Malcolm’s Official Speeches in Parliament

Right now, the Prime Minister has the authority and sole discretion to decide how many advisers each senator receives—an authority he’s used to punish those who challenge him.

Advisers are vital for researching and scrutinising legislation, engaging with constituents, and holding the government accountable. Cutting staff for senators who oppose him does not pass the pub test. It’s not just unfair—it’s undemocratic. What is the Prime Minister afraid of? Is it scrutiny, truth, or the rise of One Nation? His actions show he fears accountability and seeks to silence those who stand up to him.

The staffing decisions reveal a disturbing pattern. Senators who vote with Labor—David Pocock, Tammy Tyrrell, Lidia Thorpe, Jacqui Lambie—kept all their advisers. Those who challenge Labor—Senator Ralph Babet and One Nation senators—had their staff cut in half. Senator Fatima Payman, who resigned from Labor, had no advisers before or after the election. Queensland, which I proudly represent, has ten times Tasmania’s population and a vastly larger economy, yet Tasmanian senators receive more than double the staff. This inequity across states is blatant and raises serious concerns about bias, discrimination and political bastardry. The Prime Minister’s refusal to meet with Senator Hanson and me together, his lack of consultation, and his disregard for administrative law and workplace safety standards show a pattern of vindictive, chaotic governance.

This bill is a practical, fair solution supported by Senator Payman, Senator Babet, the Liberals and One Nation. It sets minimum standards for staffing while preserving the Prime Minister’s discretion to allocate more. It ensures that support for senators is not subject to political whim.

Previous Liberal PMs treated all senators fairly—PM Albanese does not. He promised transparency and fairness, but his actions betray those values.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support this bill to restore fairness, integrity and justice to allocation of staff in crossbench senators’ offices, to protect accountability in parliament and to guard democracy. The Prime Minister currently has the authority and sole discretion to determine the number of parliamentary advisers to crossbench senators. 

Here’s how he allocated staff in the previous parliament, and then after the recent election. Firstly, the crossbench senators who largely vote with Labor. David Pocock had two advisers before the election. After the election, it was unchanged—two advisers. Tammy Tyrrell had two advisers before the election. After the election, it was unchanged—two advisers. Lidia Thorpe had two advisers before the election. After the election, it was unchanged—two advisers. Jacqui Lambie had three advisers before the election—three! After the election, it was unchanged—three advisers. 

Secondly, let’s move on to the crossbench senators who often oppose Labor in the Senate. Senator Ralph Babet had two advisers before the election. After the election, it was cut in half, to one adviser—one! One Nation senators had two advisers each before the election. After the election, on average, it was cut in half, to one adviser each—one! 

Thirdly, crossbench senator Fatima Payman, who resigned from Labor in the last term, embarrassing the Prime Minister and the Labor Party, had zero advisers before the election—nil! After the election, she had zero advisers—nil, none! 

Next, consider this: the Prime Minister sacked both of my advisers. He bypassed me, their employer. The parliamentary adviser’s duty, the personal adviser, is to assist senators with researching proposed legislation, assist senators in writing speeches, advise on parliamentary tactics, help prepare questions for Senate estimates hearings, be the first point of contact for community groups, and deputise for the senator in meetings when the senator is engaged in the chamber or elsewhere in the state. The Prime Minister radically gutted the staffing of those senators who hold the Labor Party accountable. This does not pass the pub test, nor any test for fairness, integrity or justice.  

When the Prime Minister cuts the staffing of those senators who take positions opposing his, he has an obvious conflict of interest. The incentive for the Prime Minister is to cut the resources of his political opponents, seeking to take political advantage and to cut us off at the legs. Reducing the number of support staff for a senator effectively reduces the ability of a senator to function on behalf of the electorate and provide an effective opposition, a foundation of our Westminster system of democratic government. This is an abuse of taxpayer funds and of the nation’s top political office—that of Prime Minister—to cripple senators with the courage to hold the Prime Minister’s government accountable and to reward those senators who support the Prime Minister’s agenda. This Prime Minister seems to forget that parliament does not serve him. He serves the people through the democratically elected parliament. 

The state I proudly represent, Queensland, has 5.7 million people. Tasmania has 575,000. The state I represent has around 10 times the number of constituents as Tasmania. Queensland is 25 times larger in area that Tasmania. Queensland has more diverse regions and climates and a much larger and more diverse economy. Queensland’s gross state product is 12 times larger than Tasmania’s. Yet the Prime Minister allocates more than twice the number of advisers to each Tasmanian crossbench senator than to each Queensland crossbench senator. Senator Whitten’s state of Western Australia has an area almost 40 times that of Tasmania. He has to get around that. The state of New South Wales has a population 14 times that of Tasmania’s. The disparity between our states and the Australian Capital Territory, with its tiny population, are even more striking than with Tasmania. 

This treatment of different Senate offices is inequitable and raises issues of bias, discrimination and political bastardry. This clearly shows the Prime Minister to be incapable of fairness and clearly displays his vindictiveness, incompetence and biased behaviour. Is he aiming to cripple One Nation after we received a huge increase in votes, doubled our members in parliament and came close to having a total of seven senators elected? One of our candidates for the House of Representatives achieved two-party preferred status and came close to being elected. Is the Prime Minister afraid of One Nation’s rise? Perhaps the Prime Minister is sensitive to criticism or to being held accountable. He reportedly found $886,000 of taxpayer money to splash on refurbishing the new Greens party room, his partners in the government’s communist coalition. By the way, the journalist who exposed this news was banned from parliament for a week. Of what is the Prime Minister afraid? 

Further, after his gutting of our staff, the Prime Minister and his chief of staff refused to meet with Senator Hanson and me together. He insisted that he and his chief of staff would meet with only one of us. In my subsequent meeting with the Prime Minister and his chief of staff, I raised three main issues: the unfairness of the Prime Minister’s staffing allocation; that the Prime Minister’s actions breached recognised processes expected under administrative law provisions; and that the Prime Minister was imposing needless stress on staff who are already working hard in the taxpayers’ interest. 

Let’s next consider the process the Prime Minister chose to follow. On 23 June 2025, Prime Minister Albanese notified Senator Pauline Hanson of his decision to slash half the parliamentary staff allocation for each One Nation senator, from two each to one each. In doing this, he had exercised a discretion authorised under sections 4(1), 11(3) and 12 of the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act, the MOPS Act. In determining these allocations of parliamentary advisers and implementing these notices of allocation, the Prime Minister breached important provisions of administrative law, which is defined in common law as decisions from courts, including the High Court. The breaches include that he gave no reasons for his decision; he had not consulted or sought input from any One Nation senator; he did not act in good faith; he did not act with a proper purpose; he had not considered relevant matters; he had not acted on reasonable grounds, given that One Nation had doubled its number of senators from two to four, with no increase in personal staff offered; he did not act based on supporting evidence; and he had not provided procedural fairness to affected persons, including personal parliamentary staff and senators. 

