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Soviet-Style Rule in Australia Under Labor

Here is my reflection on the second Albanese government budget, particularly relevant as the Prime Minister is breaking his election promises at breakneck speed.

Were these promises ever designed to be kept? Or were these strategic promises designed to hide this government’s Soviet-style agenda during the election campaign? It’s that agenda that I speak to — an agenda of making people reliant on government handouts, to make them captive to the government. A compliant, captive population is the building block of a Soviet-style society that this Prime Minister appears to have supported in his youth.

As part of this agenda, rather than creating viable private sector jobs, the Prime Minister is destroying them.

We’ve lost 1,500 jobs in transport with the loss of Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics in the name of net zero-trucking. We’ve lost jobs and risk losing entire communities in coal regions, including the Bowen Basin in our state of Queensland, in the name of net zero-mining. We’ve lost jobs in the live sheep export industry, which Labor is shutting down in the name of net zero-grazing. We’re set to lose more jobs and more family farms in the agricultural sector as Minister Plibersek restarts water buybacks in the name of net zero-agriculture. ‘No water buybacks’ was another broken promise which all along was really a bald-faced lie.

Net zero has made Australians poorer, transferring tens of billions of dollars in wealth from taxpayers to the government’s mates in the solar and wind scam, who then export that wealth to foreign tax havens. Solar and wind are parasitic mal-investments. They’re parasitic and they kill their host, the Australian economy. All this is wrapped in a feel-good cloak of saving the planet.

Net zero is a fraudulent plan to replace productive energy generation with fairytale generation designed to create energy shortage, and from that shortage comes control. The only winners will be the billionaire carpetbaggers who are driving this agenda through their ownership of media, energy companies and, of course, political parties.

The PM has given in to the foreign controlled Australian banks, removing penalties for criminal banking behaviour. As night follows daylight robbery, criminal banking behaviour will follow.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I believe this second Albanese government budget is a time for reflection, a reflection on what this government promised and what it’s delivered. There’s been much talk about the Prime Minister’s broken promises, without any thought to the question: were these promises ever designed to be kept, or were these strategic promises designed to hide this government’s Soviet-style agenda during the election campaign? It’s that agenda that I speak to now. It’s an agenda of making people reliant on government handouts, to make them captive to the government. A compliant, captive population is the building block of a Soviet-style society that this Prime Minister appears to have supported in his youth.

As part of this agenda, rather than creating viable private sector jobs, the Prime Minister is destroying them. We’ve lost 1,500 jobs in transport with the loss of Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics in the name of net zero—trucking. We’ve lost jobs and risk losing entire communities in coal regions, including the Bowen Basin in our state of Queensland, in the name of net zero—mining. We’ve lost jobs in the live sheep export industry, which Labor is shutting down in the name of net zero—grazing. We’re set to lose more jobs and more family farms in the agricultural sector as Minister Plibersek restarts water buybacks in the name of net zero—agriculture. ‘No water buybacks’ was another broken promise which all along was really a bald-faced lie.

Net zero has made Australians poorer, transferring tens of billions of dollars in wealth from taxpayers to the government’s mates in the solar and wind scam, who then export that wealth to foreign tax havens. Solar and wind are parasitic mal-investments. They’re parasitic and they kill their host, the Australian economy. All this is wrapped in a feel-good cloak of saving the planet. Supported by affluent Australians who have led lives of plenty, these people now embrace the climate agenda to ease their conscience about leading lives of plenty. In reality, net zero is a fraudulent plan to replace productive energy generation with fairytale generation designed to create energy shortage, and from that shortage comes control. The only winners will be the billionaire carpetbaggers who are driving this agenda through their ownership of media, energy companies and, of course, political parties. The Prime Minister has given in to the foreign controlled Australian banks, removing penalties for criminal banking behaviour. Surely, criminal banking behaviour will follow.

