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It was a pleasure to participate in the Raise Our Voice in Parliament campaign, a national non-partisan initiative aimed at increasing the political literacy of our young voters and future voters under 25 by connecting them with their local Member of Parliament or Senator.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the speech by 16-year-old Queenslander Jade on mental health support for young people in Queensland. What an impressive speech by such an inspiring young lady.

One Nation looks forward to participating again in 2025!

Transcript

It’s my pleasure to join the Raise Our Voice in Parliament campaign, a national non-partisan initiative aiming to increase the political literacy of all our young voters and voters-to-be who are under 25 through connecting them with their local member of parliament or senator. Today I’m pleased to read 16-year-old Queenslander Jade’s speech: 

My name is Jade, I am 16 years old and my electorate is Petrie. 

The issue I would like to address is how little there is being done about mental health. Recently, I attended a youth mental health/leadership camp—this camp is called Borderline Australia. 

I went into this camp terrified; I went in with 3 friends but we were in separate groups, in separate cabins and I knew I was going to have to talk to strangers. 

I’ve struggled with many issues in my life, mainly mentally. They were either internal or they were due to the experiences I’ve had to face whether that be growing up or even recently. 

At borderline, I connected with many people and made new long lasting friendships, I would call them family. But it was when people would share their stories that I realised nothing is being done. 

Many issues with mental health are occurring and it’s not good enough that we don’t do enough. And it’s so sad that everyone has a story. Having this realisation made me sad and sympathetic – are my future children going to grow up in a world where their mental health isn’t cared for? 

This issue is important because it is a fundamental right that people should live in a community where they are cared for and they shouldn’t have to pay to seek help for their struggles. 

People do care, people will listen and help—the ones you least expect. My call to action is for therapy to be free to the youth, and for Borderline Youth Camp to be able to occur more frequently to help the youth like myself—as it makes an everlasting impact. 

Jade’s heartfelt comments deserve a place in the Senate Hansard. They’ll be going into the Hansard as part of the Raise Our Voice in Parliament campaign. 

Queensland has been identified as the “crime capital of Australia,” with nearly 300,000 residents falling victim to crime in the past year (9news.com.au | June 30, 2024).

It’s clear we need to take action! We all have a fundamental right to feel secure in our homes, workplaces, and communities.

Join us to discuss this and other pressing issues affecting many Queenslanders. This is your opportunity to share experiences, express your concerns, and learn about the solutions One Nation propose if elected in October. Change begins with the choices we make. To truly make a difference, we must reconsider who we send to Parliament.  Together, we can create a safer Queensland!  

RSVP: https://qld.onenation.org.au/meet-with-glen-cookson-and-senator-malcolm-roberts  

📅  25 September, 2024 

🕒  6 pm to 8 pm 

📍  Springlife Conference Centre, 178 Springwood Road, Springwood, QLD 

Join me and Michelle Wilde, your One Nation Candidate for Clayfield, for this FREE community forum on Queensland’s Crime Crisis!

🗓️ Friday, 9 August 2024
🕒 6 pm to 10 pm
📍 Hamilton Hotel, 442 Kingsford Smith Drive, Hamilton

Queensland has recently been labeled ‘Australia’s Crime Capital,’ with nearly 300,000 residents affected by crime in the past year alone. The numbers are staggering: 58,479 assaults, 49,490 break-ins, and 18,210 car thefts—making Queensland’s crime rates 12% higher than New South Wales, despite its smaller population | https://senroberts.com/qld-crime.

This is an opportunity to share experiences and concerns with us and fellow residents.

RSVP: https://qld.onenation.org.au/crime-crisis-forum

Dining in? Please book directly with the hotel on (07) 3268 7500 or book online here: https://www.hamiltonhotel.com.au/dining

Join us for a community forum to discuss the concerns surrounding the Fire Ant Eradication and Control Program.

Many residents have raised concerns about how the program is being conducted.

Friday, 19 July 2024

6 pm to 8:30 pm

Samford Community Centre

41 School Road, Samford

Join us for a community forum discussing Crime, Cost of Living, Renewables … and more!

Liz Suduk, your One Nation Candidate for the October Queensland State Election, will be joining me to hear any concerns affecting you and your community!

Dining in? Book your meals directly with the Inglewood Hotel by calling (07) 4652 1374

RSVP here: https://senroberts.com/3XP8fDL

Saturday, 13 July 2024

5:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Inglewood Hotel
79 Albert Street, Inglewood

Join us for a discussion on Native Title … and more! Liz Suduk, your One Nation Candidate for the upcoming Queensland State Election, will be joining me to hear your concerns on this and other issues affecting you and your community!

Dining in? Book your meals directly with the Toobeah Hotel by calling (07) 4677 5280

RSVP here: https://senroberts.com/3WcJGPJ

Saturday, 13 July 2024

11 am to 1:30 pm

Toobeah Hotel Motel
Lot 8 Barwon Highway, Toobeah

Join us for a discussion on Cost of Living, Crime … and more!

Wayne Ziebarth, your One Nation Candidate for the upcoming Queensland State Election, will be joining me to hear your concerns on this and other issues affecting you and your community!

Dining in? Book your meals direct with the Boonah Tavern by calling (07) 5463 1007

Sunday, 14 July 2024

12 noon to 2:30 pm

Please RSVP here: https://senroberts.com/4eTh1Xw

Boonah Tavern
88 High Street, Boonah

It was a pleasure to have a long chat with two fantastic veterans – Dylan Conway from the charity, Brothers and Books and Michael Lorrigan of Two 14 Coffee Company – to talk all things Defence and Veterans.

Brothers and Books does fantastic work supporting reading therapy for first responders, with companies like Two 14 Coffee backing them up.

You won’t want to miss the incredible story of what these gentlemen are doing for the Australian community.

