I first announced our policy to cut fuel excise back in February 2025, repeating it in March 2025 as part of our promise to deliver $40 billion into people’s pockets. Senator Hanson and I have consistently championed this measure, including early in 2026 following rising Middle East tensions.
After 13 months of One Nation patiently explaining why cutting fuel taxes would stimulate the economy and boost productivity without driving inflation, the Albanese government finally adopted our policy, even copying our slogan about putting money back into people’s pockets.
While our policy isn’t to remove the GST on fuel entirely, halving the excise automatically reduces the GST applied on top of it, chipping away at an immoral tax-on-a-tax that both major parties have long supported.
One Nation was the first to call for fuel security, supply stability, and excise relief long before the major parties even thought of it.
They called us extremists.
Yet we were right all along and we are proud to see that our vision finally delivered some relief to everyday Australians.
— March | Senate Speech
Senator Roberts: All these bills are coming before the parliament this week to solve the fuel crisis, when the real solution would be to solve the government crisis. Reducing the excise on fuel was part of One Nation’s 2025 federal election campaign.
The Acting Deputy President (Senator Scarr): Excuse me, Senator Roberts—can you maybe just be a little bit lower in terms of the sound? It’s—
Senator Roberts: I’m already pretty short!
The Acting Deputy President (Senator Scarr): Thank you for your good humour.
Senator Roberts: I first announced this One Nation policy on 11 February 2025 in a Senate adjournment debate. The policy was repeated in my adjournment speech on 25 March 2025 as part of our election promise to cut $13 billion worth of excises to put more money back into the pockets of everyday Australians. Not only have the Labor Party stolen the policy; they’ve stolen the slogan about putting more money back in people’s pockets.
My talking point is similar to one I’ve heard today. It’s this: the ACCC monitor fuel prices daily, and I’m confident the reduction will be passed on to consumers. Fuel is an input cost right across the economy. Lowering fuel prices lowers commuting costs for consumers and transport costs across the economy, including for groceries, saving consumers and industry $8 billion a year. The policy was a hit and helped to start the orange tidal wave, the orange movement.
Senator Hanson spoke to One Nation’s policy to reduce the fuel excise in her senator’s statement on 5 March 2026. In a statement on fuel prices and security amid Middle East tensions, Senator Hanson said:
“The government collects 51.6c per litre in fuel excise. One Nation was elected on a policy to halve that tax, cutting 26c a litre immediately, with compensation for any truckies and farmers losing rebates. The Morrison government took our advice in 2022 for six months—”
They took our advice—
“but didn’t look after truckies and farmers. It’s time for the Albanese government to do the same and deliver cheaper fuel for Australians in 2026.”
On 2 March, I raised the fuel crisis two days after the jets flew from Israel into Iran. On 12 March, I spoke on the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Domestic Reserve) Bill 2026 and called for the excise to be halved. This week, Senator Hanson called for the fuel excise to be removed and for the road user tax on trucks to be suspended for three months. One Nation, One Nation, One Nation, One Nation. Our policy is not to remove the GST on fuel, though reducing the excise 52c a litre will reduce the GST by 5c and end this immoral tax on a tax that both you parties support.
So, here we are. After 13 months of One Nation patiently explaining to the ideologues on my left why reducing the fuel tax will help everyday Australians and stimulate the economy, finally, lo and behold, One Nation policy is now government policy. As I explained a minute ago, it’s not inflationary. It increases productivity. I did hear Senator Waters describe this bill as ‘rushed’. The bill is rushed. The idea of fuel duty relief, though, is not.
It was amusing to listen to the Liberal Party and the National Party take credit for the idea. I went back and looked to see when the Liberals first started talking about cutting the excise on petrol and diesel. It was on 26 March 2026, last week, after four weeks. Yet, somehow, the Libs claim it was the Liberals who forced the Albanese government to introduce an excise cut. Nonsense. This is the second time today the Liberals have dispensed with the truth. Senator Cash’s speech on the cash ban regulations was factually false. It misrepresented the truth, and we will explain to the people of Farrer how the Liberals and the Nationals sold out the bush. Today, the uniparty was on display for everyone to see. Look at them down there. The Labor, Liberal and National uniparty were defending their big mates in big banking—their big donors in big banking.
The Treasury Laws Amendment (Fuel Excise Relief) Bill 2026 implements a 50 per cent cut in petrol and diesel duty and suspends the road user charge. One Nation will support this sensible measure to reduce the cost of petrol by 31c for everyday Australians and 32.5c for the trucking industry. This will keep the trucks moving, putting food on the shelves at the supermarket, stock in the shops, medical supplies in hospitals and dentists and ensuring the economy doesn’t melt down entirely as a result of the war in Iran.
I remind people that One Nation were the first to raise the fuel supply, fuel security and price volatility issues. We were the second, we were the third, we were the fourth, and we were the fifth, before the Nationals and the Liberals even dreamt of it. They’re playing catch-up. We are having crisis after crisis, and you lot over there in the government accused us of being far-right-wing extremists. We are correct, we are right, and we hit the target before you even dreamt of it.
A 2011 legislative drafting mistake caused ASIC to apply indexation incorrectly, leading to inaccurate review and late fee charges.
The Corporations (Review Fees) Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2025 seeks retrospective authorisation, deeming previously collected, incorrect fees legally valid after the fact.
Small businesses and employers end up paying the price for a government mistake.
I feel very uneasy about that and dislike retrospective legislation unless it is truly necessary. We do not support this bill.
Small businesses shouldn’t be penalised for government administrative errors, especially during tough economic times.
Transcript
ASIC collects fees from users registering their business entities, such as companies, as part of its regulatory activities. The review fees act provides ASIC with the power to collect fees in relation to review dates for certain entities. Typically, an annual fee falls due on an entity’s anniversary of registration on ASIC’s register. The review fees regulations prescribe the review fees. Regulation 4 sets out how the fees are applied and calculated, including an indexation mechanism, and schedule 1 sets out dollar amounts that apply to particular entities and circumstances. ASIC identified a technical error during a routine review of its regulations—so full credit to ASIC—which affects how indexation was applied to certain fees.
The affected fees are late fees, tenure upfront fees and special purpose company review fees collected under the review fees regulations. The 2011 amending regulations made amendments to the review fees regulations to increase the base rate for certain review fees and continue the annual indexation of those fees using the increased base rate. In addition, these amendments reinserted the same base fee for some review fees, and other review fees were not amended. The indexation provisions applied for all review fees, which did not reflect the intended policy outcome at the time—poor drafting of legislation—nor does it reflect the intent now. As a result, ASIC applied an indexation methodology which resulted in incorrect amounts of certain review fees being charged.
These amendments validate review fees ASIC has already collected and deem the amount of the review fee to be a certain amount. This ensures any review fees charged from 1 July 2011 are valid and that ASIC was authorised to collect the review fees—authorised retrospectively. I feel very uneasy about that and dislike retrospective legislation unless it is truly necessary. This bill, the Corporations (Review Fees) Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2025, is trying to validate a government drafting blunder to make taxpayers liable, even when the government is at fault.
We would not support the payment of late fees as a punitive measure during difficult economic times when the original source of authority is faulty. I think of the small businesses that are impacted. I think of the government agencies that extort fees from many small businesses and other employers. My current view is that we should not support this bill.
One Nation supports the sensible reforms to let trained registered nurses prescribe common PBS medications — a practical step that will ease pressure on doctors, strengthen rural healthcare and improve access for everyday Australians.
This isn’t a thought bubble; it’s the result of decades of professional evolution in nursing.
