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Malcolm Roberts addresses the Climate and Energy Forum

The 2023 Climate and Energy forum was held on the 2nd of February with a fantastic line-up of speakers. This is the full recording of my address to the forum showing just how baseless and environmentally damaging climate policies are.

Transcript

Good evening.

To this forum’s organisers, thank you. To fellow speakers and to all in our audience, thank you.

I can’t join you in person because our daughter is about to have our first grandchild.

In late 2007 I started holding climate alarmists accountable, alongside Viv Forbes. In 2009 I paused and asked myself: “why was I doing this?” and unearthed five aims:

  1. Protect freedom. For myself, for everyday Australians and now for our new grandchild;
  2. Restore scientific integrity, because true science improves humanity’s standard of living;
  3. Protect our natural environment. Corrupt climate science is killing our environment, not saving it;
  4. Protect our economic security without which everyday Australians will not have a future. This is vital for humanity’s future;
  5. Restore humanity’s reverence for, and connection with, nature’s magnificence and rekindle our human spirit.

I’ve researched, investigated and written extensively on climate science.

The end game of unfounded claims that carbon dioxide from human activity causes global warming is clear. It has always been to take wealth, freedom and opportunity from everyday Australians and to enhance the wealth and opportunity of the world’s predatory billionaires.

I challenged alarmists speaking out publicly to debate me – politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, academics and activists. They all ran away.

Entering the Senate in 2016 gave me a chance to speak to our elected representatives face to face.

I wanted those advocating the destruction of our local communities and of our national economy to be accountable for revealing the scientific evidence behind their climate and energy policies.

The CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, government departments and Ministers have failed to provide logical scientific arguments citing empirical data and observations proving that carbon dioxide from human activity is causing environmental harm.

After years in Parliament spent writing letters, making speeches, asking questions in Question Time and Senate Estimates of CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology “scientists”, one thing is now clear:

They have no scientific argument to support the failed theory of man-made climate change.

They have no data to show humans are causing climate change, and of course they won’t because climate varies in natural cycles.

Last September I made an 82-page submission to Labour’s 2022 Climate Change Bill.

That paper is on my website. Today I’ll mention the most important points:

  • CSIRO admitted that it has never stated that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger. Statements of danger came from politicians;
  • CSIRO has never quantified any specific impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on any climate or weather variables, such as temperature, rainfall, droughts, floods, storms, ocean alkalinity. Yet this is fundamental for climate and energy policy. There’s no scientific basis for climate policies;
  • CSIRO admits to not doing due diligence on data or reports it relied upon from external agencies;
  • CSIRO admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. They’ve occurred before;
  • CSIRO then claimed unprecedented rate of temperature rise, which we destroyed using the papers CSIRO itself cited;
  • CSIRO has failed to provide statistically significant evidence of change in any climate factor. It’s just normal, natural cyclical variability.

The Climate Change scam is not scientifically driven. There is no science. It’s politically driven.

In my submission to the Government’s Climate Change Bill I dealt with the history of climate change legislation, which casts the necessary light on this scam’s politics of this scam, quote:

“To comply with the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the Howard-Anderson Liberal-National coalition government introduced the Renewable Energy Target (RET). They were the first large federal party to have a policy calling for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS or Carbon Dioxide Tax). They deliberately bypassed the constitution in a deal with state premiers to steal farmers’ rights to use their own land in order for the Liberal-Nationals federal government to comply with the 1997 UN Kyoto Protocol. In doing so, the Liberal-National government got around our constitution’s Section 51, Clause 31 requiring farmers to be compensated for loss of their rights to use their own land. Yet in 2013, six years after leaving office, former Prime Minister John Howard delivered the annual address in London of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation in which he confessed that he was agnostic on climate science, meaning he did not have the necessary climate science to justify his party’s policy and his government’s legislation. Thus, the government that started and entrenched climate and associated energy policies did not do so based on science”.

And further in my submission: “When I repeatedly asked the Morrison government’s Senate Leader, Matthias Cormann for the logical scientific points supporting climate and energy policies he repeatedly failed to answer my question and instead stated a need to fulfil international commitments and obligations. This is no basis for policy that is costing Australians billions of dollars and will cost trillions of dollars”.

Matthias Cormann was actually being honest here. Australia is introducing Climate Change Armageddon NOT because of the science. Instead, because unelected, unaccountable foreign bureaucrats serving the interests of the world’s predatory billionaires are instructing our governments.

My submission is on my website malcolmrobertsQLD.com.au. It includes a detailed scientific rebuttal, using peer-reviewed scientific papers, rebutting CSIRO’s claims.

Now, let’s consider the present government. In Senate Estimates hearings I asked Senator McAllister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy to provide me with the elusive ‘logical scientific points’ to prove that carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut.

Senator McAllister responded with these papers and, listen to her, quote: “Here are the 20 most cited peer reviewed papers about climate change and its effects” … “compiled by Thomson Reuters” … “that expressed a view on climate change”.

  • One is titled: Biological RESPONSE TO climate change on a tropical mountain,
  • Another: PREDICTING the impacts of climate change on the distribution of species,

These do NOT discuss CAUSES of climate change. They’re about claimed effects. This applies to half her cited papers. She’s scientifically ignorant.

Let’s look at Senator McAllister’s so-called ‘proof’:

One paper specifically questions whether climate variability is due to human or natural cycles.

Nine of the 20 papers just assumed climate change is real without providing any proof. These are the papers that Senator McAllister said proved man made climate change was real.

Eleven of the 20 papers and three of her additional five papers rely on numerical models, not empirical scientific evidence.

Models prove whatever the person paying for the model wants it to prove. 

