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Malcolm Roberts’ review of Labor’s first budget

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This budget will jack up power prices, keep inflation roaring to new heights and do nothing to help you from day to day. I joined Sky News the night it was delivered to talk about my initial reaction.

Transcript

Welcome back to our coverage of the budget. Tonight the Treasurer has laid out his economic plan, and while Labour has the numbers in the House of Reps, the Senate cross-bench will be critical for whether the government can pass its various measures. Here’s a reminder of the state of play: 39 votes are needed to pass bills into law. The government has 26, meaning it needs another 13 to get its agenda across the line. The Greens have 12 of those, with another five Senators representing minor parties, and one independent. Joining me live on the desk, is three of those crucial cross-benchers that could make or break the Labour budget. Senator Jacqui Lambie, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, and Greens Treasury spokesman, Nick McKim, great to see you all. Senator Lambie, let’s start with you. What did you think of Jim Chalmers’ first budget?

Oh, I have to say, they’ve played it very safe, haven’t they? It’s really is a mini budget. They’ve got five months up their sleeve, they’re buying time here. They’re gonna have to make some tough decisions by May. We’ve got a massive blowout in the NDIS. We’ve got the cost of living pressures out there, and I think we’ve just, I’ve just seen on the TV in the last five minutes, the gas prices are gonna go up 20% in two years. I tell you what, we are really under the pump in this country, and then we have a major deficit we’ve gotta payoff. That’s where we’re at, some tough decisions. They need to go back to the drawing board. It’s lovely, it’s all been touchy-feely. Let’s see what the May budget looks like, but they’re gonna have to make some cuts, and they’re gonna have to be tough.

Nick McKim, what’s your take on Jim Chalmers’ first effort?

Oh look, there’ll be a lot of disappointed people in the country, I reckon. I mean, this budget’s got more than a width of austerity about it. The government, and the Treasurer, have acknowledged the challenges, and Jacqui talked a little bit about those. I mean, they say they want wages to go up. Wages are gonna go down, then they’re gonna flat-line. They say they want employment to go up, but actually unemployment is going up. They say they want to be fair to people, but actually they’ve got stage-three tax cuts, which give a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks, overwhelmingly benefiting the top end of town. And people who are really struggling to make ends meet, are not getting much assistance at all in this budget.

Malcolm Roberts, is it a budget for the times, as Jim Chalmers argues?

[Malcolm Roberts] It’s a budget for the continuation, and falling off a cliff I think, because workers have already gone backwards 10%. Anybody who earns a wage or salary is going back 10%, and will continue to go back because we’ve got rapid inflation. Wages won’t move anywhere nearly as quickly. We’ve got high cost of living pressures. We’ve got high energy prices. Prices are forecast to go up 50% next year Kieran, and 50% the year after. People can’t handle that. That’s a doubling of prices. 100% increase over two years, that’s a doubling. We’ve got a climate change, there’s very few specifics. The housing, we talk about a million houses.

[Jacqui] Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I can see you nodding your head Jacqui, a million houses, how? Where’s the provision?

Yeah.

[Malcolm Roberts] We can see 20, $25 billion on climate. Well, 20 of it is on poles and wires. It’s just gonna increase the cost of electricity from far-flung areas. We’ve already got the poles and wires we need from coal-fired power stations. This is absurd.

With that rewiring the nation, that project that Malcolm Roberts is alluding to there, it’s $20 billion. A lot of challenges in terms of workforce and supplies in getting that done. Does that mean that power prices rise at least in the short term until that’s all established?

Well, this budget makes it very clear that, retail electricity prices will go up 56% in the next two years. So there is no doubt that we are facing massive pressures on household bills. I wanna talk a little bit about the housing announcement.

[Kieran] There were those numbers there. So you have 20% this year, 30% next year-

[Nick] That’s right, they have compounded.

[Kieran] -for electricity and gas. Yeah, that’s 56. And then the gas 20 and 20.

[Nick] That’s right.

[Kieran] As Jacqui suggested.

[Nick] That’s right.

[Kieran] So, we’re talking a massive hit to-

We are talking massive hits on household budgets, and what the government could have done is walk away from the tax cuts for the top end, and put in place genuine cost of living measures. They could have put dental into Medicare, mental health support into Medicare, done more on childcare, built more affordable homes, wipe student debt. Like there’s plenty the government could do. And the money was there. A quarter of a trillion dollars, $250 billion over 10 years overwhelmingly favouring the top. We’re all gonna get a 9,000; Jacqui, Malcolm, and I will all get a $9,000 a year tax break, and there is nothing in that package for minimum income.

Do you think there should have been direct support on power prices? Because obviously there’s this challenge with the inflationary environment right now, that if they write checks,

Yeah, the challenges.

they could have a counterproductive effect.

The challenges with this country over the years of both major parties have sold us out. We no longer own things. This is the problem. So, we’re relying on other people to generate our power for us, and that cost us a lot more money instead of leaving it in the hands of what we should have been as private investors. That’s where we were at in 2021. And that’s been really unfortunate. I don’t know what you do about those power prices, ’cause quite frankly, we have no control over the companies that run them. They can pretty much run amok all they like, and that’s where we’re at.

Should there be price caps or something of that sort?

