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Coal LSL audit vindicates One Nation allegations

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I’ve pursued allegations of fraud, conflicts of interest and risk management about the Coal Long Service Leave Corporation for years. Finally, an independent review has confirmed dozens of governance and fraud risks that have left casual workers without their fair entitlements. It’s a hard-fought win for casual coal miners by One Nation, but there is still much further to go.

Transcript

CHAIR: Senator Sheldon, you are making a statement. We will now go to Senator Roberts.

Senator Cash: Do you feel better, Senator Sheldon, for getting that off your chest because—

Senator SHELDON: I do feel better.

Senator Cash: I’m glad you do because, as I said, I don’t believe, Senator Sheldon, that you as the head of the TWU would indulge in this behaviour. I don’t believe that you, three years later, after a case has been dismissed by the full bench of the Federal Court, would actually stand up and say, and make admissions, the national executive did not approve any of the 20 donations, the subject of the investigation, which contravened the registered organisations act. As I said, that was as recently as December 2021. You’re referring to a statement made on 7 March this year, I would reflect, backed on the admissions made by the AWU in December 2021—a range of admissions concerning contraventions by the AWU. They submitted they made mistakes; they did not comply. So I think, if anyone’s providing an apology, perhaps the AWU should apologise to its members for those contraventions.

Senator SHELDON: And the minor breaches that they were fully aware of throughout the entire five years—

CHAIR: Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Senator Sheldon.

Senator Cash: Senator Sheldon, as you and I know, you need to comply—

Senator SHELDON: The ROC was fully aware that they were minor breaches all the way through, and yet they continued to pursue it.

Senator Cash: You and I are going to have to agree to disagree in relation to the incorrect information you’re providing by way of your questioning.

Senator SHELDON: That’s not incorrect. It was minor breaches, and they were fully aware for the whole five years, and they dragged this out—

Senator SMALL: Who decides whether it’s major or it’s minor? Is that how you plan to act in government?

CHAIR: Order! Order, Senator Small! We would like now to move on to Senator Roberts, who has a series of questions on a different topic.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you all for appearing today. Most of my questions, I think, will be going to the minister, or certainly to the department. Minister, recently KPMG presented their report into Coal LSL. How are you progressing in relation to implementation of this review and report, and when will it be completed? I understand that some are immediate and some are—

Senator Cash: Understood. I know this is a genuine interest for you, so what I will do is ask Ms Williams to take these questions for you.

Ms T Williams : Senator, you asked how we are progressing with implementation of the recommendations. As you might know, the government has accepted all 20 recommendations of the review. In terms of the 10 recommendations specifically directed at government, the government response to the review identified that the government will take legislative action to clarify eligible employees and ensure that no eligible employee is worse off; ensure fairness for casuals to be treated equitably with permanent employees; address legacy coverage issues to ensure fairness and transparency for employees, employers and employers that may register with the scheme; and strengthen decision-making, review and dispute resolution to enhance accountability and compliance.

The government response to the review really highlights that. It recognises that the reforms are complex and they will require further technical legal advice to ensure that the changes really have the desired impact and benefit for employees and employers under the scheme. The intention is for consultation and action to continue in the spirit of the review, which, as you may be aware, included consultation with producers, employer groups and peak bodies, employers, employees, unions and representatives from modern industry stakeholders. We’ll draw on their expertise and stress test ideas going forward. We’ll need to do that closely and methodically with the stakeholders, including the provision of exposure drafts of legislation. The department is just working through that now, and consultations will begin as soon as practicable.

Senator ROBERTS: I can understand that it’s still being digested. When do you think the plan will be available—or you will have one, even if you’re not sharing it?

Ms T Williams : We’re working through. The review also canvassed that there were a number of existing proposals put to government and suggested that they provided a really good foundation to start to work through some of those ideas. The department is working through that now. In terms of the exact specifics of the consultation, we’ll provide advice to government in due course.

Senator ROBERTS: Reading parts of the report—I haven’t read the whole report—I believe some can be remedied by legislative changes, some can be remedied by the existing proposals and some can be remedied by further consultation. When do you think you will you have the plan together?

Ms T Williams : We’re working on that now. The specifics of that will be a decision for government but, as I said, it will continue in the spirit of the review and be broad-ranging in terms of the consultations. I think the other thing that the review really recognises is the deep industry expertise from employers and employees in this sector and also a real commitment by all the stakeholders that were consulted in the review to get this right. So we’ll provide advice to government on how to take that forward, but the consultations will be very much in that vein.

Mr Hehir : I might just add to that. We’re still some months away. The consultation process will still take a few months to work our way through. Then, following the consultation process, we’ll need to put our advice to government. So we’re still some months away.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I will just go to page 126, and I’ll read the main points, the issues in red that are not—

Senator Cash: Just hold on for one moment. Have you got the whole—

Ms T Williams : Yes, I do.

Senator Cash: It will assist if the official is reading it with you.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s a fairly simple question, even though the question will be long. I’ll read out the issues not addressed—the ones in red. On waiver agreements, it says:

The Existing Proposals do not substantively address this issue.

The report says the same thing about conflicts of interest, which it says are significant; allegations of fraud; culture; communications; risk management; adoption of technology; data security and privacy; and validation of data. So none of them are being addressed. For each of them, the report says:

The Existing Proposals do not substantively address this issue.

When do you think you will have something around those? They’re the core issues. That’s not a complaint about the report; the report is fine. But we need to understand when they will be addressed.

Ms T Williams : I will just clarify for you that this section of the report is actually talking about the existing proposals that were put to government before the government realised, or in the process of the government realising, that we needed to have a holistic response to the issues in the sector. So these proposals were actually put by stakeholders, and then the government commissioned an independent review. So the review itself and the recommendations do cover those issues. I think conflicts of interest are covered by recommendation 11.

Senator ROBERTS: What about changes to the board structure and composition?

Ms T Williams : That’s recommendation 13. So they are all covered by the review. This is really talking about how, before the government commissioned the review, those existing proposals had that gap in them. So we commissioned the review, which has now addressed those areas.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you very much. Now I’d like to move onto the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, the FEG. These are simple questions. You may have to take them on notice. My first question is: have the Fair Entitlements Guarantee and Coal LSL paid any Coal LSL entitlements to One Key employees who no longer work in the coalmining industry and were not CFMMEU members?

Mr Manning : Is this about the One Key workforce case?

Senator ROBERTS : Yes.

Mr Manning : Ms Saunders, who will be coming up from our waiting room downstairs, should be able to answer that for you. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a room next door today. But we wouldn’t be told whether or not they were union members. We wouldn’t ask that on the application form. So I’m not sure about that, but, when Ms Saunders arrives, she might be able to answer it. You might need to repeat the question, though, because she’s had to come from downstairs.

Ms Saunders : Would you mind repeating the question?

Senator ROBERTS: Sure. It’s from a constituent. Have the Fair Entitlements Guarantee and Coal LSL paid any Coal LSL entitlements to One Key employees who no longer work in the coalmining industry and were not CFMMEU members?

Ms Saunders : Under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, we pay the five basic employment entitlements: redundancy pay, long-service leave, wages, annual leave and payment in lieu of notice. So our consideration of that doesn’t actually take into account the extent to which they are funded by another organisation, except that, if there is a redundancy trust fund or whatever that will step in to pay a portion of the cost, that is not covered under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee program. I guess, in the sense that any entitlements that were payable under their governing instruments would have been paid under FEG, to the extent that they were eligible for it. For example, with One Key Workforce we paid 346 claimants a total of a $6.8 million in FEG assistance. That covered a range of entitlements.

Senator ROBERTS: What was the total figure?

Ms Saunders : It was $6.8 million.

Mr Hehir : Recognising that covered off a number of different employee entitlements.

Ms Saunders : I don’t have the detail of what made up that in terms of the different entitlements that were covered. I can take that on notice.

Senator ROBERTS: If you could, please. I’d like to understand this issue because it involves some constituents in the Hunter Valley. My next question is: why did the Fair Entitlements Guarantee not pay One Key employees who were non-CFMEU members all entitlements owed under the black coal award, including shift penalties and overtime rates?

Ms Saunders : Okay.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s a complex issue, but it should be able to be boiled down once you have the data. I’m happy to take it on notice.

Senator Cash: You’re happy for us to take it?

Senator ROBERTS: Yes. I’d like to get to the bottom of it.

Senator Cash: Yes, understood.

Senator ROBERTS: Finally, the issues raised in here show—I won’t say neglect, but times are changing across industry and the cracks that are exposed in Coal LSL itself are significant for employees and some employers. They’re very important, but they’re minor relative to the cracks in the Fair Work Act that have been exposed with changes in industry and in employment practices over time. Minister, is the government open to comprehensive review of industrial relations? The reason I ask is that Dave Noonan and heads of the CFMEU and the ETU have said they welcome a comprehensive, fair approach to reviewing and revising industrial relations. The Business Council of Australia has told me that they’re open to it as well and they support it. Large employers have told me the same. Small business is crying out for it, and medium businesses are as well. The industrial relations club which consists of major union bosses, major employers, major industry groups, consultants and lawyers are feeding off this, but the workers are not protected. Even unionised workers are not protected today, and they’re coming to us. The Fair Work Act is so complex that people are trying to detour around it, and that’s adding even more complexity. We need to restore fairness, entitlements and protections to workers—especially fairness to the small businesses. Are you open to comprehensive review of industrial relations?

Senator Cash: I think the government is always prepared to listen to stakeholders—it’s obviously subject to the ability to get anything through the Australian Senate—to make the system a better one, a more productive one, both for employers and for employees. You do raise a good point, though, in relation to the complexity of the system, and I might just ask the official who was talking about the budget announcements that we have made in relation to small businesses in particular being able to better navigate the system to come back to the table, because this is something that you and I had actually spoken about. We have made a budget announcement, so it’s embedded in the budget. But this is, in particular, to assist small businesses to be able to better understand and better navigate the Fair Work Act as it currently stands. If you would just indulge us for two or three minutes, I will get you this information.

Ms Huender : The government’s providing $5.6 million over four years to the Fair Work Commission to establish a dedicated small business unit within the Fair Work Commission to provide tailored support to small businesses to assist them to navigate the system. We’re aware that small businesses are a big part of the Australian economy, with 3½ million businesses employing over 40 per cent of the workforce. However, they do find the system complex. They don’t have the support of HR managers or legal support, so they also find navigating the system costly. So this unit’s designed to provide strategic leadership and to develop improved information resources and case management support for small businesses when they engage with the system. Small businesses, I understand, make up 50 per cent of the Fair Work Commission’s customers, as it were, but they represent 95 per cent of first-time users.

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, that’s necessary, but it just reemphasises my point. It’s a moribund, complicated, inefficient system. And I’m thinking now that, for not only small business but also workers in the Hunter Valley for some of the world’s largest companies, workers in Central Queensland, workers for other large companies, some of the things that are going on with the COVID injection mandates are just despicable. I could tell you stories that would really shock you. We’re not living in a Third-World country, but we’re behaving as if we are, and some workers have no longer got basic protections and basic entitlements.

Senator Cash: I would disagree.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s like we’re living in a Third-World country.

Senator Cash: And I understand, because you genuinely do prosecute this case that every estimates and in relation to, in particular, the size of the Fair Work Act now and its growth over time.

Unidentified speaker: I’m disappointed you didn’t bring it along today!

Senator Cash: As I’ve said, the government is always prepared to work with stakeholders, employers and employees, to take on board the feedback to improve the system. Ultimately, though, changes are to the Fair Work Act itself, and those changes do need to be got through the Australian Senate. I think the perfect example—and you and I had many discussions on this—was the omnibus bill. There were significant parts of that bill that would have given more certainty to certain sectors et cetera, but we just could not get that through the Australian Senate.

With your support, though, we of course rectified the Rossato decision, and that was later, obviously, confirmed in the High Court of Australia. That was an incredibly important decision, as you know, because of the uncertainty that it had given to small businesses that they might end up with what we’d estimated to be I think it was up to a $38 billion or $39 billion liability. We couldn’t even get the support of the Australian Labor Party to actually take that impost off small businesses. You worked with us, and I was very appreciative of that, and we did make that change.

But, in relation to the other parts of the bill, again I’m prepared to work with people. I think a better system, a simpler system and a more productive system—but it has to reflect the needs of both employers and employees—is a good situation to aspire to, but ultimately, as you know, it does come down to the ability to get legislation through the Senate, and we can’t get the Labor Party or the Greens to support that type of productive change.

Senator ROBERTS: We had to work with small businesses to identify issues that they had, and we were pleased that the government resolved some of those issues and put our suggestions into the revised act. But, again, your recounting of the situation, while accurate, reinforces the need for change, because it is just so difficult and such a complex environment, with so many stakeholders hanging on by their fingernails. It’s just out of date and it’s hurting workers.

Senator Cash: As I said, you and I have had many discussions over many years now, and we’ve always worked constructively together in this regard, with a commitment to improving the system for both employees and employers. Ultimately, though, it is difficult to get through the Australian Senate. But what I think it does show is that it’s not therefore about one policy lever. If that policy lever is difficult to actually pull and properly implement because of the nature of the Australian Senate, you do then need to look at other ways that you can deliver for small business.

You and I have long talked about lowering taxes. When you look at, say, the tax rate for small business, under the Australian Labor Party it was 30 per cent; under us it is currently 25 per cent. So, whilst that’s not the industrial relations system as such, it is another way that you can ensure that you’re giving back to small business. I know, throughout COVID-19, even just the ability to change the way you process documents to allow for that—the e-technology certainly assists them. There is the availability of the instant asset write-off and the ability to say to them, ‘If you have that capacity to invest in your business, the government’s going to back you every step of the way.’ If one lever proves difficult, there are other levers that you can then look to utilise to ensure that you are responding in every possible way to that commitment that they are the backbone of the Australian economy, that they deserve to be backed by government, which is what we do. In relation to those changes, the omnibus bill is the perfect example: it was a very reasonable bill that would have provided both employers and employees with a more productive workplace, but we couldn’t get it through the Senate. I was grateful for the support you gave on the Rosato decision.

Senator ROBERTS: You fiddling with the tax system, and I don’t mean that derogatorily.

Senator Cash: I know what you’re saying.

Senator ROBERTS: The tax system makes the Fair Work Commission and Fair Work Act look simple. It doesn’t fix basic safety protections that have gone AWOL in workplace relations. It doesn’t fix the basic employer-employee relationship, which is the primary relationship of any workplace and must be such. We need something that’s comprehensively reformed and brought back to something simple that looks after the primary workplace relationship between employer and employee.

Senator Cash: On safety: I think that, for each one of us, that has to be paramount in the workplace. There are no two ways about that. I know that, when I first came into portfolio and I worked very closely with Mr Hehir on this, we were presented with the outcome of the Boland review. That was something that I looked at. As you know, there are model work health and safety laws, and the Commonwealth works with the states and territories to ensure that we can effect change that is recommended to us. We had the Boland review, we had the recommendations of the Boland review and I worked constructively with our state and territory colleagues regardless of political persuasion. If you’re, the relevant minister I work with you. I was very pleased that, within a few weeks of me formally come portfolio, all relevant ministers across Australia had agreed to accept all the recommendations coming out of the Boland review.

So certainly, when it comes do work health and safety, I have a very good relationship with state and territory ministers, and we will make improvements to the model work health and safety laws together by accepting all of the Boland review’s recommendations.

Senator ROBERTS: Notwithstanding what you just said, I have enjoyed working with Mr Hehir. I have found him easy to deal with and open to deal with.

Senator Cash: Thank you for that feedback.

Senator ROBERTS: But there are people being severely injured, not even reporting and then being threatened if they dare raise safety issues in this country, and that’s not good enough. I’m happy to leave it there, but it is an issue that’s really important, and we will be pushing it.

Senator Cash: Thank you for those questions.

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One Nation introduces Equal pay for Equal work Labour hire bill

Companies have been using labour hire contracts to cut wages and benefits for workers. Our One Nation ‘Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill 2022’ will put an end to this unfair abuse.

Transcript

In the last Senate week I introduced my bill to make sure workers employed under labour hire contracts are paid the same rate of pay as workers who are employed directly in certain awards, including the black coal Mining Industry Award and the Aircraft cabin crew award. You know, breadwinner jobs used to be able to provide for a family on one wage and still buy a home, a car and have holidays.

Labour hire contracts are one of the devices that large corporations are now using to drive down wages in industries that have traditionally provided breadwinner jobs. My bill, this bill, will help to bring a better life for Australian workers. Coal mining is in my blood. I started work as a coalface minor for three years underground, including in the Hunter, before progressing to mine management.

The exploitation I have seen lately in the coal mining industry is an absolute disgrace. This bill is the product of work I’ve been doing for years with Hunter Valley coal miners and Queensland coal miners.

One Nation was instrumental in achieving positive change to the Fair Work Act in 2021, including protections for casual workers and casual conversion rights for workers: casual to permanent, improvements to work health and safety incident reporting, proper payment of workers compensation, proper payment of accident pay, proper leave and freedom of speech for casuals who are threatened with the sack if they speak up about saefty.

Labour hire contracts have been exploiting workers for years and the CMFEU Union bosses, the mine owners and the Labor Party and the liberal national governments in New South Wales and Canberra have done nothing about it, and they don’t want to do anything about it. Union bosses do very well, very nicely out of these labour hire contracts.

The One Nation, Fair Work Amendment (Equal Pay for Equal Work) Bill 2022, will put an end to this unfair abuse. With our previous work and this Bill, One Nation is now the party of the workers.

