For years, the Government has subsidised rooftop solar and, more recently, wall batteries. This isn’t so you can have cheap power, it’s so they can have YOUR cheap power.
Half of Australia’s solar energy is generated from rooftop systems. During the morning and evening peak hours, when the sun isn’t shining and wind energy reduces by 90%, the government will take the charge from your wall battery and EV to keep the grid going. This is called “grid connectivity”. Under net zero policies, you will receive only as much electricity as the officials in Canberra decide you can have.
One Nation will end the net zero scam, build new high efficiency coal plants and restore wealth and prosperity to Australia.
Transcript
I thank Senator Van for this matter of public importance. Without criticising the science, cost and impracticability of net zero, which I did last night and will do again tomorrow, it’s certainly possible to talk about wasted capacity in the electricity sector. The ad hoc stance towards solar power in Australia has meant that a lot of people have fitted solar panels without battery storage. This is a distortion in the market as a result of government interference—subsidising solar panels early on while only subsidising wall batteries much later. In fact, the distortion in the energy market as a result of government interference is exactly why energy prices in Australia are out of control. In the most energy rich country in the world we should have the cheapest retail electricity in the world; it should not be amongst the dearest.
Remember, though, that One Nation is the party of free enterprise. If an Australian homeowner, body corporate or business wants to spend their own money to install solar power, connect it to a battery and then use that investment to start trading in electricity, all power to you. In fact, homeowners organising themselves to direct the output of their solar panels into community batteries is a way of getting into the energy business.
The government promised community batteries, and I know it has so far funded 370. Only one of the 370 grants went to a community organisation. The other 369 were to either government departments or energy companies. Why are we giving grants to energy companies to build big batteries when the proceeds of those big batteries will be sold back to the grid? Can’t they finance themselves? The Albanese government are handing out taxpayers’ money to their big business mates at a time that everyday Australians need the money for themselves.
Electric vehicles are another area where energy trading could be an option. Modern EVs use a battery which can hold 100 kilowatt hours of electricity. If charged from the owner’s own solar panels during the day, selling that electricity into the grid during peak hour will help stave off blackouts. Instead, all of these measures fracture energy generation and make the task of maintaining the reliability of the grid harder and more expensive.
There is a better solution. Modern clean-coal technology allows for the retrofitting of a device which captures all of the gas coming out of a coal fired plant and converts the gas into useful products like fertiliser, AdBlue and ethanol. In the language of the woke, that means zero emissions. This process costs less than $100 million per power station and works best using sea water. Instead of spending more than $1 trillion and up to $2 trillion to simply replace our electricity generation and convert to electrification, clean coal will achieve the same objective for a few hundred million dollars. Clean coal is the real wasted resource in the Australian energy market. Clean coal will reduce the cost of living under Labor.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Hughes): The time for the discussion has expired.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/9FeWhS7-SZs/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-09-26 16:59:472024-09-26 16:59:58Government Will Take Power from YOUR Solar Panels and EV
I thank my fellow Senators for their participation in a successful debate on my Motion in defence of free speech and peaceful freedom of association. I’m not sure if some understood how the Government’s “Misinformation and Disinformation Bill” (MAD for short) will limit the right to protest. As demonstrated during COVID, posts promoting protests were banned and organisers arrested. This Bill would allow the Government to ban posts that promote protests as a threat to public order, which is why my motion mentioned both free speech and the right to protest.
In my speech, I drew attention to the bigger picture – that predatory foreign billionaires have bought Australia, and this Bill prevents us talking about it.
One Nation will continue to fight for human rights and I am pleased to know we will not be alone.
Transcript
I move:
That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:
Freedom of speech and peaceful freedom of assembly are inalienable rights which the Senate must defend.
What do the billionaires who run the world do when we, the people, realise how much has been stolen from us—how much money, how much sovereignty, how much opportunity?
In the next few minutes, it will become obvious what this has to do with the misinformation and disinformation bill—’m-a-d’ or ‘mad’, for short. The world’s predatory billionaires do not wield their power directly; they hide behind wealth funds such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and First State. These funds act in concert with political change agents, including large superannuation and sovereign wealth funds such as Norges. The racket these subversive elements are running really is racketeering. They use their wealth to buy shares in companies that are then required to follow the agenda. This is not my opinion; these are the exact words of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. Buying out Western civilisation is an expensive business. The never-ending quest for more money, more power and more control is being noticed and resisted. Much of that resistance has been a result of Elon Musk buying X and allowing the truth to live in one mainstream forum.
The minute the BlackRock racketeers walk into a boardroom, any notion of public interest is abandoned. A case in point is Coles and Woolies, who used to pride themselves on providing the necessities of life—food and clothing—at the lowest possible price through competition. With the presence of an almost complete set of predatory wealth funds on their share registers, in recent years, Coles and Woolies no longer compete against each other. Instead, they collude to pursue a pricing strategy designed to maximise profit from our necessities of life, profit that’s sent overseas into the coffers of these sovereign wealth funds, leaving Australians permanently poorer.