I also put an end to the latest round of “Mediscare” nonsense. One Nation will defend Medicare and the PBS — full stop. We’ll crack down on the $3 billion in fraud the government refuses to confront, protect patients from bureaucratic roadblocks, and ensure no Australian pays more for a prescription under a One Nation government.
Our healthcare system must serve patients, not criminals, not fraudsters and not political spin.
One Nation will keep Medicare strong, keep the PBS fair and keep pressure on a government too timid to clean up its own mess.
Transcript
One Nation will support the Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025. It amends the National Health Act and the Health Insurance Act 1973 to enable approved registered nurses to prescribe certain pharmaceutical benefits under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the PBS. Australia’s health system is experiencing increasing demand due to an ageing population and rising prevalence of chronic disease, something we do need to better understand. Improving access to safe and effective medications is essential to meeting the health needs of everyday Australians.
Registered nurses comprise around half the Australian health workforce and are the most geographically distributed health profession. They’re the best placed to prescribe certain common medications, taking the pressure off doctors while reducing travel and inconvenience to patients. This will support rural pharmacies. Registered nurses must complete a three-year bachelor’s degree in nursing. Nurse practitioners must hold a master’s degree in nursing and complete 5,000 hours of advanced clinical practice.
The history of the idea of allowing nurses, suitably trained, to write prescriptions is quite long. It began with a trial in New South Wales between 1991 and 2000—a generation ago. This went national in 2001 with the advent of the national Nursing and Midwifery Board, designed to bring regulation of nurses closer to the system used for doctors. It was at this time that the pathway to nurse practitioner was introduced. In 2010, nurse practitioners were approved to write prescriptions under the PBS, although only while working in collaboration with a registered medical prescriber. Then, in 2024, the government removed the need for collaboration with a registered prescriber, allowing nurse practitioners to prescribe most medications under their own Medicare Benefits Schedule prescriber number. Finally, in 2025, the government introduced the ability of registered nurses to prescribe. There are suitable checks and balances. Nurses must meet specified qualifications, complete the course and maintain endorsement. The first cohort were enrolled and have now completed their training.
This legislation will enable these health professionals to prescribe certain medications. Perhaps this could have been done the other way around, with the heads of power to allow registered nurses to prescribe written into law before we started training them, disrupting their careers and offering them a career path which didn’t yet exist. Maybe that’s just a sensible One Nation thing.
This legislation is being supported across the chamber and could have been supported a year ago. The point of this history lesson is clear. The move to allow registered nurses to prescribe is not a thought bubble. It’s the result of a generation of evolution in the education and professional certification of and skill base within the nursing profession.
The system they’ve put in place appears fit for purpose. Not all drugs can be prescribed by registered nurses, just certain ones: birth control; repeat prescriptions across a wide range of conditions. There are lots of opportunities to take the pressure off our doctors. This is particularly beneficial to regional and remote areas.
For those who may be concerned about this measure—and One Nation is not concerned with it—I reference the PBS auditing framework. The PBS has excellent audit routines which scan all the prescriptions written across the system and zero in on any patterns out of the ordinary. These are then followed up with a phone call or, if necessary, a visit. Misuse will be detected. One Nation does contend medical professionals are given insufficient discretion to use their wealth of medical knowledge. In this case, it will provide an additional check. The initiative in part stems from the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce. One Nation is pleased to strengthen Medicare with this initiative.
Next, I must address ‘Mediscare’ 3.0, which disreputable media have been promoting in the last few weeks. I say ‘Mediscare’ version 3 because the last two elections saw the Labor Party, or their supporters, smear the Liberals with a false ‘Mediscare’ campaign. Now it’s One Nation’s turn to be smeared, and Labor is smearing One Nation. They must fear us. While it has been only one week since the last time I defended Medicare and the PBS in a Senate speech, it seems I need to do it again. Very well. One Nation will defend the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Medicare. Both are part of a social-welfare safety net which maintains a healthy population and contributes to Australia enjoying a high standard of living. Medicare and the PBS are why people pay taxes—and don’t forget it, government.
Taxes are, of course, not the government’s money. Taxes are the people’s money and should only be spent accordingly. Hardworking Australians do not deserve to have their money wasted or handed over to fraudsters. One Nation will work with and better resource the Benefits Integrity Division and the Fraud Fusion Taskforce to ensure every cent of money spent through Medicare and the PBS goes to people who need it and who qualify for the benefit.
It’s intolerable to me that new drugs, drugs that could save lives, are held back, despite agreement between the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee and the drug maker, because of the cost, because billions are being taken out of the system in fraud. And, yes, some prescribers are complicit, although a tiny amount. No patient with a legally obtained Medicare card should ever be afraid of using that card under a One Nation government. No Australian will have to pay more for a prescription under a One Nation government. We will support and maintain the system of the Medicare urgent care clinics, and we will work constructively with all stakeholders to extend operating hours for service delivery to take further pressure off public hospital emergency departments—which we will be able to afford because we will remove the criminals and fraudsters from the system and ensure everyone who uses a Medicare card is entitled to use that card. The government knows who these people are—yes, you do. The government knows where the $3 billion a year in fraud is coming from. Their own integrity division said as much in Senate estimates recently. The fraud figure is the government’s, not One Nation’s—we didn’t cook it up; the government’s own agency told us. The Albanese-Burke government doesn’t have the guts to do anything about it.
I’m concerned that the Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025 could create a two-tier health system. Rural, regional and poorer suburbs would get registered nurses and nurse practitioners. Richer suburbs would get doctors galore. In fact, I’m sure that’s going to happen because it’s happening now. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the federal department of health track their workforce using a framework called the Modified Monash Model. Their data shows a stark imbalance. Roughly 84 per cent of private hospital medical practitioners and the vast majority of medical specialists operate exclusively within major capital cities and metropolitan centres. Small, regional, rural and remote towns classified as MM4 to MM7 contain the lowest number of healthcare workers per capita. In these areas, access to medical care drops drastically. In these areas, GPs provide primary care and act as emergency doctors and hospital doctors, making up 60 per cent of the entire available hospital workforce because there are so few dedicated specialists. The bill before the Senate will help take the weight off those GPs, yet will not solve the issue of doctors gravitating to wealthy suburbs and cities. What may solve that problem is to do more to assist children from the bush to take up medicine as a career. One Nation’s health policy, to be released later this year, will add more detail to that statement.
Finally, I’ll be moving amendments to this bill on behalf of Senator Lambie, who’s recovering after recently herself quality-testing our healthcare system. As it currently stands, properly qualified podiatrists and podiatric surgeons can prescribe specific medicines to their patients, although these prescriptions are not recognised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Patients either have to pay the full price or meet with the GP to get the same medicine prescribed under the PBS—or, worse, go without and suffer the consequences. That’s ridiculous. Podiatrists require a university degree, must maintain membership of their professional association and are affiliated with Ahpra, like other medical associations. Their medical expertise in their area of care is well capable of supporting improved prescribing rights. The focus of our healthcare system must be what’s best for the patient, and what’s best for the patient cannot include bureaucratic roadblocks and financial pain. The amendments I foreshadow do not reduce safeguards. They do not give podiatrists greater prescribing powers. They will ease GPs’ workload and make things easier for patients. They are commonsense amendments, and they should be supported.
Government is failing to maintain the internationally mandated 90-day fuel stockpile, currently holding less than 30 days of reserves.
Senator Ayres is misrepresenting statistics, claiming “115% capacity” when it actually means only 26 days of supply. A deliberate deflection of accountability.
Depleted fuel reserves put the nation’s daily transport, defense, mining, and agriculture sectors at severe risk, threatening to grind the country to a halt and fuel inflation.
Australia needs long term fuel security – not short term band-aid fixes.
For decades Senator Hanson has suggested a pipeline to convert domestic natural gas into liquid fuels (diesel and petrol) for major cities.
