I had a great first conversation back for the New Year with Marcus Paul. we spoke about Brisbane’s snap lockdown, big tech censoring conservatives and councils sneakily using COVID as an excuse to boycott Australia Day.

Transcript

[Marcus] All right, welcome back. 22 minutes to eight. That is of course, New South Wales Daylight Saving Time. Time to catch up with One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts. Happy New Year, Malcolm.

[Malcolm] Happy New year to you Marcus. And thank you very much.

[Marcus] You’re welcome. Did you get a break at all?

[Malcolm] I took some time off between Christmas day and New Year’s day.

[Marcus] Good on you.

[Malcolm] How about you?

[Marcus] I had a couple of weeks off, which was nice. Caught up with family as much as I could. And then Annastacia closed the border on me again and I couldn’t get up to see dad on the Gold Coast.

[Malcolm] Ain’t that disgraceful? Just capricious the way that woman works on this, just conditioning people to accept control. That’s all it is. It’s just nonsense.

[Marcus] Donald Trump. I’m looking forward to my wine, so it’s on its way apparently.

[Malcolm] Yes, I ordered it straight after the sixth. So it should be there pretty soon. It was recommended to me by Vic Pennisi, the Southern Downs mayor in Warwick. I don’t drink wine. I don’t drink spirits. The stiffest thing I have is light beer but my wife really enjoyed it. So I hope you enjoy it.

[Marcus] Thank you. Thank you. It was a bit of fun. Banning Trump from Twitter and other social media platforms. I mean, Twitter has benefited enormously from Trump using the platform during his presidency. Shares of Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google all shed more than 2% on Monday. They will suffer according to you by this ban.

[Malcolm] Yes, I’m married to an American. I’ve travelled through all 50 states of America. I’ve lived and worked there and studied there and I’ve worked in eight states. I get to know them pretty well. Americans don’t like this kind of behaviour from someone acting capriciously. As you said, it’s quite right. Twitter has benefited enormously from Trump and they didn’t seem to be bothered with him over the last four years and they don’t seem to be bothered with supporting Venezuela’s dictatorship, Iran’s dictatorship and China’s Communist Party. Now that we’ve got a Democrat coming into the White House, they seem suddenly to be concerned about Donald Trump.

[Marcus] I mean, they have protections as an open platform, both Twitter and Facebook, for instance. They’re not subjected to the same laws and rules as traditional media as they claim not to be publishers, but deleting Trump’s whole account of tweets is kind of acting as a publisher, is it not?

[Malcolm] You’re absolutely correct, Marcus. It’s akin to book burning. That’s what it really is. It’s just like burning books. As a publisher, they need to be accountable to the same laws that govern publishers. And that’s why Trump was coming after them to make sure they are publishers. But yeah, they’re acting capriciously just like the Queensland premier. We’ve now heard that there’s interference with the Ugandan Facebook and Twitter account holders ahead of the election today. Ugandan accounts have been linked to the incumbent president. They’d been removed from Facebook. Social media platforms are taking sides in an election by removing these accounts. It’s not the business of social media to decide who is good or bad. Now, some people, Marcus, might say, well, it’s a free enterprise society. You can join Twitter. They can kick you off, whatever. If you make a contract with Twitter to use them, then they don’t cut you off just before an election, which has been the threat from Twitter and Facebook for quite some time that they would cut candidates or even parties off their services just before an election at the last minute when they can’t do anything about it. And that’s exactly what’s happening in Uganda. And it’s exactly what’s happening in America.

[Marcus] Well look, some people say, well, the Murdoch Media seem to favour certain parties. And so why shouldn’t social media giants be able to do the same thing?

[Malcolm] That’s a very good argument. However, as I just said, if you’re gonna take my material, if you as a social media platform are gonna take my material for four or five or 10 years and then suddenly cut me off before an election, that’s not on. Now with Murdoch, I’ve got a choice. We know that he has favoured the Labor Party at times. We came out very strongly in favour of Rudd. I think he came out strongly in favour of Whitlam. And I know that he’s also favoured the Liberal Party at times, but I’ve got a choice. I don’t have to buy The Australian newspaper. I don’t have to watch his television stations. And that’s my choice if I do that. He can switch, like Murdoch’s Fox News in America when they started becoming biassed, just like CNN over the US Election. Reportedly the number of subscriptions at Fox News had plummeted by 50%. So they’re now starting to think about, because Americans had said, we’ve had enough of this bias. So Marcus, I think if you’re paying for a service, you can choose what you want to do. But if I’ve got an established relationship with someone, then they shouldn’t cut me off just before an election because I’m a candidate.

[Marcus] Australia Day not too far away, Malcolm. Some councils seem to be cancelling celebrations, refusing to celebrate the national day saying they are in solidarity with indigenous campaigners. It almost appears like they’re, if you like, blaming or hiding behind COVID 19 to justify the cancellation.

