Yesterday, Joel Fitzgibbon stepped down as the Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources. This seismic decision is traced back to the 2019 election when One Nation’s Stuart Bonds won close to 22% of the vote causing Joel’s first preference vote to collapse by 14%. The blue collar workers in the Hunter sent a very clear and blunt message to the Labor party – you no longer represent us.
The Labor party have committed to a net-zero 2050 climate policy which means the end to coal and gas use and the end of tens of thousands of mining jobs across Australia. Joel has taken the blue collar workers in the Hunter for granted for the past 24 years, popping his head up before each election while doing nothing to stop the Labor party from slipping into the hands of the cultural elites and inner city Greens.
Stuart Bonds is a miner and the voice of the Hunter Valley. It’s time to elect a representative who will serve the people rather than someone who expects the people to serve him.
Transcript
[Malcolm Roberts]
Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I’m in our Canberra office on the Senate side of Parliament House. And I’m with Stuart Bonds, our One Nation candidate in the seat of Hunter last election, last year. Stuart, your campaign is still causing tremors around the place.
[Stuart Bonds]
Yeah, yes. Well, it was one of the untold stories, I think, of the last election. And it’s come home to roost with Joel Fitzgibbon. I think it’s shaken him out of bed. And I think it’s, you know, it’s woken him up. Before this, he’s been strong. As soon as the election was finished, he was, bang, he was out there, he was the biggest friend to coal. And I think he’s made too many waves and he’s been pushed out.
[Malcolm Roberts]
It seems strange that he didn’t really care about blue collar workers’ jobs and miners’ jobs in the Hunter until his job was threatened by you.
[Stuart Bonds]
Oh, absolutely. That’s one of the funny things, is that until someone comes for your job, right, you’re happy to sell everybody else out, you know what I mean?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, I don’t think you would.
[Stuart Bonds]
No, no, absolutely not. But I mean, you see this with the ABC, that they, they’re hammering the coal miners and then when they get threatened to have their funding cut, it’s the worst thing in the world. I mean, it’s terrible to have people gunning for your job.
[Malcolm Roberts]
And Joel’s now a backbencher. He’s resigned and gone back to the backbench. He was Shadow Agriculture and Resources Minister.
[Stuart Bonds]
Yep.
[Malcolm Roberts]
So if he couldn’t help the Hunter from the front bench, how the hell is he going to do it from the backbench?
[Stuart Bonds]
I have no idea. I mean, if you’re in the prime position, they’re meant to come to you for counsel, and they’re obviously going to Joel and then ignoring him, right? Because everything that he’s saying is the opposite of what the party’s saying.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yeah, and people who are supposed to be in the Labor Party, are supposed to be from the blue collar, and support the blue collar, but they’ve abandoned Joel in place of the Chardonnay sippers and the latte sippers.
[Stuart Bonds]
Yep.
[Malcolm Roberts]
And we’ve got no real connection with the blue collar worker, the producer in Australia anymore in the Labor Party.
[Stuart Bonds]
No, no, and Joel was one of, if not the last members that were sitting from the Labor Party in a rural area. So they’re really losing their voice. Rural Australia is losing their voice, the hard working coal miners, gas, the oil producers. The miners in general are losing their voice from the Labor Party.
[Malcolm Roberts]
What should he do, mate?
[Stuart Bonds]
He should step down, he should resign. I mean, if he’s going to stand there and have no voice whatsoever, he should put it to a by-election and let people have a choice. Have their voices heard.
[Malcolm Roberts]
And would you stand?
[Stuart Bonds]
Absolutely, I would stand. Because the reason I stood in the first place was Labor’s policies. It was never Fitzgibbon’s policies, it was Labor. And they have not changed their policy. They still want to see the end of mining. Albanese’s on the television today, which I reckon might have been the thing that tipped Fitzgibbon over the edge, was when the scenes of the Biden results come in in America, and he won it, first thing Biden did, 2050, zero net emissions. And Albanese’s seen a crack, and he’s straight in there.
[Malcolm Roberts]
They’ve already got that policy, 2050 net zero.
[Stuart Bonds]
Yep.
[Malcolm Roberts]
So that’s the end of the coal industry.
[Stuart Bonds]
Yeah, I mean, and nobody to this day has come out and told us what a 2050 economy looks like. To this day there is no meat behind the policy.
[Malcolm Roberts]
I can tell you. It’s going back 150 years to without electricity. That’s what it is. Because you won’t have reliable electricity. But in the meantime, we wanna make sure that if there is a by-election, and you’re saying bring it on–
[Stuart Bonds]
We should do it.
[Malcolm Roberts]
That you’re there.
[Stuart Bonds]
We should do it, right now. He should call it now-
[Malcolm Roberts]
I’ll be there. I’ll be there to support you, mate.
[Stuart Bonds]
Excellent.
[Malcolm Roberts]
All the way.
[Stuart Bonds]
Thank you, Malcolm.
