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The Malcolm Roberts Show – Journalist Tony Thomas

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I talk to journalist Tony Thomas who is interested in climate change, indoctrination in schools and universities, the ABC, and Aboriginal politics. See all episodes of my show on TNT radio.

Recorded 19 February 2022

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

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

Senator Malcom Roberts (00:07):

And welcome back to Today’s News Talk radio, tntradio.live. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I just want to apologise for my amateurish approach to the microphone. I’m learning this game as we go. So bear with me, please. Hope this is much better now. I’ll look for some feedback from the panel in the gold coast. This hour coming, I’m going to be chatting with the real journalist. Tony Thomas is someone who hasn’t lost sight of the dignity and responsibility of journalism. Tony’s now 81, he’s been in journalism for more than 60 years. Since he started his cadetship, and I want to emphasise that word cadetship, in 1958 on The West Australian newspaper, he spent a decade there, followed by 10 years writing economics for the age in the Canberra Press Gallery. Through the 1970s. He’s an ideal person to talk about the Press Gallery and the media in Canberra reporting on politics.

Senator Malcom Roberts (01:04):

He spent 20 years with weekly business magazine, BRW, including as associate editor. Since retiring from salary journalism in 2001, he’s published more than 400 features for Quadrant and Spectator magazines, and his work is marvellous. It’s always factual and accurate. He’s done a part-time master’s degree in literature and a bachelor of economics at Australian National University and published nine books on history, business, and current affairs, including four books of collected essays in the past five years. So you can see that he’s across many different topics. One of his books on business won an award in 2000, from the chartered accountants body as quote, “A substantial contribution to the literature of the industry.” Tony’s major topics currently include climate change, indoctrination in schools and universities, the ABC and Aboriginal politics. Welcome to tntradio.live. Tony.

Tony Thomas (02:04):

Thanks very much Malcolm, a very nice introduction.

Senator Malcom Roberts (02:10):

We always start with appreciation. Tell me something you appreciate, no matter how briefly, no matter what topic, what do you appreciate?

Tony Thomas (02:18):

I appreciate the ability to research right, and get published with alacrity. There’s no fun writing for a publisher, and then your book comes out 15 months later, but writing for Quadrant Online, I put the article in within a day or two it’s up on the blog site. So, that’s very satisfying.

Senator Malcom Roberts (02:43):

Thank you. Now I want to go back to your cadetship. How did young journalists operate? Is it like the classical movies tell us 40 years ago, they would sniff an issue, they would go out and research it, they’d talk to people, above all, listen to people, give everyone a fair hearing. And then they would write an article without fear, without favour, objective. Is that the way you started? Is that the culture in which you started?

Tony Thomas (03:14):

Yes. In those days, the young journalists were monitored and herded by old veteran pot belly grizzled journalists changed [inaudible 00:03:27], who’d been in the game since before the war, who would roast you for the slightest grammatical mistake or sloppiness, and so on. I must say though, The West Australian was a monopoly in that capital city. So they weren’t as sharp as many other newspapers are where everybody’s competing, but still it was a four year cadetship. I did three years and you learn shorthand. I actually learned shorthand twice over once at school and once on the job. And you were put through all sorts of experiences, especially court reporting, which may seem quite okay for a young cadet. But in fact, it’s the most difficult and exacting form of reporting. And if you get one little thing wrong or you mishear something because of bad acoustics, you are in big trouble. So the training was quite slow in those days, but thorough.

Senator Malcom Roberts (04:30):

Thank you very much. So basically it’s an apprenticeship and you learn-

Tony Thomas (04:35):

That’s right.

Senator Malcom Roberts (04:35):

…the tools of your trade and the methods of your trade and the processes of your trade by the guidance of experienced people, successful people. You also said something else, implicitly. You said that The West Australian was a monopoly. And therefore it wasn’t as sharp as some of the other papers where there was cutthroat competition. You also said there’s shorthanded school as shorthand was at school, basic skills that are not taught today. Now, just of something of interest. And you also mentioned you were sent to court reporting, where you have to be accurate and precise and succinct, just a little sideline, whenever I’m approached by anyone in the media, whether it be by phone or personally, I always turn on my recording device.

Senator Malcom Roberts (05:23):

The other day in parliament, I was wandering through the corridors on my way to Senate estimates hearings, and Andrew Probyn now with the ABC saw me and he went past me and he said, “Can I just get your comment off the record, of course, about a topic?” And I said, “Hang on just a minute, I’ll just turn my recording device on.” And he said, “No, if that’s it, not interested.” So, there’s that kind of thing, he’s not willing to stand up to accountability because if he misreports, this is my opinion, if he missed reports, then I can hold him accountable for it. The moment I did that, he ran away. So journalists have prized impartiality, what happened?

Tony Thomas (06:09):

Well, what happened there, was the old story, as you said, of journalists not wanting to be accountable. Now, it’s 10 times worse with the TV journalism because the TV journalist will interview you for half an hour and then cut and snip the interview down to just a few sentences, according to whatever agenda he’s on. And some really clever people like Joanne Nova, the climate blogger in Perth, when she was met by the ABC filming team, had her own filming camera set up in the lounge room and she filmed the ABC filming. And so then she was able to say, this is what the ABC has done with that interview, where they’ve cut, how they’ve distorted it, and basically how much they left on the cutting room floor. So there’s an old saying about, trust me, I’m a journalist. Well, that’s ironic.

Senator Malcom Roberts (07:15):

Yes. That’s a really important point. You’ve just mentioned journalists, as we agreed is not accountable today. And it’s worse with TV because of the editing. That’s implicit in what you said, Joanne Nova’s filming the filmers. There’s a story, I was in Cannes with a candidate who was fairly inexperienced and he had a colourful background, nothing wrong with it, but he had background and some of the media locally were trying to distort that misrepresented to cast dispersions on him. And one of the journalists came up and I said to him that I was recording it in front of the candidate.

Senator Malcom Roberts (07:54):

And then I proceeded to answer his questions by asking him questions. And after a couple of minutes, he realised that he was being interviewed and I realised where the slant of his thrust was going to go. So what I did was I posted the recording on Facebook immediately. Now that’s taking away livelihood from a journalist, but in my opinion, it was also protecting an honest, innocent person from being slandered or being misrepresented. So that’s one way of fighting the media, but how else can we protect ourselves against the media?

Tony Thomas (08:36):

Well, before the online world happened, the journalists for print could write what they liked and the only response that any reader would have would be to write a letter of complaint to the editor. And then the editor, which is like complaining to your wife about your mother-in-law. The editor would normally pick a side of the journalist and throw the letter in the bin, or whatever. But now that there’s an online world, if a journalist writes a piece that people object to, either on that site itself or on their own blogs or anywhere, they can put a post up arguing back against the journalists. So, that’s what the online world has opened up. The journalists are now accountable to every person on the planet, which is an excellent thing.

Senator Malcom Roberts (09:32):

Yes, until we get censorship in social media, which is what Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn are doing. So how do we counter that?

Tony Thomas (09:43):

Well, as Trump and Joanne Nova, and people are doing, they’re finding other platforms, which are pretty obscure, and I’m not across them, I think a bit [inaudible 00:09:56], and these ones are open and not centering you. So that takes some power away from Twitter and Facebook.

Senator Malcom Roberts (10:05):

What about polls? What do they show about trust in the media these days, Tony?

Tony Thomas (10:09):

I’ve been looking into this and there, there was a poll by the Reader’s Digest of all things in Australia last year. And they wanted people to rank professions according to trust. And guess where journalists came, they came second last of 30 professions, just ahead of politicians. Sorry about that, Mal. And just-

Senator Malcom Roberts (10:32):

You’re not affecting me because we deal with honesty, Tony, I know exact be what you’re talking about. They’re [inaudible 00:10:38].

Tony Thomas (10:38):

Yeah. And just ahead of delivery drivers, and when you go to a place like the United States, there was a, I think a Pew poll, for how is trust in the media represented across 46 countries, and of the 46 countries trust in the media, in the US was bottom. You can’t get any lower than that. Only 29% of the population said they trusted the media. Whereas I looked up Australia, that was 43%, but Australian trust in the media is below what you got in Croatia, Poland and South Africa. If you want a bit more there’s other polls quite recently, where trust in the media overall in the US is only 36%, which is the second lowest ever since Gallup began polling, only 11% of Republican trust the media. But when you take all American adults, only 10% trust the media on their COVID coverage. Now that is truly remarkable and indicates that no matter what the press is saying, their audience frankly, is mostly not believing it.

