Transcript

[Marcus Paul]

All right, welcome back to the programme on this Thursday, December 3, where it’s 22 minutes away from eight o’clock, New South Wales, daylight saving time. And Senator Malcolm Roberts joins us on the programme. Good day, Malcolm.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Good morning, Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus Paul]

I’m okay. I think you’d still be disappointed with the bank bail-in voted down this week. I know you’ve done a lot of work on it.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes, we were disappointed, but we were expecting to get, have it defeated. We were mildly hoping the labour party would wake up, But they abandoned their core, but what has been very good, Marcus, is that as a result of my speech and as a result of the work, one of the liberals came up to me later and he organised a meeting with me and our staff and himself and a senior advisor from the treasurer’s department.

And they now acknowledge that there is a problem and that they have promised to remedy it. So it looks like it’ll be taken care of, anyway, thanks to the effort we’ve done.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, just remind my listeners, What this is all about, what is the bail-in?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, let’s talk about a bail-out first. A bail-out is when a bank gets into trouble and the government gives it taxpayer money. So basically a bail-out is where the taxpayer money goes from the taxpayer through the government, to the bank, save the banks, even though the taxpayers didn’t cause the damage and bail-in is where the bank takes the depositors’ money and converts into shares.

So they get their money, they get the depositors’ money and get out of trouble. And in exchange, the depositors get worthless pieces of paper called shares because the bank is so close to collapse, it won’t be of any value.

So then that means that the depositors have a worthless piece of paper or they can hang on for a few years and hope that the bank comes back, which it probably will in our system, but a bail-in takes money, steals money from the depositors of the bank.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, and you’re hopeful that eventually after further discussions, even though it was voted down earlier this week, you’re hopeful that you will get this passed?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, not passed, but modified by the government itself. So it’ll take care of it. So either we’ll get the corrections that we wanted, the modifications we wanted in the government’s bill, so that there’s no bail-in. Or if there is a bail-in possibility, then at least it will be honestly portrayed.

And so everyone can make up their own mind what to do, but we think a bail-in would be better ruled out because it then instils confidence in the banks. We’ve had something like $20 billion in notes go disappearing in the last 12 months because people are scared of what will happen to their cash if there is a bail-in.

Because they’ve had bail-ins in Greece and other countries, we see this as a magnificent opportunity to clarify and to make it very, very clear to people what is happening.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, you want more of us to drink Australian wine?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yeah. I didn’t know if you knew it, but 30% of our wine export goes to China.

[Marcus Paul]

Oh, yeah I knew it, well used to.

[Malcolm Roberts]

That’s double the UK, double the UK, double the US but an inter parliamentary alliance on China, our friends in parliamentarian and parliaments and congresses around the world showed support for Australia. And they’re really annoyed with the bullying of China against Australia.

So we actually saw a video that was made up of people from Japan, parliamentarians, from Japan, who said, you know, we like our saki better mate, but Aussie wine, go and buy a bottle of Aussie wine, and then the Italian saying we’re the number one wine exporters in the world, and we make the best wine, but go and get a bottle of Aussie wine.

So we’re encouraging Australians to go and spend a bit more time in the wine rose and liquor store and get stuck into some Aussie wine and show the Chinese that we will carry on regardless of their threats.

[Marcus Paul]

Well that’s right, there’s no 212% tariffs here at home with our domestic wine. I mean, we know that wine, the sector itself valued at $4 billion in September, 2020, before these ridiculous over-inflated tariffs were imposed. Maybe we can, I know we export around 15 and 14% respectively to the United Kingdom and to the United States of our wine products maybe we could up their share of exports and not worry too much about China.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Exactly, and I think this is a problem that’s coming home to roost Marcus, we’ve gone to China because it’s the easy way out. We haven’t done the hard yards in this country of fixing the tax system, reducing our energy costs. We’ve instead inflated our energy costs.

We’ve doubled in, some places tripled our electricity costs for example, instead of doing the hard yards to fixing that energy sector and stopping the rort on climate and the subsidies, and instead of fixing the taxation system to make manufacturing more competitive, we have taken a lazy way out and just exported iron ore to China, coal to China, raw materials to China, agricultural products to China and just bought, whatever we can from China, very lazy way.

We’ve destroyed our manufacturing, let China supply us, and we’ve got to stop that. We’ve got to rebuild this country, bring it back to basics.

[Marcus Paul]

You’re not still betting on a Trump win, are you?

[Malcolm Roberts]

Oh yes, definitely. Definitely.

[Marcus Paul]

Malcolm, you still haven’t woken up.

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, no. The fact they’re coming in now there’s clear corruption, Marcus. And I think that Trump has recognised this. In fact, one of the Republicans said that we know there’s been corruption from the Democrats, especially for many, many years.

And Trump, to his credit has set the eyes in motion and the monitors in motion. And now it’s all coming home to roost for the Democrats. There’s serious corruption out there. And there’s a path for Trump to the White House. He’s definitely in.

[Marcus Paul]

Not till 2024, though.

[Malcolm Roberts]

No, no, it’ll be this year. You watch.

[Marcus Paul]

This year?

[Malcolm Roberts]

So much corruption going on that the constitution and the laws in America provides for this kind of circumstance. And Trump is in the box seat. He knows what he’s doing.

[Marcus Paul]

You want to bet me a bottle of wine on this? Australian wine

[Malcolm Roberts]

I definitely do.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Now the Australian federal integrity commission, you know, that toothless tiger that’s been suggested, the centre for public integrity called a press conference to highlight the extensive inadequacies of the government’s draught Commonwealth integrity commission bill, 2020.

There were plenty of people present, including previous members of the high court, former judges from the Victorian court of appeal and a former judge of the New South Wales court of appeal. Now, Helen Haines MP has introduced a better version. The Australian federal integrity commission bill 2020. What do you say to this?

[Malcolm Roberts]

We actually like Helen Haines’s version much better. We’ve had a couple of presentations on it. We listened to Helen herself, came over to Pauline’s office and I joined them. It’s quite good. The Australian centre for public integrity endorses it. And the government’s bill is a shocker.

It’s just a lazy well, it doesn’t even work properly because politicians are treated differently from everyone else. They’re treated far too softly. And, that’s, you know, that’s the worst thing you can do to restore public confidence in the integrity in parliament.

The second thing is that the government’s proposal has a very high threshold for referrals. You have to be, have a lot of evidence there before you can even get through. And the third thing is that the Attorney General has powers to limit information that can be considered by the corruption commission.

[Marcus Paul]

Well as I said, it’s toothless.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes, that’s basically it, they can hide, they can still hide. And the other thing, Marcus, is it’s not retrospective meaning that we won’t be able to investigate any of the past dodgy dealings.

[Marcus Paul]

That’s right. And you know, we may never know why the government thought it was a great idea or a great investment to, you know, overspend on land at Badgerys Creek Airport, and the rest of it. Malcolm, I’ll have to leave it there today, but thank you very much, mate. We’ll catch up with you again next week.

[Malcolm Roberts]

I’ll look forward to drinking your wine.

[Marcus Paul]

He’s still in lala land over there. All right, mate. Good on you, we’ll talk soon.

[Malcolm Roberts]

See you, mate.

[Marcus Paul]

All right, there he is. Senator Malcolm Roberts.