In 2022-23, around an election, Woolies donated $110,000 to the ALP. In 2022-23, other industries under the control of these predatory wealth funds, including the big pharmaceutical industry, donated a million dollars to the ALP. What do they get for their money? Last Tuesday, I spoke in favour of the community affairs committee inquiry report into a prospective terms of reference for a royal commission into COVID response. Despite me simply agreeing with the committee report and despite my using only peer reviewed and published science to support my position, Senator Ayres from the Labor Party chose to describe my words as—listen to this:
… damaging misinformation and disinformation … there is a reason why the ASIO director-general highlights the role of extremist misinformation and disinformation in terms of its corrosive effect. It does lead to some of the acts of violent extremism here and overseas, motivated by the same vile conspiracy theories that we’ve just heard …
Wow, what a rant! No data, no argument; just empty labels.
Our New Zealand friends started their royal commission into COVID in December 2022. New Zealand has now decided that the royal commission unearthed so much behaviour that was cause for concern they’ve expanded the royal commission to include looking into COVID in much greater depth, including vaccine harm. The New Zealand royal commission now closely resembles the royal commission the Senate standing committee on community affairs recommended following their inquiry initiated on a One Nation referral. For Senator Ayres to say this is extremist misinformation and disinformation likely to lead to acts of violent extremism is a complete slap in the face to New Zealand’s royal commission and one that Senator Ayres would be well advised to reconsider.
This is the trouble when the government panics that $1 million in donations is at risk and brings on a bill that will shut up any opposition to the rule of the billionaires through their front companies—in this case, pharmaceutical companies—a rule that is, quite simply, a threat to the future of our beautiful country. With total clarity, Senator Ayres has drawn the battle lines here. What’s the truth in New Zealand parliament is ‘extremist misinformation and disinformation’ in Australia, if the Ayres government says it is. This bill has no protections, no checks and balances—it should rightly be renamed the ‘crush any opposition to the billionaires’ bill.
While the Labor Party’s desire for totalitarian censorship is no surprise, the people need to be aware that the Morrison-Littleproud Liberals and Nationals introduced this bill. Opposition leader Dutton makes no indication of whether he intends to oppose the bill, I guess because when he gets in he’ll be happy to use its onerous provisions. While I don’t have time to go into the Liberal Party’s donations from companies under the control of the world’s predatory billionaires, the same issue affects both parties. The Morrison-Littleproud government kept the COVID vaccine contracts hidden from our requests to make the contracts public for those who paid for the injections—taxpayers. The temptation to have extra money to spend in an election campaign has proven far too much for the major parties, and their independence, their objectivity and their common sense have been compromised. The world’s predatory billionaires’ downfall will be their hubris. The question is: who will go down with them?
On August 29th, The Australian newspaper reported that a government-owned bank, created out of Australia Post, may be back on the Labor government’s agenda. This move is seen as a response to the recent closures of numerous bank branches in regional Australia. If this report is accurate, I applaud the Government for this welcome development.
Years of regulation have not succeeded in forcing the banks to act with honesty, decency, and compassion. Additional regulation is not the answer, as large banks typically have access to superior legal resources compared to the Government. The answer lies in establishing a People’s Bank that can provide competition to the Big Four banks oligopoly, or more accurately, the cartel.
A People’s Bank could rewrite their Banking Code of Practice, restoring protections that successive Liberal Governments have removed—such as face-to-face banking, cash transactions and a guarantee of banking services to prevent the problem of political de-banking. People’s Banks worldwide have proven their ability to be secure and profitable, and to hold commercial banks accountable, as outlined in my speech.
Transcript
The Australian newspaper reported on 29 August that ‘a government owned bank created out of Australia Post is understood to be back on the Labor government’s agenda’ and that it is ‘seen as a response to the closure of numerous bank branches in regional Australia’. I hope this report is well founded, and, if it is, I applaud the government for this welcome development.
Years of regulation have failed to force the banks to behave with honesty, decency and compassion. More regulation is not the answer. Big banks will always have better lawyers than the government. The answer is a people’s bank offering competition to the big four bank oligopoly—or, more accurately, cartel. As someone who participated in the inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia, I attest that there is a desperate need for a public bank to revolutionise Australia’s banking system, the way the original Commonwealth Bank did, which the Fisher Labor government established in 1912.
Today the big four cartel controls 80 per cent of the market and dominates banking. They’re acting together to remove face-to-face banking, which doesn’t stop customers from needing face-to-face services. It just forces customers to travel further. It’s not just in the regions; it’s as difficult for the elderly in the city to travel to the next suburb for their banking as it is for a regional customer to travel to the next town.
We saw numerous instances of the banks’ dishonesty when closing branches, and we’re seeing it again right now with ANZ’s closure of its Katoomba branch. The ANZ treated Katoomba as a regional branch until it promised to not close the regional branches as a condition of its merger with Suncorp Bank. Lo and behold, suddenly ANZ claims Katoomba is not a regional branch so is proceeding to close it. The big four have concentrated close to 70 per cent of their lending into residential and investor mortgages, with more money fuelling the increase in house prices, while neglecting small business lending and regional communities.
