Malcolm’s Official Speeches in Parliament

One Nation is Proud to be a Populist Party

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Senator Hanson recently spoke about record immigration and the human catastrophe this is causing to everyday Australians. The Australian newspaper described her words as ‘populist’. Among members of the news media, or commentariat, that label offers mythical protection, insulating them from having to actually discuss the issues we’re raising.

The commentariat may be interested in the definition of ‘populist’ being ‘a politician who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups’. Damn right!

The elites have been ignoring everyday Australians’ concerns for 50 years. Populist is exactly who we are in One Nation—a party that cares about everyday Australians and the financial, housing, social, and medical crisis now engulfing us.

I’m proud that One Nation talks with the people and listens to what they have to say. I’m proud One Nation votes in the best interest of Australians in parliament and I’m proud our supporters have the courage to stand up for what’s right.

This country might not be in such a dire state if other political parties in Parliament showed the same level of interest in the concerns of everyday Australians as One Nation does. Instead, they, along with the commentariat, seem to view the term ‘populist’ as a slur, as if it challenges their self-perceived superiority and arrogance.

I will continue to represent the interests of everyday Australians!

Transcript

Last week Senator Hanson spoke about record immigration and the human catastrophe it’s causing everyday Australians. The Australian newspaper described her words as ‘populist’. Among the commentariat, that label offers mythical protection, preventing them from having to actually discuss the issues we’re raising. The commentariat may be interested in the definition of ‘populist’ being ‘a politician who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups’. Damn right! The elites have been ignoring everyday Australians’ concerns for 50 years. Populist is exactly who we are in One Nation—a party that cares about everyday Australians and the financial, housing, social and medical crisis now engulfing us. 

I’m proud that One Nation talk with the people and listen to what people have to say. I’m proud One Nation votes in parliament for the best interest of Australians, and I’m proud our supporters have the courage to stand up for what’s right. This country would not be so far down the toilet if other parties in this place were as interested as One Nation is in the wants and needs of everyday Australians. Instead, they, like the commentariat, spit the word ‘populist’ from their mouths as if it were poison—as if it were an affront to their self-perceived superiority and arrogance. 

Such contempt for the word ‘populist’ comes from a deep-seated sense of superiority amongst inner-city elites and their champagne socialist ideology—socialists whose wealth insulates them and their ideologies from human outcomes. These are the people who eat the food and drink the wine grown on farms that the same champagne socialists demonise as enemies of their net zero revolution—farmers who they wish would get off their land to make way for solar panels, wind turbines and powerlines erected in the bush so city socialists don’t have to look at them. All the while, they pat themselves on the back about how worthy they are, under the hubris of their spiritual guide and leader, the World Economic Forum, which steals wealth and sovereignty from everyday Australians on behalf of globalist, parasitic billionaires. 

To them, it doesn’t matter that we Australians don’t want to have our cars taxed until we can no longer afford to keep them; be locked into 15-minutes cities; never again be allowed to travel where we want, when we want and how we want; be living in homes rented from the billionaires because land taxes forced us to give up our own homes; be forced to rent furniture and whitegoods because green taxes made it too expensive to buy; and be forced to eat bugs and forced give up red meat in favour of cancerlike fake meat cultured in bioreactors. Who owns the companies making this slop? It is the same billionaires campaigning against red meat. 

And what is the greatest threat of all? It is digital currency that comes with a use-by date. Spend every cent of the money you earn or your money expires. There’ll be no saving and no passing wealth on to our children. Australians will live in economic and physical slavery, except those wealthy and well connected under a different set of rules. 

When the commentariat dismiss us as populist, this is what they’re covering up. These people are the billionaires’ little minions—brainwashed ideologues and those simply greedy for money and power, operating in the bureaucracy, the media, corporations and parliaments around the world. Soviet Russia called these people the nomenklatura, and there’s evidence they’re in Australia, including here in this Senate. My words will be interpreted as some form of class warfare. Yes, they are. It was not One Nation, though, that started a war on working Australians. It will be One Nation that finishes it and wins it. 

Right now, fortunately, the public are waking to see the voice behind the curtain. The greed and ruthless self-interest are now obvious amongst the billionaires and the nomenklatura. This will not be an exercise in free will. You will be forced to comply. The elements of the control agenda are being shaped right now. 

The Digital ID Bill is on tomorrow’s Senate schedule. This bill ensures every Australian has a government-backed digital identity that must be shown to access daily services: transport; shopping; banking, including ATMs; the internet; and much more. If you’ve heard the phrase ‘papers, please’ in connection with totalitarian regimes and wondered how people accepted that, wonder no more. The legislation can be used to prevent troublesome populists like One Nation from being heard. 

The digital ID is paired with legislation previously passed through this parliament that allows government and business to scan everyday Australians’ faces in real time as we go about our business. The legislation that One Nation opposed yet the Senate passed allows police and any bureaucrat associated with penalties to determine your identity through a facial scan taken using your computer, your phone, your traffic cam, your street or shopping centre camera—even at supermarkets, which these days have more cameras than staff. The result is each Australian’s data history, which corporations are allowed to access. They will know everything about each of us, and this information will be traded to corporations and between corporations to build an even more detailed picture. Who is to blame for these tools of tyranny? Labor, the Greens, teal Senator Pocock and the globalist Liberals and Nationals. One Nation tried to pass an amendment to prevent this type of facial scanning yet the establishment parties voted our amendment down and out. They know this legislation’s real purpose is to extinguish populism so government can rule with total control. 

It was chilling last week to hear Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who graced business leaders with his thoughts on our future economy. The Treasurer believes Australia must become an ‘anti-fragile nation’ and invoked the philosophy of Nassim Nicholas Taleb—that strength and resilience emerge from confronting stress and disorder. The Treasurer said, ‘It is hard not to see the value in this idea.’ What may appear as a Treasurer trying to impress the big end of town with his pseudo-intellectual ‘wafflenomics’ on the nature of randomness is much, much more. The ‘non-fragile’ in that conversation means nothing the public can do, nothing the next ‘plandemic’ can do, will shape the total control held in the hands of government and their big business mates, the corporations. Nothing can and nothing will interfere with the flow of profit from everyday Australians into the pockets of the world’s predatory globalist billionaires. 

The Treasurer said ‘strength comes from confronting stress and disorder,’ which is a tenant of Communist political theory. To build a new world order one must first create chaos from which the public will beg to be rescued—climate fraud and fear, COVID panic and hysteria. We now see chaos in the housing market, in the food and cost-of-living crisis, in the hospital and medical crisis, in education and across social issues like the capture of language, and the erasure of women and gender. The Treasurer’s words were a frightening self-own. 

The government are not interested in solutions. They want chaos, to force the public to accept a loss of sovereignty and freedom in return for income, housing and false security. Many Australians are waking. Those who aren’t waking are running out of time. All that is needed to complete the suppression of opposition to this new tyranny is the misinformation and disinformation censorship bill that Minister Gallagher introduced. Free speech is the one thing preventing their plan from being complete, and the misinformation and disinformation censorship bill destroys speech.  

One Nation, being a proudly populist party will stick up for everyday Australians and oppose this control agenda. There is still hope. The internet is changing the ground rules, which is why they seek to control it. There is still time to sever the umbilical cord between the World Economic Forum and our parliament. Senator Hanson was right when she said last week ‘stop voting for parties that are deliberately making your lives harder. Stop voting for the Liberal and Labor uniparty. In the next election you have a choice: One Nation or tyranny. 

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Happy Easter ✝️

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As we stand on the brink of unprecedented challenges, it’s essential to reflect on the message of Easter.

The world may be in turmoil, but we must continue to strive towards a future of peace, prosperity and community. The farewell discourse from the Last Supper, though criticized by some, leaves us with an open ending and invites us to ponder our role in shaping a future as yet unwritten.

