If you enjoy your petrol or diesel car, the government is trying to make sure you won’t be enjoying it for long.
Looking through this word salad I got from the Department, the reality is the government is placing fines on manufacturers who sell too many petrol and diesel cars. Australians prefer cars that are useful for a weekend of camping, spacious enough to fit the whole family, and capable of doing long road trips without frequent refuelling or needing to stop to recharge.
The government thinks you’re enjoying your cars too much and is going to forces manufacturers to progressively phase them out, leaving only useless electric vehicles available.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Can I turn to cars and utes, as mentioned by Senator O’Sullivan. Car makers must comply with regulations that you are about to introduce. They must also comply with customers’ needs. My understanding is that the demand for sedans—for example, a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic—is decreasing, and the demand for the corresponding SUV—which in the case of Toyota would be a RAV4 or a Honda Civic—is increasing dramatically. The SUVs are heavier, they’re more utilitarian, but they’re preferred. But they chew more fuel and they produce more carbon dioxide—which to me is not a problem, but anyway. How does that affect the manufacturer? On the one hand they have a government that says, ‘Decrease the size of the car, the weight and the fuel efficiency.’ But customers say, ‘No, do the opposite.’ The customers don’t think in terms of carbon dioxide because they know it’s crap.
Ms Purvis-Smith: As I mentioned in a previous answer, manufacturers are able to make commercial decisions as to what their fleet looks like. The standard looks at their whole fleet. There are a range of ways that manufacturers can meet the standard. I think Mr Kathage went through this before. I’m not sure if you were here. He could go through that again. If they get credits in one year they can hold them over to meet debits they may get in a following year. They can also trade credits. They can look at the fleet, change the fleet and make commercial decisions about what they import into the country and offer consumers.
Senator ROBERTS: Before Mr Kathage does that, perhaps you could tell me: if customers want SUVs over sedans, will that company be penalised?
Mr Kathage: I can point you to appendix A of our impact analysis, where we set out the sales volumes of various types of vehicles. Your question is actually quite difficult because, as Ms Purvis-Smith mentioned, there’s actually quite a lot of things that vehicle suppliers can do to improve the efficiency of the vehicles they sell and their fleet overall. The first thing I’ll mention is that there are changes to the vehicles themselves that they can make—improving the aerodynamics, changing the drive train—
Senator ROBERTS: I accept that. But an SUV compared to a sedan—they can make improvements on both but the SUV will chew more fuel and is heavier—full stop, end of story.
Mr Kathage: That’s right. So one of the features of the policy is to include a few flexibility mechanisms. The first one is to include two targets. One target is for passenger vehicles and a higher target for light commercial vehicles. The second flexibility mechanism in the scheme is to adjust the limit by weight. So you might have a Toyota Kluger, for example, which will have a particular mass in running order. Therefore, the target for that vehicle or the fleet of vehicles—that weight—will be adjusted. The third thing is that in any given year a vehicle supplier might bring in too many vehicles that are too polluting. They’ve got two years after that point to bring what’s called their ‘initial emissions value’ down to zero. So they do have some time.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Looking at electric vehicles, for example, this policy, these regulations, are to make petrol and diesel vehicles less attractive and to make electric vehicles more attractive. That’s clearly what’s going on. But the efficiency of resources in electric vehicles is quite low, because the vehicles are inherently heavier, as Senator O’Sullivan said—needing heavier brakes, more resources; heavier suspension, more resources; heavier components all through, more resources. So we’re actually driving an economy to use less efficient vehicles and less efficient use of resources. That doesn’t make sense to me.
Mr Kathage: I’m sorry; what was the question?
Senator ROBERTS: The question is: are you aware that that’s happening?
Mr Kathage: I’d probably say the purpose of the new vehicle efficiency standard is to improve the efficiency of new vehicles. It’s not to drive a particular type of vehicle or particular type of outcome, except for reduced emissions. That’s the purpose of the policy.
Senator ROBERTS: You talked about reducing emissions. Have you done any work on the life cycle production of carbon dioxide from a diesel and a petrol vehicle, compared to the electric vehicle—
Mr Kathage: We have—
Senator ROBERTS: Particularly right through the mining sector as well, because there are extra resources that need to be mined for an EV.
Mr Kathage: Yes, we have. We included some evidence in our impact analysis, which is now published on the Office of Impact Analysis website. Section 4.2.1 sets out a range of different estimates that have been made. The first one is from our own Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, which finds that while manufacturing an EV may produce more GHG emissions than an internal combustion engine, that is more than offset after about one year if the vehicle is charged from renewably sourced electricity—that is, home solar—and two years if charged from the grid using a mix of electricity generation sources. In that section—I won’t read it all out—we do have, I think, four other sources that support the same contention.
Senator ROBERTS: There’s an assumption there that they’ll be using renewables—solar and wind. That’s a big assumption. Thank you, Chair.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/pwwjkq9IO6k/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-08-15 12:05:002024-08-15 13:57:01Government Crack Down on Petrol and Diesel Cars
There is no specific evidence that Angus Campbell was “in action” which is the criteria required for his medal at the time of his nomination.
The honours and awards system has been abused, with senior officers and generals giving medals to each other, while frontline soldiers who faced direct enemy fire must fight yet again, this time for the recognition they rightfully deserve.
This issue goes far deeper than General Campbell. It’s time to clean out all the rot at the highest levels of the Defence Force.
The public hearing on Excess Mortality was profoundly poignant and unsettling in equal measure.
It has sparked further concerns and raised questions that require answering about excess deaths since the rollout of the COVID vaccination and why there is such a concerted effort to deflect closer scrutiny.
COVERSE and the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS)
It was good to speak with a group of professionals that are prepared to dig into COVID ‘vaccine’ mortality. My questions were about suppressed or disguised data. It’s been well established that the modelling during COVID was not done well – potentially to support the government program regardless what the data was actually showing.
There are numerous methods through which excess mortality can be hidden. We simply cannot trust the government data when it stands in such stark contrast to the widespread experiences of everyday Australians.
A study of excess mortality in Queensland in 2021 offered warning signals. There was a huge spike in deaths immediately after the COVID injection rollout began, even before the virus itself arrived in Queensland. Similar patterns was seen in Western Australia and other parts of Australia. This spike then came back to near normal levels once the “vaccine” rollout slowed down.
It is not acceptable that instead of seeking to understand the reasons behind these findings, our health authorities are attempting to discredit this data.
Australian Health Department
I asked the Department of Health to explain peaks of excess mortality in 2022.
Significant peaks observed were higher than expected, with the explanation being that it can be contributed to COVID itself, although there was still a peak outside the average.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed it’s possible to match COVID jabs with mortality, however Australia’s Health Department appear to be quite reluctant to do this. They commissioned a report from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance to conduct an analysis comparing ‘similar populations with each other’ to give a “better sense of mortality”. Predictably, the outcome of this “critical research” is that COVID vaccines provided significant protection against mortality from COVID and extended this to all-cause mortality.