The United States has dropped net zero and the Paris agreement and is now producing more hydrocarbon fuels. Why? Because they are essential for human life as we know it.
One Nation calls for an immediate parliamentary inquiry to reveal the truth, address price volatility, and secure Australia’s fuel supply chain.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: This matter is urgent for three reasons. Firstly, the truth is not coming out. We want it out. It has to come out immediately before more people die. Secondly, fuel security—the people are getting ripped off at the bowser because of fuel volatility in prices and supply. I want to correct the record here, and I also want to point out, yet again, how urgent this is.
This is from Senator Hanson, Leader of One Nation, from a Hansard from 2021:
“I rise to speak on the Fuel Security Bill 2021. When I came into the Senate in 2016 I raised the importance of fuel security for all Australians.“
For a decade, she has been on about it, and I have been hearing her for that full decade and before. She goes on to say:
“This and previous governments have continually failed to meet the internationally mandated 90 days stockpile of fuel for the people of this nation. That means this government has put at risk—“
that was the Morrison government, but you’re doing the same now—
“the fuel security of our daily transport needs—”
daily transport needs of the people watching this at home—
“our defence, our aviation industry, our mining and our commuter needs. Without this internationally mandated 90-day stockpile of fuel, Australia risks coming to a grinding halt. My concerns were echoed by Senator Jim Molan when he entered the parliament in … 2017.“
Not only has she done that, but she’s advocated for a pipeline across the country to bring some of the world’s largest gas reserves to the east coast cities of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney and get fuel from gas to liquid fuel, diesel and petrol, conversion. And what have you done? Nothing
What Senator Ayres did, through you, Chair, on Monday, when I asked this question and started this talk about fuel security—which we must discuss—is try to conflate it by saying he had 115 per cent, 120 per cent, 150 per cent. Forget the arithmetic; he was misleading, because, when we went and did our research, we found out he had 115 per cent of 24 days, which is about 26 days. We realised he was misleading the people of Australia and misleading the representatives in this chamber, because he was saying we had 115 per cent of reserves when we had less than 30 per cent of reserves, according to the International Energy Agency. Then, when he was caught out by my question on Monday, what did he do? He focused entirely on Angus Taylor, who has nothing to do with this at the moment.
This is what the government try to do. They try to deflect, denigrate and mislead, and they try to hide it. That’s why we need this, if I follow Senator McKenzie’s call—I’ll read clause (b). It calls on the government to take ‘urgent action to avoid a fuel crisis that will add to Australia’s already existing, home-grown inflation pressures’. Fuel stocks are low. We are not arguing they are low under Mr Taylor as the energy minister. That’s for another day. We want to sort the problem out now. We need truth, we need security, and we need absolute facts out in the open. That’s why we need this inquiry. We can’t get the answer by asking the minister, Chris Bowen, or Senator Wong.
Volatility of fuel prices is cut by having reserves at 90 days. That is a fact. The people of Australia will pay through the neck. The other thing is security. The whole country stops when we run out of diesel—farms, mines, transport. Every single thing in this country relies upon transport indirectly or directly, and, when the trucks stop, Australia stops. You should know that from listening to Glenn Sterle, a truckie himself. This is about security. It’s also about long-term security, getting a pipeline across the country, as Senator Hanson has requested and suggested for decades now, to convert our gas fuels into liquid fuels, diesel and petrol in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. We also note that the United States has dropped net zero and the Paris agreement and is now producing more hydrocarbon fuels. Why? Because they are essential for human life as we know it.
In February I questioned the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) on the surge in early-onset breast cancer, with diagnoses in women in their 20s, 30s and 40s rising sharply over two decades.
When I asked whether they’d cross-referenced these cases with lifestyle factors, or with COVID vaccination status, they admitted they haven’t done that work.
To me, that’s a glaring failure.
COVID injections were the biggest health intervention in our history, yet no one is checking for possible links to adverse outcomes. Australians deserve transparency, not avoidance.
If there’s no connection, proper research would reassure thousands of worried people. Instead, all we get is deflection.
I will continue to push for answers.
— February | Senate Estimates
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. The Cancer data in Australia 2025 report emphasises that cancers, including breast cancer, are being diagnosed more frequently in people in their 30s and 40s, with the share of all breast cancer diagnoses rising about 50 per cent over the last 20 years, which is stunning. Breast cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer for women aged 20 to 39 and 40 to 59, which is surprising as well. Have you undertaken any analysis to cross-reference breast cancer in this younger cohort with lifestyle factors—drinking, prescription medications and so on?
Dr Bolevich: We do indeed produce the report you’re talking about and have a unit within the institute that specialises in cancer data—its collection, national consistency around it and various types of analysis. We often make the data available to researchers. For the specific question you’re asking, I will defer to my colleague.
Ms Gates: As you said, we produce that information about cancer. We sometimes look at lifestyle factors. Specifically, it depends on what information we have around the connection between having a lifestyle factor, such as risk factors around smoking or other risk factors—I haven’t got to hand anything directly that we’ve done in relation to breast cancer.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you take it on notice, to give us a range of what you provide in terms of lifestyle factors like drinking, prescription medications and so on?
Dr Bolevich: We can take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: We’d just like to see what you’ve got available; thank you. The American Cancer Society call this ‘early onset breast cancer’. Specifically, have you cross-referenced breast cancer in this younger cohort with COVID vaccination status?
Dr Bolevich: No, we haven’t done that kind of work.
Senator ROBERTS: Why not?
Dr Bolevich: I think we have provided updates to this committee on previous occasions about the work we’ve done to create some data infrastructure that will enable various types of research to occur. That infrastructure is now largely in place, and we would expect that over time people will undertake various types of analyses using that data and other data that’s available to them. But the institute itself has not undertaken that specific type of research.
Senator ROBERTS: You’re more the constructor of the database and the ability to cross-reference, but it will be up to someone else who wants to do that to do it?
Ms Hermann: Cancer Australia is undertaking a piece of work at the moment, directed by the minister, to look at the impacts of early onset cancer, including looking at lifestyle factors and other factors that may be influencing earlier rates of cancer in Australia.
Senator ROBERTS: What about COVID vaccination status?
Ms Hermann: I don’t think that’s included in what they’re looking at.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m surprised, given what’s in the public domain about that. Have you cross-referenced COVID vaccination status with any health outcome and any demographic?
Ms Gates: We have looked at vaccination status in terms of rates and that sort of thing, but, no, we haven’t looked at that in terms of any associations.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m surprised, because of the news that’s travelling around about that, including from many scientists. COVID injections were the most significant health response in Australian history, coming at a significant cost to the taxpayer and involving a significant level of coercion which, in hindsight, was not justified by the risk. The news about AstraZeneca and even the Pfizer shots, and the concerns, came out very early. There’s a widely-held belief that the vaccines caused adverse events, and nothing but denials has come from the government—and not just this government but the previous government as well. If you have nothing to hide, Minister, why are you not doing the research which would confirm or disprove the link between COVID vaccination and adverse events, which would put a lot of people at ease?
Senator Green: The department and the officials have explained to you that there is work being undertaken on a range of research projects that look into trends in health care. Whether or not that’s post COVID-19, there’s a lot of time still to go before we see what that research might be. But the systems are being set up, and I’m sure that if there are any updates they’ll give them to you first and foremost.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s most unlike you, Minister, because it sounds like a lot of fluff. Is your government afraid of confirming that COVID shots cause early onset cancer? To me, people who have got cancer have got that thought in their mind; it’s right through the community. People are worried, and if there is no connection it would be wonderful to take that off their burden. It sounds like, ‘Bugger the people; just get on with the job and keep hiding it.’ Senator Green: I think the most important thing to do is to listen to the experts.