Senator Malcom Roberts (11:59):

So, they’re startling figures. So trust is just about shot, which will ultimately lead to two things, correct me if I’m wrong, people will stop paying media. People will turn to alternatives as we are doing. We are turning to what I call independent truth media, podcasts, independent stations like tntradio.live. These are the things because ultimately there is a free market, but let me just check again. Pravda still exists, doesn’t it, in Russia?

Tony Thomas (12:36):

I think so. I’m not sure.

Senator Malcom Roberts (12:38):

I’m pretty sure it does. That means our journalists in this country, our media in this country are ranked below Pravda, who would’ve thought that 40 years ago before 1988? Who would’ve thought that?

Tony Thomas (12:52):

Well, I don’t know where the Russia who was on that list of 46 countries, but I’ll give you the benefit on the doubt there, Malcolm.

Senator Malcom Roberts (13:00):

Well, some of the Eastern block countries.

Tony Thomas (13:02):

Yes. Well, they were there. Poland, Croatia. You name it.

Senator Malcom Roberts (13:07):

Yeah. How effective is the ABC’s charter for impartiality?

Tony Thomas (13:12):

Oh, it’s really a joke. What it actually says is that the ABC reporters should follow the weight of evidence. So that means if there’s a consensus about something, they should reflect that consensus. But it says that all points of view should be covered over time. And what this has done is given a licence to the, in addition it said, you don’t have to worry about tinfoil hat conspiracists and [inaudible 00:13:44], and people like that who are not actually entitled to any sort of point of view in balanced coverage.

Tony Thomas (13:53):

Well, the ABC people of course have now lumped climate sceptics to take the most pertinent example, along with the tin hat foil conspirators, and they won’t touch any sceptic point of view. And on the rare occasions they have, such as on their science show where they interviewed Dr. Judith Curry, a very esteemed American climatologist with a sceptic point of view, they book ended her with two or three of their own pet climate scientists, so that everything that Judith said, they were able to drown out with opposing views from their several friends there. So, that’s how they pretend to keep their charter, while actually protecting the public from the views of a very large proportion of people on climate.

Senator Malcom Roberts (14:51):

Well, it’s very interesting you mentioned. I didn’t know those details about the ABC, even though we’d done some research and some work in response to some political activities a couple of years ago. They are a disgrace, in my opinion, I think they should be sold with the exception of the regional arm. And that should be retained, especially for natural disasters. So, I’ll come back to the ABC in a minute. Well, let’s deal with them first, before we go to-

Tony Thomas (15:16):

[crosstalk 00:15:16] Pilborough.

Senator Malcom Roberts (15:17):

…go to the Pilborough in 1980s, the ABC actually requires dealing with the consensus, supporting the consensus. Now, that’s very interesting because they don’t do their research. When it comes to climate, the consensus is with the scientists who don’t believe that carbon dioxides from human activity has to be cut. That is undoubted. The Oregon petition 33,000, 34,000 now scientists, who are opposed to what we are being told by the United Nations. Kevin Rudd as prime minister, what a disgrace he was, his behaviour was atrocious because he’d basically lied in parliament. He said that 4,000 scientists produced the IPCC’s report. I challenged him. I wrote to his office and I said that the claim is really 2,500, but of those 2,500, only about a 1,000 produced a science report.

Senator Malcom Roberts (16:24):

In the science report, and you would well know this, in 2007 there was one sole lonely chapter claiming carbon dioxides from human activity effects climate, needs to be cut. The rest was bumf, fluff. That was it. Chapter nine, from memory in 2007. In that chapter, the reviewers numbered about 57, of those reviewers, only five endorse a claim that carbon dioxides from human activity affects climate, only five. And there’s doubt that they were even accredited scientists. So we have, not 4,000 that Kevin Ruddd told us, we had five. That’s from the UN’s own process, the UN’s own data, which Dr. John McClain painstakingly took from UN documents. After that exposure by Dr. John McClain, the UN stopped producing reports on the numbers of scientists, but that is a blatant lie. Now what makes it even more so atrocious, Tony is that I wrote to Kevin Rudd, his department responded to me. I then told them why their response was nonsense. They then responded to me again, from memory. And then I told them why that was nonsense. I won the argument. They didn’t respond. Hard data they go against.

Tony Thomas (17:48):

Yeah, I actually am a friend of John McClain, here in Melbourne.

Senator Malcom Roberts (17:53):

Wonderful man.

Tony Thomas (17:54):

Yeah. He tipped me off that there’s a key chapter in the IPCC reports called Attribution Studies, where they have to literally attribute global warming to CO2, via their modelings. And I’m not sure which report it was. It could have been the 2007 one. There were only 60 scientists involved in that attribution exercise, and basically all of them were in a network where their peer reviewing each other’s work, and hobnobbing together, and you can do one of those spider graphs where you can link just about every one of them to every other one. So it was a small group, a closed shop of people, but there were 60 people basically dictating this entire global warming hysteria that’s been going on now for 30 years.

Senator Malcom Roberts (18:51):

Well, not only that, I’m pretty sure you’re citing the data there that I also cited. There were 60 authors of the critical chapter, the sole chapter, again. The overwhelming majority of them were climate modellers, not empirical scientists.

Tony Thomas (19:10):

Sure.

Senator Malcom Roberts (19:10):

And there’s no empirical data, which is the fundamental root foundation of science. Objectivity is based on empirical data, hard facts, hard observations. None of that appears in chapter nine, 2007, the sole chapter that claims warming and attributed to carbon dioxide from human activities. What’s more though, is we see… And why hasn’t the ABC reported that? Why hasn’t anyone reported that? Because they’re too lazy, in my opinion Tony, to go and do the work, do the research that you were trained to do. And now it’s that second nature to you, but not only that, they don’t report on the links, the links to, for example, the network of very close, I think about four institutions, those 60 odd scientists, I don’t call them scientists, I call them academics. The 60 academics that produce the chapter nine, but largely modellers overwhelmingly were modellers.

Senator Malcom Roberts (20:12):

But more importantly, they were from, I think about four different modelling organisations. All enrolled in spreading this climate crap. And so they feed off each other, they validate each other’s papers. And when you look through the peer reviewers, they’re all forming a very close club and they depend on each other to maintain their positions. But there’s also another connection, a colleague of mine in Canberra, who I think you know, Peter Bobrov, he did an analysis of those who are connected to the United Nations or globalist organisations. Overwhelmingly, the loud voices, the mouths that spread this nonsense, they’re academic activists, advocates. They’re all one in the same, it’s hard to tell the difference between academia and activists these days, but they’re overwhelmingly connected to the UN or associated globalist bodies.

Senator Malcom Roberts (21:14):

And then David Karoly, he was editor, lead author for one chapter, I think it was in 2001 for the sole chapter that claims warming and attributed to carbon dioxide. He was also one of the three primary reviewers of the same chapter, the equivalent chapter, sorry, chapter nine in 2007. And the 2007 report just built on the 2001 report. So if we’ve got crap at the start in 2001, and it was, then it was validated by the people who produced the crap. It was validated in 2007. And David Karoly, despite people saying the science was settled back then, received a grant for $1.9 million to research this climate science, despite it being settled. And it’s just stunning the money that taxpayers spread out through people like Kevin Rudd, and sadly the liberals. So there’s this very tight incestuous group, but the media doesn’t talk about it.

Tony Thomas (22:17):

Yeah. The Australian Academy of Science in 2015, put out a booklet called a Question and Answers on the Science of Climate Change. And I immediately went looking for where are they going to produce the evidence for the CO2 causing the warming? And it said, “Paleo climate studies plus outputs from modelling provide compelling evidence of the connection.” Well, since when is output from models, been compelling evidence, it’s just a scientific absurdity. And this booklet would’ve gone through the hands of dozens and dozens of academy of science people, making sure that they weren’t going to get caught out on anything, and this just goes through. Output of morals to them is compelling evidence. It’s shocking, really.

Senator Malcom Roberts (23:14):

But no media journalists pick it up apart from Adam Creighton and Tony McCrain and sometimes Graham Lloyd. The media seems to willfully ignore it. And when you challenge him, aren’t they still ignore it. You mention the Australian Academy of Science, I had dealings with will Stephan, who is a member of the Academy, from memory. He was on four government funded organisations. And yet when he was introduced as a newly selected member of the climate commission, or should that be climate [inaudible 00:23:44], but anyway, climate commission, the minister at the time for climate, pushing climate, he was Greg Combet, and he said that Will Stephan. And the others were all impartial.

