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Aussie Manufacturing as Bad as Kazakhstan and Lebanon – 2SM with Marcus Paul

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Transcript

[Marcus] Minutes away from eight o’clock Senator Malcolm Roberts joins us on the programme, from One Nation, morning Malcolm, how are you mate?

[Malcolm] Good morning Marcus, I’m very well, how are you?

[Marcus] Yeah really good, look I’ve spoken a lot on the programme this week about our manufacturing sector. Look we need to make our economy capable of recovering from COVID-19, it’s, look it’s a complex issue I understand that but, I mean what do you think we should be doing mate?

[Malcolm] Well, you know it is a sad and scary story actually because it’s now recognised internationally that we’ve lost our economic security. We can’t make make protective equipment, we can’t get our supplies for handling the virus, we don’t make cars anymore, basic manufactured goods, tools, construction and mining equipment.

What we need to do is to harness the power we have in this country with our people and our resources. And to revive manufacturing and agriculture, the government needs to get back to doing its job to serve the people, and to create an environment for investing and making. Instead of just simple relying on digging and shipping

[Marcus] Yeah

[Malcolm] Which we need to continue to do, minerals and energy. We need to reform tax, we need to cut regulations, we need to build infrastructure, and we need to restore skills, particularly apprenticeships and restore the TAFE system.

[Marcus] Well absolutely, and what we do need to do Malcolm, is we need to value add the stuff we take out of the ground, otherwise we’ll fall further and further behind. I mean the latest indicator for manufacturing 2020 the manufacturing self-sufficiency index, ranks Australia almost, in fact, last among developed countries for God’s sake.

We’re ranked 59th, we’re somewhere between Kazakhstan and Lebanon, we’re not adding value to our primary production.

[Malcolm] Yeah you’re absolutely correct, and the reason why is in part because of the things I’ve mentioned, the tax that favours multinational companies, and also, that’s the company tax, and also the ridiculous regulations.

But what we’ve done is we’ve gutted our energy system, we’ve still got the world’s cheapest, high quality coal, very good, clean coal, and what we’re doing is we’re raising our energy prices artificially through these stupid regulations and this climate nonsense, and what we do now is we export our coal to China, and they sell electricity using our coal at eight cents a kilowatt-hour.

What we do here is we sell it at three times that price, our same coal that’s got less distance to travel. What we need to do is build coal fired power stations, end the ridiculous subsidies on intermittent energies, and that’s what they are, wind and solar, are intermittent, unreliable and expensive.

We need to remove these climate policies, we need to build a hybrid Bradfield Scheme in Queensland, because that comes with a hydro power system, and we need to stop the Queensland state Government for example, stealing one and half billion dollars every year, from every energy user, and that’s just basically a tax, they make that as a profit, and they just, it’s really a tax, so that’s crippling our manufacturing and crippling our ability to add.

We’ve now got aluminium smelter’s have shut, near your way down in Kurri Kurri and the Hunter. Looks like it’s under threat at Tomago, also in the Hunter, certainly in Geelong, and possibly now in Boyne Island. So what we’ll do is we’ll dig the bauxite out of the ground and then ship it off to overseas, and we won’t even get the aluminium out of our country, I mean it’s just ridiculous.

[Marcus] Well that’s right, that’s the value added that we’re talking about that we seem to be essentially either pricing ourselves out of, or basically because we’re lazy and we don’t want to look at any other way of perhaps taking advantage of this rich, mineral nation and land that we have here in Australia I mean, look manufacturing, back in the 1980’s, manufacturing was one of our biggest, if not the biggest employer at 17% of the total employment pie.

Now, it’s sadly just sitting down there at 6%, no wonder our economy’s hungry, I mean that’s how much less of the pie it’s getting.

[Malcolm] That’s right, 50 years ago, Marcus, and it’s so pleasing to see you using hard data. 50 years ago manufacturing was 30% of our gross domestic product, now it’s just 6%, and blue collar workers must be shaking their heads in absolute disbelief at what’s going on.

But I reckon every middle class person in this country, all blue collar workers, all small businesses, need to be very, very scared and worried about the Labor Party in particular, because it’s driving

[Marcus] Well hang on yes

[Malcolm] The agenda for renewables.