This Easter, I hope everyone can enjoy a well-deserved break with their families. Let’s use this ‘pause’ to strengthen our focus and objectivity, ensuring our story contributions are filled with peace, prosperity, and unity.

Transcript

In this week before Easter, I’m reminded of an old joke: Pontius Pilate said to Joseph, ‘I don’t understand, Joseph; you are a wealthy man and you have spent a fortune building a tomb for yourself and now you have given it to this pauper named Jesus,’ and Joseph replied, ‘It is only for the weekend.’ Easter weekend is upon us and the act of kindness from Joseph has endured for more than a weekend—for 2,000 years. Easter carries a message of rebirth, of starting over in the spirit of a God that forgives our transgressions while asking us through our actions to do better and to be better. John 14:27 records  

Jesus’s words at the Last Supper, the farewell discourse, as being: ‘Peace I leave with you, and the peace I give isn’t fragile like the peace the world gives. So don’t be troubled or afraid.’ All I can say is that Jesus got everything else correct; so I know he will again be right. Yet the world is on the brink of tribulations I have not lived through before and had hoped I never would experience. Some biblical scholars have criticised the farewell discourse as having been written too late after the event, leaving the ending of the discourse open. One would think that was the point. What is the ending? Will it be community and prosperity as we have enjoyed in this beautiful country for hundreds of years or will it be another Dark Ages, this time with the stain and stench of neo-feudalism, violence and immoral relativism, which is really just nihilism repackaged as woke agenda. Will those who think they are too smart for religion succeed in destroying real religions? That is the ending that was not made clear. How could it be? The ending has not been written and we can add just one part of it. 

I hope this Easter everyone has a nice break and, in the real world, with our families to strengthen our focus and objectivity, ensuring our contribution to the unwritten ending is peace, prosperity, family and community.  

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The Digital ID Will Change the Lives of Every Australian – For the Worse

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As much as the Government attempts to downplay the importance of introducing a single central digital identifier for all Australians, the truth is that this legislation is the most significant I’ve encountered during my time in the Senate.

t’s the glue that holds together the digital control agenda by which every Australian will be controlled, corralled, exploited and then gagged when they speak or act in opposition.

The government knows Digital ID will be compulsory by the device of preventing access to government services, banking services, air travel and major purchases for any Australian who does not have a Digital ID.

The Digital ID will, in effect, create a live data file of your movements, purchases, accounts and associates containing reference to every piece of data being held in the private and government sector as a first step in a wider agenda. Tech giants have been building huge data files on every Australian for years.

Those huge data files that contain every website you visited, every post you made on their social media, everything you have ever bought online. Keywords scanned from conversations overheard by Siri and Alexa in your home are now unmasked.

Until now, that data was anonymised using a unique identifier rather than name and address, which has always been there as well. However, tech companies were not allowed to use it or share data with others that included the person’s name and address. Until Now.

Look for the tech giants to ask for your Digital ID as a requirement of using their service. The point of that exercise is to ensure they put the right name on the right data treasure trove.

This is why the Liberal Party have moved amendments to the Digital ID Bill to bring private corporations into this roll out earlier. All those treasure troves of data worth billions, trillions, that have been accumulated for years illegally, by retailers, tech and data companies – all that unrealised profit just sitting there has been too much of a temptation for the Liberal Nationals to resist and is now joined with Labor in pushing Digital ID.

There will be no escape from the digital ID.

Australians now have a digital version of “papers please” and Australians will never be the same.

Transcript

Life is about to change for every Australian. As much as Senator Gallagher seeks to downplay the significance of introducing one central digital identifier for each and every Australian, the reality is that this is the most significant legislation I’ve seen in my time in the Senate. It’s the glue that holds together the digital control agenda by which every Australian will be controlled, corralled, exploited and then gagged when they speak or act in opposition.

The Digital ID Bill will be misused because this bill is written to be misused. The government knows that digital ID will be compulsory by the device of preventing access to government services, banking services, air travel and major purchases for any Australian who does not have a digital ID. The digital ID will, in effect, create a live data file of your movements, purchases, accounts and associates, containing reference to every piece of data being held in the private and government sector as the first step in a wider agenda. Google, Facebook and other tech giants have been building huge data files on every Australian for years. Those huge data files contain every website you’ve visited, every post you made on their social media and everything you have ever bought online, and the keyword scan from conversations overheard by Siri and Alexa in your home are now unmasked.

Until now, that data was anonymised using a unique identifier, rather than name and address, which has always been there as well. However, tech companies were not allowed to use it or to share data with others that included a person’s name and address—until now. Look for the tech giants to ask for your digital ID as a requirement of using their service. The point of that exercise is to ensure they put the right name on the right data treasure trove. It’s not just the tech giants heading into the data gold rush. Those reward cards you scan at the checkout have included terms and conditions to allow Coles and Woolies to make a record of every purchase you have made for years. This is why the Liberal Party has moved amendments to the Digital ID Bill to bring private corporations into this rollout earlier. All those treasure troves of data worth billions or trillions have accumulated for years illegally, and all that unrealised profit just sitting there has been too much of a temptation for the Liberals and Nationals to resist, and they have now joined with Labor in pushing digital ID.

Those listening at home may be wondering how an individual could avoid being drawn into this net of data trading and surveillance. The simple answer is: you can’t. This Labor government has already passed the Identity Verification Services Bill, which makes it legal for every Australian’s photo or video likeness to be used to verify that person against the database containing their biometric data. Biometric data simply means a digital representation of your face that allows for instantaneous electronic matching. Just days after that bill passed, the first thing the government did was to send an email to people with a myGov ID to update their myGov record by providing a facial scan on their phone. Yes, that really happened. This is what these people are doing to you. This is not voluntary.

Ten million Australians have a myGov ID. Most of those were forced into it to access Centrelink benefits. It’s cruel. There are another two million Australians who were forced to get a myGov ID to register as a company director, despite the director identity enabling legislation not even mentioning myGov. The government did it anyway! The database the government is using for data surveillance is the national driver’s licence database which has 17 million records—everyone who has, or has had, a driver’s licence. This government doesn’t need an excuse to further digital control for everyday Australians. Socialists love control. Socialism needs control. For socialism to exist, there must be control. The government knows control will be used by government to identify people who say mean things on social media to speed up enforcement of our new laws against saying home truths to crazy or dishonest people. No hiding behind anonymous accounts or false addresses; you can expect a knock on your door at home, work or school, as we’re seeing happening in other countries with digital identity already in place. Only by being able to keep tabs on citizens 24/7 can the government possibly hope to introduce the wealth heist they have planned.

Anyone viewing this topic for the first time can see the detail of what I’m talking about on my website. The committee report on the digital ID bill was a travesty. The committee made a recommendation to pass the bill which was simply not supported by the evidence they received during the inquiry. Witness after witness testified that this rancid evil bill failed to protect privacy, failed to establish that the ID would be voluntary, failed on human rights grounds and failed on technical grounds. One blackout, and the whole thing comes crashing down. Yet all these valid criticisms from leading organisations who, unlike the government, know what they’re talking about were simply ignored.

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Investigating the mRNA Mutant Crime Scene

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I called on the Senate to support the inquiry into the federal COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme and restated my demand for the people of Australia to have their Royal Commission in COVID.

Australians are dying at a far higher rate than normal. Surely even the pharma industry lobby in the Senate can see that there’s a high probability that the cause, the one thing that has changed in the last 4 years coinciding with the increased mortality, is the jabs that everyday Australians were coerced and bullied into taking.

Why is the Labor Government so afraid of uncovering the truth? If they’re confident it’s not the cause, then shouldn’t they be prepared to have an inquiry into it?

This is an issue of life or death for the Australian people and it needs to be above suspicion. We need honest debate and proper scrutiny to understand why over 30,000 people more than normal have died so far.