And stay tuned we’ve got a lot more coming.

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MEDIA RELEASE: No justice for injured Grosvenor coal miners is a disgrace

It is a disgrace that the QLD Workplace Health and Safety prosecutor did not charge and make accountable the Grosvenor Mine operators for the badly injured casual coal miners in the mine explosion in May 2020.

Senator Roberts said, “Anglo American have a duty of care to its workforce, and it is inexplicable that an explosion can occur, five miners get badly injured and almost die, and there is no accountability back to the operator.

“Anglo American are treating its casual coal miners as literally being expendable with no serious consequences of their neglect to the keep the mine safe for workers now and in the future.”

Senator Roberts has listened with casual coal miners in NSW and QLD and some of the serious mining incidents can be traced to the culture of disrespect and exploitation of coal mine workers.  The culture of penny-pinching, fear and intimidation is especially prevalent in the growing casual / labour hire segment

Senator Roberts said, “It is a gross injustice that casual miners are discouraged from reporting safety issues for fear of losing their jobs.

Queensland Coal Mining Safety and Health Advisory Committee consists of majority membership of mine owners / operators and unions, and neither group represent nor have any interaction with casual coal miners.

Senator Roberts said, “The casual coal miner does not have a place at the table, nor any representation, on key committees that determine safety standards and address safety concerns. “The Labor Palaszczuk government has no integrity when it comes to keeping casual coal miners safe.”

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Coal LSL – Caught Out

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After an independent report vindicated One Nation and casual coal miner’s accusations of unscrupulous malpractice, the pressure has been on the Coal Long Service Leave Scheme to give workers a fair go and on Government to clean up their agency. Coal LSL initially tried to refuse coming to Senate Estimates and over the course of many more sessions repeatedly denied anything was wrong. We now know that was a lie.

Transcript

Chair.

Okay, thank you. I will go to Senator Roberts.

Thank you chair, and thank you for attending again. And, my first question is going to the to the minister, and I note that the KPMG review of Coal LSL report came out today.

Yes.

I haven’t seen it, but it came out.

Yes, it’s out.

So we’re looking forward to reading that. Thank you very much for arranging that.

Thank you for working so constructively with government on it.

Well, it’s a big concern as you know, for us, the coal miners in Queensland and New South Wales. Now, I note that KPMG was engaged to undertake the review of Coal LSL, in relation to the underpayment and abuse of casual coal miners. KPMG has also conducted the audit of Coal LSL. Doesn’t that create a conflict of interest? And what did you do to manage this conflict? Because the audit could have influenced the review and the review could have influenced the audit.

Look, I don’t regard that as giving rise to a conflict of interest. There was no direct financial interest for KPMG to do anything other than act consistently, with its duties as an independent examiner there.

Senator, I’m aware there was an audit,

and commissioned by the corporations, it’s conducted by PWC.

During procurement processor. When we selected an independent review and a KPMG, we looked at any consultant and at the time with engaged to buy. The corporations may causing a perception of a conflict interest, we have exclude them. So at the time we engaged KPMG and the KPMG wasn’t working with the collective corporations or any other projects, but Miss Pearl Kumar may have given updates on. Are they been engaging KPMG on the consult?

You welcome, thank Senator. Thank you, Senator.

I can confirm that KPMG has not been engaged by Coal LSL to conduct any work. They’ve not been involved in our internal audit programmes. They’re not engaged by the ANAO to do our external audit. So, from, yeah, I think we’re confident to say that any conflict of interest certainly wouldn’t exist with KPMG conducting that work on us.

Now I’m going to leave out my second question because the report may, the review report may address that. So I’ll just go straight to my third. When will Coal LSL fix its broken system that disadvantages coal miners, casual coal miners everywhere? And when would you remove the biassed and conflicted members from the board, so workers get a fair go? I’m talking here specifically about what I see and what we’ve talked about for a long time now. The conflicts of interest with having significant, well 50/50 minerals council in New South Wales and CFMEU from New South Wales involved. When will that be addressed?

Senator Roberts, without wanting to spoil your reading, because you know, spoiler alerts are sometimes needed on these things. One of the recommendations in the report is that there’d be independent directors added to the board and the expectation that that would assist with dealing with the problem you raise.

Okay. Thank you. We’re pleased to hear that. Last question, Chair. The one key resources case where many casual coal miners missed out on their fair pay back pay conditions, seems to have been blatant phoenixing to us. Yet, this rip-off of workers was accepted by your government, the courts, labour and the CFMEU and Hunter Valley. More needs to be done to protect casual coal workers to get equal pay and entitlements and safety. One nation has proposed the equal pay for equal work bill to protect casual coal workers. What are you doing to make sure that this doesn’t happen again people have lost there.

The KPMG report and I’ll paraphrase somewhat here, acknowledges that there has been difficulties and confusion associated with a lack of clarity on what constitutes a black coal worker and also the changing environment and timetables on which people work. It plans out our ways in which that can be dealt with so that we don’t face that problem in future. It also provides some good recommendations for how to resolve those concerns as they have arisen in the past. I’m optimistic that as we implement the government’s response to those recommendations, we will have that in a more satisfactory place for everyone involved.

Because this is affecting tens of thousands of families who are significantly underpaid compared with permanent workers doing the same job. But it’s just one of a suite of issues. This is just, it’s very important to coal miners. And we’ve been relentless in this, and we’re pleased to see what you’re doing, but it’s a one tiny aspect of the bigger picture, which we can.

Look, I share your sincere concern for making sure that this works for everybody. And that’s why I’m really optimistic that what’s come to us through the KPMG report, and all the recommendations to government have been accepted, in, you know one form or another. And I’m really pleased to say that we’ll be working to do what’s necessary to make all of that much more functional for the future.

I look forward to reading the report and thank you chair.

Thank you, Senator Roberts.

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MEDIA RELEASE: Independent auditor vindicates Senator Roberts’ call for scrutiny of coal long service leave

Casual coal miners who have highlighted the unscrupulous practices of the government corporation Coal Long Service Leave (Coal LSL), have been vindicated in a recent audit by consultants KPMG. 

Senator Malcolm Roberts has championed the scrutiny of Coal LSL after he first became aware of many malpractices from Hunter Valley casual coal miners and labour hire companies in 2019. 

Senator Roberts said, “This issue has been in plain sight for years, yet successive Liberal, National and Labor governments have ignored the calls for an investigation, instead sprouting platitudes with no action.” 

The KPMG report, which the Government ordered in late 2021, makes 20 recommendations covering governance, treatment of casual coal miners, exploitation of SMEs, compliance, and Board governance and conflicts of interest. 

Senator Roberts said, “I welcome the recommendation for independent Coal LSL board members to address the current glaring conflict of interest with only Minerals Councils and the CFMMEU representatives. 

“The shame of the current arrangement is that CFMMEU bosses on the Coal LSL Board – and who should have known better – enabled, perpetuated and covered up many malpractices, and sold out their casual coal miner members.” 

Senator Roberts gathered evidence from many casual coal miners that showed LSL entitlements were incorrectly calculated, and yet Coal LSL refused to investigate and rectify. 

“When the casual coal miners themselves could work out that Coal LSL were not calculating their entitlements correctly and notified Coal LSL management, it begs the question why it took a KPMG review for Coal LSL to finally listen,” Senator Roberts said. 

Coal LSL’s attitude toward casual coal miners and SMEs has been shown to be unresponsive, dismissive and highly litigious and “it seems that Coal LSL board and management just didn’t know when to stop the money grab, taking a heavy handed and litigious approach to demanding that SME contractors entering coal mining sites for short term maintenance, also pay into their Coal LSL fund, knowing this group would never be able to access the money,” added Senator Roberts. 

Coal LSL were reluctant first-time attendees at Senate Estimates in 2019, having never faced Senate scrutiny, until Senator Roberts demanded they appear to account for their actions.  They have appeared at every Senate Estimates since 2019 at the request of Senator Roberts. 

Senator Roberts said, “There was no way Coal LSL were going to continue to avoid scrutiny because I knew that hundreds of casual coal miners had been systematically ripped off and ignored over decades.” 

Although some miners prefer to be casuals, all casuals deserve respect as they allow companies to move with changes in the global market and mine site conditions. 

Senator Roberts said, “The mobility of this casual workforce doesn’t mean they should be treated with such contempt and disregard; they too have livelihoods and families to support.  “It’s astonishing that successive governments, Liberal, National and Labor, and union bosses, have shown no care for the plight of casual coal miners over many years.” 

KPMG-independent-review-coal-mining-lsl-schemeDownload
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The Malcolm Roberts Show – 22 January Par

