Malcolm’s Official Speeches in Parliament

Bringing Choice Back to Family Assistance

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One Nation fully supports the bill introduced by Senators Babet and Antic – A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025 – which seeks to restore the conscientious-objection clause to federal family assistance laws.

This bill enables parents with unvaccinated children to access the childcare subsidy and Family Tax Benefit Part A without facing financial penalties, applicable up to age seven after which the child is deemed to meet the schedule irrespective of vaccination status. Under this amendment, parents would be able to file a written declaration of conscientious objection, alongside a consultation with an immunisation provider regarding risks and benefits, to legally satisfy childhood immunisation requirements.

Australian childhood vaccination rates are at a 12-year low, dropping below the federal government’s 95% target. This drop in vaccination rates is no coincidence and can be attributed to public distrust following government actions and mandates during COVID-19.

Medical coercion violates patient autonomy and the ethical guidelines of the Australian Immunisation Handbook, which mandates voluntary informed consent.

There are disparities in state-level “no jab, no play” childcare bans so vaccination status should have no bearing on child care, relevant subsidies and the ability to claim Family Tax Benefit A. Besides, we let in millions of people into Australia without knowing their vaccination status. India and China have vaccination rates higher that we do, however Pakistan is down to 80% and Yemen is at 50%.

Further, safety testing of childhood vaccines against inert placebos have NEVER been tested, a requirement of the ICH Guideline for Good Clinical Practice E6, which the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) ratified. High levels of adverse events such as autism that parents associate with the vaccines, are brushed off by the authorities, with no examination, and no interest in exploring truth. A One Nation government believe this is a matter in the public interest and will require this safety testing to be funded given the significance of the exercise.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Thank you to Senators Babet and Antic for this bill, A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Amendment (No Jab No Pay Repeal) Bill 2025, which One Nation wholeheartedly supports. The bill simply provides for the conscientious-objection clause to be restored to the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999, which will allow children who are not fully immunised to access social security. 

Specifically, this will allow families whose children may not be vaccinated to access the childcare subsidy and the family tax benefit part A supplement without facing financial penalties. Under this amendment, if a parent files a written declaration of a conscientious objection and an immunisation provider certifies they have discussed the risks and benefits, the child is legally deemed to have met the immunisation requirements. This provision only applies to age seven, after which the child is deemed to meet the schedule irrespective of vaccination status. 

This bill is sensible. It’s fair. It restores the fundamental principle that parents make decisions for their children—not governments. Childhood vaccination rates in Australia are currently at a 12-year low, dropping below the federal government’s target of 95 per cent. Vaccination rates at 12 months are 90.5 per cent, down 4.3 per cent over the last five years. At 24 months, the rate is 88.4 per cent, and, at 60 months, the rate is 92.5 per cent. According to the latest data from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, approximately 80,000 children under the age of five are not fully up to date with their standard childhood immunisations. 

The timing of this fall is no coincidence. Immunisation was a major casualty of Australia’s criminal response to the COVID scandal. It turns out that, when you force vaccination on people and destroy the careers, businesses and, in some cases, marriages of those who refuse, many people do not react with acquiescence. They react with understandable suspicion, distrust, resentment and anger. They saw the harm people were experiencing from the COVID injections, they look at the harm some childhood vaccines are causing, and they ask, ‘What else have our authorities lied to us about?’ 

The reduction in support for vaccination takes two forms. Firstly, parents are increasingly choosing not to give some or all of the schedule to their child. Secondly, parents are delaying the shots until their baby is older. For instance, in 2025, two in five children received their first measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, dose later than recommended. That’s 40 per cent. 

When looking at vaccination rates across Australia, national averages can be highly misleading. The national average sits at around 91 per cent, although this does not mean every area is vaccinated to that level. There are growing regional differences. The drop in vaccination rates is not happening evenly across the country. 

The National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance map data from the Australian Immunisation Register onto a standard unit called an SA3, statistical area level 3. This is important when comparing vaccination rates in one area against those in another. Five years ago, more than half of all SA3, statistical area level 3, areas had reached or exceeded the 95 per cent target. Today, the number of SA3 areas meeting that target has plummeted to just 18 per cent—less than one in five. This shows that the fall in confidence in vaccination is happening right across the country. 

It can be argued that these SA3 areas with vaccination rates below 95 per cent no longer have herd immunity. Herd immunity has come under scrutiny following the failure of the COVID vaccines, the COVID injections, the COVID gene therapy treatments, to effect herd immunity, despite the level of coercion which went into achieving very high vaccination rates So far, this healthy scientific re-examination has shown measles, mumps, polio and rubella vaccines can achieve herd immunity because their outer shell is stable over time. 

Many countries, including the United States, have found the level of preservatives in the MMR vaccine is too high for safety and require those shots to be given separately and spaced out. One Nation supports that position. Viruses like COVID and influenza mutate rapidly and, as society proved with COVID, do not allow for herd immunity. This was conventional science before our COVID response tore up the rule book and threw out the science. Surprisingly, the areas of lowest vaccination are not in rural and regional areas. They are in growth corridors and inner-city areas. That’s interesting. Conservatives are frequently blamed for lower vaccination rates, yet where are the lowest rates? They’re in inner city left-leaning electorates. Vaccination rates in the bush, though, can be delayed, owing to distance and scheduling. 

Growth corridors are showing lower vaccination rates, and this is where the babies are and where mothers live with concern about government agencies’ actions dishonestly compromising their precious babies’ health. The bill does not address the issue of unvaccinated children attending child care. State governments control that policy. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia all have laws preventing unvaccinated children attending child care. Queensland allows the centre to make the decision. The ACT, Tasmania and the Northern Territory have no regulations similar to no-jab no-play. Vaccination status is not relevant to child care. Canberra always makes rules for others that it does not impose on itself. Recall Commonwealth agencies inhuman, antihuman, immoral, dishonest COVID restrictions and lies contrary to the science. This is interesting. If vaccination status is critical to keeping children safe, we would see New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia having lower disease rates than the ACT, Northern Territory and Tasmania, who allow vaccinated and unvaccinated children to mix. Not surprisingly—to me anyway—there is no difference in disease rates between the states on average over time. Don’t you just love competitive federalism? I sure do! 

If you look at the raw infection numbers that the Australian Centre for Disease Control, the CDC, publishes, New South Wales regularly records the highest numbers of whooping cough and measles cases in the country. This may be because Australia does not screen new arrivals for vaccination status. For clarity, new arrivals are those visa types which are counted towards net overseas migration. Although the same no-jab no-play rule covers children of the net overseas migration and Australian children, when new arrivals apply for permanent visas, they come under the migration medical examination, which does check their vaccination status and requires makeups where required. 

What’s the take-home here? We go to all this trouble to achieve childhood vaccination, then we let in millions of new arrivals and don’t even ask their vaccination status. For the record, India and China have vaccination rates higher than ours. Pakistan is down at 80 per cent, and Somalia and Yemen are at 50 per cent. I’ve asked about this in Senate estimates hearings and always get nothing answers—crap—and that’s the problem. Unless we can talk honestly about these issues, confidence in health authorities will continue to plummet. Their hubris will be fatal to public health. We also know is that we have a 35-year high in whooping cough, pertussis, notifications and public measles alerts. Something is going wrong, and we have every right to ask about it. 