National Rural Health Alliance
The points raised by Susanne Tegen, Chief Executive of the National Rural Health Alliance, went to the heart of the struggles faced by rural and remote communities during the federal and state governments’ COVID response.
National Rural Health Alliance commented on limitations in mortality data. It strongly advocates for the creation of datasets demonstrating excess mortality in relation to remoteness.
The Alliance wrote in their submission that the absence of geographical data makes it impossible to fully understand the impacts of excess mortality on rural and remote consumers, and that “Tailored datasets and rural specific models of care are imperative to addressing ongoing healthcare inequities.”
Research should be prioritised to examine how pandemics and other disasters impact health systems in rural Australia.
Transcripts
COVERSE and the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society
Senator ROBERTS: Mrs Potter, I feel very ashamed of our country. As a result of lies, you’ve had your life altered completely and what we’ve given you instead of care is gaslighting. Thank you so much for your courage in being here. I also want to put on the record my appreciation to Senator Rennick for his previous two questions that Dr Neil answered and answered so capably. They were fine questions and excellent responses. Mr Faletic, you came before us at the terms of reference inquiry. I want to thank everyone for being here in person. Thank you for your commitment. You said in your opening statement, Mr Faletic, ‘newly disabled and chronically injured’, and there are thousands of them. You also mentioned in the terms of reference inquiry that doctors were coerced, so I don’t need to put questions to you. I would love to, but I’ve got some other questions. Dr Kunadhasan, you mentioned ‘peer reviewed paper unaffiliated by trial sponsors Pfizer’. Could we get that paper on notice, please?
Dr Kunadhasan: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: You also told us that more than 50 per cent of Australians took Pfizer. I’d like to learn more separately on notice. I’ll think of some questions for you with regard to your correspondence with Dr Lawler, because I read it in your submission and I’m stunned. I want to also acknowledge the courage of your stance. Dr Neil, on pharmacovigilance, if I could have a one-word answer at the moment because I want to get on to Dr Madry. Pharmacovigilance is not independent, is it, in this country?
Dr Neil: A one-word answer? I don’t believe it is sufficiently independent and the access is very difficult for the average doctor.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you send us the peer reviewed paper that you’ve published on notice, please?
Dr Neil: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Dr Madry, can you comment on the use of models used for predicting excess mortality, please?
Dr Madry: I want to thank Mrs Potter. You moved me. That’s part of the reason we do some of this work. There’s been an epidemic of bad modelling during this pandemic. Stanford Professor John Ioannidis published a paper about how bad the modelling was. When we do modelling we need to apply a range of models to look at best case and worst case scenarios. Models rely on assumptions. Those assumptions can be wrong. I know time is short, but a quick comment on the models that the government is relying on at the moment for predicting the numbers of excess. That model changed last year and predicted lower numbers. There are a number of fundamental issues with that model. It uses a time series modelling that one wouldn’t use in a modern analysis, fitting a sine wave, which doesn’t actually fit the sort of seasonal trends. A strange thing happened. The standard years were 2015 to 2019, and then there was a decision to reach back to 2013 and it turned out 2013 is a low year for mortality; 2019 is a high year. So, if you wanted to tip up the baseline and make the excess less, that’s what one would do. In our submission, we’ve provided a range for what it should be. The estimates at the moment are very much at the low end of the estimates. We need to look at the low end, the high end, and the real result should be somewhere in between. There’s another issue about subtracting all COVID deaths from and with. We know the convention shouldn’t be to count the deaths that are with someone who dies from cancer, for example, who tests positive with a PCR test. They shouldn’t be subtracted. We know influenza was down during those years. So, should we be subtracting all of those deaths? Because clearly some of the COVID deaths were deaths of frail elderly people who, sadly, would have died anyway. So, if we’re trying to come to what’s the clear non-COVID excess there are more professional ways to look at that. Modelling has been done poorly. That’s well established. I think independent groups like ours that can talk to what’s really happening have a better understanding and can try to fit ranges to those models. Especially when it’s a high-risk situation where people are dying and getting injured, we need to understand the best case and worst case scenarios.
Senator ROBERTS: What other data is needed to clarify what could be causing the non-COVID excess mortality?
Dr Madry: If you wanted to rule out COVID vaccinations as a possible cause of this excess, with these datasets that Senator Pratt was talking about where there’s a linkage between immunisation registers and mortality registers we understand that a linking of tables has been done by the Institute of Health and Welfare and the ABS. Basically the data that’s needed is the date of last vaccination and date of death on an individual record basis. We can go through that and find out if there trends that shouldn’t be there. They should be independent, but there could be trends. If we can get access to that, we can provide some insight.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you intend to apply for access to that data?
Dr Madry: Yes. Since we’ve heard more about this we do intend to apply for it.
Senator ROBERTS: You said you did an analysis of mortality in Queensland. What did you find?
Dr Madry: Queensland kept out COVID until right up to the end of 2021. So, with Queensland we had a 10- month window where we could look at mortality without the effects of COVID. Any deaths from COVID in Queensland were from cruise ships or out of the state. We purchased data from the ABS with narrow age ranges. What became clear was that in the older ranges, which is where we saw in the database of adverse event notifications a lot of the deaths occurring—ages above 60—we saw the trend of mortality start going up in the second quarter of 2021. That went up right until the end of the year. That was clearly a warning signal.
Senator CANAVAN: Have you looked at Western Australia, which had a similar experience? When I look at the ABS data, again, the deaths seem to start ticking up in late 2021, even before the WA border was open.
Dr Madry: Western Australia has a few more months, because they opened up in March, I understand. We’d have a full one-year window with Western Australia. The reason I picked Queensland was partly financial, because you have the largest state with the longest time. South Australia and Western Australia would be other ones that would be worth looking at.
Senator ROBERTS: Dr Neil, there are many ways excess mortality can be hidden. Classification of causes of death—can you answer yes or no to each one as to whether or not it’s possible to hide a death?
Dr Neil: Excess mortality typically just considers all-cause mortality. Then there’s a secondary sort of inquiry as to what the subcauses might be.
Senator ROBERTS: So with doctors placed under coercion, we could hide a death due to a COVID injection by classifying it as ‘not due to an injection’?
Dr Neil: There are two avenues to highlight a death as a doctor where as a doctor you might have the opinion that it’s a vaccine death. One would be by registering the death on the pharmacovigilance database, and 75 per cent of the deaths were registered by doctors. The other would be to write a death certificate—I believe that’s rarely done—in a way which would note a vaccine injury as a cause of death, but it is possible.
Senator ROBERTS: They can be statistically hidden or misclassified, correct.
Dr Madry: Correct. Misclassification is one of the biggest problems we have as analysts.
Senator ROBERTS: A barrister I talked to said you can hide evidence, and the best place to hide it is in plain sight.
Dr Madry: That’s a very wise statement.
Senator ROBERTS: Are these things being done?
