Podcasts from Senator Malcolm Roberts

On this episode I talk to Paul Withall and Amanda Sillers about parental alienation, male suicide and family law.

Paul is the Founder of Zero Suicide a not-for-profit organisation that advocates to make bulk change on the issues in society that cause people to have suicide attempts or thoughts at an institutional and government level. Zero Suicide does not accept money, grants or raise funds through merchandise. They run on love and fight for the truth. Paul is also lobbying for a Minister for Men.

Amanda is one of Australia’s most renowned research advocates in the Parental Alienation space. Her foundation, Eeny Meeny Miney Mo, is a support group for parents and children who are experiencing alienation.  She knows about this because she has lived experience. This experience and her research puts Amanda in a powerful position to unpack parental alienation and how it is harmful for both parents and children. Amanda is dedication to have parental alienation recognised as a form of child abuse across the Family Court and Domestic and Family Violence legislation.

Transcript

Speaker 1:

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on today’s news talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm:

This is today’s news talk radio, tntradio.live. And I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts. And I’m very, very proud to be a host on TNT radio because we’re putting out both sides of the news. I want to move now to a man I met a couple of years ago in Maryborough, which is on the Queensland coast and his name is Paul Vittles. And he struck me as being very knowledgeable, very dedicated, and very caring man, who has a passion for helping people. Very, very caring. He was passionate, he was very active, energetic, but he was not overbearing. He just knew his stuff and he wanted to share it and he wants a voice. We’re going to give it to him now. Paul Vittles is the founder of Zero Suicide, a not for profit organisation that advocates to make bulk change on the issues in society that cause people to have suicide attempts or thoughts at an institutional and government level. Zero Suicide does not accept money, grants or raised funds through merchandise. They run on love and fight for the truth. Paul is lobbying for minister for men. Welcome Paul.

Paul:

Thank you, Malcolm. Thanks for the opportunity.

Malcolm:

Tell me something you appreciate, anything at all?

Paul:

Being in a position to be able to help other people and getting opportunities to make a difference in the community.

Malcolm:

Well we hear, Paul, a lot about the plight of women during family breakdowns, but how badly are men suffering?

Paul:

It’s not just the suffering, it’s the lack of support, the reason why they’re suffering. There’s no housing directly for men that are going through anything. They can’t get funding for free legal. When they’re in family court, there’s people that are making false accusations and restraining orders, and there’s no services for these men to turn to, to get assistance. So in turn, it makes them lonely and causes them issues.

Malcolm:

I mean, our previous guests today have said pretty much the same thing. Is there something unique about men compared with women? Women, when they get under pressure, they tend to run off to other women and they seek each other. And then the other women actually like that. If you know what I mean? Because they’re given the opportunity to care and humans love to care. Men and women love to care. So when we ask for things, we’re giving the other person who we’re looking for care from a real opportunity to express themselves, men don’t seem to think that way.

Paul:

No, they don’t. It’s not that they don’t think that way, I don’t believe. I believe it’s because they don’t have the opportunity to reach out that way. So men feel that if they’re going through something, they can talk to their mates about it. But if it’s something like you’ve lost your children, they’re worried that they’re going to be branded more so through relationship breakdown, if they’re having problems in their relationship, a domestic dispute with their partner or just niggles in the relationship. They don’t want to tell other people that, because it can in turn cause them more problems. People ask questions and if they put it out on social media, in turn, other people will attack them. And for that reason, it makes them stay silent, it’s because of the way society is.

Malcolm:

And that’s the very worst thing that someone can do rather than share it. And when we share we give someone the opportunity to care, even if sometimes they might reject us because they’ve got issues themselves, but it gives them the opportunity to care.

Paul:

Yeah. But men are scared. That’s the thing, men are scared now because society’s changed to the place where men are put in a corner and they’ve got to fight their way out of that corner. And whether there’s no services and we reach out to politicians and other services, there’s just simply nothing there to actually deal with the three issues that men deal with the most. And that’s like you say, one of the top things, relationship breakdown’s the main reason for men’s suicide.

Malcolm:

What are the other two?

Paul:

First one’s relationship breakdown and divorce, the second one’s loss of children or access to children and the last one’s financial or court. And to actually add to that with the mental health banner that everyone talks about when they link suicide and mental health together, men’s suicide’s just under 50% mental health related.

Malcolm:

And all three of the top causes for suicide are involved in the family law court system, all three.

Paul:

100% spot on. And when these men go to family court, there’s no one in court to actually talk to the people or assess the nature of how they’re dealing with the process. And especially men, they’re losing their children. The people that they’ve loved and cared for, and they’ve built their whole life around. Even their partner, even if the family’s broken down they’re losing that partner as well, even if they’ve had the fight and things are bad, but there’s nothing for them. So in turn, these men that have fought their whole life to become a father and to have a happy, healthy relationship when that breaks they’re broken. And there’s nothing there, the family court for these men to turn to, there’s more to it, but that’s the basis of what happens.

Malcolm:

So, let’s explore that a bit more by looking at what men do differently, compared with women during times of family distress, what do men do that women don’t do? And what do women do that men don’t do?

Paul:

Well, men will isolate they’ll… I suppose both genders would drink. But men will isolate because they have to isolate because there’s nowhere for them to go. They can’t reach out to a solicitor and get help. While they’re going through family court, for instance, 40% of men that go through your family court it costs them a minimum of $11,000. Some men don’t have that and it’s really hard to get legal aid in a small community town because there’s a conflict of interest there. So for that reason, they may-

Malcolm:

What the conflict of interest?

Paul:

Conflict of interest is when you have one solicitor that’s being used, say the local legal aid solicitor, and another solicitor comes in. I mean, someone wants to use the solicitor, but there’s none in the town. They actually physically cannot get a solicitor.

Malcolm:

So, if the spouse’s signed up with that solicitor tough luck, you can’t sign up with that solicitor?

Paul:

Yep. And that solicitor might be the local legal aid solicitor, and they’re being funded because men can’t get free legal when it comes to family court. Whereas women, with no disrespect, if they make a claim of domestic violence or anything like that, they can get free legal for those reasons. And during that process, they’re being funded as well with housing, with food, food parcels, food vouchers, and many other things. But men can’t get that assistance. So when they’re going through the process, they feel even further isolated pushed back further into the corner.

Malcolm:

So they see the system is different for them, and they’re probably wondering why. And they may not even know that women get all these things, but they just know that they’re isolated and alone, and they’re very vulnerable. And they just dig deeper into themselves, whereas they should be reaching out.

Paul:

They should be reaching out. But where do you reach out to, Malcolm, when there are no services that are individual for men? I challenge anyone in Australia, look through and find a domestic violence service for men, look through, find… even trying to get just normal alcohol or drug counselling. They’re there but the waiting list is three to six months. So if someone in family court, a male turns to alcohol or starts drinking heavily, or starts using drugs more, or for whatever reason during that process, there’s no service for them to get help, to deal with that issue, which causes further depression.

Malcolm:

I’ve got some other questions prepared, but I want to, before we get onto those other questions, you’ve compiled a report on men’s suicides based on government statistics. And the final copy of that is being released next week. Is that true?

Paul:

Yes, it is.

Malcolm:

And it’s titled… I have it here with me, I haven’t read it because it is long and it’s detailed, Zero Suicide Report on Men’s Suicide in Australia. And I think there’s a Facebook page?

Paul:

Yeah.

Malcolm:

What is that?

Paul:

Our Facebook page is… Good question, Malcolm. It’s ZeroSuicide Community Awareness Programme and Walks To Prevent Mens Suicide.

Malcolm:

So we’ll do that again. ZeroSuicide Community Awareness Programme And Walks To Prevent Mens Suicide. What do you mean by walks to prevent men’s suicide?

Paul:

We launched a proposal in state minister for men on the basis of suicide two years ago. When we did that, we did that around three states and it was walks. So we walked from one place to the parliament house to announce the proposal. And basically it was a protest.

Malcolm:

What sort of distance?

Paul:

2 and 3K. Not far walks, but it was more about the… We were hurt, we wanted to get our message out. So as we were walking along the streets, we were handing out flyers about the proposal, we were trying to engage with people and show them what was going on. When we got to parliament house, it was a really good feeling just to be proud that we’d had the proposal and from there we got other people were coming up to us. Even after that walk, our leadership team of 12 in Victoria, we all walked separate ways and walked through the whole city, handing out all the leftover flyers of 150.

Malcolm:

Hang on. You just told me a leadership team in Victoria. Is this a national crusade?

Paul:

No. So we launched it in Victoria two years ago, we had a lady, Kathy Cooper that was passionate about our work and she’s from New South Wales. So we ended up forming a Zero Suicide in New South Wales.

Malcolm:

So you’re from Queensland.

Paul:

I’m from Victoria.

Malcolm:

Oh, you’re from Victoria. That’s right.

Paul:

Yep.

Malcolm:

That’s right. You’re you’re in the show society.

Paul:

Yep, so [inaudible 00:10:01]-

Malcolm:

That’s right.

Paul:

That’s why I became the leader, so to speak-

Malcolm:

[inaudible 00:10:04] as Queenslander.

Paul:

Because being a travelling show person, I’ve got the capacity to get to the government offices in all the different states to get to all these different places. And that’s what made Kathy from Zero Suicide join the team because she knew I had the capacity, she’d seen what I was doing. She’s like, “I need to help you, I’m in New South Wales. What can I do?” And here she is out there flown up today and she’s outside in our Zero Suicide tent today leading the way. We’ve got walk to… We’ll talk about that later, we’ve got event coming up at parliament house in Canberra that she’s instigated.

Malcolm:

Do you want to talk about that now or deliberately leave it till later? Whatever.

Paul:

I’ll leave it till later.

Malcolm:

Okay. When’s when’s later?

Paul:

When we’re about to wrap it up.

Malcolm:

Okay. Okay. Now we’ve talked about dads and moms who really in a lot of trouble and hurting, but children are missing out on their dads during family breakdowns. What do you see happening in this space?

Paul:

Suicide. Oh my God.

Malcolm:

Of children?

Paul:

Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. There was a 10 year old last week committed suicide.

Malcolm:

10?

Paul:

10. Yep, in Wollongong. 10 years old, that’s how bad this is getting. Now, we can’t honestly say we know exactly what his cause was because I didn’t deal with that child. But there’s 10 year olds, there’s 14 year olds. And you’ll see in this report that I’ve given you that some of the statistics it’s horrible. But what happens, it’s not just suicide. These children get bullied at school, we know bullying at school causes suicidal thoughts in children. This is when the children realise that, “Hang on, my dad will think that my mom or dad doesn’t love me.” So they have that opportunity to have their first try of drugs or go to that party. That’s when that starts. That’s when they think, “Well, they don’t care about me. I might as well do it.”

Paul:

So that starts the whole cycle. And in turn, once you live at home is what you see. And if you’re not getting the love, or even if you are getting the love, if you alienated against or any of that, it all starts at home or with your peers that you work around. And that’s why children are killing themselves. And not just killing themselves, starting that process of having an unhealthy life as a teen. Because when teenagers go through that, they don’t understand. And they might say they do, they don’t understand. And because they say they understand they don’t get the assistance that they need from the people that need to help them.

Malcolm:

So you won’t hear this in the Mockingbird media, the legacy media, the tainted media, the mainstream media, you will hear it on tntradio.live because the only mandate at tntradio.live is to tell the bloody truth. And that’s why we want to give a voice to people like Paul right now. So Paul, one of your pet strategies is to get a minister for men. How will such a thing make a difference for our society?

Paul:

There’s literally hundreds of ways. Firstly, having a minister for men instated, we can start dealing with the issues that are facing men in society that make them want to take their own life.

Malcolm:

So in some ways it’s a bit of a flag, but men have arrived. The issue is real.

Paul:

Yes.

Malcolm:

So it’s symbolic. It’s a flag.

Paul:

Yep.

Malcolm:

Okay.

Paul:

We have ministers for women, at the state and federal level all over our country. We don’t have ministers for men. Isn’t that the most inner quality you could talk about when it comes to our parliament? I mean, at the end of the day, let’s can even make the minister for men, a woman. It doesn’t matter so long as they’re trying to deal with the issues before the thought takes place. So we need to instigate, we need to get some simple answers. They could have the men’s sheds. They could be government funded, we can use the youth programme. So with the correctional facilities, we have these children that go out and do… Young boys that are going out, cleaning graffiti off with other criminals.

Paul:

Instead, we could put these into the men’s shed where they’ve got old heads working together to learn from each other. If that was funded, we could make change. There’s lots of different things. We have people screaming that men are the instigators to domestic violence. Okay. Don’t blame, let’s instate the minister for men, let’s research the reasons why. From that, we can instil the things that need to change in men. In turn, we drop the suicide rate. We can deal with the domestic violence issues. You know that you can’t take a child to a refuge in Australia if you’re a man?

Malcolm:

Well, what do you mean?

Paul:

You can’t. There’s no one refuge in Australia that a man can leave domestic violence with their child and go into. None.

Malcolm:

So if a man is suffering from domestic violence, then he can’t take his child with him?

Paul:

And in turn that causes domestic violence. It forces these men to stay in the home. Quite and often men are threatened, “If you do this, you’re going to lose your kid.” We’ve all heard this before, we’ve all heard the sentence. That forces men to stay in toxic environments, and some of these men are not violent. Of course they are but if they stay in that environment, the children see it. Like I said, it goes through that, that causes children to feel bad. It educates them that’s the wrong relationship.

Malcolm:

We need to go to an outbreak. And so this will be the last question for you, Paul. But while I understand now, the minister for men is a flag to say, “Hey, men have problems too.” And I, and I get that. And that’s a positive reason for doing it. I think that it’s a need to get back to basics for both men and women in our country. Need to get back to basics for Aboriginals in our country. And need to get back to basics for so many groups of people in our country.

Malcolm:

And so I would put it to you that while the minister for men might be a nice flag, until we fix family law, until we fix the tax system, until we fix the energy system that man has caused, government has created. Until we fix cost of living, until we fix overregulation, we will be continuing this spiral of misery because government seems to think that they have to be the solution when they’ve caused the bloody problem in the first place. Government’s duty is to create the environment in which people can operate sociably and effectively. They don’t have to be the environment, they have to create the environment. And if we got back to basics we’d have one spouse at home because the taxation system would be reasonable and we’d have so much nurturing, so much of a better environment for a decent family.

Paul:

You’re right. But at the end of the day, because they haven’t done that suicide and all suicide is now nearly 80% men. And that’s because that hasn’t happened, Malcolm. That’s why we need to instate the minister for men. In talking 80% of all suicides of men, clearly there’s something wrong with our society. That’s why I fight for the minister for men, the segregation, just because you’re Aboriginal, you look through those stats. Most of those people will be men and all the same problems, family relationship breakdown, loss of children. And it’s all the same thing. The LGBTQI community, same thing. You’ll find it’s mostly the trans or the gay men. And that’s why we need this minister for men because it’s 40 years now, this is [inaudible 00:17:24]. 40 years, men’s suicide has been 70% of all suicides.

Malcolm:

Wow. We need to do something about this so well, we can see that the need for minister for men to draw attention to it. We need to get back to basics in this country and fix the governance. So thank you so much, Paul, for coming in. We’ll now go to an ad break.

Paul:

Thank you for your time, Malcolm. And I appreciate it.

Malcolm:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts again, back with a new guest on parental alienation behaviours. We’re going to move from the term parental alienation to parental alienation behaviours. So my guest is Amanda Sillars and she’s with Eeny Meeny Miney Mo Foundation, and we’re going to talk more about that later. Amanda is one of Australia’s most renowned research advocates in the parental alienation behaviours space. Her foundation, Eeny Meeny Miney Mo is a support group for parents and children who are experiencing alienation. She knows about this because she has lived experience, this experience as both a child and as a parent later. And her research puts Amanda in a powerful position to unpack parental alienation and how it’s harmful for both parents and children. Amanda is dedicated to have parental determined and dedicated to having parental alienation recognised as a form of child abuse across the family court and domestic and family violence legislation.

Malcolm:

And I must give her an apology because she contacted me some time ago and I put a note in my calendar, “Call Amanda Sillars.” But I kept trying to find her number. So anyway, here we are face-to-face and what a beautiful smile she’s got. Anyway, welcome Amanda.

Amanda:

Hi, it’s great to be here.

Malcolm:

First thing, tell me something you appreciate can be about anything?

Amanda:

I guess, despite the things that I’ve been through in life, I’ve had a lot of trauma and things like that as a child and as a parent as well. I’m grateful that I’ve got that experience, that I can better understand others who go through these type of things. It’s a strange thing to be grateful for, but I’ve learned so much from it and I’ve become a better person and less judgemental and more understanding.

Malcolm:

Thank you. I appreciate your smile, very much. Childhood Amanda is such an impressionable time and a child’s adoration for their parents, makes them especially vulnerable. How easily can children be manipulated by one parent?

Amanda:

Oh, extremely easy. From the day that we’re born, we look to our parents for the facial expressions of what’s happy, what’s sad, what’s surprising and the angry face and all that sort of stuff. So, starting off with some of the naive alienating behaviours is the nonverbal communications. So, if a parent’s showing that they’re bitter towards another parent, or they’re angry or they’re horrified, things like that is that children will look at their parent for these cues and they’ll respond to these cues. So if you’ve got a caretaker that’s showing that they’re really angry at the other parent, and the child starts to associate that when the moms or dad’s angry with the other parent, “But this parent’s making them upset.” And so, they can start withdrawing from the other parent as a result of simply the non-verbal communications.

Malcolm:

Well, I imagine it actually probably goes even deeper and you correct me if I’m wrong, because you’ve been through it and you’ve done the research. But if a child loves both parents and they’ve got good reason to, and one parent suddenly starts trashing the other parent, then the child is going to be, “Hang on, well I don’t see that.” So that child is going to be very confused, they’re very much doubting what they are seeing and they’re going to doubt themselves and reduce their self-confidence. Because they’re saying, “Mum is saying this, but dad is not that way. There must be something wrong with me, the child.” Is that valid?

Amanda:

I guess, when you’re criticising the other parent, you’re criticising the child as well, because the parent’s part of them. I’ve got a huge list of all the-

Malcolm:

This lady is prepared.

Amanda:

I know. I’ve got a… so we’ve got things like, obviously we talk about the denigrating, the parent to the child. Maybe we’ve got the vilification of the targeted parent without any adequate supportive evidence. And unreasonably interfering with communications, and the time the child spends with the targeted parent. Eradicating the targeted parent from the child’s life, purposely withholding information about the child from the targeted parent. So these are all alienating behaviours. Interrogating the child for information about the targeted parent and the time spent with them. This is the really serious one, because parents can start questioning the child. Like, “What did you do with the other parent? Who did you see? What did you get fed?”

Amanda:

And the child will respond, and sometimes they’ll start responding in a way that they’re trying to please that parent, because they see that parent’s fishing for information. So what will happen is sometimes we have a situation like the parent might have got upset with them over something. And the child learns to catastrophize things because they’re with the parent that has these cognitive distortions, where they catastrophize, they’ve got this black and white thinking, like they’re all good. The other parents all bad. And so this is quite distressing for a child to start learning these kind of behaviours. And it does affect them. So kids will start reporting back things that didn’t happen. Because I thought it was all about just a parent, not just, but a parent denigrating the other parent. But it’s not, it’s actually the children can start confessing to things that didn’t happen.

Amanda:

And there’s a study that’s called The Mousetrap Study and they asked a series of questions over a number of weeks. And there was one question that remained the same. And that is, have you ever had your finger caught in a mouse trap? In the first week none of the children… These were school-aged children, none of the children had had their finger caught in the mouse trap. By the second and third week the children started reporting back, “Oh yeah, my little sister, she got it caught in, I got my finger caught in. It was in the attic.” And they started elaborating on it. So it just shows you that you ask a child the same question again and again, eventually they’ll tell that child what they think that their parent’s fishing for, and naturally children want to be helpful and they want to please their parent.

Amanda:

So you can imagine that I’ll give you our worst case scenario. So, we’ve had cases where the father might have been bathing the child in the bath. And then the mother who’s now separated from him and is like, “Well, what was he doing? Did he touch you down there? Did you touch your private areas?” And the child’s like… Oh, maybe the first time they’re saying, “No, it didn’t. I just washed myself.” And then the child will come back the second time, if they’re washing… The father might not even wash the child anywhere in their private areas.

Malcolm:

So, the child is sensing that he or she would please the mother if he or she said these certain things?

Amanda:

Yeah, absolutely. And so we see a lot of cases where, and it’s not just fathers that are being accused, we’ve got moms that have been accused of things like that as well. So this is not gendered, this comes back to those problematic personality traits, which we do highlight on our website of all the different… Sorry, I just go through my… I’ve got so many pages that are printed out here today.

Malcolm:

I don’t know that you need those pages because you seem to know it pretty well.

Amanda:

Yeah, well… Yeah, sorry.

Malcolm:

But she’s thorough, she’s thorough.

Amanda:

I just want to make sure, because my… Here we go. So what we’re looking at, the characteristics of alienating parents are the problematic personality traits, which are under the narcissistic personality, borderline personality, paranoid personality, and the histrionic personality traits. And then we’ve got the cognitive distortions, which I said before is those really unhelpful thinking traps, like they’re never wrong. They catastrophize, they overgeneralize, all those sort of behaviours. And then we’ve got externalising unwanted emotions and responsibilities, and unable to accept their own problems. And they tend to blame other people that projection and abnormal grieving responses, when people are in an intact relationship, everything’s okay. But then once they break up, some people can’t transition into that co-parenting, that separated environment.

Amanda:

And they have to reformulate things to make them hate that person, because they’re not able to manage with that separation. So they can basically start saying that whole relationship was abusive or it was really bad, that whole entire time just to get them to hate this person, because they’re not able to transition into that separated environment type of thing.

Malcolm:

So aren’t these… Well, in my ignorance and my lack of experience, they seem to be symptoms of underlying mental health problems in the parent that is trying to alienate another person.

Amanda:

Absolutely.

Malcolm:

So sometimes done deliberately for ulterior motives, sometimes just done almost habitually without even knowing.

Amanda:

Yeah. Naively, they can be naively done. When someone’s got residual, there’s a little bit of alienation in most separations. But if you’ve got somebody who’s got a mental illness or a mental disorder, it’s going to be worse.

Malcolm:

Mm-hmm.

Amanda:

Yeah.

Malcolm:

What’s the experience and impact for the parent who’s being alienated from their child or children?

Amanda:

Oh, it’s such a helpless-

Malcolm:

Because you had that experience?

Amanda:

Yeah. I’ve actually been through that. And the thing is it’s being judged, when you’re being vilified.

Malcolm:

Judged by the child?

Amanda:

When you’re being judged by the family court system, or if people have had child protection involved or police involved and things like that. You’re guilty until you prove your innocence. And so you’ll spend all your time trying to explain yourself, and sometimes you’ll give that much detail in a sentence. It’s like that of an affidavit because you’re feeling like you have to prove yourself all the time.

Malcolm:

Justify.

Amanda:

And sometimes because you’re not getting support, there’s not enough support for these people in these situations that you can become quite unhinged. So can you imagine if you’re going for a single expert report and you’ve been vilified, you’re not seeing your children, you’re now being financially abused with the incentives of child support to the abuser. People become, as I said, unhinged. And so you’ve got one hour appointment with a single expert and you’ve got that period of time to tell what’s going on in your life. And when you’ve got one hour and they haven’t looked at the timeline, when they haven’t interviewed other people in the family or in your community and stuff like that.

Amanda:

And you’ve only got that one hour to tell your story. That one hour you could come across as a absolute… really unwell and unregulated, you can sound dysfunctional. So, a lot of people aren’t trauma-informed, so they don’t understand this.

Malcolm:

So there’s another symptom of the system that’s failing, the system that’s diseased, the family law system. It has to be canned and you can’t understand someone in an hour.

Amanda:

No, definitely not. No, you really need longitudinal interview process and more people in the community that’s associated to the children and the parents to be interviewed. You can’t base it on one hour with the children, one hour with each parent. That’s just not enough.

Malcolm:

And can there be… We’ve been talking all day, all this show about parents who separate, who divorced, who are going through those proceedings, can this happen in a marriage, one parent be alienated?

Amanda:

Oh absolutely. You can have one parent that’s undermining the other parent’s rules in the house. You can have one keeping secrets from the other parent or trying to find out information on what they’re doing and stuff like that. Or, it’s very much like the alienating tactics that are after the separation. Let’s say it’s someone’s birthday, but then minimising things that are important about that person and making them less important.

Malcolm:

Or even downright putting the other person down.

Amanda:

Yeah.

Malcolm:

Either in front of her or behind his back or wherever.

Amanda:

Yeah. Talking down about the other parent. Absolutely. Yeah. Like, if they’re making the child a meal and it’s not what the other parent thinks is appropriate, they might just, “Oh, you’re always make him unhealthy food.” And you just even add the little simple things that the child starts to get this perspective of this parent. So you can imagine once you’ve got the separation, how that can just magnify.

Malcolm:

So a lot of the parental alienation seems to be about control, to try and hurt the other parent, not recognising that they’re hurting the child in the process. So what are some of the things… What’s the experience and impact for the child that’s being subjected to this manipulative behaviour?

Amanda:

Okay.

Malcolm:

Can it stay with them for a lifetime?

Amanda:

Absolutely, it can. I’ve got… Okay. It’s traumatic. We did a study recently and there was people that came forward to participate in the research that just are not in the frame of mind to be able to participate, that’s how damaged they are as the result of from-

Malcolm:

From being children-

Amanda:

… from being alienated. So they’re now adults.

Malcolm:

Yeah.

Amanda:

But they are so harmed that we could not have them participate in the study.

Malcolm:

In what way?

Amanda:

Suicidal dysregulated, you just can’t have people participate in research, because what it is it’s-

Malcolm:

So their wounds are that deep.

Amanda:

Yeah. Well their interview, so you ask a series of questions, you’re not just ticking a survey. Yeah.

Malcolm:

And that interview would break down because the adult who was once a child victim of parental alienation behaviours just couldn’t cope?

Amanda:

No, they can’t cope through it. Yeah. It’s just unethical. It’s unethical to interview somebody who’s that traumatised.

Malcolm:

So how will that make them as parents?

Amanda:

Yeah. Well, I can’t really cover this.

Malcolm:

Wow.

Amanda:

Yeah. History will probably repeat itself. Either they might become an alienating parent or they might become alienated because that’s the cycle. But what we’re seeing in the impact is that we’re seeing disrupted social and emotional development. We’re seeing insecure attachment styles. So what you see in the prisons, a lot of people that are in prison have the antisocial attachment style. Is interpersonal problems, the relationships they choose and how they manage those relationships. Paranoid thinking, obsessive compulsive tendencies, low self-esteem that’s without a doubt, we see so much low self-esteem. Resentment, grief, anger, depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, physical symptoms, substance related problems and suicide. And then family violence and abuse they can end up into in relationships with family violence.

Malcolm:

So, because they went through that, they could become violent or they could become attracted to someone who is going to become violent later.

Amanda:

Yeah. Yeah. Because some people-

Malcolm:

We seem to have these contracts, the way I listen to people sometimes it’s almost like they’re contracted to marry someone who will teach them that lesson by the experience.

Amanda:

Yeah. Well, sometimes it’s what’s familiar. I know with my own situation, I had a father that was really good at telling people what they want to hear and very manipulative, but behind closed doors, he would grind you down, belittle you and things like that. And so that was a familiar thing for me. And so that’s what I chose in my partner. I chose very similar behaviours, even down to their birthdays, being a couple of days apart and looks were very similar as well. Big white teeth, broad shoulders, tall, everything was just so much alike, because it was familiar. And I was used to being treated that way. As a problem, because my dad used to always say things about my mom. Like, “Oh, you just…” He’d make negative comments about my mom. So I learn that was a bad thing, but that was okay to be spoken to that way. So, that’s what happens with this. It’s what’s familiar to you and you compromise yourself for other people and your own thoughts and feelings are minimised. You don’t matter.

Malcolm:

Well, thank you very much Amanda, for sharing that insight into your personal behaviour. It’s a strong woman who can do that, a strong person who can do that. We’re going to take an ad break and then we’re going to come back again with Amanda Sillars, and talk more about parental alienation behaviours.

Speaker 1:

[inaudible 00:36:53] weaponizing weather with reality and perspective.

Malcolm:

Al Gore effect warning. This is a warning, is in effect because of the media misinformation media. They’re not telling you about how much rain the Colorado river basin has had this monsoonal season and how much more is coming. It may be the wettest four month period on record in the so-called desert Southwest, which looks more like the swampy Southwest. But wait, there’s more. Texas has been in a hot dry summer, there is a drought in Texas right now. Not as bad as the 1950s and for the United States, not as bad as the 1930s, but a monster reversal is coming. In fact, what we’re telling our clients is Texas is going to go from dust to mud and floods, especially up across the Northern part of the state.

Malcolm:

Do you think you’d hear any of that from the media misinformation media? Of course not. This is weatherbell.com meteorologist Joe Bastardi for TNT radio, reminding you to enjoy the weather, it’s the only weather you got.

Malcolm:

And this is Senator Malcolm Roberts back again with Amanda Sillars. Now Amanda is not one to mark around. So she’s told me what she would like to talk about next. So guests usually have charge in my interview because they know the topic, I don’t. So, okay, Amanda, over to you, tell us what the topic is and what you’d like me to ask, or just go into it. Don’t worry about me, just go into it.

Amanda:

Good eye, science of social influences that support parental alienation theory. So what we do know from the research is that false memories can be implanted.

Malcolm:

We know that from parliament?

Amanda:

Suggestion and questions can lead to the corruption of memory and perception, and the cues of others shape our own perception. And this is true in influence children, teens then even adults. The mechanism of influence includes social pressure, visualisation, suggestive questioning, repetition, compliance, patternicity and confirmation bias. So that’s when someone who searches for information that supports their beliefs or values.

Amanda:

And going back to the interviewing is that interviewing, questioning and counselling techniques used with children can be so suggestive that they have the capacity to substantially alter the child’s recollections of events and thus compromise the reliability of the child’s personal knowledge. So you’re talking about in court situations where children are interviewed by somebody who’s not trained in how to interview children appropriately, they can start off with suggestive questions like, “Oh, does daddy hurt you?” Or, “Does mommy slap you?” They start with those leading questions kind of thing.

Amanda:

And this is quite common. We hear it a lot in child protection, we hear it with some police will be like that, suggestive with their questioning. Even though you’ve got people in units that are highly trained in the area, if they’re on site and you’ve got somebody who’s questioning a child and the child’s already had those questions asked by a parent and they’ve sort of giving into that parent, the child will start elaborating. The story will get bigger and better over time. So you can imagine when you get more and more people involved, how a case that could be so innocent with somebody telling the child often. Then now the parents abusing them and now they’ve been abusing them their whole life, and they’ve always done it and they’ve even done it to the other people. And, this is the hour of suggestibility.

Malcolm:

And children are very vulnerable, especially young children because they want to please.

Amanda:

Yeah.

Malcolm:

It’s important for their survival. So just building on that, I’ve prepared a question here. I understand that false allegations of abuse account for nearly 80% of cases during family court proceedings and this alienation is a way of permanently severing the parent child relationship. That’s a very high percentage for such destructive behaviour. Why do people make false allegations in custody disputes?

Amanda:

Well, I’ve written an article about this and again, instead of articles, I have list supports.

Malcolm:

Okay. Go through your list.

Amanda:

Yeah. So, buy some time to manipulate, brainwash and coach the children, gain an advantage in divorce, quickly put a parent out of the house without eviction or a court mentioned hearing to get vengeance, to control or manipulate a parent or get leverage in some way. Sometimes to put a parent in jail, they can set them up and bait the other parent. To emotionally and psychologically damage the other parent, they can get financial support and compensation from social services or victims compensation groups. I’ve seen that happen a lot of times. And when you question the victims of compensation, they don’t investigate. So you can go basically with nil evidence and just make claims that a parent has physically or sexually abused a child and a parent can get a compensation that will help them move into state, that will get them a new phone account and things like that. And then the child will be compensated a substantial amount of money when they turn 18.

Amanda:

So the child will hit 18 and they get a compensation to say that they’ve been sexually abused. When they in alienation cases, they haven’t been sexually abused and might have been, it would be exonerated by the police. It’ll be exonerated by the courts and everything like that. But this parent will still go and make these claims. I’m not saying in any way that the children aren’t genuinely… this doesn’t happen, but this gets misused, so you can see how it can get misused and easily get misused. So you can misrepresent a parent as being dangerous to officials or the children. And they can take that to schools and say, “Here’s my restraining order. Or…” And they might not have had the time to appeal that restraining order yet. But the parent will go and use that as evidence to vilify that parent even further.

Malcolm:

It’s a tactic.

Amanda:

As a tactic.

Malcolm:

As Rick said, it’s weaponized.

Amanda:

Yeah, absolutely.

Malcolm:

Becomes a weapon.

Amanda:

Yeah. And so it can socially isolate someone. It can gain 100% custody for child support purposes. So not just in my… Because that happened, my kids were abducted on a Saturday and on the Monday morning at 9:05 in the morning, there was a 100% child support claim put in against me by their father. So this is the stuff that goes on. I mean, my story is just one of like literally millions of people this is happening to.

Malcolm:

Men and women.

Amanda:

Men and women.

Malcolm:

It’s not just men, men and women.

Amanda:

Yeah. Well, our support group’s made up of 60% women now in our groups, since I’ve been advocating, we’ve had women coming out of the woodwork. And what happens is you get a lot of people that might get the term incorrect. They’ll say, “Oh, I’m alienated.” But their children aren’t actually rejecting them. They’ll come running to them, they see them every other weekend, but they claim that they’re alienated. And they might get contact denial, contact denial is an alienating tactical behaviour, but it’s not parental alienation in its entirety. Because the children aren’t being condition, or brainwashed, or punished and reward systems and stuff like that. So it’s important for people to understand that even though you are being denied contact, it’s not parental alienation in it’s entirety.

Malcolm:

Okay.

Amanda:

Yeah. Because the children are [inaudible 00:45:55].

Malcolm:

Have you finished your list on that one?

Amanda:

No, I haven’t.

Malcolm:

Keep going, I love those lists.

Amanda:

Give them a reason to tell the children that the other parent is so dangerous that they had to get a restraining order to protect themselves, give the applicant justification to badmouth the other parent all over town to make them look like the child protector and saviour, and the best parent which supports the image of parent of the year.

Malcolm:

Yeah.

Amanda:

And to keep everything in the house once the other parent is removed, to allow the complainant to get a new boyfriend or girlfriend of the picture and the other parent out. It’s just these tactics that people use by making false allegations.

Malcolm:

So, let’s just check my understanding. Sometimes the parent who’s doing the alienating of the other parent can be harsh and direct with the child to alienate the other parent. Sometimes the parent who’s doing the alienating can be subtle and implicit, and sometimes they can be doing unintentionally because they just want to get some form of control. Actually, all of these are forms of control. Control of the child, control of the other parent, control of the situation. Always beneath control, in my experience, there is fear. So the person doing the alienating is actually afraid and using it as a means of [inaudible 00:47:16] their own inadequacies.

Amanda:

Well, I guess what we’ve got to look at is coercive controllers at the heart of parental alienation. And so, the coercive controlling behaviour, looking at it, would pressure the child to feel allegiance or loyalty to them. Pressure or reward the child to reject the targeted parent, make the child afraid of the target parent in the absence of a real threat. And coerce the child to be defiant towards target parent. So they will teach them to undermine their rule, things like that. “Oh, you don’t have to do that.” Or they’ll teach the child that that parent all they’re there for is money. So the child will demand things from that parent, but yet the parent might want to see them, spend time with them, but they will reject that and they just want, “Oh, well I need a new pair of shoes.” Or, “I want the latest iPhone,” and things like that.

Malcolm:

So, kids can play the game?

Amanda:

Absolutely. But it’s because they’re being coerced to do it and it’s not even their fault. They’re being manipulated to do it. Yeah.

Malcolm:

Your foundation is calling, Amanda for legislative change to acknowledge parental alienating behaviours. How do you see that working?

Amanda:

Well, I guess we need to recognise parental alienating behaviours as child abuse and family violence. And it needs to be clearly defined what those behaviours are. And then we need a legislation that basically… Yeah.

Malcolm:

So you want to basically identify the parental alienation behaviours, because that’s been your term. You’re not talking about parental alienation, you’re talking about parental alienating behaviour.

Amanda:

Alienating behaviours. Yeah.

Malcolm:

So you identify them and get them ingrained as symptomatic of child abuse?

Amanda:

There’s certain tactics that are used like I guess it’s, yeah, not really… Yeah, what they are is they’re parental alienating behaviours. And we’ve got a huge list of on our website of all these behaviours. We just want to get them recognised as child abuse because the research that we’re doing is showing the outcomes of the impact of what these [inaudible 00:49:32] talking about… Its been a long day, I’m getting my moods fixed.

Malcolm:

You’re doing fine. So where can people find that website? Can you tell us?

Amanda:

Yeah, well, we’ve got EMMM, which is emmm.org.au. That’s M for Mary.

Malcolm:

So that’s Eeny Meeny Miney Mo, E-M-M-M.

Amanda:

.Org.au. And we’ve also got a Facebook page because we are a advancing education and health services charity. We’re not funded. And we also have a Facebook page that we have a support group that’s associated to that [inaudible 00:50:10].

Malcolm:

How would they find that? Eeny Meeny Miney Mo?

Amanda:

From EMMM Foundation on Facebook, type in @, and then EMMM Foundation. I actually manage the intake of that group because I screen the people that come into the group, and I managed all that myself to make it a safer space for people to be able to talk about the situation.

Malcolm:

Because you want people to be open and honest about their circumstances.

Amanda:

I’ll be able to reach out for support.

Malcolm:

Yes.

Amanda:

And talk about how they’re feeling and things that they’re going through, and get support from others who are going through. We have grandparents in the group as well. And we have some stepparents in the group who are supporting the alienated parent. We also run workshops with the University of Tasmania that are psychoeducational. So it teaches parents about what parental alienation is and what it isn’t and how to manage the situation better.

Malcolm:

We’re getting close to the end of the show. So there are a couple of things I want to get through. I want to make sure that people are introduced to your Eeny Meeny Miney Mo Foundation petition that’s running. You’ve already got 20,000 signatures and now aiming for your next target of 25,000. Where can people find the petition and where to from there?

Amanda:

Okay. Well, on our website, on the homepage, we’ve actually got the petition on there. So if you follow the links, sometimes ask you to donate to Change. Just ignore that little prompt.

Malcolm:

Thank you for that. I almost did, because I think your cause is well worth donating to, and I almost donated to change.org. No, no.

Amanda:

No, no. Don’t do that. Just sign the petition and if you’re able to share, it would be greatly appreciated because-

Malcolm:

Oh, so when you showed me on the phone, that was your website.

Amanda:

Yeah.

Malcolm:

Oh.

Amanda:

Oh no. No, that was a Change website.

Malcolm:

Yeah.

Amanda:

Okay. Yeah. So, but after you sign the petition, it sometimes wants to push you to sign other petitions or to donate to them.

Malcolm:

Yeah. So be careful if you’re wanting to sign the petition that you don’t end up donating to change.org, is it?

Amanda:

Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm:

Okay. All right.

Amanda:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Malcolm:

One final thing for a couple of minutes. Could you tell us about the research you’re doing in the area of parental alienation behaviours with the University of Tasmania?

Amanda:

Yeah, absolutely. The first studies that we did was the targeted parent perspective that has gathered so much. Oh, sorry. [inaudible 00:52:33].

Malcolm:

No, no, you’re right. I’m just getting a warning that we’ve got two minutes left. That’s all.

Amanda:

All. Okay. We’ve done the targeted parent perspective, we’ve done the alienated child perspective, and recently we’ve done the grandparent perspective. And it definitely fits the definition of child abuse and family violence. And with the grandparent, it fits the definition of elder abuse. If they’re on the receiving end of parental alienating behaviours. And we have continuing… We’ve got more studies that are coming out. And I’m hoping to do a study with veterans who are experiencing parental alienation. Because not only are they experiencing things like PTSD and physical injuries and stuff, then they’re cut off from the children as well, which compounds their mental health. And so I think it’s critical that we get some research happening in that area.

Malcolm:

Well, I know we are right near the end. So as a child, you were hijacked to America.

Amanda:

Abducted.

Malcolm:

Abducted. Yeah, that’s the word. You abducted to America and you suffered from parental alienation.

Amanda:

Yeah.

Malcolm:

Then as a married mother, you were alienated from your child. So the other person that’s not involved. Sorry, that is involved and hurts is the grandparents. So we got 30 seconds. That seems to be someone who always left out the grandparents.

Amanda:

Oh, absolutely, grandparents. So I have a lot of people who follow my page now who always say, “What about us grandparents?” And so I’ve started our grandparent page on our website now, so we can actually share our research and provide some videos on there as well.

Malcolm:

I want to thank you so much, Amanda Sillars for doing what you’re doing. Eeny Meeny Miney Mo. Fabulous lady. Get behind it.

Amanda:

Thank you.

On this episode I talk to Cody Beck, Leisa Young and Rick Young about parental alienation.

Cody has worked extensively advocating for fathers within the system, first with ABF (Australian Brotherhood of Fathers) including giving submissions at the Family Law Inquiry, and now independently with his own firm Beck Law in Southport.  Cody supports the organisation DADS and advocates to raise awareness for parental alienation.  He knows this affects so many Australian families and is committed to supporting similar organisations that are working tirelessly for change and awareness in this space.

The money being raised at the even we recorded at is going towards building a DADS support centre.  Its aim is to provide face to face support for families who are going through domestic and family violence, family court proceedings and suffering the effects of parental alienation.  The energy behind the Parental Alienation Awareness ride are Ric and Leisa Young and they joined me to talk about the amazing day that unfolded at the show grounds.

Transcript

Malcolm Roberts:

Today’s news talk radio tntradio.live. Thank you so much for having me as your guest, whether it’s in your kitchen, your car, your shed, or wherever you are right now. I always say this, the two most important themes for my programmes are freedom, especially freedom versus control, and secondly, personal responsibility and integrity. Both are fundamental for human progress and people’s livelihoods. Today, I am broadcasting live from Redland Showgrounds in Brisbane, and we’ve got five people. So in the last couple of weeks, last couple of episodes, I’ve had one person for the last four hours. Today we’re going to have five people for the two hours. Before talking about that. I want to say that I must express my sincere regrets to tntradio.live for what happened on Wednesday. We had a phenomenal COVID under question two. It was our second COVID under question, called Opening Eyes and Hearts.

Malcolm Roberts:

We were using the parliamentary wifi in the Commonwealth buildings, and it was absolutely atrocious quality. We just could not give our feed to TNT Radio because it was so poor. We wanted to save that, but we didn’t. We got lost in that communications and caused a bit of a panic, which is sincerely regrettable. So we’ll let you know when the videos are processed because some really startling material coming out of that. So back to today. Today I’m broadcasting live from Redland Showgrounds, which is a suburb of Brisbane. I have five guests joining me to talk about parental alienation, because today is the second parental alienation awareness cruise. This cruise is one of the largest car bike and truck cruises that Brisbane has ever seen. It is a fundraiser event to raise money to build a centre for the family support group DADS, D-A-D-S, which we’ll talk more about later in the hour.

Malcolm Roberts:

I want to say that I had the privilege of being invited and participating in last year’s cruise. And we went from Brisbane, out into the farmlands around Gatton Lockyer, and it was just phenomenal. The amazing energy. It was really stunning. What a great group of people to be with. First, let’s talk about parental alienation, which is not a term we hear often. It’s estimated at the least one million Australian children are currently alienated from one parent by the other parent. And this typically happens during family breakdowns. Essentially it’s about one parent’s persistent attempt to damage their child’s relationship with the other parent. And it doesn’t just hurt the other parent. It devastates the children, scars them for life. It’s really about one parent controlling the other parent, and controlling the child. It affects moms and dads, moms and dads both. During family breakdowns, dads, though, more often find themselves as the parent that has become alienated from their children.

Malcolm Roberts:

Not only do the dads miss out, the children miss out, and this can cause lifelong mental health issues. Support for dads is often forgotten about. And today our guests are going to share their passions for supporting grieving families, moms and dads, through this process with a focus on fathers. We will be listening to experts and we’ll be listening to mums. Now, my first guest is Cody Beck, who I met some years ago through the Australian Brotherhood of Fathers in Southport on the Gold Coast. Cody is a lawyer who has worked extensively advocating for fathers within the system. First with the Australian Brotherhood of Fathers, including giving submissions at the Family Law Inquiry, and now independently with his own firm Beck Law, in surfers’ paradise, Gold Coast. Cody supports the organisation, DADS, which stands for Dads Against Discrimination Support. We’ll explain that later. And advocates to raise awareness for parental alienation. He knows this affects so many Australian families and he’s committed to supporting similar organisations that are working tirelessly for change and awareness in this space. Welcome Cody. Good to see you again.

Cody Beck:

Good to see you again, Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

There’s so much recognition and services provided to women these days, Cody, during domestic and family violence issues, yet we rarely hear about what is available for men. Are they being under serviced in this area?

Cody Beck:

Men are very much under serviced. There’s a lot of government support for women going through family breakdown, family court, things like that. For men there just isn’t the same support apart from groups like the Australian Brotherhood or Fathers, DADS, other groups like that will help out dads and understanding what they go through. But unfortunately for men, they seem to get left out, which is disappointing in circumstances where you’ve got things like Queensland Women’s Legal Service and things like that, which the government donates a lot of money to. There’s nothing like that for men. And in fact, I’ve had my firm now for a few years, we try to get on the legal aid panel, to get legal aid to be able to help dads who aren’t financial. And we were knocked back because we were deemed a gendered service. Legal Aid wouldn’t allow us to go on the Legal Aid panel.

Malcolm Roberts:

But we can have plenty of gendered female services.

Cody Beck:

Yeah. Yep. That’s all fine.

Malcolm Roberts:

So why is this ready cash for female services, but not available for male services?

Cody Beck:

I can’t answer that question. It amazes me that particularly in a society now where everybody screams about equality and carries on about sexism and all that kind of thing, for it to be so skewed against one gender, it blows my mind and it, and it’s not getting any better. And it’s only, and I said this to a lot of people, it’s only you and Pauline who are the ones who are talking about this, other members of government just aren’t interested in it. They don’t want to touch it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. I’m very surprised by it as well. And the only thing I can think of, Cody, is that it’s got something to do with the fact that some people have really been spread… It’s the bloody Greens. Okay. And some members of the Labour Party. What they’re spreading is bullshit about, it’s only the women who are victims. Well, that’s crap. 50% of the victims in this space are men. And you know that, you’ve had much experience with that. But it’s not the right thing. It’s not politically correct to talk about the men needing support, because they’re supposed to be the perpetrators, which is rubbish. Sometimes they are, sometimes it’s the women. So would that be some possible explanation?

Cody Beck:

Yeah. Look, the government and the media are peddling this thing that women are all victims and men are all perpetrators. It’s just not the case. Don’t get me wrong. Domestic violence happens and it’s very bad. And we should be dealing with it. But the reality is, the way the system is at the moment, it gives women an incentive to make false allegations. And I see false allegations constantly. Every day at work we’re dealing with false allegations. We’re consistently seeing a situation where a woman will make allegations. And basically the reality is, as a male, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent, and the time and the cost to prove yourself innocent is significant. Going through the family court, you’re looking at somewhere about 18 months to get a trial at best. And with a lot of firms, you’re spending upwards of a hundred thousand dollars to be able to defend yourself when allegations, are made and the court will act protectively.

Cody Beck:

So they’ll essentially put mechanisms in place such as supervised visits and things like that, because they’re not sure if the allegations are true or not, and they can’t make a decision on that until you get to a trial. I was speaking to Pauline about this earlier. I think the best thing that the government could implement, and it would be a little bit resource heavy at the front end, but in the long run, I think it would unclog the system a lot, would be on day one of when you first get to family court, on day one, if there’s allegations made, serious allegations, about domestic violence or inappropriate sexual contact or anything like that, I think both people should be on the witness box on day one and be cross examined, even if it’s a limited amount of time, so the court can get to the bottom of that at the start, rather than it clogging up the system, having five or six court days before a trial, 18 months down the track, and the cost involved in that.

Cody Beck:

Not just financial cost, but the psychological cost for a dad who’s not seeing his kids. And then because what we are constantly getting is, when we finally do get to a trial, probably four out of five of our matters where there’s been allegations made, we get to day one of trial and the mother will come to us with an offer, something along the lines of five nights a fortnight, half school holidays. And it’s like, what she’s been talking about the last 18 months just didn’t happen. Happens all the time.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’ve heard that a lot. But the bias against men extends right through parliament. Pauline, as you know, got the joint select inquiry into the family law system and family court. And I attended the first session because the Greens and the Labour Party were bagging Pauline for months beforehand. They were really annoyed that the previous government gave us that inquiry. They were really worried about Pauline speaking. They tried ruthlessly to get it out. They were even moving motions to that effect, the Greens and the Labour Party. And so I turned up at the first hearing with intention of staying for many of the hearings, just to support Pauline, right?

Malcolm Roberts:

Ah, she didn’t need it. She’s a strong lady, she’s a strong woman. But the tone in that first hearing was atrocious. It was about men being the perpetrators, females being the victims. That came from the Greens, especially, and the Labour Party, but you know what? Pauline and the others had organised so many witnesses to come forward, that at the end of that whole series of inquiries, which went around the country, the Labour Party members had walked up to Pauline and said, we didn’t realise it was that bad. They admitted Pauline was right. So that’s the bias that’s in our society when members of parliament don’t even understand that themselves.

Cody Beck:

And it was huge. I made submissions with the ABF to the inquiry, and then we also did a Zoom call and I had a bit of a barney with some of the Greens and Labour-

Malcolm Roberts:

Good on you.

Cody Beck:

… people. Because the bias was just was out of control. And it’s good to hear that by the end of it, that they may have had a slightly different view, because at the start they were ruthless. They hated the fact that we were supporting men and that we were saying that men can be victims as well. And some women can be perpetrators. They didn’t like that at all.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, what do you expect in a parliament that refused to endorse a motion saying All Lives Matter? So that’s quite clear. So what are the general issues then, Cody, and the struggles fathers face with contact with their children, following allegations of domestic or family violence?

Cody Beck:

Look, as I said before, basically as a male, you’re guilty till you prove yourself innocent. So allegations can be made. There can be no evidence apart from the allegation from the ex-wife or ex-partner. And once those allegations are made, you’ve got dads dealing with having to have supervised visits. I had a situation where one of our clients was getting remarried. And at the wedding table, it was husband and wife, and then there was a supervisor sat next to the husband, and then the children were on the other side of him during his wedding.

Cody Beck:

And that’s another case where the mother made all these allegations about mental health and violence and things like that. And when we got to trial, on day one, she came with an offer for five nights a fortnight, half school holidays, which we took. And then funnily enough, after him fighting for about 18 months to get that time with his daughter, she then decided that she was going to move to, I think, Melbourne, with her new partner and basically dropped the kids off to the dad. He now has them full time. She has only school holiday time.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s what we hear a lot, that the mother usually uses, sorry, not usually, the mother sometimes uses this as a bargaining ploy to extract a better deal from the court system. So what support services are available for men in comparison with the services available to women, Cody, when they get to the magistrate’s court?

Cody Beck:

From a government perspective, very little. They do have duty lawyers at the courts. There’s organisations, obviously, like the ABF and DADS that offer support as well. But you’ll find, for example, at the Southport courthouse, where I’m at frequently, there’s a domestic violence room where the women go to. It takes up probably about a quarter of level two of the court. There’s no room for men. Men don’t get to go there. And in fact, if I want to go and talk to an applicant, as a solicitor representing one of my clients, they won’t allow me to go in that room. It’s a women only room, and there’s nothing like that for men.

Cody Beck:

And previously, they didn’t even have duty to lawyers for men. They just had centre care would be at the court, but they’d only be there for a couple of hours a day. Whereas you’ll find frequently women will go into this safety room. Even when they’re the respondent in an affidavit, they still go in the safety room. The men don’t get to go in there. And then when they go to court, there’ll be one or two support people with the women. So there’s a lot of resources there at the Southport court. And it’s all over the state as well. But there’s nothing like that for men.

Malcolm Roberts:

So men are second class citizens then. We’re going to go to an ad break next, after this question, Cody. It’s complex. What’s it look and feel like? Give people a feel for what men are going through, because they must feel guilty with accusations. They feel powerless. And so we have a very high suicide rate. So that indicates something is horribly wrong with treating men as second class citizens. They’re frustrated, they’re boxed in. They don’t know what to do.

