SIMPLE QUESTION: HOW MUCH DOES THE U.N. COST AUSTRALIA?

I could not believe no one in government could give me a total cost on what we pay to the UN, its subsidiaries and how much we spend in complying with their dictates.

Transcript

[Senator Roberts] And thank you all for attending today. My questions are about the United Nations. So I don’t know who will answer those questions. In total, how much does Australia pay to the United Nations or subsidiaries each year, in dollar terms? Do we need to take that on notice?

[Minister Payne] No, I don’t think we do, I think someone’s coming down from upstairs. We will unfortunately get into questions of definition about which subsidiary agencies and all the rest of it, we may need to… in order to give a completely comprehensive answer, we may need to take it on notice, that there’ll be a number of things that we can say that are general level that I hope will be what you’re after Senator.

[Senator Roberts] I’m after a comprehensive level, yeah.

[Minister Payne] Well if you need comprehensive Senator, I’ll ask officials to do their best at the table.

[Senator Roberts] Yes.

And then if parts of it needs to be taken on notice, we’ll return to the committee.

[Senator Roberts] Of course. – Thank you.

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. Apologies. I just had to come down the stairs. Justin Lee, first assistant secretary multilateral policy division. Senator, can I just ask you to repeat the question?

[Senator Roberts] Yes. In total, how much does Australia pay to the United Nations, or its subsidiaries, each year, in dollar terms?

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. The key contribution that Australia makes is our assessed contribution to the United Nations and that’s based upon the size of Australia’s economy. Australia contributes 2.21% to the UN regular budget.

[Chair] The question was in dollar terms.

[Justin Lee] Yes. And that equates to, in 2021, around $82.2 million, is our assessed contribution to the UN. We also make other contributions for example, to UN peacekeeping. And that is also based on an assessed contribution to the United Nations. And in 2019/20, which was the last year, we had a figure out for that. Australia provided $212 million in assessed contributions to support UN peacekeeping missions. Senator that is not the total of course though, of our contribution to the United Nations. And I don’t have a figure because that is provided by a range of contributions that may be made through the development corporation programme. It may be made through contributions to UN specialised agencies. They would be looked after by other Australian government agencies as well. So getting the total contribution that Australia makes to the UN, and all of the subsidiary agencies, requires a collation of data from across government, which we don’t have.

[Senator Roberts] I’ll be happy to take that on notice. Thank you. This is a very important issue for our constituents because they’re concerned at the cost and the impact on the country. The next one is along the same vein. In total, how much does it cost Australia to comply with, or to implement, UN dictates in the form of various forms, treaties, agreements declarations, protocols that are expected of the UN members?

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. I don’t think that we would be able to provide a figure on that because if Australia, Australia of course seeks to adhere to its international obligations, including treaty reporting processes, a lot of that would be the responsibility of Australian government agencies and, and to to calculate that, you would need to look at the the staff costs, the time costs. Sorry, I, I… I just don’t think that we would have that figure or be able to collect a figure, on implementation of international obligations in that, in the way that you portray it.

[Senator Roberts] It would be. Thank you for your openness. It would be enormous. I’m thinking of the compliance with the UN Kyoto protocol. That’s cost a lot of farmers to lose their property rights. That’s been estimated by some people to be either a 100 or $200 billion. So it’s rubbery but it’s a difficult thing. Compliance with the water act, which puts compliance with international obligations as it’s, one of its primary aims, right through. Compliance with the UN Paris agreement, particularly when other nations don’t have to wreck their economy to comply because their goals are so easy. So manufacturing the UN Lima agreement, a declaration from 1975 and the governance impacts from the UN Rio declaration in 1992. So just take it, but I am. I am wondering if anyone has figured out the cost to this country in dollar terms, the cost to our economy the cost to a loss of our governance and sovereignty.

[Justin Lee] Senator, I think the only other way to portray it though is the, is the benefits that, that Australia gets from these arrangements and these agreements.

[Chair] With respect, I understand that but this isn’t the forum for arguing somebody seeking costs. And if somebody else wants to ask a question about the benefits, then that’s up to them. But time is very limited. I’m sorry.

[Senator Roberts] So that, that leads to my third question which is given the globalist approach of the UN, what value is there for Australia to constantly pay out money directly and at huge indirect cost to our governance and our economy?

[Justin Lee] Oh, well, I think the answer to that would be the benefits that we get from those, those arrangements, both in terms of having, having rules that are that guide many things that, that guide the Australian economy. If we look for example, all the work that we have been doing around rules that guide international aviation, international shipping, telecommunications, all of those rules are set by the United Nations. That means that we’ve got a global economy that we can participate in that sets equal rules between countries which Australia is a, is an open trading economy and an economy of our size can, can benefit from. Similarly, we have international organisations dealing with global challenges. So the roles that the WHO is playing in response to COVID. Dealing with, dealing with those challenges that we want addressed in the world, by making contributions to those, we get benefit from that. So we appreciate that there are costs, both direct costs and obligations that Australia has to adhere but we also get a number of very significant benefits.

[Senator Roberts] And I’d put it to you that the benefits, for example in aviation, they could be done by a country hosting the other countries of the world to come up with a convention on that. So that doesn’t have to come from the UN. And we’ve shown that in the history of our planet. What would it mean to Australia, if Australia chose to withdraw from the United Nations? If we exited.

[Minister Payne] Senator, I can assure you that there is no consideration of that, that our engagement in the international system, and indeed Australia’s security and prosperity has been underpinned for a very long time, by what is known as the rules-based international order in the institutions that were created to support that. What we have seen in the last 12 months, frankly, the impact of COVID around the world. We’ve seen what happens when those systems can click into gear. And can support the countries and the communities that need them. The international cooperation that we have through those UN agencies and organisations is very important to that management. COVID-19, as I was saying, has really exposed the magnitude of the consequences if those global institutions are not working as well as they should, that does not mean, and I think the prime minister and you, have probably engaged on this before. It does not mean, as the prime minister said in his Lowy speech last year. He said, ‘We can’t be an indifferent bystander to these events that impact our livelihoods, our safety and our sovereignty. We must, as we have done previously, cultivate, marshal and bring our influence to bear to protect and promote our national interests.’ So what we seek, is an international system that respects the unique characteristics of individual states within it. In our case, Australia. That still provides a framework for cooperation on security and prosperity. Mr. Lee, Dr. Lee has advanced international aviation I think, if I was, if I was hearing correctly as a, as an example of that, but there are countless others, Senator, where we understand that working cooperatively with others is an important part of our national interest. It’s in our national interest, it allows us to pursue shared regional and global objectives. And it is a centrepiece of our international engagement. Now, we did a lot of work on this last year, a lot of work. And that has crystallised and firmed the government’s views on these matters.

[Senator Roberts] Well, thank you and I respect your right to have an opinion. I also have a different opinion.

[Minister Payne] As I do yours, Senator.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you. I know you’ve shown that in the past.

[Minister Payne] We’re in a very good democracy. Sorry. I took some of those minutes. My apologies.

[Senator Roberts] I do acknowledge the prime minister said, I think these words, on the 3rd of October, 2019 when he addressed the Lowy Institute in Sydney, ‘Unaccountable’ he spoke of, ‘The unaccountable internationalist bureaucrats or bureaucracies.’ I think those were the words. And then promptly gave, advocated to give World Health Organisation more power. I would argue with you about the World Health Organization’s benefits, because I think it contributed to the rampant spread of COVID, but nonetheless. How many funding arrangements between Australia and the UN are open-ended?

[Justin Lee] I, I’m not…

[Senator Roberts] They get ratcheted up automatically, or they’re they haven’t got a closing date.

[Justin Lee] Yes. I, I’ll try to take that on notice. But my, my initial reaction would be that we would have no open-ended commitments, or any commitment that we make would be on the basis of an agreement or an understanding. But I can take that on notice.

[Senator Roberts] I think there is some updates to our laws or our requirements, or our commitments that are made automatically if the UN document or protocol is, is changed. Are you aware of any of those?

[Justin Lee] You could be, I’m not sure Senator, you could be referring to what I mentioned earlier, which was our assessed contribution. And there is a committee that looks at our assessed contributions and adjusts that contribution according to changes and our national circumstances, our size of our economy, debt ratios and the like in comparison to other countries. That is still part of a committee which we participate in. But ultimately we would abide by the finding of that committee and at the end of that process. So there is that sort of process. And that was what I was referring to earlier about the calculation about assessing.

[Senator Roberts] It may be, I’ll finish up now, but it may be in the human rights area. Or the rights of the child area, where changes in the UN requirements are automatically fed through to us and we have to comply with them. So that may be something to consider, but I believe that’s the case.

[Justin Lee] I can take that on notice.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you, if you could. And, you know, from my, my questioning. I really question the need to stay in the UN and the advantage to this country because of the governance impact on our country, the sovereignty impact on a country and the economic impacts on a country. So, you know, I recognise and acknowledge that this country’s current government is not thinking about exiting the UN, but we certainly are. So a lot of our constituents want to.

[Minister Payne] Senator, can I also say, I understand the reform issues you’ve raised and we are strong supporters of the reform processes that have been underway in the UN and acknowledged, more to do. And I did raise that with the secretary general last week, in a conversation on a number of regional issues. But also in passing on the year-end reform questions.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you very much.

This morning I talked to Marcus Paul about coal-fired power, the mess our Industrial Relations are in and the fact that the corrupt World Health Organisation actually said Australia could be where COVID originated.

Transcript

[Marcus Paul]

Malcolm, good morning, mate.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Good morning, Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus Paul]

I’m okay. I’m very well. Listen, I just wanted to ask you first off the bat, a question without notice because I know you’re very good on your feet. New research has found Australia’s coal fired power stations are routinely breaching their licence conditions putting our community’s health and the environment at risk.

The newly released coal impacts index reveals there have been more than 150 publicly reported environmental breaches since 2015. However, the spokes person for Australia Beyond Coal, David Ridditz says only a fraction of these, 16, have resulted in penalties or enforceable undertakings. Now, if coal’s to be a part of our reliable energy future, we need to clean up our backyard I think.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, if that’s true then certainly we need to. No one should be exempt from those regulations, Marcus. The environment is very important. It’s also important to understand that solar power destroys the environment as well because they’re leaking cadmium and selenium and lead into the soil and into the water.

In fact, it’s monstrous what’s going on north of Brisbane. A proposed Chinese development of a solar panel farm. They’re not farms, they’re industrial complexes, directly affecting Brisbane’s water supply for two million people. So, I mean, we’ve got to protect the environment. That’s the number one thing. The environment can’t exist without civilization being productive and civilization can’t be productive without the environment being protected. So, the future of our civilization, the future of our environment are interdependent and rely on each other.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Anthony Albanese, the federal opposition leader yesterday, talked policy. He’ll be on the programme a little later this morning, but by the way, he’s promising workers a better deal with a suite of reforms to improve job security and provide minimum pay and entitlements to those in insecure work. What’s your take on this?

[Malcolm Roberts]

I think he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth. For a start, his policies on energy, his policies on lack of taxation reform, are cruelling job security. Secondly, his policies on energies just mentioned, don’t take into account the fact that Australian workers need to be productive and we can’t be productive when we’ve got energy costs that are now amongst the highest in the world due to labour policies under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and due to liberal national policies under John Howard and every prime minister since. So, what we need to do is look at the big picture.

But also, it’s very hypocritical and I believe dishonest of Anthony Abanese to talk what he’s talking about casual because Joe Fitzgibbon had plenty of opportunity to address the casual issues in the Hunter Valley. Instead, what he did was he tried to misrepresent me going after it and now, what we’re seeing is I was absolutely right, with Simon Turner and other’s in the Hunter Valley, loss of worker’s compensation, loss of their leave entitlements, loss of their long service leave, accruals being accurate, loss of their accident pay, being suppressed when they had an accident or injury and being told to cover it up.