Senator Malcom Roberts (23:55):

They already had strong connections to the government. And as you point out, that the only thing that they can hang their hats on now is modelling. We had 90 models producing vastly different outputs. So which one of these is the settle science? And now we have whittled that down from 90 to 40, they say. So as it was asked in Senate estimates last week, if you’ve got 40 models producing different results, what does that tell you about the science being settled?

Tony Thomas (24:29):

Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. What they’re now going for is to pretend that basically the consensus is overwhelming and there’s no more argument. And so if you start signing the pledge and so on, that is proof that everything’s okay, there’s this organisation called Covering Climate Now based in Columbia University, School of Journalism and The Guardian and a few other groups, and they’ve got 460 media groups worldwide to sign the pledge, to do their utmost to hide global warming and shun any critics of it. And to use words that the guardian recommends like global heating, global crisis, emergency climate breakdown. So they even want to constrict the language into this campaign of theirs. Well, once you realise that 460 media outlets have signed that pledge, how can you possibly imagine that any of them remain objective on the subject?

Senator Malcom Roberts (25:40):

Exactly. And I love your use of data. Your readily available at your fingertips data. And I note that News Corporation in its editorial, leading up to the Glasgow Conference of Parties with the UN back in, what was that? November last year. The news Corp said, “We’re going to change our editorial policy slightly. We’re going to be reporting more implicitly,” didn’t state it directly, a slanted view, but Tony, we’re going to go to an ad break now. What I’d like to do when we come back in a minute or so is have your views on the role of the now activist global news agencies like Associated Press, AFP, Reuters, AAP, et cetera. We go to the ad break.

Tony Thomas (26:29):

With pleasure. I’ve been researching that all week. Okay. Thanks Malcom.

Senator Malcom Roberts (28:38):

Welcome back you’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts interviewing a journalist with 60 years of experience, Tony Thomas. Tony, one of the advertisements a minute ago just said “Your future depends on how you think.” Could it be any better said? The quality of our decisions depend upon what we think or on how we think. And particularly based on data, how can we make a sound decision on voting, which will determine taxation and community policies, defence, social policies, industry policies, productivity, with a biassed media? People have been asleep in this country. The media perpetuates the two parties, which are so similar. It’s really a uni-party, but people are still asleep. COVID though have as awoken people, and no matter how much the bias is there, and it’s very solid. People seem to be waking up. What’s the role of the now activist global news agencies?

Tony Thomas (29:36):

Well, people don’t really realise or appreciate that if it wasn’t for the huge global news wholesalers like Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Bloomberg, their newspapers would be half empty and the same with the radio, news, and so on. That they just shovel in the output from these news global wholesalers. And I’ve just been checking, and I find that AFP, which has got literally thousands of journalists there and probably thousand or more media customers, and Reuters and Bloomberg have all signed this covering climate now petitioned to hype global warming and stamp out any dissenting views. And then I began to realise that The Australian newspaper, which has been my main reading and I’ve always respected it, is taking basically ghastly climate propaganda from AFP. And there is an example, just the other day about a headline, The acceleration of global warming code red for humanity.

Tony Thomas (30:58):

And it was illustrated with a picture of a cool city with beautiful green grasses, blue skies, pink, white, fluffy clouds. And then because of CO2 on the left side of the picture, it turns into a boiling hot hellscape, fires and cracked earth, not a green thing in sight. And this was all under the heading, Breaking News. And then I found that the same guy from AFP who’s their global head of climate coverage called Marlowe Hood has got more than 20 of these propaganda pieces into The Australian.

Tony Thomas (31:41):

And it’s just unbelievable that they wouldn’t at least be put under comment, but to have them all in the news section like that. And clearly The Australian having paid for a feed from AFP, just uncritically takes everything that they offer. But if we move on to Associated Press, there’s a huge scandal just broken in the United States, where five leaftist philanthropic foundations have given Associated Press $8 million to hire 20 new reporters to push the climate change message.

Tony Thomas (32:29):

So this means that when you are reading climate stuff from now on, from Associated Press, you could be reading material by people who’ve been hired with money from foundations like The Rockefeller Foundation, the James and Catherine Murdoch Quadrivium Foundation. There’s the Walton Foundation, there’s another one that I’ve forgotten. Anyway, they’ve all got green leaf credentials. They’re all determined to save the planet. And this is so contrary to the codes of ethics of Associated Press itself, which it says don’t allow money to influence anything you’re doing and always be wary of anyone offering money to influence your coverage. And in point, they even said, announcing this $8 million grant that they were no longer going to be so wary because the money from these foundations is such nice money, and we really need it. I mean you can’t make this stuff up.

Senator Malcom Roberts (33:41):

No. And we know that I think it was John Rockefeller. One of the early Rockefellers about a hundred years ago, thanked the New York times, that’s right, for keeping the global control under wraps. So not being impartial, just silencing the control of the major 46 newspapers in the United States that were biassed and controlled by the globalists. And then there’s another problem we have Tony, and that is that I think it was Julia Gillard’s Labour government that had in amongst its ministers and its staff, amongst its MPS. It had something like 150 journalists working for them. Anastasia Palache was recently reported, was it 30 journalists reporting to her or reporting in her department-

Tony Thomas (34:39):

There could have been.

Senator Malcom Roberts (34:39):

…and what’s happening, sorry?

Tony Thomas (34:41):

Well, it could have been triple figures for all the media Flex in the Palache Queensland government. And it’s much the same in the Andrew’s government. The teams of media flex that he owns are probably larger than the teams in any other media outlet stable.

Senator Malcom Roberts (35:03):

So the point I was getting to, that’s a really important thing to say that the biggest employers of media are in fact, the politicians because what’s happened with increasing competition, especially from the internet, is that some of the conventional, what I call the legacy media, especially the print media, are now shutting down. Well, have been for many years, shutting down the number of journalists they have. And so journalists go and are employed by the politicians, especially those in government with seemingly endless taxpayers money to employ journalists. And this army of journalists, writes crap. And then the under demand journalists in the mainstream media, the legacy media, they just take whatever they’re given and copy and paste it, straight into the media. And so what we’ve got is, we’ve got governments of both types, labour liberal, both virtually writing newspaper articles.

Senator Malcom Roberts (36:07):

I cancelled my subscription to Sky News because it’s now woke, lame. Prime Minister Morrison seem to do some favours for some of the journalists in Sky News. And now they just gush about him. It makes people sick. And Sky News is dropping in viewership now. I don’t buy any newspaper, other than The Weekend Australian because my wife likes The Weekend Australian magazine, some News Corp journalists are quite good, Alan Jones, but he’s sacked or he’d been let go. So, that tells you something about News Corp. Bolt has been throttled, Terry McCray’s good, Graham Lloyd is sometimes impartial. We’ve got these temperatures. The temperatures today are cooler in Australia than the temperatures in the 1880s, 1890s. Fact Bureau of Meteorology’s own record. We know that temperature hasn’t increased. There’s been no warming trend since 1995, none globally.

Senator Malcom Roberts (37:14):

If you take away where the El Niño and Southern Oscillation in this, which is cyclical, there’s been no warming in Australia. We see now that we’ve had two experiments, real life experiments, and that’s the key to science. In 2009, there was a massive recession, a pretty severe due to the global financial crisis near the end of 2008. So when we have a recession, industrial production goes down, which means the consumption of hydrocarbon fuels goes down, which means the production of carbon dioxide from human activity goes down. It went down enormously. So the human production of carbon dioxide went down enormously in 2009. Yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued increasing unabated, same linear trend of increase. In 2020, we had almost a depression around the world due to government restrictions on COVID, not due to COVID, but due to government restrictions because of COVID.

Senator Malcom Roberts (38:18):

And so again, we saw a reduction in carbon dioxide from human activity, and yet the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued increasing at a linear trend. We know from science that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are controlled entirely by nature. We know that there’s 50 to 70 times more carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans than there is in the entire atmosphere. And the UN has given us those figures. And so slight changes in temperature of the ocean, which is naturally variable, lead to either absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or liberation from the oceans to the atmosphere.

Senator Malcom Roberts (38:58):

So we’ve got this massive facts staring at us in the face. And yet we don’t see any of it reported in the media. So the media is destroying itself, people are losing trust. As you’ve pointed out, alarmingly. The people are losing faith in the science because they know there’s no overall warming, that people are losing faith in politics because of the lack of responsibility. And that means people don’t take responsibility because they don’t see that they can affect the outcome of politics. So these are not good science for our society, are they?

