Senator Malcolm Roberts’ motion today in support of the coal mining industry is to help the voters of the Hunter decide who they can believe and who they can’t.
One Nation has consistently backed coal-fired power stations in our energy mix as it is one of the most affordable and reliable energy sources for Australia.
Senator Roberts said, “Thanks to One Nation’s relentless support for coal, the Nationals have clearly had a light bulb moment in their recent support for coal-fired power stations.”
Senator Canavan, leading the charge for the National’s renewed support, stated on Twitter in September 2020 that “the Hunter Valley has the best thermal coal in the world” and calls on the Morrison Government to build a coal fired power station in the Hunter.”
Senator Roberts added, “Voters need to look closely at the hypocrisy of the Nationals’ message; at a federal level there is a sudden spruiking for coal, but at a state level the Nationals continue to pursue closing Liddell coal power plant in 2023.
“Closing Liddell will result in blackouts as nearly 10% of the national power grid will go offline.”
There has been a conga line of National politicians turning up in the Hunter for damage control after One Nation candidate Stuart Bonds received more votes than the Nationals in the 2019 election. Senator Roberts said, “Voters in the Hunter need to know who the real supporters for the coal mining industry are and my motion today will divide the Chamber along those support lines.”
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Mining.png?fit=2300%2C1294&ssl=112942300Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2021-02-02 08:22:562021-02-02 08:23:07Senator Roberts’ motion to flush out support for coal in the Hunter
One Nation supports this motion. Cheap reliable hydrocarbon fuels have led to the greatest improvement in human progress in the past 150 years.
One Nation supports Senator Rennick’s proposal to extend the Kogan Creek coal power plant.
Climate policies and renewable subsidies have led to Australia having one of the most expensive power prices in the world and becoming more unstable. Senator Rennick’s proposal is good for Queensland and good for Australia.
That the Senate notes that the current dispute between China and Australia is more deep-seated than a trade spat involving wine, coal and timber.
The motion I moved is the opening paragraph in Robert Gottliebsen’s newspaper article in The Australian yesterday, and I’ll quote it again:
When China declared that Australia had been “evil” it suddenly became clear that the dispute between the two nations is more deep-seated than a trade spat involving wine coal, timber etc.
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia who is involved in the governance of Australia, I want to focus on Gottliebsen’s meaty fourth paragraph:
From President Xi down, there has been little respect for Australia for a long time and many in China believe we are a foolish country that makes mistakes at almost every turn, led by defence.
He then details serious flaws in the governance of three Defence projects, the submarine ‘shemozzle’, as he calls it, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and the Hunter frigates. We obviously are ‘a foolish country’ based on this, and the obvious point of his article is our shoddy governments over many decades, both Liberal-National and Labor.
People in this country are feeling concerned about the seriously deteriorating state of our country. We have lost our economic sovereignty. We’re losing our national sovereignty. We’re plunging towards catastrophe economically, and dependence with a complete loss of security. People are fed up and, across many communities and industries—and I mean right around the country—people are feeling dispirited, hopeless, confused, aimless, wary, concerned and even fearful, because most can sense our country’s destruction. Yet, 100 years ago Australia was No. 1 in the world in income per person and had the highest GDP—gross domestic product—per person.
There’s a worse aspect beyond economic demise though. Bullies like China prey on those perceived as being weak. Gottliebsen rightly says that, due to poor, and even stupid, decisions, we’re rightly perceived as being weak in defence. Yet he barely scratches the full extent of the deterioration of our security, because our productive capacity has been dismantled, and our economic security has been smashed, destroyed. We are vulnerable. Now, as a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, that is what I will discuss, because, like bullies in a schoolyard or in a workplace, China preys on those it perceives as weak or foolish. By the way, when I raise China, I refer to the Chinese Communist Party and not the millions of Australians of Chinese descent now in our country, descendants of those who came during the gold rushes almost two centuries ago, and those who immigrated more recently.
Not only does the Chinese Communist Party assess other nations against China’s values and standards; the Chinese Communist Party assesses our country against our own values, and from that it finds out: Does our government have courage? Does our government have integrity? Do the politicians in this country and this parliament have the strength of character needed to lead a country? I’ve been thinking about this for some years now and I’ve made a list of Australian values: mateship; a fair go; support; loyalty; being fair dinkum; telling the truth; honesty; fairness; freedom to live; freedom of speech; freedom of thought; freedom of belief; freedom of religion; freedom of faith; freedom of interaction; freedom of exchange; democracy; our flag; our nation; family; care; respect for people; respect for community; respect for the law; respect for the environment; making sure government fulfils its three primary roles, which are protecting life, protecting property and protecting freedom, and stays out of everything else; and our Constitution. We value our Constitution, especially competitive federalism, and we value human progress. Australia has led that improvement in progress in the past 150 years. It has been amazing progress, right across the world.
So let’s assess governments against these values and their impact on our productive capacity. Productive capacity depends on many things, but particularly energy costs—the primacy of energy. An ever-decreasing cost of energy has led to 150 years of human progress. Australia has gone from having the world’s lowest electricity prices to having the world’s highest, yet we’re now the world’s largest exporter of energy—gas and coal. China imports a lot of our coal, but the production of coal in their own country is eight times our total production—not just our exports but our total production. They make us look like small producers of coal. They have the largest coal reserves in the world, along with the United States. They use our coal. They’re building steel power plants out of our coal, and they’re building hundreds of coal-fired power stations.
We legislate to use their wind turbines and their solar panels. We subsidise them. It drives up the cost of our electricity, and we pay them for unreliables—their solar and wind generators. We pay them for components of electric vehicles, which we also subsidise. And then we have Chinese companies, affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, owning electricity networks in our major cities. Then we have the Queensland Labor government stealing $1½ billion a year through the generators. All of this destroys jobs and destroys competitiveness.