In this speech, I go further into messenger RNA “vaccines”, the technology used to protect them and the actual mechanism by which these jabs could be causing the harm we are seeing.

I also talk about the “bait and switch” that was used during clinical trials, which saw trials conducted using the long-established method of using albumin to grow the vaccine. After testing, this was switched out for a new and untested method using a derivative of E. coli bacteria, which multiples much faster but contaminates the vaccine in the process.

During an interview on the ABC, Greg Hunt, the Health Minister at the time, admitted that “The world is engaged in the largest clinical trial, the largest global vaccination trial ever, and we will have enormous amounts of data”.

Where is that data now and what does it really say about our COVID response? The answer will only come from an inquiry. Clearly the Albanese Government and the Opposition do not want you to know.

Transcript

There have been more than 25,000 deaths. That’s more than 25,000 homicides. At Senate estimates hearings last November I produced an independent analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data. It showed the unexplained increase in deaths for the period 2022-23—population adjusted, excluding COVID and respiratory deaths—was 13 per cent. The Australian Bureau of Statistics provided data using a different methodology, which agreed closely with my figure. An increase of 13 per cent above baseline on 195,000 deaths in 2022-23 means 25,000 more Australians died than expected. 

Did the novel COVID injections cause all of these deaths? While highly likely, it’s possible they did not. Were enough of these deaths caused by the injections to be of serious concern and to support an inquiry? Definitely yes. A common argument against having an inquiry is the issue that increases in mortality are due to many different causes—cancer, dementia, cardiac conditions and diabetes—so there can’t possibly be a single cause. An inquiry would need to explain this. In the absence of an inquiry, I’ll advance a theory from many credible medical authorities. I’ll do that in a minute. 

The COVID products are not vaccines because they don’t stop people getting COVID. They don’t stop people passing it on to someone else. I call them injections or jabs. The jabs include a segment of messenger RNA, which has the purpose of splicing a new segment into our DNA, which produces a protein to create an antibody to COVID-19. This raises the possibility that disease can be prevented, using mRNA techniques to get our bodies producing antibodies to stop cancer and disease in their tracks. This opportunity to play God has proven so intoxicating that many in our health industry have fallen for it; mRNA jabs are being defended with religious fervour. As with any religious zealotry, those who ask difficult questions like, ‘Why are so many people suddenly dying?’ are being treated in a way that is an afront to parliamentary process and civil government. This issue is life or death. It needs to be above honest debate and scrutiny. 

One potential explanation for increased mortality rates across a wide range of conditions is a scandal known as ‘plasmidgate’. This is technical, so I’ll use plain language and apologise to any specialist vaccinologists listening. Messenger RNA is too fragile to use in a vaccine. To protect the RNA sequence from damage, these COVID jabs use a new technique, wrapping each one in a protective coating called a lipid nanoparticle. This keeps the RNA intact on its journey from your arm to the nucleus of every cell in your body, where the coating helps the RNA enter the cell and bind with your existing DNA. Remember, there are billions of mRNA particles in every jab. 

The manufacturing process is not clean. Fragments of DNA are being picked up in the manufacturing process and getting coated in that protective layer as well, a coating that stops your body expelling the fragment. These fragments are coming from the E. coli bacteria, a derivative being used to grow on the mRNA. Yes, they’re using modified E. coli bacteria as the growing medium for the mRNA in these jabs. 

The clinical trials for this product were conducted using the previous growing method, albumen from eggs. That’s the clinical trials. Yet that was far too slow for Pfizer, claiming the so-called speed of science. So, after the clinical trials were tested, with a conventionally propagated product, Pfizer switched it out for one grown using the much faster E. coli bacteria method. Has E. coli ever been used before as a medium to grow on a vaccine? No, it hasn’t. No, it has not. Was any safety testing done? Well, that would be every person that has had done the jab. That’s where the testing was done, if you’ve had the jab. Now people are dying, and the mRNA vaccine zealots are ignoring the outcome. The crime of the century is that the Australian public have been injected with DNA from E. coli bacteria that was wrapped up in a protective coating and delivered into the nucleus of every cell in your body. 

It gets worse. The latest peer reviewed published data on this shows that, in a third of cases, the cell will not produce the antibody intended against COVID and instead will produce some other antibody—in a third of cases. It’s a process called frame shifting, which means the mRNA does not present itself to your DNA strand correctly and accordingly combines with your DNA in an unintended way before producing an unintended protein antibody. This is going on in people’s bodies right now. What does that mutant protein do to your system? Nobody knows. Here’s the final crime. These mutant proteins are not created in one-third of people; they’re created in one-third of cells, meaning that everyone who was injected with a COVID product has a third of their cells now producing mutant proteins. We don’t know what harm that will cause. The harm varies from person to person. 

Are these proteins now resting in our brain? Are they? We know it can cross the blood-brain barrier into our brains. Are these proteins resting in our hearts, in our livers, in female ovaries, in male testes? Is it turning off our body’s natural cancer defence, resulting in turbo cancers? Highly likely. These are questions, not statements. When some of the most highly qualified medical professionals on this topic are asking questions, there is no excuse not to be investigating when those questions are being asked. It’s time to treat the zealots of the religion of mRNA as the maniacs they are. They played God and they harmed people. They killed tens of thousands of people. They committed homicide—homicidal maniacs. 

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support this motion from Senator Rennick, which will find out how bad the damage is, and, once again, I call on the Senate to demand a royal commission into the crime of the century. 

The PRESIDENT: The question is that the motion moved by Senator Rennick be agreed to. 

The Senate divided. [12:18]  

(The President—Senator Lines)  

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Give Australians a Say on Immigration

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Australians have never been asked what they think is a fair amount of immigration. The Lib-Lab parties both advocate for high immigration and as there are many different issues that go towards deciding the party to vote for on polling day, elections simply don’t provide a way for the public to express their opinion on migration.

The Plebiscite (Future Migration Level) Bill 2018 aims to give Australians a say on immigration levels through a plebiscite. Senator Hanson argues that high immigration is causing a per capita recession and is detrimental to Australians’ standard of living.

Current immigration policies favouring high numbers of immigrants are driving up housing costs, leading to catastrophic homelessness among Australians. The Morrison government and now the Albanese government have failed to address this issue.

Australians deserve to have a voice on immigration levels that are impacting their security, lifestyle and their ability to provide for their future.

Transcript

The Plebiscite (Future Migration Level) Bill 2018 is simply saying, ‘Give Australians a say.’ That’s all we want. We want to listen to the people and let the people decide. Give the people a say—a ‘voice’, if you like. Senator Hanson is driven to do what’s in the national interest. That means protecting Australians and protecting Australians’ lifestyle. This is simply a voice—give Australians a say. 

Make no mistake; the figures show that we are in a per capita recession. I’ve said that in the past in the Senate and I continue to say it. Labor lies and policies are hiding that because you, as a government, do not want to be blamed for putting the place in recession. This is something that’s been carried through from the Morrison government to the Albanese government. Australia is in a per capita recession, and you’re hiding it with high immigration numbers. They raise artificially the GDP, making sure that we don’t have two quarters with negative growth.  

Without high immigration, this country would be in recession. You are doing the people a disservice and you are hiding the fact that we are in recession. You’re doing the people a disservice because they’re now sleeping in cars, under bridges, in tents and in caravans. They’re being moved to showgrounds—moved along from parks—in Bundaberg, Gladstone, Townsville, Cairns, Logan, Ipswich and Brisbane. I can step out of the CBD in Brisbane and within minutes of walking I can find people living in tents. Through the chair: Senator Watt and Senator Ciccone, are you aware that in our state, which is so fundamentally wealthy, we have thousands of people living on the streets? They are being moved on daily because they can’t be kept in one place any more than three days. Some of these people have got jobs—and that’s where they live! We’re creating and exporting our wealth to the world—5½ million Queenslanders are creating wealth for the world and our own Queenslanders are living in tents and living in cars. Some of them are being picked on by rangers, and as they’re moved on their kids are confiscated. These are working people.  

