Humour can be powerful.
Help us open more eyes. Too many Australians are placing blind trust in government. It’s time to shift that trust back to where it belongs: within ourselves.
When we think independently and make our own decisions, we reclaim our freedom—and that’s how we move forward.
In 2024, 23,000 foreign students were found to have purchased qualifications—many in aged care and early childhood—from deregistered providers like SPES Education.
This is a clear breach of their visa conditions under Section 8202 and defeats the entire purpose of studying in Australia—which is to support the Australian education industry while acquiring real skills they can use to contribute to the growth of Australia or their country of origin.
The penalty for such a serious breach of trust with the Australian people must be the cancellation of the individual’s visa cancelled and deportation, along with any family members they were permitted to bring with them while studying in Australia.
I asked Minister Watt whether the government would cancel the visas of these students and others who obtained qualifications fraudulently.
Listen closely to the gaslighting, the waffle and the “backslapping” – all to avoid admitting that the Albanese Government has no intention of deporting these illegals students.
My question is to Minister Watt, representing the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. In July the Australian Skills Quality Authority issued notices cancelling the qualifications of more than 4,200 foreign students, who were largely studying aged care and early childhood, after their education provider, SPES Education Pty Ltd, was deregistered for running a cash-for-diplomas operation scheme. In 2024, 23,000 foreign students were caught purchasing their qualifications, which is a breach of condition 8202, applying to all class 500 student visa holders. In short, these foreign students are in breach of their visas. Minister, will you cancel the visas of these 23,000 students and any others who cheated when purchasing their qualification?Â
Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water): Thank you, Senator Roberts. While I understand you prefer to ask these types of questions through the frame of migration, the matters you are asking about probably fit more within the responsibilities of the Minister for Skills and Training, Minister Giles, but I do represent him here, so I can still answer that question.Â
We are very proud of the fact that we have reformed the compliance measures around international education to weed out the shonks who had been running international education operations and proliferated under the former coalition government. The international training system that was left behind by the Murrison government was not just a joke; it was crooked. We had shonks and crooks unfortunately running these sorts of operations, exploiting international students who were here, taking money off them and providing them with dodgy qualifications that weren’t fit for the kind of work they went on to do. So we are proud of those reforms.
As you say, Senator Roberts, it has resulted in thousands of qualifications being cancelled, as they should have been, because in some cases people were being awarded qualifications without doing any training or any study whatsoever; basically, you paid for a qualification and you got it. That’s not how the system should work. It’s how the system worked under the former coalition government, but it’s not how the system works under this Labor government. Again, we make no apology for taking back the qualifications of people, so-called students, who have obtained qualifications through those means, and we make absolutely no apology for going after the shonks who were running those kinds of organisations. They have no place in our system. They actually tarnish Australia’s reputation as a provider of international education, and we will continue to go after them.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Under both Australian and Queensland law, a person who obtains a job using a faked qualification has committed two offences: using deception and forgery to obtain a financial advantage. Both carry a penalty of seven years in jail. This is not just a foreign student breaching their student visa conditions; this is serious criminal behaviour. Minister, have you brought in so many foreign students and so many new arrivals that you have lost the ability to police clear-cut federal law?
The PRESIDENT: Minister Wong?
Senator Wong: President, I would ask you to consider whether that question is in order, given that it appears to go to a question about criminal provisions or offences under state legislation that clearly can’t be in the portfolio responsibilities the minister is representing.
Senator ROBERTS: My question goes to the quality of immigrants that are being allowed into this country and turning out to be criminals.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, you also referred to the qualifications or the penalties in the Queensland and Australian jurisdictions.
Senator Scarr: President, speaking on the point of order, it is a fact that the Australian immigration legislation does cross-refer to state criminal legislation with respect to calibrating what is serious or not-so-serious criminal conduct. I just provide that for your assistance.
The PRESIDENT: In response to your point of order, Senator Wong, the minister can answer the question to the extent that it goes to his portfolio or portfolios, his areas, but I do remind everyone in the chamber that it doesn’t go to legal opinion.
Senator WATT: Senator Roberts, I think we’re all used to you and other One Nation senators asking questions that involve pejorative statements towards migrants, and it would appear that that is the intention for this term as well. How you decide to use your questions is a matter for you.Â
The PRESIDENT: Minister Watt, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts.
Senator Roberts: An unfounded imputation, President. I happen to be an immigrant.