Tony Thomas (39:34):

No. Sure, the one sided reporting is pretty terrible, but even getting away from the climate issue, the public have got so many good reasons not to trust the media. I was just been looking into the scandal at the New York Times, which is the premier masthead in the world, old where-

Senator Malcom Roberts (39:56):

Well, I’ll disagree with you, but you can have that view.

Tony Thomas (40:00):

Yeah, well, but for 10 years, they were taking a $100,000.00 a month from the Chinese Communist Party to run Chinese communist propaganda in the guise of advertorials from the China Daily newspaper. And it only came to light because Republicans began demanding from China news, full details under probably the foreign lobbying act of just what they’d been up to with the American mainstream media. And it turned out that since 2016, they basically bought the American media for as little as $20 million, that included the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, New York Times, and running these propaganda pieces about which islands belong to China, and which don’t, and how nice the Chinese have been to the [inaudible 00:41:00].

Tony Thomas (41:00):

And it turned out that the New York times had run 200 of these pieces. And when China daily got sprung, the New York Times, which has kept their archives back to 1850, that’s how comprehensive they are. Sneakily went in and deleted all 200 pieces from their archives. So, this is an enormous scandal and you wonder the New York times would have any reputation at all left after this. So that’s just one of the latest scandals to hit the American media, which helps explain the low levels of trust there.

Senator Malcom Roberts (41:45):

What about the role of fact checkers these days? Are they a restraint on bad reporting?

Tony Thomas (41:51):

Well, they’ve been captured by the very same people, who are running so many, dare I say, fake news items. For example, Facebook contracted out fact checking to some group. And when somebody sued Facebook over their fact checks, Facebook said, but our fake checks are only opinion and that’s protected under the first amendment. Well, once they’ve said that, you know what fact checking’s all about. Now Agence France-Presse, and I think Associated Press have also got their fact checking outfits alongside, but of course, who needs fact check more than AFP and AP itself, there’s been a whole litany of leaks and stories from within these large media groups, like the New York Times where.

Tony Thomas (42:48):

For example, the New York Times editor, when it came out, the Trump collusion with Russia story was dead in the water, briefed the journalists to say, well, we gave that one, a good run. We focused our whole coverage on the collusion story. Now that’s gone. We need a new cause. So let’s focus on how racist America’s been since 1619, I think it was. And so that’s the new line that is being propagated through the New York Times, all about race and identity politics and so on. Well, once upon a time, or as the TV, people used to say, just the facts ma’am, just the facts. Well, now you’re getting just the narrative, thanks. Just the narrative that we’ve selected.

Senator Malcom Roberts (43:39):

And we’re getting something else too. I think Tony, from the use of these labels like racist, Islamophobe, homophobia, misogynist, et cetera. What I’ve noticed happen is that if I present something or when I present, so that is solidly backed by data, which is my habit, and a logical argument that shows cause and effect. Then people respond, especially journalists with either silence to shut me down, stop my common sense getting out or with labels. So they call me racists, Nazi, whatever they want to call me, tinfoil, hat wearer, a conspiracy theorist. And what I’ve learned to do to them is to turn around and say, well, thank you for just confirming that you have got no data or you can’t string together a logical argument for rebutting what I’m saying. Thank you for admitting that you’ve got no data and that I’ve won the argument, because if you had any argument, you wouldn’t be using labels, instead you’d be presenting the data in the argument, instead of valid response.

Tony Thomas (44:48):

Well, that’s an excellence response from you and basically name calling does lose you the argument in any debate. I must say there’s a new trend. It’s creeping in everywhere where the reporters are writing. What’s supposed to be a straight story and they’ll suddenly throw in the words “He falsely claimed,” or “He claimed without evidence,” or ” XYZ is a conspiracy theory.” And they attach these completely subjective labels to what they’re reporting. And I think as Joanne Nova said, “As soon as you see any of those labels, like false, misleading, without context and so on, have a good look because it’s very likely that what you’re reading’s correct.” And I could give you a recent example, the ABC 7:00 PM news last Sunday had a report on Scott Morrison, the prime minister accusing the opposition leader, Albanese of being soft on China. And the reporter said, Morrison accused Albanise, without evidence of being soft on China.

Tony Thomas (46:02):

So I put in a complaint to the ABC saying, what evidence would actually satisfy your reporter, that Albanese was a tool of China. Would you want a stat deck from three government ministers? Would you want a high court ruling? Would you want a Royal Commission that establishes the truth? Do you want a court case leading to a victory for Albanese, and how come you never say that Albanese, when he turned around and accused the prime minister of being the Manchurian Candidate no less, how come you never attach the label without evidence to that one? So I’ll be interested to see how the ABC replies to my complaint there. Sometimes I win these complaints. So that one time in three, I’d say.

Senator Malcom Roberts (46:51):

Well, I’m going to set aside. I’ve had questions that I prepared for you, further questions. We could go for hours, but I’m going to set them aside entirely because I’m sensing something far more interesting here. We’ve established what the media is like these days sadly, they’re propagandist. But I want to know about Tony Thomas, you’re 81, you’ve got the voice of someone in their 40s. You’re taking on these bastards in the media, you’re taking on these bastards in the government. Tell us what you do during the day. It’s fascinating.

Tony Thomas (47:28):

Well, I’ve been retired a long time and I don’t have too many babysitting duties. So I just think of a subject, research the hell out of it, wind up with maybe 30,000 or 40,000 words of raw material on it. And then I boil it all down to about 2,000 words and send it off to Roger Franklin at Quadrant Online. And as I said, he publishes it very, very promptly. And I love finding out stuff that’s so outrageous, that people have to say, Tony must be making that stuff up, but I’m always scrupulous to put in my links and evidence for everything I say. I mean the latest article I wrote-

Senator Malcom Roberts (48:12):

I’ve seen your work.

Tony Thomas (48:15):

…Biden’s new assistant deputy secretary for nuclear waste disposal, being a fetishist to do with gay men, pretending to be dogs with tails stuck up their rectum and all sorts of goings on there. And copiously illustrated with photographs. And this is the man now in charge of America’s nuclear waste industry, and as some of the commenters have said anything to do with nukes, you wouldn’t let a man like that, normally within a thousand miles of it, I mean, he’s entitled to his hobbies after work, but he’s making an absolute parade of his fetishisms. And as somebody else said, are his subordinates going to respect him in his role? Or is he basically shot his credibility, even in the nuclear waste area where he is qualified and nobody’s claimed that he’s not qualified. So, that’s the sort of article I love writing that just make people real back saying this can’t really be happening in the world I live in.

Senator Malcom Roberts (49:29):

Well, maybe giving Biden the button to obliterate the world through America’s nuclear arsenal is good because I don’t know if he’d be able to remember where it is. So may maybe very safe. Tell me what is most satisfying about your whole career spanning now 60 years? What are the highlights?

Tony Thomas (49:50):

When I was in the Press Gallery in the 70s, I was the only journalist who immediately spotted that Rex Connor, the minister for minerals and energy was a nut case. And I spotted this because he’d drawn a map with gas pipelines, going all over Australia, which is about 2,000 miles wide and high. And he apparently saw no technical problem with crisscrossing the country with these gas pipelines. And then he got up and told parliament, he was going to set up a nuclear enrichment plan on Spencer Gulf in south Australia, because there, it would be safe from enemy submarines.

Tony Thomas (50:30):

And I just knew that this man was short of a few kangaroos in the top paddock and began writing that way. So for a couple of years, I was almost the only writer who was critical of this minister for energy until he fell flat on his face, trying to do deals with raising $4 billion from Saudi Arabians. And it was all just a fantasy. And so he got sacked, his mate, Jim Cairns got sacked and then Whitlam, the prime minister got sacked, and that was the end of the labour government. So I think that was my proudest moment.

Senator Malcom Roberts (51:13):

And you weren’t proud, from what I can pick up, of leading to the dismissal of the labour government. You were proud of the fact that your facts eventually prevailed because of your gathering the data and your dogged persistence. And this is where it’s wonderful to be on a station like tntradio.live, because I happen to have been brought up in a family, and we’ve only got a minute or so to go now, Tony, before the news.

Senator Malcom Roberts (51:38):

But I was brought up in a family that ridiculed Connor, but later on, I talked to people and listened and there was some marvellous, what would you call it? Overall aims that he had for protecting our resources? Not for nationalising them, but for protecting them and getting a good price for them. So I can see both sides of the argument, but what’s important here is not whether I agree with you or disagree with you because in part I agree, I can see some things I disagree, but the fact that you were determined you would [inaudible 00:52:09] and you got the facts out and that’s extremely important, isn’t it?

Tony Thomas (52:12):

And unpopular, you could say.