All four are aggressively pushing customers away from cash and into digital banking and transacting so they can surveil and harvest your data and collect fees on all non-cash transactions. They now gouge Australians out of more than $4 billion per year in transaction fees and surcharges. In short, the big four serve only themselves and use their oligopoly power over a captive market to exploit their customers.
There’s a dire need for a public bank that can set standards of service and break up the banking cartel. A post office bank is the perfect way to do it, operating under a modified banking code of practice to restore protections to customers that successive Liberal-National governments have removed and guaranteeing cash and banking services, face-to-face banking in a branch, best interests of the customer and protections against politicisation of banking.
The Commonwealth Bank originally started in post offices in 1912, from which it provided banking services to all parts of Australia, even remote areas. It raised loans for the government at one-tenth the cost of the private banks. In the panic of 1914, it protected deposits in all the banks. It supported Australia’s agricultural production in World War I and funded the emergency purchase of a fleet of ships in the war, which became Australia’s first national shipping line. It made development loans to local councils all across Australia for crucial infrastructure, and it made affordable housing loans to returned soldiers. It accomplished all of this in its first decade, before its political enemies reduced its ability to compete with the private banks, until later when another Labor government unleashed it again in World War II.
Public and post banks are very successful around the world. The Japan Post Bank is one of the world’s biggest banks and was the secret to Japan’s postwar economic miracle, funding their government’s investments in infrastructure and industries. France’s post bank, La Banque Postale, started in 2006 and is already Europe’s 18th biggest bank and the biggest lender to local councils in France. Kiwibank started as a post bank in 2002, quickly growing into New Zealand’s fifth largest bank and the only bank that can compete with New Zealand’s big four banks, which Australia’s big four banks own. Its first achievement was injecting competition which stopped all branch closures in New Zealand for seven years. In the global financial crisis, Kiwibank was the only bank to increase lending while the private banks all reduced lending. Listen to this: the Bank of North Dakota, not a postal bank but a brilliant state owned bank, supported North Dakota’s public finances and its farmers for more than a century, making a profit in every year of operation. In the 2008 financial crisis, North Dakota was the only United States state to stay out of crisis.
I applaud the news that the government is in talks with Australia Post on this solution, and I urge the government to have the vision to create a powerful bank that can once again serve the people of Australia.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/mO21kmh2Mvs/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-09-19 17:15:002024-09-19 13:44:34Government-Owned Bank Back on Labor’s Agenda
The government claims they’ll build 40 huge wind turbines every month, 22,000 solar panels every day and at least 10,000 kilometres of power lines – in less than 6 years. Despite their promises of a ‘net-zero’ utopia, they have no idea how many has even been built.
As coal power stations are forced to shut down and nothing has been built to replace them, Australia is heading towards a scary place.
Blackouts and an environmental wasteland will be the reality of the uni-party’s ‘net-zero utopia’.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator Wong. Minister, exactly how many wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and kilometres of transmission lines were built last month?
Senator Wong: Thank you, Senator. I don’t have a monthly breakdown of what has occurred in terms of renewables since we came to government. But what I can say to you is that we have invested $22.5 billion to, over the next decade, help make Australia a renewable energy superpower. We have a budgeted plan that is backed by the experts at AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator. They have an Integrated System Plan that looks at the total cost, out to 2050, of generation, storage and transmission of renewable energy, which the government is working to and is contributing to.
I would also make the point, Senator—and you do understand markets—that the uncertainty under the coalition meant that 24 out of 28 coal-fired power stations announced their closure. We did not have new investment to replace them at the scale needed, and that is because the market knew that, with 20-plus energy policies, there was no certainty to enable investment in additional generation and supply. If we want to bring prices down and ensure reliability, we have to have more supply.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: Unlike with coalmines, there’s no obligation for industrial wind and solar sites to rehabilitate the land. The cost of pulling down wind and solar sites is left completely with landowners and farmers who have no idea what they’re signing up for. Minister, does your wind and solar plan rely on saddling farmers with the entire cost of disposal, or will your government legislate rehabilitation bonds for wind and solar projects?
Senator Wong: Senator, what I would say to you is that there has been a lot of investment and a lot of interest from Australians, in terms of both investors and landowners and landholders, to be part of this transition. It is true that there are a lot of challenges associated with it, including investment in transmission, which is one of the reasons the government is working on both increasing the flexibility of the system and also ensuring that more capacity is delivered across the country. For example, our Capacity Investment Scheme has delivered over 32 gigawatts of capacity. We’ve had the largest ever single tender for renewable energy, which is currently open for bids.
In relation to your issues, I don’t have advice on—(Time expired)
A report revealed from a motion I put into the Senate, that the government kept a helicopter flying for more than 5 years with a defective engine part.
