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Double Jeopardy in Tax Unfair

One Nation supports an efficient, honest and fair tax system.

A fair tax system is one where tax is not double-charged. That’s what franking credits do. They make sure a tax is not double-charged.

They ensure that Australians don’t pay income tax on the parts of dividends on which the government has already collected company tax. That’s fair. There’s no reason to allow the government to double-dip on Australian profits and then again on Australians’ income.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 1) Bill 2023. One Nation supports an efficient, honest and fair tax system. An important aspect of a fair system to is to make sure tax is not double-charged. That’s what franking credits do. They make sure a tax is not double-charged. They ensure that Australians don’t pay income tax on the parts of dividends on which the government has already collected company tax. That’s fair. There’s no reason to allow the government to double-dip on Australian profits and then again on Australians’ income.  

In the 2019 election campaign, Labor proposed changes to the franking credits system. Australia completely rejected those thought bubbles. Labor learnt from that lesson and for the 2022 election, promised there would be no changes made to franked dividends if Australia voted them into government. Yet, now that Labor is in government, schedules 4 and 5 make a number of wholesale changes to how the dividend, share buyback, and franking system currently works. It is a broken promise, yet another to add to Labor’s list of broken promises. Just like when they promised to reduce your power bills by $275, Labor’s promise that they wouldn’t touch franking credits was a lie. As always, the government claims that these are simply modest changes. They’re anything but modest, with large implications for companies and for capital markets. The government hasn’t been able to articulate the need for these changes, nor quantify how big an impact they will have. They’re doing it, and they don’t even know what will happen. We cannot legislate on a hope, a vibe or a wish that it will be okay. While that is, according to some in government, Prime Minister Albanese’s modus operandi, it’s not a responsible way to steer a $1.7 trillion economy. It’s highly irresponsible. One Nation will be opposing these changes in schedules 4 and 5 and cannot pass the bill if they remain part of this package.  

Schedule 2 lays the groundwork for standards that align money to climate goals. This would presumably be to create alignment with the greatest scam in finance: ESG standards—environment, social and governance. The powers that be call them ‘sustainability standards’, yet there’s nothing sustainable about them. In fact, UN sustainability policies survive only as parasites on subsidies from the real economy—subsidies: that makes them unsustainable. So-called sustainability standards talk about protecting the financial system from risks. Yet they cannot quantify what those risks are. The idea that the government or, worse, a single bureaucratic department can ever predict and quantify risk to the financial system is sheer lunacy.

A brief analysis of history shows that. Did the government and regulatory agencies see the risk of the dot com bubble coming in the 2000s? No. They had no idea. Did the American regulators see the risk of subprime mortgages leading to the global financial crisis? No. They arguably participated in and make it far worse. Did any regulator around the world predict the risk of almost every government in the world going certifiably insane in response to COVID, a bad flu? No, they did not. Over the last three years, the Reserve Bank created $500 billion in electronic journal entries, money concocted out of thin air. Did any regulator predict the risks that would lead to the skyrocketing inflation that we’re still trying to get under control? No, they did not. Actually, some did, and we were ridiculed by the experts. The point here is very simple. The government and the regulators cannot quantify the risk of financial system shock. History shows governments are hilariously bad at it. They certainly won’t be able to do it for supposed climate risks that are nothing more than fabrications concocted from inherent, natural, cyclical variation. By the way, everything in nature—everything in existence—varies, yet understanding of variation is not taught in schools and rarely taught properly, if at all, at university. That’s why Green, Labor, Teal and, sadly, some Liberal-National members and senators spout nonsense in this parliament and in public, concocting and spreading imaginary fears of climate apocalypse, when reality shows simply inherent, natural, cyclical variation. 

