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Federal Government Enables the States to Steal Property

I supported a motion from Senators Colbeck and Cadell that called for an inquiry into property rights. In particular, I speak here about the compulsory acquisition of land for the short-sighted and unsustainable failed wind and solar experiment across vast tracts of our countryside.

Although our Commonwealth Constitution recognises and enshrines secure property ownership, this is worthless because the States have become adept at stealing land from landowners, mostly in an ongoing attack on farmers. Worse still, State Governments are not paying “just compensation” that Australia’s Commonwealth Constitution demands (Section 51, clause 31), because the States each have their own constitutions that do not provide for just compensation.

The Labor Government is hell bent on vandalising vast tracts of prime environmental habitat and productive food-producing land for banks of expensive, unreliable wind turbines and toxic solar arrays, each with access roads and a spiderweb of high-voltage power lines that leave permanent scars across national parks and private land.

City dwellers will eventually recognise that demonising farmers and hijacking their land for massive energy white elephants is contributing to the rising cost of living.

Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson – you can have farms without cities, but you cannot have cities without the farms.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I remind people of what Thomas Jefferson said: ‘we can have farming without cities yet cannot have cities without farming’. No farmers, no Australia! Why does this Labor government use the states to steal property from hardworking landowners and rip off farmers left, right and centre? Why? Because it can. And it builds on actions of past Liberal-National governments. 

Before explaining that, Madam Acting Deputy President, let me say that I have a list of eight keys to ongoing, sustained human progress—just ones that I’ve developed over the years. The first is freedom. The second is the rule of law. The third is constitutional continuance and competitive federalism. The fourth is secure private property rights. That’s fundamental. It enables freedom. The fifth is strong families. The sixth is affordable, reliable energy. Then there’s fair and honest taxation and honest money. 

Secure property rights are fourth on my list. Why? Because secure property rights are fundamental to reward for genuine effort and creativity and for investing and taking risk. People won’t do that if they can’t keep what they earn. Secondly, secure property rights are necessary for people to exercise initiative. Thirdly, secure property rights are necessary for people to exercise responsibility and accountability, because if you can just steal it then why would you have any accountability? The fourth fundamental about secure property rights is freedom. It enables freedom. This has been well known for centuries. One of the reasons communism and socialism always fail is that they steal property rights. And it’s the reason, always, that personal free enterprise succeeds until the government—and this has happened repeatedly throughout history—gets too big and infringes on civil liberties. It destroys property rights and infringes on civil liberties. 

So it’s very important, and our founding fathers agreed, because our Commonwealth Constitution recognises and enshrines the importance of secure property rights. Under Section 51, Clause 31 of the Commonwealth Constitution, our Constitution, the Commonwealth may acquire property from a state or person providing it is on just terms. So reading that in context, Section 51 of the Constitution says: 

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: 

then one of them is listed, one of the many listed is – the acquisition of property on just terms from any State or person for any purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws; 

That is clear—’just terms’. This means that the Commonwealth, the federal government, must pay the person being dispossessed of rights to use their land reasonable and just compensation for the property the Commonwealth acquires. If the Commonwealth interferes with rights to use land, it must pay just-terms compensation. 

Generally, the states lack such property protections. Should a state acquire—or even steal, as has happened—land for a state, it does not need to provide compensation. Under state constitutions, no compensation is required. Even if a state acquires land for a Commonwealth purpose, the state is not bound under the Commonwealth Constitution to acquire it under just terms. This would then enable working around the constitutional protection for landowners, as I’m going to tell you with a story that is actually factual. 

This is a story about the worst theft of property rights in our country’s history. It happened during the lifetime of everyone in this chamber. In 2007, after John Howard was booted from office, I wrote a personal letter of thanks to him. I thought highly of John Howard. I thanked him and acknowledged him for his 30 years of work and for being at the forefront of the governance and policies introduced by the Keating and Hawke governments as well as has his own government afterward. Yet I didn’t know at the time something that I’m going to share with you. It was the former Liberal-National coalition government under Prime Minister John Howard who came up with the disgraceful mechanism of using the states to do the federal government’s dirty work for it. This is not new. This goes back to 1996-97. 

The story starts with the United Nations Kyoto protocol on climate variation and John Howard’s admitted desire to comply with it. He said he wouldn’t sign the 1997 Kyoto protocol but we would comply with it as a country. He or his government realised that people were not ready at that time to shut down industry, power stations, agriculture, travel and transport that produce carbon dioxide, so they came up with a different idea—a worse idea: stop the farmers clearing their land. Stop the farmers using their land as they were free to do. The Constitution, though, requires compensation. That would have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The federal government could not afford that, so the Howard government went around the Constitution, using the states to do the federal government’s dirty work of stealing farmers’ land to comply with the UN Kyoto Protocol, because John Howard’s government realised that they could cut the production of carbon dioxide or they could stop the clearing of land, which would be getting credit for giving more absorption of carbon dioxide. It was the same net effect. He did it without any scientific basis, as I’ll explain in a minute. 

One of the Howard government’s early responses was to do a deal with Rob Borbidge’s National Party government in Queensland. We had a National Party government in Queensland and three signatures from the senior National Party people, doing a deal with the Liberal-National federal government. They did a similar deal with Bob Carr, of the Labor Party in New South Wales, and then entrenched the deal with Peter Beattie in Queensland. Despite the denials under the Morrison government, this is still something the federal government relies upon for climate compliance. The irony is that John Howard betrayed himself as a champion of the Constitution and a champion of property rights that are fundamental to free enterprise societies. If you don’t believe me on this story, ask Peter Spencer, who nearly died protesting. Ask Dan McDonald and many farmers who are awake to this in Queensland and New South Wales. 