Dr Madry: Is it being hidden? There are certainly strange things happening where the ICD cases with categorisation going into vague categorisations; it might have been very specific cardiac, respiratory. There are strange things going on. We can detect those things happening. As you said, from a forensic point of view, being able to see those sorts of things is insightful in itself. Even though it may make it harder to find the actual result we’re looking for, that’s important.
Senator ROBERTS: So, keeping on theme of hiding data, we can also have alternative narratives, such as long COVID instead of vaccine injuries? We can also have the use of labels to denigrate people, shut them up, condition an audience that it could be something else, propaganda to dissuade people’s perceptions? Do any of these things tie in with you?
Dr Neil: As a society, we’ve been concerned about the culture in medicine that tends towards censoring doctors from speaking about some of the key issues of pandemic management, including the vaccine. We believe that’s real, we believe we can document it, and it could well have had an effect on the information that’s able to come to light.
Australian Health Department
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing again today. On that last question that Senator Rennick asked, Dr Gould, are you familiar with the Australian Bureau of Statistics submission?
Dr Gould: Yes. If you just give me a moment, I will fumble on my iPad to have that. What page, Senator?
Senator ROBERTS: It is on page 7 of their 14-page submission—top of the page, graph 1. Have you done any work on trying to understand and explain the first peak in March 2021 and the next peak in August 2022? Can you tell me the causes of those peaks? Take it on notice if you want.
Dr Gould: I’m not actually seeing a peak in March 2021.
Senator ROBERTS: You are not seeing the actual deaths?
Dr Gould: Yes, I’m looking at the same graph as you, I believe, with expected, actual and—
Senator ROBERTS: There is a peak well outside the upper range.
Dr Gould: Oh, yes, there is a small period—
Senator ROBERTS: It’s quite marked.
Dr Gould: The graph that you see, the expected mortality, is a modelled number. We have talked about this before. And, as with any modelled number, it has strengths and weaknesses, so that is acknowledged. There are a number of different ways—
Senator ROBERTS: This is a startling peak.
Dr Gould: Yes, so—
Senator ROBERTS: Is that all due to the model?
Dr Gould: The peak you are referring to is a peak because it goes above the confidence intervals of the model, so it is a function of the model and it is also a function of mortality.
Senator ROBERTS: It is way, way, way above.
Dr Gould: I’m concerned that we are looking at different graphs. I’m not seeing a large peak in 2021—
Senator ROBERTS: Graph No. 1. End of February, early March 20—sorry, 2022.
Dr Gould: Oh, 2022.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m sorry, you’re right. What is the explanation for the big peak there?
Dr Gould: You see a very significant peak with the actual number, so that is the dark red number, and that represents total mortality over that period. And it is higher than expected. Importantly, this graph also shows what it looks like without COVID, so that is the—dare I say, salmon coloured or pink coloured line—which is a much less dramatic peak, so that indicates how much COVID itself contributed to that large peak. That said, I would acknowledge that, without COVID, the light pink line is still outside of normal expectations. So that would be considered a period of excess mortality.
Senator ROBERTS: Have you done any work on explaining why that is the case? It is above the mean of the range and it’s above the upper limit.
Dr Gould: Again, the ABS reports look at different causes of death, and complementary analysis of the Actuaries Institute also looks at potential causes there. That includes ischaemic heart disease.
Senator ROBERTS: So we go to the ABS?
Dr Gould: The ABS is—
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, thank you. I want to follow up on a question from Senator Rennick that I did not hear that you answered, and that turned on something I asked earlier in the second session. The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed in estimates last week that it is possible to match ABS deaths data against COVID status to see what the respective death rates for vaccinated and unvaccinated Australians are. Have you done that analysis? I did not hear you respond to Senator Rennick.
Dr Gould: Again, it is the same concept where I was talking about the time series analysis. We need to be really careful about producing—
Senator ROBERTS: Have you done it?
Dr Gould: I will get to that. Producing raw mortality counts by vaccination status is of very limited value. Obviously, the counts we would expect to be higher for vaccinated Australians because the vast majority of Australians were vaccinated. So we needed an appropriate denominator. So that work needs to be done. We also need to—
Senator ROBERTS: Excuse me, Dr Gould, you can still have comparison of people who have had one vaccine, two vaccines, three shots, four shots et cetera.
Dr Gould: Yes, and what I wanted to get to: you could do that with raw mortality rates, but, as we have discussed, age is a really important factor for mortality, so age standardisation is really important there. But there are other forms of work there that we need to do to ensure that we are comparing like populations with each other—so, effectively we are comparing statistical apples with each other. And that was the whole purpose of the research that we commissioned by the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance—that they could do that challenging but really critical work so that they could give a better sense of the mortality outcomes for people—
Senator ROBERTS: What is the answer?
Dr Gould: The answer is that it is very clear that COVID vaccines provided significant protection against mortality from COVID. They also extended that research to all-cause mortality. As we have said, COVID was the last—
Senator ROBERTS: Could we get a copy of the report please?
Dr Gould: Absolutely. It is publicly available, and we would be happy to send you a link for that.
Senator ROBERTS: Where abouts?
Dr Gould: I can’t quote the exact web address, but it is—
Senator ROBERTS: When did you ask them to do that report?
Dr Gould: I believe the date is current to 2022. We could take on notice when we started conversations about the report.
Senator ROBERTS: If you could please. What is the death rate comparison amongst vaccinated and unvaccinated Australians? I know you said there are many qualifications but, filtering through the qualifications, what is the death rate?
Dr Gould: It is lower for vaccinated Australians as per that research.
Senator ROBERTS: Could we have those numbers please?
Dr Gould: The way that they describe it is actually in terms of the protection against death from the—
Senator ROBERTS: Not the death rates?
CHAIR: Just one moment please, Dr Gould. Senator Roberts, just the last five minutes you have been interrupting quite regularly while they are answering—
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair.
CHAIR: Could you maybe wait until they finish and then ask your next question.
Dr Gould: I think that research should answer a lot of your questions.
Senator ROBERTS: Has anyone ordered you not to analyse deaths, or excess mortality, or to do so in a certain way to hide anything?
Dr Gould: Absolutely not.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Thank you, Chair.
National Rural Health Alliance
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here, Ms Tegen. Your submission’s third paragraph includes this statement: The absence of geographical data makes it impossible to fully understand the impacts of excess mortality on rural and remote consumers. NRHA strongly advocates for the creation of datasets demonstrating excess mortality in relation to remoteness. We need to ensure that the committee notes this, Ms Tegen. Is this something that must be in this inquiry’s report?
Ms Tegen: Absolutely.
Senator ROBERTS: What about preparedness? You should have been aware that there was a preparedness plan for rural areas for a flu epidemic. Were people in rural areas aware of such a plan, and was it followed?