Senators and affected staff were given no opportunity to put their case to the Prime Minister before he made his decision to slash staff allocations. He or his office ordered the employment of my staff to be terminated before my staff were made aware—the only senator’s office in which that occurred. I was given 12 minutes notice to respond to a communications deadline late on a Friday evening, and I worked that night until 10.30 pm and did not check my emails—12 minutes notice to respond! The Prime Minister had not properly considered the merits of the decision. He has still not indicated that he had evaluated all relevant evidence. He had not acted reasonably or fairly, as senators were not allocated staff on the basis of need. Nor were senators treated evenly. Some senators had savage cuts made to their staff, while others had no cuts made at all. The Prime Minister did not inform senators that he had made a decision that affected them. Some senators found out via the media. 

Our Australian courts have clearly recognised that the exercise of administrative discretion, including the decision to reduce support for selected senators, must follow the procedural principles set out in Australian case law. The Prime Minister did not follow these principles. The process he stumbled through appears to be different for every crossbench senator. 

The decision also flies in the face of the recent Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet review of health risks to parliamentary staffers from workplace stress and excessive work demands that lead to workplace health and safety issues. A Parliamentary Workplace Support Service review into the resourcing of parliamentary staff concluded: 

Staffing levels overall are not adequate to meet all the parliamentary and electorate work demands placed on staff in some offices. 

This translates to the fact that personal staff are overworked and translates further to a workplace health and safety issue. 

The way in which the Prime Minister slashed some senators’ staffing and caused staff to be brutalised shows he does not care about workers. If the Prime Minister supports a fully functioning parliament and democracy and supports accountability, then he should ensure that members and senators are provided with reasonable resources, including qualified and professional advisers as personal staff. After securing re-election based on promises of transparency, the Prime Minister appears to have abused his position, disrespected Australian law and courts and jeopardised democracy for his political advantage. The Prime Minister shows he is incapable of fairness and competence. He will be more able and likely to hide with a reduced opposition. That hurts Australia. It hurts democracy. This is clearly a further example of the Prime Minister seeking control over democratic processes. 

I remind everyone that always beneath control there is fear. Why is he afraid of democratic scrutiny? Why is he afraid of losing the control that he covets? Why is the Prime Minister afraid of me? I’m not a big bloke. Is he afraid of my work as a crossbench minor party senator? Is he afraid of my passion for exposing the truth and serving constituents? Is he afraid of my teamwork with my staff, making us more effective as a team? Is that why he dismantled my team and stressed them needlessly? Is he, with just one year’s experience in the real world, afraid of my diverse practical experience, including underground coalface miner, vineyard labourer, engineer, mine and project manager, executive leadership consultant, and board director? Is he afraid of One Nation rising, or does he still have blind prejudice towards One Nation, as revealed in his adjournment speech of May 1998? Last week during question time in the House of Representatives, why did he try to ridicule me, a small-party crossbench senator? Doesn’t he realise that name-calling and labels are the refuge of the ignorant, the incompetent, the dishonest or the fearful and are signs of fear? 

Before the election, the Prime Minister promised transparency and fairness. His actions show why I take note of people’s actions, not their words. What’s important is what we can do, not who we can be. In other words, what we do matters; our title matters not. 

This new bill’s co-sponsors include Senator Payman, Senator Babet, the Liberals and One Nation—indicating a unity of support. Under this new bill, the government retains over 520 staff and access to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of departmental staff. The bill provides fair allocation of staff to government, opposition, Greens, other parties and crossbench senators. This bill is well considered, well written and fair. The bill offers career progression for crossbench staff. It nominates only minimum standards. The Prime Minister still has the freedom to allocate more and to exercise his discretion. 

We are all tired of partisan politics that threaten to destroy our country and our democracy. This bill will ensure that support for senators and for Australian democracy is not subject to the whims of a recalcitrant prime minister who puts his own needs ahead of the effective operation of this chamber. Both preceding Liberal prime ministers allocated equal numbers of personal advisers to each crossbench senator, showing that they both saw merit in fairness and in democracy. Prime Minister Albanese hides from, buries, prevents and kills democracy. 

One Nation welcomes the spirit with which many diverse senators approached this issue’s resolution in a united way. This bill is a sensible, practical and responsible solution to digging the Prime Minister out of the ridiculous and embarrassing hole he has dug for himself. All One Nation senators support this bill. I encourage all senators to support this bill. I say to all Australians: the ABC, and the media generally, won’t report this issue, so, if you’re concerned about the Prime Minister’s abuse of power and taxpayer money, please share it and spread it. Bringing back and restoring our country starts with the people driving parliamentary accountability. 

Labor’s decision to slash the withholding tax for foreign corporate landlords from 30% to just 15% is a slap in the face to everyday Australians. While families struggle to buy a home, Labor is rolling out the red carpet for global giants like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street—offering them tax breaks to build rental stack-and-pack apartments that Australians will never own.

Let’s call it what it is: build-to-rent is build-to-never-own. It’s designed to lock Australians into a lifetime of renting from foreign billionaires, while those same corporations pay less tax than the hardworking people they’re renting to.

One Nation has been warning about this for years. We believe in the Australian dream—owning your own home, not renting it forever from a global landlord.

We stand with Australians, not greedy foreign corporations and parasitic predators driving the World Economic Forum and the United Nations agenda.

Transcript

Senator Bragg’s disallowance seeks to throw a spanner in the works of the build-to-rent scheme. That’s a very good thing and One Nation will be wholeheartedly supporting it. Foreign corporations used to pay a 30 per cent withholding tax on housing investments like build to rent. Labor cut that in half, to 15 per cent.  

Let’s be clear: this Labor government said to foreign, corporate landlords like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard and first state, ‘We’ll cut the amount of tax you pay in half.’  

Forget the Australian dream of owning your own home. Labor’s dream is that you live in a stack-and-pack shoebox apartment paying rent to BlackRock forever, while those foreign corporations pay less tax than you do. That’s what build to rent means. 

Whenever you hear ‘build-to-rent’, remember ‘renting forever to a foreign corporation, a foreign corporate landlord and a foreign global wealth investment fund’. They’ll build homes, for sure, and Australians will never, ever own them—never. It’s built to rent forever. I’ll quote from the Economics Legislation Committee report into the Treasury Laws Amendment (Build to Rent) Bill 2024 and the provisions of the Capital Works (Build to Rent Misuse Tax) Bill 2024. The provisions of the bills include ‘reducing the final withholding tax rate on eligible fund payments—distributions of rental income and capital gains—from eligible managed investment trust investments from 30 per cent to 15 per cent, starting from 1 July 2024’. So there you go—a tax cut in half for those global, corporate, predatory investors, who own almost everything and are determined to own everything. I’ll say that again: they own almost everything and are determined to own everything. 

The report states: 

The draft legislation was adjusted as a result of this consultation to ensure the government’s policy objective of incentivising foreign investment in BTR— 

Build-to-rent— 

including affordable housing supply, is achieved. 