[Marcus] Well that was my next point, Labor are supposed to be supporting the blue collar worker, what are they doing about it?

[Malcolm] Well you know, Senator Sterle and Gallacher, Sterle, Glenn Sterle’s a wonderful guy and Alex Gallacher from South Australia, Sterle from Western Australia, they’re genuinely trying to stand up for workers like old Labor, and in One Nation, Marcus, we always give credit where credit’s due. But Fitzgibbon now, Joel Fitzgibbon

[Marcus] Yeah?

[Malcolm] A member for the Hunter, has stood up and said “the Green’s have infiltrated Labour.” Hello Joel, we’ve been saying that for decades, and what’s happening now is we’ve got new Labour, which is not like old Labor, and now we’ve got a confirmation of new Labor, because Albanese is rebuking Fitzgibbon,

And confirming that Labor will continue to abandon workers, in selling out to the Green’s, Labor has completely confirmed that it opposes coal mining jobs, opposes manufacturing jobs opposes blue collar jobs. They just want to go off and bend genders and all the rest of it, it’s completely absurd.

[Marcus] All right look, go easy on my mate Joel, I mean he’s the hope for the side. I think with Mr Fitzgibbon I’ve been very adamant, I mean I like Anthony Albanese but, I mean Anthony is simply too nice.

I really believe that, and Joel, perhaps I think he should have higher aspirations considering he speaks better sense than a number of his colleagues on the future of our energy sector and resources and mining and you know, he’s one of those that you’re right, will not be infiltrated by a Green ideology thank God.

That’s why I say that Joel Fitzgibbon is the hope for the side, and as soon as Anthony perhaps, realises this, he maybe needs to get out of the way.

[Malcolm] Well that’s the problem, that’s the problem you’ve identified Marcus, doesn’t matter what Joel thinks, because Anthony Albanese has gutted and cut the legs out from underneath Joel Fitzgibbon and no one stood up to support Joel publicly, no one, and they just let it all slide through.

So, basically what Albanese’s done is undermine the Hunter Valley, undermine all industry and undermine small business in this country, because he’s pushing absurd policies that are driving up energy pricing ridiculously.

[Marcus] Don’t hold back Malcolm okay? Don’t hold back, whatever you do. Tell me about this, a 23 year old university student is suing the government for failing to disclose the risk climate change poses to Australian super and other safe investments in government bonds, what?

[Malcolm] Yeah it’s ridiculous, you know this is just the ABC putting out another story, but unfortunately it’s true, but putting out another story in favour of their climate alarm crusade, but you know what Marcus?

You know where I stand on this, but I actually welcome this woman doing this, this young lady, 23 year old, because we need to bring this issue to court, because in court, they have to give hard evidence, empirical data, under oath. We’ve never had that in this country, and the second thing that she wants, she wants to change the way the government handles climate.

We want them to do exactly that, we want them to start using data, and you know, the third thing, so I actually support her getting into court, but what a ridiculous thing she’s doing because, it shows her entitlement mentality, she wants government to protect people from their own investment decisions, it’s just another stunt, again without the data.

[Marcus] All right and look I know you’re really chomping at the bit to get into this, the New South Wales police commissioner as we know, has fined BLM protestors.

It is pleasing, the law has been enforced, including Mr Patrick, who, the leader of the so-called BLM movement, here in New South Wales, at least, he was, well, I thought he was thrown in the back of a paddy waggon, but he was basically given a green carpet ride into the bowels of Parliament House don’t press, you know, don’t pass –

He certainly bypassed jail he got a thousand dollar fine, but I don’t know, what do we make of this Malcolm?

[Malcolm] Well didn’t he get the help from Green’s MP’s David Shoebridge and Jenny Leong to get into Parliament house?

[Marcus] Well I didn’t see Mr Shoebridge, but definitely Jenny Leong and she was there on the news last night, justifying this, well at least trying to justify it. It even had the New South Wales premier, who’ll join us on the programme soon, I mean, Gladys was even shaking her head, she didn’t quite understand how that could happen.