Anthony Abanese has got to come clean on this. Joe Fitzgibbon had six years to fix this. So did the liberal party. They’ve done nothing until their big corporate mates get into trouble and now they’re wanting to take on the little guy again.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, all right, let’s move onto the World Health Organisation and that dopey, ridiculous, so called investigation into Covid.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yeah, can you believe it? That they think it might have come from our beef. I mean, this is absolutely monstrous. We know that the Chinese Communist Party and the UN, through the World Health Organisation, have colluded closely to suppress the news of Covid virus in China early last year. We know that.

That enabled the virus to get a march on around the world. I mean, the Chinese came out and the World Health Organisation echoed them saying, there is no human to human virus transmission, none at all. And then they suppressed news of that, they suppressed their own doctors of it and the World Health Organization’s chief has been beholden to China. So, this is not an investigation, it’s a cover up, it’s a complete cover up and can we really have confidence that this is a transparent and thorough investigation?

No, we can’t. What we need to do is get the hell out of the World Health Organisation and get out of the UN. That’s why I called for an Aus Exit from the UN back in 2016 and I keep calling for that. The UN is a corrupt, dishonest, incompetent, lazy organisation that is hurting our country.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, they say the likely scenario is that the virus passed from original animal host to intermediary animals including frozen and chilled animal products, including Australian beef to humans.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes. I mean, it’s ludicrous. They wouldn’t allow an investigation for 12 months basically. They covered everything up, they weren’t allowed to go to the lab. I mean, this is not an investigation, it’s a stitch up.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. What about the Nationals, are they backing away from manufacturing policy? They’ve collapsed on coal, they’re backing net-zero 2050. It means they’re, in your opinion, opposing jobs.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes. We talked last week about the fact that the Nationals came up with a lovely glossy booklet and the core of that booklet… Sorry, on their managing policy, but on the manufacturing policy, but the core of that booklet was a solid page on their support for coal.

Then we put a motion into the senate one week ago and we said we need to build a coal fired power station in Hunter Valley, which is exactly what the Nationals were proposing. In the face of the motion, in the senate, the Nationals ran away and voted with the Liberals against a coal fired power station in the Hunter, after they said just a week before, that they were supporting it. So, they abandoned coal last week.

Now, we see their manufacturing policy relies upon cheap energy, but with the net zero 2050, it means the liberal party will be opposing jobs and opposing cheap energy and opposing manufacturing. The Nationals have meekly rolled over again. Because this policy for net-zero, according to the IPA, will cost coal miners, farmers and steel and iron workers amongst the majority of the 654,000 jobs that will be lost by the adoption of Net-Zero. We can’t afford it. It’s absolute rubbish.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Let’s move now to the north of the country. Western Australia in particular. The north west. Yet another overreach, you say, by Mark McGowan, the WA premier and closing down for some five days.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes. Marcus, I was supposed to be calling you from WA, up in the north west, up near the Kimberlys today. But unfortunately, we couldn’t go there because Mark McGowan capriciously locked down parts of WA again and made it impossible for us to get there and come back in the time without some risk.

So, we need a better way of managing our community and business in the face of the virus being here. It’s just ludicrous where we get one case and people get locked down. We get people jumping on a plane in Perth, coming to Brisbane, by the time they land in Brisbane, five hours later, they suddenly find out WA’s been locked down and they have to go into hotel quarantine for two weeks at their own expense.

It’s just not right. We’ve got people in New South Wales contacted me saying they’d love to spend a holiday in Northern Queensland, beautiful up there, and they’re not going to do it because they just don’t know what Annastacia Palaszczuk’s going to do. McGowan, Palaszczuk, the control freak in Victoria, they’re using lock downs capriciously and even the UN’s corrupt World Health Organisation has admitted that lock downs are a blunt instrument to be used when things are out of control to get control.

So, the premiers of Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria simply admitting that they can’t control their states properly with the virus in their state.

[Marcus Paul]

Always good to have you on for your views. I appreciate it.

[Malcolm Roberts]

You’re welcome, Marcus. Have a good day, mate.

[Marcus Paul]

Take care, Malcolm.

There has been many comments recently about a bill that people were concerned about which they claimed would allow foreign troops and police to enter Australia and act against our interests.

This is untrue.

The bill simply gives foreign troops and police who are invited into our country to help in emergencies an exemption of liability if they are acting in good faith while performing their duties. It’s the same exemption that our defence force and police are given in emergencies.

One Nation would clearly not have anything to do with allowing foreign troops or police into Australia to act against the interest of its people.

The bill was the “Defence Legislation Amendment (Enhancement of Defence Force response to Emergencies) Bill 2020”.

As a way of explanation, Clause 123AA:

A protected person (see subsection (3)) is not subject to any liability (whether civil or criminal) in respect of anything the protected person does or omits to do, in good faith, in the performance or purported performance of the protected person’s duties,…. A protected person is defined under 123AA :

  1. Each of the following is a protected person:

(a) a member of the Defence Force;

(b) an APS employee in the Department;

(c) a person authorised under subsection (4) to perform duties in respect of the provision of assistance mentioned in subsection (1).

Transcript

Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I’m in Thursday Island just above the tip of Cape York. And we’re here for a Senate inquiry, but I also want to respond now to people who’ve contacted our office about something that concerns them. It’s another internet rumour that’s not true.

They’re asking questions about us, or the parliament or the government authorising foreign defence forces to come onto this country and be armed and to control the people, that’s nonsense.

The bill that was passed recently is merely to ensure that overseas volunteers who come here to help us in times of natural disaster have the same rights and protections as Australian soldiers and Australian volunteers, because they’re covered by insurance, foreigners are not, until now.

So it means that providing foreigners, whether they be armed, whether they be, they won’t be armed forces, but whether they be defence forces or police forces or volunteers, will be covered. People like the three pilots who died in the plane crash last year fighting the fires with a water bomber.

Volunteers, defence, police, and so on. They must be acting in good faith. If they’re not acting in good faith, or they do something deliberately harmful to people, then they lose that protection, and they’re vulnerable.

So all that’s happened is that the government is protecting the foreign volunteers to make sure that we keep getting foreign volunteers to come here and help us with their particular skills in terms of natural disasters.

That’s all it is. We checked it thoroughly, and it’s here for our protection.

Pepe Iovannella is one of the largest tour operators in Cairns. Cairns have suffered more than any other city in Australia because of COVID restrictions which has decimated the tourism industry.

Pepe tells us that even though the Labor government promised to dredge Trinity Inlet to allow large boats to increase opportunities, they have reneged on the deal.

Transcript

[Malcolm Roberts]

Hi, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts and I’m in Trinity Inlet in Cairns. You see a Cruise Ship here, Trawler behind us and recreational boats and Trawlers on the other side of Trinity Inlet. Now I’m with Pepe Iovannella. How’s that?

[Pepe Iovannella]

Correct.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Thank you.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Perfect.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Pepe’s family is the owner of the largest tour operator Australian family owned tour operator in Cairns. They did tours to the Reef and he’s got many other businesses.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Yap.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Cairns depends on tourism, right Pepe?

[Pepe Iovannella]

We’re a key element of Cairns. We’re probably in the top five if not the first. It’s crucial for our business and obviously in a COVID year we’ve been struggling and if it wasn’t for JobKeeper, we’d be definitely, most of operators be closed by now.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Right. So the government’s restrictions around COVID state and federal have gutted Cairns. Cairns has suffered more than any other community in the country. It’s income gross domestic product has gone down 16%. It’s economy is folding.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Yes.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And it needs to come out of that. And what Pepe is doing, is he can see that the trend is toward larger Cruise vessels to get higher turnover. And yet the Port Authority is being restricted by the state government. So we kinda, you won’t get those larger boats.

[Pepe Iovannella]

So back in 2016, when they announced to dredge to allow larger Cruise ships, which are crucial to Cairns they bring millions of dollars of money and passengers and tourist numbers. They promised us four million cubic metres of dredging. After they got elected.

[Malcolm Roberts]

So just before the election.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Before the election.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And before the election they promised 120 million dollars.

[Pepe Iovannella]

All parties agreed and Labor were last to come on board. They finally agreed to dredge and give us the money for four million cubic metres. If they won, and whoever won that election and Labor won the election. So they had to commit to honour their commitment and promised us four million cubic metres. Two years later we got 700,000 which essentially is our maintenance dredging for the year.

[Malcolm Roberts]

That’s about 16% of what they promised.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Correct.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And so it’s very important to understand that Trinity Inlet is fed by creeks and just like every other inlet fed by creeks and rivers silt comes in. Silt builds up when it hits the stagnant water or the steady water of the ocean and silt fills up the Harbour. And so you have maintenance dredging to keep the Harbour at the right level.

And then you have capital dredging, which expands, deepens, widens the Harbour. And so Cairns is gonna miss out. It would missed out on the maintenance dredging and it is gonna miss out on the capital dredging to get these bigger cruise vessels.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Yeah. You know obviously as time goes on the Cruise ships get bigger. We need to cater as, even as the commercials our commercial vessels have got bigger over time. Cruise ships get bigger. We need to cater for Cruise ships. And that’s why it’s imperative that we get back and do the four million cubic metres of dredging that was promised by the Labor Party.

[Malcolm Roberts]

But Cairns, I didn’t realise this. Cairns has the largest, has the largest number of vessel movements of any regional port in Australia. Correct?

[Pepe Iovannella]

Correct. Yeah we got the largest number of class one vessels, class three vessels. We have the highest number- the Trawler industry is huge in Cairns. We have Reef boats that go out. The Coral Princess goes out taking passengers over board. So we got all those apart from our day passengers.

So we’ve got a whole plethora of combination of boats that run out of Port and and which makes us the number one port in Australia.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And what happened to this port was that somebody in their wisdom, and without any scientific evidence the state government moved the port limit, sorry moved the National Park limit to within the port. So that stopped any dredging within the port. I mean, this is dumb. It goes completely against the science.

So that then led to a large fight but you’ve also got not only the state government but the globalists and the federal government people like Greg Hunt at the time who all bowed to the almighty people in the WWF and the other UN led organisations which are now choking Cairns. That’s basically it.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Correct, yeah. So we’ve got the largest fleet in Australia running out of port, and yet we’re not a priority port. You know other ports, there’s four other ports in Queensland that are priority ports.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Townsville, Gladstone, Mackay and Hay Point.

[Pepe Iovannella]

And yet we’re the number one port for movements. Number one port for maintenance. People relying on boats that earn their income, Trawler industry, and yet we’re still stifled by the Labor government, by not allowing us to have priority. So if we had priority port status, that would fix a lot of our issues.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And this is so stupid. We’ve got cruise liners anchored off the coast here and passengers being ferried in and out. We’d have far more people, if they could put their feet on the ground. If they tied up here at a decent wharf and could get out and spend their money at service stations, motels, entertainment, restaurants and that’s what Cairns is missing out on.

Cairns is being belted by international tourism shutdown because of the airline traffic, being belted by the Cruise industry being shut down. But when you finally get out again you wanna thrive and you can’t do that with these dopey buggers in government

[Pepe Iovannella]

We’re the ideal port to be a turnaround port for Cruise ship industry. There’s the Brisbane port has been increased and they’ve spent a billion dollars on Brisbane port yet they don’t wanna spend a cent here in Cairns. So they’re stifling Cairns growth.

[Malcolm Roberts]

And get this, they see tankers taking oil from Northern countries down to Brisbane, putting it on road tankers and transporting it up by truck to Cairns. How stupid is that when these tankers should be unloading here? I mean, they’re just holding the North back holding the state back.

[Pepe Iovannella]

The stupidest thing is that sugar industry can’t even pick up from the sugar terminals anymore. ‘Cause obviously the ships are bigger, so they can’t fill the capacity. So we’re only half filling the sugar ships out of Cairns.

[Malcolm Roberts]

We blame the United Nations for the blue and the green tape but we especially blame the people who just bow to the UN. State and federal globalists, and that’s it. They’re the ones destroying the city.

[Pepe Iovannella]

Absolutely, 100% agreement.