They are admitting that the objective of the bills is incentivising foreign and predatory corporations into owning your home. The report also states: 

The Property Council advised the 15 per cent tax rate for investment in housing is already available to Australian investors. The MIT— 

managed investment trust— 

withholding tax rate applies to withholding tax that goes back to overseas investors— 

Predators and parasites— 

but foreign investors can also capital partner with Australian investors. 

That is the most telling part of all. This bill would only change the tax treatment of foreign, predatory, multinational corporations. That’s all. There’s nothing for Australians. Australian companies could do it. Foreign companies pay a penalty—that’s a good thing. Yet the Labor Party of Australia would change that; you in the government would change that. Are Labor the party for Australia, or are they the party for global, foreign corporations? Build-to-rent answers that question clearly. Clearly Labor are for the foreign corporations like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and First State. One Nation, though, is for Australians owning their own homes. 

I’m going to do something a little unusual and quote extensively from the coalition senators’ dissenting report on the build-to-rent bills—an outstanding report. I hope you don’t mind, Senator Bragg. It goes to the very heart of what’s wrong with the new Labor Party: 

Build to Rent has had minimal cut-through in Australia because our tax settings are designed to favour individual, ‘mum and dad’ investors, not institutions. That is appropriate. 

This legislation seeks to tip the scales in favour of institutions through tax concessions, in order to make Build to Rent projects profitable for industry super funds and foreign fund managers. Labor thinks that institutions need a leg up over Australian first home buyers. 

Why? The report continues: 

Dr Murray was critical of the Bill’s attempted perversion of our tax arrangements: 

It’s not clear to me why local investors shouldn’t be advantaged over foreign investors in Australian housing. I don’t see that there’s a good argument … for levelling the playing field there. It’s not clear to me, if the intention is to attract super funds into this, why owning your own home via your super fund and renting your own home from your super fund is better than owning your own home and using that money to buy what is the best asset to own in retirement. 

That’s just like One Nation policy. The report goes on: 

At the public hearing, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (‘ASFA’) suggested that Australians would prefer Black Rock and Cbus be the nation’s landlords— 

Really? You would? 

and described mum and dad investors as undertaking a ‘hobby activity’— 

How condescending; how arrogant— 

Senator BRAGG: Do you think the Australian people want to rent their house from a super fund? 

Mr Clare: I think that they would be very happy with institutionally owned residential property where there is an option of having longer-term tenancies rather than the more-typical-in-the-market situation where there is a lack of assurance of continuity of tenancy because it’s a small-scale, hobby activity for individual landlords. 

The report continues: 

This is the view of a vested interest. Most Australians would not agree with this proposal. 

Other witnesses did not share ASFA’s view. Grounded Community Land Trust Advocacy told the Committee:  

Senator BRAGG: Are you concerned that we are seeing a corporatisation of housing in Australia? 

Mr Fitzgerald: Absolutely. This is delivering horrifying results in the Northern Hemisphere, and this legislation makes no account of that— 

No account of what’s actually happening— 

It perplexes me that this government, which purports to be in support of labour— 

That is, workers— 

is allowing rent-maximisation strategies to come through unabated. Yes, I agree: pushing mum-and-dad investors out of the housing market will result in less competition— 

An oligopoly for the big fellas— 

What we’re seeing in the Northern Hemisphere is a horrific new software program called YieldStar, which in Atlanta coordinates rental increases for 81 per cent of rental properties. The board of supervisors in San Francisco has now banned this as a monopolistic practice— 

Yet you want to bring it in— 

There’s just nothing in this legislation that even prepares us for what’s coming. 

The report goes on: 

The Housing Industry Association pointed to the importance of Australia’s housing market maintaining a focus on individual ownership. 

Senator BRAGG: But isn’t it the case that the character of the housing market in Australia is largely focused on individuals? … Do you think that’s a good or a bad design feature? 

Mr Reardon: I think that is a very positive outcome, with the association and connection with home and with location, and a sense of place and purpose—all of those dynamics. 

This is reinforcing what we already know and what Senator Bragg has already discussed. Mr Reardon goes on: 

All the evidence shows that people who own their own home are far less likely to be incarcerated and more likely to be gainfully employed. All of the evidence shows positive economic, social and cultural outcomes. 

Personal responsibility is a cornerstone, a foundation of a safe and productive society. Personal responsibility enables and is the basis for a safe and productive society. 

Senator Bragg’s report then says: 

Australians are not interested in subsidising institutional investors. When asked what organisations would be the key beneficiaries of Build to Rent tax concessions, Treasury confirmed that foreign fund managers would be at the centre: 

There are a lot of foreign investors using the MITs because of the withholding tax concessions and other benefits from using that structure, but there can also be domestic investors using the MITs; they just get a different tax regime. Those investors will be working in partnership with commercial developers to develop these buildings. 

The report continues: 

Cbus Super has previously committed to scaling up in the Build to Rent sector, announcing a plan to scale up its portfolio to approximately $2 billion in apartments. 

Some of the most alarming evidence from the public hearing was that the passing of this Bill could see Australian taxpayers subsidising foreign governments in their investment in our housing market. Dr Murray warned: 

I find it interesting because we’ve already even got foreign investment funds doing build to rent. What’s even funnier is that the largest one is a foreign government. We’ve got the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, who owns the Smith Collective on the Gold Coast, which is 1,251 build-to-rent dwellings, and we’re now proposing to offer them a better tax treatment for something they’re already doing—through a foreign government. I find that a bizarre outcome of this proposed bill. 

It is bizarre. The report continues: 

Approaches like Build to Rent endeavour to emulate the corporate housing model which has seen a downturn in the United States housing market. 

Fund managers have become the predominant landlords in the US— 

I will digress from Senator Bragg’s dissenting report for a minute. The bankers in the United States said in the 1920s that their dream was a combination of predatory behaviour and legislation to get a monopoly and own every house that they could in the country—to control people—because once people have their residence at stake, they are easily controlled. The report says: 

Fund managers have become the predominant landlords in the US. According to the US Government Accountability Office (‘the GAO’), large institutional investors emerged following the global financial crisis, purchasing foreclosed homes at auction in bulk and converting them into rental housing. 

In 2023, corporate housing funds held $1 trillion USD in assets. In Atlanta, Charlotte and Jacksonville, institutional investors own 25, 18 and 21 per cent of the rental stock respectively. 

That is what you are wanting here. We don’t want it. The report continues: 

This corporate housing model, in order to generate a return on investment for institutional investors, relies on individuals being locked into a cycle of perpetual renting— 

This is exactly what we’ve been warning for the last five years. It continues: 

There is a growing consensus in the US that this model has failed and is hurting prospective first home buyers. Lawmakers from both sides of politics are introducing legislation to limit institutional investment accordingly— 

Watch what’s happening; this has failed— 

While the US is moving away from corporate housing, the Australian Labor Party is forcing Australians into it. 

Well, Senator Bragg, I’m not ashamed to admit we probably couldn’t have written it better ourselves; thank you. 

