Regional Queensland Ripped off by the South

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Record mining and agriculture booms from Central Queensland prop up government budgets in Brisbane and Canberra. Yet those same governments rip critical infrastructure funding for dams, roads and power stations out of regional queensland. The rip-off has been going on too long and must stop, regional Queensland deserves its fair share.

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Coal miners still being dudded out of entitlements

For three years I have been raising the issue of casual coal miners being fraudulently dudded out of Long Service Leave entitlements. Finally, I was able to secure an audit into the Coal Long Service Leave Scheme from the previous government.

Yet, exactly how much needs to be paid back to casual coal miners is still unclear. We’ll be following this up again at next estimates and ensuring casual workers receive the leave payments they are entitled to.

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Fire Ant eradication failure costing hundreds of millions

I had a simple question for our bio-security officials, are they winning in their war against fire ants in south Queensland? The answer I get from people on the ground is definitely not.

There’s a lot of questions about how the State Government is spending the hundreds of millions and whether it’s just a money spinner while fire ants continue their march across Queensland.

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Labor breaking promises to coal miners, again

Labor paraded around coal towns during the election promising coal miners a “just transition” and replacement jobs because of the transition to net-zero. Just a few months into their government, BHP has announced the closure of their Mount Arthur coal mine with 2000 miners to lose their jobs.

Instead of finding them the replacement jobs they promised, the government is washing their hands of the closure and saying it has nothing to do with them despite the fact they put their net-zero target into law. It just goes to show, they’ll tell you anything to get elected and then say “not our job” once they get in.

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17,000 Bee Hives Destroyed by Government

Despite the government destroying tens of thousands of bee hives they have still failed in their mission to try and contain a varoa mite outbreak. No support has been offered to beekeepers to restock their hives. Without bees we won’t have agriculture and we won’t have food.

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Government uses data breaches to push Digital Identity

Have you noticed more and more data breaches lately? Some in the Government are using this as a reason to centralise everything into one Digital Identity. As the long list I read out proves, nothing is unhackable. That’s a good reason why you SHOULDN’T centralise everyone’s data into one Digital Identity location. It would be a hackers dream, a one stop shop to steal your identity.

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Was the election audited as required?

Before the election a change was made requiring the Australian Signals Directorate to audit the AEC voting systems ensuring they were secure and fit for purpose. I was hoping for a very quick answer at Senate Estimates to confirm this was done but didn’t receive one. The agency has about 6 weeks to get the answers back to me after taking the questions on notice.

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What is the AEC doing?

After every election the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) meets to review the election – what went well, what went badly, and most importantly how to improve the election experience and increase accuracy.

This year the Government has opened the JSCEM inquiry with a very limited terms of reference, which is a very unusual decision.

Many thousands of submissions have been made, these are either not being published or published with heavy redactions.

Today I asked questions in Senate Estimates to draw attention to some of the areas in this election that must be done better next time. I call on the Government to upgrade the JSCEM Inquiry to a full inquiry, as normal.

Every Australian who has made a submission deserved to have their concerns dealt with.

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Are weather events more severe because of climate change?

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Every time there’s a drought, flood or cold day you’ll hear climate alarmists claim it’s all because of climate change. Well this study says there is no positive trend in the severity or frequency of natural disasters. That puts a bit of a hole in the “climate emergency”.

Study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to Minister Watt. You said in your opening statement:

There can be no doubt that the severity and regularity of these natural disasters is a result of climate change …

I’ve got a media report that I’m happy to table—I’ve got 10 copies—and a study which I will table that found there is no positive trend of extreme weather events as a result of climate change. Given this scientific study’s finding that there is no increase in severe weather events because of climate change, there appears to be some doubt about your statement. Have you misled the committee with your opening statement?

Senator Watt: Whose report are you quoting from?

Senator ROBERTS: An Italian European Physical Journal Plus—a team led by Gianluca Alimonti from the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and the University of Milan extended the analysis to include natural disasters, floods and droughts.

Senator Watt: Is that peer-reviewed data?

Senator ROBERTS: Yes.

Senator Watt: You’re sure?

Senator ROBERTS: Yes.