The key issue here is trust. We cannot trust the Albanese Labor government, just like we could not trust the Morrison Liberal-National government. Another key issue is serving the people. Senator Hanson mentioned it. I mentioned it. As servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, we are raising this issue because it is fundamental to Australians’ lifestyle, security and productivity.  

Senator Hanson raised immigration many years ago. She’s famous for it. Three of her four grandparents were immigrants. She’s not against immigration; she’s against overimmigration. She’s making sure that the quality of migrants is suitable for our culture, our laws and our values. This, though, has nothing to do with Senator Hanson. It’s simply a plebiscite to give people a say. You wanted it for gay marriage, homosexual marriage, and now you won’t let the people have a say in something even more fundamental. Senator Hanson has a very simple approach to politics. She hasn’t an elaborate political philosophy. She has a simple approach: do what’s right for the national interest—that’s it. That means doing what’s right for the standard of living.  

Senator Hanson and I are proud to support this bill because it is about propping up and restoring our standard of living. I raised immigration, particularly in connection with housing, starting a couple of years ago and I’ve been bashing it ever since. Have a look at my Facebook page, my Instagram page and my Twitter page. This has been a sincere and genuine concern of mine for years now. We have, as I said, people living in cars, tents and caravans and getting moved around in showgrounds. We had in January, just two months ago, record immigration. We had 125,000 new arrivals in January alone. I haven’t done the maths, but that’s around about 1½ million a year. After removing the number of people who left Australia that left 55,375 net migration into our country in one month. That was 40 per cent above the previous record for January way back in 2009. We have returned to the days of very high immigration, but we have gone way beyond that. We have 2.3 million people on working visas in this country, meaning 2.3 million beds and 2.3 million roofs over beds are needed. We have 600,000 students. We only have beds for 100,000 university students. So the university students we are bringing in to give us income are taking beds off Australians who need beds. 

Politicians in this country, the Liberal-Nationals and the Labor-Greens, follow a ‘big Australia’ policy—a ‘massive Australia’ policy. The people do not. The people want a ‘fair Australia’ policy. Trust, as I raised a minute ago, has been languishing in this place, and trust in the Albanese government has plummeted. Trust is made up of two components basically: integrity or honesty and competence. The Albanese Labor government is showing neither. 

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, let me tell you about a phone call I had just yesterday. I had a New South Wales truckie call me. This man was looking for a job. He admires the way our office runs and he wanted a job. He’s a truckie. I’ve met him in the past. He’s a wonderful man with a wonderful family. He’s on the Central Coast of New South Wales. He helped out during the fires. It cost him a lot of money to help out during the fires of 2019. He stood up to the COVID injection mandates in 2021. He’s a really decent person, who was making sure that he stood up because the COVID injections killed his aunty. This is a man who’s got the same genetics as his aunty, and he knew that the COVID injections would kill him. As a result of the COVID mandates which Scott Morrison’s government put in place and drove, and as a result of the economic policies that Anthony Albanese’s government is driving, he lost his business, a vibrant business employing seven people. 

Let’s look at housing. As I’ve talked about many times in the Senate and outside, we have a critical shortage of houses in this country. How do you respond as a government? You jack up the bureaucracy. You call it a $10 billion investment in housing when we know that that is just the fund and it’s only the returns from that fund which will be invested in housing—a few hundred million dollars a year. But you’ve added three new bureaucracies. They build bugger-all. What we need to do in this country is to stop the castration of property rights and to free up land. We need to free up tradies from overregulation and get on with the job of letting our tradies build the houses. People can’t find rental homes at the moment. The vacancy rate is 0.7 per cent—a record low. There are no bloody houses. And there are foreigners who own a lot of our houses and lock them up. But, no, you don’t want to do anything about that either. You turn a blind eye to that. 

My mother was born in this country. My grandparents were born overseas. They were immigrants. My father was an immigrant. So I’m half immigrant and I’m proud of that. I’m proud of being Australian, but I’m ashamed that the people in this chamber and the people in this parliamentary building want Australians to suffer. When you’re in Queensland, one of the wealthiest places in the world, and you cannot get a house, so you sleep in a tent or in a car with your family, and you do it because they’re covering up a per capita recession, that is cruel and that is inhuman. It’s not just un-Australian. It is inhuman—the bureaucracy; the regulations; the United Nations World Economic Forum alliance; policies restricting land; big immigration policy; energy; inflation caused by the people in this chamber, the previous Morrison government and now the Anthony Albanese government; and energy prices. Our country is the largest exporter of hydrocarbon fuels in the world. When you add up our coal and our gas, we are the largest exporters of energy, but we can’t use it here. We drive up inflation. We drive up energy prices. We drive up housing costs, and then we see people living in the streets in tents in Queensland. 

We see that the Liberals and Nationals are waking up to this issue. Senator David Sharma last night mentioned housing and immigration. We’ve been talking about it for several years now. He also mentioned that we need to do something about bracket creep. Recently, the Liberals and Nationals had a perfect opportunity to vote for my amendment on tax changes that would have ended bracket creep. You said no. Instead, you’re going to help the Labor Party steal $38 billion in the next four years from Australians because of bracket creep. You both want bracket creep. That’s the truth. You say that you don’t want it but, when the time comes to have a vote, you don’t vote for ending bracket creep. You vote for bracket creep because that’s how you steal more money from Australians, just like you’re stealing their livelihoods and their accommodation. 

I proudly speak about people’s wants and needs. Australians have very simple wants and needs. They want security, they want a good Aussie lifestyle and they want a fair government that looks after them—not one that steals from them. They want people in this place and in the House of Representatives to put the national interest first —not to bring in 2,000 Gazan immigrants with just one hour of processing. 

Only One Nation wants to give Australians a say. Under Senator Hanson as our leader—we’re the only party with a female leader, I might add, and proudly so—we’ve had a policy of a citizen initiated referendum for 10 or so years or perhaps even more, because One Nation is about giving the people a voice. One Nation is about holding Labor-Greens coalitions and Liberal-National coalitions accountable. A plebiscite is very, very simple. There’s only one question in it: should we reduce immigration? What are you afraid of? Should we reduce immigration? Let’s hear from the people: yes or no. That’s all we want. We want to put the people first in this country. That’s what we’ve been doing and that’s what we will continue to do. That’s why we have our energy policies and our immigration policies. We want to stop the mess that is unfolding in this country. 

Australia used to have the highest per capita income in the world; that was 120 years ago. We’re now slipping below many other countries. We’re heading for 20th. Yet, according to the United Nations, we have the richest resources in the world. You and you are squandering those resources. You’re stealing from the Australian people and now you’re making sure that they don’t get a house and that they don’t get a rental. They’ll keep sleeping in parks. All Senator Hanson and I want is to put the people first, to serve the people and to give the people a say. Should we reduce immigration? It’s over to the people of Australia. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Allman-Payne): The question is that the bill be read a second time. 

The Senate divided. [10:03]  

(The Acting Deputy President—Senator Allman-Payne)  

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Labor Abandons its Roots

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The Labor Party’s famed light on the hill is now nothing more than the sun reflecting off solar panels, which we know are expensive, short lived and an environmental disaster – just like the Albanese Labour government. In a recent article in The Australian, Jenny George AO delivered a scathing assessment of the modern Labor Party, stating that “Labor today is not the party it once was. It has lost its moral direction.”Members of the Labor Party like Jenny George have not left the party – the party left them. Continuing in her own words – “The party that was formed to give political expression to the needs of working people has allowed the light on the hill to dim.” 

The duopoly of Labor and the Liberal-National Party, that Australians wearily switch between every few years, is no longer built on the foundations of what Labor and the LNP originally stood for. These establishment parties continue to take from working Australians to line the pockets of their billionaire mates at the World Economic Forum. 