Senator Malcom Roberts (52:16):

So that’s something to really wear proudly because it’s something that Pauline and I do as well. Proud of being honest. Tony, I want to thank you for speaking so bluntly, so refreshingly purely, so objectively, and thank you for coming loaded with data. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts on tntradio.live. Thank you very much, Tony Thomas.

/by

The Malcolm Roberts Show – Professor David Flint

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Today I talk to Emeritus Professor of Law David Flint about our broken system of democracy, the monarchy and republic fight, China, ABC, Biden and much more. Listen above or read the transcript below. See all episodes of my show on TNT radio:

Recorded 19 February 2022

Transcript

(00:01):

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

Senator Malcolm Roberts (00:07):

Good afternoon, or wherever you are in the world. It may be good morning. This is Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. Thank you for having me as your guest in your car, your kitchen, your lounge, to your shed, or wherever you are right now. There are two themes to my show, freedom and personal responsibility. Freedom is specifically in the context of freedom versus control. As we can see under assault all over the world is freedom right now. The control freaks want to take over. It’s basic, freedom is basic for human progress and people’s livelihood. The second theme is personal responsibility and the importance of integrity. That’s also basic for personal progress and for people’s livelihoods.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (00:55):

Our show’s direction and tone are along these lines. I’m fiercely pro-human. I’ve had enough. I’ve had a gut full of the media and politicians bagging and ragging on humans. Excuse me. I’ve just been told that my mic level is too high. The second thing is that I’m very proud to be part of the species that is the only species in the world that is capable of logical thinking. Although sometimes I wonder if all people are capable of logical thinking. Another aspect and tone is that we are positive. While we are here to deal with issues that people face and are concerned about, I encourage our guests to provide solutions, lasting, meaningful solutions, as well as what’s wrong with politics, what’s needed in politics. As well as what’s wrong with politicians, what we need in politicians. As well as what’s wrong with the media, what’s needed in the media.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (01:58):

We’ll get to the core issues, words and all to develop solutions. We’ll cover the human aspects, the strengths, the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities, the failings, the highlights. What makes people real? We want to be data-driven. We will be and are data driven, factual, truthful, and honest. And we will speak out bluntly on the issues. I had the privilege, and I mean that sincerely, the privilege of being one of the many hundreds of thousands of protestors in Canberra last weekend. I was down there, was due to come home for the weekend, but decided to stay. And so glad am I that that happened. My wife and son drove down the 14-hour trip to join me and join hundreds of thousands of protesters in Canberra.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (02:47):

And those protesters were either ignored by the media or downplayed into just a few thousand or maybe one channel even had 10,000. That’s complete rubbish. It filled acres and acres of land between the old parliament house and new parliament house. And what an exciting buzz it was. It was phenomenal energy there. People are angry, but they weren’t violent. They were calm. They’re determined, they’re encouraging, supportive of each other. The posters that people had, the signs, it was just beautiful. It was absolutely stunning to be there. And after the protest, I went down to Camp Epic, which is where tens of thousands of people are camped out. People have driven here from Perth, driven to Canberra rather, from Perth, from Darwin, from Brisbane. It was absolutely stunning.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (03:37):

And the environment, the tone, the energy was electric, but it was also people having fun. People just being themselves. It was a real community, tens of thousands of people from all over the country showing what real Aussies are about. And they’re about respect, they’re about care. They’re about freedom and they’re about community and connecting with each other. It’s one of the highlights of my life to just feel that atmosphere. It was just absolutely marvellous to see that back in Australia, after months and months, two years of government control.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (04:11):

What I’d like to do today is talk about the media. And it was triggered, this topic, by something David Flint, Professor David Flint said during his talk on the conversation two weeks ago with me here on TNT Radio. He says that the first duty of the press, The Times newspaper declared in 1851, “The first duty is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time and instantly by disclosing them to make them the common property of the nation.” David Flint is a very honourable man, a highly respected man, and he’s nailed it right there with that quote from The Times. So I’m going to hold the media to account today with my two guests.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (04:58):

First up, it’s great to be talking with Professor David Flint again. He joined me last fortnight to chat about the constitution and we invited him back. I didn’t realise it would be just within two weeks. Professor David Flint, who has an order of Australian medal, is an emeritus professor of law. He read law and economics at Universities of Sydney, London, and Paris. After admission as a solicitor of the New South Wales Supreme Court in 1962, he practised as a solicitor from 1962 to ’72 before moving into university, teaching, holding several academic posts before becoming professor of law at the Sydney University of Technology in 1989.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (05:38):

Professor Flint is the author of numerous publications. His publications include books and articles and topics such as the media, international economic law, Australia’s Constitution, and on Australia’s 1999 Constitutional Referendum. And I almost made the mistake of voting for that referendum until I listened to some high court judges in Brisbane. And then I became totally in favour of our constitutional monarchy. He was recognised with the award of World Outstanding Legal Scholar. I’ll say that again, World Outstanding Legal Scholar, awarded by the World Jurist Association Barcelona in October, 1999. He was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1995.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (06:23):

There’s a higher qualification though, that David has. He has come from lofty academia. He works and rubbed shoulders with some of the most powerful people in the country, and he is respected by them. But he remains a man of the people. You’re just as likely to bump into him on the street, bump into him at a protest, bump into him at a conference. He challenges the elites and the establishment, but is still highly respected by even them. He’s aware the system is broken and the media is responsible for perpetrating the two party system, the pseudo-democracy. Well, we’re given a choice, but there’s no real choice because they’re both the same. Welcome, David.

David Flint (07:03):

Well, thank you very much. Lovely to be on your programme again, Malcolm.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (07:11):

Something you appreciate, David, what do you appreciate?

David Flint (07:14):

Well, I appreciate common sense. Particularly because I think it’s such a guide in relation to politics and all sorts of public activities. Common sense mixed with integrity, if you have those two, I think you’ll go a long way. And that is what is so missing in the management of society today. You quite rightly quoted that comment from The Times back in 1851 at the time of the referendum in 1999, which wasn’t just a referendum about royalists wanting to keep the monarchy. It was about requiring those who wanted to change the constitution to be doing something to improve the governance of the country. We had quite a few slogans in that campaign. And one which really cut through was vote no for the politician’s republic because this was going to increase the power of the politicians.

David Flint (08:25):

It was going to take away the role of the crown as providing leadership above politics, and playing a role as one of the guardians of the constitutional system. That’d be taken away, and what you would have would be a puppet president and the power of the politicians, that is the two-party cabal, would’ve been significantly increased. But what we found in that referendum was that most of the politicians wanted the politician’s republic. The extraordinary thing was that the media, which have a duty because they get all their freedom. They get their freedom in return for being responsible,, for giving that real information to the people without bias and without distorting emphasis and not suppressing anything that’s in their code of ethics.

David Flint (09:22):

They have that enormous freedom so that they can be responsible but they weren’t in the referendum. And this is where I particularly noticed it because I was chairing the vote no group. And we used to meet regularly every day, and we would be amazed sometimes by the way in which the arguments were distorted. But there was an independent observer of that referendum in 1999. This was Bill Deedes, and later on made Lord Deedes. He was a very distinguished fighter during the Second World War, and he was one of the very lofty stream of people who’ve been editors of London Telegraph. London Telegraph is one of the most reliable newspapers in the world.

David Flint (10:14):

But he wrote this about the Australian referendum, “I have really attended elections or votes in any country. Certainly not a democratic one in which the newspapers have displayed more shameless bias. One at all, they determined that Australians should have a republic and they used every device towards that end.” That’s all of the newspapers. Most of the electronic media, all of the public media, the ABC and SBS, all of them were pushing one way. There was only one major person in the media who offered something towards the no case, and that was Alan Jones. Alan Jones used to say when people rang in and said, “Alan, I don’t know how to vote. What should I do?” He’d say, “If you don’t know, vote no. If you don’t know, vote no.”

David Flint (11:18):

But the fact is, even with all that massive campaign, all of the politicians, almost all of them, just a handful of them who were coming out and saying this model’s no good, all of the media, except Alan Jones, as a major person in the media, and many of the elites, big businesses, they’re all saying vote for this republic, although it would’ve increased the powers of the politicians. And yet, we were able to get a vote, which shows the common sense of the Australian people. We were able to get a vote, which produced a national majority. It produced a majority in all states. In a referendum, you’ve got to win at least four states. We got all states and we won 72% of electorates. Not relevant to a referendum but it just shows how sweeping that decision was by the Australian people, which shows that there’s a lot of common sense out there among the electorate. And-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (12:22):

Let me jump in there, David.