Scott Morrison is due to attend another climate jamboree where he will no doubt promise to implement more of the United Nations agenda destroying more of our economy.

Well I have an idea. I can go in his place.

Transcript

One Nation opposes this motion. I for one, would be happy for our Prime Minister not to speak at the Climate Ambition Summit. Our prime minister has demonstrated that he will not put the interest of Australia first.

On the international stage under pressure, the prime minister turns to jelly and adopts the agenda of the United Nations without regard for the damage it does to our Australian economy or the lives of Australians.

If Australians want someone to represent and fight for Australia, may I suggest Senator Hanson or I would be happy to take the prime minister’s place. The greens won’t debate me, so maybe some of their globalist masters will.

Transcript

 I move:

That the Senate notes that the current dispute between China and Australia is more deep-seated than a trade spat involving wine, coal and timber.

The motion I moved is the opening paragraph in Robert Gottliebsen’s newspaper article in The Australian yesterday, and I’ll quote it again:

When China declared that Australia had been “evil” it suddenly became clear that the dispute between the two nations is more deep-seated than a trade spat involving wine coal, timber etc.

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia who is involved in the governance of Australia, I want to focus on Gottliebsen’s meaty fourth paragraph:

From President Xi down, there has been little respect for Australia for a long time and many in China believe we are a foolish country that makes mistakes at almost every turn, led by defence.

He then details serious flaws in the governance of three Defence projects, the submarine ‘shemozzle’, as he calls it, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and the Hunter frigates. We obviously are ‘a foolish country’ based on this, and the obvious point of his article is our shoddy governments over many decades, both Liberal-National and Labor.

People in this country are feeling concerned about the seriously deteriorating state of our country. We have lost our economic sovereignty. We’re losing our national sovereignty. We’re plunging towards catastrophe economically, and dependence with a complete loss of security. People are fed up and, across many communities and industries—and I mean right around the country—people are feeling dispirited, hopeless, confused, aimless, wary, concerned and even fearful, because most can sense our country’s destruction. Yet, 100 years ago Australia was No. 1 in the world in income per person and had the highest GDP—gross domestic product—per person.

There’s a worse aspect beyond economic demise though. Bullies like China prey on those perceived as being weak. Gottliebsen rightly says that, due to poor, and even stupid, decisions, we’re rightly perceived as being weak in defence. Yet he barely scratches the full extent of the deterioration of our security, because our productive capacity has been dismantled, and our economic security has been smashed, destroyed. We are vulnerable. Now, as a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, that is what I will discuss, because, like bullies in a schoolyard or in a workplace, China preys on those it perceives as weak or foolish. By the way, when I raise China, I refer to the Chinese Communist Party and not the millions of Australians of Chinese descent now in our country, descendants of those who came during the gold rushes almost two centuries ago, and those who immigrated more recently.

Not only does the Chinese Communist Party assess other nations against China’s values and standards; the Chinese Communist Party assesses our country against our own values, and from that it finds out: Does our government have courage? Does our government have integrity? Do the politicians in this country and this parliament have the strength of character needed to lead a country? I’ve been thinking about this for some years now and I’ve made a list of Australian values: mateship; a fair go; support; loyalty; being fair dinkum; telling the truth; honesty; fairness; freedom to live; freedom of speech; freedom of thought; freedom of belief; freedom of religion; freedom of faith; freedom of interaction; freedom of exchange; democracy; our flag; our nation; family; care; respect for people; respect for community; respect for the law; respect for the environment; making sure government fulfils its three primary roles, which are protecting life, protecting property and protecting freedom, and stays out of everything else; and our Constitution. We value our Constitution, especially competitive federalism, and we value human progress. Australia has led that improvement in progress in the past 150 years. It has been amazing progress, right across the world.

So let’s assess governments against these values and their impact on our productive capacity. Productive capacity depends on many things, but particularly energy costs—the primacy of energy. An ever-decreasing cost of energy has led to 150 years of human progress. Australia has gone from having the world’s lowest electricity prices to having the world’s highest, yet we’re now the world’s largest exporter of energy—gas and coal. China imports a lot of our coal, but the production of coal in their own country is eight times our total production—not just our exports but our total production. They make us look like small producers of coal. They have the largest coal reserves in the world, along with the United States. They use our coal. They’re building steel power plants out of our coal, and they’re building hundreds of coal-fired power stations.

We legislate to use their wind turbines and their solar panels. We subsidise them. It drives up the cost of our electricity, and we pay them for unreliables—their solar and wind generators. We pay them for components of electric vehicles, which we also subsidise. And then we have Chinese companies, affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, owning electricity networks in our major cities. Then we have the Queensland Labor government stealing $1½ billion a year through the generators. All of this destroys jobs and destroys competitiveness.

Then taxpayers pay people, quite often foreigners, to come in and squat on the land, just to get carbon dioxide credits. It’s called carbon dioxide farming. It takes good farmland and destroys it with noxious weeds and feral animals—pests—and then that has to be reclaimed at some later date; who knows when. Then we have Angus Taylor, the Minister for Energy and Emissions, a farmer. He knows that the EPBC Act is hurting him—I’ve had conversations with him—but he just smiles, rolls his eyes and puts up with it. He is a sceptic on climate change—sceptical that we are affecting the climate. He’s been slammed, and he’s now coming back into parliament and driving up electricity prices. Matt Canavan, Barnaby Joyce: strong sceptics in their beliefs. Barnaby Joyce was the Deputy Prime Minister. The Chinese know that. They watch him. They saw him come into cabinet and they saw him run for election in New England, when he moved out of the Senate and into the lower house. And Malcolm Turnbull, to get Mr Joyce elected, showered $400 million of taxpayer funds on unreliable wind power. Then Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce were both in the cabinet, and they suddenly became alarmists, spouting alarm about carbon dioxide.

So I asked Matt Canavan in the Senate one day where his evidence was, and he just slid away from me. Now that he’s out of cabinet and Mr Joyce is out of cabinet, all of a sudden they’re becoming a little bit sceptical again in their words. But the Chinese Communist Party see this and that tells them a lot about the lack of leadership in this country.

The Chinese have their own agreement within the Paris Agreement. It says, ‘We will continue doing whatever we want, continue growing our economy, continue constructing our country, developing our country and putting in place infrastructure, and then in 2030 we may consider something.’ Meanwhile, this parliament in this building has legislated to destroy our economy to comply with Kyoto. That’s not an agreement; that is stupidity and economic suicide. The Chinese Communist Party watches us pay academics to tell lies about climate and to misrepresent the climate science. We even put some of them in charge of or in senior places in the CSIRO and pay them $800,000 a year to destroy our country. Dr Andrew Johnson went from head of the climate research agency department in the CSIRO to become head of the Bureau of Meteorology. Under him and his predecessors, the Bureau of Meteorology has been shown to be concocting the data and misrepresenting temperatures.

We pay people like Ove Hoegh-Gulberg and Ian Chubb, former chief scientists, to destroy the science, to misrepresent the science. In 1975, Whitlam signed an agreement saying we’ll comply with the Lima Declaration to shut down our manufacturing and export it. The following year, Liberal Prime Minister Fraser ratified the deal. In 1992, Paul Keating’s Labor government signed the Rio Declaration, which is about 21st century global governance. Then we had the Kyoto protocol destroying our country, stealing our farmers’ property rights. And now we have the Paris Agreement exporting jobs and shutting manufacturing.

Then the current Prime Minister has the temerity to say, ‘We will fiddle with the industrial relations system to bring back manufacturing.’ How the hell can you bring back manufacturing when you have the highest electricity costs in the world and a big component of manufacturing—the largest component, usually—is the cost of electricity? How the hell can you do it with a tax system that favours multinational companies and lets them off scot-free? How the hell can you do it with overregulation? How the hell can you do it with a lack of water? How the hell can you do it with a lack of infrastructure? The Chinese are watching this and they’re helping us destroy our electricity sector and export even more jobs, because our prices for electricity are going up, businesses are shutting and then the jobs start up in China.

We are now reversing the last 170 years of human progress, because the key to human progress is decreasing the price of energy, which raises productivity, raises wealth, raises the standard of living. That ended in this country 24 years ago. We have ceded governance to the UN: Lima, Kyoto, Rio, Paris and many other agreements. How does this comply with Aussie values? How does it comply with being fair dinkum? Worse, the granddaddy who concocted this climate change rubbish was Maurice Strong. He concocted it when he created and then took over as head of the United Nations Environment Program. He pushed that program, starting from the 1970s, and in the 1980s he ramped it up. In 1988 he formed the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a fraudulent organisation. And the Liberals, Labor, the Nationals and the Greens have fallen for it all. Maurice Strong was a crook. He was wanted by the police in America and died in exile in China. Who’s the beneficiary of all this destruction of Western civilisation? The Chinese government.

That’s what the people in this chamber and the chamber across the hall there have done to this country by blindly following the UN diktats. How does that comply with our values? It doesn’t. It breaks our values. What about water ownership? Destroyed by separating water ownership from property ownership. What about the Murray-Darling Basin and the corruption that is rife? What about the family farms shutting down? What about water projects? What water projects? That’s it; there aren’t any. And yet look at what amazing water projects the Chinese Communist Party has put together to develop its country.

What about infrastructure? Hardly anything built and no plan. The north is exposed without the Bradfield scheme and we see floods destroying Townsville. There is destruction and a waste of water flowing out to sea. We see the state governments joining in. The Labor Party in Queensland has reef regulations which are shutting down agriculture. Vegetation protection legislation is destroying agriculture. Firebreaks aren’t allowed and are being destroyed when farms are under fire. We put animals and fungus ahead of humans.

The Queensland Labor government put a Chinese company in charge of the electoral roll and then there is Queensland local council corruption linked to the Labor state government. This extends well beyond Ipswich and Paul Pisasale; it is systemic and it is widespread. We have foreign banks that were deregulated under John Howard and we saw the result of that through the Hayne royal commission. We see Adani frustrated by both the Liberal-National and Labor governments in Queensland and by the federal government, which was weak. That’s one man from India, which has a booming, growing economy, who wanted to spend $17 billion in our country. He was thwarted for eight years. That’s a blight on us that not even the Chinese can miss—that no-one in the world can miss. We go on and on and on.

I give Senator Rex Patrick credit for moving a motion to get an inquiry into the relationship between China and Australia six times—and I supported him every time. Both the Labor Party and the Liberal-Nationals squashed it. This is what the Chinese are seeing, yet Australians are wanting far more. Australians want leadership. Australians want security, reassurance, confidence, leadership, trust, pride and freedom—a restoration so that we can be No. 1 in the world again. What does Australia need? It needs principled leadership based on values. It needs disciplined leadership based on data and facts instead of ideology paying off donors. It needs honest leadership and strength of character. It’s the simple ability to say: ‘I’m wrong, I’m sorry—can you help me? Please explain.’ We need visionary policies, and that is what will take us back to being No. 1.

One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts’ motion to bin the Cash Ban bill received triumphant support in the Senate today.

The Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill would have banned the use of cash for transactions over $10,000 and put in place hefty fines and jail terms for breaches.

Senator Roberts said, “This is a fantastic win for all Australians, particularly rural and elderly Australians where the use of cash is still prevalent.”

“Even the Government’s own Committee Inquiry said that the bill was out of step with Australian values and was totally impractical.”

Senator Malcolm Roberts has been persistently vocal in the fight against this bill since August 2019.

“This bill was never about tackling crime or money laundering, and instead criminalised the use of legal tender, cash, for everyday Australians.

“Australians now retain their right and freedom to use cash with the bill now officially dead,” added Senator Roberts.

One Nation received a ground swell of support from a wide range of Australian communities for whom the use of cash is cultural.

Senator Roberts said, “I would like to thank the many groups who organised community campaigns against the cash ban bill including the Citizens Party, the John Adams and Martin North show, Heise Says, Nugget’s News, Taxpayer’s Alliance, Bank Reform Now and The Bitcoin community.”