In 2013, six years after being booted from office, John Howard said, as the annual lecturer on climate at the London Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is a sceptic think tank opposed to the impacts of climate policy economically, that, after doing what he did to destroy our electricity sector and steal farmers’ property rights, on the topic of climate science he was agnostic. None of it was driven by climate science. Yet he led a government that stole farmers’ property rights and introduced a renewable energy target that is now gutting our electricity sector—shipping manufacturing overseas because of high electricity prices, driving families broke and causing inflation. His government concocted the National Electricity Market, which is really a racket. It’s not a market; it’s a bureaucracy that controls prices. Contrary to what people have been saying about Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, John Howard was the first leader of a major party and of a government to put in place an emissions trading scheme as policy.  

This set a pattern for Labor because, if you look at the history of climate policy and energy policy, the Liberal-National coalition introduces climate and energy initiatives and the Labor Party, when it comes in, then ramps them up. Have a look at the safeguard mechanism as a foundation for a global carbon dioxide tax. That was admitted when Greg Hunt, under Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership, introduced the safeguard mechanism in 2015. It wasn’t Chris Bowen—he just ramped it up. The UN’s net zero strategy was first introduced to Australia by Scott Morrison, and it was then ramped up by the Greens and the Labor Party. Carbon farming—or money farming—sterilises and steals and locks up the land, increasing the cost of feral animal management and noxious weed management for all the farmers in the area. Locking up land means it becomes full of weeds. For UN biodiversity policies, look at the Howard government again.  

Back to the Howard government, the 2007 Water Act and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority separated water entitlements from the land. Now we see in the Murray-Darling Basin—with the loss of property rights and water entitlements—the land is now married back up with water in the hands of corporate farmers on corporate farms. One of the aims of the Water Act, which is repeatedly stated throughout the act, is compliance with international agreements. What the hell is that doing in our legislation? 

Let’s have a look at the Labor state and federal governments. The Beattie Labor government in Queensland ramped up the stealing of farmers’ property rights by imposing more restrictions on farmers’ use of land, and so did Anna Bligh’s government. Campbell Newman’s government failed to restore property rights and just looked the other way. Annastacia Palaszczuk has since extended the stealing of property rights and entrenched it. The states have become adept at this method of stealing land from landowners, mostly as an attack on farmers, and not paying just terms compensation. Another way the states—Queensland in particular—do this is by using environmental reasons to justify placing restrictions on farmers’ use of land, reducing the worth of land, preventing it from alternative productive use and preventing the development of the land for agricultural or grazing purposes. For example, the Great Barrier Reef protection legislation—contrary to the evidence of farming having no impact on the Great Barrier Reef—is having a devastating impact on communities because of the unfounded and unscientific restrictions that the Labor government has placed on farming communities up and down the east coast of Queensland. This is destroying productive land—with woody weeds under native vegetation protection legislation—and turning productive land with a bright future into a monoculture of woody weeds and no grass, which increases erosion.  

This Labor federal government has declared war on farmers and primary producers. It’s hijacking prime agricultural land to install banks of ugly wind turbines and poisonous and dangerous solar panels, vandalising literally acres of otherwise productive food-producing land. Any person should be able to see the stupidity, the hypocrisy and the economic devastation of such actions. In its desperate attempts to virtue signal to the world that it is a conservation and climate-saving giant, the Labor government is hell-bent on covering the landscape with expensive and inefficient wind turbines, ugly banks of solar panels—and damn the consequences. We see huge complexes of solar and wind farms built with no connection to the grid. We see it in Victoria and we see it in Queensland.  

Now they are thinking, ‘We’d better build transmission lines.’ Transmission lines are going to chew up prime environmental habitat and farming. Now more than 100 square kilometres of koala habitat in Queensland is under threat from the developers of these destructive wind turbine projects, all in the name of so-called renewable energy and at the cost of the environment and the extinction of rare wildlife—another aspect of killing the environment to save it. Other damage to farming by the Labor government include stopping regional infrastructure spending to improve the productivity of the regions and stopping live cattle and live sheep exports.  

Farmers are hard pressed to stop the states, acting for the Commonwealth, from stealing land and attacking the property rights of farmers. The Labor government, in bed with the Greens and the teals, is pushing inhuman and antihuman policies, antienvironment policies and anti-Australian policies. Labor, Greens and the LNP, the Liberals and Nationals, are hell-bent on promoting projects that are destroying the land, destroying the environment, increasing unemployment, destroying the economy and pushing up the cost of living in Australia and reducing our security by exporting our major manufacturing. When it becomes too expensive to sip a latte in the city, even the teals might wake up to the fact that their lefty policies are making it too hard to continue living in what was the lucky country. 

If our farmers chuck it all in, this country is lost, and the Chinese can simply walk in and create a food bowl to feed Asia. I remind you that Thomas Jefferson said, ‘You can have farming without cities, but you cannot have cities without farming.’ No farmers, no Australia. I haven’t got time at the moment, but the stealing of property rights is not restricted to farmers. It is happening in urban environments, including Caboolture, near Brisbane. It is happening in Mosman, in Sydney. I fully support this motion from senators Colbeck and Cadell. It needs to go much further to encompass past theft of property and federal-state collusion enabling uncompensated theft of property rights with no just terms of compensation.  

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From Sublime Hemp to Ridiculous Crickets

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Emerging industries was the topic in this Senate Estimates attended by AgriFutures, an organisation set up by the Australian government to help fund research and development in our rural industries.

I’m pleased to see that AgriFutures is active in hemp research and investing in grants for trials, including one in the Northern Territory. I visited a successful hemp farm in northern Queensland earlier this year and was curious to know if AgriFutures had looked into trials in this part of Australia too.

Although AgriFutures claims its operations are free from political bias, they are tied into the United Nations sustainability goals. Levies paid to AgriFutures are also being spent on carbon farming for carbon trading, which is a contrived market.

Bug farming is another area that AgriFutures is promoting. It involves growing bugs in intensive urban facilities, which is not supporting the farmers in the regions. AgriFutures’ bias towards these policies is doing people out of their jobs. Taking regional jobs and shoving them close to the cities is political no matter how you characterise it.

One of the purposes of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is to allow the globalists to get control of agriculture and food, centralising people into urban landscapes. AgriFutures’ excitement about turning crickets into dog food is just another step towards that future.