That MRH-90 helicopter that crashed in Jervis Bay without any fatalities was a stroke of luck. Four months later, another helicopter crashed in the Whitsundays, resulting in the death of four Defence personnel. This report reveals that senior “leadership” of Defence was willing to put people’s lives at risk with defective engine parts. The question must be asked – how many other risks were they willing to overlook or explain away?
One Nation backs our Defence Personnel. The Government can’t claim they do unless they hold senior members of the Defence Department accountable for their failures.
Transcript
I rise to speak on the document produced in response to order for the production of documents No. 200. This order relates to the MRH-90 Taipan helicopter crash in Jervis Bay in May 2023. The helicopter call sign Bushman 82 was hovering low to water on a training exercise, with divers suspended below, when it experienced a catastrophic failure of its left-hand engine. The helicopter ditched into the water—in a stroke of luck, without any fatalities. Just one month later, Defence gave the MRH-90 helicopter a completely clean bill of health and authorised it to continue flying. The Senate agreed to this OPD in May 2023, requiring Defence to hand over any safety reports and documents in relation to the crash. We wanted to know how Defence had certified the helicopter as safe so quickly after such a significant incident. In defiance of the order of this Senate, the Minister for Defence refused to hand over any documents, citing an ongoing internal investigation, despite the helicopter already being back in the air, threatening lives. The government and Defence advised that that investigation should conclude in October 2023.
In June 2023, a month after, the Senate reiterated its order for the documents in motion 243, with a new deadline of November in accordance with the advice of the government. We gave them a go. They failed to produce even a response to that order until the Senate sought an explanation in December of 2023. We can see how time marches on and is irrelevant to Defence.
Now we fast forward to September 2024, 18 months after the crash and nearly a year after the government promised to respond. We finally have a response and documents, yet it is not a compliant response. It’s a redacted version of an executive summary to a single report. The order very clearly specified ‘all incident reports, safety evaluations, briefing notes, correspondence and information held by the Department of Defence, the defence minister or the defence minister’s office’. The executive summary to one report clearly doesn’t satisfy this request.
Minister, where are your briefing notes? Where is your correspondence? Are you telling the Senate that you and your office had nothing to say about the Jervis Bay ditching? The executive summary is dated 2 August 2024. That’s three months and two weeks ago. Did Defence sit on this report before giving it to the minister? Why the delay? The six pages of redacted executive summary we do have are from the Defence Flight Safety Bureau’s aviation safety investigation report. From what we do have, a few things are clear:
The engine failure was caused by the rupture of Blade 34 from the High Pressure 1 (HP1) wheel in the High Pressure Turbine (HPT).
They know the cause. Another quote reads:
… in 2017, as a result of several HP1 failures across the global fleet, the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) issued a NH90 Service Bulletin recommending that operators … replace HP 1 blades with modified blades.
Another quote reads:
The investigation highlighted that there was no definitive evidence of the completion and recording of hazard analysis and safety risk assessments related to HP 1 failures during MRH-90 PCS operations.
Defence decided to keep flying the helicopters without the modified parts and eventually get around to it while failing to consider and document the risk that these things would lose an engine during low-level flight because of this. In 2023, five years after the bulletin was given to Defence, Bushman 82 was still flying in Jervis Bay, without the recommended modified parts.
This report, while not compliant with the Senate’s order, is important because it again demonstrates Defence was willing to overlook serious risks when it came to this helicopter—risks involving lives. How many other problems with the MRH-90 helicopter did Defence overlook? How many times did they allow this thing back in the air, knowing it would unnecessarily put our defence personnel at needless risk? How many potentially catastrophic issues, like the TopOwl headset, were supposedly mitigated or did Defence just explain away?
These documents are important because this helicopter should have been pulled from service a decade ago. The MRH-90 should have been permanently grounded after Bushman 82 ditched into Jervis Bay—the latest, at the time, of a series of incidents. It wasn’t pulled from service, and, four months later, Bushman 83 crashed in the Whitsundays, resulting in the death of four personnel: Warrant Officer Class 2 Joseph Phillip Laycock—Phil, as he was known; troop commander Captain Danniel Lyon; Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent; and Corporal Alexander Naggs. May they rest in peace. Blood is on the hands of the Defence leadership and successive defence ministers who kept this helicopter in the air when it belonged on the ground. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.
The State Governments constantly come begging to the Commonwealth for money for schools which are State Government responsibility. This money inevitably ends up going towards ‘woke’ agendas, such as those promoted by Queensland Premier Steven Miles.
Drag queen story times, welcome to country and gender affirmation in schools is ridiculous and taxpayers shouldn’t be funding such programs.
I have long called for education to be about the basics: Education NOT Indoctrination!
Transcript
The schooling resource standard, or SRS, estimates the amount of public funding that schools need to meet their students’ educational needs. As of 2024, the Commonwealth is responsible for providing 20 per cent of public schools funding and, in line with this arrangement, states are required to take on 75 per cent, leaving a five per cent gap. The Commonwealth wears extra loadings for medium and small schools, which is estimated to cost the federal government $600 million in 2024 alone, as well as other student based loadings.