Cody Beck:

Mate, it’s heartbreaking. Day after day, you’re dealing with good men, who, all they want to do is see their kid. All they want to do is spend time with their children. And you’ve got all these blocks in the way. You’ve got a vengeful ex who’s using the system. And unfortunately, the system is there for them to use, using the system to make their life as difficult as possible. And frequently we’re seeing it’s just out of spite, that this is the only way that they can now inflict pain on this person, is by reducing their relationship with their children. It’s heartbreaking.

Malcolm Roberts:

So that’s how much the system has deteriorated that women and men, some men too, can use the system to try and break the other person, and in the process destroy their own children’s lives. That’s how ego driven and egocentric it’s become. Thank you so much, Cody, for being here today. It’s been a real delight having you, and thank you for speaking so forcefully and direct. Appreciate it.

Cody Beck:

All right. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

Malcolm Roberts:

The money being raised today at today’s cruise is going towards building a DADS support centre. It’s aim is to provide face to face support for families going through domestic and family violence, family court proceedings, and suffering the effects of parental alienation. The energy behind the parental alienation awareness ride are Rick and Lisa Young. And they join me now to talk about the amazing day that is unfolding right here at the red Redland Showgrounds. So welcome, Rick and Lisa. Good to catch up with you today.

Lisa Young:

Hi, Malcolm. Good to see you.

Rick Young:

Hi, Malcolm. Thanks for having us.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I want to thank you for last year. That was a stunning event. I got to ride on a Harley for the first time ever, and I enjoyed the whole trip all the way out to Gatton, 80ks or whatever it was. Something you appreciate. Just tell us anything. We always start with appreciation.

Lisa Young:

I’m going to say always appreciation for family. Absolutely, a hundred percent.

Rick Young:

I’d say the appreciation would be the support that the people have shown today, for coming out and bringing their families out and really just making a presence today. It shows us that we’re needed and that we’ll keep going.

Malcolm Roberts:

There are a lot of hurting people here who value highly what you’re doing. I noticed that last year, brought me to tears at times. It was just stunning. Why DADS, D-A-D-S, Dad’s Against Discrimination Support.

Lisa Young:

I guess when we started the community support page on Facebook, we wanted to capsulate the fact that it was fathers that needed the support, but also the discrimination side of things in the system, and wanting to take away that gender bias. So for us, it was about basically acknowledging that there is a loop here, there’s a hole in the system, and that is that there’s a lack of support for fathers, but also that there’s quite a discrimination against services that are out there, because predominantly the services for domestic and family violence are there for women.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right. We’ve noticed that everywhere for a few years now. And no one in government seems to be at all interested. They seem to be too timid about fixing this. So why is that?

Lisa Young:

Oh, I think we’ve all got our theories around that, Malcolm, but to be quite honest, I think there’s a lot of funding that goes into women. When you look at the Duluth model, which is the domestic and family violence model of, not just legislation, but the model itself, it’s written for women. And I am a woman, so I know that I can get a bit of a slack when I come out and I speak about it the way that I do. But at the end of the day, I think domestic violence isn’t a gender issue, it’s a humanities issue. And when we start looking at it from that point of view, we’re going to see a difference. And we’re going to see reform in the sector. We’re going to see a difference in the cycle of abuse when we start treating humans as humans, whether that be a man, a woman, or a child.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well said. It isn’t a gender issue, it’s a humanity issue. And you alluded, you didn’t state clearly, but you alluded to the fact that women sometimes are the victims, men sometimes are the victims, and you will help both. This is not just about males. This is about males and females. It’s not a gender issue, it’s a human issue. So you both have enormous passion for this. I can tell. I noticed it first, last year, as soon as I met you both. How has this passion come about and why this cause?

Lisa Young:

Oh, you can jump in here.

Malcolm Roberts:

Follow instructions now.

Rick Young:

It just comes down to a lived personal experience. Going through the family court, domestic violence systems and being a father, you soon come to the realisation that there’s little to no support for men, let alone fathers. And basically from there, we started the Facebook page and the response from that, and I think the big thing for DADS is the message is to people going through parental alienation, or going through family court, or facing false allegations, is that just to know that you’re not alone, because it can be of a very lonely feeling and a process.

Lisa Young:

It’s very isolating, I think, for a lot of families, particularly if they, or fathers or parents in general, if they don’t have a lot of family support, it’s very isolating. They don’t know where to turn to. With even just the allegations of any kind of domestic violence, they can lose their friendship, their network, their peers at work look at them differently. It’s such a flow on, it’s a ripple effect across the whole broad, but from our lived experience, we noted that there needed to be some support out there. And with me working in the sector, I had the tools and some of the resources and learning every day, as you do. And I knew that I had to get in there and jump in and help.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, that couldn’t be clearer. But what you said, Rick, I’ve noticed that so many times with fathers who are broken, because they feel lonely, like you said. There’s no one to help them, and they feel incredible shame. Just thinking of that-

Rick Young:

Absolutely ashamed.

Malcolm Roberts:

… brings tears-

Rick Young:

The stigma.

Malcolm Roberts:

… to my eyes. Yeah. The stigma.

Rick Young:

The stigma that goes with it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Sometimes one of the couple will invoke a complete bullshit argument, an allegation against the father, usually, sometimes against mother, but it’s usually against a father. That father is labelled in public as perpetrator of domestic violence or child abuse. And it’s false. And so imagine the shame of that. I couldn’t think of anything more shameful for a man than to be accused of hurting or even molesting, for goodness sake, his children. And that’s done deliberately sometimes with no evidence, not even the hint of it happening, and the children denying it, and the mother, or sometimes the father, do that. So then fathers feel hopeless, and they’re trapped.

Rick Young:

Yeah, look, absolutely. And I refer to domestic violence orders as being the silver bullet, it’s the weapon of choice for separation. It’s the first weapon of choice. The first thing is what comes usually that we see and experience talking to dads is the false allegations during separation or the start of separation, and that essentially then alienates that other parent straight away. The process to clear one’s name to in the family court or the domestic violence can take years before you get a day in court

Malcolm Roberts:

And a lot of cash.

Rick Young:

With parental alienation, I think, one thing I’d like to raise is grandparents who are the forgotten victims of all this. And I can tell you now, just with the fathers that we talked to and the mums that we talked to, it’s the grandparents that are funding a lot of these hundred thousand dollars family law costs. It’s the grandparents that are selling their caravan, refinance their homes, putting off retirement to pay for their son or their daughter to go through the family court process. It’s a money making machine, and it’s not right. It’s certainly broken.

Malcolm Roberts:

There’s no doubt it’s broken. Because we are scrunched over one microphone, I’m looking very closely at these people’s eyes and there’s real glint in their eyes, there’s real energy coming out of these people. It’s wonderful to see Rick and Lisa. Now one of the things that might surprise people is, we’re on a cruise for vintage cars, not [inaudible 00:24:52] what do you call them? 1960s, muscle cars.

Rick Young:

Yeah. Just muscle cars.

Malcolm Roberts:

Trucks, motorbikes and [inaudible 00:24:58] There’s some wonderful machinery here. There’s some in cars, like me.

Rick Young:

Yeah, absolutely.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m not in an ordinary car, but there’s so many cars like the one I’ve got, which is ordinary, but what are the backgrounds? There are construction workers, there are lawyers.

Rick Young:

Well, I was just going to say, just to give an indication, the CFMEU union really got behind the dads just recently. And one of the guys there, Stuart Burgess, he’s a construction worker, commercial work, obviously a union member on their sites and all their foremans, all their heads are really getting behind that. And what’s been put to the unions is how many fathers don’t turn up to work? How many fathers have accidents on sites, because they’re not focused? Because they’re stressing about family court costs. They’re facing false allegations. They’re not seeing their kids for a year, two years. It’s just all these statistics, like I said, on sites, particularly the high rise commercial sites, where it’s quite dangerous and a lot of risk. You’ve got guys on site that are, like I said, they’re not focused or they’re not turning up to work, or they’re ending it. They’re not there next week.

Malcolm Roberts:

It’s literally a matter of life and death. Not only the suicide rate being so high, but literally someone’s mind being elsewhere, feeling hopeless-

Rick Young:

Endangering others.

Malcolm Roberts:

… and endangering others and himself or herself at work. But there are all kinds of professions involved. It’s not just people who like bikes. It’s not just people who are construction workers. It’s not just people who are professionals. All kinds of people are being victimised in this. The only thing that seems to be common, it’s not always the case, is the fact that they’re men.

Rick Young:

Yeah.

Lisa Young:

Yeah. It would be very safe to say that. And I think if you asked me this 10 years ago, I probably would’ve disagreed, and that’s just putting it out there. But now that I’ve worked in the sector, experienced the sector from a lived experience, I can see that I was probably living under a cloud or head in the sand, because unless you’ve actually experienced the system firsthand or you know someone that has, you’re not aware of this, and it goes the same with child protection matters. When you’re talking child protection and I work in that space alongside child safety, and you’re working with families to try and give them the tools that they need to keep the children safely in the home. You wouldn’t believe or breathe of it what we see and what we experience as a practitioner.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, I must say, my eyes were opened by Leith Erickson. He did a phenomenal job at Australian Brotherhood of Fathers, still doing it. Man’s amazing. You could see the anger in him, and I think eventually Leith worked it out. He had to process his own anger to be more effective, and I’m not speaking on behalf of Leith, this is just my opinion, but he transformed into someone who’s very calm and unflappable, and because he recognised that was necessary. And so it was just a pleasure to see Leith that way. But you mentioned, a few minutes ago, Rick, the weapon of choice is the domestic violence allegation, and it alienates parents and shatters kids.

Rick Young:

Well, it does a lot of things, Malcolm, it does exactly that. And the damage to the kids can be irreparable and life lasting. Parental alienation, children, one minute seeing a parent saying goodnight, getting up, then all of a sudden, not seeing that parent. They’re gone. It’s also this system financially rewards that parent for doing that. And then we start digging into things like child support and family tax benefit A and B, and rent assistance. So it’s almost an incentive to some parents, and believe it or not, there’s plenty of them. I know parents, where they get their kids during afternoons, after school, for example, they might get the kids five days a week after school.

Rick Young:

Mom’s happy to hand the kids over. But they will not have an overnight, because when it comes to overnights, that’s when it affects the dollars. And the standard every second weekend for a dad, that’s because if it’s three nights a fortnight, it goes over into a different threshold for child support. That’s the other thing. So these are all the things, it’s nothing to do with the best interest of the children. It’s just that it’s a financial reward. And that’s sad that people would use kids. But that’s the reality of it.

Malcolm Roberts:

And it’s sometimes a financial reward to get money, but other times it’s a financial reward to make sure the partner doesn’t get money. It’s a get even session.

Rick Young:

Look, and particularly at the start of a family court proceeding, it comes down to percentage of care when you talk property settlements. A parent might have the children, 80% care. Come time to share the property pool and divvy it out, there’s an automatic assumption that, that person with a kid, that has them as majority of care will get an absolute bigger piece of the pie, if that makes sense. I’m sure Cody could go into that further. And then you’ll find in a lot of cases that I particularly hear about, is after the trial, after it’s all divvied out, you can have the kids whenever you want now.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yep.

Rick Young:

So it’s-

Malcolm Roberts:

So we’ve talked a lot about the problem. The support centre sounds like it will have many services on offer. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you see it working? What types of services are needed?

Lisa Young:

Yeah. So I think the whole point of having the service centre here in the Redlands, because there’s nothing like it well anywhere really, but there’s nothing like it here in the Redlands, specifically, but it’ll allow us to give that face to face support to our family so they can come in, they can talk to us if they need a food hamper, if they needed a go card or a fuel card or something like that. We may be able to provide some emergency relief for men that are fleeing domestic and family violence. There are no shelters for men that can accommodate men and children.

Malcolm Roberts:

That sounds like what women’s shelters do.

Lisa Young:

Yeah. It does sound like that. Except unfortunately, we don’t get the grant funding that they do. So we have to do things like this fundraiser to make sure that we can raise the funds to open this support centre and then support these families through what they’re going through. And they can come to us, paralegal administration, so we do help them work out their legal aid forms and things like that. We let Cody take care of the rest, because we’re not solicitors, but ultimately, most families don’t even know where to start. And sometimes it’s just good for them to come and talk and unpack it a little bit with someone and get it off their chest. Because unfortunately, solicitors just don’t have the timeframe to provide that emotional support. So that’s where we come in.

Malcolm Roberts:

So it’s counselling service, legal support, social network, unpacking their feelings, because men tend not to do that. Don’t we mate?

Rick Young:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes down to that stigma of just, I’ll just deal with it, or generally that the ex-partner, she’s just angry right now and things will come around, but definitely, again, when you feel alone, you’re pretty less inclined to actually speak to people about it because you think, well, they don’t want to hear my, but you meet other guys today that will…

Lisa Young:

Well, the other thing is, like you were saying before, Malcolm, is the shame and it’s the judgement , right? So how did they talk about that with their normal friendship group if a judge has ordered that they can’t see their kids, or if they’re having supervised contact with their children in a supervised centre? Oh, there must be a reason for that. Or you must be a bad man. You must be a bad person. It isn’t always the case.

Rick Young:

Yeah. And I was going to say, well, I would’ve said the same thing, Malcolm, if you had to ask me, we’re sitting in a pub 10 years ago and you said to me, that guy over there, he hasn’t seen his kids in two years, the courts ordered that he can’t see them. You know what I mean? I honestly would have thought and I would have judged and just thought, well, our court systems don’t stop good parents from seeing kids. He must be a grub. He must deserve that. He must be a bad guy. Until you experience our justice system, not our justice system so much, but the family court proceedings, and the way it’s conducted, those blinkers come off and you start to realise, no, there are good dads, there are great dads that are not seeing their kids.

Malcolm Roberts:

And if you want to see a great person, look at someone who’s been deprived of his children. The whole world is his child or his children.

Rick Young:

Absolutely.

Malcolm Roberts:

Men have that same feeling towards their children as women do, and yet we’re treated sometimes as not.

Lisa Young:

Yeah. I hate that as a parent. I have children to, another father, before I met Rick, and my children, there’s no court orders, they get to see their dad as much or as little as either party wants. Do you know what I mean? And I think that’s the biggest thing that’s missing here is that these blokes, they’re not every second weekend babysitters, these guys are fathers. They deserve the same right. Just because they haven’t carried the child for the term of the pregnancy does not mean that they do not have the right to have that equal time with their children.

Malcolm Roberts:

So well said. We’re going to take an ad break now, and then we’re going to be back with Rick and Lisa. And I’m going to ask them about how well pets are protected. I’ve got that for a reason. See you in a couple of minutes, we’ll be right back.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m on TNT Radio. I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts, and the reason I’m on TNT Radio is because I get to interview lots of wonderful people like the guests we’re having today, because they don’t have an alternative voice. The mainstream media is the mockingbird media, the lamestream media, the legacy media. They push a narrative. They don’t listen to both sides. And that’s what I’m sick and tired of in our political system, in this country as well. It’s based on bullshit. And we need to get all sides of the story. And that’s why I work with Pauline, because she listens and she pushes both sides of the story.

Malcolm Roberts:

She goes out, and we both go out and listen to people. So did you know that there are many ways you can listen to TNT Radio? Why not stream us direct from our website on your desktop, tablet or mobile device, or download our app from the app store. We even stream live on YouTube, Rumble and Odyssey. We’ve got you covered on TNT Radio. And we’re now going to hear an exclusive, tell us about how pets are looked after under this system when men can’t get attention, but pets can.

Rick Young:

Yeah, look, I think it was last year, it come to my attention, Malcolm, when the government was issuing the budget or announcing the budget, which children and women for domestic violence would get X amount of millions. What sort of pricked my ears up was when I’m waiting to see if they allocated any money towards men that year. And it was actually when they announced that there was pets of DV, so pets of domestic violence. And I believe that, that funding goes to things like your animal shelters, when there’s from a domestic violence home that needs caring. Which is great, because I love animals. But to me, that is a bit of a kick in the guts to, I suppose, the blokes out there who pay tax, that half that funding come from men, I assume. Population, whether it be 50/50, but I assume that the taxpayers being men as well, have contributed to that budget, yet $0 allocated to men when it comes to domestic violence. But the government allocate so many million to pets of domestic violence. I just found that appalling.

Malcolm Roberts:

That says so much, doesn’t it? And it’s not good, but I’m going to get you some dog tags and then maybe they’ll take better care of you, or get you a leash. Has he got a leash, Lisa?

Lisa Young:

Oh yeah, sometimes, if I keep you on it. If keep you on the leash.

Rick Young:

Short leash.

Malcolm Roberts:

So I think I know the answer to this question, but I was just wondering, how much of a demand is there for services such as the ones we’ve been talking about that are missing, and where are these people going now? I’m guessing they’re going nowhere.

Rick Young:

Look, I think there’s quite a few fathers’ Facebook pages and things like that. There are support groups. I know dads that have reached out to us today that said they would’ve loved to have come, but if their ex-partner found out they were here, they’d be in trouble.

Malcolm Roberts:

What?

Lisa Young:

Yeah, or it’d be used against them.

Rick Young:

Malcolm, recently we sold lapel pins to raise money. The DADS lapel pins. We’ve had judges tell fathers in the courtroom to take the lapel pin off, that it’s intimidating. So when we talk about where a dad’s going, they’re actually in fear. I’ve had one father who had a domestic violence order placed on him, a temporary protection order, private application, for wearing a DADS shirt.

Rick Young:

The supports there, but there’s dads out there that are scared to even, and this is a free country. This is Australia. It’s not the country that I served in the army for, where fathers can’t wear a DADS shirt or lapel pin to let them know they’re not alone when they’re in court. They’re feeling anxious, they feel alone. And they’ve told me, this is their feedback, that wearing that pin makes them feel that, you know what? I can finish court and come out, give Rick a call, tell him how I went. You know what I mean? And for these judges and magistrates to tell them to take the lapel pin off, that’s the system we are facing.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, first of all, thank you so much for your service to our country.

Rick Young:

My pleasure.

Malcolm Roberts:

And thank you for doing what you’re doing now. So many people are being rescued by you and Lisa and an army of people behind you.

Lisa Young:

We sure do.

Malcolm Roberts:

It’s wonderful.

Lisa Young:

It gets me every time, this guy. As soon as he starts talking, I just get all choked up. But he is right. He served this country and he served two tours for us, for what we have today, for what we’re doing today, to have this beautiful weather, this event and this community engagement. And he does it all for nothing.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, you’re achieving quite a bit, so that’s wonderful. The real story is that there is a need for you to do that. There shouldn’t be. That should be taken care of by our communities. But there’s also distortion of statistics. You know that the veterans who come back, even from overseas service have a very high rate of suicide. And when a dad takes his own life, because he feels hopeless and shamed, that’s sometimes put down to PTSD from Afghanistan or whatever. That dad’s issue is completely bulldozed. It’s completely-

Rick Young:

RSL DVA. Don’t want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. And I can tell you now, and this is from one fellow I served with. He faced false allegations, domestic violence. He was kept from his child. And the easy thing for them to do is simply, oh, he’s a veteran. Yeah. He’s been diagnosed with PTSD. Oh, that’s an easy one, suicide. PTSD. But in fact, he took his life because he didn’t see his daughter for two years. But they don’t want to link the veteran’s suicide to this. And where that comes in, Malcolm, is I’ve never been charged in my life, don’t have a criminal record, but a veterans training, their tours, and particularly if they’ve been diagnosed with PTSD, the stigma around that, in our courtrooms, from the judges, even police.

Malcolm Roberts:

The stigma of PTSD?

Rick Young:

Being a veteran with PTSD.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah.

Lisa Young:

Yeah.

Rick Young:

Yeah. Plenty of other services suffer PTSD, ambulance officers, police, first responders, that sort of stuff. But being a veteran, particularly a combat veteran, there’s a certain stigma that you are a risk to the community. You’ve never broken a law in your life. You’ve never hurt anyone in your life, but the sheer training and qualifications and your experience, you are treated absolutely differently, without justification. And that goes into the courtroom, where the courts… How do I put it? You’re portrayed as a trained killer, that you’re a potential risk to your children, simply because you’re a veteran, and I’ll tell you now, I’ve said it in court myself. I said, the funny thing is, two days a year you want to buy me a beer, the rest of the year I’m a risk. Which is it? You know what I mean? And we better have to think about the March come Anzac Day, because you got a lot of bad people getting together and marching, if we’re going to judge veterans as a risk based on just their service.

Malcolm Roberts:

Two days ago was Long Tan day.

Rick Young:

Yeah, it was.

Malcolm Roberts:

Vietnam veterans day. And I think about the people who went to Vietnam, especially the… Well no, including the conscriptees, not especially, everyone who went there, including the conscriptees, and they came back, and every previous war they were celebrated and given ticker tape parades. After Vietnam, they were shamed. Oh, you’re a Vietnam vet, you’re probably a drug killer. Now you’ve got a man or a woman, but a man in particular, who’s gone to, say, through training, had extensive training, being taught to do his manly job, if you like, defending the country, facing bullets, all of that. And he comes back and he’s accused of domestic violence when it didn’t happen. That’s not all the time, but sometimes it did happen. He’s accused, he feels shame and guilt. And he’s saying, what the hell am I doing here? And then that ends his life. That man, who’s got the discipline.

Rick Young:

It’s not just suicide. It goes into substance abuse, whether it be drugs, alcohol. It’s not just mental health. A lot of suicides… And I’m so happy that you’re going to be speaking to Paul today, from Zero Suicide, because he can really educate the people, listening about how suicide is just simply palmed off as, oh, it’s a mental health issue. No, no. Not seeing your kids, having kids in your life one minute and then getting told to get out of your house and you don’t see your kids for the next two, three years. That’s not normal. It’s inhumane to have someone say you don’t see your kids because of allegations have been put on that paper. You haven’t had a day in court yet.

Rick Young:

It’s just someone who’s made allegations, but you better get some money together, and you’ll get a day in court in about 12 months to two years. That’s not right. A big thing I really want to raise is, let’s just compare, and no disrespect to Anna Clark and those beautiful children, but let’s compare the attention that, that grab, that tragedy compared to Stanley Obi, who was a father, and his children and his partner, where his ex broke into his house, poured petrol on him and set him a light in his house.

Malcolm Roberts:

So most people would be saying, Stanley who?

Rick Young:

Who’s Stanley? Exactly. And that’s my point. There’s no benches, there’s no foundations, there’s no ribbon cutting.

Lisa Young:

ScoMo wasn’t at his funeral.

Rick Young:

Funeral. We went to the memorial walk with his family and friends, people who worked with him. He worked at an age care facility in Brisbane. Just a beautiful father. He just got custody of his kids, awarded custody. And he also got custody of his ex partner’s child as well. There was red flags. She was posting on social media what she was going to do. But yet, like I said, that shows where the media sits with this narrative. And it comes down to heartstrings. What’s going to pull a heartstring? Daisy and the kids or Stanley and the kids?

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s inhuman. Yeah. I think it’s important to say to people that no matter how bad life gets, life is better than suicide. It always comes good. It might take a while, but it always comes good. There’ve been times when I’ve been in challenges and I thought, my goodness, how am I going to survive this? But I did. And I look back on it and I go, thank goodness that happened because I learned from it. So I think it’s very important to… You’ve probably had to talk to people who are looking at committing suicide, and life is always better.

Rick Young:

Yeah. I think, again, Paul’s obviously a lot more educated on the suicide prevention, things like that. But I think by the time, particularly men reaching out publicly on Facebook saying, I’m really struggling, guys. I don’t want to be here anymore. That call for help, they’re really at their wit end. A lot of them, if they’re speaking out.

Malcolm Roberts:

So what do you say now, Rick and Lisa, to someone who might be thinking about that right now, or has felt that way for some time? What do you say to them?

Rick Young:

Well, a lot of times the guys that I talk to, particularly the dads, I explain to them that it consumes you and feels like this is your forever. That I’m never going to see those kids again, it’s never going to get better. And it does. It will, over time, and sometimes it might be five years, but it’s, like you said, it’s better to be here. We don’t know what’s around the corner next week. I used to say it to my kids all the time, you’re not getting to see me right now, or I might be doing supervised visits. It was two hours a fortnight. And I used to say to the kids, look, I know it’s not good. This is not a perfect situation, but you know what? I promise you, it’ll just get better. I just had a little bit of faith that it got better. I’d get the kids every second weekend and then end up getting the kids living with us. They have that attitude, particularly my daughter, oldest daughter, is that, you’re right, dad.

Lisa Young:

What may seem really heavy at the time and what you’re going through, and there’s no words, and a lot of people can’t even give you any empathy, in the sense that it’s going to make it feel all right for you. But I guess, what Rick is really singing home here is that you do need to be here and you do have people that love you. And there will always be someone there to talk to you. There will always be someone to help you through it. And if that’s not us, there will be somebody else. It could be a complete other stranger that has absolutely nothing to do with these organisations and what we do, but there will be somebody there. And eventually your heart will not hurt as much as what it might be at that one time. So you just got to-

Rick Young:

Might not go away.

Lisa Young:

Yeah, that’s right. It might not go away, but you just got to hang in and hang tight.

Malcolm Roberts:

And there’s a funny thing about we humans, we sometimes think that the feelings that are consuming us are us, and life is hell. But that’s not true. We’re not our feelings. So is there anything you can say to people, give them a website, Facebook page? How can people get in touch with you? What would you like them to do to support you? Anything like that? Did you like to say, give them a location website?

Lisa Young:

Yeah of course. So our website is the full name, which is dadsagainstdiscriminationsupport.com.au. You can email us at info@dads, with an S, d-a-d-s-q-l-d.com. And you can reach us on our social platform. So we are on Facebook and we are on Instagram and we are on TikTok as well. And all of our contact details are across our platforms, so you can reach us via phone. And it is a two man team at the moment. But once we have this community centre doors open, there’ll be much more than a two man team.

Skip to 30m30s for Senator Roberts’ interview

I joined Maria Zeee for an important conversation about the Digital Identity Bill and how it is feeding into more control for the globalists.

Transcript

Maria Zee:

Now, one of the other problems that’s plaguing our country at the moment and has been for some time is the increased government surveillance that we’ve seen over the past two years under the guise of COVID 19 measures. They claim that it’s for the safety of the people to be surveilling them, but now all of a sudden, we’re talking about the trusted digital ID that’s going to be implemented in Australia. What does this actually mean? Well Senator Malcolm Roberts is a person that’s been speaking up a lot about how this lines up with Klaus Schwab’s plan for the great reset. You will own nothing, and you will be happy. Yuvil Harari, the Lead Advisor of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum says we can now track and trace individuals and even manipulate them the way that we want. What do they mean? Well here’s a clip from the UN about what they say digital is.

Speaker 13:

Digital Transformation is changing the way we manage our data, our information, our interactions, and our identities online. The United Nations is ready to digitally transform how it deals with identity, with a system to streamline information sharing, daily workflows, access to platforms and buildings, operating across agencies by providing its personnel with a universal system-wide identity solution. Introducing the UN Digital ID, a unique and digital identity for UN personnel from the day you join to the day you part. All of your personal, HR, medical, travel, security, payroll, and pension data in the Palm of your hand, giving you full control on what you share and with whom. With blockchain and biometrics, the UN Digital ID makes verification efficient, secure, transparent, immutable, portable, and universal. It’s been piloted by different agencies and the UN Pension Fund where they’ve replaced current manual processes with certainty for who and where pension recipients say they are at any given time.

Speaker 13:

Imagine a regional field officers just joined the UN. She uses the mobile app to obtain a digital wallet stored securely in her smartphone and only accessible to her with biometrics. Even better than a physical wallet, she can store all her credentials issued by any UN organisation in her digital wallet. She has immediate access to core certificates, travel clearances from UN DSS, medical records from allergies to vaccinations, also making any transfer to another organisation a breeze. As innovation transforms the world, we can improve the way we manage our identities online. UN Digital IDs, a building block for digital corporation, unlocking the promise of the SDGs.

Maria Zee:

And of course, we had to see a picture of the world just then, because this is linked to the wellbeing of the planet, right? Digital ID, improving your security, all of your things in one place, all for the sake of convenience, just like most things that we’ve been told are for the sake of our convenience when they’re actually to increase surveillance. Now, Senator Malcolm Roberts has a different take on what the digital ID means, and here’s something the mainstream media won’t show you.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

The United Nations has a problem. How can they control the carbon footprint of the world’s citizen? Very soon, government will tell our farmers what they can grow and punish Australian consumers if they buy the wrong things. The dream of micromanaging individual carbon emissions hinges on the soon to be past so-called, Trusted Digital Identity Bill. If Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce want to achieve their net zero 2050 dream, freedoms must be slashed, removed.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

It is only through the relentless digital stalking of citizens that the liberal nationals government can micromanage purchasing choices. Businesses are punished with tax while consumers get their credit score docked. This already happens in China where a person’s shopping list lowers their social credit score until they cannot travel. In Australia, it may be as simple as denying banking services because you dare to drive a four wheel drive to work. Australian banks have already shown a keen interest in the trusted digital identity bill, saying it will, “Allow them to create a rich view of their customers.” These are the same banks that already list climate risk as a means to deny loans. When the liberals tell you that digital identity will make your life easier, remember there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Maria Zee:

There is no such thing as a free lunch. That is seriously alarming stuff. That is taking steps towards a police state where you are monitored for every single thing that you do buy, sell, even think. And it’ll of course affect your social credit score, which is what the digital ID could very well lead to and some say it will. And of course, we know the World Economic Forum has these plans as so said Senator Malcolm. He talks about the great resist recently in parliament. I want to show that clip before we go to Senator Malcolm Roberts.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

If this parliament gets its wrong, every day Australians will suffer through inflation or worse stagflation for decades. And instead of working together to push Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum plan based on United Nations policies, work together instead for our country. Klaus Schwab life by subscription is really surfed him, its slavery. Billionaire globalist corporations will own everything homes, factories, farms, cars, furniture, and everyday citizens will rent what they need if their social credit score allows.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

The plan of the great reset is that you will die with nothing. To pull off this evil plan, Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum will need to take more than just material possessions from Australians. Senators in this very chamber today who support the great reset threaten our privacy freedom and dignity. Yes, they’re in this Senate Chamber. One nation vehemently opposes the great reset, the digital identity bill, theft of agricultural land use forcing farmers off their land, and all of the great reset. One nation has a comprehensive plan to bring our beautiful country back to sustainable prosperity. And in the months ahead, we will be rolling that plan out. Instead of lib lab, pushing Klaus Schwab’s great reset with the tagline, you’ll own nothing and be happy. One nation advocates, the great resist.

Maria Zee:

The great resist, which is essentially what everyone should be doing if they knew just how much government control a digital ID would lead to yet, the mainstream media is not warning you about what the new propaganda around climate change actually means and how the digital ID could be weaponized against every single Australian citizen. Well, Senator Malcolm has been speaking about this regularly and he joins us now for an update. Here’s Senator Malcolm. Thank you Senator Malcolm Roberts for joining us today to discuss a range of very, very important topics.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well, you’re welcome. And thank you for the invitation, Maria. And I’ve got to say how much I appreciate what you do because it’s people who are independent broadcasters like you that really are going to bring Australia back.

Maria Zee:

Well, just earlier in the show, we spoke about all of the information the mainstream media has either been withholding from Australian people or misrepresenting over the past two and a half years. So I think it’s absolutely crucial that we continue to do this. Now, the main things that we want to discuss today really are this climate change bill that’s just passed in the lower house in Australia. And obviously, we need to discuss digital ID and how this all ties in. And my questions to you, Senator Roberts are we had an ice age, not so long ago. Now it’s global warming and now we’re pivoting to manmade climate change, human beings, being at fault for climate change. Can you weigh in on this for us?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Sure. There’s climate variability. It’s naturally varies every day just like you are taller than I am. You’re a woman, I’m a man and we’ve got people all around varying in nature. We’ve got trees varying in nature. Everything varies. The weather varies, the climate varies and the climate comes and goes in cycles. And so, what’s happened is that they have fabricated this, a man called Maurice Strong, he died in 2015 just before the Paris Agreement. And he concocted it. He was a Canadian billionaire. He was a crook, a criminal who the American police wanted in investigations of some pretty serious crimes. He was also connected with the UN’s Food for Oil scam in the middle east. The man was exiled in China so that the authorities couldn’t get him. It was a complete scam that was concocted by Maurice Strong from Canada.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

He formed the United Nations Environmental Programme in 1972. Six months later, he became the Head of the UN Environmental Programme. He was sitting amongst a very senior level, one down from the secretary general, the top dog in the UN. And because he was surrounded by basically failed politicians, failed bureaucrats and academics and other glory seekers in the UN who just have no accountability, when it came to matters of environment, they all turned to Maurice Strong. So he wrapped everything as an environmental issue and he got control of so many things. He fabricated the global warming scam, he created the intergovernmental panel on climate change. He created the UN framework convention on climate change, which oversaw the circle scientific body, the IPCC. He’s done the lot. And he created the IPCC with his influence.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

The man was very bright, very, very bright, but he is also twisted. And he was a very, very good networker Maria. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He was just a phenomenal mover of people. He created the whole ground swell at meetings like the Rio De Janeiro, what do they call that? The Rio De Janeiro conference in 1992, where we signed Agenda 21. He created the fanfare around UN Toyota Protocol in 1997, which then John Howard implemented. Now, he’s concocted the lot. But the other thing is that, we’ve asked the CSIRO for their evidence of climate change and they have come back and admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. The temperatures were warmer in the 1880s and 1890s in Australia then today. The temperatures, according to NASA’s global satellites are pretty much flat. If you take away El Nino and La Nina variation, it’s pretty much flat since 1995.

Maria Zee:

So what we’re essentially dealing with is change of weather. CSIRO cannot produce the evidence of climate change and yet Australia has just passed the climate change bill of 2022 in the lower house. Now I’ve read that bill and it continues to make reference to the Paris Agreement of 2015, which I’ve also read. Now, there’s a lot about how climate change affects women and girls with their domestic activities apparently, but it doesn’t actually specify any solutions as to how to deal with this so-called climate change, which you are saying isn’t even a real thing.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Correct.

Maria Zee:

So what is the government actually proposing? Because the climate change build doesn’t have any solutions. How are we going to, other than maintaining the world temperature at pre-industrial levels and reducing carbon emissions, which now we’re being told CO2 is harmful human beings breathe out CO2. What solutions is the government actually saying that we need here because they have not specified anything, either in this bill or the Paris Agreement of 2015?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well, if you remember just a few things. First of all, government in our country and in many Western countries has now become a huge means of transferring wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy elites. That’s what it is all about. The second thing it’s all about is control, controlling what we do. And you want to talk about the digital identity bill later, that’s what is the mechanism enabling them to control us. So they want control and they want to extract money. That’s what they’re all about. Just remember those two things. So the Paris Agreement has, by the way, the Paris Agreement is not an agreement. What they did was, because they couldn’t get agreement at the previous Conference of Parties in Copenhagen, and it was an embarrassment for the UN and all the global leaders. What they decided at Paris was that the global leaders would come in at the start, not the end.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And they would leave, create the fanfare, getting the media. Then the bureaucrats would hammer out an agreement. Now the agreement was, China basically said stuff you, India said, we’re not doing it. And so China’s commitment to the Paris Agreement is, we won’t do anything until 2030 and then we’ll think about it. And India pretty much the same. So what we said was, we’ll destroy our economy and hand it all over to China. And that’s our part of the UN agreement. I mean, we didn’t literally say hand it over to China, but what we’re doing to electricity prices, we are handing it over to China.

Maria Zee:

Well, what I’ve read in that agreement is a lot of, we’ll work it out as we go it seems as per whatever, the committee or the members, there’s a lot of confusing language in that document, Senator Roberts.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

It is confusing. And the other thing that the Paris Agreement calls into play is net zero by 2050. Now, the only way you can do that is using unreliable solar and wind, which jacks up the price of our electricity, which sends our jobs overseas because electricity is now the biggest component of manufacturing, not labour.

Maria Zee:

So well, here’s the thing about solar and wind as well. Sorry to cut you off there. But the whole thing about solar and wind is, if the climate is so unpredictable, wouldn’t that mean that solar and wind would be an unreliable source of energy?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Maria, we have spent up until roughly 1870, 1880, we have spent hundreds of thousands of years scratching around in the dirt at the whim of mother nature’s floods and droughts and temperatures and storms. We get hydrocarbon fuels, coal, natural gas, and oil. We suddenly are independent of nature, well, not completely, of course, but we’re basically our food… We don’t have famines anymore. This is remarkable. We don’t have famines because we’ve got the technology now to overcome them. Dams, irrigation, fertilisers control, not control of but control of weather forecast, not control of the weather, but we can forecast when things happening. We build buildings in ways that protect us against nature’s extremes. So the deaths due to natural disasters are plummeted all around the world because of our savvy. The food production is skyrocketed because of our savvy.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Now these bastards want to destroy that and take away a hydrocarbon fuels and give us unreliable solar and wind. It’s also unstable, it’s not secure, it’s very expensive. The price relationship between the amount of renewables and the amount of solar and wind and the cost of electricity is like that. It just increases. So if you’ve got all cost of electricity up here, the amount of renewables here, the further out you go, the higher the price of electricity. We are doing ourselves out of our industry. We’re killing jobs in this country, killing our security and as you pointed out, we’re handing ourself back to mother nature, just absurd, especially at a time when they say, oh, the climate’s becoming more variable. Why would you go to wind and solar?

Maria Zee:

Precisely. So this then leads into the second part of our conversation, which is digital ID and the whole global surveillance being pushed by the World Economic Forum. I’ve just before played a clip of you speaking in parliament recently about this, the great reset and what Australia needs to do, which is the great resist. And I love that slogan, I think it’s fantastic. This entire climate change narrative is going to be used to control people even further. Can you talk to us about how Australia’s trusted digital identity bill leads into all of that?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Sure. It’ll take some time. And I’ve got some notes from a briefing paper, my staff produced. And by the way, we were the first in Australia to reveal this. And we’ve given copies of it to a couple of in liberal senators, who are sympathetic and they’re awake. Very few senators are awake.

Maria Zee:

Oh, sorry. I just lost you. You’re back now. Nope, I’ve lost you again. There we go. There we go. You’re back. A very few liberal senators are awake.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Yes, we’ve given this to two liberal senators at my briefing paper that our staff developed and they’re across it. Now, what we want to do is wake people up because my office is the one that’s that’s scratched the, or what do you call it? Discarded the cash ban bill. We did that with the help of people on the ground with the help of the cross band standards. We woke people up and trashed it and got rid of the cash band bill. Now what the digital identity bill is about, is about bringing back again, a ban on cash and about controls on people. So it’s a huge potential for corporations to get control of our data. What it means is that, the government can sell your data to a company, that company can be foreign, and they can store your data overseas, which no longer protects your security of your data, your privacy.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Then they can sell that data to whoever they want to sell it to. So, in other words, if you want access to your medical records, you’ll have to pay a foreign corporation to get access to your medical records. That’s how bad it could be. But that’s the thin end of the wedge. They also want to have digital currency. And we know that the Reserve Bank of Australia has been working on this for many years. So they get a digital currency in place, and that’s ultimately where they want to go. And then, if you do something that the government doesn’t like, you make the wrong comments on social media, you buy a four wheel drive instead of a little tiny eco box, then they say, if you want a house loan, stop making your comments on social media. You want a house loan? Swap your four wheel drive for a little eco box.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

See what they do? They control you. And that’s what happens. And if you don’t, then what we’ll do is just scratch your digital identity, which means that you can’t access your bank accounts, which means you can’t access food. You can’t buy anything. This is how they control. And the real thing they’re after is control of you. So if they see you’ve gone to a protest, your digital identity is cancelled. You can’t get food, you can’t go to the bank.

Maria Zee:

Well, there are a lot of people that might be watching this broadcast and I hope they are that wouldn’t normally attend a protest, but I want people to know that this is not just affecting those who you’ve seen over the past couple of years, who are standing against the immense control that the government gained through the COVID 19 measures. We’re talking about this affecting every single person and their family. Do go on.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, right. So it affects your medical history, the shopping and spending preferences, they’ll know all this. Who you associate with, judging whether your choices are in compliance with the government’s wishes, whether they’re so-called green, social security, veteran services, travel and movement records, whether you will be allowed to travel, whether you have access to travel, surveillance, website viewing, they’ll track what websites you’re going to, employment status, wealth measurement, that’s bank records, social media comments, everything you do will be recorded and converted into digital form, and then used against you to control you. And that’s what they really want. They want control. All of this is about control. And it started with the COVID measures, Maria. We saw those. They were despicable. Anti-human, immoral, unlawful, but they started with them and they practised a lot of their tricks for controlling people on COVID.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And they got in place some of their measures. You saw the QR codes and scanning in at various places and checking in, that’s what they’re doing with this. And by the way, the World Economic Forum is the source of our digital identity bill. Parts of our digital identity bill were copied and pasted from World Economic Forums, digital platform policy I think it’s called, digital project. And I just asked for an update from one of my staff.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And he said that, the same bill or virtually identical bill has been rolled out in other countries around the world, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Singapore, Thailand. That’s where bills are before the parliament right now. The EU European union has a bill for the whole of the European Union. Malaysia has it in place past already. It’s already at 64% uptake then. So it’ll be needed once they get a hundred percent uptake or very close to a 100% uptake, then they will just make it compulsory for anything to do with the government or banking. In the Philippines, it’s similar. And in Indonesia, it’s across government only not banking yet. So they’re moving this out throughout Asia and throughout the European Union and through Canada in North America.

Maria Zee:

Klaus Schwab recently, and proudly stated that they have infiltrated over 50% of governments worldwide.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Yep. I thought it was just Sarah Hanson-Young from the greens who was a graduate from the World Economic Forums, Young Leaders Programme. But we also learned that liberal Senator Andrew Bragg is a graduate. We found that Clare O’Neil is a graduate from the labour party. We found, I can’t remember the other name, Scott Morrison’s a graduate. I think there are three or four others senators and MPS who are graduates of that same programme from the World Economic Forum. And what they’re doing is, they’re putting people in places of power in governments to control those governments. So they don’t need to get votes, they just need these people to be in charge. Canada has I think seven, no sorry, Republican Party in America has seven graduates in its ranks and the Democrats have dozens of members in their ranks, Canada similarly. And I think in Canada, they’ve actually got control of the government. So basically, the World Economic Forum is taken over. And then this is not new stuff. This is stuff that the World Economic Forum itself has said, as you pointed out Klaus Schwab has said.

Maria Zee:

So their entire plan is, obviously they’re talking openly now about the great reset, the new world order. They’ve made the statements. We had public health officials last year talking about this is the new world order. This is now essentially no longer even hidden in plain site. They’re openly speaking about it. So what does Australia do to resist this? You called this the great resist. What should Australians be doing right now and what should people be making others aware of?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Listening to you in this interview and spread it around. That’s the first thing we need to do. And then calling your member of parliament and saying to him or her, you want a meeting and you don’t want this because you control your member of parliament. They don’t control you, you control them. We need to get the power back in the right area there. And then, if you can’t get a meeting with them, then talk to them on the phone. If you can’t do that, then send them a written letter saying you’re against it. Most of the members of parliament have no idea what you and I are talking about right now. I’m mean that sincerely.

Maria Zee:

These are some of the most important issues facing the entire world right now, and the fact that they are ignorant to this is beyond me.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Yep. Well, there’s so many things. They’re ignorant to the climate change scam. They’re ignorant to the cash band bill. They thought it was something else. This is liberals and nationals thought it was something else. And when you tell them straight, they then follow the party power brokers anyway. But see, we beat the cash ban. Labour and liberal, both put it through the lower house, but we got such good publicity on it, and so much pressure on it politically that labour sent it to a committee and then it languish in the committee for months, and then I moved a motion to get rid of it off the Senate books.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And we passed it to get rid of it off the Senate books. So the cash plan bill is gone. But what we know is, cash is really important. So that’s another thing people can do. If you have no cash, you’ve got no alternative. If you’ve got cash, you’ve got an alternative as to how you buy something. So use cash wherever you can. That’s what I do sometimes. I used to just use a card, no more. I carry cash with me to use cash. So buy with cash wherever you can.

Maria Zee:

Senator Malcolm Roberts, we thank you so much for bringing awareness to Australians about these crucial issues that face all of humanity all around the world. But most importantly, Australia has been through so much over the past two and a half years, we have literally destroyed our economy. And as much as they want to tell us that we haven’t, and I know that we have. How many small to medium size businesses weren’t able to continue, weren’t able to recover from all of this, not to mention the mental health impacts and the long term impacts and we’re already talking about this climate change, which we don’t even have the system set up, the infrastructure set up for what they are wanting to achieve. And yet-

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

They’re already transferring billions of dollars through your electricity rates into the hands of billionaires who are making money out of solar and wind. Most of the companies installing solar and wind turbines are foreign owned multinational, including some from the Chinese communist party. So this is about a transfer of wealth and about control, and you’ll only be allowed to use power when the government says you can. So at the moment you go home at night, you’d flick on a switch and take it for granted. You won’t take that for granted in the future because they’ve got it all wrapped up. You’d have to beg and scrape to get your food, to beg and scrape to get your air conditioner. They want us down on the knees, they want to bring you to your knees.

Maria Zee:

Just like we’ve seen in China recently. Some footage emerged out of China of people literally being forced onto their knees to be tracked and traced for COVID by people inspecting them. Again, Senator Malcolm Roberts, thank you for sharing this important information and coming on to speak with us today.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well, thank you for what you’re doing. Keep doing it for goodness sake. We’ve got to have some honest media and you’re one of them. So thank you very much, Maria.

Maria Zee:

Thank you to Senator Roberts. We’ll be back right after this short break. As some of you may know, I’m a regular contributor to Red Voice Media, where you will find fellow truthers and those committed to reporting the real news like Stew Peters and Dr. Jane Ruby, and many more. You can trial their premium subscription service for just $1 for the first month and only $10 every month thereafter. You’ll love it. Link is in the description below.

Maria Zee: So you can see from this discussion with Senator Malcolm Roberts, just how far they want to take government control. And speaking of government control, maybe people have forgotten or didn’t have access to the footage during the protest when people were protesting their God given rights, their right to bodily autonomy, they’re right to their civil liberties, which this digital ID seeks to strip from you. And maybe we’ve forgotten of just what they’re capable of.

This week I talk to Ian Plimer for a full two hours and dive even deeper into the global warming fraud.

Transcript part 1 (click here to go to part 2)

Speaker 1:

This is the Malcolm Roberts Show.

Speaker 2:

On Today’s News Talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, good afternoon or good morning or good evening or good night, wherever you are around this marvellous world of ours, this is Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk radio, tntradio.live. Thank you for having me as your guest. Whether it’s in your car, your kitchen, your shed, or your lounge room, wherever you are right now, whichever continent, whichever country, whichever region, whichever state, thank you so much for having me as your guest. We are going to continue in a minute with continuation of last week’s show.

Malcolm Roberts:

We had two hours with the fabulous professor, Ian Plimer. He is back, as I promised, and we’re going to try and finish it. There’s so much material to cover. We may not get through it all, but we’re going to have some fun doing it. I’m just going to remind everyone that there are two themes to my show. Firstly, freedom, specifically freedom versus control, the age old human battle. And secondly, personal responsibility and integrity.

Malcolm Roberts:

And this man, Ian Plimer, Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer shows both, and he’s been a passionate defender and protector of freedom and shows personal responsibility and integrity. He’s a marvellous guest. Both freedom and personal responsibility are fundamental for human progress and people’s livelihoods. Before welcoming Ian back, let’s just recap some of the things that happened this week. First of all, the Great Barrier Reef. I’m going to ask again about this.

Malcolm Roberts:

We see now that the Australian Institute of Marine Science is telling us that, sorry, the Central Barrier Reef and the Northern Barrier Reef have got record levels of coral cover, record levels of coral cover. And he won’t be surprised, I am not surprised. And the Southern Barrier Reef, the Southern Region, there are three regions, the third doesn’t have record, but it has very high coral cover. The only reason it’s not record is because there’s a cyclical crown of thorns, starfish infestation. These come and go. We’ve known that for a long time.

Malcolm Roberts:

The other thing I would mention is that despite all the raving on about bleaching for the last few years rather, bleaching is entirely natural event response to, sorry, low cold temperatures and high warm temperatures, entirely natural. And people who understand barrier reefs understand that perfectly. And I remind people that Queensland had record cold temperatures, not in 1888, not in 1988, in 2008. And in that record, cold temperatures in 2008, the Southern Barrier Reef bleached in places. It’s a natural response.

Malcolm Roberts:

And then we have the lunatics in Canberra, and I’m part of that bloody zoo. We’re doing our best to try and turn the zoo around, but they passed in the lower house. It’s got to come to the Senate now, the labor’s climate change bill. Or should I say, the labour Greens coalition’s climate change bill, along with the tills. What a disgrace that is. Currently, unreliables, that’s wind and solar, are at 9% and 9% each. Both wind is 9% and solar at 9%. That’s 2020 and 2021.

Malcolm Roberts:

Labour wants to shoot that target up to 43% and unreliable’s solar and wind will make up 43%, more than doubling our solar and wind. Electricity prices have already trebled in the last three decades. We’ve gone from having the lowest electricity prices in the world to among the highest. Why? Because of wind and solar. The noted economist, Dr. Alan Moran, tells us in a especially commissioned report and he gets these figures, by the way, from government reports, government budget statements, state and federal. They can’t be argued.

Malcolm Roberts:

You cannot put a sensible argument to refute his figures. The levelized prices per megawatt hour of electricity hydrate is the cheapest. But the capacity in this country is very limited because we’re wasting the water up north. Let’s get onto the viable alternatives. Coal, $50 per megawatt hour. Gas, currently because of high gas prices, it’s around $80 to $100 per megawatt hour. It has been usually around $60 per megawatt hour. Nuclear, $70 to $80 per megawatt hour.

Malcolm Roberts:

And by the way, the coal prices are legit because there was recently another coal fired power station built in Vietnam to burn our coal. Wind, $100 per megawatt hour. Solar, $120 per megawatt hour firm. And of course, they need the batteries for wind and solar, and the batteries are impossible. Coal is half the price of wind and about 45% of the price of solar. That’s why our electricity prices skyrocketed. Now, what Ian Plimer and I are going to be discussing is my letter to the four amigos. That’s what I call them.

Malcolm Roberts:

The former prime minister, when he was prime minister, my letter was sent to Scott Morrison on the 27th of October 2021. It was sent at the same time and address to Barnaby Joyce, the deputy prime minister, head of the national party at the time. And also too, at the same time, the one letter went to these four people, went to Anthony Albanese, the then leader of the opposition and now the prime minister. And the fourth of the four amigos was Adam Bandt, the leader of the Greens. The letter can be found at the website, my website, malcolmrobertsqld.com.au, M-A-L-C-O-L-M-R-O-B-E-R-T-S-Q-L-D.com.au. And we’ll be discussing that letter. Ian has a copy of it. It’s not kept secret, but we’ll be going through that. Welcome, Ian.

Ian Plimer:

Good day to you. How are you?

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m very well, thanks, mate. How are you?

Ian Plimer:

Oh, struggling through life with the greatest of ease.

Malcolm Roberts:

Can you struggle with ease? Well, tell me something you-

Ian Plimer:

Oh, that was a pretty good [inaudible 00:06:18] about the week.

Malcolm Roberts:

The zoo, the zoo, the excellent zoo. All this is fabricated.

Ian Plimer:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So-

Malcolm Roberts:

All this climate hysteria.

Ian Plimer:

What a week it’s been. We have known from tourist operators for a long, long time, but the Great Barrier Reef was not in trouble. And they were using one of the fundamental criteria of science, and that is to observe. And they observe time and time and time again, that the Great Barrier Reef wasn’t in trouble. And finally, we get the Australian Institute of Marine Science tells us, it’s not in trouble. It’s, in fact, at best that’s been for a long, long. Now, how dare they? Now, if you’re employed in the climate industry, how dare someone say the planet’s okay?

Ian Plimer:

Because what that really means is you put people out of work. These people who are bludging grants from the government, these people who are imminently unemployable, working in these organisations that are trying to scare us and then in return, we give them money. They are now showing that it’s a total waste of oxygen and a total waste of money to keep these people alive. The Australian Institute of Marine Science has told us what we already knew, that coral reefs come, coral reefs go. There are many, many reasons.