[Malcolm] But there is a wonderful positive side to this because the New South Wales police commissioner stood up last week and said that he will be enforcing the law and requiring police to enforce the law, and that’s exactly what the police force need to do. You know up here in Queensland, we have a premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who is soft on criminals, and hard on farmers and producers. And you know, she just invites people, and we got 30,000 people turning up to a black lives march protest last month, just crazy.

[Marcus] Yeah well, and then she closes borders, and worries about the importation, if you like, of COVID-19, meanwhile you’re right, that strange lily-livered, I guess mentality of preferring people’s civil liberties and their rights to protest over everybody’s health.

You know that’s, you’re gonna fester in your own nest I think up there, look I don’t know, maybe, I think as far as Queensland’s concerned, there needs to be a much stronger opposition Malcolm, because Annastacia seems to be able to be doing what she wants and she’s completely blocked out Sydney now as we know with the latest news that’s come through and off she goes mate, she’s on a tirade up there.

[Malcolm] Well we haven’t got any strong opposition here in the LNP because Deb Frecklington is really just the previous opposition leader Tim Nicholls with a skirt, you know, and what’s happening is the LNP are pushing similarly absurd policies to energy and climate policies as the Labor party.

And the Nationals are now following our lead, and pretending, we are actually opposing the UN and what it’s doing in this country, the Nationals realising that we’re stealing their votes are now pretending to oppose the UN. But the same people in the National Party are meekly following the LNP which signed the, which the coalition signed the Paris Agreement, which is gutting energy.

John Howard and the Nationals at the time, John Anderson, signed the, sorry committed to, committed our country to complying with the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s Kyoto Protocol and that’s decimated farming

[Marcus] We’ve all been sold a dud, we’ve all been sold a dud on this climate change, we know that. Malcolm good to have you on the programme, let’s talk again next week thank you.

[Malcolm] Look forward to it, thanks Marcus

[Marcus] All right there he is Senator Malcolm Roberts

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Medical cannabis gets the green light

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One Nation has worked with the Government to pass legislation through the Senate to remove a major stumbling block that will expand the medical cannabis and hemp markets.

Senator Roberts said, “This is a game changer for the medical cannabis and hemp industries.”

The Certification of Narcotic Exports bill replaces the ad hoc approvals for exports with a streamlined process giving certainty to medical cannabis and hemp growers and manufacturers.

One Nation supports natural, whole plant medical cannabis via doctor’s prescription for a medical need, issued from a chemist and on the PBS, but does not support recreational use of cannabis.

“It is a lifeline for thousands of people currently forced to use illegal medical cannabis at high prices, as affordable legal cannabis is hard to obtain,” added Senator Roberts.

The bill will lead to a quick expansion of Australian production for export, which will bring about a greater range and lower prices for Australian patients.

Senator Roberts stated, “Export volumes assist local companies to grow plants with a wider range of profiles, allowing a patient to receive cannabis developed for their specific medical condition.”

“Australia has a unique competitive advantage with perfect climate, existing transport infrastructure and the international standard of Good Manufacturing Practice already in place.”

“Queensland is at the forefront of this multi-billion dollar export industry with a manufacturing facility at Southport, and expected growth to $1 billion over next four years.”

Hemp is known for its strength, durability and versatility, has wide application and its market growth looks promising. One Nation calls on the government to honour the intentions of this legislation and put in place export rules for cannabis that facilitate growers and manufacturers accessing export market.

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One Nation secures victory for live exporters

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A One Nation motion asking the Government to rule out an appeal to the Federal Court decision that the 2011 Live Export Ban was unlawful, received a majority vote in the Senate today.

Senator Roberts moved the motion after the Government indicated they would appeal the decision.

Senator Roberts stated, “This decision should ensure the $750 million in compensation is paid to farmers whose livelihoods were destroyed by the Gillard Labor Government’s decision to suspend live cattle exports in 2011.”

“I call on the Government to honour today’s commitment and ensure families who have suffered financial hardship receive their compensation without further legal delay.”

Live exports are a fundamental part of our country, our economy and vital to regional Australia.

Senator Roberts added, “No Australian industry should be closed down overnight based on falsified reports, no consultation and with indifference to people’s livelihoods.

“The Government needs to pay the compensation now and restore confidence and security to the live export sector.”

