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In support of Peter Ridd and Science

I had the honour of speaking in support of Peter Ridd and his High Court challenge. James Cook University sacked Dr Ridd in circumstances that should send a shiver up everyone’s spine.

The free discussion of ideas, even those we disagree with and especially at University, is fundamental to the scientific method. The scientific method has led to untold wealth and prosperity for human civilisation.

We will bring on our own downfall if we discard it.

Transcript

[ Malcolm Roberts ] Well, good evening everyone. It’s lovely to be here and thank you very much to Jewel for organising this event. And let’s put our hands together for Jewel because of that. Now, I also want to thank everyone for being here because this is important for Peter Ridd support. Peter is what Peter is doing is much more than just scientific integrity, much, much more. It’s costing us all trillions of dollars.

It’s costing each of us in this room, thousands of dollars. And I’ll explain why in a minute but it’s costing us enormously in terms of the values it’s undermining and destroying in this country and freedom. So I want to also mention and acknowledge our party’s leader Senator Pauline Hanson. I do this not because she’s our party leader but because she’s so damn good at what she does.

When we were looking at the government’s previous bill that went through the Senate late last year Dan Tehan was the education minister. And Dan put forward the bill and Pauline said we will support this providing you do something about Peter Ridd and about the destruction of our universities and freedom of speech.

What would you like us to do? And Pauline rattled off a list. And she got a lot of it from Peter. So I want to acknowledge that there are people in federal parliament, Dan Tehan is one of them and his success minister Tudge is another. They are going to come forward with a bill to restore some of those freedoms in the near future.

But let’s get back to science. It’s ironic, isn’t it? That Pauline Hanson didn’t go to a university but she knows what’s happening in the universities better than vice-chancellors do. That’s appalling that the vice-chancellors are that way. So let’s think about science. What has science brought us? Come on,

[ – ] Electricity.

[ Malcolm Roberts ] Electricity, yes.

[ – ] Progress.

[ Malcolm Roberts ]Progress, in what way?

[ – ] Better living standards.

[ Malcolm Roberts ] Better living standards, what else?

[ – ] Nice things.

[ Malcolm Roberts ] Nice things, comfort, ease, security, lighting, safety, and also long longer living and safer living. It’s brought us material wealth. Look how far we’ve come in the last 170 years despite the last 20 years of reversal. Look how far we’ve come in the previous hundreds of thousands of years and in the last 170 we’ve come so far materially. Enormous it’s staggering. Everything in this room has come as a result of science making a discovery, either in the manufacturing of something or the actual harvesting of something, everything.

And we’re living longer, safer, happier lives but science is much more than just the pure dry knowledge or even the practical knowledge. It’s much more than that. That’s what I’d like to discuss. A scientist is defined as someone who follows the scientific method. Now I won’t go into that in detail now, but the root, but the end result of the scientific method is objectivity. And that’s extremely important because objectivity frees us from the bullies’ control.

Many people think it’s just about coming up with new inventions. It’s not, it’s about freedom in our society. Freedom in all forms, economic freedom. You know, when my grandfather was born he was pretty much tied to a job in the, in the Valleys of Wales, in his Valley, he didn’t go very far, but now someone in Australia can go almost anywhere in the world and work. So if you’ve got a bully in charge of the mine or your factory in your Valley you’re stuck there 150 years ago.

Not anymore, you can go anywhere. Science did that for us. It ended physical intimidation because no longer did the strongest person, the financially wealthiest person, the politically connected person, the economically powerful person no longer did they have sway over our lives because we had objectivity. This is only been with humans for about three or 400 years.

The Greeks had some touches of it but three or 400 years since the enlightenment. So it’s the freedom now to control our resources. We have control over our land our property because of science, but much of our journey is about control versus freedom. When I say a journey, our journey here in our lives, on earth as humans much of it is about control versus freedom.