While cash transactions over $10,000 must still be reported to AUSTRAC, it is timely to remind retailers with Christmas on the horizon that cash is legal tender and ought to be accepted from consumers. “One Nation’s resolve and persistence to stand in defending the rights of everyday Australians has won the day.”

Transcript

[Marcus] Malcolm good morning.

[Malcolm] Good morning, Marcus. I’m disgusted with that rort I’m bloody annoyed because look, what’s really going on here, mate is it’s not just that he’s got a job that’s being protected. What we’re doing is Mathias Cormann in the Senate, who often answered questions by saying we are fulfilling our global responsibilities.

To hell with the global responsibilities. We have to look after Australian sovereignty. I don’t need him in the OECD bringing back OECD stuff to steal wealth from Australians. I need as Australian parliamentarian to look after Australians.

[Marcus] Yeah, I thought that might have you fired up. And I’m glad I asked the question. You said it much better than what I did. I mean, you, you’ve dealt with this man, and it’s not a personal attack. It’s just the way the system’s set up. And you know, we’ve been talking at length this morning about the disparity, if you like, in opportunities and pay for men and women in our workforce. But I mean, this is just beyond the pail.

It really is and you know, 4,000 odd dollars. Now that’s before staff mind you, up to eight staff, the Prime Minister is apparently providing this former Senator, former Finance Minister with, to try and get him around the world to lobby people. So he gets his prime gig with the OECD, mind you at the same time, he’s going to receive a pretty decent politician salary upon the fact that he’s decided to pull the pin. He’s retired etc. He’s still of working age. I mean, the whole thing is just, it’s a joke.

[Malcolm] Well, it’s actually worse than a joke. It’s theft because the costs that you have just outlined are huge, but Marcus, they are tiny compared to the cost to the Australian people of pushing this globalist agenda. Morrison has appeared to be against the international globalist. But the fact is his behaviours show that he is a globalist.

He said on the 3rd of October, 2019, after we were pushing the fact that the message about the globalist taking over, he came out trying to steal our thunder by saying he is against the unelected, unaccountable, internationalist bureaucrats. He pretended to be against them. He didn’t say the UN, but since then, he’s said that we need to give the World Health Organisation, a UN body increased powers, powers of weapons inspectors, to just go into countries.

He’s just collected an award from Boris Johnson as for fulfilling his global agenda. And Morrison is just pushing policies. I’m tired of the liberal and labour and national parties, pushing policies that are destroying our water in accordance with UN, destroying our energy sector in accordance with the UN Kyoto Protocol, destroying property rights and farmers’ rights to use their own land in accordance with the UN Kyoto Protocol.

Both of these major parties have done that for 30, 40 years. Look at our tariffs look at it that have been smashed and left our companies vulnerable. Look at the taxes that we have paid to the foreigners and multinational companies in this country and 90% of the large companies in this country are owned by foreign owned multinationals, and they paid little or no tax.

[Marcus] That’s right.

[Malcolm] That’s fact. And then we’ve also got people being destroyed in the family law court system, which is a slaughter house of the nation, that’s fact. And that came from the UN as well. We’ve got to start running this country for Australians and let the Australians do the job. Instead of these bustards from overseas, it really fires me up.

[Marcus] Ah, well, I can tell all it’s missing next to the Australian flag behind the Prime Minister is a sign saying, “The Great Reset.”

[Malcolm] Correct. That is what is going on. And it’s just a return to feudalism. We will be surfed, serving the barons and the international barons. We have got one of the wealthiest countries on earth. We are the biggest exporters of energy in that gas and coal in the world, even greater than Middle East countries.

And yet we’re sitting at the crumbs, we’re taking the crumbs off the table now because the wealthy corporations are just taking it. They don’t pay taxes for taking our natural resources. This is ridiculous. They’re stealing it. And we end up poor and we’re taking the crumbs off a rich man’s table when we should be sitting at the bloody table.

[Marcus] All right, the Defence Inquiry has wrapped up the Brereton Report, there’s a whole range of issues. Here, Malcolm, you’d be happy to know that we are speaking to ex-Commando ‘H’ on our programme regularly. He’s outlining things from… And he’s not one of the people who’s been accused of any of the alleged war crimes, but he’s providing us updates on welfare of fellow serving Australians.

And they wanna start a petition to try and get their citations kept rather than taken off them. And also the other issue of course, is the fact that bloody War Memorial now wants to, before anything’s gone through courts before anyone’s been found guilty of anything. The War Memorial is already talking about setting aside a section of that sacred place in IsaLean, Canberra dedicated to the so-called atrocities of war in Afghanistan.

I mean, it’s almost as if these people have been found guilty. Don’t we have a presumption of innocence here, at first?

[Malcolm] Well, of course we do Marcus, and this is really, a really very difficult situation to walk through. You know, our country has a value that you don’t murder people in cold blood. That’s a value that we have to stand up for, whether it’s here or overseas. But we have to be compassionate and understanding that these people were sent overseas, if first of all, they must have a trial and they must have the resources.

Secondly, their generals above them are culpable because there’s no way, if this is true, there’s no way the general did not know this was going on. It’s their responsibility.

And I take it a step further, Marcus, John Howard came back from America, according to Alexander Downer, and when Downer retired, he said that John Howard came back from America after 9/11, and walked into the cabinet and said, “We’re off to Iraq,” no executive council meeting, no cabinet meeting, we’re just doing it on one mans say-so.

And apparently, I don’t know this for a fact, because I’m not educated on this. I haven’t been briefed on it yet, but apparently Afghanistan, we did not declare war. So there were no true terms of engagement. And so what we had, we had women and boys with land mines, with explosive tied to them.

And we also had Afghanis in an American training base and an Australian training base shoot Australians and Americans within. And so this is a war that’s not really a war.

And yet it’s diabolic, a very deceptive. And we went in there, based upon one man and that man later admitted, or his government later admitted, there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, look at what we’re doing with our boys in this country.

So if we can’t uphold murder, but at the same time, you have to be compassionate because we sent these people there, to do our job, and we should have done a better job in looking after them.

[Marcus] Well, well said a lot of people we’ve spoken to, including Commando “H” said that, you know, the situation over there is best described by people who’ve been there rather than armchair critics. And even to be honest, generals who sit in their plush leather chairs in Canberra and direct these men.

Look, the issue obviously is that in relation to the enemy, it’s not an international war as such. It was more a civil war, so war within a country. So whenever they did manage to capture some of these people, Taliban and otherwise, they had to eventually, within a day or two release them, only to be shot at again by the same people that just captured.

I mean, the whole thing really needs a good looking at, and we need to bear in mind that it’s very correct what you say, Malcolm, we don’t condone outright cold-blooded killings, but at the same time, we also need to understand what went on over there, why we were there in the first place.

And the other issue, of course now, comes down to mental health and we know, and we’ve been told by our sources and Commando “H” that, you know, so many men and young women who’ve served overseas and are suffering mental health issues as a result of not only their service, but this inquiry as well.

[Malcolm] Yes, well, very well said. There’s an a Roman general who said that no one who’s been to war can understand what goes on and people who go to war do not come back with the same mental approach. They have enormous burdens mentally and emotionally. So let’s recognise that for start.

So we send them, we bend them, but we don’t mend them very well in this country, but it is good to see that the people have set up a hotline for these servicemen, but, you know, stripping medals from people who have earned that medal through an Act of Valour, it’s just wrong.

These people earned it through an Act of Valour, who knows as a result of the torturous and tough regime of cycling in and out of Afghanistan so quickly and so often, if these people weren’t under enormous pressure and they did something, they shouldn’t have done. That’s if they were guilty, let’s assume some of them were guilty.

Why should we strip the medals of these people when they earned it, earned the medals for doing something to protect other Australians or protect their country, or protect even Afghanistan people? So, and then let us strip them because they’ve cracked under pressure, that’s wrong.

[Marcus] I think so.

[Malcolm] They were given a medal and they deserve to keep it.

[Marcus] All right, let’s talk IR reform, we know March 21 is the date when JobKeeper ends, there are some very big concerns amongst some sectors of our community that as of next, well, March, April, you know, there needs to be an extension of some sort, for JobKeeper what do you make of it all?

[Malcolm] What I make of it is that the Morrison Government would yet, again, fiddle around the edges and not do a good job and make it worse. The Morrison Government is about building facades and not getting on with the job properly. Getting back to basics. We need to rebuild our country. There are several lessons from this COVID–

[Marcus] Pandemic.

[Malcolm] Virus that hit our country. And the primary lesson is that we have destroyed our productive capacity and manufacturing. Even our agricultural sector is being destroyed by unelected international bureaucrats that our governments, labour and liberal had put in place.

That’s the first thing we need to restore manufacturing. Marcus we cannot restore manufacturing and our economic sovereignty, our economic security, unless we address electricity prices. Electricity is the biggest cost, component of manufacturing today, greater than labour.

So we need to do a good job in reforming industrial relations. And I can talk about that in a minute, but we must do it with regard to energy prices, taxation, overregulation from the UN. We must do it with regard to where water and other resources and infrastructure. Without that we’re just playing with this stuff. Now, you know, that I’ve done a lot of work in protecting some miners in the Hunter Valley–

[Marcus] Yes absolutely.

[Malcolm] From exploitation with under the hand of BHP and Chandler MacLeod, but also the CFMEU was involved there because they agreed with the exploitation of workers and enabled it. And I’ve done nothing to protect those workers, which raises an interesting point, could these workers sue the CFMEU because they paid dues to be protected and the CFMEU actually in the Hunter Valley I must add actually did not fulfil their responsibilities?

But look at the corruption of some of the union bosses, the Health Services Union, the AWU, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ union. This shows that our system is wrong. And the Hunter Valley has just brought it home to me just how corrupt our system is, we need to get back to basics because people at work feeling frustrated, hurt, literally crippled, painful, afraid of losing their job.

We are right now got people confused. If someone’s working on the job and wants something clarified, they’ve got to go to a bloody lawyer. It’s actually, that’s some of the advice that the Fair Work Ombudsman has given people. I mean who can afford to go to court our system is completely smashed, I’ve said it before.

People want to know that their job is safe. People want to know that they can be safe at work. People want to know that they’re protected, they’ve got protection for their rights. They want to be supported and be in compliance. They want fairness, they want choice. They want simplicity, understanding.

We’ve got to really rejig the whole of our industrial relations system because it’s not serving the people. It’s serving a few union bosses and a few company bosses, and that’s wrong and it’s serving a hell of a lot of lawyers. We’ve got to completely clean that out and do a good job. Get back to basics, to protect workers and honest employers.

[Marcus] Just finally, Malcolm, you’ve been on fire this morning. Are you gonna get that jab?

[Malcolm] That jab mate, I will get a jab when Alan Joyce takes the jab and I’ll watch him do it.

Look–

[Marcus] He probably will.

[Malcolm] He probably – ridiculous. How do we know the impact–

[Marcus] Well, hang on, just back to that, that comments you’ve just made. You’ll get the job when Alan Joyce does. Well, I believe that Alan Joyce probably will get the jab because of he wants to fly overseas, which you probably will for business on his aircraft. And that’s what he calls them, on my airline.

[Malcolm] Well, he’s become a national test guinea pig by the sound of it then, but maybe that’s his new job. But this is disgraceful because even the International Air Transport Association, IATA has distance itself from Qantas’ compulsory vaccination stance, the Prime Minister has done that too.

It’s certainly how do we know the impact of these viruses, which have been tested in minimal circumstances at the moment, very short term? How do we know the impact on these sort of these vaccines with other drugs, with complimentary medicines? How do we know the long-term impact? This is ridiculous. I’m not gonna take the jab, not until it’s proven.

[Marcus] All right, Malcolm. Great to have you on this morning. You been on fire and I love it. I love the passion and thanks as always. Mate, look after yourself, we’ll chat again soon and all that if you catch up with Mathias, make sure we get the window seat, okay.