Let me remind people: former Prime Minister John Howard did the same thing in 2003 when he tore up the banking code of practice and gave the green light to banks to tear apart the laws of fairness and decency, laws that protected everyday Australians from financial exploitation. Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones has withdrawn penalties for criminal bankers in his financial accountability scheme proposal. He really is a friend—a great friend—of the big banks and their foreign owners. What, may I ask, is he doing in the Labor Party? The Prime Minister is hollowing out the bush, transferring up to two-thirds of Australian land area to the United Nations through native title and locking it away from Aboriginals. The Prime Minister has cancelled one submarine that will never be built and replaced it with another submarine that will never be built, all the while destroying Australia’s defensive capability. Everyday Australia will feel the result of this mismanagement all at once, and then unrest will result. That’s why the Prime Minister and our weakened, complicit military leadership are training Australian troops to attack Australian protesters. Clearly, the troops on the streets threatening and intimidating Australians into staying silent in their homes were just on a training exercise for what’s to come. Yet the future is never dictated; it can only be manipulated.

Conservatives can retake government in the next election if we come together and do more to spread our message of economic prosperity, family, community and Australian values. I’ve said this before in this place: abundance is not a dirty word; it’s a wonderful word. One Nation is the party of abundance, with policies that generate wealth for everyday Australians and prevent wealth from being leeched away from Australia. Conservatives must do more to drown out the self-interest of the presstitute media, who are advancing the interests of predatory billionaires on their share register over the interests of everyday Australians. Here’s an example: in the recent Senate committee hearing into One Nation’s anti-vaccine-mandate bill, we heard of a fine young Australian killed by vaccine mandates imposed by her employer, SG Global. SG Global is part-owned by the Vanguard investment fund. Their primary shareholder is a South African company that is partly owned by Vanguard. They use financing instruments from Vanguard. Vanguard use their ownership to force vaccine mandates that require the purchase of vaccines from Pfizer, a company in which Vanguard are the largest institutional shareholder. Do you see how it works? That’s how the rich become richer and everyday Australians lose wealth, lose health and, with no explanation or media interest, lose their lives in unexplained deaths. There have been more than 35,000 excess deaths in Australia. In a world run by everyday Australians, this sort of crony capitalism would rightly be considered racketeering, yet no action has been taken by the uniparty to uncover the truth and dispense justice to the crooked.

What we hear from the Prime Minister is rhetoric around plans for better days accompanied by handouts to make it look like he cares—not to do good but to look good. Handouts are government funded fake jobs which will not lift the poor out of poverty. They will not provide a sustainable breadwinner job that is so necessary for starting and supporting a family. The indisputable truth here is that wealth drives social change, not the other way around. Handouts take wealth; they do not create it. This is why every policy that comes out of the antihuman Greens, the teals and the Labor Party is about making people poorer and taking their homeownership, their spending power, their opportunity and, worse, their pride in order to break their spirit.

This is not an unfortunate outcome of Albanese government policies. This is the agenda the Prime Minister was covering up with his empty promises during the election campaign. It is a deliberate strategy to return the public to poverty, where they can be controlled, indoctrinated and caged in their 15-minute cities. Even the Bank of England stated recently that the public had to get used to being poorer. To hell with that. Corporate ownership and influence in Australia have gone too far. Health has been compromised, as I spoke about during my recent matter of public importance on a COVID royal commission, which the Albanese government promised before it was elected. Education has been compromised, as I spoke about in my two-minute statement on the sex education program of the UN and the UN’s World Health Organization that can only be called child sexual grooming. Energy has been compromised, as Treasurer Chalmers’s $15 billion income support in the budget shows. This giveaway is an admission of the failure of parasitic solar and wind energy to provide energy that people can afford.

It’s not just energy, of course. Food is becoming much more expensive, and that process will continue until everyday Australians eat the bugs or the lab meat—the in-vitro, cancerous meat. If this is not obvious to the chamber yet, then let me use an example from the Netherlands, where the globalist government of World Economic Forum lackey Mark Rutte has announced that they’re buying back 1,000 family farms from Dutch farmers and rewilding them, using taxpayer money to buy back farms and shut the farms, shutting food production. The purchase agreement made at the point of an administrative gun requires the farmers to agree to never farm their land or any other land in the European Union ever again—all that knowledge gone, all that experience gone and all those farmers prevented from ever growing food again. Is this where Australia is heading? Under the antihuman Greens and the soviet Albanese government, the answer is yes, no doubt. I call on the Prime Minister to categorically rule out purchasing and rewilding Australian farms and to rule out taking food off the table and the future away from rural Australians. One Nation’s message to the Prime Minister is this: Australia is not the Soviet Union, and it never will be.