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Transcript

Speaker 1:This is a Malcolm Roberts Show. On Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT.  
Ian Plimer:Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live.  
 This is Senator Malcolm Roberts from down under, fresh from my COVID bed. Yes, I had COVID. Now I have the world’s most powerful immunity, natural immunity.  
 Thank you very much for having me in your car, your lounge room, your men shed, picnic. I hasten to say that I’m not contagious. I know that some people think that telemarketers and telehealth people have to get injected before they can speak over the phone, but I can assure with 100% confidence that you will not catch anything from me over the phone, other than a dose of the truth and some outspoken speech.  
 My session on the radio is governed by two things, freedom. Specifically, freedom versus control. That is basic for human progress and livelihoods. And we’re going to have a very special guest today to talk about that.  
 The second thing that drives me is personal responsibility and the importance of integrity. That’s the basics for personal progress and livelihood.  
 Before getting to our guests, let’s just cover my show’s aims, themes, and the focus. I’m fiercely pro-human. Yes, you heard that. I am fiercely pro-human. I believe in humanity. I am tired. I’ve had a gutful of the media and politicians ragging on humans and humanity. I am proud to be one of our planet’s only species capable of logic, and capable of love and care, and quite often giving that love and care.  
 I’m also fundamentally positive. I get excited by good things that are happening, and I want to contribute to that. While we are dealing with issues that people face today, and they’re concerned about, I will encourage guests to provide solutions, lasting meaningful solutions. Instead of what’s wrong with politics, what’s needed in politics? Instead of what’s wrong with politicians, and there’s plenty, what we need in politicians? Instead of what’s wrong with the media, what’s needed in media? And we can start that with the truth.  
 We will get to the core issues, whats and all to develop solutions, because it’s only by getting into the real issues can we have real faith in the outcomes.  
 We’ll cover the human aspects, strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, failings, highlights. What makes people real?  
 The second thing about anything I do, it’s got to be data-driven. It’s got to be factual, truthful, and honest.  
 And the third thing, be blunt. We will be speaking out, calling it like it is. And I’ll be welcoming talkback callers in the near future. Currently, tntradio.live is betting down many systems. This is a truly global operation. It’s a gift to the world from the world. We’ve got hosts all over the globe, broadcasting from Belfast, London, Los Angeles, New York, Tel Aviv, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, The Bush in Australia.  
 And I want to express my deep and sincere appreciation to Mike Ryan for restoring integrity to media and to politics.  
 This radio network, this global radio network will serve the people, not control and con the people. We will serve with truth, and we will be blunt.  
 Before getting to my first guest, let’s just cover a couple of things that have happened today in the news. First of all, right around Australia, to all the people taking part in freedom marches, whether it be in Newcastle din-making, or people in Brisbane, people in Melbourne, people in Sydney, people all over, country towns, regional towns, thank you very much. And, Robert F. Kennedy, and your supporters in Washington, D.C. tomorrow on their freedom marches.  
 I have brothers-in-law coming from the Southern United States and the Northern United States meeting in Washington. They’re going to tell Biden what we think about his mandates and his coercion.  
 I’ll see people in Maryborough tomorrow because we’re having a peaceful protest in Maryborough.  
 I want to express my condolences to the family of Meat Loaf. Meat Loaf was a big part of my life. He had such a wonderful voice. He could go down so low, and then belt it out so strongly, so powerfully. He brings back many, many fabulous memories of my time listening to his music and with friends.  
 For those listening outside Australia, you probably don’t know that it’s Australia Day this coming Wednesday. That’s when we celebrate our country, or some people try to.  
 A friend of mine sent me this. “On the Mornington Peninsula, this year, they have cancelled Australia Day celebrations, yet they have not cancelled the Invasion Day celebrations. Invasion day events …” he goes on to say, ” … are free for the indigenous and $39 for the non-indigenous. They’re setting up two countries, one against the other.”  
 Another news item. China coal production in the month of December alone, 384 billion tonnes in one month. China is by far the world’s largest producer of coal now, and it’s thriving because of it. Australia producers just under 500 million tonnes in a year. Our production is around 11% of what China’s is, basically, one tenth, yet we’re trying to gut our economy, thanks to the Liberal Labour Nationals and Greens. What the hell is going on? China will produce 10 times as much coal as we will. And our politicians want to gut our country. This is ridiculous. And my first guest will be talking about this and many other things.  
 Then we’ve got news that the Bureau of Meteorology has, wait for it, remodelled Australia’s official temperature record for the third time in nine years, and found things to be warmer than thermometer readings had measured.  
 The Bureau did not announce the changes, but details of them were published on the Bureau’s website. So we’ve got to sneak around trying to catch them out, because they won’t talk about it boldly.  
 Jennifer Marohasy, a noted scientist in this country, a fighter for truth has said this, “The bureau has now remodelled the national temperature data set three times in just nine years.” Do they have no confidence in their own revisions and modelling? They have to keep cooling the past and warming the present? Why aren’t they doing an independent open transparent scrutiny of all of this work that they’re supposedly doing to fabricate global warming?  
 My first guest, fittingly, is a true scientist and a remarkable human being with a remarkable sense of humour, and engaging lively real personality, and a wicked sense of humour. He’s won many international awards and recognition, but this man is no ivory tower preacher, no ivory tower academic. He’s a real world man, who gets down in the mud, wrestles, argues, debates in the bush, pubs, exploration camps, politicians offices, street corners, corporate headquarters, media, academics, anywhere. He’ll take on anyone anywhere. This man, Professor Ian Plimer has dismantled frauds wherever they appear. Welcome, Ian.  
 Well, thank you for having me, Malcolm.  
Malcolm Roberts:Always a pleasure, mate. I’ve known you for a few years now. I always start with something, and we’ll talk about the reasons for this later, what do you appreciate?  
Ian Plimer:Being alive. I’ve had many chances to die, but I think the devil has taken a good look at me and thought, “My God, the competition’s too great, so I’ll leave that one.”  
Malcolm Roberts:Right. Now, you are famous as a scientist, and as a speaker, and as a fighter for humanity. What is science?  
Ian Plimer:Science is married to evidence, and that evidence comes from experiment, it comes from observation, and it comes from calculation. It comes from, basically, collecting data. Now, that data, if it’s collected in Peru, or Poland, or Chad, or Canada, it makes no difference. It is data. And that data has to be reproducible. It has to be in accord with all other validated data.  
 And if it’s not in accord, then any conclusions based on the data are rejected. So science has a habit of rejecting old theories and building stronger, more valid theories. It is a way of understanding how the world works. And it is very much different from religion, which is an understanding of the world within, and science is an understanding of the world without.  
 And scientific ideas are always challenged. There is no such thing as consensus in science. There is no such thing as agreement in science. There are fads, and fashions, and fools, and frauds in science, the same as in any other area. And just because someone arrogantly struts around with a white lab coat, stroking their beard, and trying to look intelligent, doesn’t mean that what they’re promoting is correct.  
 Now, science is always changing, and so, to have a scientific concept wedded over time is non-scientific. And I argue that there are many things in today’s world that are not scientific.  
Malcolm Roberts:Well, Ian, fabulous discussion by the way. But perhaps we can bring it back to every-day lives these days, because a typical person today living on welfare, a welfare recipient … that’s not being denigrating, that’s someone saying is down on his luck at the moment, or her luck … a typical person on welfare today lives better than a king or queen did 200 years ago, longer lives, easier lives, healthier lives, safer lives, more comfortable lives, more entertaining lives, more diverse lives. Science gave us this, didn’t it?  
Ian Plimer:Yes. By every measure, we are living better than we did hundreds of years ago. The world’s gross domestic product and per capita GDP has gone up. The global population in absolute poverty’s gone down. The food supply has gone up. The tree cover’s gone up. The global urban population has gone up. Democracies, a number of democracies around the world has gone up. The deaths from natural disasters has gone down. And the list is a very, very long one.  
 We are living in far better times now than our great-grandparents did. And the reason for this is, that we’ve created potable water, we’ve created good sewage systems, we’ve created employment such that animals and humans don’t do the backbreaking work, that we have machines to do that now.  
 And so, we are living in an age where we have benefited from science … and you are an engineer, trained as an engineer … and from the application of science, which is engineering. And we are living in a far, far, better world than any generation has.  
 Now, we’ve had about 20,000 generations of humans on planet earth, and it is only the last four generations, where we’ve had an increase in longevity, and that is due to better science. But, not only medicine, due to the fundamentals by having a sewage system, by having drinking water that doesn’t kill you, these are the fundamentals.  
 And for people that moan and grown about how terrible the planet is, and how we’ve ruined it, should actually take a look at history. We have never, as humans, lived in better times, we’ve never eaten better, we’ve never had more shelter, we’ve never had more ability to travel. And that doesn’t matter, whether you live in Africa, or India, or the West, we are living in the best times ever to be a human.  
 And, yes, we have plenty of humans that need to be dragged up to the level that those in the West have, but the best way to get out of poverty is to get wealthy. And one of the ways of getting wealthy is to have a very cheap and reliable energy system. The West has done this, the UK, the U.S., and Europe have all gone from miserable poverty to living comfortable lives by having cheap reliable energy.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, science to me is something profound, something beautiful. It’s done, not only what you’ve just said in terms of our health and our opportunities, but it’s given us something even more fundamental, and that is freedom through objectivity. It is fundamental for freedom, isn’t it? Science.  
Ian Plimer:I think so. It provides you with the absolute tools that you need for freedom, and that is criticism, analysis, argument, and these must be unconstrained. And this doesn’t happen in some areas of science today. And we see that with the science on COVID, the science on climate. There is no freedom there. There is no ability to be able to express different views. That’s what we had in the past.  
 And we saw that with Lysenko, in Russia. Lysenko was a peasant. He managed to get into the establishment, and he established a concept called vernalization, and this is where seeds of plants must be persuaded to take on the communist characteristics, where they’re all equal.  
 And Stalin absolutely fell in love with this idea. The end result of that was that tens of millions of people died in famines. Those people who were engaged in genetics, those people who were engaged in trying to create better plant yields by using science were banished to the Gulags, some of them were killed. And this is a very good example of where science has not allowed freedom, where we’ve had one concept rule, and the end result was poverty, and tens of billions of people starving to death quite unnecessarily.  
Malcolm Roberts:I think we’re going for an ad break now, Professor Plimer, and we’ll be back in just a minute or so.  
Malcolm Roberts:This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, coming to you from Gold Coast in Queensland’s remarkable playground. And I have with me a special guest, Professor Ian Plimer.  
 Ian, science is more than just a word, it’s a process, a method, and as you’ve said, it never ends. We used to have science-driven policy, we now have, as you alluded to, policy-driven science, can you explain why that’s dangerous?  
Ian Plimer:Well, I think it’s extraordinary dangerous, because you do not get an independent conclusion on reality. And a lot of policy is driven by fairly young people in government offices who have gone straight from university into a government office, or into a union, or into a political office, and these people have absolutely no life experience.  
 And science is a constant questioning. Once you have a policy set in concrete, you are incapable of questioning it. The system doesn’t allow you to do it. And we have that with a couple of aspects in today’s modern world. So I very much reject the idea of policy-driven science. I would rather have facts, and I would rather have facts that are underpinned by the scientific method.  
 Now, policy-driven science is, in fact, having an opinion. I don’t have an opinion, I don’t have an opinion at all. I have facts. And if you want to challenge me on the facts, then we come to an argument about how we collected those facts, who collected those facts, where they were collected, what instruments were used, what was the order of accuracy? What corrections might have been used in collecting these facts.  
 So, I think we are facing fairly bad times when we are not looking at facts. When we have one group of people saying, “Oh, well you have your facts, and I have my facts.” I’m sorry, facts. There’s only one thing. It’s a fact. And that fact is reproducible. That fact can be validated. And if it’s not validated, then it gets thrown out. That is the basis of science.  
 And we have abandoned the scientific method in so many areas of our life. Medicine would be one of them, climate change would be another one of them. And if we had policy-driven engineering, you can imagine how many bridges would fall down, or how many aeroplanes  would crash. I mean, this is just absolute nuts.  
Malcolm Roberts:So you’re a scientist of the real world. Now, you are one of the most qualified scientists in the world. You’re esteemed. You’ve been given awards. You’ve been showered with praise for, not only your scientific integrity, but your guts, because you are a scientist who gets out in the pubs, and actually talks to people, listens to people. Above all, listens, because that’s another form of observation. You get into debates … you don’t hide from these things … you get into debates, where you flesh ideas out. What are your greatest qualifications, life qualifications, Ian?  
Ian Plimer:My greatest life qualifications is that I’ve worked underground. I absolutely love working in underground mines. And, there, you’ve got safety constantly in the forefront of your mind, but you are dealing with real people, and you can’t afford to be dealing with anything else. But, reality, when you are underground, these are real people, these people know how you convert a rock into money. It’s the same as if you’re on a farm, you’re converting soil into food or fibre. These are the real people. And I spent a lot of my time with real people.  
 Yes, I spent a lot of my life in the academic world, but that was also pretty uncomfortable because I was a square peg in a round hole. And none of the academics loved me, but the students absolutely loved me because I told it as it is.  
 So, when you’re underground, you’re in a totally different world. It’s a three-dimensional world. If you want to find some more oil, you have to use basic principle of physics, and chemistry, and geology. You have to understand how the rocks move. When you’re underground there’s always a bit of noise, the rocks are creaky and groaning. The miners say the rocks talk to you. So that was probably the greatest learning experience for me.  
 The other was working out in the bush and getting my hands dirty out in the deserts. And I have a great affinity for desert. I have a couple of places, houses out in the desert, and I absolutely love the desert. And this is unforgiving, if you make a mistake, you are dead. If you make a mistake underground, you are dead. If you make a mistake as a climate scientist, you get promoted.  
Malcolm Roberts:What an absolutely amazing explanation. And I share it with you, because when I graduated as a mining engineer with honours in 1976, I decided I better go and learn something. So I’ve worked as an underground coal miner and one open cut mine, but mainly underground around the country, mixing with people, learning about people, learning about underground.  
 And it is such a challenging place to be. It is such a wonderful teamwork environment to be. Surface mining, large open cuts, that’s just dirt shifting, Ian. We know that. But underground, that’s real mining.  
 And where did you learn to have your love of argument, because you just love argument. I’ve seen you run away from nothing. Why do you love an argument?  
Ian Plimer:Well, that, of course, goes right back to my childhood. I was always a little bit of a rebel with a number of things. I had relatives, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers who were scientists, but also quite argumentative.  
 And my life was opened up when I was married, and my wife saw the potential, and gave me the freedom to argue and to fight. And this is how freedom, and argument, and science all come together.  
 Now, in terms of having debates, the one group of people who will not debate me are climate scientists. They will not debate me because I don’t use political policy, I don’t use opinion, I use facts. And you cannot get a climate scientist to stand up in public, and debate me, and then face questions after the debate. They will not do it. And I know why, because they are being funded to pursue the biggest scientific scam we’ve ever seen in the history of the planets.  
Malcolm Roberts:Correct. And I saw you and Viscount Monckton dismantle two members of the media in Brisbane several years ago. I think one of the poor fellows, Graham Readfearn, I think that was his name, just absolutely hopeless, you just tore him to shreds, so much so that his employer, The Courier-Mail, I think sacked him not long afterwards. Absolutely disgraceful presentation from him.  
Ian Plimer:But he’s still employed. He’s employed by The Guardian, and still writes the same codswallop that is going on with there. So there is the warning, no matter how hopeless you are, there is always something for you. And if you’re really hopeless, the left will look after you. If you’re absolutely extraordinarily unbelievably hopeless, the extreme left will look after you. And that’s what’s happened to Graham Readfearn.  
Malcolm Roberts:That’s absolutely so accurate, what you’ve just said. You have mentioned empirical evidence, the hard data, the observations, because your advice sometimes leads to the expenditure of billions of dollars, and your employers are not happy if it’s wasted. And you are held accountable because you’re working in industry, you’re working in academia, and you’re working in the community at large. You’ve worked in the global community.  
 What we’ve seen now is that science has been reduced to a label. It’s no longer a process, it’s no longer a methodology. It’s a label to justify policies that contradict hard data.  
Ian Plimer:Well, let me give an example. We have had trillions spent globally dealing with human-induced global warming. And what you do in science, is ask really simple questions. You don’t need to use nomenclature, you don’t need to use complex words, you don’t need to hide behind a lab coat and pretending you’re important. Just ask a simple question. And you’ve got to be polite. The simple question is, can you please show me that the human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming?  
 Now this has never been shown. You have pursued that in senate’s estimates committee meeting with Australia’s premier scientific organisation, the CSIRO.  
Malcolm Roberts:Premier?  
Ian Plimer:Well, they were ones-  
Malcolm Roberts:Bloody hopeless on climate, Professor Plimer.  
Ian Plimer:They were once a premier organisation in things like genetics, and wheat, and water, but they have now suffered from being woke, and they have suffered from being dragged into getting extra funding by following the climate line.  
 Now, that question, can you please show me that the human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming, it has never been answered. I have asked people who claim to be scientists, just give me half a dozen scientific papers showing that? I have asked journalists, can you please show me that? They can’t.  
 Now, of course, the next question is, if they could, you would then have to ask the next question. And 3% of all emissions of carbon dioxide are from humans, the other 90% is natural. And you then have to ask the next question, can you please show me why the 97% of natural emissions do not drive global warming? So it’s checkmate before the game even starts.  
 Now, these people who call themselves climate scientists, and these can vary from anything, from influencers, to lawyers, to sociologists, to historians, to mathematicians, and on we go, the whole basis of human-induced global warming has never been challenged. And as a result of that, we’ve had this massive waste of trillions of dollars.  
 Now, what flows on from that are these monstrosities like wind turbines. Now, to make a wind turbine, the amount of energy to make that is more than it will ever deliver in its workable life.  
 The second thing is, that the amount of carbon dioxide to make it and maintain it, is more than it will ever save. So why bother? And then when you’ve got these wind turbines, which have a fairly short life of about 15 years, they need to be disposed of after their working life.  
 And when you dispose of turbine blades, you start to contaminate the environment with some dreadful toxins. So you cannot claim that these burden, bat munching, scenery destroying monstrosities have anything to do with the environment. And the way to understand the way that climate industry works is follow the money. Just have a look at who is behind these wind turbines. If one country starts with C and finishes with A.  
 And then we look at the solar PV systems. Now these destroy huge amounts of [inaudible], and you have to clear a lot of [inaudible], that’s surely not environmental. To make them, again, use far more energy than they will ever release. They also emit, in the making of them, more carbon dioxide than they’ll ever save.  
 You can’t have solar power 24 hours a day. We can, but I’ll come to that in a second. When you dispose of those, you start to contaminate the environment with all sorts of toxins, of gallium, and germanium, and arsenic, and selenium, and tellurium. All the things that, of course, make your hair curl and kill you.  
 But just to show you what a scam, the whole business is, we have solar power generation in Spain at night. Now, the Spanish are absolutely wonderful, but to generate solar electricity at night? And you scratch yourself, and you think, well, how the hell do we do that?  
 The answer’s simple. In Spain, the solar panels are illuminated with floodlights from diesel generators because the subsidies are so great that they can make money out of generating solar power at night. And that demonstrates that we have got a total scam in solar and in wind power generation. Now that scam is coming towards the end of its subsidy life and solar and wind power don’t generate electricity. They generate subsidies.  
 And towards the end of the life, now the boys have got to think of something else. So they’re thinking of offshore wind, which is wonderful, you reduce the life of the equipment even more with the saline attack. You also now see people saying, “Hmm, I wonder if we can use this gas, hydrogen?”  
 Now people have tried to use hydrogen 100 years ago and it failed. It failed for three reasons. First, it’s super expensive. Secondly, there’re massive energy losses in making hydrogen, which doesn’t occur in large quantities naturally. And, thirdly, it has to be transported at -253 degrees Celsius and 700 times atmospheric pressure. Now, that is a bomb waiting to happen.  
 So the same people who are scamming on wind and solar, are the people now who are shifting into hydrogen saying, “Oh, we’ve got to try this wonderful new fuel.” Well, it has been tried and it has failed.  
 And in my latest book called Green Murder … and check it out on greenmurder.com … in my latest book, I go into all the details on this and other scams.  
 And this is how we’ve wasted trillions of dollars, and it’s been a slimy approach, every single person who’s paying an electricity bill gets a little slice taken off, and that goes to the scamsters. And this ends up in trillions of dollars in subsidies, trillions of dollars getting paid to people who are only interested in making money rather than providing long-term stable electricity.  
 And if it’s cheap, then it generates employment. And if you have employment generated, then you have less people on the dole queues. And if you have fewer people on the dole queues, then your economy thrives. It’s pretty simple. And we have been conned because we’re so wealthy, because we’re so comfortable, and people have said, “Oh, I can afford to pay a few more dollars because it makes me morally feel better.”  
 And in this book, Green Murder, I argue about the morality of The Green position. And I will give you just one or two examples. For example, if you are wanting to put in wind or solar, then the solar panels have a very good chance of being made by slave labour in China.  
 The wind companies and wind turbines are made by Chinese companies who are destroying the long-term, stable, cheap electricity, be that nuclear, be that coal, be that gas, be that hydro, and replacing it with what they call renewable energy, and I call it unreliable energy, because we once had cheap reliable energy. So there is a scam. And that is weakening the West, and it’s seriously weakening countries like the U.S., and the UK, and Germany.  
 And we can see now the disaster that has occurred in Germany. This is one of the G20 countries, yet we have people getting cut off from their power source because they can’t afford to pay the exorbitant prices. They are now going foraging in the forests to get wood, to keep themselves warm, and to cook. That’s in Germany.  
 In England, you have a choice, do I have a hot shower, or do I heat the house, or do I have a warm meal? I can’t have all three, I can only have one of them. That is a G20 country that’s committed suicide on this green murder path they’ve chosen.  
 And if you, as a wonderful Green, if you think, oh, I want to save the environment and drive an electric vehicle, well, start to look at the resources you use. We haven’t found them yet. And I’ve spent a lot of my time in exploration in a lot of countries, and we have not found the resources we need to put all of the U.S. hydrocarbon-driven vehicles off the road and have them as EVs. We haven’t found the resources. We haven’t got the copper, we haven’t got the lithium, we haven’t got the nickel, we haven’t got the cobalt.  
 But assume you are living in Los Angeles, and you want to be a moral virtue signaler, and get yourself an electric vehicle, well, you’re only constrained to the city, you can’t drive any further. You couldn’t drive to Nevada in an EV. You just couldn’t charge it up. And if you did, for a 500 mile trip, you’d have to stop 3 or 4 times to charge up the vehicle. It’s just totally ineffective.  
 But if you are going to moralise about driving electric vehicle, you have to ask a few questions. Where does the cobalt for your electric vehicle come from? About 80% of the world’s cobalt comes from the Congo, and it’s mined by Black slave children underground, in conditions that are extraordinary dangerous, and where there are toxins everywhere.  
 And if you want to claim that you are moral in driving electric vehicle, you also have to be aware that you are supporting Black child slave labour in the Congo. You can’t have it both ways.  
 So I argue that there is no science behind The Greens position on climate, and I argue that there’s no morality behind The Greens position on climate. You can’t have it both ways. And so, we have to, I think, be fairly blunt, and fairly robust when we argue with people who claim that they want to save the planet. What are they saving it from? Who are they saving it from? Follow the money and follow the morality causes.  
Malcolm Roberts:Ian, the fundamental thing, as I understand it, for driving human progress, there are eight of them. First of all, is freedom. That is determined by science because science gives us objectivity. The second one is rule of law. Third one is constitutional succession, so that we have a smooth ongoing form of government and elected democracy. The fourth one is secure property rights. The fifth one is cheap, abundant, affordable, electricity, or energy, both forms, hydrocarbon and electricity. The next one is family. A strong family network. The next one is honest money. And the last is, of the eight, that I carry around in my head, is, a fair, efficient, honest taxation system.  
 This climate scam, as you have talked about it so accurately, is an assault on every one of those eight fundamentals of human progress. In particular, what we’ve seen in the last 200 years, last 170 years, in particular, is a relentless reduction in electricity prices and energy prices, to the point where each reduction in real terms leads to an increase in productivity.  
 That was until about three decades ago, when the lunatics in the West fared by China, pumping wind and solar generators at us, have destroyed our electricity sector. Australia has gone from being the cheapest electricity in the world, to the most expensive. That means that we export our jobs to China, our future to China, our independence to China. We become dependent on China. Isn’t it a fundamental travesty against generations not yet born, to destroy our country’s manufacturing capability, to destroy our country’s economy, when the Chinese themselves are pumping out almost 10 times as much coal as we produce in total each year? This is insane.  
Ian Plimer:Well, there’s a couple of points here. We have a coal-rich country called India. And, yes, they have some rather shabby transport systems, but they have a lot of coal. And there has been a huge amount of pressure on India and on Africa not to have coal-fired power generation. And so, people live in huts, they burn dung, and twigs, and leaves for heating and for cooking. And, as a result, there’re millions of women and children, every year, die because of that form of energy. So the cheap electricity that people in Africa and India deserve is denied by moralising greens, who are actually killing people by their policies.  
 The second thing is that, I’m very pleased that countries like China have had the industrial revolution. The UK, the Europe, and the U.S. have had their industrial revolutions that brought people out of poverty, that enabled people to live longer, that gave a lot of meaningful work. It actually created all sorts of new jobs. China is undergoing that industrial revolution, and undergoing it very, very quickly. And, in China, we’ve probably had the greatest movement of people, and the greatest economic rise that the world has ever seen. And I think that’s fabulous for the average Chinese person.  
 But the greens tell us the downside is the pumping out of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Well, have I got news for you? We have had a slight increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 30 years. And satellite information is showing us that the planet has greened up. Our crops have become more prolific. Now, that’s partly due to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because carbon dioxide is plant food, but it’s partly due to better fertilisers, and better farming techniques. So we have very good evidence that carbon dioxide is good for you.  
 We have evidence from the Second World War, from the global financial crisis, and from the COVID crisis, when we’ve had a backwardation of economic activity, that we’ve had carbon dioxide continue to increase. So there’s been less carbon dioxide coming out of industry, yet we’ve had a global increase in carbon dioxide. And that’s telling us that the dominant source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is from degassing of the oceans, it’s not from industry, it’s not from human activities.  
 And, thirdly, in the geological past, we’ve had times when the atmospheric carbon dioxide was up to 100 times higher than now. And what did we have then? We didn’t have runaway global warming, we actually had ice ages. And six of the six ice ages, this planet has enjoyed, was started when we had more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now. So you cannot ignore that huge body of evidence from the past telling us that in geological times, carbon dioxide was much, much higher, and we yet we had ice ages during these periods of high carbon dioxide.  
 And the fourth point is, ice core drilling, it’s shown on one scale that is a correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature. But when you look on a much closer scale, we see something that we all know from chemistry, but it tends to get ignored, and that is, that, when we have a natural warming event, anything from 650 to 1600 years later, we then have an increase in carbon dioxide. So it’s not that carbon dioxide drives the temperature increase, it’s the exact inverse, the temperature is actually driving a carbon dioxide increase.  
 And this is why I argue, that those who call themselves climate scientists are milking the taxpayer to keep themselves in a job because they’re in effect unemployable. And we are being frightened as humans to accept this concept that we are going to fry and die, yet we’ve had periods of time when it’s been much warmer, yet we’ve had periods of time we’ve had much higher carbon dioxide.  
 And just during the time when we humans, Homo sapiens, have been on the planet, we have experienced many periods of cooling in glaciation and warming in interglacial. And in the last 20,000 years, we have gone from the zenith of a glaciation, where most of the U.S., most of all of Canada, most of Northern Europe, and England were covered by ice. A lot of the southern hemisphere was covered by ice.  
 Those areas that weren’t covered by ice were deserts with howling winds, bring salt-laden air, and shifting sand dunes. And these are the great Loess plains of Asia. There’s a great sand dune country of inland Australia.  
 And we humans have endured that. And we came out of that great glaciation event about 12,000 years ago. And temperature increased, it then suddenly plummeted, and then went up again by about 15 degrees in about 10 years. Now that’s real global warming. Then it stayed static for a while, then it dropped again, then it went up again.  
 And then we had, what was called the Holocene optimum, from about 7,000 to 4,000 years ago. And it was a couple of degrees up to 5 degrees warmer then than now. Sea level was higher than now. And over the last 5,000 years, global temperature has been decreasing. We are coming out of the interglacial into the next inevitable glaciation. We’ve actually been cooling. But during that cooling period, we had warm spikes like the Roman Warming in the dark ages when it was cool. Then another warm spike in the mediaeval warming, then a cool period in the little ice age, and then the modern warming. And we’re coming out of that modern warming into another cool period.  
 So if you ignore the past, and if you ignore all the sciences that deal with the past, you can come up with an unvalidated idea that human emissions drive global warming. I say that is false. I say that the promotion of that is done by people who are modellers, who do not look at the science of the past. And we know, that from 30 years of models, not one of these models is in accord with what we measured over the last 30 years.  
 And if I have the choice as a scientist, between a model and a measurement, I will take a measurement any day because a model is a garbage in, garbage out process. And a model, basically doesn’t deal with the unknown unknowns, whereas measurement can be replicated measurement. We argue about the order of accuracy, but it’s still measurement. So, that’s the answer to your question. God knows what the question was.  
Malcolm Roberts:That was fabulous. I want to remind you of two recent episodes in human history. The first occurred in 2008, the global financial crisis. It led to a downturn around the world. Australia wasn’t hit because we were living off the Chinese minerals boom, but most of the world was hit. And it’s certainly a global recession, very severe recession.  
 So the actual use of hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil, gas decreased in 2009 compared with 2008 in the recession. That meant there was less carbon dioxide produced in 2009 than in 2008. And yet, Professor Plimer, as you have so accurately stated, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued to increase.  
 Then we marched forward to 2020 when we had a global, almost a depression due to the COVID restrictions, the government imposed COVID restrictions, not due to COVID, due to government-imposed COVID restrictions. We saw, again, a reduction in the use of coal, oil, and gas compared with the previous year 2019, we saw a decrease in the human production of carbon dioxide, and yet the global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continue to increase, which just shows two things.  
 First of all, we have no say in what is the level of global carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. None at all. We can gut our economy and it will have no effect on it whatsoever. So we can gut the West and let China keep producing carbon dioxide, let India keep producing carbon dioxide because they have a duty to their citizens to lift them out of poverty, and to give them the trappings of modern civilization, there’ll be nothing we can do. And besides that, carbon dioxide, as you’ve said, is a plant fertiliser it’s plant food. It is essential to all life on this planet, is it not?  
Ian Plimer:Yeah. Just to add to that, these two examples you gave are examples of the scientific method. We’ve had two great unintentional global experiments, global financial crisis, and COVID, and these were great global experiments. So it’s not that we’ve done the experiment once, we’ve actually replicated it. And in both cases, we have shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide do not drive global temperature. And in fact, global temperature depends upon whether you measure it on the ground, and if it’s measured on the ground, then what a wonderful opportunity you have to cook the books and change results. And that’s what happens almost universally with cooling the past and warmingly the present.  
 But when you look at the satellite measurements, and there are three basic sets of satellite data, it shows a very different story. So I would much prefer to have a uniform measurement at all altitudes around the whole planet that tell me about the temperature rather than having selected people entrusted with looking after a surface measurement, and then changing it over time. And as you mentioned, the Bureau of Meteorology has done that three times over the last nine years, which creates all sorts of uncertainty about whether they’re worth a million dollars a day.  
 So we’ve had these two great global experiments, which in my mind prove that human emissions of carbon dioxide did not drive global warming. So, why bother? Why bother? Why don’t we, as Western countries, say, we are very happy to look after our environment. And the only countries with good environmental policies preserving the environment [inaudible] have become wealthy due to the industrial revolution.  
 And this thing you can do for our environment [inaudible] what you consider is worth preserving. We should be very pleased China [inaudible] ahead and becoming a wealthy country. As a result, they will [inaudible] pollution. And I think China and India should [inaudible] people.  
Malcolm Roberts:What you’re saying, Professor Plimer, is that, we need to restore scientific integrity to protect freedom, to protect our natural and environment, because scientific development and understanding has enabled us to protect our natural environment.  
 Science also then is vital for sound sustainable policy, which impacts people’s economies, and lives, and livelihoods, and security. And it’s also to protect the human spirit by ending the unfounded climate fear and guilt while restoring our connection with nature.  
 Something I think is really important to human progress is strength of character. You display it in spades. Whenever you speak, you’re fearless, but you’re also passionate. Why are you so proud of being a human, and what traits in humanity, are of concern to you?  
Ian Plimer:You’ve asked me 17 questions there, so let me just comment on a couple of things. You spoke about protecting the environment. I’m a great supporter of that, because I’ve bought a considerable acreage of land to protect it. But I’m not conserving it, because how can you conserve the environment on a planet that’s dynamic and it’s always changing? So we can protect what we have and let nature do its bit.  
 In terms of fear, we, humans, are hardwired to fear that grizzly bear that’s behind you and is going to come and get you. We are hardwired to have an adrenaline rush to save ourselves. This is a fundamental trait of humans and of many, many other animals. So fear is still hardwired into our system. And the fear that has been induced in populations, by governments on matters such as COVID or climate, they have been exploiting that fundamental human characteristic of fear.  
 And in many cases, you fear because you do not understand. Science gives you a method of being able to understand. And if you can understand, then you are not nearly as fearful.  
 Now, I am very passionate because my early life I started being interested in the planet and geology, when I was about four. And I had some very good mentors, and I’ve been guided well through life. And I’m mentoring, I think 8 or 10 people now, giving back the same way it was given to me.  
 But if you can understand how the planet works, if you can understand the past, then this is far more exciting than-  
Malcolm Roberts:We’re going to have to call it off, Professor Plimer. This is Professor Ian Plimer, guest of Senator Malcolm Roberts.  
 

