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The Labor-Greens Agriculture Wrecking Bill

In 2016, I stood in the senate for the first time and warned that the United Nations wanted to reduce everyday Australians to the status of serfs through climate policy. I said back then we need an #AusExit, that our values and way of life were at risk from the dangerous socialist agendas of the UN. And here we are now.

Here is more legislation being pushed through Australia’s house of review, the Senate, without proper scrutiny or debate. Labor is doing more dodgy deals on behalf of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Labor has also introduced a Motion to allow the Greens to amend the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act as part of this Bill. This allows the Greens to put a Bill of their own making onto the end of the government’s Bill then vote it all through in one go. A Bill that we cannot review, amend or debate. This isn’t conventional parliamentary process. This is undemocratic dictatorship.

The ‘Nature Repair’ Bill allows large corporations to greenwash their image by leveraging the PR benefit of Nature Repair Projects they buy. It provides the means to restrict productive capacity through taking productive farmland and returning it to Gaia. It will prevent Australians and visitors to our country from being able to get out and generally enjoy our magnificent national parks because it hands more control over to traditional owners.

The globalist agenda is being rolled out in the self-interest of the world’s predatory investment funds. It’s delivered through the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum and implemented in shoddy, rushed legislation like this bill proposes.

One Nation proudly stands against everything this Bill represents and I offer the same advice as I did in 2016. We must exit the United Nations #AusExit!

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (20:06): As a servant of the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, it’s my duty to ensure I deal with every bill that comes before the Senate fully and properly. All too often, this government does dodgy deals with the Teals, the crossbench and the Greens to get legislation through without scrutiny. This is legislation that’s written for reasons of ideology, not human need, and that as a result makes things worse. This is legislation that must get through without debate, lest the electorate be informed about what the government is really doing to them in the name of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

I’m speaking about the Nature Repair Bill 2023, only 30 minutes from when the vote will be taken, yet I’m speaking to an interim bill. The massive amendments to this bill, which I know now are substantial, had not been revealed to the Senate just an hour ago. It appears to be the government’s plan to provide the amendments and then require an immediate vote. That was exactly what we saw. That’s not how the house of review, our Senate, works.

Even more troubling is that the government now has a motion that would allow the Greens to amend the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act as part of this bill—news to us until an hour ago. What that means is the Greens, with Teal Senator Pocock’s support, are being allowed to put a bill of their own making onto the end of the government’s bill and then vote it all through—a bill we can’t read, can’t amend and can’t debate. There’s a longstanding convention in the Senate that we do one bill at a time and amend only the bill at hand, a rule the government are happy to ignore when they get desperate enough numbers to do a deal with the Greens and Teals. This isn’t parliamentary process; it is undemocratic dictatorship. What a joke, and the people will be paying for it. When we call the Greens watermelons—green on the outside and red on the inside—this is why. Soviet Russia would pull a stunt like this, not democratic Australia.

I’ve spoken on several occasions recently on how this Labor government is best friends with the world’s predatory parasitic billionaires. This bill is a perfect example of that. Like the failed national electricity market, which is really a racket, this bill allows large corporations to greenwash their businesses. To explain, greenwashing allows a business—most likely a foreign multinational company—to make a claim such as being ‘net zero friendly’. That’s simply not true. They’re deceiving investors and customers in the process. They get to net zero by purchasing green certificates or carbon dioxide credits to balance out the environmental costs supposedly incurred in their business operation. A European Union report found that 95 per cent of carbon dioxide credits came from projects that did not make a difference to the environment, and Europol just a few years ago said 95 per cent are crooked. In other words, it’s all a con.

The mining industry have come out in favour of offsets, which they call ‘avoided-loss offsets’. These offsets occur after purchasing and improving an area of land with the same habitat as that which is destroyed or damaged in the development. This may appear to be mining-friendly, yet it’s really more expense and more green tape that would best be handled through the existing system of remediation—put it back the way you found it, or better, which is what is happening.

Indeed, one could be concerned that these avoided loss offsets are an alternative to remediation. I certainly hope not.

The bill helps wind turbines with the horrible problem of clubbing koalas on the koalas’ property—clubbing them to death! They could literally club 10 koalas to death and then buy a national biodiversity certificate for 10 new koalas bred somewhere else. As we speak, the Australian Carbon Credit Unit’s review is underway. The review is looking at a thousand carbon dioxide credit generating projects to see if they were fair dinkum and have been kept up. The lessons from that review were going to be added to this bill to ensure the national biodiversity certificate system was legitimate. Bringing forward this bill actually ruins that process.

One Nation opposes greenwashing, although, in most cases, we would suggest that the better option would be for our mining and manufacturing industries to first use environmentally friendly techniques, as they usually do. Then, having done that, be proud of their role in developing the economy, providing jobs and supplying materials that people need for a life of abundance. Perhaps that’s just we conservatives taking care of the natural environment and taking care of people. Some submissions to the Senate inquiry called on the government to purchase the certificates themselves to provide certainty that, should a project be completed, there would be someone to buy the resulting certificate. Minister Plibersek has ruled this out—the only decision in this whole process One Nation can support.

I was amused with the submission from champagne socialists in the Byron Shire Council, who submitted that— quote—’free market alone may not facilitate rapid uptake of this scheme,’ and called on the federal government to kickstart the market by committing to purchasing certificates itself. It will never stop. I would think that the federal government would be better off spending money on tax cuts for working Australians and paying off our debt so that interest rates come down, but that’s just conservative values again—human values; real environmental values.

Minister Plibersek has described this bill as creating a ‘green Wall Street’. Wall Street provides a means for financing businesses to expand productive capacity. This bill provides a means to restrict productive capacity
through taking productive farmland and returning it to Gaia. I don’t see the comparison with a genuine financial product, unless the minister was making a comparison to Bernie Madoff. That would be accurate in that case. The product itself, biodiversity credits, is subjective and, over time, will require more and more personnel to conduct compliance on an ever-increasing number of projects, just like the National Electricity Market—the racket. This does not increase productive capacity. It does increase bureaucracy at the public’s expense, of course. Many submissions opposed the use of these certificates for environmental offsets, including the Greens’, and I note their amendments remove the offsets for the purpose of these certificates. This would seem a significant conflict between the minister’s intent and the Greens’ intent. What a mess! The Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 is a solution to a problem that has not yet been defined and does not meet real needs, just like the failed National Electricity Market.

The government is working on an update on the entire Environmental Protection and Biosecurity Conservation Act—the EPBC—informed by the Samuels review into the legislation from three years ago. Those amendments will frame the problem this bill is supposedly solving. This is something that Senator Thorpe has correctly pointed out in the second reading amendment, which I will support. How do you pass a bill like this ahead of the implementation of the Samuels review? How do we know which projects should be supported and which are not needed, or, worse, which projects are a load of bollocks, like the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull, as most climate projects are—climate fraud?

In relation to ensuring integrity around the use of offsets, the Australian government is working to introduce a new national environmental standard for actions and restoration contributions. This new standard is expected to include a requirement that offsets must deliver net gain for impacted protected matters and that biodiversity projects certified under the Nature Repair Market Bill will only be able to be used as offsets if they meet the new standard. What new standard? Oh, wait, you haven’t written it yet! Great. Minister Plibersek is trying to pass a bill that implements a standard that hasn’t been written yet. Can someone please give the government’s legislation chocolate wheel back to rotary and we’ll go back to doing things properly—you know, in the correct order.

This legislation implements something called the Nature Positive Plan. That sounds good. This is the government’s overarching environmental blueprint. I notice that, on page 32, this plan includes a provision that
traditional owners will have more control over Commonwealth national parks. More control!

Australians who are used to bushwalking, camping and generally enjoying the beautiful national parks Australia offers are flat out of luck under this Labor government. ‘No nature for you. Get back to your 15-minute cities.’ That’s exactly what the United Nations sustainable development goals do—they reduce everyday Australians to the status of serfs, imprisoned in their 15-minute cities, locked in a digital identity prison, owning nothing and eating bugs instead of real food. I first said that in the Senate in 2016, and the sniggers were obvious. Well, nobody’s sniggering now. Now you’re all trying to justify the abomination your globalist masters are working to impose.

Over the remainder of the Albanese government, those in this chamber will be required to face the reality of this government’s globalist agenda. It’s not an agenda written for the benefit of everyday Australians or for the Labor heartland. It’s an agenda that serves the self-interest of the world’s predatory investment funds, delivered through lobby groups like the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum and implemented repeatedly in legislation like this. It’s an agenda that will make life a misery for everyday Australians, sending them back to serfdom. One Nation stands against everything this bill represents. It proudly stands against everything this bill represents.

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Climate Ambitions for an Unsustainable Future

I made this statement to the senate recently to highlight the insanity of the C40 scheme. This is a collaborative effort by many of the world’s largest cities which have been captured by the UN monolith and their financial backers, the world’s predatory billionaires.

C40 strives for a ‘zero-carbon future’ and of course it’s backed by those who will profit from the scheme.

In 2021, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced that 1000 city and local governments around the world have joined the ‘Cities Race to Zero’. The globalists and their mouthpiece media are supported by a captive political establishment in both the parliament and the bureaucracy.

The main outcome of C40 will be a massive increase in taxation to pay for the apparatus to police the scheme. This will require substantial reductions in personal sovereignty, taking away freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and the freedom to decide how and where you spend your own money.

C40 is about Government autocrats having more money and power, leaving everyday Australians with less. Much less.

In short C40 will regulate and tax individuals into serfdom.

The Lib-Lab duopoly and the Greens have been promoting this agenda for twenty years.

Only One Nation stands opposed to the United Nations, World Economic Forum and the World Health Organisation – all of which are dedicated to increasing their power and reducing your freedom.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I draw the Senate’s attention to C40 Cities, another campaign, from predatory billionaires who run the world, to destroy our standard of living and steal everything we own for themselves—all in the name of saving the planet. C40 Cities is a product of the usual suspects—billionaires Michael Bloomberg and George Soros, and the Clinton initiative. Sydney and Melbourne have already signed on.

As he calls on the world’s governments to do more on climate change, Michael Bloomberg is doing the opposite. In 2022, he made 702 flights in his five jets, covering 810,000 kilometres, burning 1.2 million litres of jet fuel, and, for those who are counting, producing 3,200 tons of carbon dioxide. Bloomberg’s No. 1 destination was not the Sudan or Afghanistan, where his money might actually help people; his favourite destination was the Bahamas.

Here are the top end C40 targets for 2030, just seven years away. There’s cutting steel and cement use 56 per cent. There’s increasing the number of people in each building 20 per cent—and the Reserve Bank governor recently made a similar comment. There’s eliminating—yes, eliminating!—meat consumption and dairy consumption. There’s limiting buying new clothes to three new items a year—three; that’s three pairs of undies. Food waste is to be reduced 75 per cent, mostly from homes. We’ll shop once a week, buy our allocated ration from bulk displays and eat everything we buy or starve until our next allocated shopping day. There’ll be programmable digital currency to ensure compliance.

These rules are for you, for us, not for the elites and their nomenklatura, their henchmen in the media, academia, the bureaucracy and politics. The rules never apply to the people who make them.

One Nation stands opposed to serfdom. One Nation works for freedom, basic rights and free choice.

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Labor and the Greens have decided you have too much stuff

This week the Safeguard Mechanism Bill will pass after a dodgy Labor deal with the Greens and David Pocock.

More than 200 of the largest companies in this country will have to cut their production. There’ll be less electricity, less essential goods and they’ll all be more expensive.

Just remember, you are the carbon they want to reduce.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Australia and particularly Queensland, I speak on the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting Amendment) Bill 2023. Here we go again! Once more, the Labor government is putting a Liberal-National climate policy on steroids in a race to see how quickly both of them can destroy our beloved country to appease their globalist masters.

Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese are building, in this bill, on the safeguard mechanism that Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Hunt introduced in 2015. This bill establishes a new form of carbon credits—or, more correctly, carbon dioxide credits, or, more correctly, a carbon dioxide tax—naming them safeguard mechanism credit units, or SMCs. You might ask: what is a safeguard mechanism credit unit defined as? Is it nine cow farts worth? Ten burps? The entire concept of counting carbon dioxide emissions is a scam; it’s a fraud. While we can poke fun at the scam, the lack of detail in this bill is incredibly serious. Do not let the title fool anyone. The definition of a safeguard mechanism credit is not in the bill. If the parliament passes this bill, we’ll just have to trust the minister or some bureaucrat to tell us later.

The biggest producers of goods in this country will be told to cut their production of carbon dioxide, with the amount not defined in the bill. It may be 4.9 per cent a year. If they don’t, they’ll be forced to buy undefined carbon dioxide credits—an undefined carbon dioxide tax. I use the word ‘producers’ deliberately because this bill will apply to companies in this country that actually make something—or what’s left of them. Because they’ve been forced to buy carbon dioxide credits, these companies will be forced to make less of the things they make and be forced to make them more expensive. It doesn’t matter what fancy scheme the government wants to dress this up as; it is a carbon dioxide tax. It’s a tax on production, and we all know that whenever we tax something we get less of it.

Take a look around at everything you have right now—your phone, your house, your car. If you want a new one in the future, or more things for your children, too bad; the Labor government has decided Australians have too much already and what’s left will only be for the rich, who can afford it. The Greens will smear and label me again for simply telling the truth, yet I believe we should come to parliament to make Australia prosper—not force unnecessary scarcity to appease the sun gods and the climate carpetbaggers. That’s the general rule that should be followed for a prosperous Australia: do what’s in the national interest.

Let’s look at the globalists. This legislation is not in Australia’s interest. Gutless politicians are doing it all to satisfy unelected and unaccountable foreign organisations. All of Australia’s climate legislation has abundant references to satisfying our international commitments, including the UN’s Kyoto protocol, the UN’s Paris Agreement, the UN Agenda 21, UN 2050 net zero and so on and on, with the UN World Economic Forum alliance. The creators of these international agreements are unelected and unaccountable. These foreign bureaucrats believe the prosperity of Australians should come second to their desire to transfer wealth from our people into the hands of predatory billionaires. Don’t be fooled. While this supposedly green pipedream dresses itself as virtuous, the billionaires of the world have untold amounts invested in wind, solar, batteries, green hydrogen and other scams in which they demand a return. Having predictably failed in the free market, they must now hijack international organisations to pressure governments into the forced uptake of their failed investments. With such large amounts of money at stake, the billionaires can afford to buy guns for hire at many different levels.

The teal Independents—Monique Ryan, Allegra Spender, Zoe Daniel, Kylea Tink, Sophie Scamps and Zali Steggall—all peculiarly made submissions to the consultation paper for this bill, arguing it should go even further. Did they declare their clear conflicts of interest? Collectively, the teals received millions of dollars from Climate 200 for their election campaign. Climate 200’s principal donor, Simon Holmes a Court, has massive investments in wind, solar, battery and hydrogen scams. He, along with many other climate billionaires, will benefit hugely from this bill’s passage. It seems the teals’ calls for transparency don’t apply to them and donations aren’t dirty if they come from ‘sugar daddy and carpetbagger’ Holmes a Court. Equally, in this debate I hope Senator David Pocock declares the same conflict of interest that arises from Climate 200’s donations to his campaign, making him a teal. This bill allows the climate billionaires to harvest taxpayer money through their scams like carbon capture, locking up productive farms and other cons. What schemes will be entitled to harvest taxpayer money? What will be the criteria for being accepted? What integrity checks will be in place? Nothing.

Some years ago, Euro poll stated ’95 per cent of Europe’s carbon dioxide trading is tainted with corruption’. Nothing in this bill has the answers. We just have to wait for a minister or a bureaucrat to tell us later, after the Senate has passed the bill, giving them incredible power. We do know that the safeguard mechanism credits will be defined as ‘eligible international emissions units’, meaning they will be able to be traded overseas, globally. As even the Australian Financial Markets Association noted during consultation: ‘There is no good reason for making the credits internationally trade-able’—other than perhaps helping the globalist billionaires suck the country dry.

Let’s look at the carbon dioxide credits whitewash. There are too many problems with this bill to fully address in just 15 minutes. We can’t let that time pass, though, without acknowledging one of the greatest exercises in political whitewashing this parliament has seen—the Chubb carbon dioxide credits review. Australian National University environmental law professor and expert, Professor Andrew Macintosh, said Australia’s carbon market is a fraud on the environment, suffers from a distinct lack of integrity and is potentially wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer’s money. In response to this scathing criticism of the integrity of the carbon dioxide credit system, energy minister Chris Bowen rushed to appoint a panel to review the integrity of carbon dioxide credits, an independent panel, supposedly, but how independent can a government-appointed panel really be?