Ms Tegen: I am not sure whether they were all included in such a plan. If there is a federal plan, it needs to be taken to those rural communities. A classic example, again, is through the PRIM-HS model where, at a local level, they start looking at, ‘How do we manage a risk like this if it comes to our region?’ It’s no different from a fire plan or a flood plan that rural communities have. It’s really interesting. Why is it that the Defence Force and police forces are all funded to do this, to support their workforce to do this well? We need to do it in health. It needs to be done under a national health strategy, and there needs to be a compact between federal, state and local government, with the community.
Senator ROBERTS: I must commend the witness, Chair, for providing clear, concise and very strong advocacy. It’s refreshing. What discussions, meetings and planning occurred in the early stages of responding to COVID to guide your response in rural areas to COVID, once we were told there was supposedly a major virus on the loose?
Ms Tegen: The National Rural Health Alliance started a series of teleconferences and updates with not only its members but also its Friends of the Alliance, which are the grassroots people. In addition to that, we held meetings with the government to provide real-time feedback to those communities, and the clinicians. Again, clinicians on the ground were really stretched in rural areas because they already had workforce shortages. It needs to be revisited, taking into account the learnings of the populations and the response on the ground.
Senator ROBERTS: Your submission raises the topic of a shortage of health professionals in rural areas. You have said it repeatedly today. How did the shortage of health professionals in the bush make the impact of COVID worse, and what can be done about it?
Ms Tegen: It burned out a lot of the workforce. It made people feel that they weren’t supported, because as soon as we felt that COVID was finished and it was ‘business as usual’, they are still trying to recover from what happened over the last four or five years. They still feel that they are not supported. We are now focusing on the future workforce, yet we are not able to support or provide more bolstering for the current workforce. The communities are back to normal in terms of living their life. They’re working in an environment where there is a higher inflation rate.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s tough.
Ms Tegen: It’s tough. These communities are the most underfunded. If you’re looking at agriculture and primary industries, they are the only communities around the world that are not subsidised. Here we are, expecting them to deal with health issues, with global markets and with weather patterns. We don’t expect that from the city. Why do we expect it from the country? It is because it’s out of sight, out of mind.
Senator ROBERTS: One of the things I’m picking up, between the lines, is that you don’t see the imposing of systems and processes from the city on rural as being effective. You are calling for a national rural health strategy. You’ve also made the point that people need to be accountable for their own individual health.
Ms Tegen: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Isn’t that something that could be said about the whole country’s health?
Ms Tegen: Absolutely. By increasing the amount of data that is available, by increasing an understanding of health care, not only the healthcare system but also your own health, you are more likely to be able to deal with your own health issues because you have an increased health literacy level. I will make a comment about the death recently of a person that was raising the awareness in the population. That was Michael Mosley. Australians loved watching him. He increased their understanding of health care. Norman Swan is increasing the understanding of health care. His Coronacast was listened to by millions of people around Australia. Rural Australia still has a very high readership of and listening to the ABC, and those initiatives were really important to rural people. We need to make sure that they are not forgotten, and that we have a social contract to do something about this, rather than having reforms and inquiries, and nothing happening with them.
One Nation attempted to refer “gender affirmation” treatment to a Senate inquiry to expose the harm that is being done to our children.
The gender cult is hell-bent on confusing our kids and leading them down the path of irreversible changes for no medical outcome. We must protect our children from these predators.
Transcript
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support Senator Hanson’s motion to refer the issue of treatment options for young people with gender dysphoria to an inquiry. It’s a simple fact that the model of gender affirmation is completely experimental, and that’s at best. More likely, it’s mutilation and debasement of children. Gender affirmation treatment is putting children who feel confusion about their gender at a young age on the pathway to life-altering hormone blockers and irreversible surgery. It’s butchery when children need something else.
People seem to have difficulty accepting this, but some feelings of confusion are completely normal as teenagers make their way through puberty and experience many new changes to their bodies. Left alone or dealt with by counselling and therapy—and love, in the severe cases—these feelings almost always resolve themselves. That is fact. Children need love, compassion, support and respect.
I have a relative who had gender dysphoria much of her life. She contemplated gender surgery. She decided to start the process. She made the decision, and, before doing so, she decided she would not adopt chemicals or surgery. She and her doctor wife came to accept her dysphoria. They are now proud parents of a lovely young child, and we accept and love her regardless of her decision. I have a friend who did change gender the opposite way, from male to female—another lovely person. These people need to be accepted, but children need support, counselling and love, not chemicals and scalpels.
As I said, the alternative to this gender affirmation is leaving kids to work through their issues lovingly, with support, counselling and therapy. The alternative is gender affirmation. Gender affirmation involves telling children that sex is just an arbitrary concept—that’s a lie—and that you can choose to be a boy or a girl whenever you want; with a click of the fingers, you can change teams with little to no consequence. Introducing this idea around the time of puberty and of other feelings of confusion is a dangerous, risky cocktail. Right at the time children are feeling most confused, they’re told that nothing is real and that everything will be fixed if they simply switch teams. The gender affirmation witchdoctors won’t tell children that fully committing to pretending to be a boy or a girl, if they weren’t born that way, simply isn’t simple. Basic biology gets in the way.
The only way to try and eventually effect this change is through a potent, permanent and dangerous cocktail of drugs, they are told, often prescribed off label in addition to permanent, irreversible surgery to lop off bits of people’s bodies. Gender affirmation advocates claim these treatments are reversible. That is a lie. Many children who were pressured into the gender affirmation pathway are coming to regret those choices as adults. De-transitioners are a growing community of adults who now find they will never fully embody their target gender yet are unable to return to the gender they were born due to the irreversible effects of gender affirmation drugs and surgeries. Instead, they’re left dependent on expensive cocktails of gender hormone drugs for the rest of their lives.
The real winner out of the gender affirmation pathway is big pharma, being delivered waves upon waves of medication-dependent consumers for life. It’s worth billions of dollars, despite the small number of people. The victims of the gender affirmation pathway, though, are left destitute, with no accountability for the outcomes that extremists in the gender cult pushed onto them from an adolescent age—extremists like senators in this chamber—for whatever reason.
It’s important to keep in mind the issue that’s trying to be fixed here: feelings of confusion or stress in children going through adolescence. There’s no longitudinal evidence that the gender affirmation pathway leading to gender reassignment fixes the core issue. There’s much evidence that it does not and that it does enormous harm. In fact, the transgender community is at the highest risk of suicide of nearly any community in the world. Why? Because so many young people come to regret their change and are trapped—trapped for life, in being unable to change back to their birth gender, which they’ve come to accept. They are trapped for life, unable to have children themselves, unable to live a normal life and regretting their decision for the rest of their life because they made their decision as an impressionable child. Whether they’re simply predisposed to psychological distress or that distress is created or compounded by the failed gender affirmation pathway is difficult to say. What can be said, however, is that if reassignment surgeries and drugs are meant to be a cure for psychological distress in children, they have absolutely and obviously failed. They’re failing many, many children.