Something needs to be done, whether it’s price caps or, I think Daniel Andrews is buying his lot back. Isn’t he in Victoria? He’s worked out, it’s costing them a fortune. He’s got no control over it. He’s buying it off. We have control over ours in Tasmania. We’re very lucky the state government owns ours, and they could give us, they could relieve that pressure as well by giving us cuts. They don’t do that, that is their choice. We pay a little bit less than the rest of you, but I can tell you now, this is where the state government of Tasmania is really gonna feel it, because there’s no way Tasmanians can afford for our power prices to go up 5%, let alone 20.

We’re talking of massive impact. What do you think? Should there be price signal or price cuts?

[Malcolm Roberts] No, definitely not. If you look at childcare, it’s increasingly getting more and more subsidies. The prices go up, whenever you subsidise something, people charge more for it. I mean it’s that simple, this is basic economics. Manufacturing will get really decimated by this. First of all, the cost of electricity is now the number one cost category in any manufacturing, any manufacturing. It used to be labour, labor’s not anymore. It’s electricity. What we’re doing is, we’re subsidising the Chinese to instal these parasitic mal investments. They’re kamikaze investments, solar and wind, to raise the price of electricity, everywhere in the world, where they’ve increased solar and wind, they’ve increased the price of electricity, startlingly. Manufacturing will be driven out of the country yet more.

What’s your read on that? Because obviously in the short term, there are challenges with transmission. The poles and wires that we spoke about, they need to be done to accommodate.

Absolutely.

But Malcolm Robert’s argument there, that it’ll just simply continue to drive prices up, renewables.

Oh no, I mean you could legislate to put in place price caps. I mean there’s a very common thing to do around the world, and I don’t accept Malcolm’s argument there. I mean ultimately…

[Malcolm Roberts] It’s in the figures, empirical figures all around the world. Every country, Spain, Germany, any country that goes heavily into solar and wind, it increases their prices of electricity.

I know Malcolm doesn’t believe in climate change, but the sciences-

[Malcolm Roberts] I believe in climate variability Nick.

absolutely have to to rapidly reduce our emissions in this country. And the best way to provide the cheapest power is more investment in renewables, and less into propping up the dirty, old coal-fired clunkers because they are unreliable. They’re old infrastructure, building new fossil fuel plants, including gas, is more expensive than putting in place distributed generation of renewable energy close to the centres of demand, supported by battery store.

The challenge in the the short term obviously, workforce shortages, supply shortages, these are all bottlenecks,

[Nick] They are.

in terms of that process, aren’t they?

Yeah, absolutely they are. And, now there was some welcome investment in the budget into TAFE and vocational education. I think that’s a good thing, but that does take obviously time to flow through.

Do you see Jacqui Lambie, I think you alluded to it earlier, but with this spending approach, Jim Chalmers says it’s 99% of the additional commodities, and tax revenue has been banked. Is this an attempt to say, “Okay, we’re not doing a Liz Truss budget, we’re gonna be responsible, and this is almost like a stepping stone to the May budget, where those broader changes might eventuate.”

Well, I think if you follow Liz’s Truss’s track, you’re not gonna last very long. That would be my my first point. But look, we’ve been really, really lucky with our commodities in this country. We’ve made a lot of money outta them. We don’t know if we’re gonna do that next year, the year after. We don’t know whether there’s gonna be a call for as much of those resources as around the rest of the world. I wouldn’t think there will be. We’ve had a really great year on that. That’s great. And we’ve all got a little bit GST extra outta that for our states, that’s a fabulous thing. We’ve seen that, I’m sure $360 million extra in Tasmania is gonna help us a lot. We’re only a small state, and that that will go to fixing things. But we cannot rely on this. We really need to look at those stage-three tax cuts. I believe that, those people in those lower incomes, certainly give them a tax cut, give them a bit of a break. It’s gonna be tough for them over the next few years. There’s no doubt about that. But people on the 120, a 100 or 1,000, where’s the cutoff to say, “You know what? We can’t afford to give you a tax cut at this point in time. Something needs to be done.” We can save billions of dollars there. There’s no doubt about that. I have to laugh about their TAFE, when they, they’re gonna chuck a billion dollars back into TAFE, Kieran, which is lovely. I’d remind the Labour Party, they cut $4 billion outta that education fund about three years ago alongside the Labour Party. So good on you for putting it back. Better late than ever. And I’ll be very grateful for that. But right now, we have a deficit and we cannot ignore that. And we have to start paying that back. We also have to pay up there for that NDIS, and something has to give here.

Malcolm Roberts, the Treasurer says that we need to have a conversation, a national conversation, and the tax needs to be part of that conversation. Where should we head in terms of the debate about the structural deficit? Because quite clearly, he’s identified the illness, not necessarily the entire cure this evening.

[Malcolm Roberts] Good question. First of all, we need the end, I’ll get into tax in a minute, but we need to end the black armband view of mining. Mining has pulled this country out of a mess for the last two years. And the coal prices were forecast in last budget are around about $60 a tonne. They’re $400 in actual fact, iron ore similarly, very much higher than they were forecast be. If it wasn’t for mining, we’d be well and truly deeper in the brown stuff. Now, tax, we need to make it simple. We need to make it, so that the multinationals automatically pay their tax. They’re not doing it at the moment. The Liberal Party in 1953 put in the Double Taxation Recognition Act, which basically made large foreign multinationals, not pay company tax, that’s absurd. The petroleum resources tax, that Bob Hawke’s Labour Party brought in the ’80s, made sure that the largest tax evader in the world, Chevron, pays not a cent, while they export billions of dollars worth of our natural gas. And we’re the largest gas, we’re the largest exporters of energy in the world. And we get bugger all for it here. We have the highest gas prices, we have the highest-

So do you think a profits tax, a super profits tax or something like that?