Ian Plimer:

But the two major reasons I had been promoting, and that is runoff from agriculture and climate change just don’t affect coral ridge. And every time it warms up a little bit, a coral reef, you can hear it. You can hear it cheer because coral loves warmer water. The corals saying the Red Sea or Papua New Guinea growing much, much warmer water than the Great Barrier Reef. Coral likes it warm. Right from day one, you could not argue that warmer waters will kill off a coral reef. Now, blind Freddy knows that.

Ian Plimer:

But we have to wait till some official organisation can put their stamp of approval on it. For years, we’ve had to put up with the hypocrisy and moaning of these people. Thank God we’ve actually had a report that demonstrates that they’re tightly is this. They should go home.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, mate, can you … I normally start the show with something my guest appreciates. For something you appreciate, what is it? Anything at all? Maybe you appreciate the barrier reef, the truth being told.

Ian Plimer:

I appreciate living in a country with fresh air, with no pollution, with fresh water, something that so many countries where I work, such as in South America, Africa, Middle East, that they have got. We can actually breathe the air. Now we had the Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, a week or two ago in a national press club announcement, tell us how dreadful the pollution was in Australia. And then she finished with a tee-wee little emotional statement about how she loves to fly into Australia and see all the forests surrounding the city of Sydney, that crystal clear sparkling water and how she can see for miles.

Ian Plimer:

What she’s saying is that it’s absolutely beautiful, there is no pollution. If you want pollution, go to China, go to parts of India, go to parts of Africa. But you don’t see it in Western countries. Why? Because we have generated enough wealth to be able to clean up our act. If you want to stop pollution, get wealthy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well said, I’ve got to just adjust my microphone here because I’m coming across too loudly. We’ll see if that makes any difference. But thank you very much, Ian.

Ian Plimer:

All of the political issues, you have to come across loudly.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ve been trying it. Now speaking of politics, the key issue in this whole climate scam is shoddy governance. And the key issue there is the lack of integrity. And that’s what we’re focus on. Now listeners who listened to Ian and myself last two weeks ago know that we devoted the two hours to exposing the fact that there has been no one anywhere that has in politics that has provided the logical scientific points. By logical scientific points, what I mean is empirical scientific evidence, hard data, hard observations within a causal structure, a framework that proves cause and effect. No one anywhere. Not only that-

Ian Plimer:

Oh, Malcolm, that’s so many words. That’s so many words. It’s really simple. No one has ever shown too many emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. Those emissions are 3% of total emission. If you did show that human emissions drive global warming, then you’d have to show that 97% of natural emissions don’t drive global warming. It’s checkmate.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, exactly. Now what we then started on was the cross examination that I have done of the CSIRO, the Australian Federal Government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. They’ve been given the responsibility for the last 48 years, almost half a century, to come up with the evidence. Now, these people in the CSIRO … By the way, CSIRO has a fabulous reputation over many, many years for some marvellous inventions, made life easier for people around the world. However, in the climate area, they are absolutely disgraceful.

Malcolm Roberts:

I refuse to call them scientists because they’re basically academics who are activists. Anyway, I’m the only person anywhere in the world, I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying it to highlight a point in a minute, I am the only politician anywhere in the world, an elected representative in congresses, in parliaments to have held a government science agency accountable. And we’re going to go through that right now. Two weeks ago that we pointed out that the first thing I did when I entered the Senate, as an elected representative of the people on 2016, was to send a letter.

Malcolm Roberts:

As soon as I got sworn in, I sent a letter to the head of the CSIRO, Dr. Larry Marshall, the chief executive, requesting a presentation. Now they ducked and dodged and bobbed and weaved and tried desperately to get out of it. But we eventually pinned them down with the help of two government ministers and senators. What we found, the first question I asked was, I want a presentation on the empirical scientific evidence, the hard data that shows that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger to humans.

Malcolm Roberts:

During the two-and-a-half presentation, when we eventually nailed them down … And by the way, they could bring any evidence they wanted, anything. They gave us one paper on carbon dioxide and one paper on temperatures. After more than 40 years of research, one paper on temperatures, which was published in 2013, and we dismissed that paper, completely tore it apart. Not only that we quoted the lead author of that paper himself saying, you can’t rely on the temperature construction that they made for the 20th century.

Malcolm Roberts:

I mean, the own author was dismissed within two weeks of that paper’s released in 2013. But in the course of that cross examination, CSIRO admitted that they have never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger, never. We asked them, “Who has? Why do the politicians are saying that they rely on CSIRO?” And they said, “We better go and ask politicians.” Then I mentioned that we asked the chief scientists, the federal government’s chief scientist. And I think we got onto this, Ian, from memory, who at the time was-

Ian Plimer:

Yes, we did.

Malcolm Roberts:

… Dr. Alan Finkel. And we asked for a presentation from him. We opened the presentation in a little room in the science minister’s, Arthur Sinodinos’ office. And Dr. Alan Finkel started rabbiting on for about 20 minutes. And after 20 minutes, we’d had enough. And we just asked one simple question, I can’t remember what that question was. And he looked at us, he was stunned. He was suddenly realising that he couldn’t feed us crap. And he suddenly realised that we knew what the hell we were talking about.

Malcolm Roberts:

And he looked at me, and I will always remember these words, Ian. He said to me, “I am not a climate scientist and I don’t understand climate science.” And yet that man, funded with taxpayer money, was spreading the word around the countryside, advocating cuts in carbon dioxide from human activity. Ian, what do you say to that?

Ian Plimer:

Well, Malcolm, there’s couple of things here. There’s a couple of things here. You don’t have to be a climate scientist, whatever that is, to be able to see that this is total [inaudible 00:15:07].

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you.

Ian Plimer:

All you have to do is to adhere to the scientific method. And science is married to evidence. That evidence must be reproducible, it must be validated. It must be in an accord with everything else that’s been demonstrated. Now, in science, we have a body of evidence from which we construct a theory, and that’s just a way to try to understand things. And if the theory doesn’t work, you throw out the theory. What the climate activists are wanting us to do is to say, this is a theory. We, humans, drive global warming and we’ll juggle the evidence to fit it.

Ian Plimer:

Any evidence that doesn’t agree with the theory, such as my science, geology, then you just throw that out. It’s the exact inverse of how science works. And they are corrupting the scientific process. These people are not climate scientists. They are activists who are chasing your money, chasing power, chasing fortune. Yet they don’t chase an electorate as you have to do. It is not science. And it’s something that I get thrown at me quite often, because I’m an earth scientist. I’m not a climate scientist.

Ian Plimer:

These people do not realise that we have 200 years of geology textbooks where half the space of the book is arguing about climate. We, geologists, were onto climate change 200 years ago. This was from people working in the Paris basin, seeing that there was tropical flora and fauna in the Paris basin where it isn’t tropical. People in England realised from fossils that we had to have had much warmer climate. And Charles Lyell in 1833, pursue this even further. He very nearly got onto the idea of continental drift.

Ian Plimer:

We, geologists, have been struggling for centuries about how you can have tropical flora and fauna in fossils in high latitude European countries, that with climate change. The textbooks are full of it. And all of a sudden, when there’s money to be made and when people want to frighten us with this, we get a group of atmospheric mathematicians and physicists who argue that it is only a traces of a trace gas in an atmosphere that drive a whole planetary process.

Ian Plimer:

They don’t seem to realise that in the past, we’ve had huge processes where the atmosphere, the oceans, the rock and life have worked hand in hand. And that’s happened a number of times in the past. To be what is called a climate scientist, you have to basically ignore all the evidence from other sciences, ignore the scientific method, and promote your alleged science on the basis of feelings and beliefs rather than evidence.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well said. And we’re going to go to an ad break now. But when we come back, I’m going to tell you what the chief scientist did on the second presentation that we arranged. We’ll be right back for more from Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer.

Malcolm Roberts:

And this is Senator Malcolm Roberts, broadcasting from Australia with Professor Ian Plimer. And Ian, we arranged at that first presentation from the chief scientist. We said to them, this is not good enough, we want a proper presentation, and we want that to be at least four hours in length and a proper discussion. And he responded to me and he and the science minister, both agreed, we set a date for a couple of months’ time. And then as we wound up, he said to me, “Can I bring a scientist?” And I said, “You can bring anyone you like.”

Malcolm Roberts:

Ian, the second presentation, just before it was due to be held, was cancelled because Dr. Alan Finkel was overseas. Now he since come back. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. We suddenly had the CSIRO arranged to give a second presentation to us. And at this presentation, we said, “You failed the first one, so let’s have a simpler task for you. We want evidence, empirical scientific evidence of anything unprecedented in climate in the past 10,000 years and due to human carbon dioxide.”

Malcolm Roberts:

And in the course of that, they presented another paper, which we ripped apart as well and had no evidence. But in the course of that presentation, Ian, over two-and-a-half hours again, from the CSiRO’s climate science team, they looked at me and admitted, “Today’s temperatures are not unprecedented, not unprecedented.” Yet the whole climate scam started on claims of unprecedented, unusual, catastrophic, disastrous global warming. Are we warm at all, Ian?

Ian Plimer:

Well, we hear that porn word, unprecedented. There are a couple of things unprecedented in the history of our planet. The first time it rained, the first time we had life on earth, the first time we had a climate change. They were unprecedented. They didn’t happen before. They only happened once. And after that, everything is a reflection of climate cycles, which seem to get ignored. We have cycles of climate related to the pulling apart of the continent and the stitching back together every 400 million years.

Ian Plimer:

Cycles of climate related to having a bad galactic address every 143 million years, cycles of climate based on orbital cycles of the earth, which get us closer or further from the sun, cycles of climate derived with changes in the sun. And these changes are based on sun spots, but they’re also based on long cycles, 1500 years and 10,000 years. These cycles are well documented and they then affect ocean cycles, which turn out to be about every 60 years. And we also have lunar tidal cycles, pushing warmer water into the Arctic.

Ian Plimer:

And every time that happens, the Northwest Passage is open. Every time we don’t have that warmer water pushed into the Arctic, it’s closed. We’ve known this for a long time. The Chinese have known it for thousands of years because they once had a calendar based on the 60-year ocean cycles, which was related to the productivity of their crops. We never hear that we have cycles of climate and we never hear that in the past, we had very carbon dioxide rich atmospheres. This atmosphere had cyclical changes.

Ian Plimer:

And in today’s atmosphere, we have traces of carbon dioxide and humans are adding traces and traces to that atmosphere. And all of a sudden, we have to forget all the previous cycles and being that traces of a trace gas are driving all of climate change. To forget all of past science and to try to blame humans on driving a massive planetary system is just bonkers. Yet this is what we get told. Now, the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, they do not talk about cycles. They talk about carbon dioxide as if this trace gas drives the whole climate. They are demonstrably wrong.

Ian Plimer:

And I don’t have opinions in my science, I have facts. I don’t let emotions get in the way of my science. Well, yes, I do. I tell a lie, I get excited. And what excites me in my science is not what I know, but what I don’t know. What excites me is when I see something and I find out something and I think, well, that’s interesting. I’m curious about that. And it’s curiosity that drives science. It’s evidence that drives science. It’s not politics. You’ve only got to look at what Lysenko did to agricultural science in the Soviet Union, ending up in 30 million people dying because the science was wrong.

Ian Plimer:

Now we are in a similar situation where the science on climate change is demonstrably wrong. It is sending countries bankrupt. It is killing people. It’s not warm weather that kills people, it’s Jack Frost that kills people. The science is to demonstrably wrong. Governments are able to skin people alive in Western countries because they’re wealthy. And when these Western countries have ultimately fritted away, large amounts of money and have ended up economically like Argentina. Some clown is going to ask the question, how did this happen?

Ian Plimer:

We’re once wealthy, we once had reliable electricity and cheap electricity. What has happened? I mean, that’s when questions like the ones you are asking in the Senate and programmes like this become important. No one has ever pursued scientific organisations in parliament on those fundamental question. You’re the only person that’s done it, and more power to you. Keep doing it.

Malcolm Roberts:

We will. We will, Ian. We’re going to bust this rubbish. Now you raised-

Ian Plimer:

Well, I’m happy to talk with you in the trenches.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m going to ask you something about that. Maybe on air, but maybe after, it depends. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Can you explain-

Ian Plimer:

Well, it’s better if everyone can hold be accountable. I don’t mind being accountable.

Malcolm Roberts:

No, no. I mean, I’m lining up to a range of presentation, an offer of a presentation from the best scientists in the world to some of the tills and some of the other climate alarmists. And I was wondering if you’d be available for that.

Ian Plimer:

I’m certainly available for it, but it’ll takes [inaudible 00:27:52] to quiet me down. But I’m more than willing to use evidence to charge and persuade people that opinion and feelings don’t count. It is evidence and it has to be reproduced. It has to be valid.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And the whole thrust of the programme two weeks ago for the two hours and these two hours is to do one thing, to put the onus onto the politicians who want to cut a human activity producing carbon dioxide and taxes all into oblivion, put the owners on them because they have never held onus.

Ian Plimer:

Yeah. If you come up with an extraordinary idea, you need extraordinary evidence to support it. That hasn’t been done.

Malcolm Roberts:

Correct. Tell everyone what a trace gas is because it’s a scientific term, trace gas.

Ian Plimer:

We once had an atmosphere with a very large amount of carbon dioxide. Our first atmosphere on planet earth had ammonia, methane, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and helium. That didn’t last long. And we got into our second atmosphere, which had nitrogen and a huge amount of carbon dioxide, maybe 20% carbon dioxide. Our third atmosphere-

Malcolm Roberts:

Roughly, when did that change occur? I mean-

Ian Plimer:

On a Tuesday and-

Malcolm Roberts:

Resident mother earth.

Ian Plimer:

Now, that was in the geological period called the Proterozoic from about 2.5 billion years ago to about 500 million years ago.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right, thank you.

Ian Plimer:

We had huge amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And we’ve sequestered that into the limey rocks. And the third atmosphere, which we currently enjoy, is nitrogen and oxygen dominant atmosphere. That oxygen comes from life. That oxygen comes from life consuming carbon dioxide, using the carbon and excreting the oxygen. And so, we have gone from an atmosphere that had 20% carbon dioxide in it to 1.04%. And we are worried about a slight increase in carbon dioxide. Now, during that time, we have had six great ice ages.

Ian Plimer:

Each one of those ice ages started when there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now. You can’t try to tell me that the traces of small amounts of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere, which has only got 0.04% carbon dioxide in it, can drive global warming. Because it didn’t happen in the past. The physics and chemistry of the way the planet works hasn’t changed because you are alive. It is a trace gas in the atmosphere. It is plant food. It has very slightly increased over the last 50 years. Now we actually don’t quite know why. Because we know from ice cold drilling that once you get a temperature increase, then anything from 600 to 6,000 years later, you get a carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere. We’ve had-

Malcolm Roberts:

So hang on there. That means the temperature drives the carbon dioxide, not the carbon dioxide driving the temperature.

Ian Plimer:

Yes. And we’ve only known that for 200 years in chemistry. But if you don’t know any chemistry, then, of course, that doesn’t fit your policy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Henry’s Law, right?

Ian Plimer:

Henry’s Law. And so, what we can see in the past is that once we have cold periods of time, then we get natural warming, later carbon dioxide increase. Now our last cold period finished in the minimum, just over 300 years ago. We’ve been increasing in temperature for that last 300 years. So that increase in carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere might not be due to humans emitting carbon dioxide from industry. It might be due to natural exhalation of carbon dioxide with the warming of the oceans.

Ian Plimer:

The jury is out because the methods which are used to try to tell us the proportion of human carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are dodgy at best. And I go in my latest book, Green Murder, I go into some of those calculation. And I’m arguing that it could have even be only 1% of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions every year from humans, not the 3% which we commonly get told. There’s a whole lot of uncertainty in this science. But when we have an atmosphere that was once 20% carbon dioxide and life thrived, we had glaciations, we had climate change.

Ian Plimer:

And now we’ve got an atmosphere of 0.04% carbon dioxide. We’re having connections about a couple of parts per million increase of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere. Now we can see the effects of that because we’ve been measuring our planet from satellites since 1979. And we’ve seen that in the last 40 years or so, we’ve had a slight greening of the planet. That’s due to a very slight increase in carbon dioxide and maybe 10 or 20 parts per million carbon dioxide increase. That slight greening has done the planet good.

Ian Plimer:

The second thing is we’ve seen an increase in crop yield, partly due to increase carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, partly due to genetically modified crops, and partly due to better fertilisers. If we go the other path, you just go down the path of Sri Lanka. Carbon dioxide is good for you. It is plant food. If we didn’t have plants, we’d be dead. If we have the atmospheric carbon dioxide content kiss some part of your body and say goodbye, you’re going to be dead.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well said. We could talk for hours, and maybe we’d come back to carbon dioxide at the end of the show. But the trace gas carbon dioxide, as you pointed out, is 0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere right now. And the proportion could … Well, that’s basically 4/100ths of 1%. It’s trivial. It’s minuscule. And that’s why it’s called a trace gas. And it’s not Professor Plimer or myself is calling it a trace gas. It’s a scientific category. It’s a trace gas. You also mentioned … Well, let’s go to sticking with the second CSIRO presentation.

Malcolm Roberts:

The first one, they presented after 48 years of research, they presented one paper and temperatures, which we showed was complete crap, complete crap. They presented one paper by Harris. And that first paper on temperatures was by Mark Adam. I’m putting these on the record, 2013. And the second paper was Harris et al that was on carbon dioxide, and that was shown to be completely faulty, completely faulty. The covert spoke about those two papers again.

Malcolm Roberts:

And at the second presentation, they gave us Lecavalier 2017 on temperatures and Feldman on 2015 on carbon dioxide. Again, faulty and proven to be faulty by pre-reviewed scientific papers that we presented to the CSIRO. At their third presentation, they presented five vague references. None of which specified any location where there’s proof that human carbon dioxide is affecting the climate, nothing at all, nothing scientific, nothing specified. And some of the references in the last five they gave us contradicted the earlier references.

Malcolm Roberts:

I mean, Ian, you can’t make this stuff up. They provided us with no evidence at all and then contradicted themselves and showed an abysmal understanding of science. Is that typical of the CSIRO? It doesn’t seem to be, but they’ve gone rogue.

Ian Plimer:

Well, in that particular case, they were treating you with disdain. Feed this man a bit of bullshit and he won’t understand it. He would go away. Now, that’s not the way it works. The CSIRO has been a great organisation, creating new strains of wheat that can survive our lower rainfall and high solidity soils in Australia. They’ve done some wonderful work. They’ve done some wonderful work with mineral exploration, but many of these divisions of the CSIRO now have been reduced or closed. CSIRO now has a sociologist in each division.

Ian Plimer:

And these people are there to help promote the social benefits of what the CSIRO do. And they were fobbing you off. They actually made a fundamental strategic error of warfare. They underestimated how strong and how good you work. And they said, oh, we’ll just give this clown a few papers full of gobbledygook and he’ll go away. Well, firstly, he’s like a rabid dog. He won’t go away. And the second thing is, you understand the science, you’ve got a background in engineering, you’ve practised engineering. You’ve actually seen the practical side of doing things. And that contempt that they had for you, you have exposed. And you’ve got to keep doing it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes, and we will. And I’ll just point out something. While I’m an engineer by training and qualification, I have other statutory qualifications that also depend upon my understanding of atmospheric gases, including carbon dioxide. I’ve had to keep people alive, underground in minds, based upon my knowledge of atmospheric gases, including carbon dioxide. I’ve had to do that. I’ve held accountable under the most rigorous scrutiny of possible. But the work that we did holding the CSIRO accountable involved a wonderful man who’s highly objective.

Malcolm Roberts:

I won’t give you his name out at the moment. He has an order of Australia medal for his services to research in this country. And he is not only a phenomenal brain and one of the highest intellects that I’ve ever experienced, he has a complete objectivity, no emotion, whatsoever, attached to his statements. He just says it like it is and he holds people accountable. He is also a genius in statistics, a genius in computing. He wrote programmes to legally go into scientific bodies around the world and scrape off 24,000 datasets.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s what CSIRO was up against, this man with 24,000 datasets on both climate and on energy. And that’s how we smashed them. But the key thing we were doing, Ian, was putting the onus on them. They failed the first time. They failed the second time to provide any evidence that we need to cut anything at all in our output. Let’s move on to Senate estimates. Sorry, they-

Ian Plimer:

Just come back-

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes.

Ian Plimer:

Just come back to that. We are having people create policy and make statements, such that pensioners say in the UK, need to make a choice that whether they eat, have a hot shower or heat a room. These policies are-

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s happening in Australia, Ian. That’s happening in Australia.

Ian Plimer:

Yeah. These policies are killing people. Now, while you were an engineer working underground, and I go underground very regular now, we measure gases. We measure carbon monoxide. We measure carbon dioxide. We measure methane. We measure sulphur dioxide. We measure nitrogen oxides. We measure oxygen. And if you, as an engineer, underground and someone dies with a methane gas dust explosion or someone asphyxiates from carbon monoxide, it’s not only that you are responsible in the state where you worked as a mining engineer, you are criminally responsible.

Ian Plimer:

You go to a trial where there is no jury and where there’s no mechanism of appealing. You go to jail with a very hefty fine. That is the industrial law that you worked under as a mining engineer underground. We have no such industrial laws for those people who might set up a wind turbine that send people absolutely bonkers with the ultrasound that they have to suffer. We have no industrial law to make people responsible for killing people because they haven’t got enough energy to stay warm. I think that point of the consequences of your action and responsibility is an extremely important one. And this is why I called my latest book Green Murder, because these green policies knowingly kill people and there is no responsibility for that.

Malcolm Roberts:

Hear, hear. Well, we’ll go to another ad break and we’ll be right back for more with Professor Ian Plimer. And we’ll continue putting the onus on these people who are destroying humanity.

Malcolm Roberts:

And this is Senator Malcolm Roberts, coming to you from Australia, wherever you are in the world right now, with my special guest, Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer. Ian, we then had a third presentation from the CSIRO that they requested, because they were so embarrassed with what we’d done to their so-called science, their third presentation. And that’s-

Ian Plimer:

Oh, you [inaudible 00:43:12] for punishment.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And then we had Senate estimates hearings. I was knocked out due to dual citizenship and came back in 2019. And I held these people accountable in Senate estimates. And I asked them for a really … They failed to provide anything that was any evidence of danger. They admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. They failed to provide any evidence, whatsoever, that we need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. I asked them a really simple question. “Okay, okay.

Malcolm Roberts:

All I want from you in Senate estimates is the empirical scientific evidence, the hard data showing that there has been a statistically significant change in climate, anything, temperatures, snowfall, rainfall, drought length, severity, frequency, a flood, lengths of frequency, severity, tides. Anything at all, away you go.” And they said, “We’ve already done it,” which was a fundamental lie, which is a fundamental misrepresentation by the CSIRO’s director, one of his directors, Dr. Peter Mayfield.

Malcolm Roberts:

They have never shown us even that there’s statistically significant change in climate. In other words, Ian, there is no change of process, there is no change of climate, just as you pointed out at the very start of your contribution today, natural cycles interacting.

Ian Plimer:

Well, yes, you can’t show that human emissions drive global warming. Because you have to show that the oceanic emissions don’t. It’s checkmate. It can’t be done, and it hasn’t been done. And the arguments always fall apart with what you are doing. Really simple questions. And I think for any listeners that want to battle their local green activist, don’t argue with them. Don’t present them with facts. Ask them really simple questions. Put the owners on them to say, oh, well, that’s an interest concept. Where can I find the evidence? And wave your mobile phone around.

Ian Plimer:

And you can say, look, for the 30-second search on this phone, I can show you that the hurricane intensity hasn’t been increasing. With the 30-second search from this phone, you can see that the Great Barrier Reef isn’t being destroyed. With the 30-second search on this phone, you can actually see that sea levels are not rising catastrophically, that land levels go up and down as well as sea levels go up and down. The information is out there. Your choice is to whether you want to actually look at information.

Ian Plimer:

And for me, the most exciting thing is to put together all of the information. Some of which might grade a little bit, but put it all together to try to get an understanding. And that understanding is a model. Models are not evidence. Models are a really, really naive way of trying to understand how the world works. However, it is models that are driving the scare campaign. It is models that are telling us that in 50 or 100 years’ time, we’re going to fry and die. Yet those people promoting those models are going to be dead anyway. What value is that? There is no responsibility.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, speaking of responsibility, I take responsibility for the executive summary of the report that I wrote along with my Senate office team and our colleague with the Order of Australian medal. We published this in a report entitled, Restoring Scientific Integrity. And I’m going to read out the executive summary. And then what I’d like you to do, Ian, is to give me a comment on the 10 … Overall comment, whatever you want to say. This is the executive summary. The CSIRO has never stated that carbon dioxide from human activity is dangerous.

Malcolm Roberts:

Secondly, they admitted that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented. They withdrew, effectively withdrew by not discussing anything after we discredited the papers that they had provided as evidence of unprecedented rate of temperature change, and then failed to provide supporting empirical evidence. The CSIRO has never quantified any specific impact of carbon dioxide from human activity. That’s the fundamental basis for policy. Fifth, they rely on unvalidated models, as Ian just said, that give unverified and erroneous projections as so-called evidence.

Malcolm Roberts:

They relied on discredited and poor quality papers on temperature and carbon dioxide. They admit, they admit to not doing due diligence on reports and data from external agencies that they use. They revealed little understanding of papers they cited as evidence. They showed us papers, in fact, later that contradicted their earlier papers. These people have no clue. Second last, they allow politicians and journalists to misrepresent CSIRO’s science without correcting the journalists and the politicians. And last, they misled parliament. What a dog’s breakfast, Ian?

Ian Plimer:

Well, it is. And we have some problems here that this is a bandwagon, this is a fad. This is a fashion. This has nothing to do with science and everything to do with controlling you taking money out of your wallet and being unelected and controlling the way in which this world operates. For me, the important aspects are the lack of due diligence. Now, I spend a lot of my life doing due diligence on various projects. If I get it wrong, I actually lose my job. If I get it wrong in a public organisation, a public company, I can go to jail.

Ian Plimer:

But that doesn’t happen with these scientific organisations. And our journalists, I mean, I don’t think we have many journalists left on planet Earth. We have now people who have chosen to be activists and claim that they are journalists and are in the mainstream media trying to change people’s opinions. And most of that attempt is done by omitting information rather than providing information. The good old fashioned crusty journalist who started life as a 16-year-old cadet in the newsroom has ended up writing balanced stories. Those people don’t exist.

Ian Plimer:

There are a few newspapers around the world and a few media networks where you can get this balance. This is why I think a lot of people now are not buying newspapers, they’re not looking at commercial television. They are getting their information from other source because they have realised that the art of journalism has almost died. And journalists now are trying to use a very, very limited dumbed down education to actually push their own political barrier. This is tragic. And we see them also trying to influence politicians, most of whom cannot answer simple scientific questions that when I was 12 years old, I could have answered.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay, Ian, one fundamental point. We’ve got about five minutes before the top of the hour and we go into our news. And we’ll be back after that, everyone, by the way, with Ian Plimer. One really fundamental question for politicians, scientists, and voters. The CSIRO has never presented any robust scientific evidence underpinning their policy, the government’s policy, labour and liberal. The proper basis for policy, and this is what I’d like you to comment on, please, the proper basis for policy, as I understand it, is a specific quantified impact of human carbon dioxide on any temperature factor, whether it’s temperature, rainfall, drought, snow, ocean, alkalinity, anything at all.

Malcolm Roberts:

You have got to show that for a certain unit of carbon dioxide from human activity, this is the consequence in temperature or rainfall or whatever. That’s the first thing. That is fundamental to policy. Because you cannot assess any cost benefit analysis by saying, if we put in place a mechanism for minimising that impact, what it will cost compared with the cost of doing nothing. That’s fundamental. And the third point about this is that if you haven’t got that specific quantified effect from human carbon dioxide, you cannot track, cannot measure how you’re going with implementing your policy. This is fundamental, isn’t it?

Ian Plimer:

Well, very much is. Now our politics is not driven by building the nation. It’s a populist view derived from surveys to try to guarantee that a particular politician is going to get reelected. It’s got nothing to do with making the planet a better place. It’s got nothing to do with helping people in need, and it’s not based on any knowledge, any science, or any data. Policy is to get reelected. That is what drives political views. And this is why I’ve often argued that the best politician is a frightened politician. They have to face an election.

Ian Plimer:

I’ll give you example of a true journalist in this country, Alan Jones, who asked the Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, what the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide was. She couldn’t answer it. Now, that is a question that if you are going to get into discussions about climate, you should actually know how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, which allegedly drives climate change. We had a minister for the environment couldn’t answer that really simple question. What hope have we got?

Ian Plimer:

These people, listeners, you have to make your politicians scared. You have to frighten them. You have to let them know that if you follow this policy, you will not be reelected. And this is the only reason we have politicians create certain policies. It’s got nothing to do with the environment. It’s got nothing to do with saving the planet. It is to get reelected.

Malcolm Roberts:

Hear, hear. And that leads to a very simple point before I continue with another list. The simple point is this, we will never have frightened politicians in this country whenever people blindly vote for labour, liberal, nationals, or greens. Just blindly vote. We have to scrutinise politicians. We have to scrutinise their words, their behaviour, their actions, their policies, and then vote for whoever is correct, whoever aligns with you, not just go with the title party.

Malcolm Roberts:

Here are some conclusions, Ian, that I’ve got from my restoring scientific integrity as a result of our cross examination of CSIRO. CSIRO’s evidence for unprecedented change was easily refuted, and a major breakdown of the peer review system was revealed in Marc or in Lecavalier. We’ll have to come to a summary of this after the break, your comments after the break. Oh, no, no. Let’s leave that till after the break. What I’d also like to mention, Ian, is that they rely on claims of consensus. Isn’t that an admission? Just briefly, isn’t that an admission that they don’t have the science? Whenever they claim a consensus, that’s an admission they don’t have the science. Because if they had it, they would’ve presented it to me.

Ian Plimer:

Oh, yes. Science is married to scepticism. Science is often conducted by lone wolves. Science is not conducted by committees. Consensus is a word of politics, it’s not a word of science.

Malcolm Roberts:

And with that, we’re going to the break. And we’ll be back straight after the break with the news, with Professor Ian Plimer, to continue exposing more of the government’s bullshit on climate.

Transcript part 2

Speaker 1:

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts, on Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts from Australia and I’m with Ian Plimer, Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer. So Ian, I’ll read the conclusions from my study, Restoring Scientific Integrity, that summarises what CSIRO has failed to do.

                “First of all, CSIRO’s evidence for unprecedented change was easily refuted and a major breakdown of the peer-review system was revealed in both Marcott and Lecavalier papers. Secondly, CSIRO provided no quantified evidence that humans are responsible for any particular amount of change in any climate factor nor any climate variable, nothing. CSIRO would not attribute danger to carbon dioxide from human activity. And have not provided evidence to allow any politicians, including ministers, to attribute danger. CSIRO stated that the determination of danger was a matter for the public or for politicians.

                Australian climate policies have never been based on empirical evidence and logical scientific reasoning. After reviewing the peer-reviewed papers that CSIRO cited, it is inconceivable that government policy should be based on the unverified assumption that a peer-reviewed paper is accurate and contains the best available research. That’s particularly so when key data has been unscientifically fabricated, as was the case in the first paper and second paper that CSIRO presented on temperature. As Australia’s premier government-funded climate science agency, CSIRO’s gross deficiencies need to be investigated to establish reasons for CSIRO’s deterioration. The fact that CSIRO abrogated claims of danger to government ministers, reveals that it has been afraid to speak out about obviously politically driven deviations from science. That includes journalists driving deviations from science.”

                Ninth point. “Integrity and accountability need to be restored for both research and for presenting scientific conclusions, as well as for scrutinising political claims and policies supposedly based on science. Next, the CSIRO climate group’s pathetic and inadequate case does not justify spending tens of billions of dollars, nor does it justify the destruction of trillions. And I mean that word sincerely, trillions of dollars of wealth as a result of climate policies that hurt families, export Australian jobs and erode our national security.

                Our ability to defend and secure our borders. The onus. Lastly, the onus is now on the federal government to scrap climate policies, unless CSIRO can provide accurate, repeatable and verifiable empirical scientific evidence. Within a logical scientific framework that proves carbon dioxide from human activity detrimentally affects climate variability and needs to be cut. The proposed cuts need to be specified in terms of the amount, the impact and effects, together with the cost of making and not making the cuts.” What do you think, mate?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, we get told that the science is settled. Now, if the science is settled, we say, “Thank you very much, we are now going to disband you. We’ll disband the climate division of the CSIRO. We’ll disband all the climate institutes at the universities. We’ll disband the climate group in the Bureau of Meteorology, but we sincerely thank you for all the work that you’ve done and demonstrating that the science is settled.” I think that’s the easiest way to solve the problem.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well said, let’s continue on with their claims of consensus and their claims of that they haven’t provided the science. So what we then see from the government is that they claim they rely upon 97% of scientists claiming that they have the science. Yet not one of them has produced the science. What I’ve done, Ian, as you know, is I’ve interviewed world leading scientists on my findings of the CSIRO. And they have all justified and endorsed my claims about CSIRO.

                I’ll go through a list of them. Professor John Christie, Climatologist, Mathematician, University of Alabama Analyst and presenter of Global Temperature Data from NASA satellites. The man who does that. Professor David Legates, climatologist and statistician. Dr. Craig Idso as climatologists. These are state climatologists in the United States. They have been appointed climatologists for their state.

                Dr. Nils Mörner world’s number one C-level expert. The late Dr. Nils Mörner. Professor Nir Shaviv, atmospheric physicist from Israel. Professor Will HHapper, physicist. Dr. Willie Soon, atmospheric physicist. Yourself, you’ve done this. Steve McIntyre, mathematician and statistician who tore apart Marcott within two weeks of its release in 2013. Bill Kinmont, a former senior bureau of meteorology official and meteorologist. Emeritus, Professor Garth Paltridge, former CSRIO senior researcher. Dr. Howard Brady, geologist, another one of your kin Ian, and an Antarctica researcher. Dr. John McLean, a climate scientist who did the first audit on the global historical climate network, temperature data.

                It had never been audited, never until John did that. And he found glaring problems with it. And that’s the temperature data that the UN relies upon. And the CSIRO rely upon. Tony Heller, geologist and engineer auditing NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies data. Susan Crockford, polar bear researcher. Professor Lou Milan, Brazil Bureau of Meteorology and Dr. David Evans, who had been working as a climate modeller, and then has realised that it’s all rubbish. I mean, do we need anyone else? They haven’t provided the evidence and we’ve got the scientist.

Professor Ian Plimer:

You used a very interesting word, audit. Now, all public and private companies are required by law to have an audit. Are the books wrong? Is someone tickling the till? Is the company operating while in solvent? Now an audit, a scientific audit should look at very similar things. Are the claims being made, supported by evidence? Are people over icing the cake in order to get their next research grant? Are the people making these claims qualified to make those claims? So if, for example, you in the minerals business make a claim that this mineral deposit is that big or this big, you have to have certain qualifications to make such statements. So the normal due diligence processes that we have operating any other business, besides government, has an audit. Yet these government businesses are dealing with trillions of dollars and no one audits them and says, “Wait a minute folks, we might have got the fundamentals wrong.”

                And this is why I urge you to continue this line about, show me the evidence that human emissions drive global warming. Because if there is no evidence, then the whole white shoe brigade industry of subsidised solar and wind coming off that, shouldn’t be there. Then the next great subsidy stage of having subsidised hydrogen from subsidised wind and solar, shouldn’t be there. And we find that the emperor has no clothes. This to me is by far the best approach, ask simple questions, don’t make statements, ask questions. And that’s what an auditor does. And with my various roles in life at present, I’m constantly dealing with auditors under US law, Canadian law, UK law, and Australian law.

                They ask questions and you have to satisfy the auditors with your answer. If not, you have broken the law and you can be fined or go to jail. And I can’t see why the laws should be any different from someone making an extraordinary scientific claim, which requires a taxpayer to spend trillions. We need an audit and we need audits every year as every company has to have. And I can’t see why we can’t have scientific audits all the time. Now, Professor Peter Wild, did a scientific audit of what the coral reef scientist were stating. And he showed that it was wrong. There was a lot to be desired. Those audits should happen every year. We taxpayers are putting billions every year into science research. Where are the audits?

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Right. Now, I’m going to feed you a really a tender morsel Professor Plimer. We have had two natural real world experiments on these climate claims. In 2009, we had the global financial crisis. In 2009, the following year, we had a recession around the world, a very severe recession in most countries, Australia, wasn’t in recession. Thanks to our amazing exports of mineral products from this country. Every other country just about, was in a major recession, not a minor recession, a severe recession.

                When that happens, people use less hydrocarbon fuels, coal oil and natural gas, which meant that the production of carbon dioxide from human activity decreased. In 2009, there was less carbon dioxide produced from human activity than in 2008. And yet the level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere continued increasing in 2020 we had COVID, almost a depression around the world. Again is very severe recession, most countries around the world. And when that happened, we again used less coal, oil and natural gas. And so the human output of carbon dioxide in 2020 was less than in 2019. And yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued increasing because nature alone determines the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Isn’t this a perfectly natural real world experiment professor Plimer?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, what it does is it shows us that the common figure that’s thrown around of 3% of all emissions or of human origin might actually be wrong. It might actually be 1%. And I argue this in my book, Green Murder, I argue from volcanic emissions. I argue it used, 2007, 2008 and 2020 to the present COVID crisis, that we have got these natural experiments. And it may well be that human emissions have absolutely no effect whatsoever on global climate. And if it is, it’s probably close to the order of accuracy of measurement. And if it is abled to be measured, then the effect that Australia has in emitting 1.3% of the world’s annual admissions, which is 3% of the total planetary emissions. Is nine parts of one 11th of bugger all. So why are we having conniptions about a fractional amount of carbon dioxide emitted by humans?

                Why are we having conniptions when we cannot show that this has any effect on global climate. And shouldn’t we be spending our hard earned dollars on other things rather than spending billions every year on climate research. Trillions on putting in infrastructure that we know already will fail. So I think once you get a populist idea like this, it takes a long time to grind through the system before people realise it’s wrong.

                Populous politics, isn’t very sensible. And we see that ultimately this culotte mania, which we’re undergoing, leads to tears. We’ve seen it before, South seen [inaudible 00:12:41] Dutch culotte mania, and we’re right on that path again. And there’s something rather fundamental about our opposition, our position won’t argue data. As soon as we raise a point, they attack us with hatred and with venom. And why do they do that? They do that, I think for two reasons, the first is that they’ve been beneficiaries that have dumbed to down scientific education whereby they haven’t got any science. And they can’t argue because they haven’t been taught critical thinking. So the only response they’ve got is to be angry. And the second thing is, there’s no evidence. So we are seeing all these clues that we are being fed, probably the greatest policy damaging process for a very long period of time. The one before that was communism.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Here, here, and just think about this too, everyone at home. Hard earned dollars is what professor Ian Plimer just mentioned. Our hard earned dollars. If we cannot by cutting our carbon dioxide production, human production of carbon dioxide, severely as in two major recessions in the last 14 years. If that had no impact on reducing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, why the hell do they want to steal our land, raise at taxes, impose gut wrenching regulations on us. That’s what we have to ask. The natural experiment in 2009 and 2020 showed that our massive cutting of carbon dioxide from human activity had no impact whatsoever. Neither will taxes. Neither will regulations. Neither will continue to steal. Neither will the continued stealing of farmers’ land.

                Let’s move on. This was this climate sham was first raised by a liberal politician, Baume, in federal parliament in 1975, he was the first one to raise the possibility that human or the claim that human activity, carbon dioxide from human activity affects our climate. The first prime minister to raise it was Bob Hawk. He raised it sometime after 1983. And he first raised it himself as an MP in 1980. And then we had John Howard go on the bandwagon. And what they quite often claim is that it based upon UN intergovernmental panel on climate change results. Ian, I’ve analysed the UN reports.

                1990 was the first, 1995 was the second one, 2001 was the third one, 2007 was the fourth one, 2013 was the fifth one, 2000 and… Just recently 2020 was the sixth one, sorry, 2022 was the sixth one. In each of those papers. They have one single core chapter that is supposedly showing that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. In 2001, it was chapter 12. In 2007, it was chapter nine. In 2013, it was chapter 10. In those so chapters and in the latest one, the same applies. There has never been any evidence presented that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. But instead, what we have is a summary for policy makers. That’s dumbed down for politicians and journalists that is full of crap. It has no evidence whatsoever in it. What about the UN IPCC, Ian?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, the UN IPCC is not a scientific organisation. It is a political organisation. It’s brief is to show that human emissions drive global warming. That brief comes out in a report, which has two parts to it. One is a summary at the beginning, and that’s the journalists and politicians, most of whom are ill educated. And it’s written in a very alarmist language. And that summary is normally totally unrelated to the scientific text, which in the latest one was just short of 4000 pages. And that is again, baffling people with bullshit. And there’s just so much information there that it’s very hard for the average person to work out what’s going on. So they have to actually trust it. Now I don’t, because there is a huge amount of information out there that has the contrary view. The book that I put out 10 years ago, Heaven and Earth. I had three and a half years-

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Oh, marvellous. Marvellous book.

Professor Ian Plimer:

… of scientific papers, which show that human emissions don’t drive global warming. And the latest book, I’ve only got 1700 scientific papers that show that humanly emissions don’t drive global warming. Those papers are not listed in the IPCC reports. Those IPCC reports omit any contrary information whatsoever. And so it is very much a partisan view, fulfilling the requirements of their brief. And that is to show we’re all going to fry and die. And it’s very much the view of an anonymous group of rather shady people who love their joints and conferences and write a few words every few years. And for that, there’s fame and fortune and there’s power. And there’s these faceless people who are creating a power structure whereby we pay.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Here, here, we’ll go to an ad break now, and then we’ll come back and we’ll listen to more from Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts. Welcome back. And I’ve got my special guest, Ian Plimer. Before I move on with Ian, this is TNT radio. Where the only thing we mandate is the truth and you’ll get the truth from professor Ian Plimer. Ian, we have a fabulous researcher in Australia, an IT specialist, also a climate scientist with peer-reviewed papers published. And he pointed out that in an analysis of the UN IPCCs own data, only five reviewers endorsed the claim that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and it needs to be cut. Only five and there’s doubt they are even scientists. Yet we are told there are thousands of scientists what’s going on?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, we’re not told the truth. And I know who you’re referring to. That was a magnificent piece of work he did for his PhD. We’re not told the truth. Many of these reports are written by activists. Many of them are written by green peace officials. Few of them are written by scientists and very, very few indeed are written by eminent scientists. So this is propaganda at best, at worst it may well be indeed are written by eminent scientist. So this is propaganda at best, at worst it’s may well be part of a great reset. So you used the word truth. Now you are regarded as controversial. I am regarded as controversial. Why? Because we use facts and speak the truth. And if you speak the truth, you never have to remember what you said. And this is why when you challenge those activists, they get very, very angry because they have to argue from first principles and justify their statements, which they cannot do.

                They don’t have the methods of argument, logic analysis, and they certainly don’t have any repeatable facts. So you get called controversial because your facts do not agree with their emotional opinions and the use of language. And the capture of language now has been a major weapon in attacking the average person to make sure that they do not use certain words. Unfortunately, and I must have a lot of Broken Hill lead in my blood. And I worked at Broken Hill for decades. Unfortunately I don’t abide by those new social constraints. And I will use the vernacular to describe things that we have used those words for half a century. So part of cancelling you and cancelling me and shutting us down, is control of the language. And calling us nut cases or controversial or extreme or right wing. This demonstrates that our opponents cannot argue.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Exactly. And another thing that demonstrates our opponents cannot argue is their claims that there’s a 97% consensus of scientists who claim that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and needs to be cut. When you look at their figures and you analyse it, and there’s been a peer-reviewed papers led by Dr. David Legette with scientists and statisticians. Who analyse this claim by John Cook, a false fabricated claim, misrepresenting science, misrepresenting nature. David Legette’s and his co-authors analysed John Cook’s 97% consensus claim and found out when you go through the actual data, there is a not a 97% consensus. There is a 0.3% smattering and not one of those 0.3% smattering has any evidence that carbon dioxide from human activity as bad.

Professor Ian Plimer:

Yes, you’re being very kind. That worked by was fraud. There were 10,000 people who were sent a survey. These are people who put bread and wine on the table from frightening witness about climate. Out of those 10,000, who received Cooks survey, only 3000 replied. He chose 77 of those 3000 replies to publish. One reply wasn’t really in agreement. And that’s was the 3%. So this was a very, very selective survey, picking out certain information and then telling us that 97% of scientists believe this or that.

                Well, belief is not a word of science. It’s a word of religion and politics. The second thing is that science is not like politics, where we all put up and say, “Yes, we believe that the earth is flat. And we believe that the sun rotates around the earth.” Science doesn’t work like that. It works on reproducible evidence. That was fraud. Now, Australia exports, a lot of black stuff. That’s called coal. A lot of that comes from your state Queensland, but John Cook was in Queensland and we exported not black coal, but he’s black soul went to another country. We’ve got rid of him. Thanks be to the Lord.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Well said, then let’s move on to the NASA’s Goddard Institute Space Studies. It’s a tiny group within NASA. And then there’s a tiny, tiny group within the Goddard Institute Space Studies that is responsible for climate studies. We’ve heard so many times that NASA is saying that this climate claims, that climate sphere is all justified. And yet I had correspondence when I entered the Senate as a Senator in Australia. And I held director Gavin Schmidt accountable for some of the work that NASA was doing in corruptly modifying temperature data to raise temperatures artificially. And in his first response back, he made a slip and he showed that inadvertently, he made serious contradictions.

                So when I held him accountable for these contradictions. He stopped writing to me. And then later they reversed their claims about Iceland, temperature data tampering, and reduce them down again. I mean, NASA itself has never said that the climate is a problem. A tiny group of people, activists within the NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has said that. And these people need to be held to account. It’s just fraud again, that NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies led by Gavin Schmidt and the previous alarmist James Hansen have spread this nonsense. We’ve got letters from NASAs senior administrators, astronauts who’ve had to rely on science, stating that these guys are speaking bullshit.

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, we once used to have respect for an institution. Be that the CSIRO, be that a university, be that the church, we once had respect for an institution. We now live in a society where anything goes, this is the attack on Western civilization and climate change is only part of it. But we are attacking Christian religions. We are attacking parliament. We saw that recently in the Senate in Australia, where one Senator being sworn in, gave a Black power salute and wanted to insult the queen. This respect for institutions is disappearing. They are always under attack. And in some cases like NASA, they do it to themselves. In some cases and I would argue, it’s part, the churches have done this. They’ve done it to themselves. So we are living in a society where anything goes, where all opinions are equal. There is no informed opinion. There is no respect for anything or anyone. Yet the same people want to be respected. I think respect has to be earned. I don’t think because you are an oxygen thief that you automatically qualified to get respect.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Here, here. Let’s move on now. Some people I know you have heard about the Stern report. That’s a fraudulent document that was developed in Britain for the government to push this climate rubbish. We had our own equivalent version of the Stern report in Australia. It was the Ghana report, which from memory was released in 2008. I think it was initially a state initiative but then when Kevin Rudd entered power as a prime minister in 2000 late, 2007, he adopted it as well. And I think he pushed it. And I’ll just go to that because a lot of people in our country think that the Ghana report had scientific proof that we need to cut human carbon dioxide. So I’m going to read from chapter two of Ghana’s report, which was used to push the narrative that we need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. Chapter two is titled, Understanding Climate Science.

                It states, key points. “The review takes as its starting point on the balance of probabilities. And not as a matter of belief,” I’m sorry, I can’t help laughing. I’ll start again. “The review takes as its starting point on the balance of probabilities and not as a matter of belief, the majority opinion of the Australian and international scientific communities that human activities resulted in substantial global warming from the mid 20th century. And that continued growth in greenhouse gas concentrations caused by human induced emissions would generate high risk of dangerous climate change.” No evidence anywhere and yet the media, the politicians run around saying the Ghana report is scientific proof. Ian, what the hell is going on?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Oh, it’s very simple. We’ve had every major institution taken over by activists. We have activists in the church. We have activists in universities. We have activists in schools. The public service is absolutely full of activists. These people are driving the ship because politicians get reappointed every couple of years. These people can outlive them. These people can outstay them. So we’ve had the march of the left. It’s been a 40 year march into all of the institutions. The biggest damage they have done is to dumb down the education system, such that all of the people now in middle level, be they in government be, they in business, have undergone this activist education. So we’ve totally been taken over by activists. And for me, it’s not a war that you can fight. You can fight as we are doing as guerrilla fighters, but we have to wait for the inevitable. And the inevitable will be a financial crisis.

                And then ultimately people will say, “Well, wait a minute. What used to be a very wealthy nation? What happened?” So this is why it’s extremely important to keep fighting the fight. We’ve lost it. We haven’t infiltrated the system 40 or 50 years ago. The left did that, but ultimately there is a price to pay. And the price to pay is going to be very, very nasty indeed. So we have to keep these arguments on the record. We have to keep arguing. We have to fight everything. Now, for example, we have this absolute trivial argument now about the burping and farting of cattle. So just heal out a very simple argument. Grass grows by using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, that cattle eat that grass and burp and fight out. Some of the carbon is methane and carbon dioxide. And the rest of the carbon ends up in the meat, in the skin and in bones. We eat that meat that’s sequestered for a little while. The bones, the carbon is sequestered for a little while and in the leather that we have, it’s sequestered for even longer, in say our footwear.

                So if cattle are so bad and eating this grass and farting out methane, belching out methane, what happens if we took the cattle off the ground? If we took the cattle off the field, then the grass would rot. And the grass would give out methane when it rots. And the same number of atoms of carbon that went into growing that grass, the same number of atoms of carbon, that either are extracted by cattle or extracted by rotting of the grass.

                Now that is a total furphy that we’re being fed by our climate activists. So what’s happened is the vegans have got in to the climate activists groups. And they’re trying to tell us we shouldn’t be eating meat and we’re destroying the climate. So we’ve got all these sorts of crazies now, have attracted themselves to the vegan groups in the climate groups. Now I’ve had a bit to do with vegans, when I used to take university field excursions. These geological field excursions were interesting because the meat eaters were the first ones to the top of the mountain. The vegetarians were about halfway up and the vegans were still trying to work out how to get out of the vehicle.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Okay, I want to continue that line in a minute, but first I’m going to go to the InterAcademy Council. If I can collect my thoughts after that, the InterAcademy Council. You’ve heard of that as a noted scientist Professor Plimer?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Yes, yes. Well, I’m in one of the major academies. But they represent my view and don’t listen to my science.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. Well, we could talk about the Australian Academy of Science, which is completely lost the plot on climate science. But anyway, the InterAcademy-

Professor Ian Plimer:

Those academies stay alive by government funding. And they have to play in the same key from the same musical script as the government, otherwise they don’t get funding. So this is not fearless and free information that the academies are giving. It’s already contaminated.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Right. And so we’ve been told many times that all the major science academies around the world support this rubbish about climate being affected by carbon dioxide from human activity. None of them have ever provided the evidence. But the InterAcademy Council, which is the combination of many of these national bodies, put out a damning report about 10 years ago. An absolutely damning report about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel and Climate Change. It is the UN’s climate science body, was just shown to be completely incompetent and dishonest and unscientific. And no one raised an eyebrow. Now, I also want to talk about what I call the rats nest of climate alarmist academics. These people in my mind are not scientists at all, but they’ve been paraded as scientists. They’ve been funded by government taxpayers. Funded by us to misrepresent the science. I’m going to read their names out, because these people will be very familiar to some. Tim Flannery, many faults forecasts, which have caused enormous damage, including costing people’s lives.

                Professor Will Steffen, a chemical engineer. Professor David Karoly, a former meteorologist. Ova Goldberg. And I’ve challenged Ova Goldberg and Tim Flannery to debate. And poor old Tim didn’t know which way was up. And his publisher just dragged him away from me. Ova Goldberg, would not debate me. John Cook would not debate me. Another one of these academics. They’re not scientists because they don’t follow the scientific principle. A scientist is someone who follows a scientific process. Matthew England, a climate modeller, mathematician, I believe. Leslie Hughes, Kurt Lambeck, Andy Pitman, Ross Garnaut.

                And then we have a man called Stephan Lewandowsky. And Stephan Lewandowsky is a, I think he’s got something to do with the behavioural scientist. And he made claims that if you don’t agree with these people, then you’re a nut job. So, I mean, these people have been funded by government. They’ve been appointed to the climate commission by the Gillard Government. They’ve been fated by the liberals. They have been funded to spread misrepresentations of climate. I’m trying to find a comment. Would you, if you could make a comment while I’m looking for a summary assessment of Tim Flannery’s report.