Another paper reinforces that natural cycles and oscillations are driving climate variability and admits that climate drivers are poorly understood. It questions whether human activity drives climate.

NONE of the papers Senator McAllister cites and relies upon, nor any member of Parliament or bureaucrat, has been able to provide logical scientific points using empirical scientific data proving that carbon dioxide from human activity effects any climate factors including temperature. NONE.

This destroys the very basis of the climate change hoax.

Why would Senator McAllister cite papers that do not support her case?

It’s simple. Senator McAllister never read them. The journalists that tout these papers as proof of climate change never read them. And the public that shares them around on social media never read them.

I did read them because that is what you pay me to do.

Where are the papers that prove climate change is man-made – they do not exist.

It’s a scam.

Peer reviewed papers tell us that there is no discernible trend in severe weather events.

These are inconvenient truths for the Climate Crisis doomsayers, charlatans and financial beneficiaries.

There’s no scientific basis for climate alarm.

Nor for Liberal-National or Labor-Greens-Pocock climate and energy policy.

We’re experiencing natural climate variability.

There’s no reason for shoddy, deceitful, policies costing our nation billions of dollars now, growing to trillions of dollars over time.

Supposed “cheap” wind and solar power is a lie. It’s a lie that purposely ignores the costs of necessary overbuild, firming, low energy density, unreliability and the complete rebuilding of our transmission network which worked just fine.

WE ALL pay for that.

Businesses large and small pay for that and pass the cost on to us.

Governments pay for that and pass the cost on to us.

Right now, in kitchens and livings rooms across Australia, families are opening their electricity bills, their gas bills and having to sit down. Then the panic sets in – how can I pay this?

It will get worse – when the lights go out, the heaters and air-conditioners stop, poor and vulnerable Australians will die.

These measures are destroying the lives of everyday Australians, small and medium businesses, industrial and extractive businesses, agriculture and tourism.

While Australia is slowly killing itself, China is receiving most of the solar and wind subsidies and tightening its almost complete control over the wind and solar supply chain.

Please help awaken our fellow Australians to restore sound governance and sovereignty through personal pressure on your MPs and through informed choices at the ballot box.

Please support One Nation as we fight back against this madness and defend all Australians from the soviet style government of Prime Minister Albanese and the Labor-Greens Party.

Most importantly, call this supposed “Climate Breakdown” what it actually is, a Climate Fraud.

Thank you.

Enjoy the forum.

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Labor rams through communist style control over the gas industry

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In an abuse of Parliamentary process and at great expense to the taxpayer, Anthony Albanese has called everyone back to Canberra for one day to pass his thought bubble that will not bring electricity prices down.

While capping gas prices might sound good in the short term, in the long term it will mean less supply and more expensive power prices when the cap runs out in 12 months.

Instead, we need to remove all of the wind and solar subsidies. Let coal do its job as a reliable baseload power and remove the roadblocks for nuclear energy.

Wind and solar caused this energy crisis, capping gas prices won’t fix it.

Transcript

President, as a servant to the many varied and hard-working people in our QLD community, I’m happy to travel back to Canberra for this session while recognising that due to yet another Labor-Greens-Teal rushed bill many senators cannot.

I’ve submitted a document discovery today to find out exactly how much taxpayers’ money was wasted on this disgusting spectacle.

It would have been wise for the Government to work out what we were returning for prior to recalling the Senate, instead of this chaos to get a bill ready at 9.30pm the night before.

With no Committee oversight, no public scrutiny, no industry scrutiny, a shocking bill rammed through courtesy of the ALP, Greens and Teals Senator Pocock in a single day, in return for quid pro quos next year.

There’s a point where the process this Government uses to get Greens’ and Teal Senator Pocock’s support moves past what is proper into very questionable territory.

Under this bill, the gas industry is being murdered for the financial benefit of rival industries – wind and solar, who are financial supporters of the Greens and Teal Senator Pocock.

It should be clear by now the Albanese Labor Party are not the ones running the country. In the senate, the Greens-Teal Pocock alliance run government.

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Energy Price Relief Plan) Bill 2022, has I’sure been met with popping champagne corks from comrades on the labour left.

Soviet-level powers right there, in the Government’s grasp.

The Government regulation will decree what gas can be sold, to whom it can be sold, for how much it can be sold, who can be refused permission to buy or sell and who can be forced to buy and sell.

The Greens and Teals can’t wait to write those regulations.

A frightening power grab from a desperate government without a clue how to solve the energy crisis it helped create and now worsen.

What industry will be next?

Don’t be fooled with this talk about temporary price caps. This legislation includes a code of conduct with permanent price controls built in.

How much will that ongoing cap be?

This is done through Legislative Instrument, so whatever the cap is, the Commissar, Minister can change it at the stroke of a pen with no appeal mechanism.

Make no mistake if this bill is passed those regulations will escalate in lockstep with the Government’s desperation to control runaway energy inflation caused from escalating power shortages.

Under the Liberal/National government, tens of billions of dollars in direct subsidies have been poured into unreliable wind and solar.

These are incapable of supplying baseload power at an affordable price.

Because the market has not closed hydrocarbon power down as fast as climate bed-wetters want, coal-fired power stations are now being threatened with closure using State Government powers.

This is what is known in finance as political risk.

As the supply of electricity becomes less reliable, afternoon price spikes are becoming common place and everyone’s power bills go up.

There’s a lesson here. Intervening in energy markets to push a political ideology has unintended consequences.

With this legislation Australia is preparing to take our place alongside the Weimar republic, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Venezuela on the list of Governments who ignored history and as a result destroyed their economies.