David Flint (12:25):

Sure.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (12:27):

That is a remarkable statistic you’ve just given us. But overwhelmingly, the Australian people, despite the media, despite the politicians being almost exclusively in favour of the republic, and despite the propaganda, the constant barrage all through the media, with exception of Alan Jones, the people still kept their sanity and the people prevailed. So that’s really important to understand.

David Flint (12:56):

And remember, we didn’t have much money. We didn’t have the money for advertising that Malcolm turn … Malcolm [inaudible 00:13:04] funded most of the republican campaign, and he put a lot of money into it, but it didn’t make that much difference.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (13:13):

Let’s come back to the media because I’d like to include this in the summary when I give it in a minute. You’ve written articles on the degradation of today’s journalism. People worldwide are waking up to the death and the dearth of journalism talent. What is it that you have been railing against in your articles against the media and that people are now waking up to?

David Flint (13:37):

Well, I think we’ve seen the worst in the United States where the mainstream media and a lot of the social media have decided to become the propaganda arm of the democratic party of a democratic party, which is swung to the far left. And when the media decided to become a propaganda arm, it’s like living in a communist country. It’s not as bad because you still have other media. But we saw this, for example, when Hunter Biden lost his laptop, and that laptop contained an enormous amount of information, which demonstrated that the Biden family had been operating as an enterprise while he was a senator while Biden was vice president, and now as president. He was operating as an instrumentality, particularly when he was vice president, which offered to plutocrats, usually in authoritarian countries. Offered to them access and influence in Washington, but highly improper of course, but that laptop showed this.

David Flint (14:55):

What happened when that laptop came out and young Hunter Biden didn’t deny that what was on that laptop was his. He didn’t deny that, although some people are saying it’s a Russian setup, but it turned out to be perfectly real. What it showed was that the Biden family was behaving, offering access and influence to plutocrats and their favourite plutocrat, because they were the ones willing to pay the Chinese communists. Now, what did the mainstream media do? What did the social media do when this came out before the final voting and the election? They killed it. Twitter and Facebook closed down the New York Post to cut … But New York Post was one of the few journalist outlets that was willing to broadcast this and mention this.

David Flint (15:55):

And after the election, there was an opinion poll, which showed that the majority of people didn’t know about what was on the laptop. They didn’t know about the laptop story because the press managed to hide it. And the majority of them said that if they had known, they would have voted against Biden. Well, that just demonstrates that the median America, a lot of it owned by corporate interests who were making a lot of money out of slave labour in China and the sort of things that go on in China, and they hoped to make a killing in the Chinese market, they were willing to sacrifice their media ethics to make sure that Trump didn’t get in.

David Flint (16:48):

Because Trump had shown himself to be the first president of the United States since Clinton effectively, unleashed the communist by allowing the communist to join the world trade organisation in the hope that they would follow its rules, which they haven’t. I mean, that’s why we’ve got a tax, I think of about 280% on our barley, because they had questioned the origins of the virus, which we’ve suffered from. That’s the situation-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (17:23):

We suffered from the virus, David, or have we suffered from government restrictions and mismanagement?

David Flint (17:27):

You’re absolutely right. And this really comes to the question we’re discussing. You’re right. This virus is benign in relation to the majority of the people. It’s one of those viruses where we’re fortunate enough to know who the vulnerable are. The vulnerable aren’t the healthy children, they aren’t healthy people. It’s essentially those people who are both elderly and suffering from other illnesses, they’re the ones who are the most vulnerable. And they’re the ones who should have been looked after. You’re so right, we’ve suffered terribly from government decisions, but it hasn’t been the virus that has caused the suffering for the great majority of people. And even in relation to the vulnerable, more people, more vulnerable have died than should have died because of the activities of the government.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (18:28):

I agree entirely but nowhere have I seen that in the media, except for maybe Adam Creighton in The Australian, a wonderful economist who speaks with data and truth. Terry McCrann, similarly. Perhaps if I could give a summary, and then we’ll start the conversation about what triggered me to invite you back so quickly. First of all, you’ve mentioned the politician’s republic, the vote for a republic would’ve been a vote for a politician’s republic to increase people’s power. That’s a wonderful insight that I didn’t realise until you mentioned it to me last week and you’ve repeated it again. You also mentioned that the media gets its freedom, whether implicit or by law, if it presents impartially.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (19:15):

You chaired the no vote group and you saw yourself, shameless biassed back then, I was too young at the time to realise that, but I thought newspapers were objective, but I realised now it was completely biassed. And you mentioned that was across all forms of media, all papers, most electronic media, the ABC, the SPS, the public broadcasters. And you said quite rightly so, there’s only one major media person who was opposed to the republic vote. And that was Alan Jones. How many times have we heard Alan Jones being pilloried for being alone in dissenting from the majority view? Majority of the media view that is.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (20:02):

And I loved your comment about Alan Jones saying, “If you don’t know, vote no.” And I would say that right through almost every topic today. And you pointed out something that was the core to what you said, despite all the political propagandist, the overwhelming weight of political opinion, political experts, which are not really experts, and the media, the people prevailed. And that’s why in my opening comment, I support humans because when we’re aware, we prevail. You then went on to talk about the USA gives us the worst examples of media bias, democrat bias, social media, which is paid to shut down opposition, the media itself. You quite rightly pointed out. And that’s significant, Professor Flint, because the USA is known to be the home of modern democracy.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (20:56):

We could argue Britain is, but in terms of modern expression, the USA thumps its chest about that a lot. And yet the USA now has the worst censorship because it’s hidden censorship. And we know for example, that if the tanks roll in and the army gets out with guns, we know that we’re being controlled. But what you’ve done is you’ve highlighted the hidden control, the subtle control, the invisible control, which is every bit as effective as a gun or a tank. The media has silenced me. They sometimes silence Pauline Hanson. And it’s significant to understand, I don’t know if you mentioned this, but you did mention that the corporates control the media and the media has become a propaganda arm.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (21:40):

That was mentioned to me by someone called John McRay back about 10 years ago, that he showed me quotes from the owners of the media, the Rockefellers, controlled by the banks, the major banks pushing the bank propaganda. And we’ve been under this not just for the last two years of COVID, not just for the last 24 years since the referendum, but we’ve been under this for a hundred years and longer. And you also pointed out that the communist part, Chinese Communist Party controls many of the corporations or the same people who control those corporations are in bed with the Chinese Communist Party to control humans around the world, not just China.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (22:20):

So we are in fact, while not ruled by the Chinese with guns, we are ruled by the corporate globalists with silence and with propaganda. Now, you mentioned, Professor Flint, that in my show two weeks ago when we had a chat, that the media perpetuates the two party system. And it’s really a one party system because the policies are almost identical and we’re given a choice, we think, but in fact, there’s no real choice because we get shafted with the same policies. How is the media perpetuating the two party system that is effectively one party?

David Flint (23:01):

Well, I think we see this, for example, in relation to the Wuhan virus, which the communist wanted us to call COVID-19 and the WHO, which is under their control, agreed to. But they do this because they’ve become the propaganda arm of the politicians. And that means the two party system, which as you write this in many ways is becoming almost one party because like oligopolist in a small market, they’re not competing. In a small market, oligopolists don’t compete on price. They compete on product or brand distinctions, different ways they advertise, for example. And that’s what the politicians are doing. They’re both, for example, for net zero emissions, they have very similar policies on most things, but they make a slight difference by saying one will be harder on China than the other.

David Flint (24:02):

Although both sides demonstrate that some politicians when they retire seem to be able to get very good jobs with the Communist Chinese. I think they’ve become, in many ways, the propaganda arm. And you see this in relation to the virus. Their favourite phrase is doing the right thing or the people have done the right thing. These people are going to do the right thing. We have to do the right thing. The right thing means what the politicians have decided is right. And this is from a group of politicians in the national cabinet most of whom have had no life experience and really don’t know that much about doing the right thing. Because they’ve been so up to their necks in political manipulation that they’ve lost a lot of the ideas of what the right thing is.

David Flint (24:58):

And just take it, for example, just take it at the beginning. They’ve ignored the common sense rule in relation to [inaudible 00:25:06]. Two common sense rules. Firstly, you look after the vulnerable. And if the virus is such that we know who the vulnerable are, and here we do know who they are, you look after them and you let everybody else get on as best they can with their lives. But what do they do? They abandon the vulnerable, the premier of Victoria being the worst there. And they tied down the rest of us as though we were all sick so that we couldn’t go out. We had to stay home. I live near Bondi Beach. The first thing they did was to close the beach. Though anybody with any sense knew that the virus didn’t survive in the sun and the wind, but it was probably the healthiest place to go to. It was the first place they closed. And the second thing that they-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (25:58):

Excuse me, David. Oh, sorry, when you finish this point, we’ll go to the ad break.