It’s time Australian conservatives left behind the fifth column of globalist infiltration that has infected parts of the Liberal and National parties and returned to genuine conservativism. History has shown that the only way to lift people out of poverty and oppression is through economic progress. That’s the basis for human progress. The last 170 years have been remarkable for that. The last 30 years have seen a backward step under policies adopted from the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. History has taught us that some rich greedy bastard will always try and take everything for themselves. It is, though, only in recent years that the Labor and Liberal parties have decided to let them do that, no doubt in response to pressure from the party of the rich, the teals. The Liberals seem to have forgotten one of their founding principles: wealth in the hands of everyday Australians is the antidote to oppression and tyranny.

One Nation will grow the wealth of everyday Australians and drive Australia forward using our abundant, cheap means of power generation, coal, to produce clean, environmentally responsible baseload power—reliable, secure, stable, synchronous baseload power. This will provide an answer to net zero for those who have joined the UN and World Economic Forum’s alliance and its net zero cult, while we will also save the national silverware—and by that I mean our productive capacity.

One Nation will use vehicles driven by internal-combustion engines that power our productive capacity in a way that electric vehicles can only ever pretend to do, at a fraction of the cost of those monstrous electric vehicles—inefficient resource hogs. One Nation will build infrastructure, including through Project Iron Boomerang, the Outback Way project, the Gladstone port upgrade and the Hells Gate water and hydro project. These are Queensland projects that will provide breadwinner jobs for 100,000 Australians and add 20 per cent to our gross domestic product. The longer the Albanese government wrecking ball continues, the more Australia will need a One Nation conservative government to restore wealth and opportunity to everyday Australians.

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Albanese Government Housing Bill is a Sham

What is Albanese’s solution to the housing crisis? He won’t slow down the 400,000 new immigrants arriving this year. He won’t stop foreign investors snapping up property. He won’t stop short term rentals.

Instead, they will invest a maximum of $2.5 billion over five years into a property market in Australia that is worth over $10 trillion dollars. A drop in a bucket is bigger than the 0.025% this bill represents.

If we want to fix housing in this country we have to cut red tape and stop the 400,000 arrivals this year pushing up rental and house prices, not just create another layer of bureaucracy.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I say the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and related bills introduce a seriously flawed concept—many flawed concepts. The Housing Australia Future Fund Bill establishes the Housing Australia Future Fund to make funds available for Housing Australia to make grants and loans in relation to acute housing needs, social housing or affordable housing—more bureaucracy. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023 renames the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation to Housing Australia—more bureaucracy. This is a clear difference between the Liberal and Labor parties. The Liberal Party name their reckless, wasteful market interventions as corporations. The Labor Party give their reckless, wasteful market interventions grander names. ‘Housing Australia’ sounds so big, so comforting and so reassuring, yet it falsely implies the Prime Minister has the housing crisis sorted when he is way off target. He’s making it worse.

Prime Minister Albanese’s solution is not to slow down the obscene level of immigration pouring into cities without homes for people to occupy. His solution is not to address foreign investors buying and locking up new homes so they can be sold as brand-new in a few years time when values increase. His solution is not to address short-term rentals pushing the long-term rentals out of the housing market. No, his solution is an investment fund that will make no noticeable improvement to the housing crisis.

Here’s the data around that. The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts the number of Australian dwellings at 10 million. This bill pretends to add 30,000 new dwellings, or a 0.3 per cent increase. The total value of Australian dwellings is just under $10 trillion. We need as much as $1 trillion worth of new housing by 2030 to meet the needs of everyday Australians, including migrants. This government is offering $2.5 billion. That’s 0.025 per cent.

The government can’t build enough homes to fix this. Only private enterprise can meet Australia’s needs. What created this mess? Red tape, green tape and blue tape created this mess, and high interest rates from a flawed Reserve Bank strategy and inflation from bad government management created the mess. The only thing that will work is getting government out of the way and letting free enterprise fix this mess. Anything else is dishonesty—reckless dishonesty. The Housing Australia Future Fund Bill is dishonest. Not only does this bill not solve the housing problem for people who are already here; it does not solve the housing problems for the millions that will arrive by 2030. Either that Albanese government is deliberately misrepresenting the outcome of the bill or there is more here than the paperwork suggests.

