Here are some bold ideas you won’t hear from anyone but One Nation.
1. Ensure cheap power by turning on coal-fired stations, building more, and ending solar and wind subsidies.
2. Stop inflation by halting excessive money printing.
3. Guarantee cheaper housing and rents, prioritising young Australians.
4. Secure cheaper groceries by supporting farmers and building dams.
And lastly, use our natural resources for Australians first.
One Nation is committed to putting Australians first and freeing them from unnecessary restrictions.
Transcript
Here are things you won’t hear from anyone in the budget, except for One Nation because we’ve got the guts to say what you’re thinking.
Firstly, guarantee cheap power—turn the coal fired power stations back on, build more coal fired power stations, and remove solar and wind subsidies. It’s the only thing that can save us right now. Secondly, stop inflation. Stop quantitative easing—printing excess money. A trillion dollars was concocted during the COVID response, which is a major cause of the inflation we’re still fighting today. Thirdly, we’ll guarantee cheaper houses, cheaper rents and get young people into their first home. Don’t just cut net overseas migration: start deporting. Prior to COVID, there were 1.9 million visa holders who needed housing and who were fighting Australians for a roof over their heads. That has increased to 2.3 million today, plus 400,000 tourists and others. Ten per cent of our population is on visas and needs extra housing. We will ban foreigners from buying Australian property. They’re currently snapping up nearly one in 10 new Aussie homes.
Fourthly, get cheaper groceries—build dams and help farmers produce tonnes of fresh, healthy produce for Australians. Give farmers water and the right to use their land, and we’ll never have to worry about grocery bills again. Fifth, use all of our natural resources we have right here for Australians first. There’s no need to become a green superpower, and we never will. We’re already an oil, gas, coal and uranium superpower. The government won’t do this because some foreign, unelected organisation in Zurich or New York will claim that we’re not complying with our international obligations.
Governments on both sides have forgotten that their first obligation is to Australians and no-one else. One Nation knows this. We’ll put our trust in Australia’s people and release them from the nanny state that tells them everything they can and can’t do, which will enable people to abound and flourish. That’s our promise of what would be a One Nation budget. We will always remind members of parliament to put Australians first.
The cost of running the Federal Government is an important issue for One Nation. We believe that a smaller government is better and strongly advocate for reducing its size to align with the constitution.
I’m an avid reader of the budget volume that lists out the cost of Government. This year, the figures don’t add up. The budget appears to be assuming there will be no increase in the cost of Government for the next four years.
In a period of high inflation, which will be at least 13% over forward estimates, an assumption that the Federal Government administration cost (wages, office expenses, etc.) will not go up in those four years is, at best, improbable and at worst, dishonest.
I asked the Finance Minister, Katy Gallagher to “please explain”. Aside from small savings from reducing the use of contract labour, there are no explanations for the figures presented in the budget. The outcome is that the deficit over the forward estimates is more than likely understated by as much as $50 billion.
Transcript
My question is to the Minister for Finance, Senator Gallagher, and will reference Budget Paper No. 4: Agency resourcing, page 186, department expenses table. The government has been conducting a program of reducing spending on external providers—contractors; consultants—and hiring employees directly instead, to perform those duties, and One Nation supports that. These conversions, from external providers to employees, save taxpayers money, being the difference between paying a public servant to do that work and paying a consultant, partly balanced out by the increased costs of office expenses, travel and so on. Minister, how much has this program saved in 2023-24, and how much will it save over forward estimates? I note that, as I understand, the budget papers have another 2,502 conversions projected.
Senator GALLAGHER: Thank you for asking me a question about Budget Paper No. 4. That is the budget paper that Finance has responsibility for. We have worked hard to make conversions, as you say, and to reinvest and put increased capability into the Public Service. What we did find out from the audit on employment was that the real size of the APS when we came to government was much larger than had been publicly reported, so we are taking steps to rebalance it and to put public servants into jobs that labour hire had done.
In the last budget, I think the savings were in the order of $800 million in terms of the conversions that were being made. In this budget we’re finding a further billion dollars in reductions to agencies’ departmental expenses because of the investments we’re making in the Public Service. Obviously, we are making additional investments in the Public Service for additional responsibilities that they have, but what we’re doing is painting a very honest picture of the price of delivering improved services.
Those opposite, I know, are going to do what they always do and say they want a smaller Public Service, but they should then explain why 41,000 veterans who didn’t have their claims allocated now have their claims allocated and now are getting access to pensions. It’s a direct result of our investment in the Australian federal Public Service. We weren’t seeing those results, whether it was in Immigration, DFAT, Services Australia or Veterans’ Affairs. We see that on the payments side now because veterans are getting access because they are being dealt with. Because they’ve got public servants dealing with their claims, they are getting access to the money that they deserve.
So it’s a piece of ongoing work, Senator Roberts. If there’s further information I can provide to you, I will. But we are finding savings from the program at the same time that we’re making additional investments.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The table shows many departments costing less to run in 2027-28 than they do today, despite ongoing inflation, and rents, electricity and expenses far exceeding the savings from operations. The department of infrastructure is down from $554 million in this budget to $452 million in 2027-28; Health and Aged Care, $1.6 billion down to $1.1 billion; and Services Australia, $5.7 billion down to $4.5 billion. Minister, please explain from where these huge claimed projected savings will come.