Community TV provides a vital service to small business, to communities, and to developing future workers in the broader TV & Radio sector. It provides a training ground for emerging talent and provides programmes with heart. If it didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have this ‘free’ hands-on training ground for students.

Across refreshingly propaganda-free community television and radio, 17,000 volunteers and almost 1,000 employees generate $250 million in value each year. The federal government contributes $43 million each year towards the cost, or rather, the taxpayers do. I wish more recipients of government (taxpayer) funding demonstrated such a positive return on investment.

The bipartisan approach of the Lib-Lab Uniparty is jeopardising the future of Community TV. Why? Because mainstream TV desires the viewership, and telecommunication companies covet the bandwidth.

Welcome to Australia, where the power lies in the hands of foreign shareholders of television and telecommunication companies. If the government genuinely intended to counter the powerful financial sway of telecommunication and broadcast companies, it would have supported my amendment, which sought a guarantee that Community TV would always have free-to-air bandwidth.

The impending digital restack will involve moving broadcast television channels closer together to free up a sizable, contiguous band section of bandwidth, which will then be sold to telecommunication companies. Taxpayers stand to make over a billion dollars from the sale, while telecommunication companies will profit significantly more.

Community TV is likely to disappear permanently due to the interests of telecommunication companies and mainstream mouthpiece media.

Transcript

One Nation supports the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Community Television) Bill 2024. Across community television and radio, 17,000 volunteers and almost 1,000 employees generate $250 million in value each year, every year. The federal government contributes $43 million towards the cost—or, I should say, the taxpayers do. I wish there were more recipients of government funding—taxpayer funding—with that good a return on investment. 

In 2017, the national network of community TV stations was attracting more than one million unique viewers a week. Top programs were attracting 400,000 viewers, including off-peak repeats in the week of release. In 2024, those ratings would rank in the top 20 of free-to-air and cable shows. That’s why Malcolm Turnbull destroyed community TV, moving channels off free to air to an online model where a commercial business plan was impossible, thus returning a million viewers a week to commercial television, which was suffering from falling ratings and advertising revenue. Channel 31 and C44 in Adelaide resisted and were saved as a result of work by One Nation and the Greens. Ratings on free-to-air television have fallen since 2017 in terms of the percentage of available screens because mainstream television is mostly absolute rubbish, completely lacking in the creativity and anarchy that attracted such a large and loyal following to stations like C31. Community TV is at times weird and wonderful. Programs with heart and soul have been replaced with commercial programs devoid of those very qualities. 

The small cost of community TV must be considered in the wider context. Community TV provides a training ground for talent, scriptwriters, make-up artists, producers, directors, sound and lighting. The former TVS in Sydney was based out of the University of Western Sydney school of media in Kingswood, offering students both theoretical and practical tuition. C31 is based out of RMIT in Melbourne. The now closed C31 in Brisbane included programming using students from the Queensland University of Technology. Mainstream television look for graduates of community television when hiring staff. If community TV did not exist then the taxpayers would be on the hook for vocational education training places to teach those skills.  

As a result of the closure of all states except Melbourne and Adelaide, small businesses across the country have been deprived of the opportunity to access advertising on broadcast television. Many brands have grown their business and community TV and now find advertising on commercial TV is unaffordable. Often small business can’t even get a TV advertising salesman to return their calls.  

This legislation, which extends C31 and C44 licences into the future is welcome. Yet it’s half a solution. Community TV deserves to get their broadcast rights back in the upcoming digital television restack promise for 2024 and now apparently some years away, so it’ll survive for a while. The restack will involve moving our broadcast and television channels closer together to free up a large contiguous section of bandwidth that would then be sold off to telcos. The taxpayers will make north of $1 billion out of the sale; telcos will make much much more.  

There we have it. Community TV is likely to disappear permanently because the interests of mainstream mouthpiece media and telcos have aligned against it. Mainstream TV want the viewers; telcos want the bandwidth. Welcome to Australia where the power is in the hands of foreign shareholders of television and telecommunication companies, and everyday Australians just don’t matter. Our kids are getting free hands-on tuition in television production does not seem to matter. Having a channel that doesn’t offer propaganda and prurient rubbish doesn’t seem to matter.  

It’s disappointing that Minister Rowland declined to support my second reading amendment, which I had intended to foreshadow to guarantee bandwidth for community TV in the upcoming digital restack. I understand the argument the government is using. There’s an inquiry into the future of free-to-air broadcasting—also called over-the-top broadcasting. Committing to community TV now though does get ahead of the inquiry findings. But, so what? If there was any real intention on the part of the government to go against the powerful financial influence of telcos and broadcast stations, the government would have supported my amendment.  

The government, sadly, is not prepared to guarantee one tiny little bit of bandwidth for community TV. One Nation is prepared to make that guarantee because we are not beholden to the foreign predatory billionaires and their wealth funds. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I urge community TV and radio to continue broadcasting. As the people’s media, you perform a vital service. Thank you.  

Every Australian child deserves to be protected from inappropriate reading material in taxpayer funded, public libraries. You have every right to have a say about what books are appropriate for your children, grandchildren, and students. 

Sign and share the petition below – closing date is 17 April – and help to make libraries safer places for our children. 

A thorough audit of libraries for “Submittable Publications” is recommended by the petitioners. Any explicit material meeting the criteria should be sent for classification review. The petition calls for a proactive approach and consistency of classification to protect children from explicit content.

It has become a growing trend in public libraries, including their online catalogues, to display books that are quite frankly designed to groom children about sex. We have the right to say this is not acceptable!

The ‘woke brigade’ are calling it book-burning. It’s not about erasing knowledge — it’s about decency and protecting children’s innocence by letting them have their childhood.

Leave our kids alone!