Build-to-rent is an abomination that destroys the Australian dream of owning your own home. One Nation raised this cruel reality years ago. One Nation rejects making Australians forever renters to a cartel of greedy foreign corporations. 

An honourable senator interjecting— 

Senator ROBERTS: Let’s see if you repeat that: One Nation rejects making Australians forever renters to a cartel of greedy foreign corporations, predatory parasitic corporations and parasitic predators driving the World Economic Forum and the United Nations agenda, on your conscience. All Australians should be able to work hard and one day own their own slice of this great, big, wonderful country with so much potential. Only One Nation has the policy to make this real for everyday Australians. 

Australia watched the Treasurer turn the cabinet room into a stage for business and union bosses instead of using it for real cabinet deliberation. The roundtable wasn’t about shaping policy—it was about rubberstamping what the government had already decided. Their attempt to link productivity to higher taxes collapsed, and Australians are left wondering why this government keeps chasing revenue instead of fixing its spending problem.

One Nation will fight the Albanese government’s tax hikes and end the wasteful net zero transition that’s draining billions a year while driving private enterprise away. We will restore fiscal sanity by cutting unnecessary spending, imposing an eight-year residency requirement for Social Security, and cracking down on fraud in agencies such as Centrelink, Medicare, the NDIS, and the PBS.

Smaller government and a sensible energy policy will deliver real productivity gains and prosperity for Australians—especially our young.

Transcript

Last week, Australia watched the Treasurer host business and union bosses in the cabinet room. The irony escaped the Treasurer—using the cabinet room to hold a policy debate cabinet itself should be doing. The usual suspects were not there to help form government policy; they were there to rubberstamp the policies the government intends to implement in this parliament. The roundtable even failed to achieve that. We know this because the ABC leaked the outcome of the week before. That communique remains in Treasurer Chalmers’s drawer, abandoned and unloved. The core intent—making productivity about taxation—failed.  

One Nation will oppose the tax hike the Albanese government will still try to introduce to cover its growing financial black hole caused largely through the increasing use of taxpayer money to pay for a net zero transition from which private enterprise is walking away—indeed, running away. This government doesn’t need more revenue; it needs to spend less money. One Nation will abolish the net zero transition, saving the government $30 billion each year in direct expenditure and generating that much again in extra revenue from a revitalised economy. One Nation will impose an eight-year residency requirement on access to social security, taking tens of billions of dollars off the cost of Centrelink, Medicare, the NDIS and the PBS and giving auditors and police a chance to investigate and prosecute the rampant fraud. Net zero insanity, deficit spending and throwing cash at new arrivals are robbing our children of their future.  

Smaller government and a sensible energy policy are where productivity improvements will actually come from. One Nation’s policies will restore wealth and prosperity for all who are here, especially our young. The Albanese government will just take your money and leave working Australians with less—much less. A One Nation government, though, will restore Australia. 

Transcript

I thank Senator McGrath for this motion, which One Nation supports. This government is flooding the country with new arrivals who need a bed to sleep in. Home construction is 500,000 homes behind, and this figure is not reducing; it’s growing. A sensible party would simply impose a moratorium on new buildings until housing catches up. That’s One Nation policy.

This, though, is not a sensible government nor an honest government. The roundtable received a proposal to force Australians with spare bedrooms to take in new arrivals or pay a penalty tax. Elderly Australians living in their family homes, with children moved out and bedrooms galore, are terrified of this idea. Current best practice is for the elderly to stay in their homes for as long as possible. Now they are to be turfed out through taxation and forced into retirement homes. In answer to my question on this topic to Minister Gallagher yesterday, I did hear a qualified denial. The minister did not rule the idea out, though; rather she used vague words like, ‘The proposal was not raised while I was in the room.’ Really? That’s not a clear statement. The idea must be dismissed and never considered again.

I would raise this simple question: what’s a bedroom? Does ‘bedroom’ mean any room that can be used to house a new arrival? Studies, rumpuses, garages turned into granny flats? Who will make these decisions? SBS, who promoted the idea, has clearly never watched Doctor Zhivago, a movie depicting life under Soviet rule, which depicted this very thing. The Soviets actually did this, so it’s an idea with precedent. Will the government include compulsion in addition to taxation? Will all those Australians who are buying their homes under Help to Buy or government guaranteed mortgages, who have the government as the shareholder or guarantor on the mortgage, be forced to comply? Will they? Who knows, because no-one is saying. They won’t deny it.

I call on the Prime Minister to rule out any new taxes on the family home, including land tax, bedroom tax and grave tax.

I’m an immigrant, and I love this country deeply. Like many others who marched in the March for Australia, I came here legally, embraced the culture, and built a life as part of the Australian community—not separate from it. We weren’t born here, but we’re proud Australians.

What we’re standing up against isn’t immigration itself—it’s immigration without assimilation. We’re tired of politicians pushing mass immigration without thinking about the social and economic hardship it causes. We’re fed up with being called racist or hateful just for wanting to protect our way of life, our jobs, and our communities.

Australians aren’t against migrants — we’re against policies that prioritise foreign workers over Aussie ones, that erode secure employment, and that replace permanent jobs with insecure subcontracting. Labor used to stand for workers, but now they’ve abandoned the working class in favour of globalist agendas, predatory billionaires and their corporate interests.

The truth is diversity is not our strength. Our strength lies in people from all over the world with different backgrounds coming together as Australians, respecting our laws, values, and culture. That’s the Australia I believe in – the Australia I marched for. If you love this country, if you want to contribute and be part of a united Australia, then join us.

Transcript

Immigration without assimilation is an invasion.’ So read the T-shirt that a lovely, older immigrant lady wore in the Cairns March for Australia on Sunday. Many of the tens of thousands of Australians who marched for Australia on Sunday were not born here. Like me, they’re immigrants. I spoke with marchers from all over the world, of every religion and skin colour. They are wonderful Australians who came here as migrants legally, who love this country and who have built a life in Australia, not on top of it—not those who impose their religion, their culture, their intolerance and their perpetual hate onto Australians and who marchers rightly criticised. Marchers criticised politicians and others who hate this country so much that they seek to flood Australia with like-minded arrivals to destroy our culture and to carve off religious and ethnic enclaves in order to divide us. The Australian public are not against immigrants. We’ve had a gutful of excessive, mass immigration—a simple distinction that the unhinged rants from Greens and Labor senators yesterday were designed to cover up. I appreciate the far left in this country have disappeared up their own nobility complex and have completely abandoned any pretence of democracy, decency or civil discourse. Vile, unhinged abuse devoid of facts—indeed, devoid of any relevance to the motion I presented yesterday—doesn’t work on One Nation. It doesn’t work on our supporters and it doesn’t work on those who attended the many marches for Australia. Our beautiful country can embrace and lift up only so many people before the economic and social costs cause the elastic of society to snap back, which is the process you’re watching with confused looks on your faces and fear in your eyes. 

