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Australia turning into a spiderweb of high voltage transmission lines

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It’s estimated that 28,000km of power lines will be required to help the government’s net-zero pipe dream.

In many places, these powerlines are being proposed over prime agricultural land with the owners having their property compulsorily resumed.

I spoke in support of a inquiry to give affected landowners a voice as the government bulldozes over them on their way off the wind and solar cliff.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to acknowledge the people in the gallery. My brothers and sisters in Queensland amongst the rural sector were at a property rights conference just last Friday. The stories about the so-called green power—wind and solar—are well and truly horrific.  

People are just starting to wake up to the blight that is coming upon this country. And it’s not just the city people paying for power; it’s rural landholders and farmers losing their land, losing their livelihoods and losing their health. The social, economic and moral impacts are enormous and devastating. And the anti-human Greens are responsible.  

I want to compliment the farmers who have come here today. Thank you so much, because what you’re showing is democracy in action. You’re putting pressure on the people down here in this chamber. We are paid by these people. We serve them.  

Recently I was in the wonderful Widgee community to listen to people about the Queensland government’s plan to destroy their national park and communities in order to build a high voltage powerline. Electricity transmission has become a controversial topic in recent years. The UN’s 2050 net zero—next to zero—needs a huge spend on wind turbines and solar panels, inevitably located in the bush and requiring tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines to bring the power all the way to the cities. 

Long transmission lines were not needed when coal power kept lights on and fridges running, lifting our beautiful country into a period of prosperity and stability. 

The woke Left—the socialist Left—are destroying what works and replacing it with a short-lived, unscientific exercise in feelings. Net zero will need $50 billion spent just on transmission lines, every cent of which will come out of the pockets of everyday Australians and electricity users, including manufacturers. Queensland Premier Palaszczuk’s plan for a big battery in the Pioneer Valley calls for peak generation of five million kilowatts of electricity to be delivered into a 275-kilovolt transmission line. It’s absolute insanity, deceit and arrogance. Premier, where’s the costing on the several thousand kilometres of additional lines necessary to carry that amount of power into the grid without melting the wires? Are you forgetting that melted wires is exactly what happened when the Kennedy renewables project was connected to the grid, and that was less than one per cent of the Pioneer project? 

It’s a fact that Katherine Myers from Victoria addressed the Property Rights conference in Gympie on the weekend. She told us that 80 per cent of solar and wind in western Victoria is not connected to the grid. You guys have blown that money and now you’re wanting to tear up farms to get it to the cities. Once wind and solar wear out, which takes only 12 years—and that’s the reason they’re called renewables, by the way—and taxpayers become jack of this ruinous drain on public finances the bush will be left a wasteland of glass, toxic chemicals, rusted steel towers, concrete and fallen wind turbines full of oil and dangerous chemicals. Do you know why they’re called renewables? Because you have to renew the bloody things every 12 years. In the space of building one power station you need to build four generations of solar and wind. That’s why they’re renewables. 

Wires melting is exactly what happened when the Kennedy renewables project was connected to the grid, and that’s less than one per cent of the Pioneer project. Nothing stacks up—nothing. Their owners are Bahamian shelf companies and Chinese shelf companies, which have no intention of remediating this inevitable environmental disaster. Who will be left with this legacy of blown toxic panels and wind turbines? You will be. That’s why we need this inquiry to explore this issue. 

One Nation stands opposed to green vandalism underway in rural Australians’ backyards just so that wealthy, ignorant and uncaring inner-city anti-human Greens and teals can feel better about their inhuman energy consumption myths. Why do the Greens hate nature? Let’s look at their track record. They chop down trees to make way for steel and fibreglass monuments to the sky god of warming, who is celebrated with religious fervour by people who think themselves too clever for religion. Tens of thousands of hectares have been cleared and devastated for electricity interconnector easements. It’s a permanent scar across the landscape for no reason.  

The seabed is marked with two new interconnectors to get hydropower from Tasmania to energy deficient Victoria. Suicide is what’s going on with the Victorian government. They’re suiciding their state. Productive farmland and native grasses are covered in a carpet of glass and silicon reflectors. The sea is supposed to shine, not the countryside. Productive land is dug up as a graveyard for expired wind turbine blades. There’s strip mining of the seabed for rare earth minerals to make EVs and big batteries. Beautiful natural lakes in China are polluted with toxic chemical run-off from the processing of rare earths. The Greens look the other way with this environmental vandalism because ignoring environmental standards is essential to bring the price of solar down so that they can claim the price of solar is falling. 