[Malcolm] Mate. Yeah, we’ll try and make sure that we stop him bringing his OECD policies into this country. Well, I want Australia to be Australian.

Transcript

Thank you, Mr President.

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I proudly ask for the Senate’s support for the Banking Amendment Deposits Bill 2020.

Commonly called the NO bail-in bill.

Our purpose is to keep people’s money SAFE.

And to keep the banking system safe.

Let me first explain what is a bail-out and then a bail-in.

Bail-out’s have been used during financial crises when banks get into trouble and are a lifeline of money from taxpayers to banks to keep banks afloat. Govts act as a conduit from taxpayers to the corporate banks, even when the banks got into trouble due to their own greed or stupidity.

In times of profit banks are capitalists and in crises banks are socialist.

International Monetary Fund and G20 rules now though prevent taxpayers’ money being used to save a bank.

Instead requiring that rescue funds must come from shareholders and from depositors. A Bail-in.

Literally banks steal the money in retail deposit accounts and use that to save themselves. In exchange depositors get shares in the bank.

The shares are then suspended from trading – because the banks’ shares are worthless pieces of paper and will remain so for years.

‘Retail deposit accounts’ are the bank accounts of everyday Australians and small and medium-sized businesses.

This is money taken from these accounts, which people need to pay bills, buy stock, pay the rent and pay staff.

Gone.

This is money a couple is saving to buy their first home.

Gone.

This is money retirees cashed out of superannuation and is needed to live on, to buy food and clothing and pay bills.

Gone.

Gone. Overnight.

Reserve Bank figures show that 1 trillion dollars is available to be taken in a bail-in.

That’s what the Liberal, Nationals and Labor parties defend when opposing my bill.

Next, I’ll share a letter from a constituent, Peter Thompson, last week:

Quote: “As a self-funded retiree I shouldn’t be lying awake at night worrying how to safeguard my deposits from “bail in” by predatory and profligate banks, however I am!”

“I have Greek friends who lost most of their saving in the Greek bank bail in.”

“I don’t trust APRA nor the Treasury to protect my interests and certainly don’t trust any bank. We need a people’s bank… now.”

“What can I do to protect my bank deposits?”

Peter continues: “Withdraw cash, which by design is getting harder and harder to do, and take the risk it will be stolen by more obvious thieves?”

 “One can’t buy land or property with the Australian real estate market in radical downturn, I want my deposits in a bank.”

“Your Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill is a vote winner. It will give Australians, many of whom have no idea of what “bail in” entails, an opportunity to understand and take action to protect their savings and create confidence in the system. “

Thank you, Peter. Creating confidence is exactly why I have proposed this bill.

The public understands that the govt’s Cash Ban bill is designed to force everyday Australians to keep all their money in the banking system to make a bail-in much more effective.

Labor, Liberals and Nationals passed the Cash Ban bill through the House of Reps and are now terrified of the public and backbench backlash if it enters our senate.

The public understands our real estate prices are the third highest in the world.

The public understands that the govt’s COVID restrictions are destroying small and medium business and the ability of those business owners and their staff to service their mortgage, loans and credit card debt.

In fact, there is a sleight of hand going on here. A handful of large retail businesses, telcos and internet-based companies are doing better than ever.

While hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses are doing much, much worse.

The effect on the economy of the govt’s COVID restrictions is much worse than the headline figures.

And yet State Governments recently doubled down with more lockdowns, more restrictions, more destruction of wealth, and more unemployment amongst small and medium businesses.

So the public are responding by removing cash from the banking system at an alarming rate – $20 billion in notes have gone missing in calendar 2020.

Cash is being stashed under beds.

My Bill is an opportunity to restore confidence in the banking sector.

It’s an opportunity to attract deposits from other countries where bank deposits are less secure than ours.

We could be a safe haven for legal investment in our banking sector – money that isn’t coming, for once, from the taxpayer.

Why shut that down and make banks even more reliant on the Government for funding?

What a missed opportunity that will be for our banks and for their customers.

The Liberal, National and Labor Parties now have a chance to stand up for everyday Australians.

To protect bank deposits from being bailed in.

The response from these tired old parties? Denial.

We’re told that this bill is not necessary. We’re told that the law does not allow for a bail-in.

I ask all Australians to listen more closely. Listen for their proof.

There is none.

No legal opinion, nothing but bland assurances from self-interested public servants hoping that constant repetition will fool the public.

Here’s MY argument. The Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures Act 2018, that was passed in the dead of night, with just 7 Senators present, uses weasel words to hide the reality.

The wording does allow for the banking regulator – APRA – to instruct the banks to bail-in retail deposit accounts.

The protections that the tired old parties rely on for the supposed opposite case are contained, not in the Crisis Resolution Powers Act, but in the Banking Act.

Their argument is a nonsense because the emergency provisions powers in the Crisis Resolution Powers Act over-ride the everyday protections in the Banking Act.

That’s why the govt has an emergency powers act. To provide extra powers in an emergency.

This is not just my opinion. It’s the International Monetary Fund’s opinion. Quote:

“The new ‘catch-all’ directions powers in the 2018 Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill provide APRA with the flexibility to make directions to the banks that are not contemplated by the other kinds of general directions listed in the Banking Act.”

“[APRA’s] Direction powers are a key element in the resolution process for a distressed bank. APRA could order a bank to recapitalize…using the funds of unsecured creditors”

The IMF goes on to define ‘unsecured creditors’ as shareholders and retail depositors.

Liberal MP Tim Wilson, Chair of the House Standing Committee on Economics has admitted the Crisis Resolution Powers Act does allow for a bail-in.

Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker in a letter to a constituent admitted that legislation allows for a bail-in.

Yet their party bosses say the complete opposite.

Why would they do that?

Well, the answer is yet again because of our international obligations. The G20 and the IMF have dictated that taxpayers’ money can’t be used to rescue a bank.

The tired old parties know that letting unelected bureaucrats in New York and Brussels tell Australians what to do in a crisis does not pass the pub test.

So the tired old parties hide the facts and contradict reality using weasel words.

It‘s instructional to note that New Zealand’s response to the same IMF and G20 instruction is to do the opposite. The Kiwis dutifully wrote their bail-in laws and made them honest and transparent. If a bank fails the bank closes, pays off it’s debts using depositor funds and then re-opens the next day. Depositors can access what remains of their money. If there is any.

I’m not suggesting the New Zealand model is better. More honest yes, better no.

There’s a simple solution for bank failures.

When a bank fails, the Government could issue bonds. Currently we’re offering just 1% interest on bonds, so it’s not a costly option. We then use that money to buy new shares in the failing bank. That injects enough capital for the bank to survive.

Then vest those shares with the Future Fund, who pay that small interest payment on the bonds.

In a few years those shares will be worth money again and the Future Fund can sell them back into the market in an orderly fashion.

In this simple, ‘One Nation bank survival plan’, taxpayers’ money would not be used to save the bank, so our IMF and G20 masters should be pleased.

Nobody in our process loses money. Depositors keep their cash; banks keep trading, mum and dad shareholders retain the value of their shares over the medium term.

What’s the Labor and LNP track record on corporate bail-outs?

Both gave foreign car companies billions and then watched them shut up shop as soon as the money tap was turned off.

If we’d been asking for shares for that money, we would now own the car companies. We would still have a car manufacturing sector, we would still have all those wonderful breadwinner jobs for workers.

Prime Minister Gillard gave ABC Child Care $120m. Not in exchange for shares, it was another gift from taxpayers.

If we’d asked for shares in ABC Childcare in return for the bail-out those shares would be worth $250 million today.

Our response to a bank failure should not be “go and steal it from customers.“

Our response should be to use capitalism to fix crony-capitalism.

Labor are having a lot to say about their Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee (FCS).

The Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee will advance up to $20 billion per bank, to protect deposits if a bank fails.

Let’s take a closer look at the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee.

The vast majority of the $1 trillion in retail deposit accounts is held by the big 4 banks. $20 billion times 4 though is only $80 billion. The Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee will save less than 10% of bank deposits!!!!

The Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee is not active and is not funded. There’s no money sitting there ready to go. Not one cent.

Should a bank fail, the Treasurer must issue a notice to activate the scheme. Yet, the Labor scheme uses taxpayer’s money to bail-out banks so the Treasurer will not issue the notice because the notice would breach IMF orders.

In the unlikely event of the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee being activated, there’s a second problem that Labor never discusses: once the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee is activated APRA must liquidate the bank to get taxpayers’ money back.

How much does anyone think will be available to retail depositors if the bank is liquidated? And how long will customers have to wait to get their money back from the liquidator?

The Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee is worse than a con job. It will make things worse.

Earlier I said that once a bank fails, whether that failure is public or only known to the regulator, the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee scheme can be activated if the Treasurer so chooses.

The whole point of a bail-in is to prevent a bank failing.

This means the bail-in can only come first. And will come first. Then if the bail-in doesn’t work the Financial Claims Scheme Guarantee triggers, 10% of bank deposits are saved and the bank is liquidated.

This is what Liberals, Nationals and Labor are relying on to falsely tell everyday Australians ‘our money is safe?’ Yet the reality is that it’s not safe.

Following the dictates of unelected globalist masters is more important to them than looking out for the interests of everyday Australians.

The Government has advanced a criticism of my bill, that the definition of ‘retail deposit account’ introduces a different definition than is contained elsewhere in the Banking Act.

This argument fails because the only place the phrase ‘retail deposit account’ appears in the Banking Act is in my amendment. We did that deliberately so as to not interfere with the rest of the act.

Criticism dismissed.

In concluding Mr President, at no time has the Government, the Treasurer or APRA actually said they will not order a bail-in. These govt agencies duck the question and say “APRA doesn’t have the power”.

Well Mr President my bill clears that up. My bill adds one clause to the Banking Act that simply says APRA does not have the power to order a bail-in.

No other powers are affected.

Passing my bill ensures everyone will read it the same way.

Let Australians know that our money is safe in a bank. Let Australians know that there’s no need to stuff cash under the bed.

Even the Australian Bankers Association in its submission said if there is any confusion about what the law actually says then consider passing my bill.

What a great idea.

Let’s pass this bill, to keep people’s money safe.

On the panel with week we discuss ‘The Great Reset’, where billionaires, celebrities and the worlds elites wants you to give up all YOUR possessions and claim you will be happy. We also discuss the United Nations and the US election.