And that’s a theme that I quite often go to. Who’s read Von Mises work, Ludwig Von Mises work. Well, you probably will hope you read the book where he talked about the way that the word liberal was captured. Liberal is someone, a tag given to someone who believes in liberty and espouses liberty and fights for liberty. What does liberal mean these days? Not the party. What does liberal mean?

[ – ] Lefties.

[ Malcolm Roberts ] Lefties, that was deliberately hijacked to destroy that libertarian argument. It was deliberately hijacked. Ludwig Von Mises was one of the best economists ever couldn’t get any tenure in American universities because they didn’t like his argument because they were fighting freedom. The human condition is the development of our ego. And as a result of that our fear and it leads to human behaviour which is quite often driven to control people. Whether we control our kids, control our parents, control our neighbor, control the local sporting club we’re in.

But it leads to suppressing of human progress. So the human condition the ego drives sometimes counterproductive behaviours even though at our core, humans are caring people are we? We at our core are caring and that that holds back human progress. And at times it seems especially in federal parliament as though everything is about control versus freedom, control versus freedom. Look at our energy sector. That is what determines our productivity. We have destroyed our energy sector. And I’ll talk about the cost of that in a minute.

Due to so-called science? We have destroyed our Murray-Darling basin due to so-called science and it’s rubbish as Jennifer will know. We’re destroying agriculture in this state as a result of reef science, which is rubbish. And Peter has led the charge on that. Now and this is what’s so significant that I want to bring to your attention. Now, those who seek to control and there are people who want to control. They want to capture science to control us and I’ll show you how. They want to actually capture control the very concept of science. And these are the substitutes for science.

Some of the substitutes of science. No longer does data and objectivity rule at universities, claims of consensus. The 97% consensus. When you look at the figures from John Cook’s rubbish paper it’s actually 0.3% of scientists, academics are in agreement 0.3. But even if it was a hundred it doesn’t matter because consensus is anti-science. It’s not about objectivity. Or they appeal to the name.

The CSRO is the top 100 top 1% of scientific organisations in the world, but they can’t give me data. They’re hopeless, they are rubbish, or they smear us, ridicule us, derogatory hurtful labels. Or implied smear like, Oh, Jewel you would believe in, you wouldn’t believe in the moon landing. Would you, I know your a lot. So that’s what they do. And that’s how they live. Or they come up with catastrophic consequences.

Great barrier reef’s gonna be dead in 12 years. Sea levels are going to claim us all, rising sea levels, ocean alkalinity, storms, insects, ticks malaria, droughts, floods, species extinction. My God, we’re getting overwhelmed. You haven’t got more than five years to live. I’ll tell you a joke later on about Al Gore. Computer models, their output is falsely called data. They actually say that the output of a computer model is data.

That’s how desperate they are due to using these unvalidated computer models, unvalidated and erroneous, Or they say if statements. Jennifer, if antarctica melts it’ll arise 20 metres. What’s the chance of Antarctic melding. And all people remember is the sea levels are going to rise 20 metres. It was a rubbish statement in the first place. Peer review, another logical fallacy. Somebody who we don’t know who hasn’t really looked at the paper their opinion is worth something when there’s no data, this is insane. Celebrities including a socially awkward 16 year old take their word for it.

UN has got so desperate that they’re now using an awkward well, she’s now 18 years old. Greta Thumberg hopeless. Where’s the science. Great, I can’t tell you that. Emotion, fear, guilt, pity, lies, and distortions. And these are the things that are now anti-science but they’re passed off by our opponents as science. And so what we have now is that distortion of freedom, academic freedom and claim of ownership of what is a scientist.

Scientist is an advocate who espouses the control side of politics. That’s what a scientist is these days and it’s rubbish, complete rubbish. They consign real scientists like Peter Ridd, Professor Peter Ridd to the dustbin. That is what’s really going on here. And the whole pseudo-science is to control our policy. And this is where it leads us to governance that is not based on data. I’ve been in federal politics now about three years in total in the Senate and instead of data.