Venezuela should be a lesson for Australia. Socialist President Maduro spent his first term in 2012 spending every cent the Government earned from oil exports.

Windfall revenue was spent on programs that sounded good on social media, yet proved unsustainable.

Australia is spending every cent we earn from coal, gas and mineral exports just like Venezuela.

When the oil boom ended, Maduro started printing money to keep wasteful government spending going.

Australia over the last three years printed $500bn using electronic journal entries.

Maduro’s print and spend caused prices to double each week, and Maduro responded with price controls.

Australia’s inflation rate is at a 30-year high, nothing like Venezuela’s, and yet we have price controls being introduced with this bill.

Price controls cover up the problem. They never solve it. They make it worse.

To take such an authoritarian measure is an indication that something has this Government and the Premiers spooked – likely the REAL inflation rate that will result from net zero measures?

Time will tell.

The way in which a western country like Venezuela lost control of their economy should be a warning to Australia.

For three years ’print & spend’ measures have been waived through on Liberal, National, Greens and Labor uni-party voices.

Labor did not inherit Scott Morrison’s mess, Labor in the states were part of Scott Morrison’s mess.

Whether our inflation rate from this point forward moves up or down is squarely in the Government’s hands.

A small number of people in the government think they are smarter than the free market.

The same free market has for generations successfully combined hundreds of thousands of workers with hundreds of billions of dollars of capital equipment, in order to successfully manage trillions of dollars in mineral resources for the lowest cost to the consumer.

Now though, our Federal and State Labor Governments, together with the fake Christian, fake Conservative NSW Government of Matt Kean and Dom Perrottet, think this piece of legislation will fix what they broke.

So much hubris combined with so little knowledge of history & economics will be the downfall of our beautiful country.

Veneztralia here we come.

In six months the Albanese government has steered Australia from ‘welfare liberalism’ to socialism.

Next port of call will be ‘statism’ before Labor reach their ultimate destination – communism.

I notice some commentators have been calling for the Government to penalty tax the very high profits being experienced in the minerals industry in recent years.

Instead of making money for taxpayers the Prime Minister decided instead to just destroy those profits, so the shareholders don’t get them, the tax man doesn’t get them, nobody gets them AND the taxpayers are paying $1.5bn a year in subsidies from our debt-financed budget.

$1.5bn over two years is only one percent of the household and small business electricity market, this measure is more public relations than realistic assistance.

One Nation will not be wedged on this payment. Borrowing money from Australians to give back to Australians is a pointless exercise. It literally transfers money from children to their parents.

Responsible parents do not fall for this.

It is a sugar hit that takes attention away from why electricity prices are so high.

Rising electricity prices come from several different aspects of the government’s net zero transition, which, for clarity is a transition away from cheap and reliable, coal baseload power to fairy tale, nature-dependent solar and wind power.

Treasury are projecting electricity prices will rise 36% next year. If passed this bill will reduce that rise 6.5%, and if the States cap the coal price this will save another 6.5%.

In any event electricity is still going up next year. Households can expect a rise of $420 using the Government’s own sums. A rise of 23%. Almost a quarter higher.

When these measures fail, and they will, the rise will be $650.

Today I submitted a motion for a document discovery on the modelling claiming the increase will be 23% not 36%. Including the element of any electricity price rise caused as a result of the Ukraine war.

I look forward to seeing this ‘modelling’

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Energy Price Relief Plan) Bill 2022 deals with gas only. The Albanese Government has dumped the coal price ceiling on to the states to avoid having to pay compensation.

John Howard’s government pulled that same bypass around the Constitution when he took property rights away from farmers to meet UN Kyoto targets without paying a cent in compensation to farmers.

The Albanese Government has joined John Howard’s government in destroying trust in Government, with the result Government must apply more and more coercive measures to govern.

Australia’s gas price has been a problem since the end of 2020. The government’s Australian Energy Regulator confirms the rise in gas prices started a full year before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Treasury and the Government spin doctors blaming Russia for electricity price rises is dishonest. Deceit.

Gas and coal price rises have resulted from the need to back up unreliable wind and solar with gas, combined with colder temperatures and a wind drought across Western Europe.

At the same time the idiots in power in Western Europe closed their coal and nuclear plants.

Gas became the only thing keeping their lights on.

Dishonestly blaming Russia instead of the correct cause – net zero energy deficits, will lead Australia down the same dishonest, inhuman path as Europe.

This bill quite simply fixes the wrong problem.

The war on coal has meant Australia cannot meet the world demand for coal and as a result prices are high, and market demand has switched to gas, those prices are now going up.

Australia has a coal and gas supply problem, not a price problem.

Australia must take the jackboot off the coal and gas industries and allow more production.

Rather than imposing old soviet-style controls on the gas industry under this bill, the Federal Government could have gone with a much simpler and less onerous option.

Western Australia has had a domestic gas reservation since 2006. This requires Gas extractors to reserve 15% of production for Australian domestic use.

This scheme has produced a gas price around $5 a gigajoule, which is production cost plus a fair profit.

Prime Minister Albanese could have used this system on a national level. He chose not to.

Instead, the Prime Minister has gone with old soviet-style legislation that will cost Australians twice as much for gas than a reservation system would have cost.

Why would they do that unless the reason for the legislation is not the price cap and is instead this bill’s industry control powers?

In two or three years’ time the public will be marching on Parliament House to protest electricity bills that are so out of control power that companies will be disconnecting people left right and centre.

Once the serious protests start this Government will reach for the permanent price controls in this bill to force coal and gas extractors to sell to electricity generators at next to nothing, just to save themselves.

There is a showdown coming in this place.

This morning Adam Bandt confirmed that the Greens and Teals are committed to eliminating the gas industry.