One Nation has concerns around no-jab no-play laws. In medical ethics the relationship between coercion and vaccination is a complex topic, with two competing ethical duties—respect for individual autonomy and the duty to protect public health. In Australian clinical practice, coercion is against ethical guidelines. Under the Australian Immunisation Handbook for a patient to give legally valid medical consent that consent quote ‘must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation’. A doctor cannot ethically use physical force, direct threats or deception to compel a patient to take a vaccine. Doing so violates the foundational bioethical principle of autonomy, and that’s the right of an individual to make decisions about their own body. It is this autonomy Senator Antic’s bill seeks to strengthen, with the re-inclusion of a conscientious objection. As such, the bill fits perfectly within the existing legal and ethical vaccination framework. Here I must make the point that during COVID this fundamental protection against coercion was torn up and ripped to shreds with apparent glee from our health authorities, who revelled in operating in an environment without ethics. The very people who should have displayed ethics instead chose hysteria with an added layer of financial gain. The fundamental rule here is that, if you ignore the rule on informed consent, the risk—in this case, COVID—has to be proportionate to the measures taken. The vaccine has to be proven safe and effective. The measures taken must be the least necessary to be the least infringement on the code, and, finally, the measures have to be necessary. The COVID immunisation agenda met none of these four tests—not one. The COVID shots were not tested. The skimpy so-called testing was done on a different version of the vaccine to the one actually sold in Australia. The term ‘safe and effective’ was two lies. They were not safe; they were not effective. And we know the health agencies and departments knew that at the time. I’ll say it again: we know the health agencies and departments knew at the time that they were not safe and effective. They were not necessary. Vaccinating for influenza has never worked and did not work in the case of COVID, and, lastly, they were not the least infringement on the code. Ivermectin and similar accessible, affordable, safe drugs were proven safe and effective yet were banned by our health authorities. 

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, Ahpra, should have acted to defend the rights of patients and stood in defence of informed consent, which is supposedly an Ahpra objective. Instead, they chose to police medical practitioners to ensure none dared to follow the Australian Immunisation Handbook guidelines. Ahpra tried heavily and determinedly to ensure health practitioners did not comply with the Hippocratic oath. These dishonest travesties Ahpra continue today. 

Secondly, childhood vaccines have never been tested for safety against an inert placebo—never—which is what is required by the ICH Guideline for Good Clinical Practice E6, which Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA, has ratified. Australian vaccines have not been tested against this standard. Instead, the TGA, in Senate estimates hearings, relies on the lack of reported serious adverse events to assume vaccines are safe. Despite there being high levels of adverse events such as autism that parents associate with the vaccines, the authorities, with no examination, brush off that the cause is vaccines. It’s this, more than anything else, that’s causing a loss of confidence in vaccination. A One Nation government will require this safety testing to be done and, given the significance of the exercise, fund the trials, in the public interest. 

Finally, under America’s health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC in America, announced an unprecedented revision of the routine childhood immunisation guidelines, shrinking approved vaccines from 17 to 11. Australia has 14. This move is currently blocked in American courts after the pharmaceutical industry fought back. I hope the measure is approved, as it will provide a very immediate answer to the question of a potential link between childhood vaccines and adverse events that agencies with connections to big pharma currently and blindly do not accept as being vaccine related. 

Greg Beattie’s excellent book, Fooling Ourselves, provides a proper statistical evaluation showing that the incidence of childhood diseases and their effects plummeted before the vaccines were released. That means that vaccines were not the cause of the near eradication of the diseases. Rather, it seems that improved hygiene, improved sanitation and improved nutrition were the causes of falling disease incidence. It means that there will be no harm in not forcing childhood vaccines—no harm. 

In summary, parents have every right to be wary of the harm these products may be doing to their children. They have every right to exercise their religious or conscientious objections to forced vaccination. They should not be treated differently for not having vaccinated their children in whole or in part. And childcare centres should be free to make the decision to accept or not accept vaccinated or unvaccinated children. One Nation will proudly support this bill

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Essential Infrastructure Belongs in Public Hands

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Infrastructure of national significance such as power transmission lines, substations and water systems should remain in the hands of the government, on behalf of the people, which will prevent corporate monopolies and price gouging. While power generation can be privately owned, it needs long-term supply price controls.

Privatisation of water in South Australia in 1996 failed and was brought back under government control in 2012. Not only was it poorly maintained, water went from being amongst the cheapest to the dearest. Similarly, Western Australia privatised water in 1996 and likewise, was brought back under government control in 2019. The Western Australian government discovered that managing complex private contracts was actually costing more than doing the work themselves. This saved taxpayers $5 million a year.

Rather than learning from the costly mistakes of other states, Victoria is pushing ahead with plans to lease VicWater assets to the highest bidder. The result? Victorians will face higher water bills only to inherit degraded infrastructure when its handed back.

Privatisation leads to monopolies, profit maximisation and price gouging. By contrast, I generally support the free market because it gives consumers choice, driving accountability, efficiency, and productivity.

Given Australia’s small population and vast size, duplicate critical infrastructure cannot exist, meaning private ownership inherently creates unregulated monopolies that maximise profit through gouging.

The Solution? Competitive Federalism. State-owned critical infrastructure avoids private monopolies because it operates within a system of “competitive federalism.” Citizens have freedom of movement between states, creating a “marketplace in governance” where states must remain accountable, efficient, and responsive to citizens, driving positive policy reforms across the country.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: I thank Senator McKim for moving this motion, which One Nation supports. It’s One Nation policy that infrastructure of national significance should remain in the hands of the government on behalf of the people—not under government control but on behalf of the people. This includes power transmission lines and substations. Power stations can be privately owned and operated under a long-term supply price, which prevents price gouging in times of power scarcity, which happens all the time with weather-dependent solar and wind power. It’s a travesty that the business model for Snowy 2.0 hydro seeks to justify the $42 billion price tag using a projection for power prices which suggests they too expect a profit from price gouging. AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator, is frequently forced to intervene in the market at $600 per megawatt hour, which is a staggeringly high price, because new gas-firming plants are not being required to accept a feed-in tariff. If it existed, it would be $60 to $80 per megawatt hour. Consumers are paying peak pricing which is 10 times the price they would pay if we built our baseload power stations with sensible supply contracts—fact. 

Privatising infrastructure of national significance has failed. South Australia privatised water in 1996 and brought it back under government control in 2012. This was after the operator failed to maintain a sewage treatment works and Adelaide endured months of what was called the ‘big pong’. Adelaide water went from being amongst our country’s cheapest to our country’s dearest. Western Australia privatised water in 1996 and brought it back under government control in 2019. The outcome in Western Australia was interesting. Perhaps Premier Carroll could pay attention there. During 25 years, the Western Australian government realised that managing complex private contracts was actually costing more than doing the work themselves. Moving Western Australian water back to government ownership saved taxpayers $5 million a year. Now Victoria is the latest bankrupt state selling off the silverware—VicWater. The plan is called Project Nerva and circumvents the Victorian constitution through leasing the $18 billion in assets of VicWater to the highest bidder. Victorians will pay more for their water and receive back an asset in a worse state than when it was leased. Such is privatisation. It leads to a monopoly, which leads to profit maximisation, which leads to gouging. I generally support the free market because it gives consumers choice, and choice leads to accountability, and choice leads to efficiency and productivity. Given Australia’s small population, though, and huge area, we cannot support two sets of critical infrastructure for roads, water and electricity. We cannot place monopoly power in corporate hands, where profit maximisation is the goal and leads to gouging. 

What of government monopolies? Our forefathers, the founding fathers of our Constitution, thought of that and came up with a solution—actually, they borrowed it from the American constitution. The solution is embedded in our Constitution. States provide infrastructure and critical services. That comes under competitive federalism. One state competes with another state. That’s a marketplace in governance. There is choice. If South Australia is stuffing things up, South Australians can move to New South Wales or Queensland. It doesn’t matter what it is. Whether it’s education, infrastructure, water, electricity, roads—whatever it is, there is no monopoly, because the states have competition under competitive federalism. That provides a marketplace in governance, which leads to choice. If you don’t like the state you’re in, you can move to another state. Freedom of movement leads to accountability. So state ownership of critical infrastructure is part of a marketplace solution. 