This scheme was agreed upon between the federal, state and territory governments under the National School Reform Agreement. Australia is a federation of states, and education is a state responsibility. Not only are the states failing to meet their 75 per cent target; they’re demanding that the federal government tip in more money for an additional five per cent. It is hypocrisy for the Victorian education minister, Ben Carroll, to suggest that the federal government should cut its funding to non-government schools to make up for it. The Commonwealth is already paying its fair share and meeting its target as outlined in the schooling resource standard, and the states are not paying their fair share—their agreed share. The states have even declined the offer of the federal government taking on an additional 2.5 per cent to help in closing the gap. They are asking for the full five per cent. How can the states ask for anything when they’re not even meeting their own target?
It’s worth noting that, in Australia, states and territories are responsible for the majority of public school funding, to which in 2024 alone the Commonwealth government is contributing $11.2 billion. Contrary to union bosses’ claims, the federal government over the past decade has taken on a greater share of the responsibility of funding schools. In fact, in 2013-14, states were responsible for 87 per cent of public school funding. Today that share is 12 per cent lower. It’s not the Commonwealth’s job to make up for the states’ fiscal illiteracy and mismanagement or the states’ pursuit of woke agenda. Look at Steven Miles, the Premier of Queensland. He is driving an agenda that includes gender bending and kiddies talk.
Senator Allman-Payne interjecting—
Senator ROBERTS: Senator Allman-Payne was talking about human relations. This is bending our children. That’s what we’re paying for. We should not be paying for that. Reading kids drag queens’ story times in schools—ridiculous! It’s left to the parent to defend their children and come in and stop it. One Nation stands on the fundamental idea that education is a state responsibility. We support Senator Tyrrell’s matter of public importance, and we thank her for it.
When the Prime Minister talks about ‘Future Made in Australia,’ he really means unworkable renewable projects made in Australia but owned by mostly foreign multinational corporations. There’s no national pride in this; it’s simply a cash cow for the PM’s renewables mates. The money is election fairy floss and not much more.
In this speech, I highlight projects that are genuinely made in Australia and involve mostly Australian companies and will grow the wealth and prosperity of our beautiful country. This includes the Iron Boomerang project, which will create a rail crossing across the top end, benefiting Aboriginal communities, grazing, and mining. It will also drive the Capricornia steel project at Port Hedland and Abbot Point, which will generate 40,000 breadwinner jobs, add $100 billion to our GDP and contribute $25 billion in government revenue.
One Nation builds, while the Albanese Government delivers press releases.
Transcript
The Future Made in Australia Bill 2024 provides a legislative framework for parts of the government ‘s Future Made in Australia policy. This provides for an investment of $22.7 billion over the next 10 years to ‘help Australia become an indispensable part of the global economy as the world transforms to net zero emissions and undergoes the most significant changes since the industrial revolution’. The government talks about maximising the economic and industrial benefits of the move to net zero and securing Australia’s place in a changing global economic and strategic landscape. Specifically, the following claim is made by the government:
Given our critical and abundant natural endowments and skilled workforce, Australia is well positioned to strengthen priority supply chains and become an indispensable part of the net zero global economy.
One Nation are big supporters of the first part of that statement. Australia is blessed with abundant and substantial mineral resources, and it’s our obligation to share those with the world so other countries can enjoy the standard of living we have. That is, we used to have it. Now our economy is in a race to the bottom, with the Greens, teals and Labor in a race to see how many wealth-generating projects they can shut down.
The Future Made in Australia agenda includes broader investments in the government’s growth agenda, including critical technologies, defence priorities, skills in priority sectors, a competitive business environment and reforms to better attract and deploy investment—in particular, projects where some level of domestic capability is necessary for efficient delivery of economic resilience and security and the private sector will not deliver the necessary investment in the sector in the absence of government support. That’s an important point. I have been working with the project sponsor of Capricorn Steel, a steel park project in northern Queensland, which I will speak more often a moment. This project, known also as Project Iron Boomerang, includes a railway, port and new energy efficient ships. This is a $50 billion project, initially, which is to be entirely financed through private equity, who have the money ready to go but will not commit it, because they don’t trust the Australian government. After watching a litany of cancelled projects—like Adani, where a billionaire from India wanted to invest $17 billion in Australia, and we did our best as a country and as the state of Queensland to keep him out—long legal delays and general incompetence, financiers are taking their money elsewhere.
This is why the government is now creating an investment pathway to get things built again. It’s the government or nothing. The prime function of the government is to build infrastructure projects that allow private enterprise to grow the economy and raise the wealth and prosperity of all Australians; to improve productivity in a way that protects the natural environment. This bill adds a layer on top, which is that the development must be net zero friendly.