This is the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull. So there’s China’s environmental standards and the health of the locals, but who cares about children being devastated? Our beautiful bird life is sliced and diced in wind turbines across the country. If oil were the culprit, they would never shut up about birds. But with wind turbines: ‘Shoosh. No-one mention the dead birds.’ 

I make this offer to the Greens: come camping with me. Let me show you the beauty of this amazing countryside and then perhaps then you will be less likely to chop it down; cover it in glass, steel and concrete; pollute it; and lock it away so nobody but a chosen few can appreciate the beauty. One Nation is now the party of the environment. 

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Australia Council happy to waste 7% more of your money to virtue signal

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Everyone’s power bills are going up, which made me wonder why the Australia Council was happy to make their power bill 7% more expensive for no reason at all.

Despite the same power coming through the plug (probably from a coal fired power station) the council elects to make their bills 7% more expensive so they can buy “green power”. What a scam and a waste of money.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: I want to follow up on something we discussed last time. You may recall that last estimates we had a conversation about your power bills.

Mr Collette: Yes.

Senator Roberts: A lot of people are talking about power bills these days.

Mr Collette: They are.

Senator Roberts: This is estimates, and one of the purposes of estimates is to assess how you are spending taxpayers’ money. That is what I want to revisit. Firstly, thank you for your detailed response, when you took my question on notice. That was SQ 23-003317. I hope all of the Public Service takes notes from you about how questions on notice should be answered. We appreciate it.

Mr Collette: Thank you.

Senator Roberts: In that answer, you said that you elect to add the green power product to your power bills. That is totally optional. You opt in, and you take extra money from the taxpayer to pay that expense. That is making your power bill 6.8 per cent—say seven per cent—more expensive than otherwise. Whether you opt in to pay the extra for green power or not, the same power comes through the same plug, probably from a coal-fired power station. But you are choosing to waste taxpayers’ money on this optional expense that makes no difference to what is turning the lights on. How much did you pay for green power over the last year?

Mr Collette: I will have to take that on notice, unless my colleague has the answer.

Mr Blackwell: I don’t have it.

Mr Collette: We will try to come back to you with an equally exemplary response.

Senator Roberts: Good, thank you. I don’t expect this of you, but do you have any guess as to what your power bill is?

Mr Collette: I would not like to guess, no.

Senator Roberts: Can you also tell me how much you expect to pay this coming year?

Mr Collette: I can’t tell you that, but I will certainly get that information for you.

Senator Roberts: You were established under legislation; correct?

Mr Collette: We are.

Senator Roberts: So I assume you have been established with the objective of funding the arts.

Mr Collette: Yes, we have, investment and advocacy.

Senator Roberts: Investing in arts and advocacy on behalf of the arts. Thank you, that is clarifying. What part of your objectives enables you to waste an extra seven per cent a year on a core component, power, when it is literally the same power coming through the plug whether you pay the extra expense or not?

Mr Collette: What part of our objectives? I think the Australia Council—Creative Australia to be—does have sustainability goals, and we try to exemplify those, which are important to the sector that we serve as well. Given that we invest in the sector, and we advocate for the sector, I think this is generally respected by the arts and creative industry.

Senator Roberts: I think you are wasting taxpayer money and that should be cancelled. Would not that money be better spent on the art that you are supposed to be funding?

Mr Collette: There is always a cost to investing in servicing the art that we are funding, and I think you will find that this is significantly respected by the sector.

Senator Roberts: The point is that you are spending an extra seven per cent on a key component—

Mr Collette: I understand that.

Senator Roberts: Same plug, same power.

Mr Collette: I understand that. But there are different kinds of value as well.

Senator Roberts: I am not arguing with you on that point.

Mr Collette: So this would be a small contribution to social and environmental value that is respected by the sector, and I am sure if you ask their general view on whether we should save whatever the sum is—seven per cent of our power bill, and I confess I don’t know our power bill as I sit here—you would find very broad support for what we do.

Senator Roberts: I think there is a lot of ignorance—and I am not singling you out; I think it goes right through the community—about this green power, because the same power comes from the same place through the plug, regardless of whether you pay that seven per cent or not. So I would like to know what benefit you get from that seven per cent.