Hydrocarbons have lifted Australians and the world out of poverty. The Greens will cast our beautiful nation back to the dark ages.

Gas is essential to firming solar and wind, which means gas and coal are the only things keeping our lights on, our fridges running and industry functioning.

And electric vehicles running.

Without gas and coal the economy will be entirely reliant on nature dependent solar and wind power and battery backups that carry a price tag above $100bn and require renewal every 10 years.

Green energy is no energy. Eliminating gas and coal is insanity.

The Albanese Government’s proposal for a coal price cap will not reduce electricity bills and most likely, will increase them.

Coal plants buy their coal on long term supply contracts. The cost they are paying is not the spot price, it is much less.

The cap of $125 a tonne is above the contract supply price currently being paid at coal power stations, of $80 to $100 a tonne.

It is most likely that suppliers will increase their supply price of coal to $125, knowing that’s the safe limit.

A coal price rise is the most likely outcome from these measures.

A 6.5% fall is technically impossible. For the sake of argument let’s assume the price of coal in 2023 would have been $175 and is now $125 as a result of the cap.

Let’s have a quick look at the effect of that $50 a tonne reduction.

The energy density of coal is 6.7kw/h per kilo, which means one tonne of coal produces 6.7MW/h of electricity.

That’s enough to run 1600 homes in Queensland for a day.

So a $50 saving divided by 1600 homes….at the most simple level of analysis, this measure will save householders .3c a day on their electricity bills.

Not 6.5%, which is $110 a year, $11 a year.

Because coal fuel costs are a tiny portion of the coal-fired electricity price.

The Government’s measures are being sold with a deceitful public relations spin, hiding onerous, soviet-style powers that are the real reason for this legislation.

There’s another serious risk to our energy security this bill ignores – rising interest rates.

Six interest rate rises in 6 months under this Albanese Government.

Rising interest rates increase business overheads right across the energy industry.

Our electricity generation capacity must be replaced to meet ‘net zero by 2050’ –  generators, transmission lines and a whopping $100bn bill for big batteries.

Rising interest rates are pushing up the capital cost of this replacement, as well as operating costs across the energy sector.

If this Government cannot get interest rates under control the outcome will be catastrophic for taxpayers and energy consumers.

There is a better way.

Even to the global warming believers One Nation’s plan can deliver cheap, stable baseload power without upsetting your sky god of warming.

All we have to do is

  • Stop closing coal power stations;
  • Build Collinsville power station and replace Liddell with modern Hele coal;
  • Transition Australia’s coal generators to modern HELE coal.

Transitioning to clean coal and ending government handouts for renewable fairy tale solar and wind power will dramatically reduce electricity bills.

It’s time to walk away from this net zero dumpster fire.

I call on the Senate to reject this bill and say no to soviet level powers that will inevitably backfire and cause an economic and social catastrophe.

One Nation has been right to oppose net zero madness for 25 years.

We will continue to be a voice of reason, bringing better solutions to this Parliament.

Solutions that will provide everyday Australians and the businesses they rely on with opportunity and prosperity for all.

We have one flag, we are one community, we are One Nation.

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The video that got me BANNED from LinkedIn

It’s been nearly three months since the platform LinkedIn inexplicably banned me for sharing this video. Big tech censorship is getting out of control. Just imagine the consequences when getting labelled with “wrongthink” is combined with the power of a Digital Identity.

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Will sportspeople stop going woke yet?

It feels like everywhere you turn politics is mixing with sports. Is it too much to ask that sports celebrities be good at the game they are playing?

When you get down into the details of their grandstanding it never stacks up. Just play the game and do your team proud, Australia already hears enough of the politics.

Transcript

The Australian netball team rejected an offer of sponsorship from Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting because they refused to wear their logo. Who is this company our netballers rejected? Hancock Prospecting grew into one of Australia’s largest companies on the strength of their Roy Hill iron ore mine. Iron ore is still their largest product—Hancock mines coal as well. Since the Greens seem to be ignorant of metallurgy, let me educate you lot: the only way to make steel is using coal to heat iron ore. The Greens talk about green steel as an alternative—it’s not. Green steel is so brittle it’s unusable. There’s no realistic chance of green steel ever being used to replace coal-fired steel. Green steel does have a role as a photo opportunity to sustain the green steel lie designed to destroy the coal and steel industries for whatever visible reason the Greens advocate.

Australian netballers rejected steel. Senator McKim’s motion is rejecting steel. I hope that all those who feel as Senator McKim does go home tonight and rip out their steel stoves, turn off their steel fridges, throw away their steel microwaves, their cutlery, their knives, their saucepans—you get the idea. How will Senator McKim and his steel haters get home? Not in a car or even an electric vehicle. Those are made from steel and other products made with coal and hydrocarbon fuels. These other products include aluminium, glass, fibreglass and plastic. They can’t travel in a train, bus, cycle or scooter—more steel, more oil. Walking home is, of course, an option—just avoid steel-capped work boots or any boots made with steel tools. The hypocrisy in this motion is breathtaking!

Hancock Prospecting enjoys strong relations with the local Aboriginal communities, who benefited over the last seven years from mining royalties totalling $300 million. We have one flag, we are one community, we are one nation—coal-powered and steel-built thanks to miners.

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Net-Zero means strip mining the sea floor for rare earths

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The Earth simply doesn’t have enough of the rare earth materials used in batteries and net-zero products to reach net-zero.

That’s even when you take into account the materials gained from strip mining the ocean floor and covering the surrounding ecosystem in silt.

One Nation supports real environmental protection, not the environmental destruction the UN net-zero is pushing.