They cannot even come up with the only sound and essential basis for policy—that is, they’ve never quantified the specific effect of carbon dioxide from human activity. That means they have no basis for climate and energy policy, no specific quantified goals for climate and energy policy and no means of measuring progress towards those goals. We’re flying blind. Australia is flying blind. Energy costs and climate policies are out of control and needlessly imposing huge costs on families, small businesses, our country and our nation’s future. Anyway, the only thing we can do to protect against systemic risks is to make sure that financial intermediaries are well capitalised and diversified to survive any risk that comes to fruition. Doing anything else encourages a lack of diversification and actually increases risk. 

I don’t believe in this climate apocalypse nonsense, this climate fraud, yet even for those who do fall for this illusion there’s no serious risk to anything. Let’s look at the supposed science around climate risk. When I ask the government why we need to cut human production of carbon dioxide, they point me to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN IPCC. They’re a dodgy bunch—proven over 40-plus years—yet I don’t think anyone in here has actually read the IPCC reports they claim as proof the climate is going to collapse. If you go to the IPCC’s assessment report 6, you’ll see chapter 12 is the summary of Working Group I, who looked at the actual science around natural disasters. Table 12.12 summarises all of the available evidence on the frequency of extreme weather events. Let me read out the types of natural disasters where even the United Nations has said there has been no detectable increase in the number of natural disasters. I repeat that: no detectable increase in frost, river flood, rain measured in terms of mean precipitation or heavy precipitation, landslide, drought, fire weather, wind speed, windstorm, tropical cyclone, dust storm, heavy snowfall, hail, relative sea level, coastal flood, marine heatwave—and on and on. Although I do not put any trust in the United Nations, government claims it does, and the United Nations says there has been no increase in severe weather events in those categories—none. 

Even better, table 12.12 in the IPCC’s AR6 says the United Nations doesn’t expect to see any detectable increase in those categories in the next 80 years under its worst-case scenario. There’s no risk to the financial system from climate change because there’s no need to cut human production of carbon dioxide—end of story. 

As an aside, I ask: on what basis does Minister Watt get his frequent fanciful, scary claims of increasing extreme weather events? Wild imagination, Senator Watt? From where do the Greens get their dishonest claims? From where does Senator Pocock get his pseudoscience to support his Kermit green fantasy policies? Is it the family money of Simon Holmes a Court, who now relies on the millions of green subsidy dollars that support otherwise unsustainable and failing wind and solar net zero projects—parasitic subsidies from energy users and taxpayers who pay through needlessly higher prices. 

Recently in this chamber I heard Senator David Pocock cite scientists who said they have fears for the climate. Significantly, he did not provide any science to back it up, apparently because he seems to just swallow their words because they claim to be scientists. That’s what’s happened repeatedly in this chamber. People don’t produce the science; they say what scientists conclude and don’t analyse it. Those scientists are on major grants to push the climate fraud. Real scientists don’t peddle unsubstantiated fears. Scientists present science, presenting the empirical scientific data as evidence within logical scientific points, proving cause and effect. Never has anyone done that. Senator David Pocock never presents any such science nor references the specific pages providing such logical scientific points—never. Extreme weather has always been with us. It remains with us and will always be with us. It’s natural and often cyclical.  

So what’s the real reason for implementing so-called sustainability standards and ESG? The Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones, said it in his second reading speech to this bill: the purpose is to ‘align capital flows towards climate and sustainability goals’. I’ll say it again: the purpose is to ‘align capital flows towards climate and sustainability goals’—political goals, not scientific. Those are the goals of predatory globalist billionaires and the rent seekers who are flogging wind, solar and battery products, billionaires peddling parasitic mis-investments in solar, wind and batteries and transferring wealth from families, small businesses and employers to billionaires, often overseas. 