The immigration debate is not an argument about someone’s past nationality, religion or skin colour. It’s an argument about wealth, opportunity and security. Former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard knew this to be true. In an address to the University of Western Sydney in March 2013, then prime minister Gillard promised Labor would ‘stop foreign workers being put at the front of the queue, with Australian workers at the back’. She said: 

We will support your job and put Aussie workers first. 

What a difference 10 years makes! Now those foreign workers are being advanced to the front using DEI, and Australian workers are being told not to apply. Often, the application is not even for a job with secure employment, an award or guaranteed conditions. In the new Australia, jobs are now a subcontracting arrangement requiring an Australian Business Number, an ABN. A microbusiness with a single customer—the same business which used to employ Australians on permanent employment, with awards protecting wages and working conditions—is no more. In just 10 years, the Greens have pushed Labor so far to the left they have abandoned their working-class base, embracing a UN/World Economic Forum sustainability agenda which gives their members less and foreign, predatory billionaires more. 

It’s no surprise that marches included members of the AWU, the CFMEU, the ETU and other unions who’ve seen their wealth, opportunity and place in Australia be reduced. Labor has failed to defend Australian workers from employment arrangements that destroy the standard of living of everyday Australians. Instead of listening to the public, rightly complaining, Labor came into this place yesterday and ranted against One Nation. They name-called, lied and misrepresented out of confusion and fear. One Nation has a message for this government: go back to your masters at the World Economic Forum, go back to your owners—the world’s predatory billionaires—and tell them Australia has had enough. We’re not going to be ground zero for your evil plan to tear apart Australian society, culture and cohesion and rebuild in the image of the World Economic Forum. Everyday Australians want our country back. Our success is inevitable because our Australia, built on family, on community and, yes, on national pride, is paradise compared to your ugly vision of a society based on an ever-changing agenda relying on intimidation and bullying. 

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam found that the greater the diversity in a community the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and the less they work on community projects. A massive new study based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America supports those who marched on Sunday. In the most diverse communities, neighbours trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogeneous settings. The study found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. Ask the five tight monocultures—Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea and Singapore. Diversity is not our strength. Our strength is Australians who’ve come here from all over the world, with different races and religions providing different perspectives on life, working together as a community of Australians old and new. One Nation welcomes anyone who loves our country, who wants to join in and who wants to pull their weight, follow our laws and, in so doing, lift themselves up. If that’s the Australia you love, please join One Nation and help us reverse the decline of our beautiful country. 

Darwin Port under CCP control for 99 years! While PM Albanese calls Communist China a “friend,” they harass our aircraft, wage trade wars and control our most strategic northern port. Their actions speak louder than words.

One Nation stands firm: Australian assets MUST be in Australian hands. Our sovereignty and security are NOT for sale!

No more election promises – hand back Darwin Port now!

Transcript

Australians are sick of the benefits of our natural resources and critical infrastructure being siphoned off to foreign multinational companies. Chinese company Landbridge will operate the Port of Darwin for 99 years. Make no mistake; that means it’s under Chinese Communist Party control. While Australia differentiates between private companies and government, there’s no such separation in communist China. Every company is a direct arm of the ruling communist party and serves its purposes, so the Chinese Communist Party is running Darwin port. 

It’s not just a profitmaking venture; it’s Australia’s most strategic major northern port. Darwin in general is crucial for our Defence Force’s deployment. It’s crucial for securing our borders and millions of square kilometres of northern ocean. The security implications of having a potential foreign adversary decide how the Darwin port is developed and used over the next 99 years are obvious. Australians should own Australian assets, especially ones as critical as our Darwin port. 

To be clear, One Nation supports Australians with Chinese heritage, and they have been living here as Australians since our gold rushes in the 1880s, and we support the Chinese people. We oppose, though, the government of China, the Chinese Communist Party, with their totalitarian abuse of humans, censorship and rule though fear. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week said communist China is a ‘friend’. Let’s see what our friend has said about Australia. During our diplomatic freeze for asking where COVID came from, a Chinese government official said, ‘Why should China care about Australia?’ and said phone calls would be meaningless. In 2020 communist China issued 14 demands of Australia, criticising us for not censoring the press and for having honest conversations about China’s activities. They’ve illegally waged trade wars on Australian lobsters, beef and barley, trying to coerce Australia because we dared to ask where COVID really came from 

This year communist China’s navy circumnavigated Australia, conducting unannounced live-fire exercises that diverted aircraft flights. This week Chinese aircraft harassed and released flares in front of an Australian aircraft over the disputed Paracel Islands, the latest in a string of similar dangerous incidents. It’s very weird behaviour for a friend! They seem to mean it when they say, ‘Why should China care about Australia?’ 

The United States seem to know the strategic value of northern Australia better than our own government does. They’ve been encouraging us to develop and fortify our infrastructure there so that we may have a chance of defending ourselves in a conflict. A US official reportedly said: 

We are surprised this issue has not yet been settled, and we are closely watching what the Albanese Government is doing. There has been some concern that getting back control of Darwin Port is no longer a priority for Australia. 

It’s hard to disagree. 

Before the election we heard again and again, as early as February this year, that a big decision was around the corner. Since the election, we’ve heard nothing—another broken election promise. In July, Prime Minister Albanese met with President Xi, of China, and had the chance to sort it all out. Instead, when asked if he raised the issue of the port, the Prime Minister said he didn’t need to—gutless. 

Should this foreign government have a 99-year hold on our most strategic northern port? On security reasons alone, One Nation’s answer very clearly is no. Putting aside the security and sovereignty issue, there’s basic common sense. As I’ve outlined, Darwin port will essentially be under the control of the Chinese Communist Party government for 99 years. They will operate, develop and profit from Darwin port for nearly a century. The communist Chinese government will reap the profits from Australia’s most northern strategic port. 

There’s a reason a foreign government would seek to get a stranglehold on a critical asset like Darwin port for 99 years: to develop it, of course, and then squeeze every dollar they can out of it to return a tidy profit back to their treasury reserves. If anyone is reaping some kind of profit from critical infrastructure in Australia, it should be the Australian government and the Australian people. At the minimum, it should be a publicly owned, wholly Australian company. This extends to Australian farmland, water, critical power infrastructure and residential homes. All critical assets in Australia should be in our Australian hands, not in the hands of a foreign government or foreign multinational corporation. Labor, get some courage and integrity and put Australia first. 

President Trump recently called on vaccine manufacturers to support their claims regarding the safety and efficacy of their products. It was these assurances that led him to launch Operation Warp Speed to develop the COVID vaccine and has defended the product in the years since.

It now appears President Trump is open to reconsidering his position on vaccine safety. I hope he does. A critical review of the claims made by vaccine manufacturers is likely to show a very high level of data tampering, misrepresentation, and outright lies.

This will mostly be around vaccine quality, not design. Many of our vaccines are produced as cheaply as possible and contain high levels of heavy metals, such as aluminium, which act as a preservative. These are causing harm to our children.

I hope the President reaches the same conclusion I have – that the mRNA platform is dangerous and should never have been used as the basis for the COVID vaccines developed under Operation Warp Speed.

