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Restore our productive environment

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Questions for the Prime Minister – COVID19

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Transcript:

Thank you Senator Keneally, Senator Roberts.

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to discuss our people’s health and safety, the security of our national economy and thirdly, our national economic recovery in the near future and the long term because no one is discussing the key issue, and One Nation has solutions.

I remind people of government’s three primary roles, protect life, protect property and protect freedom. Importantly, in democracies, those governing do so only with the permission of the people governed and those governing are responsible to the people.

I will in this speech discuss a former prime minister who I had respected until I did my research. I want to thank everyone who is caring for us and keeping us safe, including healthcare workers, police, defence, emergency workers and everyone serving others including helping to supply and feed us, electricity generation, cleaners, garbage collection, water supply and many more.

Many of us feel gutted that this year will be the first time Anzac Day public commemorations have been called off. This illustrates the seriousness of the threat we face. Firstly, health and safety, this must be every government’s primary focus.

Now there is no manual on dealing with COVID-19. So while I empathise with government’s challenge, people want answers, people are feeling confused, afraid, concerned, some feel lost, grieving for those dying and grief for our country.

Some feel angry, many are still living in disbelief, why? Because people want to know what has to be done, why it has to be done and how long before it’s over and what will it cost, financial, social, personal, mental, emotional.

Remember, we have to pay these bills. People have a right to know the fair dinkum facts and right now, many people are, like me, in the dark or plagued with uncertainty. Two and a half weeks ago, in this place, I praised the success of East Asian nations in combating COVID-19, particularly Taiwan and South Korea.

Their focus is on people’s health and safety. Both are democracies and government provides strong, clear leadership. The people trust those governments because they used facts, instituted rigorous widespread testing of body temperature and virus infection, relied on sharing data and had solid processes and systems with medical supplies and facilities.

Both those nations quickly arrested the virus and instead of isolating everyone, they quickly and rigorously isolated the infected and the vulnerable, allowing the majority of healthy people to continue working.

This is their lesson to us, acting decisively to make health their first priority, minimised disturbance to their economies. Western nations though have tried to balance health and the economy and as a result, both have been compromised.

Australians are asking serious questions. Why did it take so long for the government to publicly discuss modelling, as it pretended to do so yesterday yet not release the modelling. Why did the modellers release the draught version separately yet not release the model?

Why did the government not discuss the underlying assumptions including infection, transmission and mortality rates? Why did the government not discuss the variables modelled? Without that we can make no conclusions.

Why did the government not disclose the model’s result? Did the government gather data and facts from successful nations like Taiwan and South Korea? And if so, what did it learn? Now modelling is often flawed yet in this case, isn’t failing to get the data or failing to model acceptance of needless deaths?

When did state and federal health ministers last get together to scenario plan the effects and management of a virus pandemic? Have they ever? Have they considered their interaction with border security and who to allow into our country from planes and ships?

Did they involve the hospitals and medical colleges? Data suggests Australia’s testing for the virus is narrow and well below the world’s best per capita. Why is the government’s data on number of cases continually revised with dramatic changes to its graph?

Are casualties and deaths from flu and pneumonia here and overseas being reported as from COVID-19? How many people will die with the virus compared with how many people die from the virus? In some nations, are deaths inflated?

What is the government’s plan for treatment using hydroxychloroquine showing amazing results in New York and elsewhere? And ivermectin being 100% effective in Monash University’s in-vitro tests? What is the plan for mental health issues?

Everyday Australians want to know, how long will I be working from home? When can we get back to work and school? When will we be safe from this virus? I now turn to the Chinese Communist government that harmed the Chinese people and people worldwide.

It hid the outbreak, suppressed the views of the virus and punished the doctors who wanted to inform and prepare the world. That meant the virus spread rapidly around the world. What will it do now to people in poorer countries, Africa, India?

Instead of it protecting its people, the Chinese Communist government neglected, controlled and punished them. Worse, in January, the United Nations’ World Health Organisation spread the communist government’s lies that there is no human to human transmission of the virus.