The PRESIDENT: There is no need for the added piece. Senator Roberts, the minister was describing the language with which a question was asked, so it doesn’t go to imputation.
Senator WATT: To answer your question, Senator Roberts, as I say, when the issue of fraudulent qualifications came to light, we took action. I was a little bit involved in this in my previous portfolio, and my recollection is that a very thorough search was done with employers who may have been employing the people involved. I will come back to you if this is wrong, but my recollection is that there was not very much evidence, if any at all, that people were being employed using those qualifications. As I say, if that’s wrong, I will come back to you. We do take this matter seriously, and we will keep acting against it.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Foreign students can now bring family members with them, a prize for which many are clearly prepared to break the law. Deporting 27,200 crooked students and the thousands of family members they brought with them will free up thousands of homes and help ease the housing crisis and record homelessness that your government has caused through catastrophically high immigration. Minister, isn’t it time we freed up homes for Australians who deserve them ahead of continuing to import criminals?
The PRESIDENT: Minister Wong?
Senator Wong: President, I would ask you to consider whether the use of that adjective, which I would prefer not to repeat, about the students in that question is in order, because it suggests all—I think it was a few hundred thousand—are in fact contravening or on the wrong side of the law or whatever. I do wonder if that’s an appropriate inclusion in a question to a minister in this place.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts?
Senator Roberts: Senator Watt has already admitted that shonks are being weeded out. We want to get rid of them—out of the country.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, the minister was referring to providers of education. Minister Wong?
Senator Wong: On the point of order, the fact that some people may have breached the law does not make an entire cohort in breach of the law. That was the implication. It was a clear statement in the question.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts?
Senator Roberts: We know 27,000—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, you are not in a debate here. You either have a legitimate question or you haven’t. I am going to seek the advice of the Clerk.
Senator Roberts interjecting—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, we are not in the committee stage. This is question time. You ask your question. It gets ruled in or out of order if a point of order is raised. But you are not in a debate, and you are clearly not in a debate with me. Senator Roberts and Minister Wong, as is my usual practice, I am happy to review the language, but I would remind all senators that language used in questions is ultimately their responsibility and ultimately a reflection on them if there is some offence. So I will call Minister Watt.
Senator WATT: Thanks, Senator Roberts. There are a number of assumptions in your question. One of them is that those students who obtained fraudulent qualifications were working in the occupation that that qualification was for. As I said, I am checking my records as to that situation, but I don’t think you should necessarily make that assumption. It is one thing for someone to obtain a fraudulent qualification, and that is wrong. As I said, we have taken action on that against the students by cancelling their qualifications. Also, we have taken action against some of those shonky providers. But it’s quite possible that those students may have obtained a qualification in a certain area but have been working in a completely different occupation. My recollection is that that is what the case was for those students, but I’m checking that matter. As I said, if I have heard anything further to add to that then I will advise the chamber.Â
A million foreign students and their families are in Australia—overcrowding schools, straining housing, and bleeding tens of billions of $$ out of the country.
Courses are being used as backdoor permanent residency pathways, with poor standards and little oversight.
One Nation will:
✅ Deport visa cheats
✅ End family visas for students
✅ Introduce 8-year wait times for benefits
✅ Free up homes for young Aussies
It’s time to fix the rort and put Australians first.
 I move:
That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for the Environment and Water (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to international students.
I asked: has the government lost control of student visa holders? The Australian public have had enough of the government pretending immigration is fine. So many people are entering that the government has lost control. Foreign students are now allowed to bring in spouses, de facto partners and children under 18 who attend state schools and contribute to overcrowding. Spouses can work 24 hours a week, or, if the student is a postgraduate, they can work full time with no restrictions. Buying a first degree and coming in as a graduate student opens the door to a financial windfall and helps to explain how foreign visa holders were able to last year send $15 billion home to their families—money that leaves Australia forever, making our economy and our people poorer.
In the last two years, the early education graduate diploma at the Southern Cross University has had 6,000 enrolments. The ABC reports that courses like this are being used as permanent residency pathways, with courses dumbed down to keep the gravy train going. There are confirmed issues around graduates not speaking English and not understanding child protection policies, safe sleep or even hygiene. There are 1.1 million foreign students and their families currently in Australia.