Senator ROBERTS: And common sense and what people in the street are saying.
Senator Green: And the health experts—particularly the health experts.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/bBfq5xjEDQY/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-08-26 13:43:322026-08-26 13:43:36Avoidance on Rising Breast Cancer Rates
Mainstream media is manufacturing outrage for clicks to compensate for its declining influence. They’ve taken my past comments out of context, and in one case, edited them to mean the exact opposite of what was said.
TV audiences have halved, newspapers have lost billions, and one in three Australians now openly distrust the news. Instead of fixing their credibility crisis, they’ve doubled down on woke propaganda, false reporting and partisan hit jobs on One Nation.
I laid out the hard numbers in Parliament last week – from the media’s market freefall to the truth about COVID policies, excess mortality and the fear campaigns they helped sell. When I ask data-based questions, they smear me as a “conspiracy theorist” because they can’t defend their own record.
Australians deserve facts, not fear porn. And as One Nation’s support grows, the media attacks will only get louder. We won’t be backing down.
Transcript
It’s obvious the media recently declared war on One Nation, and tonight I ask the obvious: what’s really going on? Over the last 20 years, the mainstream media’s market penetration has crashed. Broadcast television fell from a peak of 56 per cent of adult TV usage in 2006 down to just 20 per cent today. For young adults aged 18 to 35, it’s even lower, at just 12 per cent. Many still watch their favourite program online, mostly sporting telecasts. What they don’t watch are commentary shows, social engineering and opinion for hire.
The last five years have seen the cancellation of commentary programming: 10 News+, The Project, 7NEWS’s, early and late editions, SBS’s The Feed and ABC’s Q+A. The Q+A format, where one leftist host and four leftist talking heads invite a conservative to be ritually sacrificed each week no longer resonates. This is why the media’s woke agenda has now been injected into sport, usually through welcoming the audience to their own country, men in women’s sports and woke commentary talking points. No opportunity is lost in the media’s quest to replace balanced, factual reporting with woke propaganda, at dramatic cost to the media’s shareholder value.
In 2006, Channel 9 was worth $7.5 billion. Today, Channel 9 is worth just $960 million—less than a billion. Channel 7 fell from $4 billion 20 years ago to just $115 million today. For accuracy and fairness, by the way, both values are inflation adjusted. Channel 10 was worth $1.5 billion 20 years ago and today is on the books of owner Paramount at just $20 million.
Movies suffered, with theatre attendance over the last 20 years falling 50 per cent—an inevitable outcome of gender and race swapping of lead roles; the compulsory inclusion of a gay storyline and a transgender character; the endless negative portrayal of men; the refusal to show a happy, loving nuclear family; and generally propagandising the woke agenda while pretending it’s entertainment.
Let’s move on to newspapers. News Corp was valued 20 years ago at $85 billion worldwide. Today, it’s worth just $14 billion, including REA Group and Dow Jones. Fairfax Media was valued at $9 billion in 2006. Twenty years later, it was forced to sell to Channel 9, whose value of $960 million today includes Channel 9, Fairfax Media, Stan and Domain Real Estate. Again, I’m using inflation adjusted figures to compare 2006 with 2026 for fairness and accuracy—things Fairfax does not extend to us in One Nation.
Last week saw what is a low point for Australian journalism. The Sydney Morning Herald falsely reported Senator Hanson had used party funds to keep a luxury hotel room vacant for six days while visiting Italy and played up the waste of donations. This ignored the facts. Firstly, the $5 million donated in the Fire the Liar campaign has gone into a term deposit, gathering interest until it’s needed for the next federal election. Secondly, the story was false. Senator Hanson immediately provided receipts to show the room was not booked in this period and cost One Nation nothing. Rather than admit its mistake, the Sydney Morning Herald replied with a headline saying ‘Hanson feuds with media, concedes using party funds for luxury hotel’—no apology and no correcting the record, just a story and a headline which doubled down on their lie. This is not journalism; it’s partisan propaganda. If this continues during the next election, it will clearly and patently be election interference.
What was a scandal was Minister Bowen spending $345,000 of taxpayer money in the last 12 months alone on junkets to Brazil, Denmark, Finland, USA, Germany and Fiji—and on and on the list goes. How does a minister with a domestic portfolio spend $100,000 more on overseas trips than the Minister for Foreign Affairs and $110,000 more than the Minister for Trade? How? These trips were designed to promote Minister Bowen’s personal gains on climate change and, in part, his attempt to chair a UN climate change group. Instead of questioning this expense in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and a budget deficit, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story portraying Minister Bowen positively for not claiming any family travel as part of these junkets. Fairfax Media has lost 90 per cent of its market value and still can’t help itself. A company that was properly run would not be allowing injection of journalists’ personal and political vendettas into a supposed news story. It would have presented the facts without partisan attacks and left the public to make up their own minds.
Our media have skipped the whole balanced and impartial part and gone straight to telling you who to vote for. Conservatives make up 50 per cent of their potential audience. One Nation alone is 30 per cent. To alienate, ridicule, insult and lie to half their potential audience at a time of falling market share, falling profits and eroding shareholder value is business suicide. The fable of the scorpion and the snake was written for the Australian media, hopelessly ensconced in their urban bubbles, preaching to an ever-shrinking base of champagne socialists raging at the dying of wokeism, a perfect demonstration of the classic logical fallacy: they do not see the world as it is; they see the world as they are. Conservatives can turn, by the way, to the Spectator and the Epoch Times for accurate news and current affairs. If you haven’t discovered these publications, have a look.
Meanwhile, a casualty is media’s credibility. The Australian Communications and Media Authority says the proportion of Australians who explicitly distrust the news rose from 25 per cent in 2016 to 32 per cent last year. That’s a huge proportion of Australians—one in three—who do not believe what the newspaper or television tells them. This figure will grow as the truth around Australia’s COVID response emerges. The media went all in on promoting baseless COVID policies, using what can only be described as ‘fear porn’. I called for caution in Australia’s COVID response in a letter to Prime Minister Morrison in April 2020, pointing out the fatality rate was simply not what the Chinese suggested. At that time, Anthony Fauci, in his private diary, recorded his comments to the American CDC saying COVID was ‘acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility’ and would have a fatality rate of between 0.2 per cent and 0.3 per cent, not the two to three per cent publicly claimed. Zero point two per cent to 0.3 per cent is in line with the 0.1 per cent fatality rate of an average influenza. It’s 0.13 per cent for a more serious flu. The current known fatality rate of the original COVID strain from 2019-20 worldwide is between 0.2 per cent and 0.3 per cent, exactly what Fauci privately predicted in February of 2020.
Fauci was called last week to testify to the US Congress as to why his private diaries had the correct appraisal of COVID while his public pronouncements were entirely the opposite, whipping up unfounded terror and fear, and to inquire why he advocated measures like social distancing, masking, lockdowns and screens at check-outs, all which had no scientific basis. He pleaded his fifth amendment right to not answer based on his fear of self-incrimination 113 times. Nothing says ‘I am guilty and will lose my immunity if I lie to you’ more than what he did. The committee has now held Fauci in contempt. This he would rather than to admit under oath that the actions he took, the same actions the Australian media enabled with their fear porn, had no scientific basis. Fauci knew that at the time. These were actions taken to sell pharmaceutical products which were disproportionate to the health risks of COVID but which made big pharma rich. There was an opportunity to wind all this back in November 2021, when the omicron virus arrived in Australia and the fatality rate from COVID fell. The omicron fatality rate was between 0.03 per cent and 0.1 per cent; that’s way less than the flu. Nonetheless, at the time, the excess mortality rate was going through the roof—and we know it was not due to COVID.