[Malcolm] Yes, you’re right. Some councils are refusing to celebrate the national day saying they’re in solidarity with indigenous campaigners, which makes me wonder because there are many Aboriginals who openly support Australia Day including some prominent spokespeople, male and female from their Aboriginal community. So I don’t know where they’re getting that from. And secondly, somehow as you said, refusing to celebrate and blaming COVID. Greatest Sydney councils including Liverpool and North Sydney, Parramatta and Canterbury Bankstown, are still going to have normal citizenship ceremonies but have cancelled the large gatherings because of COVID. So there’s some genuine concern in there as well, but it’s on Australia Day. We all should come together especially after this tumultuous year we’ve had in 2020, Marcus.

[Marcus] Absolutely. I mean, we’ve been through enough. If we are in this together, why can’t we celebrate together? I mean the division and some of the notoriety of that same, so negative, really isn’t needed at this time. And I do get a little frustrated that every year as it rolls around December, I beg your pardon, January 26, becomes a poster, if you like, for people that like to call it invasion day, et cetera. I don’t think we have the stomach for this year to be honest.

[Malcolm] No, I agree with you mate. It’s usually a beat up from Richard Di Natale when he was in the Senate. He was the one who pushed it. I don’t know who’s pushing it now. I think it’s just become some martyrs within various councils just wanting to make their say. But I agree with you. We need to come united in this country.

[Marcus] Now, finally, there’s another arbitrary lockdown, we know in Brisbane. There are some quite serious concerns of this United Kingdom strain of COVID 19 which is a little more dangerous than the previous ones for goodness sake. But if individual states are paying for jobkeeper, then you say, you bet there will be different decisions. I mean they’re drastic and abrupt closures. I don’t know, sometimes they are needed, but I mean at the end of the day, all it’s doing is wrecking the economy and ruining plans that people have for weddings and other major events in their lives.

[Malcolm] You’re absolutely right, Marcus. And what is really important here, is that the World Health Organisation which is admittedly corrupt, dishonest and incompetent, but even it, even it says that lockdowns are last resort and lockdowns are used to get control of a virus in the early stages. This basically says that Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland is admitting she doesn’t have control of the virus. And that’s a significant thing because what we’re doing in this country is we’re not managing the virus. The virus is managing us. One case pops up, one positive test pops up in Brisbane and we lock down a city of one and a half to 2 million people in greater Brisbane? And what happened was that, you hit the nail on the head because we have got to have the economy healthy because a healthy economy is the only way you’re gonna get future health, mental health and physical health. So we have had an insane debate in this country. Should we look after the health or the economy? The answer is you do both. And the leading countries in the world, Taiwan in particular is doing both because you have to protect people’s health but you have to protect the economy to maintain future health, mental and physical. And so we have got a stupid debate going on in this country. It’s not economy or health. It’s both. And that’s how you protect health. The premier was giggling on radio on Monday. I heard her. They were talking about the traffic jams of people flooding out of Brisbane and the premier after destroying small business and destroying families activities over the weekend laughed when she said, that the Gold Coast had great occupancy. There were traffic jams of people leaving Brisbane. I mean, what’s that gonna do for spreading the virus? If such a thing was the root cause of what she was doing. It’s insane.

[Marcus] Absolutely. I agree. I mean, COVID will continue its presence. We need more testing, rigorous quarantining and isolation of the sick and vulnerable. And we need to get back to work as well. The New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian, you say, seems to be in the most measured and pragmatic in response to the complex challenge of managing this pandemic.

[Malcolm] I said that. I don’t have much time for the New South Wales LNP government but I think when it comes to managing COVID, they’ve done the best. But they’ve still done a poor job by world standards. Let’s not kid ourselves. Australia has had over 900 deaths from COVID. And what we’ve got in the country, there’s 25 million people. Taiwan has got 24 million people on a densely populated Island. Sometimes the population density is a thousand times what we’ve got here in Brisbane, for example, and they’ve had earlier introduction of the virus, they’ve had longer with it. They’ve got much more inter-connection with the communist, China, where the virus started and wove in. They’ve had seven deaths. Seven deaths. And what they’ve done is they’ve focused, exactly what we were talking about a minute ago. They’ve focused on the economy and health. And what they’ve got is they’ve got a government that is worthy of trust. I’ve talked to people from Taiwan. They’ve told me that. The government’s not perfect but at least it involves people. It presents data. These people in New South Wales even, and even I’ve said it’s the best, they’re not presenting the data to underpin their plans. And so what we’ve got Marcus, is we’ve got plans all over the country that are completely different. I like the idea of that in the sense that it maintains state sovereignty but it shows me when there’s so much diverse plans that no one’s got the data backing up the plans and people deserve to have that data to know that their leaders are basing those decisions on data.

[Marcus] All right, Malcolm. Great to catch up. We’ll talk again next week. Appreciate it.

[Malcolm] See you Marcus.

[Marcus] One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts. Marcus Paul In The Morning