People will be shocked. The government appointed a somehow independent panel and claimed there was nothing to see here. It made a few superficial recommendations and gave the carbon dioxide credit industry a great big fat tick. As Macintosh responded on January 2023: ‘The review panel acknowledge the scientific evidence criticising the carbon credits scheme,’ but says, ‘It was also provided with evidence to the contrary yet it did not disclose what that evidence was or what it relates to. The public is simply expected to trust that the evidence exists.’ That is an environmental professor seeing right through this. What are they hiding? The Chubb review was a complete sham, designed to give a scam-filled industry a green tick of health to pave the way for this bill. With Ian Chubb’s whitewash review conveniently in place, Labor has given itself permission to rush this bill through, while the scientists who originally raised the integrity issues scream that none of the protests have been addressed. Chubb has repeatedly taken money from Liberal-National and Labor-Greens federal governments to peddle unfounded, false and scary claims. He is a paid gun for hire to push the government line.

Next let us consider the fact, the fact, that we are already at net zero. Why do we need a carbon dioxide credit scheme anyway? As I explained to this chamber in September last year, Australia is already at net zero. Where is the confetti, the streamers, the champagne, the celebrations? Taken directly from clause 4 of the Paris agreement, and as Assistant Minister McAllister in the debate of the climate change bill said:

Net zero is a balance between human production of emissions and removal of those emissions by environmental sinks.

Our country has so many forests that Australia already sequesters or sinks three times more carbon dioxide than we produce. Then when you consider the fact that we are entirely surrounded by oceans, it is even more so. Even to people foolishly believing Australia needs to carry out the net zero kamikaze mission, on net zero we are already the world’s heroes without doing a damn thing.

Let us look at the delegated powers. While the entire concept on which this bill is based is flawed, the way it operates seems to be even worse. The Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022 is a shell containing little detail about how the largest producers, manufacturers and resource companies will be regulated. Instead, the bill places huge power in the minister, with out-of-touch federal bureaucrats in the Canberra bubble left to later fill in the detail.

To my colleagues in this chamber: I urge you to please think carefully about the process this bill implements. This is not a vote on some companies cutting production by five per cent—4.9 per cent, five per cent; that number is not even in this bill. It is another ministerial power to decide. This is a bill to give the minister a blank cheque for who this policy will apply to, how much they will be forced to cut, how quickly they will be forced to do it and much, much more.

While some people may consider the current proposal reasonable and proportionate, this nearly unlimited power will almost certainly be abused in the future. Almost all of this policy will be made via legislative instrument, an executive dictate from the minister. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Senate granting this wide-open power over some of the most significant changes to our economy is unconscionable. The design of this bill to minimise parliamentary scrutiny—the deliberate design of this bill to minimise parliamentary scrutiny—spits in the face of the parliament, spits in the face of democracy and spits in the face of the Australian people who you are meant to serve in this chamber.

Let’s think about the consultation. Predictably, we can assume that Labor will—wrongly—assure us that they have consulted widely on this bill. Just like we saw the Treasurer wanting to ‘start a conversation’ about tearing down the economic fabric of our country, Labor’s consultation process is a sham designed to give them cover for doing whatever they please. To consult means actually listening. Labor has no intention of listening. Numerous stakeholders noted the staggered release of the draft bill, the legislative instruments and the Chubb review. Combined, these steps limited the ability to consider the implications of the proposed reforms. How can Labor claim to have consulted, when many of the detailed operational elements of this entire policy are contained in legislative instruments which do not yet exist? How could anyone be consulted on those legislative means? That’s not unusual for Labor.

The bill is unfounded. It is damaging for Australia—it is suicidal—and it is we the people who will pay. One Nation opposes this bill and, if passed, will work to unwind it and tear down the global climate scam that drives this bill.

I want to make a couple more comments—basic questions. Why are China and India not doing what this Labor-Greens-teal-Pocock coalition government is doing? Why is Russia not doing it? Why are we punishing Australian families, employers and workers? Why can the other countries have the benefit of our high-quality coal and gas, hydrocarbon fuels, yet we cannot? Think about the primacy of energy; it’s in everything. We’re killing our productive capacity and our children’s future.

Secondly, the costs of the Labor-Greens-teal-Pocock bill are extraordinarily high. Why are we punishing Australian employers and families? Remember that primacy of energy. That will see prices skyrocketing continually.

Thirdly, there’s no justification in science for cutting carbon dioxide from human activity—no empirical scientific data, no logical scientific points to back this up. I’ve asked them, and they’ve repeatedly run. There’s no specific quantified effect of carbon dioxide from human activity, none at all. There’s conclusive evidence from two global experiments that overwhelmingly prove that cutting carbon dioxide from human activity has no effect. In 2009 and 2020 we had global recessions, almost depressions, and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued to increase, despite dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide from human activity. It’s pointless. Nature alone determines the level of carbon dioxide. Humans have no effect.

Let’s ask the fourth question. Why are we following in the footsteps of crooks? The father of global warming was senior UN bureaucrat and oil billionaire Maurice Strong. He morphed it into climate change, climate apocalypse and climate breakdown. He was involved in the UN food-for-oil scandal. He was involved in corruption in the water systems of the western United States. He exiled himself in China, running away from the American police. He formed the UN’s climate body that is really a political body. He was the director and founder of the Chicago Climate Exchange, aiming to make billions of dollars trading carbon dioxide credits, like Al Gore’s company, Generation Investment Management. The whole thing is a scam to make billionaires richer, and you in Labor and you in the Greens are following in the footsteps of a crook, Maurice Strong.

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The Great Resist

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While crooked Klaus Schwab wants the Great Reset, I’m promising to take up the Great Resist. We will resist the infiltration of our Parliament by globalist pawns. We will resist the destruction of the family. We will resist billionaires making everyone else poorer.

Transcript

In a previous speech, I called for Australia to reject the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset and instead mount a ‘Great Resist’. These were not idle words. Video is circulating online of World Economic Forum crook and mastermind Klaus Schwab bragging about penetrating the cabinets of western democracies with his young global leaders. Some Klaus Schwab disciples are in this Senate, and one is in the cabinet. How this has not triggered a national security investigation is beyond One Nation. We certainly would be taking a much closer look, given the coordination we are seeing in the policies being enacted by WEF disciples like Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau.

One Nation will resist the transfer of wealth from everyday Australians to predatory billionaires. This was the inevitable and deliberate outcome of profligate government COVID spending that the Liberals, Nationals, Labor and Greens waved through this parliament. One Nation will resist exposing our children to adult sexual content in their libraries and school textbooks and, now, in kids programs on the ABC. One Nation will resist the dehumanisation of women through genderless language that erases the very concept of a woman and a mother. We will not allow the family to be undermined. One Nation will resist the reduction of sex to a soul-destroying, meaningless transaction—the very thing Aldous Huxley warned us about in Brave New World.

One Nation will resist the war on farming that seeks to destroy family farms, rewild the bush and shift food production to corporate owned, near-urban, intensive factories producing chemically driven food-like substances for everyday Australians to eat while the elite gorge themselves on red meat and seafood—something they did again last week at COP27 in Egypt, indulging in luxury while spreading poverty. Disgusting!

We are one community, we are One Nation, and parliaments belong to no-one but the Australian people.

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Malcolm Roberts speaks at Nigel Farage Brisbane

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Government wants to tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel. We must oppose this new dystopia at every turn.

Transcript (click to expand)

Joel Jammal:

One of the biggest people exposing what Klaus Schwab has been doing is a man sitting in this room, Malcolm Roberts. Malcolm, could you please come to the stage? Now, Malcolm is a Senator for One Nation, A Senator for Queensland. Queensland is first.

Malcom Roberts:

Very important. I’m the senator for the people who are elected, sorry constituents. I’m not a senator for One Nation. I’m a senator for the people of Queensland in Australia with One Nation.

Joel Jammal:

Absolutely, absolutely. Australia First, Queenslanders first. You’ve been taking the fight in the Senate, no matter if you have the numbers for a bill or not. You’ve been raising awareness on issues. How do you deal with Canberra? We were there and we were at a press conference yesterday with Nigel. The place feels dead. How do you get things on? How do you raise awareness on these issues?

Malcom Roberts:

Well, number one, I’ve got a remarkable leader in Pauline Hanson, and I mean that sincerely because Pauline has been in there fighting for a long, long time, and nothing deters her. If she says something, she means it. So I can trust her. If I disagree with her and I talk to her about it, she’ll either say, give me your facts. In which case, I’ll give them to her and she’ll say, “Fine, we’ll change your mind.” Or she’ll say, “No, I don’t agree with you,” so that’s wonderful. You know exactly where you stand, and she likes it when I tell her exactly where I stand, so that’s the first thing.

But the second thing is that we do what we think is right. That’s fundamental because then it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m comfortable with it. I don’t care who criticise me, how much they criticise me. If I’m doing the right thing, then I’m very, very comfortable. So I don’t care what people think.

Joel Jammal:

God bless you. I think the other parties need that as well. Is anyone in this room getting a little bit twitchy about digital currencies and digital passports? And I’m seeing a lot of nodding heads. Any business owners here? Put your hand up. I think the states have a lot of plans for businesses. Malcolm, what’s going on, on this front and how can people protect themselves? What’s coming down the line?

Malcom Roberts:

Well, to understand what’s coming down the line, we have to look at what has been coming along the line behind us. What did we see in COVID? We saw so many things for the first time. Any one of them we would’ve rejected, but instead they came steamrollered, one after the other and that just bamboozled people. Digital passes where you could and couldn’t go. Restrictions as to what you could do, what doctors can say.

I mean, a doctor, when you go to a doctor, you get his or her opinion about your health. You couldn’t get that now because the doctors are told what to say, so that’s the kind of thing we’re seeing coming. So a lot of the things that were done here, New Zealand, Canada, France, United States, we’re testing the way for digital identity.

You saw the Optus leak. Who’s have been involved in that? Anyone? 10 million people. Member of my staff left Optus in 2008, 14 years ago. He’s part of that leak. His information was leaked. So the big leaks come mainly from mistakes in big tech and in government, and they want us to trust them with our data, like hell. So what they’re trying to do is to get the Digital Identity Bill was introduced, not into Parliament, but it was circulated in the Parliament for discussion. Labour Party said they would support it.

Digital Identity Bill is about taking your data, health data, travel data, social media data, purchases, finances, everything about you and centralising it and then selling it. And if it goes to a foreign multinational, they look after it under their laws, not our laws, so it’s not secure. And then if you want to know your health data, you pay to get it. And then what they do is they bring in a digital currency to wipe out cash. And when you’ve got no cash, you’ve got no alternative and no choice. You understand that, and then they’ve got you. They’ve well and truly controlled.

And then they get onto a social credit system and they’re already doing it to us because they’re saying, if you produce more carbon dioxide, we’ll have to limit what you’re doing and carbon dioxide’s plant food. It’s a fertiliser. It’s wonderful. Without it, it’s a trace gas that’s essential for all life on this planet. It’s odourless, colourless, tasteless. It’s not a pollutant, but they fabricated this. So what you’re going to get more of, what we are going to get more of is lies to justify what they’re doing.

If you go to the World Economic Forum, they’re talking about my carbon. My carbon, your individual carbon, your individual carbon, your individual carbon dioxide. What they’re trying to say is they will put monitors on you and actually not a monitor. It’s going to be an app on this, which will estimate your carbon dioxide. It’s just a control mechanism, so that’s what they will do. They will justify everything that they want to cut in our lives through an app.

They will have passes what you can and can’t do, digital currency. The Reserve Bank in this country has been working on digital currency until we expose that for quite some years. They’re also working with other central banks around the world on their digital currency because they’re coming up with a global digital currency. So people talked about Pauline Hanson talking about the unelected global governance from the UN that was first murdered around 1996. She built a cat. She was ridiculed for it, but she’s telling the truth, so that’s what they’ve got coming down the line.

Job controls imposed, but the biggest thing of all, the scariest thing of all is that in the past, dictators use guns. Get down on your knees, buddy. Now they don’t. They use invisible systems, they use name calling, they use labels, they use indoctrination in schools. We’ve got kids thinking that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. It’s complete crap. This has not been going on for a few years, just like the COVID debacle, which was completely mismanaged because the health was never their concern. Their aim in COVID was to control us. That’s why they made such a stuff up of it, but they got what they wanted.

So this has been underway since 1944 with the formation of the UN for that very purpose. Now, 10 years ago, I would’ve laughed at anyone saying that. I know that for a fact. The UN senior people have been telling us that for a number of years. Ottmar Edenhofer, Murray Strong. Murray Strong concocted global warming, changed that into climate change. He did it, and then guess who formed the Chicago Climate Exchange for carbon dioxide credit trading? Yes. And who was doing the the directorships? Murray Strong. Murray Strong was a crook, a crook, and he had two aims in life. He stated them, unelected socialist global governance and deindustrialization of Western civilization.

What’s happening in Britain? Deindustrialization. What’s happening in America? Deindustrialization. What’s happening in Europe? Deindustrialization. What’s happening in Australia? Deindustrialization. We’re back heading back to the caves, but there’s one thing that’s really important and that is the people. If we wake up, that’s how we can stop them.

Pauline Hanson wanted a royal commission into financial services in this country. Turnbull was the Prime Minister. Morrison was the Treasurer. Morrison said 26 times, you’re not getting one. Turnbull said 16 times, you’re not getting one. So Pauline did a deal and got an inquiry that was called a Senate select inquiry into lending to primary production customers. She got that out of Turnbull. She made me the chair of that.

We went out into the bush, Pauline’s team and my team, and we helped the farmers put together submissions. We then held inquiries in the bush and we loaded up all the information and then we held the banks accountable in Sydney and in Canberra. We embarrassed them so much. Here she is. So we embarrassed them so much by getting the facts and the data out, that some of the nationals went to Turnbull and said, “You better have a royal commission because otherwise that’s going to be very embarrassing for you when our report comes out.” And there was a royal commission just before Pauline released the report.

Another thing, the Cash Ban Bill. James Ashby told me about the Cash Ban Bill. He’s on top of the things very, very well. Our staff got hold of it, we looked at it and sure enough it was a ban of cash for any purchase over $2,000, and you can see where that’s going. It would’ve been $200 and then complete ban. So what we did was we got hold of the cross bench, just my team plus Pauline’s staff. We got hold of the cross bench and showed them what was going on. They were horrified.

Then we got hold of some liberal branch members and they were horrified. The Labour Party and The Liberal Party and The National Party passed that through the lower House, came to the Senate, was sent to a committee, and because of the shit that we kicked up, it stayed in committee. And then I moved a motion to get rid of it off the Senate books and it got rid off Senate books, but they’re trying repeatedly in many other ways to ban cash because they want to control. Their main objective is control.

Joel Jammal:

You got to hand it to them. They’re diligent, aren’t they, Malcolm? They just won’t die. We are, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Pauline’s been to jail, and in second I will invite you to. Yes, she’s still here. Who says you can’t have a comeback, Pauline?

Now Malcolm, in a second I’m going to invite Pauline up, Senator Hanson rather. I’m very informal. I’m so comfortable with these senators. Tell me another senator in the major parties you can just approach like this. I mean, Malcolm has been fighting the fight. Pauline, Senator Hansen has been fighting the fight. Senator, what’s that? Oh, you love Pauline. Oh, cool. She invited me too. It’s polite too now. Okay. All right.

One Nation has been an absolute bull work against the major parties in the last few years. I particularly liked that time you held up the entire government agenda this year when you and Senator Rennick and Senator Antic held up the entire government agenda so they couldn’t get a single thing passed in the last five or six months because they would not move on the job.

Senator Rennick and Senator Antic said, “Scott Morrison, I know we’re in the Liberal Party, but we will not move on this.” We have to deal with stories like Sienna Knolls, 19 year old equestrian girl, healthy. You got to be quite healthy to be an equestrian. Jab injured, two jabs, jab injured. He said, “If you don’t move on this, if you don’t offer some protections, we’re not passing any bills. So between One Nation and these two liberal senators, they absolutely held up the entire government agenda for five months. It was a lame duck session. And so thank you guys for that and thank you for being a light on all of these issues. Thank you.

Malcom Roberts:

Thank you for doing what you’re doing.

Joel Jammal:

No, it’s my pleasure.

/3 Comments/by

The Malcolm Roberts Show – Banking Activist Robbie Barwick

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After studying commerce at the University of Southern Queensland, instead of working as an accountant, Robbie joined the CEC, now Citizens Party, as a full-time staffer in its new HQ in Melbourne.

In the 30 years since, he has worked as a researcher, media liaison, campaigns director and research director, with a focus on Australian political history and especially the history of the Commonwealth Bank.