The unfounded fear that Fauci fomented meant that advocating for the cessation of vaccination would have been hard to explain, despite the fact that American and Australian health regulators knew that Pfizer had misled the public on its shoddy, skimpy, faulty testing that proved fatal for 1,230 people. Only a royal commission can deal with the critical point here: if the omicron fatality rate was as low as 0.03 per cent of infected persons, and most people had been infected and, at the time, had natural immunity anyway, why was excess mortality running at a staggering 13 per cent? It’s impossible for that mortality rate to have come from the COVID virus. What could it have been? Only one thing, it seems: COVID injections.
Even now, five years later, Australia’s excess mortality rate is running at five per cent. This represents 10,000 additional people dying each year with no explanation. I asked about this in Senate estimates and was told it was the lockdowns delaying medical treatment. It was psychological trauma, despair and loneliness: ‘It’ll pass.’ It has not passed. Why is the media falsely labelling me a conspiracy theorist, and why is it lying about me for asking these questions based on hard data? The answer is that the media took their 30 pieces of gold in the first three years of Australia’s COVID response. The media banked over $600 million from COVID— (Time expired)
What wasn’t said because of Time Expired:
related advertising from State and Federal Governments.
That’s what’s going on.
Only a Royal Commission can investigate Australian governments’ COVID response, the media’s role in this and the reason for excess deaths still occurring.
The Greens have shown their true colours with calls to nationalise essential services, a pipe dream that our economy simply cannot afford.
Government-run industries and state-owned supermarkets sound like a fantasy, yet we all know that when politicians try to control everything, everyday Australians pay the price through total government overreach, inefficiency, and incompetence.
Imagine if you will a Greens-run government supermarket: no plastic packaging (bring your own bags and scoop out your purchase), Aboriginal Australians would shop first, then migrants with brown skin — Senator Faruqi’s description, not mine — then gay and bi folk, then men dressed as women, followed by actual women, and then straight white men last, if anything is left.
The shelves will carry only brown onions (white onions are cancelled), staff are color-coded by hair dye, green in produce, blue in cleaning aisle, and meat rations are down to one lamb chop or one cockroach per week, WEF-style.
Bags of coal will make fart noises when touched and the store is only open for 20 minutes on Friday morning because employees are absent on paid leave for everything from stress to gender reassignments to union meetings, or annual leave from having leave. Not to mention – working from home.
If this sounds ridiculous, that’s because extreme government control always is!
We’ve already seen the disastrous results of trying to nationalise the energy market under the guise of saving the planet: skyrocketing bills and sheer incompetence. The private sector belongs in business; government belongs in governance.
One Nation supports strategic public infrastructure, like rail and a government owned bank, to ensure a fair go for everyday Australians.
One Nation will always stand against extreme, far-left overreach.
Transcript
I thank Senator McKim for this motion. The Greens have finally shown their true colours: ‘Let’s nationalise essential services.’ From their website, those would include power, water, telecommunications, education, transport, health care and labs, which are industries that collectively hold $3 trillion in assets. No government could afford to pay just compensation at that price, which section 51 of our Constitution requires. Any attempt to nationalise these industries will fail on that basis. Greens party policy calls for a national chain of government owned supermarkets, so perhaps add a few hundred billion dollars more for those.
Actually, let me pause and focus on a government owned supermarket in the hands of the Greens for a moment. What would it look like? No plastic packaging, of course—former senator Whish-Wilson’s contribution—in fact, very little packaging at all. Customers would need to bring their own bags and scoop out their purchases, just like in The Handmaid’s Tale. When a new shipment arrives, Aboriginal Australians would shop first, then migrants with brown skin—Senator Faruqi’s description, not mine—then gay and bi folk, then men dressed as women, followed by actual women, and then straight white men last, if anything is left.
Brown onions are available; white onions, not so much. Staff can be organised by hair colour: green hair in produce; blue hair in cleaning goods, just like toilet ducks; and red hair in hot food. Pricing is based on genetics. Please share your Ancestry DNA results in order for us to decide how much loading you will be charged for your white privilege. Staff dress is strictly pants and shirts for the women and skirts and blouses for the men. The Greens have of course built their supermarkets without walls, so the checkouts aren’t very busy. Following World Economic Forum guidelines, meat is restricted to one lamb chop per week or one cockroach per week, and shopping trips are limited to one visit per person per week.
Senator McKim interjecting—
I’m glad the Greens can see the sense of humour. The bags of coal on display are empty and make fart noises when you touch them. Stores are now only open every Friday morning because staffing has been affected by the Greens’ four-day working week and working from home, plus leave for maternity, paternity, sickness, bereavement, bad periods, stress, gender reassignment, domestic violence, study, union meetings and, of course, annual leave from having leave. I’m pretty sure I missed a few there!
The Greens’ economic justice policy calls for the nationalisation of all natural monopolies and essential public services, which reflects the wording in Senator McKim’s motion. Natural monopolies include water, rail, roads, sewerage and electricity, so I’m really not exaggerating my comments here at all. To be conducted under government ownership is property development and housing—but not all of it, since paying for $11 trillion in real estate might tire out their magic money fairy.
In other words, this motion is a Greens wet dream—total power and control in the hands of a government that will then make decisions based on victimhood and feelings. If this sounds like I’m having a lend, I’m having no more of a lend than the Greens and Minister Bowen have been taking at the taxpayer’s expense in the name of saving the world from the sky god of warming. The government’s attempt to effectively nationalise the power market to promote so-called renewables has resulted in a bill of hundreds of billions of dollars. It has shown the sheer incompetence of government when asked to perform tasks which are best left to the private sector.
Let’s be clear. One Nation is not opposed to government-private partnerships which are part of our energy policy. We believe, though, that some infrastructure, including rail, should be publicly owned. Banking must have a government owned bank to provide a fair go for everyday Australians, which our banks stopped doing years ago.
Senator McKim interjecting—
Just one out of others. The real reason for the motion is simple: the Liberals moved to the left, and the Nationals followed them. Labor moved further to the left, and the Greens move so far left they’re sitting in totalitarian territory. One Nation opposes this motion.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator O’Neill): Before I call Senator Shoebridge, I’ve counted three terms about body parts and body motions already in this debate. I remind senators to think carefully about the language choices they make that bring respect and order to the Senate rather than descend into inappropriate language that I think is less than satisfactory for this place. I look forward to your contribution, Senator Shoebridge.
The media tried to smear me to weaken One Nation and they failed.
Their pile-on was nothing more than a distraction from the truth now spilling out in the United States. Anthony Fauci’s — a primary face of the federal COVID-19 response in the US — own dairies and phone records expose the lies, the cover-ups, and the man-made origins of COVID.
These documents show exactly what I’ve been saying for years. COVID was engineered, the public was misled, early treatments were suppressed, and the injections were pushed despite known failures and risks.
While the media called me a “conspiracy theorist”, Nobel-willing scientists and US defence officials were confirming the same facts.
Every Australian was lied to, jabbed or unjabbed. Every one of us!
This is why we need a full royal commission into COVID.
No more cover-ups. No more corporate influence over public health.
Justice for those harmed and accountability for those who orchestrated this scandal.
Transcript
In the last few weeks, the media have tried to drive a wedge between me and Senator Hanson. The journalists’ plan was simple—take statements I’ve made over many years out of context, misrepresent them, falsely portray me as a conspiracy theorist, tell blatant lies about me and invite Pauline to sack me, thereby weakening One Nation and returning power to the Liberal-Labor uniparty, who have exercised that power to advance and enrich their benefactors for decades. They failed. In my adjournment speech last week, I detailed the reason why the media would behave in this manner. I invite everyone to catch up with that speech. I note Karl Stefanovic and now Kyle Sandilands have apologised for being sucked in with the COVID scandal. I thank Karl and Kyle for their honesty in apologising and note it only came after they ceased working for the mainstream media propaganda machine. Honesty is easy when it carries no cost.