Part 2
 

Speaker 1:You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on today’s News Talk Radio TNT.  
Malcolm Roberts:Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT radio.live. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts from the Gold Coast broadcasting globally. Fresh from my COVID bed a week ago, I had COVID, now I have the world’s most powerful immunity, all natural. I want to call out to the people marching around our country today. And in fact, around the world for protesting or reinforcing freedom. I’ll see you in Maryborough tomorrow for the protest at Maryborough. And I look forward very much to being up in Maryborough. I want to express my condolences to the family of Meatloaf who died last night. He brings back very fond memories. I love his music, that the way he can go from something, belting something out to just something so soft and tender.  
 We have Australia Day coming up this Wednesday in our country, celebrating our national day. On the Mornington Peninsula, friends send me this: on the Mornington Peninsula this year, they have cancelled Australia Day celebrations, yet not cancelled Invasion Day celebrations. Invasion Day events are free for indigenous and $39 for a non-indigenous. See what people are doing? They’re setting up division. That’s quite often what’s happening around our planet. The globalists are pushing division.  
 Last hour, I had the honour of having professor Ian Plimer as my guest, a highly intelligent, very practical man. I, now introduce another highly intelligent, very practical man. John McRae, his voice is known all over Sydney, all over New South Wales, all over Australia. He’s even tied up Alan Jones in arguments at times. This man has got the knowledge about our country and about our potential and our history. I have enormous respect for John, his knowledge, his passion for Australia. His memory; it’s like an iron trap. I can remember meeting John for the first time around about 2011 and what a character.  
 He opened up to me Australia’s successful past in so many fields. His memory would just showered me in facts. He gave me an introduction to books from people like Anthony Sutton, who wrote three books about Wall Street and the damage that Wall Street does. Above all though, his diverse stories, his practical knowledge of factories in Sydney, banking, his knowledge of farming, his knowledge of our history, his knowledge and introduction to people like Graham Strachan, who has done so much to publicise what the globalists are trying to do to our country to destroy it. He’s made public presentations informing residents across New South Wales. He’s worked in so many diverse industries. He shares with me a time and working as an underground coal miner. John, welcome to the show.  
John McRae:Thank you very much, Malcolm.  
Malcolm Roberts:Mate, first simple question. [crosstalk] First simple question for you, John, what do you appreciate?  
John McRae:I appreciate what you’ve just done. One thing, what you’ve just done a moment ago, having that brilliant man on radio, expanding the truth, the fact and the science, as opposed to the lies and the deceit that we are being fed from parliament and from so-called academics that are on the gravy train payroll. And he exploded all their theories and I enjoyed it immensely. I should have been brushing up with my own memory, but I enjoyed it. You’ve got to get him back on. You’ve got to advertise it, that he’s on there, so people can get the truth.  
Malcolm Roberts:John, you’ve always been pushing the truth. You just like professor Ian Plimer. You never run away from an argument. You know how to deal with people because you apply same basic strategy that Ian does. You use facts and data. Could you tell us something about past accomplishments? I’m thinking particularly about the Kalgoorlie pipeline and look, mate, we know that sometimes Sydney Radio tries to shut you down because you’re just too good for them. I want you to talk. I want you to spill the goods on this country. So, just do what you’re doing. Just tell it as it is. Away you go, mate.  
John McRae:You want to know about the pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie?  
Malcolm Roberts:Yes.  
John McRae:Firstly, I’ll say this. Australia is the richest country in the world with 75 of the 77 minerals our world requires we’ve got them in abundance, but we’ve a crazy wombats running the joint. The Perth to Kalgoorlie pipeline exemplified that. 1896 to 1903, it is still regarded as the greatest hydraulic achievement ever in the world. They pump water from Perth to Coolgardie originally, because a bloke, they found gold at Coolgardie, but then Patty Henon found it in 1892 at Kalgoorlie. And that started the gold rush. And people came from everywhere to get money out of the gold rush and people were dying because they had no water and things like that. So, they were condensing water and it’s replication of what’s happening in Australia today, the money people started condensing water to supply the people at the goldfield, but it was wasn’t enough because it needs a thousand gallons of water to refine one tonne of ore.  
 So, they were opposing the pipeline, the men that come up with this idea , John Forest. So John Forest was the premier and he borrowed money from England, 2,500 Pound… 2,500,000 Pound. Now remember that figure because I’m going to give you a figure later on as we go, that’ll shock you. And they got Alberton O’Connor to do it. He was an Irish engineer and they brought him over to do the railway lines. And they said, “We need water.” Now you’ve got to get over the Flinders Ranges into Barron land desert, but it’s not desert. It’s rich, red basalt soil. Let’s say you’re up in Queensland, you’ve got black basalt soil, that’s the indication of the volcanic reaction and the formation of Australia.  
 He then put together some smart people. This is 1896. It’s got to go 500 kilometres and the first pump up was 390 metres. In actual fact, Kalgoorlie is about four or 500 feet higher than Perth. So it’s going to be pumped all the way over the Flinders Ranges. 3000 people worked on it. Population of Australia was about four and a half, 5 million. So they had 70,000 plates of steel was imported from England and Germany, but what he had to do was build the harbour first to get the ships, in the sailing ships and the steam ships with all the supplies, then he had to design and build the dam, then they had to manufacture the pipes. Then they had to get the pipes from Perth all the way to Coolgardie. But then they found out that they can go to Kalgoorlie, and this whole pipeline was built on budget and on time. So away they go. It all has to be done by man, pick and shovel, horse and cart and camel train.  
 Now, the dam has to be built first and completed first before the rest of the pipeline is completed and the pumping stations and everything. 5,000 boxes of pump parts came out in containers and had to be built along the way. The pipe were built in two halves, 180 degrees, you know a full pipe and cut in the middle, you’ve got two pipes. They had to be sealed. And that’s where the Australian inventor started.  
 They invented the ceiling sleeve that goes along it. Then you’ve got to seal it. There’s no welding back then, only rivets. But this is what people got and said, “No rivets, no welding, no dynamite, only black powder. And you’ve got to build a dam, extract rocks out and everything else.” So they’ve got to make these ceiling machines, make this sleeve.  
 Three Australian… Me and Ferguson, Hodson, and a fellow from Sydney called John Hoskins, the start of the steel mills in Australia. The first steel plates of steel were built down in Murgon, there’s a park built there, Fitzroy Park. That’s where Fitzroy Steel started. He made the first plate steels in Australia and the first piece of plate of stainless steel. They got together and invented how to bend the steel by making the pipes. They had this steel bending machine and they redesigned it. They were making the pipes in the finish in 11 minutes, put the ceiling sleeve on it, it was sealed by lint and rope. And blacksmiths had to make the ceiling rings. They tested them between 320 and 400 pound PSI. The pipes were 23 foot long and 3 feet in diameter. Now that’s the pipe bit going.  
Malcolm Roberts:Excuse me, John. Excuse me, excuse me, John. What you’re really saying there, and I want you to get back to your story as quickly as possible, but what you’re really saying is that they started this project with a vision and with no understanding of how to do some of the details? They relied upon their intuition to come up with solutions and dammit, they did.  
John McRae:They did. They did. Hey, hey, listen, in the overall scheme of things, what I’m about to tell you about doing the dam, that they’d nearly pile into insignificance. So, they’re going to build the dam, they’ve got to build the dam. In the meantime, everyone’s against him because of the sale of the water. Now, there was two senators in the government, on the 26th of the 6th, 1898, G. T. Simpson said, “It is the height of madness to mortgage the future of our state with two and a half million Pound for just one silly project. The gold will run out and we’ve wasted all the money.” And Alberton O’Connor said, “This is rich fertile soil. So who’d want to go there?” The next bloke Wilson said the same thing. No government can justify pledging so much money to plunges into debt, for this.  
 So, they’re going to build the dam. So this is all done with pick and shovel. So they’re building the dam, and when they’re building the dam, they run into what they call a floater. Now, when you get the sandstone bedrock, that’s where you start your foundations. You can’t be on slippery, shifty ground or shifty… They’ve got to get this grounded boulder out. They had to dig down 90 feet further than the original depth. 90 feet hand, pick and shovel, hand drills, and everything else. Out they came again, stopped the project. “This bloke’s an imbecile. You can’t have this going on. It’s going to be further behind time. We’ll never get the job done, or anything else.”  
 What did he come up with? He’d come up with a carbon arc light. That’s the same as what you do with the search light, carbon arc. He rigged it all up. They worked 24-7. I’ve got photos of the vicarious stuff out, how they did it. They dug that granite out. I’ve sent you a photo of them down in the hole. You can hardly see the blokes down in the hole.  
Malcolm Roberts:Yeah.  
John McRae:Nd there’s no shoring up between the granite sandstone that they dug down. They extracted the granite boulder out, crushed it all up, reintroduced it back as the foundation with the carbon arc. How’s that for ingenious? How is that?  
Malcolm Roberts:Mm.  
John McRae:There’s no electricity over there, no Boeings to get an extension cable and a generator. None of them existed. And they got it back on time. They worked 24-7, and that’s what they did. If he hadn’t done that, they raised a dam wall, remind me to tell you about how they raise a dam wall. So, that dam had to be built, that pumping station had to be built because where the dam is, is 24 kilometres away from Perth, where they’ve got to pump the first pump over the Flinders Ranges. So there’s two pumps there at the dam to go to the pump at Perth, the reservoir in Perth to pump it.  
 Then they’ve got to get all the pipeline going. Then the first lot of pipes that were delivered, were delivered by horse and cart and camel trains. Then he built the railway line and then they could go on the railway. Now they had to… There’s an invention, how he got the rock out. He built a ramp for a steam shovel. You wouldn’t pass his test today because they’d say it would fall in, but they did it. No dynamite, no dynamite. I know they had black powder then, but I don’t know how they would… There would’ve been hand drill, one bloke held the drill and wriggle it, another bloke banged with the sledgehammer, they dug it out.  
Malcolm Roberts:So let me just reframe this for people who’ve just joined us, this is in the days of horses and carts, camels, predated the railway to some extent in some areas. And it was the man who proposed it was vilified for his 2,500 Pound investment. Are you going to tell us about the success of this investment?  
John McRae:Well, the 2,500,000 Pound, it was built in… This only took six years with no machinery. What do you think we could do today? What do you think we could do? We could do it overnight with the will of Australians, because they had the will do, can do and want to. The 2,500 million Pound they borrowed, three years after it was finished, the goldfields, the water, they made 25 million Pound.  
Malcolm Roberts:So that’s 10 times as much. So not only that, John and I’m talking with John McRae here from, used to be Sydney, now it’s central New South Wales Coast. They opened up the gold mining, which continues to this day in one of the richest gold mining areas in the world-  
John McRae:Recognised the biggest goldfield in the world, and it opened up the whole mining industry of this country that we’ve benefited by for all those years. And we still are, but we’re not getting the value that we should have, as Ian Plimer has just told you, we’re not getting the value, we just kept holding our arms up and let them rape us for our money.  
Malcolm Roberts:Didn’t they also open up a farming area?  
John McRae:Oh, there’s 8,000 kilometres now a pipe, 8 million acres of cropping land, sheep and wheat and everything else. And when the English migrants came out here, they put it on the share market and there was a stampede to get shares in this joint and Kalgoorlie mine and everything else. The English migrants come in, they said, “You could grow anything here.” They’ve grown vegetables, everything, everything there.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, so let’s-  
John McRae:You only need heat and water. That’s all Australia needs, water and electricity as we were supplying the whole world commodities, the whole world.  
Malcolm Roberts:Thank you. Thank you, because energy is the key to productivity, which is the key to prosperity, which is the key to wealth generation for everyone in the country. And what we are doing, we’re destroying our energy. But listen to some of these figures, I’ll go through them again. I noted them as you were talking. John McRae, the initial cost was 2,500,000 Pounds.  
John McRae:Yes.  
Malcolm Roberts:Within two years, it was 10 times that much paid back.  
John McRae:Yeah. Because you have just identified the component that we need was energy and water is energy because their whole body is 82% of water.  
Malcolm Roberts:Yeah.  
John McRae:So don’t worry about the water out in the grass. The water in your own body is 82% to give you the energy. So all these wombats that are running around, talking about climate and everything else that the climates just destroyed, they better go back and read this. It’s not very hard to read. I’ve never been to university, but I can read. And most people can read. Don’t listen to the crap they’re telling you. And when they start telling you all this say, “Don’t tell me, show me.” And they can’t.  
Malcolm Roberts:No, they can’t. And we’ve had that repeatedly. Now in addition, they had to lift that water 390 metres to get it over the range. [crosstalk] They then had to continue pumping it uphill for 500 kilometres to Kalgoorlie. I mean, this is in 1896 with no machinery. No machinery. And we can’t even do that now. This would be, with the technology we’ve got these days, John, that would be so easy. Why can’t we do it?  
John McRae:Oh, oh, look, look, Malcolm. It is equivalent to you driving around T Model Ford as opposed to a Mercedes-Benz. That’s the advancement. But what Malcolm, I failed to tell you one thing, there was eight pumping stations and it relied on the push-and-pull system. The same as the sewage does. So sewage is not done with pumping, it’s done with suction. So to get to the first reservoir and they held about a hundred thousand gallons, I think. And then it might go downhill to the next bit, now it’s got to be pumped up to the next reservoir. It’s got to go over the Flinders Ranges. If you see the Flinders, it’s more up and downhills than what the Luna park Ferris Wheel is.  
 And they had to do that. They pumped it. There was pumping stations all along, they had to build pumping stations. They had to build schools. They had to build hospitals. They had to have nurses and everything else going along there. And all the people in the town that were getting money out of this water condensers, they were jumping up and down because they’ve lost their gold mine. Their gold mine was water. They were more interested in water than gold.  
Malcolm Roberts:They wanted to preserve their monopoly rather and open up the country for Australians.  
John McRae:Of course.  
Malcolm Roberts:Yes.  
John McRae:Same thing. What do you think they do with the Murray–Darling water now? Same thing. It’s superannuation for the fire brigade, superannuation fund in New York and a massive amount of water rise. Who did they get the water off in the first place to sell to?  
Malcolm Roberts:John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull and John Anderson.  
John McRae:Yeah but they’re about as helpful as ashtray on a camel.  
Malcolm Roberts:Yeah. Water Act of 2007, thanks to Malcolm Turnbull, John Howard and John Anderson. And we’re still crippling.  
John McRae:And under our constitution, no one is to be denied water. And that’s what the thing should be taught in the school, our constitution and our rights, our civil rights and what you’ve just been speaking about, it’s music to my ears.  
Malcolm Roberts:John, John, you’ve always impressed me with your knowledge, your depth and your passion for this country. You’ve also struck me, I mean, you’re not a technically educated man. You’ve got a trade certificate. There’s no doubt about that. But you’ve read widely. Where did this love of humanity, this inquisitiveness, where did it come from? Was it your mother? Was it something happen in Kids?  
John McRae:It was my mother. Malcolm, what happened to me when I was little, I got polio and I was crippled. And you are ostracised by society back then, this was in 1948, 49. People didn’t want know you, even my own cousins were not told I had polio because people think you could catch it. You can’t catch it. You can breathe on, you do what you like. You’ve got to ingest it. And it comes from poor hygiene, exactly what Ian Plimer was talking about, poor hygiene. You got to lift people out, give them water and lack of water and end and lift them out of their hygiene standard and their living standard. Look, they are saying, pulling hands and juices a lot of times teach. Give a man to feed of fish today, he eats it. Teach him how to fish and he’ll feed himself for life. Now that’s what you’ve got to do.  
 We’ve got to get the hygiene and everything. Anyway, what happened after that? I crippled up and they operated on me, but I had the most beautiful mother that anyone could ever have. She was talented and not only talented, she was a good looker. Fair Dingham, she looked like, it’s either Susan Hayward or Vivien Lee, one of them, she looked like a one of them. She was a concert pianist, dress maker and milliner, and then become a psychologist. And I went to a lot of her, I was in lucky, I went there. But anyway, one of my grandfather’s best friends was Sir William McKell, the Governor-General. The man that got us-  
Malcolm Roberts:Tell me about that because you have a lot of respect for McKell, why?  
John McRae:Oh, it’s unbelievable, man. Unbelievable. He started off as a five and six fiddly a week boiler maker because his dad, they come from down the South Coast and he was a butcher and his dad died. They lived at Redfin and he detested people calling Redfin congested areas-  
Malcolm Roberts:John, I just want to point out, we’re going to an ad break fairly soon. So I might have to cut you off suddenly, but we’ll come back if I do, so please continue.  
John McRae:That’s okay. That’s okay.  
Malcolm Roberts:Please continue.  
John McRae:Anyway, he started off as a five and six fiddly boilermaker of Maud Stock. That was the place where they first shipped the fresh meat, the over frozen meat to England. Then he went to Eveleigh Workshops. He educated himself. Then he went and become a lawyer. Then he got into local government, then a pilot, and he became the premier of New South Wales. And he was the instigator through with Chifley and Kurton to get the Snowy Mountain Scheme going. But that person they think was a great bloke, Menzies was verdantly against it because he wanted to, I don’t know what he wanted to do, but he just didn’t want to do that because he said, “You’re going to deny people of water in Victoria, South Australia.” He said, “No, they’ll get more water.” He said, “Well, I’m going to stop you with The Constitution.” And McKell said, “Well, you do your best because I’m going to invoke the Emergency Powers Act and see how you travel with that.” He’s a fellow that explained a lot to me, and he explained the Taxation Act to me and things like that. But he-  
Malcolm Roberts:So, McKell did this for you?  
John McRae:Yes.  
Malcolm Roberts:Wow, wow.  
John McRae:Just after I left school-  
Malcolm Roberts:What a blessing.  
John McRae:In 1953, that Tax Act that was after Robert Menzies introduced that, and I asked him about the Snowy Mountain Scheme, and he was good enough… He got me an introduction to Sir William Hudson, the engineer. What a genius, what a genius. We had Alberton O’Connor, but what people have got to understand, all that project over in Western Australia, all the knowledge and empirical knowledge and-  
Malcolm Roberts:Okay, John, we’re going to go to an ad break. We’ll be back straight after to hear this continuation of your story. Thank you.  
Speaker 4:If it feels like it’s hot enough to fry an egg on a sidewalk, it probably is. When it’s 86 degrees outside, asphalt can reach a sizzling 135 degrees. Hot enough to cook an egg and your dog’s feet. Be safe. Test the sidewalk with your hand. Avoid midday walks and walk in the grass. Bring along water and rest in the shade at the first signs of heat exhaustion, including heavy panting and stumbling. Go to peta.org for help and information on how to keep your dog safe in hot weather.  
Speaker 5:Good day. Fast Ed here. As a chef, you know what I hear a lot? Wow. That smells really good. Is it done yet? For certain foods it’s important to cook properly rather than how they look or smell. Those foods include hamburgers, sausages, chicken, and leftovers. The rule of thumb is pretty simple: cook those foods to 75 degrees Celsius. Listen, I’m no Einstein, so I use a food thermometer and I reckon you should too. That way you’ll know it’s done without guessing. And no one will get sick.  
Speaker 6:A message from the Food Safety Information Council.  
Speaker 7:The bush fire was so unpredictable. It was important to have a plan.  
Speaker 8:[crosstalk] We stayed up to today with our phones and the radio. We knew it was coming.  
Speaker 9:I never thought it would actually happen. I’m glad we had a plan.  
Speaker 10:You have to prepare your property and your family.  
Speaker 11:And there was nothing we could do. [crosstalk]  
Speaker 13:Hence, why I always had a plan.  
Speaker 14:We can all be bushfire ready. Do a five minute Bush fire plan today.  
Speaker 15:Unlike other health concerns, mental illness is not always easy to see. Depression won’t show up on an eye chart and you won’t find PTSD by looking at a thermometer. Sorting out a mental health concern takes professional diagnosis and treatment. Anxiety won’t just go away under a bandage. If you or a loved one has a mental health concern, call 1-8-0-0-6-6-2 HELP for free and confidential information and treatment referral. Learn more samhsa.gov/support.  
Speaker 1:Today’s News Talk Radio TNT.  
Malcolm Roberts:Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT radio.live. And I’ve got a special guest with me, John McRae. John, continue please with McKell.  
John McRae:Okay. I’ll finish that brief thing with McKell because I’ve got to give you some more information on that pipeline. And I was, speak to McKell about politics and everything else and different things had happened. And he explained to me how we were the supplier for the world, which I knew, after the war because I was aware of it, and the great farmers and the great things we’ve done. Then I learned a little bit about the pipeline. He invigorated that in me. Now, and I spoke politics to him. He gave me forecasts of politics. Malcolm, in this pipeline, there was 60,000 joints they had to seal. 60,000, and there was 63,000 pipes and they had to be done, it had to be sealed with cork, with lead and rope, and they invented a corking machine and that invention, this sleeve situation and they couldn’t be done without blacksmiths because blacksmiths used to make this shrink seal that pulled the pipes together onto these two ceiling sleeves.  