Robbie has been an active campaigner and has been at the forefront of many over the last decade, including:

  • a national bank
  • a Glass-Steagall separation of Australia’s bank
  • stopping the bail-in of Australian bank deposits, in which he worked closely with my office
  • reforming Australia Post and a post office “people’s bank”
  • justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of Australia’s banks and financial institutions and reforming the financial regulators

Transcript

Speaker 1:

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back to Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. I want to welcome my second guest now, Robbie Barwick. I’m very proud to have worked with Robbie and his organisation, the Citizens Electoral Council. Welcome, Robbie.

Robbie Barwick:

Hi, Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

I hope you’re listening to the first hour.

Robbie Barwick:

I was. I loved every bit of it. That was excellent.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’ve got a question for you before we take off, but first, I want to give you a proper introduction. So, Robbie studied commerce at the University of Southern Queensland. Instead of working as an accountant, Robbie joined the Citizens Electoral Council, now, the Citizens Party, as a full-time staffer in its new headquarters in Melbourne. In 30 years since then, he has worked as a researcher, media liaison, campaigns director, and research director with a focus on Australian political history and especially the history of the Commonwealth Bank. He knows government. He knows banking. He knows economics, and he’s a first rate individual. If he says something, it can be trusted. Robbie’s been an active campaigner.

Malcolm Roberts:

When I say campaigner, not electoral campaign, although he was a Senate candidate at the last election a couple of weeks ago. Robbie’s been an active campaigner working on many campaigns and it’s been at the forefront of the last decade, including a national bank, Glass-Steagall separation of Australia’s banks, stopping the bail-in of Australian bank deposits in which Robbie worked very closely with my office and with me, reforming Australia posts in a post office people’s bank, justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of Australia’s banks and financial institutions, and reforming the financial regulations. So, welcome, Robbie. You’ve just done a marvellous job. You continue to do a marvellous job.

Robbie Barwick:

Oh, thanks, Malcolm. That’s very kind, coming from you.

Malcolm Roberts:

What do you mean coming from me?

Robbie Barwick:

You do marvellous work too, mate.

Malcolm Roberts:

All right. Thank you. Well, the key is I’d say that we share, that we both look upon ourselves as serving the people and that’s what I could see coming out of Ellen’s work. Before we get into questions about banking and currency and money, what’s something you appreciate, Robbie?

Robbie Barwick:

A good sleeping. No, I’ll add to that, outspoken senators like yourself and a few others, but I reckon, in my work, I always value meeting ordinary people around Australia who can feedback to me their direct experience of the economy of the world, their life, how it works. I never cease to be amazed, Malcolm, at how much Australia relies on ordinary people who are prepared to go that extra mile to keep the system going keep in their own little way. The nurse who’s worked a double shift and she’ll stay on another 15, 20 minutes because there’s not enough people there. And this is all unfunded stuff, right?

Robbie Barwick:

The people in industry who make sure that machine works, et cetera, because without them, we don’t have an economic system that actually goes the extra mile for them, that makes sure those things happen. So much of our essential services are held together with the equivalent of elastic bands and sticky tape, which is the efforts of the people who provide them. And the most recent one I discovered, which we worked together on as well, was how licenced post officers provide our postal services. And these are all small businesses working very, very hard for peanuts, right around Australia, very tough business conditions and they provide an essential service for Australians. So, that’s what I appreciate more than anything.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, yes. And the only thing I would disagree with you on that and I do want to acknowledge the licence post office and especially Angela Cramp. The only thing I disagree with you is the term ordinary. I would call them and I do call people everyday Australians, because there’s nothing ordinary about any one of them.

Robbie Barwick:

That’s true.

Malcolm Roberts:

I know what you mean by ordinary. You mean average, typical, or every day. I know what you mean.

Robbie Barwick:

They’re not ordinary that’s for sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

No. And the whole economy based on them and what I think it boils down to, Robbie… Correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve been around a lot as well. … is that it boils down to a four letter word starting with C. They care. When you put a human in a position, most humans, almost every human, almost that they matter, then they show that care. The other thing about humans is that we know there are some fraudsters. We know there’s some crooks. There’s some dictators.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ve had our Hitlers. We’ve had our Joe Bidens. We’ve had our globalist predators. We understand that, but the majority of people are honest and that the two words, care and honest, leave us vulnerable because most of us are caring. Most of us are honest and we think everyone else is like us. And so, when we are caring and honest, we can become vulnerable to the used car salesman, to the tyrannical global bankster, the global predator who wants to control us. And we become victims in a sense.

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, that’s true.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. So, our strength is also our vulnerability. Now, listen for our listeners, they won’t know this name that I’m about to use, Craig Isherwood. He’s a Citizen Electoral Council National Secretary when he wrote an astounding paper, very simple, but for very, very powerful paper called, “The Australian Precedents for a Hamiltonian Credit System”.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, Robbie gave me that paper when we were starting to discuss this show, Robbie gave me that paper and I read it on my way to Darwin for holiday. And I read it again on the way back. And the second time I read it, I got so much more out of it. Now, Ellen hit exactly the first question. If you don’t mind, Robbie, this is the question I had. If you don’t mind, we’ll park our earlier discussions and just go through this paper and see where we go.

Robbie Barwick:

Sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay.

Robbie Barwick:

Let’s do that.

Malcolm Roberts:

I knew you’d be up for it. Okay. So, the very first point that I wrote as a key point is that Reserve Bank of Australia admitted to me in Senate estimates hearings that money is created in electronic journal entries, Ellen Hodson Brown reiterated that. She confirmed it. The question that I said was, “Who creates money?” It’s not whether it should be created or not. Clearly, for the system of credit, it needs to be created. Otherwise, people can’t invest. So, it needs to be created. The key question then is, “Who should create it?” And that’s exactly where Ellen got with her comment as well. That’s the key question. Is that the key question? Who creates credit?

Robbie Barwick:

Who controls the creation of credit? One thing to understand the financial system is so fluid and there’s so many clever people out there, Malcolm, always looking for an angle. You can forbid private banks from creating credit and they’ll find a way to create it anyway. So, your local store creates credit when they give you credit by selling you stuff something on credit. Credit is a pretty basic concept, actually. So, it’s more about who controls that. And that’s where the best form of control. Apart from having certain well-regulated banking system, the best form of control is to have a public banking presence that defines the terms for the whole system.

Robbie Barwick:

And so, the private banks have to work within those terms, because if they stray too far away from that, they won’t be competitive with the public bank, right? And so, the public bank can make sure that the creation of credit is fair, it’s productive, et cetera. And the private banks know that well, okay, they need customers. If they don’t have depositors, they’re not going to be banks. There’s a standard that they have to live up to. That’s served Australia very well for a long time, but it really does come down to the control. Who controls it? And my favourite quote, which isn’t in that Craig Isherwood article, although it might be, but the Labour Party once, upon a time in Australia, fought very hard on these issues.

Robbie Barwick:

We call it the old Labour position was about. Who controls money? And they called it the money power. Who controls the money power? And this became a name for the private banks. They called them the money power. They had this chokehold over Australia and they said the money power has to be brought under the control of the people. And by the people, it means the democratically elected government.

Robbie Barwick:

And John Curtin said in 1937, when he launched labor’s election campaign that year, which was seven years after the beginning of The Great Depression and this period of intense upheaval where the role of money was central, he demanded labour will legislate until the Commonwealth Bank would be able to control credit of the nation, rates of interest, direction of general investment, and currency relations with external markets. And he concluded, he said, “If the government of the Commonwealth deliberately excludes itself from all participation in the making or changing of monetary policy, it cannot govern except in a secondary degree.”

Robbie Barwick:

Meaning someone else is in charge of the economy, not us, not the people through their government. And so, what he was saying, it’s not just a good idea. It’s a question of sovereignty. A nation can’t be sovereign if the people through their elected government doesn’t control the credit of the nation.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. So, is it fair to summarise it by saying whoever controls the money creation controls the country?

Robbie Barwick:

100%.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s what I thought you’d say.

Robbie Barwick:

There is no more definitive power in a nation than that.

Malcolm Roberts:

And as you pointed out, it’s all about sovereignty as well as economics. And to me, it seems that my job as an elected representative is to serve the people. If you’re a grocer at a corner store, your job is to serve the people. If you’re a policeman, your job is to serve the people. Now, policeman’s job becomes a little bit more difficult because at times he has to apprehend someone and bring justice or at least arrest them to try them before the courts to ensure justice is conducted. But that service that’s the critical thing. At the moment, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m looking for your view, the people serve the banks rather than the banks serving the people. Is that a fair statement?

Robbie Barwick:

That is a fair statement. You can read a version of the explanation or the description of this in Adele Ferguson’s book that she wrote just towards the end of the Banking Royal Commission in 2018. And you’d be familiar with Adele Ferguson, Malcolm, the investigative journalist in Australia.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. Yup.

Robbie Barwick:

She had a lot to do with highlighting bank issues that led to the Royal Commission, but what she documents in that book, Banking Bad, I think it’s called, a play on the show Breaking Bad, is how from the time of the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank onwards, so the mid-1990s, the model of banking in Australia changed from one in which… Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to overstate it. The private banks were never perfect, but there was a general understanding that the private banks made their profits from the credit that helped their customers make their profits, right? They rightly got a cut from helping their customers get wealthy and preserving their deposits.

Robbie Barwick:

The model changed in the mid-90s to one in which the public, the customers became cows to be milked by the banks. Everything was about fleecing them, death by a thousand cuts. What can we sell these customers? What can we saddle them with so that through charges and interest rates, et cetera, we can just keep bleeding them for our profits? And that led to the abuses, that led to the Royal Commission.

Robbie Barwick:

And now, this became a standard model across the board from the mid-90s on, where the public absolutely served the banks, but a variation of that has always existed with private banks and banking. It’s always come up periodically in the rural debt crisis that erupt periodically around droughts and things, where it becomes a debt problem. And suddenly, instead of the banks being flexible, they’ll come in and mass foreclose. And you conducted an inquiry into that back in… Was it 2016, something like that?

Malcolm Roberts:

2017.

Robbie Barwick:

20 17. What’s happened in Australia with agriculture is we’ve gone from having something like 200,000 farmers in 1969, who between them had a billion dollars in debt to probably less than 30,000 farmers today who have $70 billion in debt. And now, the farmers do not get to accrue wealth. They’re so heavily indebted that all they’re waiting for is the next crop to be able to pay off or pay down their last lot of debt right before they incur more for the next crop. And they really have become debt slaves. And there’s a variation of that across the board in the way the economy where it’s unfortunately.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, I can recall reading a very short simple book. It was called End the Fed, the Federal Reserve Bank, End the Fed by former Senator Ron Paul in the United States, who was the only one really to hold the government accountable, held the Federal Reserve Bank accountable, wanted an audit of the gold reserves, et cetera.

Robbie Barwick:

Audit the fed. Yup.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yup. He said that every major recession since 1913 is directly attributable to the US Fed. Every major war since 1913 is directly attributable to the US Fed. Boom and bust cycles help the banks because they flood the joint with credit. Everyone goes hog, wild, and credit and overcommit themselves, and then they tighten it up. And next thing, people have to foreclose on their asset. The banks foreclose on their assets. So, private banking has failed repeatedly. Yet the banks continue to spread the bullshit that they make their money on the difference between what they charge for interest and for loans versus what they pay for deposits. Complete rubbish.

Malcolm Roberts:

The banks make their money by creating money, giving credit. And credit is essential, but they seem to have powers such that there’s no accountability. What I’m reading in Craig Isherwood’s article is something that I concluded as well, that if you have a public bank, it keeps the private banks honest. You’re not saying get rid of private banks. You’re saying let’s have both and then we’ll have accountability. Is that basically it?

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, 100%, in any sector. I think this applies to insurance as well. Queensland for a hundred years had a state government insurance office, which was incredibly important at providing insurance that the private insurers wouldn’t provide, but also setting a standard that the private insurers had to meet if they wanted to have customers. That was called SGIO. But for banking, it’s absolutely essential. There’s this enormous power to do with money, right? Where you get to create credit and then charge interest on it and direct where that credit goes and have people come to you cap in hand begging for that credit, because it is, as Ellen pointed out, even if you had a gold currency, that there’s never enough of the actual currency for the economy to work, right?

Robbie Barwick:

The credit is the lifeblood of the economy. So, these private banks, they get to determine all that. If there’s no public alternative that says, “Okay, we are going to make decisions slightly differently for the private banks,” the private banks naturally are accountable to shareholders and they want them to maximise their profits. So, they’re going to pour their credit into things that maximise their profits. They’ll enjoy the boom. They’ll monopolise the boom. And when it goes bad, then they will cut off that credit, foreclose on everybody, call in all those loans. So, they never lose. It’s the poor mug customer that loses and that’s how the private banks work, because their solvency and their profits come first.

Robbie Barwick:

Let us use the power of this credit as a public entity to do the things that actually benefit the economy, benefit the people. Let’s make low interest loans to build infrastructure, to keep important industries solvent and productive, not just solvent but productive. So, agriculture, manufacturing, et cetera. Every loan that public bank makes, Malcolm, will also be profitable, but you don’t have to have quite as much profit. You don’t have to have charge quite as much interest, right? This makes a world of difference. And in fact, because I’d hoped you read Craig Isherwood’s article, I was just brushing up on it before. And they pointed out there that one of the first things that Commonwealth Bank did when it started was the Melbourne Board of Works wanted a loan.

Robbie Barwick:

And in those days, 1913, the only place a government entity like the Melbourne Board of Works could get a loan was from London, the private banks in London. In addition to stiff underwriting charges, the best they could do, the private banks in London, was 1 million pounds at 4.5% interest. So, instead, they turned to Denison Miller, the Governor of the Commonwealth Bank and he offered them 3 million pounds at 4% interest, a lower interest rate. And when asked where the very new bank got all this money from, Denison Miller replied, “On the credit of the nation, it is unlimited.” And under Denison Miller, you’ve read the article, the first decade under Dennison Miller, this bank was spectacular.

Robbie Barwick:

And all it did was use its power as a bank, but for the public benefit. Everything was profitable. It just didn’t have to make a massive profit and Australia benefited from that. And that’s why this is, well, as King O’Malley said, the key pin or the master key to the financial system. This should be the master key. This is what solves all those various problems in the financial system.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I’m glad you raised that, Robbie, because there were so many things in Craig’s article. The first publicly owned-

Robbie Barwick:

Shipping line.

Malcolm Roberts:

… shipping line in Australia was created through funding and support from the Commonwealth Bank. The Light Horse Brigade was funded by the Commonwealth Bank. There were so many other infrastructure at a local government level, state government level funded by the Commonwealth Bank. It got us on our feet. It basically built us, and it did that by enabling credit. And it took that control out of the hands of the private banks that screw us and keep us under their control, rather than making money out of making us wealthy as a country.

Robbie Barwick:

And importantly, in those examples you’ve given, the private banks, including most importantly, the foreign private banks, the London banks that controlled us, the way the Commonwealth Bank functioned under Denison Miller showed this claim that you would’ve heard in parliament a thousand times, Australia depends on foreign investment. No, we do not.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you.

Robbie Barwick:

We do not. There’s no excuse for $1 of foreign debt.

Malcolm Roberts:

Another example was the second World War and we were poor in terms of having ability to make machine tools. Next thing that grew out of nowhere, because Australians are very resourceful. We’re very clever, very capable, very innovative. We punch above our weight. We’ve been held back by privately owned banks. And when people were given the free rein, look what we did.

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, exactly. So, the thing with wars, it’s interesting. People like to discount the way a war economy works because of those are special circumstances. That’s what the banks say, right? The only thing that’s special about a war is in the emergency of a war conditions, the governments turn to a public banking option like Australia did in both World Wars, because a war is on the private banks aren’t game to say anything, right? They have to be seen to be supporting the effort. After the war, they go back to attacking the government. No, no, no, you cannot do that. The power of credit has to be back in our hands. So, during the war, when you see what the banks was able to do in both wars, it was extraordinary and it’s also an example.

Malcolm Roberts:

Can you hold that thought and we’ll discuss that very issue after the ad break?

Robbie Barwick:

Sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with Robbie to discuss some really fundamental stuff.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right. Robbie, over to you again, because you’re going to explain how the availability of credit during the war solved The Great Depression. Is that correct?

Robbie Barwick:

Well, no, no. The Great Depression impression was the exception. They didn’t do it in The Great Depression. They did it in the wars.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s right.