Then taxpayers pay people, quite often foreigners, to come in and squat on the land, just to get carbon dioxide credits. It’s called carbon dioxide farming. It takes good farmland and destroys it with noxious weeds and feral animals—pests—and then that has to be reclaimed at some later date; who knows when. Then we have Angus Taylor, the Minister for Energy and Emissions, a farmer. He knows that the EPBC Act is hurting him—I’ve had conversations with him—but he just smiles, rolls his eyes and puts up with it. He is a sceptic on climate change—sceptical that we are affecting the climate. He’s been slammed, and he’s now coming back into parliament and driving up electricity prices. Matt Canavan, Barnaby Joyce: strong sceptics in their beliefs. Barnaby Joyce was the Deputy Prime Minister. The Chinese know that. They watch him. They saw him come into cabinet and they saw him run for election in New England, when he moved out of the Senate and into the lower house. And Malcolm Turnbull, to get Mr Joyce elected, showered $400 million of taxpayer funds on unreliable wind power. Then Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce were both in the cabinet, and they suddenly became alarmists, spouting alarm about carbon dioxide.
So I asked Matt Canavan in the Senate one day where his evidence was, and he just slid away from me. Now that he’s out of cabinet and Mr Joyce is out of cabinet, all of a sudden they’re becoming a little bit sceptical again in their words. But the Chinese Communist Party see this and that tells them a lot about the lack of leadership in this country.
The Chinese have their own agreement within the Paris Agreement. It says, ‘We will continue doing whatever we want, continue growing our economy, continue constructing our country, developing our country and putting in place infrastructure, and then in 2030 we may consider something.’ Meanwhile, this parliament in this building has legislated to destroy our economy to comply with Kyoto. That’s not an agreement; that is stupidity and economic suicide. The Chinese Communist Party watches us pay academics to tell lies about climate and to misrepresent the climate science. We even put some of them in charge of or in senior places in the CSIRO and pay them $800,000 a year to destroy our country. Dr Andrew Johnson went from head of the climate research agency department in the CSIRO to become head of the Bureau of Meteorology. Under him and his predecessors, the Bureau of Meteorology has been shown to be concocting the data and misrepresenting temperatures.
We pay people like Ove Hoegh-Gulberg and Ian Chubb, former chief scientists, to destroy the science, to misrepresent the science. In 1975, Whitlam signed an agreement saying we’ll comply with the Lima Declaration to shut down our manufacturing and export it. The following year, Liberal Prime Minister Fraser ratified the deal. In 1992, Paul Keating’s Labor government signed the Rio Declaration, which is about 21st century global governance. Then we had the Kyoto protocol destroying our country, stealing our farmers’ property rights. And now we have the Paris Agreement exporting jobs and shutting manufacturing.
Then the current Prime Minister has the temerity to say, ‘We will fiddle with the industrial relations system to bring back manufacturing.’ How the hell can you bring back manufacturing when you have the highest electricity costs in the world and a big component of manufacturing—the largest component, usually—is the cost of electricity? How the hell can you do it with a tax system that favours multinational companies and lets them off scot-free? How the hell can you do it with overregulation? How the hell can you do it with a lack of water? How the hell can you do it with a lack of infrastructure? The Chinese are watching this and they’re helping us destroy our electricity sector and export even more jobs, because our prices for electricity are going up, businesses are shutting and then the jobs start up in China.
We are now reversing the last 170 years of human progress, because the key to human progress is decreasing the price of energy, which raises productivity, raises wealth, raises the standard of living. That ended in this country 24 years ago. We have ceded governance to the UN: Lima, Kyoto, Rio, Paris and many other agreements. How does this comply with Aussie values? How does it comply with being fair dinkum? Worse, the granddaddy who concocted this climate change rubbish was Maurice Strong. He concocted it when he created and then took over as head of the United Nations Environment Program. He pushed that program, starting from the 1970s, and in the 1980s he ramped it up. In 1988 he formed the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a fraudulent organisation. And the Liberals, Labor, the Nationals and the Greens have fallen for it all. Maurice Strong was a crook. He was wanted by the police in America and died in exile in China. Who’s the beneficiary of all this destruction of Western civilisation? The Chinese government.
That’s what the people in this chamber and the chamber across the hall there have done to this country by blindly following the UN diktats. How does that comply with our values? It doesn’t. It breaks our values. What about water ownership? Destroyed by separating water ownership from property ownership. What about the Murray-Darling Basin and the corruption that is rife? What about the family farms shutting down? What about water projects? What water projects? That’s it; there aren’t any. And yet look at what amazing water projects the Chinese Communist Party has put together to develop its country.
What about infrastructure? Hardly anything built and no plan. The north is exposed without the Bradfield scheme and we see floods destroying Townsville. There is destruction and a waste of water flowing out to sea. We see the state governments joining in. The Labor Party in Queensland has reef regulations which are shutting down agriculture. Vegetation protection legislation is destroying agriculture. Firebreaks aren’t allowed and are being destroyed when farms are under fire. We put animals and fungus ahead of humans.
The Queensland Labor government put a Chinese company in charge of the electoral roll and then there is Queensland local council corruption linked to the Labor state government. This extends well beyond Ipswich and Paul Pisasale; it is systemic and it is widespread. We have foreign banks that were deregulated under John Howard and we saw the result of that through the Hayne royal commission. We see Adani frustrated by both the Liberal-National and Labor governments in Queensland and by the federal government, which was weak. That’s one man from India, which has a booming, growing economy, who wanted to spend $17 billion in our country. He was thwarted for eight years. That’s a blight on us that not even the Chinese can miss—that no-one in the world can miss. We go on and on and on.