The timing of this failed media pile-on was designed to distract from revelations in the United States relating to the COVID scandal. This includes the role of former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci. The worm has turned against Anthony Fauci. His formerly private work diaries have been subpoenaed and released. His government-issued phone has been subpoenaed, and the contents have been released. The result is a very clear picture of his lies to hide the man-made origin of COVID. Even worse, it proves a criminal conspiracy to cover up adverse events from the COVID vaccines, the injections. Note that in order to call these injections ‘vaccines’ they had to change the definition of ‘vaccine’. Changing the name doesn’t change the outcome. Death, injury, misery—crimes which may never see Fauci before a court of law, given that President Biden granted him a full pardon for all the crimes he committed going back to 2014. There are, though, many others who could and should be charged.
The Fauci papers prove COVID-19 was a man-made virus whose development commenced in the United States against the law and then moved out of the public eye to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, with American funding from Fauci. The final product, SARS-CoV-2, combined the original and man-made SARS virus with elements of the AIDS virus and a bat virus that was previously unseen in humans. The zoonotic origin of COVID—suggesting a bat virus somehow jumped to humans in the wet market in Wuhan—was made up to mislead the public, frontline health officials and professionals. This was known publicly almost from the start. Many scientists rejected the theory including the late Luc Montagnier, a Nobel Prize winning virologist, who sequenced the COVID DNA in April of 2020. He concluded the presence of a furin cleavage site and the inclusion of segments from the AIDS virus could only be the result of human intervention.
For those without a crash course in virology, I’ll explain. Furin is the name of the protein used to cut a DNA sequence in order to insert a new piece of DNA. A furin cleavage site is the location of the cut. These can occur naturally. Montagnier, though, concluded the nature and location of the cut and of the material inserted was not natural. He’s right, and I was right to call COVID man made from the start. The number of lowly qualified health professionals and journalists with no medical training who did no research of their own and who tried to debunk the theory is a frightening indictment on the medical profession and on journalism. They ignored the work of a man who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the AIDS virus. I listened to the one man on the planet most qualified to sequence and analyse the COVID DNA. Why didn’t our health professionals and the media?
The man-made nature of the virus was proven when the US defence department released a report into COVID in August 2021. The author was Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Murphy. He was formerly a fellow at America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, and was the inspector-general of the department of defence at the time—someone else that I listened to. The report states the virus is an American created, deliberately humanised virus that was developed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with the developer being American Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, who received financial grants from Anthony Fauci. For saying exactly that and for telling the truth the media called me a conspiracy theorist.
The report shows why non-medical interventions like masks and medical countermeasures—that is, vaccines—do not work well against coronavirus. That’s something else I’ve been criticised for saying. America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, rejected funding this project for ethical reasons, so Anthony Fauci funded the research, and the rest is history. The US military document confirms the date of the COVID virus’s escape: August 2019. This was prior to three researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology presenting to Wuhan hospital with a previously unseen respiratory virus. I was right about COVID being a lab leak and about when it escaped.
What that means is that Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum ran Event 201 in October 2019 to simulate the outbreak of a deadly virus three months after the virus escaped. That’s something they must have known. They lied about that and still do. Plus, it’s interesting to see the defence report, inter alia, say:
The reason the disease is so confusing is because it is less a virus than it is engineered spike proteins, hitching a ride on the virus part of the disease.
COVID-2 was a delivery mechanism for spike proteins. The report continued:
COVID is readily resolved with early treatment that inhibits the viral replication that spreads the spike proteins around the body.
Those spike proteins cause a harmful interactive overactive immune response to try and clear the spike proteins from the ACE-2 receptors.
The spike protein in the COVID virus and in the deadly vaccine stop the ace 2 receptor from doing its job, which is fighting cancer. So they leave us vulnerable to cancer. The source of the spike protein can be from the virus or from the injections. The more injections there are, the more spike protein there is in your body and the lower your defenses are against cancer. It’s no coincidence that Pfizer released a new cancer drug in 2020 and then engaged in a massive scale-up into cancer and cardiovascular portfolios, with the $43 billion acquisition of Seagen in late 2023. They created the problem; they created a solution from the same bloody company. What a great business strategy. It’s a shame about the ethics. It’s a shame about the people who died—who had their health destroyed and their lives destroyed.
And the report clearly states Daszak knew in 2018 that ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and interferon inhibited viral replication. Did our health authorities promote these treatments from the start of the outbreak? No. They banned these safe drugs they knew to be effective treatment. When doctors around the world used ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to successfully treat COVID, they were threatened and many had their registrations revoked and their livelihoods taken away. In Australia, these included courageous doctors Mark Hobart, My Le-Trinh, David Currie and Paul Oosterhuis—doctors of courage who put their patients’ welfare ahead of their own. Their hero, Anthony Fauci, explained the reason our health officials took a decision that can only be described as criminal malfeasance. According to his diary at 12.30 pm on 27 July 2021, Fauci advised President Biden: ‘The level of virus in the upper throat of vaccinated people with a serious infection was the same as the level in unvaccinated persons.’ The only conclusion from that statement is the vaccine did not stop ‘serious breakthrough cases’ any more than natural immunity did, and they knew it in July 2021, based on research from Israel. Nonetheless, Australian health authorities kept lying to you. On 25 August 2021, Fauci secretly admitted the truth—mRNA COVID jabs failed against hospitalisation and not just infection. Why was this failure not made public? Fauci’s diary from 13 August 2021 states: ‘The CDC’s statement the vaccines were not effective at all in preventing infection and transmission must be rescinded because it would undermine the Department of Justice’s efforts at mandates for vaccines.’ There you have it. The CDC then actually wound the statement back.
So there you have it. They lied and they covered up a vaccine which at the time they publicly accepted caused myocarditis and was killing people—in order to prevent critical scrutiny, to enable compulsory vaccination and to protect their power, their credibility and their jobs and to avoid the inevitable legal action for malfeasance. There’s so much more to the Fauci papers. They’re public and I’ll put the link on my website. The world suffered because of our health professionals’ self-interest. Jabbed or un-jabbed, we’ve all been lied to. This is why we must call a royal commission into COVID, to ensure public health is never again sacrificed on the altar of corporate profits and industry self-interest. Those who died and those harmed or bereaved must be granted justice.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/Ojt6PThp9pE/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-08-26 12:11:452026-08-26 12:11:48Every Australian Was Lied To
One Nation stood with Senator Lambie to call out Labor’s disgraceful treatment of Australian veterans
These men and women put their lives on the line for our country. Their lives. And Labor repays them by forcing them into a broken system where claims drag on for a year, 103,000 cases sit in limbo, and veterans are denied any choice of provider. And now, as if they haven’t suffered enough, Labor wants to slap a $5,0000 cap on their allied health care on top of all that.
Enough is enough.
Veterans deserve respect, not bureaucratic cruelty. They deserve proper care, not a cap that cuts off physio, OT, psychology and rehab halfway through the year. They deserve choice, not a government-paid assessor who cuts corners.
Labor’s waste, hypocrisy and deceit have left veterans abandoned, ignored and disrespected. One Nation will not stand for it.
When in government, One Nation will scrap the cap — and restore the dignity our veterans earned.
Transcript
One Nation supports Senator Lambie’s matter of urgency.