Robbie Barwick:

So, the first one was World War I and you gave some of those examples there, but it was things like the Commonwealth Bank didn’t fund the war per se. It funded part of it that you gave the example of the Light Horseman. And the story of the shipping line was quite extraordinary because we were stranded as a country. All the ships were controlled from the British as well and the Prime Minister Billy Hughes said, “We need ships.” And he said to treasury, “Give me £2 million.” There’s 15 ships available here in London, but he wanted to keep it secret because if it became public, that the Prime Minister of Australia was in the market for 15 ships for Australia, the British privately controlled shipping lines would’ve blocked the sale.

Robbie Barwick:

They didn’t want that. They didn’t want a government shipping line in Australia, right? So, he called back to the treasury in Australia and said, “I need £2 million.” They called Denison Miller and the money was there. He just made the money available. They bought the ships. And that was the beginning of the shipping line that eventually became Australian National Line. So, there were some things they directly did, but what they otherwise did was look after the economy in those war years. And one of the more extraordinary things was the commodities pools that they set up, Malcolm, for things like wheat and other agricultural products that we were producing that in those days we produced… You had a small population.

Robbie Barwick:

We produced for the British market, et cetera, but that was all disrupted. So, they created a pool and the Commonwealth Bank funded that. So, the farmers, when they brought their wheat crop in, they got paid straight away anyway, even though the wheat hadn’t been sold yet, because they’re putting in a pool and then the Commonwealth Bank managed the sale of that wheat over time, but the important thing was to keep the farmers going. So, they all were still productive because there was a war and that’s the thing that it could do. It funded 60 local governments around Australia. And you would’ve noticed that a lot of that funding was in things like very early electricity infrastructure, basic electricity infrastructure, small hydropower plants, this thing.

Robbie Barwick:

This was the early industrialization of Australia. The private banks weren’t going to fund that. These councils could turn to the Commonwealth Bank and the Commonwealth Bank funded it for them, important investments. Malcolm, because in the old days, things were built better than they are today. If you go to some of these places in the list, a lot of this information comes from a great book that was written on the 10th anniversary of the Commonwealth Bank to document all these amazing things it did.

Robbie Barwick:

And if you go to those places that it lists what the Commonwealth Bank invested in this infrastructure, you’d probably find a lot of that infrastructure is still there and still working order to this day, essentially later. This was the early economic development of Australia. World War II, even more spectacular and it was because of the Commonwealth Bank. Until John Curtin and Ben Chifley took over the government in 1942, the Commonwealth Bank had sat there idle as it had done all through the ’30s.

Malcolm Roberts:

Would it be fair to say that the private banks from Wall Street, London, the City of London were actively working with the Labour Party and its so-called conservative opposition to destabilise and undermine the Commonwealth Bank? Rather than just sitting there and used, it was being undermined.

Robbie Barwick:

No, 100%, but this is where a specific understanding in history is important. I know why you say that because of what you know about the Labour Party today. The Labour Party back then was a very different animal. It was the Labour Party that was fighting for the bank to be used properly. It was the Menzies’ liberals who were completely in the pockets of the private banks in London who made sure it wasn’t. And in the early ’30s, when they needed it the most, we had 25% male unemployment in Australia, Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

Geez.

Robbie Barwick:

We were being crushed in The Depression and there was a proposal to get The Commonwealth Bank to issue £18 million. Six million pounds was to go to farmers. Twelve million pounds was to go to public works. That was the proposal of the labour government then in 1931 and the former Queensland premier, who was a treasurer named Ted Theodore. The Head of the Commonwealth Bank, so Robert Gibson said, “You are asking me to inflate the money supply. I tell you, I bloody well won’t.” Now, forget what he said about inflation, because that’s a longer story. It was quite overstated. The issue there was a public servant defied the order of the government that owned his bank. He was just the manager of it, right?

Robbie Barwick:

And this led to the 1937 Royal Commission on Banking. And that Royal Commission ruled that that public servant was wrong. He should have followed the orders, but why did he defy it? Because in those years, the bank was run by a board that he was the chairman of and all those boards were representative of the private sector. And they were very much in the pockets of the private banks who didn’t want the Commonwealth Bank to function like it had function under Miller. As soon as Miller died in 1922, I think it was or 1923, Malcolm, there had been a single governor up to that point. They replaced him with the board.

Robbie Barwick:

So, you would never have someone of that noise again, because they had the right person in the right place at the right time, who could show what the bank would do. And they had a board which was a representative of private banks and private industry and they made sure in the next 28 years, it didn’t do anything. So, you’re right. They were actively suppressing it. And it was the Labour Party that fought very, very hard over this and people like John Curtin was at the centre of those fights. So, when he came to power in 1942, he knew he had a tool at his disposal, which was the Commonwealth Bank. And in those years from 1942 to 1949, when Labour lost office, those seven years are the high watermark of the Commonwealth Bank.

Robbie Barwick:

They showed what the Commonwealth Bank is capable of, even more extraordinary than World War I, because it also had the powers of a central bank by then. It got to tell the private banks directly what to do, not just compete with them. And the combination led to the greatest economic transformation in a short period of time probably the world had ever seen. We were an agrarian backwater economy and that’s why that machine tool example is such a good one. In three years, we went from an economy that relied on imports for everything. We mainly provided raw materials to the British, et cetera. We went from that to an economy that could literally produce anything. And machine tools are very complicated.

Robbie Barwick:

They are the machines that make the machines. They represent how really productive an economy is. We went from importing them all to making our own. There was nothing that was beyond the capabilities of Australians and it’s instructed the way the Labour Government did it because they weren’t ideological, Malcolm. They knew they had the Commonwealth Bank to fund it, but who did they turn to run the actual wartime mobilisation? They turned to a blue blood to them, someone that is socialist. The Labour Party was socialist, et cetera. They turned to a captain of industry Essington Lewis from BHP.

Malcolm Roberts:

Oh, yes.

Robbie Barwick:

And in those days, BHP was not a mining company, right? It was a mining company, but it was a steel maker. That’s what BHP was. And Lewis ran it and he had developed a really good relationship with Ben Chifley, but nothing would’ve happened without the funding and the Commonwealth Bank provided that. And it was extraordinary. We could produce ships, we could produce planes, we could produce machine tools. We could do anything. By the end of the war, we were approaching something like the high 20s as a percentage of our economy of manufacturing.

Robbie Barwick:

And by the late ’50s, it peaked at the mid-30s. About 33% or 35% of our economy was manufacturing. Today, it’s less than 5%. It’s tiny. It’s pathetic. It’s been smashed completely, right? But it was a transformation that was powered by the Commonwealth Bank because the long term investments that it required, the Commonwealth Bank was able to do that. And in this article, we show the charts of government spending and how the money issued by the Commonwealth Bank fueled that government spending.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let me just repeat the title of that article. It’s called, The Australian Precedents, E-N-T-S, for a Hamiltonian Credit System. The author’s name is Craig Isherwood, I-S-H-E-R-W-O-O-D. At the time, he was the Citizens Electoral Council National Secretary. Where can they get that article? Where can people get that article?

Robbie Barwick:

That’s on our website, www.citizensparty.org.au. If it’s hard to find, they can call out tollfree number 1800-636-432 and ask for a copy of it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. Just a quick little snippet, I’ve just had this realisation that Menzies has given the credit for opening up Australia, but what I think had happened now is… Some lights dawned on the wood heap in my brain. … Labour as a result of the second World War built the capacity, our productive capacity for manufacturing. After the second World War, Europe was devastated. Japan and China were devastated.

Malcolm Roberts:

The only large manufacturing facility available was in America, which had not been attacked apart from Pearl Harbour, and good old Australia where we had the raw materials as well. So, we actually then put that productive capacity to work. And it wasn’t Menzies at all who deserves the credit. It was really the Labour Party under Curtin and Chifley. Is that right?

Robbie Barwick:

I’m firmly of that view. Now that said, I will give Menzies the credit for not stuffing it up as such, though I’ve got some specific criticism.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, hang on, hang on. He bought in the double taxation legislation in 1953, which enabled foreign and Maldives nationals to completely avoid paying company tax in this country, which has really hurt us long term.

Robbie Barwick:

No, no, no. There’s a lot of those things that he does. Don’t worry, you got to hold me back not to blast Robert Menzies, but what I mean by not stuffing it up is by the time Curtin and Chifley, the government, left office in 1949, the zeitgeist had changed. The public expectations had changed. In fact, it’s known as the post-war settlement. This was universal around the world.

Robbie Barwick:

The kind of economic policy represented by what Roosevelt had done in America in the 1930s that Ellen Brown described with the reconstruction finance corporation using a public bank to invest in infrastructure and industry. We did it in World War II. You know the first thing the Labour Government in Britain did after World War II when they replaced Churchill was nationalise the Bank of England. Up until then, the Bank of England had been a privately owned bank for 150 years.

Malcolm Roberts:

From 1694 when it was formed, it had been a private bank.

Robbie Barwick:

Exactly. The first thing they did was nationalised it because they were copying Australia’s success, right? We set the tone and the expectations changed. So, when Menzies took office, he knew that he couldn’t buck that system now. People expected that there would be this public presence in the economy, but I’ll give you an example of why Menzies doesn’t deserve very much credit at all. The great Snowy Mountains Scheme, the defining infrastructure project of our history. Robert Menzies boycotted the opening of that in 1949. He opposed it. And only when it was immensely popular while he was prime minister, because it was Chifley who started it, he then went to the opening of the first stage, the second stage, et cetera, to capitalise.

Robbie Barwick:

But the fact he boycotted it was an ideological position he had and he even tried to sabotage it. He didn’t succeed, but that project was supposed to be funded by the Commonwealth Bank, Malcolm. And when he took office in 1949, he scrapped all that and he would only fund it out of revenue, the annual budget. And even then, he made the project, the Snowy Mountains Authority pay 5% interest to the government on the money that it gave them to fund the project, right? Whereas that could have all been done off the annual budget through the Commonwealth Bank, which is what the original plan had been.

Malcolm Roberts:

As I understand it, Robbie, Menzies tried to undermine the Snowy Mountains Scheme and McKell stood up to him and gave him hell and read the right act to him. Menzies pulled back his horns, but didn’t help it too much.

Robbie Barwick:

No. That would make sense, because I was going to say, the other man in the Menzies era who deserves credit for keeping him in line was Black Jack McEwen. Because Curtin and Chifley created the productive capacity of Australia. Black Jack McEwen did everything in his power to protect it, to make sure it survived, it lasted, right? In this era that we are in, the neoliberal era, all those policies that these guys stood for, they’re criticised for. I mean these liberals are so extreme now. These neoliberal liberals that you’ve been dealing with in parliament are so extreme now that by their standards, they would call Menzies a socialist. And of course, Menzies is the last thing. Menzies was a socialist.

Robbie Barwick:

It’s just that Menzies had to accept and everyone accepted in those days that you needed to have a public presence, including a public bank. The existence of the public bank, even when Menzies neutralised it a bit in 1959, he split the reserve bank function off from the Commonwealth Bank to weaken its power. Even when that happened, though, just the existence of the Commonwealth Bank and the Commonwealth Development Bank, as something the private banks had to compete with and the Commonwealth Development Bank was able to issue long term credit. It was able to provide flexible lending for farmers and all those things. It still performed a very useful function in the economy that helped stabilise the economy until Keating finally scrapped it in the mid-90s.

Malcolm Roberts:

Something for you to think about, we may or may not discuss it after, I’d like to continue with the priorities on the banking. But to me, the Labour Party is the party in the history. Even though I disagree with this ideology, the Labour Party in the era of Curtin and Chifley and some of the early Labour Party prime ministers were dinky-di. They were fair dinkum Australians. They were doing what they thought was the best for the country. Now whether you agree with them or not, that’s another thing.

Malcolm Roberts:

But what I’m saying is they were genuine. I do not see that in today’s Labour Party. They do not look after the worker. Their policies are selling out to the globalists. They’re completely enemy of the worker. Same with the liberal, the modern liberals are really socialists in many ways, because what I see, Robbie, is both Labour Party and the Liberal Nationals cow towering to the major banks and doing the bidding of the banks and the globalist predators through the UN, the World Economic Forum. That’s where we’ve gone. So, Menzies was far, far better than today’s liberals. Curtin and Chifley were immensely better than today’s Labour Party.

Robbie Barwick:

They were patriots.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you.

Robbie Barwick:

They fought for sovereignty. And yeah, in terms of modern labour, they’ll be outraged at me saying this, they hate our party for saying it, but they bear no resemblance at all to the old Labour Party. And even the last hurrah of old labour and it was slightly messier, even the Whitlam government, there was an economic component to the Whitlam government where they tried to do things that if they had to succeeded would’ve been incredibly useful now, but because it involved this issue of taking on the private sector and the private banks and the private resources companies was a big one, a really big one. They wanted to buy back the farm. What’s his name?

Malcolm Roberts:

Connor.

Robbie Barwick:

Rex Connor was the real soul of old labour in the old Labour Party and so was the treasurer, Jim Cairns who was quite a lefty, but a very, very decent person. I got to know Jim in his final years and he told me something. He had been the treasurer under Whitlam. And you know what he told me? He knew that Labour did not have to… Those loans that eventually brought them down, those foreign-

Malcolm Roberts:

King O’Malley loans.

Robbie Barwick:

… King O’Malley loans, the attempt to borrow those loans, that was not their first preference. He knew they didn’t have to borrow at all. They could have used the reserve bank as a national bank again, but unfortunately, the politics had changed and he and Connor could not persuade their colleagues to do so. And so, then they went to London and Wall Street, which is where they usually went. But those banks wouldn’t lend for the programme that Connor and Whitlam and Cairns wanted, which was to encourage Australian ownership of Australian resources. That’s what they wanted to do. Those banks wouldn’t lend that.

Malcolm Roberts:

We have to go to an ad break now, Robbie. So, everyone will be back straight after the ad break with Robbie Barwick. And let’s talk first of all about King O’Malley coming from a family of bankers and then maybe talk about whatever you want to talk about, Robbie. You take the show home for the last 10 minutes or so.

Robbie Barwick:

I’ll go with Wayne.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back and people all over the world will be very interested in the figures I’m about to give before I ask Robbie to take the show home. This is from Craig Ishwood’s article, a paper presented to the federal cabinet calculated the value difference in exporting bauxite, which is raw material for aluminium versus processed aluminium in $19.70. One million tonnes of bauxite exported as the raw material, bauxite, earned 5 million back then. Processed one step into alumina, it earned $27 million, five times as much. Processed again into aluminium, it earned $125 million. That’s 25 times as much, but wait for it. When processed finally into aluminium products, it would earn $600 million.

Malcolm Roberts:

Robbie, we have become a quarry and we are letting people overseas get the value added. And it comes back to what King O’Malley did. King O’Malley was a banker, came from a banking family. He was a yank and he came out of here and he represented Australia and Federal Parliament and became a member of the Fisher government that enacted the Commonwealth Bank legislation. He knew how currency is issued and he knew that it should be in government hands.

Robbie Barwick:

This was the gospel he preached. He gave the speech in parliament in 1909 and it went for five hours, Malcolm, this speech. They didn’t have limits like you have to deal with in those days. And in that speech where he laid out exactly how the Commonwealth Bank should work, because it was legislated a few years later, he said, “I am the Alexander Hamilton of Australia.” He was the greatest financial genius to ever walk the earth and his ideas have never been improved upon. And that was a reflection of the fact that he was an American. He grew up in the American system.

Robbie Barwick:

In his lifetime, he’d seen the effects of what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War using greenbacks to help fund the transcontinental railway line, which opened up the United States. The boom of productivity in the United States from the Civil War onwards around that investment has only been matched by what we’ve seen in China in the last 30 years. This was incredible in the United States in those years. And it was done using these American Hamiltonian methods and that’s what he was saying. He knew Australia’s potential, right? This is what we need.

Robbie Barwick:

And from the time he landed here in the late 1880s until he got that bank, he just did nothing but preached the gospel of national banking from one end of the country to the other, until he got it, until he persuaded them to set it up. And then the rest was history. I got something to read to you. A few years ago, we did some archive work in the National Library up there in Canberra. And we stumbled across this letter that O’Malley in 1937 when he was very old wrote to Franklin Roosevelt then the president. In the letter, he was introducing to Roosevelt, an economics writer, Dr. LC Jauncey, who was a friend of his. Then he gave a little bit of this history and it’s worth reading.

Robbie Barwick:

He said, “I had the honour of forcing the Commonwealth Bank onto the Australian statute book after 10 years of fighting in parliament while I was Minister for Home Affairs. Nobody would second it. We gave the late Denison Miller $50,000 to start the bank. And at the end of six months, he returned it and that is all the capital we ever put into the bank. Since its foundation, it has made $200 million net profit for the Australian taxpayers and now has a capital of over $50 million in reserves.”