There’s not enough time to tell you about Sir Joh, but Sir Joh abolished death duties in Queensland, and people moved to Queensland so that they could leave their children more money. That led to other states doing the same. Warren Buffett, the most successful investor ever, said his ideal investment is the sole drawbridge on a wide river. When you put it in private hands, infrastructure becomes a mechanism for gouging. We must protect national infrastructure and national services like water. They’re key resources.

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Drill, Refine, Rebuild

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Reflecting on a decade in the Senate, it’s clear that every major issue facing Australia — from energy and water to economic decline — stems from the “uniparty” status quo.

We’ve fallen from the #1 highest per capita income a century ago to now hurtling toward 20th. Despite having the world’s richest natural resources per capita, poor policy choices have left us dependent on foreign powers for manufacturing, energy and fertiliser.

We need to restore Australia’s independence.

We need to drill and refine at home, keeping our oil, gas and manufacturing within our borders from start to finish.

We need to secure domestic supply by rebuilding local production for essentials like fertiliser.

I support Senator Bell’s inquiry to get the real data on how this happened and how we fix it.

Australia deserves better than managed decline.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: I was elected in 2016 in May-July. I started in July. I’ve had more than 10 years since I first joined the Senate. I’ve been elected once and re-elected twice. In that 10 years, I’ve learnt that every major problem in this country is due to the uniparty. Your policies on energy, your policies on climate fraud, your policies on water—disgraceful. You’ve done everything you can to hammer workers into subservience. You’re both guilty of mass immigration. 

Australia has fallen from having the No. 1 highest per capita income in the world a hundred or so years ago to now being headed out the back door. We’re heading for 20th thanks to you lot. We are still the richest nation in the world for resources per capita, yet now we’re dependent on communist dictatorships and the unstable government for much of what we need in this country. Our manufacturing has been shot, thanks to you lot, so we’re now dependent. We must have new capability restored within our borders—we drill for oil or gas within our borders, process it, refine it, transport it, and put it in bowsers, then into cars, trucks and tractors, with the whole process in our country. What’s the matter? You have abandoned that. You’ve both caused it. 

We need the same for fertiliser. We need to restore Australia. We have the world’s highest per capita resources, yet we’re heading down the road to poverty, thanks to you lot. We need to get the data on why this has happened. We need to get the data on what we need. We need to get the facts. That’s why I support this inquiry that Senator Bell has had the courage to put forward.

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Silencing the Oath

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Recent scientific papers, including one by Dr. Yaakov Ophir from the University of Cambridge and another by Dr Raphael Lataster from the University of Sydney, reveal high rates of severe adverse events such as myocarditis, pericarditis, and cancer links following COVID-19 vaccination, which were censored or downplayed by authorities.

Australian health authorities ignored these risks.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) silenced dissenting doctors, forcing practitioners to violate the Hippocratic oath. According to AHPRA’s own data, 16 doctors under AHPRA scrutiny have died by suicide.

Doctors’ registration fees have skyrocketed fivefold — not to keep standards high, but to fund Ahpra’s mounting mission creep.

With a growing appetite for complaints and power, AHPRA lack the ability to manage processes fairly or swiftly. When a regulator’s actions lead to serious distress and suicide risks, it’s no wonder they had to convene an “incidents of distress” review.

This isn’t regulation anymore; it’s harming our medical community.

A One Nation government is committed to calling for a royal commission into the COVID-19 medical response and convening a conference of state health ministers to review and reform AHPRA’s regulatory model.

Australians deserve to know who knew what and when regarding the COVID-19 medical response.

https://youtu.be/-HmexHho1zk

Transcript

Senator Roberts: In the week since I spoke about the huge volume of scientific papers on the COVID scandal, more new papers have been published. After years of censorship, Dr Yaakov Ophir from the University of Cambridge published an excellent paper in the EXCLI Journal titled ‘Real-time pharmacovigilance and cardiac risk communication during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Israel’. The paper included the Israeli Ministry of Health’s actual internal pharmacovigilance dataset, showing that, far from being rare and mild, adverse events from the COVID jab are dangerously high. From March to May 2021, immediately after injection started among males under 20, 85 per cent of the hospitalisations involved myocarditis or pericarditis. Among females under 20, 68 per cent of hospitalisations involved myocarditis or pericarditis. Two thirds of these patients had no medical history of heart disease, and 46 of these young people died. 

These are hospitalisations and deaths amongst healthy young people for whom COVID would not have been serious and certainly not fatal. This paper shows Israeli health authorities warned US and European authorities, ‘We are seeing a large number of myocarditis and pericarditis cases in young individuals soon after Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination.’ Yet the data behind that large number never reached the public. Instead, the warning was framed as ‘rare, mild and transient’—a lie—and the injection regimen was extended to even younger people. Australia did the same. Did we get the data Israel shared? Was our pharmacovigilance compromised? Only a royal commission can get to the bottom of who knew what and when. Only a royal commission can unpack decisions made and recommend changes for those who ignored the adverse events and acted contrary to the best interests of the public. 

Australian researcher Dr Raphael Lataster from the University of Sydney has published in the peer reviewed dedicated cancer journal Oncotarget. His paper shows a mechanistic link, which means the process that links, in this case, COVID injections with an outcome—in this case, cancer. I spoke last week of a paper from the McCulloch Foundation, which established a similar mechanistic link. The work in this area is now impossible to ignore. 

Why is this not big news? We have cause and effect, absolute proof of actual cases and hundreds of autopsies of people who should still be alive, and nobody in authority cares. Only One Nation will call a royal commission into a medical response that killed thousands—tens of thousands—of Australians due to adverse events, suicides, incorrect protocols or delays in medical treatment. That is criminal.  

What’s also criminal is the performance of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, which is tasked with maintaining Australian medical standards. In Senate estimates hearings I’ve questioned Ahpra on many occasions. I’ve mentioned their jihad against any doctor who refuses to follow their self-determined medical truths and I’ve spoken about capable, sound doctors who are deregistered for the crime of providing their patients with the best possible medical care. Their actions during COVID and since show that Ahpra is dedicated to protecting orthodoxy, maximising pharmaceutical use and causing doctors to break the Hippocratic oath.  

I read an article in the Australian newspaper last weekend from obstetrician Dr Michael Gannon, former head of the Australian Medical Association. The headline correctly summarises the situation in which Ahpra has put us: ‘System to catch bad doctors is causing harm to the good ones.’ It’s killing good ones, and the regulator meant to protect patients has no filter on accepting complaints. Ahpra’s own data shows 16 doctors took their lives while under its scrutiny.  

Doctors’ registration fees have risen fivefold to pay for Ahpra’s mission creep, which is more reminiscent of a ministry of truth than a studious group of medical professionals ensuring their colleagues’ skill levels meet practising standards. In April this year, Ahpra convened the ‘organisational review group—incidents of distress’ to consider serious incidents relating to the suicide of people involved in their regulatory processes, and it’s no bloody wonder. This regulator has an appetite for more and more complaints, growing its budget and power. It’s lacking the ability to manage complaints in a morally fair and expeditious manner and it’s harming our society.  

A One Nation government will convene a conference of state health ministers to review the performance of Ahpra and explore alternative models of regulation based on correcting the balance between the practitioner’s standards and rights and the patient’s best interests. In doing so, One Nation will listen to doctors, nurses and health practitioners.

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Labor’s Tax Take Is Hitting Home

Minister for Finance, Senator Gallagher – why does your government refuse to support indexation of tax brackets. High inflation under Labor has completely negated past adjustments, leaving Australians no better off than they were in 2022 and paying 17.7% of the average wage in tax. Any upcoming pay rises will only trigger bracket creep and make workers worse off.