 Remember the pipes are 23 feet long anda metre in diameter, three feet. And they had to be all man handled. And they made this with pipe, this steel bending machine, they got one and modified it. They made the sleeve machine. Then they tested them. It’s between 320 and 400 pound PSI. I don’t know how they did that. I’ve lost that documentation. Off they went. Then what was happening, they started the belly ache because when they started to do them by hand, by 1901 they’d only done 90 miles. And oh, it’s going to fail. It’s going to fail. It’s going to fail. Then the three engineers that I told you about, me and Ferguson, Hodson, and another fellow, can’t remember his name, Stuart Sternum, some name like that. And Hoskins, they come up with this ceiling machine. Well, they could do 30 joints a day then. Why, it went like a rocket. Off they went.  
Malcolm Roberts:So John, this remarkable pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie basically opened up the west, developed so much for the country as well in terms of our steel industry, the technology we use. But ultimately, there was another dam project, the Snowy Mountain Scheme, which was more than one dam, wasn’t it?  
John McRae:Oh, yes.  
Malcolm Roberts:And McKell saved that from being cancelled by Menzies. Is that what you were saying?  
John McRae:Yes. Yes. What happened, Menzies was against it. Chifley was the prime minister and he gave, well, New South Wales has got snowy mountains in New South Wales, but the Murray, the Snowy river and that filters into Victoria and into South Australia. And they thought it was going to cripple their water supply. And he guaranteed they wouldn’t. And Menzies said, “Fight him on the constitution,” I think section 101 or 190, how no one is to be denied water. He said, “Well, I’ll take you on and I’ll invoke the Emergency Powers Act and you won’t beat me.” And McKell is there, you can see photos of when they first started, he pushes the detonator to do the first blast.  
 He was Governor-General then. He was so brilliant as a Governor-General, he was a labour appointee. When he was appointed Governor-General, by the Labour Party, when Menzies won the election 49, it was a stitch up job that. He still retained him. Then he was going to retire and Menzies said, “You can’t retire. I need you.” This is a bloke that’s fought him in the first place, then he admires him in the second place, because he could see at the end of the section, I’m going to get the brownie points for finishing this job.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, Menzies could take credit?  
John McRae:So Menzies could take credit, but initially he’s against it. There was a big strike there once. I’ll also tell you about Sir William Hudson and what a visionary, he was like that Ian Plimer, like that, and they shut the joint down. So William Hudson went to where the strike was and said, “What’s going on here?” And it’s all up, all hell has broke loose. They said, “The moots blown,” and everything else. And he said, “This place should have fly screens and they’re contesting. Why hasn’t that been done?” That was an interference from parliament. We won’t go into that. You can work out where it had come from.  
 He said, “Get the carpenters wherever they are, the air conditioner. I want it all done immediately, right now. Get them all.” Wherever he was, he went there. “You won’t be docked for your day off. You’ll still be paid. Go back to work.” Menzies told him and he said, “I never want you to do that again.” He said, “Otherwise, I’ll take your commission off you,” because he said, “I’ve got to beat the unions. I’ll get too strong. And I’ll lose the election.” See? Money again.  
Malcolm Roberts:Whereas Hudson, what he wanted to do was fix the workers problems so they just get back to work productively.  
John McRae:Yes, and they did. And by the way, all the big mob come out from America, Utah Mining, and all that. And the other mob and from England and everything else. And they thought we rode kangaroos and all this business here, and we have no chance on doing tunnelling and all this has never been done in Australia before. Four blokes come down from Queensland, their name was Feis. They broke all the tunnelling records and they built 25% of the Snowy, they built the largest earth and rock fill dam ever.  
Malcolm Roberts:And they said it was impossible to build an earth and filled dam that big. And yet they did it.  
John McRae:They did it. It was all done. This is Australian initiative. Look, I could go on for hours with what Australia’s done with inventions and how it’s benefited the world.  
Malcolm Roberts:Tell us about a few.  
John McRae:That is the hardest concrete in the world down there, Malcolm. The hardest. And I said to William Hudson, I was fortunate enough to meet him. A lot of people can meet him, when they had tools, you could go and talk to him. He said, “It was pretty simple. We had the best people.” And I said, “But how did you work out the mixtures?” Because if they had to make their own sand. Now, that sounds funny, doesn’t it? They had to make their own sand. Now, I’ll tell you how they did it. They got sandstone and you grind it up. But in sandstone, there’s impurities like silica and mud and you can’t mix with it because it goes like jelly.  
 So that had to be extracted, which they did. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it. And then they’d have to be mixed. Now, when they were mixing it, they mixed it with hot ice and ice. And they put other additives in it. But the granite and stuff they used there, they worked out what aggregate would be the best. And that’s how they did the formula, working out the earth and rock fill dam and that concrete is the hardest concrete in the world and it made Australia world leaders in concrete and highway engineering and things we’ve done with highway engineering and concrete lead the world.  
 I ask people, “Where’s the largest concrete span bridge in the world?” Because they got all the information from the Snowy, how they mix concrete. 25 countries, they tell you. I said, “You don’t even might know what you’re talking about. It’s in Sydney, called the Gladesville Bridge.” At that time it was built, it was the largest concrete span bridge, reason being, they got empirical knowledge and statistic and science from the Snowy, which they got when they did the Perth to Kalgoorlie pipeline doing the… So, it keeps revolving along, Malcolm.  
Malcolm Roberts:Can I share a story with you, John? I’m reluctant to interrupt you because you’ve just got so much. But when I was in America, I travelled through all 50 states. I was fascinated by the country and I came across a story about the development of their early space exploration. And John Kennedy had just become the president in 1960. And he commissioned NASA to do a study on the chances of getting a man to the moon and back safely by the end of the decade. In other words, by 1969. And I’ll always remember this, I bought a poster of it. It’s in every office I’ve ever worked in. I carry it with me. The result from NASA’s assessment of the possibility of getting a man on the moon and back again within nine years, wasn’t yes, it wasn’t no, it was these words: We have a sporting chance. And with that, and I’m getting a little bit teary here, John F. Kennedy said, “We go to the moon.”  
 And then you think about the technology that’s come out of that from electronic ignitions, from medicine-  
John McRae:Everything.  
Malcolm Roberts:So many things, even Velcro. I mean, so many things.  
John McRae:Yeah.  
Malcolm Roberts:And what you are saying to me, John, is that we had people like John F. Kennedy in this country who had vision, people like McKell, people like Connor. And they said, “Get out of my way and let me get on with the job.” And as a result of that, they had so much technology developed in this country that then gave us our steel industry, our concrete industry, so many opportunities and what we’ve got now, we’ve got this whole thing smashed.  
John McRae:Well, the reason being is because people haven’t had the privilege that I’ve had or ignorant and don’t want to do it. See, when I wasn’t allowed to go to school or to go to the pictures.  
Malcolm Roberts:Oh, that’s right. You had polio with your mother. Yes.  
John McRae:I went to older people and I’d ask questions and that’s what I do all my life, ask questions.  
Malcolm Roberts:Can I just interrupt there for a minute? Just want to interrupt there. I want to just tell the listeners here while they’re sitting at home or in their cars or at the picnic, wherever they are, that John is not exaggerating a bit here. I’ve watched this man. He treats people with enormous respect. If he disagrees, he’ll let you know. But he walks up to people and he takes an engaging interest. Doesn’t sacrifice his principles, his morals. He just takes an imbibing interest and people share things with John. That’s why he’s become such a magnet for facts and data. Keep going, John. I just had to share that with you. You’re you’re so impressive, the way you deal with people.  
John McRae:So I would go and ask him things. And everyone used to say to me, “John, look after your pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.” And the director of one of joints, the directors at the glassworks in Sydney, it’s Sydney in Maude Park, largest glassworks in the Southern hemisphere. He said, “Never denounce anyone.” Even the bloke sweeping the street can give you information and tell you something that you don’t know. And I’ve lived by that. When I was growing up, I’d go into engineering, “Why do you do this? Why do you do that?” I was taught how to read a micrometre at the age of 11. By 13 or 14, I knew how to do dynamic balancing. My mate’s father was an engineer, I’ll tell you his name. And-  
Malcolm Roberts:Dynamic balancing of wheels?  
John McRae:I beg your pardon?  
Malcolm Roberts:Dynamic balancing of wheels, lathes?  
John McRae:That’s nothing. Wheels are nothing. No armatures in motors and things like that.  
Malcolm Roberts:Right, thank you. So complex stuff by the time. So complex stuff by the time you were 13?  
John McRae:Yeah, I could work lathes and everything. I helped the bloke build a speedway engine. At 14, I did all the rough turning and I used to, I asked questions, if I go somewhere… Look, this is off the track. I went down to Stéphanoise and I used to go to Shepherd a lot. And I went to visit, [inaudible] They lovely people, these Italians. And they’d telling me different things. They going over the machines, breaking down. I invented this machine that could extract eight types of oil out of the apricot kernel, eight types of oil and one oil can harness one type of cancer a bit.  
 Guess what happened? John Howard sold it to Pakistan. So, we invented this machine. You should have seen it. Unbelievable. So they’re the sort of things, and I’d say, Charlie Bennett taught us dynamic balancing, when you’re balancing an armature… See I’m going from subject to subject.  
 When you’re balancing armature, if you turn it over and balance one end and then balance the other, it’s out of balance again, because you’ve got to keep the harmonics in unison. No one was doing dynamic balancing this way. He invented a machine that could balance the armature at both ends at the one time. And he balanced thousands. And he did it for the army, the Navy, the Heart Research and everything. We learned all that.  
 The rolls in the paper mills, in the newspaper bill, they get out about… He rectified that for them. How does that work, Charlie? How does this work? I worked on overhead valve at T Model Ford Motors. How does this work? How does that work? How does something else work? And I that’s how I got knowledge, but I’ve been blessed with a memory and I’ve been told that come from polio, but I was blessed with the encouragement of my mother.  
 My father was a violent, alcoholic gambler, so that didn’t give me much of an opportunity in life. So, that’s how I’ve learned things. And I appreciate, and when I see someone like Ian Plimer, I pull him up and I’d ask him a heap of questions. And that had enhanced my knowledge. And that’s what people have got to, interaction. From interaction, you get reaction. From reaction, you get action. And that’s what we’ve got to get. And we’ve got all the knowledge in this country here. I could name a few of the great Australians, what they’ve done, that settled the world on their heels. They couldn’t believe it. And then the medical inventions that we’ve had here. Hugh Victor McKay invented the wheat stripper with Headlie Taylor, feed the world, everything. I could just rattle them all off for you. And I knew Jack Brabham and I’ve even got a photo of myself sitting in the car. And that was a handmade motor in his car.  
Malcolm Roberts:Tell us, tell us more about Brabham because the likes of him has never been seen before and probably will never be seen in motor sport.  
John McRae:Never, never, never. There’s been no one ever. No one ever won the World Driver’s Championship and the Manufacturer’s Championship. In the car they helped build, mate, designed himself and raced himself. Now you’ve got to take into consideration, Australia back then, we were only making the whole motor car. So we’ve got to go up against the world of finesse, Mercedes, Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, Jaguar, Honda, Lago-Talbot, Elvis, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Renault, Citroen, Peugeot, all European. And how do they get their success? On Grand Prix racing. And they built on that Ferrari win. Michael Schumacher and Pangio, driving the 250F Maserati that Pangio drove and everything like that.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, Brabham’s up against the world?  
John McRae:He’s up against it. And they said, “Where did this billy cart come from? From Australia? It’s got a V8 motor. Where does this the local yokel come from?” The same bloke went to American in Indianapolis with a car under powered and showed him a new trick over there with a rear engine car. They’ve never seen a rear engine car before. And it was underpowered and still finished ninth. Other blokes with their big Offenhausers and everything else. Going back to that motor, when he started in the Speedway, Offenhauser was built especially for… That was a racing engine, especially for the Indianapolis. And they built a smaller motor for Speedway. Now, the Americans come out here with the most beautiful looking cars you’d ever see because all our cars were made out of junkyards and bits and pieces.  
 And this car of his was a little, air cooled motor, a Harley Davidson crank case off a motor bike and you build the rest yourself and it beat the Offenhausers. With that technology and his driving ability, he then transferred that into his car racing thing and with the help of the two Australians, Ozzy and Ronnie [Toranecko] another bloke, Ronnie Ward and Repco of Australia. They designed the engine off the 308 Holden Motor aluminium, designed their own heads and everything else. What did he do? Blew them to pieces. And they said it could never be done. Same as Ken Warby. They said they’ll never, never-.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, who was Ken Warby? [crosstalk] Ken Warby’s World Water Speed Record.  
John McRae:Yeah, 1977. It hasn’t been broken ever since.  
Malcolm Roberts:So, so the World Water Speed Record still stands and it’s held by an Australian?  
John McRae:Yes. And he put the first wind curl on a boat. Then Ben Lexcen then copied it, but hang on, here’s the clincher. He had the Naval apprentices from the Naval College, and University of New South Wales, helping him with technology, science, exactly what you’re speaking about with Ian Plimer. And the science they relied on was the temperature of the water, the atmospheric pressure and everything else when they went for the world record. He still said his only chance his son’s going to have an attempt on it in May. Now, Brabham set a world record with a car, never been equaled, built in Australia. Anywhere else in the world, they had to build an industry around it. But what do we do here? Give it away. Same with what they’ve done with all our minerals.  
Malcolm Roberts:John, speaking of giving away industries, tell me about Sydney. I mean, we drove one night and you took me through an area where we had factories after factories, after factories. And we had seafood canneries and fish canneries in Sydney and all of that’s gone.  
John McRae:Well, look, I showed where the glassworks were, that was Georgian’s bit. That was the biggest glassworks in the Southern Hemisphere. There was Crown Crystal. In that area where I took you, there were seven companies making setda lathes, drill shapers and things, and couple of turret lathes.  
Malcolm Roberts:Hang on, hang on. For people to understand, their fundamental for metal working, which is fundamental to manufacturing machinery, fundamental to making any kind of machinery. And we had all of that technology. In fact, some of our technology was world leading, wasn’t it?  
John McRae:Of course, it was. Yeah. Malcolm, before we go any further. Nothing, you’ve got, you clothes, your car, your cooking, utensils, anything has got to be made… Jigs have got to be made by a tool maker. He’s the man, the upper echelon machine in engineering. And if we can’t make the jigs, you’ve got nothing. And we had all that here. There was seven, there was seven lathes. I can name them for you if you want. Seven lathe manufacturers and machinery manufacturers in that area where I showed you. After the war, all those machinery places were working 24-7, supplying Europe and everywhere else to rehabilitate them. When we could go out near Mascot, Botany, up that way, there was all the cotton mills, the tanneries, the woollen mills and working 24-7. We made milking machines. We made shearing machines. We made wall presses. We made everything.  
 Canneries making the tins, the stuff to go in for the canning fruit. We exported all that. We had all that, but that all went by the wayside when we started to lump ourself in with the United Nations. And we signed all these agreements, especially the Lima Declaration. But we still have, all we’ve got to do is get leadership of honesty and morals and with Botany the attitude, we have done it, can do it and will do it. And all we’ve got to do is get water, forget all of this global business, because there’s no country in the world that can produce rural produce 365 days of the year of every variety, every variation, and of every thing you need, no one. They built the Ord River, there’s more tonnes of rice coming out there than what Japan can do with their special rice for their religious ceremonies.  
 We’ve got mangoes growing up there. They get five or $6 a head, a piece of fruit. We get more tonnes per wheat off our ground than anyone else in the world. No one can grow the variation of Barley wheat, corn, that we can. No one, because the Northern hemisphere is constrained by weather constraints. And we are not here. All we need is the power. And the power is water. We’ve got the place, the farmer, we’ve got the greatest farmers in the world, they know that. Look, they brought the sheep in from the Marino. We get more yield per pound per sheep than what they get. Same as the Hereford cows, the Aberdeen Angus. We get more here. There’s a bloke up there in Queensland, Peter Hughes, he’s got 190,000 breeding Wagyu cows, Japan can’t get over how he’s succeeded. And that’s one of their breeds.  
 He’s worked out how to cross breed them. Australian ingenuity, Australian ability, we’ve got them here. We’ve got the scientists. We’ve got every… We’ve got the best machinists. We’ve got the best of everything. Look at the bloke that built our machine gun. Saved Australian up the Owen Stanley Ranges, 1,500 raw recruits went up with the eight and nine divvy and drove back 7,000 jungle hardened Japanese. Why? Because they had the will to win. They had the machine gun. They had what we built. We built aeroplanes  here during the war. Even in the fifties, we built Sabre jets for the Korean War. And they tell you, we can’t do things here.  
Malcolm Roberts:John, John, Australia has a history of punching well above our weight when it comes to war, comes to industry, comes to inventions, comes to sport, comes to arts, comes to science. We’re punching way above our weight. What the hell happened?  
John McRae:What the hell happened? Because follow the money. Follow the money. See, that’s what people have got to understand. Banks are credit creators and asset strippers. And boy, we’ve got to do this and we’ve got to get into the global economy. We don’t have to get into anything. We’re the only totally self-sufficient country in the world, put a moat round us. And we could trade with one another and live.  
Malcolm Roberts:That’s a really important point I want to jump all over for a minute there, John, because Australia was independent. We could stand on our own. We could make our own armaments. We could make our own ammunitions. We could make our own everything, everything. And yet what happens now, is we are dependent on other countries. [crosstalk] Our politicians have fallen for this crap that says we must be interdependent. That was the con job to get the UN agreement signed, which you can talk about, the Lima Declaration, the Rio Declaration, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris agreement. All of these declarations and agreements have undermined us. We are no longer independent. We are now dependent because when you are interdependent, you depend on someone else which makes you dependent. We’ve lost our independence as sovereignty, our economic sovereignty, our manufacturing sovereignty, our economic security. Because politicians in this country have sold our soul.  
John McRae:They have, Malcolm. By the way, I should have included this. We built that pipeline for 1896 to 1903. After that, we achieved the greatest achievement, can’t be equaled. The longest railway line in the world from 1912 to 1917 from South Australia over to West Australia, Northam 2,500,000 railway slip, hand cut.  
Malcolm Roberts:2 million?  
John McRae:140,000 tonne of rail line, all hand laid. Start at one end, start at the other, and they said they won’t meet. It wasn’t even a half inch out. On the 17th of the 10th, 1917, the last secure inch spike on the place that held the dam was put in. Five days later, the train arrived in Western Australia. They never even put a test run on it. They tell you we can’t do it. We built all the trams in Sydney for the tram service in Sydney, it was the largest tram network in the world. We built 2,800 trams. We built the buses and everything else. We built the ferries. We’ve done everything.  
 Now we’ve got to buy more off China and they’re not worth three and six pence, they can’t ever be used. And they tell you we can’t do things. I’ve got a history of stuff. I wish I could get a chance to debate some of these wombats because I’d blow up the pieces, because we’ve got the greatest people with the greatest initiative. And we’ve got the greatest will to win and achieve. All we need is the opportunity to exhibit it.  
Malcolm Roberts:Well said, well said, John McRae. Well said. What we’ve got is we’ve got the people. We’ve got the resources. We’ve got the energy resources, the metal resources, the climate resources, the soil resources, the water resources. What we have is huge potential. We have huge opportunity. We have got the world’s biggest market on our doorstep to the north. And what we’ve got is parliaments that have abandoned the people in favour of UN agreements, seeded our sovereignty. The parliaments no longer work for this country. John, I’m convinced of that. The state and federal parliament have abandoned the people. How do we get them back to serving the country?  
John McRae:For a start, we’ve got to fix up our voting system and our taxation system and our voting system is rigged so that you can tell lies and fraudulent. The best, we could go into that another day. But here’s what we did with our industries. Now, not everyone signed this Lima Declaration. That was in 1975. Whitlam was the bloke that in inaugurated Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm Fraser ratified it in 76.  
Malcolm Roberts:Okay, John, we’ve got one minute to go.  
John McRae:Okay. This is Section 35, that Australia transfer technical and financial resources, as well as capital goods to accelerate industrialization of underdeveloped countries. As Ian Plimer said, “All they do is go into those other countries and rape and build, then walk off.”  
Malcolm Roberts:So basically, the UN’s Lima Declaration that Whitlam signed as Labour prime minister in 1975, and that the liberal national’s prime minister, Malcolm Fraser ratified the following year 76, basically said, “Take our technology, take our leadership, take our manufacturing prowess and set it up overseas and gut our country.”  
John McRae:Well, the bottom line of that is, Malcolm, liberal and labour, it’s either Tweedle Dumb or Tweedle Dumber.  
Malcolm Roberts:And we might just leave it on that because the core message, John, you’ve just told me the answer, and we’ll explore that. I’m going to have you back. We’re going to explore that is fix the taxation system that favours foreign countries’ companies at the moment and fix the voting system. So this is Senator Malcolm Roberts. I remind you how I opened the first show this morning. I am staunchly pro-human. I am proud to be of service to you. Remind you, be human, be proud, be loving, care, listen, and appreciate. Thank you very much, John. We’ll have you back anytime. Thank you very much. And thank you for having us as guests in your living room, car, factory, wherever you are today. Thank you so much for listening.  
John McRae:Thank you, Malcolm.  
/by

