The Palaszczuk Government’s decision to extend payroll tax to contracting GP’s is nothing but a tax on the sick. The treasurer has promised a 2 year grace period, instead, the entire idea of taxing GPs more should be scrapped.
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This letter is a rebuttal to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s reply to me in late November.
Previous letters in this series (click to read):
The Morrison-Joyce government and state premiers have been busy on the political point-scoring, not the doing. Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk is far more concerned about looking good and sounding good than doing good. It’s time to stop sacking workers and instead focus on jobs and the economy and on people’s health and safety. Instead of looking good, let’s have the people safe and healthy.
Transcript
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I agree that the Morrison government did too little, too late; yet I find it damned hard to agree with Labor, whose premiers have damaged our economy and our jobs. The Morrison-Joyce government has had no plan, was slow to respond and was slow at every point on the critical path. The government failed to learn lessons from other nations that were ahead of them—well ahead of them—such as Taiwan, where they protect the sick, the aged and the vulnerable, while keeping their economy and people’s businesses and jobs going. The Morrison-Joyce government and state premiers have been busy on the political point-scoring, not the doing.
Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk is far more concerned about looking good and sounding good than doing good. Her border lockdowns and sacking of health workers have damaged families, businesses and jobs in the regions. Under Labor, Queensland’s economic future is now jeopardised.
Had the Morrison-Joyce government allowed equal priority to other treatments, such as antivirals, many more Australians would have been treated and safe and the virus would be finished, as it is in other countries that are using the antivirals. Instead, the Morrison-Joyce government’s reliance on only one treatment is a major risk—a provisional COVID injection that the TGA did not test and could not and will not guarantee as safe, and that concerns a hell of a lot of Australians. Yet the Morrison-Joyce government and the states have chosen to punish nearly two in every 10 Australians for not taking this unacceptable injection and the risk associated with it.
Understand us, Prime Minister: the Liberal-Nationals and the Labor-Greens are forcing a huge segment of the public into voting against you. Calling honest everyday Australians ‘antivax extremists’ has never been the answer—unless you and Labor believe that punishing and threatening workers with the sack is the right way. I don’t. The name ‘national cabinet’ sounds grand yet is nothing more than a meeting of the Prime Minister, state premiers and territory chief ministers, trying to hide behind collective decision-making instead of standing up and being accountable for decisions. National cabinet is a pretend concept to protect politicians from what they are not doing and to hide their mistakes.
It’s time to stop sacking workers and instead focus on jobs and the economy and on people’s health and safety. Instead of looking good, let’s have the people safe and healthy. One Nation will continue to stand up for all Australians, injected or not injected, for our jobs, our rights and our freedoms, and to keep Australians safe.
I want to remind senators of what the people are saying. On Friday night I attended a lively meeting in Redlands, a suburb in the south-east of Brisbane. I also attended a meeting on the Gold Coast on Saturday and a meeting in Moreton on Sunday night. I heard about the bankruptcies. I heard about a person who has built a business up and has had to sell his house to pay off the assets in the business, and his wife and daughter will now not be able to work after the 17th—because of Annastacia Palaszczuk’s edict and medical apartheid. So what the hell does he do? He’s one of many, many people who are very angry, and rightly so. What about the veteran up at Moreton who has physical injuries and cannot get physio anymore? She’s a veteran and served the country—and now she’s worried she will slide backwards physically and mentally. What about all the other veterans in the same position? This is what Scott Morrison and Annastacia Palaszczuk are doing to this country.
This letter was in reply to my letter to leaders about the data and evidence on COVID, available here.
Other letters in this series (click to read):
- Letter to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on COVID data
- Reply from Annastacia Palaszczuk (this letter)
- Rebuttal to Annastacia Palaszczuk
Transcript
[Marcus Paul]
Around this time every week, we catch up with One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts. Malcolm, good morning to you.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Good morning, Marcus, you have got a hectic morning this morning, I hear.
[Marcus Paul]
Always busy, which is just how we like it, but look, I’ve got the next six, seven minutes to chat away with you, which I’m really looking forward to today. I know you’ve been doing a lot of travelling, haven’t you? You been…
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yeah, we’ve gone from Brisbane right through to Cairns. I’m actually sitting in a hotel room in Cairns, and we’ve been listening to people along the way. It’s been fabulous. A bit rushed, but very good.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, why are you doing this tour again?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Because we’re getting the word out on my exposing the fact that the CSIRO has never produced any evidence for our climate policies and renewable energy policies.
We’re just getting that word out through the media around Queensland.
[Marcus Paul]
And how has it been received? I mean, I know you’ve been from Brisbane to the Sunny Coast, Maryborough, Rocky, Mackay, Townsville, Cairns, Toowoomba.