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What Do Globalists Hate About Nuclear Power?

I know that nuclear is an answer to humanity’s energy needs. There are other solutions too, including hydro, which is under utilised in Australia, and clean coal.

Modern coal can be used in a way that produces zero carbon dioxide. A trial site in Tasmania is currently awaiting the equipment to convert coal to hydrogen, then hydrogen to cheap base load reliable electricity. Other nations, some of our major trading partners, are managing their energy needs with nuclear, clean coal, and hydro.

Why aren’t we doing more about safeguarding our energy needs? It’s a short answer – the United Nations.

The United Nations Net Zero narrative depends on the concept that there is no plentiful cheap source of power. It’s about restricting electricity output. Why? An artificial energy deficit is a tool used to control. If we haven’t learned our lesson by now, the UN’s Net Zero is not about saving us, or the environment from a harmless trace gas essential to all life on Earth, it’s about control and wealth.

The Greens, Labor, Teals and the globalists among the Liberal and National parties oppose nuclear energy. Their motivation should be obvious. Opposing it serves the goals of predatory billionaires who need an energy shortage delivered with endless virtue signaling by expensive, unreliable, erratic, and short-lived wind and solar. How can the destruction of forests and migratory birds for metal monsters and solar arrays ever be considered environmentally friendly? No, this is only about control and the biggest transfer of wealth this world has ever seen.

Nuclear power is used safely around the world and produces almost no waste. There is no valid reason to oppose nuclear or clean coal unless you’re opposed to cheap and reliable energy.

One Nation supports nuclear power. We support providing Australians with cheap and reliable energy. The establishment parties have made it clear there will be no low cost electricity under their leadership. One Nation will keep on exposing the elitist parasites who seek to send us back into the dark ages and steal our wealth.

Transcript

As a servant of the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I know that nuclear is an answer to humanity’s energy needs. There are others, including hydro, which is being underutilised, and clean coal. Modern coal can be used in a way that produces zero carbon dioxide. A trial site in Tasmania is currently waiting to install equipment that will convert coal to hydrogen and then hydrogen to electricity—baseload cheap, reliable electricity. This system is only 10 per cent dearer than doing the obvious thing: burning the coal itself for even cheaper electricity. And remember, no-one has provided logical scientific points with empirical scientific data saying that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut—no-one. Increasingly, leading scientists are plucking up the courage to call out the United Nations and the World Economic Forum for their climate scam.

The ruling zeitgeist among politicians, autocrats, predatory businesses and the mouthpiece media hates the concept of plentiful and cheap power. That’s the core issue. UN net zero is not about cheap power and it’s not about saving the environment from a harmless trace gas essential to all life on earth. UN net zero is about restricting electricity output to provide an artificial energy deficit that can be used to control, that can be used to keep those behind this scam in power—scarcity that will rob Australia of a prosperous future that generations of Australians have worked to secure for themselves and for generations to come.

The Greens, Labor, the teals and the globalists among the Liberal and National parties oppose nuclear, and when they do their motivation should be obvious. Critics of nuclear power are serving the interests of the predatory billionaires who need an energy shortage to control people to prevent protests against what is currently the largest wealth transfer in history—a transfer from everyday Australians to the world’s wealthiest individuals. As for the Greens and the teals, it makes no sense to pretend to the environmentalists and then stand back as swathes of Australia—national parks, bushland and farmland—are vandalised for wind turbines, solar panels, access roads and transmission lines, in a manner that stops soaring birds from migrating and nesting, coming around the world to do so. It’s telling that the teals and Greens opposed Senator Cadell’s proposed inquiry into this environmental vandalism. That reveals their real agenda, and that agenda has nothing to do with the natural environment. It’s about control and wealth transfer. So these days we listen to the Greens, the teals, Labor and the dominant globalist wing of the Liberals and Nationals putting nuclear to the sword. This is not based on any valid objection to nuclear power, which is used around the world, is safe and produces almost no waste. No, these establishment parties are putting nuclear to the sword for the same reason that modern coal is being put to the sword. There will be no low-cost electricity again in this country under a government that any of these establishment parties leads. There will be control. There will be wealth transfer from the people to elitist parasites. One Nation will continue to expose them and to support nuclear.

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No More Net Zero Performances from Politicians

From COVID mismanagement to inflation. Unsustainable immigration and the resulting housing crisis. Where do you put a million extra arrivals when you can’t house those already here? And at the core of it all is the price of electricity which hits every single part of our lives because it affects everyone from the householder to small businesses, manufacturing and farming.

The price of the United Nations Net Zero pipe dream isn’t just on your power bill. It’s on every other bill as well. If wind and solar were as cheap as we were promised we’d have the cheapest power ever. Instead it’s the highest it’s ever been along with the cost of living.

The irony of the Liberal party trying to deflect all the blame for skyrocketing electricity onto Labor is almost laughable. It’s thanks to the Lib-Lab policies and backroom party power brokers that we are all paying the price for the globalist interference in our government, no matter which wing of the bird we are looking at. It’s the same bird every time. It just costs more to roast it these days.

Party politics has corrupted this parliament and we need to return it to a house of representatives for the people.

Politicians should be warned. They’ve been able to get away with dodgy deals and dodging questions for decades. The hollow promises and empty performances were once met with complacency. Those politicians might think they’re clever but people are watching them now. They see through it. Life is getting tougher by the day for Australians and they won’t take it much longer. People are waking up at last.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I find it ironic that the Liberal Party has decided to bring on this matter of public importance mentioning the skyrocketing price of electricity, when they are the ones pushing for the United Nations net zero pipedream. It’s ironic that they would mention growing mortgage stress. Their government was the one that printed over $500 billion out of thin air during the COVID mismanagement. That caused Australia’s inflation problem. The Reserve Bank of Australia said they needed to raise rates to fight inflation by sending people with a mortgage broke. Supposedly they were trying to fix the inflation that the government caused—the gall, to mention real wages, which are forced down by the spiralling inflation problem, and suppressed by our unsustainable immigration intake.