Mr Collette: I will take that on notice and come back to you, once I understand the argument that I think you are making—that there is actually no difference in this power. I need to satisfy myself on that argument and then we can come back to you with a response.

Senator Roberts: I am pleased to hear that. Thank you.

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Snowy 2.0 continues to throw good money after bad

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I questioned the Snowy Hydro Authority on the Snowy 2.0 project at Senate Estimates.

Snowy 2.0 is a ‘big battery’ that pumps water from the Talbingo Reservoir up to the Tantangara Reservoir during the day when there is excess wind and solar electricity, then lets the water down during the evening peak to generate electricity when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing.

If this sounds like we are planning on generating electricity twice to use it once, that is exactly what pumped hydro does.

The original cost of $2 billion is now out to $5.9 billion and likely to go over $10 billion. In addition, the transmission lines to bring the power into the grid will gouge out national parks and farmland, and cost another $10 billion. And their main boring machine has been bogged for more than a year.

I asked if this project is worth continuing.

The lack of detail around how much the power will cost electricity customers is frightening.

Listen to the answers. It sounds like the Snowy Authority is planning to profiteer by having the only power available when solar and wind are not generating enough power.

All I can say is be worried – this Government is actively planning massive increases in power bills.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Thank you for appearing again today. Florence is now acknowledged to be bogged. When will it be unbogged?

Mr Barnes: I expect in weeks, not months. As soon as the slurry plant is operating, we’ll push forward, obviously in close consultation with our colleagues at DPIE and Parks, but we expect it to be relatively soon.

Senator Roberts: I empathise with you, having managed underground projects, some quite large—not as large as this one. There is a lot of uncertainty, and it’s hard telling people who are looking on how to think about this. It’s very difficult to describe.

Mr Barnes: You’ve got to see it to believe it.

Senator Roberts: That’s right. We’ve got journalists—admittedly journalists—now saying it’s time to cut our losses on Snowy 2.0. If the project is completed and all the high-voltage transmission lines are built across farmyards and national parks, there must be a calculation that takes the capital cost of the project as a whole and divides that by the life of the project to get a figure for how much the annual amortisation charge for the capital costs will be. Do you have the latest projection, please?

Mr Barnes: There was quite a lot in your question. Obviously we haven’t got an updated cost here, and we’ll provide that in months. We don’t have the cost of transmission, so I wouldn’t be able to provide that. I fully expect, through our corporate plan process, we’ll assess the returns from Snowy 2.0, and, if anything, the commercial case for it has got stronger since FID.

Senator Roberts: Sorry?

Mr Barnes: The commercial case for it has gotten stronger since the financial investment decision.

Senator Roberts: There were many factors that drove that commercial decision in the first place. Well, it wasn’t commercial, from what we understand, because there was no cost-benefit analysis, and the business case was redacted heavily, under Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership. This annual amortisation charge, which you can’t provide, is combined with annual costs like labour and maintenance to calculate what the real cost per megawatt hour will be once the project starts. You wouldn’t have the projected cost per megawatt hour either then?

Mr Barnes: That’s correct, but to think about Snowy 2.0 in megawatt hours is perhaps not the right way to think about it.

Senator Roberts: It’s a battery.

Mr Barnes: Yes, but it’s the provision of dispatchable demand over very long storage duration that allows lots of variable renewable electricity to be delivered. So we look at the business case in a much more fulsome way across the whole Snowy business. For example, over the past few years, we’ve procured 1,500 megawatts of solar and wind PPAs to enable the transition, which assets like Snowy 2.0 support. I think you’ve got to look at a whole-of-business business case, and the simple amortisation plus labour is, perhaps, too simplistic a way to consider the business case.

Senator Roberts: Now you’ve got me really worried. It’s not your responsibility with the solar and wind, but now I’m terrified of it. Your website lists the levelised cost of storage at between $25 and $35 per megawatt hour. On 340,000 megawatt hours each year, this suggests an annual cost of $11 million, including operating costs, maintenance, capital costs and the cost of buying the electricity to pump the water uphill. Is the $25 to $35 figure still accurate and, if not, what is the new figure?

Mr Barnes: I’ve not got a calculator that capable in my head, but I think there might be a multiplying factor out on those numbers. The levelised cost of storage I think we have on our website is sourced from international studies and our view of levelised cost of storage. I don’t have the updated figure in my head at the moment.