Despite claims that these solar and wind products are the cheapest, the free market has utterly failed to adopt them, because they simply cannot survive in the wild on their own, without subsidies. In other speeches in recent weeks, I’ve documented the huge number of failures in wind and solar projects overseas and here in Australia. They’re falling over like flies. Billionaires behind the climate push are panicking now that their parasitic investments won’t get the return they need. The teals’ sugar daddy, Simon Holmes a Court; Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest; Johnny-come-lately to climate fearmongering Mike Cannon-Brookes; and old stagers Alex Turnbull and Ross Garnaut—having failed with climate scams in the free market, these climate doomsayers now need the government to direct money their way through implementation of ‘climate standards’—they’re going to standardise the climate!—to, as the Assistant Treasurer said, ‘align capital flows’. This is more of the crony capitalism that has ruined Australia. If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable. This is why I’ve circulated an amendment to strike out schedule 2 of the bill. There’s no reason to even start down this path of folly and pretend that, hidden away in the cupboard somewhere, the government have a crystal ball they can use to predict the future. If they do, they clearly haven’t used it before. 

A final concern I’ll raise is with schedule 1, part 2, of the bill. This gives ASIC the power to use ‘assisted decision-making’ processes. That’s their label. This amendment is incredibly broad and vague, and we can assume this will involve some level of automation and, eventually, the implementation of AI, artificial intelligence. It’s incredibly concerning that the explanatory memorandum includes, at 1.24: ‘ASIC may change a decision made by an assisted decision-making process if it is satisfied the decision is wrong.’ Can you believe it? This very heavily implies that a human will not be involved in the decision-making process. An assisted decision-making process should only be in place to assist a human in making a decision. There should not be a robot using artificial intelligence to make the decision itself. The fact that Labor would introduce this blank cheque to the new robot overlords in the wake of a royal commission they called into robodebt is a stunning revelation. If the robots get it wrong, there’s no clear avenue of appeal for a person who is subject to the wrong decision. They’ll simply have to rely on ASIC deciding to look at it on their own motion and finding out it’s wrong. Good luck with that. This change is too broad, and One Nation is raising its concerns now so that these issues can be monitored in future. 

To summarise, the government would be better off going back to the drawing board on this con hiding behind the label ‘Treasury laws’. 

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Big consulting companies are draining taxpayer funds for nothing

The Government spends millions of dollars every year on consulting companies that overcharge to give the Government an opinion they want to hear.

Last week in the Senate I supported a motion creating an inquiry into the use of consulting companies so we can cut the waste.

Transcript

One Nation will be supporting Senator Barbara Pocock’s motion because we believe that the big consulting companies are basically guns for hire. They’re opinions for hire. They give the government what the government wants, at a million dollars a gig. Some of these big firms are multinationals out of Japan.

So we will be supporting this.

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We are in unconscionable levels of debt – Alan Jones and Malcolm Roberts on ADH TV

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Australia’s trillion dollar debt is eye-watering. But here’s the government wasting money on ridiculous grants and schemes. We have to turn this boat around.

Transcript

Alan Jones:

We’ve heard endless overtures from the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, about his budget on October 25, there’ll be no new taxes. And yet, as I said earlier tonight, we have unconscionable levels of debt. Labour has to honour more than $2,000,000 of election promises. The growth in spending for the NDIS is forecast to be over 12%. That’s just growth. And in defence spending over 4%. And, of course, then there’s aged care and health and, of course, the cost of servicing the Commonwealth debt will increase by 14%. That’s why they’re carrying on about Stage 3 tax cuts, but that won’t get them out of trouble.

The way to go, if you’ve got the guts, is to cut waste. Let me give you some examples. I’m all for the arts, but how do we give a female artist $20,000 for her Yawning Room at a Woolloomooloo gallery? How do you give $20,000 to an art group for Project Immaculate where a Melbourne artist is filming and recording, listen to this, quote, “monthly live self insemination to elevate the experience of queer reproduction and disrupt heteronormative parenting narratives.” Why is $80,000 given for drawing a bum puppet with the image of the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison, on its posterior? $80,000 went to a Chinese Australian poet writing about toilet rolls and bodily fluids. Another $80,000 went to a bloke, this is last year, and what were the Labour Party saying about it in Opposition. It should have been a field day, but $80,000 to a bloke who said he was an experimentalist and a poet and that quote, “Poetry always accompanies bowel movements. There is a mysterious connection between the two.” $80,000. Is that a palpable waste of taxpayers money? Ideologically driven rubbish? And Government and Opposition have done nothing?