Robbie Barwick:

And then he said, “I do hope Mr. President that before you retire, you will transform all the reserve regional banks or the federal reserve into government banks so that the American people will have the profits for themselves as we have here.” So, he kept his American patriotism as well and he’d succeeded in doing it here. And he wanted the Americans to reign in the fed and turned the fed into a proper national bank, which of course, it’s not, because it’s privately controlled.

Malcolm Roberts:

Robbie, we have three minutes until we have to start winding up.

Robbie Barwick:

Here’s the solution. Here’s what I want people to think about in terms of a solution that is immediately available to Australians, Malcolm. We can bring back a national bank. We can bring back the Commonwealth Bank through a stepwise process. And the first step is to start a type of bank that’s actually quite common around the world, but quite effective. And it’s a postal bank and that’s how the Commonwealth Bank started anyway. When they set it up in 1912, there were no bank branches and they used the post officers as bank branches. And what we propose is let’s get a public bank again, a public bank that the public can use. Not just own, but use it, but you can put your deposits in there.

Robbie Barwick:

They’ll be safe from financial speculation. They’ll be safe from things like bail-in, because it’s 100% government guaranteed. Your branch won’t shut down because we have this network of post officers right around Australia, right? There’s 1,500 towns in Australia that don’t have any banks, but they have post officers, right? So, your branch won’t shut down. It will always be there for face-to-face banking services. It will lend loans into local communities, because that’s what a lot of private banks, most of them don’t care about that. They’ve got one obsession, which is mortgages in the big markets. You can do that. And most important, it’ll break their monopoly. The big four are effectively… They’re an oligopoly, but they’re effectively a cartel.

Robbie Barwick:

So, you might as well call them a monopoly. If they have to go back to competing with a public option like they did for 80 years in Australia, that breaks that monopoly, they will have to compete again. They’ll have to compete on services. They’ll have to compete on the way they provide credit, right? They will see that if they don’t lift their standards, they will lose their customers to this public bank. The public bank’s going to get a lot of customers anyway. And I’ve found in talking to a lot of people across the board in parliament, I talked to all the parties, Malcolm, as you know, there is broad support for this. Even in the major parties, there’s support for this idea. But see, what happens is that every party has specific agendas, et cetera.

Robbie Barwick:

The big two major parties, they don’t have institutional support at the top, but they have individual MPs who support it. That has to be galvanised, right? If the public realise how important this solution is to the number one control over our economy and how it works and get behind this campaign, this is something we can force through into the political agenda in Australia and actually get it passed. We need to use a policy like this to get the Labour Party to go back to its roots. We talked about Labour being different to the old Labour. That’s in terms of parliamentarians. What you find at the grassroots of the Labour Party, Malcolm, the union guy, who’s still the union guy and in the Labour Party, et cetera, they think their party’s a sellout.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. Yeah.

Robbie Barwick:

Let’s get them rallying around these policies that used to be fine. We’ve got a Labour government now. Let’s force this Labour government to go back to its own tradition.

Malcolm Roberts:

Amen, amen to that. This is why a public bank is one-nation policy. The key area that we have to win though, is the narrative because the media has denigrated it, but it will bring back accountability. And I want to thank you so much, Robbie, for coming on, just being your normal frank, blunt self. Thank you so much and your informed self. You come with the facts and the data.

Robbie Barwick:

Thanks for the invitation.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’d like to have you back again, because we can also talk about-

Robbie Barwick:

No worries.

Malcolm Roberts:

… peace being a very, very formative time, not just war, for currency creation in government hands.

Robbie Barwick:

Yes. Yes. Hear, hear.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you, Robbie.

/1 Comment/by

The Malcolm Roberts Show – Banking Activist Ellen Brown

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I talk to author and activist Ellen Brown on banking, debt and the need for a people’s bank.

Ellen Brown is an American author, attorney, public speaker, and advocate for financial reform, in particular public banking.

She is the founder and chairman of the Public Banking Institute, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to the creation of publicly-owned banks. She is the author of thirteen books and over 350 articles published globally.

Ellen began her career as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. Her interest in financial reform was sparked during 11 years spent in Africa and South America, where she began to explore solutions to the challenges of the developing world. She researched the private banking cartels, their hegemony over Wall Street and control of the Federal Reserve.   She also looked at public banking, which she discovered is a very successful model. The only operating state-owned public bank in the United States today is the Bank of North Dakota and has been touted as outperforming the big Wall Street banks.

In 2007 Ellen published the first edition of her best-selling book Web of Debt (now in its 5th edition). The book details how the private banking cartels have usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how the people can get it back. Her writings proved prescient, as the financial collapse of 2008 laid bare the systemic problems she had identified.

In her 2013 book The Public Bank Solution, she traces the evolution of two banking models that have historically competed—public and private—and explores contemporary public banking systems around the world. Her latest book is Banking on the People: Democratizing Finance in the Digital Age (2019).

The Web of Debt is one of the best books I’ve read. Ellen is a dynamic woman with considerable energy and extraordinary research skills. Amazingly, much of her research was done painstakingly before use of the internet became widespread.

Transcript

Speaker 1:

This is the Malcolm Roberts Show on Today’s News Talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts. This is Today’s News Talk radio tntradio.live. I want to thank you for having me as your guest, whether it’s in your car, your kitchen, your lounge, your shed, or wherever you are right now. As regular listeners understand there are two most important themes for my programme. Firstly, freedom and specifically the age old freedom versus control challenge. Secondly, personal responsibility and integrity. Both are fundamental for human progress and for people’s livelihoods.

Malcolm Roberts:

On this show, we’re going to talk about money, money, money. We’re going to cover the eighth and final key to human progress. So I’ll list those eight keys to human progress. The first is freedom, the second is rule of law, the third is stable constitutional succession. The fourth is secure private property rights. The fifth, sorry, I’m losing track of counting. The fifth is strong families, sixth affordable, efficient, reliable energy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Then we did the next one last time, which is taxation. And this one, the eighth key is honest money. Now I’ve just introduced the word there honest money. We’re going to learn today from international and Australian experts about something we all take for granted. That’s right money. Think about it. It’s intimately involved in almost every aspect of our lives yet we take it so much for granted that we don’t see where it is, where it comes from. And we are living in misery at times. So many people living in misery.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m going to refer to a quote from my website on the CSIRO looking at what’s pushing the global climate scam, but I’m going to quote from Ellen Brown’s book, where she’s referring to Louis McFadden, who is a senior member of the American House of Representatives, quote, “In 1934, he filed a petition for articles of impeachment against the Federal Reserve Board charging the Federal Reserve Bank with fraud, conspiracy, unlawful conversion, and treason.

Malcolm Roberts:

Then I’m going to quote from his speech where he spoke of one instance of 60,000 home and farm owners losing their property to bankers at one stage of the great depression. Here’s what he said. Their children are the new slaves of the auction blocks in the revival of the institution of human slavery. A document that I referred to called the Bankers Manifesto of 1934 added weight to these claims from these charges from McFadden, an update of the banker’s manifestation of 1892. It was reportedly published in the civil servant’s yearbook in January 1934 and in the New American in February, 1934 and was circulated privately among leading bankers.

Malcolm Roberts:

It said in part, ‘Capital must protect itself in every way through combination monopoly and through legislation,” that’s controlling governments. “Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible.” Now listen to this bit. When through a process of law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of wealth under control of leading financiers.

Malcolm Roberts:

People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capital to govern the world. Now, Australian speaker and researcher, John MacRae cites the same quote independently via another credible publication. Note that the bankers rely on what they falsely refer to as the law yet they are in their dominant and powerful position due to supposedly legalised legislation past deceitfully and in breach of the American constitution in breach of the American constitution.

Malcolm Roberts:

Their position is legal in that it’s legislated yet it’s fraudulent and thus unlawful that enables the people to remove it using the law. So what I wanted to discuss today with two very credentialed people is covering the basics of what is money? What do banks provide? Why are they so powerful? Who pays for the transfer of wealth from people and businesses to banks? So we will learn today how money is not honest. And we will learn today what is honest money?

Malcolm Roberts:

My first guest for this hour is Ellen Hodgson Brown. She’s an American author, attorney, public speaker and advocate for financial reform in particular in public banking. She’s the founder and chairman of the Public Banking Institute, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to the creation of publicly owned banks. She’s the author of 13 books and over 350 articles published globally. Much of a research was done before the access to the web, the worldwide web. An amazing woman.

Malcolm Roberts:

Ellen began her career as an attorney, practising civil litigation in Los Angeles. Her interest in financial reform was sparked during 11 years spent in Africa and South America, where she began to explore solutions to the challenges of the developing world.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s why I love people who look around and see what’s going on. She researched the private banking cartels, the hegemony money over wall street and control of the federal reserve bank. She looked at public banking which she discovered as a very successful model, a very successful model, it’s successful in Australia in last century as well. The only operating state-owned public bank in the United States today is the Bank of North Dakota and has been touted as outperforming the big Wall Street banks. Every year it’s made a profit since it started.

Malcolm Roberts:

In 2007, Ellen published the first edition of her best selling book, The Web of Debt and it’s now in its fifth edition. And I can thoroughly recommend that. I’ve read it. The book details, how the private banking cartels have usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how the people can get it back.

Malcolm Roberts:

Her writings prove prescient as the financial collapse of 2008, laid bare the systemic problems that she had identified. In her 2013 book, The Public Bank Solution, she traces the evolution of two banking models that have historically competed, public and private, and explores contemporary public banking systems around the world. The latest book is Banking On the People Democratising Finance in the Digital age and it was published in 2019. The Web of Debt is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Ellen is a dynamic intelligent woman with considerable energy and extraordinary research skills. Welcome Ellen.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, thanks Malcolm. It’s great to be talking to you. I’ve seen you on some little video clips lately, and you’re doing great work there.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you very much. And I’d like to talk about your work today. We always start Ellen with something you appreciate. What’s something you appreciate anything at all?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, I appreciate all the ordinary things that everybody appreciates, family and friends and health, and I used to appreciate travel, but I haven’t travelled since COVID. I think one advantage or one good thing about these lockdowns and about crises in general is that makes you appreciate things that you used to take for granted, like being out in public and able to breathe without having a mask on your face, simple things, or being able to travel without jumping through a lot of hoops that I’m not willing to jump through.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

But one thing I really appreciate is the computer. Because when I first started writing books, we didn’t have access like we have now. And I had two small children and I dragged these two kids up and down the elevators in the UCLA library with these great heavy books, xeroxing studies and you’d get them home and they wouldn’t be what you really needed or it would refer to something else that you didn’t have access to. And now everything’s just at your fingertips, which is quite amazing, a whole world of knowledge, plus the ability to see into other countries and what people are doing around the world and get a sense of you can travel without actually travelling.

Malcolm Roberts:

So I was filled with admiration for you. We’ve talked before you took part in the Senate hearings rather on lending to rural and primary production customers. And you did a marvellous job there. We’ve talked before on the phone, I’ve read your books. I was stunned that you’d done most of your research before the internet and now I’m even more stunned because you were carting two girls around with you wherever you went. How did you do that?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

One girl one boy.

Malcolm Roberts:

One girl one boy. Okay, well I’ve got to be fair 50:50. How did you do that?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

That’s the thing. It took a lot of legwork. So I never go into libraries anymore. It’s all just right there. I did see that there was somebody at the World Economic Forum said that the Metaverse is going to be more real to us than our real lives. Well, I hope not but that is sort of the computer is a whole world in itself with great depth. It’s censor, of course you can’t always be sure you’re getting real information, but it’s incredibly interesting.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I know you’re a very strong woman, a very determined woman. I’d like to explore that a little bit later on, a very strong human in fact. I don’t distinguish between men and women in that sense, women are incredibly strong. I asked you before we were putting this together a couple of weeks ago, your idea of what you’d like to talk about. And you said you only see one substantive pro question for you and that’s proposed questions about solutions.

Malcolm Roberts:

You suggested some. What can we do about our unsustainable unrepayable sovereign debts? The US federal debt is now $30 trillion, not counting unfunded future liabilities. Second question, what to do about inflation. Third question, how to make banks and banking work for the people. Fourth question, how to make national currencies honest? So they’re the questions I’d like to ask. But first of all, I think we have to define the problem. So let’s define the problem. Let’s understand the issue, which is the problem. So what’s money Ellen?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, economists say there are three critical factors in money, which is, it has to be a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. So virtually everything we call money today, doesn’t really qualify on all those points are not very well. Store value, that value keeps fluctuating. Well, even gold. I have some gold and I have some gold stocks and I totally think it’s a good idea but it does fluctuate a lot. And so it can go up $50 in a day. I think just from reading your email, I suspect you favour a gold backed currency, but it didn’t work in the 19th century. That’s why we went to Fiat money anyway. So there’s that. That’s one definition.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

There’s M1, M2, M3, the way the Federal Reserve defines it or M0 to start with. So those are all different levels of how liquid the money is or how accessible. So M0, they get kind of confused together, but say M1 is cash, which is obviously very fungible and your bank reserve or your bank deposits. And then bank reserves are created by the Federal Reserve and you can’t actually spend those, but those are I think they’re called M0. Anyway, M2 is the larger circulating money supply. M3 they no longer even count it anymore, but it included all the shadow banking, which is unregulated forms of money. I just read that estimates are that there are $50 trillion in Euro dollars traded every single day. And these are totally unregulated. The Federal Reserve has no control over them, they’re called dollars but they’re not even really dollars. They’re Euro dollars means any dollars created outside of the United States. So it could be Japan or anywhere.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

And they’re really just banking accounting. It’s an accounting thing where they’re basically creating credit and credits and debits that there’s no physical paper involved. Anyway, it’s a huge amount of money it’s in the shadow banking system, nobody knows for sure even how much it is. It’s certainly not transparent. It’s not trackable at all but it’s between banks. It’s legitimate. Apparently banks can’t operate without it. And I remember reading that on the gold system, the only reason it really worked was that you had a lot of credit that ways of expanding credit besides the gold, because there’s just not enough gold to do all the trades that need to be done.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Even if you take one single product, I think there’s [inaudible 00:14:31] was talking about this and he, he has a gold bug, but he said that to do like a hundred dollars product, you have to do many hundred dollars worth of credits because every producer in the chain of production operates on credit. So they have to pay their workers and materials before they get paid. And then the next step up also needs. So they would also need gold if we were only operating in gold. So you can’t do it in just one metal. The Euro Asian Economic Union that’s headed by Sergei Glazyev. I just wrote an article on that. They’re proposing a new monetary system where it wouldn’t be backed by gold in the sense of that you could take your dollars and cash them in for gold at the bank, which is what you actually could do in the 19th century.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

And that’s what happened. That’s what went wrong in the 1930s to ’33 collapsed where people were rushing to the bank and trading in their dollars for gold. The banks didn’t have that much gold and they were on a fractional reserve system. So they only had a certain percentage of actual gold. So they ran out of gold so the banks then went bankrupt. So you’ve got to have credit on top of your gold in some way. But anyway, so the Russian system that is being proposed and that maybe our new banking system is, it’s not exactly backed in the sense of you can cash in your dollars for gold, but it’s measured against.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

So it becomes a stable unit of value because it’s measured against a basket of commodities and currencies when I wrote Web of Debt, I was proposing that you could use the cost of living index. In other words, a basket of things that everybody uses. And then you could figure out what the value or how much it would cost in dollars, how much it would cost and pay us, et cetera. And that would be your exchange rate rather than what we have now, where exchange rates are easily manipulated by speculators that short sell the currencies. And we’ve had several crises over that. Anyway, so what money is, is very fluid.

Malcolm Roberts:

Wow. What an answer controversial, sorry your last word

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

And controversial.

Malcolm Roberts:

Controversial. I was just about to summarise it. I asked you a simple question, simple question. Money, what is it? No, no, you’ve done a brilliant job. It’s a medium of exchange, which enables people to exchange my work for someone else’s goods and someone else makes a different product. So he makes butter and he exchanges it with someone who makes clothes and she makes clothes. So it enables an exchange of… It’s a medium of exchange. So we have to have that. Otherwise, it’s back to barter system. And a medium of exchange enables us to specialise, which gives us efficiency.