One Nation will deport every visa holder who is breaching their visa, a figure close to 100,000 when the number of dishonest foreign students is included. We will introduce an eight-year waiting period for social security benefits, including Medicare, and we will cancel the visa for spouses and siblings to accompany students entirely. In the age of online learning, there is no need for a student with children to come to Australia in person. The Albanese government’s student visa rort is selling out young Australians, causing record homelessness. We will free up tens of thousands of houses for young Australians, who, thanks to the government, currently face the worst housing crisis and the worst housing market in Australian history. (Time expired)
One Nation stands firmly against the Albanese Government’s push for electric vehicles (EVs), and the billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies and infrastructure spending that overwhelmingly benefit wealthy Australians. While everyday Australians face rising costs for housing, groceries, and fuel, the government continues to pour money into EV incentives and charger installations—despite low public uptake.
Australians should be free to choose the vehicle that suits their needs and budget—whether it’s a ute, a four-wheel drive, or a V8.
One Nation would cancel all policies that penalise internal combustion engines and calls for the return of reliable, efficient petrol and diesel vehicles.
It’s time to revoke the EV slush fund and put Australians first.
I move:Â
That the Industry Research and Development (Dealership and Repairer Initiative for Vehicle Electrification Nationally (DRIVEN) Program) Instrument 2024, made under the Industry Research and Development Act 1986, be disallowed [F2024L01460].
What a mouthful! It’s an instrument made under the Industry Research and Development Act 1986. This is where the fun bit starts. This regulation One Nation seeks to revoke is a $60 million slush fund that climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen—there he is again—will have to splash around on pet projects. Specifically, this is $60 million for the installation and repair of electric vehicle chargers. These are electric vehicle chargers from which only some of the most well-off of Australians, who can afford an EV, will benefit. While rents are skyrocketing, houses are more unaffordable than ever, groceries keep getting more expensive and beer is heading towards $15 a pint, taxpayers should not be slugged with more taxes to pay for this government’s slush fund.
Why is the government obsessed with putting everyone into electric vehicles? Some of them have decent speed, admittedly, when you put your foot down, yet the range on purely electric vehicles—battery electric vehicles—is mostly terrible. It gets even worse when trying to tow something. Forums for the Ford F-150 Lightning, a battery powered ute, are full of horror stories that unfold as soon as a trailer is attached. This is worldwide.
Australians already know all of this and are voting with their wallets. The rejection of battery EVs shows up in new car sales figures. Battery electric vehicles were just 6.5 per cent of new car sales, and how long have they been offered? Years. Even here, in the capital of ‘Wokeistan’, Canberra, home of the country’s loudest virtue signallers, battery electric vehicles are just 3.6 per cent of all vehicles on the road. This is despite every effort of government and multinational corporations trying to pull Australians away from the trusty petrol and diesel engine. There has been a near decade of propaganda and lies trying to convince Australians to make the switch—we’re not buying it.
Never mind the hugely expensive tax breaks that give an EV buyer tens of thousands of dollars. These tax breaks include exemptions from the lower luxury car tax threshold; exemptions from the penalties under the new vehicle efficiency standard, or the ute tax, as it has become known; no fuel excise at 50.8 cents a litre; exemptions from fringe benefits tax, representing a $12,000 saving on a $60,000 EV but costing taxpayers $550 million a year. Taxpayers pay for this. This is Robin Hood in reverse; robbing the poor to pay for the wealthy. Plus there is an array of rebates from state governments across the country. They’ve thrown just about every tax break in the book at EVs, and still Australians aren’t fussed over the inferior electric vehicle products.
More than 95 per cent of the vehicles on the road still contain internal combustion engines, the trusty petrol and diesel, the reliable petrol and diesel, the safe petrol and diesel. Naturally aspirated, turbocharged, supercharged or a hybrid set up, Australians have rightly shunned battery EVs for engines that make a noise when turned on. Tradies cried out in horror when the legendary V8, from the Toyota LandCruiser 200 series and utes, was removed from market in anticipation of the coming government regulations and crackdowns.
Are EVs cheaper to run? Well, a CarExpert road trip test throws real doubt on that. They drove two BMWs on a road trip from Melbourne to Sydney. They were the same exact car, the same year of make, with the same start and the same finish point. The only difference is that one was the battery electric version and the other was hydrocarbon fuelled. When they arrived in Sydney, the electric vehicle charging had cost more for the road trip than filling up with the most expensive 98 petrol. Of course, electricity isn’t free, and neither are these chargers. The minister’s slush fund that we’re seeking to disallow here is paying for the installation of chargers that are businesses in themselves, so we’re paying for a business. Taxpayers will foot the bill for installing a charger, and the EV business will reap all the profits from the charge they sell through it forever, for eternity. We would never do this with service stations, because it’s bloody ridiculous. Taxpayers should not be paying for the profits of these often foreign multinational companies who run charging services.