Well, let me put it this way, in my experience every single major problem in our country has its roots in Canberra. I’ll challenge anyone to name a problem that hasn’t got its roots in Canberra. Covid came from overseas. But the roots of our problem on how it’s managed came from Canberra. Their restrictions basically were paid for by Canberra allowing the States to go against competitive federalism. Every major problem comes from Canberra.

Why? Because government is not based on data. It’s based on ideology, emotion, vested interest, fear, uninformed opinion and quite often policies in Canberra contradict the science. They contradict the empirical evidence and the costs. Listen to some of these costs. I commissioned Dr Alan Moran to come up with the first analysis of the extra costs of climate policies and renewable energy policies on our electricity costs.

The figure I’m about to give you is the additional cost on electricity, on electricity prices due to renewables and climate policies, $13 billion a year. That’s the additional cost. That works out at an average of $1,300 per household per year. That’s adding all the costs through the supply chain. Does anyone know what the median income is in Australia? 49,000, what is it after tax? I haven’t done the calculation, 34?

How can we afford people on $34,000 take home paying an extra $1,300 on top of their electricity bill. That’s the first time anyone’s done that study And I commissioned Dr Moran to do that. Previously, the figures were in consolidated form. Now they’re scattered across various budgets and agency reports.

Because the government is telling us six and a half percent of your electricity bill is due to solar and wind, rubbish. It’s 39% and all the other inefficiencies that get stacked on top of that. For every so-called green job due to solar and wind It’s costing us 2.2 jobs in the real economy. We’re going backwards and it’s costing our nation trillions of dollars. Literally I’m not exaggerating if you look at not just the cost but the opportunity costs trillions of dollars and poor governance is destroying our country. Is anyone surprised?

[ – ] No.

[ Malcolm Roberts ] You can see it can’t you, you can feel it. So what we’ve come up with as one answer and it’s just one answer. There are many things to do, is an office of scientific integrity and quality assurance. And we’ve worked with Peter Ridd on this. Wasn’t our idea. We got it first from the American Environmental Protection Agency. We’ll have questions later, Jeff but Peter has jumped right on board with this.

He pushed it himself independently and we joined forces on that. So that leads me in a few minutes to talking about Peter. You can see why his quest is so damn important, can’t you? It’s about freedom, it’s about governance, it’s about the very security and future of our country. So what do we see in Peter? We see someone who is absolutely objective. We see some on who is honest. We see someone who can’t be bought.

We see someone who is faithful to the science. He honours the science. He protects the science because it’s giving us so much. He is a good person to be with. He is courageous. He is determined and he gets belted time and time again but he gets up every time and away he goes again and look where he’s gone. He’s got to the high court and his dishonest University has cost him a lot of money and a lot of time, but he’s still going.

He is still going. So he’s determined, he is courageous and he has enormous integrity. What more do we need? Wanna come to Canberra, Peter? We need that down there. Look, I’m going to end by saying that first of all, Peter is much more than a great scientist. He is a great scientist. His inventions have gone around the world and used in his field in other reefs in Australia as well. So he is much, much more than a great theoretical scientist.

He is a practical scientist. He’s solved problems. He’s given good advice. Maybe in the questions I can answer more comments about what he’s done. But his cause is much more than about science. Peter’s cause applies to every single one of us in this room. And to everyone who’s watching this video, everyone. Peter’s cause applies to everyone in Australia. Peter’s cause applies and I mean this sincerely starting to get little bit teary.

It applies to everyone on this planet, everyone on earth, it applies to our whole planet. People who value freedom will support Peter. It’s not sufficient for me that Galileo was vindicated after he died. I want this professor, Peter Ridd to be vindicated now. That’s what we need. I’m going to leave you with two quotes.