Malcolm Roberts:

The butter maker will be far better at making butter than I will be. And I don’t have to have the dairy cattle to make the butter. Then you also said, it’s a unit of accounting. It’s a measure of an account. And then you also said, it’s a store of value. So wonderfully, clearly they’re the three things. And then you went on with how liquid the money is, the bank reserves, unstable, shadow banking, credit, fractional reserve, a stable unit of value, manipulated, speculators. It’s a real mess. It’s a real nightmare. No wonder people don’t take much interest in this because it’s so damn complex yet let’s try and simplify it before we get onto your-

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Yeah, well, I should have… The most important thing and the most what you might consider fraudulent thing is that it’s not created by the government. Virtually all of our money is created by banks when they make loans, which I actually think is a good thing. We need a credit system and that’s a way to do a credit system. But the problem is who controls the banks? Who owns the banks? Who has first access to the money, which is called the can Cantillon effect. Whoever gets their hands on the money. First is most able to profit from it. So obviously the private banks, Wall Street, City of London, et cetera, they can create money on their books for their cl their favourite clients who may be one big cartel.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

And so they have easy access to cheap money and they can raise the rates to whatever they want on the rest of us. So, anyway, there’s the problem is that money is created by banks. They do it by double entry bookkeeping. So if you go to the bank to take out a loan, let’s say you want to buy a house and you take out a loan for $500,000, the bank will write $500,000 on one side of its books just into your deposit account, your checking account. And you can now write checks on that. And on the other side of their books, they’ll write the same $500,000 as an asset because you have agreed to pay that back. You’ve signed a mortgage, et cetera. You’ll pay that back plus interest.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Whereas, on the deposit that they wrote on the other side of the books is a liability to them because when you pay your seller, if the seller is in another bank, then the bank will have to come up with that 500,000, which they probably don’t have. What they do is they borrow it somewhere. So they borrow it. It used to be, they borrowed it in the Fed funds market from each other, but they don’t do that much anymore although that’s the interest rate that the Fed is allegedly raising and that’s supposed to cure inflation, which it absolutely won’t right now under these circumstances. We know it’s not that kind of inflation. But anyway, so now I lost my train of thought.

Malcolm Roberts:

So what, what you’ve talked about now is there’s the way the banks create money. I’m not bragging here, but I went to the University of Chicago, which is in the city of Chicago, as you know and it’s won more Nobel prizes for economics and finance than any other university in the world anywhere. So it’s got a very good name for finance, and they never told us that. They never told us how they create money, who controls the money creation and what you’ve just said, I’m going to give you an example to back you up in a minute but what you’ve just said is that banks create money in the first place by ledger entries, journal entries. And I can confirm that because I asked the Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of Australia, Guy Debelle, he was the deputy governor at the time.

Malcolm Roberts:

And I said, so what you’re saying is that money is created using journal entries. And he looked at me hesitated, and then he said, “Electronic journal entries.” So it’s created as some people would say, it’s not quite right, but it’s created out of thin air. And as you just said, the person who creates the money has the greatest control, but then these same people, privately owned banks, the same people control the Federal Reserve Bank, the same people determine interest rates. The same people determine the money supply, how easy it is to get money. So they really control the government. They really control the economy, don’t they?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Right. And also to confirm that in 2014, that the Bank of England came out in their first quarterly report and said contrary to popular belief, banks do not act simply as intermediaries taking in deposits and lending them out again. In fact, banks create money when they make loans. And in fact, they said that 97% of the money supply is created in that way. So that was confirming what used to be conspiracy theory before that. When I wrote about it, in Web of Debt, it was considered quite controversial but now everybody agrees. That’s how it’s done.

Malcolm Roberts:

So what we’ve got here is a money creation system that’s privately owned and privately controlled in large measure. And you wrote very glowingly of the Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s Commonwealth bank early last century. And rightly so, you did a very good job on that. However, it was a rarity. And so the Commonwealth Bank had to be killed because it provided competition for the private banks, Wall Street and the City of London banks did not like it at all. It held them accountable, it controlled the money and it had to go and both Labour and Liberal party governments over the last a hundred years have well until 1995, ’96, when Keating sold off the last of the Commonwealth Bank.

Malcolm Roberts:

It was destroyed over a period of about 70 years. And my next guest will explore that further. So money is important in an economy. It’s important to economic health. You’ve already talked about how we measure it. M1, M2, M3, M0, volume of money. You’ve talked about the fact that money is not honest. Money is controlled, so let’s go on banks. What’s their role in relation to money Ellen?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, as the Bank of England is confirmed they’re not merely intermediaries taking in money and lending it out again. They’re actually creating the money, which sounds shocking but actually we do need that sort of system. We need a credit system. The question is just who owns the bank and who controls the bank. As you’ve said, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia originally was an excellent model. We’ve had several quite good models too. Historically Alexander Hamilton’s original plan was to have that sort of infrastructure and development bank in the end, it wound up privatised over his objection. He didn’t think that stocks should be… Well, it was sold to foreigners over his objection. But anyway, that was the intention was sovereign money and sovereign credit. And of course the American colonists started out with sovereign money, which was original to them at the time, not counting the fact that the Chinese did it like about a thousand years ago.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

But for Western civilization, anyway, that was unique that we didn’t have money. The colonies didn’t have money. And so it was the Governor of Massachusetts in 1691 I think who got the bright idea of paying his soldiers, but just by issuing these little receipts, which were considered an advance against taxes, which was the same system as the tally system which was done by the British from like 1100 to 1700, something like that where they would split a… Well, I hope I’m not getting too far out.

Malcolm Roberts:

No, no, keep going.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Okay. So in the tally system, they took a stick and notched it. So it was an accounting system and then they split the stick. And since no two sticks split the same way, it was foolproof against forgeries. So you could put the sticks together. So the government kept one half the stick, and then the payee kept the other, other half of the stick. And then those sticks circulated in the economy as money. And that’s basically the same thing that the American colonist paper money was, which was, and you’d pay it to somebody who had delivered goods or services to the government. So the collective body of the people acknowledged that this was a debt owed to this person or whatever. And then that paper would circulate in the economy and when tax time rolled around, you could use it to pay taxes.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

We actually did that in California in 2008, but the problem was that the government, the local government wouldn’t take the money back in taxes. So it did work. It would work, it works as an advance, but you have to agree to use this to take it back. And that’s what does give it its value and stability and so forth. But anyway, it worked well for the colonists, except for the fact that it was a lot easier to issue the money than to pull it back in taxes. Because these are frontiers when they didn’t like the idea of taxes in the first place, they were kind of hard to nail down.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

We didn’t have a computer system at that time. But anyway, it worked pretty well except that they wound up hyper inflating or over printing and devaluing the currency until the Pennsylvanians, the Quakers in Pennsylvania got the idea of forming their own bank. So instead of just printing money and spending it, they printed money and lent it to the farmers. So that’s the ideal. That was the first US public bank was this the Pennsylvania state or colonial bank where they printed money, lent it to the farmers at 5% interest, which at that time was a quite good interest rate. And then the farmers would pay it back. So it went out and it came back. So it was stabilised. It was sustainable. It wasn’t just money going out and going out and going out.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. So we’re going to go for an ad break now, but before we do, I’ll just make a statement that we can ponder over the ad break. Ron Paul who’s very, very highly regarded. Former Senator says that the Federal Reserve Bank in America is neither federal, it’s not a government body, nor has it got any reserves. It’s a privately owned entity. Beyond the reach of the president, beyond the reach of Congress. And that leads to complete absence of restraints on bank’s power.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now we have bailouts and we have bail ins, which have been enabled to protect the banks at the cost of the everyday Australian. We’ve seen you’ve documented the international role and power of banking associations, like the bank for international settlements, the world bank, the international monetary foundation, their role in ruining nations and making nations dependent. The IMF international monetary I’ve forgotten what’s the F for? Foundation. I’ve forgotten.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Fund. International Monetary Fund.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you. I just had a complete blank will crippling, Mexico, crippling Russia, the Malaysian Prime Minister at the time McCarty he’s one of the feud have called out the globalist banks their power is enormous. So when we come back, let’s talk about the fact that Henry Ford said, “If the American people knew what was going on with banking, there’d be a revolution by morning.” So rather than have that revolution on the streets, could you talk about your main questions and I’ll remind them of remind you of them. What can we do about our unsustainable unrepayable, sovereign debts? What can we do about inflation? How do we make banks and banking work for the people? How to make national currencies honest? We’ll go for the ad break. And then we be right back with Ellen Hodgson brown to give us the solutions.

Speaker 1:

The midterms and America votes on November 8th, with his expert analysis and opinion. This is TNT radio with Jeremy Beck.

Jeremy Beck:

An important recall vote in San Francisco took place on the 7th of June alongside the many primary elections on the same day. Voters decided to oust the radical District Attorney Chesa Boudin whose soft on prime approach has overseen a horror show of lawlessness for the many victims of crime. Boudin is one of several dozen rogue prosecutors elected to public office largely thanks to funds from billionaire George Soros.

Malcolm Roberts:

So we’re back with Ellen Hodgson Brown discussing money and banking. So Ellen, what can we do about our unsustainable unrepayable sovereign debts? You’ve mentioned that the United States federal debt is now about $30 trillion, not counting unfunded future liabilities. What can we do about it?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, sovereign debt of course is the debt of the government. Dealing with personal debt is a lot harder. Actually the first money system I probably should have mentioned this was that the first money system in recorded history was the Sumerian money system, which Michael Hudson’s written a lot about. And it was just an accounting system, but they did charge interest. And when the debts got too high, they would have a debt Jubilee periodically. So they would wipe out all the debts and start all over. And that’s obviously the ideal, if you can do it. But the reason they could do it was that the king was considered the representative of the gods and the gods owned the land. And so the king could just order that the debts would be wiped off the clean slate. But today the debts are owed to private banks and we just wouldn’t be able to do it legally.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

So doing a debt Jubilee for the people would be a lot harder, although it certainly would be, it seems like it’s needed because one problem with the way we create money is that banks create the principle, but they don’t create the interest. So debt always grows faster than the money supply, and there’s not enough money to pay it all back without borrowing more which means the debt just goes up and up and up. It’s a pyramid scheme. So how do we bring about a debt Jubilee under today’s circumstances? Alexander Hamilton actually had a very good plan, which I think we could do. Although you know obviously it’s probably not going to happen, but what Hamilton did with the state’s deaths, the colonies debts that became the states was to roll them to accept them in exchange for stock in the first US banks.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

So you could pay partly in gold and partly in these debts. And we could actually take that $30 trillion in debt and turn it into stock in a big bank and pay some dividend on it. And actually, there is a bill that we have here in the US right now, a National Infrastructure Bank Bill, where they’re modelling it on the first US banker, the Hamiltonian model, where they would take federal securities and in exchange for stock in the bank. And that’s how they would capitalise it. So that’s one possibility. Another possibility, as long as you don’t pay interest on it, really the debt doesn’t hurt. If you just keep rolling it over and over and over. So you could just have the Federal Reserve buy all the debt. The central bank returns its profits to the treasury.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

So it doesn’t keep the interest. It’s really the interest that’s the problem. That’s the thing that we have to pay year after year and projections are that in a few years, it’s going to be up to something like a trillion dollars a year just for the interest. So that’s getting right up there with the military and are really expensive things in the budget. But that’s another possibility. In other words, you can just keep rolling it over and hold it by your own central bank assuming your central bank were actually publicly owned and controlled and serving the people. So it could be dealt with. Now foreign sovereign debts, it does look like half the world is likely to join this new [inaudible 00:37:10] system and just walk away from their debts. That’s what Sergei Glazyev said that they don’t need to pay their debts.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

They just walk away from the debts in dollars and start their own system. And that could happen. Would it destroy the dollar? I don’t think so. Because of the amount of dollars that are out there in the Euro dollar system, I mean the dollar is basically our unit of account. It’s just how people measure value. And it’s so entrenched that I’ve read other experts who say that it probably can’t be shaken loose even if half the world does abandon the dollar and take up some other currency, but I’m getting far a field again. Sorry.

Malcolm Roberts:

So Ellen, before we move on to the solving inflation your ideas on comments on that, there are many different ways of do doing this, but what seems to be coming out of it is that we need to talk about it. We need to have an open Frank discussion about it. We need to have the truth on the table. We need to understand who owns what in this, who controls what so that we can then establish a system that is good for the people rather than just for a few globalist predators.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Right. Transparency and accountability. Totally.

Malcolm Roberts:

And they’re the enemies at the moment and so there’s no transparency. A lot of this is hidden. Okay. So the solution is not an easy one, but it must be achieved. If we don’t achieve a solution by open honest frank discussion, then it’ll come through some form of control and that’ll be devastating for everyone ultimately for the global predators themselves. So what to do about inflation Ellen?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, the argument is that this is a monetary inflation, and they’re trying to tighten the money supply and not supposed to fix it, but it’s not a monetary inflation. It’s a supply problem. There’s two sides to inflation that you often hear that inflation is always and everywhere, monetary phenomenon. But that’s not true. It’s half a monetary phenomenon, it’s a half a supply phenomenon. In other words, if money goes up and supply goes down, you’re going to have too much money competing for too few goods.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

But if you can keep the supply and the money in balance, then you don’t have inflation, then prices remain stable. So what we need to do is up the supply, which a good infrastructure bank would do it, we’ve got the amazing model of China that in a couple of decades, they came up from absolute poverty for most of their people up into well, anyway, how did they do it?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

But they have these infrastructure banks where they just basically create the money as credit build the thing like the high speed rail, and then the fees from the trains pay back the loan. And that’s the way it should be. You extend the credit, you use the credit to build something productive, don’t keep pumping it into existing houses, which will just drive the price of houses up. But you put it into new productivity, new infrastructure, which we desperately need in the US and probably, I don’t know how Australia is, but here we got a serious infrastructure problem, build new infrastructure, put money into all sorts of productive things. That’s what Roosevelt did in the 1930s with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, he funded anything that was productive that would pay back, not speculative, but actual producing assets. So that’s what we need to do.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. That makes sense, because if you generate something in terms of productive infrastructure, and then you use that to generate wealth, then you don’t have inflation and you do have prosperity wealth.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

The interest rates is going to just make it worse because all the producers have credit lines and they’re not going to be able to afford their credit lines. We’re already seeing that business is falling off.

Malcolm Roberts:

And what you just said worked in the Commonwealth Bank when it was a true public bank in the early part of last century generated infrastructure and we… We’ll come to that more later. I won’t go on any more of that now. How do we make banks, coming to your fourth question, how do we make banks and banking work for the people Ellen?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, they need to be public institutions, publicly owned and controlled, the sustainable, transparent and accountable that they need to be. When we have this, the public banking institute, our mission is to try to get public banks established in the US like the Bank of North Dakota. And you often hear people say, you want to give the government a bake, because people don’t trust the government anymore than they trust bakers, but you need to design the system so that it is responsive to the people, accountable, transparent and so that we actually have control over it.

Malcolm Roberts:

So that again mimics what happened with the Commonwealth Bank. The Commonwealth Bank, when it was formed. The first governor was a man named Dennison Miller who was very energetic man who really aspired to do something really well. And he was working for the Bank of New south Wales. What is now known as Westpac. He was taken from Westpac of Bank of New South Wales and made in charge of the Commonwealth Bank. And he had a wonderful objective then to do the best for the country.

Malcolm Roberts:

And he basically ran the Commonwealth Bank very, very well and worked for the country despite Labour Party and Liberal Party or the precursor Liberal Party, trying to undo it all because one of the things that the Commonwealth Bank did when it was a true people’s bank in the early part of last century, was it provided competition for the private banks. The private banks were then held accountable, which is what you just said. The accountability is so important, but that accountability has to be to the people you’d agree with that.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Right. Totally.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. Thank you for mentioning the Commonwealth Bank in your book, the Web of Debt. The fourth question, your last question.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

[inaudible 00:43:57] very inspiring.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. The fourth question you suggested was how to make national currencies honest? How do we make them honest? Because as you pointed out at the moment, whether it’s seashells or paper or trinkets or tally sticks or whatever medium is that it can be corrupted. It’s not necessarily backed by anything. There’s no real reserve there. There’s no real value there other than what it’s deemed to be valued. It’s Fiat. It’s an announcement, a pronouncement. So how do you make national currencies honest?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, I’m not actually opposed to national currencies. I’m not sure I know the answer to that. There are a lot of people attempting to establish an alternative currency system, like a cryptocurrency system, a crypto currency would be honest if it’s backed by something like food back currencies, I think would be a great idea where it’s basically an advance against the future productivity of the farmers. They could issue their own cryptocurrency. But anyway, I think our Fiat system is not that bad. It’s who creates it and who controls its creation. In other words, if you had public banks that were actually accountable and sustainable and what was the other word I forgot now, anyway, it’s getting late here. So if you had public banks that were there to serve the people and the people in control of it actually had that sort of sense of mission that you could have an honest fiat currency.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Fiat currency is not really unbacked. It’s backed by the full faith and credit of the people, which means the people agree that to accept it. It so if I went to the grocery with a gold coin and tried to pay for my groceries and said this is worth 1800, whatever it’s at right now at 1850 or something, the grocer wouldn’t know what to do with it because they wouldn’t know for sure that it was valid. He’d say, “No, give me paper money or give me your credit card.” Because things are valued in the Fiat currency and that’s one of the properties of a good currency. I don’t know what, how do you answer it?