I give Senator Rex Patrick credit for moving a motion to get an inquiry into the relationship between China and Australia six times—and I supported him every time. Both the Labor Party and the Liberal-Nationals squashed it. This is what the Chinese are seeing, yet Australians are wanting far more. Australians want leadership. Australians want security, reassurance, confidence, leadership, trust, pride and freedom—a restoration so that we can be No. 1 in the world again. What does Australia need? It needs principled leadership based on values. It needs disciplined leadership based on data and facts instead of ideology paying off donors. It needs honest leadership and strength of character. It’s the simple ability to say: ‘I’m wrong, I’m sorry—can you help me? Please explain.’ We need visionary policies, and that is what will take us back to being No. 1.
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/Z8Ww0BSlAEk/hqdefault.jpg360480Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-12-07 14:02:442020-12-07 14:11:50China take advantage of weak Australian governments
The governance of our country is appalling. My adjournment speech.
Transcript
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I draw attention to the Australian parliament’s failure to protect the interests of the Australian people. In the Senate yesterday, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Labor Party united in standing beside big banks against the interests of everyday Australians. Together they voted down my bill to prevent bank deposits being bailed in—meaning that when banks get into trouble they can steal depositors’ money.
Their madness is simple: Australia has the world’s safest banks; the only thing that could bring our banks down is a loss of confidence; that’s the very thing my bill was designed to stop. Not once has the Treasurer, the Prime Minister or APRA, the banking regulator, come out and said, ‘We will not bail in your deposits.’ It’s time the Australian people heard those words.
The right to use a banking service without losing our money is just one of many rights that everyday Australians have lost—another is the loss of property rights. Prime Minister John Howard’s government’s response to the UN’s Kyoto Protocol in 1996 was to use the deceitful trick of protecting junk vegetation from destruction. The carbon dioxide that this saved counted to our UN Kyoto targets and it still does.
It enabled his government to bypass its constitutional duty to compensate farmers for stealing their property rights. This is a perfect example of mad climate policies that are about bowing to unelected, unrepresentative foreign UN bureaucrats, rather than showing actual environmental outcomes. The land that John Howard’s capricious actions supposedly protected was not something worthwhile like an old-growth forest or repairing vegetation, no, it was agricultural land that was stolen.
John Howard’s government stole our farmers’ rights to clear junk vegetation that grows on a field not used for a few years. It prevents farmers making productive use of their land. To this day the general public think this ban on land clearing relates to actual forests. This conjures up images of evil farmers chopping down virgin forests and sending koalas of to their deaths.
The reality is this ban stops farmers clearing salt bush and junk vegetation that’s stopping productive agriculture on land that has been farmed many times. The old parties never let the truth stand in the way of virtue signalling. The Liberal-National government with John Howard as Treasurer is largely to blame for banking misconduct. It was John Howard who deregulated banking.
This exposed bank customers to the atrocious behaviour that was found during the Senate inquiry into rural and regional lending that I chaired. Our inquiry led to the banking royal commission finding even more wrongdoing. The Morrison government recently demonstrated another failure in looking after small business. Aussie company CuDeco operated the Rocklands copper mine near Cloncurry in Queensland.
It was driven into insolvency from the actions of the minority Chinese owners. The mine was sold to a local Chinese company who promptly onsold it to a Chinese government entity. China now owns an important Australian copper mine thanks to the ineffective Morrison government. The mine’s workers will never get their missing wages and local contractors are out of pocket $60 million.
The only way we will see CuDeco’s copper again is if we buy that copper inside Chinese manufactured electronics. Chinese corporations continue to cherrypick their way through our resources sector. China is buying mines, real estate, farms and even our water. I do compliment Treasurer Frydenberg though on his recent decision to block the sale of PURA milk to the Chinese, resulting in the Australian company Bega buying PURA.
It’s a welcome break after the Liberal-National and Labor parties selling Australia out for a generation. Since my return to the Senate last year the Liberal, Labor and National parties have been acting together and have voted down One Nation’s motions—many motions—to restore farmers’ water rights.
The 2007 Water Act takes their water rights and forces Aussie farmers, family farmers, off the land. Even now with all the rain this year farmers are on as little as 39 per cent allocation. Who passed the 2007 Water Act? Prime Minister John Howard. Who introduced the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in 2012? Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
The whole point of the Water Act was to remove family farms from the land, then to remove their water rights to new irrigation areas on cheap land belonging to corporate agriculture. Windfall profits all round. Australian farmers and local communities being gutted. The Australian parliament must decide whether it represents the interests of big business or the interests of everyday Australians.
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/M8kZIFN_7B4/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-12-01 13:27:002020-12-03 13:35:33The governance of our country is appalling
One Nation is the sole political defender of our coal industry and the lone voice for our state’s largest export income earner.
Labor and the LNP have signalled a strong exit from coal as part of Australia’s energy mix, yet coal earns the Queensland Government $4 billion in royalties annually.
Labor has committed to 50% renewables and a 2050 zero net carbon dioxide, and last week, the Liberal’s new energy roadmap marginalises coal in favour of unknown and unproven renewable technologies and doubling renewables to a crippling 30%.
Senator Roberts stated, “What this means is there will be no more coal-fired power stations built under a Labor or LNP government.
“One Nation however will not abandon coal and I want to assure the coal mining industry, coal communities, and coal miners and their families that we support coal mining jobs.”
“Only One Nation has the courage and integrity to question the claimed science underpinning the destructive climate policies and doing our due diligence shows we need to stay with coal.”
During Senator Roberts’ discussions with CSIRO, their climate science team admitted that CSIRO has never said carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented.
Despite these revelations Labor and LNP climate policies continue to burden our country’s economy and cripple our recovery with the diversion of billions of dollars into renewables.
“Australia has shut down 12 coal-fired power stations over the last six years, while India and China are building hundreds of coal-fired plants.
“Labor and the LNP are kidding themselves that carbon dioxide is a problem and persist with ridiculous climate policies, while Asia strides ahead economically and industrially pumping out gargantuan amounts of this natural trace gas for decades to come.