[Malcolm Roberts] I think you get back to basics, and you actually tax multinationals on the widgets they make. That’s an interim one. But we’ve gotta have a simpler tax system, bring it back to basics. We’ve got way outta kilter. It’s far too complex. The GST was supposed to-

New mines, new gas projects and so on. But this remains a lucrative transition fuel, does it not?

We have argued consistently for a corporate super profits tax. We have argued consistently for super profits taxes particularly targeted at fossil fuel companies. And I wanna make this point about taxation. In this budget, it was revealed tonight, that the petroleum resource rent tax is gonna bring in $450 million over the forward estimates, less than what we were told it would last year. We are in the middle of a so-called gas boom, and the big gas companies are gonna be paying $450 million bucks less tax along with the other companies. The petroleum resource rent tax targets less tax than what they were forecast to last year. It’s an absolute roar.

So obviously that’s your,

And it needs to be fixed.

that’s your thinking, in terms of where the Treasurer should start this conversation.

He could do that. He could walk away from the quarter of a trillion dollars, the $250 billion in stage-three tax cuts. That’s what they will cost over the next 10 years. Negative gearing, reform capital gains tax reform, which would stop these spiking house prices, which are pricing too many people out of a home. And meaning that at the moment, homes are like an investment class, rather than a human right. There’s so much we could do, and so many levers at Jim Chalmers’ disposal, and he’s basically pulled none of them.

[Malcolm Roberts] I think we might have found something that Nick, and I agree on, because the government is talking about, housing price is a simple matter of supply and demand, right Kieran?

Is is that a first by the way? I think it might be.

[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah, no, no. Nick and I have helped each other-

I’m worried, I’m worried.

[Malcolm Roberts] on quite a few things. Housing prices are a matter of supply and demand. The supply is up to the local governments, and some extent the state governments. Federal government’s got nothing to do with that. The demand, the federal government’s gonna shoot up by increasing immigration, 180,000 net, permanent.

No, now, just to be clear, we don’t agree on that. And I just wanna say about housing, the headline from the government is a million new homes. When you look at the fine print in the budget, it’s 10,000.

We’ve got two and a half minutes left, before we cross over to Paul Murray and his special tonight. Let’s get some final thoughts, overarching thoughts if we can, Jacqui Lambie to you as we wrap up this evening. What would you like to leave our viewers in terms of your assessment? Obviously, you believe that this is really a stepping-stone budget in many respects, and a lot of work to come over six months.

Yeah, I think it is a stepping-stone budget. They’re just dipping their toe in the water at the moment. They’ve got some big decisions to make over the next six months. And-

And is it largely around the NDIS? Is it your view that that’s the role?

I think it’s around everyone, everything. I am just gonna step forward here, and say that they’re giving the GST to the states, because they’re gonna expect those states to start giving some heavy lifting and they’re gonna say, “Hey, we gave you extra GST. You go fix that.” I reckon that’s exactly what they’re doing. It is not going to be enough. Our people are really hurting out there. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better, especially if we do go, we’re already heading into recession. If we hit a recession, we’ve got interest rates going up out there. Houses are losing their value. We’ve got many young kids that invested in them. We’re in dire straits going in, into the next 12 months, and they’re gonna have to make some really tough decisions for that May budget. And you know what, this is what we’re gonna say, “Is Labour made of the steel that it thinks it is?”

Malcolm Roberts, your final assessment as we wrap up?

[Malcolm Roberts] Yeah, they’ve completely missed the major points, A paper presented, I’ll read these figures. A paper presented to Cabinet, calculated the value difference in exporting bauxite, the ore, versus processed aluminium in ’19, $70. Just imagine what these figures would be today, exporting 1 million tonnes of bauxite, the raw material earned $5 million. Processed one step into alumina, earned $27 million, more than five times as much, processed again into aluminium, earned a $125 million, and processed finally into aluminium products, earned $600 million. If they’re fair thinking about manufacturing, they need to fix electricity prices and get on with the tax reform.

Malcolm thank you, and Nick McKim finally to you as we wrap up.

Yeah, sure. Look, I’ll be brief ’cause I know we’re nearly outta time, but in one word, disappointing. People voted for change at the Federal Election this year. They didn’t get much change in the budget tonight. It was pretty bland, pretty disappointing. It’s left an awful lot of people behind, but the top end of town are pretty happy with it.

Greens Treasury spokesman Nick McKim, Malcolm Roberts of One Nation and Jacqui Lambie, great to see you all. Thanks for joining.

Thank you.

Thank you Kieran.

Thank you for your company at home, here on our Sky News.

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Labor’s Job Summit scores as a big flop

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The Jobs Summit last week was a wasted opportunity. A key decision from the Albanese government was to increase the immigration cap to 195,000 new immigrants a year. When there aren’t enough jobs for Australians right now how is importing another 195,000 hopeful employees going to help?

Transcript

President, two minutes is more than enough to review Labor’s Jobs and Skills Summit.

Allowing pensioners and student visa holders to earn more WILL help small businesses in the city and in the bush.

This has been One Nation policy for some time.

$40 billion in development funding through to 2030. $5 billion a year sounds good until we realise private investment spending in Australia in 2022/23 alone will be $143 billion.

$5 billion is a drop in the bucket. Just enough to provide the Labor with endless media photo ops.

This was the best opportunity in years to talk about growing our employment base – mining, agriculture, manufacturing, value adding. Creating breadwinner jobs.