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, just the very brief comment. These people are funded to put us out of work. Therefore, the amount of revenue collected by taxation will be less. So why not save ourself the pain and not fund them now? And then we do not decrease taxation by having people put out of work by their processes. Now, can you imagine trying to run a foundry and you are trying to pour some bronze and the power goes off. If that freezes, then you have a real problem. Can you imagine how your electricity bill, which you have in an electric arc furnace, you have an electricity bill that’s just gone through the roof. Ultimately you are going to close that business and put people out of work, or you might shift the business to Thailand or somewhere like that. This is what’s happening. Those climate policies, which are catastrophic for the average person are driven by the elites, funded from the taxes of the average person. It is time to say, enough.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Right. And I’m going to read some figures before we go to the break, we’ll have the ad break the last of the hour. And then I’d like you to, when we come back, Ian, if you could talk about the fact that Australia is already at net zero and beyond it, because our sinks of carbon dioxide absorb more carbon dioxide than all of our production. But I want to read these figures, Dr. Wes Allen wrote, what is the first known detailed review of Tim Flannery’s book entitled, The Weather Makers. Dr. Allen’s review reveals that 307 statements in Tim Flannery’s book created 577 problems with some of Tim Flannery statements, creating multiple problems. This Dr. Allen as a meticulous researcher, and he’s put it out there in public, listed them, shown them.

                And what he’s done is he said that, “Baseless, extreme comments in Tim Flannery’s book 14. Baseless, dogmatic comments, 103. Suspect sources of his points, 51. Half truth, 85. The claims that there’s absolute no uncertainty in what he’s saying, 48. Misrepresentations seven. Misinterpretations, 26. Exaggeration, 78. Factual errors, 70. Confusing or silly statements, 43. Contradictory statements, 31. Fail predictions, 11. Mistakes, 10. A grand total of problems, 577 in a book that’s about 200 pages long. This is what passes for science amongst the labour party, the liberal party, the national party, the greens. And amongst these climate activists who are masquerading as scientists, when they’re really academics and not scientists.” So we’ll go for the break and then we’ll come back and listen to Ian Plimer.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Over to you, Ian Plimer. We’re with Ian Plimer and this is Senator Malcolm Roberts in broadcasting from Australia. We are now going to hear one of the best scientists in the world, discuss why we are already at net zero and beyond.

Professor Ian Plimer:

We are very lucky in Australia to have a continent with very, very few inhabitants. We have a large area of grasslands, rangelands and forests and a lot of crop land. And the few people that live in this country live in a coastal fringe and mainly in cities. We are not a country of Crocodile Dundee’s out in the bush. We’re a country of people who absolutely live in cities. So when we look at the amount of carbon dioxide that we release from heavy industries in Australia. And we smelt a lot of the world’s aluminium and zinc and lead and copper, that puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The bulk of our energy comes from hydrocarbons, be it diesel, be it coal for electricity. And when we look at the amount of energy that we create, we could not run this country without coal.

                However, when we look at how much of a carbon dioxide is absorbed into these grasslands, rangelands, forest, crops and the continental shelf, we absorb about 10 times as much carbon dioxide than we emit. We should therefore go to Paris and say, “Pay up. We want countries like Mauritania and Chad and poor countries of the world to pay us because we are absorbing their carbon dioxide emissions.” The whole system of net zero is bonkers. Net zero is a vocabulary invented by people who want different ways of taxing you. It’s got nothing to do with the environment. It’s got everything to do with power and money.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And that leads on to something that I want to raise. The core problem here is shitty governance, comprising gutless politicians seating our sovereignty. There is no scientific data or framework on which they base these policies. The policies today in Australia are based on looking good, not doing good. Looking after vested interest and globalist predators. And Ian, I think you are well aware that the man who started this climate fraud was Maurice Strong from Canada. I haven’t got the time to go into the details. He was a criminal who exiled himself. Wanted by American authorities, the police law enforcement agencies. He was exiled in China. He came back to Canada to die in Ottawa in 2015. His policies, his scam that he initiated. He was a part owner and a director of the Chicago Climate Exchange, where billions of dollars of carbon dioxide emissions trading system credits would be funnelled through. Al Gore, the company he owns, Generation Management Investment is also a part owner of the Chicago climate exchange.

                We are taking money from poor people asking age pensioners to make a choice between staying warm and eating. And these bastards are stealing money to live like Riley. No science, enormous crippling costs imposed on people. And the people pay with their wallets, with their jobs, with their lifestyle, with their lives. For no benefit to the environment, no benefit to humanity and these grubs steal billions of dollars. And then we’ve got other billionaires who are sponsoring people into parliament, so they can keep their subsidies for solar and wind going. This is a complete scam and it is an inhuman scam. What do you say to say Professor?

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, that’s exactly right. This is probably the biggest scam we have seen in the history of time. In terms of science, it’s probably the greatest delusional science that we’ve seen since the times, just before Galileo. In terms of morality, we have sunk to new depths and in terms of responsibility, there is none. In my scientific career, I have been working in universities and outside universities. When I was outside universities, I was funded by industry.

                If I got it wrong, I lost my job. When in a university, if I got it wrong, it didn’t matter. I was able to publish and move on. In science, if you get it wrong, there are no consequences. In sociology, if you get it wrong, you get promoted. So we have lost the ethical basis of science. And I think this structural breakdown of institutional ethics is one of the reasons why your Maurice Strong and these others have been able to thrive. And there’s a whole army of acolytes there feeding off those who pay them. And eventually they are going to kill those who pay them. This is why I called my latest book, Green Murder. This process has taken 40 or 50 years to get there. And the only way I can see we can get out of this mess is to have a deeply destructive recession.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And that’s a very sad thing to say, because I’d like to finish on a positive, which you’ll come to in a minute. I’m with Professor Ian Rutherford Plimer, one of the world’s best scientists, highly awarded, a prolific author. We have been discussing my letter to the four Amigos on climate, the previous prime minister, the previous deputy prime minister, the previous opposition leader, and the then and current Greens leader, Adam Bandt. You can find that letter at Malcolm Roberts, qld.com.au, just scroll down to the climate fraud icon, click on that, and then scroll down to letter to the leaders, the climate change scam. And you can see what we’ve been talking about. I want to mention Professor Plimer, some from Professor Plimer’s books, these cover of huge gamut of interest, everything from serious scientific to discussions about humanity. To basic books like mineral collecting localities of the Broken Hill district, for people who are interested in rocks.

                Now I’ve got another book, Telling Lies for God. Let’s just think about the diversity of this man’s ability. Next one, A Journey Through Stone, Mineral Collecting Localities of the Broken Hill, Tibooburra and White Cliffs areas. This man gets down into the details. Milos: Geologic History, A Short History of Planet Earth, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science. How to get expelled from School, now that is a ripper. So is that Heaven and Earth. Not for Greens and then Ian has taken up the cut of protecting humanity. Heaven and Earth again, Climate Change Delusion and the Great Electricity Rip-off, Green Murder, a life sentence of net zero with no parole, go to Connor Court Publishing. They have been your publishers, I think all the time, Professor Plimer, anything to add to that because I find your books fascinating.

Professor Ian Plimer:

Well, I’ve published a number of best sellers in the past, through major international publishers, like Random House. And I had also published stuff through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And when I had the manuscript of Heaven and Earth ready to go, no publisher would touch me because I was questioning human induced climate change. It was eventually a very small husband and wife publisher that took it on. It made them a fortune. It was an international bestseller.

                So for those of you out there who are thinking of publishing your ideas, it’s quite often not the major publishers that will touch you. They’re not interested at all in the issue. They’re only interested in making money. And when Heaven and Earth was really humming away and selling very well. I had a publisher ring me and say, “Look, we’d like to republish your book, A Short History of Planet Earth.” And I said, “Well, that book came out 20 years ago. And the science has moved on. That some of these science that I wrote there now has been replaced by better science and there are better ideas. I’m not prepared to republish something that is knowingly wrong.” And they were persisting telling me I’d make a fortune. I wasn’t interested in that. I’m interested in facts and speaking the truth. That makes me controversial.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

And we appreciate you so much because there are so few scientists these days. So few politicians who will do that. I’m going to lead the final word to Professor Plimer. But before I do that, this is Malcolm Roberts, Senator in Australia. I am staunchly pro-human and a believer in the inherent goodness in human beings. Please remember to listen to each other, love one another, stay proud of who we are as humans. Take a minute to appreciate the abundance all around us. Ian, over to you. You have one minute to tell us why we need to get back to basics and be so positive about Australia. We have the people, the resources we have the opportunity, the potential. Mate, what do you want to say? And thank you so much.

Professor Ian Plimer:

There are very few people, very few people on this continent. We are blessed with resources. If we look at history countries or nations with very few people and a lot of resources, inevitably got invaded. Go and talk to the Carthaginians or the Thracians, go and talk to those that Alexander the Great invaded. The only way this country can be strong is to use its resources and its humans to have a vibrant economy, a big defence system and people who are great lovers and supporters of their country. And when I finally shuffle off, I just hope someone will in the eulogy say, he gave the cage a bloody good rattle.

Senator Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you so much, Professor Ian Plimer, well done.

An interview with Andrew McColl from Family Voice and Robbie Katter, Queensland State MP. Gender dysphoria is affecting our teenage girls in huge numbers. Adolescence is a tough time, and some teens experience distress with their biological identity and then claim they are transgender. This has become a quick path to puberty blockers, hormone injections and surgical interventions.

This is not the miracle solution for this distress. State legislation has been introduced that alienates parents from supporting their children, and medical profession have been intimidated into abandoning our kids and sending them on this destructive medical pathway. There is hope as the tide is turning in many of the gender clinics around the world, with hormonal and surgical interventions no longer automatically available to children presenting with gender dysphoria.

A shout out for some common sense prevailing on this issue of gender neutral language. Bill Shorten has reversed the use of the dehumanising term “birthing parent” and will re-replace it with “mother”. Interestingly the term “father” is still used and there is no talk of it being changed to “sperm donor”.

Transcript

Andrew:

Welcome to the Family Voice zoom session this morning. My name is Andrew McColl. I’m the Queensland Director of Family Voice Australia. Our subject today is the transgender controversy and I’m joined today by the Queensland Senator, Malcolm Roberts and I hope at any minute to have Robbie Katter, the Queensland State MP from North Queensland, joining us as well. That will be good. Good morning, Malcolm.

Malcolm:

Good morning, Andrew. How are you?

Andrew:

I’m well, thank you. In the absence of Robbie being with us, I’ll direct some questions straight to you.

Malcolm:

Sure.

Andrew:

That will be good. We’re talking about the transgender controversy. I happened to note Malcolm that you’d interviewed Dr Andrew Orr recently who made reference to the term, gender dysphoria. Is this how this whole matter began?

Malcolm:

I don’t know if it began there, but I think it really owes its roots to some people who are pushing this hard to disrupt our kids. Gender dysphoria is real. It’s a sense of discomfort or distress or incongruence with their own biology. I make the point that sex is not assigned at birth. It’s assigned at conception and historically children are feeling very confused over gender and that was primarily in young boys around three to five years of age. We’ve all seen boys and girls playing as the opposite sex, but in the last 10 years, there’s been a… Before getting onto the last 10 years, I think it’s also important to recognise that the brain in adolescence, both boys and girls go through enormous changes, huge changes, radical rewiring of the brain and this is a very important time for the development of the human brain.

Malcolm:

It’s also a time when hormones are flushing throughout the whole body and so it’s a very complicated time for many people and adolescence is not easy for most people. It’s a time of stress. What we’ve seen in the last 10 years, Andrew, is an exponential growth explosion in teenage girls experiencing gender dysphoria, discomfort with their own bodies, their own gender. Most of them with no history of gender dysphoria at all. Adolescence is challenging, but this is not a problem to be fixed. Instead, we’ve got people jumping on the bandwagon to create a problem, so what we’ve seen now is hormonal and surgical interventions are not a miracle solution to the challenge of adolescents. They in fact make things worse and then if they go wrong, they’ll make things worse for that person’s life for the rest of their lives.

Malcolm:

You’ve got to recognise the normal discomfort, unease, stressors of adolescents and separate that out because it is a real issue, but most people at the end of adolescence, are happy with who they are. They realise, okay, I’m a boy, and I’m enjoying being a boy. If I’m a girl, I’m enjoying being a girl. That’s what we’ve got to be very careful of and gender dysphoria has been jumped on by a few people to take advantage of it.

Andrew:

Thank you. Good morning, Robbie. How are you getting on today?

Robbie:

Yeah. Good morning. Sorry I was running late.

Andrew:

That’s all right. Thanks for joining with us and we’re getting into this matter of the transgender as you would’ve figured out by now. You spoke fairly recently, Robbie, in the Queensland Parliament, and I congratulate you for your speech regarding the fact that you have daughters who will be teenagers soon. Why was that important in the context of the transgender controversy?

Robbie:

I think the challenge for us as politicians interested in this subject is inserting it into the consciousness of a switched off public who are mostly buying the idea that people’s choice is people’s choice. What impact is this going to have and even when they start entertaining the thought of transgender, they think that’s a tricky debate. “I’m going to have to get my head across this and that’s going to probably put me in arguments amongst my friends.” That to me is the real enemy for people on our side of the argument. That’s the challenge, I think. We want to find areas where we can break that debate back down to something that’s meaningful and we’ll cut straight through to them.

Robbie:

That was what was put to me was, I think parents will care about the welfare of their kids and I think that sport is a really good manifestation of that conflict. Whilst I think the issue is a lot bigger than just women’s sport, my girls could be playing sport against these people and I’m worried about their health being made to compete against them. I wouldn’t be real happy if my girls were playing rugby league, but speaking hypothetically, if they do they’ll be up against some big bloody Pacific Islander girl that could belt the bejesus out of them. I thought that was good imagery to put [inaudible 00:05:30]

Andrew:

Yeah. Malcolm, just getting back to Dr Orr again, he mentioned that as children moved through puberty, as you were indicating somewhat earlier, many were incongruent or confused about their gender, but that will probably desist. Does that make sense to you?

Malcolm:

Yes, it does. It certainly does. I think everyone on the planet knows that children going through adolescence are under stress just because there are so many hormonal changes, so many new things in our brains going on. There is stress, but there are also children who suffer from physiologic, psychological comorbidities, including anxiety, ASD, ADHD, depression, trauma, eating disorders, and many more. What we need to do is to get to the core of those issues. I don’t dismiss this as an issue. I’m not saying it’s a non-event. It is an issue for some people. For the majority of children, they will just grow through it and we just have to be with them and love them, but for some, there is a serious issue there, but it’s not to do with their gender.

Malcolm:

It’s other underlying comorbidities, so we need to understand the diagnoses and appropriate therapeutic support and what we really need is family based therapeutic care. Much like Robbie’s doing. He’s caring for his daughters. That’s what’s driving him, but what we see are some blockages to parents getting involved and I noticed that you’ve got a question for Robbie coming up along those lines. We’ve got to be very careful because… I’ll maybe comment more after Robbie’s answered that question, but basically with parents being shoved to the side, unlike Robbie, for fear of being criticised, parents are letting go their kids and that’s not right. Kids need their parents at this critical time in their life, even if it’s just adolescence they’re facing. If they’re facing other issues, they need even more support from their parents so we cannot afford to abandon our kids at this time, just like Robbie’s not abandoning his daughters, all parents should not abandon their children. They should stay with them and care for them.

Andrew:

Yeah. Robbie, just thinking in terms of this term that people use. Some people say that it’s very important that we affirm the choices that children make. If the parents feel that their choices that their children are making are plainly ridiculous, doesn’t that mean that it’s time to say something to the child.

Robbie:

Yeah. I’ll shoot straight from the hip on that. I believe true compassion comes in trying to guide people in what you think, based on your experiences. I think it’s such a common practise in life that we rely on the past experience of others to give us some help on what’s the best outcomes for us on whether it’s on diet, staying away from McDonald’s food or whether it’s mental guidance or spiritual guidance and why would you allow parents to be giving kids advice on what’s good to put into their stomach and help them in nutrition, but you can’t help them in what’s going to guide them in the best way for the outcomes later in life.

Robbie:

If the kids are running around acting like a fool and playing up and punching kids, you pull them into line, or if they’re starting to trying to indulge in multiple personalities or something, you might try to stop it, but you at least try and put some guidance around that to help for the best outcome. If the kid is indecisive about something, I think it’s negligent as a parent to hands off approach and let the kid work it out without saying, “Crikey, that could lead them down this path and let’s just try and put them down here, because it’ll be the best outcome for them as best we can tell.” I think that’s part and parcel of true compassion and nurturing and granted, not everyone always gets it right.

Robbie:

How could you deny doing that? Me? I can’t see how you separate that because it seems to me that in this transgender debate, I think what we’re talking about is if the kid says, “I’m starting to feel like a girl,” I would say as a parent, “Crikey, maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, but let’s not just entertain that too much yet,” and see if this is just a bit of a passing phase or it’s a popular thing at school and get him through it. Of course, you should be allowed to do that and I think that’s one of the big problems now is there’s no capital in that and it’s just let the kid make all the decisions for themselves. We don’t do it with their diet or any other parts of life, but why would you allow them to do it on this?

Malcolm:

If I could jump in there.

Andrew:

Yeah, sure.

Malcolm:

Thank you. I agree with Robbie. It is a time when children need compassion from their parents. They also need genuine care, which I think Robbie ties care in with compassion. They also need understanding and you can’t have compassion without understanding. These are the things that are important, especially when children are going through adolescence and they’ll come out of it believing that they belong in the body in which they were conceived. There will be others who are suffering genuine distress and they need to have support and counselling. As a parent myself, but knowing other parents, we want parents to be with their children and to support them through it, not just say, “Yes, little Johnny, you’re correct,” or “Yes, little Mary, you’re correct.”

Malcolm:

That’s rubbish. That’s abandonment. I would line up there with Robbie, very strongly. Robbie, in my experience is a very practical down to earth person. This is a very difficult topic for all of us, but I agree with Robbie, it is the parents’ responsibility to be the guardian of that child, from all kinds of things that are going to come into that child’s life up until about the age of 18 or 21. It’s our responsibility as parents to protect, to support, to have compassion and care as Robbie said, but we are responsible for that young person and we are responsible for how they mature. I agree with Robbie. We don’t just stand by and affirm. We actually support, but we stand ground and look after our responsibility.

Andrew:

Yeah. This is the issue that this whole thing hangs upon because there’s this group in society who get some power over children who think that we must affirm children come what may, whether we agree with what they’re thinking or not. It seems to me, we’ve got to ask ourselves a question in the whole transgender debate. Do we feel obligated to affirm a child’s decisions or their views or their feelings, even if that affirmation flies in the face of biology. That to me is where it’s going to get interesting, isn’t it, Malcolm?

Malcolm:

That’s exactly the point that we don’t automatically affirm what a child comes up with. A child is a child is a child. They don’t have the life experience. They don’t have the intellectual capacity at times, especially when they’re confused, going through adolescence when their brains are literally being rewired. This is a time of enormous confusion. Sure. We listen to them, we respect them, be with them, support them, have compassion for them, care for them, but we don’t just simply agree. That’s abandonment, that’s abdication. That’s not affirmation, that’s abdication. Andrew, I noticed you’ve got a question coming up later about international organisations. A lot of this is driven by international organisations that are trying deliberately to smash the family, because when you smash family, people turn to the government and that’s what they want. They want to use control. They are happy to smash up the family and this is one of their many ways of trying to smash the family, but they’re crippling children and some of these children who have interventions, hormonal or…

Andrew:

Surgical.

Malcolm:

…surgical, thank you. They are crippled for life and then when they realise later on they’ve made a mistake as has been happening, then there are very serious mental health problems and leading to suicide. We have got to protect these children. Affirmation is rubbish in this sense.

Andrew:

Robbie, would we say that in this whole controversy, what’s really needed is good old fashioned common sense.

Robbie:

Yeah. I’ve had the belief that common sense is there latent. It exists in the majority of people there, but I think a growing number of people and still probably not the majority, but a growing number of people are unwilling to voice that intuition where they know it’s common sense, but they won’t say it because they don’t want to be unpopular in their peer group. That’s a growing number and the challenge is to find those, like the women’s sport issues, find those and put it right back in people’s face so there’s a very clear delineation of the pathway. We can head down the two pathways. We can head down in society with these things and what the sort of outcomes they can expect because it’s that slow, incremental creep of all these things that is the biggest enemy, I think.

Robbie:

That’s where it’s successful. This transgender stuff is just where it slowly incrementally comes in. That’s the biggest challenge is to keep bringing it to a head where it’s… I think as a politician, from my point of view, it’s not being too confrontational in general because a lot of people just don’t give it a second thought. It’s trying to invite them into the conversation rather trying to force it down their throat, which I think requires a fair bit of finesse and often more than I’m capable of. It’s pulling what I think is a really big issue and making it seem, in a way, not as big because people don’t want to take on a big issue, but they need to recognise just in common sense terms, what it means and the implications on their life and their future and draw that into their consciousness and apply it to their everyday life and make it relevant to them.

Andrew:

Yeah. I’ve heard the statement made by some of the latest people in this and this is not so much in Australia, but certainly overseas that says, “The child has this sex, but their gender is something different, and just because a baby is born with a penis, doesn’t make him a boy.” I look at it and think, I can’t believe people are going to say something as stupid as that, because this is a radical rethinking of how we do just about anything in our society where a child is born with the body of one sex, but it is alleged that it’s actually something different. This is why I’m simply saying we just need some common sense here. The child is either a boy or a girl. They can’t be swapping over every Thursday afternoon to the other one, because I just feel like it today.

Andrew:

It seems as if, whether it’s peer group, whether it’s social media, whether it’s just a trend or a fad, but when people go down these roads and as Malcolm was alluding earlier, and we go and do hormonal treatment or surgery that actually removes the organs, part of the difficulty is that what we don’t always understand is that males and females are diametrically different. They have to be so that we can reproduce. Obviously I’m a male, but there are components with my wife that I share lots of things. We have a human body. We have a heart and kidneys and legs and feet and brains, but compared to my wife, I’m diametrically different. That’s not something that we should be ashamed of or think that’s something wrong. That’s not wrong. That’s actually right, otherwise we can’t have children.

Andrew:

It seems as if we’ve lost track of a few things here and Malcolm, you were alluding earlier, or you made comments about these international organisations that have got some kind of agenda that they’re pushing. That’s not something that lots of people really are aware of. Maybe you could tell us some more about that.

Malcolm:

I will. Can I just jump in and make some comments on the topic you just finished discussing first?

Andrew:

Yeah, sure.

Malcolm:

Okay. Warren Entsch, the member for Leichhardt in Northern Queensland, I don’t agree with much of what he says, but he got my respect when he talked about a friend that he grew up with who was a boy and later on changed his gender. He became a woman. What I’m saying with that is, there is a very, very small minority. It’s tiny, tiny, tiny. It’s a minuscule minority of people who have that. When we look at the human being, Andrew, we pop out about this big from our mother. We’re completely helpless. Male and female. We’ve got enormous differences at birth, between male and female.

Malcolm:

Then we go through planes of development every three years, six years, three years, six years, those planes of development and physical as well as mental, emotional, spiritual maturation and then we get to about 90 and we maybe have some adequacy when it comes to maturity. Along that way, there are so many chemical things that happen with a person’s development and some people are born with lesser skills physically. Some people are born with lesser skills mentally. What I’m saying is it’s a very complex transition to go from a process to go from birth to the age of 90 or a hundred. Along that time, many influences. We’re expecting the human being to be perfect and the human being is perfect, but it’s not perfect in the sense that everything physically is fine. Everything chemically is the same. Hormonally is the same. Mentally is the same. Emotionally is the same.

Malcolm:

There are some people who actually genuinely need to change their sex. I get that, so I’m not putting them down. There are other people who are confused through adolescence. There are other people who are confused through adolescence and need support because they’ve got other things going on in their development. The majority of people go through that within a wide range and they’re fine. I agree with you that while we have compassion for the people who are genuinely confused about what their gender is, and while we have compassion for those people who go through adolescence with that confusion and emerge from that, which is the majority of people are fine, we do have to celebrate the fact that men and women are different.

Malcolm:

What the feminist movement has done at times is tried to say we’re equal and that is complete rubbish. What we do, instead of saying, “We need to have women in positions, because it’s only fair, it’s only equal.” No, we need to say, “We need women in positions because they’re different, because they bring a different perspective, a different view.” Then we’re all richer for it. You are not as rich as you and your wife together. Same with my wife and me together. We are far richer in terms of our outlook, our abilities, our perspectives, because we are different. We need to celebrate that difference. We do need to recognise the diversity of humans though, along that sphere. What you’ll find amongst these people in international organisations, to an answer your questions, Andrew, is that they’re not interested in human beings.

Malcolm:

They’re not interested in individuals. What they want is machines that do what they’re told and they’re wanting to corporatize us, they’re wanting to indoctrinate us, they’re wanting to control us, suppress us because we are just cannon fodder to them. These international organisations want to remove individual thinking. They want to remove individual responsibility. They want to remove individual initiative. They want us to be dumbed down and all be the same and just conform and that’s not the way the human is meant to be. God didn’t mean us to be like that. He made us so that we are diverse and compliment each other and we belong with each other.

Malcolm:

These international organisations want to strip us down of our individuality and make us robots, but at the same time, Andrew, what they do is they make us conform and then they put pressure on us to conform and they split us. You either conform or you’re one of the nonconformists and if you’re a nonconformist, then they get stuck into you because they want us all to conform or they put so much peer pressure on parents. They say to parents, “You must affirm your child, otherwise you’re not caring for your child.” Complete rubbish. They want us to abandon our responsibilities and that’s the biggest threat that I see of all of these people. They want us to abandon our responsibilities.

Andrew:

Yeah. Robbie, we know that what’s happened in Victoria, they’ll use this term, the anti conversion therapy whereby there is now power in government to prosecute people who fall foul of government. That is they’re trying to not go along with these attempts to somehow convert a child from one sex to another. Do you think this is contributing to our problems today?

Robbie:

Yeah. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that and it’s a really scary thought. It’s one of those signposts on the road that control from government that you don’t want to see. That to me is a sign post saying you’re going to fall off a cliff shortly. I’d even wind it back to saying that the mental trauma that puts back on parents and the pressure it puts back on parents, it’s hard enough holding a family together under normal circumstances. Now you’ve got a bit of a troubled kid and you are trying to do your bit as a parent to pull them back in line or give them advice that you think will help them through life and here’s yet another signal, even if it doesn’t affect all parents, it’s a signal to them to say you don’t really have control. We’re assuming the rights of some of this critical decision making for your kids. What an absolutely scary thought. If that’s not a red flag for politicians or people to stand up against, I don’t know what is.

Andrew:

Yeah. It does seem to be a totalitarian move, doesn’t it, where the task of raising a child is actually being taken away from the parent and taken over by some third party. You were going to say something there, Malcolm.

Malcolm:

Yes. I just wanted to compliment Robbie because I’d never realised that and this complex situation can be boiled down to really simple, basic things. Robbie just pointed out that these people who are pushing this anti conversion legislation, they’re actually putting a lot of stress on parents and that’s hurting the children again. At a time when the parents are vulnerable, the child is vulnerable, they’re trying to increase the stress on parents by saying to parents, “You shouldn’t get involved or you should affirm.” Everything in the parents’ heart, in their gut is saying, “No, I’ve got to get involved,” and that’s completely wrong.

Andrew:

Absolutely.

Malcolm:

A lot of these international organisations, I’ll name them, United Nations, the World Economic Forum, Green Peace now. Sadly, it started off very, very well in the hands of Patrick Moore, but it was completely hijacked by Maurice Strong for the UN. WWF. These are hideous anti-human organisations, and they’re deliberately putting pressure on people and trying to use peer pressure to try and get parents to shut down. Imagine a parent who wants to get involved, wants to have the compassion and care and doesn’t do so because of peer pressure from these people. At the end, their daughter has bits of her body chopped off as hormonal treatment. What would that parent feel then? What would society pick? The price society pays picking up the pieces from this mess. This is deliberate anti-human practises and it needs to be confronted and I agree with Robbie. These people are putting enormous pressure on parents at a time when they can least handle it. It’s disgusting. It’s inhuman.

Andrew:

Yeah. Robbie, when you…Go on, Robbie.

Robbie:

Sorry. It just triggered another thought. There’s also a heavy dose of contradiction, I think, in the philosophical approach of, let’s say in this case the Victorian Government, the proponents of all this transgender stuff. If you looked at the abortion debate in Queensland, they expanded it to 22 weeks which was a period that you could then start detecting defects in the child. If you could make a presumption then, as Malcolm said before, that kid’s imperfect and I have a niece who has a condition and she’s perfect to me. She’s perfect to her parents, but those people would find that acceptable that you terminated the pregnancy because you see there are imperfections here, but I think there’s a fairly heavy dose of contradiction here where it’s like, no, these imperfections are good. You’ve got to nurture that and celebrate it and quickly, we’ve got a child that’s different here so let’s give them the opportunity to change their sex because we’re celebrating the fact that they’re imperfect. I just think there’s a bit of contradiction in the approaches there of the other side.

Andrew:

Yeah. Yeah. Malcolm. What we find evident here is that doctors used to sign up to the Hippocratic Oath and one part of that says to do the patient no harm. Being fairly blunt with my listeners today, if a 13 year old girl is perfectly healthy and well and decides she wants her breasts removed by a surgeon, is that surgeon ever justified in doing such a thing and isn’t that an uncaring and an unloving and a foolish and utterly unprofessional thing to do?

Malcolm:

Yes, it is. Doctors are no different from parents. Many doctors are parents. Politicians are no different from everyday people in Australia. Many of us want to belong, so we belong to a family, we belong to a sports club, we belong to a workplace, we belong to a political party, we belong to social clubs. Belonging is extremely important and it’s part of our makeup because those who didn’t belong among our ancestors let the tribe down and were booted because you just didn’t have anything. Humans are very vulnerable individually because we are very weak as compared to some of the more aggressive animals on the planet. We have a superior intellect, we have a superior caring system and we have a superior social system and so very important to belong. What I’m saying is that doctors are no different from politicians, no different from the people at large, that there’s so much pressure to belong.

Malcolm:

Doctors will go against their better judgement and just do that operation, but also some doctors just don’t care. We’re entrusting our children to professionals who don’t care enough to make a stand on behalf of the children with gender dysphoria. A child is troubled, gender dysphoria. The child needs a therapeutic approach, psychological therapy, psychotherapy approach, not a knife, not some hormones and adults are too scared to safeguard the children from harm and that’s cowardly behaviour, but there’s so much pressure on parents as Robbie just mentioned. A much more cautious approach would be watchful waiting, getting therapeutic advice and assistance. What we need is doctors who are using the scalpel or the hormones to back off and to really look at what the child needs, because paramount in this is what the child needs and children and adolescents, especially those who are under stress and other mental health issues, that’s not the time to let them loose. That’s the time to give them compassion and care, as Robbie mentioned.

Malcolm:

The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, their gender clinic, in 2012, they had 18 new referrals. In 2021, eight hundred and twenty one new referrals. That’s largely because of peer pressure amongst girls. In 2021, they had 1120 patients. In 2020, the year before, they had 538 so there literally is an explosion of gender dysphoria, or people presenting with that. What we need is the doctors to be educated and the doctors to really be strong and honest and as Robbie said, compassionate. To look after these children with the right therapy, rather than a scalpel and a hormone, because there’s growing evidence of regret amongst people later on. There’s a 2021 transitioner study by, let me just check the name here, Dr Lisa Littman and showed only 24 percent of her 100 sample reported their regret back to the clinic. In other words, there’s an explosion of people later who regret what’s happened and we’re not considering them.

Andrew:

That’s a serious matter and I happened to come across a Jordan Peterson YouTube just last month called, “Arrest them,” and Peterson says, and I quote, “We are sacrificing our children on the alter of far left wing ideologies. This is worthy of a prison sentence. The Hippocratic oath has been replaced with a delusion.” That’s a very serious statement to make, but it does seem as though there has been some kind of an attempt to hijack, even the term, what is therapeutic? Is it therapeutic for a 13 year old girl to have her breasts cut off? How can that be? If we are talking about a woman with breast cancer, I can understand of course, but we don’t go to a healthy well child with a knife simply because the child thinks it might be a good idea today. It’s utterly unprofessional. Robbie, you made your speech quite recently in the Queensland Parliament and there were one or two labour MPs who criticised your speech that day. Do you regret any part of that?

Robbie:

Yeah. I regret not bringing up something because my colleague, Nick Dametto put a question in parliament earlier that morning about why the inquiry on domestic violence hadn’t consulted any of the men’s groups in Queensland and the Attorney-General’s response in question time that same morning was that unfortunately with domestic violence, we have to apply gender lens and was very explicit on that point. That afternoon, we were debating that you can’t refer to gender, that it didn’t exist and I forgot to cover that point. I was disappointed I didn’t. I don’t think anything the opposition said upset me because there was just no substance to it. As usual, every counter argument seems to be emotive.

Robbie:

They use the word hate speech. This is hate, this creates conflict and it’s hate speech and it’s disgusting that we’re even, and they always say, why are we even talking about this, and which is what I was referring to my initial comment is that they try and pretend it’s not relevant and it’s nothing. The challenge is to say it is, it does have implications and beyond that, they’re supposed to put up six speakers for the debate. I think they put up two speakers and the Greens contributions were just ridiculous. Again, all emotive, no substance. I actually think I did a bloody terrible job with my contribution, because I kept looking at the facts that I had to put forward and part of the speech was dedicated to going through the Olympic records in different events between men and women to provide evidence or demonstrate that there’s a built in advantage to the males versus the females.

Robbie:

I started looking at my notes and thought, I can’t even say that. It’s so self-evident, it’s ridiculous that I even have to go through it, but I kept catching myself on all the material parts of the argument. You think, this is all self-evident. I don’t even think that’s being agnostic on the issue of transgender. It’s just going through facts. The entire other side of the argument was almost completely absent of any facts at all. I think the only half reason was Sterling Hinchliffe, Member for Sandgate mentioned something about women’s sport that you thought, okay, that’s sort of a point to make, but the rest of it was purely emotive.

Malcolm:

That’s the same in the Federal Parliament, Robbie. It’s exactly the same. What happens is they can’t resort to a logical argument. They can’t resort to data, so what they resort to is name calling and smearing. When they use that on us, we just turn around and say, “Thank you for confirming my point, because if you had any data, you would’ve presented it. Instead, you’re calling me names, so that just vindicates the fact that you haven’t got any data.”

Robbie:

Yep. Andrew, if I can put some context on what Malcolm just said, put some further context around that. Bearing in mind, the same as State Parliament, the labour government has 220 parliamentary staff operating for them because the LNP gets exactly 10 percent of that, so we know they’ve got 22 staff, so you must assume labor’s got at least 220 staff or more assisting them with their parliamentary debates. We’ve got one staff, three total for KP and so it’ll be similar numbers for Malcolm in Federal Parliament. You think about this, there’s only Malcolm there and maybe one other with you in the Senate trying to back you up on these debates and same with us in Parliament. We only had Steve Andrews from One Nation backing us up so there’s only four of us versus the other 90.

Robbie:

They’ve got all that wealth of resources and all those people working for them. They’ve got an opportunity to make an absolute fool out of us and smash us with data and evidence. That’s their opportunity to put us to the sword and all they could come up with is a few lazy emotive arguments. What does that tell you? There is nothing there. Time and time again, they come up with nothing.

Malcolm:

They just call you names and I just laugh at that because it means they have lost the debate, but Andrew, the significance, not only for children in this issue, it mirrors the significance for parents, the significance for families, the significance for the energy debate, cost of living, climate change, family law, all of these things are being driven by the same people and they have been driven by the same people since the UN was formed in 1944. They are all on an anti-family agenda, an anti-human agenda and an anti-national agenda. They want to smash the national borders. They want to create just a one world global governance, and you don’t have to take my word for that. It’s in their own statements. What they have to do is smash two things, smash national sovereignty, and that’s what they’re trying to do through smashing the borders and putting in place a one world global governance.

Malcolm:

If you look at the things I’ve talked about, COVID, climate change, energy policy, these are echoed around the world. The second thing that they’re trying to do is to smash the family because when you smash the family, people turn to government and they become dependent on government. At the moment, these people who are pushing these agendas, global agendas are pretending they’re doing things to help people, but they’re just making people dependent. What they’re also doing is they’re creating victims and when you have a victim, you have someone who loses responsibility for themselves. That’s exactly what these people want. They want us to be family-less. They want us to be victims. They want us to lack responsibility. That means we lack personal accountability, lack personal authority.

Malcolm:

Victor Frankel said in his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, “You can strip everything from a man in a concentration camp in Holocaust, Germany, except for one thing, the ability to choose his attitude.” That’s what these people are trying to do to intimidate humans and smash us everywhere. They want to smash religion. They want to smash families. They want some smash nation’s states. It’s just hideous what they’re doing. They’re inhuman and they’re anti-human.

Andrew:

Thank you, Malcolm. Thank you, Robbie. Perhaps I could ask Robbie to begin with a concluding statement and Malcolm, you can follow him if you would.

Peter:

Robbie’s muted.

Andrew:

Okay. Perhaps, Malcolm, you’d like to step up to that?

Malcolm:

I’m very, very pro-human and what these people are doing is anti-human. I’m pro-human because humans have a very strong sense of care. Humans have a very strong sense of belonging to the human race. There is only one race and that’s the human race. We have a very, very powerful intellect that’s capable of creative thought and capable of independent thought. These are the reasons why I’m very pro-human. What we have to do is to be very careful about following these agendas. We have to pick them apart and recognise the tactics they use both propaganda and also social tactics, social engineering, to try and divide us and to separate us and make us powerless. Every human being, male and female has enormous power within themselves so long as we hang onto that and that’s what I’m asking people to do.

Malcolm:

The other thing I’m asking people to do is to truly forgive in the sense that Christ and Buddha and many sages throughout history have taught us. True forgiveness, the absence of value judgement . Don’t hate these people, actually truly forgive them because when we forgive, we clear our heart, we clear our mind. That’s a better way for us to think and to respond using our intuition and our common sense, as Robbie said a little while ago. That common sense we’re blessed with, just use it and help our kids and above all love our children, because that’s what they need to get through these challenging times that we all face in adolescence.

Andrew:

That’s true, Malcolm. Thank you. Robbie, do you have any conclusion to make for us this morning?

Robbie:

Yeah, I guess the conclusion from this discussion for me, and it’s probably solidified a bit more in my head as well, and it sort of taps into that sentiment that Malcolm just expressed is that I have strong views on this. I have personal strong views on where I think the morality sits on the list, but even to dial back from that to try and communicate with others and make them aware of where this road can lead us. It’s important to find those touch points and invite people into this space, not trying to jam it into them, because I think there’s a fair bit of resistance. I think there’s a huge enemy. People are disengaging from critical thinking on anything and questioning and challenging, so I think the pathway forward from my perspective is trying to hit those people on the margins that I think they’re intuitive.

Robbie:

They have buy in on this issue in their heart, but they’re not willing to so openly engage and trying to just bring them in softly but it’s also being relentless in doing that as well. You can’t be too passive to the point of being ineffectual. I think the consequences couldn’t be more important to our future as a society but the challenge right now is to make it relevant to people and bring it into their consciousness. I think that’s where the real challenge exists right now.

Andrew:

Sure. Thank you, Malcolm and thank you, Robbie. Did you want to say something else?

Malcolm:

Yes, if I could just add something. If you look at what happened. Rugby union was against transgender males playing sport against female rugby union players. Back in 2020, they ruled that out. It wasn’t taken up. FINA, the world’s swimming body did it just recently as you know, and that larger body did it very professionally. They had three separate experts. They had psychological, health and also athletes and they went right through it and they came away with a somewhat sensible policy and have you’ve seen what’s happened since? Many other organisations have followed them. Once you stand up, as Robbie is, and we are in the Federal Parliament, once you stand up once and then it slowly builds, people say it’s okay to be different. It’s okay to speak out against these people and so then the whole thing starts crumbling, so thank you very much for speaking out in State Parliament, Robbie, and I’m pleased Steve Andrews, I knew would back you. We’ve just got to keep doing this.

Andrew:

Yes. That’s the thing and it doesn’t really matter. I can put my Toyota up on a hoist and take off the wheels and put on Ford wheels and if I spray paint my Toyota badge and put a Ford badge on there, it hasn’t really changed the car, all it’s done is changed some externals. That’s the thing we have to contend with here. You simply can’t change people by changing certain parts of their body. They’re just not made that way. As I said earlier, we are diametrically opposed, males and females, and us men are not the same as women and we will never be like women in many, many things. We’re much better off being content with those differences and actually being thankful for them so we can do the things that we do as men and that women can do the things that women can do successfully.

Andrew:

Thank you once again, gentlemen, for your contributions today, and I trust you engage in further success in your careers on this subject. Thanks again to all those who have been watching us today and we trust you have an enjoyable weekend. Thank you. Bye bye.

Andrew retired from being a GP in 2019, he is married, a parent and a grandparent.

He is a graduate of Queensland University and spent the first two years after graduation as Resident Medical Officer at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane.  Andrew was appointed Medical and Paediatric Registrar at Toowoomba Base hospital and had a small group General Practice in Brisbane for eight years.  He also spent two years in solo practice in Central Queensland mining towns, Moranbah and Dysart, following which he returned to Brisbane where he was appointed Paediatric Registrar at the, then, Royal Children’s and Royal Women’s  hospitals in Brisbane.  Andrew returned to solo practice before retirement in 2019.

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Transcript

Speaker 1:

This is the Malcolm Roberts Show on Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back to Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. Last hour, we spoke with a wonderful, courageous woman who’s standing up for our society. This hour, we’re going to talk to a man, so we’re diverse. We talk to both sexes.

Malcolm Roberts:

So I want to welcome my second guest, Dr. Andrew Orr from Brisbane, Queensland, who actually lives not far from where my wife and I live, between Ipswich and Brisbane. Andrew Orr retired from being a GP in 2019. He’s married. He’s a parent. He’s a grandparent. He’s also a graduate of the University of Queensland and spent the first two years after graduation as resident medical officer at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. Andrew was appointed medical and paediatric registrar at Toowoomba Base Hospital and had a small group general practise in Brisbane for eight years. He spent two years in solo practise in Central Queensland mining towns, Moranbah and Dysart. Oh, that’s another thing we share in common. I’ve lived in Dysart.

Malcolm Roberts:

Following which, he returned to Brisbane where he was appointed paediatric register at, well, as it was known then, the Royal Children’s and Royal Women’s Hospitals in Brisbane. Andrew returned to solo practise before retiring in 2019. He’s a male, yet he understands women. Maybe that’s a good question I could ask him. But he certainly understands biology. Welcome to TNT Radio. Great to have you on, Andrew.

Andrew Orr:

Thanks, Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

Do you understand women?

Andrew Orr:

Do I understand women?

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah.

Andrew Orr:

Well, I guess, yeah, I probably shouldn’t say anything about that publicly, should I? I might be in trouble. Yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

You want to stay married and your wife might not exactly validate your claims, hey?

Andrew Orr:

Exactly.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. Something you appreciate, Andrew, anything at all, what do you appreciate?

Andrew Orr:

What do I appreciate in my life? Goodness me. Well, firstly, I remain aware and grateful. I’ve shared my life with a competent life partner, with whom we’ve had three sons, all of which have done the same, same sort of thing. They have married really top girls. And I’d like to think that my wife, Mary, and I have had a bit of a hand in that outcome because family is everything in life and it’s the basis on which you exhibit and build your own values and hopefully can pass them on.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I complimented our-

Andrew Orr:

It’s a core value thing.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. I complimented our previous guest, Katherine Deves, for standing up for Australian values and human values really, and I want to do the same with you. You’ve approached it in a different way, but you’ve been in quite a battle. So let’s talk about gender dysphoria, Andrew. You’re a retired doctor. You’ve worked as a children’s hospital-based paediatric registrar. What’s gender dysphoria?

Andrew Orr:

Gender dysphoria is a sense of discomfort that an individual is feeling subject to a sense of what’s been called gender incongruity. I suppose the terms used is born in the wrong body, as some people like to explain it. It’s a basis of feeling discomfort. Many individuals have a variable degree of gender expression but may feel no discomfort with it at all, but a small number … Well, I shouldn’t say small. It’s a significant number are suffering with a degree of discomfort that they feel is because of what they call birth assigned … What their gender assigned at birth, what you and I would call your physiological or anatomical sex, doesn’t align with how they feel inside. And a significant number of these individuals are children. And of course, they come to the attention of medical practitioners, both the adults and the children. And we can talk later why I think our approach to minors, children should be different to that how we approach adults. I think adults should be-

Malcolm Roberts:

No, keep going.

Andrew Orr:

Adults should be free, path their own life course. But I think children who are in this position, Malcolm, it’s such a huge issue. It’s hard to know quite just where to start. I think it comes down to really an ideology that’s been called gender identity/fluidity, which it comes straight from the humanity, social science, specifically gender studies within that school of thought. And that has supported the idea of what’s been called queer theory. And of course, that’s given birth to the idea that we should respond to individuals who are suffering like that based on … Well, when you go with this with kids, what do you do with this? And these children who come to the attention of medical practitioners have been, the word that’s used is affirmed of their assertion because the child is deemed the ultimate arbiter of their gender.

Andrew Orr:

So they’re in a situation where they’re subject in many cases to medical intervention, which is the application of medicalization and the administration of puberty blocking hormones and cross-sex hormones, which is a contentious issue. It is contested. It is controversial. The outcome of this as to whether it does within the long term or not, we can talk about that.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay.

Andrew Orr:

So maybe I’ve said enough for the moment. Maybe I’ll respond to the questions.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let’s be clear about a couple of things here to clarify my understanding at least, Andrew. You’re not opposed to people changing their sex if they’re an adult and they’re wanting to do that and they become well informed and that’s something that’s needed.

Malcolm Roberts:

And I gave an example of a person close to my wife and myself in another country, who we love very much, and she was going down the path, she married another lady. They’ve had a baby. She was going down the path to a sex exchange, and that was her choice. She’d been very much a tomboy. I’m not trying to simplify it, but that’s the way she felt for many, many years. There are people like that. They’re very few and far between, but there are people like that. And as she was starting to embark on the hormone treatment to become a male, she pulled back and she had reconsidered.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now some people go continue right through that process and they change their sex and that’s fine by me. You’re not opposed to that. That’s an adult decision. They’ve had many decades in that body and they realise they need to be someone else. I know someone else, a wonderful person who changed from being a male to a female and still a wonderful person. So they’re happy.

Malcolm Roberts:

But what you’re talking about with gender dysphoria, you used the word feeling discomfort. So if you dare question that, then I’m sure you’ve been labelled transgender, transphobic. But what you’re saying is that this is a statement of distress potentially, especially in children because they haven’t had the experience to make that life changing decision, so they shouldn’t be affirmed. They should be listened to, counselled, given good advice based on medical science on just being a human. Is that somewhat on the right mark?

Andrew Orr:

I think so. I think there is evidence, and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I’m an expert in this. All I can do is say to you, in answering your questions, I’ll make reference to other authorities and I’ll answer them because I think they can articulate some of the things that you’re asking about better than put them in words better than I’ll be able to. But I think the medicalization of … Well, there’s been a tsunami, a virtual tsunami of biological girls who’ve appeared all over the world, expressing this gender incongruity. Much has been written about it. Much has been said about it. So I guess that’s what the issue we should be talking about, what to do, how to respond?

Andrew Orr:

Because the evidence is if you intervene prior or if you defer intervening until a child experiences their own puberty, and most of those children will desist from the expression of being incongruent, and they’ll either express as being homosexual, which is a much kinder path to life than as a transgender individual.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. I appreciate the human body. It’s absolutely amazing. Not just as it is right now for me, as anyone is right now for them. But the growth of the human body, we popped out, at some time, we were just a cell then we became larger foetus and then we started our heart beating in mother’s womb and the brain started forming, and we had all of these inputs. Then we enter the real world or outside our mother’s womb and we continue to grow and we go through planes of development that are not understood by most people. And just that sheer … It’s so amazing. It’s so beautiful.

Malcolm Roberts:

Think of a flower, bud, a little bud. It grows from just the end of a stem and then it unfolds. It’s compressed in that little bud. Next thing, it unfolds into an amazing flower, sometimes a huge flower, sometimes a foot or more across, 30 centimetres or more across, but then that’s nothing compared to the evolution of the unfolding, the blossoming of a human, the mental development, the social development, the physical development, the skills, the complexity. It takes 25 years to build a human being, and it takes 95 for some to mature.

Malcolm Roberts:

What you’re really saying is, as I understand it, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. I’m just trying to explore this. Gender dysphoria is this statement of distress about gender, people not really understanding. And I’ve used the words, it’s a distorted reality, and I don’t mean that in an unkind sense. I mean we all have distortions of reality at times. We’re not feeling so well. Those feelings are driven because we’re not feeling comfortable in something. When we start getting worried, we start having these feelings.

Malcolm Roberts:

So it could be, and that’s the evidence that I’ve seen, that a girl or boy, who is entering puberty, is not happy with their birth sex and they emerge. And if we just give them some gentle reassurance and some love, by the time they emerge from adolescence, they’re perfectly happy with their birth sex.

Andrew Orr:

Yeah. Well, it’s part of adolescence, isn’t it, finding yourself of who you are? And I think that we’ve all been … certainly all remembered well.

Andrew Orr:

To give you some idea of the size of the issue, my understanding is the Queensland Children’s Hospital Gender Clinic is the largest now, the largest clinic of all the clinics, outpatient clinics. So the numbers are rapidly expanding. The big clinic, of course, is in Melbourne. And of course, this whole phenomenon is a Western society observed observation. It’s massive in parts of America, in California, England, and we’re experiencing the same thing. And of course, what tends to happen with us is we tend to follow the Americans a bit. And I guess I’ve been concerned about the medicalization issue with children. I think if you look at what happens in America, you’ve got children who are presenting … or first, I should go back a step.

Andrew Orr:

When we go back a few decades ago, children who were expressing gender dysphoria were mainly biological boys, who were often preschoolers even, who were confused about who they were and this went on into adolescence, continued. And there’s another demographic, which is overwhelmed. That’s relatively a small group. And these are biological adolescent girls, who’ve never said a word about it as a preschooler, never said a word about it growing up until they start to enter puberty. And many of us feel that the social media effect has had a big impact in magnifying the whole thing with kids talking together. And I’ve got a bit of an idea about why, and I’ve never heard this mentioned, I’ll just put this to the audience as a thought, this is just a thought that I’ve had, what could explain this phenomenon of mainly 12, 13, 14-year-old girls who’ve suddenly come up with this idea that they’re not girls? They’re something else.

Andrew Orr:

If I put myself in the shoes of, say, a 13-year-old girl and I’ve got my smartphone and out of normal natural human curiosity like most of us, you look at everything you can look at. And these kids come across maybe by accident the dreadful stuff on the internet they’ve all got access to, the hardcore pornographic stuff. I can imagine if I was a 13-year-old girl, I’d look at that and say, “My God. Is that what I’m in for when I’m an adult? I don’t want any part of that.” So the natural reaction might be to run away from that as far as possible. Maybe I’m not a girl. Maybe I’m something else. Maybe I’m a boy. Maybe I’m not a boy. I don’t want to be a boy. The thought of being a lesbian might be acceptable to even contemplate. So maybe they’ll say, “Well, maybe I’m something in between.”

Andrew Orr:

Look, I don’t know, Malcolm. This is just a thought that’s come to me as to try and understand what has been behind this, as I say, tsunami, massive numbers of these kids. There’s an investigative journalist called Abigail Shrier, who has written a book called Irreversible Damage. And she quotes figures like up to 10% of preadolescent girls in schools in California, who are all expressing the same idea. So it’s quite intriguing as to what’s causing this phenomena. Obviously, social media augmented, magnified. Just a thought. That’s all.