Only today the Liberal Party was completely absent from a vote on my amendment to the Housing Australia Future Fund bill to acknowledge that our immigration problem is a problem for housing. It’s the core problem driving skyrocketing house prices and rentals. Big business loves high immigration, because it keeps wages down. With a million more arrivals into the country fighting for the available jobs, no-one has to put wages up. On top of that, the government’s inflation is stealing everyone’s purchasing power. Australians are getting hit with a double whammy. If you want life to get better, unfortunately that won’t happen if you vote for either Liberal or Labor. They’re two wings of the same bird.

The core of all the problems is the price of electricity. The price of electricity is being artificially inflated by green United Nations net zero policies. Electricity prices affect every part of our lives, not just the power bill at the kitchen table. Without cheap power, manufacturers can’t produce the products we want and need at a reasonable price, farmers can’t afford to pump the water that irrigates crops and keeps cattle alive, and shops can’t afford to keep the lights on and keep the doors open. So, you don’t just pay the price of the UN climate net zero pipedream once, in your power bill; you pay for it again and again and again in every other bill as well.

Wind and solar cannot supply our baseload power needs. The more wind and solar that’s put into the grid, the higher electricity prices go. This is a fact, and it’s replicated in every country that has gone further down the United Nations net zero path than has our country. The proof is already here in Australia, too. With the highest amount of wind, solar and batteries ever on the grid, our electricity prices have never been higher, thanks to your policies If the wind and solar crowd isn’t lying when they keep telling Australia that wind and solar is the cheapest form of energy—your electricity bills would be lower than ever, cheapest forever. They’re lying, and we are all paying the price.

The elites of this country won’t let us have a conversation on the actual solutions to these problems. Backroom party powerbrokers rule the major parties with an iron fist. Anyone who has an original thought, acts on it and steps out of line is kicked out of the party. It’s actually against the Labor Party rules to cross the floor. No matter how much you morally disagree with something, if you vote with your conscience you can kiss your job goodbye. This is the rot that’s corrupting our politics. We need to return this parliament to a house of states’ representatives, people’s representatives. That means you come here to actually represent and serve the people who elect you, not the party powerbrokers. Politicians should be warned: you’ve been able to get away with these dodgy deals for decades because of the apathy of the Australian people.

No more! Every day, thousands of Australians are waking up. More people than ever are watching exactly what you’re doing in this chamber. They’re not impressed. You might think you’re clever in the way you dodge questions and in the political games you play—yes, Senator Simon Birmingham; yes, Senator Don Farrell: you think you’re clever—but people see through it. Meanwhile, life is getting tougher for Australians. People won’t take your hollow promises and empty performances any longer. The people of Australia are waking at last.

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Nobel Prize Winner in Physics Says There Is No Climate Emergency

John F. Klauser, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum mechanics, went public last week with the following statement – “I can confidently say there is no real climate crisis and that climate change does not cause extreme weather events.” In response, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the financial arm of the United Nations, cancelled his scheduled speaking engagements.

Silencing scientists won’t save the great global warming scam though. Top US climate scientists have correctly rubbished claims that the Northern Hemisphere’s July was the hottest month on record.

In an article published in The Australian last month, Cliff Mass, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, said the public is being “misinformed on a massive scale” and that there’s a “stunning amount of exaggeration and hype of extreme weather and heatwaves”.

Forests that have been overgrown and not taken care of have a tendency, when a fire is started, to burn catastrophically. When we blame climate change for this rather than environmental mismanagement, we fail to deal with the real problems.

John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alabama, which runs the official NASA satellite temperature records, says heatwaves in the first half of the 20th century were at least as intense as recent ones. In fact, the increase in temperature since 1978 is only 0.3°C in keeping with temperature trends since the mini ice age 200 years ago. Measuring mean temperatures is confounded by urban creep. The growth of cities has subjected existing weather stations to additional heat. “In central Houston, for example, it is now between 6 and 9°F warmer than the surrounding countryside, explained Prof Christy.” It’s worth noting here that large solar arrays create the same heat sink effect as creeping urbanisation.

Despite the concerted efforts of climate alarmists to control the narrative, there are growing numbers of scientists and experts who are distancing themselves from the climate pseudoscience promoted by government agencies and the media. Even Jim Skier, head of the UN climate body, says a 1.5° temperature rise is not an existential threat to humanity. There is no climate crisis.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I asked the question: Can you feel the winds of change? Leading climate alarmists are deserting their ship. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres demonstrates just how out of touch climate carpetbaggers really are. The only thing boiling dry is Antonio Guterres’s credibility. Nobel science prize winner John Clauser last week publicly stated, ‘I can confidently say there is no real climate crisis and that climate change does not cause extreme weather events.’ After saying that, the IMF cancelled his scheduled tour. Silencing scientists won’t save the great global warming scam. An excellent article in The Australian reveals two of America’s top climate scientists have correctly rubbished claims July was the hottest month on record, deploring a ‘stunning amount of exaggeration and hype’.

Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington said the public was being quite ‘misinformed on a massive scale, with a massive amount of exaggeration. He goes on, ‘In Houston, for example, in the city centre it is between six and nine degrees centigrade higher than in the surrounding countryside.’ That isn’t global warming; that is the urban heat island effect, which, by the way, is easily countered—plant trees.

John Christy, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Alabama Huntsville, said heatwaves in the first half of the 20th century were at least as intense as those recent heatwaves. This is the university that runs the official NASA satellite temperature record, the umpire of datasets, which shows an increase in temperatures since 1978 of only 0.3 degrees centigrade, on trend with temperature trends since the mini ice age 200 years ago. Even the warmer-in-chief, Jim Skea at the head of the UN’s climate body says, ‘1.5 degrees temperature rise is not an existential threat to humanity. we will not die out.’

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What’s Labor’s REAL Plan?