Minister Gallagher avoided the issue of bracket creep indexation and instead accused One Nation and I of voting against various government cost-of-living measures, housing investments and tax cuts. The Minister claimed the government is addressing bracket creep over time through various tax cuts and offsets, while pointing to investments in Medicare and cheaper medicines.

Since 2022, real wages have gone backwards by 2.2%. With underlying inflation running at 3.6% (now 3.5%), any national wage increases fail to make up for ground lost under Labor, leaving workers perpetually playing catch-up. I asked if she would accept that the only true way to restore workers’ incomes is to cut taxes.

Labor is now raking in more tax revenue than when they came to power, rising from 29.7% to 30.2% of GDP, fuelled heavily by corporate profits. Tax bracket creep is tightening its grip and increasing the fuel excise is hurting families.

Why is Labor turning their back on workers?

Once again, Minister Gallagher dodged the issue about total tax take and corporate profits, joking about the political relevance of the Liberals instead.

And then claimed the government works tirelessly 24/7 to ease household pressures, which is delusional given all the data showing workers are going backwards under this government.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister for Finance, Senator Gallagher. Last week, I moved an amendment that would have introduced indexation of tax brackets to protect against bracket creep, which is where inflation-driven pay rises push workers into the higher tax bracket and they wind up paying more tax on their pay packet. While this government adjusted tax brackets several years ago, the high inflation under your government has since negated the benefit. Australians are now no better off than they were in 2022, paying 17.7 per cent of the average wage in tax. The pay rises coming through next week will be the start of bracket creep, making people worse off than in 2022. Minister, why won’t this government support indexation of tax brackets? Are you happy to see workers paying more tax than when you came to power? 

The PRESIDENT: Before I call the minister, I remind the chamber that Senator Roberts has the right to ask his questions in silence. 

Senator GALLAGHER (Minister for Finance, Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Women, Minister for Government Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate): I thank Senator Roberts for the question. Senator Roberts, you and your party last week voted against tax cuts for working people. I would be more generous if your voting record didn’t show you consistently voted against working people. You voted against penalty rates reform. You voted against energy bill relief. You voted against housing investment, against programs like Help to Buy that are actually helping low-income Australians into housing. The reality of the way the right-wing parties vote and then the concerns they raise—the disconnect between the concerns they raise in question time and the way they vote is astounding. You voted against tax cuts just last week. From memory, you voted against the stage 3 tax cuts as well, where we ensured— 

The PRESIDENT: Minister, please resume your seat. 

Senator Bragg interjecting— 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Bragg, I’ve called order about four times. That does include you. Now either listen in silence or I’ll invite you to leave the chamber. Minister, please continue. 

Senator GALLAGHER: Every time we have sought to provide tax relief in this chamber, One Nation and the conservative right-wing parties in Australia voted against it. 

We are absolutely enthusiastic about cutting bracket creep. I have heard the Treasurer say this a number of times about returning bracket creep: we’ll do it when we can, in a responsible way and we can afford to do so. We’re cutting taxes five times in three different ways. We’ve got the tax cuts starting on Wednesday. We’ve got another tax cut starting 1 July the year after. We’ve got our instant tax deduction. We have the tax cuts that came on in 2024. We have the working Australians tax offset. These are all ways that we are making the tax system work better for working Australians. In addition to that, we’ve got all our investments in Medicare and cheaper medicines that we continue to roll out to help people with cost-of-living pressures. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: Since 2022, real wages have gone backwards 2.2 per cent. With underlying inflation running at 3.6 per cent, and rising, next week’s national wage increase will not make up for what workers have lost since Labor came to power. Workers are forever playing catch-up, never getting ahead. Minister, will you accept the only way to properly restore workers incomes is to cut taxes and put more money back in people’s pockets? 

Senator GALLAGHER: That’s exactly what the government are doing. We are cutting taxes to put more money in people’s pockets. We are supporting wage increases, and have done so consistently since coming to government. Real wage outcomes are growing and they have had a three in front of them, for the first time in a decade, since we came to government, because we on this side of the chamber understand how important wage increases every year are to make sure you can balance the household budget. 

Now, inflation is higher than we would like—we can see that in the budget papers—and wages haven’t grown as fast as we would like. That’s why we have been so supportive of the annual wage claims and why we’ve consistently done everything we can, including in aged care and early education and care, to give those workers the pay rises that they deserve—something that had been ignored for the decade before we came to government. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: This government is raking in more tax than when you came to power, from 29.7 per cent of GDP to 30.2 per cent, with tax on increased corporate profits in the lead. As tax bracket creep cuts in, from 1 July workers will be getting taxed more. Today you’re increasing the fuel excise, which will hurt everyday Australians, particularly families. Minister, why did Labor turn your backs on workers to become the party of big business, and was this a cunning plan to make the Liberals look irrelevant? 

Senator GALLAGHER: They don’t need any help in looking irrelevant right now, Senator Roberts. Even if we were wanting to help them, they’re doing a pretty good job on their own. In relation to fuel excise, we did have a temporary relaxing of or halving of the fuel excise to help when the conflict in the Middle East had such a significant impact on petrol prices. That has come down quite a bit, but we think it is sensible to continue it at a lower level for a shorter period of time to help households adjust. At the same time, we continue to roll out all our cost-of-living help, whether it be tax cuts, whether it be our tripling of the bulk-billing rate or our lowering of the price of medicines. All of these areas are targeted to make sure that people can deal with some of those household pressures that we know they have to manage. What they know is that this government works 24 hours a day, seven days a week to work through all of the ways that we can help households with those cost-of-living pressures, and we will continue to do so. 

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Misinformed or Playing Politics?

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Critics like Senator Hume and Minister Watt are either misinformed or playing politics with One Nation’s seven-page immigration policy. To be clear: our policy keeps intake numbers completely unchanged for backpackers, PALM workers and the tourism sector.

Citing from the Treasury’s FIONA model, young, working-age migrants aged 25–35 contribute positively to the economy while older migrants, family reunion programs and non-working arrivals create a net financial cost.

Our policy aims to prioritise productive workers while screening out non-producers.

Canada is proof that immigration cuts ease rental pressures and benefits local workers. We will still permits genuinely skilled workers in critical areas like construction, nursing, aged care and rural industries.

Businesses should stop relying on imported labour rather than training the 690,000 unemployed and 1.65 million underemployed Australians. Our policy will end the “cheap-labour gravy train” and boost domestic living standards.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Liberal Senator Hume described One Nation’s immigration policy as ‘a headline number and a few slogans’. I have the policy here. It’s seven pages of details and facts. It took months of research to source the numbers and formulate the measures, which are comprehensive, detailed, consistent and will fix so many of the problems Australia is facing in housing, household wealth, service delivery, social cohesion and the current per capita recession in which Australians are suffering. It’s clear that people criticising the policy have never read it or are lying out of political self-interest. For clarity, there’s no change in backpackers, no change in PALM workers, no change in tourism numbers. All three can increase if the market can sustain more. Labor Minister Watt made this criticism: ‘One Nation policy will destroy the economy and drive the economy into recession.’ The minister is not alone in this deceit. Some Liberal-aligned business leaders and Labor-aligned media have repeated this unfounded fabrication, contrary to the facts.  

The Treasury’s Fiscal Impact of New Australians model, FIONA, looks at the lifetime contribution of a new immigrant—the cost and the benefit. A young migrant in the sweet spot of 25 to 35 years of age—someone who assimilates, works his or her whole life and stays out of trouble—will add $198,000 to the economy in their lifetime, increasing GDP and wealth for all, which is why we are not reducing that cohort; we are increasing it. This is our immigration target demographic.  