Senator Watt: Senator Roberts, I think we’re all very well used to you questioning the science of climate change—more usually in the Environment and Communications committee, but it’s good to see that you’re consistent and apply the same approach across different committees. No scientific expert has ever been able to convince you that climate change is real, and I doubt that I will have the ability to do that either. To give you one example, I accompanied the Prime Minister to visit a dairy farm in northern Tasmania after the recent floods. I won’t give the gentleman’s full name for his privacy, but it was a dairy farmer called Michael. Without any prompting from any politician, he recognised the increasing number of floods and natural disasters that they were having was due to climate change. But we all know—

Senator ROBERTS: So a dairy farmer named Michael trumps a scientific study? I want to know: on what basis did you make your statement and claim? What source—specific locations, specific publications—

Senator Watt: I’m not going to play your game. We know that no evidence will ever convince you that climate change is real. I have seen you ask the head of the CSIRO. I’ve seen you ask any number of scientists who present evidence of that. There are countless IPCC reports, comprising of advice from the best experts in the world—

Senator ROBERTS: Not one of those IPCC reports contains evidence. That’s a fact.

Senator Watt: and you reject all of them. So it doesn’t really matter what I say to you. You will continue with your climate conspiracies. There’s nothing I can do to help you.

Senator ROBERTS: I note your use of a label. Whenever people use a label like ‘denier’ or ‘conspiracy theorist’, it indicates they don’t have the data. You’ve just confessed that you don’t have the data. If you did, you’d be able to give me the specific location.

Senator Watt: I refer you to any number of IPCC reports, which you continuously choose to ignore and reject. I invite you to go and speak to any farm body—

Senator ROBERTS: Have you read the IPCC reports? I have. There is no specific location of any evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut. I ask you to verify and validate your statement. Give me the specific location.

Senator Watt: I would be happy, on notice, to provide you with any number of scientific reports that back up what I’m saying. I will repeat that I could provide you with an infinite number of reports and you will never believe them. Everyone knows that. I’m okay. You don’t accept that climate change is real—that’s your right. But what I’m interested in doing is working with the farmers who are actually paying the price for climate denialism. I’m interested in working with the farm bodies that have been waiting for a government that believes that climate change is real and is prepared to put promises in place. I don’t have the exact figures to hand, but ABARES has provided reports that show that, due to climate changes over the last 20 or so years, the average farm profit or productivity—it’s one or the other—has fallen in the order of 25 to 30 per cent. They’re on later, and you can ask them about that as well. Do you know what? You won’t believe them either. I accept you just don’t believe the evidence. That’s okay, but I’m not going to get held back.

Senator ROBERTS: It’s not up to you to tell me what I will or will not believe.

Senator Watt: We all know your record.

Senator ROBERTS: What is up to both of us and every single senator and member of parliament is to come here with the empirical evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut. You have never done that. None of your imputed sources have done that. I want, in each the references you provide, the specific location of the data on which you rely and the specific location of the framework that proves that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. Science is not just about data; it is about data within a framework that logically proves cause and effect. I want that from you. For each of those references, I expect that from you. Otherwise, they’re not valid.

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Demonisation of beef doesn’t have a leg to stand on

Government wants to cut red meat production so you’ll have to “eat zee bugs”. Like lots of globalist claims however, demonizing red meat falls over as soon as you look at the facts.

Why on earth does the government want to tax cow farts?

Transcript

Australian beef and, best of all, Queensland beef are here to stay as Australia’s main source of protein. A recent CSIRO paper published in the journal Animal, found that pasture fed beef returned 1,597 times more human edible protein than it consumed. What a wonderful way to produce natural, nutritious and affordable protein to feed our world.

The CSIRO, though, couldn’t help themselves of course and went on to denigrate the cattle industry for its methane production. This fearmongering fails on the most basic of tests: the biogenic carbon cycle. Methane in the atmosphere combines with oxygen to produce water and carbon dioxide which are then reabsorbed into pastures through photosynthesis, encouraging plant growth. For those who swallow the United Nations’ climate rubbish and think that nature’s trace atmospheric gas, essential to life on earth, needs to be sequestered: it is being sequestered!

There’s no environmental harm from cattle methane production. Cattle can be raised in a sustainable manner that not only protects but improves soil health. The war on red meat doesn’t have a leg to stand on! I call on Meat & Livestock Australia to dump its Red Meat 2030 plan—a plan designed to create a false scarcity of red meat in order to double meat prices and increase profits for a lucky few large beef producers. Red Meat 2030 will end grazing in lower rainfall areas, which will then be returned to nature in a process called ‘rewilding’. This land is where affordable meat is grown. Meat will become an elitist food; everyday Australians will be forced to source protein from food-like substances grown in labs or concocted on a process line from bugs, nuts and chemicals—lots of chemicals! Pick up a pack of fake meat and check the ingredients.

Meat & Livestock Australia must stop pandering to the climate change fraud and globalist elites. We are one community, we are one nation and climate change delusion is a danger to people’s cost of living and to our very food supply and security.

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