Transcript

Proof transcript only – E&OE

Good day, good evening and welcome to the programme. Well, what another week. And the language is starting now to creep in, isn’t it? You turn on the TV news, right across all the networks, you’re picking up the papers, you’re turned on the radio stations, you hear the words. The words that are meant to create some comfort for us but don’t be conned, the great reset, the great reset. It sounds like everything that was bad is gonna go and everything that’s in front of us is gonna be good. It’s been sanctioned by the Royal Family, I mean, Prince Charles has said, “Let’s have a great reset.” It’s being promoted by the world, the left worldwide. I mean, this big great reset is actually going to be a bigger virus than COVID. It’s gonna have more of an impact on your lifestyle than you could imagine. It’s been publicised by the social media elite and you’ve got minds like build back better, I think just seeing her don’t use that as her line, when she received the government in New Zealand and Joe Biden so we had build back better. And then we’ve got this sort of post COVID world, the new normal, all this mantra, don’t let it con you. What does it actually mean? And do we actually get a site? Well, the bottom line is we might. This is a deal that is being done by the elites and is being foisted upon the weak, the weak governments of the world. And frankly, at the moment, it looks like the Australian government falls into that category as well. But maybe you can have a hand on trying to change it, but at the same time this week, we’ve heard that China, now a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, has taken time to have a close look at the human rights violations of, yes, America. They’ve decided amongst about 10 things that they wanna see in the end to the political polarisation in the United States. Now that’s all very well and good for the Chinese Communist Party, one party state ’cause there can’t be any other party, but you do know that in America, there’s two great forces at work. There’s the Democrats, their colours tends to be blue and the Republicans and they tend to be red. And Donald Trump is red and Biden is the blue side. But you know that if he is elected president of the United States, what we’ve heard from places like China in this UN declaration on human rights and this review of America’s human rights is the sort of marching orders that Joe Biden will of course, if we ever see him out of the White House bunker, will of course be attending to, I mean, we haven’t seen him for very much in the last six months, and he’s about to become the most powerful man in the world if all the rhetoric and all of the social media tweets are to be believed. The Chinese have also said they don’t want the United States to interfere in any other countries’ internal issues. And what I mean by that is Hong Kong and of course Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a democracy, the free China, the people of the People’s Republic of China see Taiwan as a Renegade province. So of course, if the United States says anything about Taiwan, it’s a fundamental breaks of the human rights of the Chinese people. This is just absolute rubbish. So over the last week, as we’ve gone through Remembrance day, I stopped and I thought like any other decent person would, 11 o’clock on the 11th last Wednesday, and I realised that we should be concerned, lest we forget that our freedoms that we enjoy are in fact being secured by those prepared to defend it. And the five oldest continuous democracies in the world, the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand have always defended freedom. Have always been amongst the first to answer the call when there’s tyranny in other places. But now we have so many people within each of these countries, including our own, that seem to be out to weaken our efforts, pull down our traditions, change the way we think. And the world is in fact right now doing, and in a lot of ways, it is history repeating what we saw in pre World War 2 Europe. If you think about 2022 China, if this is passing, putting a big dark shadow over the rest of the world, China, maybe a country that in fact many are saying we should boycott when it comes to the 2022 winter Olympics that are occurring there. But of course, plenty of people in the sporting world would say, no, no, no, keep politics out of sport. Let’s face it, sport is full of politics, there’s political operatives who are active in sport. There are sporting operatives that are active in politics. There’s political decisions that are taken in sport every day, there are political choices, there are political sponsors in sport, local sports organisations, state organisations, the national organisations are all highly political. And so the Australian Olympic Committee of course, is the Olympic size version of this highly political environment. And naturally enough, because I live in a rarefied atmosphere of self-importance, the last thing they want to see is us boycotting on principle, there’s that word again, principle, the People’s Republic of China and the winter Olympics and the entire PR spin that will come for the PRC. So if only sport was just about sport, it seems, if you look at the last week, we’re seeing more and more reasons to know the elite speed, are they big tech, be they the big media, be they big Royals, or be they the big Chinese and Marxist left us elites around the world role, choosing to reset your lifestyle. The last thing they’re gonna do is touch these, care to know what you think, hashtag Hardgrave@skynews.com.au, you can also email me directly at gary.hardgrave@skynews.com.au, still a panel, we always try and do that on a Friday night, as we fight for freedom here. Malcolm Roberts is the Senator for Queensland for One Nation, he joins me here in the Brisbane, Citadel in the city. You use Santa the great and the powerful and very, very wise Bronwyn Bishop, former speaker of the House of Representatives, from Advanced Australia Liz Storer, who’s never afraid to hold back on anything when it comes to fighting for freedom. Great to have you all with us tonight. The big reset, should we be worried, Liz? how do you feel about this great reset nonsense?

Well, nonsense sums it up Gary, sums it up perfectly. What frightens me most about this, and firstly, I should mention I’m no longer with Advance Australia, I am lead advisor with GT Communications and very glad to be surfaced. Thank you, thank you. What frightens me most about this reset is that younger generations are completely unaware of what’s happening. We’ve seen the left for decades now infiltrate our schools, infiltrate out unis, and these kids, now young adults, actually, a lot of them wouldn’t know Marx if he slapped them in the face, have never picked up the Communist manifesto. And yet we’ve got Kamala Harris, who can I say is not vice president elect. I am just as much vice-president elect as Kamala is this evening. We’ve got Kamala.

[Gary] Congratulations on your victory.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes, yes, it’s been wonderful. We’ve got Kamala tweeting, you can’t make this stuff up, talking about a reset, tweeting just before the election, a small video that she did the voiceover of literally espousing the virtues of socialism. You can’t make this stuff up, she didn’t say socialism, but the little video was literally talking about the fact that there is no equality in the world unless equality of outcome is what we’re all experiencing here. Not equality of opportunity, and so we’ve created this culture now as the left so artfully does, where it’s understood to be compassionate, et cetera. And so on being synonymous with this, literally communism is what her video was espousing. And this is the woman make no mistake about it, unless the Trumpians are successful, this is the woman who will be president of the United States. Joe Biden will just fill the seat for a little time and total on off.

Yeah, I suspect to be in the White House basement the whole time, we’ll just get him wheeled out a bit like sort of weekend at Bernie’s. He’ll just get wheeled out every so often from Fido opportunity, if in fact he actually even gets installed, sorry, aren’t I lacking in grace, Bronwyn Bishop, you can deal with me accordingly, but seriously we’re being conned. I mean, if you look at Salton, it’s in the whole Gulag archipelago, that enormous idea of the last man clapping, no one wanted to be the last man clapping in this sort of scenario, that Gulag archipelago, you know that there’s a lot of lessons not being taught, the young people, they’re making mistakes, simple.

Well, Gary of course the trouble again, when the rich and the powerful elites of the Western world, privileged elites of the West, supported Lenin and Stalin, and I’m talking about the likes of George Bernard Shaw, of Sydney and Beatrice Webb of John Maynard Keynes and of lady Aster. These people supported these things going on, and absolutely refused to see what the truth was. Solzhenitsyn came along and really exposed it all, and showed the cruelty and the brutality of what the Communist regime was. Now that’s steamed the tide and the march of Socialism for right up to the time that the Berlin Wall came down. But then George Bush weakened. And instead of saying, we have to keep fighting to show that people know what socialism is, so we don’t repeat those mistakes, he went all week and he said, oh, there’s going to be a peace dividend. And we stopped teaching people what socialism was and what we had to stand up for with the principles we believed in to have a free people who had rights and liberties. Well, we then get the Neo Fabians, and they are the Neo Fabians who go to Davos and the world economic forum. They are the ones preaching the great reset, and this is the way to socialism. But in the interim, we got Donald Trump and he was prepared to fight back and fight he did, which in the eyes of the Neo Fabians made it necessary for them to destroy him. And that’s the pattern that we have followed to this very point we’re now at, and we can only hope, and I do not give up on Donald Trump being successful at this point in time. I think it was a mistake for our Prime Minister to be congratulating Mr. Biden, because Mr. Biden said himself that he would not even attempt to claim victory until it was properly certified. When there are a lot of legal ways to go yet, and it is not being properly certified. So we have to hold firm. Donald Trump has led the way he has changed, there are what? 73 million people in America who are prepared to fight back and they need the voice and the support of those of us who believe in freedom of the individual and freedom of opportunity and equality of opportunity, not outcome as Liz said.

Yeah, and I agree. I mean, Malcolm Robinson’s to the point, this great said it’s a, you know, a three word slogan always pretty, pretty popular, but this is not a great thing. This is damaging. People’s freedoms, people’s lifestyles. This is something that is worth fighting for. When you hear it, the people saying it, you should condemn them. That’s how I read it.

I agree with you and Tali that’s once you get past the fact that this great reset is claimed to be supporting, fixing the world’s climate, it’ll fix poverty, it’ll fix in, in inequality. It’ll fix control. It’ll fix everything. Gary, why shouldn’t we wait for it? Because it is just another slogan to hide the reality that this is socialism on the March. And socialism is always about control. We’ve had this so many times and you know, in the past, people have controlled others using physical force. Now, if you grab me around the throat, I’ll put a rifle, bat in my head, Gary, people can see what you’re doing. The insidiousness of socialism this way and slogans is that they sound so nice and people don’t really see what’s going on. And next thing with the gradualism, you know, you’re in slavery. And so the essential, the essential debate, the essential theme that runs through all of the articles that you’ve introduced tonight, and your email and tonight in your editorial is control versus freedom. And that control versus freedom is a battle we all have within us, but we all thrive when we actually are free ourselves and free from our own shackles, but also the planet thrives and the nations thrive when they’re free. That’s society has proven that time and time and time again.

Yeah. Well, look, I mean, the great, the control that the battle that’s on in China, there is a battle in China, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, the Chinese Communist party authorities in Beijing, don’t have as much control of China. It’s the money. That’s actually changing things. The richest man in China, though, has been set down on his backside. He has tried to do a float of this massive Alibaba organisation, and they’ve taken him down. They’ve said, no, you can’t do that anymore. So suddenly the idea of free capital floating around and creating opportunity for everyday Chinese to actually be part of a glow. A growing world economy has been controlled by the Politburo in Beijing. This is nasty. It’s a Brahman. You see, this is a foretaste of what could come. And if, if Joe Biden heightened Biden as many are calling him and others are calling him Beijing, Joe, I mean, there’s, I, I’m not trying to be pejorative here. Although maybe people say I am, but if this plug is actually going to become the president of the United States, he cannot be encumbered to a group of people who actually hate the kind of society that we are used to having.

Well, that’s the point, Gary, you say, if Trump is not reelected, then the two most powerful pit men in the world are Putin and President Xiu. It is quite clear the President Xiu wants to rule the world. He wants to be the dominant power. And as long as Trump was there, he knew if he moved Taiwan, that Trump would act, but he knows that if Trump is gone, Biden will do nothing. So you can watch what’s going to happen to Taiwan. What’s what’ll happen in the middle East, where Trump had actually managed to have countries of the middle East, come to an agreement with Israel. And yet you will have the Biden and those people behind him will probably go back to the Obama policy of getting into bed with Iran. So the problem is that we’re going to face and what is it risk from this election? And I deliberately call these people, the Neo Fabians, because the Fabian society was founded by the webs and George Bernard Shaw to implement the change to socialism, gradually their symbol. And they stained glass window that was commissioned is a Wolf in sheep’s clothing. And that is why I think we have to identify these people for what they are. They preach my sounding things, but there’s a Wolf in there who will eat the sheep very, very easily. And we have to stop being sheep. We have to stop putting not only putting up the hook in her own mouth, we’re now about to swallow that hook. And we’ve just got to learn that that’s the end of us if we do. So, it is a very troubling time. And Mr. Ma came out in that speech, which President Xi objected to so strongly made the point that there is no such thing as a system of, of in the finite financial system in China. They make it up as they go along. And that’s why we can never believe any of the data that comes out of China, but we can believe they are building a force where they wish to conquer large parts of the world and be the dominant power controlling the lives and us and Australia. We would be the vessel state with bearing the knee and bury our back to our Chinese masters as they took our food and our iron off. That is not what I, well, that is not what my father fought for. It’s not what I believe I served in the parliament for. And you served in the parliament for, to leave to our children, grandchildren. We’ve got to fight hard.

Now, why not? Now? Why not? And I’m gonna lose store. You’re only going to look at the Y. The China is being signed to Australia. We are grossly interfering in China because we’ve raised questions about the democracy in Taiwan. We want Taiwan to be protected. We used to recognise until 1973, Taiwan as China and following Richard Nixon’s lead, we then changed our allegiance to the Beijing authorities. Boy, that’s rewarding. And then equally in Hong Kong, you’ve gotta look at what’s happening in Hong Kong, where you’ve got legislators and actually resigned from the parliament. They said, democracy is dead in Hong Kong. If I want to tackle Taiwan, they’ve told Australia to, I’ll tidy it up, shut the hiccup. You know, that that in itself should be a warning to each of us that value the opportunity to speak our and listen to about the views that the bite is not alive and not allowed. It’s not alive in China.