Senator GALLAGHER: In terms of the savings that we’ve applied through this budget, it’s an extra billion dollars onto the $3 billion that we had built into the budget, so that gives you a total of $4 billion. There are additional savings that come through the conversions of expensive labour hire into permanent Public Service work, and so that is part of it. I think it’s probably a question we can go through at estimates, as well, because I don’t have that page in front of me. But there are savings, and we take that money from departments; they don’t get that funding. So that is a saving that is realised at the time that that budget decision is taken.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The $155 billion provided in the budget as departmental expenses in 2024-25 is projected to grow to $169 billion in 2027-28 almost entirely from increases in defence and the NDIS. How could your forward projections show flat or reduced costs for, in effect, the entire government except the NDIS and defence, when the budget puts inflation over that period at 13 per cent? Does your budget dramatically understate projected deficits?
Senator GALLAGHER: No. The budget papers, as they’re released—Budget Paper No.1, which goes to providing the UCB, is based on all of the information that runs through all of the budget books, and that would include departmental expenses. There is extra investment going into defence and into the NDIS. As you would expect, they are two of the five fastest growing areas of the budget. The NDIS is the second and I think defence would be the third or fourth, and so they would be seeing increases. But the budget UCB takes into account all of those decisions. It may be reported slightly differently in different tables, based on different accounting standards, but the UCB is an honest reflection of the state of the Commonwealth’s finances.
The purpose of this Bill is to abolish the current Administrative Appeals Tribunal and establish a new tribunal with improved criteria for member appointments, ensuring a transparent process.
Under the new system, positions would be advertised and candidates selected based on their qualifications and experience, with an appropriate interview process.
This approach seeks to alleviate concerns regarding past politicisation of tribunal membership.
Transcript
The Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2024 and the associated bills, which relate to the replacement of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with a new administrative review tribunal, are long overdue.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal has developed a reputation for inefficient and delayed decision-making, holding up the highly emotive process of considering mostly visa reviews and applications. The appointment process of tribunal members has been less than transparent, with many appointments being clearly politically based and with many appointees being barely qualified for their positions. That has raised a number of questions and a lot of talk. The new tribunal will offer transparent appointments based on merit and will ensure that decision-making will be less questionably based on perceived biases or lack of understanding of the issues. That’s a clear issue in the profession. Positions will be advertised and appointments made based on record and performance at an interview. Applicants must have relevant knowledge, skills and experience, and their qualifications need to be stated.
A significant problem in considering the bills, though, has been the time involved in assessing the voluminous amount of material, which something that previous speakers Senator Shoebridge and Senator Scarr both mentioned. That is particularly so in terms of accessing the voluminous amount of material in the context of the huge number of consequential amendments that need to be made to more than 138 acts and the consideration of the impact of these changes. That’s no light task; it’s not a five-minute task.
It’s been suggested that the new bill does not adequately offer persons with immigration challenges enough access to legal support when presenting their case for review. The bills reintroduce the Administrative Review Tribunal. This is generally considered a good move as it can assist in avoiding long and expensive court actions. It’s hoped that the Administrative Review Tribunal will be sufficiently resourced to avoid the enormous backlogs that have prevented timely and final resolution of primarily .migration and refugee matters. It’s been said that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal merits review system was failed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal which did not function effectively, efficiently or transparently. In 2022-23, more than 19,000 migration and refugee matters came into the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This represented 46 per cent of all applications that came into the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. There were over 54,000 matters still outstanding at the end of the financial year. It’s hoped that this backlog will be more effectively dealt with by the new Administrative Review Tribunal.
I need to point out that the mass of material within these bills that we’ve had to go through has been difficult to take in at short notice. Sadly, this is becoming a standard practice of this Albanese Labor government, making it difficult for crossbenchers to efficiently and, sometimes, effectively perform their functions. We heard about the hoops that Senator Scarr had to jump through. That’s not acceptable. Senator Shoebridge also mentioned the same problem. The process of developing this bill and getting it through scrutiny has been catastrophic, as one of them said. We have also seen a number of bills guillotined under the Labor-Greens-Teals-Senator Pocock coalition. That coalition has been pushing things through this parliament, suppressing orders for the production of documents and guillotining debate. We’ve had bills with enormous consequences for this country—some of the most far-reaching ever—rammed through this parliament with not one word of debate. I’m talking now particularly about the digital identity bill, which went through recently. That bill was amended quite substantially, and there was not one word of debate about the bill, nor about any of those amendments. So the process of coming to where we are with the Administrative Review Tribunal was flawed. Senators Scarr and Shoebridge echoed that. But the changes are needed. As servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, my team and I have weighed the pros and cons. Based on all of this, I somewhat reluctantly decided to support the bill. Having listened, though, to Senators Scarr and Shoebridge, who are lawyers and who I respect, I will be reflecting and may change my mind. But, at the moment, we are highly critical of the government’s process in developing this bill and putting it through what amounts to less-than-perfect, inadequate scrutiny. I do say the changes are needed at the moment. I reluctantly support the bill.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/qNn49wl12hU/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-29 12:18:452024-05-29 12:18:49Let’s Have More Transparency
In trying to please everyone, the Treasurer’s third budget will please nobody.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ third budget fails to deliver affordable houses, cheaper power bills and groceries, and any hope for the future. That’s what a good budget should deliver.