FIONA shows each person arriving under the family program, though, costs the Australian economy $126,000 across their lifetime. FIONA shows a migrant arriving after the age of 50 will never pay back the taxpayers either. In addition, their lifetime value is negative. The current mix of this government’s new arrivals is heavily weighted towards older migrants, family reunions and nonworkers, and there are hundreds of thousands of fake students working in the gig economy, cheating on their tax and sending home as much money as possible. Children of new arrivals or family reunions have a huge lifetime economic cost. The younger the child, the more likely it is that they will have a negative lifetime economic impact. This is why FIONA only puts the average lifetime contribution of all migrants that this government is letting in at $41,000. The more committed, young, educated or skilled workers we let in, the more nonproducers we can screen out. It only takes 20 per cent of all arrivals to be our target young demographic for the total value of arrivals to hit the $41,000 figure. So what do other arrivals contribute? They don’t. They add costs to Australians. Do the maths.  

Prime Minister Carney grew Canada’s economy with the same approach One Nation is proposing. He grew it. Canada’s largest banks report that Canadian immigration cuts were easing rental pressures and supporting employment. In Canadian provinces where the immigration cuts were most significant, rents are falling fastest. The banks concluded the immigration slowdown has been great news for Canada’s battlers.  

Speaking last night on—of course—the ABC, George Megalogenis said our cut would cause the worst depression since the 1890s. Talk about seeing what you want to see! What utter nonsense—a lie. The data I have just presented shows the reverse will be true. Canada proved the reverse will be true.  

As for a supposed labour shortage, One Nation is not changing backpacker numbers. We’re offering skilled visas to genuinely skilled workers in areas we need them, including construction; the care economy, such as nursing and aged care; and rural industry. Let’s be clear; only one per cent of skilled arrivals last year under this government were construction workers, half a per cent were aged-care workers and one per cent were nurses. Our numbers leave plenty of room for more skilled and educated workers where we need them.  

Our policy looks after those who are already here. Right now, there are 690,000 Australians out of work—690,000. There are another 1.65 million Australians looking for extra work. Business lobbies should start there—with Australians who want a job. It’s industry’s fault that workforce planning was sacrificed on the altar of high profits and lazy management. The workers are here in Australia. It’s time for industry to get back in the business of training the new generation of apprentices and staff, instead of lazily importing them. 

Under One Nation, the cheap-labour gravy train will be over, and Australians can begin to restore Australian productivity and living standards. Together we Australians can restore Australia.  

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The Cashless Trap: Surveillance, Fees, and Control

One Nation supports these bills: Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026 and Cash Distribution Framework (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2026.

These bills establish regulatory oversight, giving powers to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the ACCC, over the cash-in-transit sector, treating cash handling as critical national infrastructure. However, we remain deeply suspicious of the government’s true motives, given their history of trying to phase out cash.

The government’s assumption that “cash is dying” is completely false. Since I began campaigning to protect cash in 2016, currency in the economy has grown 53% to $107 billion. Cash transactions are rising (now at 15%), 50% of Australians use cash weekly, and 7% rely on it exclusively.

The push toward a cashless society is a deliberate war on the middle class by the Liberal-Labor uniparty. It traps consumers into paying high electronic banking fees, forces overspending via plastic cards, and feeds massive corporate and government “big data” surveillance operations.

While some point to the cash economy in hospitality, this is largely driven by workers, including foreign students working off-the-books cash hours to bypass tax and fund untracked overseas remittances. The solution is targeting the black economy directly, not destroying cash for everyday Australians.

The banking cartel has abandoned regional Australia. These bills must be strictly used to mandate cash-handling ATMs and services in regional areas, including through post offices. Furthermore, the bush shouldn’t subsidise city security costs, especially since regional areas drive Australia’s export wealth while enduring the uniparty’s destructive “hollowing out” policies.

I have reservations regarding the $400 million emergency crisis-funding provision in the bill, which can be triggered on a very low bar.

One Nation has successfully fought the uniparty’s ongoing war on cash, from exposing systemic banking corruption that forced the Banking Royal Commission, to defeating the Morrison government’s cash ban bill in 2020 and calling out the Albanese government’s deceitful 2025 regulations that cleverly undermined legal tender protections.

From the very start, One Nation and I have been champions of the use of cash and critics of the banking cartel.

In the hands of a One Nation government, this bill will create a fair environment for the free market to thrive and for consumers to win.

Transcript

The fact is cash is king for retailers, sellers and buyers. The Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026 and the Cash Distribution Framework (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2026 establish a regulatory framework for Australia’s cash distribution system, with a particular focus on the cash-in-transit sector. The government’s claimed intention is to support continued access to cash as cash use supposedly declines and the economics of distribution become more difficult, especially in regional and remote areas. Key measures include allowing the Reserve Bank of Australia to designate systematically important cash distribution entities, giving the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission oversight of standard terms, pricing, service agreements, access arrangements and service level standards and creating good faith negotiation, arbitration and dispute resolution mechanisms. The bills introduce crisis readiness and resolution powers so that the Reserve Bank of Australia can intervene if a critical provider becomes financially distressed or services are disrupted. In effect, cash handling is moving from a commercial market service with many providers to critical national infrastructure. One Nation supports this bill. I would add that a main assumption in this bill is false. The use of cash is not declining. In 2016, when I first started campaigning to protect the use of cash, there was $70 billion of cash in the economy. Today it’s $107 billion, a 53 per cent increase in cash. Cash use is now increasing from 13 per cent of transactions in 2022 to 15 per cent today. Around 50 per cent or half of Australians use cash weekly, and seven per cent use cash exclusively. I’ll say that again: seven per cent of Australians use cash exclusively. Liberal-Labor uniparty governments have lost their war against cash because half of Australians disagree with ending the use of cash. Thank you, Australia. 

Reasons given for moving back to cash include the cost of electronic banking, which was always the plan—eliminate cash, and then banks can charge whatever they damn well like for electronic transaction fees, and consumers will be a captive market. We must keep cash. Secondly, an age-old budgeting trick is making a comeback. Withdraw your budget for the week in cash and, when it’s gone, stop spending. Swiping a plastic card encourages people to overspend. This is a measure one wouldn’t see making a comeback if everyday Australians were doing well. The truth is that the comeback in cash is directly linked to the cost-of-living crisis and the war on the middle class which the Liberal and Labor uniparty have been perpetrating for a generation. 

Increasingly, the use of cash is associated with privacy concerns. We know every purchase you make electronically is logged and then sold into the data market, often called big data. These companies have significant data files on every Australian, so much so that huge data centres are now necessary to keep track of it all and then exploit that data for the benefit of retailers and, of course, for the benefit of the government. 

The Australian Banking Association points out the rise in the cash economy. This is a valid point. There is significant use of cash payments in hospitality, among other industries. This is being driven by workers, not employers. I know one employer who advertised for bar staff and had emails from prospective employees asking what the rate per hour was for payment in cash. Foreign students are working their 20 hours legally and then working another 20 for cash. This is facilitating part of the $39 billion a year visa holders send back overseas. Recently, in Senate estimates hearings, I was given answers on this topic which suggested the amount foreign students earn each year was equal to the amount foreign students send overseas each year. So what are foreign students living on? Well, it’s obvious: their cash work and tax avoidance, adding GST to their subcontractor invoices and then shooting through before the ATO, the Australian Taxation Office, can catch up with them. 

I acknowledge that cash can facilitate a black economy, yet the answer isn’t getting rid of cash; it’s getting rid of the black economy. All of these things could be policed if the government really wanted to. It’s chosen not to. Both this government and the previous Liberal government chose not to get rid of the black economy. 

I note the bill does not explicitly mention Australia Post outlets or Bank@Post. It really should have included a statement of support for providing cash handling to post offices. Australia’s banking oligopoly, banking cartel, has badly served the bush. Local post offices are the last source of cash services for retail outlets in many rural and regional areas. The regulatory powers created in this bill must be used to mandate cash handling ATMs in areas that banks or post offices do not properly service so that business can still operate. 