One Nation doesn’t believe in the United Nations’ globalist net zero agenda. There is no empirical scientific data, no logical scientific points and no policy basis. We’ve seen that repeatedly. We believe it involves a massive transfer of wealth from everyday citizens into the pockets of the world’s predatory billionaires—billionaire parasites sucking solar and wind subsidies. It forms a highly regressive tax on the poor using electricity. We wonder when the Left signed on to a crony capitalist agenda that hurts everyday Australians for no environmental benefit. That’s a separate issue. One Nation does agree the national environment should be protected. We are stewards of the most fragile ecosystem in the world, and we must act with care. This bill doesn’t actually mention good stewardship of the natural environment, but it’s okay; One Nation does that as part of our core party values.
The Future Made in Australia policy includes the following broad stated aims: firstly, attracting investment in key industries through the national investment framework, streamlining approval processes for investment and encouraging private sector investment in sustainable industries; secondly, investing in net zero industries and increasing the demand for Australia’s green exports; thirdly, strengthening resources and economic security by investing in resources and critical mineral supply chains, as well as investing in manufacturing of clean energy technology; and fourthly, investing in new technologies and capabilities, reforming tertiary education, providing a training and skills pipeline for Future Made in Australia priority industries, strengthening defence capability and increasing drought and disaster resilience, among other things.
The bill establishes the National Interest Framework, to be used for sector assessments which will determine which sectors of the economy are ones in which Australia could have a competitive advantage in a net zero economy and that require government investment, or where some degree of domestic capacity is required for the economic resilience and security. The government’s stated guidelines in this section include a community benefit test which includes promoting safe, secure and well-paid work; developing skilled and inclusive workforces; working with communities to achieve positive outcomes, in particular First Nations communities and those affected by the transition to net zero; and strengthening domestic industrial capabilities, including local supply chains. This sounds like socialism—government wanting to control.
One Nation agrees with the intent. In particular, the industrial and mining sectors are being hollowed out through net zero measures to the detriment of the workers, unionists and their families. If the government is telling the truth, they will be able to rectify what they’ve already done in hollowing out the bush and the mining and manufacturing. Otherwise, fine Australian workers will join the tent cities that have sprung up under this Labor government. It should be pointed out that local supply chains are in fact part of the United Nations 2030 sustainability goals. It is more commonly called short supply chains. This goal encourages local supply of all goods and services, especially food. This may seem fine until you realise that, under this goal, anything which can’t be supplied locally will not be available at all. That’s the design. Except it will be available to the nomenklatura who can afford the carbon dioxide tax on long supply chains. If Australians want to live in a world that even vaguely resembles the world we grew up in, then local manufacturing is essential.
This bill seems to represent a newfound realisation by the Albanese Labor government that their union bosses and union members are running out of jobs, the economy is tanking and the next election is moving way out of reach. One Nation can get on board with making things here again. We can’t, though, get on board with all the net zero nonsense in this bill. The bill is written generally, allowing the minister wide powers to completely stuff things up. I don’t see this as any different to the general stuffing-up the Albanese government is already doing. Giving it more ways to make mistakes seems like a bad idea.
The bill has some good qualities. The economic resilience and security stream relates to sectors where Australia requires a degree of domestic capacity and resilience for domestic, economic or security reasons, and there’s an absence of private sector investment with that government support. The provisions around this section are quite extensive and seem to be a genuine attempt to provide for Australia’s sovereign industrial capacity—without using the word ‘sovereign’, of course!
Let me give you an example of a project that fits the economic resilience and security rules like a glove and provides breadwinner, family friendly, secure jobs for tens of thousands of Australians. Capricorn Steel is a project to create an Australian steel industry using new, zero-emission steel plants located at Abbot Point near Townsville and Port Hedland in Western Australia. Boomerang ships would take beautiful Queensland coking coal around to Port Hedland in Western Australia, where it’ll be used with their iron ore to produce Australian steel. This will be the world’s highest-quality steel, produced at 10 to 15 per cent less than China—the cheapest quality steel in the world.
From Port Hedland this steel can be exported to markets in the subcontinent—India and Europe. The development crescent of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia will become the world’s largest steel market over the next 20 years; Australia is perfectly placed to capitalise on that. Those ships will return to the Port of Gladstone carrying iron ore which will be combined with Australian coking coal to create a second steel park at Abbot Point. From there, Inland Rail can take this steel anywhere in Australia to help meet Australia’s steel needs—steel that is critical to net zero, housing, construction and our modern lifestyle, steel that is critical to Australia’s defence capability. Abbot Point, or the Port of Gladstone, is perfectly situated to export this steel to Asia, China and the United States.
Development of a railway across the Top End to open up areas currently served by road as well as new port facilities and new high-efficiency shipping are all projects that satisfy the development criteria in this bill—plus a water pipeline, plus a communications link to open up Central Australia and northern Queensland, the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia. Capricorn Steel and Project Iron Boomerang will add $100 billion to Australia’s gross domestic product, provide 40,000 secure breadwinner jobs and provide $25 billion in government revenue every year. Capricorn Steel will be emission free, for those who believe this global warming nonsense. Every ton of steel produced in the zero-emission steel plants to be constructed at Port Hedland and Abbot Point will save two tonnes of carbon dioxide from steel produced elsewhere. That’s a reduction in carbon dioxide production of 88 million tonnes a year.