Senator Roberts: Our staff team did some calculations. Now, admittedly, we don’t have all the costs, but it just seems ridiculously low. When we pile on these extra costs of the delay, we’re wondering about what will happen.

Mr Barnes: Just to be clear, the levelised cost of storage is what one would add to variable renewable electricity to provide a firm product. Also, the 340,000 megawatt hours of storage is not deployed over a year. It will be deployed multiple times through the year, depending on the market dynamics.

Senator Roberts: It seems to us that the capital cost is becoming a huge stumbling block. Even if you take just the cost of the project, at $6 billion—and there are serious doubts about that now—and amortise those across 50 years, the annual capital charge will be $120 million, and double that if you add the pole and the wires. That puts the cost of your electricity at over $700 per megawatt per hour, including the poles and wires. The current spot price for last weekend—admittedly the weekend was cold down here—for last weekend was $150 per megawatt hour. Is there something we’re missing?

Mr Barnes: We’ll certainly do a full financial review of the project when the increased costs are known. But I think you’re mischaracterising the nature of the asset in that it isn’t an energy provider. It’s an insurance provider for when the wind isn’t blowing, the sun isn’t shining or there is plant failure elsewhere. So we don’t sell it as a baseload energy price, which is what you’re referencing.

Senator Roberts: Hasn’t it been touted as a peak period source of electricity?

Mr Barnes: The two major sources of revenue will be the difference between the price we pump the water up to Tantangara, which will soak up demand from solar and wind when it’s not required, and the price at which we sell it in peak periods when solar and wind aren’t available or other plants are not available. So it’s an asset about being there when everything else isn’t. It isn’t sold on an energy basis, which are the reference prices you’re quoting.

Senator Roberts: Okay. But the projected cost must be the single most important KPI of this project.

Mr Barnes: Cost and schedule are my most important KPIs. The reason we came out with the schedule is that there are many stakeholders interested in the schedule, and we’ll work through the cost and associated business plans around that.

Senator Roberts: There seems to be a real risk, though. I acknowledge your point that we can’t just charge per kilowatt hour—or we can’t just recognise a per kilowatt hour figure. But there seems to be the real possibility that the price of electricity generated, recovered and stored will be massive, even without government subsidies coming in year after year.

Ms Barnes: I think that’s for others to comment on. My focus is on getting the project at schedule and cost and making a business case for it, which I think is very strong. There are many other factors which will determine the price of electricity.

Senator Roberts: Minister, can you provide on notice the current projected cost per megawatt hour of electricity generated by Snowy 2.0 on the first year of operation, please?

Senator McAllister: Senator, I will take that on notice. I would also direct you to the evidence given to you already by Mr Barnes in relation both to the variability in the electricity market that Snowy will participate in but also—

Senator Roberts: A lot of variability means uncertainty.

Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, I think that Mr Barnes has given an indication that he thinks it’s a strong business case and they’re presently working through it. I have taken your question on notice.

Senator Roberts: Thank you. This had nothing to do with your government, but right from the start of this project, Malcolm Turnbull’s government refused access to the cost-benefit analysis and heavily redacted the business case. There have been lots of questions about this project right from the start and now there are even more questions—and I don’t blame Mr Barnes for that.

Mr Barnes: My interest is running a commercially viable and efficient company, and that’s what I’ve done all of my career. The reason I joined Snowy was to get the opportunity to deliver Snowy 2, because I think it’s an incredibly important asset to the energy transition. I fully expect it to be very commercial. We’re trying to deal with the hardest part of the transition, which is providing deep storage to enable more renewables. So I expect it to be a very commercial business.

Senator Roberts: Can I confirm media reports that Snowy Hydro was found in a third independent audit last year to be noncompliant on environmental plans in 15 instances and that you have at last 10 management plans overdue?

Mr Barnes: I think, Senator, that you’re maybe referring to a National Parks Association report that was released last Thursday, without consultation with Snowy Hydro. We are currently operating under all of our construction approvals. So there are no breaches there. The plans and requirements as a result of the construction and operation of Snowy 2 obviously changed in nature over time. There are some that are relevant to construction, and we’re fully compliant with those. There are some that are relevant to operation and some that are relevant to rehabilitation. We work closely with all of the agencies to make sure that they’re reviewed and consulted on in every thorough way. I think there’s been a misunderstanding of some of the dates on various websites. So I have reached out to the National Parks Association to help them understand how it operates.