Malcolm Roberts:

We know that it happens within groups. When one influential person in the group starts speaking this way, the peers take it on, and it seems to be peer pressure. But as I said a minute ago, we are very complex creatures. It takes 25 years to assemble our body, give or take a few years for variety amongst our species. But then you add the social aspects. You add the environment, the cultural aspects. You add the feelings that come in. And adolescence becomes very, very confusing. You add the physical changes and the things we’re bombarded with, with advertising, with social media, and then the crooked, corrupt, incompetent United Nations trying to break the family, pushing some of these things. We see all of this going on. It’s no wonder people are unhappy or have dysphoria and distress and somewhat distortion of reality.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’ve had distortions of reality. We all do. They’re called being incredibly angry, being overwhelmed, being stressed because of something. We all do that. But what we’ve got now is a group of agencies and even governments pushing kids down the line to have bits of their bodies chopped off, surgically altered, hormones going in there at critical parts of their life and they’re maturing, and these hormones disrupting the natural processes. This is not healthy.

Andrew Orr:

No. Of course, the question is why have medical practitioners become involved in this? The whole thing, as I said, it comes from a social science background. It comes from this gender identity/fluidity ideology. What else can we call it?

Malcolm Roberts:

Ideology, yes.

Andrew Orr:

So it’s just confusing as to why doctors, who’ve had their training, why they would include a small subset of my profession as elected and why would-

Malcolm Roberts:

Why?

Andrew Orr:

Maybe out of compassion. We might argue in this place, compassion to participate. Now that level of participation involves hormonal interventions. In Australia, it’s not possible to obtain surgical reassignment or affirmation surgery, they call it euphemistically, until you’re no longer a minor. But throughout the world in places, girls have had their breasts removed at the age of 13 and that sort of thing, and it would be dreadful to think if that intervention crept into Australian society. The hormonal intervention itself is not without its risks in the long term. It’s associated with unacceptable risk of infertility and loss of sexual function as an adult. So it’s not reversible the way it’s been claimed by some of the activists. So you wonder why there has been this collusion.

Andrew Orr:

And the other group that have puzzled me even more, not so much the ones who’ve been actively colluding and participating out of let’s call it misplaced compassion, but the ones who should know better, the senior ones who said nothing. And you wonder why. You can understand why many young ones who have said nothing, they have the threat of career retribution. That’s always looming large because as you say, you’re immediately branded as transphobic as soon as you’ve come up with an alternative idea. But the truth of the whole thing is irrevocable. I think it was Winston Churchill who gave that great quote about truth saying, irrevocable truth is denied by ideology. It may be denied by alternative conviction. And of course, it may be distorted by malice, but in the end, truth stands, irrevocable.

Andrew Orr:

As Thomas Sowell, the American philosopher, said, it’s like the north. It’s going to be there and the winds will blow and the snow will fall and the sun will be bloody. Everything will collapse. And when it’s all settled, there it is. It’s still north. So truth is something, I think as a medical practitioner, it’s something we always should be striving for. And I think what’s happened, I think … Yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

That compass-

Andrew Orr:

We’ve gone on into this cul-de-sac.

Malcolm Roberts:

That compass in you is strong. I can sense that. So let’s come back and talk about being branded transphobic and maybe explore some of the issues you’ve just raised in a comprehensive introduction to this topic. We’ll go for a break now and then we’ll come back and hear your views on some of those specifics that you have raised with so much care.

Andrew Orr:

Okay.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’re with Dr. Andrew Orr and we’ll be back after the ad break.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back and we’re with Dr. Andrew Orr. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts.

Malcolm Roberts:

So being branded transphobic, whenever I see someone using a label to condemn someone, pigeonhole them, I see an absence of defence, which usually indicates that what they’re pushing is ideologically driven and not fact based. But so many parents are now becoming labelled transphobic when they just want to talk with their kids who are just entering adolescence at a difficult period, and so their parents shut down. Isn’t that abandoning children?

Andrew Orr:

Well, there’s a fair bit of pressure. If you’re familiar with the term anti-conversion therapy, which has come into legislation in various legal jurisdictions in Australia, it started off in Victoria and the ACT announced in Queensland, anti-conversion therapy is deemed anything other than a clinician affirming a child’s assertion. In other words, you go along with what the child is saying because they’re the final arbiter about what their expression, what their opinion is about themselves in terms of gender. So a number of child and adolescent psychiatrists and paediatricians will be feeling a level of disquiet about how vulnerable they might be unless they refer the child to the clinic. The clinics are totally overwhelmed. I might say the numbers are just ridiculous. There are long waiting periods so you’ve got children who are left dangling, waiting for appointments.

Andrew Orr:

But a lot of clinicians are feeling that they can’t really … Well, they’re vulnerable if they don’t follow the party line as it were. So that’s an issue. And of course, that extends beyond just clinicians. That extend to counsellors, psychologists, and even parents are being felt vulnerable unless they act on the child’s assertion. They may well become vulnerable legally, which I can’t think of any other medical condition that’s subject to just one legally obligatory treatment protocol, in this case that of an affirmation model.

Malcolm Roberts:

So can we discuss those terms because I feel very confused about them? Can you tell us what affirmation model is? Can you tell us what anti-conversion therapy is? I think that’s being mandated now in law, isn’t it, in some states in this country?

Andrew Orr:

Yes, it’s in Queensland. Yes.

Malcolm Roberts:

So what’s affirmation model and what’s anti-conversion therapy?

Andrew Orr:

Affirmation model is you’re accepting what the child says unquestioningly because they are the final arbiter.

Malcolm Roberts:

So we affirm what the child feels.

Andrew Orr:

You’re affirming what they’re saying. You’re not trying to dissuade them in any way. And of course, that’s part of counselling when one … I’m not a trained psychological counsellor, but my understanding is what you do when you have a patient in that situation, regardless of the nature of the complaint, you listen and you try and let them talk their way through. You don’t influence them one way or the other. Many, many decades ago, conversion therapy was described as when homosexuality was a crime and homosexuality was totally socially unacceptable. Clinicians would use all sorts of dreadful physical methods to dissuade people out of their homosexual ideas.

Andrew Orr:

Now, that term has been appropriated to apply to a counsellor or a clinician, who is not affirming a child’s assertion. That’s been deemed as likely to be conversion therapy. And of course, there are significant penalties that apply to that, jail terms and there’s significant fines, and of course de-registration. So people who are faced with children like this are going to feel quite vulnerable, unless they either refer the child to the clinic, that’s really their only option. Unless they’ve had … And I’ve had it said to me that Medical Defence Association have indicated there is a level of protection one could gain by following certain guidelines that’s been published. It’s not quite the same as affirmation, but it’s halfway. It’s one foot on each side of the barbed wire fence, if you know what I mean?

Malcolm Roberts:

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Orr:

So I think a lot of people do juggle these kids. And of course, it’s a matter of where all these kids end up. As I said, the clinic is full, and a lot of the clinicians are feeling a bit wary about what they’re going to do. It’s a real predicament. It is a predicament.

Malcolm Roberts:

So my understanding then, if you could just tick me on this or correct me, confirm or correct, affirmation model says whatever the child says is right. And then if we dare counsel our child or counsel, if you’re a doctor counselling someone else’s child, then you’re trying to do anti-conversion.

Andrew Orr:

Yes.

Malcolm Roberts:

And that is deemed illegal in some states already.

Andrew Orr:

Yes.

Malcolm Roberts:

And yet, my basic understanding of medicine has been smashed by what they’ve done with the response to COVID where we don’t get a consultation with a doctor. We get a doctor giving us orders on what they’ve been told they must do. But my understanding of the way I use a doctor is I go to a doctor presenting with some symptoms, some problems, some concerns, some fears. I listen to that doctor. The doctor tries to prescribe something. I then engage in a dialogue to understand better and get the risks and the advantages, and then I make up my mind with the doctor’s guidance. That’s correct?

Andrew Orr:

Yeah, that sounds reasonable. Yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

But we can’t do that when a child presents with gender dysphoria, even though maybe a very confused 12-year-old, entering adolescence, normal confusion. That can’t happen, so the doctor is under enormous pressure to not be seen to be anti-conversion.

Andrew Orr:

Yes. Malcolm, back in 2018, the Federal ALP at the Federal Conference enshrined the principle of affirmation.

Malcolm Roberts:

What?

Andrew Orr:

Yeah, with the change of federal government. I would just suggest to you that predictably, the various state governments may well be encouraged because they would have federal backing on this to more carefully look into what’s happening, and maybe various clinicians might be feeling doubly vulnerable. I’m just predicting what could reasonably be assumed might happen just because of the change of government. That was just one aspect that occurred to me that might make me think that if I was a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I’d be especially doubly feeling more vulnerable than I was six months ago, maybe. Just a thought.

Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts and I’m with a wonderful retired doctor, who’s been very concerned about gender dysphoria and what it’s doing to our children. So, Dr. Orr, where did the therapeutic professions, the psychiatrists and psychologists stand on this issue? They’re the ones who are supposedly counselling these children and families.

Andrew Orr:

Yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

But if you’re the mother or the father, then you can be labelled transphobic, so you don’t get involved. If you’re the doctor, you could be afraid of anti-conversion therapy. So this just seems to be abandoning our children at a time when they most need us. Where do the psychiatrists and psychologists stand on it?

Andrew Orr:

Well, that’s a very good point. And I’ve been canvasing an idea to anyone who’d listen, making the following suggestion. It’s been suggested that the whole idea is controversial, the idea of treatment outcomes, the idea of affirmation treatment. I should add to you that affirmation is adopted to children once they vocalise this dysphoria, their symptoms, significant distress. It’s really once they’ve gone on this period of six months. That’s my understanding from what the clinicians at the gender clinic have told me.

Andrew Orr:

So that’s what’s supposed to be the criteria for affirming or offering affirmation, which can lead to hormonal intervention. The child has to have expressed this thing for a significant … persisting for at least six months, something like that. So it’s not like come in today and we’ll put you on the drugs tomorrow. Obviously, the clinicians at the clinic are compassionate and wanting to do the right thing. I should have made that point clear. I think that’s significant.

Andrew Orr:

So getting back to the child and adolescent psychiatrists as a body, they have a college, and the college has recently expressed an opinion about what their members should do. That policy basically is pretty much you make up your own mind about whether you refer the child to the clinic or not, but whatever you do, just be careful that it’s not likely to be deemed anti-conversion therapy. So you really need to examine carefully what you think the motives are for the child making these assertions.

Andrew Orr:

And because the outcome of all this is not known, we don’t really know the long term. It hasn’t been going long enough to know what the outcome of all this intervention is going to be. So it is controversial and it is contested. I would have thought-

Andrew Orr:

If you took that-

Malcolm Roberts:

So the doctors-

Andrew Orr:

Yeah. The doctors as a body, all the child and adolescent psychiatrists, were they to be canvased in let’s say a secret ballot like a voluntary plebiscite, do you support the idea of obligatory affirmation of a child’s assertion? Do you think that’s a good idea that we should have legislation for that?

Andrew Orr:

And the other point I’d like to put to them as a body would be ask the members of that group, secondly, would you support the deferment of hormonal intervention in minors until they reach a mature age decision about it? And intuitively, I would’ve thought most of them would be on board with thinking, no, we don’t agree. It’s legally obligatory that it should be affirmation. And yes, we would probably as a group, I would think an overwhelming majority would say, “We’d like to see hormonal intervention made legally obligatory that had been deferred until the child is no longer a minor.”

Andrew Orr:

So I think that’s the focus. I think that’s got to be the direction in which the profession goes. And I think if you’ve got that information, then it might go some way to convincing legislators that the whole thing is not as controversial as the activists, the protagonists declare, if they can be convinced that most of the serious clinicians, mainly the psychiatrists feel that way. That may influence legislators to say, “Well, maybe this legislation for anti-conversion therapy should be withdrawn. And maybe we should introduce legislation that makes medical intervention, hormonal intervention, not surgical intervention, hormonal intervention, make that deferred while the child is a minor.” So they’d be the two optimal outcomes one would like to see happen to my mind.

Malcolm Roberts:

So this could be yet another case of someone pushing an ideology, as a few groups pushing an ideology, the doctors being afraid, the parents being afraid. The fact that the media has got this into a stage where it’s now politically incorrect to oppose it, so everyone is afraid of saying anything. Then we have AHPRA, the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency, and the AHPPC, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee. They are putting enormous pressure on doctors. The doctors are now terrified of the media. They’re terrified of being labelled transphobic, just as our parents. They’re afraid of being, what, sent to jail, fines, de-registered.

Andrew Orr:

Yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

And then they see legislation in some states talking about, just saying something to counsel a child to think maybe consider, anti-conversion therapy. So the doctor then, what you’re saying, I think, is that there could be a lot of fear around this and a lot of uncertainty. And what you need is that plebiscite of psychiatrists and psychologists and their views also on deferment of treatment to minors, whether it be hormonal treatment or surgical treatment.

Andrew Orr:

I think that might go some way, Malcolm, to convince legislators because at the moment, all they’re listening to are the activists, and they’ve been quite powerful, and they’ve had the ear of legislators to be able to obtain that legislation. So I think they need to listen. The legislators need to listen to people. That might come up with a reason to change their mind. That’s just a thought. That’s all.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, that makes sense to me because legislators are put up on little pedestals and praised as little tin gods so often around the country. I’m continually asked, “Oh, what’s your view on this?” How the hell would I know? It’s just a new topic to me. What’s your view on that? What’s your view on that? I’m treated as if I’m an expert on everything, and I’m simply not. The difference between me and others is that I’ll admit that, but the legislators are largely ignorant and they’re easy prey to activists who are pushing an agenda through the media, and so legislators respond to the media.

Malcolm Roberts:

So this is just an ideologically driven campaign that is hurting our kids. And ultimately, when our kids go through adolescence, confused and have hormonal treatment, which disrupts, destroys their development or they have bits and pieces cut off their bodies, and then they don’t have a full sex life later on, they have disease coming in later on, they have heartache. Then they’re really in trouble psychologically. We’re leaving these kids out to dry because we haven’t got the courage to say, what the hell is going on?

Andrew Orr:

Yeah. Well, in the United States, and as I said to you, I think as we all have observed, much what happens here, we follow the American themes, don’t we really, in so many different areas. Well, in the United States, what worries me, I’m just thinking in terms of participation of paediatric endocrinologists, across the United States is a network called Planned Parenthood, whose function was basically pregnancy termination services and contraceptive advice and services. But they’ve increased their business model now to dealing with children who are presenting at the clinics sent by counsellors, and these clinics or Planned Parenthood include paediatric endocrinologists, whose function is almost last cab off the rank, to provide the child with the hormones because the psychologists, who sent the child there, aren’t prescribing clinicians. They’re not qualified to do that.

Andrew Orr:

So they’ve got to involve medical practitioners significantly, specifically the endocrinologist, to supply the hormone. So the endocrinologists there supply the hormones, and the child goes, and there’s a complete abrogation of any sense of ongoing clinical responsibility. They’re basically just one little cog in the wheel. That sort of thing as of my reading, if that’s absolutely true and I have no reason to think it’s not true, when you see that sort of thing that it’s progressed to that level in a place like the United States, you wonder if we can expect that behaviour here. I would like to think it wouldn’t be possible, but there you go. You just got to look at what happens over there and think, goodness me, if that would’ve happened here.

Malcolm Roberts:

Can we take an ad break now, Dr. Orr, and be right back with you straight after the ad break and continue this?

Andrew Orr:

Thank you.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. We’ll be right back with Dr. Andrew Orr to continue discussions on gender dysphoria.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and my special guest is Dr. Andrew Orr, and we’re talking about gender dysphoria. TNT Radio, the only thing we mandate is the truth, and that’s what’s so important here, and it’s taken a while to get me to understand this. Pardon my ignorance, Dr. Orr. So we’ve now understood that this is a problem that’s driven by activists, exacerbated by peer pressure at a very sensitive age for kids. It’s out of touch. How could you say it? Medical bureaucrats, who are giving orders. Can we have an idea of just how big this problem is? How prevalent is gender dysphoria in Queensland? How many children are affected and how worried should we be, Andrew?

Andrew Orr:

Well, as I said to you, my understanding is that the clinic at the new Queensland Children’s Hospital is the largest outpatient clinic at the hospital. I understand there’s something of the order of 750 children currently this year. Well, I think it’s doubled over the last year or two, who are enrolled at the clinic, who are seen by the clinicians at the children’s hospital. So their waiting times are significant, so a lot of children who have been referred cannot be seen. And I think the same things happen down in the big clinic in Melbourne, I think. That’s my understanding. So it’s a big problem.

Malcolm Roberts:

750 children at a clinic. What about all the children not at the clinic? That would be a far greater number. So this is almost an epidemic of this.

Andrew Orr:

Yeah, that’s a misunderstanding. I’m not talking about 750 kids with their moms in one room.

Malcolm Roberts:

No.

Andrew Orr:

I’m talking about outpatient clinic to be clear.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. Yeah. No, but if they’re the ones who are getting clinical treatment then they’d be the tip of the iceberg.

Andrew Orr:

Yeah, of course.

Malcolm Roberts:

So we’ve got something that’s out of control and that is really affecting and hurting not just the children who are the key focus here, but also families and therefore communities, parents worried sick and doctors under pressure.

Andrew Orr:

Yeah, absolutely.

Malcolm Roberts:

So from your perspective then, your medical perspective, what’s your take on FINA’s decision to ban transgender participants for elite competition? Should it stop at just the elite sports? I think you’re involved with a rowing club, I won’t mention the club’s name, but which has community ramifications.

Andrew Orr:

Yes. Well, Malcolm, can I just refer to something I’ve dug up, which your listeners might be interested in? This comes from Margaret Somerville, a professor of bioethics at the National School of Medicine at the University of Notre Dame Australia. She was a founding board member of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Ethical Issues Review Panel.

Andrew Orr:

So what I thought I might do is I know you’re going to ask me about that, I had a look at some resource material, and I think let me just read this. “It merits noting that Sport Australia’s guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport, human rights informing principles call for equality but not fairness.” So basically that’s the Sports Australia’s guidelines.

Andrew Orr:

So go back a step. The World Anti-Doping Agency was founded back in November 1999. It lists drugs athletes are prohibited from using, but it also has the term therapeutic use exemption guidelines, TUE guidelines that allow the use of prohibited drugs for necessary medical treatment. In 2017, it produced a document called The Therapeutic Use Exemption Physician Guidelines, transgender athletes, which states, “The exclusive purpose of this medical information is to define the criteria for granting a therapeutic use exemption for the treatment with substances on the prohibited list to transgender athletes. It is not the purpose of this medical information to define the criteria of the eligibility of these athletes to participate in competitive sport, which is entirely left to the different sporting federations and organisations.”

Andrew Orr:

So that’s the important thing. It is left to the different sporting federations. So you’ve seen FINA come out with their opinion. So in short, this World Anti-Doping Authority deals only with what the medical evidence requirements would be for an exemption permission to use cross-sex hormones. It actually ducks the issue of whether trans athletes taking these drugs should be allowed to compete in their transgender category.

Andrew Orr:

The authority was founded to prevent the use of performance enhancing drugs, however, the issue faced in cross-sex hormone treatment for trans women, biological males, is where the performance dis-enhancing drugs to reduce natural testosterone levels should be allowed as an exemption in trans men, biological women. The question is whether performance enhancing testosterone should be allowed.

Andrew Orr:

So it’s acknowledged that these were only recommendations and the decisions about inclusion of transgender athletes was up to the individual sports federations. Now we’ve heard what FINA said with regard to swimming. Rowing Australia I think has made a similar exclusion, except when it comes down to social rowing where they’ve adopted the line suggested by the Sport Australia where you include transgender and gender diverse people. So in that case, they’ve forgotten about fairness and they’ve gone with the work idea of laissez-faire.

Malcolm Roberts:

And so now, all the pressure from the ideologists, the activists is now pushed on to community sporting groups like rowing clubs, like cricket clubs, like football clubs, and they have to make that decision, and they are bombarded by the same woke media, pushing the activist line, the same bombarding by ignorant and gutless politicians. So that’s why we’re going to have to wrap up pretty soon. So I just want you to repeat your solution, and we’ve got about two minutes, if that, your solution is a voluntary plebiscite of psychiatrists and psychologists and de-affirmative treatment to all minors.

Andrew Orr:

Yes. And also de-affirmative treat … That’s right. Well, an abolishment of anti-conversion therapy, which will take away the threat of legislation to clinicians and the legally obligatory de-affirmative hormonal intervention in minors. And I think that’s the goal I would see my profession as pursuing.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you. Where can parents, families, people within our communities, people in the medical health, where can they go for more information? You mentioned that book. Perhaps you could mention that book, the title again, and then mention any sources, any websites that you could steer people to.

Andrew Orr:

Yeah, look, Malcolm. There’s so many, but let me just mention two. There’s a book by Helen Joyce called Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality. That’s a book. It’s Oneworld Publication. It’s just called Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.

Andrew Orr:

The other thing I think that’s worth reading as an interested listener might be, the wonderful Douglas Murray, who you might know, who’s the assistant editor at the London Spectator Magazine, who’s frequently interviewed on YouTube. He’s written a book called The Madness of Crowds, which very interestingly-

Malcolm Roberts:

Oh yes. Yes.

Andrew Orr:

He’s written about the different movements that have occurred through society, the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement. And then lastly, the one, as he says, we least understand is the trans movement. If you got that book, The Madness of Crowds, I just read the last chapter, that is excellent.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. We’re going to have to go, but I’m going to say before we go, thank you so much, Dr. Andrew Orr for what you have done, what you continue to do and for a fabulous discussion today. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, staunchly pro-human and a believer in the inherent goodness in human beings.

Andrew Orr:

Excellent.

Malcolm Roberts:

Please remember to listen to one another and to love one another. Stay very proud of who we are as humans. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you all for listening.

Andrew Orr:

My pleasure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Catch you again in two weeks’ time.

Katherine Deves is a Sydney-based lawyer and mother of three daughters. Over the past few years she became concerned at the erasure of sex in policy and legislation in favour of gender identity, and what this would mean for the rights of women and girls.

In October 2020, Katherine joined forces with women in NZ to cofound Save Women’s Sport Australasia.  Her motivation came from realising that no one in Australia was speaking up for the little girls, teenagers and women whose rights to safe and fair play were impacted by inclusion policies.  If you are wondering what an inclusion policy is – it is a policy that extends eligibility to biological males to compete in the female sports category. Appearances in the Australian and international media as the spokeswoman for Save Women’s Sport raised awareness of this issue and gave her a public platform.

Related: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/the-malcolm-roberts-show-andrew-orr-child-gender-dysphoria/

Transcript

Malcolm Roberts:

This is the Malcolm Roberts Show, on Today’s Newstalk Radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back, and it’s a pleasure to do another show for Today’s Newstalk Radio, tntradio.live. Thank you for having me as your guest, whether it’s in your car, your kitchen, your lounge, your shed, or wherever you are right now, TNT Radio is where the only thing that’s mandated is the truth. There are two themes to every one of my shows. The first is freedom, specifically freedom versus control, the age old battle among individuals, among societies, amongst groups of people, and secondly, personal responsibility and integrity. Both, in my opinion, are fundamental for human progress and people’s livelihoods and safety. And we’ve got two diverse guests today, there’s that word, I’ve hit a politically correct word, diverse. We’ve got two wonderful guests, diverse guests, approaching a very difficult topic, but a topic that is extremely important.

Malcolm Roberts:

Transgender women competing in women’s sport is an international issue of considerable contentious debate. Should it be allowed? Is it safe and fair? What about inclusiveness? We going to discuss this as an issue that’s hurting children in many ways, affecting women and hurting women in many ways, destroying sport, affecting society, and it comes back to the children in particular. But transgender women competing in sport as an issue, came to a head last month when FINA, swimming’s world governing body, voted to bar transgender women from elite female swimming competitions if they have experienced any part of male puberty. And that’s pretty clear, it’s taken them years, but they did it. Fairness and safety have triumphed. The reality that fairness and inclusivity do not always overlap is a harsh reality that we cannot ignore, nor should we shrink from it, especially for the safety of our women and girls.

Malcolm Roberts:

FINAs was not an arbitrary decision that reflects the latest ideological narrative and therefore is subject to change tomorrow, it’s not. This decision was based on three expert committees, one medical, one legal, and one comprising athletes. The medical experts were able to demonstrate without any equivocation that once a male child enters and experiences puberty, the male will forever have physical advantages over women. These structural advantages such as larger lungs and hearts, denser muscles, broader shoulders, longer bones, bigger feet, and hands cannot be changed with hormone suppression. We all know this, don’t we? It’s a fallacy to think that post pubescent males can use hormone suppression to create the equivalency of strength and stamina of a female body. FINA, the world swimming body, has recognised this biological fact in this decision, which received over 70% of support from the 152 voters. But that also raises another question, what was going through the minds of the 30% of the committee members who did not support this vote?

Malcolm Roberts:

But FINAs decision is not new, world rugby barred transgender competitors from international competitions in 2020. So FINAs decision is advancing a momentum. And it is important to understand and reflect on what happened immediately after FINA, there was a rush of other sporting bodies coming out in favour of protecting women and girls from transgender athletes, who became transgender after puberty. Netball and athletics are just two of many other sporting bodies that are now reconsidering their positions on transgender women. I think the national rugby league came out against it, in support of FINA, similar decision to FINAs. Now I agree that every athlete should have the right for inclusion and the right to safety and fairness, FINA has suggested an additional open category to accommodate those who don’t fit the traditional categories. So how and why has this gender fluidity emerged? Who or what are guiding our children through it? And what is the medical profession’s response to this ideological momentum?

Malcolm Roberts:

So my first guest today is Katherine Deves, who I spoke with a year ago about transgender women competing in women’s sports. Katherine Deves is a Sydney based lawyer and mother of three daughters, so she knows a bit about women and girls. Over the past few years, she’s become very concerned at the erasure of sex in policy and legislation, in favour of gender identity and what this would mean for the rights of women and girls. In October, 2020, Katherine joined forces with women in New Zealand, to co-found Save Women’s Sport Australasia. Save Women’s Sport Australasia. Her motivation came from realising that no one in Australia was speaking up for the little girls, the teenagers and the adult women whose rights to safe and fair play were impacted by inclusion policies. Yes, they have rights too, little girls, teenagers and women have rights for safe and fair play.

Malcolm Roberts:

If you’re wondering what an inclusion policy is, it’s a policy that extends eligibility to biological males to compete in the female sports category. Appearances in the Australian and international media, as the spokeswoman for Save Women’s Sport, raised awareness of this issue and gave Katherine a public platform, and we’re forever grateful for that. She used it well. Katherine ran unsuccessfully in the 2022 Australian federal election, as the liberal candidate for the seat of Warringah in New South Wales. Welcome, Katherine. It’s wonderful to chat with you again.

Katherine Deves:

Hello, Malcolm. Thank you so much for having me on the show, and hello to all your listeners.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, we always start with appreciations. Tell us something you appreciate, anything at all, Katherine.

Katherine Deves:

Malcolm, I think it would be the fact that I am an Australian citizen. I’ve travelled the world, I’ve lived in the United States for years, and I am immensely grateful for having been born in this country and being able to raise my daughters here. It’s a country that is prosperous, secure, and we have a functional democracy, so that’s very important to me.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I’m getting goosebumps because that’s the first time that I’ve heard that answer, and I love the answer. That’s wonderful. Why do you appreciate Australia? You’ve you’ve told us about some of the features, but what is it in you that makes you feel so appreciative of our country?

Katherine Deves:

Well, my roots in Australia go all the way back to the first and second fleet. So for someone with European heritage, I’m as Australian as you can be. And I look at democracy and look, of course, it’s not perfect, but when you look at what’s happening in the rest of the world, when you look at say the rights of little girls in many countries, the fact that they can’t even go to school, and we live in a country that is so blessed, we are wealthy, we have universal education, healthcare, it is beautiful country. And by and large, every day when we get up, we’re safe, we’re not having to flee the country like the people of Ukraine. I think we are very, very lucky, and I think that sometimes we really forget how lucky we are when we look at what’s going on in the rest of the world.

Malcolm Roberts:

And that’s why I start with appreciation, because quite often we forget just how fortunate we are. Sure, we’ve got some problems and I’ve been very much disgusted with so much of what’s been happening at state and federal level in the last two years, but the basics are good. We’ve got wonderful people, wonderful resources. But our society is being torn apart in so many ways here in Australia, and what you’re doing is saving our society. So I want to thank you, first of all, Katherine, very much, for what you’ve been doing over the last two years. Thank you.

Katherine Deves:

Thanks Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

The FINA decision last month to bar transgender women from competitive women’s swimming events, was remarkable. It came out of the blue. Can you capture what that landmark decision has meant for supporters of Save Women’s Sport, Katherine?

Katherine Deves:

Well, this is really a watershed moment in this debate. Women and girls have the right to a dedicated female sports category in elite swimming. World rugby made this decision a couple of years ago, however, it simply didn’t get the reach and coverage that this decision has with FINA. And essentially it is saying to men and boys who want to claim a trans identity, that they are ineligible to compete in a female sports category. It’s the first time that, well, aside from rugby, it’s the first time that a major international federation, and this is the first federation after the IOC handed down their guidelines to do with trans and gender inclusion, that have stood up and said, “No, we are acknowledging the importance of biological sex in sport.”

Malcolm Roberts:

So it’s a wonderful decision because it’s really triggered an avalanche of associations, sporting groups, I think globally, as well as in Australia, that have followed. That’s what I can see anyway. And it’s so encouraging to know Katherine, that so many people, despite your best efforts and our efforts in the Senate and our efforts publicly and socially, our efforts have all been for naught, because the avalanche of political correctness just swept everyone away, and people were silent. Once FINA and the rugby union changed two years ago, that didn’t break too much, but once FINA changed, there’s been an avalanche of people now changing and people suddenly realising, oh, it’s okay to say what we really think.

Katherine Deves:

That’s right. So with FINA making this decision, I believe FINA was already consulting for these guidelines, prior to Lia Thomas, who is the male athlete in the United States who competed in the NCAA and became a champion in the female category, even though he is … I mean, you look at him and there is nothing female about him. And I think that that really galvanised a lot of people when they saw how unfair it is. And I think Malcolm, maybe for people, such as yourself, for people like me who have been standing up and saying things, in many countries around the world, there are many women who’ve been doing the same thing. Finally, once people saw it, when they saw Laurel Hubbard and they understood what we were talking about, when they saw those images, when you saw that image of Thomas standing there number one on the podium and the three girls who really should have been first, second, and third, huddling together, away from him, that was such a powerful image, and people then understood what it was that we were arguing about.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, let’s just go to the vote, the 70%, more than 70% vote in favour of restrictions at FINA in its committee, is resounding. What were the powerful messages that came from the critical analysis of the issue by FINAs expert medical, legal and athletic committees?

Katherine Deves:

Well, I think they did an excellent job, they heard the athletes. So what came out of that was that competitive fairness must be paramount and that sex specific categories are necessary to address the inequality between men and women in sport. The biological inequality, the inequality with access to resources and opportunity. With the science, so they had the science panel and they said that neuromuscular, cardiovascular, respiratory function, and anthropometrics, including body size and limb size, I mean, the differences in biological sex, they are imutable, they are observable and no amount of nutrition or training or inherent skill can overcome the performance advantages that men have because of those reasons. So there are biological differences linked to sex, especially at elite levels. It also addressed the issue of testosterone. Now, testosterone is a wonder drug and male foetuses start to accrue the benefits of testosterone in utero.

Katherine Deves:

So six weeks after conception, six weeks after birth, those benefits continue to accrue in childhood, and then they become very much apparent at puberty. So the science panel addressed that issue. And also with respect to legal, the eligibility rule for aquatics is very narrow and it had to reflect FINAs commitment to a sex based women’s category, in order to ensure that there is fair competition for women and girls. And there was a woman who consulted on the legal panel, who is the Honourable Dr. Annabel Bennett, a retired Australian judge. Her credentials are impeccable, she’s a tribunal member of CAS, which is the international tribunal for sport. She’s also been on the tribunal for discrimination, here in New South Wales. And she was the tribunal member for the Caster Semenya decision. So when I understood that she was participating in the FINA guidelines, I felt very confident and reassured that the guidelines would be properly given, everything would be given due consideration, because she’s one of the foremost legal minds on this issue in the world.

Malcolm Roberts:

So we’ve had confirmation from medicos, that women are different from men.

Katherine Deves:

Yes, that’s right.

Malcolm Roberts:

Basically.

Katherine Deves:

Yes.

Malcolm Roberts:

And look how long it’s taken. I mean, Senator Alex Antic asked a question of the secretary, the head of our department of health, in federal parliament. He just asked a simple question, what’s the definition of a woman? And they took it on notice, they couldn’t define that. I mean, this is really basic stuff, isn’t it? We’re getting a long way from having a balanced society. When the chief of the department of health cannot define what a woman is and now it’s taken how many years and how much heartache for the medical profession to actually say that women are different from men.

Katherine Deves:

Oh, that was terribly embarrassing when that health bureaucrat couldn’t even say what a woman is. A flip side, I’d like to say to him, well, what is a man? What’s your definition of a man? I don’t think it would’ve been the convoluted answer that they responded with weeks later, that’s for sure. But one thing that I particularly liked about the FINA consultation process was they asked the female athletes. And when the women athletes are asked in a way where it’s confidential and they don’t have to be concerned about the backlash or losing sponsorship or losing their position on the team, invariably they come back saying, “Yes, we want our own category.” So I think that Cate Campbell stood up in defence of herself and other women. So I would hope that in having started this conversation, other women activists who had done that, it empowered her to be able to stand up and be able to defend herself without feeling afraid.

Malcolm Roberts:

So let’s just branch off for a minute, I’ve got some other questions in the line we have been pursuing, but let’s take a quick diversion. My mother, who was a woman, surprising though it may sound, but she’s long said that the women’s movement had lost its way because … and I agree with her entirely. And I came to that conclusion, the conclusion that we need to celebrate women being different from men, we need to celebrate that they bring a different opinion, they bring different qualities, rather than pretending women and men are equal and the same. We have a much better society when we recognise that we need both, at whether it be at corporate board levels or sporting associations, but there are some things that men can do better than women, and there are many things that women can do better than men. And I’m not just talking about physically, I’m talking about mentally, socially, emotionally,

Malcolm Roberts:

We’re different, and we should be celebrating that and hiring people, not on the basis that women are equal to men or that men are equal to women, but that they’re different because it brings a much better balance to whatever an organisation is, whether it’s a sporting organisation or a cultural organisation or a corporation or a social club. What do you think?

Katherine Deves:

Look, I think there is a bit of a difference just saying, “Oh, we need to have equality.” It needs to be quality of opportunity, equality of access to resources. And you’re right, we do need to acknowledge that there are differences between the sexes. We need to acknowledge that women do bear the burden of human reproduction, and for that reason, our bodies are different, that we do have some limitations. It doesn’t mean that one sex is better or worse, but I agree with you, the sexes are different and what we should be striving for is more equity, that everyone has equality of access to opportunity and resources, rather than trying to be exactly the same.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes, I agree entirely, equity of opportunity, not an imaginary figment of the imagination that we’re the same. It’s complete nonsense. Thank you for being so clear, no wonder you got the result that you got. What about the 30% of the committee that did not vote in favour of the restrictions, were they mainly abstaining or were they against, did they vote against?

Katherine Deves:

I think there were some countries that abstained, but like you, I was quite surprised that it was as high as 30%. It would be interesting to see which of those countries it was. And I mean, I read the guidelines that they did vote on and I thought it was extremely comprehensive, and I think that it’s a real betrayal of women and girls and females who compete in aquatic sports, to have voted against that. Because it really needs to be clear, the eligibility criteria for male and female needs to be clear and that’s simply what the guidelines did.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. But does it worry you that 30% don’t see this?

Katherine Deves:

It does.

Malcolm Roberts:

How could they have not voted in support of this? I mean, the issue is so clear cut, why?

Katherine Deves:

I struggle with that a lot, trying to understand why people would think that the appropriate way forward here is to allow men and boys to claim to be women and to compete in women’s sports. I mean, with the FINA decision, obviously this applies to just simply elite sport, but I also struggle with the fact that it’s just elite and the sports bureaucrats seem to think that it’s fine at community and grassroots level to allow men and boys to compete in the female category. I mean, when you look at … I mean, to be able to get to the elite level, you have to start at community level. So the fact that this doesn’t apply at those local levels as well, perplexes me greatly.

Malcolm Roberts:

And there are other considerations there as well, in terms of dressing sheds, I’m going to be talking with my next guest, next hour, about the rowing, about what’s happening in rowing and males and female, biological males, sorry, and biological females having to share the same hotel room, having to share the same change sheds, dressing sheds, this is just absurd. But let’s take a break now, Katherine, and we’ll listen to our sponsors and then we’ll be back to have more of your insights and your opinions. Thank you very much. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.

Malcolm Roberts:

I was listening earlier, before I started, to Joseph and his guest Mark Wood. Now they had totally different views on Joe Biden. I’m with Joseph on that issue, but Mark had a right to express, have and express a different view, and Joseph welcomed that. So we’ve got the opportunity for the people to say what they really think. So I’m with a wonderful guest today, Katherine Deves, who’s done a remarkable job of standing up where no one else would stand up. Katherine, how important is it that FINA identified that the cutoff point, are males who have been through puberty onwards, would be excluded from competing?

Katherine Deves:

Well, my understanding of the reasoning for that decision is that it’s to do with the accruing of the benefits of a male puberty. So where they put the cutoff point, it was at 12 years old for males, provided they haven’t entered into [inaudible 00:25:03] stage puberty, which is when puberty starts to commence. In my view, it actually doesn’t go far enough, the policy, it really should be you’re excluded on the basis of being born male, observed and recorded at birth. And even FINA research itself demonstrates that boys start outperforming girls at eight years old. And I think any parent who stands on the sidelines of sports in the afternoons or on the weekend, you can see the difference between boys and girls from a very early age. Even my daughter in the under sixes for rugby league, there’s a difference in how they perform.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. And when I was a boy, which is 50 years ago, we didn’t have girls playing rugby league, just wasn’t on. And so it seems a bit strange when they started playing rugby league some years later, but now it’s an everyday occurrence and you don’t think anything of it, it’s just a natural occurrence, but you want some protection against … and let’s face it, we have boys maturing at different rates themselves. And so in some areas, they didn’t have an age limit on boys, they had a size limit on boys. You played, up to a certain age, you played according to the size because some people mature so much more quickly than others. So there is an important need to understand that boys and girls are different, sometimes kids are different, but as you’ve just said, boys will outperform girls in a physically active way, from a very early age.

Katherine Deves:

That’s right. And Dr. Carol Hooven, who’s a lecturer at Harvard, she actually wrote the book on testosterone. And she said that the dose that male neonates get about six weeks after birth, contributes to how boys rough house. So even with respect to how competitive they are, how willing they are to be … when I watch the rugby league under sixes play, the boys are much more interested in tackling, the girls usually hold back. But when we’re talking about like, it doesn’t so much apply to swimming because it’s not a contact or collision sport, but when we’re looking at contact, combat collision sports, this starts to become very important. And we’re only even beginning to understand how concussion affects males and females differently and females experience worse concussions at lower impacts, with worse outcomes.

Katherine Deves:

So it’s very, very important that we acknowledge the sex differences. And in my view, it really should begin younger than 12. I think probably about eight might be the right age to start separating them into the different sexes. And I mean, a lot of sports, particularly team sports, they will have the girls category, and then they have the boys category, which is also open to girls who are able to play at a really high level. But even once they start getting to about 12 or 13, the girls just can’t keep up, and it starts to be a bit of a safety issue as well.

Malcolm Roberts:

Boy, you’re not afraid to tackle the issues, are you, Katherine? Because you’ve just indicated, the way I read it, correct me if I’m wrong, that there’s a difference of an approach between a boy and a girl. The boy will be more physical and more aggressive, is that my understanding? I certainly agree with you if it is, but if it’s not, then correct me please.

Katherine Deves:

Oh, look, I think we have stereotypes for a reason. And I’m not saying that this is for every single boy or every single girl, of course, you’re going to get girls who like to rough house, of course you’re going to get boys who prefer to be gentle and don’t want to involve themselves in collision sports. But I think by and large, there are sex stereotypes for a reason.

Malcolm Roberts:

And we wouldn’t be here today, because our ancestors would’ve been eaten by some sabre tooth tiger or whatever, some years ago, if we didn’t have males doing the protecting. Now, if push comes to shove, don’t get between a woman and her child, that’s wonderful, that protective instinct is there, but the males are the more aggressive and the more physically assertive. And so we need to recognise that, and we need to celebrate that, providing the male doesn’t dominate unfairly because of that.

Katherine Deves:

Oh, that’s right. So, I mean, if you’re going to apply this to sport, if we don’t have sex specific categories, then women don’t have the opportunity to shine. All we have to do is look at the history of sports records and we see how much men outperform women, whether it’s speed, which we get outperformed, I think is 10 to 12%, all the way up to punching power, which is 260%. So if we don’t have sex specific categories, women just simply would not be able to compete.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now there’s been some criticism of FINAs decision and it seems absurd to me, I’ll just put it out there now, but I’d like your opinion of it because FINAs decision would potentially push boys as young as 10 to start considering puberty blockers, and sex hormones, to get in early, before the puberty starts, or they risk never meeting FINAs regulations. In American states like Texas, where it’s outlawed to have this type of medical intervention in young children, it means that FINAs ruling would exclude any transitioners during or after puberty. What do you say to that criticism?

Katherine Deves:

Well, it’s really false to claim that these boys are being excluded, it’s making them ineligible on the basis of their male sex. However, they would be able to compete in the male category or in a mixed category. So there are absolutely opportunities for them to participate in sport. I suspect FINA maybe didn’t think through the decision to cut off at 12 years old, and I can only speculate their reasoning at the time. But I think that we are also being rather naive if we do not acknowledge and accept that there will be bad actors who will try to exploit this loophole. We only have to look at the history with the east German female swimmers, also the Chinese swimmers who were doping, whether they knew that they were being given testosterone or not. And I think that this decision has definitely highlighted the moral and ethical issues around the medical transitioning of children.

Katherine Deves:

It really must be noted that countries like Finland, Sweden, France, the UK are urging extreme caution in transitioning children. There is a lot of evidence coming out now of the harm that’s being done to the bodies of children when you put them on these medicalized pathways. And some of these countries are even saying, we are just simply not offering medicalized pathways anymore, we’ll offer psychological support, like in Finland. So I think they’ve really opened a Pandora’s box with this one.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, it seems to me that the whole thing was conjured up, it’s a concoction, a fabrication to somehow stand between the sexes yet again, because we’ve seen this policy reflected in many other areas, this type of policy reflected in many other areas, and it’s really confusing. Sex is breaking down families, breaking down males and females, that’s the way it strikes me and this push back saying that, “Oh, boys as young as 10 will now start considering puberty blockers and sex hormones to get in early.” That really is clutching at straws for me, they’re really not coming up with a solid argument and so they’re trying to get their way using a nonsense. And I mean, I’m not asking you to agree with me, but the whole thing is basically a nonsense that’s been fabricated, to my way of thinking.

Katherine Deves:

Well, I think if they were going to rely on the accrued benefits of testosterone, and based on the existing evidence, and they had to have a cutoff point from 12 years old. However, now with the emerging evidence, showing that, as I mentioned before, male embryos get doses of testosterone in utero that female embryos do not, then I think it just needs to go back to your sex observed and recorded at birth.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yep. So let’s continue Katherine and thank you for your blunt answers, it’s so refreshing. How viable is FINAs suggestion of an open category, will this be sustained, are there enough competitors, will it hold the same prestige?

Katherine Deves:

Well, my concern has always been for the women and girls and provided that they continue to have a dedicated female or female only sports category, I would not object to any solution proposed to accommodate these men and boys who claim to be women, who want to compete in the female category. If that’s an open category or a specific transgender category, of course I would support that, provided that the women and girls don’t have to give up their own opportunities or give up any of their own resources.

Malcolm Roberts:

So you’re in this battle and that’s what it is, for protecting women and girls, and it’s really up to other people to come along and put their case for what they want.

Katherine Deves:

That’s right. I mean, they’re the ones making the demands and it really should not be put on women to solve this problem. I mean, women’s sports are not at parity with men’s sports as it is, with respect to scholarships, resources, media coverage, pay parity and so on. So we haven’t even achieved equality in this area yet, so I don’t think we should be expected to solve this problem for others. If they’re going to come in making demands, then they should also be bringing solutions. I think an open category, a mixed category, transgender category is more likely the way forward. And I’d also put it to men to be more accommodating of gender nonconforming males, instead of expecting women to make accommodations.

Malcolm Roberts:

So I’m with Katherine Deves, who’s doing a remarkable job of being blunt and concise. So I really appreciate the way you’re answering questions, Katherine. Now let’s extend beyond swimming. Rugby’s already made that decision in 2020, and there are more sporting bodies reconsidering their positions. Do you think FINAs decision will hasten the growing movement to safeguard women’s sport?

Katherine Deves:

Yes, I do. I think there needed to be one prestigious international federation to stand up and protect women and girls sports, and obviously FINA has done that. World rugby did it, as we mentioned before, but maybe because it’s, I don’t know, it’s a small sport, it was two years ago, the landscape has changed a lot. We’re also in the post Lia Thomas, Laurel Hubbard world, so people have had the visual on what it looks like when you have men who are essentially … I mean, Laurel Hubbard was in his 40s, and he had 10 years off weight lifting, I believe, and there he is standing there with the world’s best young women who were teenagers and women in their early 20s. And same with Lia Thomas, when we saw him, he was ranked, I think, around about 500 and then all of a sudden he’s a national champion.

Katherine Deves:

So I think Lia and Laurel both did us all a favour, in giving us [inaudible 00:37:03] around that, but I would really hope that due to the consideration that FINA gave to their guidelines, that this might serve as a template for other sports, and I would really, really like to see that adopted by the national federations here in Australia. Unfortunately, we are still getting quite major pushback. We had Kieren Perkins, who is now the CEO of Sport Australia, who came out saying that these sorts of policies protecting women and girls would end up in human carnage, which I think is very extreme and hyperbolic and incredibly-

Malcolm Roberts:

What did he mean by that? Could you explain what he meant by that, please?

Katherine Deves:

I think it’s to do with if men and boys who are claiming to be women are excluded, I’m not entirely sure that it’s going to result in human carnage. I mean, I would hazard a guess and say, does that mean that these people are going to be suffering depression and anxiety or committing suicide? I’m not entirely sure what was in his contemplation at the time, but I think that that was a very extreme comment to make. I would also say to Mr. Perkins, that had he had to compete against someone who was enjoying a 10 to 12% advantage, say a fellow swimmer who was doping, he certainly wouldn’t have won his gold medals, and he certainly wouldn’t be sitting there as the CEO of Sport Australia because he would’ve likely not enjoyed such professional success.

Katherine Deves:

And we’ve also seen that sports federations here in Australia, who’ve signed up to a group called pride in sport, which is part of ACON, that used to be known as the Aids Council of New South Wales. Now pride in sport receives very generous government funding to go and lobby government departments and sports organisations, with respect to having sports categories based on gender identity instead of sex. So we are rather behind some of the other countries like the UK, in terms of this debate. In the UK, their sports council did a wide ranging review that came out last year, that said that it is impossible to have both fair competition, player safety for women, as well as inclusion of men and boys who claim to be women in their sports categories. Whereas in Australia, our mainstream media and many of our sports federations seem to still be going along with the gender identity being prioritised over sex.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. I’d like to broaden the discussion after the break, but before we go to the break, can you just tell us how listeners can find out more about Save Women’s Sport? Is there a website, are there advocacy roles, do you need volunteers, how organised is it? Can you just tell us where people can go for more information about what you’re doing?

Katherine Deves:

Sure. So with Save Women’s Sports Australasia, we are on all the social media platforms, we also have a website where you can subscribe. Coach Linda Blade has written a book on this issue called, Unsporting, if you really want to educate yourself on this issue. And also if you follow Senator Claire Chandler, she’s very active in this space, she’s doing fundraising, she has her save women’s sports bill in an effort to clarify this issue at the federal level in Australia. So go and look her up, follow her on social media or at her website. So there’s some good places to start.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you very much. And I’ll endorse that Pauline Hanson and I, we don’t worry about someone being in another party. Claire Chandler has done a very good job in this area, full power to her, we support that, we have supported her in the Senate, we’ve spoken up very strongly in the Senate, we will continue to support Claire doing that. So thank you very much for that. We’re with Katherine Deves, having a wonderful conversation. We’ll be back, Katherine, after the ad break. And let’s talk about the avalanche that may be coming now that FINA has broken the dam wall, right across our society. We’ll be right back with Katherine Deves.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back, with Katherine Deves. So Katherine, what we notice and one of the ladies, of course, in our office team … and by the way, we’re 50/50, not because we have any mandate for that, because I don’t believe in mandates, or positive discrimination, we’re 50,/50 male and female in our office because based on merit. But one of the ladies said, “Look at all the people folding in, look at how quickly the news media picked this up.” So this was a bubble waiting to be pricked, wasn’t it? It’s based on nonsense. And so once FINA stood up, the media actually changed very, very quickly.

Katherine Deves:

That’s right. If you’ve been following this debate, the IOC put out guidelines back in November that were frankly, dreadful. They were saying that the categories for sport were to be based on gender identity, they were saying that a male could compete as a female, and under the privacy principles, you couldn’t challenge that, you couldn’t ask about that. And then in an act that, in my view, was incredibly craven, then said, “Oh, we’re going to pump this to all the international federations to sort out.” So everyone’s been waiting for one organisation to be able to stand up and be brave and acknowledge the difference between the biological sexes. So I think that now that that’s happened, it really started a bit of an avalanche because I mean, it’s just absurd, when you are seeing these men who are aged out or mediocre, competing at an elite level and women’s sport really should not be a plan B or a retirement option for these men. We really want to see the elite women.

Katherine Deves:

And I think now that we’re starting to have female athletes, ex Olympians, Sharon Davies over in the UK, she’s been incredibly vocal, we had Dawn Fraser, even standing up, Cate Campbell, a number of athletes here, parents, grandparents, women, and girls who play sports, we were looking for someone with very high profile to stand up and start talking common sense. And I think for those who are being critical of women standing up and saying we want to have our rights here, I mean, during the course of the election, I even had my opponents, Zali Steggall, who herself is a former Olympian, who likely would not have been an Olympian had she had to compete against men, and she referred to the parents who had concerns, as transphobic.

Malcolm Roberts:

I know, it’s disgusting.

Katherine Deves:

I think that when we are seeing the arguments of the other side, that is simply predicated on, well, I just want to be included, I’ve got hurt feelings and so on, I mean, it just doesn’t stand up in the face of say what FINA did, where they’re consulted with the scientists and the lawyers and the female athletes themselves. There’s just a real disparity in the quality of the arguments, and the other side just really falls over when it gets challenged, it just simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Malcolm Roberts:

And yet Katherine, we have the media, we have the activists, we have some politicians, many politicians who promote this Bullshit, pardon my French, who promote this rubbish, and it spreads right across society. And very few people have the courage to stand up and tell the truth and stand up and speak in a common sense way, about facts and data. And you’ve done that, and it’s so refreshing, what you’ve done and what you’ve led. So this is not just a campaign to bring sense back to swimming, to protect girls and women, this is about the values of our society. This is about making sure that people in the remote halls of New York and Geneva and UN buildings, who are trying to smash the family, are actually put back and said, “Get the out of our country. We believe that women and men are different, boys and girls are different. We applaud that, we celebrate that, we welcome everyone, but for goodness sake, just come at us with the facts, instead of your busted ideology, trying to divide our society.”

Malcolm Roberts:

So, Katherine, thank you so much for what you’ve done, because I see it, as I just said, as a matter of your protecting our values and I applaud your courage. What was your motivation to get involved? Why were you standing up for young girls in sport? What were you seeing that made you think that shouldn’t happen? Why did you stand up?

Katherine Deves:

For my daughters, Malcolm, they play sport and no one in any of this was speaking for the little girls. And I was seeing, it’s wide in sport with the transgender inclusion guidelines here, it was all done with great fanfare, lots of resources, people who are being paid nice full time salaries, the top nine sports in Australia had signed up to this. And then going and having a look at the guidelines and seeing that sex wasn’t a category in sport anymore, it was all gender identity and all a man or boy had to do, they don’t need hormones or surgery or anything, they just had to register as a female and say that they were a female.