Opportunity NOT taken.

25% of the delegates, one quarter, were union bosses. Yet there was no tangible job creation that may benefit union members. No wonder Red Unions are booming.

What did come out of the summit?

1.      Additional vocational training places, for jobs that don’t exist;

2.      Preferential employment schemes for women and Aboriginals, for jobs that don’t exist;

3.      195,000 new migrants every year, for jobs that don’t exist.

How will our crumbling health care system provide for all these new arrivals?

Victoria is treating patients in tents and Queensland in the back of ambulances.

Where will the housing come from? 100,000 Australians are homeless and that rate is rising. Rental prices are up 18% this year alone.

Inflation is 6% on the way to 10%. Life for everyday Australians is getting very hard, very quickly.

Labor will make all of these things worse with increased immigration adding more pressure on health and housing, while diluting the power of workers. That will reduce workers’ wages and living conditions even further.

Just who are Labor working for?

We have One flag. We are One Community. And One Nation is now the workers’ party.

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Rule of Law must prevail

https://youtu.be/gF9ofK-WnqA

We have to leave the investigation of criminal offences to the police. If the presumption of innocence is abandoned in this country, many things will fall in this country. Also in this interview: Labor proposes giving preference to gay, lesbian and trans refugees, Woolworths backs down on proposed cash ban in stores and Nationals join One Nation in support of vaping.

Transcript

[Marcus] G’day mate! How are you, Malcolm?

[Malcolm] I’m well, thanks, Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus] Good, thank you. It’s been a very busy morning. Ministers are like all people, entitled to presumption of innocence. Parliament is not a court. It should not get into police work other than holding police accountable when police have failed the people. I mean, in your opinion, is there a problem with the culture under, you know, one of our most sacred roofs, Parliament House in Canberra?

[Malcolm] Marcus, I think there’s always a problem with where there’s an imbalance of power. Senior levels of corporations, we’ve seen some union bosses in strife over these kinds of things, and it really comes down to the human condition, and people having that ego, and let’s face it: there’s a lot of power in Parliament and a lot of people there for the wrong reasons that have come to exercise their power.

I’m not just talking about politicians, I’m talking about staffers, and so wherever you’ve got something like that, there’s potential for the people who want to exercise their power to have power over other people. So that’s the real issue, and that does come down to culture, but it’s not going to be fixed by a law.

Culture is up to people like myself, for example. We had a cultural statement that guided all of our recruiting, and we made that very clear to everyone who was interviewed for a job in my office that they had to abide by that culture, and we wanted their commitment before they even started. And so that’s how we sorted things out, and we have systems in place to make sure that people abide to that way, but what we really need is to understand that culture is so important.

It’s the most important driver of productivity in any company, Marcus, and so we know it’s that important. So it’s a huge driver of behaviour, so it’s up to individual politicians, and I think the media should be chasing people, but ultimately, it’s the law that convicts someone, no one else. The police officers, the courts, that’s the process we need to follow.

[Marcus] All right. What about the government or Parliament as a whole? I mean, if the prime minister himself, and Anthony Albanese a short while ago, again, repeated calls for the prime minister to launch an inquiry into this culture, into the whole Christian Porter affair, et cetera, I mean, if the prime minister feels there is a culture that needs addressing, then of course he should address it, but I don’t think he has.

I’ve got to be honest, I do not believe Scott Morrison has done the right thing, this is just my opinion, by the women of Australia. I think he’s a victim blamer, I think he’s almost misogynistic, and I think that he’s lacking in empathy.

[Malcolm] I don’t agree with those verdicts that you have, but I do agree that he’s a facade builder and he’s a marketing person. He likes to look good, not do good. And he had a– Remember when Christopher Pyne and Julie Bishop retired as ministers, and they went straight into cushy jobs, each of them, that looked to have conflicts of interest with their past work as ministers.

Now he appointed, after a lot of pressure Scott Morrison appointed an internal investigation, and it was headed by Martin Parkinson, who was, at the time, the top bureaucrat in the country. He was the Secretary or Head of Prime Ministers and Cabinet office.

Now, the Labor Party and I, and a couple of liberals, pursued him in an inquiry into the investigation, and I got pretty relentless and held him accountable Martin Parkinson, the top bureaucrat in the country, and eventually after a lot of questioning from me he said, “Hey, I don’t have any power to investigate,” and I went, “What?! You’re investigating this, “but now you tell us after relentless questioning from me “that you don’t have any power?”

So what Scott Morrison has done has appointed, I believe Gaetjens, I’ve forgotten his first name, to investigate this, and that’s not adequate, but we need to leave it in the hands of the police. Now, if it comes to investigating culture, then we need to have a proper committee, an external committee. But you know what, the best thing of all? If we had an independent corruption inquiry committee that looked into corruption in Parliament.

That’s what we need. And so Scott Morrison has run away from that, the Liberal Party has run away from that, the Labor Party is not that powerful about it either, but ourselves, the Greens, and the independents are pushing for that a, fair dinkum one.

[Marcus] All right. What about Grace Tame? I mean, you’ve mentioned her this morning. Well, on the notes that I’ve got here, callers have mentioned her as well. What did you make of her commentary yesterday? Am I reading right here, saying that you think she’s hijacking this issue?

[Malcolm] No, no. I think she’s criticising. She’s really done a great job, full credit to her. No, as I understand it, Marcus, I haven’t seen the actual note, but Grace Tame has criticised the media for using victims and hijacking issues.