Then there’s the fire risk. Everyone knows about this. The electric vehicle industry’s dirty little secret: the batteries and these chargers present an extreme fire risk. Car ferries carrying thousands of new car deliveries have been left to burn and potentially sink after battery fires have broken out mid-ocean. Just last month, News.com reported:
There are concerns an abandoned EV carrier floating aimlessly in the Pacific Ocean could continue to burn for weeks …
Salvage operators have finally reached the Morning Midas around 350km south of Adak, Alaska, a week after it first caught fire and 22 crew were rescued by the US Coast Guard after being forced to abandon ship.
The floating inferno is said to have been caused by the lithium-iron batteries in the 70 electric vehicles on board—batteries that can cause fires that can burn for weeks.
Some apartment tower complexes have banned battery electric vehicles in their car parks. Our fire departments are sounding the alarm on the increased risk battery fires present. These battery fires often can’t be simply put out and must be left for days to burn themselves out. One suggestion to deal with an electric vehicle fire is to have the burning wreck forklifted—imagine the forklift driver!—into a waiting shipping container of water to try and keep it contained. That’s a suggestion. Seriously! That’s the best firefighting strategy we have when one of these EVs goes up.
Insurance companies have confirmed the risk in electric vehicles is real with their increased premiums. Insurance comparison site Compare the Market conducted a study of 12 insurers and has shown the top five bestselling EVs are 43 per cent more expensive to insure than similar internal combustion models. So EVs are more expensive to buy, more expensive to drive, more expensive to charge and more expensive to insure. We are running out of categories to find out where EVs are actually cheaper.
What about environmentally friendly? Let’s ask that question. As for being environmentally friendly, the process for making batteries is one of the most environmentally destructive in the world, killing the environment to save the planet. The hundreds of kilograms of minerals that go into a battery include aluminium, copper, steel, iron, graphite, nickel, lithium, manganese and cobalt. These require extremely intensive mining and refinement and huge, huge amounts of energy. The resources and energy consumed in electric vehicle manufacturing is way above those consumed in making a petrol or diesel engine car. Many of these raw minerals are sourced from conflict-torn places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, using child labourers and slaves. The overall environmental impact of building an EV is devastating, as is the social impact. The raw materials are sourced from ethically questionable countries and processed almost exclusively by Communist China controlled companies. That’s where the focus on EVs leaves Australians—completely reliant on China.
Then there’s Minister Tony Burke, whose Chinese EV says ‘Don’t plug in the phone.’ Worries about being reliant on China aren’t overblown. Government departments are warning Labor politicians of the same thing. The Strategist journal reported in November:
Senate estimates … heard the remarkable revelation that Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has had to take ‘precautions’ based on warnings from his own department to protect himself and the nation’s sensitive information from Burke’s own Chinese-made electric car—
He’s got to protect himself and the security of the country from his Chinese electric car—
The risks with such cars, according to Home Affairs officials, might include having data collected from the owner’s phone if it were connected to the car, voice calls eavesdropped on, image collection from the car’s external cameras and geolocation tracking—meaning that if Burke drove to a sensitive government location the car’s manufacturer would be able to see.
If these are risks to ministers, those same risks are inherent for all Australians. Bloody ridiculous.
What is even more confusing about the government EV push is that petrol and diesel engines are only getting better and more efficient in their newest versions. Did anyone mention weight? Electric vehicles are humongous in weight. Small, turbocharged, extremely efficient diesel engines were becoming the powertrain of choice, especially in small cars. Fuel efficiency numbers we couldn’t have dreamt of 20 years ago were being beaten. Then all the car makers in the world, and many stupid governments around the world, seemingly overnight, had to imagine that petrol vehicles and diesel engines were dead. Imagine that. Everyone would be driving an EV, apparently blind to or not caring for the downsides in range, resources and longevity. Just as we were getting to some of the cleanest, most efficient diesel and petrol vehicles ever made, why did the government decided no-one would ever want to drive them again? They decided for the taxpayers. They decided for the citizens of Australia.
