Fake Degrees, Real Consequences—But Not for the Offenders

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In 2024, 23,000 foreign students were found to have purchased qualifications—many in aged care and early childhood—from deregistered providers like SPES Education.

This is a clear breach of their visa conditions under Section 8202 and defeats the entire purpose of studying in Australia—which is to support the Australian education industry while acquiring real skills they can use to contribute to the growth of Australia or their country of origin.

The penalty for such a serious breach of trust with the Australian people must be the cancellation of the individual’s visa cancelled and deportation, along with any family members they were permitted to bring with them while studying in Australia.

I asked Minister Watt whether the government would cancel the visas of these students and others who obtained qualifications fraudulently.

Listen closely to the gaslighting, the waffle and the “backslapping” – all to avoid admitting that the Albanese Government has no intention of deporting these illegals students.

Transcript

My question is to Minister Watt, representing the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. In July the Australian Skills Quality Authority issued notices cancelling the qualifications of more than 4,200 foreign students, who were largely studying aged care and early childhood, after their education provider, SPES Education Pty Ltd, was deregistered for running a cash-for-diplomas operation scheme. In 2024, 23,000 foreign students were caught purchasing their qualifications, which is a breach of condition 8202, applying to all class 500 student visa holders. In short, these foreign students are in breach of their visas. Minister, will you cancel the visas of these 23,000 students and any others who cheated when purchasing their qualification? 

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water): Thank you, Senator Roberts. While I understand you prefer to ask these types of questions through the frame of migration, the matters you are asking about probably fit more within the responsibilities of the Minister for Skills and Training, Minister Giles, but I do represent him here, so I can still answer that question. 

We are very proud of the fact that we have reformed the compliance measures around international education to weed out the shonks who had been running international education operations and proliferated under the former coalition government. The international training system that was left behind by the Murrison government was not just a joke; it was crooked. We had shonks and crooks unfortunately running these sorts of operations, exploiting international students who were here, taking money off them and providing them with dodgy qualifications that weren’t fit for the kind of work they went on to do. So we are proud of those reforms. 

As you say, Senator Roberts, it has resulted in thousands of qualifications being cancelled, as they should have been, because in some cases people were being awarded qualifications without doing any training or any study whatsoever; basically, you paid for a qualification and you got it. That’s not how the system should work. It’s how the system worked under the former coalition government, but it’s not how the system works under this Labor government. Again, we make no apology for taking back the qualifications of people, so-called students, who have obtained qualifications through those means, and we make absolutely no apology for going after the shonks who were running those kinds of organisations. They have no place in our system. They actually tarnish Australia’s reputation as a provider of international education, and we will continue to go after them. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary? 

Under both Australian and Queensland law, a person who obtains a job using a faked qualification has committed two offences: using deception and forgery to obtain a financial advantage. Both carry a penalty of seven years in jail. This is not just a foreign student breaching their student visa conditions; this is serious criminal behaviour. Minister, have you brought in so many foreign students and so many new arrivals that you have lost the ability to police clear-cut federal law? 

The PRESIDENT: Minister Wong? 

Senator Wong: President, I would ask you to consider whether that question is in order, given that it appears to go to a question about criminal provisions or offences under state legislation that clearly can’t be in the portfolio responsibilities the minister is representing. 

Senator ROBERTS: My question goes to the quality of immigrants that are being allowed into this country and turning out to be criminals. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, you also referred to the qualifications or the penalties in the Queensland and Australian jurisdictions. 

Senator Scarr: President, speaking on the point of order, it is a fact that the Australian immigration legislation does cross-refer to state criminal legislation with respect to calibrating what is serious or not-so-serious criminal conduct. I just provide that for your assistance. 

The PRESIDENT: In response to your point of order, Senator Wong, the minister can answer the question to the extent that it goes to his portfolio or portfolios, his areas, but I do remind everyone in the chamber that it doesn’t go to legal opinion. 

Senator WATT: Senator Roberts, I think we’re all used to you and other One Nation senators asking questions that involve pejorative statements towards migrants, and it would appear that that is the intention for this term as well. How you decide to use your questions is a matter for you. 

The PRESIDENT: Minister Watt, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts. 

Senator Roberts: An unfounded imputation, President. I happen to be an immigrant. 

The PRESIDENT: There is no need for the added piece. Senator Roberts, the minister was describing the language with which a question was asked, so it doesn’t go to imputation. 

Senator WATT: To answer your question, Senator Roberts, as I say, when the issue of fraudulent qualifications came to light, we took action. I was a little bit involved in this in my previous portfolio, and my recollection is that a very thorough search was done with employers who may have been employing the people involved. I will come back to you if this is wrong, but my recollection is that there was not very much evidence, if any at all, that people were being employed using those qualifications. As I say, if that’s wrong, I will come back to you. We do take this matter seriously, and we will keep acting against it. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary? 

Foreign students can now bring family members with them, a prize for which many are clearly prepared to break the law. Deporting 27,200 crooked students and the thousands of family members they brought with them will free up thousands of homes and help ease the housing crisis and record homelessness that your government has caused through catastrophically high immigration. Minister, isn’t it time we freed up homes for Australians who deserve them ahead of continuing to import criminals? 

The PRESIDENT: Minister Wong? 

Senator Wong: President, I would ask you to consider whether the use of that adjective, which I would prefer not to repeat, about the students in that question is in order, because it suggests all—I think it was a few hundred thousand—are in fact contravening or on the wrong side of the law or whatever. I do wonder if that’s an appropriate inclusion in a question to a minister in this place. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts? 

Senator Roberts: Senator Watt has already admitted that shonks are being weeded out. We want to get rid of them—out of the country. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, the minister was referring to providers of education. Minister Wong? 

Senator Wong: On the point of order, the fact that some people may have breached the law does not make an entire cohort in breach of the law. That was the implication. It was a clear statement in the question. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts? 

Senator Roberts: We know 27,000— 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, you are not in a debate here. You either have a legitimate question or you haven’t. I am going to seek the advice of the Clerk. 

Senator Roberts interjecting— 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, we are not in the committee stage. This is question time. You ask your question. It gets ruled in or out of order if a point of order is raised. But you are not in a debate, and you are clearly not in a debate with me. Senator Roberts and Minister Wong, as is my usual practice, I am happy to review the language, but I would remind all senators that language used in questions is ultimately their responsibility and ultimately a reflection on them if there is some offence. So I will call Minister Watt. 