A better way is putting Australians first and using our natural resources to drive wealth, abundance and opportunity for all.
Transcript
Cheap houses, cheap power bills, cheaper groceries and hope for the future—that’s what a good budget should deliver. Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s third budget fails to deliver on all of these issues. Once his short-term coupons expire, inflation will fire up. Handouts and subsidies don’t bring inflation down; they just hide it temporarily. The Treasurer even admitted as much in his budget speech last night. He said:
Electricity prices would have risen 15 per cent in the last year if not for our efforts—
the Treasurer means his handouts—
instead, they rose two per cent.
Has there ever been a greater admission of failure of the net zero pipe dream? With the most wind, solar, batteries and green schemes on the grid in our history, actual power prices rose 15 per cent in just 12 months. When the last budget’s power relief ran out, Australians would have faced that entire price rise in one hit. That’s right: Treasurer Chalmers has been forced to extend another round of power bill relief. Australians would have rejected what the net zero lunacy has done to our once cheap power. Cheaper houses—with 2.3 million visa holders needing housing in the country right now, Australia is in the grip of a terrible housing crisis. Good working families, Australian families, are sleeping in tents, in cars and under bridges. Treasurer Chalmers tells us to prepare for another 280,000 migrants. Given his track record on immigration predictions, we should prepare for more. With no hope of building enough homes to house those new arrivals, rent, house prices and homelessness will only get worse.
How about hope for the future? There is little hope. The Treasurer tells us to expect crippling, worse deficits for the next 10 years, starting with this year. A better way is possible with One Nation, by putting Australians first and using our natural resources to our advantage. Then we can again become the best in the world.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/3w4hd_-2evU/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-29 07:45:212024-05-29 07:45:26Labor Fiddles Around the Edges With its Election Budget
I support this Modern Slavery Bill because slavery is repugnant to me and to Australians across our country. It’s inhuman.
While this bill is a positive step, it is not as strong as my Child Labour Bill, which has been introduced to the Senate and is currently under review by the senate committee. My bill adopts a stricter definition of ‘child labour’ and imposes severe penalties on companies that exploit child labour in their supply chains.
Australia must commit to ending all forms of slavery, particularly child slavery, because it is the right thing to do.
Transcript
As a servant to the fine people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the Modern Slavery Act 2018 establishes the Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner as an independent statutory officeholder within the Attorney-General’s Department. The role of this new commissioner is to bring together the different initiatives the government has taken since the Modern Slavery Act was enacted. These include a unit inside the Attorney-General’s Department and other agencies, including Border Force, to monitor the existing anti-slavery legislation, and an ambassador to counter modern slavery, people smuggling and human trafficking. The Modern Slavery Amendment (Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner) Bill 2023 clarifies the commissioner’s ability to share information with the Australian Federal Police and other law officers. That will be useful where slavery is brought to light. The definition of slavery in the Modern Slavery Act, which the commissioner will be relying upon for their actions, is wide enough to include that which everyday Australians would consider slavery. There is an issue with the definition of ‘child slavery’ that I will return to in a moment. Noting the absence of penalties in this bill and the modern slavery bill, I hope the commissioner does receive the level of cooperation necessary to eliminate slavery in the supply chains of corporations doing business in our country and of course eliminate slavery as it exists in Australia, which is mostly sex slavery. Senator Shoebridge has advanced an amendment which should improve cooperation with the commissioner. One Nation will support the amendment.
The commissioner will provide an independent mechanism for victims and survivors and business and civil society to engage on issues and strategies to address modern slavery. This is the area of the bill that was dialled up following the committee report. There seems to be a strong emphasis on telling the stories of those workers who are being exploited and preparing material to inform business and the public on the issue. While One Nation will be supporting this bill, I believe Australians across our country consider slavery repugnant, and the best option is to proceed to criminal and economic sanctions right now for businesses that include slavery in their supply chains. Deal with it now and stop slavery now. Businesses have had more than three years to establish whether or not they have slavery in their supply chains. That should be plenty of time. Simply reporting on it—and self-reporting at that!—is not an effective solution. That approach is nearing its use-by date.
One Nation looks forward to the commissioner stepping this up and clearly communicating sanctions to business and working with the Attorney-General and the Minister for Trade and Tourism on further sanctions and penalties. It’s essential that an Australian consumer can buy goods or services in our country and be safe in the knowledge that they are not rewarding the use of slavery. It’s useful for people who see something to have somewhere to say something. For that reason I look forward to the commissioner operating a telephone and web function that allows people to report suspicions they have around the use of, or the keeping of, slaves. That could be used for reports of child slavery and child labour.