Katherine Deves:

And I understand you’re speaking to another guest, but that was extending to change rooms, overnight accommodation, the parents weren’t to be told, if we were to send our daughters off on a sports camp, we weren’t to be told that another athlete who was male might be billeted in the same room as them, or the coach or the umpire might be in the same room as them. And I just thought that was a safeguarding failure, and I thought, why is no one challenging this? Why is this all being promoted as brave and stunning and inclusive? But when you’re putting these men and boys in there, you’re making it dangerous for little girls and they are the ones being excluded, and I felt that someone had to simply speak up for them.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, thank you for doing so. And I want to actually compliment you on something else and draw to people’s attention, your argument. Your argument has never been anti transgender. You’ve never slagged anyone who’s changed their sex, you’ve never done that. You’ve never put them down. Because I’m sure you would probably know, just like I know, there are people who are born in the wrong body, but they’re very, very few and far between, and I will support those people, and I’m sure you would too. But this is about fairness, it’s not about slagging off on someone or putting someone down, what you’ve done is very positively and in a very caring way, supported people that are being disadvantaged unfairly because of a monstrous lie in our society.

Katherine Deves:

Look, that’s right. And I mean, bodies play sport, not identities. And so for that reason, that’s why I just used fact based language. Some people might find that confronting or offensive, but I think it’s really important to just acknowledge the biological sex here. And I mean, I have people in my life who identify as trans, people who have gone through the whole surgical process, they understand that they are still the sex that they are born, but they find it easier to move in the world, identifying as the opposite sex, wearing the clothes that are associated with the opposite sex, and I fully respect their experience, but I think there are certain times when we need to just acknowledge biological sex, for very important reasons.

Malcolm Roberts:

My wife and I know of someone overseas, who was seen as a tomboy when she was a little girl and she’s dressed like a boy, she’s played sports like a boy, she’s married to another lady. She then contemplated getting a sex change operation. And as she stepped up to that, I think she might have even started the hormonal treatment, as she stepped up, she thought, no, this is not right. So that was her choice to go that way and then to pull back, and we love her for doing that, for both, that’s her choice. We love her as she is and she doesn’t claim to be a boy or a man, but we just love her as the human she is. And I think that’s what really matters here, and your love for young girls, your love for your own daughters, your love for women, it’s the same as your love for men because you’re doing this to protect men as well.

Katherine Deves:

Well, I just see this, with the gender ideology, it really just reinforces these regressive sex stereotypes. Why can’t we just have gender nonconformity? Why can’t you just have a girl who is going to grow up to be a lesbian, she likes wearing shorts, she likes playing rugby? And you say there is a million different ways to be a girl, there’s a million different ways to be a boy, but just because you’re maybe a boy who likes dresses and plays with trucks, or a girl who plays footy and wants to cut her hair off, it doesn’t mean that you’re the opposite sex. And I think that selling children that lie, we’re doing a great disservice to them. I think we should just be able to accept people for who they are, however they want to dress, whoever they want to love, instead of enforcing these sex stereotypes.

Malcolm Roberts:

Beautiful. What’s the future for this movement, and is there more to do, Katherine?

Katherine Deves:

There definitely is more to do. Unfortunately, the trans activists are very much focusing on erasing sex in law and policy, not just in sport, but in many other areas of our national interest, in education and so on. And I think we need to be very vigilant, I think we need to defend the concept of biological sex. And so yes, there is a lot of work to be done, not just with sports.

Malcolm Roberts:

How can people be more involved? I mean, you could mention your website again and people can maybe become educated by reading the book that you mentioned, Unsporting, the title was Unsporting. How can they be more involved? What are the first steps they should take if they want to protect our society? Because that’s what I see it as doing, you have been protecting our society and you continue to protect our society, and I am very grateful for you doing so. How can more people help you?

Katherine Deves:

Well, what I would suggest is following on social media, some of the groups that are doing the lobbying with respect to this. So that would be Coalition for Biological Reality, Binary also do good work. So if you start following them on social media, you’ll start to see the other groups around the world as well, that are also fighting this issue. I think supporting those who publicly stand up, whether it’s politicians, whether it’s ordinary people like me, supporting them on social media, writing to your local paper, write to the national papers, call into your radio stations, make sure that your voice is heard, get your opinion out there. Make the politicians, decision makers, see that the vast majority of Australians really don’t agree with the erasure of sex in law and policy.

Malcolm Roberts:

There are very few people like Katherine Deves, with her courage and her sense, and a common sense in politics, so take her advice and jump right into the fray. Katherine Deves, thank you so much for protecting our country and our values. Listeners, stay right here, we’ll be back after the news with another great guest, another down to earth view. Thank you so much, Katherine. Thank you to our listeners.

Part 1

Part 2

Alan Moran was the Director of the Deregulation Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs from 1996 until 2014.   He was previously a senior official in Australia’s Productivity Commission and Director of the Commonwealth’s Office of Regulation Review.  He has also played a leading role in the development of energy policy and competition policy review as the Deputy Secretary (Energy) in the Victorian Government.

He was educated in the UK and has a PhD in transport economics from the University of Liverpool and degrees from the University of Salford and the London School of Economics.

Alan has published extensively on regulatory issues, particularly focusing on environmental issues, housing, network industries, and electricity and gas market matters. He has also contributed Australian chapters in a series of books on world electricity markets, edited by Fereidoon Sioshansi.

Alan’s most recent book is “Climate Change: Treaties and Policies in the Trump Era” published in 2017.  He also assembled and contributed to a compendium Climate Change: the Facts published in 2015

Transcript

Part 1

Speaker 1:

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk Radio TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well G’day, it’s Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. Thank you very much for having me as your guest, whether it’s in your lounge room, your kitchen, your shed, your car, or wherever you are right now. Thank you very much for listening. And I remind you before we get into our programme, we’ve got a wonderful programme again today.

Malcolm Roberts:

The two most important themes for all my programmes are freedom, specifically freedom versus control, the eternal human battle. And secondly, personal responsibility and integrity. Both freedom and responsibility and integrity are fundamental for human progress and for people’s livelihoods, and we’re going to be discussing them today.

Malcolm Roberts:

Did you just hear on the news that the Ukrainians have been asked to ignore their need for warmth? Australians are also being asked to ignore our need for warmth. We now face in a country that had the world’s most reliable electricity and the world’s cheapest electricity, we now face blackouts. The new term though sorry is demand management. There are so many politically correct terms being bandied around to hide the mismanagement and destruction of our electricity sector.

Malcolm Roberts:

Before going there, I want to share with everyone that I had two wonderful days in Brisbane in the last week. Thursday evening I met with and spoke at and listened to many doctors and health professionals at the Australian Medical Practitioners Society AMPS, A-M-P-S. The summit on Thursday evening was astounding. We had people from all over the world, literally experts, but we most importantly we had homegrown Aussie experts and they did a phenomenal job. It was an honour to be on the stage with them speaking, because what they want to do is to restore our health practitioners independence. They restore the doctor, patient relationship, restore informed consent, restore fair and objective oversight and accreditation.

Malcolm Roberts:

Then the next day, I had two wonderful meetings in my office, one after the other. Firstly, some of the doctors who spoke and these doctors, their courage is amazing. They’ve given up their jobs rather than get injected under mandates from state bodies. They’ve given up their jobs and some of them have had their jobs and livelihoods and professional careers, decades in the making ripped from their lives because they have dared to tell the truth when it comes to informing their patients about the injections and about the adverse effects.

Malcolm Roberts:

We learned about the adverse effects and there are millions of people threatened. So I had two meetings, one with the doctors and then with Senator Gerard Rennick who continues with us to restore health and restore safety for the people of Australia and restore fairness and good governance for the doctors and the health professionals, including the nurses. Ambulance workers were there. Paramedics were there. And we also had two very, very credentialed medical experts; one a retired doctor and the other, a retired former American doctor who’s been in Australia 30 years working with the TGA and he told us what was going on there. And it’s shocking.

Malcolm Roberts:

So there’ll be more about that in coming months. And then last night, my wife and I went to the AMPS, the Australian Medical Professional Society dance. It was really an opportunity for people to let their hair down and talk. And we had the same doctors there. We had many, many people from the public coming in and just appreciating what those doctors are doing. The courage of these men and women, the stress that they have been under, unfairly, dishonestly, inhumanely, and immorally as they try to protect their patients.

Malcolm Roberts:

I was blessed and honoured Thursday and Friday four times by these people. Thank you so much for what you are doing and we will back you. We will hound the people that have been hounding you. We will get them to stop and leave you alone and let you get on with truthful medicine to protect people’s lives to bring safety to people. There are enormous number of people with long COVID and even more, many, many more with severe, serious injection injuries, adverse effects, and we need to protect these people and we’ll be there helping them.

Malcolm Roberts:

But coming back to the topic of energy today, the primacy of energy at the moment, and I’ll ask my guess today to explain more about this, but there are strikes going on in Britain and parts of Europe because people are without their power or because they’re facing huge increases in energy costs, huge increases. And this is in the so-called third world. And these disastrous conditions, threatening conditions are due to neglect, dishonesty, deceit and our guest will explain that.

Malcolm Roberts:

Before we go on to discussing the primacy of energy, our whole standard of living today depends upon modern energy, reliable energy, affordable energy, stable energy, secure energy, environmentally responsible energy and energy price itself is not only significant for our standard of living, it’s a price multiplier because everything is affected by electricity, our raw materials, our agriculture, our food processing, our transport and our jobs. That’s why we’ve exported our jobs to China.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ll be talking about the benefits to the environment of having affordable, reliable, secure, safe, and environmentally responsible energy. We’ll be talking if we have time about the absurdities that are going on with our so-called modern electricity sector, which is a return to being dependent on nature. Australia has gone from the lowest price electricity to the highest price, despite having the world’s largest gas exports and the second largest coal exports. We have abundant resources. We’re the number one exporters of energy, and yet we can’t keep the lights on at home and people can’t afford to use electricity. Now my guest is Dr. Alan Moran. He was the director of the deregulation unit at the Institute of Public Affairs from 1996 until 2014.

Malcolm Roberts:

He was previously a senior official in Australia’s productivity commission when it was really doing a very, very good job, and director of the Commonwealth’s Office of Regulation Review. He has played a leading role in the development of energy policy and competition policy review as a Deputy Secretary of Energy in the Victorian government, previous Victorian government I’m sure he’ll hasten to add. He was educated in the UK and has a PhD in transport economics from the University of Liverpool and degrees from the University of Salford and the London School of Economics. Alan has published extensively on regulatory issues, particularly focusing on environmental issues, housing, network industries, and electricity and gas market matters.

Malcolm Roberts:

This man knows energy. He knows government. He knows how the bureaucrats work. He has contributed Australian chapters in a series of books on world electricity markets edited by [inaudible 00:08:27]. Dr. Moran’s most recent book is Climate Change: Treaties and Policies in the Trump Era published in 2017. He assembled and contributed to a compendium climate change, the facts published in 2015. This man knows his stuff and he’s got a diverse background. Welcome Alan.

Alan Moran:

Hi Malcolm. Thank you for that intro.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well thank you for coming on TNTradio.live. Let’s start with something you appreciate, mate.

Alan Moran:

That I appreciate.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. Anything at all, just to get the heart and mind synchronised.

Alan Moran:

Well, I think I appreciate living in comfort and being able to turn on the television, being warm, going and playing tennis and having a hot shower afterwards. All of these things are a variation of what we all I think appreciate in the civilised world and what we’ve become accustomed to thinking is just the norm. But of course it wasn’t always the norm and may not be the norm in the future.

Malcolm Roberts:

What do you mean by that, it wasn’t the norm in the past? What would we rely upon for energy before our modern sources?

Alan Moran:

Yeah, well, we probably used per capita at least a hundred times as much energy as we used before, say the 15th century humans per capita. Really energy defines our abilities to enjoy life, our income levels and whatever else. If you think in terms of the development of humanity from out of Africa, et cetera, we basically became somewhat better off when we managed to get forms of energy in terms of harnessing oxen to plough fields, in terms of sales ships to trade, et cetera. And this was, I guess, the first start of rising above just the hunter gatherer stage into something which we would now call civilization. And of course, if we think in terms…

Alan Moran:

If we think in terms of the progression from that early civilization with oxen and sailboats, et cetera, it was quite slow until the 15th or 16th century. The oxens became horses and we bred them better. The sailboats became more sophisticated sailboat, which traversed the world. And all of that contributed to a basic increase in our living standards, not only contributed, without it, we couldn’t have had that increase in the living standards. And this is in the sort of prior to the modern era, which I guess would’ve started maybe in the 19th century and with the ability to harness bigger licks of energy, which meant coal, oil and gas, and allowed us then to move very quickly from harnessing oxen and horses and sailboats into an era where we were using oil and gas and diesel, both to power our homes and light our streets and cook our meals and to traverse the world.

Alan Moran:

A manyfold increase in our productivity resulted from this increased use and the development of energy which we now call fossil fuel energy and has become since then expanded into nuclear energy and hydro energy, but basically the modern forms of energy until we discovered or thought we discovered an ability to go back to wind with windmills and to sun with sun farms and, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later, has partly crippled and may well much more fully cripple our ability to enjoy those quite obvious and universal pleasures that we have as a result of our consumption of energy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, it’s a very important point you make and I want to extend it. You say we released animals from being a burden on animals to produce our energy for us. And we all need to understand that what energy does when we get it from somewhere else other than their own body, what energy does is it leverages our productivity. It enables us to be more productive and therefore have an easier life. And I loved your term there, energy defines our ability to enjoy life. But it also increases our wealth. And many centuries ago, people would harness another man’s energy called slavery. People would harness animals, and now those animals and slaves fortunately have been liberated because we found other forms of energy, which are more moral and cleaner and much, much more effective and much higher productivity. And that’s why coal and oil and natural gas came in, correct?

Alan Moran:

That’s right. Yeah. And many, many times more efficient.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And the other thing, Alan, is that nature is very variable in its production of energy, sources of energy. We used to have sailing ships, but they were unreliable. We used to have windmills, but they were unreliable. And so what the hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas did was they made us independent of nature for our energy. And that’s extremely important, isn’t it? Because it enabled us to end the famines. It enabled us to minimise the impact of droughts, floods, not by changing the climate, but by adapting to it by using energy to make us more productive regardless of the climate. So that is extremely important for our wealth, for our ease of living, for our longevity. And the key point you’ve made is that that remarkable transition has occurred in 170 years, but has been due to hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, correct?

Alan Moran:

That’s right. And of course, without those assets that we now have developed, we would be back to a very primitive living standard and to ability on the vagaries of weather, we would see the sorts of things that mankind throughout most of his history has faced which is famines and droughts and mass near extinctions of people as a result of that weather dependency. The weather is something we talk about, we ramble about, but it was something which was so vital to living before we actually managed to harness it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And let’s talk about the fundamentals of energy so everyone understands it and sees where we’re going with our conversation. Correct me if I’m wrong, the fundamentals of energy are cost or affordability. That enables accessibility for everyone if it’s cheaper energy. The very important thing though is as energy prices decrease, productivity increases because we can spend more on energy. So it’s very important for productivity.

Malcolm Roberts:

And as we increase productivity, we increase prosperity. As we increase prosperity, we increase wealth, not just for a few, but for many because one of the things oil, coal and natural gas have done, have put slaves, mechanical slaves at our disposal for carting us around, for transporting our food, for refrigerating our food, for cooking our food, doing our dishes. So we’ve become much more productive and that’s gone down to ever lower income levels. So cost, affordability. Second one is reliability. Third one is security of supply. And the fourth is stability. And I’d add a fifth one there, and that is environmental responsibility. Any others you can think of and do you have any comments on those? Am I right?

Alan Moran:

No, I think you’re dead right. I think that’s all covers the gamut of energy, of what we mean by energy by its ability to enhance our human happiness and ability to live high standard of living. And indeed the great thing about the increase in energy supply is that it allowed what is sometimes called a trickle down effect, whereas gradually if we think in a modern economy today, there are very rich people, but there’s not very many very poor people. The energy that, or they may be very poor in terms of relative to, but compared to the historical poor, they’re immensely rich. And that’s largely because we have harnessed energy and we’ve technologically developed it and we’ve actually put it through wires to our homes, through pipes to our homes, et cetera, in factories.

Alan Moran:

And we’ve done so in ways that by and large have allowed it to become reliable, to be available when we want it, not when it becomes available. And that’s something which we may talk about later is the difference between energy developed by and controlled by humans, which is the fossil fuels, hydroelectricity and nuclear, and that which is not controlled by humans, but which is determined by nature. And which in the past, we made immense advances in harnessing nature in terms of animal power, in terms of shipping or sail ships, et cetera. But those advances were nothing like the ones that we’ve made in the last couple of centuries in terms of harnessing the fossil fuels and hydro and more recently nuclear.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’re on TNTradio.live. I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts. I’m the host. And I’ve got a wonderful guest on right now, an internationally accomplished economist, Dr. Alan Moran and we’re talking about energy. So we need to go to a break in a couple of minutes, Alan, so could you tell us why hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil, natural gas, what you call fossil fuels, it’s a term I refuse to use, but you can use it. Why are hydrocarbon fuels superior? Isn’t it because of the energy density, they provide high energy density?

Alan Moran:

Yeah, that’s in a nutshell what it means. There’s very low energy density with animal power, with human power, et cetera. And the denser the energy is, that is the more compact it is per the biggest bang per buck if you like it is then the better off we are. Now I’ve got to say the densest energy is nuclear, but nuclear is [inaudible 00:20:24] form of energy, but it’s not, certainly in Australia anyway, it’s not the cheapest form of energy because its density is such that it’s, well, it’s explosive, more explosive than other energy and therefore does require a great deal of sheltering from that to actually operate it. So nuclear, at least for the present is more expensive than other energies, which are less dense than the hydrocarbons and hydropower. But yeah, the energy density defines its cost, its basic cost.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you. And perhaps before we go to the break, I’ll just mention that you’ve raised an important point in that nuclear is even more dense than hydrocarbons coal, oil and natural gas, but it needs elaborate protection, which raises the cost. And fundamental to cost is the amount of resources going into produce the energy. So in a coal fired power station for the unit of energy that it produces, it’s on average $35, sorry, 35 tonnes of steel per unit of electricity produced.

Malcolm Roberts:

Alex Epstein has produced the figures in the states showing that wind, a wind turbine, requires a 546 tonnes of steel for the same amount of energy. Huge increase in resources, not only because it is a larger use of resources in developing wind power, but also much, much less energy comes out. So we’ve got very high cost of energy per unit of energy produced.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’re with Alan Moran and we’ve just established the superiority of hydrocarbon fuels and the benefits that they have blessed on humanity. We’ll have a quick ad break and then we’ll be back to listen to Alan Moran on what is happening to our energy sector.

Malcolm Roberts:

The voice of freedom is TNTradio.live. And we’ve been talking about a topic that I don’t think you’d hear about on the ABC, Alan or on channel 7, 9, 10, a topic that would be banned on many or downplayed or distorted and misrepresented many stations around the world.

Malcolm Roberts:

So let’s move to the replacements for hydrocarbon energy. Why are unreliable intermittents like solar and wind inherently inferior and fundamentally will never work because of their lower energy density and high resource consumption? Can you explain that to people?

Alan Moran:

Yeah. You start with the first base is you say, okay, well, the cost of the fuel inputs for solar and for wind is zero more or less. So basically the air’s free and the sun’s free. So building upon that, many then argue, “Well, this is the fuel of the future. It’s zero cost as an input.” But as you point out with quoting Epstein’s estimates on the amount of raw materials in harnessing that solar and wind, by the time you’ve actually produced it, it’s obviously far more than zero. But there’s been tremendous advances in terms of the ability to produce from wind and solar. It’s much more than halved over the past 20 years. And probably it will reduce a little bit further in the future, but it follows a kind of a trajectory of diminishing improvements in efficiency and it’s difficult to see major additional ones.

Alan Moran:

But if you look in terms of crude for Australia and other countries are slightly different, but for Australia, if you’re producing wind, by the time you put all the costs of capital involved and that’s from the wind generator, it might cost about 60 or $70 per megawatt hour. Solar would probably cost a bit more, about a hundred. But 60 or $70 isn’t that much more expensive than the cheapest form of sustainable power, which is with coal based, would be about the same amount.

Alan Moran:

So many people would draw off that and then say, “Well, this is obviously the future, and there’s no pollution involved” and we might want to talk about what pollution means here. And it’s going to get cheaper in the past. People have been saying that for 30 years since I’ve been involved in it, but the answer is that for some reason or another, it doesn’t quite cut the mustard that we have never come from a situation where these solar and wind resources are able to be produced and installed in any numbers without a subsidy.

Alan Moran:

And there’s a very good reason for that. Although you might be able to get wind at 60 or $70 per megawatt hour, which is fine, you get it A, from the factory, which is unlikely to be located in your backyard and B, you get it when the wind blows, not when you want it. So in order to actually bring that wind to factories, which produce goods to households which want heating and lighting, et cetera, you’ve got to spend a lot more money. And clearly one aspect of it is that, well, you’re only going to get the wind and solar when the suns shining and the winds blowing. So you’ve got to find out ways to, they call it firming that power by utilising other power to supplement it when it’s not available.

Malcolm Roberts:

So what you’re saying then is that with wind and solar, you still have to have other sources of power or storage devices. So that’s additional cost.

Alan Moran:

Right. Yeah. And not only that, but you talked about density before and because this is the less dense form of power, in other words, you think in terms of huge power stations, they pump out electricity and it then goes through the wires to the town and to the factories. This is far more dispersed as power. So there’s a lot more wires required. And I think this is graphically illustrated by the Labour parties policy in Australia, which is to say that they’re going to spend $20 billion of taxpayers money and another 70 billion or 60 billion in terms of private sector money to replace the grid. In other words, they call re-powering the future. So that grid today, the grid of tomorrow, which they envisioned would cost $80 billion. Now you can contrast that with the grid we have at present, which cost only $20 billion.

Alan Moran:

In other words, so you’re not only going to have this firming power, but you’re going to have a lot more poles and wires around the place to ensure it is delivered. And even then, you’re unlikely to ever have enough firming power to actually cope for situations where there are lengthy, what’s known as wind droughts. And these can go for weeks on end where there’s hardly any wind at all. And in that case you very quickly run out of any kind of [inaudible 00:28:56] that would be feasibly constructed batteries or pump hydro or whatever you quickly run out of that.

Alan Moran:

So you never get the degree of security. So it’s got the three strikes against it is A, you’ve got to firm it up. And that $50 very quickly becomes doubled or more, far more. And B, you’ve got to transport it to where people need it and that adds another 30 or 40%. So even before you started thinking about what the implications are for ensuring a hundred percent availability, which is what we have with fossil fuels and nuclear and hydro, you’re into a situation where the energy costs three or four times what it would cost under the previous systems or present systems of coal, oil, gas, et cetera.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s startling. So can you just answer and explain to me please and our listeners, you said that you have to get the power from the power generation at the solar panels or the wind turbines to the industrial areas, to the residential areas. You’d have to do the same with coal and nuclear and hydro. Why is it so much greater for solar and wind?

Alan Moran:

Yeah. If you’ve got a hydro or station, it’s compact. The energy is produced in a compact way. You just send it down a wire. Whereas if it’s from a wind farm, you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of turbines you’ve got to actually link together and push that power into where it’s needed into the households and into the factories where it’s needed. Hence the reason why the consultants who did the report for the Labour party in Australia came to the conclusion that you would need four times the amount of transmission that we need with the present system.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you. That’s a great explanation. And firming is just backup power for wind, solar and wind are unavailable due to nature’s variability. So that’s an additional cost that, excuse me, coal, hydro, and nuclear don’t face. There’s also the matter of stability isn’t there? There, I think it’s called synchronous power. Coal, hydro, and nuclear have synchronous power. They’re very, very stable. Whereas solar and wind are highly unstable because they’re asynchronous.

Alan Moran:

Right. So you have to spend a lot more money in terms of the grid in terms of capacity and various devices along the grid to actually allow the operations of this electricity without installing the whole system. It’s a bit like an air block in a peshel pipe in the car. You’ve got to prevent against that. And that does cost quite a lot of money and is an additional cost which you have to incur through a wind rich system, which is not there with the systems which are mechanical systems, a lot of heavy electricity and they continue churning along. Even if you stop the coal, they continue churn along. Whereas the wind farms, as soon as the wind stops blowing, they virtually stop straight away.

Alan Moran:

So you have this system where you’ve got to discontinuity, an immediate discontinuity, and you have to spend a lot more money in terms of either supplementing that and the modern way I suppose is batteries or adjusting the way it’s transmitted in the system to allow that continuity. Because of course, if you lose a continuity in [inaudible 00:32:51] a blackout and it’s quite a serious event to actually reconnect.

Malcolm Roberts:

Especially in some industries like aluminous melting and the whole thing is ruined.

Alan Moran:

Yes. Yeah. Aluminous melters have worked the way towards allowing cessations of power for some time, usually about an hour before they totally seize up. But aluminous melters could not survive more than an hour or so without constant power.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let’s just summarise quickly the various costs. Hydro, my understanding is hydro’s the cheapest.

Alan Moran:

It is the cheapest, but hydro typically only works for about quarter of the time. It’s not necessarily like that if you’re in a country like Norway, basically it’s a lot of water and not many people. So the hydro is operating for about maybe 80% of the time. But in Australia, even if we hadn’t stopped doing more hydro, hydro would never supply more than about 10% of our electricity.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. I accept the unreliability, except in areas where there’s constant rain and there aren’t many areas like that in Australia. We’ve got high rainfall areas, but they’re not necessarily constant. So places like Quebec in Canada, Norway like you said. So hydro in a pure sense is the cheapest by far, but it’s not always suitable. And in Australia it may not be reliable.

Malcolm Roberts:

The next cheapest, as I understand it, overall is coal. Then the next cheapest is nuclear. And it’s interesting by the way, they now classify hydro as renewable. And it seems to me that’s done to pump up the amount of renewables, give people confidence that they’re coming when they’re not. So hydro, coal, nuclear, and then a long way behind comes solar and wind. Is that correct?

Alan Moran:

Yeah, I think hydro is a special case, at least in any country other than say Norway and some degree in New Zealand as well, which you’ve got immense resources of hydro compared to the population. Hydro is only ever going to be used intermittently, but is controllable. So you’d only use it when for peak periods. Basically, that’s what it’s designed for. But in Australian terms, coal electricity would be 50, say $50 per megawatt hour when you’re going to quantify all this.

Alan Moran:

Gas, well, it depends on what the price of gas is, but when the gas price, before it took off like mad in the last few months, gas would be about $70. Now it would be three or $400. Nuclear is always difficult to place because my reading of it, nuclear would be rather more than that, more like $80, but the price could come down and we might talk about that a little bit later.

Alan Moran:

But yes, solar, firmed solar to the main grid, to the main demand nodes, you’re probably talking about 150 and wind about 120, 130, 140. And that’s before you actually start talking about some of the issues which you mentioned in terms of stability where they do cost a lot more management to actually offset their inherent disadvantages in terms of abilities to supply things which are called reactive power, for example. Inability to do that cost a lot more. So you’re talking again about that kind of hierarchy of costs. Now in terms of the future… Sorry, yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

So just summarising there, Alan. Coal, about $50 per megawatt hour. Gas around about 70 if you take away the current blip, but if we return to gas prices they were several months ago, then $70 per megawatt hour. Nuclear may be around $80 per megawatt hour, many variables. Solar wind, when they’re firmed, then they’re $150 per megawatt hour, which is three times the price of coal. And plus, on top of that, stability factors for managing their instability. What about storage? If we wanted to go to complete solar or even 70% solar and wind, wouldn’t we need to have mammoth storage capacity?

Alan Moran:

Oh yeah. Many more times the Snowy 2 proposal, which of course is a proposal which proposes-

Malcolm Roberts:

We can talk about that. We can talk about that later.

Alan Moran:

Yeah. The amount of stories from batteries… See, it would not even be conceivable to do it through batteries in the present technologies. Batteries can perform quite a useful task in a wind rich and solar rich environment which we have right now, but it’s just basically for seconds, rather than hours. Even the most comprehensive battery system you would conceive of in Australia, which would cost billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, even that would only give you a few hours supply if you were doing without fossil fuels and hydro, well, with some limited hydro and batteries, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but that would only give you a buffer of about a couple of hours. So batteries aren’t a solution in the end for the so-called wind droughts, which can go for days.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right. And solar droughts that can go for days in the same way with heavy cloud cover. So not only is solar and wind three times the price of coal, it is highly unreliable and very insecure and very unstable. So what the hell are we doing?

Alan Moran:

Well, and this is the irony where some of the detractors of coal will say, “Oh, all the coal power stations broke down and that caused a problem.” The irony is that wind breaks down every minute. It sort of varies almost by the minute, certainly by the hour. And solar varies quite considerably during the day as a result of cloud cover and of course [inaudible 00:39:51] varies from possibly a hundred percent capacity factor to zero in the night times. So the reliability issue of the renewables is massively understated in terms of its dangers by its adherents.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, on TNT Radio, we are free to actually tell that truth because the only thing TNT Radio mandates is truth.

Alan Moran:

Right.

Malcolm Roberts:

So let’s go to an ad break. And when we come back, we’ll talk about the term pollution and we’ll talk about the cost so far to Australia and to Australians and families and businesses and jobs and employment of this mad swing to solar and wind. And we’ll talk about how much it will cost to continue to a hundred percent of world energy coming from solar and wind. It’s fundamentally impossible. We know that. But if we were to do it, it would cost a huge amount. So you’re on TNTradio.live with economist, internationally renowned economist, Dr. Alan Moran and this is Senator Malcolm Roberts. Stay right there, come right back in a minute or so and we’ll have more of this amazing economist telling us the truth about energy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts with my guest, Dr. Alan Moran, internationally renowned economist. And we’re talking about energy, something that is really starting to come into people’s hearts and minds and lives and livelihoods these days. Alan, you raised the word pollution. Now in response, I would say two things. First of all, the word pollution comes to mean something like sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides, particulates, toxins that impact life. Now, carbon dioxide is a trace gas essential for all life on this planet. And the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not affect climate. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not affected by humans. So carbon dioxide is in no way a pollutant. We do not control the level of it when we produce it at the levels we do produce, it’s nothing like a threat to us.

Malcolm Roberts:

In fact, the CSIRO’s climate science team when I’ve put them under a scrutiny under cross examination, they have admitted that they have never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and needs to be cut. They’ve never said it, yet politicians tell us it is. Politicians also say that this gas that they’re exhaling is supposed to be a pollutant. So koala bears are polluting our planet according to them. Am I on track with that definition of pollutant? Because the real pollution, the sulphur dioxides and nitrous oxides and particulates and others that used to come out of coal-fired power stations no longer do because they’re scrubbed out. We’re basically pollution free and all we’re producing from a coal-fired power station is water vapour and carbon dioxide, both essential for life on this planet. Am I right?

Alan Moran:

That’s right. We’ve sort of gone into new speak in terms of what is pollution. It used to be, as you say, carbon monoxide or sulphates or whatever, and it’s now shorthand, everybody says, “Oh, highly polluting fossil fuel stations.” Well, the only pollution, and it’s not pollution, of course, is you just said, it’s carbon dioxide emerging from them. And the levels of people saying that this is a dangerous pollution, well, it’s a trace gas, and we’re talking about 300 parts per million that is gone up to more than 400 parts per million, was a lower 300. It’s been-

Malcolm Roberts:

400 parts per million is just 0.04%. It’s 4/100 of 1%. It’s a trace gas because it’s bugger all of it.

Alan Moran:

Yeah. If there was like 10 times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, you might start feeling a bit sleepy occasionally. Certainly that amounts people, some Mariners, for example, have that much carbon dioxide in their atmosphere and ships and appear operate, well, obviously operate successfully. It’s not a poison in that sense, in any conceivable amounts that it would reach or has reached in the past. The higher levels of carbon dioxide are associated with different climates.

Alan Moran:

Now whether the cause and the effects of this is debatable still. But it is argued that if carbon dioxide levels double in the atmosphere, which they may well do in the next a hundred years, that this will increase temperatures by about one degree Celsius and others then go on to argue that want to have a feedback of this through water vapour, then the temperatures could increase by more 2%, 3%, some even say 4% degrees. I’m talking Celsius.

Alan Moran:

All of which is said to be disadvantageous, although if you do the sums on that, you can’t really find any net disadvantage. And a lot of people would prefer to living in warmer climates than in colder climates, most people indeed. It is not a pollutant in that sense. The amount of additional carbon dioxide that could conceivably be put in the atmosphere is limited. And if there is a relationship between that and temperature, it’s a relationship that tails off with each increment until it becomes virtually zero.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I know that professor Ian Plimer, wonderful geologist and award-winning geologist, an Australian who’s worked overseas, worked in many fields, knows his stuff, he said that when carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, many millions of years ago, were five times what they are today. Instead of being 0.04%, they were 0.2%, that life flourished because carbon dioxide is a stimulant for life. It’s a fertiliser for plants and it’s essential for all animal and plant life on this planet. And the other thing, we don’t need to discuss this here because I’d like to move to another topic about carbon dioxide in regard to the environment, humans do not control the level. Some people have said, and I’ve cross-examined the CSIRO, they have never been able to provide me with any effect of carbon dioxide on climate.

Malcolm Roberts:

None at all. Not even temperature. None at all. And there isn’t any. But we’ve had an experiment twice now in recent years following the global financial crisis in 2008. 2009 was a major recession around the world because of the global financial crisis and there was less hydrocarbon fuel, coal, oil, natural gas used in 2009 then in 2008. And carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to increase, even though we had a massive cut in human production of carbon dioxide, which is what the UN wants and our governments want, but it had no impact on the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Malcolm Roberts:

The next experiment was in 2020 when we had an almost depression around the world because of government COVID restrictions and the level of carbon dioxide produced by humans decreased dramatically due to reduced use of hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas. And what happened to the level of carbon dioxide and atmosphere? Continued increasing. So we have no effect on that and that’s what the science shows as well. But there is another aspect and that is recycling. A coal fired power station lasts what, 50 years. A nuclear power station, I don’t know how long that lasts, perhaps you could explain. A dam lasts for many, many decades. Solar and wind installations last for about 10 to 15 years under current technology and then they can’t be recycled. Is that correct?

Alan Moran:

Yeah. More or less. Certainly coal power stations last a minimum 50 years. Some of them last much longer than that. I don’t know how long nuclear lasts because they’ve not been around that long, but certainly 50 years. And as you say, the best you could expect from wind and solar would be 30 years, but more likely far less than that, more likely 20 years. And yeah, there are issues because the raw materials in which their base can’t just be recycled or can’t be added onto, they’re totally different [inaudible 00:50:47] so you got to get rid of them and dump them. And there are a lot of suggestions, well, more than suggestions, there’s a knowledge that they’ve got highly toxic ingredients, which certainly need to be carefully treated to avoid getting into the water supply and polluting the land generally.

Alan Moran:

As you say, there’s no pollution from nuclear or fossil fuel plants or virtually no pollution at all. So yes, there are huge costs of actually eradicating the materials, which are longer used. And actually, unfortunately it is around the world is there are no bonds required of wind farm, solar farms.

Malcolm Roberts:

Good point.

Alan Moran:

Whereas, if you want to open a mine anyway, you’re paying a bond up front for electrification and certainly-

Malcolm Roberts:

So could you explain what that bond is?

Alan Moran:

The bond basically says… The authorities say, well, you built a mine, you built a power station, whatever else. And when it’s finished and whatever it is year’s time, you basically got to rectify the land so that people don’t fall down shafts or people that don’t live on what may be some toxic materials. You post a bond. Basically, it’s a requirement. Sometimes it’s a cash requirement, but it’s always enforceable on the power station or the mine. As far as I know, anywhere in the world, there are no bonds on wind farms or solar farms. There’s certainly none in Australia. And so basically we are coming to a situation where these facilities, many of them are 20 years old now, will be required to be removed and stored and dismantled. And it’s not quite clear how that will be covered-

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s being kind, not quite clear.

Alan Moran:

[inaudible 00:53:00] problem.

Malcolm Roberts:

I was just saying that’s being very kind. It’s not quite clear how they’ll be recovered and reclaimed. They’ve got no idea. And there’s no responsibility. As you said, when a mine owner clears some land, he or she must pay a bond to the government and they get the bond back if they reclaim the land and they’re supposed to reclaim the land. And that’s fair enough. But there’s no such bond for solar and wind, which gives them even more an unfair advantage. So there are many unfair advantages and yet, despite that, despite the fact that the society gives them a crutch, solar and wind now account for 2% of the world’s energy after decades and claims of price reductions. We’ve got 2%. And that’s cost us, I’ve forgotten the figures, but it’s many billions of dollars, Alan.

Alan Moran:

Yeah. Well, we know how much it’s costing us in Australia and Germany. I think we’re talking trillions of dollars there. It’s costing us somewhere north of $10 billion a year, we’re spending every year in terms of the subsidies for wind and solar. And we have more than 2%, it’s more like 15% of supply in Australia. But it’s a colossal cost, which isn’t present in hydrocarbons, which of course, as you pointed out, are not only cheaper as a result, but more reliable.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right. And we are coming to the top of the hour and we’ll be having a break for the news and some advertisements, then we’ll be coming right back. So stay right here because Alan Moran will be back. We’ll continue the talk about energy. We’ll talk about the moral case for hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas and current policies. Because Dr. Moran, to give you an inclination, has done a comprehensive report on the cost of solar and wind. $13 billion a year additional costs. $1,300 for each family on average. $19 billion to the economy. And for every so-called solar and wind job, there are 2.3 jobs in the real economy that have been destroyed and lost.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ll be right back after the news to hear more from this wonderful economist talking the facts and the truth accurately about something that is so important to human life, the primacy of energy.

Part 2

Speaker 1:

This is the Malcolm Roberts Show on today’s news talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I’ve got my guest today, Dr. Alan Moran, an economist who specialises in understanding how governments waste money and what to do about stopping them from wasting money. And he’s a specialist on the cost of energy and the generation and supply of energy and its importance in society. Now, before the break, I mentioned four figures. The cost of subsidies and policies for solar and wind poses an additional $13 billion a year on the Australian economy. That’s the additional cost to our electricity sector, not the cost, the additional cost of solar and wind. That averages out at around $1,300 per household.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, Australia’s median income, perhaps Alan will correct me, but Australia’s median income, I understand, is about $49,000 a year. Half the people in Australia earn more than 49,000. Half earn less than 49,000. After tax, what’s that? Around, say, 39,000, $40,000. $1,300 a year is one hell of an impost to put on people earning less than $49,000 a year. The subsidies on solar and wind are a highly regressive tax. The poor are the ones who pay proportionately more for this government largess. And who benefits? Billionaires, Chinese multinationals, other multinationals, because we’re subsidising them to destroy our power sector with subsidies from solar and wind.

Malcolm Roberts:

Third figure, the additional cost to the economy is $19 billion a year. And I’ll ask Alan to explain these in a minute. And for every wind or solar job supposedly created, there are 2.3 jobs in the real economy lost. Australia has the highest level of subsidies for solar and wind in the world. Everywhere, as solar and wind subsidies increased, the price of electricity has increased dramatically. We have gone from being the lowest priced electricity in the world to the highest price. And in addition, the United States is the second. I think that’s correct, isn’t it, Alan? The United States has the second highest level of subsidies, and they’re half Australia’s levels. So, we are going crazy in this country supporting something that costs three times the cost of a coal fired power station to produce electricity. Solar and wind is three times the price. What the hell is happening, Alan?

Alan Moran:

Well, I mean, you can estimate those numbers a different way, but they’re certainly of that order. The actual costs that I’d estimate, the tax, the direct tax effects of the subsidies, is about $7 billion a year, but that has an effect in boosting the cost of electricity considerably, and perhaps to the level of 19 billion that you mentioned there. But whatever that taxes level was, the $19 billion has being demonstrated now to be a massive underestimate, because that was at a time when it was boosting the price of electricity from, say, it’s underlying value of $60, that’s a ex-generator, to something of the order of $100 ex-generator.

Alan Moran:

Well, since April of this year, well, right now, it’s 300, even though the market seems to have recovered. In other words, it’s three times as much as it was not long ago. And when we were in the crisis and the market was suspended, it was 10 times as much. Now, so, there’s issues about the subsidy as such, which is bad enough. You can figure what that is. But essentially, it’s poisoning the whole of the energy market. And repercussions of that is that the price goes shooting through the roof as a result. And I mean, not only is it hardship for individuals, indeed, it’s almost certain that in the next few months that the average price of electricity to households will double. I mean, it’s just the pure arithmetic.

Malcolm Roberts:

What?

Alan Moran:

They will double. The pure arithmetic is that the generation component is now three or four times what it was at Christmas time. That will have to pass through. There is no other way of doing it. It’s basically, here is the cost to the retailer, essentially, and that cost gets passed on to the consumer. So, they will do. This has already happened in the UK. UK doubled in 1st of June of this year as a result of these same factors. It will increase there again by another 50% in September. So, not only do we have this high cost imposed through the subsidies, which we all pay, but the subsidies are driving out the lowest cost available generation, which in our case is coal, and raising the aggregate price of electricity to astronomical levels, which are a real burden on the household in just of themselves, but then that burden is passed along the lines through it being incorporated in the goods and services we buy as well. So, we-

Malcolm Roberts:

So, let me just understand that. So, what you’re saying is that by themselves, the subsidies for solar and wind dramatically increase the price of electricity. I get that. But there’s an additional factor, and that is that solar and wind destroy the investment in coal. So, coal pulls out, which, because it’s the cheapest form, further raises the price of electricity.

Alan Moran:

Right. Well, I mean, basically, we first saw this in 2017 in Australia, with the loss of two major power stations, one in South Australia and one in Victoria. We saw then the price of electricity ratchet up by double. That’s with the ex-generators, which is a third of the total cost to the household, if you like. But we saw that cost double. And it came down because of COVID when we stopped using as much electricity, but with the recovery from COVID, we’ve now seen the prices escalate through the roof. And the reason is quite simple, because we’ve got subsidised renewables, which operate… The marginal cost of them is zero, more or less. We know that the cost of them is high, but the government subsidise them and sank costs in there. So, they will always make themselves available whenever they’re available at zero cost.

Alan Moran:

And that plays havoc with the economics of coal and gas, to some degree, and certainly uranium as well. And it’s forcing these into unprofitability. And when they’re unprofitable, they close. And when they close, the price shoots up again. And so you have this zigzag ratchet effect of the price of electricity going up and up and up as the poison in the system, which is the renewables, takes out the more efficient fossil fuel or nuclear plants and raises costs. And that’s happened. The nuclear plants, of course, are being taken out in the US and even in France, which has other problems with its nuclear plant, but even in France, and certainly Germany where the Greens are now in control and are closing nuclear as fast as they’re closing coal, in fact, faster than they’re closing coal. So-

Malcolm Roberts:

Germany’s actually opening coal.

Alan Moran:

They’re opening some new coal now, so they’re resurrecting coal. Actually, the irony is we can’t do that because when we closed ours, the state premiers arranged for them to be dynamited, which was just the most-

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, crazy.

Alan Moran:

… criminal action you can imagine.

Malcolm Roberts:

Terrorism.

Alan Moran:

They’ll probably get away with it. But at least in Germany, being Germans, when they closed it on ideological grounds, they left the plant basically available to be resurrected. But yeah, so we’ve got these situations. It’s difficult to see the cost, the aggregate cost. I know there’s a McKinsey’s report came out recently saying, “Well, the cost of going net zero in Europe will be a 5% reduction in everyone’s incomes.” I mean, that seems much smaller than you would imagine given the fact, basically, that energy, as we’ve discussed, is so much a part of our ability to live comfortably and our ability to produce efficiently that if we are abolishing this low cost energy, which we’ve developed painstakingly over the last 100 years and replacing by a superior form of the wind that drove us until the middle of the 19th century, then we basically are going to be losing an awful lot more than that.

Alan Moran:

And we’ve got this malaise throughout the Western world. It’s hard to find a Western country which is bucking the trend. Certainly, President Trump’s America was at the time being, and certainly other countries are bucking it like India, like China, like Russia, like Indonesia. These countries basically pay lip service to the notions that the Western politically correct people require about the importance of renewables, but basically don’t know about it.

Speaker 4:

I’m learning how to choose the right audio apps for you.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, let’s have some idea of what it would cost to go 100% solar and wind. Because can you recall, I can’t recall it, the number of billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars that it has cost to get 2% of the world’s energy onto solar and wind? Do you know that figure?

Alan Moran:

Well, I think there’s a trillion dollar actually being mentioned, but that may have just been Europe. So, it’s probably a bit more than that. And the Germans have higher proportion of wind and solar than we do, a little bit higher anyway now. As you say, we have spent more per capita than anybody else. It’s difficult to know. It’s difficult to disaggregate what the taxes are because there are different local taxes and federal tax. It’s difficult enough in Australia for the work which you’ve cited before, where you’ve got to find out how much state governments are paying, how much federal governments are paying and that some of them aren’t. Obviously, they’re not just from the government budgets, they’re from the regulatory budgets. And the governments make it very difficult to actually estimate those sorts of numbers. Although, I’m sure they’re known internally how much they would be, they don’t publish them. They used to, actually. They used to publish back 15 years ago how much was being spent to assist renewables, but it became less fashionable once the cost became apparent.

Malcolm Roberts:

Oh, that was the other figure from that report too. Governments are telling us that the proportion of our electricity bill that we can attribute to solar and wind is just six and half percent. In fact, government’s own figures, state and federal, show it’s 39% of a power bill. So, we can lop off 40%, basically, off our power bill if we stop these stupid subsidies that are just killing our industry. So, let me tell everyone a story. This is a true story. Pauline Hanson, Senator Pauline Hanson, and I received phone calls from some farmers living in the valley of Neera Creek near Kilcoy, which is not far from Brisbane. And Neera Creek, the water flows into Brisbane River, which flows into Wivenhoe Dam, which is a storage for water that goes to two and a half million people in Southeastern Queensland, including all Brisbane people.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, Neera Creek, we got the call because farmers there were upset that the Chinese appeared to be convincing the state government, the state Labour government, to convert the area into a solar complex. I won’t call it a solar farm because that’s a cute term. That’s why they’ve used it. Solar and wind pushers are using the term “farm.” It’s a solar industrial complex. Neera Valley, Neera Creek, has very good agricultural land, tillable land for crops in the valley floor. On the lower slopes, prime beef country. They wanted to build the biggest solar industrial complex in the Southern hemisphere and possibly the world. There’d be 10 kilometres of a hillside completely covered in solar panels.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, think of the consequences. The farmers there know that in flooding, the solar panels in the lower parts of the valley would be seven metres underwater. We know that there are carcinogens coming off solar panels. I think it’s cadmium and two other toxins, and also lead. So, this water, and then this whole area is under threat from hail storms. And so what would happen is we would have these carcinogens going into Neera Creek, going into the Brisbane River, into Wivenhoe Dam and throughout Southeast Queensland, into drinking water. So, that’s the first impact. The second impact, sterilising wonderful land, increasing the erosion of top soil. The third aspect is that we users of electricity in Queensland would subsidise the Chinese. And I’ve got nothing against the Chinese. They’re savvy business people. We’re the mugs with voting the governments in that we’ve got. We would be subsidising the Chinese to instal these solar panels in Neera Valley.

Malcolm Roberts:

That would then raise the price of electricity in Queensland. That would then shut some manufacturing facilities. It would impact the livelihoods of many Australians. It even has stopped the pumping of water in agricultural land. So in a drought, there were some farmers in Central and Southern Queensland saying that they would not be planting fodder crops because of the price of pumping water due to electricity prices. Then it goes on. We take our coal, which is the best in the world, and we can’t burn it here because of the green policies, but we can export it to China. So it goes over land, then it goes over the sea thousands of kilometres, then over to China, then over land again to a power station in China. The Chinese use coal, and they produce nine times the amount of coal Australia produces. We produce 500 million. The Chinese produce 4.5 billion tonnes of coal a year, nine times what we produce.

Malcolm Roberts:

When they import our coal, they feed it into power stations and they produce coal reportedly at eight cents a kilowatt hour, and that’s what they sell it for. Australia sells it for 25 cents a kilowatt hour. So, the largest cost component of manufacturing used to be labour. It is now electricity because we’re using machines that use electricity instead of humans in manufacturing a lot. So, that means we are destroying our manufacturing sector and that goes to China. So, we dig up our coal and send it to China to make solar panels. We dig up our coal and send it to China to make wind turbines. They ship it back here. We pay them subsidies to do so. Then we pay some Chinese companies and other multinationals subsidies to run this, to destroy our energy sector. This is insane, Alan.

Alan Moran:

Yeah. And we’re seeing the results of this in terms of the closure of many parts of manufacturing, et cetera, and in terms of some of the costs of living which we’re seeing. The interesting thing we’re seeing in Australia at the present time, we had a wages case where the Commonwealth government advocated a 5% increase in wages. Fair enough, because prices have gone up. Well, why have prices gone up 5%? Well, they’ve gone up 5% because of the energy crisis which we’ve created, and that’s only the first instalment, 5%, by the way, which has resulted in these high costs.

Alan Moran:

There’s an interesting comparison of that with Europe, which has got lots of strikes. I think there’s a rail strike in the UK now, but lots of strikes breaking out in the EU and in the UK, because basically they’re facing a situation where the energy crisis has resulted in prices increasing at about 8%, whereas wages have only increased at 2%. Why have wages only increased at 2%? Well, because that’s all that can be afforded in terms of the productivity. The costs, and therefore the productivity of European industry, has dropped about 8% over the past year as a result of this energy crisis. And it will go down even further, as will ours. So, there’s an impasse occurring where politicians, populous politicians, and nothing wrong with politicians, as you know, but-

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I disagree with you. There’s a lot wrong with the bastards.

Alan Moran:

But politicians say, “Well, it’s unfair. It’s unfair that people should be forced to actually have their living standards reduced.” But the fact of the matter is is that living standards depend on productivity. And if your productivity goes down, so do your living standards. It’s just a law of gravity which is not possible to counter in any sense. So, we have a situation where we have purposely reduced the living standards in Australia, and in other developed countries as well, by adopting inefficient forms of energy. As a result of the Ukraine crisis, this has come to a head. It’s not caused by the Ukraine crisis, by the way, but it brought it to a head because it actually highlighted the deficiencies that we have in the economies. It’s brought it to a head and therefore then we can see that we are less well off now.

Alan Moran:

As a result of that, people are unhappy. They don’t understand why we’re less well off. Politicians told them the new world, we’re in this energy transition towards renewable energy away from the old stuff, and it’ll be great for us all. Well, wait a minute. It’s not. We’re losing a lot of dough. We’re losing productivity. If we lose productivity, your wages have to go down. There’s no alternative. So, we are facing this sort of crisis right now. And one of the answers to this is, “Oh, right, well, we’ve got to power ahead with the renewables.” And that’s a refrain we’re seeing in Australia, in the US, and in Europe. Well, this is what’s caused the problem in the first place and yet we’re going to actually double down on this problem. Essentially, the renewables have caused us to lose a lot of productivity by… It’s replaced with high prices. And we’re actually going to do more of those. It’s just crazy. And we are going to see further living standard falls as a result.

Malcolm Roberts:

I love your forthrightness. There’s one other thing that we’ll mention before going to a break, and that is that this is immoral because what’s happening is that in the developed nations, the UN basically is discouraging the use of hydrocarbon fuels. That means people have to keep burning dung, which is a heavy pollutant and a health hazard, or do without electricity, or have very expensive solar and wind, which is basically doing without electricity because they’re so unreliable.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, this is stopping humans in undeveloped countries or third world countries from actually enjoying what we used to enjoy. This is inhuman. It goes against the environment. It is destruction. It is anti-civilization, anti-environment, anti-human, and it’s all fed by deceit. When we come back, we will talk further about these matters with Alan Moran and then get onto some solutions, because this man has got some solutions. So, we’ll be right back. Stay with us. Hear from us again in a minute.

Speaker 1:

Telling the truth is the only mandate we believe in. Today’s news talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts with outstanding, internationally renowned economist Dr. Alan Moran. We’re discussing something very important for human progress, and that is the price of energy. The advertisement we just heard said, “It’s criminal to waste energy.” Alan, I would suggest it’s also criminal to destroy energy, which is what’s going on. The biggest factor in the last 170 years of unparalleled, unprecedented human progress, material, health, longevity of life, ease, comfort, security, safety, the biggest factor driving that dramatic improvement in 170 years, we were scratching around in the dirt, having being subjected to nature’s vagaries, being subjected to famines, and in the last 170 years, we’ve basically become free of that, we have been liberated, we have enormous standard of living improvements, unprecedented, and that was due to the ever decreasing real prices of energy, because that increased productivity, as you so eloquently said, that increased our prosperity, increased wealth, as you said, for everyone. And now we are reversing that with criminal, dishonest, deceitful political policies. Is that correct?