Then in March, the UN’s World Health Organisation said the time to act was two months earlier in January. The World Health Organisation, gutless, bumbling, incompetent, hopeless, dishonest, inherently corrupt just like the whole UN.

This virus needs to be renamed the Chinese Communist Party UN virus, the Chinese Communist Party and UN need to be held accountable. Compare the Chinese Communist government with that of Taiwan’s democratic government, Taiwan’s 24 million people responded freely and as of today, had just five deaths.

Freedom works, freedom works providing the government serves the people. With freedom comes responsibility and self control, always far superior to imposed control. The communists gave us the virus, democratic Taiwan gave us medical equipment.

Now let’s turn to our fragile economy. People expect government to lead and expect leaders to have a plan based on solid data and facts. Economies are living organisms comprised of families, economies depend on human interaction.

Isolate people and economies wither. So what is the plan for bringing back our economy? What are the government’s trigger points for changing strategy from isolating everyone to wider testing and then isolating only the sick and vulnerable so the healthy majority can return to interacting, producing, exchanging, getting back to work like Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore?

The government shutdown is a ticking time bomb. It is necessary but it is a ticking time bomb. Humanity needs security, connection, family, friends. The worst thing we can do to a person after all is take their job off them.

I note now, for now rather that this bill needs to be structured as an open cheque to the government to ensure the flexibility to support people. Thirdly, this crisis has highlighted a huge gap in our country’s security.

Shortages of critical equipment like basic medical supplies, worse, an inability to manufacture medical equipment, cars, many goods that we once made ourselves are now imported, why? Because the Whitlam Labor government signed the UN’s Lima declaration in 1975 and the Fraser Liberal National’s government ratified it the very next year to transfer manufacturing to third world countries.

Worse still, an inability in Australia to grow our own food. We were exporters of basic food commodities like rice and wheat, now we cannot get enough rice and due to the virus, Vietnam has blocked exports for us to ensure supply for its own people.

Durum wheat for pasta is in shortage, why? Because the Howard government under the guidance of Liberal Senator Robert Hill, National’s Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and Liberal Prime Minister John Howard in 1996 stole farmers inalienable rights to use the land they bought.

And to avoid paying compensation, colluded with Queensland Nationals’ premier Rob Burbidge and later Labour’s premier Peter BD and with New South Wales Labour’s state minister Bob Carr, why? For the Howard government to comply with the UN’s Kyoto Protocol.

The UN, let’s get it out and who buys our farms? The Chinese Communist government despite banning Australians from buying Chinese properties. Water, what about water?

Farmers lost their water as a result of the Turnbull Howard Water Act of 2007 that according to world renowned John Briscoe, took the world’s best national water policy under the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and made it the worst under the Turnbull Howard Murray-Darling Basin Authority. How?

Infecting it with politics, UN rules and regulations. The UN exit, this week, yet another farmer Tanya Ginns in New South Wales asked, please help us, help her against the government, the global corporates, the UN.

Our own farmers asking for help against the government so she and her family can produce food for our people. And then energy, never before have humans materially advanced so quickly as in the last 170 years and it was due to ever decreasing real prices of energy, electricity, oil and gas.

The miracle that raised living standards gave us independence from weather and eliminated famines. It gave us longer, healthier, safer, easier, more productive, more comfortable and secure lifestyles.

We are the world’s second largest exporter of coal and largest exporter of liquefied natural gas yet we now have high domestic energy costs. In just a few decades, we went from the world’s cheapest electricity, thanks to our clean high energy coal to the world’s most expensive electricity, thanks to the Howard government policies based on the UN lies and fraud.

Eight years after John Howard was booted from office, he admitted in Britain, that on climate science, he was agnostic. He had no science yet he destroyed all these industries. We now export our coal to China so it can produce cheap electricity because China sensibly uses hydro, coal and nuclear being the cheapest forms of electricity generation.