International organisations can be granted immunity when operating in Australia against legal action resulting from good faith actions. This also includes protection of their records from inquiry. The Albanese Government has decided to extend this immunity to a wider range of international organisations, including those where Australia does not get a vote in how the organisation is run.

I asked the Minister what they were up to. The existing arrangements have worked fine for 30 years and I saw no reason to change them.

While the Minister’s reassurances were welcome, the point remains there is unlikely anything good going to come from this bill.

As a result, One Nation opposed the bill.

Transcript of Questions to the Minister

Senator Roberts: I have two questions for the minister. The first question is: who else will get immunity? The second question is: what additional immunities will be provided? Minister, in regard to the first question as to who else will get immunity under this bill who currently doesn’t get immunity, can you please name organisations that could be granted immunity under this bill who do not currently receive immunity? I note that the explanatory memorandum mentions the framework agreement for the Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation, OCCAR. Who else does the government have in mind, because it seems a major bill for one minor agreement? For example, would the World Economic Forum meet the criteria for immunity? Would Gavi, the global alliance for vaccines and immunisation, meet the criteria? This organisation is partly private and partly public. Does this bill extend record protections to existing organisations? I use the United Nations as an example. Do they have inviolability for their records or operations in Australia already? Under the existing legislation are all United Nations agencies, such as the World Health Organization, protected by the overarching enlisting of the United Nations as an immune organisation? Does this bill protect from inquiry, including a Senate inquiry or a royal commission, the World Health Organization’s records in respect of directions and actions they took during COVID? Is that what’s going on with this bill?

Senator McAllister: Thanks for the questions, Senator Roberts. The short way of answering your questions is to say that international
organisations are organisations that are formed as a consequence of treaty making. That is the broad test at the heart of the existing legislation and it is not proposed to change that. The specific change that is being made here that is relevant to your question is simply to allow organisations to be recognised where Australia is not a member. I’m advised by the department that the World Economic Forum is not an organisation that would be considered relevant. They sought to clarify whether Gavi would be included and they confirm that Gavi would not be included.

Senator Roberts: Specifically, does this bill protect from inquiry, including a Senate inquiry or a royal commission, the World Health Organization’s records in respect of directions and actions they took during the COVID management response?

Senator McAllister: This bill doesn’t change the protections that would be applicable to the World Health Organization.

Senator Roberts: Thank you, Minister. My second question goes to what additional immunities are offered. Will the designation of a new body be a disallowable instrument? Will there be any form of inquiry, public consultation or committee process before the minister grants immunity to some international organisations that we have no control over? What if a person from an organisation commits a summary offence in Australia? Are they covered by immunity? What if a person commits an indictable offence? Do they have immunity? Will indemnity be given to a commercial operation which, according to this bill, may be excused from taxation? Exemption from taxation suggests they are liable for taxation. Under what circumstance would an exemption apply? Inviolability of records may mean an organisation can be given immunity, come over here and then do something controversial. In that situation, can the Senate examine the organisation under oath in a Senate inquiry and compel testimony, including the provision of records?

Senator McAllister: Thanks, Senator Roberts. I think you asked essentially two questions, the first of which is about opportunities for the Senate to scrutinise decisions taken under the legislation should it pass and the second goes to what privileges or immunities might be available to organisations. In relation to scrutiny, the allocation of privileges and immunities would be done by a disallowable instrument made in the Senate, so the ordinary arrangements for the Senate would apply in this regard. I understand that, when the committee considered this, this was one of the features that senators considered in their discussion and it’s reflected in the report that was provided by the committee on this bill. In terms of the specific privileges and immunities that are presently available under the legislation, I can say two things. The first is that this bill doesn’t change those at all. It doesn’t seek to change the privileges or immunities that would be made available to an eligible organisation, but, to provide some clarity for you, I will set out what is presently available, noting that this bill makes no change to that. Privileges and immunities are legal protections afforded to foreign missions, international organisations and their representatives. The privileges and immunities contained in the act include immunity from jurisdiction, inviolability of premises and archives, currency and fiscal privileges, and the absence of censorship of official correspondence and communications. As I indicated, the bill will not change the privileges and immunities available under the act.

Senator Roberts: Thank you for your answer, Minister. I would like one clarification. I asked: Will indemnity be given to a commercial operation which, according to this bill, may be excused from taxation? Exemption from taxation suggests they’re liable for taxation, so under what circumstance would an exemption apply?

Senator McAllister: The present legislation provides for privileges and immunities to be allocated to international organisations. I’ve already provided some indication of the definition of an international organisation. It’s not proposed to change that in the legislation before the Senate.

Senator Roberts: Following on from Senator Rennick ‘s questions, I’m specifically interested in the United Nations World Health Organization. Originally that was funded as part of the United Nations, but we now know that about 80 per cent of its funding comes from private entities. Would the UN World Health Organization be considered an international organisation?

Senator McAllister: The World Health Organization is an entity that’s comprised of member states, and it would be considered an international organisation, I am advised.

Senator Roberts: [Inaudible] the discretion to stop or to look behind the proposed takeover of a UN body by a private entity as much as that’s happened with the United Nations World Health Organization?

Senator McAllister: I’m uncertain of the basis of that assertion, but, putting that to one side, this is a relatively narrow bill which makes very limited changes to an existing piece of legislation which offers privileges and immunities to international organisations. It wouldn’t affect the Australian government’s capacity to examine our participation in any of these organisations at all.

Senator Roberts: It wouldn’t stop the Senate from scrutinising such an organisation if it were brought under the umbrella of ‘international organisation’, so we could still scrutinise its actions in relevance to Australia’s operations?

Senator McAllister: As I indicated in my last answer, the matters you refer to and the capacity for the Senate to more broadly examine the functioning of international organisations or international treaties is not the subject of this bill; however, as I indicated earlier, to the extent that this bill provides a regulation-making power that might be exercised by the minister, the Senate would continue to have the opportunity to scrutinise those decisions.

Senator Roberts: I put on record my thanks to the minister for her answers.

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Only Coal Can Fix the Cost of Living Crisis

There has never been more wind and solar in the grid than we have now, and yet power bills have never been higher.