For all the talk about child labour, we still have children in the Congo digging up lithium so that urban elitists can buy their electric vehicles, install their power walls and pat themselves on the back about how worthy they are. This has to stop. Stop turning a blind eye to these kids dying in the Congo and other places. The mechanism in place so far has failed miserably to help child labourers, and One Nation has legislation already before the committee. It’s our measure to prevent goods being made with child labour from entering Australia. A problem that continues to exist—in part due to the definition of ‘slavery’ used in the Modern Slavery Act, which the parliament passed in 2018—is that the commissioner will be operating under the definition of ‘child slavery’ which traps only ‘the worst forms of child slavery’, not all the forms of it. Article 3 of the International Labour Organization Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour includes in part (d), ‘work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children’.
After all these years of talk about child slavery and all these Australian government actions, these poor children are still digging up cobalt with their bare hands when they should be at school. The International Labour Organization has a far better definition of ‘child labour’, which my office is using. Their definition of ‘child labour’—not child slave labour; it’s more encompassing—is ‘a child under 14 who misses school, or would miss school if it were available, in order to perform work’. So it is when work takes them out of school. That definition captures people who are caught in a never-ending cycle of poverty and misery, with children who are working to bring home a tiny income to support their families and who never receive the necessary education to break out of that cycle of poverty. They are trapped in poverty and misery for their very short lives. These children work until their bodies are broken, and then their children take their place. Child labour may provide large corporations with extra profits from cheap minerals, coffee and textiles, amongst others, yet it’s just plain wrong. It is inhuman.
I framed my bill to relate to child labour only because the Modern Slavery Amendment (Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner) Bill 2023 has been on the drawing board for some time. My bill covers what this bill does not cover. Having seen the final version of this bill, I will provide the committee with an update on an amendment to my bill to allow the Anti-Slavery Commissioner to be the point of reporting of child labour on imported goods in addition to child slavery. One Nation will support this bill, and, as servants of the people of Queensland, I will continue to pursue this issue.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/rIuuW8SXbuE/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-29 07:38:532024-05-29 07:38:58The Modern Slavery Bill
The Treasurer handed down his third budget tonight (14/05/2024). These were my predictions earlier today in the Senate. What do you think of what he has handed down?
Transcript
As Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down his third budget tonight, many Australians simply don’t care. All the talk about surpluses, deficits, subsidies and balance of payments is very low in the average Australian’s priorities today. The biggest budget concern across dinner tables is skyrocketing mortgage costs, rents, grocery bills, insurance premiums and power bills. Australians don’t need Treasurer Chalmers to tell them times are tough; they’re living through tough times. Unfortunately, this budget shows the government isn’t coming to help; in fact, to compensate for its poor decisions it’s going to have to have its hand deeper in your pocket, taxing more of your salary for years to come.
Let’s step through the budget and what it means for Australians. Firstly, the big headline: Labor wants everyone to know the budget is in surplus—$9.8 billion. It sounds good, doesn’t it? Anyone who’s ever had their bills laid out on the dining room table knows a good budget needs more money coming in than going out. Unfortunately, this budget surplus is terrifyingly small, given that fairies have kissed Treasurer Chalmers with good luck.
The government has won the biggest lottery prize we could ever have hoped for, yet it has just a tiny surplus. It would be like a family winning division 1 of Powerball and having $100 left over at the end of the year—and calling it a win! There should be rivers of gold flowing into the budget. Instead we have a miserable trickle because Labor doesn’t resist spending every bit of its lottery winnings.
Commodity prices for our exports like oil, gas, coal, metal minerals and agricultural produce have all been near or at record highs over the previous few years. That means huge amounts of extra money flowed into Treasurer Chalmers’s budget. ‘Oil’, ‘gas’ and ‘coal’ are all dirty words to this Labor government and the Greens, and they’re too embarrassed to admit they have, in large part, saved the budget.
The second lottery win is the Australian workers. They’re working more jobs, longer hours and harder than ever. All of the extra work is reflected by the record-low unemployment rate. That means more taxes from hardworking Australians are going into the budget coffers than ever before—a record. That’s the story of this budget: three years of some of the largest tax intakes government has ever recorded, yet Labor can only squeak out the tiniest of surpluses.
Despite Australians working multiple jobs for more hours, they’re still going backwards because of inflation. Inflation is the secret debilitating stealth tax on all Australians. It’s the reason Australia had the largest collapse of disposable income in the OECD. If you feel like you’re going backwards, it’s because you are.
The only way to get ourselves out of this infrastructure mess is by spending on productive assets that allow Australia to make more here. We need to raise our productive capacity. We need more dams so that Australians can have more food and exports. But don’t expect to see any dams in Labor’s budget. We need cheaper electricity so that small businesses can thrive and hire people in their local communities. Instead, Labor will continue to throw us down the path of the net zero pipedream, which is guaranteed to bring higher energy prices, whether Australians pay for it on their power bill or with more taxes.
Unfortunately, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Labor-Greens are a uniparty on net zero—all united in their commitment to kill our electricity grid. We need nation-building projects like the Iron Boomerang project to make millions of tonnes of the world’s best quality steel right here in our country.