[Marcus] Sure, okay.

[Malcolm] And I watched that young lady’s speech when she accepted the award for Australian of the Year for 2021, what a remarkable woman.

Did you hear her criticism yesterday of the prime minister?

[Malcolm] No I didn’t. What did she say?

[Marcus] Well, she basically turned around. There was a really good question that was asked of her. I’ll play it for you, I’ve got a bit of time here. I’ll just make sure I get it up on my screen. She basically turned around and said that the prime minister, well, she called him out on a little bit of the language that he’s used in this whole debate, I’m just trying to find it here. Sorry, mate. I’m just trying to– anyway, what we might do, we might– have you got time to hold on till after eight?

[Malcolm] Yeah, sure.

[Marcus] Yeah, I might do that, ’cause I think I want to talk further with you on this issue and the news is, we’re about to bump into it. So Malcolm, just hold on there please, mate, and my apologies for today, holding you up, because I want to get onto your thoughts on Labor’s immigration policy as well, the Woolie’s cash ban that’s been defeated, and also we’ve had some conversations recently with Matt Canavan, good conversations on this programme about vaping and e-cigarettes.

I want to get your thoughts on that as well. So I’ll just get you to hold on there, mate. Thank you for being so patient and understanding.

[Malcolm] You’re all right, Marcus.

[Marcus] Just hang on there. Malcolm Roberts, he’ll be back after the eight o’clock news, some other issues I want to get into. All right, Malcolm Roberts, welcome back, mate, thank you.

[Malcolm] You’re welcome, Marcus. All right, now I’m going to play you the audio that Grace Tame was involved in yesterday. Australian of the Year Grace Tame was asked what she thought of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s use of the phrase “as a father”, referring to a chat that he had with his wife Jenny when he responded to the allegations by Brittany Higgins, this was her response to it yesterday. I’ll play it now.

[Grace Tame] It shouldn’t take having children to have a conscience. And actually, on top of that, having children doesn’t guarantee a conscience.

[Marcus] And it’s been reported widely this morning that she didn’t miss. What do you make of that?

[Malcolm] I’ve got goosebumps listening to it. What a wonderful lady, what a very bright young woman, admired. I agree with her totally. You know, conscience is a matter of what our inner guidance says, and that is what should be driving this, and that should be about values that are tied to Australian values.

And you know, Marcus, in many ways, rape is the most horrendous crime there is because it invades someone. I mean, it’s just sickening because that person has to live with that for the rest of their life. Now, murder is terrible too, obviously, you can’t take away someone else’s life, but a murdered person, that’s the end of it for them, but a raped person has to live with it for the rest of their life, and it’s just, it’s never– it’s always been something that has just repulsed me. It’s just beyond it.

[Marcus] Let’s move on to another issue here. Labor’s immigration policy of–

[Malcolm] Before we do Marcus, I think that, you know, there is a need to understand something else that drives Parliament.

[Marcus] Right.

[Malcolm] Parliament is no longer driven by data and facts. We don’t have policies and decisions coming out of the Liberal and Labor Parties based on data and facts, and when that happens, fantasy takes over. It’s okay to fudge things. It’s okay to tell lies. It’s okay to wield power over people.

But the people who pay the price are the everyday Australians. That’s who pays the price, and what we need to do is call out the voters, because voters are putting up with this nonsense. We have family law that’s been an issue for 50 years.

[Marcus] Mm, very true.

[Malcolm] It took Pauline Hanson to get stuck into that, ’cause that drives a lot of the abuse. We have energy prices that are being driven on an insane whim, that carbon dioxide affects the– that human carbon dioxide affects the climate of the whole world, it’s absolute nonsense.

There’s never been data presented to Parliament for that. Then we have question time. I mean, you look at the behaviour of Parliamentarians in question time by Senate and House of Reps, absolute disgrace. There is no respect for the institution of Parliament amongst those MPs, there’s no respect to the voters who put them there, and the voters need to say, “I’ve had enough “of the Labor Party and Liberal Party playing games.”

These are too important. We need to see people being held accountable for data and facts and decisions based on data and facts. While ever the voters keep putting these two parties in, they will keep getting the crap being dished out to them.

[Marcus] All right. Immigration has been a volatile topic for the Labor Party in the past two decades. In the 2021 draft platform, the party proposes giving more government support to asylum seekers, especially gay, lesbian and trans refugees, while maintaining support for offshore detention.

Obviously like, look, I don’t need to really go too far. I mean, I’ll probably speak tomorrow to your colleague, Mark Latham, about this. He’s been very critical of this, but what do you say?

[Malcolm] Well, you know, the ultimate– the first thing we need to take care of is our own Australians, put them first. We’ve got veterans currently homeless in our country. Then we need to accept sensible, genuine, sorry– genuine refugees in sensible numbers, and not accept them based purely on what gender or sexual orientation they currently claim to be or identify as.

Australia has a very generous refugee intake and welfare. We have very strong welfare systems that look after people. They can come here and they get a lot for nothing. Now, Labor’s policy, as the Australian reported, is based on giving preference to gays and transsexuals. Well, it’s entitled to have that policy, but I don’t think that reflects the everyday Australian.

Entry to Australia should be on the basis of merit, and how people fit into Australian culture, values, laws. When someone, you know, a gay man in an Islamic country where they throw gays off roofs and kill them, or a white South African farmer, if they’re the two options they should be treated objectively. They shouldn’t be treated on the basis of race or religion or colour or anything else.