Banks should earn their social licence to operate. In many ways direct and indirect, taxpayers protect the banks, and government favours increase bank profits and lower the risks banks face. Major banks today socialise losses and privatise profits. When things are going well, they’re private. When things are going badly, they want help from the government. In return, banks should fulfil adequate services, including provision of legal tender, cash. 

This Labor government continues the uniparty policy of hollowing out the bush, replacing farmland with industrial solar and wind installations and transmission lines to feed power to their city voter base. Part of that is the policy of turning agricultural land into a wasteland in the name of carbon dioxide credits, wind turbines and solar panels. As one of many examples for proof, look up Rushy Lagoon, Tasmania, which the Senate is debating. It’s 11,000 hectares of prime farmland turned into a pine plantation for carbon dioxide credits—for rubbish. Shame on you. You use taxpayer money to help these foreigners do it. You gave grants to yourself—grants to government entities. 

Australia’s banks have been actively supporting the uniparty government’s agenda to hollow out the regions, removing regional cash and banking services. This bill will provide a mechanism to restore the viability of cash handling in the bush, but I’m not convinced the government means a word of it. One Nation welcomes this new framework that we can use to restore cash handling in regions once we get into government. 

Armaguard is concerned about costs imposed in the bill making cash deliveries too expensive. This will result if the cost of regional cash services is charged on a cost-recovery basis. Banks, though, do not use cost recovery. They average operating costs across all their products. Yes, the city will pay for cash handling in rural regions. The bush though, right now, pays for the heightened cost of security in our crime ridden cities, the multiple armed guards on cash deliveries, the in-branch security and in-branch translation language services not needed in rural regions. 

Banks spend way more advertising in the city to get customers, whereas, when a bank has the only branch in town, that bank does not need to spend money advertising. In the growing number of regional towns with no bank, banks have no branch costs and simply give Australia Post licenced post offices a cheap fee to act as agent for the bank. By the way, the large majority of our country’s export income and wealth comes from the rural regions, from the bush. Don’t tell them in the bush they’re sponging off the cities. It’s the city’s sponging off the bush. 

The Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026 allows the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to require Armaguard-Prosegur to provide access to their depots for smaller operators, while noting these operators already access their depots. This provision is actually not really new. Nonetheless, protecting access rights in legislation is useful, so thank you. Potential market entrants into the cash-handling market, such as NCR, expressed support for this provision. The Bills Digest discusses concentration of industry power in the hands of the merged Armaguard-Prosegur entity. This bill may create barriers to entry for new or smaller entities and thereby serve to cement the Armaguard-Prosegur monopoly. It’s a fair point, although, once again, it goes to use of the powers in this bill not the creation of those powers. 

One power I am worried about, though, is the crisis-funding provision in the bill. Part 6 and 7 allow the Reserve Bank to declare a cash-handling emergency and may authorise up to $400 million in assistance to provide continuity of service while taking action that could include appointing an administrator. My concern is this provision can be triggered on a very low bar. One trigger provided in clause 90 is simply the entity asking for the money and the Reserve Bank of Australia deciding that, if the payment is not made, their operations may become unviable. 

From the very start, One Nation and I have been champions of the use of cash and critics of the banking cartel. In 2017, I was successful in creating the Senate Select Committee on Lending to Primary Production Customers, which I chaired, or rather, I should say, Senator Pauline Hanson was successful in creating the Senate select committee and appointed me as chair. The inquiry investigated unconscionable bank lending practices, default interest rates and predatory foreclosure behaviours that ripped off and traumatised Australian farmers and rural families and fishermen and loggers during periods of drought or financial hardship. Our inquiry found so much banking misconduct that Prime Minister Turnbull, at the time, was forced to call the royal commission into financial services that found widespread systemic corruption. Then the Morrison government tabled the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019, which was to introduce a $10,000 limit on cash transactions. When such provisions were introduced overseas, the $10,000 limit was quickly reduced. Greece now has a limit of 500 euros. France and Germany have a limit of 1,000. One Nation led the campaign against this obvious attempt to get rid of cash and force the public into the electronic banking system for the financial benefit of the banking cartel. They get to charge fees, and there’s no alternative. Despite Liberals and Labor passing the bill through the House of Representatives, we were successful, in December 2020, in removing the bill from the Senate Notice Paper. It didn’t go through the Senate. The banking cartel, though, did not give up. 

Recently, the Treasurer introduced the Competition and Consumer (Industry Codes—Cash Acceptance) Regulations 2025. This regulation destroyed the legal basis for cash. How? Very cleverly. It required only petrol stations and supermarkets to accept cash. Everything else did not have to accept cash. Petrol and supermarkets only had to accept up to $500 in cash and only between 7 am and 9 pm, so it was a furphy. That meant every other business—and every business, from 9 pm to 7 am—was not legally required to accept cash. The government justified this measure as guaranteeing cash, which was fundamentally a lie. 

Since Federation, the start of our country, cash has been legal tender. Businesses can only refuse cash in a narrow set of circumstances. The Albanese regulation was deceitfully designed to provide air cover for any business that wanted to move to card-only payment. That’s the real aim—to get rid of cash. This is the reason I’m suspicious of the motives the government has in preparing this bill. The uniparty government has now tried three times to get rid of cash. In the hands of a One Nation government, this bill, though, will create a fair environment for the free market to thrive and for consumers to win. 

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Green Ideology, Empty Plates

I strongly supported Senator Colbeck’s motion regarding the sale of Rushy Lagoon, Tasmania’s largest agricultural property.

The Albanese Labor government, through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, used $69 million of YOUR money (nearly half of the $142 million purchase price) alongside foreign investment firms to price local farmers out of the market. The new owners, Tasmania Natural Asset Trust (TNAT), plan to destroy 9,000 hectares of prime dairy and beef land to plant 12 million pine trees for “carbon credits”.

Rushy Lagoon was a thriving property with a rich history of agricultural production, including the Ringarooma River irrigation pipeline, supporting 30,000 head of livestock, dairy operations, and grain and potato storage.

The government provided an additional $8.8 million grant to help turn prime food-producing land into a timber plantation, all to generate carbon dioxide credits and woodchips.

This project sacrifices regional communities and food security for city-centric climate ideology. The promised jobs are mostly short-term, while real breadwinner jobs are 25 to 30 years away.

Australia already has 1.6 million hectares of timber plantations. The real crisis in the timber industry is driven by soaring energy bills caused by net-zero policies, red tape and intrusive bureaucracy.

This purchase is part of a broader ideological war on red meat, dairy and farming, compounded by water policies destroying agricultural productivity.

With 99% of the local community opposing the sale, One Nation will do everything in its power to unwind this deal and ensure Australia’s best farmland is returned to food production.

One Nation will bring this “green” agenda to a halt on day one of our government.

Transcript

I thank Senator Colbeck for his motion, which One Nation strongly supports. Rushy Lagoon is Tasmania’s largest agricultural property, covering 21,745 hectares in the north-east of Tassie. The property sold recently for $142 million, with settlement due last week. The new owner is a special-purpose vehicle called Tasmania Natural Asset Trust, TNAT, with three shareholders. The federal government, through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, contributed $69 million—almost half. This is taxpayer money, not government money. The remaining $73 million came from UK investment companies Gresham House and Aviva Investors. The latter has BlackRock as its largest shareholder.  

The previous owners were New Zealand’s Pye family, who held the property for 30 years. In that time, the Pye family built the Ringarooma River irrigation pipeline, which, with dams and 11 centre pivots, provided irrigated cropping across 1,100 hectares. What an amazing achievement. This supported a massive dairy operation, with two automated milking parlours and substantial storage vats. The shearing sheds and stockyards supported 30,000 head of livestock. Improvements included grain and potato storage sheds to feed the world. The property has a main homestead and workers cottages. In short, until the Albanese Labor government got its dirty hands on Rushy station, the property was actively involved in growing food to feed Australia and the world with foresight and ingenuity. 