Is Anthony Fauci a genocidal maniac?

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The evidence of Anthony Fauci’s previous bungles is available for all to see. This and more on Marcus Paul in the Morning.

Transcript

[Marcus Paul]

You know I’ve enjoyed my sparring sessions with One Nation Senator, Malcolm Roberts, throughout 2021. So much so that I’m gonna do it for years to come. Malcolm And I sometimes don’t see eye to eye on certain issues, and that’s okay. One thing I do appreciate is him holding the federal government to account on a number of issues. And Malcolm has been very vocal on issues that he is passionate about. Look, I don’t know a politician that seemingly does as much research and collates as much empirical data as what he does. And for that, he should be commended. Malcolm Roberts, good morning.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Good morning, Marcus, and thank you for the introduction.

[Marcus Paul]

It’s all right, Mate.

[Malcolm Roberts]

By the way, I’ve got two things. First of all, you’d be very pleased to know that you’re converting me. I’m reading a book by a lefty.

[Marcus Paul]

Ah, stop it.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And it is stunning. And the lefty is Robert Kennedy, who is Robert Kennedy Jr., actually.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Robert Kennedy, the assassinated Robert Kennedy’s son.

[Marcus Paul]

Right.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Marcus, It is absolutely stunning.

[Marcus Paul]

What’s it about?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, it’s called, the title is called, “The Real Anthony Fauci”.

[Marcus Paul]

Right, okay.

[Malcolm Roberts]

You know who Fauci is, of course.

[Marcus Paul]

I do, yes.

[Malcolm Roberts]

He’s the man who started this exaggeration around the world. And that man, according to Robert Kennedy’s work, is an absolute criminal. He’s an inhumane, genocidal maniac. And he has deliberately suppressed, and dishonestly suppressed ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and many other standard treatments, combinations of treatments that doctors around the world have been using highly successfully for one reason, to get injections into people around the world. And Robert Kennedy has sat down and wrote this book over a number of months. He’s got something like 2000 references in it from scientific peer reviewed papers, right through to newspaper articles. And he documents about his criminal behaviour over decades. And it is absolutely stunning. And we have all been sold a pup. And Fauci has got blood on his hands to the tune of hundreds of thousands of fatalities, and thousands of, tens of thousands. That’s hundreds of thousands of fatalities that could have not occurred because we would have been using other treatments. And tens of thousands of people who have died due to adverse effects from these injections. It is absolutely disgraceful and we need to be holding people to account.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, what’s the name of the book again?