Senator Roberts: So it’s a misunderstanding that 10 of the 16 management plans for multibillion-dollar pumped hydro projects are overdue by 31 months, as reported in the media, citing the National Parks Association? So you think they’ve got it wrong somewhere?

Mr Barnes: The plans that are being referred to are prepared by Snowy and they are reviewed by various agencies. In consultation with the agencies, some of the dates that were originally envisaged are not being met and, therefore, are phases of the project which are way into the future. One of the things that may be useful for us to do is to work with the various agencies to make that understanding of how this process works. I would have happily taken the National Parks Association through that process.

Senator Roberts: Okay; so they jumped the gun?

Mr Barnes: They didn’t consult with Snowy Hydro before releasing it to the media.

Senator Roberts: Can I go to your opening statement? You recently announced a one- to two-year delay.  That’s a heck of a range, 100 per cent—from minimum to major.

Mr Barnes: It’s a project that’s being constructed over more than one to two years. It’s been in construction a few years. I think it was appropriate to give a range until we do more work.

Senator Roberts: I appreciate your honesty. I am not questioning your honesty—and I appreciate that you have given us that figure. But, for the project, that’s a pretty big number. What was the original planned project duration?

Mr Barnes: It was before my time. Perhaps we’ll come back to you. We gave a notice to proceed in mid-2020 and power was expected in 2025-26.

Mr Whitby: First power was for 1 July 2025, from a notice to proceed from August 2020. So five years was the original—

Senator Roberts: So the delay is 20 per cent to 40 per cent?

Mr Barnes: That would be the simple maths.

Chair: Senator Roberts, I’ll get you to wind it up and share the call, if that’s okay?

Senator Roberts: Okay. You mentioned in your statement the combination of four factors. What are the four factors? I’ve been through your statement and I couldn’t see them.

Mr Barnes: In our advice to ministers and in our media release we identified the effects of COVID and bushfires on the mobilisation of the project, the effect of many global factors on the availability of skilled labour and also the costs of materials. There’s a lot of steel and concrete in the project. We’ve found that some elements of the design—as we’ve gone through the process of design—are, in some cases, more costly to complete. And finally, the site conditions, of which the Florence ground conditions are the most impactful, also includes things like additional eroding. They’re the four factors.

Senator Roberts: Good luck getting that machine out.

Mr Barnes: Thanks.

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Same place, same time, different temperatures. What’s the BOM hiding?

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The Bureau of Meteorology has been in the process of replacing mercury temperature probes with digital probes at weather stations across the country.

After a long Freedom of Information process, we now have field logs from the Brisbane Airport station showing that the two different devices can record different temperatures at the same place at the same time.

The Bureau have said both of these sets of data has always been available but I don’t believe them and I think they’ve been caught out. We need a transparent inquiry into all of BOM’s temperature measuring.

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Listen to this if you’ve been affected by a wind, solar or power line project

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The Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner has a sole focus on receiving complaints about wind, solar, pumped hydro, battery and power line projects among others.

If you have been affected by a project underway or even one that is proposed you need to submit a complaint by following the steps at https://www.aeic.gov.au/making-a-complaint

Transcript

Chair: Senator Roberts.

Senator Roberts: Thank you for being here this morning. I understand one of my staff called you yesterday?

Mr Dyer: Yes.

Senator Roberts: He had a very pleasant talk. Thank you very much for opening the door. Is it accurate to say that you are the national commissioner for complaints about wind and solar projects?

Mr Dyer: I’d like to characterise it as the ombudsman of first and last resort. If you have a concern about a powerline, a wind farm or whatever that might be in our jurisdiction and you don’t know how to get it solved, you can come to us and we’ll figure out the right process to get the concern addressed.

Senator Roberts: When you say ‘you’, that was used in a colloquial sense. This is open to any citizen in Australia?

Mr Dyer: Yes. We’re a national service and we get complaints from around the country.

Senator Roberts: That’s wonderful to hear. So anyone who has a complaint about wind projects, solar projects, batteries or transmission can make a complaint to you?

Mr Dyer: Yes. If you go to our website, which is aeic.gov.au, the second or third tab along says ‘making a complaint’. There’s the process, the form and the policy. You can call us, you can mail us, you can email us or you can arrange to meet with us.

Senator Roberts: How many are in your office? I understand you have a small office.