This sale is a perfect example of the Albanese government hollowing out the bush, including by covering prime farmland with industrial solar and wind installations, transmission lines and, in this case, pine plantations. For those who don’t know—I learned this recently—nothing native grows under pine. Over the next five years, the new owners plan to plant roughly 12 million radiata pine seedlings across 9,000 hectares of the farm to generate an estimated 3.2 million carbon dioxide credit units—try eating them!—each production cycle. 

There it is. This ideology driven, delusional, dishonest Labor government is turning Tasmania’s largest agricultural producer into a subsidised farm for carbon dioxide credits. In case the government wants to pretend this was nothing to do with them, the Albanese government provided an $8.8 million grant under the Support Plantation Establishment program before the land sale had been approved by the Foreign Investment Review Board. It was a taxpayer funded grant. Turning productive farmland into a timber plantation was planned and financed through deliberate Albanese government policy. Taxpayer money is being used to destroy productive farmland. It is a measure in part justified through the timber production, which will eventually be used for housing, so they say, which could happen in 25 to 30 years time when the trees are ready for harvest. That’s not going to help the people sleeping in cars, sleeping under bridges, sleeping in tents and sleeping in caravans right around Australia because of this government’s policies. Given the miserable performance of this Albanese government in providing for the housing industry, we might still need the timber in 30 years time. 

By the way, those jobs Labor is claiming will be created are largely short-term jobs ripping out 100 years of farm improvements and then planting seedlings. That’s it. The real, breadwinner jobs will occur during harvesting, and those jobs will be 25 to 30 years away. The local community will not survive until then, but Labor and the Greens don’t care about that. This agenda is about sacrificing the bush to win votes in the city. It’s about sacrificing the regions, which feed Australia, which are crucial for the income of this country, to satisfy the city. Until the trees are mature, all the Tasmania Natural Asset Trust will produce is woodchips, most likely to be burnt for electricity to earn Albanese government issued large-scale generation certificates. 

Let’s review it so far. The Labor government spent $69.9 million to force the price of Tasmania’s largest agricultural producer so high that local farmers could not afford to buy it. It knocked them out of the market. Then they spent another $8.8 million to encourage the new owners to grow timber, not food. Then they will spend more taxpayer money giving certificates for woodchipping those trees and in turn burning them for power. This is insane. Under this arrangement, the government is giving money to itself and destroying our best farmland and productivity in the process. 

The truth is that Australia does not need this timber. According to ABARES, there are already 271,000 hectares of timber plantation in Tassie alone, part of 1.6 million hectares of timber plantation right around Australia. Nine thousand hectares of timber going into the national estate of 1.6 million hectares is not going to make any difference to timber supply. This is a lie. If the government were serious about increasing our plantation area, it would look to the 800,000 hectares of native plantation forests that have recently been locked up to prevent logging, despite there being seven million hectares of suitable forests. It just gets worse and worse. 

Logging has never taken a large percentage of the national timber estate—just 10 per cent—and logging does not destroy those forests. They remain habitat for native fauna and flora because they’re selective. Of course, this does not include old-growth forests, which One Nation would protect. I note the Greens and the Labor Party are actively clear-felling old-growth forests for industrial wind and solar installations and the related access roads and transmission lines, yet non-destructive logging is the problem, so they say. The real reason Australia’s timber supply is falling is that timber mills can’t pay their power and energy bills. Net zero power costs and intrusive bureaucracy are killing our precious timber industry. One Nation will lower power prices—we’ve given you the policies—remove the red tape, remove the green tape and remove the blue UN tape and encourage the Australian timber industry and the jobs it creates. We want jobs now, not in 30 years. 

Rushy Lagoon is about hollowing out the bush and hollowing out the regions. It’s about this Albanese government’s ideological war on red meat and dairy in the name of saving the planet from nature’s harmless trace atmospheric gas, carbon dioxide. Importantly, the war on cows is based on supposed science that is fundamentally wrong. The methane cycle has no impact on the environment. It’s a closed loop. A more important question is this: what are people going to eat if this Labor government continually destroys Australia’s agricultural capability? Only last week, SunRice laid off 78 workers in the Deniliquin and Leeton food processing plants because this government is knowingly, deliberately, deceitfully taking irrigation water off farmers and sending it out to sea. Listen to this: last year, over 4,000 gigalitres of water were sent out to sea against a basin plan target of 2,000 gigalitres—double the target wasted into the ocean. Why? It was so irrigators could not use the water to grow food and fibre to feed and clothe the world. Go for it, Labor! You’re destroying farming in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. 

Labor is just one part of the uniparty. The other part of the uniparty, the Liberal-Nationals coalition, introduced the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in their 2007 Water Act, which has a list of aims for the act, one of which is to enforce international agreements. What the hell is that doing in our water act? Farming industry body TasFarmers strongly condemned the buyout of Rushy Lagoon, calling it a ‘disgraceful outcome’ that locks up prime dairy and beef country into a ‘monoculture pine plantation’. They nailed it on both. It is just so they can ‘tick a carbon abatement box’. A TasFarmers survey revealed that 99 per cent of local community respondents oppose the sale—99 per cent. For this reason, the new owners are now talking about undertaking ecotourism and community projects to moderate the fallout, and the state Liberal government is now holding an inquiry into its own stupid decision to allow the purchase. I mean, this is farcical. One Nation will do everything in its power to unwind this deal and ensure Australia’s best farmland is devoted to food production—to food. 

Australia’s farmers have had enough of the Liberal-Labor-Greens war on the bush in the name of saving the environment, killing the environment in the name of saving the planet. One Nation will bring this agenda to a halt on day one of our government. 

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The Trust Deficit in NDIS Reform

A late government amendment (IC116) was dropped on our office proposing broad new immunities from producing documents or information for key NDIS figures, including the CEO, board members, commissioners, actuaries, and agency officers.

When I first reviewed the amendment, it looked like a sweeping shield that could let wrongdoers off the hook, shut down accountability, block Senate estimates from getting answers, and potentially cover up fraud. I asked the Minister on whether fraud was even on their radar and questioned if it was part of a deal with the LNP.

Minister McAllister assured me that the core purpose of the amendment is actually to stop dodgy providers from exploiting existing privacy clauses to dodge fraud investigations, workplace health and safety checks, and anti-corruption oversight (such as the NACC and ACIC).

The Minister clarified that these strict immunities only apply to protecting sensitive, personal information belonging to NDIS participants. She maintained that standard redaction isn’t always enough to safely handle participant privacy, though agency staff remain fully accountable to bodies like the NACC.

While I completely agree that participants’ personal details must remain private and out of the public eye, I’m concerned this would block senators from accessing documents with personal details redacted. The Minister said that officers would have to evaluate requests on a case-by-case basis depending on the exact nature of the protected information involved.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, government amendment IC116 revised has just been received by our office—it’s been presented just this evening—wanting to insert into the bill part 7, titled ‘Immunity from producing documents or information’: 

(1) A person is not required to produce a document, or disclose any information, matter or thing, to a court, tribunal, authority 

or other person or entity having the power to make such a requirement, if: 

(a) the person is, or has been, a person mentioned in subsection (2)—which I’ll get to in a minute; it’s all encompassing— 

(b) the document, information, matter or thing has come to the knowledge, or into the possession, or to the notice, of the person because of: 

(i) the performance or exercise of the person’s duties, functions … 

The following positions are listed: 

(a) the CEO; 

(b) a Board member; 

(c) the Commissioner; 

(d) a member of the Advisory Council; 

(e) the scheme actuary; 

(f) the reviewing actuary; 

(g) an Agency officer; 

(h) a Commission officer; 

(i) a consultant engaged under section 171 or 181V; 

(j) a person performing services: 

(i) for the Agency under a contract with the Agency; or 

(ii) for the Commission under a contract with the Commission. 