The truth is that putting children on the gender affirmation pathway is a pathway to butchering people for no healthy clinical outcome. Many medical whistleblowers have raised these concerns. I’ll say that again: many medical whistleblowers have raised these concerns, yet have been shouted down by the powerful big pharma and transgender cult that holds power at the moment. The United Kingdom has seen this problem and lived this problem. After whistleblowers blew the lid on medical abuse happening at Tavistock gender clinic, the entire clinic was shut down—the entire clinic that was once held up on a pillar and treated as a god. Now it’s facing class action suits and people are recognising the hideous crimes that they have committed.
At the very least, these issues need to be referred to a committee for inquiry. Those who support the gender affirmation pathway shouldn’t be afraid of the truth through an inquiry. What’s wrong with knowledge? If I’m wrong, then an inquiry will prove you right. Of what are you lot afraid? Greens use labels. Labels are the refuge of the ignorant, the dishonest or the fearful. They support big pharma. Please stop demonising children with gender dysphoria and those who have a different view. I suspect the gender cult knows that the truth is not on their side and that’s why they’re running scared of looking underneath the hood on this issue—an issue affecting children.
One Nation will stand against sending children down a path of drug dependency and body mutilation to appease the gender cult. I’m never caught up in gender, race or national heritage. Every human, regardless of skin colour, for example, and regardless of heritage, has red blood running through their veins—every single human.
We are one. I am very, very pro-human.
Send this to an inquiry and get to the facts and find out what will actually help children. Until then, leave our kids alone.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/Lpi3_fVYIS4/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2023-06-22 11:38:422023-06-22 11:38:45Leave the children alone!
I joined the Sky News panel last night to discuss the budget being handed down and what it means for Australians.
The most important thing to remember is that booming Agriculture and Mining saved the budget this year, not Jim Chalmers. If Labor keeps demonizing these industries and trying to send them broke the country will very quickly get worse.
Transcript
Kieran Gilbert: Welcome back to Budget Night Live. Our crossbench panel of Senate kingmakers are with me now ready to reveal how they’ll vote on the budget’s most polarising policies. Joining me at the desk independent senators Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock, One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts and Greens senator and finance spokesperson, Barbara Pocock. Great to see you all. Thanks for being here.
Senator Lambie, first to you. We’ll get some initial thoughts. What were your overall assessment of the budget?
Jacqui Lambie: It’s great that you’re helping the vulnerable in a certain way, although we’ll come back to that. But what bothers me more than anything, it’s those middle income earners. They are struggling themselves and a lot of them will just be over that threshold, where they won’t receive anything and those interest rates coming up continue to go up. That’s really bothering me. There is nothing for them at all. It’s something like we’re trying to push them further down and therefore a further gap between the rich and the poor. And that bothers me terribly.
The other thing that bothers me too, is when you give rental assistance out, and I know the Greens have been calling for this, for further rental assistance, and you have interest rates going up, that person that’s renting that house to you, has also got to cover their own. I’m not sure that that is going to benefit where it’s meant to go. It’s going to go to the homeowner and that’s what bothers me.
Same with childcare. When you give extra to childcare, unless you cap the fees you are paying that they’re allowed to charge you, guess what’s going to happen on the 15th of June? Every childcare centre that’s out there going to say, “We’re actually putting our fees up.” Okay, it’s great to throw money out there, but you’ve got to put caps on stuff so people don’t continue, so the greed doesn’t go to the top.
Kieran Gilbert: Yeah. Senator Pocock, your thoughts on the efforts tonight? You’ve been pushing for a JobSeeker increase across the board. They’ve delivered on that.
Jacqui Lambie: Is that what you call it?
David Pocock: I mean, the big take takeaway is health, investment in health. Clearly, I think this is an acknowledgement that our universal healthcare system is no longer that universal and there are so many people out there who aren’t seeing their GP, because they simply either can’t get in or can’t afford it. So, great to see investment in health.
Kieran Gilbert: You give a tick on that.
David Pocock: When it comes to JobSeeker, $2.85 a day, it’s a bit laughable, to be honest. It’s embarrassing. This is something that is keeping people in poverty. This is a decision that will leave people in poverty. We hear all this talk about getting people back into the workforce. Experts are saying that when you’ve got people living in poverty, it’s an impediment, it’s a barrier to them getting back into the workforce. So, I think we missed a massive opportunity to actually lift people out of poverty and allow them to get their lives back together, get back into work.
Kieran Gilbert: Isn’t one of the challenges, Barbara Pocock, is the inflationary environment we’re in at the moment? So, the government was cautious about increasing payments too much right now.
Barbara Pocock:
I think there are a lot of people looking to this budget hoping there would be help to let them deal better with the inflationary environment, with the cost of living crisis. I think there’s a lot of disappointment. That trivial increase, I mean $40 a fortnight is not nothing, but it’s not what people need. The rental assistance rise is very small and we’ve got people, it won’t even touch the sides of the rental increases we are seeing in my city, in Adelaide, and across country areas as well. So, a real missed opportunity to fix some of those really pressing questions at the bottom of our income scale and a widening inequality, because there’s some real benefits up the top of the income scale for people who are quite wealthy.
Kieran Gilbert: Malcolm Roberts, did you think the increase in the incentive for bulk billing for GPs was a good move?
Malcolm Roberts: Well, I think it’s fundamental that people understand there’s only one reason why these increases can be paid. That’s the mining industry and the agricultural sector. Jim Chalmers mentioned that we can do this because of the things we export. He won’t mention coal, he won’t mention iron ore, he won’t mention bauxite, he won’t mention agricultural products. That’s the only reason this budget is in surplus, and it shows yet again that the Treasury forecast low prices, but they’ve been saved again by high prices. The mining sector needs to be supported, not vilified.
What we need to do is open more coal mines instead of Plibersek shutting them. So, we need to build more coal-fired power stations and keep those low energy prices, because the other thing is, he’s raised the flag up the pole on energy prices, because he’s admitted that he’s failing 2050 net-zero. The UN’s policy is failing us and energy prices are rising and what we need is cheap power. Just dump the UN 2050 net-zero.
Kieran Gilbert: Been a substantial increase in migration, 400,000 people this year, 315,000 next. Is it time to back the Housing Future Fund, as the government says, because quite clearly more accommodation will be needed, Malcolm?
Malcolm Roberts: More bureaucracy, more bureaucracy, more bureaucracy. What we need to do is get the fundamentals of the economy correct, improve taxation, comprehensive taxation reform. Get rid of the red tape, the green tape, the blue tape. Set the industries free, and then we can have homes built in the right place for the right price.
At the moment, we’re getting to see more bureaucrats just adding. We’ve got three new agencies coming in the housing bill in the parliament right now. I mean, this is absurd. What we need to do is recognise the highly inflationary impact, as Warren just talked about here, of 400,000 people wanting a house. That is fundamental. That will drive up the cost of renting, the cost of housing phenomenally.
Kieran Gilbert: I know that you’ve done a deal with the government, you and your colleagues, for the housing fund. How critical is it now, given those numbers and given what the treasurer said in his speech, reiterating his commitment to it. They want it legislated this week, that fund, and given the increase in migration, sounds more critical than ever.