Mr Dyer: We’re a very efficient team.

Senator Roberts: I wasn’t being critical.

Mr Dyer: We have, I think, five people.

Senator Roberts: And you’re meant to take care of people’s complaints about solar and wind. And you work with the state government, with the federal government, with private entities?

Mr Dyer: Yes.

Senator Roberts: Thank you.

Mr Dyer: The respondent is usually the developer to a concern. But sometimes it’s a planning process or an EPBC issue. It’s not always the developer, but usually that’s the case.

Senator Roberts: So it could get pretty complex?

Mr Dyer: Yes. We’ve had some of them going for a long time, but we get through them.

Senator Roberts: Can you perhaps talk a bit more about what you can do for someone who has a complaint that you can look at, because people are not aware. Talk to everyday Australians.

Mr Dyer: I don’t have the budget for a front page ad in the Sydney Morning Herald. But people do find us. If you’ve got constituents who have concerns, we should talk about how they can come to us. The best thing to do is promote our website, and that has all of the details. Typically our process is that, if we get a complaint, we’ll do some research on the project and the proponent, and what is going on. If we don’t already know the proponent, and in many cases we do, we will go and get a briefing or open the door, and sometimes the complainant is known to the proponent. Often they’re not known, and so we’re able to build and bridge a relationship between the complainant and the proponent to work through whatever the concerns are. Many concerns are solved by just provision of factual information. It’s often a misunderstanding or misperception that has caused them to come to us.

Senator Roberts: I certainly agree with that. I would like to ask whether you’ve received any complaints in relation to the proposed Eungella or Burdekin Pioneer pumped hydro project in the hinterland near Mackay and the proposed Borumba Dam pumped hydro and the transmission lines around Widgee, which is near Gympie in Queensland.

Mr Dyer: No.

Senator Roberts: Not any?

Mr Dyer: No.

Senator Roberts: There’s a massive community movement in both cases.

Mr Dyer: Then feel free to connect them to us and we’ll work through it.

Senator Roberts: Okay. It’s shocking to me that, in both of those projects, it appears there has been an appalling level of community consultation. This is entirely from the Queensland government. In Eungella, for example, people who were going to have their houses compulsorily resumed and flooded for the new pumped hydro dam found out via media release. Then they found out that they couldn’t get loans for their business, renovations or sell their house, because their land is now jeopardised. Transmission lines for the Borumba project near Gympie are currently proposed over prime agricultural land, which would be again compulsorily resumed despite the community pointing out that there are state-owned land corridors available nearby. Does this lack of consultation sound like it meets the needs for best practice that your office would recommend?

Mr Dyer: We find that most proponents need help in some way, shape or form. I did have a look last night at the Queensland hydro website, and it didn’t jump out to me how you might make a complaint, for example. So, it’s possible that we may need to help them get their complaint process in place. We’ve had to do that with all the TNSPs, and help them get that in place, and the policies put in place, make it transparent on the project website, and away they go.

Senator Roberts: Thank you. What does the best practice consultation look like?

Mr Dyer: It’s a long topic, but it’s about knowing who your stakeholders are and being fairly well advanced in your thinking about what you’re trying to do. If I reflect on a call I had last night, it’s don’t go about it in secret. We often get developers that want to have one-on-one discussions with the landholder to sign them up for hosting the wind farm or the solar farm and say, ‘This is very confidential. We can’t let you talk to your neighbours.’  Before the developers leave the front gate, the whole street knows what the deal is.

Senator Roberts: And they know that these guys are wanting to cover it up?

Mr Dyer: Yes.

Senator Roberts: Which doesn’t build trust.

Mr Dyer: Yes.

Senator Roberts: To build trust, developers need to listen first and then talk once they understand people’s needs?

Mr Dyer: Yes. It’s, for want of a better word, not a crude word, it’s a professional sales role that they’re in. But it’s got to be done with ethics and transparency and thinking like a landholder will think—how you go about matters.

Senator Roberts: I’ve been up to both projects, but already there are many constituents who are saying that this will never be built. It’s just going to do enormous damage. It’s just the Queensland government diverting attention in the media and in the community from serious problems like the Mackay Base Hospital. That straightaway has destroyed any trust in that community.

Mr Dyer: It sounds like they might need some help, so I’ll approach the chair and we’ll start the process.