The Chinese already produce about eight times more coal than does Australia entirely and they’re rapidly increasing their production. India is furiously increasing its production, why? Because they know cheap energy is the key to productivity and productivity is the key to wealth generation and wealth generation is the key to raising everyone’s living standards.

At the same time, China exports wind turbines and solar panels to us that wreck our environment and steal our precious farmland. We subsidise Chinese companies to install these inefficient monstrosities that raise our electricity costs, destroy reliability of supply and drive our manufacturers and jobs overseas, why?

In our renewal plans, this must be reviewed and dumped. Mind you, it provides entertainment with Barnaby Joyce and Senator Canavan first speaking clearly as climate sceptics, then contorting and converting to speaking for the UN’s climate rort and now, now back-flipping to copy One Nation’s stance.

Yet although they now speak like us, they still vote like Trent Zimmerman, Zali Steggall and the Greens. Despite the recent droughts, Despite the recent drought, farmers with water could not afford to pay for electricity to pump irrigation water to grow fodder in a drought because of electricity prices.

China and the UN are doing this, exit the UN. Seafood, we have the world’s largest continental shellfishing zone yet import almost three quarters of the seafood we consume, why?

Because we have 36% of the world’s marine parks that previous ministers like Labor’s Mr. Tony Burke and Liberal Senator Robert Hill handed to the UN as World Heritage areas, all now managed under UN rules and who is our largest supply of seafood imported by?

China with its tiny coastline and 56 times more mouths to feed compared to ours, China and the UN, exit the UN. In Queensland, we have 31 major federal and state policies gutting farming and as Charleville farmer, Dan McDonald says, “With every farm input now completely under regulatory control, farming is nationalised.”

We have lost our food security, our manufacturing, our farmers’ land use, our water, our energy security. We have lost our productive capacity, our ability to produce, we have lost our economic resilience, our ability to rebound all to globalism in the name of interdependency.

The corporate elites benefiting from our bureaucrats’ gift of farming land and water and benefit from owning Chinese manufacturing. Interdependency is a con, it means we are dependent on others, we are dependent.

This virus crisis is exposing a huge gap in our security from face masks to food to loss of our independence. We voters have allowed our government since the formation of the UN, especially since 1996 to sacrifice our country’s productive capacity, our economic resilience, our economic independence and security.

Did you elect UN bureaucrats to be in charge? I didn’t, our national debt now is around 600 billion, Queensland’s around 90 billion before this package. Members of parliament and senior federal public servants need to share the burden, stop the perks like flying business class, cut our superannuation rate, reject or defer salary increases.

Let’s look to the future. What will the world look like after the Prime Minister’s quaintly named six-month hibernation? In just three to four months, what will people be doing? Will people emerge from hibernation?

When we look around, will we as a nation feel supported, excited or depleted, hungry and angry? We need two plans, one for now and one for bringing back our productive capacity and economic resilience.

One Nation will return with their detailed analysis. When this is over, though, everyday Australians of all backgrounds expect to see and deserve to be a healthy, secure people with a proud, independent Australia that reflects our lifestyle, culture, values, freedom, democracy and potential. All people want is a fair go and governance we can trust to work for our country. Thank you Madam Deputy President.

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COVID19 Senate Sitting – Decline In Productive Capacity Exposed

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Transcript:

Thank you Mr President. I seek to make a statement in response to the Minister’s statement. We acknowledge that there is no manual for dealing with this virus, and we empathise with the government’s challenge.

That is though, all the more reason for the government to openly share data, future projections, and information with the people. As pressures mount regarding personal security, as well as emotionally and financially on people across our nation, any shortage of data is being seen as an absence of trust from the government in the people.

And, that will make it difficult for Australians to in turn, trust government and the parliament. Government trust in the people and honesty, will be met with trust from the people.