Jacqui Lambie: Yeah, we hadn’t taken the increase in migration into account. We just wrote about the people here right now that are living here that are without a house. We also know from experience in Tasmania, by doing that housing deal, I can tell you now, by the time you do the greenfield sites, find them, you get state to put in their money to put new pipes and that, out to suburbs and do that infrastructure underneath, it’s a two-year turnaround before you start seeing foundation put in the ground. That’s the truth of the matter. It will take two years and those approvals to do that, it takes about that time. So, that is a concern.
My concern is if you are going to bring migration into this country, and we don’t have a problem with that, the problem is where are we going to put them? This is my question, where are we going to put them? We’ve already got thousands out there screaming for houses. We can’t keep up with that demand. We are never going to catch that demand, mate, that I can see. In the meantime, we don’t have the right tradies. How do we fix this, when we don’t have enough tradies on the ground and how do we bring more immigration in, if we don’t have the houses there?
Kieran Gilbert: It’s a huge task ahead.
Jacqui Lambie: It is a huge task.
Kieran Gilbert: I know the Greens want the government to be more ambitious, but is it time to at least take what you can get and let that bill through?
Barbara Pocock: No, the bill that is there on the table doesn’t even keep up with the growth in people who are looking for housing. It cannot solve the problem. We need to grow supply, but we also most importantly have to deal with renters. One in three Australians are renting. They are really struggling to find-
Kieran Gilbert: There’s an increase in the rental assistance announced today.
Barbara Pocock: It’s very, very small. It’s $1.18 a day. I mean, it’s a tiny increase and we know people can’t find rental properties and they can’t afford it. The price of rental has gone up so much. We’re very unhappy with that bill. We feel like the government has the capability to do much more. I know as an economist, it’s about growing the supply and that bill will not do it fast enough to keep up with what’s projected.
Kieran Gilbert: Even with Jacqui Lambie’s amendments, where there’s going to be a minimum amount?
Barbara Pocock: Well, Jacqui’s amendments create a minimum, but it’s inadequate for my state and it’s inadequate for many parts of the country.
Jacqui Lambie: But the thing is, if you don’t start building these houses now, you’re going to have more people out there. You need to start doing something now. You have the biggest balance of power in that bloody senate up there. That’s what you have and you can’t keep doing deals for more housing. You’ve got to be kidding me. You have to start today. Those people need roofs over their head today.
Barbara Pocock: We need to make sure we get the rental support for the people now.
Jacqui Lambie: You can do that with your balance of power. You keep pushing that. You’ve got that big balance of power. You’ve got more than what Tammy and I have, I can tell you. And you’re not using that.
Barbara Pocock: Well, I think we’re using it very effectively.
Jacqui Lambie: Well, you want to stop people from having a roof over their head. That is disgusting.
Kieran Gilbert: Well, David Pocock, some move is better than nothing. That’s your view, isn’t it?
David Pocock: Well, I think the thing that we’re hearing is we’re facing some enormous challenges as a society. Everything from climate and the environment, people know things are getting bad, to housing, to cost of living. I think people were looking to the government for a big plan, a longer term plan, but we’ve really seen a pretty safe budget, not a lot of tough decisions. In particular around revenue, they’ve really just kicked the can down the road. The changes to the petroleum resource rent tax, it’s just tinkering at the edges. To date, the PRT hasn’t seen a cent from offshore gas projects. The way that they’ve changed it, it’s simply going to bring forward some of those projected flows of money and create some sort of really base royalty. It’s not the sort of reform that we need when we’ve got a budget that has been in structural deficit for so long and we’re just so reliant on personal income tax as a country. That needs to change and it’s going to take some really tough conversations for government.
Kieran Gilbert: Well, with that personal income tax, the stage three tax cuts, Malcolm Roberts, they don’t get a mention in the budget. The treasurer says it’s old news, that the decision’s an old one, it’s done. Government hasn’t changed its position. Do you see that as the government reinforcing their support for it?
Malcolm Roberts: Well, I’d like to build on what David said because what we’re seeing is some fundamental contradictions here. They’re just tinkering at the edges. But the fundamental contradictions are that the Reserve Bank of Australia wants to increase interest rates to send people broke so they stop spending money. Jim Chalmers, on the meantime brings in 400,000 immigrants in one year, which will drive up the price of housing, increasing the cost of living pressures and also splashing cash around, which will drive up inflation. He’s madly stuffing cash back into people’s pockets, and we’re seeing the fundamental contradictions. We need to understand the basics of what’s happening in this budget.
Kieran Gilbert: There’s a huge challenge on the NDIS front as well, Jackie Lambie. 200 people every day going onto the NDIS. They’ve put in an 8% target cap. It’s only a target, but are you worried about the sustainability of that programme?
Jacqui Lambie: What I’m worried about, and I want to be very careful how I say this, but what I’m worried about and what I do know is I’ve got veterans out there and elderly out there, and because the NDIS pays more for services right across the board, for medical services, for gardening services, it means the elderly and the veterans are going without or waiting months and months and months for those services and treatment. That’s what I know because it pays a lot more in the NDIS. Now, I’ve spoken to Minister Shorten about this since he got got in and I’ve seen no change, nor have I seen him raise those amounts for both the elderly and the veterans, so they at least match the NDIS so we have a fair go, because right now, we’ve been pushed down the line with services and medical services, and that is a problem in itself. And yes, the NDIS was always going to blow out. There’s no doubt about that. And we need to find where we can make some savings here, and who really should be on the NDIS and who should not.
Kieran Gilbert: Well, $5 billion growth every year, Barbara Pocock, are you worried about that sustainability, even with the 8% target cap?
Barbara Pocock: It is really important for us to properly fund and properly manage the NDIS, and this budget represents a really significant cut on the projected increases that we need for that programme. So I’m concerned about that. And you mentioned the stage three tax cuts. They are very real in the way that they could be used to fund the things that we need. We need to expand our care economy, pay our childcare workers, the people who didn’t get a real increase in this budget so that we can build the care supports that we need in a population where more and more women are working. And we’ve got a demographic shift where a lot more people, as Jackie says, are getting older and need support as well as properly fund the NDIS.
Malcolm Roberts: And yet we’ve got a 10% shortfall in aged care workers.
Barbara Pocock: Yeah, we need to pay them properly, keep them there.
Malcolm Roberts: 450,000 jobs needed, 45,000 short.
Kieran Gilbert: What’s your read on the NDIS as well, on top of that?
Malcolm Roberts: The NDIS needs a hell of a good look at. We’re going to spend another 700, $800 million on increased staffing to the NDIS. The NDIS fundamental problem is that it was started as a vote catcher, with no real thought behind it. Same with the NBN, same with Gonski. That’s one of the things in this country. The governments do not have the discipline to get the data and make the right decisions. They just come up with floating bubbles every now and then, just to get some headlines.