One from the Dalai Lama ”In order to exercise creativity freedom of thought is essential” It’s not only thinking freely and independently but then exchanging ideas, ideas exchanged are enormously powerful. The second one is Steve Jobs and I hope that James Cook university who employed Peter is listening. Steve Jobs who built, he’s dead now. He built a remarkable company said ”It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do.

We hire, He said we in Apple, we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do” This man is very smart, but he’s more so, more important, He’s practical and he’s a real human and he’s got an enormous ticker. So please support Peter Ridd.

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University Reforms Package

Transcript

[Deputy President]

Thank you, Sen. Rice. Sen. Roberts?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Thank you, Madam Deputy President. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support the government’s changes to university funding. Firstly, though we agree with the government’s general thrust. Secondly, we want to go further to ensure responsibility among students and to reduce taxpayer load. Thirdly, we want to restore accountability and academic freedom in universities to make our universities better so that our future students will emerge better.

So let’s get to the government’s thrust. It reduces fees for courses that meet needs for future jobs and more practical courses like engineering, nursing, and teaching. We support that. It will make these courses more affordable. It raises fees through humanities courses, and I’ll explain later why that is so effective, because humanities people, well, graduates, are not getting jobs right now.

The government’s thrust focuses taxpayer funds on needed skills, and that is good for our country. So the second point I wanted to discuss was that we need to go further to ensure responsibility among students and to reduce taxpayer load. The current HECS debt is $65 billion and growing rapidly. That’s the outstanding HECS debt. With Australia’s national debt now pushing one trillion dollars, the repaid HECS money could be used productively.

We believe that we need to reinstate the 10% discount for fees paid up front. Now, people who pay their fees up front, people who, sorry, people who can afford university do not need the concessional interest rate. And as things start, do not need to repay debt, do not start repaying debt until earning an annual income of $46,620.

Financially, it is better value for the government and for taxpayers, and we do represent taxpayers, to have a loan paid up front at a discount than paid out over 10-plus years. It takes on average about 10 years for a student to repay a HECS debt. And we need to reduce the threshold for repaying HECS debt based on data and fairness to students and fairness to taxpayers. Remember them?

The people who are paying our salaries? The people who run this country? We need to limit and student entitlement to seven years full time equivalent and stop people on fee free university education with little or no chance of a job. Students cannot continue to live off the taxpayer forever.

We’ve got to get job ready graduates. We have a duty to protect taxpayers and to protect our nation, our community, as well as to protect students. The third area, restoring accountability and academic freedom in universities. Universities monitor student academic progress and students who repeatedly fail, for example, if they do not pass more than half of their subjects, should stop getting FEE-HELP.

This removes a fee free career for university students who keep failing. We also need students to be aware of what they’re getting from taxpayers’ money, and we need job ready graduates. I can give you some examples of universities suppressing free speech. Dr. Peter Ridd was sacked from his position at James Cook University for being critical of poor quality reef science.

He was fulfilling his duties as a scientist to challenge his colleagues and he was sacked. And the recent Senate inquiry, Vit in Queensland, vindicated him when academics admitted facts and data that revealed the Queensland state Labour government does not have the facts to support its recent reef regulations.

Peter Ridd was correct. Professor Bob Carter, the late professor Bob Carter, well known globally as a fine scientist, paleoclimatologist. He was prevented and hindered from speaking by James Cook University. And now just here recently at the ANU, Dr. Howard Brady, a noted geologist and who understands climate extremely well was invited by the staff at the University of Queensland at University ANU to make a presentation on the impacts of the study of climate science and why it’s gone wrong.

ANU prohibited him after the notice was sent out, ANU prohibited him from delivering that seminar. But here’s a welcome sign from ANU, professors and staff at ANU were so disgusted with the ANU’s response that they joined together and Dr. Brady will now be conducting his seminar later this month. And they’ve given him immense publicity internationally.

He’s received support from the University of Sydney’s staff, from the ANU stuff, from other universities within Australia and from overseas universities including Princeton.