Coal power is still the cheapest form of electricity we can make on demand, so we should be building more of it.

We need to abandon the UN net-zero pipe dream before it sends the country completely broke.

Transcript

This Greens motion complains that the government has approved five new coal projects this year, yet the government is not approving enough coal projects. We need to get these mines rolling. Australia need this government to approve coal-fired power stations. The Greens like to cherry-pick, so let’s look at what else the International Energy Agency said in July:

Coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to 8.3 billion tonnes, setting a new record — a new world record. So much for the death of coal. Instead the Greens would have Australia miss out on the tax revenue from this boom, which funds our hospitals, roads and schools and saved our economy in the last budget.

It’s always important to debunk the myth of cheap wind and solar in these debates. Today we have the highest proportion ever of wind, solar and batteries in the grid—more accurately known as unreliables, not renewables. Just ask any Australian. These are facts. Our power bills have never been higher. While the government sits on its hands about nuclear, building cheap, coal-fired power is the only solution we have for the cost-of-living crisis. The UN net zero pipe dream is already sending Australians broke and, if we don’t stop it now, the UN net zero nightmare will send the entire country broke. Unreliables have increased to only 36 per cent of Australia’s electricity needs, and look at the damage they’re already doing. If you think it’s bad now, this government wanted to get it to 82 per cent in 2030. That’s madness.

Meanwhile, as Australia annually mines 560 million tonnes of coal, China produces 4.5 billion tonnes, almost nine times as much, and on top of that China imports additional coal from us. I congratulate the government on approving some coal projects and criticise them for not approving more.

Before we all go broke, Australia needs more mines so we have coal on the ground, on ships, in power stations and in steam wheels, serving humanity.

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No more indemnity – we will chase you until you are held accountable!

Rapper Zuby, in a very well-delivered address in 2022 at CPAC, observed that most politicians don’t care if people die—and he is correct. Most politicians don’t care if people die.

There’s no royal commission. There’s no Senate inquiry. There’s no access to contracts—they’re commercial-in-confidence we’re told. Years after they were signed, they’re still commercial-in-confidence. Taxpayers paid for the injections, yet we cannot see what we paid for. We can’t even see how much we paid. Censorship. What are they hiding?

Bill Gates paid for censorship in the mouthpiece Big Brother media that is often owned by the same people who own Pfizer. Bill Gates paid for censorship across social media. Gates is an investor in big pharma—a massive investor in big pharma—and a massive contributor to the World Health Organization, the UN’s World Health Organization.

I hold the whole Senate accountable, apart from six senators withstanding the catcalls.

At last Thursday’s Senate inquiry into anti-discrimination bills—one of which was moved by Senator Hanson and another one by Senator Canavan, Senator Antic and Senator Rennick—four of the five senators grilling Pfizer, Moderna and the TGA were from Queensland. Four, plus Senator Antic. Pfizer did not know where to go.

Clearly Pfizer, Moderna and the TGA all disgraced themselves and showed themselves to be inhuman. Clearly none feel accountable for the deaths, the chronic and crippling injuries, the severe injuries—not federal government or its health departments, not the state premiers or their health departments, not employers mandating injections. No-one takes accountability.

We will chase you until you are held accountable.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I speak in support of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Vaccine Indemnity) Bill 2023, because with indemnity comes impunity, and this parliament needs huge doses of accountability to change it from exploiting the people and return it to serving the people.

The main process for distributing vaccines in Australia is through the National Immunisation Program. Section 9B of the National Health Act 1953 allows the minister for health to provide, or arrange for the provision of, injections for distribution through the National Immunisation Program. Injections distributed via the National Immunisation Program must be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The purchase of injections occurs through the Commonwealth entering into supply contracts with the relevant pharmaceutical companies. These arrangements would include the amount of compensation the Commonwealth is liable to pay in exchange for the injections and are generally subject to the Commonwealth Procurement Rules.

During COVID, the Liberal government, with the full support of the Labor opposition and the Greens, simply tore up the rule book. Pfizer were given a blanket immunity. Pfizer knew, when the injection was being developed and tested, that they had a blanket immunity. What could go wrong? Firstly, accountability is shredded. The outcome of this ill-considered decision was an excess mortality rate in Australia of 27 per cent above normal since the ‘fakecines’ were rolled out. Most likely 30,000 Australians will die this year from side effects of our COVID response, including the injectables. Did they really think Pfizer, a multinational pharmaceutical company with an appalling track record, would suddenly turn into a model corporate citizen when asked to produce the COVID injections? Did you?

Prior to COVID, Pfizer had been fined US$3 billion for criminal acts. They are a habitual offender, persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribing physicians and suppressing adverse trial results. We know Pfizer suppressed bad trial data in the COVID trials, fabricated results, excluded test subjects that became sick and failed to test for a full range of adverse effects. They did this knowingly. The ‘fakecines’ were then manufactured in a shoddy fashion and did not use good manufacturing process as they were supposed to and as every other product approved in Australia must.

Live DNA derived from E. coli used in production has been found in large quantities in the Pfizer product—up to a billion strands or parts of strands in every dose. Huge variations between batches suggest huge variations in manufacturing quality. I say ‘suggest’ because we have no idea what is actually in these products, because the TGA accepts batch testing from the manufacturer and has not conducted the testing on each batch as it arrives. It has not conducted the testing. The TGA took the US FDA’s word for the results of the stage 2/3 clinical trials, and the FDA took Pfizer’s word for it. We’re relying on Pfizer’s word for these.

To give a product immunity, the TGA should have thoroughly tested these injections, not looked the other way. We have no idea what harm these products will eventually cause, because there was no long-term safety testing conducted—none. Why would they spend that money when they already had the immunity? That’s what immunity has done to them—more profit for Pfizer, more money in the pocket for CEO Albert Bourla, who banked US$30 million in salary and bonuses last financial year. Overall, Pfizer sold $36 billion in COVID products in 2022, pushing Pfizer to a record $100 billion in sales. I am slightly encouraged to see their share price is down 40 per cent from the peak of 2021, and projected revenue in 2023 is down 80 per cent.