[Malcolm Roberts]

“The Real Anthony Fauci.” I ordered it a couple of months ago when I heard it was coming, for my son for a birthday present, but it hasn’t arrived yet because I think it’s selling so well in America that they can’t print them fast enough. You could get it in Britain for around about $2.99 for the, what is it, PDF version and the Kindle version. It is stunning.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. What I want you to do as well, considering you’re into books written by lefties, there is another book that I would like you to read. It’s written by a good friend of mine, Vanessa Badham. It’s called “Qanon and On.” All right, so that’s another. In fact, I might even get a copy of you signed by Van herself, sent to your office for Christmas, from me to you. How’s that?

[Malcolm Roberts]

That’ll go well, yeah.

[Marcus Paul]

There you go. All right, Mate. What else are we?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yeah, the other thing, the other thing I wanted to raise was I’m still waiting.

[Marcus Paul]

I know you’ll be waiting forever. Look, I got you, I got you a listener. I got you a listener to debate with this year. Wasn’t tearing him a new one enough or what?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, Mate, he showed that there is no science because he didn’t present any science, no empirical evidence proving cause and effect. And that’s the thing that I see everywhere. I’ve held politicians accountable, senior politicians, Penny Wong, Anthony Albanese, no one has got this stuff, Mate, no one.

[Marcus Paul]

You’ve taken on the Wongster. There’s no way.

[Malcolm Roberts]

I wrote a letter to her asking her for the evidence.

[Marcus Paul]

Yeah, but what about if you and, now that’s a debate I’d pay to see, you and Penny Wong having a discussion about climate change.

[Malcolm Roberts]

I’ll donate the proceeds to a charity that you care to name, Mate. You arrange it and I’ll be there.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, I can only ask. I can but ask. I mentioned this before. Nearly 40% of Australia’s coal fired generation capacity will shut down by 2030 under the greenhouse gas emission cuts promised by Labour and the federal government. Both have proposed a massive expansion of renewable energy to cut pollution from electricity generation, which accounts for around 30% of Australia’s emissions. Now I already called for the oxygen for Matt Canavan. Do I need to send oxygen your way as well?

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, because the facts will dismantle it. Unfortunately, a lot of people are going to hurt and we’re gonna lose a lot of industry. Labour is saying they want to stop coal. And yet they’re saying they won’t cost a single coal miner’s job. That is complete rubbish. It’s the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull Marcus. It is complete rubbish.

[Marcus Paul]

Hey Mate, just repeat that.

[Malcolm Roberts]

How can you shut down an industry, yet not cost a single job? The people in the Hunter, the people in Central Queensland will be devastated. But more significantly, when you shut down the cheapest form of power in this country, you will export more and more manufacturing jobs to China. We export our coal to China. They use our high quality, high energy, cheap, affordable coal. They generate coal [energy] at eight cents a kilowatt/hour. Because of our restrictions, we sell it at 25 cents a kilowatt/hour. We’ve gone from the cheapest coal and the cheapest power in the world to the most expensive. We have exported, not only our coal. We have exported our jobs, our manufacturing sector to China. And now we are dependent on the Chinese for much of our manufactured products. We can no longer sustain a defence force in this country because we don’t make our own bullets. We don’t make our own armaments. We don’t make our own machines. This is absolutely disgraceful. This is a highly important security issue, an economic issue, a social issue, a moral issue, and an integrity issue. And Labour is destroying, plans to destroy the country. If they get into power

[Marcus Paul]

Wow.

[Malcolm Roberts]

It’ll be the Greens, that run this joint.

[Marcus Paul]

Oh, rubbish.

[Malcolm Roberts]

It will be the Greens.

[Marcus Paul]

What a load of rot.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Look at the two coalitions. We’ve had the Liberal National Coalition since 2013. Prior to that, the last government was the Gillard Miln Labour Green Coalition.

[Marcus Paul]

That’s because it was a minority government. And obviously she was beholden to crossbenchers. And I don’t think that’ll happen under Albo, personally. I think they’re making it pretty, no, they’re making it pretty clear. I’ll speak to Richard Miles about it very soon. I’ll ask him like I’ve asked Anthony Albanese in the past. Will you be forming a coalition, for want of a better word, with the Greens? Their answer will be at an emphatic no, Malcolm.

[Malcolm Roberts]

That’s what they say. That’s not what they will do. They want power more than anything else. Even if they’re slaves to the Green. The Greens will say jump and Labour will say how high. That’s what’s gonna happen.

[Marcus Paul]

I love it, I love it. This is why I love having you on cause you and I can, we can spar and have a bit of fun. But as I say, I meant what I said at the beginning of the programme, of our chat. I do appreciate and do respect how hard you work. And, you fundamentally stand your ground on all of the issues that you feel so strongly for. And you have a strong supporter base as well. And look, I wouldn’t be surprised, given what’s been going on in this country in the last 12 to 18 months, that the One Nation vote doesn’t head north to a great extent when we hit the ballot box next May.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, I don’t make predictions about what people will do in elections. That’s up to the voters. But I do know that there is a huge groundswell around this country away from Liberal Nationals and away from Labour Greens. So I’ll leave it to the voters. But more significantly, what’s going on in Queensland, Marcus, is they’re starting to dismantle the narrative around COVID. There’s a huge groundswell. I’ve addressed crowds, hundreds, thousands of people, and Marcus, more telling than the numbers of people, are the energy in the people. They are angry, but then they are hopeful. They’re united. We have got local councils passing motions up and down our state and increasing in numbers, saying to the Palaszczuk Government, they will not be enforcing the injection mandate. The federal government knows, we’ve put them on notice. We will be continuing to oppose government legislation in the new year until we get our freedom back. We’ve got liberal senators now, two of them, Gerard Rennick and Alex Antic, standing up saying they will abstain from all government voting. The government is powerless, and we have to get our freedoms back, and the people are ready for that. They want their freedom back. Think again how I opened this session. Anthony Fauci is a genocidal maniac who has killed, no, he’s killed hundreds of thousands of people. He’s responsible for their deaths. And he’s also responsible for the prevention.

[Marcus Paul]

Don’t get me sued, Malcolm.

[Malcolm Roberts]

The data is there. I’ve read the data. I make comments only based on data.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, Mate. I’ve got to go. So just repeat that phrase. One of the best I’ve heard all year, what was it? Something out of the southern end of a bull. What?

[Malcolm Roberts]

It’s the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull, but more significantly, Merry Christmas to you, Marcus. I love being on with you, as you say. It’s good to have a respectful debate and Merry Christmas to all of your listeners and a happy new year to all. Let’s get this place back to normal.

[Marcus Paul]

You look after yourself. And to you and your family, take care. And I look forward to our further sparring matches next year in 2022. Thank you, Mate.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Thanks, Marcus. One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts. I love that. Well, what I would say is, he’s proposing that there’d be a Labour Greens coalition. Well, that to me sounds like something that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull.

/6 Comments/by

The Great Climate Change Debate

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I have always said I will debate anyone in the country or overseas about the evidence on climate change. The truth is, there is no evidence that CO2 from human production directly causes changes in the climate and needs to be cut.

Transcript

Forward to this all weekend, all week, the great climate change debate. Gee, I’m nervous. I shouldn’t be, I know. But I’m a little nervous. The first time I’ve ever done something like this, live on this programme. Malcolm Roberts from One Nation and also regular caller, Mark. Mark’s the only one, it seems, with the kahunas to take on Malcolm, particularly on a live radio debate. We put it to some Labour MPs to come on, I won’t shame them at the moment by naming them, and they said, “Nope, nope!” But Mark is up to the challenge. Gentleman, are you both there?

G’day, Marcus.

Hi.

G’day, Mark.

All right, now this is the way this is going to work, gentlemen. You will both have two minutes to start. So Malcolm you’ll go first. You’ll plead your case against climate change using, no doubt, your empirical data, all the rest of it. Then Mark, you will respond. You’ll get two minutes. You’ll be on a clock. And then after that, you’ll get two minutes again each for a rebuttal, okay? That sounds okay to you?

Yep.

Sounds good.

All right, now. A couple of rules, no name calling in the rebuttals. All right. Straightaway that’s a no-no. No name calling,

Okay.

Obviously not that you will, but we just have to be a little clear here. No name calling. And if I think you’re getting a little off topic, I’ll pull you up. Are we ready to go?

Yup, we’re ready.

Yeah.

All right, gentlemen. Thank you, the great climate change debate is underway. Malcolm, you’re going to go first, okay? Because I say so, and I will roll your two minutes from now. Climate change, you say, is not real. Tell me why.

I don’t say climate change is not real, Marcus. I say that carbon dioxide from the use of hydrocarbon fuels does not change climate. That’s the core point. What people have to understand that the core point is that they want to tax and cut our carbon dioxide from human activity, farming, agriculture, driving, transport, industry, power stations. So what has to happen? Always, science is decided by the empirical evidence in logical scientific points. What that means is that you have to have empirical data, hard data, within a logical framework that proves cause and effect. And empirical means measured or observed. Actual solid data. So before we can justify cutting human agriculture, driving, industry, power stations, electricity, raise their prices, we have to have hard evidence that temperatures today have been unusually high and continue to rise unusually.

One minute left.

There is no such evidence. Secondly, the cause of any temperature rise is increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Third thing, they have to prove that the carbon dioxide rising in the atmosphere is due to human production of carbon dioxide. There is no evidence to that effect. Number four, even if everything is correct, and someone provides the data that shows that temperatures are rising unusually in continuing to rise, and that it’s due to human carbon dioxide, they then have to prove that warmer temperatures are harmful to humans, harmful to the planet. Scientists classify earth’s past far warmer periods

20 seconds.

far warmer periods as climate optimums, because warmer periods have been booms for human civilization, nature, and individuals. Cold periods kill more people than warmer periods.

10.

So the next thing I point out is that I’ve done extensive work with the Parliamentary Library, with freedom of information bills, with parliamentarians-

Three.

Themselves. No one is able to

Two. provide that evidence. No one.

All right, okay. Okay. So Malcolm stated his points. Mark, are you ready, mate? You’ll get two minutes on the clock.

Just before I start-

Oh god.

on time.

Yes.

Do you recycle Malcolm? Or do you put it all in the same bin?

Hey Mark, we’ll get to that. We’ll get to that.

No, just out of curiosity. We’ll get to that. Your two minutes is up and in your rebuttal, that’s when you can ask questions of each other, okay?

All right.

All right. All right, Mark. Your two minutes starts now.

Righto. Let’s go back 450 million years. The earth was barren. It’s being bombarded by solar radiation. There was fissures and cracks pumping out carbon dioxide and methane gas. I’ve got a Kelpie chewing up my foot while I’m talking to you. The seas were swarming with jellyfish, and fish, and sharks with big bony plates. The first algae, at that time, began to creep up onto the rocks. Come forward another 50 or 60 million years. They’d turned what they call the Gilboa Forest. They were about five metres high. They had a base like a palm tree with multiple roots. They had a straight trunk. They had fronds like a tree fern. There’s fossil evidence of these from Belgium to New York state, a town called Gilboa funnily enough. Then go back to to about 349 million years ago. We started the Carboniferous Forest. These massive forest. These huge rainstorms, probably like we’ve never seen before, that filled up swamps, carved out canyons, rivers flowing up and everywhere it was just to intense-

One minute. One minute.

And then glaciers begin form ’cause there’s so much oxygen in the atmosphere. But the downside of that was every time there’s an electrical storm, because there’s so much oxygen, there’s these massive fires. And that’s what they reckon kept the forest going because forests, obviously, need carbon dioxide. Then by the end of that time, 299 million years ago, the begin to split up.

30 seconds.

And then we got back to now. Now we’ve got, the atmosphere has changed. In 200 years we’ve dug up so much carbon and burnt it, we’ve changed back to what it was 3 million years ago. So what you’re saying is, Malcolm, it took 200 years to go back to what it was 3 million years ago.

10.

And now you’re saying it doesn’t really matter because we’ve changed 3 million years in atmosphere in 200 years. That doesn’t compute.

All right. All right. Well said. All right. I think that’s pretty good from both of you. Great for a start. So the way this now works, you both had your opening arguments. Now it’s time for rebuttal. Another two minutes for any of the points that Mark’s brought up, Malcolm, you get to rebut. Then Mark, you get your chances as well. You ready to go there, Malcolm?

I am, Marcus.

All right. The clock starts now two more minutes, off you go.

I’ll say it again. What determines science is the use of logical scientific points and that’s the beauty of science. It gets rid of all the crap, all of the opinions, all living emotions, and just says, “Show me your data.” And that data, hard empirical data, has to be provided within a logical framework that proves cause and effect. Mark has done none of that. He has not proven the temperatures are higher than in the past. He has not shown that the carbon dioxide that man produces drives temperature. He has not shown that higher temperatures are dangerous to humans. Now, he’s then talked about carbon dioxide levels. In the earth’s past, fairly recent past by earth standards, carbon dioxide levels were 130 times higher than today. Carbon dioxide levels today are closer to the limit of 0.015% in the atmosphere where plants shut down. We need far more carbon dioxide, not less.

One minute. One minute, Malcolm.

Now, I’m the only person in the world from a Congress or a Parliament who has cross-examined the government science agency. I’ve cross-examined CSIRO over a period of five years. They have admitted to me that they have never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger. Never. They have failed to show me, in the last 10,000 years, anything unprecedented in climate. Not just temperatures, anything at all, rainfall, snowfall, etc, nothing at all. They have failed to show me

30 seconds. any statistically significant change in climate. None that all. The chief scientist, after I questioned him, broke down and said to me, he is not a climate scientist, and he doesn’t understand it. Yet, that man was around the country spreading this misrepresentation of carbon dioxide and climate.

10.

No one anywhere has identified any quantified effect of carbon dioxide from human activity and climate. And thus, there is no basis for policy whatsoever.

All right. Well done. Malcolm. That’s your rebuttal. How you feeling Mark, by the way? You feeling okay? What was that?

Bored.

Bored!

I’ve heard it all before.

Oh really? Okay.

So start the clock.

Hang on there. I’ve just got to re set it. Give me two seconds. Here we go. All right, you’re ready, boss? And again, you’ll have two minutes to state your rebuttal and off we go. By the way, gentlemen, I won’t be making a decision on who wins this. My listeners will. Both on air and online. So we’ll put it up a little later for those who aren’t listening live. They can listen back to it, etc. We’ll leave it up for a while. Malcolm, if you wouldn’t mind, perhaps share it as well. And we’ll get some feedback from your followers. Mark, off you go.

Okay. Now what I was getting at there is all those processes took millions and millions of years to happen.

Yeah.

Now what we’re doing now, we’re clearing land the size of the United Kingdom, every year. We’ve got this corrupt fool in Brazil that’s cleared a fifth of the Amazon jungle, which pumps out oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide. Now in 1857, a scientist named Eunice Newton Foote, a lady scientist, she couldn’t understand why when the carbon dioxide was in… Looking at the earth’s history, everything began to heat up. So she did an experiment. She put a sealed jar of oxygen, a jar of, I think it was hydrogen or helium, I can’t remember what it was, and a jar of carbon dioxide and put them in the sun. And she noticed when she took measurements, the carbon dioxide absorbed, and attracted, and retained the heat, more than the other gases in the atmosphere. They were three sealed jars.

One minute.

And then years gone by. In the late ’70s, the Nixon government, they started making warnings about climate change caused by carbon dioxide. All the insurance companies in the US all got together and said, “We’re going to have to do something about this. It’s going to cost us a heap.” Now, the track were going on now, we’re clearing so much land, and we’re cutting down all the trees, it’s turning into heat sinks. I noticed that Rob Stokes this morning, announced a thing where no more houses with black roofs ’cause the cities are taking the heat sinks.

30.

If you look at new housing develops now, they’re hot because there’s no trees, all got black roofs, and because we’re pumping out so much carbon dioxide now that it’s getting hotter and hotter. Systems are starting to collapse all around the world now. And if you take any notice or if you care, we need nature.

10.

Nature doesn’t need us. We need nature. And the thing is all these right wing gits all around the place say, “Oh, so what, who cares? It’s not our problem.” I heard some fool yesterday on the radio say, “Who cares what happens in 30 years.”

All right. That’s it. Mark, all right. Well done. Well done to both you gentlemen. Any questions between each other, let’s be respectful. You had a question of Malcolm just before, Mark. You can ask it now.

Do you recycle, Malcolm?

Yeah, I recycle.

Well, hello. That’s what the earth’s atmosphere does. We have forests to recycle carbon dioxide and turn it back into oxygen.

That’s right, and-

Yay!

Nature alone produces 32 times, every year, 32 times the amount of carbon dioxide than in the entire human production around the planet. And whats more, Data shows that the-

Hang on.

Human production cannot-

We’re burning so much-

And does not change the-

fossil fuel we’re changing-

Level of carbon dioxide-

The balance.

In the atmosphere.

Okay. I think you spoke over each other. Malcolm, just again.

Again what?

Just repeat what you were saying ’cause Mark, I think, spoke over you. We couldn’t hear you properly.

I believe in recycling and-

Yeah.

Nature itself recycles through the carbon cycle, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon is essential to all life in this planet. Every cell in Mark’s body contains carbon. Carbon dioxide is essential for life on this planet. It and water vapour are essential for life. All forms of life on this planet. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas at 0.04% of earth’s atmosphere. It has no physical effect on temperatures at all.

All right, Mark?