One Nation is the only party that still stands for working Australians and will support all who’ve come to this country to lift themselves up through their own hard work and enterprise.

Transcript

On the weekend, former ACTU president and former Labor member of parliament Jennie George AO published an article in the Australian newspaper. It’s compulsory reading. Jennie clearly holds Labor’s light on the hill in her heart, and her words echo the sadness and grief of many Labor true believers. She said: ‘The party that was formed to give political expression to the needs of working people has allowed the light on the hill to dim.’ In a recent speech I remarked that in 2024 Labor’s famed light on the hill is now nothing more than the sun reflecting off solar panels, which we know are expensive, short-lived and an environmental disaster—just like the Albanese Labor government. 

Jennie George’s judgement of the modern ALP is savage. She says: ‘Labor today is not the party it was; it has lost its moral compass.’ Ouch! Labor Party members like Jennie have not left the party; the party left them. The Overton window is a metaphor for the acceptable range of ideas and policies in which many politicians think they can act. Through it, such politicians see the middle ground of Australian politics. Under successive Labor-Greens and Liberals-Nationals governments, the Overton window has moved so far to the left and to the autocratic—that it no longer provides for everyday Australians. We’re losing wealth, spending power, access to housing, democracy and enjoyment of the riches our country has to offer. Establishment parties continue to take from working Australians to line the pockets of their millionaire and billionaire mates at the World Economic Forum. 

One Nation is the only party that still stands for working Australians and for all who have come here to lift themselves up through their own hard work and enterprise. Our One Nation policies will make the lives of working Australians easier. Jennie George’s words embolden old Labor to take back their party and excise from its ranks those who wear the mark of the World Economic Forum. Restore the ascendancy of our parliament, and return power to the people we are supposed to serve. 

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Labor’s High Immigration is a Crisis in the Making

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On Thursday, I asked simple straightforward questions of the Government regarding Labor’s record high immigration levels, which have contributed to a housing shortage crisis, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe. I had hoped for Minister Watt to acknowledge that the Government recognizes the disastrous impact its policies have had on everyday Australians.

The Minister’s four minutes of waffle and deflection only underscores that the Albanese Government has no intention of reducing immigration.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Watt. Australia is experiencing the largest immigration intake on record. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that 518,000 net overseas migrants arrived last year and 55,375 migrants arrived in January this year alone—55,375 migrants in one month. That’s 40 per cent higher than the previous January record way back in 2009. Minister, how many migrants is this government going to let in this year? 

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management): Thank you, Senator Roberts. The first thing I’d like to say is that the Albanese government is very proud of the multicultural nature of the Australian population. I heard you earlier today in another debate, Senator Roberts, acknowledge that your own family has a fairly recent history of migration, and I think we should all recognise the very valuable contribution that migrants have played, and continue to play, in Australia. Having said that, we do acknowledge that there has been an increase in migration to Australia, particularly as a result of the pause to migration that occurred through the pandemic. The figures that have come out today are entirely expected and are consistent with the forecasts for net overseas migration that we set out in the mid-year budget review at the end of last year. 

Migration levels are expected to have peaked in 2022-23 and are forecast to drop in half by next year. Our government is doing the hard work—not done under the former government—to bring migration back to sustainable levels, after all comparable countries also experienced a surge post the pandemic. The changes that we made late last year are having a significant and immediate impact. For example, student visa grants are down more than 35 per cent on last year’s level, and I know for a fact that Minister O’Neil, Minister Clare and Minister O’Connor have been working very hard on trying to tackle some of the rorts that were left behind in the international student visa system. That is having results in terms of bringing those student visa grants down by more than 35 per cent on last year’s level. 

The data that has been released today doesn’t take into account the very substantial actions that our government has taken to bring down net overseas migration, and that’s because most of those actions were implemented mid to late last year. But we recognise that this as an issue for Australians, and we’re taking action to deal with it. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: With people in Queensland, including working families with real jobs, now living in tents, in caravans, in parks, in cars and under bridges, there is a human catastrophe unfolding in this country in our state. Will you suspend further immigration until everyone who is here now has a bed to sleep in with a roof over their head? 

Senator WATT: Thanks, Senator Roberts. I absolutely acknowledge that our country has a housing shortage. We have acknowledged that since the day that we were elected and had to deal with the massive housing shortage and housing affordability crisis that was left behind by the former government. That is exactly why we have been presenting a range of options to this parliament to deal with housing shortages, including the creation of the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. Senator Roberts, for someone who says that we should have more housing to deal with this, I’m surprised that you and Senator Hanson voted against the Housing Australia Future Fund. In fact, I was reminded that Senator Hanson, in the last 24 hours or so, has described the Housing Australia Future Fund as ‘useless’. You continue to argue that we need more housing, just as the coalition argues for more housing, but when you have an opportunity to do something about it, what do you do? You vote no. We know that you’re intending to vote no to the help to buy legislation as well, so be consistent. If you want more housing, vote for it. (Time expired) 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a second supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, is immigration too high? 

Senator WATT: Thanks, Senator Roberts. The government is already taking action to try to deal with the increase in migration that we experienced after the pandemic and just as all other comparable nations experienced after the pandemic. That’s why we’ve made changes to student visa grants. They are down by more than 35 per cent on last year’s level—the settings that were left behind by the former government. That’s why we’ve taken a range of other actions to fix the utterly broken migration system that was left behind by Mr Dutton, the former home affairs minister. Yet again we’re fixing up the former government’s mess while at the same time we’re trying to build homes, even though we are obstructed every step of the way by the coalition, One Nation and, all too often, the Greens party. 

Senator Rennick: They want home ownership. 

Senator WATT: I heard an interjection that people don’t want public housing, they want home ownership. Firstly, they do want public housing; and, secondly, home ownership is exactly what we’re trying to do through our help to buy scheme. It’s in the name—help to buy. 

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Replace Health Pharmacrats With People-First Health Care

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One thing that has come out of the COVID response is how it’s exposed the pharmaceutical industry to more scrutiny from the public than ever before. More questions have been raised about the Therapeutic Goods Authority (TGA) and our Health Pharmacrats than ever before. Yet, what is the alternative?

In this parliamentary speech, I put it on record that we must look at the influence of pharmaceutical companies on the education system for medical professionals, and the relationships between pharma giants and former health department executives. The toxic, inhuman killer ‘pharmaceutical only’ model is failing Australian taxpayers. People are dying needlessly.

As an example, Albicidin is a natural antibiotic with clear potential to become our leading antimicrobial. It’s proven to not create resistance. Albicidin could be, and most likely is the answer to antimicrobial resistance. There are many others, but they don’t get patented. They don’t receive sponsorship and therefore they don’t get approved.

It’s time for an entirely new medical paradigm. One that puts humans first, not big pharma.

Antimicrobial resistance is the new climate change, allowing for control over agriculture, medicine and household and industrial cleaning, in the name of reducing use of antimicrobials. That’s why an alternative solution, using an antimicrobial that doesn’t cause antimicrobial resistance, is being ignored and quietly buried. It’s to protect globalist profits and to control people – and to hell with human and animal health and safety!

Globalists WANT control. Globalists NEED control to complete their agenda.

Australia needs a customer consumer advocate, or natural product advocate, to advance natural products that can’t be patented, yet are safe and effective treatments — products to be listed under Schedule 4 and offered under the PBS as frontline medicines. Not watered down products sold in supermarkets as complementary medicines so that their efficacy can plausibly be dismissed.

Instead of advancing people-first health care, our Pharmacrats are actively promoting mRNA vaccines and medications to the commercial benefit of big pharma. This is caused by “the patent cliff”, which refers to the expiration of patents on popular drugs, leading pharmaceutical companies to face intense competition from generic drug makers, dramatically reducing their profits. The new mRNA technology allows big pharma to replace off-patent drugs with newly patented mRNA drugs at prices that guarantee their profits for the next 30 years. Our health authorities are actively promoting this solution to the patent cliff, despite the myriad of adverse health outcomes from the mRNA vaccines.