Let’s see what else we have here. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023 streamlines the functions of Housing Australia—oddly, by making it bigger—establishes an annual review mechanism for the National Housing Infrastructure Facility and extends the Commonwealth guarantee of the liabilities of Housing Australia to apply to contracts entered into until 30 June 2028. This last one is interesting. In Queensland a number of construction companies have gone broke recently. The main reason is that, thanks to the government, we have high inflation and home builders use fixed-price contracts. The last thing you want in a fixed-price contract is high inflation taking the profit margin and pushing the builder into a loss on every home they build. Who is going to build the homes now that private enterprise can no longer shoulder their fair share of the burden? Well, the government, of course—so it says—or is it? I’m sure Anthony Albanese’s mates in those big union superannuation funds are out there recruiting builders as we speak.

The Acting Deputy President: Order, Senator Roberts! Remember to refer to the Prime Minister by his correct title.

Senator Roberts: Prime Minister Albanese’s mates in those big union superannuation funds are out there recruiting builders as we speak, ready to open their construction division to build and own Australian housing. If the project runs over budget, who cares? It’s taxpayer money. After all, the government is giving a liability guarantee, so just shovel that government money right in there.

The bill will distort the housing construction market. On one hand, suppliers are under pressure to hold costs down to make private-sector construction affordable for everyday Australians to build and own their homes. On the other hand, Housing Australia will be out there paying top dollar to get their materials and labour to deliver the homes to keep their jobs. What could go wrong with that? The Albanese government could have worked with the supply chain and with banks to put in place supply chain security to keep existing builders in business. Instead, it went the Soviet route again, pushed the private sector aside and let the government build it.

The third part of this package is the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023. That streamlining thing I mentioned earlier apparently extends to creating a whole new advisory body called the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council to advise the Commonwealth government on matters related to housing supply and affordability. It’s more bureaucracy. We already have the Productivity Commission and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to provide this economic statistical data. We have a federal department to advise the minister on housing. Now we have a whole new body as well—more bureaucrats. Where is the corresponding reduction in the department’s budget allocation, reflecting a substantially reduced workload? Bigger government is the Labor Party’s answer to everything. History would disagree.

The numbers on this bill do not add up. The Housing Australia Future Fund, HAFF, will receive $10 billion to fund the delivery of 30,000 social and affordable homes and allocate an additional $330 million to acute housing needs over the HAFF’s first five years. Oh, really? I noticed, though, that the budget line item for this bill is $15.2 billion. The explanatory memorandum states the Housing Australia Future Fund ‘would be credited with $10 billion as soon as practicable after establishment.’ Where’s the other $5 billion going? Once invested, the Housing Australia Future Fund would provide up to $500 million per year to support social and affordable housing. That’s a five per cent return on investment, which is nice if you can get it in the current investment market. The Future Fund can’t. Their return on funds invested in the 2022 calendar year was negative 3.7 per cent. The fund would be reduced and no houses built—borrowed money, interest costs, lost money, no homes built. Even at a five per cent return on investment, a $500 million dividend for five years—that’s $2½ billion—divided by the 30,000 homes is $83,300 per home. One may speculate that these are going to be really tiny homes, yet the truth is likely far worse than that.

What would a home built by this Labor government actually look like? Subdivisions will be of the modern design, with narrow streets, because cars are an environmental sin, and we will never have the generation capacity for everyday Australians to use electric cars. Those are for the city elites, in the nomenclature. Eliminating excavation for obsolete parking garages will save money. Residents will instead walk or ride children’s scooters. Shopping will be delivered by drone from BlackRock and Vanguard-owned businesses like Amazon, Coles and Woolworths. Cameras will keep you safe and inside your 15-minute allocated region. Are cameras coming out of the $83,000 for each house or are local governments paying for those?