“It is both ironic and preposterous that countries like India and China use our high grade coal to sell electricity at 8c/kWh, compared to 25c/kWh in Australia from the same coal, due to costly, unreliable and parasitic renewables,” added Senator Roberts.
Senator Roberts commissioned economist Dr Alan Moran to analyse the economic impact of state and federal climate policies and found that Australian households pay an extra $1,300 per household every year in higher electricity charges; a staggering $13 billion each year.
Senator Roberts is travelling through the Bowen Basin this week and wants to reassure the whole industry that One Nation stands in solidarity with coal mining.
One Nation will work tirelessly to reverse these unjust and ideologically-driven climate policies that erode our economic competitiveness and impose a hefty burden on our cost of living.
“There are too many lame and lazy politicians who lack the mettle and intellectual rigour to question the so-called climate science. “There are many more politicians who know the science is flawed yet spend their days hiding in the shadows of party lines, rather than having the courage to call it out,” stated Senator Roberts.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Mining.png?fit=2300%2C1294&ssl=112942300Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-10-02 15:43:422020-10-02 15:43:56One Nation: The lone voice for coal miners and coal industry
All right, it’s now 16 minutes away from 8:00. Malcom’s with us on the programme. Hello, mate, how are you?
[Malcolm Roberts]
I’m very well.
[Marcus Paul]
Excellent.
[Malcolm Roberts]
I’m very, very well, Marcus. And, by the way, I understand this is the first time I’ll be speaking to you while you’re in the Grant Goldman Studios. So well done.
[Marcus Paul]
Wonderful. Yeah. Brand new studio. We’re loving it. Everything seems to be working a-okay. Where are you at the moment? Still up north?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Back up north again. Yeah, up in Townsville. And we went through Airlie Beach yesterday, but Grant, with Grant, I enjoyed meeting Grant and working with him. He was a fabulous man.
He really looked after the people because he connected with what was really going on. He had the guts to tackle big issues, and he was just a wonderful character. I know you’ve got a caller called John Mcreigh who told me about the way Grant’s supported Lawrence Heinz and at his own costs. It’s just amazing, the courage of the man.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, wonderful, and I know you had that relationship before, and we’re very grateful that we continue to talk to you on this network and certainly on this programme, mate. So thank you very much. Now, let’s talk about changes to the university system. You support the government’s changes. Why?
[Malcolm Roberts]
They’re reducing the fees for courses that will meet the needs for the future of our country, and jobs, practical courses that will, like engineering, like nursing, like teaching. And they’ll be making courses like humanities, which have little direct relevance, sometimes, immediate relevance, and that’s what they’re doing there to make universities more affordable and also to more practical.
And what they’re doing is also making sure that taxpayer funds are based on the skills that the country needs, so that’s why we’re supporting general. But we also see this as an opportunity to go further, to ensure responsibility among students and reduce the taxpayer load. And also to restore accountability in universities and to restore academic freedom. ‘Cause as you know, that’s been smashed.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, let’s look at some of the figures here. We do need to address the growing $60 billion outstanding HECS debt. Australian debt is now pushing $1 trillion and money could be used productively if repaid. We need to limit student entitlement to seven years’ full-time equivalent.
Certainly, it takes on average around 10 years for a student to repay a HECS debt. And if you’re getting people, students into some of these humanities courses, and I’m not knocking them, I did one. I did a bachelor of arts, obviously. I majored in journalism, but we need to ensure that whatever our kids are studying at uni will get them into gainful employment once they’re finished, because we need these debts repaid.
[Malcolm Roberts]
That’s right. And we’re very concerned. Pauline in particular has been raising this issue for a number of years now that the HECS debt is going up and up and up and it’s currently around 60 billion and growing as you correctly pointed out. I love the way you use data. Pauline has been advocating that we reinstate the 10% discount if fees are paid upfront.
Now that’s because people who can afford university should not be getting a concessional interest rate. They should pay it upfront. Let them do that and that’ll, give the government better use of our funds. And also we want to reduce the threshold for income above which people start paying off the HECS debt. It’s currently at $46,000 per annum income before you have to start repaying.
We want to reduce that so that people start paying it back earlier because we’re all we’re seeing is the HECS debt rising incredibly and people basically on fee-free university education. We also want to raise the standards by which they’re allowed to continue so that if they’re failing, then they don’t continue.
[Marcus Paul]
Well, that’s right. It’s important, I think, to have our institutions, our tertiary institutions, monitor students’ academic progress. And if they are repeatedly failing, well, then they should stop getting fee help. Particularly if they don’t pass half the subjects.
[Malcolm Roberts]
That’s right. And we need to make students aware that they’re getting something from taxpayers and they’re getting money that supports their courses. So we need to make students more accountable for that. It’s not just continue to live off the taxpayer. We’ve got to get job-ready graduates.
And so we applaud the government for this initiative, but we want to take it further to bring back that accountability in the universities and also on the students.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, I want to go to this issue here of, the fact that you’re doing a lot of travelling there in Queensland, which is wonderful, Malcolm, because that’s how you get on top of grassroots issues. You speak to the punters out there and constituents. Again, you’re still hearing the businesses can’t find anyone willing to work.
Fruit pickers in southern Queensland, in tourism and hospitality, charter boat operators in the Whitsundays are cancelling cruises. The retail sector is struggling at Airlie Beach. Why can’t we fill these positions? Is it getting down to the fact that job keeper and job seeker to an extent is so generous at the moment?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, it’s really not job keeper, Marcus. It’s job seeker that’s the problem. Job keeper has actually kept some businesses going, kept them afloat. We’ve got to be careful about that.
There are some businesses that haven’t been able to get job keeper and they should be able to, but anyway, that’s another issue, but job seeker is what’s keeping some people on the couch instead of getting off their backside and going and doing some work. Fruit pickers in southern Queensland, but I think we talked about that a couple of weeks ago as well, strawberry pickers, raspberry pickers.