One thing I can guarantee is that there won’t be enough action on immigration in this budget. The Prime Minister has leaked that they expect net overseas migration to come in at 300,000 next year—300,000! This is a horrifyingly large number. It’s excessive. Prior to COVID there were 1.9 million visa holders likely to require housing in the country. There are now 2.3 million plus 400,000 tourists. That’s causing the terrible rental and housing crisis. Now the government wants to make that 300,000 people worse again. Where will these people sleep, Prime Minister?
That sums up what we can expect from this Labor budget: more Australians sleeping in cars, under bridges, in tents and in caravans; first home buyers destroyed by their mortgage repayments, while inflation runs out of control; small businesses being strangled by power prices. Does this sound good? This is hopeless. There are many more shocking stories of how the Australian dream has been ruined by decades of the Liberals-Nationals-Labor-Greens uniparty, acting together to implement the agenda of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.
A better way is possible. A much better way is possible, and One Nation will reveal how in our response to the budget this week.
Labor has been caught red-handed with a cheat sheet to circumvent democracy. The media has received a leaked copy of a manual from the office of the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. This clearly shows more damning evidence that Labor is seeking ways to side-step the responsibility and accountability of government.
Instead of respecting the role and powers of the Senate, the Prime Minister’s Office sends out a secret manual on side-stepping senate estimates’ questions.
This is nothing less than contempt of the senate from the PM’s office and reveals premeditated attempts at concealing the truth from the Australian people. This is a government that talks up transparency while writing the ‘How-To’ guide on hiding the facts. We will review this in more detail and will provide a detailed response on the manual.
Transcript
I speak to this motion to take note. I have yet to read the document in full and in detail, yet its existence is very disturbing, as other speakers have already said. At Senate estimates, Anthony Albanese’s office is putting words in the mouths of department heads. How can we trust their answers? We cannot trust this government. Repeatedly we’re getting the suppression of democracy—repeatedly—and we’re seeing arrogance. Let’s have a look at some data, and then I’ll come back to talking more about this document.
As of the end of December 2023—7 December, specifically—after 94 Senate sitting days in the 47th Parliament, Anthony Albanese’s parliament, 14 guillotine motions have been agreed to. Under the previous Morrison government, in the 46th Parliament, 14 guillotine motions were agreed to. Now we start to see the difference. A total of 87 bills have been subject to the guillotine in the 47th Parliament under the Labor-Greens-teals-Pocock coalition led by Anthony Albanese. In the 46th Parliament, under the Morrison Liberals, there were 59. So we have seen almost 50 per cent more under this government, under the coalition that Labor formed with the teals, Senator Pocock and the Greens, quite often with Senator Jacqui Lambie’s support.
They promised transparency and accountability. Instead we get the suppression of democracy, repeatedly. Arrogance—that’s what we say it is. Arrogance. We see that the suppression of democracy is a form of control.Always beneath control there is fear. Of what is the Albanese Labor-Greens-teals-Pocock coalition afraid? It’s afraid of truth and afraid, fundamentally, of an informed citizenry. They don’t want people to know.
The media has seen copies of the document. ‘The PMO’s secret manual on sidestepping Senate estimates questions’—that’s the headline in Capital Brief. The article says:
Capital Brief has seen a document sent by Anthony Albanese’s office advising departments on how to handle questions on notice from Senate estimates. Current and former senators say the edict represents contempt of the Senate.
Contempt of the Senate is a very serious matter. Another article in Capital Brief says:
Current and former senators, lawyers and a former top judge have said the drafting of the document could result in contempt of the Senate. … …
Anthony Albanese’s office has stood by a document it issued to senior bureaucrats which advised them how to sidestep Senate estimates questions on the basis that inquiries have “skyrocketed” since Labor came to government.
Well, that’s your job! I don’t care if they have skyrocketed. We’ll keep asking questions. I’ll get to the Prime Minister’s office’s manual—what we’ve seen of it so far; I haven’t dissected it.
When the interests of several departments are involved, the Government Guidelines for Official Witnesses before Parliamentary Committees and Related Matters call for departments to consult with other departments as part of the drafting process. This includes instances where the same or similar Senate estimates questions on notice are asked of all or multiple departments and agencies. Why are you worried about different answers from different departments? Look at some of the topics covered—well, we’ll go through that another time.
I know this is not a motion by leave to seek a variation of standing orders, but One Nation normally opposes them because the Senate should be focused, firstly, on Senate responsibilities and, secondly, on government business. We want the government to govern. Senate estimates, though, are a vital part of holding governments and bureaucrats accountable for taxpayer funds. Why do you hide from that? Anthony Albanese’s department wants to hide the truth from the people.
We have seen the Fair Work Commission and the Fair Work Ombudsman stumbling through an answer to my questions attempting to get to the bottom of their complicity with the CFMEU and major multinational labour hire firms in stealing $30,000 to $40,000 per miner each year from thousands of casual miners in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley. They hide the facts wilfully. The Fair Work Ombudsman office relies on fraud, repeatedly.
The Labor minister for workplace relations ignores and diverts. It’s embarrassing for departments. We look forward to reviewing the formerly secret document in detail, because democracy is at stake.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/ki6XPZvIIyo/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-24 11:55:032024-05-24 11:55:06Labor’s Guide on How to Avoid Answering Questions in Senate Estimates
On 15 May the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, was shot in an attempted assassination. Thankfully he’s out of surgery and no longer in a critical condition. On behalf of One Nation, I send our prayers for his continued speedy recovery.