One Nation would also like at this time, to thank everyone who is caring for us, and keeping us safe, including healthcare workers, police, defence, emergency workers, and everyone serving others, including helping to supply and feed us, teach our children, electricity generation, garbage collection, cleaning, water supply, and many more.

People keeping services working for us all. COVID-19 Mr President, has exposed us as severely lacking in our current economic and industrial structures, the productive capacity and economic resilience, that were once part of Australian culture and history.

We need to take this opportunity to take stock, and then rebuild our society on the values, systems and cultures that ensure a return to personal enterprise, instead of the creeping dead hand and suffocating blanket of a large, and ever-growing central government.

History shows that the secret of human happiness and human progress is nothing new, and has been discovered, lost, and rediscovered for millennia, and more recently, lost in our country.

We need to bring back Australia’s economic sovereignty, productive capacity and economic resilience, based on restoring personal enterprise and compliance with our Constitution, that enshrines competitive Federalism and individual liberty.

We all need, as representatives of the people, and servants to the people, to ensure the people’s government is held accountable for what it does, and does not do during this emergency. We are giving the government a blank check, and rightly so, because there are many uncertainties in this.

There’s such a complex system that we are already trying to amend. But Ministers have the power to make these changes through regulations. And, that is given to ensure that cracks in the legislation are closed quickly, to ensure people are covered fairly, right across our country.

It is a blank check. But, we must do our jobs as Senators to make sure that we review that and the progress of it. What many Australians, looking beyond our health and financial safety want, is to make sure that we leave COVID-19 behind us with better freedoms and liberties, and a stronger, freer economy than before. Thank you, Mr President.

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Water Security for Farmers and Coronavirus – Rural Queensland Today with Ben Dobbin

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Ben:

Welcome back to Rural Queensland Today. 8th of April on a Wednesday morning, so much still going on with COVID-19. We know that the line is flattening, the curve is starting to flatten, but it’s still a long way to go. Senator of One Nation, Malcolm Roberts, joining us this morning on Rural Queensland Today. Malcolm, good morning. Thank you so much for being with us.

The federal government’s COVID-19 stimulus package needs to be addressed so more Australians can be more [inaudible 00:00:28] on food production. Now, One Nation has called for a guarantee of water for farmers to plant essential crops this month and this would go a long way to feeding the nation in very tough times.

Malcom Roberts:

Yes, and good morning Ben and thank you for the invitation to join your show. Yes, we have asked for that because farmers are needing a drink of water for their crops by April 15th, sorry, by May 15th so that they can get their winter crops in and going. That’s needed and that’s not going to be a subsidy or anything like that, Ben. That’s going to be pure wealth created just out of water that’s natural. It’s just been withheld from farmers mate and we need to give it back to them.

Ben:

Well, I mean there’s so much has changed. I mean Vietnam have banned exporting their own home grown rice to Australia and so we actually need to prioritise our food production for Australians because we’ve seen now what a risk to our health by letting anybody into this country. And I don’t want to in any way, I’m not trying to be racist, I’m not trying to be, but our biosecurity failed us and now is, more than any time, is where we need to shore up our food and shore up our buyer security, if ever there’s been a time. And this would go a long way to growing essential crops for the nation.

Malcom Roberts:

You’re exactly correct. We had a very strong rice production in Southern New South Wales and that has been decimated by the stupid and corrupt practises that have been going on with regard to water in the Murray-Darling basin. And that has been a fault of the Turnbull Howard government that brought in the 2007 water act and that has destroyed agriculture right across the Murray-Darling basin and it sent water to corporates and taking it away from family farmers.

And family farmers, Ben, are the guts of this country. They’re the core because they’re the ones who know that if you look after the land because you give it to your kids eventually or you retire or you sell it and use the retirement to go and live somewhere else. They’re being destroyed. And that’s what we need to bring back, family farming in this country because that’s where the communities are.