They just can’t get people, and they can’t get locals, can’t get Aussies. And what we’ve relied upon is backpackers to do that job. Just a couple of days ago we were in Airlie Beach in Whitsunday. Yeah, I know. Someone’s got to do it, mate. But anyway.
[Marcus Paul]
Ah, terrible, Malcolm, yes.
[Malcolm Roberts]
But anyway, the tourism and hospitality sector are finding it difficult to get even boat crews they’ve had to cancel charter boat operators in the Whitsundays, cancel cruises because they can’t get people to do jobs because it’s too easy, too attractive on job seeker.
And then retail. We see shopkeepers who are desperate for staff, but we’ve also seen, at a time when we’ve got a massive growing debt and lowering productivity, we’ve also got shopkeepers paying inordinate amounts for electricity, especially government charges.
[Marcus Paul]
Sure.
[Malcolm Roberts]
And they’re saying themselves, all they’re doing is picking up a huge risk and picking up huge stress. They have to work longer hours because they can’t afford it. We’ve got a complete need to look at how we treat people and how we treat businesses, taxation, regulation. We’re destroying our country, Marcus.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, well, the prime minister today is about to spruik a modern manufacturing strategy. There’s a little bit of renewable energy thrown in the mix. I mean, I dunno, we’ve got a conservative premier in New South Wales who’s gone on the record as saying, we’re not real good at building things, but the prime minister says we are.
I like the idea of it, kick-starting manufacturing and building manufacturing jobs and really investing in the sector in new South Wales and round Australia. But is this more marketing? Are these going to be more slogans today? Can the government really back this up? Are you sceptical?
[Malcolm Roberts]
I am completely sceptical, and you hit the nail on the head. It’s just marketing from Scott Morrison. Look, the basics of manufacturing are electricity charges, and we’re pushing the UN agenda and driving our electricity through the roof. And what we’re doing is exporting those jobs to China, India, Asia, because they’re generating electricity at eight cents a kilowatt an hour using our coal that’s been carted overseas for thousands of kilometres.
We’re selling electricity in this country at 25 cents a kilowatt an hour. And that’s ridiculous because we’re using the same coal, and the only difference is the regulations that the government has put in place due to the UN. And the second thing is we’re over-regulated. We’ve got so many regulations in this country.
The small business just cannot compete. Large business cannot compete. That taxation structure gives incentives to foreign multinationals rather than local companies. And then we’ve had the Lima declaration that both parties signed, Whitlam Labor Party signed in 1975 and Frasers Liberal Party ratified it the following year.
And that has exported our jobs, our manufacturing. Until we start restoring our political sovereignty and national sovereignty, we are not going to restore our economic sovereignty. It’s that simple. And Scott Morrison on October 3rd, I think last year, was talking about the unelected, international bureaucrats and unaccountable international bureaucrats.
And then since then, he’s advocated giving the UN’s World Health Organisation, a corrupt organisation, increased power. So the man says one thing and does another. We will not get anywhere until we stop the UN.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, well said, as always. Great to have you on the programme, Malcolm. Let’s chat again next week. Appreciate it. You take it easy up there at Airlie Beach, Townsville. You’re not taking a little charter boat over to Maggie today to really rub it into me, are you?
[Malcolm Roberts]
No, no, no. We’ll be heading down into the Galilee Basin and the Bowen Basin coalfields to listen, pushing some things on safety there.
[Marcus Paul]
Well let’s hear a little more about that next week when we get you back on. Thanks, Malcolm. Take care.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Academic-Integity.png?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-10-01 15:05:032020-10-01 15:21:22Ensuring Academic Integrity – 2SM with Marcus Paul
Around this time every week, we catch up with One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts. Malcolm, good morning to you.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Good morning, Marcus, you have got a hectic morning this morning, I hear.
[Marcus Paul]
Always busy, which is just how we like it, but look, I’ve got the next six, seven minutes to chat away with you, which I’m really looking forward to today. I know you’ve been doing a lot of travelling, haven’t you? You been…
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yeah, we’ve gone from Brisbane right through to Cairns. I’m actually sitting in a hotel room in Cairns, and we’ve been listening to people along the way. It’s been fabulous. A bit rushed, but very good.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, why are you doing this tour again?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Because we’re getting the word out on my exposing the fact that the CSIRO has never produced any evidence for our climate policies and renewable energy policies.
We’re just getting that word out through the media around Queensland.
[Marcus Paul]
And how has it been received? I mean, I know you’ve been from Brisbane to the Sunny Coast, Maryborough, Rocky, Mackay, Townsville, Cairns, Toowoomba.
I mean, you’re a lucky man, travelling through all these beautiful parts of Australia.
[Malcolm Roberts]
I am, indeed, and we look forward to New South Wales being us pretty soon once the borders are reopened again.
[Marcus Paul]
Yes.
[Malcolm Roberts]
But no it’s been very well received. People know in their guts that there’s never been any evidence, scientific evidence to these policies that are destroying our country, Marcus, and they’re just so pleased to see someone actually exposing this rubbish.
[Marcus Paul]
Now I’m gonna talk very soon with the New South Wales MP down in the Murray region, Helen Dalton. She is–
[Malcolm Roberts]
Oh yeah.
[Marcus Paul]
Helen is a regular on the programme, much like yourself. She’s been screaming out, screaming and really unfortunately not being had a lot of attention paid to her.
She’s copped a lot from politicians. They’ve tried every trick in the political book to silence her. She wants a water register.
In other words, she wants politicians and others like herself to have a register that’s openly publicly available where people can say exactly how much water interests they have and that should also include national companies, foreign multinationals and everybody.
She wants more accountability on water. And look, she’s had a hard time trying to get this thing through the Parliament. She’s gonna try again for a register this week. It’s very tough.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes and we’ve been calling for exactly the same thing for a couple of years now, Marcus. It’s definitely needed. Pauline has been calling for it as well.