Transcript

Unreliable, weather-dependent solar and wind power has put a price tag on our oceans. The phrase ‘blue economy’ is used to soften the ugly truth that, to achieve Australia’s transition to net zero, the world’s oceans must be strip-mined for rare-earth minerals. Batteries, solar panels and wind turbines are produced in China, in part using materials that companies, mostly Chinese, mine from the sea floor. Polymetallic nodules needed for solar panels, wind turbines and batteries lay along active volcanic rifts mostly found on the seabed. Giant vacuums suck up the seabed ecosystem to bury and choke the surrounding area in a thick layer of silt. Animals, eggs, sediment, plants—everything is taken off the seabed.

A Greenpeace research fellow, distressed with what was being done, said:

In all cases, seabed mining will, by its very nature, destroy species and habitats within the mining zones. There is no justification for a ‘gold rush’ to mine the seabed …

International waters, particularly in the Pacific, contain more value than the combined mineral wealth of Earth’s continents.

The Pacific is ground zero for this green rush, with China holding the majority of licences that the United Nations International Seabed Authority handed out. The UN International Seabed Authority supports undersea mining because it aligns with the UN’s 2030 so-called—and bogus— Sustainable Development Goals. The former head of the Office of Environmental Management and Mineral Resources at the UN International Seabed Authority is on record saying that the UN International Seabed Authority is ‘not fit to regulate any activity in international waters’ in part due to a perceived conflict of interest with mining giants. Corporations are in control, and, on behalf of those corporations, climate warriors are destroying everything they touch. Explain that to our children. We are one community, we are one nation, and we want our oceans protected from crazy climate warriors.

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Electric Vehicles fall flat for Aussie lifestyle

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Labor’s much-hyped goal of net zero and electric vehicles for 2050 will run out of charge between 2025 and 2030, when lithium supplies are predicted to dry up.

No-one is looking at the harm these electric vehicles cause out of sight in the Third World or asking why they still have a social licence, given that most of them source raw materials on the back of child slave labour either.

You can have your electric vehicles, I’ll keep my turbo-diesel and tow my trailer as far as I like.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Electric Car Discount) Bill 2022. The history of climate change and related energy bills is replete with terrible governance, shoddy governance, deceitful governance. There have been genuine errors made, there have been decisions taken on greed and self-interest, contradicting the science, and now we have inappropriate market manipulation from a cynical, meddling government. This bill is designed to force the uptake of electric vehicles. What hubris, what deceit—and who pays? As always, the people are paying.

How can the Albanese government ignore the critical shortage of minerals essential to producing this many electric vehicles? Lithium has been a global arms race fought between electric vehicles and Labor’s other loves: batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. There’s not enough lithium on earth for one of these follies, let alone all four. Stuart Crow, chair of Lake Resources, said:

There simply isn’t going to be enough lithium on the face of the planet, regardless of who expands and who delivers, it just won’t be there.

So what’s the government’s plan to handle the lithium shortage in the electronics industry as net zero sucks up supply of cobalt, lithium and copper? Demand inflation will force these resources up in price over the next few years. How’s the government going to explain to citizens why their phones, laptops and household goods have been made unaffordable from so-called sustainable, green technologies? By the way, have you noticed how United Nations World Economic Forum sustainability programs can exist only with subsidies, meaning they’re not sustainable?

Back to the point, the engineering boundaries are real, and wishy-washy responses about finding new solutions don’t work when the best solution, lithium, is being wasted on the vanity of net zero. Labor’s much-hyped goal of net zero for 2050 will run out of charge between 2025 and 2030, when lithium supplies are predicted to dry up. This shortage is already manifested in mineral prices. In 2020 lithium was $6,000 per tonne. Today, what is it? I’ll tell you: it’s sitting around $78,000 per time, 13 times higher. Everything this precious resource is being wasted on will be sitting in landfill before 2050. I say it again: everything this precious resource is being wasted on will be sitting in landfill, buried before 2050. Every wind turbine, every solar panel, every big battery, every home battery—all of it rotting while the earth and its oceans are torn apart to feed the monstrous dream of net zero through the strip mining of the seabed for rare earth minerals that are necessary for the production of these follies.

Even electric vehicle manufacturers admit to being in trouble. The World Economic Forum, whose policies seem to find their way into Australian legislation, thinks we need five billion electric vehicles to achieve net zero. That’s not five billion through to 2050; that is five billion every five to 10 years for ever. No wonder you’re looking startled; this is news to most people in this room. The reason electric vehicles are so damn expensive is that, in manufacturing electric vehicles, they are resource and energy hogs. They are resource guzzlers with a huge environmental footprint, far greater than petrol and diesel cars. These price hikes, which have already started, are set to push almost all purely electric vehicles beyond the luxury car threshold required to qualify for Labor’s amendment to the Fringe Benefits Tax Assessment Act.

After the amendment moved by the Greens and Senator Pocock goes through, in 2025 hybrids will no longer be included in the bill. Price inflation will ensure not much else will be either. When President Biden gave a $7,000 subsidy, the first thing that happened? Car manufacturers put up their prices by $7,000. Subsidies make things dearer, not cheaper. They shift the price label but not the affordability. Perhaps some cheaper EVs that are made in China and that may or may not still be working in 2030 will benefit.

Labor could, of course, raise the threshold, but at what point do we say that big business is being given a subsidy from working Australians to buy luxury vehicles? Our European friends are a decade ahead of us in this madness. They’ve dismissed policies like this as expensive, wasteful and counterproductive. Their conclusion is that government interference benefits rich companies at the expense of natural market competition. It’s why German finance minister Christian Lindner said:

We simply cannot afford misguided subsidies anymore. These cars have so far been subsidised over their lifetime with up to 20,000 euros, even for top earners. That’s too much. We can save billions there, which we can use more sensibly.