Transcript

The significance of this is stunning. President Trump has been misled on the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines for a very long time. From this post it sounds like he has been kept in the dark and fed lies. I look forward to the president realising that and taking action to defend the health of all Americans by banning the mRNA vaccine platform. 

In further developments last week Robert F Kennedy Jr, the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced significant changes to the authorisation of mRNA COVID-19 so-called vaccines. It’s important to understand this was not a banning of mRNA—not yet anyway. It’s important to clarify the new measures. The Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, approved updated COVID-19 shots for the autumn season in America and imposed new restrictions, effectively ending their emergency-use authorisations. This is only a partial victory for mRNA critics such as me. The measures did terminate emergency-use authorisations that had allowed this dangerous, killer product to be given to anyone over six months of age. 

What some claiming victory may have missed is that mRNA shots for COVID were given normal approval for a limited range of people. This includes anyone over 65 and anyone from five to 65 with an underlying medical condition. Moderna was approved for children over six months with an underlying medical condition. Is it a massive reduction in approval? Yes. Is it a ban? No. President Trump’s statement overnight suggests there are more developments to come. 

Last week I spoke of many new peer reviewed studies which show how this harm is occurring right through the human body. Tonight I will talk about the data, which shows this harm is occurring. We have proof of the harm, and we have the science showing causality. The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database is part of the United States Defense Medical Surveillance System. It enables queries of de-identified medical data coded in the International Classification of Diseases classifications for active duty personnel, filtered on demographics and occupational categories. In 2021 whistleblowers reported significant increases in medical conditions compared to 2016 to 2020 baselines, prompting congressional scrutiny and resulting in a finding of data-handling errors. In 2023 outdated 2021 DMED data confirmed elevated diagnoses, including hypertensive disease up 23 per cent, ovarian disfunction up 35 per cent, pulmonary embolism up 44 per cent, Guillain Barre syndrome up 15 per cent, oesophagus cancer up 13 per cent and breast cancer up seven per cent. Myocarditis was up 151 per cent. Remember the sample set here is millions of people of the United States military. These are—or were—healthy, fit individuals and their families. 

The harm is getting worse. Data for 2023 to 2025, using the same pre-COVID baseline, shows persistent elevations, terrifying elevations, over pre-COVID levels. Myocarditis is up 154 per cent; digestive organ cancer up 16 per cent in 2021 and up 43 per cent in 2024; brain cancer up 16 per cent in 2021 and 43 per cent in 2024; and blood coagulation defects up 25 per cent in 2021, 58 per cent in 2022 and then 32 per cent in 2023 as injection rates fell. That’s pretty damning. It shows that those who call this poison the clot shots are not entirely wrong. It gets worse, much worse. Conditions which may be potentially vaccine related and are certainly COVID-response related are up. Suicidal and homicidal ideation was up 46 per cent in 2021 and 86 per cent in 2024. Obesity was up 27 per cent in 2021, 69 per cent in 2022, 162 per cent in 2023 and 262 per cent in 2024. It’s okay though. Novo Nordisk has Ozempic on the market to fix that obesity problem. Who owns Novo Nordisk? Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Vanguard and Norges. I call them ‘BlackRock Inc.’. This gaggle of rapacious wealth funds invest the wealth of the world’s predatory billionaires. 

Who owns Pfizer, the cause of this obesity epidemic? You guessed it, BlackRock. They own the problem and the solution. Did someone say COVID was just a— (Time expired) 

Sunday stirred something deep in the soul of this nation. It terrified the establishment because it woke the people—and when the people wake, the government should tremble.

Senator Hanson’s motion to protect our national flag was clear and powerful, rooted in unity and pride. Yet Labor and the Greens twisted it, replacing it with a feel-good statement that confuses our national identity. We have one national flag. One. Their amendment is disgraceful distortion – just another attempt to silence the voice of the people.

Australia is dying—not because of the people, but because of the government’s betrayal. It’s time to restore our nation, reclaim our spirit, and remind Canberra that the Constitution belongs to the people. The government serves us—not the other way around.

— March for Australia | 31 August 2025

Transcript

Sunday changed Australia. It stirred the people. The people are waking because Australia is dying. We can feel it. It’s dying at the hands of Labor and the Greens. Sunday terrified you—it absolutely terrified you—because the people woke up. Sunday changed the whole nation. What you have done now is change the whole motion. I will read Senator Hanson’s motion: 

The need for the Senate to take immediate action to make it an offence to wilfully burn or desecrate the Australian National Flag. 

That has been changed under bastardry by the Labor and Greens parties to: 

The need for the Senate to recognise that Australia is a nation that welcomes different races, religions and views and today is home to the oldest continuous culture on the planet— 

we agree with that— 

and to people from more than 300 ancestries. The Australian National Flag, and the other national flags, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, represent our shared values and our rich history and any actions to desecrate these flags should be condemned. 

Rubbish! We have one national flag. I will tell you what Google says about the Aboriginal flag—’It was proclaimed as an official flag of Australia but is not the primary national flag.’ It is not a national flag. You don’t even know that. That’s disgraceful. You don’t even know. You said ‘the other national flags’. How is the Aboriginal flag a national flag when it doesn’t cover the whole of the country, when it doesn’t cover the Torres Strait Islands? How is the Torres Strait Islander flag—good people in the Torres Strait; Aboriginals are fine people—a national flag when the flag of the Torres Strait Islands does not cover the whole of the country? These are not national flags. I cannot support this Labor-Greens bastardisation of an amendment. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, I would ask you to withdraw that. 

Senator ROBERTS: I withdraw. Look at what they’ve done to Senator Pauline Hanson. They jailed her, they denigrated her, they infiltrated her party and destroyed it in 1988 and now they are gagging her and changing her motions. Why? For the simple sin of saying what she thinks and saying what the people think. She says what the people think, and you guys do not get that. You just don’t get it. She has the spirit of Australia in her heart. She has the spirit of Australia right through every cell of her body. That is what the Australian flag is. It has the spirit of this country, and the spirit is the most important thing of any entity, whether it be a football club, a business, a church, or a country. The spirit is important, and you are killing the spirit of this country. Australia is dying. We need to restore Australia and, instead, of looking at the scarcity that you are inviting on everyone here and the fearmongering and the division, what we need to do is dwell on the abundance. It starts with the government. 

Remember this one thing: the people are in the charge of our Constitution, not the government. The government serves the people; the people do not serve the government. 

Question agreed to. 

This is my seventh update on the fallout from our ill-considered, dangerous, and criminal response to COVID-19. The truth is becoming clearer with every new study and every new piece of data.

Australia and New Zealand responded to COVID with measures designed to force mass vaccination, resulting in enormous financial gains for pharmaceutical companies. This money flowed through to shareholders—the world’s most predatory billionaires.

It’s terrifying that the entire situation—from the development of the COVID virus to the implementation of COVID measures, including the vaccines—was one giant fundraiser for the world’s wealthiest individuals. Yet that IS the truth!