There is no net zero without steel. Yet all the messaging coming from the government around this bill is nothing but net zero, which is nonsense. I get it: even net zero carpetbaggers are running out of interest in this failed net zero scam, so the government has to steal taxpayers’ money to keep net zero going.
One Nation has no confidence this bill will achieve anything positive for Australia. If the government wants to move the provisions around economic resilience and security into a new bill, with Infrastructure Australia in charge, One Nation would be delighted to support those measures.
One of the most troubling scandals in Australia involved government agencies, the Australian Red Cross, blood banks, and CSL, who knowingly transfused contaminated blood to individuals in need of transfusions. This included blood from donors with Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV, which was then used for transfusions to people, including haemophiliacs, who underwent surgery or other critical procedures.
Many recipients of this tainted blood subsequently contracted these diseases themselves. Despite numerous efforts to seek compensation from the responsible agencies and the Commonwealth, no resolution has been achieved so far.
In contrast, the Canadian government addressed this issue and compensated victims. Furthermore, following a Royal Commission into contaminated blood in the United Kingdom, the full extent of the scandal was acknowledged, and victims were provided with appropriate compensation.
I have has actively pursued justice for Australian victims, questioning the Blood Authority at Senate Estimates in February 2023 and again in June 2024 about the possibility of a Royal Commission and compensation. I remain dedicated to ensuring that Australian victims receive the justice and compensation they deserve.
As I travel through Queensland, visiting communities affected by industrial wind and solar projects, it’s increasingly evident that Greens’ politics are rife with hypocrisy and the public know it. While they present themselves as champions of the environment, they support the massive environmental vandalism involved in the push for net-zero energy.
Tops of mountains in native forests are being blown off to accommodate massive wind turbines and permanent access roads, which require blasting, are being constructed to transport enormous wind turbine blades—some over 100 meters long—around corners and up the mountain. Additionally, thousands of kilometres of forest are being clear-felled to make way for the transmission lines that will deliver the power to the cities, where Green supporters can pat themselves on the back for using “green” energy.
In reality, there’s nothing green about green energy and there’s nothing green about the Australian Greens. One Nation is the true champion of the natural environment now.
Transcript
And what do the Greens do? After finally showing their true colours as the party of Hamas; as the party of left-wing union thuggery, donations and bribes; as the party of communism; and as the party of environmental destruction in the name of net zero energy, they have a problem. Their traditional base of decent Australians concerned about the natural environment is turning away from the watermelon Greens. So here’s the Greens’ answer: resurrect a bill which was already defeated because it’s a stupid bill, and use this to pretend the Greens still care about our precious natural environment.
The intention of this bill is in the name: ending native forest logging. Regional forest agreements will be made subservient to environmental regulations which will tie logging down in the courts and bring logging to an end—end logging. All those workers, many of them fine union members, will be out of a job. It is logging that produces timber for, amongst other things, the very seats the Greens are sitting in today, right now, which were made from logged native timber—Western Australian jarrah and Tasmanian myrtle.
Putting aside their hypocrisy, it’s clear the Greens think their supporters can be gullibly convinced by a superficial virtue-signalling stunt. After all, who would oppose protecting native forests? Actually, the Greens oppose protecting native forests. Greens’ energy policies are blasting the tops off mountains in old-growth forests to erect 300-metre-high wind turbines. They’re clear-felling thousands of kilometres of forest for access roads and the power transmission lines to get the power hundreds of kilometres back to the city—thousands of kilometres, in fact, back to the city. Thousands of hectares of native forest are being permanently destroyed.
Blasting has released arsenic previously locked in sandstone into our waterways and aquifers. In the case of the Atherton Tableland in pristine North Queensland, aquifers contaminated with arsenic will eventually come to the surface in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, through underground basins.
Unlike forest taken for logging, forest damage from net zero energy is not regrown. The access roads are required for maintenance for the life of the turbine. The transmission lines are permanent. Unlike coalmines that are remediated at the end of the mine, there’s no remediation bond on industrial wind, solar and transmission lines, so these things will be a rusting blight on the landscape for a hundred years, for the community to pay for, for taxpayers to pay to rehabilitate and for farmers to rehabilitate. The Greens are environmental vandals.
I tell you who does support protecting native forests: One Nation. We would end the environmental destruction from net zero energy measures and would restrict solar panels to built-up areas where the energy is needed. We would end any new wind turbine subsidies and instead promote vertical wind technology. One Nation will prevent logging in old-growth forests.
Regional forest agreements are an accord between the federal, state and local governments to supervise the timber industry. This means the Greens believe they know better than the state governments—all six of them—who have been managing their forests for 200 years. Aboriginals have been managing Australia’s forests for tens of thousands of years, including through the use of burning off. Each state government consults with Aboriginal communities in the development of regional forest agreements. Aboriginal voices only matter, though, to the Greens when they can be exploited to advance Greens technology and lock Aboriginals into victimhood and dependency.