Home units will be constructed to the four corners of each block, and the landscaping which used to soften these buildings will no longer be allowed, because pointless plants waste water. Canberra’s posh Red Hill suburb, where senior bureaucrats live, gets beauty while everyday Australians get utility. They get cell blocks, really. Ceilings will be lowered, walkways narrowed and walls made thinner to squeeze additional units into low-rise blocks without lifts, with a daily water allowance of 120 litres per person. I remember receiving a presentation on that target back in 2019. A standard bathtub holds 180 litres, so baths are every bit as much the environmental vandals as gas stoves. Don’t laugh, Senator Duniam. Toilets will be half flush only. I don’t get this one. Is there a little electric charge that zaps you if you flush twice? How does that save water? Smart water meters will police water limits and make home and balcony gardens impossible to keep watered. So purchasing food from corporate supermarkets and corporate takeaways will be the only way to eat. Smart electricity meters will police our daily energy allowance and remotely switch off unapproved appliances.

All of these things are the current ideology of modern urban design, stated in writing. Many of these are already evident in council building codes. Smart meters are being deployed as we speak. Once the reality of having to sell a home built to these standards is removed by government ownership, all of these measures will be standard. Even if you apply Hive home ideology, can the cost come down to $83,000 per house? I doubt it. But to use a yardstick of $400,000 or more is to ignore the real intent of the bill. It is a principle we are hearing a lot, lately: you will own nothing and be happy, or else.

After the bill passes, the minister will decide where and how the money will be spent. After the bill passes, we’ll get the details. Disbursements, including grants made under the scheme, will be a budget measure, meaning the Senate can’t disallow them. The legislation does not include the rules around who can and can’t get a grant or disbursement, so this bill is really a $2.5 billion blank cheque. Clause 49 would allow the future fund board to use derivatives for certain purposes. This could include using derivatives as a risk management tool or to achieve indirect exposure to assets that it could not otherwise achieve. That sounds terrifying. I look forward to the minister’s explaining the intention of this section in the committee stage. We have questions for you.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 ‘establishes the council as an independent statutory advisory body to inform the Commonwealth’s approach to housing policy by delivering independent advice to the government on options to improve housing supply and affordability’. This is more bureaucracy. Does this suggest that the bureaucrats have been giving poor advice to the government? We already have a Commonwealth department of housing. What’s gone wrong with that department that we need this whole new additional body? Or is this just another opportunity for jobs for your mates among union bosses and among the union superannuation industry?

This bill should have been about getting people into their own homes. That requires making life easier for private-sector homebuilders and for private homeownership, which will take demand out of rental accommodation and free up homes at more-realistic prices for those who can only rent. Instead, Prime Minister Albanese is using government construction to push private homebuilders out of the market and entrench renting over owning. There is a lot of additional bureaucracy and a lot of economic and social harm for proportionally little benefit, for almost no benefit.

One Nation opposes this Soviet-style reckless, wasteful market intervention. One Nation proposes getting down to basics: cutting immigration until housing and infrastructure catch up; cutting red tape, green tape and blue UN tape; comprehensively reforming taxation to give Australians a fair go; shrinking government to fit the Constitution; and getting the government the hell out of people’s lives, enabling people to make choices that suit people’s and families’ needs. We do not need more bureaucrats and more waste; we need more houses, real houses. We need a return to basics. Let the tradies of Australia get on with the job.

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Labor wants to kill the industries that just saved their budget

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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The Budget – Malcolm Roberts on Sky News

I joined the Sky News panel last night to discuss the budget being handed down and what it means for Australians.

The most important thing to remember is that booming Agriculture and Mining saved the budget this year, not Jim Chalmers. If Labor keeps demonizing these industries and trying to send them broke the country will very quickly get worse.

Transcript

Kieran Gilbert: Welcome back to Budget Night Live. Our crossbench panel of Senate kingmakers are with me now ready to reveal how they’ll vote on the budget’s most polarising policies. Joining me at the desk independent senators Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock, One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts and Greens senator and finance spokesperson, Barbara Pocock. Great to see you all. Thanks for being here.

Senator Lambie, first to you. We’ll get some initial thoughts. What were your overall assessment of the budget?

Jacqui Lambie: It’s great that you’re helping the vulnerable in a certain way, although we’ll come back to that. But what bothers me more than anything, it’s those middle income earners. They are struggling themselves and a lot of them will just be over that threshold, where they won’t receive anything and those interest rates coming up continue to go up. That’s really bothering me. There is nothing for them at all. It’s something like we’re trying to push them further down and therefore a further gap between the rich and the poor. And that bothers me terribly.