Why? These are important matters that can only be answered by a Royal Commission.

What should not wait for a Royal Commission is a system to incorporate affordable, natural remedies into our health approval process. This could be implemented immediately if the Pharmacrats were interested in providing people-first health care.

Transcript

Where’s the scrutiny on our health authorities? During COVID, drugs were rushed through that would never have been approved on safety and efficacy grounds, such as molnupiravir and remdesivir. Last year, these two inhuman pharmaceuticals cost taxpayers $1 billion. Alternatively, tried and tested drugs that are out of patent could have been used for a fraction of the price. Remember that our authorities and the mouthpiece media called ivermectin ‘horse paste’. The statist Left rushed to demonise anyone who defended ivermectin, because the control side of politics—the so-called Left—loves to follow orders. Ivermectin is a Nobel-Prize-winning antiviral for humans. Over 40 years, it has saved millions of lives. Around the world, it’s now been proven safe and effective as an early-stage treatment for COVID, as it always was.

Our health authorities demonised ivermectin to prevent early-stage treatment of COVID in order to build demand for an untested novel mRNA vaccine. How many died because of the long-term strategy that our health authorities followed and pushed—a strategy to use COVID as a cover to introduce a class of mRNA drugs that the public would have rightly baulked at and rejected? How many died from the side effects of mRNA technology—technology that was not tested in Australia and was not tested off the production line, for which the method of production was changed after overseas testing and approval and the fake trials were at best shambolic and at worst criminally negligent?

Why would our health authorities tolerate this? Simply because of a thing called the patent cliff. Pharmaceutical companies are profitable because they develop a new drug and then get a patent, exclusive sale of the drug for 25 years. Drug companies can afford to put that drug through the approval process because once it’s approved they add the approval cost to the selling price—kerching, kerching!

The system of drug patents has created a $2 trillion industry whose tentacles of influence extend to political parties, who happily accept donations, and to health authorities. Their tentacles extend to the USFDA and Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health, who hold patents on drug processes they license to big pharma in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in personal royalties. Their tentacles extend to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, whose young global leaders sit in this parliament.

This is influence that our healthy authorities cultivate while coveting lucrative careers in the pharmaceutical industry. For example, just eight months after approving Pfizer’s untested COVID injections, Professor John Skerritt, former head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA, is now on the board of the pharmaceutical industry lobby group Medicines Australia. This isn’t the normal operation of a free-enterprise system that One Nation would support; this is a cabal of greedy, unprincipled, evil individuals treating everyday citizens as cash cows. They want everything you have for themselves, including your health.

The patent cliff is upon us. There’s increasing urgency—desperation—in the measures being rammed through government. Two-thirds of the revenue is from drugs being sold to you that are out of patent now or will go out of patent over the next five years. That threatens big pharma’s harvesting of humans for profit. Modern drugs, once out of patent, can be made for cents per tablet. India specialises in that. Australia used to, and we can do it again. The patent cliff threatens the entire pharmaceutical industry and stops the ability of chemical pharmaceuticals to do better than they do now, in terms of profit.

From where are the new patents going to come? I’m glad you asked, Mr Acting Deputy President: from mRNA of course. There are 400 new mRNA vaccines and drugs currently under development. Such is the expected volume of these things that two manufacturing plants are being prepared here in Australia. Our health authorities decided to press ahead with mRNA technology to save the pharmaceutical status quo—the pharmaceutical gouging of people to extract exorbitant profits. Patient harm apparently no longer matters.

Last week, a study of 99 million COVID-jab users, including in New South Wales and Victoria, found the product was not safe. The study was published by Elsevier, for more than 140 years the world’s leading scientific publisher and data analytics company. The study showed the following conditions were occurring above baseline levels: brain and spinal cord swelling, up 380 per cent; blood clots, up 320 per cent; Guillain-Barre syndrome, up 250 per cent; and myocarditis, up 278 per cent for Moderna and up 350 per cent for Pfizer. After a second injection, myocarditis was up a damning 610 per cent and pericarditis was up 690 per cent. I told you so four years ago. Many good people warned that COVID products were not tested, that they were experimental, and that forcing them on the general population was an insane, inhuman abuse of government power. Now look at those figures. It’s another area for a royal commission to investigate.

It’s time for an entirely new medical paradigm in this country and throughout the West. Pharmaceutical companies are embracing mRNA as their saviour because it can be patented. They can charge whatever they want for it, and compliant health bureaucrats like our TGA, acting out of self-interest, protect pharmaceutical companies from financial harm. The expert medical advice the TGA relies on comes either directly from drug companies or from advisers who have worked for big pharma, who have accepted research grants or sponsorship from big pharma, or who covet doing so in the future. After all, $29-million Sydney harbourside mansions don’t just buy themselves.

These are things that make for a royal commission. One thing that should not wait for a royal commission is a system for getting cheap, natural remedies into our health approval system. Australia needs an office of the consumer advocate to oversee complaints and the harm bureaucrats cause—bureaucrats who appear incapable of acknowledging odious and obvious adverse events. We need a customer consumer advocate or a natural product advocate to advance natural products that can’t be patented but are safe and effective treatments—products to be listed under schedule 4 and offered under the PBS as frontline medicines, not watered down and sold in supermarkets as complementary medicines so their efficacy can be dismissed. Albicidin, for example, is a natural antibiotic with clear potential to become our leading antimicrobial. It’s proven to not create resistance. Albicidin could be the answer, and highly likely is the answer to antimicrobial resistance.

Antimicrobial resistance is the new climate change, allowing for control over agricultural, medicine, and household and industrial cleaning in the name of reducing use of antimicrobials. That’s why an alternative solution, using an antimicrobial that doesn’t cause antimicrobial resistance, is being ignored and quietly buried: to protect globalist profits and to control people—and to hell with human and animal health and safety! Globalists want control. Globalists need control to complete their agenda.

Take another example: blushwood is an Australian native berry. It was shown, in a 2014 test, to kill skin cancer in just 10 days. Did our health authorities rush to understand this plant and bring a potentially lifesaving medication to market? No; they did not. Another one: conolidine is a natural treatment for severe pain. Ignored! Natural remedies include cannabis. Senator Pauline Hanson has led way, advocating for medicinal cannabis since 1996. I joined her, and now there are others.

A recent paper pointed out that natural products work differently to chemical products, yet our system for understanding and testing substance efficacy is geared to chemical drugs. The paper and system offer a new way of measuring efficacy that confirms plants like cannabis and conolidine do work, and explains how they work. The truth is this: currently only when a product is patented and presented as the TGA on a plate, ready for the TGA’s rubberstamp, does it enter our pharmaceutical system. I urge the Minister for Health and Aged Care to introduce a consumer natural products advocate to provide much needed supervision and accountability over our health authorities. Failing that, I ask the Greens to consider if the agency they’re establishing with the Legalising Cannabis Bill would be better suited to handle natural medications in general—those that the TGA refuse to handle in addition to cannabis.

I’m not offering medical advice on the examples I’ve used in this speech; I’m asking why the health department and medical schools first response is to the scalpel and the prescription pad instead of natural medications that cost a fraction of the price. We must have an independent office in the TGA with the budget to sponsor natural alternatives through the safety, testing and efficacy stages, and to have these promoted to doctors who most likely have never even heard of them.

We must look at the influence of pharmaceutical companies in the education system for medical people, in their relationship with former health department executives and their influence through advertising and sponsorship. The toxic inhuman killer ‘pharmaceutical only’ model is failing Australian taxpayers. People are dying needlessly. Stop so-called health authorities committing homicide, child homicide, infanticide. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I say call a royal commission now and make an immediate start on the obvious reforms to our health administration that we need.