We want full transparency, full openness so that people can see what’s happening to their water. And you know, what we’ve seen is in the last week, just at the end of last week, we saw the Water Minister, Mr. Pitt come out and big headlines were generated.
The biggest change, to the Murray-Darling basin in 10 years. And then we saw Bridget McKenzie, the leader of the Nationals in the Senate saying, “You cannot take any more water from our communities. The 450 gigalitres will not be coming from our farmers.
Enough is enough. You have taken enough.” And that’s very clear, Marcus. Yet the bloody report actually recommends quote, “work with the States to accelerate planning and delivery of the 450 gigalitres SDL water acquisition.”
This is insane. We’ve been along the same path for a couple of years now. But what the Nationals are doing is they’re responding to the pressure that we have put on them and they’ve come out now, initially they rubbished us, then they realised they couldn’t stop us because we have the data.
Then they went quiet and now they’re coming out to pretend they embrace what we’re saying, but they’re not doing it real–
[Marcus Paul]
All they–
[Malcolm Roberts]
they’re doing it in lies.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, they need to. I mean, it’s always- excuse me. I’m very sorry. It’s the first time
[Malcolm Roberts]
Bless you.
[Marcus Paul]
I’ve sneezed for ages, anyway. Hay fever, time of the year. Look at the end of the day, the problem’s always been, as you would know very well, Malcolm,
Since water has become scarce and we are a country where we do have droughts, there’s a light bulb moment that’s gone off somewhere and they thought, you know what, we can take advantage of this capitalism at its worst, and we’ll commodify water.
Well, ever since water became a commodity, something to be bought, sold and traded, that’s when the rot set in and you’re right, particularly for the Murray-Darling basin, in particular for my New South Wales listeners, we know it’s our country’s food bowl and the people of Australia deserve damn well better.
Look, I see too the Office of Scientific Integrity, you’ve spoken to Dr. Peter Ridd from James Cook University in Townsville about this issue. Is that right?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes we have, and Dr. Ridd has accompanied us on our travels from Brisbane right through to Cairns. Now he’s gonna join us again this morning.
Every one of the media conferences we’ve done with him. What he has been promoting for a while now is that we need a quality assurance system for the science.
That would then complete the scientific process. We’ve been arguing for an Office of Scientific Integrity.
There is so much dodgy science that’s not science, that’s killing agriculture in New South Wales and Queensland, Murray-Darling basin and its water allocations, international agreements that we’re supposed to be complying with, the so called vegetation protection legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that’s used to strangle development climate change policies, electricity policies, energy policies, forestry policies, coastal land resumptions where they’re stealing land rights from people who own own their houses on the Coast.
In New South Wales and Queensland, farmers lost their rights to use their land. These have all been based on dodgy science and then it’s not science.
So what we want is a proper scientific process that has quality assurance around it because these policies are strangling our country, gutting our economy, and we want this to be done properly with real integrity on the science, Marcus.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, I just wanna move to another issue. Dan Andrews and the prime minister, Scott Morrison, you say, are using competitive welfarism to replace our constitution’s bedrock competitive federalism.
What exactly do you mean by that?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Well, competitive federalism is where you have the exchange between States. So for example, Joh Bjelke-Petersen removed death duties in Queensland, in the seventies.
And what happened then was people then moved to the Queensland, Gold Coast in order to have their final years there and eventually die there because they would leave more money to their descendants, their kids.
And so what happened then was the other States were losing their businesses, losing their wealthy, losing their retirees. And so they enacted policies as well to remove death duties.
So we had a better and more competitive taxation system because of competitive federalism, competing between the States. It’s not ruthless cut throat competition, it’s finding out the best ways of running the State.
And that was designed by our forefathers, the founders of our constitution. What we have now is sloppiness, and there are several examples of this, but you’ve picked on one right now with Dan Andrews.
He made a mess of his State, he fell over in doing his job.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah.
[Malcolm Roberts]
He didn’t do his job, and as a result of that incompetence, Victoria is in a real mess. So what happens? The Prime Minister bails him out.
So the people of Queensland, the people of New South Wales, the people of South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory, ACT are paying for Dan Andrews’ lack of accountability and sloppiness and his dishonesty.
[Marcus Paul]
They’re doing that of course–
[Malcolm Roberts]
And that’s competitive welfarism.
[Marcus Paul]
Yeah, and that’s, that welfarism you refer to, the extension of job seeker payments, even though they’re being tiered now, but it just continues, and the longer that border closures remain in play, well, the longer the rest of the country is going to have to foot the bill for it.
What about Annastacia Palaszczuk up there? Has she be missing in action? What’s happening?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yes, she has been missing in action. What people need to understand about Queensland, the Labor machine runs the state. It’s ruthless and it’s not democratic government, nor is it caring and accountable.
And the corruption is flourishing across our State and local government markets, and we’ll be having much more to say about that in coming weeks, but it’s not Annastacia Palaszczuk who runs this state, it is the Labor machine.
Now what they’ve done is they’re missing in action to some extent, because they’ve handed over to the Chief Health Officer who has one priority, people’s physical health.
Well, Marcus, what about mental health? What about economic health? Because as they’re destroying our economy up here, this Queensland Labor machine that is appealing to the media and try to play to people’s emotions and heartstrings, they’re actually destroying our State and they’re not doing this in a humane way.
We have so many examples. Now your programme has led the way in exposing these things, we’ve got so many issues that are treating people inhumanely.
We’ve got kids with broken legs in hospitals, their parents from New South Wales can’t even visit them in Queensland.
We’ve got cancer patients, we’ve got babies in wombs dying, et cetera, and cancer patients not being treated all because the machine wants to be seen to be protecting Queenslanders when the machine is destroying Queenslanders.
If they really cared about people, they would identify the hotspots and ban people from there.