Then you get the staff levels of politicians. As I’ve said many times, I worked for a Prime Minister. We had five staff. Now I know things have changed, but does any Australian leader need almost 60 staff? If Dr. Chalmers wants to talk about waste and saving money, which he should, rather than raising taxes, let him start with his indulged ministerial colleagues.

Senator Malcolm Roberts is an outstanding, highly intelligent, splendidly credentialed One Nation Senator from Queensland. Only this week he has raised what he called wasteful Federal Government spending, where two government departments alone spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayers money last financial year on lavish business class flights. He cited one public servant charging taxpayers $4,955 for a 55 minute business class flight from Canberra to Sydney.

Senator Malcolm Roberts joins me. Malcolm Roberts, thank you for your time. Hang on. $5,000 for 55 minutes. What was going on?

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, he must have been very, very tall and very cramped to justify the extra room in business class for just 55 minutes. I think he should be able to hang on. But, Alan, this just is symptomatic of the sense of entitlements, the low accountability and the absolutely atrocious governance in this country.

Alan Jones:

I mean, you’ve provided a list here as long as your arm. I mean, if it’s someone else’s money, of course, taxpayers’ money, away they go.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, Alan, when I walk on board a plane, I walk through business class and I go to the back of the bus. I walk past the Greens and business class, past the Liberals in business class, past the Nationals in business class, past the Labour in business class and plus past the bureaucrats in business class. Why can’t they go to the back just like I do? And in fact, you get a better flight because you listen to people. You have a good natter to people. Isn’t that what it’s about? Listening to constituents?

Alan Jones:

Yes, I mean, you make this point, don’t you? And it’s so true that many hardworking, tax paying Australians who are watching you tonight have never flown business class in their life. Yet here is workers’ money, taxes, being used for staff to fly up the front of the plane.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s right. And these people are paying their wages. These people are paying their flights. These people are paying the premium for the business class experience, the free booze, and yet they’ve never been on a plane, some of them, and yet they’ve never been, certainly on business class.

Alan Jones:

There is a case for ministers and others flying business class where they get some work done and whatever, but on a 55 minute flight, for God’s sake, I wouldn’t know how you’d run up a bill of $5,000. But, why, ministerial staff, Malcolm? I mean, you’ve never been a minister. Your boss has never been a minister. This is completely over the odds. The indulged way in which these people have staff that could never, ever be fully occupied because there’s the department as well. I mean, if you’re the Minister for Industrial Relations with a stack of staff or the Treasurer, then there’s a Treasury as well full of bureaucrats. How the hell can these staff numbers be justified?

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, they can’t be, Alan. You made a very good point at CPAC. Let me just quote your figures. The gross national debt was at 20% of GDP in 2013. That was the end of the Labour party, time in Canberra. We are now at over 42% of GDP. And that’s with what? Nine years of Liberal National Party government.

Alan Jones:

Absolutely.

Malcolm Roberts:

The so-called restrained ones, the fiscally conservative party.

Alan Jones:

Oh yes.

Malcolm Roberts:

And yet we’re at 42% of GDP.

Alan Jones:

I mean, it used to be raison d’être that the coalition, the Liberals would manage your money better. And those figures that I cited indicate that it’s just been an extravaganza. Look, Malcolm, it might be unfashionable to say it. And I’m offering no reflection on a court case currently taking place in the ACT, but here were ministerial staffers, plural, out on the town, getting drunk. Now, when I worked in Canberra, we had no time to be going to clubs or bars, even if we knew where they were. We were just too damn busy. It prompts a question, doesn’t it? What kind of worldly informed advice could any 24 year old give to a government minister?