I mean, you’re a lucky man, travelling through all these beautiful parts of Australia.
[Malcolm Roberts]
I am, indeed, and we look forward to New South Wales being us pretty soon once the borders are reopened again.
[Marcus Paul]
Yes.
[Malcolm Roberts]
But no it’s been very well received. People know in their guts that there’s never been any evidence, scientific evidence to these policies that are destroying our country, Marcus, and they’re just so pleased to see someone actually exposing this rubbish.
[Marcus Paul]
Now I’m gonna talk very soon with the New South Wales MP down in the Murray region, Helen Dalton. She is–
[Malcolm Roberts]
Oh yeah.
[Marcus Paul]
Helen is a regular on the programme, much like yourself. She’s been screaming out, screaming and really unfortunately not being had a lot of attention paid to her.
She’s copped a lot from politicians. They’ve tried every trick in the political book to silence her. She wants a water register.
In other words, she wants politicians and others like herself to have a register that’s openly publicly available where people can say exactly how much water interests they have and that should also include national companies, foreign multinationals and everybody.
She wants more accountability on water. And look, she’s had a hard time trying to get this thing through the Parliament. She’s gonna try again for a register this week. It’s very tough.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes and we’ve been calling for exactly the same thing for a couple of years now, Marcus. It’s definitely needed. Pauline has been calling for it as well.
We want full transparency, full openness so that people can see what’s happening to their water. And you know, what we’ve seen is in the last week, just at the end of last week, we saw the Water Minister, Mr. Pitt come out and big headlines were generated.
The biggest change, to the Murray-Darling basin in 10 years. And then we saw Bridget McKenzie, the leader of the Nationals in the Senate saying, “You cannot take any more water from our communities. The 450 gigalitres will not be coming from our farmers.
Enough is enough. You have taken enough.” And that’s very clear, Marcus. Yet the bloody report actually recommends quote, “work with the States to accelerate planning and delivery of the 450 gigalitres SDL water acquisition.”
This is insane. We’ve been along the same path for a couple of years now. But what the Nationals are doing is they’re responding to the pressure that we have put on them and they’ve come out now, initially they rubbished us, then they realised they couldn’t stop us because we have the data.
Then they went quiet and now they’re coming out to pretend they embrace what we’re saying, but they’re not doing it real–
[Marcus Paul]
All they–
[Malcolm Roberts]
they’re doing it in lies.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, they need to. I mean, it’s always- excuse me. I’m very sorry. It’s the first time
[Malcolm Roberts]
Bless you.
[Marcus Paul]
I’ve sneezed for ages, anyway. Hay fever, time of the year. Look at the end of the day, the problem’s always been, as you would know very well, Malcolm,
Since water has become scarce and we are a country where we do have droughts, there’s a light bulb moment that’s gone off somewhere and they thought, you know what, we can take advantage of this capitalism at its worst, and we’ll commodify water.
Well, ever since water became a commodity, something to be bought, sold and traded, that’s when the rot set in and you’re right, particularly for the Murray-Darling basin, in particular for my New South Wales listeners, we know it’s our country’s food bowl and the people of Australia deserve damn well better.
Look, I see too the Office of Scientific Integrity, you’ve spoken to Dr. Peter Ridd from James Cook University in Townsville about this issue. Is that right?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes we have, and Dr. Ridd has accompanied us on our travels from Brisbane right through to Cairns. Now he’s gonna join us again this morning.
Every one of the media conferences we’ve done with him. What he has been promoting for a while now is that we need a quality assurance system for the science.
That would then complete the scientific process. We’ve been arguing for an Office of Scientific Integrity.
There is so much dodgy science that’s not science, that’s killing agriculture in New South Wales and Queensland, Murray-Darling basin and its water allocations, international agreements that we’re supposed to be complying with, the so called vegetation protection legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that’s used to strangle development climate change policies, electricity policies, energy policies, forestry policies, coastal land resumptions where they’re stealing land rights from people who own own their houses on the Coast.
In New South Wales and Queensland, farmers lost their rights to use their land. These have all been based on dodgy science and then it’s not science.
So what we want is a proper scientific process that has quality assurance around it because these policies are strangling our country, gutting our economy, and we want this to be done properly with real integrity on the science, Marcus.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, I just wanna move to another issue. Dan Andrews and the prime minister, Scott Morrison, you say, are using competitive welfarism to replace our constitution’s bedrock competitive federalism.
What exactly do you mean by that?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, competitive federalism is where you have the exchange between States. So for example, Joh Bjelke-Petersen removed death duties in Queensland, in the seventies.