Why does the government want to splash billions of dollars into technology that Australians clearly don’t want and that is environmentally reprehensible? The answer may lie in the plan for Australia’s energy grid. The government needs electric vehicles hooked up to the grid under their plans for a consumer energy resources like EV batteries to be connected to virtual power plants. They want to use your car as a battery. The government can’t afford to build all the batteries needed under their net zero plan. They don’t even know how much. There is no plan. So the government wants Australians to buy an EV with a battery that can be taken over and discharged to the grid. They don’t tell you that, do they, but that is what they are wanting. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency says that batteries from EVs ‘can help stabilise the power grid by supplying power back during times of high demand’. There it is. Do you hear that in their advertisements? No.
Like many things, this will start off as a voluntary scheme, currently called ‘bidirectional charging’ or ‘vehicle to grid’. That sounds good, but think about what it means. It means stealing your electricity when you want it. Then the inevitable threat of blackouts and the instability of the electricity grid under net zero will become an emergency, and everyone with an EV will be forced to participate. What we have now is power shortages in some states as they destroy perfectly good coal and gas generation and try and fail to replace it with solar and wind. So we’ve got a shortage of reliable electricity. And now they want to convert the car fleet, the transport fleet, to EVs to add more demand to the electricity sector. Then they want to promote artificial intelligence, which is an electricity hog. And then they want to support bitcoin mining. Where is all this going to lead? It’s going to lead to massive, sky-high prices as well as shortages, unreliability, instability and insecurity.
The government’s plan, or what it claims is a plan, is all very complicated, but they don’t know what they’re doing. That is fact. One Nation’s solution is much simpler: Australians should be allowed to drive whatever car they want, whatever car they can afford, whether it’s a four-wheel drive, a ute or a smart car. Only One Nation has a policy to cancel all policies which lead to the death of the V8 engine being provided as an option to Australian car buyers. Porsche and Mercedes-Benz said that EVs would take over, and they stopped making V8s. Now they’re bringing back V8s and they’re scaling back their EV plans. I ask the Senate to revoke this electric vehicle slush fund and join One Nation in bringing back the V8.
One Nation backs Senator Bragg’s Housing Investment Probity Bill to stop public funds flowing to CFMEU-linked projects via Cbus.
We would however go further. One Nation would:
✅ Shut down the Housing Future Fund and the federal Department of Housing.
✅ Cut $50K off home costs by fixing the Building Code and suspending GST on building materials.
✅ Create a People’s Bank for 5% fixed-rate mortgages.
✅ Allow a person’s super account to invest in their first home.
✅ Deport visa violators to free up housing.
✅ Stop foreign ownership of houses.
Australia needs homes and jobs — not government waste.
Senator Bragg has advanced the Housing Investment Probity Bill 2024, which modifies the charter of the Housing Australia Future Fund to prevent financing of projects that Cbus owns. Cbus is a superannuation fund with legal affiliation to the CFMEU. The CFMEU are currently under a federally appointed administrator, a move that was a long time coming. Queensland Premier Crisafulli has called an inquiry into the CFMEU’s systemic violence, intimidation, misogyny and bullying. This bill from Senator Bragg is common sense—to prevent cash leaking through Cbus to the CFMEU until the CFMEU clean up their act and get back to representing Australian workers and to working constructively with industry to create secure, well-paid jobs at scale for all Australians.
Australia needs housing, and we need breadwinner jobs. We have a responsibility to ensure infrastructure is built on time and on budget. One Nation does, though, propose a better alternative to Senator Bragg’s bill. We would shut down the housing future fund and the federal department of housing. Housing is a state responsibility, a state power. Government has no role in building houses. Its presence in the market drives up prices and slows down production, displacing private builders and monopolising building products. We will wind the building code back to remove the woke nonsense and the net-zero nonsense which were recently introduced into the code, and suspend the GST on building materials. Together these will cut $50,000 off a new home’s construction cost. Independently assessed, around $49,000 of that comes out of the modifications to the building code, which are rubbish. We will take the $11 billion in funds under management at the housing future fund and roll that into a people’s bank, accessed through Australia Post, offering mortgages for first home buyers who are Australian citizens. It’s been proven here in the past in Australia. It’s been proven in North America. It’s been proven in Japan and New Zealand.