Senator WATT: Thanks, Senator Roberts. There are a number of assumptions in your question. One of them is that those students who obtained fraudulent qualifications were working in the occupation that that qualification was for. As I said, I am checking my records as to that situation, but I don’t think you should necessarily make that assumption. It is one thing for someone to obtain a fraudulent qualification, and that is wrong. As I said, we have taken action on that against the students by cancelling their qualifications. Also, we have taken action against some of those shonky providers. But it’s quite possible that those students may have obtained a qualification in a certain area but have been working in a completely different occupation. My recollection is that that is what the case was for those students, but I’m checking that matter. As I said, if I have heard anything further to add to that then I will advise the chamber. 

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One Million Reasons You Can’t Afford Rent

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A million foreign students and their families are in Australia—overcrowding schools, straining housing, and bleeding tens of billions of $$ out of the country.

Courses are being used as backdoor permanent residency pathways, with poor standards and little oversight.

One Nation will:

✅ Deport visa cheats
✅ End family visas for students
✅ Introduce 8-year wait times for benefits
✅ Free up homes for young Aussies

It’s time to fix the rort and put Australians first.

Transcript

 I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for the Environment and Water (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to international students.

I asked: has the government lost control of student visa holders? The Australian public have had enough of the government pretending immigration is fine. So many people are entering that the government has lost control. Foreign students are now allowed to bring in spouses, de facto partners and children under 18 who attend state schools and contribute to overcrowding. Spouses can work 24 hours a week, or, if the student is a postgraduate, they can work full time with no restrictions. Buying a first degree and coming in as a graduate student opens the door to a financial windfall and helps to explain how foreign visa holders were able to last year send $15 billion home to their families—money that leaves Australia forever, making our economy and our people poorer.

In the last two years, the early education graduate diploma at the Southern Cross University has had 6,000 enrolments. The ABC reports that courses like this are being used as permanent residency pathways, with courses dumbed down to keep the gravy train going. There are confirmed issues around graduates not speaking English and not understanding child protection policies, safe sleep or even hygiene. There are 1.1 million foreign students and their families currently in Australia.

One Nation will deport every visa holder who is breaching their visa, a figure close to 100,000 when the number of dishonest foreign students is included. We will introduce an eight-year waiting period for social security benefits, including Medicare, and we will cancel the visa for spouses and siblings to accompany students entirely. In the age of online learning, there is no need for a student with children to come to Australia in person. The Albanese government’s student visa rort is selling out young Australians, causing record homelessness. We will free up tens of thousands of houses for young Australians, who, thanks to the government, currently face the worst housing crisis and the worst housing market in Australian history. (Time expired)

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Scrap the EV Slush Fund

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One Nation stands firmly against the Albanese Government’s push for electric vehicles (EVs), and the billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies and infrastructure spending that overwhelmingly benefit wealthy Australians. While everyday Australians face rising costs for housing, groceries, and fuel, the government continues to pour money into EV incentives and charger installations—despite low public uptake.

Australians should be free to choose the vehicle that suits their needs and budget—whether it’s a ute, a four-wheel drive, or a V8.

One Nation would cancel all policies that penalise internal combustion engines and calls for the return of reliable, efficient petrol and diesel vehicles.

It’s time to revoke the EV slush fund and put Australians first.

Transcript

I move: 

That the Industry Research and Development (Dealership and Repairer Initiative for Vehicle Electrification Nationally (DRIVEN) Program) Instrument 2024, made under the Industry Research and Development Act 1986, be disallowed [F2024L01460]. 

What a mouthful! It’s an instrument made under the Industry Research and Development Act 1986. This is where the fun bit starts. This regulation One Nation seeks to revoke is a $60 million slush fund that climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen—there he is again—will have to splash around on pet projects. Specifically, this is $60 million for the installation and repair of electric vehicle chargers. These are electric vehicle chargers from which only some of the most well-off of Australians, who can afford an EV, will benefit. While rents are skyrocketing, houses are more unaffordable than ever, groceries keep getting more expensive and beer is heading towards $15 a pint, taxpayers should not be slugged with more taxes to pay for this government’s slush fund. 

Why is the government obsessed with putting everyone into electric vehicles? Some of them have decent speed, admittedly, when you put your foot down, yet the range on purely electric vehicles—battery electric vehicles—is mostly terrible. It gets even worse when trying to tow something. Forums for the Ford F-150 Lightning, a battery powered ute, are full of horror stories that unfold as soon as a trailer is attached. This is worldwide. 

Australians already know all of this and are voting with their wallets. The rejection of battery EVs shows up in new car sales figures. Battery electric vehicles were just 6.5 per cent of new car sales, and how long have they been offered? Years. Even here, in the capital of ‘Wokeistan’, Canberra, home of the country’s loudest virtue signallers, battery electric vehicles are just 3.6 per cent of all vehicles on the road. This is despite every effort of government and multinational corporations trying to pull Australians away from the trusty petrol and diesel engine. There has been a near decade of propaganda and lies trying to convince Australians to make the switch—we’re not buying it. 

Never mind the hugely expensive tax breaks that give an EV buyer tens of thousands of dollars. These tax breaks include exemptions from the lower luxury car tax threshold; exemptions from the penalties under the new vehicle efficiency standard, or the ute tax, as it has become known; no fuel excise at 50.8 cents a litre; exemptions from fringe benefits tax, representing a $12,000 saving on a $60,000 EV but costing taxpayers $550 million a year. Taxpayers pay for this. This is Robin Hood in reverse; robbing the poor to pay for the wealthy. Plus there is an array of rebates from state governments across the country. They’ve thrown just about every tax break in the book at EVs, and still Australians aren’t fussed over the inferior electric vehicle products. 

More than 95 per cent of the vehicles on the road still contain internal combustion engines, the trusty petrol and diesel, the reliable petrol and diesel, the safe petrol and diesel. Naturally aspirated, turbocharged, supercharged or a hybrid set up, Australians have rightly shunned battery EVs for engines that make a noise when turned on. Tradies cried out in horror when the legendary V8, from the Toyota LandCruiser 200 series and utes, was removed from market in anticipation of the coming government regulations and crackdowns. 

