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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QANTAS becomes a National Shame

In recent years, QANTAS appears to have lost the skill of delivering passengers and their luggage to the same city.

Some will try to say it’s the fault of capitalism. It’s crony capitalism that is actually to blame. Crony capitalism is the network of cosy relationships between selected corporate mates and the government. Unlike actual capitalism, it’s about using the government to squash competition and secure preferential treatment from the government.

QANTAS has received billions in taxpayer handouts in the last few years alone. The government has blocked competitors like Qatar Airways from entering the market. All of this is a form of corrupt crony capitalism and Australia pays for it.

It’s the government getting involved in the market that has allowed QANTAS and Alan Joyce to pull off their heist on Australians.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I wonder, as many constituents do, who does Qantas have photographs of? How can Qantas engage in restrictive trade practices, fraud and a scorched earth policy approach to industrial relations and still be called Australia’s national airline? Are these our national values now? 

The decision of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government to stop Qatar Airways from increasing their number of flights to Australia provided a direct financial benefit to Qantas. As a result, everyday Australians are now paying higher airfares on those international routes than if Qatar had been allowed to provide competition to Qantas. I note that, over the last 12 months, Senator Sheldon has been resolute in his attempts to hold Qantas accountable through the Senate committee system. I welcome Senator Sheldon’s comments and appreciate his one-man war on the temple of uncaring corporate greed that Qantas has become. Let me be clear, Qantas is an embarrassment to free enterprise competition. Everyday Australians are now faced with dysfunctional, unaffordable air travel simply because the government keeps sticking its nose in where it does not belong. It shouldn’t be up to the government to decide how many air flights an airline has. The free market should sort that out. Free enterprise competition based on pricing, service, safety and availability would sort that out. 

Passengers make their purchase decisions on aircraft tickets based on the most fundamental duty of an airline, which is delivering a passenger to their destination at the same time as their luggage. It’s a skill Qantas seems to have lost. Free enterprise competition ensures the airline with the lowest fares, best service, safest planes and most reliable luggage will gain market share, and airlines who treat their customers with hubris and arrogance will fare badly. Free enterprise competition makes companies better. We do not have free enterprise competition in many industries in Australia, including with airlines. We have crony capitalism, a club of investment funds and their corporate henchmen who maximise short-term profits and dividends over the best long-term interests of a corporation or there’s personal greed from the corporation CEOs. It is a type of corporate asset stripping that’s behind the fall from grace of our once loved national carrier. 

To dress this decision up as being in the national interest is misdirection and misinformation. Qantas is a private company whose actions are decided by leading shareholders First State, Vanguard and BlackRock. Others pulling the strings at Qantas are JP Morgan, HSBC, State Street, Goldman Sachs, and Citicorp, which explains a lot. The Qatari government fully owns Qatar Airways. There is nothing in this deal for the predatory billionaires that control Qantas. Was this the reason for the decision to block Qatar Airways’ expansion? If so, who is really telling the Albanese government what to do? 

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Amending the Biosecurity Act — What Does it Mean?

This bill is seeking to provide biosecurity officers with increased powers. With everything we’ve been through over the past few years, I decided to ask for clarification on the bill. I questioned how these new powers could be used and whether there was a risk of discrimination against arrivals into Australia, particularly those who have chosen not to receive medical procedures such as the COVID-19 injections.

I am concerned these amendments would ensure the collection of data from all incoming travellers to support intelligence-gathering and evidence-based predictions of potential biosecurity risks.

Minister Watt offered assurances in the Senate Chamber that there is no intention of using the bill to discriminate against people based on medical status or ethnicity. He also assured me that this bill did not allow for collecting or retaining health information.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: I have two questions. The first is of the minister: could this bill be used to discriminate against arrivals who have chosen not to receive injections related to COVID-19 measures? As part of that, does this bill allow travel documents to include information based on vaccine status?

Senator Watt: I’m just seeking some further advice on that, Senator Roberts, but I’m certainly not aware of any intention to use these powers in that way or even whether the powers could be used that way. I know that there were some concerns raised by a couple of the parliamentary committees about how these powers might be used and the risk of discrimination that might be posed. I think we were certainly able to persuade those committees that there would be no such ability to discriminate. You may have seen, Senator Roberts, that one of the things this bill is doing is providing biosecurity officers with increased powers to seek passports from people, but that’s really about trying to check where they have been and whether they’re repeat offenders when it comes to biosecurity risks rather than checking on people because of their particular racial background, their COVID vaccination background or anything like that. It’s more about, as I said, allowing biosecurity officers to trace when people have been to very high-risk locations or if they’re repeat offenders with biosecurity, in which case I’m sure you’d agree that they’re the people who we really need to focus our biosecurity efforts on.