Absolutely. This is a communist party. That seems to be a very simple fact that so many people just don’t seem to understand, perhaps in the 21st century, they think even the communist party looks a bit different. It does not. This is the same regime that has countless millions of innocent blood on their hands. Let’s, let’s be abundantly clear on that when I was watching the American election, as I’m still watching it, because it’s still happening. Gary, as I was watching the American election, I kept saying to myself, if Americans knew nothing more than the fact of China’s plans for the Pacific, and just how intrinsically linked both Kamala and Joe, it’s not just Joe are in the pockets of the CCP. They wouldn’t vote Democrat, not in a million years, not in a million years, but people don’t understand what will take place. They don’t understand the strength of that Alliance. and it’s actually frightening to think that that may yet become something that the rest of us will have to look on and witness, as it unfolds, China is not going to change. It is a communist regime. It is hell bent on world, world supremacy, no matter what. And I think anyone who listens to that and says, that’s fear mongering, I would urge them pick up a history book for heaven’s sake, or even just Google comments that the president is on record saying that we will bend these democracies to our will. We think that China will become more like us as the world advances and you know, democracies around the world. Now outnumber communist dictatorships. They have no such plan. Let me tell you.

Well, I don’t. And I mean, Malcolm Robinson people think you’re wearing, you know, we’re wearing a tinfoil hat putting in, you know, rising this sort of stuff. They think we’re, you know, mad conspiracy theories. We’re not I’ve simply. And I don’t mind being proved wrong. Not one part of me minds being proved wrong about this, but the questions have gotta be asked. And, you know, when I saw that national cabinet, unfortunately, I didn’t make this decision, but national Kevin we’re considering including China in a travel bubble to Australia, I would have thought that the simple way of making that travel bubble work would have been to included the democracies of our region. The flavours Ling democracies in the Pacific that are leading Australian tourism back into it. The, the, the democracy in Taiwan, the democracy in Japan, the democracy in South Korea, before we to put some people from a totalitarian regime onto a plane in and out of Australia, I would have thought that was a simple thing. But anyway, state borders is still shot. It’s pretty distressing. Isn’t it? Australia is still split in so many ways.

Yes, Gary, you make a very, very good point because China is the country that unleashed the COVID virus on the world. Not only that, it made it possible for the COVID virus to get a heads-up because it denied its existence for so long. And then have a look at the country that has done the best of any on earth and that’s Taiwan in the same time as we’ve had, and actually longer period, it’s been exposed longer. It’s had seven deaths from COVID. We’ve had over 900. We have destroyed our economy doing that. Taiwan has simply isolated the sick, isolated, the vulnerable, and let everyone else get back. Stay at work. And their economy has barely ended into negative. I think it’s about 0.5 of a percent negative growth. That’s phenomenal. And, and our prime minister said we should be attacking China. Now the national Kevin does saying, let them mainland Chinese in and ignore Taiwan. This is insane, but let me give, just go back to a point. You mentioned a little while ago to tell you a little bit of a story. I met, I connected with a blood called Ron kitchen. He’s dead now many years ago. And he loaded the, the works of Frederick Hayak and at Ludwig Von Meese and the Austrian school of economics. And he told me a story, and this is firsthand or secondhand actually, because he, he met up with a professor from Princeton and this professor had Chinese heritage. And he was, was a Chinese, even though was an American citizen. And I think it was in the eighties. And I can’t remember the, the name of the Chinese president at the time. Ginger ping, maybe. But anyway, the habit, the Princeton professor with visiting his original roots in, in China and the president of China got wind of this. So he said, could I have a couple of hours of your time? And the Princeton professor said, sure. So he started off this conversation and remember Ron met this Princeton professor and had a good long conversation. And the Princeton professor said that the Chinese president, his opening comments were look at the wealth of our country. Yeah. But look at the state of it. It’s, it’s destitute, it’s poor. And, and he said, can you tell me how we can fix it? And the Princeton professor told him, and then he said, can you give me a couple more hours? I think to cut a long story short, he gave him days. It kept asking him to come back and that opened up China. But the fundamental thing with China is they still want to control people buttoned up the economy, but, but they’ll never be strong because always beneath control, Gary, there is fair. These people are terrified of losing control. And so what we need to do is focus on our strengths. Don’t worry too much about China, focus on our strengths and, and, and lift them because we are destroying our own country. Internally.

Now, as strengths have to be gotta be, have gotta be built around our values, our principles as a, the things that we over the 120 years, Australia has been a nation have earned us the right to say, we are the sixth oldest continuous democracy in the world. And it’s only, it’s only the UK and the USA and Canada that has stood with Australia and New Zealand, the seventh oldest, continuous democracy to defend those freedoms, Switzerland and Sweden have a five just for the record. But my understanding is they actually haven’t necessarily fought any angry shots at any stage of the last hundred years. Got to take a break. I want to come back and talk about how the country is split off the whole side of the impact on the IDF on shocked by what’s occurring. And we’ll talk about that more interest among them.

[Announcer] John Howard’s got some beat ideas.

That mine sing in public life is to get the beat things, right?

[Announcer] This Saturday is special. One-on-one chat with John Anderson.

You don’t need to pursue the identity. If you have the right policy, the inspiring things of United certain things that divided and missionary John Howard, I felt I had an opportunity to do some good things and improve the country in conversation with John Anderson, Saturday 8:30 p.m.

I need a holiday for Australia. The Outback. Yes. Yes. We could catch her in lunch. I know exactly what you mean. We should just go somewhere. We’ve always wanted to go. Yes. Oh honey. I can teach the kids to surf. Yeah. I mean, obviously.

It’s me. And then I would pass on the Western plan. Holiday. His issue.

Yeah. For Australia. So you want to learn to write, write a book, write a movie, write a law.

Cut. Oh, you want to learn the right things? The go shake the right paycheck, make dinner just the right way. Do the right thing by you. More of an overachiever. You had to own the room, own a presentation on a business, start a business, be a busy. We know some things. Well, at least people know things. Thank the thing is even though it was a thing they know, and all right here, when for you to see the day’s a day.

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Thanks so much for your company. We’re in conversation with Brahma, Bishop, Liz store, and Senator Malcolm Roberts national cabinet made a gain to die briefly. A whole bunch of announcements. Everybody’s going to open up except for Western Australia. Perth remains the most isolated city geographically, and it seems politically in the world lead store. I also note that I said a couple of weeks ago, and people thought our Gary, your gilding, the Lily here, that the Queensland border wide open up until the Suncorp site of origin match was dealt with everybody from new South Wales, except Sydney siders can comment today. They announced the softened and the Queensland government said 52 and a half thousand people can come to Suncor. There’s no dress code, but all by the way, Liz, there’s no dancing allowed in Queensland. Still. We can have 52 and a half thousand at the grand stand, but on the 200 at a funeral or something. So go, go, go figure. It’s all crazy. Isn’t it.

These rules are doing my head in Gary, especially when cases are so low. Now, I think we’ve even got Victoria zero day, zero days, every single day. Now where we’re well past the point, you’d think of these ridiculous restrictions. And when you’re talking about a state that is now hosted a game of tens of thousands of people still throwing out these random restrictions. I mean, I’m a gal in, in, in WUA, you know, leaving the state cabinet today. Like he had don’t worry team. I’ve kept GSA. It is utterly ridiculous. This, this has gone past absurdity. These is ridiculous. And when we’re watching countries like the UK still, you know, devastating, devastating, what they’re seeing unfold there, here in Australia, we’re still acting like we’ve got some sort of pandemic on our hands. The truth of the matter is we really don’t. And yet nobody seems to be calling out the fact we’ve got States with zero cases, closing their borders to States with zero cases. And people like McGowan are really just playing politics with this. Now he saw it go well for Anastasia pallor, Shea. He’s got his election coming up in March. And I think he’s doing exactly the same now going, okay, this pandemic protectionism goes well at the polling. Both. I’ll take another crack.

Yeah. He wants to keep it going as long as possible in Victoria, it’s basically declared that an experiment and the way the bureaucracy operates, Brahman produced a mission failure. The public servants are starting to be filtered out the door, sacrificial lands, but it still strikes me in the deck of cards about 10 or a dozen people that really did Muff up this hotel, quarantine fiasco. There is a whole bunch of people who’ve got to go including the joker himself, Daniel Andrews, but people still liked him. I still thought, you know, we like, we like being punished sort of, you know, bondaged and disciplined Victorian style down there. I think.

I said right from the beginning that China not only exported the disease, it also exported fear. And it is that fear factor that has allowed these premiers to control their population. And it’s, I mean, people pick perfectly normal people who you might think would think properly are cowed into fearing it and saying, well, we need to be locked down. We need to be kept cocooned and so on. So it’s, it’s a real problem. But the, the rest of the problem of course is how do we restore a functioning Federation that high court judgement in Western Australia was absolutely of no use at all. We don’t know what they’ve said. All they’ve said is that they referred the facts of the case to the federal court to determine what facts for high court would make their determination upon. They’ve said no, it was okay to put them in place. Well, was that at the time that the action was begun, we haven’t seen a judgement . We haven’t seen the reasons for the judgement . So there’s a failure in the judiciary to, to uphold the section that was put deliberately into the constitution to stop this sort of behaviour by premiers. And then we look at what premiered chairman Dan is doing down there in Victoria, and talking about setting up a centre for, for communicable diseases, just like the one in New Hampshire that was just part of the belt and road initiative. Are they going to bring some of those viruses here and develop them here with the next outbreak? And believe me, if you think we’ve seen the last, last outbreak of pandemics, you can think again, when the next one happened here, because the bar’s has been brought here. I mean, there are serious questions that have to be asked and, and it doesn’t seem that there is no action on it. It’s not, we we’ve got statements coming out that, Oh, well we’ve met today. And the, in, in the federal cabinet, whatever that’s supposed to mean, elevate the premiers and talk what rubbish we will. Everyone will be up and by Christmas. Well, all the bookings are all too late. Except wh I just find that the, the problems that are being created by the way in which we’ve gone about dealing with these matters are huge and waiting for us to have to be dealt with.

Yeah, look, Brahman. And I really want to support Scott Morrison, but I got to tell you a schema. I’ll buddy, all pal flying down to Victoria to hold hands with Daniel. Andrew is next Melbourne. Next, next week is not exactly what I would call the photo opportunity of 2020. Just a little bit of rough advice for you there, pal, but you can ignore it at your own peril. Meanwhile, in Victoria, over 700 people have died because of the incompetence of the Andrews government, their industrial manslaughter laws should kick in. We’ll see what happens, but there’s been accusations made against the Australian defence force. Now, Malcolm Roberts, I am pretty old fashioned about these things. I support those who are going to put their body on the line. In my name, in a uniform of my country to defend our values in a foreign place. I put my support behind them. Accusations are made. I get it. I understand rumours have been at the heart of some of these things, but there’s no heavy inquiry like Scott Morrison has announced this week into what’s happened in Victoria, 700, 800 people that have died. And yet we’re going to go and pick on our finest in uniform. The way we’re doing it is I think of horrid. I really don’t like it at all.

Gary, this is a very difficult circumstance, very difficult situation because on the one hand, these people, as we all know, and Andrew hasty has said it really well himself. You can see the pain on Andrew Hastie when he raised this topic three years ago, people returning from war have been changed. And, and we haven’t gone in, I haven’t gone into battle. I don’t know if you have never heard, but it is a completely different scenario. There’s enormous pressure that we will never, ever come to grips with. We can never understand that. So that’s the first thing. But the second thing is these, these men, in this case, it is all men have gone into battle to uphold their values. And that means they have to be held accountable for their actions. Maybe that means, first of all, making sure that they get very, very good defence. Maybe it also means that they get a right. They get a very, very fair inquiry. Ben, Robert Smith himself said he welcomes this. Yeah, even though he’s been through the mill himself, he welcomes this because it will clear the air once and for all. So I think we can take a lead from Ben Robert Smith, who has got a, it’s got to been awarded a VC for his, a Victoria Cross for his Valour. And now he’s had the courage to do go through this in public. And now he’s saying out, let’s have the inquiry, let’s clear the decks, but I think we also have to, and in any, in any, if anyone is found guilty of something that they shouldn’t have done, Gary, then they need to be treated with compassion and understanding. And I, I cannot understand the, the minister of defence saying, we’ll strip the metals off them. Well, hang on. They might’ve done something after two years after they’ve won the metal for some definite Valour, we can’t do things like that. We’ve got to be understanding of these people as well as uphold the values that we asked them to fight for.