Are EVs cheaper to run? Well, a CarExpert road trip test throws real doubt on that. They drove two BMWs on a road trip from Melbourne to Sydney. They were the same exact car, the same year of make, with the same start and the same finish point. The only difference is that one was the battery electric version and the other was hydrocarbon fuelled. When they arrived in Sydney, the electric vehicle charging had cost more for the road trip than filling up with the most expensive 98 petrol. Of course, electricity isn’t free, and neither are these chargers. The minister’s slush fund that we’re seeking to disallow here is paying for the installation of chargers that are businesses in themselves, so we’re paying for a business. Taxpayers will foot the bill for installing a charger, and the EV business will reap all the profits from the charge they sell through it forever, for eternity. We would never do this with service stations, because it’s bloody ridiculous. Taxpayers should not be paying for the profits of these often foreign multinational companies who run charging services.  

Then there’s the fire risk. Everyone knows about this. The electric vehicle industry’s dirty little secret: the batteries and these chargers present an extreme fire risk. Car ferries carrying thousands of new car deliveries have been left to burn and potentially sink after battery fires have broken out mid-ocean. Just last month, News.com reported: 

There are concerns an abandoned EV carrier floating aimlessly in the Pacific Ocean could continue to burn for weeks … 

Salvage operators have finally reached the Morning Midas around 350km south of Adak, Alaska, a week after it first caught fire and 22 crew were rescued by the US Coast Guard after being forced to abandon ship. 

The floating inferno is said to have been caused by the lithium-iron batteries in the 70 electric vehicles on board—batteries that can cause fires that can burn for weeks. 

Some apartment tower complexes have banned battery electric vehicles in their car parks. Our fire departments are sounding the alarm on the increased risk battery fires present. These battery fires often can’t be simply put out and must be left for days to burn themselves out. One suggestion to deal with an electric vehicle fire is to have the burning wreck forklifted—imagine the forklift driver!—into a waiting shipping container of water to try and keep it contained. That’s a suggestion. Seriously! That’s the best firefighting strategy we have when one of these EVs goes up. 

Insurance companies have confirmed the risk in electric vehicles is real with their increased premiums. Insurance comparison site Compare the Market conducted a study of 12 insurers and has shown the top five bestselling EVs are 43 per cent more expensive to insure than similar internal combustion models. So EVs are more expensive to buy, more expensive to drive, more expensive to charge and more expensive to insure. We are running out of categories to find out where EVs are actually cheaper. 

What about environmentally friendly? Let’s ask that question. As for being environmentally friendly, the process for making batteries is one of the most environmentally destructive in the world, killing the environment to save the planet. The hundreds of kilograms of minerals that go into a battery include aluminium, copper, steel, iron, graphite, nickel, lithium, manganese and cobalt. These require extremely intensive mining and refinement and huge, huge amounts of energy. The resources and energy consumed in electric vehicle manufacturing is way above those consumed in making a petrol or diesel engine car. Many of these raw minerals are sourced from conflict-torn places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, using child labourers and slaves. The overall environmental impact of building an EV is devastating, as is the social impact. The raw materials are sourced from ethically questionable countries and processed almost exclusively by Communist China controlled companies. That’s where the focus on EVs leaves Australians—completely reliant on China. 

Then there’s Minister Tony Burke, whose Chinese EV says ‘Don’t plug in the phone.’ Worries about being reliant on China aren’t overblown. Government departments are warning Labor politicians of the same thing. The Strategist journal reported in November: 

Senate estimates … heard the remarkable revelation that Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has had to take ‘precautions’ based on warnings from his own department to protect himself and the nation’s sensitive information from Burke’s own Chinese-made electric car— 

He’s got to protect himself and the security of the country from his Chinese electric car— 

The risks with such cars, according to Home Affairs officials, might include having data collected from the owner’s phone if it were connected to the car, voice calls eavesdropped on, image collection from the car’s external cameras and geolocation tracking—meaning that if Burke drove to a sensitive government location the car’s manufacturer would be able to see. 

If these are risks to ministers, those same risks are inherent for all Australians. Bloody ridiculous. 

What is even more confusing about the government EV push is that petrol and diesel engines are only getting better and more efficient in their newest versions. Did anyone mention weight? Electric vehicles are humongous in weight. Small, turbocharged, extremely efficient diesel engines were becoming the powertrain of choice, especially in small cars. Fuel efficiency numbers we couldn’t have dreamt of 20 years ago were being beaten. Then all the car makers in the world, and many stupid governments around the world, seemingly overnight, had to imagine that petrol vehicles and diesel engines were dead. Imagine that. Everyone would be driving an EV, apparently blind to or not caring for the downsides in range, resources and longevity. Just as we were getting to some of the cleanest, most efficient diesel and petrol vehicles ever made, why did the government decided no-one would ever want to drive them again? They decided for the taxpayers. They decided for the citizens of Australia. 

Why does the government want to splash billions of dollars into technology that Australians clearly don’t want and that is environmentally reprehensible? The answer may lie in the plan for Australia’s energy grid. The government needs electric vehicles hooked up to the grid under their plans for a consumer energy resources like EV batteries to be connected to virtual power plants. They want to use your car as a battery. The government can’t afford to build all the batteries needed under their net zero plan. They don’t even know how much. There is no plan. So the government wants Australians to buy an EV with a battery that can be taken over and discharged to the grid. They don’t tell you that, do they, but that is what they are wanting. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency says that batteries from EVs ‘can help stabilise the power grid by supplying power back during times of high demand’. There it is. Do you hear that in their advertisements? No. 

Like many things, this will start off as a voluntary scheme, currently called ‘bidirectional charging’ or ‘vehicle to grid’. That sounds good, but think about what it means. It means stealing your electricity when you want it. Then the inevitable threat of blackouts and the instability of the electricity grid under net zero will become an emergency, and everyone with an EV will be forced to participate. What we have now is power shortages in some states as they destroy perfectly good coal and gas generation and try and fail to replace it with solar and wind. So we’ve got a shortage of reliable electricity. And now they want to convert the car fleet, the transport fleet, to EVs to add more demand to the electricity sector. Then they want to promote artificial intelligence, which is an electricity hog. And then they want to support bitcoin mining. Where is all this going to lead? It’s going to lead to massive, sky-high prices as well as shortages, unreliability, instability and insecurity. 