Senator Roberts: Minister, have you received that advice yet about my specific question?

Senator Watt: The proposed amendments are intended to ensure that the data collected in relation to biosecurity interventions with all incoming travellers can be recorded and analysed consistently to support a more intelligence- and evidence-based approach to predicting and managing the biosecurity risk posed by future traveller cohorts. As such, the requirement to provide a passport or other travel document to a biosecurity officer upon request would apply to all persons regardless of their ethnicity, their national or social origin or their vaccination status. The powers that are being granted here cannot be, or are not intended to be, used to go after particular people based on any characteristic about them. They can be applied to all people, regardless of their vaccination status, their ethnicity or anything like that. I think that you can be confident that your concerns would not be carried out as a result of these powers.

Senator Roberts: You said ‘could’ and then hesitated. So that means these powers cannot be used to discriminate against arrivals who have chosen not to receive injections for COVID-19?

Senator Watt: That’s right. The powers cannot be used to discriminate against anyone for any reason, including their vaccination status.

Senator Roberts: My second question is: should there be time limits on the time which health information about an individual is retained?

Senator Watt: In fact, Senator Roberts, this bill does not provide for the retention of data at all. That being the case, the concern that you have does not even arise. It’s not a matter of—sorry, I’ll just clarify this. There’s nothing in the bill that allows data to be retained for health purposes and so the issue of how long data could be retained for health purposes doesn’t arise, because it can’t be retained for that purpose at all.

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Event: Why it’s important to Vote No!

I will be joining Hon. Gary Johns and Dave Pellowe to share my views on why it is so important we vote no in the upcoming Voice Referendum.

Bookings are essential due to limited seating: https://www.trybooking.com/CKPJX

Wednesday, 27 September 2023

6 pm to 8 pm

Caboolture Sports Central

Cnr Hasking Street & Beerburrum Road

Caboolture QLD 4510

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Who will fact-check the fact-checkers?

The government’s response to news of shady foreign money potentially influencing the RMIT-ABC Fact Check partnership is silence.

The credibility of ‘independent fact checkers’ has been destroyed. It’s time for the government to abandon its ACMA Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, which relies on fact checkers being the arbiters of truth.

Update: ABC has ended its partnership with RMIT Exclusive: ABC ends seven-year partnership with RMIT Fact Check (crikey.com.au)

Transcript

I rise to take note of the answers the government gave today in relation to foreign influence of the RMIT-ABC Fact Check partnership. As anybody who has been put in Facebook jail knows, the credibility of fact-checkers is in shambles. The fact-checkers are meant to be independent yet they are not. Who fact-checks the fact checkers? Facebook has recently suspended its partnership with RMIT FactLab after media reports revealed the director, former ABC journalist Russell Skelton, is openly campaigning for a yes vote in the upcoming referendum while his organisation dishes out fact checks on the no campaign—hardly impartial, completely conflicted. Then there is the potential foreign influence on the fact-check partnership.

Here are some facts Minister Watt sought and ought to know. Financial statements from the International Fact-Checking Network, the IFCN, show a foreign organisation gave grants to the RMIT-ABC partnership. The IFCN’s funders are a combination of shady private foundations, foreign-headquartered technology giant Meta and even the United States government via its embassy in Bangkok. Why is the taxpayer funded national broadcaster, the ABC, seemingly receiving funds from potential agents of foreign influence for its fact checks? What sort of influence on fact checks do foreign agents buy with this money? These are all frightening questions about how far the influence of this shady, rapidly growing censorship industry reaches.

Fact-checking is being used in a censorship campaign to shut down dissent. During COVID, fact checkers in the Department of Health and Ageing told social media to take down a meme about masks being useless. That was always true. The gold standard Cochrane review confirmed masks are useless. The fact checkers’ outrageous behaviour demonstrates that the government’s misinformation and disinformation bill should be dead in the water. It’s time for the government to admit defeat and abandon their Orwellian censorship power grab. The key to human progress is freedom. Human progress starts with freedom of thought and freedom of sharing thoughts. Freedom of speech is fundamental to human progress.

Related:

Government Ignores Foreign Influence in RMIT-ABC Fact Checks
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You Cannot Have a Treaty With Yourself

We’ve been hearing a lot about reconciliation and self-determination recently. On 20 June 2023, Senator Thorpe called for a treaty to end a “war declared on First Nations people 230 years ago” as a Matter of Urgency.