David Flint (26:03):

Yes. The second thing they ignored is [inaudible 00:26:07] fundamental rule for any decent constitutional system, that is that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They’ve whittled away all of the controls on the politicians. We’ve had just some minister or the premier deciding on a whim, for example, in New South Wales that they’d closed down the construction industry. They didn’t even have medical advice to do that. She closed down the construction industry for two weeks costing one and a quarter billion dollars and it wasn’t justified. And the reason is these regulations, these regulations are now made by a minister in his office in the middle of the night. Whereas once upon at a time, the regulations were to be submitted for audit by the executive council, the government council, even in colonial terms this was done.

David Flint (27:07):

And the second big thing, even more important was the regulations were subject to parliamentary scrutiny, particularly by the upper house and how fortunate we are to have a senate as we have now, unlike the Canadians who have a weak senate, we’ve got a strong senate because we based it on the American senate rather than the appointed Canadian senate, which is just a political stitch up. And that senate and the upper house in the states, except Queensland, which the way the politicians took to work, the upper houses can disallow the regulations. That’s a very important power. And the politicians know they have a sword of Damocles above their heads when this political system works, but they’ve been whittling this away just like the republic. The weakness in-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (28:00):

Thank you very much. We’ll resume this conversation with Professor David Flint after a minute or so of advertisements. Thank you very much, David.

David Flint (28:11):

Certainly.

Automated (28:11):

TNT Radio’s, Mike Ryan.

Mike Ryan (28:13):

What do you miss the most about being able to, or not being able to practise medicine? What the actual, what it all means to you? Because I mean, it’s overall saying, oh, well he’s got to going to go to court. It’ll be handled legally, but it’s much more than that. It’s your whole life, your whole being. What’s the thing you miss the most about not being able to practise medicine?

Mark Hobart (28:42):

Being part of the community in North Sunshine where I grew up, where I went to school. A community is so important. It’s your connection to everybody else. We’re all connected to each other. We’re connected to each other through love. That is the number one binding force of the universe’s love. And the other force is not love. It’s the opposite, it’s destruction. And that’s what we’re facing.

Mike Ryan (29:23):

Dr. Mark Hobart, truly an honour to speak with you.

Automated (29:26):

Mike Ryan on Today’s News Talk TNT Radio.

Automated (29:31):

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Senator Malcolm Roberts (30:18):

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I’ve got a very intriguing and very expert guest, Professor David Flint. And I’m going to give you a summary now before we resume our conversation with David. David pointed out that the media is pushing the two party system and it’s really one party. It’s perpetuating the two party system. At the War Memorial last week, the week before last, I took part in the service that precedes the opening of parliament for the year. And they call on the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. At the church service before parliament started the next day on Tuesday two weeks ago, they called on the leader of the opposition and the prime minister to take readings from the Bible.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (31:08):

And as professor Flint pointed out, the policies are almost identical. They’re so similar. And so we need to understand who controls the parliament. I’m going to be asking Professor Flint that in a minute. During the week, David, I was in Senate estimates and I asked Senator Seselja a simple question that anybody should have been able to answer. He’s in the government, as you know. And we were questioning the CSIRO, and in that segment, I said to him, “Minister, your party, led by the prime minister, won the election in 2019 based largely on one particular issue.” He said that the labour party was in favour of the UN’s 2050 net zero policy that the Liberal Nationals Party was not, it opposed UN 2050 net zero.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (32:04):

“Where is the evidence for that change in policy? What changed in the science?” And David, I have never seen anyone so uncomfortable. He didn’t look me in the eye once. He looked down, head was bowed. He was squirming in his seat. He was just making up words as he went. Then I said to him, “Let’s go back in time. Tell me the basis of your policy.” And the same endless dribble. And he’s a nice man, Senator Seselja, but he was talking absolute nonsense. He could not tell me the basis of the policy that is now gutting air energy sector, stealing land from properties, stealing property rights from farmers, decimating our manufacturing, controlling our water, locking up our resources all on behalf of the UN.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (32:54):

Then I asked him a simple question, policies should be based upon hard data that shows the impact of a certain amount of a specified, quantified impact of carbon dioxide. What it will do to temperatures? Rainfall. I asked him, “Isn’t that fundamental?” And again, more waffle, looking down in the eyes, head bowed, squirming. They haven’t got anything but they get away with it because as Professor Flint said, the media pushes the two party system, which is really one party and the narrative. And then they come up with slogans, as Professor Flint said, doing the right thing. These politicians are lacking practical experience. Very few of them, none of them have worked for a few years at the coalface, as if literally at the coalface underground, lacking practical experience.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (33:43):

I asked a simple question, Professor Flint, who among the politicians came to Canberra to listen to the people at the protest of where every day Australians came out in the hundreds of thousands? I’ll tell you who. Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, Gerard Rennick, George Christensen. You just pointed out some fabulous points with COVID. They have ignored the fundamentals. They have ignored common sense. They have not looked after the vulnerable. They have betrayed the vulnerable. That’s something I’ve been talking about in the senate and publicly for many months now. Then they tied up or they tied down the rest of the people, the healthy people. They stopped exercise on beach. They stopped fresh air. They stopped access to the sun for vitamin D.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (34:33):

And as you said, Lord Acton said that the power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Regulations being made by the minister, just being introduced in the middle of the night. Professor Flint, one of the things that’s emerged from the response to the virus is that the state and federal governments, labour at state level, liberal at national level have worked together on this. That’s completely opposed to the intent behind our constitution. Isn’t it?

David Flint (35:11):

Yes, we’re supposed to have competition and the states are supposed to take decisions in relation to state interests and the federation in relation to federal interests. But you say right, they do work together. And one of the things the media does, which really irritates me is that they attribute to the politicians the fact that our death rate is lower than that of a number of other countries. This completely ignores the fact that the real reason for that is we are a remote island nation. And like all other remote island nations, we’ll have a lower death rate from this sort of virus. And to attribute that to the politicians is ridiculous.

David Flint (35:57):

But then we get them when they stand up there, the politicians will refer to the medical advice and the journalists just accept that. We never know who the medical advice was from or rarely know it. We never see it so it can’t be tested. We are given glib answers like follow the science. Whereas we know that the scientists are divided on a number of significant issues. And we saw that in relation, for example, to ulcers and Australia went to scientists, received the Nobel Prize because they went against the science view that it was just a disabling condition. It could never be a disease, and they found that it was a disease. And for that, they were given the Nobel Prize. And then you’re told, believe the experts.

David Flint (36:52):

Well, having worked in a law office when I was young, in a law office where you are involved in a case concerning two sides and you’re acting for one side and there’s another people, people acting for the other side, each side has their own experts. Whether they be medical experts or engineering experts. They’re all very well paid. And I’m not saying they act in any way improperly, but they give different views. Experts are divided all the time. This idea that you must believe the experts, which means you must believe the expert that the politicians that are trying to adopt as their view is ridiculous.

David Flint (37:32):

But I think the very worst thing they do, Malcolm, this is this rule against medical treatment, including prophylactic or preventative measures in relation to this virus. It’s the only malady I know of where doctors are instructed to do virtually nothing between somebody catching this virus and really getting a serious case of it, be aware when they start putting them onto a ventilator. But nothing happens in between because they’ve ruled that none of the medical treatments, which have been shown in a number of jurisdiction to be very effective, can be used. And we know also that most of the media won’t mention these things, particularly the social media, because it goes against the interest of big pharmacy.