If someone does something wrong while in one of these positions, or having been in one of these positions, apparently they do not have to disclose documents or information. How can that lead to accountability? I thought this was all about care. We’re concerned about the care given to disabled people, we’re concerned about the taxpayer on the hook and we’re concerned about Public Service accountability. The way we read it, it means Senate estimates cannot seek information or documents from these people. The first question is: isn’t fraud on your radar? The second question is: was this part of your deal with the LNP? 

Senator McALLISTER (Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme): Senator Roberts, it might assist you if I talk through the background for this amendment that the government has brought forward. At the moment, the legislation that governs the NDIS provides very broad immunities, including for the categories of persons that you just alluded to in your question, and that’s for a very good reason. It’s because the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and the NDIA hold deeply personal information about people with disability. To ensure that that information, which is personal in nature, is protected and that disabled people who participate in the scheme can be confident that their information is protected, there are very strict privacy provisions about what can be shared about an individual person. On occasion, you may have heard me or another minister being asked about a particular person or a particular case and we declined to answer because, appropriately, a person’s individual circumstances held by a government agency may not be disclosed except under very limited circumstances. However, the challenge that we’ve been observing is that some providers have been arguing that that immunity extends to them. So when a fraud investigation or some other form of investigation is underway, providers have argued that they are not required or compelled to produce those documents because of this immunity. This amendment essentially seeks to ensure that regulators can compel providers to provide documentation for the purpose of performing their regulatory functions. It would also enable agencies such as the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission or the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate serious and organised crime operating in the NDIS. It will prevent NDIS providers from claiming immunity from the production of documents under 67G of the act. So NDIS providers and their employees would not be able to use this provision of the act to refuse to provide information to a court, a tribunal or other law enforcement agency with the power to seek this information. For example, to date, providers have attempted to rely on this immunity to refuse to provide information during workplace health and safety investigations. Immunity would henceforth only apply to officers of the NDIA and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. There would be exceptions where disclosure was necessary for the purposes of the NDIS Act, the Royal Commissions Act, the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act and the Australian Crime Commission Act. 

Senator ROBERTS: Couldn’t it simply, in the interests of openness, require redaction of personal details? 

Senator McALLISTER: The amendment before us seeks to make sure that the privacy provisions are being used as intended, and, in doing so, it seeks to make it clear that they are not intended to be relied upon by providers who have in recent times sought to use these immunities to prevent them from being accountable for some of their obligations. As I indicated in my earlier answer to you, the immunities that apply to officers of the NDIA and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission are subject to exceptions where disclosure is necessary, and I listed those. There are some purposes under the NDIS Act that enable or compel disclosure. The Royal Commissions Act is relevant; the National Anti- Corruption Commission Act is relevant, and the Australian Crime Commission Act is relevant. 

Senator ROBERTS: Couldn’t normal redaction processes cover the personal confidential details? 

Senator McALLISTER: I think the advice we have is no and that the protections that are in place that protect the personal details of disabled people who are participants in this scheme are an important feature of the operations of the scheme. 

Senator ROBERTS: I’m not alluding to any people in their current position, but, in the future, if a CEO, board member, commissioner, member of the advisory council or scheme actuary were to do anything wrong, they wouldn’t have to disclose that information; is that correct? 

Senator McALLISTER: The advice that I have is that, if an employee of the NDIA or of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission does something wrong, they are accountable in all of the ordinary ways, including, of course, to the National Anti- Corruption Commission. These protections apply only to the disclosure of personal information about participants. 

Senator ROBERTS: Let me check my understanding: it’s only to personal details, personal disclosure? 

Senator McALLISTER: The act defines protected information, Senator, and I’m paraphrasing here, but, in general and non-legal terms, protected information generally refers to personal information about participants. 

Senator ROBERTS: As a senator, I ask questions in Senate estimates. I’m not interested in personal details. I wouldn’t like to see that come out in public, so I agree with that, but does this impact, in any way, a senator’s right to gain access to information or documents in Senate estimates or orders for production of documents? 

Senator McALLISTER: Not unless it contains that protected information that we were speaking about earlier. Senator. 

Senator ROBERTS: What if I asked for with that with the personal details redacted? I’m not interested in personal details. 

Senator McALLISTER: I think it would depend on the circumstances, Senator. The prohibition is on the release of protected information, and, if you made a request of that kind, the officer at Senate estimates would have to consider their legal obligations and make a decision which was specific to the document that you were requesting. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Minister. 

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History Remembers the Builders

Following my questions to Minister Farrell regarding the Great Australian Infrastructure project (GAIN) and despite giving him advance notice of the topic, the Minister was still unable to provide an update on its progress.

To be clear, I wasn’t asking for project approval; I simply wanted a commitment to advancing it expeditiously. For a minister who claims that advance notice helps him check status, he clearly ignored it entirely.

Infrastructure should be bipartisan. These are Australia’s projects, not One Nation’s, and history remembers who builds, not who plays politics.

I urge the Labor government to take the win, advance this work and grow our productive capacity to deliver wealth and opportunity for all Australians.

And the best part? These projects require no significant taxpayer investment.

International banks want to fund Australian infrastructure, but trust has been broken by major government project failures like Inland Rail, Snowy Hydro 2.0, and Adani.

While construction money is ready, funding for business cases is stuck. Project backers only want a small amount of government financial commitment in the middle stages to prove the government is serious, especially since private investors already paid for the early stages.

With our population surging, our GDP is being sliced thinner and thinner and Australians are feeling it. A responsible government’s duty is to grow the pie through essential infrastructure like roads, rail, ports, pipelines, processing of our minerals into steel for domestic use and export, creating strong breadwinner jobs.

Update: Following this question, Minister Farrell followed up with NAIF. They contacted the project sponsor and the project is now moving forward. Thank you, Minister Farrell!

Transcript

Despite me providing the minister with not only a notice of my question last Thursday but also the actual question, he was unable to provide an update on the progress of the project. I was not asking for the project to be approved. I was merely asking for the minister to commit to ensuring the project was advanced expeditiously. Despite the minister saying advance notice gave him time to determine the status of the project, he clearly had not done so. 

I’m stunned. Infrastructure should be bipartisan. One Nation is not trying to take credit for the 12 projects we’re working on with proponents. They’re not our projects; they’re Australia’s projects. History will not remember the politics of the project; it will remember which government built it. To the Prime Minister I say: take the win, advance the project, grow Australia’s productive capacity and deliver wealth and opportunity to all Australians—those who were here first and those who have come since. 

These projects do not require any significant taxpayer investment. International merchant banks have seen through the net zero scam and are now desperate to finance actual, proper productive infrastructure. Australia is a prime destination for international capital, which has realised successive Liberal and Labor governments have neglected infrastructure for so long. There is a plethora of opportunities here. 

While the financing is available for construction, it’s not available for business cases. There’s a simple reason for that: international capital does not trust the Australian government any longer. After fiascos like Inland Rail, Snowy Hydro 2.0 and the Adani mine, who would trust us? Proponents want to see government skin in the game before committing their own money. This may be as little as millions for middle-stage development. All of these projects have already had private funding for early-stage development. 

Australia is bringing in so many people our GDP is being sliced into smaller and smaller slices, and the public are feeling it. Any responsible government has a duty to grow the pie and increase GDP to maintain our standard of living. The way to do that is roads, rail, port, pipelines and internet backbones. It includes tertiary processing of Australian minerals, coal and iron ore into steel for domestic use and export, taking advantage of our resources to undercut foreign steel and create breadwinner jobs—union jobs. I look forward to Minister Farrell updating himself on this project before we return in September. (Time expired) 

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