A treaty is a legal arrangement between parties, each authorised to represent their side. Treaties are a two-way street. In simple terms, treaties are agreements between nations. They’re used to end wars, land disputes and even establish new countries.

Senator Thorpe called for a treaty to address historic systematic injustices and remove systemic racism. How does she see this as a uniting process? It’s not reasonable nor logical to try to punish later generations for perceived historical injustices to the ancestors of Aboriginal people.

Without a doubt, injustices occurred on both sides during the opening up of inland Australia, as settlers pushed into the interior. Australia was not won as the spoils of a war, and there was never a united aboriginal nation to treaty with.

A treaty binding Australia with First Nations people is not viable. It is not based on law and is divisive. We need to unite as one country.

Transcript

Senator Thorpe is calling for a treaty as a matter of urgency. A treaty between which parties? Who would represent Aboriginal people? What would be in the treaty? Billions in compensation and reparations, perhaps? The white and black Aboriginal industry already receives billions of dollars in grants and projects. Even if a treaty had been considered in the early days of settlement, it could not have been completed as there was no representative Aboriginal leader. There was no means of establishing representation of widely distributed tribes of Aboriginal people across the vast continent of Australia. It was impossible. Some tribal groups were simply unknown to others. There was no universal legal system in place when Europeans settled Australia. A treaty is a legal arrangement between parties authorised to represent their side. Treaties are a two-way street. Each party would agree to do or refrain from doing certain things. The process is essentially contractual.

Senator Thorpe has indicated that a treaty should address historic systematic injustices. How does she see this as a uniting process? It’s not reasonable nor logical to try to punish later generations for perceived historical injustices to the ancestors of Aboriginal people. There’s no doubt that injustices occurred on both sides during the opening up of the inland as settlers pushed into the interior and developed Australia. Australia was not won as the spoils of a war.

Is this treaty to be part of the blak sovereignty agenda that Senator Thorpe has been pushing since leaving the Greens or is this part of the Greens’s globalist agenda? According to some reports, a treaty is stage 2 of a three-stage process linked to getting the Voice up and then the rewriting of Australian history from the radical socialist point of view. Most Aboriginals have never heard of blak sovereignty, and the concept of a treaty is only the language of the socialist far-left elite and academics pushing for the Voice.

Aboriginal people never formally united in exercising exclusive possession of the entirety of Australia and Aboriginal sovereignty cannot be ceded as it did not exist after 1788. The High Court held in Love v Commonwealth in 2020 that First Nations sovereignty did not persist after the British Crown’s assertion of sovereignty in 1788. This confirmed the decision made in Mabo No. 2 in the High Court.

Treaties in other countries were possible because the indigenous party was a united nation. That has never been the case for Aboriginals in Australia. A treaty binding Australia with First Nations people is not viable. It is not based on law. It is divisive. Instead, we need to unite as one country.

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Government Ignores Foreign Influence in RMIT-ABC Fact Checks

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Financial statements show an ABC fact check partnership with RMIT received grants from an organisation that receives funds from George Soros funded foreign organisations, foreign governments and shadowy foundations.

Instead of taking these issues seriously, Minister Watt treats the questions with contempt, rabbiting on with meaningless waffle.

If the ABC has been co-opted into “fact checks” that have been influenced by shady foreign money, then Australians deserve to know.

Follow up to these questions here.

Update: ABC has ended its partnership with RMIT Exclusive: ABC ends seven-year partnership with RMIT Fact Check (crikey.com.au)

Transcript

Senator Roberts: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, Senator Watt. Why is the ABC receiving funds from potential agents of foreign influence for its fact-checking partnership with RMIT?

Senator Watt: I am not actually aware of the suggestions that Senator Roberts is making. I’m a little wary about taking them at face value, because I know Senator Roberts has a certain view of the ABC that is not a view I share. And I’m not sure Senator Roberts has always accurately represented the situation when it comes to the ABC. I would invite Senator Roberts to present further evidence of that, if he has that evidence available.

What I will say is that this government is a very strong supporter of the ABC. We recognise that it has a very important role as the national broadcaster. It has an important role not just in our big capital cities but also, particularly, in regional parts of Australia. It is often the only way of having local, regional stories told at the national level, and that’s why we are supportive of the ABC. It also plays a very important role during natural disasters as a sort of critical information for people seeking to stay alive during emergencies. They are some of the reasons that we support the ABC, and they are some of the reasons why we were so concerned by the budget cuts that were imposed by the then coalition government on the ABC, because those cuts removed or reduced the ability of the ABC to broadcast those regional stories in some of those areas that Senator Roberts and Senator Hanson like to say they care about. Those cuts reduced the ABC’s ability to provide some of that emergency information that is so vital to rural and regional communities. So we’re very proud of the fact that we’re strong supporters of the ABC. We don’t join in the regular attacks that we see on the ABC from the conservative side of politics, because we think that the institution plays a very important role in our national democracy. We will always remain strong supporters of the ABC.