Slovakia recently re-elected the Fico Government for the fourth time. His political longevity stands against globalist influences, including those from the EU and the United States. This platform includes opposing the World Health Organisation Pandemic Treaty and any measures that compromise Slovakian sovereignty.
The attempt on the President’s life reflects a desire to maintain control over Slovakia, as seen in Hungary under President Orban. President-elect Peter Pellegrini called the shooting an unprecedented threat to democracy, emphasising the importance of expressing political opinions through voting, not violence.
This sentiment resonates with Australia’s current political climate, where we must remain vigilant against the erosion of democracy.
Prime Minister Albanese’s government has been pushing through bills with little oversight, including the Digital ID bill.
One Nation wants to know — who is influencing these decisions? It clearly isn’t the Australian people.
Transcript
Overnight the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, was shot in an attempted assassination. He’s in a critical condition. On behalf of One Nation, I send our prayers to the Prime Minister and hope for his speedy recovery and return to work. Slovakia has only just returned the Fico government, on a platform that stood out against globalist influence on Slovakia from the EU and the United States.
This platform includes opposing the World Health Organization pandemic treaty, opposing the international health regulation amendments and any measure that takes away Slovakian sovereignty. Clearly, the attempt on the Prime Minister’s life is the work of someone who feels the Slovakian people should not be allowed to break away from the controlled state being constructed in Europe and make their own way in the world, just as their neighbour Hungary has done under Prime Minister Orban.
President-elect Peter Pellegrini called the shooting an ‘unprecedented threat’ to democracy and warned against expressing political opinions with pistols in squares instead of voting in polling stations, a sentiment true for our divided country. As Churchill said, ‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.’ Prime Minister Fico displayed such vigilance in standing against unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels, Geneva, London, Europe and New York. Australia must be vigilant against the continued subversion of our democracy by these same people.
Under Prime Minister Albanese, Australia has seen a procession of bills designed to subvert Australian democracy. Today we see yet another guillotine. Thursdays have become ‘guillotine Thursday’ as the government rams one freedom-destroying bill through after another to avoid oversight. Indeed, as we speak, the government is doing exactly that with the Digital ID Bill in the House of Reps. The Senate is the house of review. This government, the Greens and some crossbench senators are making a mockery of our solemn duty. One Nation wants to know who’s pulling this government’s strings. It’s clearly not the Australian people.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/9-hnr-zbaZg/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-23 16:35:282024-05-23 16:35:33Gloves Are Coming Off Against Populist Leaders
Queensland residents can’t find a home because there are simply more people than homes. Our hospitals are ramping because there are too many patients and not enough healthcare staff, and the number of kids in Queensland classrooms are rising not falling, despite many parents opting to home school.
The COVID response era actually provided a great opportunity to catch up on building infrastructure while immigration was frozen and people were out of jobs. Instead the government paid people to stay at home and NOT contribute to or build social infrastructure.
I asked Minister Watt, who is a Queenslander himself, if the Government opened the floodgates on immigration without the necessary social infrastructure being ready. His answer confirmed the government has not done the sums on the impacts of our record level of immigration and, quite honestly, is not fit to govern.
Transcript
I move:
That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to social infrastructure.
For three years, from 2020 to 2022, with the nation mostly out of work, we had an opportunity to catch up on social infrastructure: hospitals, schools, transport, water and housing. Instead, we paid money that could have been used to build those things to people to sit at home and not build those things. It was a trillion dollar wasted opportunity. With a new Labor government in power, the immigration floodgates then opened without the social infrastructure to accommodate the new arrivals. What’s worse is that there are not enough land re-zonings, building applications, approvals and starts to ever make a noticeable improvement in housing.
The Albanese government created a problem it cannot solve. Australia needs to get a refund on that plan we heard so much about from the Prime Minister in the last election because it’s a dud. It’s not up to the minister in his answer to blame the previous government repeatedly. For three years a so-called National Cabinet of Liberal and Labor leaders ran the country, so failure is on both your hands. It’s true that the neglect of social infrastructure goes back through 30 years of Liberal and Labor governments—the uniparty.
The message from the last two weeks of elections in Queensland and Tasmania is simple. Voters worked out the link between immigration and social infrastructure and voters are not happy. Voters are angry with Minister Watt and the Albanese government for creating a housing crisis that’s rapidly escalated to now be a human catastrophe. The public are noticing the disparity between those benefiting from the property market and those falling behind. It now takes everyday Australians on a median salary up to 14 years to save for a deposit for their own home. The housing crisis the Morrison government started and the Albanese government multiplied is disenfranchising the young. The irony is that the Labor government—supposedly, once the party of the workers—is making inequality of wealth far worse. Before the thread of social cohesion unravels in this country, this government must turn off the immigration tap and start building social infrastructure.