Corporates, global corporates, large Australian corporates don’t give a damn about communities. They don’t give a damn about rural Australia. They don’t give a damn about food security. It’s all a profit. And so what we need to do is restore our communities and their rural sector. There is an ideological assault on rural Australia and it starts with water policy, it continues with energy policy and it’s most of all, it’s about the stealing of the farmers rights to use the land they have bought. I don’t know if you know of Dan McDonalds-

Ben:

Yeah, sure.

Malcom Roberts:

I mean, Dan has said that every input, the farming these days is controlled by some bureaucrat. So farming has been nationalised. It’s no longer a private enterprise business. It’s been nationalised. It’s being destroyed and that’s what we need to protect because this Covid virus has exposed huge gaps in national security. We haven’t got enough face masks. We haven’t got enough ventilators. We haven’t got enough basic stuff. And yet we shifted all the production of this to overseas starting with the UN in 1975, the Lima Agreement signed by the Whitlam’s labour government and then ratified the following year in ’76 by Frazier’s liberal government.

The UN has just, we’ve taken it all off shore and we are now vulnerable. We don’t make masks, we don’t make ventilators, we don’t make cars. We make [inaudible 00:04:05] and we need to get that back into this country. We need to restore our economic productive capacity and their economic resilience. Mate, that’s really been highlighted by this.

Ben:

I agree with you. I mean we need to start building things back in Australia. There’s no two ways about it. Industry needs to happen here and for too long we’ve been relying on doing it cheaper from overseas and bring it in here.

But let’s just get back to what you’re talking about with the Murray-Darling basin. Now we know Queensland New South Wales, Victorian farmers received zero general security water allocation for irrigation over the last three years. That’s a fact. There’s no two ways about-.

They’re trying to get it under control, but big business and foreign owned companies have bought up all the allocation at different stages. They’ve sold it. It’s traded as a commodity. It’s been an absolute mess. Now how would you go about fixing it and can you get the numbers in the Senate to make some change?

Malcom Roberts:

Getting the numbers in the Senate is difficult because there are only two of us at the moment and that’s the big mess. [crosstalk 00:05:02].

Ben:

But there are people who are willing in the LNP and the national party to try and see farmers get more food secure and get more food security here in Queensland and New South Wales and Victoria.

Malcom Roberts:

There are also people in the LNP protecting the corporates and protecting the water act. And that’s what’s caused the disruption of farming in across the Murray-Darling basin, Ben. It’s not everyone in the liberal national party. It’s not for the land.

For example, have a look at Senator Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce. They were once the best speakers in parliament against this climate crap. And then they both got in the cabinet and their lips were sealed. And then even Senator Matt Canavan even spoke in favour of this climate nonsense.

And then now that One Nation is making inroads into their vote because we’re supporting coal, because we’re supporting land use being given back to farmers to control, Matt’s come out now he’s talking like one of us, but he still votes with the Trent Zimmermans and the Zali Steggles and the Graves, the same policies that are destroying land use, that are destroying farming, that are destroying [inaudible 00:06:12] in this country.

We’ve got farmers who have been told in North Queensland, I spoke to one personally, Central Queensland and Southern Queensland, who would not plant fodder during the drought because electricity prices were too damn high to pump water. I mean this is insane. That’s where we’ve got to with the policies that the liberal nationals have pushed. We’ve destroyed our farming sector [so] that John Howard [could] comply with the Kyoto protocol, which he proudly discussed, has stolen the land rights, the land use rights of farmers in this country. They’ve stolen the water through the water act, which was Turnbull and Howard, and then Howard complying to the Kyoto protocol and the liberal nationals complying with UN agreements, including the Paris Agreement, has wrecked our energy sector.

I mean there’s nothing more fundamental than being able for a farm to buy his or her land and then use it as they want. There’s nothing more fundamental than water. Then there’s nothing more fundamental than energy. Energy prices were decreasing for the last 170 years, relentlessly decreasing in real terms, Ben, and with the policies of the labour greens and liberal nationals party in the last 20 years, they’ve doubled. That’s the reverse of human progress. This is insane what’s going on in this country.