And what happened then was people then moved to the Queensland, Gold Coast in order to have their final years there and eventually die there because they would leave more money to their descendants, their kids.
And so what happened then was the other States were losing their businesses, losing their wealthy, losing their retirees. And so they enacted policies as well to remove death duties.
So we had a better and more competitive taxation system because of competitive federalism, competing between the States. It’s not ruthless cut throat competition, it’s finding out the best ways of running the State.
And that was designed by our forefathers, the founders of our constitution. What we have now is sloppiness, and there are several examples of this, but you’ve picked on one right now with Dan Andrews.
He made a mess of his State, he fell over in doing his job.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah.
[Malcolm Roberts]
He didn’t do his job, and as a result of that incompetence, Victoria is in a real mess. So what happens? The Prime Minister bails him out.
So the people of Queensland, the people of New South Wales, the people of South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory, ACT are paying for Dan Andrews’ lack of accountability and sloppiness and his dishonesty.
[Marcus Paul]
They’re doing that of course–
[Malcolm Roberts]
And that’s competitive welfarism.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, and that’s, that welfarism you refer to, the extension of job seeker payments, even though they’re being tiered now, but it just continues, and the longer that border closures remain in play, well, the longer the rest of the country is going to have to foot the bill for it.
What about Annastacia Palaszczuk up there? Has she be missing in action? What’s happening?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes, she has been missing in action. What people need to understand about Queensland, the Labor machine runs the state. It’s ruthless and it’s not democratic government, nor is it caring and accountable.
And the corruption is flourishing across our State and local government markets, and we’ll be having much more to say about that in coming weeks, but it’s not Annastacia Palaszczuk who runs this state, it is the Labor machine.
Now what they’ve done is they’re missing in action to some extent, because they’ve handed over to the Chief Health Officer who has one priority, people’s physical health.
Well, Marcus, what about mental health? What about economic health? Because as they’re destroying our economy up here, this Queensland Labor machine that is appealing to the media and try to play to people’s emotions and heartstrings, they’re actually destroying our State and they’re not doing this in a humane way.
We have so many examples. Now your programme has led the way in exposing these things, we’ve got so many issues that are treating people inhumanely.
We’ve got kids with broken legs in hospitals, their parents from New South Wales can’t even visit them in Queensland.
We’ve got cancer patients, we’ve got babies in wombs dying, et cetera, and cancer patients not being treated all because the machine wants to be seen to be protecting Queenslanders when the machine is destroying Queenslanders.
If they really cared about people, they would identify the hotspots and ban people from there.
[Marcus Paul]
I mean, look. The other issue of course is you’ve got a lot of hypocrisy going on. We helped a gentleman yesterday who was, who’d been stuck on the Tweed Coast.
His father is in Royal Brisbane hospital. He’s had a massive head trauma, he’s on life support. They’re about to turn it off. He desperately, desperately needed to get to see his father in his dying days along with his sister.
We had to intervene. We had to go cap in hand to Queensland Health and we also spoke to the New South Wales health department and also to the wonderful people in Pauline’s office at One Nation.
We got this bloke across the border, along with his sister and we shouldn’t have to be doing this, we shouldn’t, but at the end of the day, the reason we shouldn’t be having to intervene like this and to expedite these kinds of situations for people is, well, some are getting the red card treatment.
Look at the red carpet treatment, look at the AFL officials. They can come on in, they can frolic, they can have a pool party for God’s sake on the Gold Coast.
Tom Hanks can just rock up whenever he likes, it appears, without having to go into quarantine. There’ll be 30,000 people gathering for the AFL Grand Final and everyday Queenslanders cannot gather in groups of more than 10. I mean for goodness sake.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yeah, you’ve hit the nail on the head and that’s what I’m talking about. It’s a ruthless Labor Party machine up here that does not care about people.
Annastacia, sorry, Annastacia Palaszczuk, one of her predecessors was Anna Bligh. Two weeks before a State election, the machine promised that they would not sell assets.
Within weeks of the election, just six weeks after their promise, they flogged off billions of dollars worth of core assets in this State. It is a Labor Party machine. It’s not Queensland, it is the Labor Party machine that is uncaring and inhuman–
[Marcus Paul]
Well, problem is–
[Malcolm Roberts]
And what the AFL Grand Final should be up here, but we need to treat Queenslanders with respect.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, well, our problem is, and we’ve got to call into Deb Frecklington’s office, I mean, she’s almost, what she’s back down really now because of populism, I guess, she’s supporting Annastacia Palaszczuk. I’ve run out of time, Malcolm.
[Malcolm Roberts]
See you, mate .
[Marcus Paul]
All right, buddy. Thank you so much. As always good to chat. We’ll talk to you next week, okay?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Thanks, Marcus.