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Queensland Supreme Court Rules Against ‘Vaccine’ Mandates

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Many Australians have lost trust in governments at both state and federal levels, and we’ve lost trust in health authorities. Last parliament the Select Committee on COVID-19 stated ‘a royal commission be established to examine Australia’s response to the COVID-19’. That was two years ago. During his election campaign, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised the Australian people a COVID Royal Commission. He and Minister Gallagher, who chaired the committee, have both broken their promises.

The Government has clearly chosen to cover-up for the failure of our health authorities to apply human rights to our COVID measures. A genuine party of the worker would be protecting workers against the billionaires who profited from COVID.

The Albanese government must restore trust and commit to a royal commission now. The royal commission could easily commence as soon as the current Senate’s inquiry into appropriate terms of reference defines those terms — an inquiry One Nation secured. I promised to hound those responsible down and I will keep that promise.

Transcript

Today the Queensland Supreme Court ruled vaccine mandates for Queensland’s emergency services workers to be unlawful. What a victory for the Australian people! It’s a victory that reaffirms the need for a full royal commission into Australia’s response to COVID. Everyday Australians have lost trust in governments at both state and federal levels, and we’ve lost trust in health authorities. Recommendation 17 of the report of the Select Committee on COVID-19 stated ‘a royal commission be established to examine Australia’s response to the COVID-19’. That was two years ago.

During his election campaign Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised the Australian people to hold a COVID royal commission. He and Minister Gallagher, who chaired the committee, have both broken their promises. Appearing to have something to hide looks terrible for the government. It is terrible for the government. The public realise that our Prime Minister and his administration cannot be trusted to keep their word.

Today’s Queensland Supreme Court ruling is encouraging for everyday Australians who’ve lost their source of income. Businesses were forced to lay off their staff unless they complied with the draconian policies, and many industries are still suffering the consequences of having to fire unvaccinated staff. Our nurses, teachers, police, firefighters and paramedics, along with other Australians, deserve to know where things went wrong and why the government turned against them. One simple green tick was the difference in being able to attend school, go to work, move around, socialise and exercise—one green tick that took our rights to freedom, life, privacy and movement.

The Prime Minister must now realise that, if he takes these things from the people, trust goes with them. The Albanese government must restore trust and commit to a royal commission now, to commence as soon as the current inquiry into appropriate terms of reference defines those terms.

The Queensland Supreme Court said there was an abuse of process and that they did not consider the loss of human rights fundamental to Australian democracy. 

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Bracket Creep is a Stealth Tax

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Both Labor and the Coalition voted to collect billions of extra income tax dollars because they need more money. Yet foreign multinational corporations in Australia are paying little or no company tax.

Bracket creep is a secret tax that means government makes money out of inflation. The government is not indexing the tax brackets to fix bracket creep meaning Australians will collectively pay $38 billion extra in tax over the next four years.

I moved an amendment that would eliminate bracket creep by indexing the tax thresholds. This means the inflation rates would be adjusted for inflation so Australian’s pay the same rate of tax instead of continuing to pay more which is the current situation the government is failing to address.

Instead of giving tens of billions of dollars back to Australians, both Liberal and Labor are happy to keep secretly collecting more and more tax, and by their own admission, they’ll only ever give it back when they can afford to. When can we expect that to occur, considering the current government’s focus is on funding UN climate goals and inflationary COVID debts?

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, do you agree bracket creep is a problem for taxpayers in Australia? 

Senator GALLAGHER: I think all governments recognise bracket creep is an issue. That’s why governments of both major parties return bracket creep when it’s affordable and sustainable to do so. You’ll notice that, in the reforms to the tax proposal that was outlined by the former government, this does that by lowering the two thresholds and dropping the two tax rates; sorry, I’m getting back into tax land! That’s how we’re dealing with bracket creep. It provides relief, and 84 per cent of taxpayers will be getting a bigger income tax cut than they would have under the former government and paying less tax. By 2034-35, someone earning an average income will pay $21,635 less tax than they otherwise would have without these tax cuts. 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, you said you return bracket creep when it suits you and when you can afford it. Doesn’t that mean that you’re taking money off taxpayers, and that it’s really a stealth tax because taxpayers don’t know they’re moving into a higher tax bracket? Bracket creep is when the brackets stay the same but people’s wages inflate and they move into a higher tax bracket—so they automatically pay a far higher rate of tax in the next bracket and they don’t even know it. Isn’t that tax by stealth? 

Senator GALLAGHER: No, I don’t agree with that. I think Australians understand marginal tax rates and the interaction between their earnings and those tax rates. I would say again that’s why, regularly, tax cuts are provided to taxpayers—to deal with bracket creep and provide other assistance where that’s possible, where it’s affordable and sustainable to do so. I say that not to say ‘when we choose to’ or ‘when we feel like it’ but because we have to manage a budget responsibly as well. People expect that because taxes pay for all the services that people consume and expect to receive from their government. 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, I remind you, before asking my next question, that former deputy commissioner of taxation Jim Killaly, who was in charge of large companies and also international matters for the Australian Taxation Office, said back in 1996 and 2010 that 90 per cent of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and have paid little or no tax since 1953, due to Liberal legislation that was passed in 1953 letting major foreign owned corporations off the hook. Bob Hawke made sure that the Labor Party was also giving gifts to major foreign corporations by letting the world’s largest avoider of tax, Chevron, off the hook for tax in the North West Shelf. Surely the fix to bracket creep is to index brackets. If we’d done that 10 years ago we would have saved the people $44 billion in tax. You say, ‘Where can we get the tax from?’ I get that tax is the cost of government, that tax is the price of government and that tax has to be paid, but foreign corporations in this country are paying little or no company tax. That means they’re using our services that every mum and dad and family and small business is paying for in this country, and they’re doing it for free. We used to be the world’s largest exporters of gas, we get very little for it, and these foreign companies are sending it overseas. Japan gets $3 billion a year off import duty for our gas going into their country, and we get very little for it. So what I say to you is that we can’t afford it because you’re not taxing foreign multinationals adequately. You’re letting them off the hook. Because you didn’t index brackets in this attempt, over the next four years Australians will pay $38 billion more tax than if you indexed brackets. Surely, you can look at the spending and cut some of that back. Surely, you can look at the taxation of foreign multinationals and make sure they start paying their fair share. Then let Australian families off the bracket-creep hook. Why can’t you do that proper budget for the Australians? 

Senator GALLAGHER: There was a lot in that, Senator Roberts. I think your final question was around budget management, and the work we have done in the last or two budgets and MYEFO has been to repair the budget. The deficits are a lot less, going forward. We’ve had a surplus budget, we’ve lowered our debt, we’ve contained spending despite the pressures the budget is under, and where we’ve had revenue windfalls we have returned the vast majority of it— over 80 per cent, 88 per cent I think—to the budget to repair it. We do have to manage the budget responsibly and we’ve been able to do that and provide bigger tax cuts to more Australians. On your point about multinational tax reform, I don’t necessarily agree with all of it because I haven’t been able to verify some of the things you’ve said. We agree that we should be making multinationals pay their fair share of tax—we’ve got a bill before the parliament on that, we’ve got a bill on PRRT and we’ve got a bill on high-balance super, and that is about making sure we are putting the budget on a sustainable footing, that we’re able to pay for defence, aged care, hospitals, the interest on our debt and the NDIS, and that we are able to pay for those services that people expect. But this plan does deal with bracket creep, so I don’t accept the position that you put saying we don’t. That’s part of the reason why we’re doing it. The Treasury advice there is very clear. Our plan provides better protection against bracket creep for 70 per cent of all taxpayers over the decade, including the average taxpayer and those on low and middle incomes. 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, how can you say it fixes bracket creep when over the next four years Australians—families and individuals—will be paying an extra $38 billion due to bracket creep? You are not indexing the brackets themselves; you’re just making a one-off adjustment. As soon as that happens, with inflation continuing, you will continue to increase revenues. Inflation hits families in two ways: first of all, goods and services cost more; second of all, they move into a higher tax bracket and they pay more tax. They actually end up with less take-home pay. So I don’t buy your argument. Why doesn’t Labor want to fix bracket creep? 