Germans are saying this.

This bill for luxury foreign electric vehicles is designed to fix a number on Labor’s spreadsheet of carbon dioxide output. It’s not to assist a transition to electric vehicles for the general public. The fastest rise in product quality occurred when electric vehicles were forced to compete on merit against their oil and gas hydrocarbon fuelled betters. It was only then, when the customer was king, that their price came down. Their quality went up and their range increased slightly. When European governments handed the electric vehicle market billions in subsidies, car manufacturers grew fat and lazy. They took the money, slacked off on development and raised their prices knowing that public money would cover the difference. This is transferring wealth from taxpayers to electric vehicle manufacturers.

Labor’s bill is more of the same failed economics that fundamentally misunderstands what drives success. Given the price dynamics at play, if anything this bill penalises full electric vehicles and preferences hybrids. At the same time hybrids begin to win the consumer war, this government’s net-zero policies are pushing up the price of fuel and leaving every car owner worse off. We’re quickly reaching a point where car ownership will become a rare privilege that won’t impact at all anyone in this chamber, yet it will make the lives of everyday Australians an intolerable misery. As Norway, the world’s premier electric vehicle buyer, has stated, they want to reduce individual car ownership and see their population walk or catch public transport. The United Nations World Economic Forum EV policy is not about having different cars; it’s about no cars—no cars. Good luck telling Australian tradies that, but that’s what will happen.

These EVs have no resale value because they tend to be sold when the batteries are cooked. If we’re talking about sustainability, electric vehicles are on a swift path to landfill, unlike conventional cars that have many lives and many owners. To get electricity consumption down in order to improve range, EVs are made of composite materials, aluminium and plastics. Most of the steel in the subframe is needed to hold the extra weight of the battery. Recycling is, of course, possible, although with the price of electricity in Australia, thanks to weather-dependent solar and wind driving up power prices, our recycling industry is struggling. Think about this: much like used plastics, glass, solar panels and wind turbines, EVs will not be recycled beyond their copper wires and the little steel that has been used. If electric vehicles are a less desirable product at a terrible price heading towards extinction, what are their alleged climate virtues? Let’s consider that: this virtue is not based on science; it’s not a calculation of their cradle-to-grave life cycle. It’s a self-declaration. Electric vehicles identify as net zero, and so this government treats them as such.

No-one is looking at the harm these electric vehicles cause out of sight in the Third World or asking why they still have a social licence, given that most of them source raw materials on the back of child slave labour—child slave labour. What is the environmental cost of the Third World mining operations to build a car that sits in an Australian dealership with a green virtue sticker on the side? That’s completely irrelevant as far as this government is concerned. Why else would Labor throw good money after bad behind Congo cobalt? Labor are turning a blind eye to the 40,000 children in the Congo mining the cobalt for EVs—after this bill, 45,000. Leading electric vehicle manufacturers claim to be free of child slave labour, yet their supply contracts for cobalt are with companies with child slave labour in their supply chains—deceit.

We like to think that our civilisation has advanced, yet these net-zero technologies, more than any other, are indulging in the cheap, largely unregulated labour of our poor neighbours and their children. When it’s not children down mines clawing at the ground with their bare hands, it’s the toxic mining practices for rare earths that make coalmines look like an oasis. This is the truth behind the green sticker. Electric vehicles need mining, and the Greens hate mining—or so they tell us. Greens and teals demand coal stay in the ground. How can anyone make more EVs without using coal to smelt the steel and the aluminium, process the plastics from coal and oil and make the glass? How can we make more electric vehicles without oil in the bearings? It seems the government and the Greens and teals cheer squads are determined to find out. It’s impossible.

Added to the list of disasters waiting to happen is the effect of this many electric vehicles on the national electricity grid. Now we’re talking about something that’s hurting everyone. All it takes is three or so electric vehicles on an average suburban street to charge at the same time, and the powerlines melt down or shut off. Weather-dependent power like solar and wind cannot charge this many electric vehicles—full stop, that’s it. I’m sure this bill will lead to government departments buying another off-market round of electric vehicles to zip around Canberra. What it will not do is save the planet. What it will not do is make electric vehicles more affordable. What it will not do is ease the cost of living. What it will not do is create a better, more competitive product. And who will pay? As always, the people will pay for this government’s stupidity and deceit.

Even if they are miraculously delivered in this fit of madness, as a product electric vehicles have serious unresolved issues, like their tendency to spontaneously combust. Australia’s firefighters have complained that they do not have the ability to put out lithium-ion battery fires in electric vehicles. So what happens when our underground car parks are packed full of these things and one starts off a chain reaction? What happens if they catch fire beneath apartment blocks, inside shopping centres, in tunnels? The ventilation of buildings and car parks is not designed to handle the safety issue, the hazard and risk issue of the scars, and there will be serious accidents in tight residential areas. If there’s a fire, the water used to fight that fire is 10 times the amount for a conventional car fire. Firefighters are terrified of this. Even worse, that water becomes toxic as a result of contact with a toxic battery fire and must be captured and treated. Allowing firefighting water to run off site is an environmental contamination. EV does not stand for electric vehicle; EV stands for environmental vandalism. This bill states that its purpose is, ‘To encourage a greater uptake of electric cars by Australian road users to reduce Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector by making cars more affordable’. Let me be straight: this is a big-business perk to help the richest people in this country improve their environmental virtue-signalling and their social credit status on paper. It is nothing more. Labor is offering another incentive to the rich, urban, professional teal voters to come on over to Labor and to keep their buddies in government, the Greens, with them.