The other thing that bothers me too, is when you give rental assistance out, and I know the Greens have been calling for this, for further rental assistance, and you have interest rates going up, that person that’s renting that house to you, has also got to cover their own. I’m not sure that that is going to benefit where it’s meant to go. It’s going to go to the homeowner and that’s what bothers me.

Same with childcare. When you give extra to childcare, unless you cap the fees you are paying that they’re allowed to charge you, guess what’s going to happen on the 15th of June? Every childcare centre that’s out there going to say, “We’re actually putting our fees up.” Okay, it’s great to throw money out there, but you’ve got to put caps on stuff so people don’t continue, so the greed doesn’t go to the top.

Kieran Gilbert: Yeah. Senator Pocock, your thoughts on the efforts tonight? You’ve been pushing for a JobSeeker increase across the board. They’ve delivered on that.

Jacqui Lambie: Is that what you call it?

David Pocock: I mean, the big take takeaway is health, investment in health. Clearly, I think this is an acknowledgement that our universal healthcare system is no longer that universal and there are so many people out there who aren’t seeing their GP, because they simply either can’t get in or can’t afford it. So, great to see investment in health.

Kieran Gilbert: You give a tick on that.

David Pocock: When it comes to JobSeeker, $2.85 a day, it’s a bit laughable, to be honest. It’s embarrassing. This is something that is keeping people in poverty. This is a decision that will leave people in poverty. We hear all this talk about getting people back into the workforce. Experts are saying that when you’ve got people living in poverty, it’s an impediment, it’s a barrier to them getting back into the workforce. So, I think we missed a massive opportunity to actually lift people out of poverty and allow them to get their lives back together, get back into work.

Kieran Gilbert: Isn’t one of the challenges, Barbara Pocock, is the inflationary environment we’re in at the moment? So, the government was cautious about increasing payments too much right now.

Barbara Pocock:

I think there are a lot of people looking to this budget hoping there would be help to let them deal better with the inflationary environment, with the cost of living crisis. I think there’s a lot of disappointment. That trivial increase, I mean $40 a fortnight is not nothing, but it’s not what people need. The rental assistance rise is very small and we’ve got people, it won’t even touch the sides of the rental increases we are seeing in my city, in Adelaide, and across country areas as well. So, a real missed opportunity to fix some of those really pressing questions at the bottom of our income scale and a widening inequality, because there’s some real benefits up the top of the income scale for people who are quite wealthy.

Kieran Gilbert: Malcolm Roberts, did you think the increase in the incentive for bulk billing for GPs was a good move?

Malcolm Roberts: Well, I think it’s fundamental that people understand there’s only one reason why these increases can be paid. That’s the mining industry and the agricultural sector. Jim Chalmers mentioned that we can do this because of the things we export. He won’t mention coal, he won’t mention iron ore, he won’t mention bauxite, he won’t mention agricultural products. That’s the only reason this budget is in surplus, and it shows yet again that the Treasury forecast low prices, but they’ve been saved again by high prices. The mining sector needs to be supported, not vilified.

What we need to do is open more coal mines instead of Plibersek shutting them. So, we need to build more coal-fired power stations and keep those low energy prices, because the other thing is, he’s raised the flag up the pole on energy prices, because he’s admitted that he’s failing 2050 net-zero. The UN’s policy is failing us and energy prices are rising and what we need is cheap power. Just dump the UN 2050 net-zero.

Kieran Gilbert: Been a substantial increase in migration, 400,000 people this year, 315,000 next. Is it time to back the Housing Future Fund, as the government says, because quite clearly more accommodation will be needed, Malcolm?

Malcolm Roberts: More bureaucracy, more bureaucracy, more bureaucracy. What we need to do is get the fundamentals of the economy correct, improve taxation, comprehensive taxation reform. Get rid of the red tape, the green tape, the blue tape. Set the industries free, and then we can have homes built in the right place for the right price.

At the moment, we’re getting to see more bureaucrats just adding. We’ve got three new agencies coming in the housing bill in the parliament right now. I mean, this is absurd. What we need to do is recognise the highly inflationary impact, as Warren just talked about here, of 400,000 people wanting a house. That is fundamental. That will drive up the cost of renting, the cost of housing phenomenally.