Kieran Gilbert: David Pocock, to you on the NDIS, they’ve got that target now, that cap of 8% growth every year. But even with that, to this point, it’s been $5 billion growth every year. As someone who supports it, do you also recognise the government’s concerns about the sustainability?
David Pocock: I thought Kurt Fearnley the other day, talking on RN, really nailed it, saying, “We’ve got to remember this is talking about people in our communities who desperately need the support to be able to live lives where they can be included in our society and they can contribute.” And I think that needs to be the basis of this discussion. But we clearly need to be looking at sustainability of a programme like this, and ways that it can be run efficiently and effectively to ensure that it’s there into the future.
Malcolm Roberts: Well, they’re nice words, David, but we need to get the money, and we need to have the discipline and how we spend it. At the moment, people are trying to kill the mining industry, which is the single greatest source of revenue for this country, number one and number two exports come from mining, and they’re trying to kill it. So it just does not make sense.
Kieran Gilbert: Malcolm Roberts, Barbara Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, David Pocock, thank you all. Appreciate your time on budget night and thank you for your company tonight.
Today I joined Senators Hanson, Antic, Rennick and Canavan in sponsoring a motion that would have forced the government to publish the Pfizer contracts. These contracts have cost taxpayers billions of dollars and include unspecified indemnities for harm big pharma’s products cause.
Ironically, the “my body my choice” greens teamed up with labor to block this motion that would have ensured transparency and accountability around the products that were mandated into people’s bodies.
Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts and I’m in Rockhampton with David Swindells and Rob Pie. They’re both fishermen, they’ve been fishing for many years. And I am absolutely stunned and shocked with the stories I’ve heard in the last hour and a half. So we’re just gonna pick a couple of really startling stories. Can you tell us what’s involved when you catch Black Jewfish?
Well, just for me to go and catch a Black Jewfish, which has a quota on of 20 tonne for the commercial sector.
So that’s for a year, the whole commercial sector gets 20 tonnes of Jewfish. Just 20 tonnes for the whole year. I think this year it took 48 days to catch that quota. After that, we were not allowed to go and catch any more. But, while I could got and catch ’em, just to go and catch this fish, I had to ring up fisheries every morning before I left the boat ramp.
Were they in Brisbane?
Oh, gotta ring up Brisbane, on an automated system, which isn’t real good. Then, once I go out there fishing, or I catch a fish, when I come home I’ve got to ring ’em before I get to the boat ramp, let ’em know how many fish I’ve got. I’ve got to the boat ramp, then I have to take ’em to the wholesaler. And when I go to the wholesaler, all this period of time I cannot let that fish outta my sight.
So you can’t even have a leak?
Oh, I wouldn’t want it to be for too long. But anyway, then I can’t let it outta me sight. Then, once I’ve sold it to the wholesaler, I then have to do what they call a CDR, docket to the wholesaler. Then he can have it. Then I have to ring up Brisbane once again and tell them who I’ve sold it to and the weight and the number of fish. And I thought that would be enough. Then I go home again, I then have to put it into my normal logbooks, to send that to Brisbane again. And I have to send that to Brisbane within seven days of entering it in of catching the fish. Now, these regulations are over the top. Now, the State Government has to come and do something for the fishermen. I’m sick and tired of the fishermen being the lower class. It happens all the time. We are not to be stood on. It’s about time the public and the State Government got up and stood up for us.
Now, fishing is one of the biggest, I think it’s the world’s biggest recreational sport, maybe apart from golf. So, you’re not opposed to recreational fishermen. But, if a recreational fisherman catches a Black Jewfish, does he have to do this?
No, if a recreational fisherman catches a Black Jewfish, all he has to do is bring it in whole. He is not allowed to gut it or anything, same as we’re not allowed to gut ’em.
Doesn’t have to report it?
He doesn’t have to report it.
So, just one thing, before we move off your topic and go onto one of Rob’s. The 48 days of catching Black Jewfish for the whole industry, 20 tonnes, last year it was 48 days. So the rest, the other ten and a half months, there’s no Black Jewfish caught?
There’s no Black Jewfish caught commercially, so the public doesn’t get any fresh fish, once again. Like the net free zones, when they brought them in, they stopped 36% of the wild caught Barramundi being fed to the Queensland consumer. Now, don’t our Queensland consumers have some rights? Or is it only the recreational fishermen that they’re looking after? And as far as I’m concerned, they’re only there to get votes. Votes do not put feeds on the table.
Rob, can you tell us quickly about the costs involved? You’ve got what I would call a dinghy, it’s a big more than that, but it’s a dinghy. We’ll get some photos of it. And it costs a recreational fisherman or anyone who wants to buy that same boat with the outboard motor about $25,000. What do you have to pay for it?
Well, if I was to tear the backside out of it now, and to replace that boat it would cost me upwards of $70,000, without me putting equipment on it to shoot away and retrieve trawl nets, as they class the net with fisheries.
And even though the fish take notice of the moon and the tides and what have you, and the weather and the climate, they don’t pay attention to whether it’s weekend or not as far as I know.
No, no.
But you can’t fish on the weekend, even if the tides are suitable and the moon’s suitable.
I can fish in certain parts of the river, but with the net free zones, when there was nets in the river allowed, that was classed as weekend closure, which allowed the commercial fishermen only to work until 6 p.m. Friday night. It was closed from 6 p.m. Friday night to 6 p.m. Sunday afternoon. And then that was open again on 6 p.m. Sunday night for the commercial to set their nets. So, on the weekend, if you called it weekenders and pros clashing, they saw that weekend clash as a way of softening the blow on it and avoiding the fights or whatever may be. Now the net free zones have been declared, the net free zones still have the trawl areas. The big trawl area here is still closed for weekenders for no apparent reason.
No data, nothing.
No.
A lot of these regulations are not based on data, they go against the data. We haven’t got time now, but you’ve given me phenomenal examples of how this is actually hurting the fish that they’re supposedly trying to protect.
Yes.
It’s making it worse for the Barramundi and other fishes.
Yeah, well not only the Barramundi. Like, the Barramundi, they have problems, they eat their own young. And up to a fair size, actually, I’ve caught fish years ago, like probably a 30 pound Barra, probably had three fish up to 10 inches long in it.
So, you’ve actually noticed
Yes.
That there are fewer fish now with the restrictions that you’ve got on you, with fewer fish now than before when there were no restrictions because what you did was keep the balance.
Yeah, well what we used to do, we’re allowed to keep, until the new logbooks came in, and they threw the logbook from the offshore fishery at us for the trawl fishery and out of about 20 different species that you can catch in the offshore trawl fishery, we only catch about five here. So, it’s a useless piece of gear that we’ve gotta fill in that doesn’t reflect what we can catch. What we can catch is prawns, we catch different varieties of prawns. We catch small mullet, herrings, gar and similar fish. If we catch the prawns, we can keep them. But if we catch herrings or gar or small mullet, we’ve gotta return them to the water.