Ben:

Yeah, I think a lot of people are frustrated and clearly you are as well.

Malcom Roberts:

And angry.

Ben:

Yeah, and that’s the big thing. Do you think that they’ve offered enough the government as a stimulus package to try and get this back under control with COVID-19? Was it too little too late? I do know that now is not the time to politicise things, but do you think they’re doing enough?

Malcom Roberts:

Well, I think they are doing enough financially. They’re not doing enough health-wise. The countries that are leading the way and around the world are the East Asian countries of Taiwan and South Korea especially, and to a lesser extent, Singapore.

Now what’s happened is that in the West we’ve tried to balance health and the economics. That is not working. In East Asia, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore, they made health number one priority. They got it under control, had rapid testing, very widespread testing, not only tested for Covid virus in people but tested for temperature because they would basically say, you’re coming into work today, Ben. Here, take your temperature. Mate, you’ve got a hot temperature over here and then we’ll test you for Covid virus. If you have got no temperature, then you go to work.

When they test you for Covid virus, then they say, “Ben, you’ve got Covid virus. Isolated. Off, away you go.” Or if you’re free of Covid virus you get a little note saying Ben Dobbin has got a high temperature today. He’s free to go to work.

What they did was they isolated the sick and the vulnerable, the elderly, the people with chronic disease problems. They isolated them. And Taiwan has had hardly a blip in its economy. South Korea got off on the wrong foot to start with. It went down Italy’s track and then it quickly copied Taiwan and then they got the back and so got everyone back to work.

What we’ve done is we’ve isolated everyone. Instead what we need to do now that we’ve got it starting to get it under control, Ben, we need to see the triggers in the government’s plan for changing our strategy to isolate those with the virus, isolate those vulnerable to the virus and let everyone get back to work. That time could be coming soon, but the government has not focused on that.

What the government is focused on is compromising health and economic activity. And you can’t do that because you end up undermining the health. What we’ve got to do, Taiwan has got the same population of Australia. They’ve had five deaths and they’ve got it earlier than we did, and they hammered it. And that’s what we need, real leadership, real strength.

At the moment, yesterday, Prime Minister Morrison and his health advisor released the broad statement about their modelling, but they didn’t give us the model. They didn’t tell us what the projections were in the future. We need to know them. They need to stop hiding on that. That’s the other thing they did in Taiwan and South Korea, they gave people the truth, gave people the information. That gives people confidence. It also gives people the sense of responsibility because people who are free to make up their mind usually make it the right way. And that’s what they did in Taiwan. That’s what we need to get to.

Ben:

Fantastic. You said it well. Malcolm, appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much for being with us on Rural Queensland Today.

Malcom Roberts:

Anytime, Ben.

Ben:

Good on you. Malcolm Roberts, Senator for One Nation. This is Rural Queensland Today across the Resonate Broadcast network.

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Farm Household Assistance

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The Farm Household Allowance Bill was on today’s agenda as a matter of importance.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support this bill. The reform to make the farm household allowance a flat rate paid on current income, helps to reduce the regulatory burden on farms, who already work long hours for decreasing rewards.

These income audits were a massive distraction, so this is a good move from the government, a welcome move, the extension of time for conducting an assessment helps farms involve their accountants, or bookkeepers, in a process that was previously an ordeal.

My concern in light of current events, is that COVID-19 assistance is targeted at urban, and not rural areas. Our farmers have come through the worst drought in 100 years and the drought may or may not be ending.

What we do know is that the rivers are full, but the damns are empty. Farmers are watching this water, this bounty of water, running down rivers and out to sea. General-security water licence holders are still on zero allocation, they have no confidence that irrigation licences will be honoured.

If international trade is being disrupted, we need to grow food, we need to allow more water to be taken for irrigation. The environment has had a drink, a bellyful, from recent rains, it’s now the farmer’s turn.

What good is farm assistance if farmers go broke, because we took too much water for the environment and not enough for food and fibre? And I’d like to talk about the productive capacity of our country, especially the rural productive capacity.