Alan Moran:

Yeah, it is. The politicians, in some respects, are leading this, but in most respects, as often happens in politics, they’re following others. And there is an ideology which is being developed through the institutions and whatever, through education institutions, that coal is bad and wind is good and that wind is cheap. And your very good friend from CSIRO produced a lot of material which purports to prove this. And when you actually ask them then, “Do you now support then the emasculation and prevention of all subsidies for wind?” they sort of hum and haw and look at their feet, in fact. So, they obviously know that’s untrue, but they hope that in future, it might be true.

Alan Moran:

And then there’s a whole lot of people who gain from this because they’re wind farm developers or whatever else, and they want the subsidies as well. And so you’ve got a mass psychosis. If you look at the last election in Australia, you call yourselves the Freedom Parties, but the Freedom Parties probably only got about 12% of the vote. We’re talking about Senate here. The Liberal Party maybe supports half of them, maybe support that, Liberals and Nationals. But you can come to a situation where 70% of people voted for, in some cases, we have this phenomenon of the Teals and the Greens, voted for an intensification of the eradication of fossil fuels, of hydrocarbons.

Alan Moran:

So with the politicians, basically, most of them were just led by the nose. There are very few political leaders in the country, and obviously you’re one, who basically call it out. The rest of them just give back what people want. And we’re seeing then, as a result of that, these very high prices which have come to a head this half year. And people are saying, “Well, that’s only a blip. The prices are going to come down.” Well, they won’t. They’ll come down from the $15,000 a megawatt hour from the $50, $15,000 a megawatt hour until recently. And then they were controlled at 300. But since they’ve become uncontrolled the last day or so, the price has stayed at $200 a megawatt hour.

Alan Moran:

Well, why is that? Well, basically, because we’ve not been investing in power stations because governments haven’t allowed it. They haven’t allowed access to new coal resources for power stations. They certainly have encouraged the attack on fossil fuels, which has come through the environmental, social governance kind of rules within finance capital. They certainly haven’t protected mines from depredations from activists. And essentially what we’ve seen is a slow down and decline and a reduction in the capital base of these very efficient producers of energy with the cataclysmic consequences we’re now seeing.

Malcolm Roberts:

And let’s go back to something you said a minute ago, people who gain from this distortion, this criminal activity. It was reported that Peabody Energy company used to be, and I think it still is, the world’s largest public company producing coal. I mean, the Indian government may produce more. It’s a state owned industry there, horribly inefficient, but it produces more. And other organisations, state owned, may produce more. But Peabody was the largest public company, privately owned, if you like, non-government. When Obama was in power, as the president, the Democratic Party really put a lot of pressure on Obama to talk down coal, to really badmouth coal. And it’s said that George Soros owns the Democratic Party. It’s basically his little puppy. It does what he says.

Malcolm Roberts:

Obama dutifully talked down coal because he said it would be banned. Basically, it would be. And the Department of Energy in the United States came up with the policies to destroy the use of coal. Such was the talk that Peabody Energy company shares went from $1,100 to 15. That’s a 98% drop. Guess who bought significant chunk of Peabody shares? George Soros became a very large shareholder in Peabody Energy company. Why would George Soros do that? This is his standard practise. It’s been reported many times that he drives down through deceit the value of an industry. And he goes in invests heavily and waits for it to come back up again. The international energy agencies, other forecasts, show that there will be dramatic increases in the use of coal in future. China is trying to make massive increases in coal production. It’s already producing nine times what Australia produces. Indonesia, to our north, produces more, sorry, exports more coal than Australia does now. It’s the world’s leading exporter of coal.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, what we’re doing is we’re destroying the crucible of human progress, and we’ve turned parasitic malinvestments in solar and wind into the destroyers of our economy. The cost of electricity is now prohibitive and hurting families, and it’ll go up higher, Dr. Moran says. It’s destroying industry. Alan Moran has already said that. Manufacturing jobs are being exported. De-industrialization means no future for Australia and no industrial security, no defence security. We don’t make our own defence provisions. It’s destroying agriculture. And then on top of that, these dopey politicians are now saying, “We want to transfer our transport fleet of cars and trucks to electricity.” So, that will add even more demand to electricity. And as we go further into solar and wind, it will destroy… So, we’ll get less production of electricity. So, with less production and doubling of demand due to the conversion of our transport fleet, what will that do to prices?

Alan Moran:

Obviously, it’ll increase them more. I mean, you opened up by talking about Obama. And I think when he first got elected, he said something like, “Now is the time when the oceans stop rising, when the wildfires have ceased and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And he also said, “Look, I won’t stop anybody investing in coal, but if you do invest in coal, you’re an idiot because the policies I have in place will kill coal as we move to this brand new world of solar and wind.” And indeed, in the Present Biden government, Granholm, I think, the Energy Minister, is saying the same sort of thing still.

Alan Moran:

So yeah, I don’t know to what degree Soros is the instigator of all this. Certainly, there are many people who would make money out of it. And certainly, that issue of the collapse in price for coal as a result of government statements is true. And one of the things, an interesting figure coming through in the last few days, is just the level of investment in gas and oil over the past four years is now one third of what it was in 2015 when, if you like, the madness came to a head with the Paris Agreement now on allegedly seeking or seeking-

Malcolm Roberts:

True.

Alan Moran:

… reductions in emission levels, and therefore the abolition of coal to some gas and oil. So, all of these things are self-inflicted. Certainly, there’s issues in the developed world. Some of them have been harassed to actually reduce their own emissions through aid, et cetera. Others, who are smarter, and you mentioned Indonesia, India, China, Vietnam, these are just sailing forward, paying lip service to the politically correct people but then building new coal power stations and gas stations and nuclear stations too. So, the smarter heads in the third world are taking advantage of the market opportunities, if you like, caused by the developing world increasing, purposely increasing, its own costs and industries migrating there. China has about 55% of the world’s steel production, coming on for 50% of aluminium, et cetera. All of this is because basically they have adopted sensible power policies in a context when the West has been retreating from those.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And we see the absurdity of now subsidising electric vehicles, again, with a very troubling high use of resources. Electric vehicles are so much more expensive than petrol or diesel powered vehicles, simply because of their extraordinary appetite for natural resources, expensive materials, expensive metals, exotic minerals, earth, rare earths. But we also see the environmental legacy of their batteries. So, we are going in entirely the wrong direction for the environment. We are going entirely in the wrong direction for productivity because we’re feeding parasitic malinvestments. I think that was a term you coined once, Dr. Moran, parasitic malinvestments. And the instigator, I wasn’t accusing George Soros of being the instigator of this rubbish, I lay the blame firmly at the hands of Maurice Strong from the United Nations. He died in 2015, just before the Paris Agreement was signed. But that man caused all of this.

Malcolm Roberts:

He’s the granddaddy of climate change, the false claims on climate. He was the granddaddy of centralising a lot of the bureaucracy based upon UN policies. That’s the man who did it. Soros and other billionaires are just taking advantage of it. And it’s significant again that it’s the people who are paying. The people who are paying with loss of jobs, exported to China, with increased costs for families, increased cost for small business. And who do they pay it to? Because of the wealth transfer, it gets paid to billionaires who are benefiting from subsidies. It gets paid to Chinese and other multinationals who are benefiting from subsidies. So, we’re wrecking our economy, and we’re paying others to do it. And we’ve got billionaires in Australia and overseas who are making money out of this. That is theft. It’s fraud, because they’re presenting something as it is not for personal gain. There is no need to do this, and yet they’re doing it. So, let’s get onto some solutions. Well, before we go onto the solutions, tell us about the national electricity market, please, Alan.

Alan Moran:

Well, it’s a market which is based on trying to incentivize. It was developed about 25 years ago now, and I had something to do with it in its early days. It’s essentially to say, well, why don’t we have a situation where we inject competition? We have lots of different generators. In those days there was no wind or solar, but there were probably 50, no, more than that, 70 generation units there. Why don’t we get these bidding in how much they’re prepared to give, at different price bands, and the market cleared? It’s just the same way as happens in every other market, aluminium markets, or cotton markets, grain markets, et cetera. And it worked very well. It brought a massive reduction in prices. Partly this was also because there was quite a degree of privatisation at that time, not so much in your state of Queensland, but elsewhere around Australia. And that replaced what were essentially union controlled plants with massive overmanning by shareholder controlled plants which sought to reduce costs and increase profitability.

Alan Moran:

So, we had a situation where it worked very well. The lights stayed on. Prices fluctuated quite strongly, as they’re supposed to fluctuate strongly, but then the retailers took out contracts for different licks of power to ensure that they had insurance against this. So, we saw a massive reduction in the cost of generation in Australia, about a 50% reduction as soon as the market came into operation. And shortly afterwards, of course, the madness started, first of all by John Howard, actually, introducing a renewable requirement, which was progressively jacked up by Rudd. And Tony Abbott tried to stop it. The previous government tried to stop it as well or did something to arrest it, but essentially it ploughed its way forward until we now have 15 or 20% of our supply by this exorbitantly subsidised inefficient renewable power which has undermined the national market.

Alan Moran:

So, what happened then when this came to a head, well, this half year is suddenly, nobody had been investing in coal and we’d been disinvesting in coal. There were no incentives to do so, and, in fact, every incentive not to do so. And so once we started getting back to a reasonable degree of normality post-COVID, the price shot up. And indeed, it shot up all over the world. The gas price, because state governments, with the exception of Queensland, haven’t allowed firms to go exploring for gas, so we’re short of gas as well. They’ve put all sorts of impediments into new coal plants, not only especially domestic, but even international coal plant. We had the experience of Adani mining coal in Australia, selling it to India. It took 10 years to actually get approvals and massive increases in costs required of them.

Alan Moran:

So we are, we’re sort of tying our hands behind our backs and trying to walk forward in that way. And the upshot of once a price bubble started rising globally, we were caught in it. We haven’t developed enough gas locally, so the price of gas went up. The irony, one irony amongst many, is the Victorian Energy Minister started demanding that Queensland gas be sent south to Victoria. Whereas, when the Victorians don’t commit to any gas development whatsoever and the Queensland gas is pretty well fully acquitted in terms of contracts for supply. So this is some of the craziness, some of the stupidity we have of the people who have been elected to parliament and are running the place. So, that’s the national market. There’s nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with the concept of it, but it can get poisoned by subsidies on some sorts of fuel which affect others.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, yeah.

Alan Moran:

And people are now looking for ways out of that.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let’s have a debate one day on this, a discussion about the privatisation and about the markets for energy, because I’m a firm believer in competition, it’s excellent, and a firm believer in getting government out, but not where there’s a monopoly. And essentially in water supply, some transport corridors, and some transport facilities like ports, and also some energy sources and energy networks, they can only be one of them. They can’t duplicate them to have real competition. So, that means we’d be giving that to a monopoly. And then we know what happens in monopolies. But your point is, so putting that aside, I’ll just invite you back for a debate one day on that, or a discussion on that, Alan, I know your views are privatisation is good. My belief, and I’m not asking you to comment on this because we need to go to an ad break, and we’ll come back and deal with the solution, so you’ve got some solutions in mind, the national electricity market has been completely destroyed because politics and bureaucrats interfere.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, it’s no longer a market. It’s a racket. It’s a national electricity racket. And what we’ve seen is that government has become the agency for wealth transfer. Citizens of this country have been duped into transferring their wealth through subsidies to millionaires and billionaires in this country. And politicians have become wealth destroyers. Government should be the crucible, create the environment in which people create wealth. What the government’s policies are doing now is increasingly destroying wealth and transferring it to billionaires. So, this is Senator Malcolm Roberts. I’ve got a wonderful guest on with Alan Moran. We’ll be back to hear the solutions from Dr. Moran as to what’s needed to put our energy sector back on track.

Announcer:

This is today’s news talk and the voice of freedom, TNT Radio.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and my guest is Dr. Alan Moran, economist. Alan, what are the solutions? Over to you. I’ve handed you-

Alan Moran:

Well-

Malcolm Roberts:

… a hospital pass here.

Alan Moran:

… thanks very much. The solutions? I’ll tell you what aren’t the solutions first off. I mean, one has been highlighted, one possible solution is that we’ve got to double down on renewables. In fact, we heard this in the Australian newspaper. Rod Sims, who used to be head of the regulator, the ACCC in Australia, a corporate regulator, talking about, “We need a carbon tax.” I mean, basically, either he wasn’t aware that we do have a carbon tax, not a very efficient one, but it’s a tax on coal and gas, which is the corollary and the subsidies we give to the carbon-free wind and solar.

Alan Moran:

So, we have a carbon tax already. I don’t know how much he wanted that tax to be. He didn’t specify it, but certainly there’s some estimates of what a carbon tax would need to be to get to net zero, one from the New Zealand Productivity Commission which was something like of the order of 160, $170 per tonne of CO2, which would be a fivefold increase in the price for electricity. So, that’s one estimate of it. There are other estimates. They’re all around that same sort of level. So, carbon taxes are ridiculous. Basically, it’s pouring oil on the troubled waters.

Alan Moran:

Others have come around. A modern one is talking about, “Well, we need a capacity market.” So, we need a market which gives specific payment to coal and to gas and to water to be available when the sun isn’t shining. So, we give them a top-up in terms of their ability to earn income. Of course, that’s complicated straight away by socialist ministers, like the minister in Victoria saying, “Well, we’re not going to give that to coal or to gas or whatever.” So, it makes it absolutely ridiculous if you don’t give it to coal and gas.

Alan Moran:

But the other thing about a capacity market is another distortion. It is the regulator coming in saying how much capacity is needed, remunerating people that way. And we’ve got capacity markets around the world. UK’s got a capacity market. It hasn’t stopped half the retailers going bankrupt. It hasn’t stopped the price of electricity to the consumer doubling. So, I mean, you don’t need a capacity market. You basically need retailers to ensure that they have supplies available. And that’s the way our present market should operate and has been operating until it became unworkable once we subsidised so many renewables in there. So, that’s a couple of solutions.

Alan Moran:

Another one, oh, a great idea, lets ban exports of gas and of coal and redirect them to the domestic market. Well, that’s like saying to firms, “Well, you went and developed this productive capacity and you got some contracts from China and Japan and India or wherever else. Now we’re going to just stop you selling that and you’re going to have to sell it to the domestic market,” presumably at a cheaper price. Well, that’s a great way to go forward in terms of a sovereign risk placed on any investments and thereby undermining the investments, putting a greater premium on them.

Alan Moran:

So, the simple solutions don’t work like that. The only solution you can do is basically we have to get away from subsidising all power, all power or, in fact, almost everything. We have to get away with saying, “Those subsidies end now. End now.” But that is not going to be a quick fix because the subsidies have taken 15 years of subsidies before they actually undermined the market. And they won’t be wound down, or their detrimental effects won’t be wound down quickly. They will gradually be wound down. Say, if we stop all subsidies, then there will be no more renewables built. Believe me, there will be no renewables built if there are no subsidies.

Alan Moran:

We also have to pair that with certain aspects like forbidding firms to discriminate. We have a situation where banks and insurance companies will not give cover, will not give funding to selective sorts of investments in terms of coal, oil, and gas. And ironically, it reduces availability of investment to financial resources in China, of all places, and India, which makes it more difficult to actually maintain and to develop new capacities. But we have to then warn firms that they must not discriminate against certain sorts of legitimate customers, and we do that generally throughout the economy, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Alan Moran:

We have to ensure that we’ve stopped any planning, reverse planning decisions, which have made it very difficult to actually get stuff off the ground. I mentioned Adani had taken 10 years getting off the ground. Others are taking just as long. The gas developments in Queensland and Northern New South Wales are taking an awful long time. Because we have planning courts, which have been staffed by activists, and they hear advice from other activists who say, “If we develop more coal here, then it’ll add to global pollution of carbon dioxide. So, you’ve got to stop it,” and all that. That eventually gets quashed, but it all takes a long time to work its way through the courts. So, we have to stop doing that. We need political leadership above all. We need men and women who understand the politics, who understand the economics of this to start coming forward and saying, “This is just crazy. This is just crazy. We can’t do this. This is being caused by these actions. We’ve got to stop doing it.” And we need to actually reduce any other legislative barriers. We’ve mentioned nuclear.

Alan Moran:

I mean, I’m not sure how remunerative nuclear would be in Australia. Probably not very much at the moment. But we certainly ought to stop people from preventing nuclear developments. It’s just about the safest source of power. It’s been demonised by various adverse effects in Ukraine and difficulties that it sometimes does. But if you look at numbers of fatalities per units of energy, it’s massively less than coal, even, certainly less than hydroelectricity, all of which have faced disasters from time to time. So, these are the measures we’ve got to do to get back on track. We’ve got to actually get rid of all the regulations and encourage the most cheapest form and most reliable forms of electricity rather than discourage them.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, that’s a very comprehensive list. So, let me just go through them. What you’re basically saying is to start telling the truth, politicians start telling the truth. Stop policies that are pushing towards UN 2050 net zero, and put policies in place for our Australian nation. Stop subsidising solar and wind. Stop market distortions, and, for example, capacity markets. Stop the bureaucratic interference that has destroyed the national electricity market. Stop subsidising solar and wind. Stop subsidising electric vehicles. Ban discrimination of finance on political grounds. Reverse planning decisions that are impeding projects. What you’re really saying is get government the hell out of industry, decrease legislative burden, and remove regulations, restore our sovereignty, economic sovereignty, and find political leadership.

Malcolm Roberts:

And, Dr. Moran, that’s a wonderful list. I was very keen. I am sincere in saying, let’s have you back for a debate on privatisation, and I can see the benefits. But I would like to thank you very much for coming on today, being so frank and forthright, sharing your knowledge, sharing your experience with government. You know the evils of government. You know the need for some sensible regulation. We’ve got about 20 seconds. Is there anything you would like to say in terms of how people can contact you, or your books?

Alan Moran:

Well, my website is Regulation Economics. I’ve got a lot of material on there on-

Malcolm Roberts:

Regulationeconomics.com. Is it regulationeconomics.-

Alan Moran:

.com, yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you very much, Alan.

I joined Chris for another episode of the independent, unfiltered Primodcast for a thrilling conversation on all the things mainstream media won’t cover.

Click here to listen on your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

Chris Spicer:

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Speaker 2:

Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, podcasting, podcasting from Sydney, Australia, this is The Prime Modcast. Independent, unfiltered, and uncensored, beginning in three, three, two, two, one, one.

Speaker 3:

This meeting is being recorded.

Chris Spicer:

Nice. Got it. Senator Malcolm Roberts, thank you for joining me again. Third time.

Malcolm Roberts:

Third time. Third time lucky, eh?

Chris Spicer:

Yeah, you’re-

Malcolm Roberts:

No, you’re welcome. Always a pleasure, Chris. I enjoy talking with you.

Chris Spicer:

Mate, it’s great. It’s always good and very enlightening. And, mate, I get terrific feedback every time. So, you’re practically a co-host at this point, with three times.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah.

Chris Spicer:

What’s been happening, mate?

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, we’ve seen the people have made their decision in the election last week. A lot of people are very disappointed by it, but that’s the way democracy works. Suck it up and just live with it because they’ve made their decision. Some interesting facts, though, Chris, as you probably realise, I think this is the first time we’ve had a government that’s been elected with less than a third of the people voting for it. So, more than two thirds of the people did not vote for the Labor Party. I think this is the first time, certainly first time in a long time, that… I’m sure it must be the first time, but I can’t say that for sure because I haven’t checked, but it must be the first time ever that both the old tired old parties, Liberal Party, Labor Party, have got less than 32%, less than a third of the vote. So, oh, hang on, the Liberals might be just above a third.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, what we’ve seen, a very positive sign, is we’ve seen an enormous swing away from the Liberal, Labor, Nationals club. And that’s the duopoly. We’ve talked about that in the past. There’s no difference between the two parties. They both push the UN agenda. We saw a startling admission during the election campaign. Both Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison, when asked about the UN’s World Health Organization’s International Health Orders/Regulations being changed to become coercive and take control over a country’s health system, intrude in it, they both said they were in favour of giving the World Health Organisation more power. Yet Morrison said at the start of this virus we needed to hold them accountable. And then he changed his mind very, very quickly, and he said, no, he wants to give the World Health Organisation more power. I think he said that in about April 2020.

Malcolm Roberts:

So I mean, these people are allowing the UN, if the UN comes up with this this year, this week, they will allow the UN to have more power over us. The other message that I think that came through from the election is that the Teals got a very focused campaign. They focused on just a handful of seats. They focus on Liberal seats. Fortunately, they were woke Liberals, so we haven’t lost anything by them going to the Teals. But they’re just a closet pro-Labor group. They’re funded, driven by a billionaire who is making a lot of money out of renewable energy, what I call unreliables. So, there’s something in it for him, by the look of it. So, they’re just masquerading as climate warriors.

Malcolm Roberts:

The Greens got an increase in vote as well. But both of those parties didn’t say anything concrete, didn’t say anything negative. They just silently went through playing TikTok videos and all the rest of it. I mean, complete crap. And I think what happened was people said, “We’ve had enough of two years negativity.” So, when we were pointing out messages… Our vote went up, by the way. We’re now the largest freedom party in the country by quite a way.

Chris Spicer:

Well done.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. And it looks like we might get four, possibly five senators. So, it all depends, but that’s a very good result. Yeah. The other thing is that these people went through, the Greens and the Teals went through, basically just skated through without saying anything controversial, nothing specific. They locked down their senators. All the Greens’ senators were stopped from talking. Lidia Thorpe escaped for one session, I think, and embarrassed herself. So, they locked her up again. And… what’s her name? … Mehreen Faruqi did the same. But the Greens have shut up, and all they’ve done is relied upon what I would call immature videos and just emotions. And I think that reflects that people have had enough of negativity and they just want something clear. So, they’re not going to get anything, but that’s what basically won.

Chris Spicer:

Do you think it was more of a vote against Morrison than a vote for the other parties? Because it almost seems to me like it could be the fact that they didn’t want to vote for Morrison, but they didn’t really know who to vote for. Do you think that’s likely?

Malcolm Roberts:

I think you’ve nailed it. I said throughout the election campaign, Morrison’s best asset is Albanese, and Albanese’s best asset is Morrison. They’re both woeful. The Labor Party is pathetically weak and they’re deceitfully dishonest. What was I going to say there? Morrison failed completely because people started waking up to him being a liar. I don’t know if we discussed this topic last time, but he repeatedly said day in, day out for a couple of weeks there, “There are no vaccine mandates in Australia.” That is a complete lie. Everywhere I went, I would just turn the microphone over to the audience and say, “What do you think of that statement?” And they’d be yelling out, “Liar! Bastard!” this kind of stuff.

Malcolm Roberts:

But if you look at what Morrison did, while he was saying that, he bought 280 million doses of the injections. That’s 11 each. He then indemnified the states. He then said to the states, oh, sorry, the state premier said the decision that they made at the states to mandate the injections was in line with the federal, sorry, with the National Cabinet. Now, the National Cabinet is not constitutional. It’s just concocted. But who leads the National Cabinet? Who formed it? Who leads it? Who chairs it? It’s Scott Morrison. And then you see there’s something else that’s crucial. You cannot have these injection mandates enforced without the knowledge that whether or not someone is injected. And that data comes from the Australian Immunisation Register, which is a Federal Health Department. So, the Federal Health Department made it possible.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, Morrison bought the vaccines, bought the injections, spread the injections, led the cabinet that decided on the injections, and then enabled the injections to go ahead. Plus, his party, with a few exceptions, no exceptions from the Labor Party, but just a few Liberals excepted, they opposed the bill that I introduced, Pauline’s bill that I introduced into the Senate to outlaw discrimination based on injection status. And then the same parties, led by Scott Morrison, denied us even sending it to a committee. Labor, Liberal, Nationals, Greens all stopped us sending it to a committee so that you and the other people of Australia couldn’t have their say.

Malcolm Roberts:

And then you look further, Chris, and this bloody liar, he then… You see the Defence Department. Some people in Defence are mandated. Australian Electoral Commission is mandated, and they’re having trouble getting sufficient volunteers to run the election properly. Border Force is mandated, aged care is mandated. So, they’re actually going against the constitution mandating these things. So, you make up your mind. I’ve made up my mind. Morrison was a dead set liar. And people woke up to him. They woke up to him, and that’s why they punished him. Because the Liberal Party has plummeted down to, what, 50 something seats, isn’t it?

Chris Spicer:

Yeah. Well, they were annihilated, and I think it’s a lot of that. Well, the Liberal Party, to me, yeah, they’ve gone too far left with a lot of their policies and what they’ve done. And this has been, I think, accelerated since Morrison has been in power there, where the difference between Liberal and Labor, what is there? There’s nothing.

Malcolm Roberts:

Zero.

Chris Spicer:

There’s nothing. There’s no difference where-

Malcolm Roberts:

Name a policy.

Chris Spicer:

Well, that’s what I mean. The same. I mean, they used to be more leaning towards the right with their policies. That’s what the Liberal Party is known for, but now… My father’s been a Liberal voter his whole life, and I had a conversation with him the other day about it, and he said, “The Liberal Party’s not the Liberal Party. They’re not.” He goes, “They’re a shadow of Labor.” This woke nonsense that’s going on now and all the rest of it, it’s out of control. And now we’ve got a Labor government and the Greens who have a… I don’t know how many. You’d be able to know for sure how many people are in the Senate are from the Greens Party, but they’re going to get a lot of say.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, the last Labor government was a Labor-Greens Coalition. There was a formal coalition drawn up under Julia Gillard, because she was the prime minister with that Greens-Labor Coalition. And we all know that the tail, the Greens, wagged the dog, the Labor Party. And so that’s what’s going to happen again. We don’t know the makeup of the Senate yet though, Chris, because the voting hasn’t been finished. The counting of the votes hasn’t been finished yet and probably won’t be for a few days yet. So, we won’t know the makeup, but it depends upon a couple of scenarios.

Malcolm Roberts:

If we get all the ones we look like we’re getting, then we might have some say in the balance of power, but if the Greens and the Independent in the Australian Capital Territory get it, then it’s going to be Labor-Greens Coalition in Senate. So, it’ll be Labor-Greens Coalition government. Oh, by the way, though, 15% of people, 15 to 20% of people, voted for Freedom Party. So, we now know that freedom is a definite… It’s smaller than I thought, but it’s still a sizable chunk of people. We now know that freedom is a very important issue, and I think that group is here to stay.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah, definitely here to stay. And I can tell you now that I can see it’s going to grow. It’s not going to shrink, it’s going to grow, because what I think is going to be coming in the next few years is really going to get a lot of Australians, maybe even the ones who really didn’t get too involved in it due to the mandates, but when we’re talking about these climate policies and all those different policies that are incoming is they’re going to really get the backup of a lot of Australians. So, I could only see the freedom movement growing, moving forward. But quickly back to the Senate, what’s the position? What’s going on with Pauline? Because I’ve seen a lot of talk online. And I’m smart enough to know not to buy into what the media is saying. So, I’ll ask you myself. What’s happened with Pauline? Because some of them are saying that she could potentially lose her seat. Others are saying that she won’t.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. There’s potential for that. They haven’t seen the numbers today, because I can’t control them. It looks like she’ll be right to get back in, but it depends on preferences. Because what happened was Clive Palmer came in and split the vote for the freedom parties. And so did the Liberal Democrats. Now, if we get all of their preferences, or a lot of the preferences, of their voters, then she’ll be home easy. But what’s happening in pre-poll, sorry, what’s happening in the counting now is that they’re counting the postal votes, which were huge.

Malcolm Roberts:

And the Liberal Party is doing really well out of the postal votes. We’re doing well out of the postal votes. The Greens are falling in the postal votes. They’re not getting many. So is the Labor party. And so is Medical Cannabis. So, the threat originally was that the Medical Cannabis Party might overtake Pauline. That’s not going to happen. But the threat may be now that the third Liberal candidate might overtake Pauline, in which case she’d be knocked out. Or we might see Pauline go ahead of the second Labor candidate, which is a possibility. So, there’s a very good chance she’ll be back, but it’s not certain yet. So, we’re concerned about that.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah, definitely. I hope, obviously, everything works out for Pauline. She’s a light, and both you and Pauline have been a light for a lot of Australians for the past two years. So, let’s hope that things work out well. And so you’re safe, you’re fine, yes?

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. I wasn’t up for election, Chris, because the Senate has staggered terms, and I don’t come up till 2025. But the other thing there, I agree with your dad that the Liberal Party’s no longer the Liberal Party, but I disagree with him that it’s become… Well, it is a clone of the Labor Party, but I think we’ve got to take it a step further. They’re both taking their orders from the United Nations. They’re both implementing United Nations instructions. There’s no doubt about that. One of the reasons, a big reason that Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National Coalition won the 2019 election, when everyone said Shorten was going to romp it in, was because of their position supporting coal and especially their position saying that they would not support the UN’s 2050 net zero decision policy from the United Nations.

Malcolm Roberts:

Then two years ago, they adopted it. Within 12 months after the election, they adopted it. I mean, that’s just the last UN policy to come in place. And Liberals have adopted it when they said their mandate was to not have it. So, that’s what’s happening. And then you look at the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations, you look at them, they’re coming in. Perhaps we can talk about it later, but a critical part of that is going to be that if we don’t adopt them, assuming they get passed this week in Geneva, if we don’t adopt them, then the world can apply sanctions to us. Now, you might say, “Well, sanctions are no big deal.” Well, they’re no big deal 40 years ago. But what’s happening is that people have realised this COVID thing was not set up in 12 months. It wasn’t set up in a few months. This was set up over the last 10 years. It’s been premeditated.

Malcolm Roberts:

But when you realise what’s happening, Chris, 50, 60, 70 years ago, we were independent, our country. We made everything we needed, almost everything we needed. We made our own toolmaking equipment for lathes, metalworking, making tools for manufacturing. We made it all. And we made some of it so well that we exported lathes and other precision equipment overseas. We had our own oil reserves. We’re now the largest exporters of natural gas in the world. We’re the second largest exporters of coal. We’re the largest exporters of energy. And yet if someone put a blockade on our country, within a matter of days we’d stop, grind to a halt, because our oil supply is stuck in the United States. That’s where our oil securities are, in the United States. I mean, this is crazy.

Chris Spicer:

It is crazy.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, you shouldn’t even let them get down low. But then, so in other words, the United Nations could just say, “We’ll put a blockade on Australia unless they take our World Health Org Regulations.” And so we would be really hurting ourself. Because what they’ve done, Chris, this has been deliberate over the last seven decades, they have deliberately made countries interdependent. Now, that sounds like a lovely thing. I’m interdependent on you. We can get on really well. We’re dependent on each other. Sounds good.

Malcolm Roberts:

But if you strip it all away, you’re dependent on me and I’m dependent on you. If something happens to me, you’re buggered. If something happens to you, I’m gone. So, what they’ve done is they’ve made us interdependent, which has made us dependent. And so now we can’t stand up for ourselves. That’s what the UN has done. And it’s been cold and calculated, and that was their aim to do that. This is not about COVID coming up in the last 12 months. It’s not about COVID coming up in the last 10 years. We know it’s taken that long to engineer this. This has been going on for seven decades, 78 years.

Chris Spicer:

Let me ask you a question about that, because a lot of people wonder, and sometimes I think about it as well. What is it with the United Nations and the World Economic Forum and all these foreign unelected agencies, what is it about them where Western leaders, they just comply with their demands? What is it? Is it the threat of sanctions and that sort of thing that give them no choice but to go along with it? What is it that is pushing them to adopt policies? So, let’s just say Albanese, for whatever reason, decided that he doesn’t think signing onto the World Health Organization’s treaty is a good idea and he doesn’t want to do it. We know that’s not going to happen. We know that he will sign onto it. So, what is it? What is it that drives these Western leaders to just go along with it?

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, there are a few things. First of all, the World Economic Forum had… Well, no, first of all, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum were both formed to push the agenda of the globalist predators, the major, major corporations, BlackRock, Vanguard, and the people who own them, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, et cetera. So, they control most of the large corporations across all kinds of industries in the world. They wanted to get more control. Because what’s happened, if you go back to the way we used to live in Europe and in Britain was feudalism.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, the baron or the lord of a region controlled all the land, owned all the land, and you and I would work as serfs. We would basically slog our guts out, die at an early age after working all our lives. And we would be given a plot of dirt that we could grow our crops on. And that would have to carry us through. The majority of our work, our product, would be given to the lord of the manor, but we would keep enough just to keep us alive. That was feudalism. We were controlled by the lord of the manor, and we worked for him.

Malcolm Roberts:

Then we had the Industrial Revolution, and we had freedom breakout, and we had the middle class. And the middle class was not controlled. It was free. And so the globalists don’t want that. What the globalists want is control. And so the whole thing about this UN and World Economic Forum is control. So, what they want to do is they want to control property. I won’t go into it now, but there are many things that they control. Our property. If you control property, then you control the people. They want to control our energy. They’ve got control of our energy. They want to control our water. They’ve got control of our water. They’ve got control of many of the policies in both parties.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, how have they done that? It goes back to things like the… what is it? … Young Global Leaders programme. Justin Trudeau from Canada, prime minister, he’s a graduate. Macron from France, he’s a graduate. Merkel, I’m told, is a graduate. Biden is affiliated with the World Economic Forum. They’ve actually said, the head of the World Economic Forum has said that what they’ve done is they’ve infiltrated governments around the world, especially in the West, and they have got control of those governments. Ardern in New Zealand is a graduate of the World Economic Forum’s Global Young Leaders programme. Sarah Hanson-Young, the Senator from South Australia with the Greens, is a graduate.

Malcolm Roberts:

Andrew Brag. It’s not just the Labor Party and the Greens, it’s also Senator Andrew Bragg from the Liberal Party. He’s a graduate of the World Economic Forum Young Leaders programme. Greg Hunt was the… what was he? … Director of Strategy for the World Economic Forum in the years 2000 and 2001. Greg Hunt pushed through things that drove the basis for an international carbon dioxide trading scheme, which will give the UN money, give them a guaranteed revenue source once it’s implemented. Greg Hunt pushed the climate scam. I presented data to him that shows it’s not caused by us at all, there’s just natural climate variability. Greg Hunt told me to my face, he said, “That’s the best presentation I’ve ever had on climate.” The CSIRO, as we were discussing off air before, one day we can probably talk about that, they’ve never presented any evidence. No one has presented this evidence. And so Greg Hunt has pushed this through based on bullshit. The others have fallen behind the same way.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, the globalists also push the media and they control the media. And the media narrative has been to just, “Climate change is real and it’s caused by us,” when both are wrong. The education system has been taken over by the control side of politics, what most people call a left-wing, and that’s indoctrinated people. So, most people around the age of 30 now, they think that it’s real because they’ve been indoctrinated all the way through. They can’t tell when they’re at a young age that it’s indoctrination or education. They’re not thinking for themselves at a young age in primary school. It starts in primary school. It continues on TV, on the media. It continues in university. If you want to speak out against the myth of manmade global warming and global climate change, you won’t get a job at a university.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah. No.

Malcolm Roberts:

You’d get fired. So, what happens is these people have been coerced by the media. They want votes. So, Frydenberg looks like he’s out of parliament. Frydenberg is a climate sceptic. He doesn’t believe it, and yet he’s pushing it because what he thinks is that as there are more Green voters moved to his inner city Melbourne electorate, then he has to try and appeal to them. If he came out and actually told them the truth, we’d knock this whole thing on the head. But instead what happens is the woke politicians, the gutless politicians like Frydenberg, Seselja, who’s not a bad bloke, actually, but he became woke because he’s in the Australian Capital Territory, Sharma, Zimmerman… who’s the other one? … Wilson, these people have got no evidence. I’ve had an argument with Zimmerman about it, and I trashed his argument about climate change. These have got no evidence, but what they’re doing is they’re kowtowing to inner city Greens voters.

Malcolm Roberts:

And Chris, if you kowtow to that without any evidence, then you’re endorsing it. They’re actually strengthening the Greens’ position, and they’re strengthening the Teals’ position. Zimmerman, Wilson, and Sharma were replaced by Teals. Frydenberg will be replaced by a Green. Oh, hang on, no, that’s a Teal as well. So, what they’ve done is they’ve created their own demise because of their gutlessness and their stupidity and their ignorance. So, that’s the way. It’s not a simple story. But, oh, the other thing that they’ve done to push this climate change rubbish and the control by the UN, when you watch, when you dismantle the control methods they use for pushing the climate scam, it applies to so many things.

Malcolm Roberts:

You showed me a little while ago that billionaires have advanced because of the COVID virus. Billionaires have advanced because of the climate change myth. And what they do is they make sure that the billionaires get their palms greased and make a lot more money out of it so that the billionaire says, “Sign me up.” Then when they become prominent signatories of the climate change, or the COVID, or whatever, they’re on the gravy train. But their voices are influential, and they con a lot of people into thinking that COVID is a serious problem that has to be dealt with with controls, climate is a serious problem that has to be dealt with with controls. So what you see is deceit, money, and you see massive control. That’s the objective, control. And there are many ways in which they’ve done it, but that’s some of the ways.

Chris Spicer:

Well, that’s right. And that’s what a lot of people often say, “Okay, but why do they want control? Why do these people like Bill Gates and George Soros and these characters, why do they want control?” And I say, “Well, listen, people like you and I, just born into a normal household, average income, our parents weren’t wealthy…” I’m assuming your parents weren’t wealthy.

Malcolm Roberts:

No.

Chris Spicer:

But certainly not billionaires. Certainly not billionaires, right?

Malcolm Roberts:

No, they weren’t wealthy.

Chris Spicer:

So, we’ve had to work for everything. And you’re driven not necessarily by money, well, by money, but to use for good or to give your family a better life. That’s my dream, and that was your dream. But these people that are born into families with endless amounts of money, like Bill Gates… Bill Gates’ father was loaded. Bill Gates never had to work for anything in his life. He never had to. He never missed out on anything in his life. He had it handed to him. Those are the people that grow up and chase. They don’t need to chase money like you and I. They’ve already got it. They chase power, they chase control.

Malcolm Roberts:

Bingo. Bingo.

Chris Spicer:

And they’re relentless in that. It might be originally, “Oh, I wonder if we can get people to wear face masks.” Then they’ve got that amount of control. “I wonder if we can get them to lock up inside their homes for a number of months.” They’ve got that control. They’re after power and more control. They’re not going to get to a point and think, “Okay, we’ve got enough control now.” It’s never going to end. So, people need to understand that the way they think, the way their brains operate, isn’t like the average person. It’s different.

Chris Spicer:

So, you can’t really understand it. Because we’re all stuck in the rat race, the 9:00 to 5:00, and trying to earn money and give ourselves and our families a better life. They don’t need that. They need control, and they want more power. And that’s, I think, where a lot of that comes from. So, it’s almost asking the average person, “Why does a serial killer like Ivan Milat, why does he do that? How could you do that? It’s evil.” We don’t understand it because our brain chemistry isn’t the same. And it’s the same with these people like Bill Gates. We can’t think. It’s irrational to us because they’ve got a different makeup than we have.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let me give you an example. This is from a Canadian broadcasting system, which is a bit like the ABC, this Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a government owned station. They made a video, a… what do you call it? … documentary, mini documentary, about an hour long, on Maurice Strong. Now, you say, “Who the hell’s Maurice Strong?” You may know of him, but he was the guy who fabricated global warming, fabricated climate change. He was the guy who said that he had two aims in life. Get how sick this is. One is to de-industrialise Western civilization, de-industrialise us, take us back to the caves. The second is to put in place an unelected socialist global governance.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, I can run a company so long as I get into a position of influence, I can run a company’s board of directors without having the dominant vote. I can do that because of personality. You can do it because of personality. We know that boards of directors are generally filled with people who just kowtow. They’ve been selected to do that. So, someone can take over a company effectively without having a vote. That happens. You can take over countries the same way. It happens. You can take over a football club. It happens. So, Maurice Strong, this is his background.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, he became very senior in the United Nations. He basically ran the joint. So, when he was 17, he did an intern at the UN. And just think about this. The guy came back from that place as an intern. And someone asked him, “What was your impression, young Maurice?” And he said, “That place will have enormous power one day.” What 17 year old thinks like that? “That place will have enormous power one day.” Now, think about this. It backs up exactly what you said. Then at the age of 25, he was running a large… Well, no, not a large but a significant oil corporation, producing oil. Got that? Producing oil.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

And he says, “I’m doing pretty well, but I want something else.” So, he puts his company in the hands of another manager and goes off and works for Canada’s most influential family. Canada’s most influential family at the time, I can’t remember their names, controlled both sides of politics. There’s that word, control. So, he works for them. And then someone asked him, “Is your ultimate objective to get into politics?” “No, no, no, no. That’s not where the power is.” The power. So, he ended up commissioning a report on the state of the world, or state of the Earth, or state of the planet, whatever it was back in 1970.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, 1970, he commissions this report, and it comes back and says the world’s buggered. We’re going to hell in a hand basket. Okay. So, he then uses that report to develop the United Nations Environmental Programme, a department within the United Nations called UNEP, United Nations Environmental Programme. And guess who becomes its first head? Maurice Strong. So, the people who sit at senior levels of the United Nations are basically diplomats, failed politicians, and bureaucrats. And all of a sudden, you get Maurice Strong coming up in there, and he’s sitting as head of UNEP. He’s sitting one level below the United Nations Secretary General, the head of the United Nations. But he’s in that top management group.

Malcolm Roberts:

And so he starts developing lots of policies about the environment. And we know there were some problems with the environment in the 1970s, because people had just started getting right into industry, new technologies, and they were making mistakes. But the significant thing was that people were correcting those mistakes. They don’t like lakes being set on fire, covered in oil, beaches covered in oil. So, anyway, Maurice Strong then makes the environment the issue. So, all of a sudden, people are saying, “We need environmental policies.” By the way, the Nazis did the same. So, this has been copied from the Nazis in Germany.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, hang on, the head of the UN and the other bureaucrats that live just below the head of the UN, they know nothing about the environment. So, they all say, “Well, what do we do, Maurice?” And Maurice tells them what he’ll do. Then Maurice concocts the global warming scam, 1970s, he created that. In 1988, he formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was an exceptional brain, an exceptional networker, very good at manipulating people. He then started controlling people like Greenpeace, WWF, or having significant influence on them. Then in 1992, he led the United Nations Rio Declaration, which was about 21st century global governance. And he got control of the floor, of the delegates. He brought a lot of people in from overseas, through Greenpeace and WWF, and they all spoke very strongly in favour of climate action.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, see how he started it? He then had a conference in 1980 in Villach, Austria, where they invited the chief climate scientists from around the world. They came, and they had a conference. And they were presented with a document that said, “Sign this. It’s a declaration stating that we need to cut our carbon dioxide.” And the scientists said, “No, mate, we’re not signing that because there’s no evidence for it.” So, 1985, in the same town of Villach, Austria, they had another conference, but this time Maurice Strong organised it so that they picked the scientists that would represent each country. And guess what? They passed a motion saying that our carbon dioxide affects global warming, even though it didn’t. And so then he got the 1992 Rio Declaration, which was about 21st century global governance. I’ve got the document. Hang on, I’ll just get it. There’s been many, many documents written about this. The United Nations are not denying it. Can you see that?

Chris Spicer:

Yep. Summit Agenda 21. Yep.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. Agenda 21 came out in 1992. When it first came out, that was Agenda 21: 21st Century Global Governance. They’re warning, by the year 2000 for the 21st century global governance in place, they would control everything. And at first, our politicians… They all signed up to it, by the way. Keating signed up to it on behalf of the Labor Party, and our prime minister in 1992. At first, the politicians on both sides denied it. Pauline spoke out about it in 1996. Then when people became more informed about Agenda 21, they went, “Yeah. Well, it exists, but it’s got no teeth.” What they didn’t tell people was that they were pushing through parliament, sometimes in regulations avoiding the parliament, regulations that would control various aspects: our energy, our water, our property rights, our regulations on how we live, what kind of food we eat. They were being drafted. They control all of those things, and they’re seeking more and more control.

Malcolm Roberts:

And why do they do it? Because they like power. Maurice Strong, at 17, said, “That place is going to have power one day.” That attracted him. He then influenced all this power. This is how one man can shape the world. And people say, “Well, hang on a minute. That’s a bit unusual.” I said, “No, it’s not, because you’ve had Genghis Khan. Well, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, we’ve had Hitler, many people trying to control the world. Maniacs.” And if you look at these people, there is some maniacal bent in them. I mean-

Chris Spicer:

All of them.

Malcolm Roberts:

… look at Gates. Look at Gates. But the significant thing, Chris, is that always beneath control, there is fear. So, if you try to control me, it shows me that you’re afraid of me. Otherwise, you wouldn’t need to control me.

Chris Spicer:

That’s right.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, these globalist freaks, these globalist predators that are trying to control, are doing so because they’re afraid. And what are they afraid of? Well, if you go to the ultimate, the ultimate… what’s the word? … deceit is the way they create money. And we’ve had this proof from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Deputy Governor, Guy Debelle. I asked a question in Senate Estimates. He confirmed it. They create money out of thin air. Now, the significant thing there is that people don’t really think about money. It’s in everything we do. It’s intimately woven into every single thing we do in our lives. So, we take it for granted. But if you sit back and say, “How do they come up with a dollar bill? How do they come up with a $2 coin?” It’s just journal entries and “electronic journal entries,” to use Guy Debelle’s words. They just pull it out of thin air and just write it down. So, they can create all the money they want.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, that’s a wonderful system if you’re the one controlling the money printing, but it’s not for us. Because what happens is that these people control governments, and they have done for centuries, literally control governments because they control the central banks. Now, in the case of the United States Federal Reserve Bank, it has power over so many other countries because the dollar is essentially the global currency, until Putin came along. But anyway, it’s the global currency. So, the Federal Reserve Bank is privately owned. Privately owned. As Ron Paul, Senator Ron Paul said, Federal Reserve, it’s neither federal, state, federal government, it doesn’t have any reserves. It controls the money supply. It controls the interest rates. It controls everything in the United States.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, our reserve bank is not owned by anyone other than the people of Australia, but it’s controlled by major bankers, which is the Bank for International Settlements, which is a central bank of central banks. So, what we’ve seen is a massive control of funds. And the same people who have the control behind the scenes over you and I also control BlackRock and Vanguard, which own most of the corporations. And what I believe they want us to do is to go back to being serfs in the futile times where we eke out a living. And that’s what’s behind the Digital Identity Bill. We get just enough to survive so that we’re producers, and they can scram all the profits off us. And they can also control the money. But what they’re afraid of is people waking up and taking over.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah, which is happening. I mean, there’s a lot more people now than this time last year that are actually speaking about these things, which is great because that’s what we need. Individually, you and I, what can we do? Nothing. It’s going to be a collective effort and just enough to make them uncomfortable, just enough to make them think about it twice or even prolong it. Just say they wanted to achieve this by a certain date. If there’s enough pushback from the people and they can see that, hold on, the people are getting a bit restless, they’ll prolong it, prolong it, prolong it, prolong it. And what we’ve seen in the past few years is an incredible acceleration from these globalists trying to achieve their goals and what they… Yeah. The Great Reset, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with. So-

Malcolm Roberts:

Build back better, The Great Reset, New World Order, you name it. And the significant thing, Chris, is that those slogans are used by Ardern in New Zealand, Trudeau in Canada, Macron in France, Merkel in Germany, she used to be there, Morrison, Boris Johnson. They’re used within hours of each other. It’s all coordinated.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah, that’s right. And that’s what I keep saying to people, “We’ve just got to keep speaking. Just keep doing your part.” We all have our part. Obviously, your part, you can speak to the parliament. You can speak to a wide range of people about these issues. I’m lucky that I’ve got a big platform to raise these issues and speak on. But even to the average person who may not have that, a big following or whatever, just speaking to family about it, speaking to their mates at the pub about it, just getting the word out so people, or at least it’s in the back of their mind. So, when they raise things, for example, the Labor Party with the co-ownership of the housing, 40% equity in the homes, the minute I heard that, I thought, “Oh, we’ll own nothing, but we’ll be happy.” Straight away I heard that. I thought, “That’s exactly what they want.” I mean, I believe that’s a step in that direction, because it’s blatantly obvious.

Chris Spicer:

Then yesterday I see an article down in Victoria, it was. I’ll bring it up. I’ll read it to you. There we go. “Proposed petrol car cutoff date in Victoria in Environment and Planning Committee report.” This is from the Herald Sun. “A Greens backed parliamentary inquiry has recommended a cutoff date for the sale of new petrol cars.” So, things are moving at an incredible rate. They really are. And I just hope that the cash ban, that I think it was yourself and Pauline that stopped that happening a few years ago, it’s actions like that. Because imagine if you didn’t stop it back then. Imagine where we would be now. We wouldn’t have had cash for a few years. We’d be in all sorts of trouble.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, you’ve got to have cash because it’s an alternative to the digital currency they have said they’re bringing in. At Davos in the World Economic Forum this week they’ve talked about the digital currency. The Australian Banking Association’s Conference a few months ago that I went to, every single speaker talked about either the digital identity or the digital currency. The reserve bankers talked about it. They’ve been working on it for years. Davos has admitted that they’re working on a digital currency. The Reserve Bank of Australia has admitted they’re working on a digital currency globally and interacting with other nations. So, with that cash ban, it’s very, very important, because if we don’t have cash, there’s no alternative. You will go on that digital currency.

Malcolm Roberts:

And then they will determine what the value of that currency is from day to day. And if you don’t behave yourself, you’ll have less value in your digital currency. If I behave myself and kiss their arse, I’ll have more value. So, what they’re doing is they’re trying to get coercion in. But what you said a little while ago about the cash ban was significant. It was my office. I was the one who raised the awareness of this. We went to the Labor Party, and the Labor Party said, “Yeah, you’re right,” but they voted for it through the lower house. The Liberals pushed it through the lower house. So, then when it came to the Senate, we created such a stink with the crossbench and we put so much pressure on Labor that it was consigned to a committee to be evaluated.

Malcolm Roberts:

We also then got in touch with significant players in the grassroots membership of the Liberal Party. There’s a couple of them stood up in Victoria, and good on them. Steven Holland in particular was one of them. Not the swimmer, but another Steven Holland. And we had talks with them, and we had talks with other people in the grassroots. And they created such a fuss in the Liberal Party that the Liberal Party let it go. And so we moved a motion in the Senate saying that we would dismiss that from the Senate list. And it’s gone.

Malcolm Roberts:

But they’re coming back because the Digital Identity Bill is where they want to bring back another cash ban. So, we’ve got to fight that. But we will beat them, Chris, providing we do exactly what you said, talk to our friends, talk to our family, talk to our workmates, talk to our sporting mates, and spread the word. And then speak up with the politicians, put pressure on the politicians, as they did in Victoria with the cash ban. Speak up and spread it out. The other thing that gives me a lot of hope is that… How can you put it? We had questions of the Digital Transformation Agency in federal Senate Estimates, right?

Chris Spicer:

Yep.

Malcolm Roberts:

Mate, they struck us with their incompetence, that they can’t do this. They will try, but they can’t do it. But they’d cause a lot of damage by trying to do it. So, what we can do is make sure that they don’t do it by spreading the word, then destroy anything that they can create. Just not cooperate, just hold them accountable everywhere they go. But they’re not going to be able to do this. And the other thing is that control, always beneath control there is fear. These people, except for the very senior level, are either afraid and they’re pushing this… Even the senior level is afraid. But imagine being one of these people pushing these controls. You couldn’t do it, Chris.

Chris Spicer:

No.

Malcolm Roberts:

Even if you wanted to, even if they were rewarding you, you couldn’t put your heart and soul into it. They’re not going to beat our passion and our energy across the everyday Australians. They are not knowing what they’re doing. They cannot put their whole heart and soul into it. So, this is not a fait accompli. They’ve got enormous power, but they haven’t got the will. They haven’t got the real passion.

Chris Spicer:

No. And look, there’s so much going on at the moment too, that I feel like a lot of people, their brains are just overloaded with so much. I mean, you’ve got COVID, which is still going on, not to the degree that it was 12 months ago, but still very-

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, the fear of COVID. COVID is not really the problem. It’s the government restrictions and the government fear and sensationalism, that’s the problem.

Chris Spicer:

That’s the problem, but that’s not where it is. A year ago to today, you can’t compare the two. People don’t care anymore about COVID. But instead, we’re hit with this monkeypox. Then, on top of that, there’s a war in Ukraine that dominated the airwaves for weeks. Now, all of a sudden, no one’s talking about it. So, that’s what they do. They almost intentionally overload you with so much information, and there’s so much going on at any given time that… We just got over COVID, two years of it, of government interference and overreach, and then, bang, monkeypox. The first thing I think of is, “Fuck. Here we go again. Here we go.” And this time it’s going to be worse because it’s not going to get any better. So I thought, “Well, it’s going to be worse.” But that’s sort of sitting idle at the moment.