Yet underneath it all, the Australian people are left to pick up the bill for Labor’s empty virtue-signalling and economic stupidity. This government needs to stop sucking up to the teals and start governing for Australia, and replace policies from the United Nations and World Economic Forum alliance, that began in 2018, with policies instead that serve Australia.

I want to mention a couple of points from Judith Sloan, the economist and journalist. At a time when United Nations and World Economic Forum policies drive goals of converting our transport fleet to electricity and hugely increasing demand for electricity, our bureaucrats push United Nations and World Economic Forum policies to kill reliable, baseload coal power and replace it with expensive, intermittent, unreliable wind and solar. And here’s what Judith Sloan said:

It is surely ironic it was Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen who explicitly outlined the numerical challenge in front of transforming the NEM in such a short time frame. He has told us we will need 22,000 solar panels every day and 40 wind turbines every month for the next eight years. There will also be a requirement for at least 10,000km of additional transmission lines.

At the same time, we’ll see 11,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation coming off capacity. This is insane. And who will pay? It’s the people who will pay. We need sensible government—honest governance. We have one flag. We are one community. We are one nation. And we stand for affordable, clean, secure mobility for all Australians.

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Albanese pouring fuel on the cost of living fire

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The cost of everything is going up, but the Albanese Labor government is pouring more fuel on the fire by tipping billions into policies that will make electricity prices even higher. With more wind and solar in the grid than ever before power bills have never been higher. Time to give up on this pipe dream.

Transcript

President the Albanese Government’s behaviour goes well beyond a broken election promise to give cost-of-living relief. The Government is actively making inflation worse.

The inflation rate is 8% and will remain at 8% into the future, on the back of increases to energy prices. Electricity, gas, diesel and petrol are all inputs into every corner of our economy.

Forcing energy prices up to appease the sky god of warming will force up input costs right across our economy and lead to more inflation.

Weather-dependent solar and wind power will never provide baseload power. Doubling down on more solar and wind, before the added cost of changing out every wind turbine and solar panel with new ones before we even get to 2050 will lead to more inflation.

Taxpayers pay for these things twice: once in taxpayer subsidies to wind and solar and through higher inflation. Energy inflation.

Not only do we have a lack of wage rises, we have a lack of wages. Businesses are closing all over Australia as inflation wreaks havoc in the productive economy and energy costs drive manufacturing overseas.

This Government has no answers. We have just seen a child care bill that gives handouts to millionaires but fails to create a single job.

Failing to use government policy to create jobs while allowing 220,000 new migrants into Australia every year will create a pool of unemployed, resulting in reduced market power for labour. That can only mean lower wages, even before losing 8% a year off their pay packet through inflation.

One Nation believe the way to break the inflation cycle is a comprehensive root and branch review of the taxation system, to return bracket creep to wage earners while forcing big business, especially foreign corporations to pay their fair share.

Queensland Labor’s Health Department still mandates COVID injections for health professionals. Injection mandates must be abolished now. Let anyone who wants to work, work.

We are one community, one nation and Labor are a threat to breadwinner jobs.

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Climate talk-fest not coming to Australia is a win!

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If Climate Change talk-fest COP doesn’t want to come to Australia that’s their loss. We’ll keep our abundant protein-rich red meat, delicious range of seafood, cheap and reliable coal-fired power, huge gas reserves and efficient petrol and diesel cars. Let COP eat their bugs in the dark while they wait for their electric vehicles to charge.

Transcript

Great news, Vanuatu still exists.

Experts told us it would now be underwater due to global warming and rising sea levels. Just like Al Gore forecast Mount Kilimanjaro would have no snow by 2016.

How many islands has Vanuatu lost due to rising sea levels? None. Mount Kilimanjaro is still topped with icy white powder.

Maybe that’s why it’s now called climate change instead of global warming?

I thank the Australian Greens for this breaking news that Vanuatu’s climate minister would only back Australia’s bid to host the 2026 Conference Of Parties, COP, if Australia doesn’t commit to any new coal or gas projects.

With that headline the solution is clear.

Australia must immediately fund and build as many coal and gas projects as humanly possible so there’s no chance we’ll have to host the expensive UN-WEF talk fest for climate elites, the 2026 COP.

What is the COP?

The UN’s Conference Of Parties involves millionaires, billionaires and politicians bouncing around the world in fuel-guzzling private jets to luxurious locations.

Gorging themselves on prime beef while preaching to we lowly peasants to reduce our carbon dioxide footprint, stop flying, stop driving and stop eating red meat.

If the 2026 COP was hosted in Australia, taxpayers would be forking out for the UN’s globalist elite talk fest.

We’d be paying for them to tell us to destroy our energy grid and commit economic suicide to appease the sun gods.

If COP doesn’t want to come to Australia that’s their loss. We’ll keep our abundant protein-rich red meat, delicious range of seafood, cheap and reliable coal-fired power, huge gas reserves and efficient petrol and diesel cars.

Let COP eat their bugs in the dark while waiting for their electric vehicles to charge.

We have one flag. We are one community. We are one nation.

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Wind turbines are environmental vandals

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I remember when greenies hugged trees. Now greenies chop down trees and hug manufactured wind turbines made of concrete, steel, fibreglass and gearbox oil. 40 million tonnes of wind turbine blades destined for landfill by 2050. Wind power isn’t renewable.

Transcript

There’s nothing more galling than the sight of a 100 metre wind turbine slumped over. A smouldering aluminium & concrete corpse testament to wind power’s stupidity.

Even if a wind turbine fibreglass blade makes it through a 12 year operating life, the blade is still a global waste catastrophe.