Senator Roberts: We’ll get your website and your name and we’ll send it to—

Mr Dyer: I’ve got a card here for you. You can take that after the session.

Senator Roberts: I’m intrigued about bonds on solar and wind generators. In the coal industry, for every acre that a surface mine uncovers the coal company has to provide a bond to the government, and then it doesn’t get that bond back until the land is fully reclaimed. Sometimes the reclaimed land is far more productive and far cleaner than the original scrub. What is the bond on solar and wind generators?

Mr Dyer: It’s up to the commercial arrangement between the landholder and the proponent. It’s no different from you owning the milk bar as a commercial landlord down the main street of town. If the tenant defaults and leaves the building, you’re stuck with the bain-marie.

Senator Roberts: So, without a bond, at the end of life, solar and wind generators can just walk away from it? Where are the funds to ensure remediation?

Mr Dyer: Some landholders are quite savvy, and I have seen everything from bank guarantees to bonds being in place, but it’s not across the board. That’s not to say it’s not happening and not being done, but it needs to be a standard practice.

Senator Roberts: There is a standard in the coalmining industry, but there’s no standard in the solar and wind industry?

Mr Dyer: It’s something I’ve advocated for a long time. It’s in section 8 of my report in appendix A, that is, the need to have licensed developers accredited to have the skills to carry out the process, as we are doing in offshore wind, and also that the area being prospected has been sanctioned ahead of time.

Senator Roberts: I want to put on the record that I appreciate Mr Dyer’s frank and complete comments and his openness. It’s much appreciated. Thank you.

Chair: I think we would all agree.

Mr Dyer: Thank you.

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ARENA hands out $2.15 billion in subsidies to supposedly “cheap” renewables

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We constantly hear that “renewables” are the cheapest and the best way to go. If that’s the case, why does the Australian Renewable Energy Agency need to commit $2.15 billion in subsidies, grants and loans to prop up “renewable” projects?

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Thank you for appearing today. The latest figures I have about funds committed, as at June 2022, is $1.86 billion committed across Australia. That is from the 2021-22 annual report. Do you have the most recent figure on what you have committed?

Mr Miller: The most recent figure is $2.15 billion.

Senator Roberts: It’s constantly jammed down Australian throats that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy. Why do you have to commit billions in subsidies to wind and solar if this is the case? If they are so much cheaper, shouldn’t they be able to survive without your subsidies and just simply beat coal and gas in the market?

Mr Miller: ARENA hasn’t given much, if any, support to wind projects, in our history. When ARENA was formed 11 years ago, wind was relatively mature and didn’t need much support. Solar was an industry where Australia had a research advantage and a burgeoning research community, and ARENA stepped into that space and continued providing research funding to solar.

I think it’s entirely appropriate that we aim for lower cost, higher efficiency and more sustainable solar materials. That is what the work that we do supports. In terms of our support for solar, our key program in that respect was in 2016-17 where the intervention that ARENA and the CEFC provided the industry, with $92 million funding to two large-scale solar projects, drove the cost of that technology down from $2.50 a watt to $1.25 a watt following that program to the point where large-scale solar is economic in Australia—and the International Energy Agency says is the cheapest form of electricity generation in history. 

ARENA’s continued support for solar R&D is to create a sustainable, comparative and competitive advantage for Australia in this important technology, to unlock the potential for solar to be that form of ultra low-cost generation to support a giant iron and renewable steel manufacturing capability in Australia and to provide low – cost energy into our industrial system and to our domestic users. We take that responsibility seriously, and we are very excited by the opportunity to continue to support solar PV research, manufacturing and production in Australia to that effect.

Senator Roberts: Could you take on notice to explain in depth the cost structures around solar that you are contributing to at the moment, please? In simple terms, the generating of solar is cheap but, by the time we add the doubling or the tripling of the area needed because of the variability in nature and then you add the battery storage, it’s very, very expensive.

Mr Miller: Senator, I’m not clear what you want me to do.

Senator Roberts: I would like the levelised cost of solar produced electricity equivalent to coal in terms of quantities and reliability?

Mr Miller: I would point you to the good work that the CSIRO has done in collaboration with AEMO in their GenCost analysis, which is thorough analysis by the team at the CSIRO, which shows you the levelised cost of solar on its own and wind on its tone and then adds storage to that, which is a proxy for firming. I would suggest that we would not be able to provide you with any more information than that high-quality work that has been done by the CSIRO.