They should be treated on how they will contribute to our country and the values they uphold. But why are we discussing this when we can’t even allow people into the country right now? It’s just beyond me.

[Marcus] That is true. All right, but again, that’s– I dunno, look, maybe, the cynic in me says, because, well, you know what’s happening this weekend. It is Mardi Gras time, and it’s a time when this community does get a lot of the spotlight.

I’ll agree to slightly disagree with you there, Malcolm, I think we should be welcoming people who are sadly objectified and vilified and even worse in other countries around the world. But one thing we do have common ground–

[Malcolm] Well, we should be welcoming them but we shouldn’t be discriminating against them, we shouldn’t be discriminating in favour of them.

[Marcus] Fair enough.

[Malcolm] We should be treating everyone on the merits of the case.

[Marcus] The Woolie’s cash ban. It’s a bit of a win. We know that in a number of cities, they’ve been trialling you know, card only terminals and all the rest of it. I think it’s bad enough that these big corporations are sacking checkout operators and replacing them with machines.

I don’t go to do my shopping to replace workers. I shouldn’t have to scan my own groceries. They say, it’s all, you know, to save you time and so we can keep our prices low. Well, that’s bullshit. What they’re doing basically is trying to save or cut back on their costs. Malcolm.

[Malcolm] Yes, that’s an interesting perspective. We just looked at the cash ban as something that was brought in for the wrong reasons. They told us it was about anti-money laundering, which is complete nonsense, and we’ve got the facts to show that. Initially, when the government brought this into the lower house, the cash ban bill, Labor supported it in the lower house.

It got through to a Senate committee. We went to work very strongly. We convinced the Greens to join us, We convinced in opposing the cash ban. We convinced the crossbench senators, who weren’t aware of it at the time, to jump in.

Then we actually embarrassed Labor into it, and then the government realised it was dead, so we moved a motion to get that bill, cash ban bill, off the books in Parliament, and that’s what happened, so we won. Then we put pressure on Woolie’s with our recent petition. But the real thing here is that there’s people power, and we listen and work actively with people, and what the people have done is told Woolie’s, “Stick your cash ban.”

And so while it is an interesting argument you make about preserving jobs, people will go to whoever gives them the best service, you know, and so it’s important to let people have the freedom to decide whether they will use cash or not. It’s not up to some government implementing an IMF policy from overseas globalists to tell us we can’t use our cash because they want to control us. That’s where it’s headed.

[Marcus] Well, it’s current tender, and to be perfectly honest, if you turn up somewhere and you’ve only got cash, you know, you should be able to use it regardless.

[Malcolm] Exactly.

[Marcus] All right, finally, e-cigs and vaping, we spoke to– who did we speak to on this last week, Scruff? There’s so much going on at the moment. Oh, Matt Canavan, we spoke to Matt about it. He’s been doing a little bit of work on this issue. Senator Stirling Griff’s motion in the Senate against vapes and e-cigs has been defeated.

Your position is that vaping and e-cigarettes are as safe as the solution that they’re in. They should be available in Australia using the established Therapeutic Goods Administration procedure for Schedule 3 pharmacy-only medication.

[Malcolm] Yes, we’ve been pushing this issue for a number of years now, and it’s very good to see Senator Matt Canavan at last join us. I pushed a bill with David Leyonhjelm when he was in the Senate back in 2016-17, but, you know, e-cigs have been shown to be a way of getting people to cut smoking altogether.

They have reduced smoking rates. They do not introduce people to smoking. That is nonsense. They have been very effective in cutting down the use of cigarettes, which are harmful. E-cigs look as though they’re not at all harmful, at all, and a good way of getting people away from harmful activities like smoking.

So that’s why we’ve been in favour of it, and it’s pleasing to see that Matt’s joining us on this as well as some other policies that they have long opposed, they’re changing as a result of the pressure we’re putting on them.

[Marcus] All right. Thank you, mate, great to have you on the programme as always. We’ll talk again next week.

[Malcolm] Look forward to it, Thanks, Marcus.

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Labor has no solutions for IR problems

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Labor has no claim to the high ground on industrial relations, they have abandoned the working class. A graph of our median and average wages over time is untroubled by changes in government.

Liberal, National, Labor or Greens, it makes no difference; workers just keep going backwards. Only One Nation has a vision for the future that returns our productive capacity, manufacturing and better wages for Australians.

Transcript

This motion is one of the least self-aware that I’ve seen out of the Labor Party. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the median wage has not increased in real terms over the last 30 years after adjusting for dramatic increases in the cost of housing, health care and education, yet Australia’s gross domestic product per capita has increased over that period from $13,600 to $65,400 in real terms—as are all my figures today. Gross domestic product is up by a factor of five, and the wages of everyday Australians have not increased. Where’s the money gone? Average wages for Australians at the upper end of the scale have seen an increase of 50 per cent, and at the very top end the increase is over 100 per cent. A graph of our median and average wages over time is untroubled by changes in government. Liberal, National, Labor or Greens, it makes no difference; workers just keep going backwards.

Wages as a share of GDP have fallen from $116 billion to $96 billion over 30 years. The share of our gross domestic product being paid to Australian workers is at an all-time low yet corporate profits have grown from $20 billion to $120 billion—six times. Globalist economics has crushed the wages of everyday Australians and deposited the spoils from an expanding economy into the pockets of the big end of town in salaries, bonuses and dividends. Globalist free trade agreements have seen more than one million high-paid, skilled manufacturing and heavy industry jobs moved overseas. Labor is a big fan of globalism—voting in favour of every one of these free trade agreements.