The former high court Chief Justice, Robert French, recommended in his government commissioned review of free speech at Australian universities that academic freedoms would be protected so data and research can be put forward. That’s a scientist’s responsibility.

Justice French recommended that as part of academic freedom, academics should be allowed to, quote, to make lawful public comment on any issue in their personal capacities. Universities allow, indeed encourage, far left Marxists, anarchists, socialists, and communists to speak freely on university campuses.

Yet do nothing to stop these same fascists shutting down lecturers with whom these fascists disagree. In not protecting free speech of all voices, universities are complicit in the suppression of speech. Now, I went to the University of Queensland, where I got a master’s in business administration.

And I’m very proud to say that the Dean of that university just recently a few years ago welcomed students with a note saying, there are no free spaces, no free, no safe spaces at the University of Chicago. Basically he was saying, suck it up, discuss and debate freely. That’s what universities were about.

That’s what they need to get back to being about. And recently I was listening with a university vice chancellor, a regional university vice chancellor, who subtly admitted to me that the Capitol City unis have fouled their nests because of their craving for political correctness and their fear of upsetting people.

The media reported Professor Ridd as saying he supported, quote, any moves to improve the disastrous situation at the moment where academic freedom of speech effectively does not exist. At present, universities are applying their vague codes of conduct on top of academic freedom of speech.

And this means academics have to be respectful and collegiate. Any robust debate, as he points out, is likely to seem disrespectful to somebody. So that is a way of shutting down debate. That’s how universities that fear academic freedom or are too gutless to ensure freedom suppress academic freedom and free speech.

And we need practical graduates. And my three years underground as a coalface miner after graduate was priceless for me. So I left university and then I realised I’d better go and learn something. So I worked underground as at the coalface for three to four years. We also only need to remember that In addition to practical experience, universities are not for everyone and should not be for everyone.

We need to rekindle trades, rekindle the TAFE, rekindle apprenticeships, and Sen. Hanson has been leading the way in Australia in rekindling apprenticeships and the government has taken her policy two years ago and implemented it. We need to also stop political correctness at TAFE and get it back on track.

So we’re very pleased then to see that the government is undertaking a major shakeup of university fees in a bid to steer students towards fields where there are skill shortages and jobs for the future. And it’s better for students after graduation. University graduates have been slamming universities for meaningless degrees that have left students with dismal career prospects and crippling debt.

While a university degree leads some students to a bright future, for others, it currently leaves them with nothing but debt and disappointment. Now, I wanna take a break here because I wanna answer some comments from Sen. Murray Watt. His comments disrespect the university students and universities.

And his fabrications require me to respond. He said that since they have entered parliament centre the Hanson and one and Sen. Roberts line up with the LNP to pass legislation. Well, let’s see who lines up with the LNP. Let’s indeed have a good look at this. On climate policies, Liberal and Labour are similar.

They believe the nonsense. On energy policies, Liberal and Labour both believe in our renewable energy target. Both believe in stealing farmers’ property rights, as they have both done. Liberal and Labor both believe in gold plating the networks. Liberal and Labor both believe in a national electricity market that has turned into a national electricity racket.

One Nation opposes all of those. On water, the Turnbull-Howard 2007 Water Act is supported by Labour. Now some Liberals are waking up and some Nats are waking up. One Nation opposes the 2007 water act. And the destruction it’s caused across the Murray-Darling basin.

Electricity price, as I’ve just said, Labour and Liberal support the renewable energy target, they support subsidies to the intermittent unreliable energy sources of wind and solar, they support privatisation, They support the national electricity market which has been, which is a national electricity racket.

Both are anti-coal in their actions. The only difference between the Liberal and Labour is that liberals are positive in their talk, but not their actions. Labour and Liberal have been killing our fishing industry. Foreign ownership, Liberal and Labour have sold out Port of Darwin and other companies and water rights in our country.