The government’s plan, or what it claims is a plan, is all very complicated, but they don’t know what they’re doing. That is fact. One Nation’s solution is much simpler: Australians should be allowed to drive whatever car they want, whatever car they can afford, whether it’s a four-wheel drive, a ute or a smart car. Only One Nation has a policy to cancel all policies which lead to the death of the V8 engine being provided as an option to Australian car buyers. Porsche and Mercedes-Benz said that EVs would take over, and they stopped making V8s. Now they’re bringing back V8s and they’re scaling back their EV plans. I ask the Senate to revoke this electric vehicle slush fund and join One Nation in bringing back the V8. 

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One Nation’s Housing Fix

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One Nation backs Senator Bragg’s Housing Investment Probity Bill to stop public funds flowing to CFMEU-linked projects via Cbus.

We would however go further. One Nation would:

✅ Shut down the Housing Future Fund and the federal Department of Housing.

✅ Cut $50K off home costs by fixing the Building Code and suspending GST on building materials.

✅ Create a People’s Bank for 5% fixed-rate mortgages.

✅ Allow a person’s super account to invest in their first home.

✅ Deport visa violators to free up housing.

✅ Stop foreign ownership of houses.

Australia needs homes and jobs — not government waste.

Transcript

Senator Bragg has advanced the Housing Investment Probity Bill 2024, which modifies the charter of the Housing Australia Future Fund to prevent financing of projects that Cbus owns. Cbus is a superannuation fund with legal affiliation to the CFMEU. The CFMEU are currently under a federally appointed administrator, a move that was a long time coming. Queensland Premier Crisafulli has called an inquiry into the CFMEU’s systemic violence, intimidation, misogyny and bullying. This bill from Senator Bragg is common sense—to prevent cash leaking through Cbus to the CFMEU until the CFMEU clean up their act and get back to representing Australian workers and to working constructively with industry to create secure, well-paid jobs at scale for all Australians.  

Australia needs housing, and we need breadwinner jobs. We have a responsibility to ensure infrastructure is built on time and on budget. One Nation does, though, propose a better alternative to Senator Bragg’s bill. We would shut down the housing future fund and the federal department of housing. Housing is a state responsibility, a state power. Government has no role in building houses. Its presence in the market drives up prices and slows down production, displacing private builders and monopolising building products. We will wind the building code back to remove the woke nonsense and the net-zero nonsense which were recently introduced into the code, and suspend the GST on building materials. Together these will cut $50,000 off a new home’s construction cost. Independently assessed, around $49,000 of that comes out of the modifications to the building code, which are rubbish. We will take the $11 billion in funds under management at the housing future fund and roll that into a people’s bank, accessed through Australia Post, offering mortgages for first home buyers who are Australian citizens. It’s been proven here in the past in Australia. It’s been proven in North America. It’s been proven in Japan and New Zealand.  

Mortgages will be on five per cent interest with a five per cent deposit, fixed for up to 30 years. The five per cent deposit can come from the first home owner grant and then be topped up using the applicant’s own superannuation account, protected with a lien. Notice I said ‘account’, not ‘fund’. This will not be a drawdown from super. Super is useful for retirement. Our policy simply replaces super funds investing in housing with the person’s own super account investing in their own house. As the house grows in value, so too does the value of the lien held in the person’s own superannuation account, protecting their retirement. Someone who has been working in the workforce for five years on average, and who is entitled to a first home owner’s grant, may be able to move into their own home straightaway.  

We must do more for the young Australians who this government, and other recent governments, have sold out. Young people who did everything society asked—they studied hard, stayed out of trouble, got their degrees, got their high school qualifications—now have a HECS debt, rent and a grocery bill they can’t afford. And they are in despair, right across Australia. 

The government’s housing measures are complete rubbish. They are an insult to Australians. The government’s own incoming government report stated clearly that their construction targets would not be met—bloody hopeless. Canberra, as I’ve said many times, is the source of every major problem in this country, and one of the biggest problems we have in this country right now is a homelessness crisis—an inhuman homelessness catastrophe.  

In my state of Queensland, going from the north in Cairns, every major provincial city has a homelessness crisis, a housing crisis. In Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Bundaberg, Maryborough, the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, Brisbane—the capital city of what should be the wealthiest state in the world has got homeless people sleeping on the riverbanks, under bridges, in tents and in caravans—Ipswich, Boonah, Toowoomba, in every major provincial city, there are homeless.  

If you drive into Gympie, in a concrete car park, there are homeless people in tents. Parents come home at night—working mothers and fathers—wondering if their kids are still in the car and then sleeping in the car. Where do they go to the toilet? Where do they have showers? These are good people. And then the councils just put the bulldozer through the tents, put the bulldozer through the cars and that’s it: gone.  

Why is that happening in Queensland? It’s because we’ve got so many people leaving Victoria to come up to Queensland. In particular, we have got catastrophic, inhuman immigration levels that this government and the previous government have perpetuated. Catastrophic immigration started with John Howard’s government when he doubled immigration. Every prime minister since has been on the trend of increasing immigration.  

We’ve got so many foreigners owning houses. Some of them are locked up as an investment, not being used. We’ve got 75,000 people here on residence visas illegally. One Nation says, ‘Deport them immediately.’ We’ve got students here in contravention of a student visa—up to 100,000 of them. Get rid of them. Free up some houses. We’ve got accommodation capacity for 100,000 students; we’ve got about 600,000 overseas students in the country. That can’t continue. One Nation says: start with the demand and deport people who are here illegally or in contravention of their visa—deport them. Stop foreign ownership of housing, which will increase the supply. And, regarding the construction costs that I’ve mentioned, our policy goes beyond what I’ve mentioned briefly. We’ve also mentioned the finances. Our One Nation policy fixes demand, supply, construction and finance. Senator Grogan said that housing cannot be fixed overnight. It can be fixed close to overnight, just by doing the things One Nation has said: address demand, supply, construction and finance. We must do better. It takes several months to build a house; it takes several months to build an apartment complex. It doesn’t take long, though, to deport people who are here illegally. It doesn’t take long at all. That frees up supply and reduces the demand. 

Canberra, as I said, is the cause of every major problem in this country, and it comes from both Liberal and Labor governments—every major problem. The government’s housing measures—I repeat—are rubbish. Their own incoming government report stated clearly that their construction targets would not be met, yet they perpetuate the nonsense. We must do better. One Nation are in support, and I thank Senator Bragg for this legislation. 