The Albanese Labor government is again denigrating and mistreating our honourable and deserving Australian veterans, the people we rely on to keep us safe; who put country first, ahead of their own lives and safety; and to whom every Australian owes a huge debt. These are our finest—decent, caring, disciplined, noble—and, in serving Australia, some have been injured or damaged. This government is now treating these women and men with a contempt that should be called out for the shame that it brings on all Australians.
I recently met with yet another group of veterans, the Coalition of Veterans Voices, concerned about Labor’s interventions into veterans rights and care. These men and women are genuine, sensible and intelligent Australians alarmed at Labor’s imminent curbing of veterans rights to essential allied health care needed as a result of their services to Australia. They said the minister, the Hon. Matt Keogh, who begrudgingly met with the veterans, declined to even shake their hands. What’s wrong with Labor politicians? The group told me of the broken DVA claims processing—the uncaring system that hinders rather than helps—that seems not to have performance standards—and if it does, it rarely meet those standards. I was told that veterans are being denied their choice of provider. They’re funnelled to a single provider contracted to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, where claims are then underestimated and delayed. DVA’s own figures reveal that last year the average time to determine an initial claim took 364 days—virtually a year!—of wait time. As at 30 June 2026, the department had 103 outstanding claims. This system is clearly broken and needs to be reviewed and rebuilt. By the way, Senator Grogan mentioned that when her government came into office the backlog was 42,000. It’s now 103,000. The changes will not assist veterans. They callously short-change veterans. Labor now has an upper limit cap of $5,000 on allied health services and treatment for conditions and injuries that occurred because of defence service. Doctors and our veterans are worried, and have every right to be worried.
Labor claims that this cap won’t hurt veterans with complex cases, and yet admits that a system to apply the funding has not even been designed. The cap is contrary to recommendations by the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. It’s callous disregard for the health and wellbeing of veterans and is highly disrespectful. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychological services and other rehabilitation services are not discretionary needs—they’re vital means to support vets to regain their health—and they need to be continuous, not capped and then having six months of no care before they’re renewed. Veterans should be able to choose a practitioner who knows their care needs. A $5,000 cap is not a budget efficiency; it’s a barrier to treatment. The cap must go. Scrap the cap. In sync with this is the need for Labor to restore a veteran’s right to choose their assessor and not be restricted to a government paid contractor likely to want to cut corners. Our relatively small Defence Force plays a vital role in defending the security of 28 million Australians, yet Labor fails to support vets under attack. When the ABC grossly misrepresented and harmed distinguished veteran Heston Russell, Labor did nothing despite the ABCs use of taxpayer funds. ABC lost a court case and failed repeatedly to apologise to Heston. And former commissioner Paul Brereton undermined accused veterans, including our most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith. Brereton’s inaction reflected Labor’s failure to assist and support veterans. Diggers went to Iraq on the basis of weapons of mass destruction and then, two years later, we found there were no weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie, but no-one apologised. Why would anyone seriously wish to join the military if they knew that they would be thrown on the scrapheap or ignored and disrespected if they left the service through service related injury or conditions? Are Labor’s imminent caps on care the result of Labor’s wasteful spending in other areas that’s sending our country broke? Is this the Albanese government’s trademark deceit and hypocrisy? Three words frame Labor: waste, hypocrisy and deceit. This inept Albanese government tries to look good, not do good—words, no substance. Yet, despite Labor’s hype, misinformation and propaganda, Australians are waking up. One Nation and I completely support this matter of urgency.
During this session with NDIS officials, I questioned them on their progress in tackling fraud within the scheme.
Here’s an overview of how non-compliance and fraud are being tackled:
👉 29,000 tip-offs received annually, though not all represent actual fraud, with issues ranging from accidental errors to organised crime.
👉 Thousands of Australian Business Numbers are currently placed under manual payment controls and enhanced automated screening.
👉 400 active NDIS investigations are currently being handled by the NDIS Commission and taskforce partners out of 660 total taskforce cases.
👉 25 convictions have been recorded with sentences including up to 6 years in prison. Dozens of more cases are currently in the prosecution phase or awaiting final court sentencing.
Mr Dardo stressed that regulatory oversight relies on a full spectrum of interventions from automated payment blocks to criminal prosecutions to plug integrity leaks effectively.
Every step must be taken to ensure the NDIS remains financially sustainable and accessible for Australians that genuinely depend on it.
Transcript
ACTING CHAIR: Welcome back, everybody. We are on outcome 4, and we will start our questioning with Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing again today. What is the amount forecast to be saved by the proposed cuts to the NDIS program?
Mr Comley: The number in the budget is $37.8 billion over the forward estimates.
Senator ROBERTS: Is that for four years?
Mr Comley: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Shouldn’t the priority be to stop wasting money and stop the criminals defrauding the service?
Senator McAllister: We had quite a long conversation about this earlier in the day. To put it briefly, our priority is to stop the criminals defrauding the NDIS. The budget contains very significant investments in the capability of the agency to disrupt fraud, including continuing funding for the Fraud Fusion Taskforce that we’ve spoken about before. The point I was making earlier is that we see some savings to government when we disrupt fraud, but, historically, we’ve seen the vast majority of the money that we identify as going to bad actors returned to people with disability. So, yes, our priority, absolutely, is intervening to stop fraud—non-compliant claiming and other integrity leakage—but whether that is a source of savings to government is a different question.
Senator ROBERTS: What is the answer to that one?
Senator McAllister: The answer is that historically, when we have disrupted providers who are defrauding the NDIS, they are taking money from disabled people. We disrupt it. The money goes back to that person who acquires the services that they need from a legitimate provider. So it’s not a source of savings to government, but it does improve the functioning of the scheme. I’ve said it on many occasions: this scheme has to operate with integrity. Over the period that we have been in government, we have made very substantial investments to lift the capacity of the NDIA and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission to make sure that that is so. There is still more to do, and it’s why there is significant investment—further investment in the budget—that we’ve just brought through.
Senator ROBERTS: So rather than cutting services, you’re cutting fraud?
Senator McAllister: The reform package as a whole seeks to make sure that the scheme is sustainable. Minister Butler has talked about stopping runaway cost growth. He has talked about tackling fraud. He’s talking about reshaping markets so that they deliver good value services and quality services to people with disability. The whole package is about making the NDIS stronger and better so it is here for the long term. It’s not a choice between dealing with runaway cost growth or tackling fraud. We actually have to do both.
Senator ROBERTS: Who are the people whose services will be cut then, if it’s not just fraud?
Senator McAllister: I’ll ask officials to talk you through some of our expectations in terms of the approach that we are taking.
Mr Comley: Perhaps the easiest place to draw from is the public disclosure of information and the lines there where it runs through the composition of the reductions across the forward estimates. I also note in reply to your earlier comment, Senator, that that production of documents includes—as does the budget—the savings measure on both a fiscal balance and underlying cash balance basis. I gave you the underlying cash balance. The equivalent number on fiscal balance is $38.1 billion, so they’re both around $38 billion. There are 10 aspects outlined in that production of documents.
Ms Long: That’s correct.
Mr Comley: I’ll hand over to Ms Long.
Ms Long: The reforms cover a range of areas. That includes addressing fraud, compliance and integrity, but it also includes measures around eligibility and participants’ budgets. Would you like me to go across—
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, please.
Ms Long: As Secretary Comley said, the total impact of the reforms is $38.1 billion over the forward estimates. That can be broken down into a number of components. The first component is around strengthening guidance on what is reasonable and necessary, and that has an impact of $2.9 billion over the forward estimates.
Senator ROBERTS: Is that tightening up on who should get it? I’m using that word ‘tightening’ constructively.
Ms Long: It’s around what is considered reasonable and necessary and how that is applied in terms of the determination of budgets.