[Marcus Paul]
I mean, look. The other issue of course is you’ve got a lot of hypocrisy going on. We helped a gentleman yesterday who was, who’d been stuck on the Tweed Coast.
His father is in Royal Brisbane hospital. He’s had a massive head trauma, he’s on life support. They’re about to turn it off. He desperately, desperately needed to get to see his father in his dying days along with his sister.
We had to intervene. We had to go cap in hand to Queensland Health and we also spoke to the New South Wales health department and also to the wonderful people in Pauline’s office at One Nation.
We got this bloke across the border, along with his sister and we shouldn’t have to be doing this, we shouldn’t, but at the end of the day, the reason we shouldn’t be having to intervene like this and to expedite these kinds of situations for people is, well, some are getting the red card treatment.
Look at the red carpet treatment, look at the AFL officials. They can come on in, they can frolic, they can have a pool party for God’s sake on the Gold Coast.
Tom Hanks can just rock up whenever he likes, it appears, without having to go into quarantine. There’ll be 30,000 people gathering for the AFL Grand Final and everyday Queenslanders cannot gather in groups of more than 10. I mean for goodness sake.
[Malcolm Roberts]
Yeah, you’ve hit the nail on the head and that’s what I’m talking about. It’s a ruthless Labor Party machine up here that does not care about people.
Annastacia, sorry, Annastacia Palaszczuk, one of her predecessors was Anna Bligh. Two weeks before a State election, the machine promised that they would not sell assets.
Within weeks of the election, just six weeks after their promise, they flogged off billions of dollars worth of core assets in this State. It is a Labor Party machine. It’s not Queensland, it is the Labor Party machine that is uncaring and inhuman–
[Marcus Paul]
Well, problem is–
[Malcolm Roberts]
And what the AFL Grand Final should be up here, but we need to treat Queenslanders with respect.
[Marcus Paul]
All right, well, our problem is, and we’ve got to call into Deb Frecklington’s office, I mean, she’s almost, what she’s back down really now because of populism, I guess, she’s supporting Annastacia Palaszczuk. I’ve run out of time, Malcolm.
[Malcolm Roberts]
See you, mate .
[Marcus Paul]
All right, buddy. Thank you so much. As always good to chat. We’ll talk to you next week, okay?
[Malcolm Roberts]
Thanks, Marcus.
[Marcus Paul]
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, as always speaking a good deal of sense on the programme.
Re: Repeal of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Regulations 2019
Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef is an immense treasure and multi-dimensional asset belonging to the people of Queensland.
Our beautiful reef is a spiritual asset connecting people with nature’s universal awe and wonder, an ecological asset and an enormous economic asset with vast unrealised potential value in tourism, fishing, research, healthcare, recreation and other activities. It is a living part of Queensland, a renewable asset for generations to come.
I hope you agree that it is the duty of elected officials to work for the benefit of all citizens within their jurisdiction and that in our country governments have a duty to listen to, understand, work for, and serve the people.
On Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 July 2020 I took part in the Senate’s Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport (RRAT) inquiry into the identification of leading practices in ensuring evidence-based regulation of farm practices that impact water quality outcomes in the Great Barrier Reef, held here in Brisbane. I was amazed yet not surprised with the answers to fundamental questions that senators asked on behalf of all Queenslanders. Among many facts the academics presented to us about the reef, we learned that what some groups say about the reef is incorrect. Specifically, that:
“Cloudy water” affects only the inner reefs being three per cent of the reef and is natural. Indeed, the portion adjacent to farm runoff is only half that, being 1.5 per cent with the other 1.5 per cent being off Cape York whose coastline is largely agriculturally undeveloped. The cloudy water effect is natural with no effect from modern farming methods.
Targets for pesticides near the reef and on the reef are not being exceeded and results shows there is no need for your Labor government’s most recent reef regulations.
Middle and outer reefs are pristine and show no impact from farming.
There is no direct evidence that dissolved nitrogen is having any effect on inshore coral reefs and certainly no effect on the middle and outer reefs;
There have been no measurements of coral growth rate since 2005. That’s fifteen years with no data and the question this raises is – what is the basis for the Labor government’s regulations?
Over recent decades farmers have made massive changes to farming practice, yet academics say there has been no impact from these changes and that leads logically to the conclusion that farming is having no discernible impact on the reef. Thus, there is no need for the Queensland Labor government’s reef regulations.
The cost of the Queensland Labor government’s regulations to each farmer is or will be tens of thousands of dollars per family farm. There is no benefit to the reef, and it will increase the price of the food we buy.
Secondly, it became clear during the inquiry that the Labor government is not meeting farmers’ needs to be heard and that agriculture seems to be a dirty word to your government. Neither is your government meeting farmers’ and communities’ needs to be treated with respect and consideration. Farmers are understandably frustrated and angry and have lost confidence in your government because they have never been presented with the empirical scientific evidence needed to justify the changes your Labor government is imposing.
Thirdly, farmers today are environmentalists and not criminals. Farmers know that their main asset is their farm soil and they protect it. Farmers today know that the future productivity and value of their farm depends on the quality of the surrounding natural environment. Farmers know that productive farming and the natural environment have a mutually beneficial relationship, not as you portray, as being mutually exclusive. Productive farming depends on a healthy natural environment and in turn the natural environment depends on healthy, economically productive farming communities.
These days farming must be internationally competitive, and farmers cannot afford to waste money applying fertilisers if those fertilisers run-off their farm. Technology today places fertilisers where they are needed and no more.
In giving evidence under questioning, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, AIMS, admitted:
“There is lots we don’t know about the Great Barrier Reef”;
The term “Consensus Statement” may be misleading;
“Climate change is not connected to farming”.
Your Labor government and senior public service bureaucrats seem to operate under the spell of ideologically driven activists including the notorious WWF, who are pushing their agenda to destroy Queenslanders’ rights to use their land and to destroy basic freedoms. These few activists and your government pandering to people who lack understanding of the source of their food are demonising farmers, farming and food production. You and they are doing so in contradiction of the science and in conflict with common sense.