Let me be clear: those who died from COVID died from a man-made virus. It was developed using gain-of-function research to be more deadly and more contagious than the original SARS virus, which was the starting point for the development of COVID. The virus was then “sold” to the public as the unfortunate result of human interaction with pangolins at a wet market in Wuhan, China.

It’s concerning that so many believed that fanciful story—an over-trust in authority resulting in a medical tragedy that’s still unfolding, as shown in new peer-reviewed and published studies.

Transcript

The New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons Learned invited several former ministers in New Zealand responsible for the damaging, inhuman and fatal COVID response. These were Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister; Chris Hipkins, the former health and COVID-19 response minister and current Labour leader; Grant Robertson, the former finance minister; and Ayesha Verrall, the former health minister. All four refused to testify, instead choosing to provide the Hollywood version of their actions in writing, avoiding cross-examination. Jacinda Ardern went so far as to call the royal commission a witch-hunt. One Nation calls it accountability. To refuse to be held to account for their actions is a signed confession of wrongdoing. Australia and New Zealand reacted to COVID with measures designed to force mass vaccination at huge financial benefit to pharmaceutical companies. This money flowed through to shareholders who are the world’s predatory billionaires. It’s terrifying that this entire thing, from the development of the COVID virus to the COVID measures, including the vaccine injections, was one giant fundraiser for the world’s wealthiest people. Yet that is the truth. 

We know COVID itself is a man-made virus developed under Anthony Fauci with funding from the United States’s NIH, National Institutes of Health, administered through Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance. The research was conducted first in the USA and then moved to the Wuhan Institute of Virology from 2014, where it escaped in a lab leak in September 2019 before development was completed. Documents released through the FBI and others prove these facts. This is why the amazing United States secretary of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, announced the opening of a criminal investigation into Anthony Fauci and his cronies. I wonder if Ms Ardern considers that a witch hunt. The wheels of justice turn slowly, though they do turn. Ms Ardern can stare down a royal commission now, yet the truth is coming out. 

It’s important to note that in its 2020 press release Australia’s own CSIRO confirmed it was involved in this gain-of-function research. Last February, a new paper was published through CSIRO Publishing entitled ‘Impacts of long COVID on disability, function and quality of life for adults living in Australia’. It found that people with long COVID reported worse disability than 98 per cent—almost 100 per cent—of the general Australian population. A total of 86 per cent those with long COVID met the threshold for serious disability compared with nine per cent of Australians overall. Complex areas like housework and socialising were badly impacted. People could often meet basic needs, yet their ability to contribute to their homes, workplaces and communities was limited. Quality of life was badly affected. Energy levels and social life were the most impacted, reflecting how fatigue and brain fog affect activities, relationships and connections. It is without a hint of irony that the CSIRO published a study showing health damage resulting from the virus they helped create through their support for gain-of-function research. All the evidence we have at the moment suggests long COVID can come from exposure to COVID or from the vaccine, the injections, the shots, and from some batches more than others. This is because for the first year the COVID shots were not made using good manufacturing processes, so batch variation was enormous. 

Almost immediately when the virus appeared, we knew that COVID was the product of gain-of-function research. Nobel Prize winning virologist Luc Montagnier sequenced COVID in April of 2020 and found unmistakeable evidence human intervention, including the inclusion of a large segment of the HIV virus. Luc should know; he won his Nobel prize for discovering the HIV virus. The bat virus was spliced in to confuse the human body’s immune system into producing in the wrong immune response to make the virus more deadly, deliberately. Then, for good measure, they spliced in most of the HIV virus to make it more contagious. Let me be clear. Those who died from COVID died from a manmade virus developed using gain-of-function research to be more deadly and more contagious than the original SARS virus which was the starting point for the development of COVID. Then the virus was sold to the public is an unfortunate outcome of human interaction with pangolin animals in a wet market in Wuhan in China. It’s concerning that so many believe that fanciful story and overtrust in authority, resulting in a medical tragedy that continues to unfold in new peer-reviewed and published articles. 

Here are the latest such articles. Chen and others say mRNA injections cross the placenta and reach the fetus. mRNA-1273 crosses within one hour, accumulates in fetal organs, translates into spike protein and persists after birth. Thorp and others say CDC and FDA safety signal thresholds were breached for 37 adverse events following jabs in pregnant women, including miscarriage, stillbirth and fetal arrests. Karaman and others say mRNA shots destroy 60 per cent of a woman’s egg supply, known as primordial follicles. Manniche and others, on a sample set of 1.3 million women, found 33 per cent fewer successful pregnancies in women who had the shots. Freiberg and others, on a sample of 493,000 people—almost half a million people—found a 23 per cent increase in autoimmune disease post shot. 

Did anyone hear about this study conducted from the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Dr Feldstein, published in the Paediatric Infectious Disease Journal, an Oxford University Press peer-reviewed publication? Amongst children aged six months to four years with no prior COVID infection, those who received the Pfizer-bioNTech mRNA shots were 159 per cent more likely to get infected and 257 per cent more likely to develop symptomatic COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated children without prior infection. This study from the US’s own CDC clearly shows that a COVID shot in young people has negative efficacy. It makes children more likely to get COVID, and, when they do, they experience worse symptoms. That study has resulted in the FDA and now Australia’s TGA at long last announcing the end of COVID vaccination for children, after they told us it was essential. Add that to the mental health damage, developmental delays and academic damage done to children during lockdown, and the picture is scandalous. This is criminal. This is inhuman. 

In O’Keefe Media’s recent hidden camera video, Johnson Johnson’s lead scientist in regulatory affairs, Joshua Rys, admitted the typical clinical process was abandoned for the COVID-19 vaccine. J J knowingly bypassed standard testing protocols under pressure from the Biden government. Joshua said: 

This was just, ‘let’s test it on some lab models … and just throw it to the wind and see what happens. 

He acknowledges that the public was not informed about the shortcuts, which were not acknowledged. Did the TGA know that there was no proper safety testing on the J J product before it was given approval in Australia? While public officials claimed the vaccines were ‘safe and effective’, Rys pushed back saying: 

There’s no proof. None of that stuff was safe and effective. 

He added that the industry relies on a benefit-to-risk trade-off to justify product launches. What this means is that the product is justified if it helps more people than it harms. In that scenario, harm is tolerated. If the pharmaceutical company has its thumb on the scale, making harm less and benefit more, then the faulty product makes it to the market. That’s exactly what happened with the COVID products and 20 other products, like Remdesivir, that were approved in Australia. 

Now the latest instalment in Frankenstein science is upon us. Listen to this. Self-amplifying RNA vaccines—saRNA—are being tested. These are shots which replicate inside the human body after injection, turning our bodies into genetic material production units which shed on those around us. This is uninformed consent to vaccination taken to a whole new level. A paper published in the peer reviewed Journal of Clinical Medicine found that the COVID-19 replicon saRNA injections caused severe blood abnormalities in 93 per cent of trial participants. Symptoms include increased risk of internal bleeding and suppressed immune cells, which raises infection risks. Renowned American cardiologist Dr Peter McCullough last week commented on saRNA technology, saying: 

Vaccinologists have made a critical error in the design of genetic vaccines. Injection of the genetic code for any foreign protein including parts of viruses causes the body to respond with an immune attack against its own cells. 

