: It’s unfortunate that the opposition don’t want to understand and listen to the measures of preparing for the outbreak. The reason you don’t vaccinate, Senator Roberts, is that you are then deemed by the rest of the world as having foot-and-mouth disease, and that is what prevents the export of our product overseas. It’s effectively the same as having the outbreak here when you vaccinate. The idea would be that in the first instance you would impose a 72-hour livestock standstill to limit the movement of animals, and only if the outbreak got further would you consider vaccines. My advice, and I will get this checked, is that we have approximately one million vaccines available to us in a stockpile and they are available within one week’s notice.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:41): We have 25 million cattle and 2.5 million pigs. How is one million enough?

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management) (14:41): As I said, the first move, should we have an outbreak here, is not to just run out and vaccinate every herd of cattle, sheep, pigs or goats across the country—or buffaloes, for that matter. What we would actually do is try to control the outbreak in the localised area that it is in so that it didn’t spread further afield. If it did spread further afield, that is when we would look to vaccinations as an alternative. It is not the only alternative that we would have, but it is certainly one, and we would be able to access other vaccines at very short notice. What we are actually prioritising in relation to the supply of vaccines at the moment is providing them to Indonesia, and the reason we are doing that is that, if we can bring that outbreak under control in Indonesia, not only is that in their national interest; it is in our national interest. We have continued to have very productive discussions with the Indonesian government about what other vaccines and other assistance we can provide. But my priority right now is keeping the disease out, and that is why we want to support the vaccine rollout in Indonesia.

he PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:42): Why are these vaccines not already in Australia? We are one of the largest cattle and related product producers in the world. Speed of response is critical to protecting our biosecurity. Why are these not being brought to Australia now as a precaution?

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management) (14:42): As I said, vaccination is not the first measure that you would undertake if there were an outbreak, but there are a couple of other reasons why we have got those vaccines here now, the first of which is that there are sometimes issues about the bringing of live virus into a country, and the responsible members of the opposition understand this. In addition, though, we don’t necessarily know what strain of the disease we would have in Australia, and we want to make sure that the vaccines that we obtain would actually be effective for the strain of the virus that we would get if we were to get it. In fact some of the technical support we have started providing to Indonesia was actually to help them diagnose the strain of virus that they had so that we could then go out and procure the vaccines that would deal with that particular strain. There’s no point sending vaccines to people if they don’t work for a particular strain of the virus, and we would need a little bit of time to diagnose the strain that we have here in Australia so that we could then very quickly obtain the correct vaccines to deal with the version of the virus that we got.