David Flint (38:25):

And we know that big pharmacy needs under American law, they needed to get approval for their vaccines. They needed to be able to show that there were no preventative measures, which could be taken against the virus. Hence, this campaign to kill off Ivermectin and other. This is not just the magic cure but there a number of things used either to prevent it or to cure it in the early stages. And these proved very effective. Yet in Australia, we’re told that you can have no medical treatment and no serious medical treatment between catching it and really getting a very bad dose when you’re … There’s nothing much they can do if you are in a weak condition. Otherwise, you might get out of it and they put you onto a ventilator.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (39:26):

Well, David, perhaps I could summarise your points again. The media has been silent on the live and the prime minister has repeatedly said, “Australia has no vaccine mandates.” Yet the Morrison, Joyce Federal Government drives the vaccine mandates, and at the very least enables mandates through many means. The Morrison, Joyce government bought 280 million doses of these things. They could easily stop the mandates at the state level by withholding these injections from states that don’t make it optional, but make it compulsory through stealing people’s livelihoods. The federal government indemnified the states. Senator Hanson’s bill could amend that so that the federal government can stop mandated injections.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (40:15):

The states said, this is the fourth point I’m making, the states say that the vaccine mandates are in line with the unconstitutional so-called national cabinet that the prime minister leads. The prime minister, as you’ve just pointed out, his government withdrew the proven, safe, effective, affordable treatment using Ivermectin and various other drugs. And it’s significant, Professor Flint, that you can freely mention Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and alternative natural treatments on this TNT Radio station. But you can’t mention it on any other network apart from podcasts. You can’t mention it on social media without being banned.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (40:58):

The federal government health department provides the data and systems that the state’s access to enforce the mandates. The federal government mandated vaccines in aged care workers. The federal government mandated vaccines in the Australian electoral commission poll workers. They’re mandating it in some defence personnel to inject. They drove the employers to mandate injections, BHP, for example, and they funded ridiculous policies by the premiers of the states. And yet, despite all these things showing completely that the states could not have mandated injections without federal government enabling them to do so, supporting them to do so, the prime minister of this country has repeatedly lied to the people.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (41:47):

“Australia has no vaccine mandates,” he says. That doesn’t get reported in the media, or if it does, it’s done in a positive way that the prime minister says that. And yet at the rally last weekend in Canberra, hundreds of thousands of people were walking up and they were saying he’s a liar. The prime minister is a liar. So we come back to government control and that is only one on side controls the media, and that’s the money side, the corporate side. Professor Flint, do they also control the government?

David Flint (42:25):

Well, I think they have a very strong power over the government. It’s in the interest of government to follow what is in the interest of big pharmacy it seems. You can only judge politicians by their results when they’re in government, not what they say. For example, in education, for example, they say that they’re very interested in children’s education, but the fact is that we know that there’s a very strong Marxist influence in education departments. We know that notwithstanding the increase in funding, which I think is about 40% increase since that was introduced, we know that standards in Australia have fallen more than any other OECD country except perhaps Finland.

David Flint (43:22):

So the more money we’re putting in, the standards are falling and that’s because our education departments are not allowing or not encouraging the teaching of children in the really important disciplines. They’re filling their minds with all sorts of propaganda and Marxist rubbish. Their obsessions, for example, you get some new dogma for example, about gender fluidity or something like that. And that becomes an important issue as we saw in relation to the religious legislation. But as you say, there’s this obsession with vaccines as though it’s the only thing which should be followed. And that’s where the money is. That’s where the very big funds are being made by big pharmacy, instead of things which should be associated with vaccines.

David Flint (44:12):

For example, early treatment, that should be the first thing that they should be following because that would’ve saved lives in relation to the vulnerable. And it’s something which I don’t think we should be considering seriously for children, given that these only have a temporary authorization. We don’t know the long term consequences of some of the things which are being put into children’s bodies. They’re very serious things, which are being done. And the national cabinet has gone along with what a really communist solutions that is lockdowns. Lockdowns don’t work. They regiment the people even more, but they certainly have had no effect in relation to getting rid of the virus because they don’t get rid of the virus. And they’ve resulted in more deaths in Victoria, which had the most serious lockdowns, had more deaths among people from suffering from the virus. But you are so right-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (45:17):

Yeah, go ahead.

David Flint (45:17):

Certainly.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (45:20):

I’d like to interrupt to summarise what you’ve said before getting onto the solutions. Because I know you’re a man of solutions. So let me just summarise what you’ve just said. The media is culpable for serious damage, serious problems in our community. Medicine, it’s enabled deaths because it doesn’t hold the government accountable for its complete obsession with unproven injections and reliance on them. Greg Hunt, the federal health minister has said, “The world is engaged in the largest clinical vaccination trial. These drugs, these injections are experimental. It’s a trial. And we are now talking about injecting them into kids without any assessment of long term consequences.”

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:06):

In the United States you also mentioned that a lot of this is driven by money. In the United States, 70% of American advertising in the media is funded by big pharma. And yet, as you rightly pointed out, the obsession is leading to deaths through the mismanagement of COVID and the application of experimental injections. You pointed out the damage to our educational sector, the 40% collapse in measured outcomes. And yet the manipulation of kids growing at adulthood, children, I should say. You mentioned the early treatment that’s proven affordable, safe, successful around the world. And you also mentioned that lockdowns are effectively a communist solution.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:59):

Journalism, Professor Flint, over the decades, journalists have fought for freedom to tell the story and rights to privacy of sources. Yet, they’ve shown no regard for the freedoms and privacies of the people as you just pointed out. Yet, their duty is to provide, freely tell both sides of the story with accuracy and balance. Who holds them to account? And where do we go to from here? How do journalists restore their reputation? Because at the moment they’re feeding on each other and the people are watching them destroy themselves. But we do need a strong, solid press, don’t we? So what do we have to do now? What are the solutions?

David Flint (47:35):

Well, the solutions I think, are by going to those outlets such as this station where the truth is being presented. That is our best solution. I would not recommend the regulation. You can’t have the regulation of the press because they’re free. And there is some protection from defamation laws, but that only relates to individual reputation and not reputation of institutions and things such as early medical treatment, which is important. So we have the power. We have the power to deal with the media and we have the power to put the right politicians in office. And this is something which Australians must seriously do. They did that in America with President Trump, they got a man in who was obviously going, from what he promised, was going to change the direction of the United States.

David Flint (48:36):

And this had a magnificent effect because the Republican Party is so open in the way in which it pre-selects. And it doesn’t restrict pre-selection to even members of the party, any registered supporter of the party can vote in those pre-selections, which gives tremendous power to people in America. We don’t have that, but we can choose people from other parties or at least give our first preferences to people like yourself. Now, you One Nation, New AP parties, which are talking about this, what you said also about the federal government, I’d like to comment on that briefly.

David Flint (49:18):

The federal government had the power to stop mandated vaccines. And you were quite right, the legislation that you proposed, I think One Nation introduced legislation to that effect that I think was within power. The commonwealth has the power to move in relation to quarantines. It can occupy the field. And that’s the core part of the management of vaccines, the control of quarantines. And I think that the commonwealth should have continued in that first case concerning the West Australian border. It should not have allowed the states to close off their borders, locking down whole states that achieved nothing in relation to controlling the virus.

David Flint (50:08):

And it was most inappropriate, in relation to Australia. The whole real economy should have continued. As you rightly have pointed out in the past, it’s not the politicians who are imposing this sort of thing, lockdowns and so on, who suffer. It’s the people who lose their jobs. It’s the people who lose their businesses. The people who are tied up, they’ve put their savings into some business quite often. They’ve mortgaged their house. And an enormous number of people have been ruined by the activities of the government, who’s only just beginning to start again.

David Flint (50:45):

There was no need to close down vast parts of the economy in Australia to stop this disease. What they should have done was looked after the vulnerable. What they should have done was encouraged early measures and preventative measures, prophylactic measures. If they’d done those things, as the media should have been calling on them to do, we would’ve been in a better situation than we are today. And we wouldn’t have this massive debt, which is going to be carried by the next generation of Australians.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (51:18):

So I’m going to have to summarise now before we end the show, because I wanted to do a summary. You’ve raised some marvellous points. The solutions you’ve said are up to the people. The market, choose the media well. We have a choice as to which media we watch. The media is sweating on that. We see Joe Rogan topping the media ratings in the United States with 11.5 million views of one of his podcasts with Robert Malone. The nearest competitor was Fox News with 3.5 million views. That’s a long way behind. CNN, the propaganda experts in America, around about 800,000 views [inaudible 00:51:59]. Don’t have regulation, that just gives more control to the globalists and to the government.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (52:04):

It’s up to the people through media choice and through political choice at votes. We have the power, you said, Professor Flint. I make a note that pre-selection in the liberal party now on New South Wales is becoming just like labour, fictionally written. You’ve pointed out that the commonwealth government has the power, it just hasn’t exercised it. And you’ve pointed out something that I’ve said repeatedly in the senate, people are paying the price for police stupidity.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (52:30):

The governments and the politicians make the mistakes regardless with no responsibility, and the people pay the price. For goodness sake, people of Australia, wake up. Choose who you listen to in the media with your wallet, follow and vote for politicians who work for you, serve you, and give your preferences at accordingly. Professor David Flint, thank you very much again for yet another wonderful session. I love your practicality, your common sense, your good sense. Thank you so much.

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