Recently the Senate voted for a UN funding bill to direct money into funding economic development in countries with which we have a free trade agreement. This facilitates increases in their productive capacity to take yet more Australian jobs. One Nation was the only party to oppose the funding bill. The Labor Party voted in favour—in favour of losing yet more jobs overseas.

COVID restrictions have had a role to play as well. The government’s COVID restrictions measures have moved consumer spending away from small businesses who employ everyday Australians to corporate retailers who pay minimum wage. Online growth has gone to Amazon, owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos. Social media are calling the COVID restrictions on businesses ‘a war on capitalism’; it is no such thing. In corporate Australia, the biggest crony capitalists have record sales, record profits and have paid higher dividends and bonuses. As a result of government coronavirus restrictions and measures, the world’s 400 richest people have increased their wealth by $1 trillion. Much of this new wealth is money that was once spent in local communities—in hardware stores, community supermarkets, butchers and grocers. This was money that held up real wages paid by local businesses to their loyal staff. Now those businesses have been forced to close or to sack workers. So the real outcome from coronavirus measures has been the largest transference of wealth from small businesses to foreign-owned or controlled corporations in Australian history. We expect this sort of thing from the globalist Liberal Party and their sell-out sidekicks—the Nationals—yet this has been brought to you by Labor in Queensland, Labor in Western Australia and Labor in Victoria. Almost every government measure during the COVID period has been waved through the Senate by the Labor Party, working in conjunction with the Liberals and Nationals.

Labor don’t get to complain now; they should have seen this coming. The only thing that was not in this profligate spending was a permanent increase in JobSeeker. The constant pressure from One Nation in this place directly with the government across many years has today had a result. One Nation will continue to stand up for everyday Australians. The destruction of wages and entitlements for Australian workers has many other causes. At the heart of the problem is supply and demand for workers. At the same time that Australia is sending jobs overseas, we are importing workers. Over the last 30 years, Australia has added 10 million new Australians. While many of these do not go into the productive economy, the bottom line is simple: we are importing workers for jobs that have already been exported to lower-cost destinations, especially China. There are more workers than jobs and that can only have the effect of reducing wages. Labor defend Australia’s high immigration rate and suggest One Nation are racists for wanting a reduction in the rate of arrivals. The use of the word ‘racist’ means they have no argument to counter us. All One Nation are doing is standing up for everyday Australians who will never get a decent pay rise a as long as the government keeps bringing in more new arrivals than there are jobs. The Rudd Labor government and the Gillard-Rudd Labor-Greens government increased permanent migration from 160,000 in 2007 to 205,000 in 2013. Labor cannot pretend to care about workers when it was Labor that initiated the largest spike in arrivals in the last 30 years.

The other issue around stagnation in real wages is foreign temporary workers. The Senate inquiry into temporary work visas found temporary migrant workers experienced widespread wage theft and gross violations of Australian minimum work standards including: failure to pay minimum wages, long work hours and lack of health and safety training leading to workplace injuries. Temporary work visa holders are being exploited to drive down wages and conditions. Indeed Bill Shorten, as minister, set the record for temporary work visas in this country, a record that Labor still holds. I don’t hear Labor complaining about this.

This may be because their beloved free trade agreements facilitate foreign workers. The Indonesian free trade agreement section 12.9 removes labour market testing and allows additional contract workers across 400 skilled occupation. It allows for 4,000 temporary working holiday-maker visas per year, and these workers are highly exploited because they’ll be deported if they lose their jobs. Wage theft is not entirely restricted to vulnerable foreign workers, although it does account for most of the cases. The problem of falling real wages, job insecurity and wage theft, which Senator Walsh mentions in this motion, results from Labor Party policies. One Nation is accused of wanting to wind the clock back. Well, on this issue we do want to wind the clock back, back to when workers got a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. We need to start putting Australia and Australians first, back to when workers settled here, became Australian citizens and contributed to the future of our marvellous country.

Full Motion: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansards/c18a4b03-69cc-4413-9438-08e33693f884/&sid=0102

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Matter of Public Importance: Immigration Program

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Pauline and I spoke on our ‘Matter of Public Importance’ in the Senate: “When Australia restarts our migration program, we do not want migrants to return to Australia in the same number and in the same composition as before the crisis.”

Read Transcript.

Transcript

[President]

Senator Roberts.

[Sen. Roberts]

Thank you, Mr. President. As a servant to the people of Queensland in Australia, I recognise that for 230 years, migrants of many races and religions, amazing people from all over the world, have joined us to build our beautiful country into something greater than when they arrived.

Now, though, we may be ending 2020 with 1.2 million Australians out of work, and 1.2 million temporary visas. For 20 years, Senator Hanson has warned that this day would come. In 2016, the Productivity Commission issued its 700 page warning on the imbalance in our immigration policy. Their report questioned our high immigration intakes strain on infrastructure, the environment, and quality of life in our capital cities.

The government ignored the Productivity Commission, why? To keep the flood of cut price workers coming in and to hide the data showing a per capita recession. That led to a long-term pain on infrastructure, housing, wages, state budgets.

The inevitable result of that is high unemployment, and more underemployment. Many of these unemployed Australians are migrants who came to contribute their labour, yet now languish on job seeker benefits they don’t want instead of going to the job they do want.