Mr Comley: To be clear, that measure is for people that are in the scheme, once they’re in the scheme, on what is considered the right level of support. There are other measures Ms Long will come to that go to the question of who should be in the scheme in the first place.
Ms Long: There’s another element around resetting social, community and civic participation and capacity building budgets, which has an impact of $13.2 billion over the forward estimates.
Senator ROBERTS: What do you mean by that?
Ms Long: There are two particular budget categories. The first one is the social, community and civic participation budget. That’s a type of support that is provided. Another type of support is capacity-building daily activities. Those two types of supports, through a ministerial determination, will have budgets reduced. The social and community budgets will be reduced by 50 per cent. The capacity-building daily activity budgets will be reduced by 10 per cent.
Senator ROBERTS: What do you mean by community activity? What is the scope of that?
Ms Long: It’s quite a broad support category. It provides supports to participants to go out and engage in the community. It might involve having a support worker take them out to engage in some form of community activity, for example.
Mr Comley: It could be as simple as going to a park, maybe having a walk around or feeding the ducks, or it could be a sporting event. It could be a whole range of things. That’s community participation.
Ms Long: Another element of the reforms is around commissioning plan management and support coordination, which would deliver an improvement of around $1.4 billion over the forward estimates. Also, there has been quite a lot of plan inflation that has been observed, so there are a series of reforms that are aimed at addressing that plan inflation. That includes tightening the criteria around unscheduled reassessment requests and ending plans rolling over and funds being rolled over alongside. The total impact of those reforms is $3.1 billion over the forward estimates. There are also a range of access changes, as Secretary Comley referred to. In particular, in introducing an objective test of substantially reduced functional capacity, that would look to tighten eligibility for the scheme in order to focus that back on significant and permanent disability but also to have a focus on substantially reduced functional capacity rather than disability type. That change would have an impact of $9.3 billion over the forward estimates.
Senator ROBERTS: So it’s going to tighten and be more specific?
Ms Long: That’s correct. There will need to be a range of consultation and engagement on how that’s applied in terms of the threshold, the definition and how that’s done in practice, but, yes, the intent is to focus in eligibility on significantly reduced functional capacity. To date, access to the scheme has commonly been done through access lists that relate to your disability type. This would mean that we would no longer need to use those access lists and instead eligibility would be focused on a substantial reduction in functional capacity. If you’d like, I could keep going through a number of the other elements of the reform package, if that’s helpful.
Senator ROBERTS: How many more are there?
Ms Long: There are probably a couple more that I could mention if you like. Another one that might be worth highlighting is there’s a measure for mandatory registration for high-risk providers, which is around, obviously, having registration. That would deliver savings of $0.2 billion over the forward estimates.
Senator ROBERTS: High-risk providers?
Ms Long: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: How do you identify high risk?
Ms Long: I might need one of my colleagues to talk to the detail of how that will be applied.
Ms Alisa Chambers: High-risk supports as imagined through the budget is an extension of mandatory registration that we’re moving through at the moment with supported independent living and platform providers, in the new category of advanced registration. Those high-risk supports relate to daily activities—things like catheter care or really intimate personal care—and closed settings, like respite settings, where we see really significant risk to people with disability, particularly people with significant support needs.
Ms Long: Overall, as a result of the reforms, it’s projected that average growth in the NDIS will be 1.7 per cent over the forward estimates and five per cent over the medium term. Five per cent per annum growth for the NDIS is broadly in line with Medicare and aged-care growth rates. It also means that the scheme will remain steady at around 1.6 per cent of GDP over the medium term on the current projections that we have.
Senator ROBERTS: I had a question about how those people whose services will be cut will be identified. It’s basically through tightening up the eligibility criteria, which is something that we’ve been talking about for a while. That’s good to see, Minister.
ACTING CHAIR: You’ve got about another two minutes, Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ve got questions for quality and safeguards. We’ve identified several fraudsters who need to be investigated and moneys chased down. Is this where most effort should be used to seek restitution?
Mr Comley: I think the Quality and Safeguards Commission is dealing more with participant safety. The NDIA and Mr Dardo‘s area are more in the area of fraud and misuse of funds. Mr Dardo might want to comment.
Mr Dardo: Overwhelmingly, our focus is on preventing the money going out in the first place so we can prevent the money leaving the system when it shouldn’t be. The beauty of that is you’re not trying to chase a debt. You’re not trying to chase the money after it’s gone. That’s our overwhelming focus, and we’ve done a really, really good job in identifying problematic providers and stopping the funds leaving before they should. When the money has gone, there are different ways that we might recover it. Raising a debt might be one way. Asking the courts for reparation, like an order to repay, might be another. Another way that we’ve done it is we’ve worked with state or federal policing authorities to seize assets or freeze assets. In one recent case, we froze $5 million in assets and had them confiscated by the Commonwealth. In another case, we’ve frozen $40 million in assets. In a recent case, we’ve frozen another $4½ million to $5 million. It’s really important that we send the message that, even if the money has gone and somebody thinks they’ve gotten away with it, we will actually pursue the assets. There is another avenue that we’ve been using, which is to get the tax office to go after them from a tax perspective and raise taxes and attack the problem from that direction. Overwhelmingly, designing a system to stop the money going out in the first place is our mission, but we do have avenues to try to recover money when it gets to the serious end of fraud.
Ms Wade: Secretary Comley mentioned that the commission’s focus with respect to fraud is firmly on the behaviour of providers in the market. In addressing that, in addition to penalty frameworks for providers, we have the registration scheme, and we’ve strengthened our approach to the registration scheme to ensure that it detects fraud in more sophisticated ways through recent reforms. As those registration groups grow, which we just spoke about, that strengthened response for fraud detection continues to be enhanced as well.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s multipronged.
Ms Wade: Yes, absolutely.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll ask my last question for this bracket. I’ve still got more when we come back. How many cases of fraud are being reported? You said that, if you took them all to court, they’d be clogged.
Mr Dardo: The way we look at it is that it’s about stopping the integrity leakage whether it’s accidental, it’s sharp, it’s malicious or it’s organised crime. We’ve got to stop it all because any one of those vulnerabilities that are open allows money to leak out of the scheme. We get a significant number of tip-offs every year. We get 29,000 tip-offs every year. They are not all fraud. We’ve got to be really careful in assuming. They’re not all fraud. As you go up the spectrum, there are several thousand ABNs that we’ve already got some controls on through manual payment reviews, and we have been building more systems in the last few weeks that are now turning on. We will put a couple thousand more ABNs into those reviews in the next few weeks. Then you go up the spectrum a bit more, where we’ve got Fraud Fusion Taskforce investigations. There are about 660 investigations, but 400 of those related to the NDIS are either with the commission or with us—or both. Then you get to the ones that are in the prosecution phase. There are a few dozen in the prosecution phase, so they’re in front of the courts or we’ve got briefs of evidence with the CDPP to prepare them for the courts. That’s the spectrum. And it’s really important to note that there is no regulatory system in the world that thinks that every single non-compliant thing is going to end up as a prosecution. That is not the way the world works.
Senator ROBERTS: How many convictions have there been?
Mr Dardo: There have been 25 convictions since the Fraud Fusion Taskforce started, and those sentences have resulted, in some cases, in custodial sentences up to six years. There are more cases where there has been a guilty outcome—either pled guilty or found guilty—but they’re awaiting sentencing. We don’t control the dates of the court, so some of those have been sitting there awaiting sentencing for six months or a year. There are cases that are currently scheduled for sentencing in July. They may happen in July; they may happen in December—we don’t know. But there are more cases sitting there right now where they’ve been found guilty awaiting sentencing.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/HFyqGlbiGm0/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-08-26 11:40:172026-08-26 11:40:21Protecting Every NDIS Dollar