The President: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?

Senator Roberts: The International Fact-Checking Network’s financial statements show that that foreign organisations gave the RMIT-ABC Fact Check partnership multiple grants. The International Fact-Checking Network receives funds from the US government, a private Norwegian foundation, foreign headquartered tech giant Meta, and a handful of private, shady organisations and foundations. Why didn’t the ABC declare that it was receiving funding from private, foreign organisations and governments for its RMIT fact-checking partnership?

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Senator Watt: That’s a fair point, Senator Brown. If there were a fact checker for some of the things that come out of One Nation, they’d be very, very busy. As for Senator Canavan, you wouldn’t even start trying to check facts from Senator Canavan. You’d want to have more than a decade if you wanted to check facts from Senator Canavan.

As I say, I’m very wary of entering into propositions that are being put by Senator Roberts when it comes to foreign interference and foreign influence. He is prone to saying various things about those issues, which don’t always bear fact checking themselves. Again, Senator Roberts, I’d invite you to provide any hard evidence that you have to support the claims that you’re making, but I repeat my position that we are strong supporters of the ABC. In fact, I think the public regard the ABC as the most trustworthy news agency in the country. That is regularly shown in surveys. (Time expired)

The President: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?

The government’s Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill does not define the terms ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ in specifics. It would likely be left to biased and foreign influenced fact checkers. Facebook has suspended RMIT FactLab services after accusations of bias in fact-checking the Voice referendum and reports of lapsed accreditation. Minister, will the government abandon its Orwellian misinformation and disinformation bill given that the fact checker’s credibility has been destroyed?

Senator Watt: Senator Roberts, thank you for the question. I know that you and a number of members of the Liberal and National parties have a strong position, you say, in relation to matters of misinformation—

The President: Senator Watt, I remind you to direct your comments through the chair.

Senator Watt: Okay. I know that there are many senators from the Liberal, National and One Nation parties who say all sorts of things about misinformation. It doesn’t seem to prevent them from presenting all sorts of misinformation about certain referendums that we’re about to have in this country. It doesn’t seem to prevent them joining in on misinformation and disinformation campaigns telling people that we’re going to be facing parking tickets being legislated by the Voice and all sorts of nonsense like that. If you want to have a discussion about misinformation, I’d suggest that you keep your own house in order and come to this parliament in good faith rather than providing the constant misinformation we see from the other side.

Related:

Who will fact-check the fact-checkers?
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Unique Australian Ecosystems Under Threat

Pristine Australian bushland environments are being torn apart for metal monsters.

Short-lived and resource-hungry wind turbines are going up all over Queensland as part of Australia’s Net Zero 2050. These monstrosities are nothing more than a pipe dream for ‘free energy’.

Wind does not and cannot provide baseload power that coal provides cheaply and reliably.

To ensure coal mines restore the environment, coal mines pay a hefty bond for land disturbed. This bond is only returned after restoration is completed after mining.

Wind power companies pay NO environmental bond to make good afterwards.

I guarantee, if the government stopped propping wind and solar up with ‘free money’ the investors would run a mile and that is exactly what is happening overseas.

When will Australia acknowledge what a green-washed white elephant these wind projects are and back out before more birds disappear and more of the environment is destroyed?

I bet Andrew Forrest wouldn’t put one in his own backyard. Would you?

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Pursuing Accountability Among the Agencies

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The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) is thorough and does some fine work. Its audit of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the National Recovery and Resilience Agency (NRRA) found performance accountability missing.

At Senate Estimates the ANAO audit of Disaster Recovery Funding uncovered several reporting deficits with NEMA and NRRA that need to be addressed, vindicating my previous call for a Senate Inquiry into the administration of Disaster Relief Funding Arrangements to expose the misuse funds.

I called for an ANAO audit of Coal LSL (Long Service Leave) after Chartered Accountants KPMG’s concerning report of Coal LSL revealed many governance problems and the non-paying of entitlements to Hunter Valley coal miners.

I’ve been raising these issues for the past four years and will keep raising them on behalf of Australians until these identified problems and governance issues are resolved.

ANAO has agreed to examine this so watch this space.

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