Air, and also oxygen, blankets out the heat that’s being bombarded into the planet. We’re just changing the balance so much. These people just don’t get it. I just can’t believe people can be so thick as a society.

Hang on, lets be nice.

We need more carbon dioxide.

Let’s be respectful. It’s not about being thick. We’re talking ideology, we’re talking science, we’re talking-

All right.

It’s an important debate because it’s effectively divided our-

I’ll finish up with this.

Yeah?

I’ll finish up with this. Remember the smoking debate. They used to trot out all these people with white coats and clipboards saying “Oh, it’s not smoking. Two twins, one smoked and the other one didn’t. The one that smoked didn’t die, but the other one that died had cancer, so explain that.” They try and confuse you with figures. That’s what it is. But we’re changing the balance. And as I said before, all these things happened over millions of years, not the rate we’re doing. Not 200 years-

Yeah.

Millions of years.

All right, Malcolm?

Yeah, sure. Marcus, the use of any label like thick indicates that Mark-

Yeah.

Hasn’t got an argument that he can put together to counter the data.

Well, I think he did put an argument together, but.

The second thing, Marcus, is that raising smoking, which has got nothing to do with this. just shows that he hasn’t got an argument. Temperatures today are cooler than the 1880s and 1890s, when they were warmer 140 years ago. The longest temperature trend in the last 160 years was from the 1930s to 1976 when temperatures cooled. Since 1995, for 26 years, that’s more than a quarter of a century, temperatures have been flat yet China, India, America, Brazil, Russia are producing record quantities of carbon dioxide. When you consider nature’s El Nino cycles, there has been no warming trend at all for 26 years. And that conclusion is confirmed in NASA satellite temperature data.

All right, Mark? There is nothing unusual happening.

Mark?

Look at the extreme weather events that we’re getting now. As we talk, did you know last week in Canada, a place called Merit City, they had to evacuate 7,000 people because of the floods. Do you know in India last week they evacuated 200,000 people because the floods? This is what’s happening here. All these extreme weather events, and these people keep living in denial.

So Malcolm, Mark is suggesting climate changes has led into catastrophic floods, and we look here in Australia at the fires. Are you suggesting, Malcolm, that climate change has nothing to do with these severe climb of the severe environmental challenges faced by flood, fire, and?

Mark himself has failed to provide the evidence.

But there is evidence there.

Hang on, Marcus, I’m answering your question. The area of land burned-

Yeah. In the 2019 fires was much, much smaller than in the past. Even in the 1970s and much smaller than a hundred years ago. Much, much smaller. That’s the first point. The second point is that Antarctica has just had the record coldest six month period in its records, ever, ever.

Yeah.

And you can’t just go off… You notice, I don’t raise things like that, because that is weather. And the same with Canada having floods, we’ve always had floods. And if you look at the records from the Bureau of Meteorology, and you hear it on the news every night, oh, this is the heaviest flooding since in the last 50 years, what happened 51 years ago?

All right.

It was greater.

30 seconds each, just to finish. Mark, you first.

The weather events are getting more extreme because the oceans… I’ll just tell you. Okay, we’re in Australia. This is what’s happening. Up in Queensland they’ve cleared so much land the fertilizer’s washing into the water, feeding the Fido plankton. Fido meaning floating, plankton meaning plant life. That’s feeding the crown-of-thorns starfish. They’re munching their way through the barrier reef. Up in the gulf you’ve got hundreds of kilometres of the, what do you call them, mangroves have died off because it’s so hot. You’ve got Leeuwin Current floating in the coast of Western Australia was five degrees warmer-

All right.

than what it usually was. Five degrees!

Malcolm, last 30 seconds please.

Mark has failed to provide any evidence. Look, before we can provide any policy, you need to be able to quantify the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate. No one anywhere in the world has done that. No one anywhere has quantified any effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate. And thus, there is no basis for policy. Mark is just clutching at straws. Crown-of-thorn starfish come and go in cycles. And we’ve known that for decades and decades and decades.

All right.

We need to respect nature, not vilify nature.

Gentleman, thank you both. This has been very enlightening. Very interesting. I hope the people listening at home, and those that listen back to the podcast online, enjoy it. Thank you, Mark, and both of you for being a really good sport. I think Mark deserves kudos for taking you on, Malcolm considering others, including federal members of parliament, have refused to do so. So I think kudos to him.

I agree. I agree. Kudos to Mark. But one of the sad things is that Mark has failed to provide the evidence. What we need, Marcus-

All right.

Is to understand-

Yes.

That you need to provide the empirical data, proving the link between the human carbon dioxide and climate variability.

All right, guys.

No one has done that anywhere in the world.

All right, I have to go. We’ve got the news coming up. Thank you, gentlemen, both for your time. That’s the great climate debate.

/18 Comments/by

No plan to remove toxic solar panels

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Solar panels have a limited shelf life before they lose efficiency and don’t generate enough electricity. When that shelf life is reached, the panels need to be removed and disposed of.

Unfortunately solar panels are full of highly toxic chemicals like lead, lithium and cadmium which are hard to dispose.

Despite knowing about this looming problem for decades, the government has no plan and no budget to clean up the millions of toxic solar panels across the country.

Transcript

Chair, and thank you for appearing today. In terms of clean energy technology development, what is the proposed solution from the government to safely dispose of the heavy metal component of degraded solar cells?

Senator, there is some work underway through ARENA to look at end-of-life issues for solar cells, but to give you a specific answer right now, I’d have to take that on notice.

Okay, thank you, so some work is underway with ARENA, end-of-life. How expensive, I guess you probably can’t answer this question. How expensive will this process be and what amount had been budgeted for this task?

Yeah, Senator, I don’t think we have the right answers for those questions, and certainly from a Commonwealth perspective, there isn’t a budget allocated to that activity.

Who will be responsible for implementing this policy once it’s developed.

So I think that there’s waste disposal issues. So that’ll be governed more by state legislation than Commonwealth legislation.

So we’ll have some Commonwealth legislation hybrid?

No, Senator, I’m saying that

I’m just trying to clarify.

it’s more a state issue.

Okay, it’s a state issue. So is it likely to be privatised or would it be the responsibility of the individual solar complexes owners?

Look, I really don’t think we have answers to those questions, Senator. I think the research that ARENA is doing will provide some light onto whether or not there are issues that need to be dealt with, and then if there are, there will be policy responses developed by the relevant level of government.

If there are issues?

Yeah, that’s right.

So we don’t know if there are issues yet?

I can’t say myself that I’m aware of how significant those issues are. So research is underway.

Senator, this issue further, we’ll take the rest of that on notice. That question…

Thank you. Will these costs be factored into the massively high government subsidies that are the only way to fudge the actual cost of solar to the community who have been duped into thinking that solar is a cheap source of electricity?

We’ll take that on notice, Senator.

Thank you. Isn’t it true that if the subsidies were removed from solar, they would not be viable because solar in reality is much more expensive than coal, which is still the cheapest form of energy apart from hydro?

On notice, Senator.

On notice? Given that we know that within 10 years or less, the Australian landscape will be littered with hundreds of thousands of dead toxic solar cells. What is the plan? You don’t know the plan yet, ARENA?

We’d take that on notice to do that properly for you, Senator.

Okay, thank you. Is it the government’s intention to create a new industry of solar cell disposal?

Same again?

Senator, we’ll take that on notice

Okay. When will this government, Minister, when will this government stop pandering to the greens on this issue when it works out against Australians who now are forced to pay the most expensive electricity bills in the Western world because of the government subsidies paid for solar and wind generation?

Well, I don’t accept the premise of your question, Senator Roberts. I mean, if you look at the record under this government when it comes to energy prices, for instance, we saw quarter on quarter, month on month energy reductions in costs in energy prices. So we take that

Does that have anything to do with COVID?

We take that very seriously. No, that predates COVID, like, we can go to some of the detail of that if you’d like, but we have had a very strong focus on reducing emissions. That’s why we don’t support things like, sorry, on reducing prices and reducing emissions at the same time. And that’s why we don’t support things like carbon taxes. We have pursued approaches that support reliability, ensure, yes, renewables are very important part of the mix. I know that there will be disagreement between the government and yourself, Minister Roberts, Senator Roberts, on that, but if you look at where renewable energy is affordable, of course, that’s a great part of the energy mix. It’s doing an environmental job and it’s also contributing to the overall price points, but we know that there are challenges with that. That’s why you need backup. That’s why you need, for instance, gas-fired power as backup to renewables. And so the mix of energy is important. We take that very seriously, but no I certainly don’t accept the premise of your question.

Do you think, Minister, it’s responsible for a government to embark on a policies as they did with the Howard Anderson Government in 1996 to reintroduce the renewable energy target, to drive renewables, and yet had no plan for how we would deal with the legacies of these solar panels and wind turbines?

Well, look, it’s probably difficult for me to comment.

This is now, excuse me, this is now 25 years.

But it’s probably difficult for me to comment on sort of the policy process in, you know, 1996 and sort of in that government. So it’s, I probably can’t add too much…

Well given that we are now aware of this issue, and we’ve been saying this for years now, given that we’re now aware of this issue, let’s forget 1996, and let’s look at what your government is doing with regard to this issue now. It’s right on us. We’re gonna have these toxic panels all over the country.

Well, look, as Ms. Evans has said, I think some of those questions have been taken on notice, and, obviously, we will provide you with some further detail if we can.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay, thanks Senator Roberts.

/2 Comments/by

Climate Nonsense Taking Over

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https://youtu.be/4Ke2GHOrd14

Yet again, the Prime Minister is bowing to unelected overseas elites and forcing unnecessary, broken climate policies on Australia. Our entire economy and your job is at risk so that the elites can have more control and money.

Transcript

[Marcus Paul] Well Malcolm Roberts says that parliament has lost it’s way under the two major parties. He made this impassioned speech just the other day.

[Malcolm Roberts] The issue that is of utmost importance is the integrity of this parliament, the integrity of this country, the integrity of state parliaments, the integrity of the people of this country, and their jobs and their livelihoods. That is of utmost importance to our nation and I wish it was of utmost importance to every single person in this senate. But clearly it’s not.

[Marcus] Well.

[Malcolm] The issue that is of utmost importance is the integrity of this parliament.

[Marcus] There we go Malcolm Roberts. Good morning to you Senator.

[Malcolm] Good morning Marcus. How are you mate?

[Marcus] Alright thank you. You looked pretty annoyed when you made that speech just the other day.

[Malcolm] I’m very very annoyed because I’ve always been a passionate person for the honesty and for the truth. Integrity is extremely important to me and Pauline, and accountability is too. And you know the people of Australia are now paying 19 billion dollars a year in nonsensical rubbish commitments for these parasitic mal investments. Unreliable energy that’s destroying our energy sector. We went from the cheapest energy in the world to now amongst the most expensive.

[Marcus] Alright.

[Malcolm] And the typical family household is now paying an extra 1,300 dollars a year for this rubbish.

[Marcus] Okay but I’d love to know how much we’re paying in subsidies to fossil fuel industries. You always talk about how much money we’re subsidising renewable energy. What about the fossil fuel industry that’s making billions out of our resources, many from overseas corporations that pay little to no tax, Malcolm. And all the rest of it. Are there any figures for, ya know, how much subsidy we’re providing fossil fuel companies?

[Malcolm] The Greens claim that, that the Greens have never ever provided any evidence saying what these circle subsidies are. The closest the Greens have come is to say that depreciation and amortisation on our subsidies. That applies to every single industry, and that applies to the taxation system. So that’s nonsense.

[Marcus] Okay so what you’re suggesting

[Malcolm] The clear

[Marcus] Hang on you’re suggesting we

don’t pay subsidies

[Malcolm] Correct. to the fossil fuel industry?

[Malcolm] We’ll let’s get two things straight.

[Malcolm] First of all,

[Marcus] Course we do.

[Malcolm] It’s not fossil fuels, they’re hydrocarbons. They’re compounds of hydrocarbons.

[Marcus] Semantics.

[Malcolm] No no no no. No it’s semantics. It’s extremely important they’re hydrocarbons. Now what happens with the coal sector, coal fired power section I should say, coal fired power section is now subsidising the other forms of electricity. Because coal fired power sections are competing with subsidised wind and solar and they can’t compete on that basis. So their prices of coal fired power sections are going up because of that. But if you look at the basic costs of coal fired power sections, we can build a new power station in this country and generate electricity for 45 dollars a megawatt hour. 45. There’s nothing comes close. Wind and solar are many times that.

[Marcus] What about the affect that will cause on climate change in the longer term, Malcolm?

[Malcolm] There is no evidence anywhere in the world that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. And remember they’ve tried to tax us on this. And the tax was beaten by attorney Evan. One of the good things he did. Think about this Marcus.

[Marcus] Yeah.

[Malcolm] The production of carbon dioxide in 2009 after the global financial crisis decreased. Decreased. And yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased. Because nature alone determines the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We don’t control it. Second point, in the last 19 months with the COVID shutdown around the world, we had almost a depression. Yet the level of carbon dioxide reduced from humans using hydrocarbon fuels. Cars,

Power stations

[Marcus] Yep.

[Malcolm] gas heaters, has decreased. And yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased. Nature controls it. It wouldn’t matter how much they tax us. How much they throttled us. We will not affect the temperature. The second thing to remember is that despite the human production of carbon dioxide going up dramatically, in the last 25, 30 years, the actual temperature of the planet has stabilised since 1995. It’s been flat. It’s just natural variation, up and down from year to year. It’s been flat. So no matter which way you look at it, this is rubbish. It’s just a matter of controlling our energy,

[Marcus] Well the

[Malcolm] controlling our water,

[Malcolm] controlling our land,

[Marcus] Well okay

[Malcolm] and ripping us off in taxes.

[Marcus] Well the Prime Minister obviously doesn’t feel that way. He’s gonna sign up to net zero by 2050. He’ll drag the Nationals screaming and kicking along the way as well. And he’ll be off to Glasgow. What do you make of that?

[Malcolm] It’s another show. Another show. Look the real issue here is that we have two coalition governments vying for government. We have the Morrison Joyce government that’s currently in power as you know, and we have the Albanese Bant government. And make no mistake, the last labour government, they’ve lost so much support from their key areas that they could only govern in coalition with the Greens. And that’ll be the case

[Marcus] Whoa hold on

[Malcolm] It’ll be Albanese and Bant together.

[Marcus] No all that rubbish.

[Malcolm] The fact is that Scott Morrison has got no data. We know that. Got no data backing up his claims about having to cut down carbon dioxide from human activity.

[Marcus] Alright.

[Malcolm] What he’s doing on this is kowtowing to his globalist masters.

[Marcus] Alright I got a note here I’ll get you to comment on. It’s on the same thing. It’s from one of my listeners. Good day Marcus. Whilst the federal government dithers, bickers, and carries on developing a coherent policy for net zero emissions, the private sector is getting on with it. Rio Tinto, Big HP, the Commonwealth Bank, the CSIRO, Fortescue Metals, Mirvac, Brisbane airport, AGL, Ramsay Health Care, they’ve all pledged to slash their emissions. Atlassian’s founder says he’ll invest and donate 1.5 billion dollars for climate action. The states are all backing clean energy projects. And he concludes by saying in my view Morrison’s strategy is clear, do nothing and allow the others to do the heavy lifting. If the others succeed, as they’re likely to do so, then Morrison will take the credit. If their strategies do not work, then Morrison will not be blamed.

[Malcolm] Very very simple Marcus.

[Marcus] Hm?

[Malcolm] People, humans have a problem in that some people just follow like sheep. I challenged the chief executive officer, the head of coal division, and the chairman of BHP, several years ago, about 2014 from memory, to provide me with the evidence for their policy. They all failed. Every single, Rio Tinto failed to provide it. These people are pushing a globalist agenda. BHP you’ll notice is piling out a thermal coal because it’s mines are so damn inefficient. It’s piling out a thermal coal, steaming coal, power station coal, but it’s not saying anything about it’s coking coal. Coking coal is absolutely essential. And BHP can make money because coking coal prices are so damn high. They can’t make it in steaming coal because they’re inefficient. They’re very badly managed. I’ve challenged the chief executive officer of the ANZ bank. The head of the ANZ bank. And he can’t provide me the evidence. And what’s more, he told it’s not about evidence. It’s not about science anymore because it’s become political and the risks are too great because the globalists that are pushing this scam, and you can go back to Maurice Strong, he started this. He created this whole scam. And Maurice Strong died a criminal on the hunt from the American authority.

[Marcus] Right okay.

[Malcolm] Because of criminal activity. So this is the kind of thing we’re looking at here. And Marcus, the leadership of these companies, some of these companies, is atrocious. I can give you fine leaders who are saying it’s complete rubbish.

[Marcus] Alright.

[Malcolm] Fine leaders.

[Marcus] Okay Malcolm, always good to have you on. It’s great to get your perspective on this and I’m really interested to get your thoughts once Glasgow gets underway and we start hearing more and more about

[Malcolm] Can I?

[Marcus] action on climate, yeah?

[Malcolm] I’ll issue a challenge to you Marcus.

[Marcus Laughs] –

[Malcolm] No no

No one has been able to do this. CSRO, Bureau of Meteorology, no one. The UN panel on climate. I challenge you to provide me with the specific location of the data within a causal framework, scientific framework, and that’s what determines science. That shows we need to cut our carbon dioxide. No one has been able to do that. And what’s more I’ll issue a challenge to anyone in Australia who wants to debate me on the science and on the corruption of science. Anyone.

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