Senator GALLAGHER: I think we’re just agreeing to disagree, Senator Roberts. This plan does deal with bracket creep by reducing two tax rates and increasing two tax thresholds. It does deal with bracket creep. In particular, as I said in my previous answer, for average taxpayers—those on the average wage, and low- and middle-income earners—this substantially improves the money they get back in their pockets, and returns that bracket creep. But you disagree with me—I will keep making that point and, presumably, you will keep making yours. 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, you cannot argue with the fact that someone who is just below the next tax threshold will soon be paying higher tax because of inflation. That is a fact. The only way to beat that is to index the tax thresholds. As to supporting my amendment, it shows you do not want to stop rampant increases in tax or you want to keep bracket creep to exploit taxpayers. Why don’t you want to fix bracket creep properly by indexing it so that brackets rise as inflation rises and wages rise, so people stay within the same bracket and there is no creep? Why don’t you want to fix bracket creep? 

Senator GALLAGHER: The tax rates haven’t been indexed, that’s right. I understand your amendment seeks to do that. I don’t think you’ve moved your amendment, but I may as well cover off. We are not supporting your amendment. The approach in this bill is preferable to your amendment because it provides governments—I’m talking about not our government but all governments; this is the way it’s been done—with greater flexibility to respond to fluctuations in the economic cycle. This proposal does deal with bracket creep. It does return money to taxpayers. I don’t know where you get your $38 billion figure from over the forward estimates, but I think your point there is that there will be—that’s assuming, wherever that number comes from, that there will be no change to tax rates in that. History will show that governments have made decisions to implement tax cuts where it’s affordable and sustainable to do so on the budget, and I expect governments of both political persuasions will continue to take that approach. 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, in my view, I don’t think you’re being honest with the people of Australia, because bracket creep is a stealth tax. Inflation helps your tax revenue. How many pages are in our tax act? 

Senator GALLAGHER: We might have to take that on notice. I’m just seeing if we can provide you with an accurate answer, but it’s quite detailed and there are obviously pages that underpin the tax act as well. I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that accurately tonight, but we’ll see what we can do. 

Senator Scarr: To the nearest ten thousand! 

Senator GALLAGHER: I was going to say: it’s a lot! 

Senator ROBERTS: To the nearest thousand would be fine, thanks, Minister. The point I’m trying to make is that we already have a very complex tax system, which is confusing for small businesses and confusing for people who don’t have access to lawyers and deep pockets. It’s confusing for individuals and families. We always support returning more money to taxpayers, and $15 a week is a lot of money to many people. In the overall scheme of things, it’s not very much. In a few years, you’ll be recovering far more. Is there any plan to actually reform taxation properly, to do a comprehensive reform so that the tax system becomes simple, clear, effective, efficient, fair and honest? Is there any stomach within the Labor Party to be honest with the people of Australia and really reform taxation comprehensively? 

Senator GALLAGHER: I think the government’s been clear about what our tax changes are. They are the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024, the bills I referred to before on high-balance super accounts, multinational tax reform, PRRT—they are the government’s tax plans. Am I missing one? 

Senator Hume: Negative gearing! 

Senator GALLAGHER: I don’t accept that interjection. That is the government’s tax agenda going forward. 

Senator ROBERTS: I move Pauline Hanson’s One Nation amendment (1) on sheet 2342. 

Senator HUME: For the benefit of the chamber, I just want to inform you that the opposition is going to oppose this amendment, Senator Roberts. We won’t be supporting it, because the stage 3 tax cuts were originally designed to address bracket creep but do it in a very structural, costed and fiscally responsible way. While this measure would address bracket creep, you’re absolutely right that the fiscal cost of this change isn’t known, and that’s why we couldn’t support it at this stage. The Prime Minister’s broken promise means that delivering the stage 3 tax reforms as they had been legislated originally is now impossible, but the coalition remains committed to fighting bracket creep and to enshrining aspiration, because strong leaders keep their promises, even when it’s hard to do so. 

Senator GALLAGHER: I made some comments previously, but we will also be opposing this amendment. The bill before the chamber does deal with bracket creep. It delivers tax cuts for 13.6 million Australians. It’s carefully calibrated to provide more cost-of-living relief. I know that Senator Roberts said that it was $15. I think that figure he is using is the extra that people will get. Those people will get $15 extra on top of the tax cuts they otherwise would have got, and, for many people, that is a substantial amount of money. We recognise there are other things to do on the cost of living. That’s why our other measures are being put in place. But in terms of your amendment, we oppose it. We think the way we’re approaching it in this bill is preferable, and it’s the way it has been done in the past. It gives government the flexibility to make those decisions when it’s affordable to return bracket creep in a way that can maximise those returns. 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, I want to take you back briefly to a previous answer you gave when you implied the surplus—which is correct in the budget. The surplus has only been around for two years because of the strength of our agricultural production and our coal and iron ore exports. That’s the only reason. What we’re seeing is a country that is at the mercy of international prices for its major primary products. If something happens, then we have to rely upon bracket creep to pull us out of the mess, and that’s not fair to Australian families and individuals. 

Senator GALLAGHER: I accept that our export industry and our resources certainly contribute to our tax revenue through company tax receipts and others, but the strength of the revenue upgrades has also been improved and strengthened by the strength of our labour market. We’ve had many more people in jobs earning money and therefore paying tax than we have previously. Unemployment is at a record low; participation is at a record high. It’s kicking up a bit now, but that has contributed significantly to the improved position of the budget. Yes, we acknowledge that. Part of that has allowed us to pay debt down so that we’re not paying as much into the future and generations of the future are not paying those interest costs—the fastest-growing cost on the budget is managing the interest costs on our debt— and it’s allowing us to deal with all of those areas of pressure that we talk about all the time in here: the NDIS, aged care, hospitals and defence. They are all big costs coming at the budget, and we do have to manage it in a responsible way. 

Senator ROBERTS: I’m not pretending to say it’s easy. It’s complex, but it’s excessively complex. You’re addressing the need for increasing tax revenues for the extra expenditure, including interest payments, but what you’re not saying is that a lot of that money is coming from individuals through immigration, which is putting enormous pressure on house prices and inflation. That’s a real impediment to people looking for houses right now. We’ve got people in Queensland sleeping in tents in showgrounds in Gladstone, in parks in Bundaberg, in parks and on the banks of the river in Brisbane and in Ipswich, Logan and Townsville. I think we’re making a rod for our own back. When are we going to see comprehensive tax reform to take the load off individuals and put it onto large corporations so they start paying their fair share? 

Senator GALLAGHER: Well, I’ve outlined that we do have a bill around multinational tax reform to ensure that those big multinational companies are paying their fair share of tax. I think if you talk to many domestic companies they’ll say they’re paying their fair share of tax right now. People have a view about that, I guess. Individuals do contribute substantially to the Commonwealth budget through income tax. We need to generate revenue in order to pay for services. On your point around population and housing, obviously you can’t do everything through tax cuts, and that’s why all those initiatives we’ve got in housing are so important and why we want the chamber to support the latest part of our housing initiatives, which is Build to Rent. We’ve got a full suite of programs. We acknowledge that supply is the problem, and the Commonwealth is right in there with our sleeves rolled up, working with states and territories, to do whatever we can to generate more supply. Also, as you know, some of the changes we’ve made to the migration system have ensured that those net overseas migration numbers that we’ve seen rise post-COVID are coming back down to our more traditional rates. 

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