While Pfizer made out like the fraudulent bandits they are, the Australian taxpayers are on the hook for who knows how much. The budget papers are required to show every potential liability the government has. There is an entry for our liability under the COVID products, yet they have not quantified it. You have not quantified it; there’s no figure there. That can’t continue. This liability will run into the billions. Australia needs this bill from Senator Babet to make sure no greedy, dishonest, opportunistic pharmaceutical company is allowed to get away with financial murder again. Australia needs this bill to make sure that no inhuman monster like the former health minister Greg Hunt, like the former prime minister Scott Morrison, like premiers Palaszczuk, McGowan and Andrews, is allowed to get away with malfeasance forcing experimental gene therapy based injections leading to tens of thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of people permanently crippled for life and hundreds of thousands of people injured, and uncounted people in mourning. Those are the nuts and bolts.

Now we go to the morality because governments cannot be trusted. With immunity, comes impunity. The simple reason for lack of accountability is the hiding of government actions through indemnities. Firstly, my position on medications including injections: we all want safe treatment. We are all pro-medicine. We all want that each of us decides what is put into our body—my body, my choice. We all want freedom to make our choice and for our choice to be accepted and respected. We all wholeheartedly support medicines that are fully tested and proven safe, effective, affordable and accessible. I am opposed to untested drugs, forcing untested experimental injections on to people, forcing untested experimental injections on to people with the only alternative being to lose one’s livelihood or let your children starve. How could any human allow this to happen?

How could any human allow this to happen, yet you did. Then in your shame, your cowardice, your guilt, the best you could do to those of us who stood up to this inhuman, monstrous and at times murderous madness was to call us ‘anti-vaxxers’. Pathetic—labels are the refuge of the ignorant, the incompetent, the dishonest, the guilty and the fearful, name-calling as you sling words at us for protecting innocent good people. But your vilification means nothing to us because we go for the truth. I oppose coercion, I oppose mandates, I oppose confidentiality hiding details from taxpayers. These untested injections from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca were forced on people using lies. Daily for two weeks former prime minister Morrison said, ‘There are no vaccine mandates in Australia.’ That was a lie, a murderous lie killing 30,000 Australians annually in excess deaths above normal. Worse, the Morrison-Hunt duo enabled and drove the injection mandate. Here is how: the Morrison-Hunt duo bought the injections. The Morrison-Hunt duo gave them to the states. The Morrison-Hunt duo indemnified the states. The Morrison-Hunt duo made federal health department data available to the states.

That was the only way the states could enforce their mandates, which really were driven by the Morrison-Hunt duo. State premiers admitted their vaccine mandates were in line with the bogus so-called ‘National Cabinet’, which was headed by Scott Morrison. The Morrison federal government mandated injections in Defence, the Australian Electoral Commission, aged care, the Australian Federal Police and others, but there are no vaccine mandates in Australia, he said. Then on Tuesday, I spoke about the Medical Countermeasures Consortium, which drove the whole lot, the four nations’ defence departments, from Canada, America, Britain and Australia. This was planned and delivered, and Pfizer did the work on behalf of the American Department of Defense. That’s why it bypassed the testing. Now we have 30,000 excess deaths That’s the equivalent to two Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashes every week for a year—every week for a year! Yet we have Queensland nurses still suspended. Foreign nurses are being recruited by Premier Palaszczuk to take their jobs. Then she’s told us repeatedly for the last three years, ‘The health system is crashing.’ Disgraceful, inhuman. The police are mandated, and they’ve lost many. The teachers have been mandated, and, when they finally lifted the mandate, many of them didn’t come back. We found children were crippled, affected. The teachers were fined. Doctors were mandated and many have left the profession. How can Australia put up with that? That’s going to hurt the patients. The pilots were mandated and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, CASA, cares not a bit. It’s wilfully blind, it’s misfeasance and it’s betraying passenger air safety.

In a shining light, the Australian Firefighters Alliance was formed because their union would not stand up for them. Many unions went rogue and did not stand up for their members. The Australian Firefighters Alliance resisted. They developed, from the very start, a defensive strategy and an offensive strategy and that’s the only one that Premier Palaszczuk did not mandate. It’s based on a false premise. Livelihoods and lives have been destroyed.

We had the absurdity of the drugs failure, the vaccine failure, the injections failure being falsely blamed on the people who didn’t take it. Indemnities encourage impunity and rogue behaviour, irresponsible behaviour, destructive behaviour, cruel, monstrous, inhuman behaviour. Indemnities destroy accountability because everything is hidden, and indemnities are given. There’s no problem disclosed and so there’s no compensation. Millions of people suffer in silence and this Labor government perpetuates the misery, the deceit.

Rapper Zuby, in a very well-delivered address in 2022 at CPAC observed that most politicians don’t care if people die—and he is correct. Most politicians don’t care if people die. There’s no royal commission. There’s no Senate inquiry. There’s no access to contracts—they’re commercial-in-confidence we’re told. Years after they were signed, they’re still commercial-in-confidence. Taxpayers paid for injections, yet we cannot see what we paid for. We can’t even see how much we paid. Censorship. What are they hiding? Bill Gates paid for censorship in the mouthpiece Big Brother media that is often owned by the same people who own Pfizer. Bill Gates paid for censorship across social media. Gates is an investor in big pharma—a massive investor in big pharma—and a massive contributor to the World Health Organization, the UN’s World Health Organization.

I hold the whole Senate accountable, the whole Senate, apart from six senators withstanding the catcalls. At last Thursday’s Senate inquiry into antidiscrimination bills—one of which was moved by Senator Hanson and another one by Senator Canavan, Senator Antic and Senator Rennick—four of the five senators grilling Pfizer, Moderna and the TGA were from Queensland. Four, plus Senator Antic. Pfizer did not know where to go. Clearly Pfizer, Moderna and the TGA all disgraced themselves and showed themselves to be inhuman. Clearly none feel accountable for the deaths, the chronic and crippling injuries, the severe injuries—not federal government or its health departments, not the state premiers or their health departments, not employers mandating injections. No-one takes accountability. We will chase you until you are held accountable.