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Child Safety or Deliberate Political Censorship?

Life will never guarantee safety. That is not an excuse to legislate danger.

Australia is set to ‘quietly’ introduce ‘unprecedented’ age verification checks for YouTube and Google as part of a wider push to gate-keep access to social media.

Quietly.

Without the consent of the Australian people.

Labor is pushing ahead despite alarming fallout from the UK where their Online Safety Act, claimed to be created in the interests of ‘child safety’, has led to the immediate censoring of political discussion surrounding mass migration and Grooming Gangs.

What began as genuine concern for children on social media has rapidly expanded to mandatory, wide-ranging, biometric age checking across the digital landscape.

Not only here – throughout the Western world.

Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have all decided that information is the enemy of political ideas.

The Coalition established the eSafety Commissioner

Liberal Leader Sussan Ley continues to support the eSafety ‘Commissar’s’ proposed restrictions on X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, set to begin in December and now expanded to YouTube and Google (including Google maps).

Failure to comply will see the imposition of extraordinary and ludicrous fines.

This is to satisfy an age verification technology whose reliability is yet to be proven. While these biometric technologies can guess at ages, they cannot return a reliable result to distinguish teenagers, even for the same individual. How can this be the proposed basis for adult rights to digital communication?

It is only natural that when adults find themselves unable to access essential digital services, or a 16-year-old on their birthday wants to download X, that a more reliable form of identification will be sought – and that will almost certainly be Digital ID.

So much for promises that this will be ‘voluntary’ and ‘only for government paperwork and applying for rental properties’.

Most believe, logically, that the point of ‘child safety’ legislation is to force the implementation of Digital ID and perhaps begin the crackdown against VPNs.

These are policy positions that would have been rejected if it weren’t for the added layer of ‘think of the children’ just as deconstructing our energy grid required the weaponisation of screaming children gluing themselves to the road believing they were ‘going to die’ because of fossil fuels.

It is a sickening form of confected emotionally-manipulative hysteria.

We may ask, for what other reasons have these extreme measures been placed upon the digital realm?

Especially considering YouTube is one of the most heavily regulated established platforms and Google has a fully-functional adult-content setting.

Safety?

I don’t believe that. I’m sure you don’t believe that. Chalk up another Uniparty lie.

There is more going on.

While the government continues turning a blind eye to gaming chats and unregulated message boards, it clearly does not believe in child safety online. And even if the eSafety Commissioner believes in her mission to ‘protect children online’, why not wait until the Under 16 social media comes into force in December?

There is enormous doubt about its functionality and, most assume, its public reception. It is likely to be a social disaster. Children around Australia will suddenly realise that government power extends beyond campaign slogans aimed at their frustrated parents.

The UK is experiencing a fraction of the power the Australian legislation proposes, and it is an unmitigated disaster which has been called an assault on fundamental human and civil rights. Instead of protecting children, the UK’s Online Safety Act has put them in danger because it silences information about police complicity in the Grooming Gang assaults and removes public protests about illegal migrants who have been accused of sexually assaulting young people on the street.

Censorship is creating a world where criminals and predators are protected for the sake of political harmony

This is why we say, over and over, the government cannot be trusted with censorship.

Even good intentions turn sour, and we are confronted with ridiculous scenes, such as Peter Kyle, the UK Science Secretary, accusing Reform leader Nigel Farage of being on the side of Jimmy Savile. Needless to say, Farage is demanding an apology.

‘If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that,’ Mr Kyle spat back.

This is what authoritarian governments do when they have overreach – falsely frame a legislative reform as an existential threat to safety. If you don’t want your free speech rights or privacy erased, you must be supporting predators. If you think industrial renewable energy projects are a bad idea, you must want the world to burn. Or freeze. Or flood. (They’re not quite sure on that one.)

The truth is, the UK has shown us what awaits Australia in the immediate future.

Even those who dislike social media need be concerned about the impacts on search engines such as Google and Microsoft. Those who do not verify their age will have their results automatically filtered to child settings. This does not mean the standard ‘safe search’. No, it is instead a more complex algorithm that we have been warned will include harmful content which could simply mean a discussion on migration or whatever the government deems to be misinformation.

It might be an article from the wonderful Professor Ian Plimer challenging the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It is via these methods of ‘child safety’ that our access to knowledge shrinks.

The government has become what the late Christopher Hitchens warned about – an entity deciding what you can read.

Did the Prime Minister mention this at the last election?

Who is responsible for subverting democracy and taking this decision away from the Australian people and our elected representatives?

This intolerable story of the erosion of rights comes down to the eSafety Commissar, Julie Inman Grant. She seems absolutely giddy at the thought of more power. I’m disgusted. Enough is enough. We need to have a talk about digital overreach and the misuse of child safety as a means to control people’s access to the digital world.

Based on the Coalition’s introduction of necessary precursor policies and legislation, Labor’s assault on the digital world is so expansive and severe it is difficult to know which argument to take into battle.

And that is the point.

Destroying the modern public forum is an essential step on the path to cementing an era of unchallenged propaganda capable of re-shaping the social conversation of Australia.

The people who founded our democracy wrote privacy into the system for a reason.

It was to protect people from the government

First, terrorism was used. Then climate change. Then Covid. Now, child safety.

All of these have been used to deceitfully chip away at privacy and free speech. It must stop. We have to draw a line in the sand and protect the internet, for ourselves and for the next generation of children who deserve to grow up in a free country and indeed, a free world.

Life will never guarantee safety. That is not an excuse for the government to legislate danger.

‘Child safety’ or deliberate political censorship? by Senator Malcolm Roberts

Life will never guarantee safety. That is not an excuse to legislate danger.

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HECS Relief Should Mean Real Change, Not Just Headlines

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One Nation voted against the Government’s HECS bill because it’s a con job that’s going to leave students, graduates and taxpayers worse off in the long run.

The government has outright lied. The effective debt cut is just 2% taking into account previous indexation – indexation that was made worse because the government caused the inflation crisis. This Bill does nothing to fix the broken University sector.