Malcolm Roberts:

It’s very difficult, but it seems to me that what you’ve said in answer to each of the four major questions is that it has to go back to being publicly owned bank, a government led bank, not, not necessarily led because governments can then do political things but an independent bank that’s independent from privately owned banks because privately owned banks are the root of the problem. These privately owned banks, these globalist predators, when things are going well, they love capitalism. When things are going badly, they want socialism.

Malcolm Roberts:

And that seems to be a major problem for these people because they make so many… Without any accountability, they make horrendous decisions which ultimately the people pay for in a loss of their house, the loss of their cars, the loss of productive capacity of the country, the decimation of a whole economy. And then you extend that power, that national power internationally through the Bank of International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, the world bank, et cetera. You’ve got a huge problem and they’re basically controlled by the same globalist predators. So that seems to be the core to take it back and give it to the people. But either way you’ve done a marvellous job in painting the fact that there are no simple solutions and yet there is a basic simple solution and that is people’s banking. Ellen, can I ask you some personal questions?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Because I’ve got just two minutes to go and I like to finish on the hour rather than early. First of all, I want to thank you so much for joining us. And I look forward to staying in touch, but I read that you were born in 1945, that makes you almost 77, 76. How do you do it?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Almost 77. Well, how do I do it?

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. You look at the research, you’ve done the clarity, your ability to say that it’s not all bad. Some things that need to be considered, but you’re juggling all these complex concepts in your head.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, it’s incredibly interesting. Don’t you think?

Malcolm Roberts:

Oh yes.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

You’re doing marvellous work and just the idea of cracking this nut. Like how do we figure this out? And, well, actually I got divorced if you want to get really personal 20 years ago. And I was quite depressed. And so at some point I said, “I don’t want this body anymore, but if somebody up there has a good idea for [inaudible 00:49:03].”

Malcolm Roberts:

So you took it on as a challenge. I’d want to give you the last say we’ve got 20 seconds left. How do they learn more about you? What’s your website?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Oh, ellenbrown.com or publicbankinginstitute.org.

Malcolm Roberts:

ellenbrown.com or publicbankinginstitute.org. Thank you so much Ellen. What a wonderful person you are. Thank you for being so open and honest.

/by

How much does the U.N. cost Australia? DFAT at Senate Estimates

, ,

SIMPLE QUESTION: HOW MUCH DOES THE U.N. COST AUSTRALIA?

I could not believe no one in government could give me a total cost on what we pay to the UN, its subsidiaries and how much we spend in complying with their dictates.

Transcript

[Senator Roberts] And thank you all for attending today. My questions are about the United Nations. So I don’t know who will answer those questions. In total, how much does Australia pay to the United Nations or subsidiaries each year, in dollar terms? Do we need to take that on notice?

[Minister Payne] No, I don’t think we do, I think someone’s coming down from upstairs. We will unfortunately get into questions of definition about which subsidiary agencies and all the rest of it, we may need to… in order to give a completely comprehensive answer, we may need to take it on notice, that there’ll be a number of things that we can say that are general level that I hope will be what you’re after Senator.

[Senator Roberts] I’m after a comprehensive level, yeah.

[Minister Payne] Well if you need comprehensive Senator, I’ll ask officials to do their best at the table.

[Senator Roberts] Yes.

And then if parts of it needs to be taken on notice, we’ll return to the committee.

[Senator Roberts] Of course. – Thank you.

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. Apologies. I just had to come down the stairs. Justin Lee, first assistant secretary multilateral policy division. Senator, can I just ask you to repeat the question?

[Senator Roberts] Yes. In total, how much does Australia pay to the United Nations, or its subsidiaries, each year, in dollar terms?

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. The key contribution that Australia makes is our assessed contribution to the United Nations and that’s based upon the size of Australia’s economy. Australia contributes 2.21% to the UN regular budget.

[Chair] The question was in dollar terms.

[Justin Lee] Yes. And that equates to, in 2021, around $82.2 million, is our assessed contribution to the UN. We also make other contributions for example, to UN peacekeeping. And that is also based on an assessed contribution to the United Nations. And in 2019/20, which was the last year, we had a figure out for that. Australia provided $212 million in assessed contributions to support UN peacekeeping missions. Senator that is not the total of course though, of our contribution to the United Nations. And I don’t have a figure because that is provided by a range of contributions that may be made through the development corporation programme. It may be made through contributions to UN specialised agencies. They would be looked after by other Australian government agencies as well. So getting the total contribution that Australia makes to the UN, and all of the subsidiary agencies, requires a collation of data from across government, which we don’t have.

[Senator Roberts] I’ll be happy to take that on notice. Thank you. This is a very important issue for our constituents because they’re concerned at the cost and the impact on the country. The next one is along the same vein. In total, how much does it cost Australia to comply with, or to implement, UN dictates in the form of various forms, treaties, agreements declarations, protocols that are expected of the UN members?

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. I don’t think that we would be able to provide a figure on that because if Australia, Australia of course seeks to adhere to its international obligations, including treaty reporting processes, a lot of that would be the responsibility of Australian government agencies and, and to to calculate that, you would need to look at the the staff costs, the time costs. Sorry, I, I… I just don’t think that we would have that figure or be able to collect a figure, on implementation of international obligations in that, in the way that you portray it.

[Senator Roberts] It would be. Thank you for your openness. It would be enormous. I’m thinking of the compliance with the UN Kyoto protocol. That’s cost a lot of farmers to lose their property rights. That’s been estimated by some people to be either a 100 or $200 billion. So it’s rubbery but it’s a difficult thing. Compliance with the water act, which puts compliance with international obligations as it’s, one of its primary aims, right through. Compliance with the UN Paris agreement, particularly when other nations don’t have to wreck their economy to comply because their goals are so easy. So manufacturing the UN Lima agreement, a declaration from 1975 and the governance impacts from the UN Rio declaration in 1992. So just take it, but I am. I am wondering if anyone has figured out the cost to this country in dollar terms, the cost to our economy the cost to a loss of our governance and sovereignty.

[Justin Lee] Senator, I think the only other way to portray it though is the, is the benefits that, that Australia gets from these arrangements and these agreements.

[Chair] With respect, I understand that but this isn’t the forum for arguing somebody seeking costs. And if somebody else wants to ask a question about the benefits, then that’s up to them. But time is very limited. I’m sorry.

[Senator Roberts] So that, that leads to my third question which is given the globalist approach of the UN, what value is there for Australia to constantly pay out money directly and at huge indirect cost to our governance and our economy?

[Justin Lee] Oh, well, I think the answer to that would be the benefits that we get from those, those arrangements, both in terms of having, having rules that are that guide many things that, that guide the Australian economy. If we look for example, all the work that we have been doing around rules that guide international aviation, international shipping, telecommunications, all of those rules are set by the United Nations. That means that we’ve got a global economy that we can participate in that sets equal rules between countries which Australia is a, is an open trading economy and an economy of our size can, can benefit from. Similarly, we have international organisations dealing with global challenges. So the roles that the WHO is playing in response to COVID. Dealing with, dealing with those challenges that we want addressed in the world, by making contributions to those, we get benefit from that. So we appreciate that there are costs, both direct costs and obligations that Australia has to adhere but we also get a number of very significant benefits.

[Senator Roberts] And I’d put it to you that the benefits, for example in aviation, they could be done by a country hosting the other countries of the world to come up with a convention on that. So that doesn’t have to come from the UN. And we’ve shown that in the history of our planet. What would it mean to Australia, if Australia chose to withdraw from the United Nations? If we exited.

[Minister Payne] Senator, I can assure you that there is no consideration of that, that our engagement in the international system, and indeed Australia’s security and prosperity has been underpinned for a very long time, by what is known as the rules-based international order in the institutions that were created to support that. What we have seen in the last 12 months, frankly, the impact of COVID around the world. We’ve seen what happens when those systems can click into gear. And can support the countries and the communities that need them. The international cooperation that we have through those UN agencies and organisations is very important to that management. COVID-19, as I was saying, has really exposed the magnitude of the consequences if those global institutions are not working as well as they should, that does not mean, and I think the prime minister and you, have probably engaged on this before. It does not mean, as the prime minister said in his Lowy speech last year. He said, ‘We can’t be an indifferent bystander to these events that impact our livelihoods, our safety and our sovereignty. We must, as we have done previously, cultivate, marshal and bring our influence to bear to protect and promote our national interests.’ So what we seek, is an international system that respects the unique characteristics of individual states within it. In our case, Australia. That still provides a framework for cooperation on security and prosperity. Mr. Lee, Dr. Lee has advanced international aviation I think, if I was, if I was hearing correctly as a, as an example of that, but there are countless others, Senator, where we understand that working cooperatively with others is an important part of our national interest. It’s in our national interest, it allows us to pursue shared regional and global objectives. And it is a centrepiece of our international engagement. Now, we did a lot of work on this last year, a lot of work. And that has crystallised and firmed the government’s views on these matters.

[Senator Roberts] Well, thank you and I respect your right to have an opinion. I also have a different opinion.

[Minister Payne] As I do yours, Senator.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you. I know you’ve shown that in the past.

[Minister Payne] We’re in a very good democracy. Sorry. I took some of those minutes. My apologies.

[Senator Roberts] I do acknowledge the prime minister said, I think these words, on the 3rd of October, 2019 when he addressed the Lowy Institute in Sydney, ‘Unaccountable’ he spoke of, ‘The unaccountable internationalist bureaucrats or bureaucracies.’ I think those were the words. And then promptly gave, advocated to give World Health Organisation more power. I would argue with you about the World Health Organization’s benefits, because I think it contributed to the rampant spread of COVID, but nonetheless. How many funding arrangements between Australia and the UN are open-ended?

[Justin Lee] I, I’m not…

[Senator Roberts] They get ratcheted up automatically, or they’re they haven’t got a closing date.

[Justin Lee] Yes. I, I’ll try to take that on notice. But my, my initial reaction would be that we would have no open-ended commitments, or any commitment that we make would be on the basis of an agreement or an understanding. But I can take that on notice.

[Senator Roberts] I think there is some updates to our laws or our requirements, or our commitments that are made automatically if the UN document or protocol is, is changed. Are you aware of any of those?

[Justin Lee] You could be, I’m not sure Senator, you could be referring to what I mentioned earlier, which was our assessed contribution. And there is a committee that looks at our assessed contributions and adjusts that contribution according to changes and our national circumstances, our size of our economy, debt ratios and the like in comparison to other countries. That is still part of a committee which we participate in. But ultimately we would abide by the finding of that committee and at the end of that process. So there is that sort of process. And that was what I was referring to earlier about the calculation about assessing.

[Senator Roberts] It may be, I’ll finish up now, but it may be in the human rights area. Or the rights of the child area, where changes in the UN requirements are automatically fed through to us and we have to comply with them. So that may be something to consider, but I believe that’s the case.

[Justin Lee] I can take that on notice.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you, if you could. And, you know, from my, my questioning. I really question the need to stay in the UN and the advantage to this country because of the governance impact on our country, the sovereignty impact on a country and the economic impacts on a country. So, you know, I recognise and acknowledge that this country’s current government is not thinking about exiting the UN, but we certainly are. So a lot of our constituents want to.

[Minister Payne] Senator, can I also say, I understand the reform issues you’ve raised and we are strong supporters of the reform processes that have been underway in the UN and acknowledged, more to do. And I did raise that with the secretary general last week, in a conversation on a number of regional issues. But also in passing on the year-end reform questions.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you very much.

/3 Comments/by

Matthias Cormann given millions to jet around Europe – 2SM with Marcus Paul

Transcript

[Marcus] Malcolm good morning.

[Malcolm] Good morning, Marcus. I’m disgusted with that rort I’m bloody annoyed because look, what’s really going on here, mate is it’s not just that he’s got a job that’s being protected. What we’re doing is Mathias Cormann in the Senate, who often answered questions by saying we are fulfilling our global responsibilities.

To hell with the global responsibilities. We have to look after Australian sovereignty. I don’t need him in the OECD bringing back OECD stuff to steal wealth from Australians. I need as Australian parliamentarian to look after Australians.

[Marcus] Yeah, I thought that might have you fired up. And I’m glad I asked the question. You said it much better than what I did. I mean, you, you’ve dealt with this man, and it’s not a personal attack. It’s just the way the system’s set up. And you know, we’ve been talking at length this morning about the disparity, if you like, in opportunities and pay for men and women in our workforce. But I mean, this is just beyond the pail.

It really is and you know, 4,000 odd dollars. Now that’s before staff mind you, up to eight staff, the Prime Minister is apparently providing this former Senator, former Finance Minister with, to try and get him around the world to lobby people. So he gets his prime gig with the OECD, mind you at the same time, he’s going to receive a pretty decent politician salary upon the fact that he’s decided to pull the pin. He’s retired etc. He’s still of working age. I mean, the whole thing is just, it’s a joke.

[Malcolm] Well, it’s actually worse than a joke. It’s theft because the costs that you have just outlined are huge, but Marcus, they are tiny compared to the cost to the Australian people of pushing this globalist agenda. Morrison has appeared to be against the international globalist. But the fact is his behaviours show that he is a globalist.

He said on the 3rd of October, 2019, after we were pushing the fact that the message about the globalist taking over, he came out trying to steal our thunder by saying he is against the unelected, unaccountable, internationalist bureaucrats. He pretended to be against them. He didn’t say the UN, but since then, he’s said that we need to give the World Health Organisation, a UN body increased powers, powers of weapons inspectors, to just go into countries.

He’s just collected an award from Boris Johnson as for fulfilling his global agenda. And Morrison is just pushing policies. I’m tired of the liberal and labour and national parties, pushing policies that are destroying our water in accordance with UN, destroying our energy sector in accordance with the UN Kyoto Protocol, destroying property rights and farmers’ rights to use their own land in accordance with the UN Kyoto Protocol.

Both of these major parties have done that for 30, 40 years. Look at our tariffs look at it that have been smashed and left our companies vulnerable. Look at the taxes that we have paid to the foreigners and multinational companies in this country and 90% of the large companies in this country are owned by foreign owned multinationals, and they paid little or no tax.

[Marcus] That’s right.

[Malcolm] That’s fact. And then we’ve also got people being destroyed in the family law court system, which is a slaughter house of the nation, that’s fact. And that came from the UN as well. We’ve got to start running this country for Australians and let the Australians do the job. Instead of these bustards from overseas, it really fires me up.

[Marcus] Ah, well, I can tell all it’s missing next to the Australian flag behind the Prime Minister is a sign saying, “The Great Reset.”

[Malcolm] Correct. That is what is going on. And it’s just a return to feudalism. We will be surfed, serving the barons and the international barons. We have got one of the wealthiest countries on earth. We are the biggest exporters of energy in that gas and coal in the world, even greater than Middle East countries.

And yet we’re sitting at the crumbs, we’re taking the crumbs off the table now because the wealthy corporations are just taking it. They don’t pay taxes for taking our natural resources. This is ridiculous. They’re stealing it. And we end up poor and we’re taking the crumbs off a rich man’s table when we should be sitting at the bloody table.

[Marcus] All right, the Defence Inquiry has wrapped up the Brereton Report, there’s a whole range of issues. Here, Malcolm, you’d be happy to know that we are speaking to ex-Commando ‘H’ on our programme regularly. He’s outlining things from… And he’s not one of the people who’s been accused of any of the alleged war crimes, but he’s providing us updates on welfare of fellow serving Australians.

And they wanna start a petition to try and get their citations kept rather than taken off them. And also the other issue of course, is the fact that bloody War Memorial now wants to, before anything’s gone through courts before anyone’s been found guilty of anything. The War Memorial is already talking about setting aside a section of that sacred place in IsaLean, Canberra dedicated to the so-called atrocities of war in Afghanistan.

I mean, it’s almost as if these people have been found guilty. Don’t we have a presumption of innocence here, at first?

[Malcolm] Well, of course we do Marcus, and this is really, a really very difficult situation to walk through. You know, our country has a value that you don’t murder people in cold blood. That’s a value that we have to stand up for, whether it’s here or overseas. But we have to be compassionate and understanding that these people were sent overseas, if first of all, they must have a trial and they must have the resources.

Secondly, their generals above them are culpable because there’s no way, if this is true, there’s no way the general did not know this was going on. It’s their responsibility.

And I take it a step further, Marcus, John Howard came back from America, according to Alexander Downer, and when Downer retired, he said that John Howard came back from America after 9/11, and walked into the cabinet and said, “We’re off to Iraq,” no executive council meeting, no cabinet meeting, we’re just doing it on one mans say-so.