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Restore our productive environment

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I will say it again. We need our economic productive capacity to be restored, we need our economic resilience to be restored, we need our economic sovereignty and independence to be restored, and we need our economic security to be restored.

Transcript

Thank you madam acting deputy president. As a servant of the people of Queensland and Australia, I support this bill. We need though, to do far more. We need to get manufacturing moving. We need to protect Australia from the risks of sources of imported goods drying up, and we need, as Senator O’Sullivan has said, jobs, jobs, jobs.

Queenslanders and Australians everywhere have heard us speak about the gaps in our productive capacity, the gaps in economic resilience, the gaps in our economic sovereignty and the gaps in our national security. That was before COVID.

Now it’s even more so, especially since COVID revealed that we did not even have enough personal protective equipment to protect our valued healthcare workers and everyday Australians. And now we have to store our own oil, our own oil in the USA because we have nowhere to store it here.

And at first we couldn’t even after COVID, we couldn’t even manufacture ventilators, but thanks to Aussie ingenuity and a personal thank you to all those innovative Australians who did step up to fill this gap. Certainly, we need the skills.

Australia needs the skills and the capability to ensure that we can protect ourselves from future health disasters and economic disasters, especially things like the prolonged border closures of, or international transport closures or blockades cut the sea transport.

And these are possibilities. We see the news of what’s happening in the South China seas. We see the growing confrontation between America and China. We need to think about our security. So this government has presented a bill for the creation of the position of national skills commissioner.

Yet we need to ensure this is not just an advisory role. Just setting up this office for four years is costing taxpayers over $48 million. And I quite often hear Liberal and Labor people and the National saying, “We’ve spend a million here, “we spent tens of millions here, “we spent hundreds of millions here, “we spent a couple of billion here and there.”

It’s not the money that matters, it’s the environment in which that money can be turned into something beneficial for the people of Australia. So we expect a return on that 48 million. A return on investment by giving the commissioner the teeth to ensure that vocational training across Australia is high in quality, consistent and competitively priced.

Training by itself is not the answer. It needs to be good, effective training. So where is the accountability between the federal funding of approximately $1.5 billion a year to the States, to the vocational providers, to ensure that our vocational trainees, get a high quality education and an affordable education that really lands them a job.

If the government is going to invest $1.5 billion per year in vocational education and training, then Australians have a right to ensure that our taxes are well spent. So we need a review of the performance of the national skills commissioner after 12 months, or possibly after three years, we need that review.

We also need to understand that it is not the commissioner who is going to get us effective training. It is not the commissioner who is going to decide what skills are needed. Government, Liberal, Labor, Nationals have shown a very poor track record of anticipating demand for specific skills.

Those decisions must be based upon what the market needs. It’s the men and women in work. It’s the men and women investing, men and women leading corporations that determine the skills we need and actually going beneath that, it’s the market that drives those skills.

And they will tell us what skills are needed to service the market. More importantly, we need to restart manufacturing in our country, and that needs more than training. It needs much more than training. It needs an integrated approach and industry and economic environment, which enables and encourages Australian investment.

How the hell can people afford to invest when energy prices are so high? How the hell can it be that we don’t have reliable, affordable, stable, synchronous electricity? We have the cheapest coal in the world, the highest quality coal in the world.

We export that to China and they produce coal far, far more cheaply at about 40%, they sell it to their manufacturers at 40% of the price we sell it. Why, because our electricity prices have doubled in the last 10 years. Why, because of Liberal, Labor and Nationals policies’ based on rubbish, a climate scam.

That is what’s destroying our manufacturing industry. Labour costs are a smaller component of manufacturing these days than they used to be. Electricity prices are significant. We’ve gone from the lowest price electricity to the world’s highest prices.

And that’s been due to regulations based not on data, but on opinions from the Liberal, Labor and Nationals governments. How can it be that China, takes our coal thousands of kilometres and sells it at 40% of the price that we sell it for?

It’s regulations, it’s government screwing with the market, it’s government screwing with regulations. Listen to some of these factors, all government driven. The renewable energy target, introduced by John Howard’s government.