Mortgages will be on five per cent interest with a five per cent deposit, fixed for up to 30 years. The five per cent deposit can come from the first home owner grant and then be topped up using the applicant’s own superannuation account, protected with a lien. Notice I said ‘account’, not ‘fund’. This will not be a drawdown from super. Super is useful for retirement. Our policy simply replaces super funds investing in housing with the person’s own super account investing in their own house. As the house grows in value, so too does the value of the lien held in the person’s own superannuation account, protecting their retirement. Someone who has been working in the workforce for five years on average, and who is entitled to a first home owner’s grant, may be able to move into their own home straightaway.
We must do more for the young Australians who this government, and other recent governments, have sold out. Young people who did everything society asked—they studied hard, stayed out of trouble, got their degrees, got their high school qualifications—now have a HECS debt, rent and a grocery bill they can’t afford. And they are in despair, right across Australia.
The government’s housing measures are complete rubbish. They are an insult to Australians. The government’s own incoming government report stated clearly that their construction targets would not be met—bloody hopeless. Canberra, as I’ve said many times, is the source of every major problem in this country, and one of the biggest problems we have in this country right now is a homelessness crisis—an inhuman homelessness catastrophe.
In my state of Queensland, going from the north in Cairns, every major provincial city has a homelessness crisis, a housing crisis. In Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Bundaberg, Maryborough, the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, Brisbane—the capital city of what should be the wealthiest state in the world has got homeless people sleeping on the riverbanks, under bridges, in tents and in caravans—Ipswich, Boonah, Toowoomba, in every major provincial city, there are homeless.
If you drive into Gympie, in a concrete car park, there are homeless people in tents. Parents come home at night—working mothers and fathers—wondering if their kids are still in the car and then sleeping in the car. Where do they go to the toilet? Where do they have showers? These are good people. And then the councils just put the bulldozer through the tents, put the bulldozer through the cars and that’s it: gone.
Why is that happening in Queensland? It’s because we’ve got so many people leaving Victoria to come up to Queensland. In particular, we have got catastrophic, inhuman immigration levels that this government and the previous government have perpetuated. Catastrophic immigration started with John Howard’s government when he doubled immigration. Every prime minister since has been on the trend of increasing immigration.
We’ve got so many foreigners owning houses. Some of them are locked up as an investment, not being used. We’ve got 75,000 people here on residence visas illegally. One Nation says, ‘Deport them immediately.’ We’ve got students here in contravention of a student visa—up to 100,000 of them. Get rid of them. Free up some houses. We’ve got accommodation capacity for 100,000 students; we’ve got about 600,000 overseas students in the country. That can’t continue. One Nation says: start with the demand and deport people who are here illegally or in contravention of their visa—deport them. Stop foreign ownership of housing, which will increase the supply. And, regarding the construction costs that I’ve mentioned, our policy goes beyond what I’ve mentioned briefly. We’ve also mentioned the finances. Our One Nation policy fixes demand, supply, construction and finance. Senator Grogan said that housing cannot be fixed overnight. It can be fixed close to overnight, just by doing the things One Nation has said: address demand, supply, construction and finance. We must do better. It takes several months to build a house; it takes several months to build an apartment complex. It doesn’t take long, though, to deport people who are here illegally. It doesn’t take long at all. That frees up supply and reduces the demand.
Canberra, as I said, is the cause of every major problem in this country, and it comes from both Liberal and Labor governments—every major problem. The government’s housing measures—I repeat—are rubbish. Their own incoming government report stated clearly that their construction targets would not be met, yet they perpetuate the nonsense. We must do better. One Nation are in support, and I thank Senator Bragg for this legislation.
Australia is set to ‘quietly’ introduce ‘unprecedented’ age verification checks for YouTube and Google as part of a wider push to gate-keep access to social media.
Quietly.
Without the consent of the Australian people.
Labor is pushing ahead despite alarming fallout from the UK where their Online Safety Act, claimed to be created in the interests of ‘child safety’, has led to the immediate censoring of political discussion surrounding mass migration and Grooming Gangs.
What began as genuine concern for children on social media has rapidly expanded to mandatory, wide-ranging, biometric age checking across the digital landscape.
Not only here – throughout the Western world.
Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have all decided that information is the enemy of political ideas.
Liberal Leader Sussan Ley continues to support the eSafety ‘Commissar’s’ proposed restrictions on X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, set to begin in December and now expanded to YouTube and Google (including Google maps).
Failure to comply will see the imposition of extraordinary and ludicrous fines.