The inquiry was told that the 30 per cent nitrogen reduction target has been modelled to cost $110 million annually for sugar cane farmers and sugar millers. Yet the science shows that this is and will be for no environmental benefit. That means that all this pain is for no gain.
I hope that you will support my recent call for an Office of Scientific Integrity to ensure the validity of science in making policies that are claimed to be based on science.
I enclose a copy of my report titled Restoring Scientific Integrity, together with a copy of Dr Alan Moran’s report titled The Hidden Cost of Climate Policies and Renewables. These show that your government’s destructive energy policies are costly mistakes for which the people of Queensland are paying heavily and for which you have no justifiable scientific basis.
I request that you reconsider your farming, climate and renewable energy policies. Your Labor government’s reef regulations will destroy east coast farming and your energy policies will smash all industries across the state, destroy livelihoods, export jobs and place a frightful burden on all families and on people’s cost of living.
I look forward to your reply and request that your government holds an independent inquiry into the unfounded “science” underpinning its reef regulations, repeals the legislation and apologies to farmers across the state.
This report provides a summary of the discussions and transcripts from meetings with CSIRO. Additional links in the References section give an in-depth appreciation of analysis of the evidence provided by CSIRO. In the context of seeking CSIRO’s empirical evidence to justify climate policies, I know that CSIRO:
has never stated that carbon dioxide from human activity is dangerous.
admitted that temperatures today are not unprecedented.
withdrew discredited papers that it had cited as evidence of unprecedented rate of temperature change and then failed to provide supporting empirical evidence.
has never quantified any specific impact of carbon dioxide from human activity.
relies upon unvalidated models that give unverified and erroneous projections as “evidence.”
relied on discredited and poor quality papers on temperature and carbon dioxide.
admits to not doing due diligence on reports and data from external agencies.
revealed little understanding of papers it cited as evidence.
allows politicians and journalists to misrepresent CSIRO science without correction.
misled parliament.
Seventeen internationally respected climate scientists from Australia and five other nations verified our conclusions about CSIRO. In conclusion, CSIRO’s science on the matter of climate for policy making, amounts to a gross misleading of Parliament. The onus of proof is now on Parliament to provide the empirical scientific evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut, and until that is provided, government must immediately stop wasting billions of dollars on climate policies.
CSIRO has been caught out relying on discredited scientific papers and unvalidated models as the basis for advice to government on climate policy, which is a multi-billion dollar drag on the economy.
Senator Roberts said, “This is shameful, and I call on the CSIRO Chief Executive, Dr Larry Marshall, and executive Dr Peter Mayfield, to resign.
“Both have been complicit in the economically destructive policies based on CSIRO’s misplaced climate research.”
The controversial, but central claim, that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut, was the focus of Senator Roberts’ cross-examination of CSIRO.
When CSIRO was asked for evidence of anything unprecedented in climate due to human carbon dioxide, and despite nearly 50 years of climate research, it could only provide the discredited Marcott (2013) paper on temperatures and the discredited Harries (2001) paper on carbon dioxide.
Both papers wilted under scrutiny, with CSIRO representatives in agreement with the concerns raised, resulting in CSIRO withdrawing the papers.
Astrophysicist and Geoscientist Professor Willie Soon was scathing in his assessment of CSIRO’s use of Marcott (2013) by saying “Two weeks after publication this paper was completely destroyed and yet, someone as high up as CSIRO trying to say this paper is legitimate and can be used as a supporting scientific evidence, is scientific malpractice”.
Senator Roberts stated, “Robust science reflecting the highest standards of integrity and transparency should be the core business of CSIRO.
“How could it be that climate scientists were unaware that the evidence being used for significant policy-making was based on poor quality and discredited scientific papers.
“CSIRO’s lack of understanding of the papers they cited shows laziness and lack of intellectual rigor. Clearly, CSIRO cannot honestly claim that human activity is causing climate variability.”
When pressed further regarding the view of CO2 being dangerous, CSIRO were quick to point out that they never claimed CO2 was dangerous, rather that it was politicians that assigned the word danger to human CO2.
CSIRO also agreed that temperatures today are not unprecedented.
In a last ditch attempt CSIRO referenced the United Nations’ reports relying on unvalidated computer models, despite freely admitting CSIRO had not done due diligence on any UN work.
CSIRO also admitted it had not done due diligence on data from the Bureau of Meteorology.
Senator Roberts added, “In my discussions with eminent international scientists, Professor John Christie stated he has closely examined CSIRO’s Access Models and found them below par, as the projections simply do not match what we actually see in the real world.”
Professor Christie added, “Climate is so complex, our ignorance of the climate system is enormous, and the myriad of models have not even agreed on a key variable, CO2 sensitivities.
“The CSIRO models are running overly warm and this has been proven when comparing real data of the last 40 years with the climate model projections.”
Dr David Evans, one of the world’s top computer modellers, states, “CSIRO climate models should not be used for policy as they are not right yet.
“The performance of all climate models, including CSIRO’s, are not sufficiently validated and consistently overestimate warming.”
Senator Roberts added, “It is the duty and responsibility of politicians to base costly policies and economic structural change on robust scientific evidence, not discredited papers and deficient models.”
Senator Roberts calls for “a halt to all climate policies and spending until credible empirical evidence is provided to justify the spend, and for an Office of Scientific Integrity to scrutinize science used for policy.
“The onus is now on parliament to provide the empirical scientific evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut, and until that is provided, government must immediately stop wasting billions of dollars on vested interests riding the climate gravy train.”
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/CSIRO-Press-Release.png?fit=2300%2C1294&ssl=112942300Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-08-31 06:00:002020-08-30 16:04:30Senator Roberts calls on CSIRO head to resign