We have destroyed it in the last 20 years. Farmers have had their ability, their right, to use the land taken from them, stolen from them, to comply with international agreements starting with the UN’s Kyoto protocol.

We need that back, or farmers paid compensation for the loss of their rights. Secondly, water, I’ve just touched on water, but we need to have investment in water infrastructure, and make sure that farmers have that water, because its essential for food. And we need energy prices to be lowered.

We have the world’s biggest exports of natural gas and coal, and yet we have among the highest prices of electricity in this country. We have farmers not able to irrigate, because they can’t afford the electricity to pump water in a country that’s blessed with energy.

What is going on? We have to restore the productive capacity of our country, which means getting back to sensible electricity policies, energy policies, so that we have, once again the lowest prices in the world, the best policies, we’ve got now, the worst.

Restoring the productive capacity will involve, also, other sectors, including education, but it starts with land use, the right to use the land that farmers have bought, the right to access water at sensible prices, free of corruption, and the right to electricity at reasonable prices.

I also want to talk about one other aspect, and that is we have fallen for the globalist trap, of interdependence, inter-dependence, and what that really is, is dependence, because when we’re in interdependent on someone else, with around the globe, and they shut down, we’re suddenly dependent on them.

Australia has got abundant minerals, abundant energies, abundant agricultural resources. We’re not using these resources. Australia has enormous potential with its people, with its resources and its opportunities, and we need to rekindle these, and get back to putting Australia first.

No more interdependence, because that is simply dependence We need to become independent, as we were and we were independent we thrived. And that, when we restore our independence, we will restore our economic resilience and we’ll also restore our productive capacity.

So we compliment the government on this initiative, but we need to go much much further to restore the productive capacity, and economic resilience of our country. Thank you, Mr. President.

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COVID 19 (Coronavirus) Special Sitting of the Senate

I spoke in this special sitting of the Senate dealing with the Corona Virus (COVID19).

Transcript

We applaud Senator Cormann’s opening comments and also Senator Keneally’s opening comments. This is, as Senator Cormann said, a new threat to our nation, our health, people’s health and security and our economics.

COVID-19, as Senator Cormann said, is moving so quickly and on so many fronts. Yet Senator Cormann, through you, Mister President, when we went shopping yesterday to get some food in Canberra, I saw business as usual.

People are not aware of what is happening, not aware of the threats of this so we need to work on that. We will, One Nation, will work with the government to serve the people but what we want to do is to not just slow down the virus but to shut it down to save lives and to minimise economic impact.

Saving jobs will require restoring the productive capacity of our country. This, as many people have said around the world, is now a war and we’re on war footing and that’s why it’s so important to have our productive capacity restored.

Italy had an excuse for the mess in which it finds itself. Open borders and ignorance in dealing with a very new threat, yet South Korea made the same mistake initially but it has rebounded remarkably through rigorous testing, isolating key people and then getting back to normal.

They’ve had minimal disruptions, so is reported. We need, as Senator Cormann said, to heed the advice of the top medical people. Could I ask everyone in this chamber to look at the data, look at the facts around the world.

We now have that data and facts that Italy and South Korea initially didn’t have and that South Korea is now showing us as is Taiwan, Singapore and even mainland China, are showing how to deal with this.

A third point I’d just like to make is that history shows that some entities during such crises and challenging times take advantage of others. We will make sure, in One Nation, to protect our taxpayers, to protect people’s health. We will join with the government in doing that.

We need though, to remember that we look at the future to restore the productive capacity of our country after 20 years of neglect. We need to restore freedoms as soon as possible because economics depends on interaction of people.

Once we cut that interaction, there is a minimal economic trading. So I ask everyone in Australia to cooperate with the government. We elected the government, whether you voted for it or not it is the government and we need to go beyond that to ensure the virus is stopped and everyone in Australia has a role in stopping this virus. Thank you Mister President.

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