The people are being heard here. Not only the fishermen, but everyone who eats seafood in Queensland, because we’re bringing in more imported seafood because the locals can’t catch it. And it’s just absolutely insane.
https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.png00Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-03-16 12:13:362020-10-19 12:15:33Fishing industry under threat
Australia has the largest continental shelf fishing zone in the world yet we import close to 75% of our seafood. Why?I had a chat to a couple of fishermen in Mackay to learn about their lives and the problems in the industry.
Transcript
Okay, we’re in the harbour in Mackay with lots of fishing boats behind the camera and I’m with Steve Andrew, the state member from Mirani, a One Nation member of Parliament, Ben Smith, who’s a fisherman out of Bundy.
Yep.
Bundaberg and Paul Newman who’s from Cairns, but you guys fish just about anywhere, don’t you?
Yeah.
Along the East Coast.
Travel the coast, yeah.
Wherever the money, or we think we can do the best.
Get the prawn.
Yeah.
So you’re based in Cairns but you’re in Mackay, you’re based in Bundy, why’re you in Mackay?
It’s just the time of year, we generally, over Christmas, work down home and then from first of March, which season opens here first of March, from then on, we work north of here, sort of thing, from here through to Cairns.
And how long to do you go out at a time?
Oh look, average would be 25 nights.
25 nights in a row.
Anything up to 40, yeah.
And you are up to 100?
Quite often we do a 100 day stint, yeah. From Cairns North, we’ll use some other ship’s services and do 100 days straight.
Wow. And how much fuel do you take on, what does it cost you to fuel up for a month?
$25,000 roughly a month.
$25,000 in fuel a month?
Yeah, that’s roughly, you know.
Do you have to pay excess on that?
No.
No, okay. Well, you do and then you can claim it back.
And what does it cost every week? A thousand bucks or something in insurance you said?
Oh look, between, say, 700 and 1000 a week.
Wow.
With the two boats, I think, 16, 18, a quarter or something like that, and I’ve actually had to tone down my insurance ’cause the premiums keep stepping up so much.
So you’ve got very large costs. What’s your turnover a year?
Look, you generally aim for about a million dollars.
Wow.
Generally, you need that, you need that.
So, for example, a new main engine in one of my vessels is about $120,000, $130,000.
Then you’d put a gearbox on the back of that, that’s $80,000 like it’s–
The fella helping you put that engine in, he’s often $100 to $150 a hour and the slipways where you might do said job can be as much as three or four hundred dollars a day.
So getting a prawn onto our plates is an expensive venture, and it’s risky?
That’s where the insurance comes in, yeah.
Well, it is, it’s a risky game.
It’s like anything, it’s as risky as, you know, there’s ways to manage the risks basically.
‘Cause you’ve got X amount of knots, you can go at X amount of knots?
Weather?
And then after that, your insurance is null and void, that’s what you’ve gotta be careful of.
Not necessarily, no.
Not exactly, no.
But it’s up to the captain as to what he sees fit and most of us are smart enough.
We’re here now, we’re only in town now ’cause with the risks of safety with this–
Because you understand the weather events are impending but even if it was just a normal weather event, you could work behind the reef in that league, in the league of the reef or the oils.
Can I just say, those of us left fishing today, numbers are only 250 odd east coast trawlers now, the safety of our vessels and the fact that we’re still here speaks for itself.
You’ve got about seven or eight different licencing with all your monitoring as well on top of that, so the red tape’s huge in Queensland and you’ve, you know, the vessel monitoring, all your satellite stuff, of course.
So what was the fishing fleet, say, 20 years ago?
1,500.
1,700.
1,700, and what is it now?
At any one time, I think there’s less than 200 of us active licencing.
So you’re down to about 12% of what it used to be 20 years ago?
Absolutely, yeah.
And yet, now, we’ve got the largest continental shelf fishing zone in the world, okay? And yet, we import, and we’ve only got 25 million people, we import almost three quarters of the seafood we eat, and where do we import it from? Number one place is China.
Yeah.
Which has got a tiny coastline compared to ours, massive population, and yet, they send their seafood down here, and then the second biggest place that sends us seafood is Thailand, but here’s the killer, guess which country has 36% of the world’s marine parks?
Us.
Us. The UN directly manages some of our coastal areas, the rest are UN guidelines that state and federal governments manage, so we’ve got a hell of a lot of our fishing zones shut down.
Shut off, yeah.
So now, one question, and you guys chime in if you want to, so we bring prawn into Queensland, it says in there, and the government tells us you can eat these prawns but don’t take them fishing.
And isn’t that just crazy?
Is that serious?
That’s the white spot related thing.
The bar for our export product is here.
I know.
The bar for our import product is here, and I have to do battle with it to sell it, to sell my good product to the people of Australia
So you can eat the white spot prawn, but you can’t feed them to the fish?
You’re not allowed to go fishing with them.
You can’t put them in the environment ’cause it can–
I’m sorry, have you heard anything so ridiculous in your life.
What we’re doing, the government is actually allowing us to import disease and destroy our bio-security area ’cause not everyone’s gonna take heed to that. Those words are so cheap.
It’s only a guideline.
Exactly.
So that brings us to the last point, and that is that you guys have been jerked around a lot by government regulations, and they’re not based on science.
No, they’re not. There’s groups that get on the government’s case obviously, whether it’s environmental, recreational fishers, GRMPA, there’s just that many of them. They’ve gotta listen to them and see they’re listening, but I mean everyone’s got their own agenda.
And we’re such a minority.
Yeah.
You know, we’re not great numbers.
If you’ve got 200 businesses left, and we’re fishermen, we’re not scientists, we’re not any of those things, all we want to do is go and do what we’ve paid our money to do, and that’s basically all–
There are really decent scientists who agree with what you’re saying that the fish are not being depleted, they’re not being over-fished, it’s bullshit.
Yeah, that’s right, yeah. And what they’re actually doing is, everywhere they close off, they’re squeezing us into a smaller area.
So what do you think happens?
But you’re not only getting squeezed into a smaller area, you’re getting squeezed in the area with the recreations as well.
How big is this coastline for him from Bundaberg and me from Cairns to meet here?
Yeah, exactly.
Because we’re pushed into one area.
Your dad would have taught you, and I know Jim Edwards and the old fellas taught me, you go out there, you take what you need or you just take that bit, and you know where to come back, doesn’t matter what you’re doing.
It controls itself to a point, and yeah, we don’t need all the overregulation.
It sort of comes back to common sense, you know, you protect what you’re trying to get
You know what the real problem is, and we’ll finish on this one, the real problem is that we’ve got a state government that goes looking for votes in the southeast and spreads misinformation about what’s happening and then people in the southeast think that they’re doing good for the reef when they’re not.
And the recreation sector compared with us, we’re so small, we have votes.
They’ve got quite a big voice compared to us.
Anyway, thank you very much for going out there so often and getting us good fish, healthy fish and prawns. Thank you very much.
https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.png00Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2020-03-16 12:08:022020-10-19 12:12:23Government has nationalised the fishing industry