We’ve had airline employees taken to hospital and then returned and Qantas insisted they be injected. There are too many other stories there; I won’t go into them. But we see people awakening. We see the situation has created heroes: Hoody, Maria Zeee, Chris Spicer and many, many more from the independent people’s media; doctors who formed the Australian Medical Professionals Society; Dr William Bay, and he is a doctor; nurses like Dee; firies like Dan; police like Krystal; paramedics like Peter; doctors like Camillo; pilots like Alan; and thousands of construction workers and other workers. You’ve woken the people up. Thank you so much for being our heroes. Here and globally, you’re wakening people up.

When indemnities are granted, especially in secret, accountability is removed, and you in this Senate, in this parliament, have demonstrated that repeatedly. You’ve confirmed it. All who oppose this bill will be voting to continue the needless deaths and lies. This bill will prevent recurrence. Ending indemnity will end impunity. It will contribute to restoring accountability. Transparency restores trust. I wholeheartedly support this bill and urge all senators to vote in support.

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Blaming Ukraine for Australian Energy Prices is Misinformation

Coal prices have risen internationally but Ukraine had nothing to do with energy prices rising in Australia. Investment in solar and wind is to blame.

It is important that the government in this country start facing reality and stop hiding the problem.

The Ukraine has nothing to do with coal prices in this country. In fact, Australian coal prices did not rise at all under their existing long term contracts for our coal-fired power stations.

The government must stop misleading parliament that rising electricity prices in Australia are due to a war in the Ukraine.

Massive solar and wind subsidies are the cause of Australians suffering some of the highest electricity prices in the world. Every time a coal fired power station is shut in this country we see yet the another spike in our power bills because unreliable ‘renewables’ cannot provide the same inexpensive baseload power supply.

This government’s Safeguard Mechanism Bill will add even more fines to reliable coal-fired power and yet more pain for Australian households.

Transcript

Blaming Ukraine for a problem that has been caused entirely in this country leads to misleading the population of Australia and hiding the problem. The real problem is our energy prices.

Coal prices have gone up internationally but not for Australian contracts feeding power stations in this country. Stop misleading the parliament.

Coal prices that feed our electricity in this country are still on the same long-term contracts at $80 to $100 a tonne as they had been before Ukraine became an issue. What’s really killing this country is investment in solar and wind, which are inherently more expensive because they produce far less and lower-density electricity and so their unit costs of electricity are far higher.

Every time a coal-fired power station is shut in this country, we see the spike and an increase in electricity prices.

Minister, it is important that governments in this country start facing up to the reality rather than blaming something in Ukraine. Ukraine had nothing to do with the continuation of coal prices in this country not rising at all. It had nothing to do with energy prices rising due to solar and wind and subsidies and now you safeguard mechanism adding to fines for coal-fired power. These are the things that are crippling our country and crippling our productive capacity.

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Labor’s Welfare Policy is Causing Tough Times for Australians

This welfare bill is trying to solve the problems government caused. The payments are needed because people are doing it tough in Australia.

Government is causing the problem with its Net Zero policies and unbridled money printing during the COVID response, slamming everyday Australians.

Isn’t the Government lucky that record mining and farming is providing the tax revenue to fund this increase in social security, which will ease the burden government has inflicted? These are the same industries that the United Nations’ Net Zero delusion wants to kill off.

I asked the Minister if they understood that the measures they are taking in increasing spending on welfare are the same measures that has caused our runaway inflation in the first place.

Rather than start a wages/welfare/price spiral, the Government should be immediately increasing productive capacity and reduce taxation so people can keep more of their own money.

Growing the pie for everyone will allow fair welfare and equality of opportunity for all Australians. Net Zero shrinks the pie.

Transcript

My questions are to the minister. I have two questions. This bill is specifically trying to partially solve a problem that government caused—not just your government but the previous government. The extra costs people are facing in our community right across the country are due to skyrocketing electricity prices cascading through all stages of our economy, driving inflation. That has been admitted by the energy relief payments that were announced in the budget. The 2050 net zero target, coming from the UN policy, is hurting Australians all over the country. It has been admitted. We’ve also got insane Greens climate policies destroying baseload power, forcing up prices, thanks to the Labor Party and the Liberals and Nationals, who’ve adopted these Greens and UN policies. We’ve got high immigration, driving up house prices and rents.

I’ve recently been travelling, for the last five weeks or so, in regional Queensland. In Bundaberg people are sleeping in tents, caravans and cars in parks. In Gladstone, people are sleeping in tents, caravans and cars in showgrounds, and that is happening across regional Queensland. We’ve had a mismanaged response to COVID, with half a trillion dollars in cash splashed around, driving inflation and, of course, higher prices. While shutting down the supply side of the economy, it was driving up prices.

People are doing it tough, Minister, because of your policies. My first question is: are you aware of that? Secondly, who’s paying for this solution to the problem you’ve created? I’ll tell you who’s paying for the largesse in this budget and the ability to afford these increased welfare payments, which are necessary because people are doing it tough due to your policies. I’ll tell you who’s paying for it: agriculture, with exports recently at record levels; the mining of coal—I’m proudly wearing a tie that I got 40 years ago from a coal company—and the mining of iron ore and other minerals. That’s what’s paying for our ability to afford these increased payments. Government is causing the problems, slamming everyday Australians, and mining and farming are providing the money to ease the burden government has inflicted. Are you aware of that, Minister?

When you sit back and look at it, every major problem in this country is due to government, largely the federal government. Who pays? It is always the people who pay. Yet who has the solutions? It is the people. We could fix this far better, Minister, if we just addressed productive capacity.

We will be supporting Greens amendment 2028, limiting the period for recovering errors from people overpaid to six years, and we will be supporting the bill as it stands at the moment.

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