Why? That’s one question that I want to ask repeatedly in this speech. I see the government’s changes as a welcome step, but it’s a tiny, tiny step and we need many, many more. It could be one of my footprints, Senator Ayres! We see the government’s previous tax changes. They weren’t cuts; they were changes. As a result of those changes, we will see the government increase revenue by about $38 billion over the next four years—so much for tax cuts. They’re tax changes that will lead to an increase in tax for mums and dads.
Why are politicians scared of tax reform, and why do they place the burden on families and individuals to pay tax and let multinationals off the hook? Why are politicians scared of tax reform, but they continue tinkering with the system to affect mums and dads, who end up by paying, by far, the lion’s share of tax in this country? Why did Senator Sharma, in a very good speech, say that he wants to end bracket creep and the Liberals want end to bracket creep, yet, three weeks earlier, they voted against ending bracket creep with my amendment? They want enduring bracket creep. Why do the Labor Party say they want to end bracket creep—I remember Senator Gallagher said at the time, ‘We want to end bracket creep’—but vote against it? My amendment to abolish bracket creep once and for all was defeated.
Why is taxation not transparent? I’ll tell you why. It’s so that governments can continue to steal money from families to pay for their uncosted bribes. The Senate and the House of Representatives have turned into auction blocks using taxpayers’ money to buy votes. That’s what they’ve turned into. That’s how the governments of this country work, the uniparty of Labor and the Liberals. Why is the uniparty looking for new ways to tax people? Cars and utes—the foundations for tradies—are now going to be taxed. Clothing is going to be taxed under the Labor Party. Food will be taxed with a new biosecurity levy. Inflation was caused by the Labor and Liberal uniparty during the COVID response—the COVID mismanagement. State premiers were largely Labor, and the federal Prime Minister was Liberal-National. Inflation is a tax, especially on the poor and those with low incomes. Inflation is a huge tax burden. Greenwashing requires corporations to buy carbon dioxide credits. How do they pass the costs on? They pass them on in the form of higher prices.
Why do they require diversity, equity and inclusion and ESG reporting, which are ridiculous and unfounded? No-one has provided the evidence for that policy. It’s a compliance tax. Where will the cost of that compliance tax go? Onto the things that mums and dads and families pay for. Whole departments have been created in corporations, and that adds to the prices families have to pay. Why more tinkering? Why more complexity and less productivity? Think about the behaviours this drives with regard to allocation of resources and the behaviour of executives and decision-makers. Why is it that every problem in this country comes out of this building, like housing and excessive immigration, which is putting inhuman catastrophic pressures on people now? People are living in tents, cars, caravans, out in the street and under bridges in Brisbane in one of the richest states in the world. This is happening in our regional cities right up and down the east coast of Queensland. It’s a long coast. The Murray-Darling Basin is a disaster. It’s climate fraud, a lie and a scam. It’s a hoax. Stealing farmers’ property rights—the Liberal-National government did that from 1997 to 2007.
We’re still living with COVID mismanagement. I had a gentleman in my office today who is vaccine injured. It’s been stated by doctors We had to turn the lights off because of the glare. He couldn’t look straight at the windows. He had to look down. This was a vibrant healthy person now with COVID vaccine damage. He’s almost incapacitated. This was a lively human being now pulled up.
We’re still living with the COVID mismanagement. There’s inflation from the money supply, as I mentioned. There’s inflation from crippling the supply chains during the COVID restrictions. Crippling our supply chains led to higher prices.
Senator Bilyk: President, I raise a point of order on relevance. We’re here to speak about the Treasury Law Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share—Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023. Not once has the senator mentioned anything to do with that bill, and it’s been five minutes. I’m just wondering if you could draw to the attention—
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Polley): Thank you, Senator Bilyk. I will remind Senator Roberts of the topic, but as you and other senators know, it’s a broad-ranging debate.
Senator ROBERTS: For those senators with poor hearing, let me say again: we support this bill. That’s what I opened with. We support this bill—I’ll repeat it. I said that.
I’ve just laid down a litany of problems that are coming from this building in betrayal of the people in this country, my fellow Australians. I’m now getting to the point of that betrayal. The most destructive system in government under the uniparty for the last 70 years has been the taxation system. It focuses our brightest and best people, some of our lawyers and accountants, not on serving our country in competition with foreign companies overseas—the Koreans, the Japanese, the Taiwanese, the Chinese, the Europeans and the Americans—but on screwing the government and getting away from complex, ridiculous taxation systems. They’re focused not on competing with foreign owned corporations but on competing with our government. Think of the behaviours that are driven at the corporate level, the allocation of resources, the inefficiency of resources and the behaviour of executives.
Taxation is highly complex. How many pages are there in our taxation act? It’s highly inefficient directly in terms of allocation of resources and indirectly in terms of the behaviours that are driven. It’s directly inefficient in terms of the way taxation is levied in this country. James Killaly was a former deputy commissioner of taxation in charge of large companies and foreign matters. He said in 1996 and 2010, ‘Ninety per cent of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and, since 1953, have paid little or no tax.’ This bill does go a little way towards addressing that, but we need to address it full on.