This leads to intense vaccine injury syndromes all through the human body 

He said: 

Giving the vaccines their own ‘life’ with the ability to reproduce themselves is inhumane, reckless, and from the outset, should be flagged as dangerous and potentially lethal to the recipient. 

COVID vaccines were released without proper testing and caused 1,200 deaths in testing alone, in Pfizer alone. Pushing COVID shots killed tens of thousands of Australians—homicide. If saRNA shots are pushed, it will be genocide—deliberate. Those responsible for COVID have not been held to account, yet now they plan to turn every person and every animal into a genetic material production facility. I have now given seven of these COVID updates, 70 minutes of proof—scientific proof, medical proof—that we must investigate this criminal enterprise, or this next generation of Frankenstein science, the saRNA, will kill and maim huge numbers of Australians. 

Six years ago, I exposed a $1.3 billion wage theft scandal involving BHP, multinational labour hire firms, union bosses, and the Fair Work Commission. Casual coalminers were underpaid, stripped of entitlements, and betrayed by those meant to protect them.

Despite ridicule, I persisted. Now, the truth is accepted—but the workers still haven’t been fully compensated. Labor ignored One Nation’s equal pay bill, that would enable the back payment of stolen wages, then copied some of it under pressure. Labor’s Bill did not seek the reimbursement of the stolen wages which had been enabled by the unions in cahoots with dishonest employers.

Labor continue to protect union donors and multinational corporations to the detriment of honest workers.

One Nation stands alone in fighting for justice, recovery of the stolen wages, and accountability. We won’t stop until every coalminer is paid what they’re owed.

Transcript

It’s ironic that six years after me first raising in the Senate the issue that BHP and other multinational mining companies, together with labour hire companies, colluding with the coalmining union bosses and the Fair Work Commission, perpetrated Australia’s largest case of wage theft. An estimated $1.3 billion was ripped off workers.  

I first raised this in July 2019, together with clear breaches in statutory provisions for workers compensation, leave, long service leave and other provisions. I was met with ridicule. Slowly, with my persistence and solid data as evidence, my claims were increasingly accepted and now are accepted. Yet here we have before us yet another Fair Work Act bill, yet another change to the Fair Work Act. While we support this bill, I raise concerns with the Fair Work Act itself yet again. 

Getting back to BHP and the CFMEU colluding with the labour hire companies, stealing wages and conditions from workers that the government is finally recognising is wrong, I am wearing down my opponents in parliament and the bureaucracy, in one of Australia’s largest and most powerful unions, in one of Australia’s most powerful industries, in some of the world’s largest mining companies and in the world’s largest labour hire firm, Japan’s Recruit Holdings. Who would have thought that the Labor Party, formerly touting itself as the party of the worker, could actively cover up theft from workers? Who could have thought it? What about Labor colluding with major multinational mining corporations, major multinational and Australian labour hire firms and major union bosses to hammer, abuse and steal from Australian workers? These are workers who keep the lights on and who earn export income for what oscillates between Australia’s largest and second-largest export income earner, the coal industry. Labour hire companies, particularly in coal mining, have been consistently underpaying miners to rip off and abuse casual workers who are really working regular full-time hours with the full knowledge and agreement of the CFMEU and MEU bosses and employers. They are stripped of award protections, conditions and entitlements. 

I introduced the first equal work, equal pay bill. Labor did not vote for it. They did not support it, saying they would introduce their own. Eventually—a long wait—we shamed Labor into doing their equal work, equal pay bill. They followed One Nation. Equal work for equal pay should be a norm, yet what about the millions—an estimated $1.3 billion—owed in back pay to those who are ripped off? What about them? Some workers were shortchanged more than $40,000 each per year. One complaint lodged with the Fair Work Ombudsman recently as a result of my work revealed a worker is owed $211,000 for years of back pay. It’s wage theft. These workers deserve to be compensated for their years of being underpaid. It’s a rort that goes back to 2014 and has its roots in the Rudd-Gillard Labor fiasco, with former minister Shorten in 2010 overseeing changes in coal-mining long-service leave provisions, making it possible to hide the other breaches of industrial law in the coal sector. They were hidden until I applied the spotlight relentlessly for 6½ years. When will this Labor government go all the way to compensate those workers, whose losses the union bosses should have stopped, not enabled? When will this Labor government go all the way to compensate those whose losses the Fair Work Commission should have stopped, not approved? 

Two entities, the CFMEU/MEU bosses and the Fair Work Commission, who should have protected Australian workers, in fact enabled Australia’s largest wage theft from honest workers and then vigorously denied it, thereby helping to cover it up. They were hiding the rip-off of workers to make large multinational labour hire firms in the world’s largest mining company unlawful profits that are exported overseas. The profits are exported. How? Those coalminers had worked under an award that did not allow casuals to work in the black-coal industry. The CFMEU then negotiated an enterprise agreement that included casuals who were grossly underpaid. Their employers and the Fair Work Commission went along with this, even though the better off overall test was not satisfied. This legal requirement was boldly sidelined and breached. The union entered into a secret agreement with the employer to not represent the workers seeking a remedy with the employer. The union signed away its rights to protect workers. It was part of the shabby agreement. 

As a former underground-coalface miner and union member and as a former coalmine manager and coal-mining executive, I was absolutely stunned and disgusted at the bold exploitation of Australian workers. I was determined. I remain determined, and now I’m encouraged. Yet, after six years, those coalminers still have not received their fair compensation. One Nation will continue to be the only party that pushes for repayment to those coalminers of their stolen wages. 

When I first met with workers in the Hunter, way back in 2019, I drafted three aims for guiding our work that I anticipated would push us against roadblocks from the perpetrators of Australia’s largest wage theft. I will state these aims again: to recover the lawful and moral entitlements of casual coalminers; to stop these abuses across the coal industry; and to expose and punish the guilty. These three aims continue to guide us. Why does this Labor government continue on a path that ignores those ripped-off coalminers? Who are they protecting? Labor is protecting union bosses and what is one of the largest donors to Labor election campaign funds—the CFMEU, now the MEU. Labor is protecting the world’s largest foreign multinational labour hire corporations supplying casual workers to government contracts, costing Australian taxpayers billions of dollars. This is big money. Labor is protecting the world’s largest multinational mining corporations, lacking the integrity and nous to negotiate legal agreements with workers. Labor is protecting its Fair Work Commission. 

Despite these huge and powerful forces, One Nation is making progress in giving casual miners tangible hope and the real possibility of compensation. The Fair Work Act is not fit for purpose. Industrial relations needs to return to protecting workers and employers, particularly small business. But it must protect workers. Workers are no longer protected in this country under Labor. One Nation is the only party now protecting workers.