Kieran Gilbert: I know that you’ve done a deal with the government, you and your colleagues, for the housing fund. How critical is it now, given those numbers and given what the treasurer said in his speech, reiterating his commitment to it. They want it legislated this week, that fund, and given the increase in migration, sounds more critical than ever.

Jacqui Lambie: Yeah, we hadn’t taken the increase in migration into account. We just wrote about the people here right now that are living here that are without a house. We also know from experience in Tasmania, by doing that housing deal, I can tell you now, by the time you do the greenfield sites, find them, you get state to put in their money to put new pipes and that, out to suburbs and do that infrastructure underneath, it’s a two-year turnaround before you start seeing foundation put in the ground. That’s the truth of the matter. It will take two years and those approvals to do that, it takes about that time. So, that is a concern.

My concern is if you are going to bring migration into this country, and we don’t have a problem with that, the problem is where are we going to put them? This is my question, where are we going to put them? We’ve already got thousands out there screaming for houses. We can’t keep up with that demand. We are never going to catch that demand, mate, that I can see. In the meantime, we don’t have the right tradies. How do we fix this, when we don’t have enough tradies on the ground and how do we bring more immigration in, if we don’t have the houses there?

Kieran Gilbert: It’s a huge task ahead.

Jacqui Lambie: It is a huge task.

Kieran Gilbert: I know the Greens want the government to be more ambitious, but is it time to at least take what you can get and let that bill through?

Barbara Pocock: No, the bill that is there on the table doesn’t even keep up with the growth in people who are looking for housing. It cannot solve the problem. We need to grow supply, but we also most importantly have to deal with renters. One in three Australians are renting. They are really struggling to find-

Kieran Gilbert: There’s an increase in the rental assistance announced today.

Barbara Pocock: It’s very, very small. It’s $1.18 a day. I mean, it’s a tiny increase and we know people can’t find rental properties and they can’t afford it. The price of rental has gone up so much. We’re very unhappy with that bill. We feel like the government has the capability to do much more. I know as an economist, it’s about growing the supply and that bill will not do it fast enough to keep up with what’s projected.

Kieran Gilbert: Even with Jacqui Lambie’s amendments, where there’s going to be a minimum amount?

Barbara Pocock: Well, Jacqui’s amendments create a minimum, but it’s inadequate for my state and it’s inadequate for many parts of the country.

Jacqui Lambie: But the thing is, if you don’t start building these houses now, you’re going to have more people out there. You need to start doing something now. You have the biggest balance of power in that bloody senate up there. That’s what you have and you can’t keep doing deals for more housing. You’ve got to be kidding me. You have to start today. Those people need roofs over their head today.

Barbara Pocock: We need to make sure we get the rental support for the people now.

Jacqui Lambie: You can do that with your balance of power. You keep pushing that. You’ve got that big balance of power. You’ve got more than what Tammy and I have, I can tell you. And you’re not using that.

Barbara Pocock: Well, I think we’re using it very effectively.

Jacqui Lambie: Well, you want to stop people from having a roof over their head. That is disgusting.

Kieran Gilbert: Well, David Pocock, some move is better than nothing. That’s your view, isn’t it?

David Pocock: Well, I think the thing that we’re hearing is we’re facing some enormous challenges as a society. Everything from climate and the environment, people know things are getting bad, to housing, to cost of living. I think people were looking to the government for a big plan, a longer term plan, but we’ve really seen a pretty safe budget, not a lot of tough decisions. In particular around revenue, they’ve really just kicked the can down the road. The changes to the petroleum resource rent tax, it’s just tinkering at the edges. To date, the PRT hasn’t seen a cent from offshore gas projects. The way that they’ve changed it, it’s simply going to bring forward some of those projected flows of money and create some sort of really base royalty. It’s not the sort of reform that we need when we’ve got a budget that has been in structural deficit for so long and we’re just so reliant on personal income tax as a country. That needs to change and it’s going to take some really tough conversations for government.