Here’s what One Nation would do for students:

  • Publish graduate salary data: Universities should disclose average graduate salaries at one, five, and ten years post-graduation to help students make informed decisions about their degrees.
  • Cut fees for courses: One Nation proposes reducing fees for subjects that rely heavily on outdated prerecorded lectures and frequent group assignments.
  • Enforce English standards: Universities should strictly enforce English proficiency for international students to ensure fair group work and protect domestic students’ academic outcomes.
  • Fix HECS indexation timing: The government should apply withheld HECS repayments before indexation to prevent students from being unfairly charged interest on money already paid.
  • Increase university accountability: Universities must be held responsible for the quality and outcomes of the degrees they offer, especially when public funds are involved.

All of these things must be fixed or HECS debts will be racked up again and graduates will be back to where they started.

Transcript

The Albanese Labor government is selling students a con job. This isn’t a HECS refund; it’s taking students back to where they started, before the government caused the inflation crisis. I will say that again: this isn’t a HECS refund; it’s just taking students backwards to where they started before the government caused the inflation crisis. 

On the original HECS indexation rates, HECS debts would have been indexed 23 per cent since COVID, or 2020. Accounting for recent cuts, this figure is still 18 per cent. While Labor keeps posting TikToks saying, ‘You’re getting a 20 per cent cut,’ the reality is you’re only getting a two per cent discount on the 2020 balance, at best. The Albanese government’s student debt reduction is fiscally irresponsible, lazy and vote-buying and does nothing to address underlying issues in university education. 

These changes are reported to cost $16 billion in forgiven debt, which adds to roughly $3 billion in forgiveness from changes to indexation rates in relation to high COVID inflation that came into effect in December 2024. This $19 billion goes onto the national debt, on which all taxpayers pay a far higher amount of interest than HECS debt indexation. Those who’ve got university degrees and those who haven’t all pay. Taxpayers, who are more likely than not going to be people with degrees, are going to have to pay back that national debt and then some. It’s just shifting the debt from your HECS account to the tax you’ll have to pay in the future.  

When it comes to HECS debt, many young people have signed up to take on a huge amount of debt, often for degrees that failed to deliver on the university’s promise of a high-paying job in the future. That is what universities promise. Standards of tertiary education have continued to deteriorate. Indoctrination has become more important than education, and promised job prospects have failed to materialise for many students. 

Meanwhile, the universities and their extravagantly paid vice-chancellors are laughing all the way to the bank. In 2020, the heads of 16 of Australia’s 41 universities each earned more than $1 million a year, more than the head of the world’s best university, Oxford. A number of Australia’s universities generate more than $2 billion a year in revenue. The universities face no accountability for the quality of teaching they pump out. Under the HECS system, the government pays the university upfront, while the student pays the debt back to government for rest of their life. 

Tertiary education has turned into an extremely lucrative government guaranteed cash cow, with students holding the debt for degrees that fail to deliver quality teaching or the promise of a good, stable job. Many courses are being delivered with prerecorded lectures that are many years old. Delivering degrees is getting cheaper, so course fees should be getting cheaper too, but they’re not. One Nation would cut the fees for subjects that use repeated prerecorded lectures and large numbers of group assignments. 

The increasing use of group assignments so that universities can pay for fewer assessors per course is another real issue. In these group assignments, students are frequently grouped with foreign international students, on whom universities rely for even more income. English standards are not being strictly enforced, so Australian students find themselves having to do the entire group’s work or watch their grades suffer as a group result. One Nation will strictly enforce English standards for international students so that universities aren’t sacrificing Australian educations to increase profit from international students, to the detriment of Australian students. Our universities should be focused on delivering a good education for Australian students first. That’s the first priority. 

There are still big problems with the way HECS debts are indexed, though. Employers withhold extra tax from HECS debtors on every pay under the pay as you go withholding scheme. While extra tax has been withheld every pay cycle, the extra tax paid is only deducted from the study debts once the person’s tax return has been lodged. The earliest someone can do this is 1 July. HECS debts, however, are indexed earlier, on the larger balance, before the payment on 1 June. This means that, despite the student paying extra tax for their HECS all through the year and the government holding that money for HECS at the time, the indexation rate is applied to the larger balance, without that withheld tax being applied, which would reduce the interest added on top of at indexation. This is grossly and inherently unfair and deceptive. If the government is holding someone’s money for HECS repayments, that money should be applied to the balance before indexation is applied. To do otherwise, which is what the government’s doing, is theft. Nothing in this bill fixes this unfair situation. We’ve raised this issue of theft before, and still the government continues to steal from students. 

Finally, One Nation believes universities should be made accountable for the degrees they deliver. One Nation believes universities should publish the average salaries of graduates from their degrees one year, five years and 10 years after graduation so that future students know what they’re signing up for. Is doing the degree going to be worth the debt? This could be done per university and per individual course, anonymously and in aggregate, giving everyone clear data on what future job prospects they can expect, without divulging identities. This is possible already. Simply link the unique student identifier and their course with the student’s tax file number and their salary reported to the Taxation Office. 

In summary, the government’s HECS bill is a con job. It only returns balances back to where they were right before COVID arrived. That’s all. The debt is just transferred to the national debt, which taxpayers, like uni graduates, will have to eventually pay down with higher taxes. This bill does nothing to make sure Australian university students get an education that’s actually worthwhile. It does nothing. One Nation will vote against this bill because we do not want a con job reduction. We want a better life for university students, and this bill does not do that. We want a life that doesn’t mean a forever debt for a degree that never lives up to its promises. One Nation wants students to get education and value. 

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When Trust is Betrayed

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They promised safe and effective. What they delivered was sudden and unexpected.

For years, I’ve defended the doctor-patient relationship against bureaucratic overreach and pharmaceutical influence. The COVID response exposed regulatory failure, destroyed trust, and harmed hundreds of thousands of Australians who trusted the medical establishment.

One Nation will shut down the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and its related crony committees, end the revolving door between regulators and industry, and demand a royal commission into the COVID response.

Australians deserve truth, justice, and a health system free from corporate control.

Transcript

‘They promised you safe and effective; instead, they delivered sudden and unexpected.’ So reads the billboard erected by NZDSOS—a group of 9,000 New Zealand doctors, health professionals and academics. There are 9,000 of them; courage is contagious. Their byline is, ‘It’s time to remove the government from the consultation room.’ 