Why does that happen? Why are foreign companies getting let off the hook? I’ll tell you why. It’s because many of even our large Australian companies are part-owned and controlled by foreign corporations. The major predators are Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street and First State. They own 10 per cent of the four banks combined and they own the controlling interest. They tell the banks what to do—BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, First State and others in that little cohort of multinational predatory organisations. We don’t have four main banks. We have one main bank that is hiding behind four logos. That’s what we have. They have the same policies, principles, strategies, products and services.
Coles and Woolies, again, are part-owned by BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard. If you go right through our corporations in this country, the corporations we thought were Australian owned, they’re foreign owned and controlled, and where does the money go? The profit goes overseas. What did the Morrison government do, along with the state premiers? They loaded it up so that foreign multinationals that own the large companies in this country made a killing out of COVID at the expense of small companies and small businesses.
On the other hand, look at Qatar and Norway. They have bountiful natural resources, just like us—not as much as we have, in fact, and yet they make so much more. Qatar made $78 billion out of its gas exports. We export more and we made a tiny fraction of that, around one per cent of that.
So why are we doing this? What I’m saying and have been saying for many years, ever since I got into the Senate, is that we need comprehensive, proper and honest tax reform. Let’s have a look at the person who introduced GST into this country. Paul Keating was the Treasurer and, I think, Deputy Prime Minister under Bob Hawke. He came so close to introducing the GST, and, at the last minute, the Prime Minister at the time, Bob Hawke, fell over and lacked the courage to do so. Paul Keating was very upset with that. A few years later, John Hewson introduced the GST as part of Liberal Party policy, and who smashed him over it? Paul Keating, the man who introduced the concept of GST to this country.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Polley): Senator Roberts, I will remind you to use people’s correct titles when referring to former prime ministers.
Senator ROBERTS: He was the Treasurer at the time. What I’m saying is that the taxation system was mooted for change, and the person who introduced the GST actually smashed the GST, for purely political reasons.
On another aspect of comprehensive tax reform, Treasurer Peter Costello—who has been admired as a Treasurer—found out that Senator Pauline Hanson, who at the time was a member of the lower house, was keen on the transaction tax. As a way of trying to destroy her, he destroyed the transaction tax, even though he had previously said publicly that it had a lot of merit.
The point I’m getting to is: taxation has become a political football. It’s not an honest debate anymore; it’s about smashing a system. So what I propose is that, instead of proposing a system, we should look at basic principles. We should first of all agree that the taxation system is one of the most destructive systems in this country, if not the most destructive, which is my opinion of it. Once we get agreement on that, we should then put forward a set of principles that we can agree on.
I’ve been putting some thought to principles. First of all, a fair, efficient and honest taxation system would enable us to receive far more income because the multinationals would be paying their fair share of tax. It should be fair and equitable to all people and to all economic entities, including Australian businesses, and with no exemptions for foreign companies, which are now largely exempt. Making foreign companies and speculators pay their fair share of tax would quickly end the budget deficit and overseas debt and fund future infrastructure without borrowing. The second principle: it should be in the national interest.
The third principle—and this is very, very important for a country, and the reason why I went through the problems that are coming from this building: it should be incorruptible and impossible for politicians to fiddle with. A major source of political power is the ability of politicians to make legislation that punishes or advantages particular groups. This ability gives politicians from the uniparty enormous power over others because they can enact, for example, taxation provisions that assist their supporters or hurt their supporters’ competitors. An honest tax system removes this blatant abuse of power.
The fourth principle: it should comply with and support our Constitution’s intent and written provisions—not contradict our Constitution but comply with it. The fifth principle: there should be simplicity in understanding, administration and accountability. It should be completely transparent, unlike the current taxation system, which is deliberately opaque. There should be an objective basis for levying tax. Instead of assessing tax on profit and loss that can be fiddled, use objective measures. These do exist and include, for example, market sale price or straight-out unit cost.
The taxation system needs to be constructive, not punitive. It needs to be efficient to administer, with low administration costs, not the unwieldy behemoth that is administering, or mismanaging, tax at the moment. It should increase people’s purchasing power. A good taxation system, an efficient taxation system, will increase people’s purchasing power so people are economically far better off, because the burden will be shifted more towards multinationals.
The next principle is: there should be minimal disruption to the economy, with no ability for politicians to manipulate the tax system across industry sectors or industry groups. The taxation system could be a wonderful way of getting aggregate economic data and detailed data.
The next principle is arguably one of the most important: accountability. When properly designed, a tax system develops accountability in the government and in the people, through being a restraint on the cost of government. Taxes are necessary to pay for the cost of government, but what happens at the moment, because politicians from the uniparty can ratchet taxation up freely, is that they tend to abuse it and neglect their accountability to the people for managing costs. Politicians will have to manage within the country’s means. The next principle is: it should help people to become independent of government.
What I want to do in wrapping up is say, again, to the senators who didn’t hear me in my opening comments: we support this bill. But it is far too little. Why is it too little? We have got plenty of money in this country for investment. We have got super funds holding enormous sacks of gold, from rivers of gold. I’m asking the government to change your ways. Put families before large, foreign multinationals—Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, First State. Put national interest before large, foreign multinationals. Reclaim our national sovereignty, and put it before large, foreign multinationals. Put Australia and Australians first.
I asked this question at the start: why? I ask this question now: why not?