Kieran Gilbert: Well, with that personal income tax, the stage three tax cuts, Malcolm Roberts, they don’t get a mention in the budget. The treasurer says it’s old news, that the decision’s an old one, it’s done. Government hasn’t changed its position. Do you see that as the government reinforcing their support for it?

Malcolm Roberts: Well, I’d like to build on what David said because what we’re seeing is some fundamental contradictions here. They’re just tinkering at the edges. But the fundamental contradictions are that the Reserve Bank of Australia wants to increase interest rates to send people broke so they stop spending money. Jim Chalmers, on the meantime brings in 400,000 immigrants in one year, which will drive up the price of housing, increasing the cost of living pressures and also splashing cash around, which will drive up inflation. He’s madly stuffing cash back into people’s pockets, and we’re seeing the fundamental contradictions. We need to understand the basics of what’s happening in this budget.

Kieran Gilbert: There’s a huge challenge on the NDIS front as well, Jackie Lambie. 200 people every day going onto the NDIS. They’ve put in an 8% target cap. It’s only a target, but are you worried about the sustainability of that programme?

Jacqui Lambie: What I’m worried about, and I want to be very careful how I say this, but what I’m worried about and what I do know is I’ve got veterans out there and elderly out there, and because the NDIS pays more for services right across the board, for medical services, for gardening services, it means the elderly and the veterans are going without or waiting months and months and months for those services and treatment. That’s what I know because it pays a lot more in the NDIS. Now, I’ve spoken to Minister Shorten about this since he got got in and I’ve seen no change, nor have I seen him raise those amounts for both the elderly and the veterans, so they at least match the NDIS so we have a fair go, because right now, we’ve been pushed down the line with services and medical services, and that is a problem in itself. And yes, the NDIS was always going to blow out. There’s no doubt about that. And we need to find where we can make some savings here, and who really should be on the NDIS and who should not.

Kieran Gilbert: Well, $5 billion growth every year, Barbara Pocock, are you worried about that sustainability, even with the 8% target cap?

Barbara Pocock: It is really important for us to properly fund and properly manage the NDIS, and this budget represents a really significant cut on the projected increases that we need for that programme. So I’m concerned about that. And you mentioned the stage three tax cuts. They are very real in the way that they could be used to fund the things that we need. We need to expand our care economy, pay our childcare workers, the people who didn’t get a real increase in this budget so that we can build the care supports that we need in a population where more and more women are working. And we’ve got a demographic shift where a lot more people, as Jackie says, are getting older and need support as well as properly fund the NDIS.

Malcolm Roberts: And yet we’ve got a 10% shortfall in aged care workers.

Barbara Pocock: Yeah, we need to pay them properly, keep them there.

Malcolm Roberts: 450,000 jobs needed, 45,000 short.

Kieran Gilbert: What’s your read on the NDIS as well, on top of that?

Malcolm Roberts: The NDIS needs a hell of a good look at. We’re going to spend another 700, $800 million on increased staffing to the NDIS. The NDIS fundamental problem is that it was started as a vote catcher, with no real thought behind it. Same with the NBN, same with Gonski. That’s one of the things in this country. The governments do not have the discipline to get the data and make the right decisions. They just come up with floating bubbles every now and then, just to get some headlines.

Kieran Gilbert: David Pocock, to you on the NDIS, they’ve got that target now, that cap of 8% growth every year. But even with that, to this point, it’s been $5 billion growth every year. As someone who supports it, do you also recognise the government’s concerns about the sustainability?

David Pocock: I thought Kurt Fearnley the other day, talking on RN, really nailed it, saying, “We’ve got to remember this is talking about people in our communities who desperately need the support to be able to live lives where they can be included in our society and they can contribute.” And I think that needs to be the basis of this discussion. But we clearly need to be looking at sustainability of a programme like this, and ways that it can be run efficiently and effectively to ensure that it’s there into the future.

Malcolm Roberts: Well, they’re nice words, David, but we need to get the money, and we need to have the discipline and how we spend it. At the moment, people are trying to kill the mining industry, which is the single greatest source of revenue for this country, number one and number two exports come from mining, and they’re trying to kill it. So it just does not make sense.

Kieran Gilbert: Malcolm Roberts, Barbara Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, David Pocock, thank you all. Appreciate your time on budget night and thank you for your company tonight.

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