For many years, I’ve spoken about the primacy of the doctor-patient relationship. I’ve spoken against the insidious influence of health bureaucrats creeping into that relationship—influence exerted to benefit the pharmaceutical industry over the interests of everyday Australian patients. I’ve spoken about the abuse of power and regulatory capture of Ahpra and health regulators. In recent months, I have joined the fight against the Queensland health department’s decision to destroy biological samples taken from 10,000 volunteers and used to test the safety and efficacy of COVID injectables. A bad decision that, I’m happy to say, has been overturned. Thank you, Premier Crisafulli from Queensland. I always say ‘injectables’ because these dangerous, killer products are not vaccines; they’re a biological experiment which failed. Tens of thousands of people died, and many more live with adverse reactions, which is bureaucrat-speak for them having their health and lives destroyed. 

One Nation will close the Therapeutic Goods Administration and its related crony committees, filled as they are with personnel that pharmaceutical companies employed, funded, educated and now seek to regulate. Australians were healthier and safer when the health department made these decisions with the benefit of close parliamentary scrutiny. We must go back to that system. One Nation is preparing legislation to prevent the revolving door between parliament, the Public Service and private industry, so a person cannot go from regulating big pharma to working for big pharma. We continue to call for a royal commission into our COVID response. We must understand how the disproportionate, homicidal response to a bad flu killed many tens of thousands of people and maimed many more. Justice must be served or more people will die. (Time expired) 

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Our Senate Inquiry into Military Medals

Those who serve Australia deserve to be recognised.

When it comes to Defence, there is nothing more important than the men and women who wear the uniform and put their lives on the line for Australia.

It’s a reality often forgotten when we hear defence spending argued as a percentage of GDP. Money is an indication of commitment – an important measure – although not the only one.

As a nation with a long and proud history of military defence, we should be extremely concerned about the human numbers which indicate Australia’s Defence Force is facing a critical staffing shortage and retention crisis.

Not only are young people choosing not to serve, those who do choose a career in the military are leaving prematurely.

Our personnel numbers in 2024 were found to be 7% below strength, with recruitment drives failing to attract enough new people to keep Australia safe. The situation is so dire that our Defence Chiefs have been recruiting foreign nationals to serve – a Band-Aid measure which has failed.

As serving numbers drop, the Top Brass have inflated to ‘record highs’. They are credentialled, well-paid compared to their American counterparts, and yet the system is collapsing beneath their leadership.

At fault is a broken awards system and two-tiered recognition structure.

This has led to a widespread morale problem that has taken root within the ADF over previous decades.

The people who serve our nation have been asking for help and been met with silence.

They want their achievements to reflect their service, those achievements to retain their meaning, and to have their medals protected from cancellation without proper oversight.

The fallout from the infamous Brereton Report, and fears that 3,000 Australian Defence Force personnel might have their service records unfairly tarnished, brought the long-simmering issue of ADF morale into the spotlight.

As a Senator, I found it disturbing how easily distinguished ADF personnel could be stripped of their awards and how difficult it was for these decisions to be reviewed in a fair and timely manner.

Sometimes it seemed as if they suffered the political fallout for other people’s errors while their superiors remained insulated from criticism.

Too often ADF personnel were left to rely on the intervention of the relevant minister.

Meanwhile, the head generals gave themselves medals – in my view illegally – for sitting in air-conditioning while soldiers serving in action were not properly recognised.

This is not the message we should be sending to recruits. It is a story of bureaucracy, not valour.

Seeing this two-tiered system entrenched in the military, One Nation initiated a Senate Inquiry into the military medal system – which has recently concluded.

Having been through this long process, it remains our firm belief that service medals and awards must represent genuine achievement, otherwise the act of recognition is diminished for the men and women who truly deserve the acknowledgment.

We want to see a functioning, fair, and transparent honours and awards system that recognises the sacrifices and achievements of ADF personnel regardless of their rank.

During the Inquiry, we saw evidence of widespread abuse of the system which gave weight to the claims of those ADF personnel who either left or felt abandoned by the system.

There were found to be systemic issues with the awarding of the Distinguished Service Cross and Distinguished Service Medal to those who failed to satisfy the ‘in action’ criteria.

There is a clear, perverse incentive for Senior Officers to seek out these awards.

These prestigious recognitions centred around ‘in action’ as a requirement, which has long been defined as ‘acts in the course of armed combat or actual operations against an enemy’.

As we have since discovered, ‘in action’ seems to be taken loosely, or not at all, by many Senior Officers awarded a Distinguished Service Cross. Some could only claim to have ‘travelled extensively within the area of operations under their command’.

When it comes to the Distinguished Service Decorations criteria, the ‘in action’ criteria was changed in 2011 to the lesser ‘warlike operations’.

Which we can all agree, is not keeping within the spirit of the recognition.

One Nation, along with veterans and ADF personnel, have reached the conclusion that there is a widespread failure in the culture of recognition, particularly as it relates to Senior Officers.

Considering this, One Nation submitted a list of recommendations to improve fairness and transparency. These include:

  • Medals given to the top brass should be reviewed from 1991-2012 for integrity assurance with a particular focus on the ‘in action’ criteria being met.
  • Return the proper definition of ‘in action’ to its original standing. The change was made without wide support and is not a trivial matter.
  • Establish separate medals for leaders who distinguish themselves in warlike situations separate to ‘in action’.
  • The Defence Minister and Chief of Defence should not be able to cancel other people’s awards and medals without a right of appeal.
  • Government must establish command responsibility as binding doctrine.

Our recommendations come as the Albanese government moves to rapidly increase defence spending, outlaying hundreds of billions for sophisticated equipment.

Whether this money is allocated to AUKUS submarines, Hunter Class Frigates, Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles, or F-35 fighter jets – there are real service men and women on the other side operating the technology. They need to believe that the Australian Defence Force values their services and honours it, when appropriate.

Without them, Australia has no defence.

We believe that low morale is playing a significant role in weakening our defence capabilities.

No one who signs up, voluntarily, to defend Australia should be left feeling this way.

It cannot continue that ADF personnel say they do not feel valued by the institution which asks that they lay down their lives in defence of Australia.

Ensuring a fair system of award recognition is one way to let ADF personnel know that their acts of service are valued by Australia, regardless of rank.

Our Senate Inquiry into military medals by Senator Malcolm Roberts

Those who serve Australia deserve to be recognised

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DITCH Net-Zero to Fix Cost of Living

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One Nation is the only party completely united in our belief that Australians deserve a better, cheaper way of life by ditching Net-Zero.