Every year, Europe already adds 2 million blades filling landfills.

At the same time that we declared plastic straws an environmental sin, our beautiful planet has 40 million tonnes of wind turbine blades destined for landfill by 2050.

Every blade of every wind turbine installed to 2030 will be in a landfill by 2050.

So-called renewables need to be renewed every 10-15 years.

We’re not building our net-zero, nature-dependent generation once. We’re doing it twice over. Or three times. With all the waste this will bring.

This is environmental vandalism, killing the environment in the name of saving it.

I remember when greenies hugged trees. Now greenies hug manufactured goods composed of concrete, steel, fibreglass and gearbox oil. Greenies are resource hogs.

Recycling wind turbine blades is not impossible. It just takes a huge amount of energy for which coal is the optimum fuel. That’s why, without affordable coal energy, wind turbine blades and solar panels are dumped not recycled.

German wind farms kill 100,000 birds a year and unlike those killed in cities, these birds tend to be endangered species due to the location of turbines.

New model turbines are approaching 240 metres in height with blades close to 120 metres.

That will need a big hole to bury.

This is not ‘free’ energy and it certainly is not ‘renewable’.

Governments should not ‘force’ a technological transition. If wind technology was any good it would not be reliant on subsidies of $500,000 per turbine per year.

Real transitions – those that serve to benefit our community – happen naturally through market forces because they have natural economic or social advantages that meet people’s real needs.

We are one community, we are one nation and the United Nations & World Economic Forum’s net-zero is environmental vandalism.

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Are weather events more severe because of climate change?

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Every time there’s a drought, flood or cold day you’ll hear climate alarmists claim it’s all because of climate change. Well this study says there is no positive trend in the severity or frequency of natural disasters. That puts a bit of a hole in the “climate emergency”.

Study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to Minister Watt. You said in your opening statement:

There can be no doubt that the severity and regularity of these natural disasters is a result of climate change …

I’ve got a media report that I’m happy to table—I’ve got 10 copies—and a study which I will table that found there is no positive trend of extreme weather events as a result of climate change. Given this scientific study’s finding that there is no increase in severe weather events because of climate change, there appears to be some doubt about your statement. Have you misled the committee with your opening statement?

Senator Watt: Whose report are you quoting from?

Senator ROBERTS: An Italian European Physical Journal Plus—a team led by Gianluca Alimonti from the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and the University of Milan extended the analysis to include natural disasters, floods and droughts.

Senator Watt: Is that peer-reviewed data?

Senator ROBERTS: Yes.

Senator Watt: You’re sure?

Senator ROBERTS: Yes.

Senator Watt: Senator Roberts, I think we’re all very well used to you questioning the science of climate change—more usually in the Environment and Communications committee, but it’s good to see that you’re consistent and apply the same approach across different committees. No scientific expert has ever been able to convince you that climate change is real, and I doubt that I will have the ability to do that either. To give you one example, I accompanied the Prime Minister to visit a dairy farm in northern Tasmania after the recent floods. I won’t give the gentleman’s full name for his privacy, but it was a dairy farmer called Michael. Without any prompting from any politician, he recognised the increasing number of floods and natural disasters that they were having was due to climate change. But we all know—

Senator ROBERTS: So a dairy farmer named Michael trumps a scientific study? I want to know: on what basis did you make your statement and claim? What source—specific locations, specific publications—

Senator Watt: I’m not going to play your game. We know that no evidence will ever convince you that climate change is real. I have seen you ask the head of the CSIRO. I’ve seen you ask any number of scientists who present evidence of that. There are countless IPCC reports, comprising of advice from the best experts in the world—

Senator ROBERTS: Not one of those IPCC reports contains evidence. That’s a fact.

Senator Watt: and you reject all of them. So it doesn’t really matter what I say to you. You will continue with your climate conspiracies. There’s nothing I can do to help you.

Senator ROBERTS: I note your use of a label. Whenever people use a label like ‘denier’ or ‘conspiracy theorist’, it indicates they don’t have the data. You’ve just confessed that you don’t have the data. If you did, you’d be able to give me the specific location.

Senator Watt: I refer you to any number of IPCC reports, which you continuously choose to ignore and reject. I invite you to go and speak to any farm body—

Senator ROBERTS: Have you read the IPCC reports? I have. There is no specific location of any evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut. I ask you to verify and validate your statement. Give me the specific location.

Senator Watt: I would be happy, on notice, to provide you with any number of scientific reports that back up what I’m saying. I will repeat that I could provide you with an infinite number of reports and you will never believe them. Everyone knows that. I’m okay. You don’t accept that climate change is real—that’s your right. But what I’m interested in doing is working with the farmers who are actually paying the price for climate denialism. I’m interested in working with the farm bodies that have been waiting for a government that believes that climate change is real and is prepared to put promises in place. I don’t have the exact figures to hand, but ABARES has provided reports that show that, due to climate changes over the last 20 or so years, the average farm profit or productivity—it’s one or the other—has fallen in the order of 25 to 30 per cent. They’re on later, and you can ask them about that as well. Do you know what? You won’t believe them either. I accept you just don’t believe the evidence. That’s okay, but I’m not going to get held back.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s not up to you to tell me what I will or will not believe.

Senator Watt: We all know your record.

Senator ROBERTS: What is up to both of us and every single senator and member of parliament is to come here with the empirical evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut. You have never done that. None of your imputed sources have done that. I want, in each the references you provide, the specific location of the data on which you rely and the specific location of the framework that proves that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. Science is not just about data; it is about data within a framework that logically proves cause and effect. I want that from you. For each of those references, I expect that from you. Otherwise, they’re not valid.

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