Yeah. Look at least I have not because of the efforts of so many and generations before me, some of them family members who stood in my name in other places, I have not had to face that kind of circumstance. And I’m grateful for that. I just simply say, I am troubled by the idea of academics will qualify to bureaucrats well qualified and some military you’re going to have going to inquire it, all this sort of thing. I hope they get the values and the principles and the support for these guys ride. I just find the whole thing, sad and demeaning and very sad and demeaning.

Indeed. I actually questioned over the last few days just to myself, whether this is actually in the national interest, if this is in the, in the public interest to be brought out and have this dirty laundry ed, we know this is, this is not something systemic in our ADF. This, this is something there’s a small group of individuals. Clearly we don’t yet know the details that have committed atrocities, but I would, I’d love to echo what Fitz given said. And he himself is a former minister of defence. And he said, these guys were deployed for too long and on back to back deployments. And as you’ve said, Gary, you and I, and, and millions of Australian civilians have absolutely no idea what that’s like. And we have no idea what that’s like thanks to these men and women who go and do it for us so that we can sleep in our beds every night, knowing that we’re safe. And even I though I being a civilian as I am, I’m not above one drink. I don’t think any of us can be above saying, I would never, I would never do this. Or I would never do that after what these people have been through, Mr. Senator Roberts just raised Andrew hasty member for canning. And I remember reading years ago, it would have been because he was quite new to parliament at the time. And he won’t mind me sharing. Cause this is on the public record. He shared it himself. That even as he was doing his training, these gruelling days and days on end, that they’d be sent on, have to undergo unspeakable, not only temperatures, but conditions, no sleep for days on end all the rest of it. And he shared coming back from this particular training trip, just sobbing on the end of the line to his lovely wife, Ruth, this, this stuff, these guys go to go through, breaks them. It absolutely breaks them. And I’m not making excuses for atrocities. They may have committed in, in the line of line of duty, but it, we have to, we have to keep that in mind that human beings cannot go through prolonged periods of these high pressure, no slate, adrenaline running through your veins, 24 seven, that kind of fear that the environment we can’t even imagine for days on end and then still function properly. They, they just can’t.

Great. If you don’t mind me jumping in, I think there’s something that I think there’s another factor here too, that we must.

Right. All Malcolm, just get one last line, one line, you know?

Yeah. That’s something you mentioned in the material you send out and that is that there’s a catch and release policy for it. For people you can’t hold them, you can’t detain them. So some of these people were at the kill soldiers, they catch them. So SSL just catch them and then have to let them go again, because there’s not a proper theatre of war. I know that if I was under that scenario, I’d be thinking twice about letting them go and there’s nowhere to keep them. What else are you going to do? You know, when, when people’s minds under that much stress Brahman, Gary, you know, we’ve got to be understanding and compassionate about that.

I think, and I don’t mean to domain my sincerity at all, but I, I, you know, I think about Jack, Jack Nichols, Jack Nicholson’s line in a few good men, you know, can we handle the truth? I mean, it’s kind of, I guess, yeah, if they’ve done the wrong thing, the system will out, but I am concerned.

Gary. I sat in that parliament in the house of representatives, as we stood again and again, mourning the death of a soldier in Afghanistan. And we made great speeches about their, their, their sacrifice for us, the way they represented us. We as a people, our government, both labour and liberal sent those men to fight for our principles in a foreign land. And as I said, we eulogise and spoke of them. I even attended ramp ceremonies when those bodies were returned to Australia. And yet the same government that sent them, we sent to fight for us is now attacking our own people, our own soldiers. I worked as hard as I could not to have Australia sign up for the international criminal court because I could see how it could be used against us as a matter of international propaganda. But the reality was that Alexander data had virtually committed us. But one thing I did get added was a footnote that said we would never hand over any of our soldiers to that court, which is the thread that is held over. If we don’t investigate, they’ll do. But I insisted that that went in now. Let’s look, what’s happened mr. Justice, the gay Britain, major general, the gay Breton, a former commander of the fifth brigade. The second division has spent four years investigating these issues for years, that investigation actually advertised in Afghanistan for Afghanis to come forward and testify or give still evidence against soldiers. We paid for people to go there to try and find people who would either tell the truth or to lies. How do we know unbelievable for years, this has gone on and those men have lived with that for these four years. We are now told that there was a report that’s going to be released, which we will find shocking. Peter Jennings has very wisely walled that this will be used by ISIS in a recruiting programme for them to say, they’re justified in taking the lives of Australians. And that will be civilian, as well as military people. We are hanging these people out to dry and saying that responses, we will have a further investigation and that investigation we’ll see whether or not there should be any prosecutions in line with the requirements under the ICC. We will never hand over any of our soldiers to that court for them to make the investigation. And if you take a look at who sits on it and would be sitting and just judgement on us, I just get anger, which is beyond belief. So I say that we have a huge obligation to the men and women who serve 29,000 people have served in Afghanistan. When I was minister for defence industry science and personnel, we didn’t send many people overseas at all. It was into Bosnia then and they had to go viral being succonded into the British army. And then they could go across and fight. But the long and the short of it is, is that they have worn our uniform and our flag to support our values. Our values are important, but for the government to turn on our soldiers and to hold them up through this period, we have had something like we have lost more soldiers in the years. We’ve been in Afghanistan to suicide than we lost in combat. So just understand the stresses that they’re under and understand one more point the rules under which they fight are called terms of engagement. And they literally write down what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do. And then there is a definition of what is an atrocity or what is a war crime set out the ICC. And this is what is almost like being told you go there to fight with one arm behind your back. I can only say, as I sat in that parliament and heard the eulogies of these men and the others who are equally served with great Valour and attending that ramp ceremony to receive those bodies back. And first now to be putting the hall about 80th under some sort of additional pressure, I find very difficult to come to terms with indeed, we are these here.

Oh, I, I, I congratulate you on what you’ve just said. And I thank you for your eloquence, but the substance of your argument. And I also make this very plain observation. We did this, the Australian government did this, my, these announcements, the week of remembrance day, I find it just sickening to my core. And I hold all of my freedoms in the Palm of my hand and at the tip of my tongue, purely off the back of those, who’ve served this nation and I feel very emotional about it as well. I’m going to take a break. We’ll come back. We’ll stand up for the workers of Australia. Somebody has to.

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Thanks so much for your company on a roll in. This will be hit with Newsnight. After the top of the hour with Liz Stora, we brought my Bishop was Senator Malcolm Roberts. Well, it seems that the labour party, whiteness, the inner city, people who just love everything that involves lattes and nothing to do with coal fire power losing the working VIG who’d thought. I mean watching and Joel Fitzgibbon, I thought bill the cat rather. Well this week, Malcolm Robinson, he said, you know, I’m watching people showing up with one nation, how to vote cards and with liberal national party hat of icons and not live ahead of icons and even branch members of the labour party at doing that, a lot of of potty have lost the worker vote. And I said this back in 2007 27 in the parliament where I said that they were looking after the nonproductive elements of societies, not the workers are recognised was right. Then you are, you are.

And it’s significant to remember one thing, Joe Fitz given was not worried about blue collar jobs until his job was threatened. Then he’s terrified and that’s good. And he should be terrified because we have an outstanding candidate down the Institute, bones articulate, smart. Savvy, and very, very dedicated to the country and very honest and straight. And he’s raised a number of issues with us. The whip we’re prosecuting Stuart is a wonderful man and Joel needs to be concerned because his party has abandoned him. Even if what Joel is doing is, is a sincere, then his party is still abandoned him because it’s abandoned blue collar workers and the labour party is all about wokeness. That’s all it is. Write them off.

25 Years. Next is instal was elected. His dad. Eric was there for a dozen years before that this is a Fitzgibbon thing. Liz Stora the seat of Hunter. But unless you actually start to get the workers of Australia front and foremost, you’re not going to get invited. And I actually think, look what the Republicans are doing in America, where they’ve broadened the base of their appeal. This certainly must be what the liberal party, the national party. I know one nation they’re doing it. I mean, we just need to know that the workers don’t vote labour anymore. I can understand why.

So can I look? I honestly don’t understand how the ALP isn’t just agreeing with everything. Fitzgibbon has said, got to say, Joel broke my heart this week, stepping down from the front bench. And then more recently saying that it’s, it’s not for a run at the leadership. I’m like, please feds do it for the country. Body look, everything. This guy says resonates now. And I take the senator’s point that maybe he wouldn’t have said the same prior to the last election, but here he is trying to speak truth to power within his own party. And labour has been getting crucified due to this, this new urbanisation that it’s found in literally in Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, it has no seats outside of the cities. When, when did this happen? It’s happened since 2007, as this seats outside of city areas have dwindled. These don’t like wokeness. They’re telling labour, they screamed at labour at the ballot box last year. Labor’s not paying attention. I can’t explain it for the life of me.

Well, I brought my Bishop today and I know you’re not on Twitter, but take my word for that. Anthony, Albanese actually tweeted about how our climate is dying and the smoke is killing us. And you know, the great reset kind of narrative. And I was thinking, at the Franklin who I know well is his media office who gonna re retweeted it. And I was thinking, Aw, come on Alba, come on, Franklin. You know, this is just like manifests a heaven for the real Australians who think the labour party have completely lost the plot.

Well, the problem is of course, and this happened some considerable time ago in the 90s that the so-called rusted on workers to the labour party, cease to be rusted on. And they ceased to be someone who was sort of on the, under the boot of the, of the employer, which is the picture that the labour party used to paint, but they became aspirational people. They became small business people. They became in charge of their own, their own destiny. They could see that they could have a better future for their kids if they got these opportunities, which liberal governments offered. And so what the labour party missed out on was to see that the attitude had changed of people who were their traditional rust add-ons that they had become the aspirational people who are the heart and soul of small business. And it used to the liberal party that they came. A similar thing happened in the United States with Ronald Reagan. When the, the Reagan Democrats sort of became a phenomenon it’s happened here. So what we have to understand and what the, what the government liberal governments have to understand is that you have to give those people the things that they need. And that’s why the issue of cheap electricity is so vital because to be successful in those endeavours, they need cheap electricity. It is the only competitive advantage they have against imported goods, and they need to be able to produce here in Australia, to set, as we pivot away from China, as we have to do and become more self-reliant, that’s why we need base power. And that’s why we can’t flood our power lines with the, the so-called with wind and solar, because you get all sorts of problems with delivery of power. And I, and I’ve said before, I can remember being in Manila in the 1980s, and they would be Brown out periods. They’d call them. And every time all the lights went on in the palace at Malecon yang, all the surrounding suburbs, they lost their power because they didn’t have enough. What will happen to us the only way you did enough and always be enough for the green elites for the labour elites, three people out of it. If we don’t get some base power.

Look, the bottom line is we need people with trade skills and nice and building skills. When they plumbers, when they’d spot Ks, we need people who know how to build stuff with their hands or with really clever use of machines. They can be women. They can be men, they can be young, they can be all that. We need those people. We need coal-fired power. We need water where, and when we want it, it’s not hard to work out. I want to hear this from the prime minister. I want to give a shout out before I finished. Cause we got to wind up, but good on your Dominic parity. One of the greatest places of public policy, I’m never in favour of new taxes. The idea of texting paper with electric cars is a beauty of all in favour of electric vehicles, but the infrastructure to make it possible for people, Jimmy Barnes and his a hundred thousand dollar plus, you know, electric car to, to really feel should be paid for an, a tax by the people who own the cars. Surely it shouldn’t be just doing me driving around in other cars. I would’ve thought that was a good piece of public policy. Dominic pyrrhotite well done to you. Malcolm Roberts. Thanks so much for your company tonight. Ramen, Bishop, Liz, Stora, brilliant to have you on tonight and kudos to you, Brahman for standing up for our defence force personnel list. We forget. Well, that’s it for another week back again. Next week, look forward to your company. Have a great day.