[Marcus Paul]
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, as always speaking a good deal of sense on the programme.
The Premier
Hon. Annastacia Palaszczuk
PO Box 15185
CITY EAST QLD 4002
Email: thepremier@premiers.qld.gov.au
Dear Premier
The recently introduced Queensland legislation regarding residential tenancy changes, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, have removed property owners’ fundamental ownership rights and will create additional economic instability.
Many Queenslanders are rightly concerned at this level of government intervention into people’s lives. These tenancy changes will:
- negatively impact on the value of people’s homes and properties;
- expose the entire property market to the risk of property owners exiting the rental market;
- leave a shortage of rental properties, increase rents and make it harder for tenants to apply for leases.
These residential tenancy changes will have a catastrophic impact on the economy and on the already stretched state budget. Many property owners are self-funded retirees and are highly vulnerable to loss of rental income. More needs to be done to protect them.
I also seek your support for the reduction of rates imposed on property owners when their capacity to pay has been curtailed and that is providing more hardship with limited relief.
Commercial tenants are now asking for rental relief even in circumstances where they should not be entitled. I am advised that Tabcorp is one such company, whose share price has climbed 20 per cent in the last month, has asked for rental relief.
I ask that you reconsider the residential and commercial tenancy regulations by winding back unnecessary government intervention, restoring the full rights of property owners and mitigating any needless economic ruin as a consequence of this legislation.
Yours sincerely
Senator Malcolm Roberts
Senator for Queensland
200402-Qld-Premier
/1 Comment/by Senator Malcolm RobertsFull text
Dear Premier
I was alarmed to recently hear that licenced dealers and armourers across Queensland were notified by Queensland Health that they must cease trading by close of business on Saturday, 28 March 2020.
I have been swamped with complaints from people who have lost their jobs and livelihoods because of this short sighted decision.
Other businesses such as the retail stores are able to carry on business without onerous conditions. This would appear to be discrimination.
A decision had been made by the Chief Health Officer, a public servant, in conjunction with you, to add all Licensed Firearm Dealers and Licensed Armourers to the list of non-essential business, with few exemptions.
I am told that this was done on the basis of perceived health needs to reduce threats of domestic violence, on the presumption that licenced shooters are likely to commit domestic violence if they can go to a gun dealer’s shop.
This is absolutely untrue and has no foundation in fact.
Queensland already has some of the tightest gun management laws in the country.
There is no evidence in Australia that draws a link between domestic violence and gun ownership, or attending gun shops.
Why were the Weapons Licensing Branch and the police not consulted beforehand?
Why were industry representatives not consulted?
It is not possible to buy a gun over the counter from a dealership and leave with it.
I suggest that this response by the government goes well beyond the power of the State Government to make such a direction based on a health power and is clearly contrary to the National Firearm Agreement.
This constitutes a major employment problem across the State and 22,000 jobs have now been lost unnecessarily.
This has the potential to lead to mass bankruptcies of businesses with a total lost value to the Queensland economy of more than $1 billion.
Many country outlets will have to close down and farmers, who constitute the main users of firearms and ammunition in the State, will be caught unable to deal with the needs of stock and feral management, necessary to be productive in a season of lush greenery.
The most recent Closure Directive (No 4) from the Department of Health is so restrictive to farmers that many are unable to purchase vital ammunition because of the limited Condition Codes on their Weapons Licences.
It will impact on an already overworked police service upon whose shoulders it will be to maintain some sort of security of firearms and fill the gap from the front counters of stations across the state.
Gun shop owners who had ordered weapons and/or ammunition prior to your government’s capricious action would have originally been left in the position of either opening their shop and breaking your directive, or leaving weapons and ammunition in the hands of delivery companies or on their shop front door after delivery. Your government increased the security risk to the community and that risk was averted only through the advocacy of concerned gun shop owners and shooters representatives.
This is an example of poorly thought through and opportunistic government decision making that should worry all voters about intrusive and unjustified governments who can invent a reason to shut down people’s livelihoods.
A legal challenge is likely unless the Queensland Government reverses this dangerous decision that may lead to widespread job loss and the destruction of yet another industry through poor government decision making.
To avoid all these negative outcomes I ask you to please reconsider this decision.
Yours sincerely
Senator Malcolm Roberts
Senator for Queensland
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Malcolm’s Fight
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My Other IssuesFebruary 16, 2021 - 12:08 pm
Murray Darling BasinMarch 23, 2020 - 3:05 am
Foreign OwnershipOctober 16, 2019 - 4:58 am
Property rightsOctober 16, 2019 - 4:39 am
United Nations #AUSEXITOctober 16, 2019 - 2:31 am
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