Record debt, state and federal, Labour and Liberal join. Infrastructure, a lack of infrastructure and neglect. Taxes, foreign multinationals, tax-free, Labour and Liberal have enabled that over the last six decades. I could go on, but you can get the point that Liberal and Labour are actually closer than One Nation and Labour One Nation and the LNP.

The second point Sen. Watt talked about was One Nation candidates out there, masquerading, these are his words, as the people who are standing up for battlers in our community. Well let’s go through some of our candidates. Michael Blaxland at Gimpy. Sharon Lohse at Maryborough.

Sharon Bell, now here’s a good example, Sharon Bell, a real fighter, she’s out working class girl who’s come up and is now working in the construction industry. She is fighting the member for Bundamba who was parachuted in from a job from a union position in Melbourne, parachuted into Queensland outside the Bundamba electorate.

And then two months before the recent election, served by election, he moved into Bundamba, and he’s doing nothing. And what did the Labour Party do? They got rid of Joanne Miller, a first class true Labour member of parliament, and replaced her with this blow-in parachuted in from Melbourne.

Then I could talk about Deb Lawson, Christine Keys, who wants to restore solid education, Wade Rothery, a coal miner in Keppel, Torin O’Brien, Steve Andrew, an electrician who has got such a good rapport with the people of Mirani in his electorate, because he is a member of parliament.

These are the types of people that One Nation is very, very proud to say stand with us. And they are fed up with the tired old parties, both Liberal and Labour. And so as an increasing number of voters. And that’s why these candidates are standing up, because they’re sick and tired of Liberal Nationals and sick and tired of Labour.

They have been abandoned by both the tired old parties. Labour and the LNP actually make battlers. Sen. White talked about us as standing up for the battlers, that’s correct. And the reason we have to do that is because the Labour Party is creating battlers. It’s taking the middle class and making them poor.

It’s taking the poor and making life tougher for the poor. Look at your energy policies, look at your agriculture policies. They are coming to One Nation because people need someone in this parliament who stands up for them and someone in state parliament who stands up for them.

And Sen. Hanson, and this is something Murray Watt, Sen. Watt has said, ‘Sen. Hanson and her party come down to Canberra. they vote with the Liberal and National parties.’ It’s not us that have the policies that are the same. It’s not us, it’s you guys. Let’s then have a look at, let’s then have a look at what Sen. Watt said.

We’ve seen it, he raised pensions. Sen. Hanson and I have advocated for an increase in pensions. We’re advocated and advocating and got solid policies for decreasing cost of living. That’s more important because to a pensioner, the cost of energy is a highly regressive tax and burden.

Then Sen. Watt raised apprenticeships. Sen. Hanson introduced the apprenticeship scheme into this parliament and the government has taken it.

[Deputy President]

Sen. Roberts?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes?

[Deputy President]

I have been listening carefully and you certainly started off talking about the higher ed bill. And I think I’ve given you enough time to respond to other senators in this place. But I do remind you the bill before us is the higher education bill.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Thank you, Madam Deputy President, I’m simply responding clearly to everything that Sen. Watt has said-

[Deputy President]

Sen. Roberts?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Because his comments misrepresented the facts.

[Deputy President]

Sen. Roberts, the bill before us is the higher education bill. That’s the bill you need to be responding to. There are other opportunities to respond to other senators. Thank you.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Certainly, well, in response, Madam Deputy President, I wanna comment that this bill, with One Nation’s amendments that the government has agreed to, protects students, protects taxpayers, protects universities, protects Australians, and protects Australia. Because education is vital to the future of our country.

Education is vital as a source of foreign income. And while Labour is off with the rainbow coloured unicorns on this and many other topics, we are very, very proud to speak for the battlers and to support the battlers.

[Deputy President]

Order, order.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Students must be equipped educationally for a career in and beyond the COVID-19 economy with its focus on digital technologies, robotics, automation, science, and health services, real jobs.

[Deputy President]

Thank you, Senator Roberts, your time-

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