I congratulate one of my Labour colleagues, on finally seeing the light and joining us in speaking up on the issue of excessive migration and foreign workers. People might not be aware that on the 3rd of May in a Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece, Senator Keneally asked, “Do we want migrants to return to Australia “in the same numbers and in the same composition “as before the crisis?”

Senator Keneally’s answer was, no. The question now is, will Senator Keneally stand by her words, and will the Labour Party stand by their Shadow Immigration Minister?

[Sen. Hanson]

Very much Mr. Acting Deputy President. Well, One Nation submitted today a matter of public importance. And that wording was, “When Australia restarts our immigration programme, “we do not want migrants to return to Australia “in the same numbers and in the same composition “as before the crisis.”

Well, I have to admit they are not my words that was Senator Keneally’s words that she actually said in her statement. So it’s quite interesting that I’ve always said, there should be a debate on this. And I’m pleased to see that we actually got the call on this debate.

Now, forcing the debate on immigration and foreign workers is often a thankless task. No one knows this more than me. When you bring up facts, like more than half the nation’s population growth since 2005 has come from overseas migration, you get called a racist.

When you explain that, instead of flooding Australia with migrants to drive economic growth, we should be increasing productivity or investing in skills and training, people call you xenophobic. When you make common sense statements like Australian should get a fair go and a first go at jobs, people call you a white supremacist.

When you argue like Senator Keneally did the other day through you chair, that once Australia starts its immigration programme, migrants must not return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the coronavirus crisis.

People even might accuse you of stealing One Nation policy. This is why today I want to say thank you to Labour’s Shadow Immigration Minister, Kristina Keneally, because I know she will not be getting much support from her Labour colleagues.

Reading through some of the recent comments made by Senator Keneally, I can only assume she has spent much of her time in quarantine, reading through my speeches from 1996, and taking copious notes. And because so much of what she said could have been taken from comments and arguments I’ve made over the past 24 years, perhaps Senator Keneally might want to make an admission here today that she’s a closet One Nation supporter.

I know it took Mark Latham a couple of decades to come out of the One Nation closet, but look how great he’s doing. He’s a new man, and loving it, so are these Australian people. Today I want to reassure the Senate that if Senator Keneally wants to cross the floor in support of her own comments, and finds herself thrown out of the Labour Party for breaking ranks, I will always have a position in my office for talented immigration speech writers such as herself.

I know I don’t often get a chance to congratulate my Labour Senate colleagues, but I always give credit where credit is due. And credit is due because by revealing herself as a covert to One Nation position on immigration, Senator Keneally has proven what I have long said is true.

So powerful are my arguments on immigration that even a staunch opponent of One Nation like Senator Keneally, will eventually be dragged to kicking and screaming to supporting cuts to immigration, cuts to foreign workers.

And I know there are many in the Labour Party and even more among Labour’s allies in the unions, who will agree with my position on immigration and foreign workers behind closed doors, but refused to speak the truth publicly out of fear of being called racist, or some other meaningless insult.

Right now due to the coronavirus, there are millions of Australians unemployed or underemployed. These are the people we need to look after, not foreign workers. This is the debate we need to have. We can’t go back to our old immigration programme.

Australians have a right to a job and a way of life that is not tied to welfare handouts. For decades, the coalition Labour Parties have used mass migration and foreign workers to artificially pump up economic growth. For decades, they have cynically used insults and slurs to try and shut down this debate.

For decades, they have refused to admit that this is creating problems with increased demand on our limited services, housing affordability, unemployment, and underemployment, wage stagnation, and congestion in our cities.

Senator Keneally and I have now warned each and every one of you that if we continue down the same path of the mass immigration and foreign workers, our economy will come crashing down. I moved a notice of motion today in floor of parliament.

And I’ll just read out some of the comments in this notice of motion. And it’s relying on high levels of immigration to boost population to fuel economic growth is arguably a lazy approach. Letting lots of migrants come to Australia to drive economic growth rather than increasing productivity or investing in skills and training is a lazy approach.

Instead of letting lots of migrants come to Australia to drive economic growth, we should be increasing productivity, or investing in skills and training. As at June 2019, there were 2.1 million temporary visa holders in Australia.

Australia hosts the second largest migrant workforce in the OECD, second in total number only to the US. One in five chefs, one in four cooks, one in six hospitality workers, and one in 10 nursing support and personal care workers in Australia hold a temporary visa.

Another one, when Australia restarts its migration programme, we must understand that migration is a key economic policy lever that can help or harm Australian workers during the economic recovery and beyond. And when Senator David talks about regional areas, it says here, we must also ensure that regional areas don’t only get transient people but community members who will settle down, buy houses, start businesses, and send the kids to the local school.

The whole fact is that the Labour said I was pulling a stunt no, all those words were from Senator Keneally, her article, that was Labour’s Shadow Minister for Immigration. And yet they said I was pulling a political stunt. No, I wasn’t pulling a political stunt.

The fact is that I called Labour out for what they are, nothing but pulled political stunt themselves, and Keneally was the one that actually made those comments. But Labour clearly does not stand by them, because they did not support them notice of motion today.

So who’s really pulled the political stunt? They use it when it suits them. As I said, high immigration props up our economy, has been used by both major political parties. And I will have my comment about Senator Faruqi today, and her comments said that One Nation stands by white supremacy.

At no point have we ever. And I’m sick of the lies put across in this chamber with regards to One Nation, and I’m going to call it out for what it is. And I encourage people to go to One Nation’s website, look at our immigration policy, which is non-discriminatory.

So that is purely lies. And to talk about immigration policy, we need the debate, Australians want the debate.

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