The national electricity market, introduced before John Howard, if memory serves me correctly, but worsened under John Howard’s government. National energy market is really a racket, not a market. And that’s the people in Australia are paying for the prices that the retail margins are guaranteed in some states at high levels with very little risk.

The networks are gold plated because of regulations. And then we’ve got privatisation. In Queensland, our state, the Labor Party up there, and the state government uses that as a tax, $1.4 to $1.5 billion a year in tax, due to excess charges from the generators.

Privatisation, the sale of assets, is failing around the country. That is an essential asset and it’s crippling our manufacturing. It’s crippling jobs right across. Agriculture, farmers won’t irrigate because the price of water is too high. Price of pumping water is too high.

Second thing, tax, that’s part of the business environment. Multinationals in our country are going without paying tax. Any company tax due to agreements from Robert Menzies’ Liberal Government in 1953, perpetuated with the lack of tax on the North West Shelf Gas that was enabled by Bob Hawke’s Labor Government in the 1980s.

Both sides have done that. Former deputy commissioner of taxation Jim Killaly, said in 1996 and the year 2010, that 90% of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and since 1953 have paid little or no tax. What that means is that mums and dads, families, small businesses, Australian owned businesses have to pay more tax than they need to.

It also means that the Australian businesses are at a competitive disadvantage of about 30% because they have to pay company tax and large companies have to pay company tax and the foreign companies don’t.

So taxation, we need to set a level playing field by taxing multinationals and reducing the tax burden, simplifying the tax system, having a comprehensive review of tax, because that is one of the most important factors driving the lack of investment from Australians.

We also have an abundance of regulations that are crippling, that is crippling our country. We have red tape from the bureaucracies that state federal and even local level. We have green tape driven by rampant environmentalists. We have blue tape driven by UN, and that is arguably the largest component of tape.

The blue tape, most expensive of all, put in place by Liberal, Labor, Nationals Governments. And then we have economic management. How can companies prepare? How can companies plan for the longer term, which is needed these days when we have governments, making economic management decisions purely based upon electoral electoral payoffs, not just every three years as it used to be, but now it’s an annual cycle.

Budgets are based upon bribing taxpayers to vote for that particular party. Economic management is now 12 month issue, and it’s very short-term and it’s counterproductive to good business environment. We have states now with lower accountability because competitive federalism has been white anted.

The Queensland Labor Government can sit on closing its borders and decimating our tourism, decimating small business in our state. And why, because under the Commonwealth Constitution, we are supposed to have competitive federalism yet in 1943, the income tax was stolen from the States and given to the federal government.

And now essentially more than 50% of state government expenditure is from the federal government, tied to federal government conditions and guidelines, which means effectively that the federal government is running much of what the States do.

The federal government is running much of what the local councils do around Queensland and around Australia. I was in the Balonne Shire council in 19, sorry, in 2017 in February and they told me an answer to a question of mine that 73% of their annual revenue comes from the federal government with strings attached.

Not only does the federal government tell them how to manage their local community, the federal government only has three to five year windows, which means the local councils can’t go beyond that time frame during their planning. How can local councils make a long-term plan?

This is what’s hampering governance in this country. So I plead with the government to make sure that we focus on our economic productive capacity, our economic resilience, our economic sovereignty, our economic security, our economic independence, which has been smashed by the quest for the elitist quest for, interdependence which is really depending upon others, that is a loss of dependence.

Nonetheless, this legislation will help all Queenslanders to improve our state’s economy and to repay the debt hole in which Labor Government in Queensland has buried Queenslanders. We need training, but we need jobs. We need Australian jobs.

We need Queensland jobs, especially in regional Queensland. Training is a minor component, yet an important component. Beyond that, we need to get back to basics to create the economic environment, to drive the Australian investment.

As I said, I’ll say it again, we need economic productive capacity to be restored. We need economic resilience to be restored. We need economic sovereignty and independence to be restored. We need economic security to be restored. Australia has the people, has the resources, has the opportunity, has the potential.

We just need to get back to what we had, get back to the basics. And in the basics, Australia led the world in per capita gross domestic product per capita income in the early years of our Federation. When our constitution was followed and the States behave competitively toward each other.

That’s what we need to get back to a productive environment. Thank you Madam acting deputy president.

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