Chris Spicer:

But it’s just, look, I don’t understand how… I speak to my mates about this all the time. I say, “I don’t know how the average person doesn’t think, ‘Hold on. What’s going on?'” Because me personally, I’m 29 now, prior to COVID, there was nothing. There was an occasional bad flu season every five, six years. That was it. Then in the space of three years, we’ve been hit with bushfires, COVID, floods, more COVID, floods, monkeypox, the war in Ukraine. That’s in three years. That hasn’t happened in the 30 years that I’ve been alive. So, that should ring alarm bells in itself as to why are all of these events… Just where are they coming from? Why is this happening? Why are we having an outbreak of monkeypox that’s in 12, 13, no, it’s now 15 different countries, when, if you know anything about the virus, it’s uncharacteristic of the virus to pop up like this? Why is this happening? Why is all the-

Malcolm Roberts:

It’s shingles.

Chris Spicer:

Well, I’ve got Dr. McCullough coming on Monday to have a chat to me about it and get his opinion, because everyone’s going to have different opinions on it. It looks like shingles when you look at it. It could be they’re masking vaccine side… Who knows what it could be? Who knows? But what I do know-

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, they did say-

Chris Spicer:

… they’re pushing bullshit.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, they’re definitely pushing bullshit. What people have been saying for about six months now… Oh, what’s the name of that virus supposedly coming out, starting with the letter M? Mergon or something like that. And anyway, they said that there will be a virus coming out that will hide the vaccine injuries. And this could be it, the people keeling over, because we know that they’re doing that in the thousands. Hospital admissions, ambulance trips have been skyrocketing. And they’re in case they’re… what do they call it? … category one hospital trips, which is heart problems. “I wonder what that could be,” says Yvette D’Ath, the State Minister for Health. I wonder, Yvette. It’s no wonder at all, but-

Chris Spicer:

Yeah, I know.

Malcolm Roberts:

… you look at these things-

Chris Spicer:

I heard that. I remember when she said that. I’m thinking, “What do you mean, you wonder?” You’re not a stupid woman. Come on. Just, we know what it is.”

Malcolm Roberts:

She’s either deceitful or dumb. But climate change, invisible. COVID, invisible. Bushfires, there was not a problem there. Those bushfires were nothing unusual by our standards in this country. They were less than earlier bushfires in our country, including in the 1800s, including the 1974, including earlier on in the 19th.

Chris Spicer:

Let me just quickly, sorry just to disturb you, just quickly, well, just let me finish this part about monkeypox. So, I wrote an article the other day about it, because I’ve heard about monkeypox for quite a number of months and I was anticipating it somewhere to pop up unusual. And I wrote an article on it. And do you know, they ran, there’s actually two sets, there was… I’ll try and find it now. I did publish it on the… I’ll tell you what. Because I don’t know if you know, and if you don’t know, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s almost hard to believe. So, they ran, like they did with COVID, prior to COVID they ran Event 201, which is a simulation of a coronavirus outbreak.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yep, yep, yep.

Chris Spicer:

I’m sure you familiar with that.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yep. They had several simulations.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah, that’s right. In March 2001, there we go, the NTI, which is the Nuclear Threat Initiative, they held a tabletop exercise focusing on reducing high consequence biological threats with catastrophic consequences, and the virus they used for that simulation was a genetically modified version of monkeypox. Now, in September last year, the UK Ministry of Defence, they used… There’s a software that’s called Conductor. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s this software that you can run simulations, where it brings up fake Twitter profiles and fake Facebook and all the rest of it. You won’t believe this when I tell you. And it’s all there. That’s the little graphics for the event that they ran. So, you can find it. It’s on Google. It’s online, right? So what it was, well, here, on Conductor, so this was the UK Ministry of Defence, they ran a simulation about how the world would react to Russian disinformation during a monkeypox outbreak. I’m not joking. They ran that in September last year before the war on Ukraine was going on. Why are they running that event in September? Come on! That’s not a coincidence. It can’t be.

Malcolm Roberts:

No. Well, they’ve had six years of Russian disinformation. No, sorry, disinformation about Russia. We had Trump being accused of being allies with the Russians, complete bullshit. And then there’s another thing. So, the fires, coming back to the fires, there’s nothing unusual there except that the media blew them up. Nothing unusual at all. And the media blew them up. And then you see Ukraine, that was the other one, Ukraine, all we’re getting is one side in the media. That’s all we’re getting. I stood up in parliament and said, “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” I was the only one to do so, “Hang on just a minute here. All we’re getting is the Foreign Minister saying this, we’re getting the Labor Party saying the same thing, getting the Liberal Party saying the same thing, getting the Greens saying the same thing.”

Malcolm Roberts:

The Greens, by the way, are the greatest control freaks in the country. They want to inject people. They’re very much into control, because they’re pushing the UN agenda for them, and the UN’s all about control. And so we had all these people saying, “Just follow Ukraine. Bash Russia. Bash Russia.” And I said, “Hang on a minute. I’m not going to take a side here because I don’t know enough. But I’m going to ask one question. What the hell are we doing? Where is the information? Let’s stop and not just follow America into another war.” Because we followed America into so many wars in the last 100 years.

Malcolm Roberts:

And there again, Chris, you look at Ron Paul. Senator Ron Paul mentioned that in a book I read, a very good book, it’s End the Fed, end the Federal Reserve Bank, he said, “Every…” And this guy is phenomenally educated, self-educated largely, but very, very strong and respected by both sides of the house in America, both sides of politics, incredibly well-respected, very strong, very honest, very competent. He said, “Every major war since 1913 when the Federal Reserve Bank was created is directly attributable to the United States Federal Reserve Bank.” Every major recession is directly attributable to their policies. They flood the joint with cash. Does this sound familiar? They flood the joint with cash, lower interest rates. People overcommit. Then they jerk up the interest rate suddenly and people collapse and foreclose.

Chris Spicer:

That’s what’s going on now, right here.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay? That’s the basic mechanism that they’ve done time after time after time. And that’s how they engineer it. Because who takes over the assets when you foreclose? The banks. Who owns the banks? The same globalist predators, BlackRock, Vanguard, the same families that run the whole lot. So, all of these things attributed come back to the use of money and the control of the people who control the money.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah. It’s just, look, I don’t know what’s going to happen here. I mean, interest rates, there’s talk they’re about to go up to 2%, then they’re projecting up to 4% by this time next year. With the way the fuel prices are going, fuel is well and truly back over $2 a litre again. Now, I can speak about it because I know. Obviously, I’ve got a young family with five kids. And it’s tough, very, very tough, to the point where-

Malcolm Roberts:

Especially when you’ve been mandated out.

Chris Spicer:

Well, that’s right. That’s exactly right. So, it’s just the pressure. You’ve got an event or you get invited to a family gathering or whatever it may be, it’s a few hours away up the coast or whatever. It’s going to cost you a couple of hundred dollars in fuel just to get there. You got to take that. You never used to have to worry about that. But when fuel’s up around $2.30 a litre, you got to think about it because that’s a huge chunk of money that’s coming out of your budget. It’s almost forcing you to stay local because families can’t afford to be going on holidays because the fuel’s so excessive. I mean, it’s double what it was a year ago, a year or two ago.

Chris Spicer:

I remember about three or four years ago it got down to 86 cents a litre in parts of Sydney, and now it’s $2.30 a litre of fuel. And there’s no end in sight. We’ve got food shortages. The food comes back and they’ve hiked the price up on that. And then they’re imposing sanctions on Ukraine and they’re blaming that for a few of the cost of living issues that we’re dealing with here. And it’s like, “Well, stop sanctioning them. Stop it. If you’re making the Australian people suffer because you’re sanctioning Russia because they’ve made innocent Ukrainians suffer, you’re doing the same thing with your sanctions,” if that’s what they want to blame it on. I mean, if they’re saying that a lot of this, the inflation at the moment and shortages of different produce, is because of the war in Ukraine, because of their own sanctions, stop it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, mate, one of my researchers is extremely good, and he’s been across all the topics we’re talking about for quite a while. He’s been alerting me to the fact that so many food processing plants are shut. Shut.

Chris Spicer:

Yes.

Malcolm Roberts:

In America, they’ve got the largest… And TNT Radio, for anybody who’s listening, when Chris is not on air, go and listen to tntradio.live. I can tell you more about that.

Chris Spicer:

That’s right. You’re on Saturdays.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, I’m on every second Saturday. But during the week, phenomenal, they tell the truth. They talk about the topics we’re not allowed to be talking about. I heard Rick Munn on the evening show. He’s broadcasting out of Belfast, Ireland. He said that the largest baby formula factory in America was shut down a few weeks ago because of some bacterial infection. They found out that it wasn’t due to that factory. It was false. But the thing has not opened up since. It’s still shut down. So, they’re trying to drive the price of baby formula up by making it scarce, or they’re trying to just make it scarce and put pressure on families. There is so many food processing plants in the United States, something like 30, shut. That’s creating an artificial food shortage. So these people, I don’t know how they’re doing it other than through ownership of the major companies like maybe Nestle, maybe some of the other food companies. They’re all owned by the globalist predators as well, BlackRock and Vanguard. So [inaudible 00:57:37]-

Chris Spicer:

Because it’s not even a conspiracy, it’s a fact that they’re impacting, they’re deliberately impacting, well, causing food shortages in America. The baby formula shortage in America is horrific. I know babies are going to hospital now and some are probably dying due to not been able to get… There was one lady who said that she’d driven, I think, 300 kilometres from her home, well, 300 miles, whatever that is in kilometres, from her home to find formula and put it. So, is it control? Is it just to put the population just in shambles? What is it? What are they gaining from that?

Malcolm Roberts:

Both of that. What they gain is control over people, and they get then cheap Labor. They get us basically back to feudalism, back to communism, working as slaves. These people have destroyed property rights, which is fundamental to a free democratic society. They haven’t destroyed them, sorry, but they’ve destroyed them in certain sectors in this country. And I mentioned it to a group of doctors who invited me to their meeting. These are doctors against the mandates, oh, a couple of months ago. And they suddenly had woken up. They realised it wasn’t just them being impacted individually. It was a whole medical fraternity being impacted. And they suddenly realised they’d lost their profession. The whole profession has gone. And I said, “Now you know how the farmers feel like.”

Malcolm Roberts:

Because farmers in Australia lost their right to be able to use their property. They’ve got to get permission from people to grow certain things. I mean, this is just insane. If you own property, you bought it to produce whatever you want to produce on it. So, losing property rights is fundamental to a return to communism. Destroying religion, and they’ve destroyed that not with guns, but they’ve destroyed that. They’re destroying it by infiltrating the churches. The churches have come up with woke policies now that push climate change. The churches have been shut down during the COVID restrictions, the government’s COVID restrictions. The churches were shut down, but the pubs weren’t. The abortion places weren’t, but the churches were. So, they’ve got an all out war against religion, because people turn to religion for guidance and a code of conduct. When the church is gone, they’re buggered.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, they’re also destroying the family through the family law system, which was introduced into this country in 1975 by a Labor government. It doesn’t matter, Labor or Liberal, it’s the same. And they are destroying families. They’ve injected the kids, infiltrated the kids’ education, indoctrinated the kids with all kind of gender bending influences, all kinds of sexuality changes. And then they’re just indoctrinating them with climate change crap. So, they’re changing the family, the construction of the family.

Chris Spicer:

The family unit, yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

They’re changing nation states. They’re destroying the borders between nations. Fortunately, Abbott stood up. Tony Abbott stood up. He’s the one leader we’ve had who stood out by actually doing what was right on so many issues. I think he’s aware of some of these things. But he was under so much pressure from his own party, people like Malcolm Turnbull, that he couldn’t do the whole job properly. So, they’re destroying the fabric of our society, destroying the foundations of our society. They’re destroying our borders.

Malcolm Roberts:

And what they want is a global governance, which means you don’t have national borders, you don’t have elections, unelected global governance, and they just control things. They make the decisions that will determine your life, what you’ll eat. And they’ve seen it. Davos has talked about this. They will soon be able to track your so-called carbon dioxide output or usage. And that will then enable them to say, “Well, Chris, you’ve had too much carbon dioxide produced this week because you’ve eaten too much beef. So, therefore, you’re going to be cut back next week.”

Chris Spicer:

That’s happening.

Malcolm Roberts:

They want to control how we live. I mean, they said it. It’s not me saying this. Davos has said it.

Chris Spicer:

Well, in Sydney, I don’t know if you heard about this, a few weeks ago, Channel 9, it was, obtained a report from, I think, the New South Wales government about distance-based tolling. Did you hear about that?

Malcolm Roberts:

No. Oh, distance-based tolling. So, in other words, you pay per kilometre however far you drive?

Chris Spicer:

Yeah. So, just say I want to go into Sydney Harbour, and, well, where I do live is probably about 70ks out of Sydney, I will pay a lot more to go there than what somebody would who lives 20 or 30ks away. So, they’re going to charge you-

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, that’s fair enough. That’s fair enough because somebody uses less energy should be paying less. But it depends on the structure, how they’re going to do it, because I’m guessing it’s to control so that you don’t drive very far, you’ll catch a bus.

Chris Spicer:

Well, that’s what it is. It’s-

Malcolm Roberts:

They want us inducted in the scheme. Of course.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah, that’s right. And you’re seeing that now. I mean, Victoria, they’re well-advanced in terms of this. They’ve already got electric buses. They invested a huge amount of money to get electric buses, and even buses now where you can put your pushbike. They’ve created these. Did you see that? The Victorian government have created buses where they’ve got bike racks on every single bus so you can load your pushbike up to the front of the bus and then take the bus. So, that’s what they want. They want us out of cars. They want us into buses, electric buses, which is what it will be, riding pushbikes. Out of cars, that’s what they want. But back to your religion for a second that came after-

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m going to have to go, Chris, because I’ve got an appointment at 1:30, so it’s 17 minutes past.

Chris Spicer:

No, you’re right. It’s gone fast, hasn’t it?

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, it has. We’ve covered a lot of territories.

Chris Spicer:

It always goes fast. But I’ll finish on this point, as to why they’re coming after religion, I believe. I think it’s a lot harder to control a man who has faith. A lot harder. Because he doesn’t fear you. He won’t fear you. He fears God. He won’t fear the individual. And on top of that, a lot of our moral compass comes from religion. So, destroying that is another way of demoralising us. That’s my reasoning for it, because a lot of people ask me, “Who cares? It’s only religion.” But those are the points that I make, that a lot of our life here is from religion.

Malcolm Roberts:

You’re correct. You’re correct, all those things. That’s what Lenin said, that’s why he wanted to destroy religion. It’s one of the first things you do. You are absolutely correct. History has shown that repeatedly, mate. You’re spot on.

Chris Spicer:

All right. Well, I’ll let you get to your meeting. Malcolm, it’s been a pleasure, as always.

Malcolm Roberts:

Same here, mate. Keep going. We’ve got to have independent media, what I call independent new people media.

Chris Spicer:

Yeah. Well, it’s going well. There’s a big market now. From when I first started till now, it’s great. I love seeing it. Because to me, it’s not competition, for me, I love it. It’s, we’re a community. I don’t look at another show as a competitor. It’s a community. And good work with what you’ve been doing, and also Pauline. Thank her for me as well that you both have been incredibly important to this country over the past few years.

Malcolm Roberts:

It’s her birthday today, mate.

Chris Spicer:

Pauline’s birthday?

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah.

Chris Spicer:

Happy birthday, Pauline. Yeah. Make sure you pass that on for me. But-

Malcolm Roberts:

Will do.

Chris Spicer:

… yeah, again, Malcolm, thank you very much.

Malcolm Roberts:

You’re welcome. And thank you for what you’re doing, Chris. Really appreciate it.

Chris Spicer:

Thank you, mate.

After studying commerce at the University of Southern Queensland, instead of working as an accountant, Robbie joined the CEC, now Citizens Party, as a full-time staffer in its new HQ in Melbourne.

In the 30 years since, he has worked as a researcher, media liaison, campaigns director and research director, with a focus on Australian political history and especially the history of the Commonwealth Bank.

Robbie has been an active campaigner and has been at the forefront of many over the last decade, including:

  • a national bank
  • a Glass-Steagall separation of Australia’s bank
  • stopping the bail-in of Australian bank deposits, in which he worked closely with my office
  • reforming Australia Post and a post office “people’s bank”
  • justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of Australia’s banks and financial institutions and reforming the financial regulators

Transcript

Speaker 1:

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back to Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. I want to welcome my second guest now, Robbie Barwick. I’m very proud to have worked with Robbie and his organisation, the Citizens Electoral Council. Welcome, Robbie.

Robbie Barwick:

Hi, Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

I hope you’re listening to the first hour.

Robbie Barwick:

I was. I loved every bit of it. That was excellent.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’ve got a question for you before we take off, but first, I want to give you a proper introduction. So, Robbie studied commerce at the University of Southern Queensland. Instead of working as an accountant, Robbie joined the Citizens Electoral Council, now, the Citizens Party, as a full-time staffer in its new headquarters in Melbourne. In 30 years since then, he has worked as a researcher, media liaison, campaigns director, and research director with a focus on Australian political history and especially the history of the Commonwealth Bank. He knows government. He knows banking. He knows economics, and he’s a first rate individual. If he says something, it can be trusted. Robbie’s been an active campaigner.

Malcolm Roberts:

When I say campaigner, not electoral campaign, although he was a Senate candidate at the last election a couple of weeks ago. Robbie’s been an active campaigner working on many campaigns and it’s been at the forefront of the last decade, including a national bank, Glass-Steagall separation of Australia’s banks, stopping the bail-in of Australian bank deposits in which Robbie worked very closely with my office and with me, reforming Australia posts in a post office people’s bank, justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of Australia’s banks and financial institutions, and reforming the financial regulations. So, welcome, Robbie. You’ve just done a marvellous job. You continue to do a marvellous job.

Robbie Barwick:

Oh, thanks, Malcolm. That’s very kind, coming from you.

Malcolm Roberts:

What do you mean coming from me?

Robbie Barwick:

You do marvellous work too, mate.

Malcolm Roberts:

All right. Thank you. Well, the key is I’d say that we share, that we both look upon ourselves as serving the people and that’s what I could see coming out of Ellen’s work. Before we get into questions about banking and currency and money, what’s something you appreciate, Robbie?

Robbie Barwick:

A good sleeping. No, I’ll add to that, outspoken senators like yourself and a few others, but I reckon, in my work, I always value meeting ordinary people around Australia who can feedback to me their direct experience of the economy of the world, their life, how it works. I never cease to be amazed, Malcolm, at how much Australia relies on ordinary people who are prepared to go that extra mile to keep the system going keep in their own little way. The nurse who’s worked a double shift and she’ll stay on another 15, 20 minutes because there’s not enough people there. And this is all unfunded stuff, right?

Robbie Barwick:

The people in industry who make sure that machine works, et cetera, because without them, we don’t have an economic system that actually goes the extra mile for them, that makes sure those things happen. So much of our essential services are held together with the equivalent of elastic bands and sticky tape, which is the efforts of the people who provide them. And the most recent one I discovered, which we worked together on as well, was how licenced post officers provide our postal services. And these are all small businesses working very, very hard for peanuts, right around Australia, very tough business conditions and they provide an essential service for Australians. So, that’s what I appreciate more than anything.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, yes. And the only thing I would disagree with you on that and I do want to acknowledge the licence post office and especially Angela Cramp. The only thing I disagree with you is the term ordinary. I would call them and I do call people everyday Australians, because there’s nothing ordinary about any one of them.

Robbie Barwick:

That’s true.

Malcolm Roberts:

I know what you mean by ordinary. You mean average, typical, or every day. I know what you mean.

Robbie Barwick:

They’re not ordinary that’s for sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

No. And the whole economy based on them and what I think it boils down to, Robbie… Correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve been around a lot as well. … is that it boils down to a four letter word starting with C. They care. When you put a human in a position, most humans, almost every human, almost that they matter, then they show that care. The other thing about humans is that we know there are some fraudsters. We know there’s some crooks. There’s some dictators.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ve had our Hitlers. We’ve had our Joe Bidens. We’ve had our globalist predators. We understand that, but the majority of people are honest and that the two words, care and honest, leave us vulnerable because most of us are caring. Most of us are honest and we think everyone else is like us. And so, when we are caring and honest, we can become vulnerable to the used car salesman, to the tyrannical global bankster, the global predator who wants to control us. And we become victims in a sense.

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, that’s true.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. So, our strength is also our vulnerability. Now, listen for our listeners, they won’t know this name that I’m about to use, Craig Isherwood. He’s a Citizen Electoral Council National Secretary when he wrote an astounding paper, very simple, but for very, very powerful paper called, “The Australian Precedents for a Hamiltonian Credit System”.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, Robbie gave me that paper when we were starting to discuss this show, Robbie gave me that paper and I read it on my way to Darwin for holiday. And I read it again on the way back. And the second time I read it, I got so much more out of it. Now, Ellen hit exactly the first question. If you don’t mind, Robbie, this is the question I had. If you don’t mind, we’ll park our earlier discussions and just go through this paper and see where we go.

Robbie Barwick:

Sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay.

Robbie Barwick:

Let’s do that.

Malcolm Roberts:

I knew you’d be up for it. Okay. So, the very first point that I wrote as a key point is that Reserve Bank of Australia admitted to me in Senate estimates hearings that money is created in electronic journal entries, Ellen Hodson Brown reiterated that. She confirmed it. The question that I said was, “Who creates money?” It’s not whether it should be created or not. Clearly, for the system of credit, it needs to be created. Otherwise, people can’t invest. So, it needs to be created. The key question then is, “Who should create it?” And that’s exactly where Ellen got with her comment as well. That’s the key question. Is that the key question? Who creates credit?

Robbie Barwick:

Who controls the creation of credit? One thing to understand the financial system is so fluid and there’s so many clever people out there, Malcolm, always looking for an angle. You can forbid private banks from creating credit and they’ll find a way to create it anyway. So, your local store creates credit when they give you credit by selling you stuff something on credit. Credit is a pretty basic concept, actually. So, it’s more about who controls that. And that’s where the best form of control. Apart from having certain well-regulated banking system, the best form of control is to have a public banking presence that defines the terms for the whole system.

Robbie Barwick:

And so, the private banks have to work within those terms, because if they stray too far away from that, they won’t be competitive with the public bank, right? And so, the public bank can make sure that the creation of credit is fair, it’s productive, et cetera. And the private banks know that well, okay, they need customers. If they don’t have depositors, they’re not going to be banks. There’s a standard that they have to live up to. That’s served Australia very well for a long time, but it really does come down to the control. Who controls it? And my favourite quote, which isn’t in that Craig Isherwood article, although it might be, but the Labour Party once, upon a time in Australia, fought very hard on these issues.

Robbie Barwick:

We call it the old Labour position was about. Who controls money? And they called it the money power. Who controls the money power? And this became a name for the private banks. They called them the money power. They had this chokehold over Australia and they said the money power has to be brought under the control of the people. And by the people, it means the democratically elected government.

Robbie Barwick:

And John Curtin said in 1937, when he launched labor’s election campaign that year, which was seven years after the beginning of The Great Depression and this period of intense upheaval where the role of money was central, he demanded labour will legislate until the Commonwealth Bank would be able to control credit of the nation, rates of interest, direction of general investment, and currency relations with external markets. And he concluded, he said, “If the government of the Commonwealth deliberately excludes itself from all participation in the making or changing of monetary policy, it cannot govern except in a secondary degree.”

Robbie Barwick:

Meaning someone else is in charge of the economy, not us, not the people through their government. And so, what he was saying, it’s not just a good idea. It’s a question of sovereignty. A nation can’t be sovereign if the people through their elected government doesn’t control the credit of the nation.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. So, is it fair to summarise it by saying whoever controls the money creation controls the country?

Robbie Barwick:

100%.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s what I thought you’d say.

Robbie Barwick:

There is no more definitive power in a nation than that.

Malcolm Roberts:

And as you pointed out, it’s all about sovereignty as well as economics. And to me, it seems that my job as an elected representative is to serve the people. If you’re a grocer at a corner store, your job is to serve the people. If you’re a policeman, your job is to serve the people. Now, policeman’s job becomes a little bit more difficult because at times he has to apprehend someone and bring justice or at least arrest them to try them before the courts to ensure justice is conducted. But that service that’s the critical thing. At the moment, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m looking for your view, the people serve the banks rather than the banks serving the people. Is that a fair statement?

Robbie Barwick:

That is a fair statement. You can read a version of the explanation or the description of this in Adele Ferguson’s book that she wrote just towards the end of the Banking Royal Commission in 2018. And you’d be familiar with Adele Ferguson, Malcolm, the investigative journalist in Australia.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. Yup.

Robbie Barwick:

She had a lot to do with highlighting bank issues that led to the Royal Commission, but what she documents in that book, Banking Bad, I think it’s called, a play on the show Breaking Bad, is how from the time of the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank onwards, so the mid-1990s, the model of banking in Australia changed from one in which… Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to overstate it. The private banks were never perfect, but there was a general understanding that the private banks made their profits from the credit that helped their customers make their profits, right? They rightly got a cut from helping their customers get wealthy and preserving their deposits.

Robbie Barwick:

The model changed in the mid-90s to one in which the public, the customers became cows to be milked by the banks. Everything was about fleecing them, death by a thousand cuts. What can we sell these customers? What can we saddle them with so that through charges and interest rates, et cetera, we can just keep bleeding them for our profits? And that led to the abuses, that led to the Royal Commission.

Robbie Barwick:

And now, this became a standard model across the board from the mid-90s on, where the public absolutely served the banks, but a variation of that has always existed with private banks and banking. It’s always come up periodically in the rural debt crisis that erupt periodically around droughts and things, where it becomes a debt problem. And suddenly, instead of the banks being flexible, they’ll come in and mass foreclose. And you conducted an inquiry into that back in… Was it 2016, something like that?

Malcolm Roberts:

2017.

Robbie Barwick:

20 17. What’s happened in Australia with agriculture is we’ve gone from having something like 200,000 farmers in 1969, who between them had a billion dollars in debt to probably less than 30,000 farmers today who have $70 billion in debt. And now, the farmers do not get to accrue wealth. They’re so heavily indebted that all they’re waiting for is the next crop to be able to pay off or pay down their last lot of debt right before they incur more for the next crop. And they really have become debt slaves. And there’s a variation of that across the board in the way the economy where it’s unfortunately.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, I can recall reading a very short simple book. It was called End the Fed, the Federal Reserve Bank, End the Fed by former Senator Ron Paul in the United States, who was the only one really to hold the government accountable, held the Federal Reserve Bank accountable, wanted an audit of the gold reserves, et cetera.

Robbie Barwick:

Audit the fed. Yup.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yup. He said that every major recession since 1913 is directly attributable to the US Fed. Every major war since 1913 is directly attributable to the US Fed. Boom and bust cycles help the banks because they flood the joint with credit. Everyone goes hog, wild, and credit and overcommit themselves, and then they tighten it up. And next thing, people have to foreclose on their asset. The banks foreclose on their assets. So, private banking has failed repeatedly. Yet the banks continue to spread the bullshit that they make their money on the difference between what they charge for interest and for loans versus what they pay for deposits. Complete rubbish.

Malcolm Roberts:

The banks make their money by creating money, giving credit. And credit is essential, but they seem to have powers such that there’s no accountability. What I’m reading in Craig Isherwood’s article is something that I concluded as well, that if you have a public bank, it keeps the private banks honest. You’re not saying get rid of private banks. You’re saying let’s have both and then we’ll have accountability. Is that basically it?

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, 100%, in any sector. I think this applies to insurance as well. Queensland for a hundred years had a state government insurance office, which was incredibly important at providing insurance that the private insurers wouldn’t provide, but also setting a standard that the private insurers had to meet if they wanted to have customers. That was called SGIO. But for banking, it’s absolutely essential. There’s this enormous power to do with money, right? Where you get to create credit and then charge interest on it and direct where that credit goes and have people come to you cap in hand begging for that credit, because it is, as Ellen pointed out, even if you had a gold currency, that there’s never enough of the actual currency for the economy to work, right?

Robbie Barwick:

The credit is the lifeblood of the economy. So, these private banks, they get to determine all that. If there’s no public alternative that says, “Okay, we are going to make decisions slightly differently for the private banks,” the private banks naturally are accountable to shareholders and they want them to maximise their profits. So, they’re going to pour their credit into things that maximise their profits. They’ll enjoy the boom. They’ll monopolise the boom. And when it goes bad, then they will cut off that credit, foreclose on everybody, call in all those loans. So, they never lose. It’s the poor mug customer that loses and that’s how the private banks work, because their solvency and their profits come first.

Robbie Barwick:

Let us use the power of this credit as a public entity to do the things that actually benefit the economy, benefit the people. Let’s make low interest loans to build infrastructure, to keep important industries solvent and productive, not just solvent but productive. So, agriculture, manufacturing, et cetera. Every loan that public bank makes, Malcolm, will also be profitable, but you don’t have to have quite as much profit. You don’t have to have charge quite as much interest, right? This makes a world of difference. And in fact, because I’d hoped you read Craig Isherwood’s article, I was just brushing up on it before. And they pointed out there that one of the first things that Commonwealth Bank did when it started was the Melbourne Board of Works wanted a loan.

Robbie Barwick:

And in those days, 1913, the only place a government entity like the Melbourne Board of Works could get a loan was from London, the private banks in London. In addition to stiff underwriting charges, the best they could do, the private banks in London, was 1 million pounds at 4.5% interest. So, instead, they turned to Denison Miller, the Governor of the Commonwealth Bank and he offered them 3 million pounds at 4% interest, a lower interest rate. And when asked where the very new bank got all this money from, Denison Miller replied, “On the credit of the nation, it is unlimited.” And under Denison Miller, you’ve read the article, the first decade under Dennison Miller, this bank was spectacular.

Robbie Barwick:

And all it did was use its power as a bank, but for the public benefit. Everything was profitable. It just didn’t have to make a massive profit and Australia benefited from that. And that’s why this is, well, as King O’Malley said, the key pin or the master key to the financial system. This should be the master key. This is what solves all those various problems in the financial system.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I’m glad you raised that, Robbie, because there were so many things in Craig’s article. The first publicly owned-

Robbie Barwick:

Shipping line.

Malcolm Roberts:

… shipping line in Australia was created through funding and support from the Commonwealth Bank. The Light Horse Brigade was funded by the Commonwealth Bank. There were so many other infrastructure at a local government level, state government level funded by the Commonwealth Bank. It got us on our feet. It basically built us, and it did that by enabling credit. And it took that control out of the hands of the private banks that screw us and keep us under their control, rather than making money out of making us wealthy as a country.

Robbie Barwick:

And importantly, in those examples you’ve given, the private banks, including most importantly, the foreign private banks, the London banks that controlled us, the way the Commonwealth Bank functioned under Denison Miller showed this claim that you would’ve heard in parliament a thousand times, Australia depends on foreign investment. No, we do not.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you.

Robbie Barwick:

We do not. There’s no excuse for $1 of foreign debt.

Malcolm Roberts:

Another example was the second World War and we were poor in terms of having ability to make machine tools. Next thing that grew out of nowhere, because Australians are very resourceful. We’re very clever, very capable, very innovative. We punch above our weight. We’ve been held back by privately owned banks. And when people were given the free rein, look what we did.

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, exactly. So, the thing with wars, it’s interesting. People like to discount the way a war economy works because of those are special circumstances. That’s what the banks say, right? The only thing that’s special about a war is in the emergency of a war conditions, the governments turn to a public banking option like Australia did in both World Wars, because a war is on the private banks aren’t game to say anything, right? They have to be seen to be supporting the effort. After the war, they go back to attacking the government. No, no, no, you cannot do that. The power of credit has to be back in our hands. So, during the war, when you see what the banks was able to do in both wars, it was extraordinary and it’s also an example.

Malcolm Roberts:

Can you hold that thought and we’ll discuss that very issue after the ad break?

Robbie Barwick:

Sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with Robbie to discuss some really fundamental stuff.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right. Robbie, over to you again, because you’re going to explain how the availability of credit during the war solved The Great Depression. Is that correct?

Robbie Barwick:

Well, no, no. The Great Depression impression was the exception. They didn’t do it in The Great Depression. They did it in the wars.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s right.

Robbie Barwick:

So, the first one was World War I and you gave some of those examples there, but it was things like the Commonwealth Bank didn’t fund the war per se. It funded part of it that you gave the example of the Light Horseman. And the story of the shipping line was quite extraordinary because we were stranded as a country. All the ships were controlled from the British as well and the Prime Minister Billy Hughes said, “We need ships.” And he said to treasury, “Give me £2 million.” There’s 15 ships available here in London, but he wanted to keep it secret because if it became public, that the Prime Minister of Australia was in the market for 15 ships for Australia, the British privately controlled shipping lines would’ve blocked the sale.

Robbie Barwick:

They didn’t want that. They didn’t want a government shipping line in Australia, right? So, he called back to the treasury in Australia and said, “I need £2 million.” They called Denison Miller and the money was there. He just made the money available. They bought the ships. And that was the beginning of the shipping line that eventually became Australian National Line. So, there were some things they directly did, but what they otherwise did was look after the economy in those war years. And one of the more extraordinary things was the commodities pools that they set up, Malcolm, for things like wheat and other agricultural products that we were producing that in those days we produced… You had a small population.

Robbie Barwick:

We produced for the British market, et cetera, but that was all disrupted. So, they created a pool and the Commonwealth Bank funded that. So, the farmers, when they brought their wheat crop in, they got paid straight away anyway, even though the wheat hadn’t been sold yet, because they’re putting in a pool and then the Commonwealth Bank managed the sale of that wheat over time, but the important thing was to keep the farmers going. So, they all were still productive because there was a war and that’s the thing that it could do. It funded 60 local governments around Australia. And you would’ve noticed that a lot of that funding was in things like very early electricity infrastructure, basic electricity infrastructure, small hydropower plants, this thing.

Robbie Barwick:

This was the early industrialization of Australia. The private banks weren’t going to fund that. These councils could turn to the Commonwealth Bank and the Commonwealth Bank funded it for them, important investments. Malcolm, because in the old days, things were built better than they are today. If you go to some of these places in the list, a lot of this information comes from a great book that was written on the 10th anniversary of the Commonwealth Bank to document all these amazing things it did.

Robbie Barwick:

And if you go to those places that it lists what the Commonwealth Bank invested in this infrastructure, you’d probably find a lot of that infrastructure is still there and still working order to this day, essentially later. This was the early economic development of Australia. World War II, even more spectacular and it was because of the Commonwealth Bank. Until John Curtin and Ben Chifley took over the government in 1942, the Commonwealth Bank had sat there idle as it had done all through the ’30s.

Malcolm Roberts:

Would it be fair to say that the private banks from Wall Street, London, the City of London were actively working with the Labour Party and its so-called conservative opposition to destabilise and undermine the Commonwealth Bank? Rather than just sitting there and used, it was being undermined.

Robbie Barwick:

No, 100%, but this is where a specific understanding in history is important. I know why you say that because of what you know about the Labour Party today. The Labour Party back then was a very different animal. It was the Labour Party that was fighting for the bank to be used properly. It was the Menzies’ liberals who were completely in the pockets of the private banks in London who made sure it wasn’t. And in the early ’30s, when they needed it the most, we had 25% male unemployment in Australia, Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

Geez.

Robbie Barwick:

We were being crushed in The Depression and there was a proposal to get The Commonwealth Bank to issue £18 million. Six million pounds was to go to farmers. Twelve million pounds was to go to public works. That was the proposal of the labour government then in 1931 and the former Queensland premier, who was a treasurer named Ted Theodore. The Head of the Commonwealth Bank, so Robert Gibson said, “You are asking me to inflate the money supply. I tell you, I bloody well won’t.” Now, forget what he said about inflation, because that’s a longer story. It was quite overstated. The issue there was a public servant defied the order of the government that owned his bank. He was just the manager of it, right?

Robbie Barwick:

And this led to the 1937 Royal Commission on Banking. And that Royal Commission ruled that that public servant was wrong. He should have followed the orders, but why did he defy it? Because in those years, the bank was run by a board that he was the chairman of and all those boards were representative of the private sector. And they were very much in the pockets of the private banks who didn’t want the Commonwealth Bank to function like it had function under Miller. As soon as Miller died in 1922, I think it was or 1923, Malcolm, there had been a single governor up to that point. They replaced him with the board.

Robbie Barwick:

So, you would never have someone of that noise again, because they had the right person in the right place at the right time, who could show what the bank would do. And they had a board which was a representative of private banks and private industry and they made sure in the next 28 years, it didn’t do anything. So, you’re right. They were actively suppressing it. And it was the Labour Party that fought very, very hard over this and people like John Curtin was at the centre of those fights. So, when he came to power in 1942, he knew he had a tool at his disposal, which was the Commonwealth Bank. And in those years from 1942 to 1949, when Labour lost office, those seven years are the high watermark of the Commonwealth Bank.

Robbie Barwick:

They showed what the Commonwealth Bank is capable of, even more extraordinary than World War I, because it also had the powers of a central bank by then. It got to tell the private banks directly what to do, not just compete with them. And the combination led to the greatest economic transformation in a short period of time probably the world had ever seen. We were an agrarian backwater economy and that’s why that machine tool example is such a good one. In three years, we went from an economy that relied on imports for everything. We mainly provided raw materials to the British, et cetera. We went from that to an economy that could literally produce anything. And machine tools are very complicated.

Robbie Barwick:

They are the machines that make the machines. They represent how really productive an economy is. We went from importing them all to making our own. There was nothing that was beyond the capabilities of Australians and it’s instructed the way the Labour Government did it because they weren’t ideological, Malcolm. They knew they had the Commonwealth Bank to fund it, but who did they turn to run the actual wartime mobilisation? They turned to a blue blood to them, someone that is socialist. The Labour Party was socialist, et cetera. They turned to a captain of industry Essington Lewis from BHP.

Malcolm Roberts:

Oh, yes.

Robbie Barwick:

And in those days, BHP was not a mining company, right? It was a mining company, but it was a steel maker. That’s what BHP was. And Lewis ran it and he had developed a really good relationship with Ben Chifley, but nothing would’ve happened without the funding and the Commonwealth Bank provided that. And it was extraordinary. We could produce ships, we could produce planes, we could produce machine tools. We could do anything. By the end of the war, we were approaching something like the high 20s as a percentage of our economy of manufacturing.

Robbie Barwick:

And by the late ’50s, it peaked at the mid-30s. About 33% or 35% of our economy was manufacturing. Today, it’s less than 5%. It’s tiny. It’s pathetic. It’s been smashed completely, right? But it was a transformation that was powered by the Commonwealth Bank because the long term investments that it required, the Commonwealth Bank was able to do that. And in this article, we show the charts of government spending and how the money issued by the Commonwealth Bank fueled that government spending.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let me just repeat the title of that article. It’s called, The Australian Precedents, E-N-T-S, for a Hamiltonian Credit System. The author’s name is Craig Isherwood, I-S-H-E-R-W-O-O-D. At the time, he was the Citizens Electoral Council National Secretary. Where can they get that article? Where can people get that article?

Robbie Barwick:

That’s on our website, www.citizensparty.org.au. If it’s hard to find, they can call out tollfree number 1800-636-432 and ask for a copy of it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. Just a quick little snippet, I’ve just had this realisation that Menzies has given the credit for opening up Australia, but what I think had happened now is… Some lights dawned on the wood heap in my brain. … Labour as a result of the second World War built the capacity, our productive capacity for manufacturing. After the second World War, Europe was devastated. Japan and China were devastated.

Malcolm Roberts:

The only large manufacturing facility available was in America, which had not been attacked apart from Pearl Harbour, and good old Australia where we had the raw materials as well. So, we actually then put that productive capacity to work. And it wasn’t Menzies at all who deserves the credit. It was really the Labour Party under Curtin and Chifley. Is that right?

Robbie Barwick:

I’m firmly of that view. Now that said, I will give Menzies the credit for not stuffing it up as such, though I’ve got some specific criticism.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, hang on, hang on. He bought in the double taxation legislation in 1953, which enabled foreign and Maldives nationals to completely avoid paying company tax in this country, which has really hurt us long term.

Robbie Barwick:

No, no, no. There’s a lot of those things that he does. Don’t worry, you got to hold me back not to blast Robert Menzies, but what I mean by not stuffing it up is by the time Curtin and Chifley, the government, left office in 1949, the zeitgeist had changed. The public expectations had changed. In fact, it’s known as the post-war settlement. This was universal around the world.

Robbie Barwick:

The kind of economic policy represented by what Roosevelt had done in America in the 1930s that Ellen Brown described with the reconstruction finance corporation using a public bank to invest in infrastructure and industry. We did it in World War II. You know the first thing the Labour Government in Britain did after World War II when they replaced Churchill was nationalise the Bank of England. Up until then, the Bank of England had been a privately owned bank for 150 years.

Malcolm Roberts:

From 1694 when it was formed, it had been a private bank.

Robbie Barwick:

Exactly. The first thing they did was nationalised it because they were copying Australia’s success, right? We set the tone and the expectations changed. So, when Menzies took office, he knew that he couldn’t buck that system now. People expected that there would be this public presence in the economy, but I’ll give you an example of why Menzies doesn’t deserve very much credit at all. The great Snowy Mountains Scheme, the defining infrastructure project of our history. Robert Menzies boycotted the opening of that in 1949. He opposed it. And only when it was immensely popular while he was prime minister, because it was Chifley who started it, he then went to the opening of the first stage, the second stage, et cetera, to capitalise.

Robbie Barwick:

But the fact he boycotted it was an ideological position he had and he even tried to sabotage it. He didn’t succeed, but that project was supposed to be funded by the Commonwealth Bank, Malcolm. And when he took office in 1949, he scrapped all that and he would only fund it out of revenue, the annual budget. And even then, he made the project, the Snowy Mountains Authority pay 5% interest to the government on the money that it gave them to fund the project, right? Whereas that could have all been done off the annual budget through the Commonwealth Bank, which is what the original plan had been.

Malcolm Roberts:

As I understand it, Robbie, Menzies tried to undermine the Snowy Mountains Scheme and McKell stood up to him and gave him hell and read the right act to him. Menzies pulled back his horns, but didn’t help it too much.

Robbie Barwick:

No. That would make sense, because I was going to say, the other man in the Menzies era who deserves credit for keeping him in line was Black Jack McEwen. Because Curtin and Chifley created the productive capacity of Australia. Black Jack McEwen did everything in his power to protect it, to make sure it survived, it lasted, right? In this era that we are in, the neoliberal era, all those policies that these guys stood for, they’re criticised for. I mean these liberals are so extreme now. These neoliberal liberals that you’ve been dealing with in parliament are so extreme now that by their standards, they would call Menzies a socialist. And of course, Menzies is the last thing. Menzies was a socialist.

Robbie Barwick:

It’s just that Menzies had to accept and everyone accepted in those days that you needed to have a public presence, including a public bank. The existence of the public bank, even when Menzies neutralised it a bit in 1959, he split the reserve bank function off from the Commonwealth Bank to weaken its power. Even when that happened, though, just the existence of the Commonwealth Bank and the Commonwealth Development Bank, as something the private banks had to compete with and the Commonwealth Development Bank was able to issue long term credit. It was able to provide flexible lending for farmers and all those things. It still performed a very useful function in the economy that helped stabilise the economy until Keating finally scrapped it in the mid-90s.

Malcolm Roberts:

Something for you to think about, we may or may not discuss it after, I’d like to continue with the priorities on the banking. But to me, the Labour Party is the party in the history. Even though I disagree with this ideology, the Labour Party in the era of Curtin and Chifley and some of the early Labour Party prime ministers were dinky-di. They were fair dinkum Australians. They were doing what they thought was the best for the country. Now whether you agree with them or not, that’s another thing.

Malcolm Roberts:

But what I’m saying is they were genuine. I do not see that in today’s Labour Party. They do not look after the worker. Their policies are selling out to the globalists. They’re completely enemy of the worker. Same with the liberal, the modern liberals are really socialists in many ways, because what I see, Robbie, is both Labour Party and the Liberal Nationals cow towering to the major banks and doing the bidding of the banks and the globalist predators through the UN, the World Economic Forum. That’s where we’ve gone. So, Menzies was far, far better than today’s liberals. Curtin and Chifley were immensely better than today’s Labour Party.

Robbie Barwick:

They were patriots.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you.

Robbie Barwick:

They fought for sovereignty. And yeah, in terms of modern labour, they’ll be outraged at me saying this, they hate our party for saying it, but they bear no resemblance at all to the old Labour Party. And even the last hurrah of old labour and it was slightly messier, even the Whitlam government, there was an economic component to the Whitlam government where they tried to do things that if they had to succeeded would’ve been incredibly useful now, but because it involved this issue of taking on the private sector and the private banks and the private resources companies was a big one, a really big one. They wanted to buy back the farm. What’s his name?

Malcolm Roberts:

Connor.

Robbie Barwick:

Rex Connor was the real soul of old labour in the old Labour Party and so was the treasurer, Jim Cairns who was quite a lefty, but a very, very decent person. I got to know Jim in his final years and he told me something. He had been the treasurer under Whitlam. And you know what he told me? He knew that Labour did not have to… Those loans that eventually brought them down, those foreign-

Malcolm Roberts:

King O’Malley loans.

Robbie Barwick:

… King O’Malley loans, the attempt to borrow those loans, that was not their first preference. He knew they didn’t have to borrow at all. They could have used the reserve bank as a national bank again, but unfortunately, the politics had changed and he and Connor could not persuade their colleagues to do so. And so, then they went to London and Wall Street, which is where they usually went. But those banks wouldn’t lend for the programme that Connor and Whitlam and Cairns wanted, which was to encourage Australian ownership of Australian resources. That’s what they wanted to do. Those banks wouldn’t lend that.

Malcolm Roberts:

We have to go to an ad break now, Robbie. So, everyone will be back straight after the ad break with Robbie Barwick. And let’s talk first of all about King O’Malley coming from a family of bankers and then maybe talk about whatever you want to talk about, Robbie. You take the show home for the last 10 minutes or so.

Robbie Barwick:

I’ll go with Wayne.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back and people all over the world will be very interested in the figures I’m about to give before I ask Robbie to take the show home. This is from Craig Ishwood’s article, a paper presented to the federal cabinet calculated the value difference in exporting bauxite, which is raw material for aluminium versus processed aluminium in $19.70. One million tonnes of bauxite exported as the raw material, bauxite, earned 5 million back then. Processed one step into alumina, it earned $27 million, five times as much. Processed again into aluminium, it earned $125 million. That’s 25 times as much, but wait for it. When processed finally into aluminium products, it would earn $600 million.

Malcolm Roberts:

Robbie, we have become a quarry and we are letting people overseas get the value added. And it comes back to what King O’Malley did. King O’Malley was a banker, came from a banking family. He was a yank and he came out of here and he represented Australia and Federal Parliament and became a member of the Fisher government that enacted the Commonwealth Bank legislation. He knew how currency is issued and he knew that it should be in government hands.

Robbie Barwick:

This was the gospel he preached. He gave the speech in parliament in 1909 and it went for five hours, Malcolm, this speech. They didn’t have limits like you have to deal with in those days. And in that speech where he laid out exactly how the Commonwealth Bank should work, because it was legislated a few years later, he said, “I am the Alexander Hamilton of Australia.” He was the greatest financial genius to ever walk the earth and his ideas have never been improved upon. And that was a reflection of the fact that he was an American. He grew up in the American system.

Robbie Barwick:

In his lifetime, he’d seen the effects of what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War using greenbacks to help fund the transcontinental railway line, which opened up the United States. The boom of productivity in the United States from the Civil War onwards around that investment has only been matched by what we’ve seen in China in the last 30 years. This was incredible in the United States in those years. And it was done using these American Hamiltonian methods and that’s what he was saying. He knew Australia’s potential, right? This is what we need.

Robbie Barwick:

And from the time he landed here in the late 1880s until he got that bank, he just did nothing but preached the gospel of national banking from one end of the country to the other, until he got it, until he persuaded them to set it up. And then the rest was history. I got something to read to you. A few years ago, we did some archive work in the National Library up there in Canberra. And we stumbled across this letter that O’Malley in 1937 when he was very old wrote to Franklin Roosevelt then the president. In the letter, he was introducing to Roosevelt, an economics writer, Dr. LC Jauncey, who was a friend of his. Then he gave a little bit of this history and it’s worth reading.

Robbie Barwick:

He said, “I had the honour of forcing the Commonwealth Bank onto the Australian statute book after 10 years of fighting in parliament while I was Minister for Home Affairs. Nobody would second it. We gave the late Denison Miller $50,000 to start the bank. And at the end of six months, he returned it and that is all the capital we ever put into the bank. Since its foundation, it has made $200 million net profit for the Australian taxpayers and now has a capital of over $50 million in reserves.”

Robbie Barwick:

And then he said, “I do hope Mr. President that before you retire, you will transform all the reserve regional banks or the federal reserve into government banks so that the American people will have the profits for themselves as we have here.” So, he kept his American patriotism as well and he’d succeeded in doing it here. And he wanted the Americans to reign in the fed and turned the fed into a proper national bank, which of course, it’s not, because it’s privately controlled.

Malcolm Roberts:

Robbie, we have three minutes until we have to start winding up.

Robbie Barwick:

Here’s the solution. Here’s what I want people to think about in terms of a solution that is immediately available to Australians, Malcolm. We can bring back a national bank. We can bring back the Commonwealth Bank through a stepwise process. And the first step is to start a type of bank that’s actually quite common around the world, but quite effective. And it’s a postal bank and that’s how the Commonwealth Bank started anyway. When they set it up in 1912, there were no bank branches and they used the post officers as bank branches. And what we propose is let’s get a public bank again, a public bank that the public can use. Not just own, but use it, but you can put your deposits in there.

Robbie Barwick:

They’ll be safe from financial speculation. They’ll be safe from things like bail-in, because it’s 100% government guaranteed. Your branch won’t shut down because we have this network of post officers right around Australia, right? There’s 1,500 towns in Australia that don’t have any banks, but they have post officers, right? So, your branch won’t shut down. It will always be there for face-to-face banking services. It will lend loans into local communities, because that’s what a lot of private banks, most of them don’t care about that. They’ve got one obsession, which is mortgages in the big markets. You can do that. And most important, it’ll break their monopoly. The big four are effectively… They’re an oligopoly, but they’re effectively a cartel.

Robbie Barwick:

So, you might as well call them a monopoly. If they have to go back to competing with a public option like they did for 80 years in Australia, that breaks that monopoly, they will have to compete again. They’ll have to compete on services. They’ll have to compete on the way they provide credit, right? They will see that if they don’t lift their standards, they will lose their customers to this public bank. The public bank’s going to get a lot of customers anyway. And I’ve found in talking to a lot of people across the board in parliament, I talked to all the parties, Malcolm, as you know, there is broad support for this. Even in the major parties, there’s support for this idea. But see, what happens is that every party has specific agendas, et cetera.

Robbie Barwick:

The big two major parties, they don’t have institutional support at the top, but they have individual MPs who support it. That has to be galvanised, right? If the public realise how important this solution is to the number one control over our economy and how it works and get behind this campaign, this is something we can force through into the political agenda in Australia and actually get it passed. We need to use a policy like this to get the Labour Party to go back to its roots. We talked about Labour being different to the old Labour. That’s in terms of parliamentarians. What you find at the grassroots of the Labour Party, Malcolm, the union guy, who’s still the union guy and in the Labour Party, et cetera, they think their party’s a sellout.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. Yeah.

Robbie Barwick:

Let’s get them rallying around these policies that used to be fine. We’ve got a Labour government now. Let’s force this Labour government to go back to its own tradition.

Malcolm Roberts:

Amen, amen to that. This is why a public bank is one-nation policy. The key area that we have to win though, is the narrative because the media has denigrated it, but it will bring back accountability. And I want to thank you so much, Robbie, for coming on, just being your normal frank, blunt self. Thank you so much and your informed self. You come with the facts and the data.

Robbie Barwick:

Thanks for the invitation.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’d like to have you back again, because we can also talk about-

Robbie Barwick:

No worries.

Malcolm Roberts:

… peace being a very, very formative time, not just war, for currency creation in government hands.

Robbie Barwick:

Yes. Yes. Hear, hear.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you, Robbie.