Groceries, power bills, insurance and running a small business can all be made cheaper.

Only One Nation can be trusted to put Australians first over what foreign, unelected organisations tell us to do.

Transcript

To get to what matters most in this debate over net zero, we just have to ask Australians some simple questions: is your life more affordable or more expensive over the last five years? Are you paying more or less for groceries? Is your power bill cheaper? How about the cost of a new car—how about your insurance premiums? Has your salary increased more than inflation? The answers are almost the same. It hasn’t gotten better; it’s far worse. All of these problems Australia is suffering from can be traced back directly to net zero policies. 

This isn’t just a culture war, as some people try to write it off as; this is a fight for the survival and prosperity of all Australians. This is a fight to restore our country’s position as the envy of the world. Australia is the richest country in the world for resources. We have abundant energy resources. Australia is awash with vast amounts of proven coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, rare earths and critical minerals. We should have the cheapest power prices in the world, yet we pay more for electricity than the countries to which we sell our resources. Back in 2004, the energy white paper proudly boasted Australia’s average price of electricity as being just a touch over 4c a kilowatt hour—amongst the cheapest in the world. Now the average is 33c a kilowatt hour, just 20 years later. Japan imports most of its energy resources from Australia. Japan’s electricity used to be four times more expensive than Australia’s. Now, ours is 20 per cent more expensive than Japan’s—all because of net zero. Thank you so much! 

We don’t make Fords, Holdens, Toyotas or Mitsubishis in this country anymore, because of net zero. Our steel mills, like the one in Whyalla, are going broke because of net zero. The copper smelters, like the one in Mount Isa, are shutting down because of net zero. Chocolate-maker Cadbury have said they may have to pull out of Australia because it has become undeniably expensive to manufacture in Australia. In the words of Matt Barrie, ‘Australia is about to be a country that cannot make a chocolate bar’—because of net zero. 

Wind and solar pushers have been promising Australia that it’s the cheapest way to go. They’ve been saying it for 25 years, since the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act was implemented in the year 2000, under John Howard, yet here we are today, facing desolation. With the largest amount of wind, solar, batteries and pumped hydro on the grid than ever in recorded history, life has only gotten more expensive. As the solar, wind, batteries and pumped hydro increase, electricity costs increase. This is the experience of every country that has gone down the path of net zero. As electricity gets more expensive, good jobs in manufacturing are getting shipped overseas and life gets worse for that country. 

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One Nation Turns Its Back on ‘Welcome to Country’

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From 2GB: One Nation has staged a protest against Welcome to Country. Party members turned their backs during the ceremony.

Listen to the full chat below:

Transcript

Ben Fordham: There’s been some tense scenes on the first day of federal parliament. One Nation has staged a silent protest during a welcome/acknowledgement in the Senate involving Indigenous Australians. Pauline Hanson and three of her party colleagues turned their backs and the One Nation leader says – our whole team has made it clear, we’ve had enough of being told we don’t belong in our own country. Now it’s not the first time Pauline has done this but it is the first time her long time colleague Malcolm Roberts has decided to take part and he’s on the line right now. Malcolm Roberts, good morning to you.

Malcolm ROBERTS: Good morning Ben. How are things?

Ben Fordham: Pretty good. Thank you so much for joining us. So, why did you join in with the protest yesterday?

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well our constituents Ben, across Australia have had a gutful. They’ve had enough of being welcomed to their own country and secondly and very importantly, we care for Aboriginals and what’s happening with these token services, token ceremonies is that they’re ignoring the real plight of Aboriginals which is real and we care about that. And we just listen to our constituents and our constituents have said both those messages.

Ben Fordham: Any reactions from some of your parliamentary colleagues in there? From the other parties?

Malcolm ROBERTS: No. No, not at all. They probably didn’t even realise it had happened.

Ben Fordham: I reckon there is a time and a place for these things and if there was a time and if there was a place it would be on the opening day of parliament, but you’ve obviously got a stronger view than me. You don’t think there’s any time, any place to have an Indigenous acknowledgement?

Malcolm ROBERTS: Not an acknowledgement of country Ben. I went to Yarralumba, the Governor-General’s residence on Sunday for a family day and we got a lecture, the Governor-General handed it over to the Indigenous – the aboriginal person and we got a lecture for ten minutes and the fact is that our sovereignty, there was never any sovereignty that had to be ceded. And then on Tuesday, we got four times a welcome to country or acknowledgement of country. The Ecumenical Church Service in the church started with that acknowledgement of country and then we had a welcome to country event and then we had the Governor-General opening parliament giving a welcoming ceremony and then we had the start of the Senate and that’s when we said “that’s enough, that’s it, we’ve had enough” and the President was appointed and she started the Senate with a welcome to country or acknowledgement of country. And Ben it gets ridiculous. I was at a conference in Mackay in Central Queensland and we had a speaker on a video tele-conference – she gave an acknowledge to the people of Canberra and to the people of Mackay. I mean this is crazy!

Ben Fordham: We revealed just on Monday that a daycare centre in Sydney where toddlers are being told they have to do a acknowledgement or a welcome at the start of the day.

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah it’s just – it perpetuates division and diverts the real care away from needy and deserving aboriginals Ben. But it also fractures and indoctrinates people. There’s plenty to celebrate in every culture but we don’t have to be welcomed to our own country every day and especially in Kindy. Come on!

Ben Fordham: Is this something that you’re going to be doing again in the future?

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yes. Every day.

Ben Fordham: What, do they do it every day though? Is there a welcome or acknowledgement at the start of every day?

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yes, there is. In the Senate …

Ben Fordham: Every day?

Malcolm ROBERTS: Every day, mate. That’s what I’m talking about. Every day. It start with an acknowledgement to country and then we go onto the prayers. And then we get on with business. So, it’s not needed. We’ve got three flags in the Senate …

Ben Fordham: So there were calls about a year or so ago for people to boo during welcome to country ceremonies at the AFL and I came out at the time and said absolutely not. I mean you’ve got to think about the poor person whose been given the responsibility of getting up there and doing the welcome. It’s not their call that they’re doing it and it’s not fair to do that to people so this is a silent protest and Malcolm Roberts is saying that they do the acknowledgment at the start of every single sitting day and that’s what we’re talking about when we’re saying this is overdone, it’s an overload, which is why some people are saying “enough is enough”.

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