And apparently, I don’t know this for a fact, because I’m not educated on this. I haven’t been briefed on it yet, but apparently Afghanistan, we did not declare war. So there were no true terms of engagement. And so what we had, we had women and boys with land mines, with explosive tied to them.

And we also had Afghanis in an American training base and an Australian training base shoot Australians and Americans within. And so this is a war that’s not really a war.

And yet it’s diabolic, a very deceptive. And we went in there, based upon one man and that man later admitted, or his government later admitted, there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, look at what we’re doing with our boys in this country.

So if we can’t uphold murder, but at the same time, you have to be compassionate because we sent these people there, to do our job, and we should have done a better job in looking after them.

[Marcus] Well, well said a lot of people we’ve spoken to, including Commando “H” said that, you know, the situation over there is best described by people who’ve been there rather than armchair critics. And even to be honest, generals who sit in their plush leather chairs in Canberra and direct these men.

Look, the issue obviously is that in relation to the enemy, it’s not an international war as such. It was more a civil war, so war within a country. So whenever they did manage to capture some of these people, Taliban and otherwise, they had to eventually, within a day or two release them, only to be shot at again by the same people that just captured.

I mean, the whole thing really needs a good looking at, and we need to bear in mind that it’s very correct what you say, Malcolm, we don’t condone outright cold-blooded killings, but at the same time, we also need to understand what went on over there, why we were there in the first place.

And the other issue, of course now, comes down to mental health and we know, and we’ve been told by our sources and Commando “H” that, you know, so many men and young women who’ve served overseas and are suffering mental health issues as a result of not only their service, but this inquiry as well.

[Malcolm] Yes, well, very well said. There’s an a Roman general who said that no one who’s been to war can understand what goes on and people who go to war do not come back with the same mental approach. They have enormous burdens mentally and emotionally. So let’s recognise that for start.

So we send them, we bend them, but we don’t mend them very well in this country, but it is good to see that the people have set up a hotline for these servicemen, but, you know, stripping medals from people who have earned that medal through an Act of Valour, it’s just wrong.

These people earned it through an Act of Valour, who knows as a result of the torturous and tough regime of cycling in and out of Afghanistan so quickly and so often, if these people weren’t under enormous pressure and they did something, they shouldn’t have done. That’s if they were guilty, let’s assume some of them were guilty.

Why should we strip the medals of these people when they earned it, earned the medals for doing something to protect other Australians or protect their country, or protect even Afghanistan people? So, and then let us strip them because they’ve cracked under pressure, that’s wrong.

[Marcus] I think so.

[Malcolm] They were given a medal and they deserve to keep it.

[Marcus] All right, let’s talk IR reform, we know March 21 is the date when JobKeeper ends, there are some very big concerns amongst some sectors of our community that as of next, well, March, April, you know, there needs to be an extension of some sort, for JobKeeper what do you make of it all?

[Malcolm] What I make of it is that the Morrison Government would yet, again, fiddle around the edges and not do a good job and make it worse. The Morrison Government is about building facades and not getting on with the job properly. Getting back to basics. We need to rebuild our country. There are several lessons from this COVID–

[Marcus] Pandemic.

[Malcolm] Virus that hit our country. And the primary lesson is that we have destroyed our productive capacity and manufacturing. Even our agricultural sector is being destroyed by unelected international bureaucrats that our governments, labour and liberal had put in place.

That’s the first thing we need to restore manufacturing. Marcus we cannot restore manufacturing and our economic sovereignty, our economic security, unless we address electricity prices. Electricity is the biggest cost, component of manufacturing today, greater than labour.

So we need to do a good job in reforming industrial relations. And I can talk about that in a minute, but we must do it with regard to energy prices, taxation, overregulation from the UN. We must do it with regard to where water and other resources and infrastructure. Without that we’re just playing with this stuff. Now, you know, that I’ve done a lot of work in protecting some miners in the Hunter Valley–

[Marcus] Yes absolutely.

[Malcolm] From exploitation with under the hand of BHP and Chandler MacLeod, but also the CFMEU was involved there because they agreed with the exploitation of workers and enabled it. And I’ve done nothing to protect those workers, which raises an interesting point, could these workers sue the CFMEU because they paid dues to be protected and the CFMEU actually in the Hunter Valley I must add actually did not fulfil their responsibilities?

But look at the corruption of some of the union bosses, the Health Services Union, the AWU, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ union. This shows that our system is wrong. And the Hunter Valley has just brought it home to me just how corrupt our system is, we need to get back to basics because people at work feeling frustrated, hurt, literally crippled, painful, afraid of losing their job.

We are right now got people confused. If someone’s working on the job and wants something clarified, they’ve got to go to a bloody lawyer. It’s actually, that’s some of the advice that the Fair Work Ombudsman has given people. I mean who can afford to go to court our system is completely smashed, I’ve said it before.

People want to know that their job is safe. People want to know that they can be safe at work. People want to know that they’re protected, they’ve got protection for their rights. They want to be supported and be in compliance. They want fairness, they want choice. They want simplicity, understanding.

We’ve got to really rejig the whole of our industrial relations system because it’s not serving the people. It’s serving a few union bosses and a few company bosses, and that’s wrong and it’s serving a hell of a lot of lawyers. We’ve got to completely clean that out and do a good job. Get back to basics, to protect workers and honest employers.

[Marcus] Just finally, Malcolm, you’ve been on fire this morning. Are you gonna get that jab?

[Malcolm] That jab mate, I will get a jab when Alan Joyce takes the jab and I’ll watch him do it.

Look–

[Marcus] He probably will.

[Malcolm] He probably – ridiculous. How do we know the impact–

[Marcus] Well, hang on, just back to that, that comments you’ve just made. You’ll get the job when Alan Joyce does. Well, I believe that Alan Joyce probably will get the jab because of he wants to fly overseas, which you probably will for business on his aircraft. And that’s what he calls them, on my airline.

[Malcolm] Well, he’s become a national test guinea pig by the sound of it then, but maybe that’s his new job. But this is disgraceful because even the International Air Transport Association, IATA has distance itself from Qantas’ compulsory vaccination stance, the Prime Minister has done that too.

It’s certainly how do we know the impact of these viruses, which have been tested in minimal circumstances at the moment, very short term? How do we know the impact on these sort of these vaccines with other drugs, with complimentary medicines? How do we know the long-term impact? This is ridiculous. I’m not gonna take the jab, not until it’s proven.

[Marcus] All right, Malcolm. Great to have you on this morning. You been on fire and I love it. I love the passion and thanks as always. Mate, look after yourself, we’ll chat again soon and all that if you catch up with Mathias, make sure we get the window seat, okay.

[Malcolm] Mate. Yeah, we’ll try and make sure that we stop him bringing his OECD policies into this country. Well, I want Australia to be Australian.

/by

Anti-Bail-in Law

Transcript

Thank you, Mr President.

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I proudly ask for the Senate’s support for the Banking Amendment Deposits Bill 2020.

Commonly called the NO bail-in bill.

Our purpose is to keep people’s money SAFE.

And to keep the banking system safe.

Let me first explain what is a bail-out and then a bail-in.

Bail-out’s have been used during financial crises when banks get into trouble and are a lifeline of money from taxpayers to banks to keep banks afloat. Govts act as a conduit from taxpayers to the corporate banks, even when the banks got into trouble due to their own greed or stupidity.

In times of profit banks are capitalists and in crises banks are socialist.

International Monetary Fund and G20 rules now though prevent taxpayers’ money being used to save a bank.

Instead requiring that rescue funds must come from shareholders and from depositors. A Bail-in.

Literally banks steal the money in retail deposit accounts and use that to save themselves. In exchange depositors get shares in the bank.

The shares are then suspended from trading – because the banks’ shares are worthless pieces of paper and will remain so for years.

‘Retail deposit accounts’ are the bank accounts of everyday Australians and small and medium-sized businesses.

This is money taken from these accounts, which people need to pay bills, buy stock, pay the rent and pay staff.

Gone.

This is money a couple is saving to buy their first home.

Gone.

This is money retirees cashed out of superannuation and is needed to live on, to buy food and clothing and pay bills.

Gone.

Gone. Overnight.

Reserve Bank figures show that 1 trillion dollars is available to be taken in a bail-in.

That’s what the Liberal, Nationals and Labor parties defend when opposing my bill.

Next, I’ll share a letter from a constituent, Peter Thompson, last week:

Quote: “As a self-funded retiree I shouldn’t be lying awake at night worrying how to safeguard my deposits from “bail in” by predatory and profligate banks, however I am!”

“I have Greek friends who lost most of their saving in the Greek bank bail in.”

“I don’t trust APRA nor the Treasury to protect my interests and certainly don’t trust any bank. We need a people’s bank… now.”

“What can I do to protect my bank deposits?”

Peter continues: “Withdraw cash, which by design is getting harder and harder to do, and take the risk it will be stolen by more obvious thieves?”

 “One can’t buy land or property with the Australian real estate market in radical downturn, I want my deposits in a bank.”

“Your Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill is a vote winner. It will give Australians, many of whom have no idea of what “bail in” entails, an opportunity to understand and take action to protect their savings and create confidence in the system. “

Thank you, Peter. Creating confidence is exactly why I have proposed this bill.

The public understands that the govt’s Cash Ban bill is designed to force everyday Australians to keep all their money in the banking system to make a bail-in much more effective.

Labor, Liberals and Nationals passed the Cash Ban bill through the House of Reps and are now terrified of the public and backbench backlash if it enters our senate.

The public understands our real estate prices are the third highest in the world.

The public understands that the govt’s COVID restrictions are destroying small and medium business and the ability of those business owners and their staff to service their mortgage, loans and credit card debt.

In fact, there is a sleight of hand going on here. A handful of large retail businesses, telcos and internet-based companies are doing better than ever.

While hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses are doing much, much worse.

The effect on the economy of the govt’s COVID restrictions is much worse than the headline figures.

And yet State Governments recently doubled down with more lockdowns, more restrictions, more destruction of wealth, and more unemployment amongst small and medium businesses.

So the public are responding by removing cash from the banking system at an alarming rate – $20 billion in notes have gone missing in calendar 2020.

Cash is being stashed under beds.

My Bill is an opportunity to restore confidence in the banking sector.

It’s an opportunity to attract deposits from other countries where bank deposits are less secure than ours.

We could be a safe haven for legal investment in our banking sector – money that isn’t coming, for once, from the taxpayer.

Why shut that down and make banks even more reliant on the Government for funding?

What a missed opportunity that will be for our banks and for their customers.

The Liberal, National and Labor Parties now have a chance to stand up for everyday Australians.

To protect bank deposits from being bailed in.

The response from these tired old parties? Denial.

We’re told that this bill is not necessary. We’re told that the law does not allow for a bail-in.

I ask all Australians to listen more closely. Listen for their proof.

There is none.

No legal opinion, nothing but bland assurances from self-interested public servants hoping that constant repetition will fool the public.

Here’s MY argument. The Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures Act 2018, that was passed in the dead of night, with just 7 Senators present, uses weasel words to hide the reality.

The wording does allow for the banking regulator – APRA – to instruct the banks to bail-in retail deposit accounts.

The protections that the tired old parties rely on for the supposed opposite case are contained, not in the Crisis Resolution Powers Act, but in the Banking Act.

Their argument is a nonsense because the emergency provisions powers in the Crisis Resolution Powers Act over-ride the everyday protections in the Banking Act.

That’s why the govt has an emergency powers act. To provide extra powers in an emergency.

This is not just my opinion. It’s the International Monetary Fund’s opinion. Quote:

“The new ‘catch-all’ directions powers in the 2018 Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill provide APRA with the flexibility to make directions to the banks that are not contemplated by the other kinds of general directions listed in the Banking Act.”

“[APRA’s] Direction powers are a key element in the resolution process for a distressed bank. APRA could order a bank to recapitalize…using the funds of unsecured creditors”

The IMF goes on to define ‘unsecured creditors’ as shareholders and retail depositors.

Liberal MP Tim Wilson, Chair of the House Standing Committee on Economics has admitted the Crisis Resolution Powers Act does allow for a bail-in.

Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker in a letter to a constituent admitted that legislation allows for a bail-in.

Yet their party bosses say the complete opposite.

Why would they do that?

Well, the answer is yet again because of our international obligations. The G20 and the IMF have dictated that taxpayers’ money can’t be used to rescue a bank.

The tired old parties know that letting unelected bureaucrats in New York and Brussels tell Australians what to do in a crisis does not pass the pub test.

So the tired old parties hide the facts and contradict reality using weasel words.

It‘s instructional to note that New Zealand’s response to the same IMF and G20 instruction is to do the opposite. The Kiwis dutifully wrote their bail-in laws and made them honest and transparent. If a bank fails the bank closes, pays off it’s debts using depositor funds and then re-opens the next day. Depositors can access what remains of their money. If there is any.

I’m not suggesting the New Zealand model is better. More honest yes, better no.

There’s a simple solution for bank failures.

When a bank fails, the Government could issue bonds. Currently we’re offering just 1% interest on bonds, so it’s not a costly option. We then use that money to buy new shares in the failing bank. That injects enough capital for the bank to survive.

Then vest those shares with the Future Fund, who pay that small interest payment on the bonds.

In a few years those shares will be worth money again and the Future Fund can sell them back into the market in an orderly fashion.

In this simple, ‘One Nation bank survival plan’, taxpayers’ money would not be used to save the bank, so our IMF and G20 masters should be pleased.

Nobody in our process loses money. Depositors keep their cash; banks keep trading, mum and dad shareholders retain the value of their shares over the medium term.

What’s the Labor and LNP track record on corporate bail-outs?

Both gave foreign car companies billions and then watched them shut up shop as soon as the money tap was turned off.

If we’d been asking for shares for that money, we would now own the car companies. We would still have a car manufacturing sector, we would still have all those wonderful breadwinner jobs for workers.

Prime Minister Gillard gave ABC Child Care $120m. Not in exchange for shares, it was another gift from taxpayers.

If we’d asked for shares in ABC Childcare in return for the bail-out those shares would be worth $250 million today.

Our response to a bank failure should not be “go and steal it from customers.“

Our response should be to use capitalism to fix crony-capitalism.

Labor are having a lot to say about their Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee (FCS).

The Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee will advance up to $20 billion per bank, to protect deposits if a bank fails.

Let’s take a closer look at the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee.

The vast majority of the $1 trillion in retail deposit accounts is held by the big 4 banks. $20 billion times 4 though is only $80 billion. The Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee will save less than 10% of bank deposits!!!!

The Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee is not active and is not funded. There’s no money sitting there ready to go. Not one cent.

Should a bank fail, the Treasurer must issue a notice to activate the scheme. Yet, the Labor scheme uses taxpayer’s money to bail-out banks so the Treasurer will not issue the notice because the notice would breach IMF orders.

In the unlikely event of the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee being activated, there’s a second problem that Labor never discusses: once the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee is activated APRA must liquidate the bank to get taxpayers’ money back.

How much does anyone think will be available to retail depositors if the bank is liquidated? And how long will customers have to wait to get their money back from the liquidator?

The Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee is worse than a con job. It will make things worse.

Earlier I said that once a bank fails, whether that failure is public or only known to the regulator, the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee scheme can be activated if the Treasurer so chooses.

The whole point of a bail-in is to prevent a bank failing.

This means the bail-in can only come first. And will come first. Then if the bail-in doesn’t work the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee triggers, 10% of bank deposits are saved and the bank is liquidated.

This is what Liberals, Nationals and Labor are relying on to falsely tell everyday Australians ‘our money is safe?’ Yet the reality is that it’s not safe.

Following the dictates of unelected globalist masters is more important to them than looking out for the interests of everyday Australians.

The Government has advanced a criticism of my bill, that the definition of ‘retail deposit account’ introduces a different definition than is contained elsewhere in the Banking Act.

This argument fails because the only place the phrase ‘retail deposit account’ appears in the Banking Act is in my amendment. We did that deliberately so as to not interfere with the rest of the act.

Criticism dismissed.

In concluding Mr President, at no time has the Government, the Treasurer or APRA actually said they will not order a bail-in. These govt agencies duck the question and say “APRA doesn’t have the power”.

Well Mr President my bill clears that up. My bill adds one clause to the Banking Act that simply says APRA does not have the power to order a bail-in.

No other powers are affected.

Passing my bill ensures everyone will read it the same way.

Let Australians know that our money is safe in a bank. Let Australians know that there’s no need to stuff cash under the bed.

Even the Australian Bankers Association in its submission said if there is any confusion about what the law actually says then consider passing my bill.

What a great idea.

Let’s pass this bill, to keep people’s money safe.

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