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, Alan, I find the same problems at Parliament House. I never stop. I haven’t got time to go out into the clubs. I haven’t got time to go and get boozy. But what it is is the rot always starts at the top. The fish rotting starts at the head of the fish. And the same with government. What we’ve got is a very lax system in Parliament. We’ve got very low accountability between the Labour Party and the Liberal Party. And what we see is, I mean, we are talking about $5,000 flights to Sydney. We’re talking about the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, $5,500 flights, $4,300 flights, $4,184, $4,095, $5,063 flights on business class. We’re talking about that. But the bigger malaise in this country, that is almost insignificant compared to the bigger malaise. We are talking about policies in this country that are not based on data and that contradict the real world data. We’re talking about policies that are costing people trillions of dollars, not billions, Alan, trillions of dollars. You know that from the energy consequences.

Alan Jones:

Well, I’m going to talk about …

Malcolm Roberts:

We’re talking about …

Alan Jones:

I’ll cover that energy thing in a moment. I just want to finish on staff. See all this nonsense about the Teals being refused staff by Anthony Albanese. I give Anthony Albanese full marks. These people automatically have four staff and they want more. I’d like to know what Zali Steggall has done that benefits any constituent in the seat of Warringah.

Malcolm Roberts:

There’s no reason for that in a small seat of Warringah. Look at Anthony Albanese’s seat. It’s three kilometres across in radius roughly, 32 square kilometres in total area. Queensland is, what was it now? I’ve forgotten the figures, but you know it’s 2,800 kilometres from north to south. It’s 2,000 kilometres east to west. We need staff to get around and listen and with us. So there is a need for some staff for senators, but not for MPs in inner city suburbs.

Alan Jones:

I don’t want to let you go without talking about this cost that you talked about, which was a very valid point. What are the costs to the taxpayer of policies? Now, we’ve seen this week, the very thing that you and I have warned about, energy price is going to climb through the roof. Up to 35% increases next year. Business and households won’t be able to cope. You and I have warned of this. We talked about 17 internationally respected climate scientists from six nations including Australia and covering many disciplines of climate science and climatology who have confirmed your conclusion that CSIRO, our leading research entity in this country, had never presented logical scientific points needed as the basis of policy in climate change.

Malcolm Roberts:

That is correct. And what’s more, what we find is that the CSIRO in their first presentation to me, which lasted two and a half hours, as did the other two presentations, the first one, they admitted that they have never said to any government that there is danger from carbon dioxide from human activity. So I said, “Who has said that danger?” And they said, “Well, you’ll have to go and ask the ministers who’ve been saying it.” The second presentation, they admitted to me, Alan, under cross examination of their presentation that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. Yet the whole global warming, global climate live was based on the premise that we’ve got unprecedented temperatures. Complete rubbish. Complete rubbish. And now we’ve got trillions of dollars going to be blown and wasted and opportunity costs. We’re going to have Australia decimated.

Look, Alan, when I was a boy, I was born in India for first seven years there. Then we moved to the Hunter Valley. I lived in the bush outside of a town called Kurri Kurri. I used to cycle to school and I went past the aluminium smelter at Alcan. That was built, as was the Tomago smelter, because they were attracted to Hunter Valley because of our clean, high quality, coal, which made cheap electricity. Australia had the world’s cheapest electricity. We’ve now got amongst the world’s highest.

Alan Jones:

We certainly have.

Malcolm Roberts:

But the primacy of energy is really fundamental. You don’t get human progress without ever decreasing energy prices. From 1850 to 1970, we had a relentless reduction in the unit cost of electricity, which dramatically rose productivity, which dramatically gave us our standard of living. We went from scratching in the dirt in famines in the course of 120 years to being free of all of that.