Generations of ongoing development of forestry agreements, planning out supply and demand, protecting sensitive habitats and protecting old-growth forests—all that great work involving communities, industry and government is torn up and thrown away because the Greens think they know better. They are playing God, playing tsar. What an ego—and to what benefit?
The Greens are proclaiming their love of housing and promising to build more houses than anyone else. The question arises: out of what are they going to build those houses? The Greens want to shut down the Australian forestry industry, the conventional steel industry, the gas industry, the diesel industry and the cement industry. The Greens are proposing to build houses without timber, steel or concrete. Well, the last time I looked, pixie dust was not a building material. Does the CFMEU know they’re hopping into bed with a political party that would remove from the market all the materials tradies need to build a new home and build new apartment towers while also removing diesel for tradies’ generators and utes, which they now propose to tax out of existence?
I don’t want to confuse the feelings coming from my left with facts, yet that’s what I do. I deal in facts. At last mapping, there were 131½ million hectares of native forest in Australia, which is 17 per cent of Australia’s land area, and there were 1.8 million hectares of commercial plantations, including pines and eucalypts. This is where most logging occurs, yet it’s not enough to sustain Australia’s demand for timber. There are 30 million hectares of land, most of that privately owned, which can be logged under the careful management of regional forest agreements. Last year, two per cent of those 30 million hectares were logged, meaning Australia is logging 600,000 hectares out of the 133 million hectares available, less than one half of one per cent of our native forests.
What happens when a forest is logged? Is it clear-felled, never to grow anything again? Of course not. Forestry is about renewal. That’s the whole point of regional forestry agreements. The logging industry is allowed to go in and take the productive timber, remove the stunted and useless timber and then leave that forest to regenerate for 10 years or so before returning to repeat the cycle. Habitat is not destroyed; it’s enhanced. Forests are not destroyed; they’re enhanced. Rather than helping our forests, this Greens bill will harm them.
Logging removes the fuel from the forest. It thins the trees and protects native forest from bushfires. There are huge areas of this country that have never fully recovered from the bushfires during the drought because some native forests contain so much fuel they burned like hell. What happened to the wildlife the Greens profess to care so much about? They were incinerated—agonisingly, cruelly incinerated. The damage to native flora and fauna caused in those bushfires resulted directly from restrictions on burn-offs, something sensible forest management would have mediated. They tried to, but the Greens stopped it. This is the problem with communists. They think imperious proclamations are a substitute for good government facts and data. They are wrong.
Let’s be clear: it has been illegal to log old-growth forests for the entirety of this century. I know there has been some intrusion into old-growth forests. This bill from the Greens won’t deal with that problem, though, because the intrusion is mostly coming from the construction of wind turbines, access roads, solar panels and transmission lines, which the Greens adore and love and drive. Illegal logging, logging that damages old-growth forests, must be prosecuted, and One Nation will prosecute offenders.
One Nation opposes this bill, because we are the party of the environment and we know the current system is best for the environment. As someone who has personally planted thousands of trees, rehabilitated land and protected coastlines, I know One Nation is now the party of the natural environment.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/ggL-SH71qjY/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-09-17 15:02:412024-09-17 15:02:47One Nation is the True Champion for the Environment
In this video I outline One Nation’s plan to restore Australian farming – within the 60 seconds I was allotted to debate the Nationals’ motion on the issue.
Net zero is a policy of the Liberals, the Nationals, Labor, the Greens, and the Teals. Their collective commitment to net zero is destroying farming through the death of a thousand regulatory cuts, strangling farmers with restrictions on water use, farm chemicals, fertilisers, on their soil. This is choking the life out of rural Australia in the name of reducing carbon dioxide, which helps grow the very food these net zero ideologues eat.
In reality, net zero means net zero food, net zero clothing, net zero freedom and net zero travel. The UN and the World Economic Forum are pushing for food to be produced in near-urban intensive food manufacturing facilities producing cultural lab-grown meat, forced greens with no cell structure and bug protein. It’s time to let Australian farmers once again feed and clothe the world.
Let’s end government driven by ideology and restore common sense to farming.
Transcript
How would One Nation restore Australian farming—explained in the 60 seconds the Nationals have allocated me? It’s easy: end the net zero madness. Net zero is a policy of the Liberals, the Nationals, the Labor Party, the Greens and the teals. Each committed to destroying farming through the death of a thousand regulatory cuts, strangling farmers with restrictions on water use, on farm chemicals and fertilisers and even on their soil. This is strangling the life out of rural Australia in the name of reducing carbon dioxide, which fertilises the very food these net zero ideologues eat.
Net zero really means net zero food, net zero clothes, net zero freedom and net zero travel. We’ve been told by the UN and the World Economic Forum that food will be produced in near-urban intensive food-manufacturing facilities producing cultured laboratory meat, forced greens with no cell structure and bug protein. Allow Australian farmers to once again feed and clothe the world. It’s time to end government by ideology.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/OR2IXGkh_kM/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-09-16 16:53:442024-09-16 16:53:55One Nation’s Plan to Restore Australian Farming : End Net Zero Madness