This is to satisfy an age verification technology whose reliability is yet to be proven. While these biometric technologies can guess at ages, they cannot return a reliable result to distinguish teenagers, even for the same individual. How can this be the proposed basis for adult rights to digital communication?
It is only natural that when adults find themselves unable to access essential digital services, or a 16-year-old on their birthday wants to download X, that a more reliable form of identification will be sought – and that will almost certainly be Digital ID.
So much for promises that this will be ‘voluntary’ and ‘only for government paperwork and applying for rental properties’.
Most believe, logically, that the point of ‘child safety’ legislation is to force the implementation of Digital ID and perhaps begin the crackdown against VPNs.
These are policy positions that would have been rejected if it weren’t for the added layer of ‘think of the children’ just as deconstructing our energy grid required the weaponisation of screaming children gluing themselves to the road believing they were ‘going to die’ because of fossil fuels.
It is a sickening form of confected emotionally-manipulative hysteria.
We may ask, for what other reasons have these extreme measures been placed upon the digital realm?
Especially considering YouTube is one of the most heavily regulated established platforms and Google has a fully-functional adult-content setting.
Safety?
I don’t believe that. I’m sure you don’t believe that. Chalk up another Uniparty lie.
While the government continues turning a blind eye to gaming chats and unregulated message boards, it clearly does not believe in child safety online. And even if the eSafety Commissioner believes in her mission to ‘protect children online’, why not wait until the Under 16 social media comes into force in December?
There is enormous doubt about its functionality and, most assume, its public reception. It is likely to be a social disaster. Children around Australia will suddenly realise that government power extends beyond campaign slogans aimed at their frustrated parents.
The UK is experiencing a fraction of the power the Australian legislation proposes, and it is an unmitigated disaster which has been called an assault on fundamental human and civil rights. Instead of protecting children, the UK’s Online Safety Act has put them in danger because it silences information about police complicity in the Grooming Gang assaults and removes public protests about illegal migrants who have been accused of sexually assaulting young people on the street.
This is why we say, over and over, the government cannot be trusted with censorship.
Even good intentions turn sour, and we are confronted with ridiculous scenes, such as Peter Kyle, the UK Science Secretary, accusing Reform leader Nigel Farage of being on the side of Jimmy Savile. Needless to say, Farage is demanding an apology.
‘If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that,’ Mr Kyle spat back.
This is what authoritarian governments do when they have overreach – falsely frame a legislative reform as an existential threat to safety. If you don’t want your free speech rights or privacy erased, you must be supporting predators. If you think industrial renewable energy projects are a bad idea, you must want the world to burn. Or freeze. Or flood. (They’re not quite sure on that one.)
The truth is, the UK has shown us what awaits Australia in the immediate future.
Even those who dislike social media need be concerned about the impacts on search engines such as Google and Microsoft. Those who do not verify their age will have their results automatically filtered to child settings. This does not mean the standard ‘safe search’. No, it is instead a more complex algorithm that we have been warned will include harmful content which could simply mean a discussion on migration or whatever the government deems to be misinformation.
It might be an article from the wonderful Professor Ian Plimer challenging the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It is via these methods of ‘child safety’ that our access to knowledge shrinks.
The government has become what the late Christopher Hitchens warned about – an entity deciding what you can read.
Did the Prime Minister mention this at the last election?
Who is responsible for subverting democracy and taking this decision away from the Australian people and our elected representatives?
This intolerable story of the erosion of rights comes down to the eSafety Commissar, Julie Inman Grant. She seems absolutely giddy at the thought of more power. I’m disgusted. Enough is enough. We need to have a talk about digital overreach and the misuse of child safety as a means to control people’s access to the digital world.
Based on the Coalition’s introduction of necessary precursor policies and legislation, Labor’s assault on the digital world is so expansive and severe it is difficult to know which argument to take into battle.
And that is the point.
Destroying the modern public forum is an essential step on the path to cementing an era of unchallenged propaganda capable of re-shaping the social conversation of Australia.
The people who founded our democracy wrote privacy into the system for a reason.
First, terrorism was used. Then climate change. Then Covid. Now, child safety.
All of these have been used to deceitfully chip away at privacy and free speech. It must stop. We have to draw a line in the sand and protect the internet, for ourselves and for the next generation of children who deserve to grow up in a free country and indeed, a free world.
Life will never guarantee safety. That is not an excuse for the government to legislate danger.
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