That’s human progress. In the last few decades, we have reversed that. And instead of having a decreasing price of electricity, we’ve had a doubling and a trebling of electricity prices. Now the significant thing of that is that not only does human progress get reversed, but manufacturing, these days, the largest cost component is not labour. The largest cost component has been electricity for quite some time in manufacturing. When we increase our electricity prices due to the highest subsidies of solar and wind in the world, we are double the next highest per capita. We are sending our manufacturing to China. China is manufacturing with our coal, wind turbines and solar panels, shipping them to here where we subsidise the Chinese to instal them. We subsidise the Chinese to run them. We are gutting our manufacturing. We have got farmers in North Queensland, Central Queensland, Southern Queensland, during the last drought, not planting fodder crops because the cost of electricity for pumping water was too high. And this is absurd. We are destroying our country. I call it the solar and wind, a kamikaze malinvestment. Kamikaze malinvestment. That’s what these things are. Parasitic.

Alan Jones:

Well, I’ve called it a national economic suicide note. We’ve run out of time, Malcolm, but I just want to commend you, this man called the Climate Change Bill. Talks in simple language, and I’ll say it slowly. Malcolm Roberts, Senator. Malcolm Roberts, that’s this bloke here, has said, and I’ve said this too, but he’s put it in different lingo. The Climate Change Bill is the biggest change to Australian lives, the Parliament of Australia has ever considered. I’ve called it a national economic suicide note, and that’s where we’re heading.

Malcolm, good to talk to you. We’ll keep talking to you. We’ll have you back. Thanks for your time tonight.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you, Alan. Thank you for what you’re doing.

Alan Jones:

Not at all. There he is. Senator, Malcolm Roberts.

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JETSETTING STAFF CHARGE TAXPAYERS FOR LUXURY FLIGHTS

Senator Roberts has slammed wasteful Federal government spending as FOI documents reveal two government departments alone spent nearly a quarter million dollars of taxpayer money on lavish business class flights last financial year.

“Public servants need to get the message that taxpayer money isn’t theirs to splash on luxury flights,” Senator Roberts said.

“A public servant charging taxpayers $4,955 for a 55 minute business class flight from Canberra to Sydney is simply outrageous and shouldn’t be allowed.”

“Many hardworking, tax-paying Australians have never flown business class in their life. Using Australian taxes for staff to fly up the front of the plane and live a life of luxury is an insult.”

“This is just one example of the disregard some have for taxpayers’ money. Unfortunately, it’s all too common across government.”

“If the Prime Minister is serious about budget repair he needs to rein in his wasteful departments. It looks like the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry should be first on his list.”

FOI Documents – FY21/22 Staff Business Class flights:

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New submarine contract should be cancelled

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Today I supported a Motion to keep the Collins Class submarine extensive maintenance and upgrade refit program in South Australia rather than have it moved to Western Australia. I also took time to condemn the new contract signed to build 12 new submarines.

This order will cost $200 billions. These submarines will be obsolete before they even get delivered. This money would be better spent supporting our economy as we recover from the COVID19 economic crisis.

Transcript

– Mr. President thank you, I’ll seek leave to make a short statement one minute.

– Leave is granted for one minute.

– Thank you, we supported the original motion, the current sustainment model that supports the Collins class submarines works well in South Australia and it is not warranted to move this to Western Australia.

Of greater significance is the absurdly expensive contract, that the government signed to purchase 12 new submarines over the next 20 years. The current cost of building them with all peripherals is now around $200,000,000,000, $200,000,000,000, has this government gone mad?

In the middle of this pandemic we cannot afford to proceed with this contract. This money will be far better spent to support the Australian recovery from the economic pit, that is caused by this pandemic. By the time these submarines are delivered, they will be obsolete.

A complete waste of money that would be far better spent elsewhere. The cost of $400,000,000 to cancel this contract is a pittance compared with proceeding.

We need to dump this new subs contract.

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