Senator Roberts: That’s fine; thank you, Mr Miller—because the CSIRO’s assumptions are just woeful. If that’s the best and you term it excellent, we’re in trouble. That’s my view. So thank you for saying that.

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Will the Australian Energy Regulator sacrifice price or reliability to reduce emissions?

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Currently, the government agencies that run our electricity grid are meant to balance 5 objectives: price, quality, safety, reliability and security of supply. The Government wants to add emissions reduction to those objectives.

I don’t think the objectives of price, reliability, security of supply and emissions reduction can all be achieved at the same time so my question to the Australian Regulator was, which objective will you sacrifice for emissions reduction to satisfy the net-zero pipe dream?

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Thank you all for being here today. The national electricity objectives include price, quality, safety, reliability and security of supply. The government is now intending to add emissions reduction to those objectives. You, the Australian Energy Regulator, have made a submission to the government’s consultation process on the draft National Energy Laws Amendment (Emissions Reduction Objectives) Bill 2022. In that submission you said, ‘The AER supports including an emissions reduction objective.’ This is support for a proposed government policy. Surely the very first value of the Australian Public Service is meant to be impartiality. Why are you commenting one way or another on support for a government policy?

Ms Savage: I guess my objective from that would be that we are there to try and meet Australia’s emission reduction targets in the least-cost way. That’s part of our job, and our decision-making needs to ensure that happens. Our purpose as the Australian Energy Regulator is to ensure Australian consumers are better off now and in the future, so when we assess what tools we need, as the Australian Energy Regulator, to actually do our job effectively and to make sure that we can deliver upon that purpose, our considered view is that change to the legislation, to the objective for which we have to use our decision-making, is required and is important to us being able to deliver upon our purpose. So it speaks fundamentally to our role rather than to the government’s policy.

Senator Roberts: Do you consider that the Australian Public Service Values and Code of Conduct apply to you?

Ms Savage: I absolutely do, Senator.

Senator Roberts: Do you consider that the Australian Public Service value of impartiality applies to you?

Ms Savage: Yes, I do.

Senator Roberts: Why are you stating support for a proposed government policy, rather than impartially commenting on your ability to carry it out?

Ms Savage: I’m not commenting on the policy; I’m commenting on the importance of the change to the work of the Australian Energy Regulator. In that regard, my obligation is to make sure that we have the tools we need to discharge our function such that we can ensure Australian consumers are better off now and in the future.

Senator Roberts: I put it to you that you are breaching the Australian Public Service value of impartiality by advocating support for a government policy. I would like you to take on notice to fully explain how advocating support for government policy in a submission is impartial.

Ms Savage: Senator, as I’ve said, we didn’t advocate support for the policy. We’re advocating support for the changes to the laws that are required to enable us to do our function.

Senator Roberts: ‘The Australian Energy Regulator’—your words—’supports including an emissions reduction objective.’

Ms Savage: That is the change to the legislation required to do our function.

Senator Roberts: You’ve taken a side in this debate even before it’s started. You’re required to be impartial. Why were you not impartial?

Ms Savage: I have—

Senator Roberts: I don’t accept your answer.

Ms Savage: I hear that you don’t accept my answer, but my answer remains that we have asked for changes, and we constantly and repeatedly ask for changes to legislation—and it’s in our strategic plan to do this—when it’s required for us to fulfil our strategic purpose, and that is to ensure that energy consumers are better off now and in the future. Limb 4 of our strategic plan actually says we will inform debate about Australia’s transition, and that’s to ensure that we can do our job to make sure Australian consumers are better off now and in the future.

Senator Roberts: I suggest you read the Australian Public Service Values and Code of Conduct.

Ms Savage: I have, Senator.

Senator Roberts: The current objectives of price, quality, safety, reliability and security are sound objectives. What level of compromise on price or reliability are you willing to accept to achieve the objective of emissions reduction?

Ms Savage: When it comes time for us to consider the new objectives, with all of the limbs in them, including the emissions reduction objective, we’ll need to think about the value of carbon emissions reductions in the context of the target to achieve net zero by 2050, to ensure that the investments that happen in things like transmission or gas networks are consistent with achieving that goal at least cost to consumers, which is where that element of making sure consumers are better off now and in the future arises.

Senator Roberts: So my question—I’ll say it again—is: what level of compromise on price or reliability are you willing to accept to achieve the objective of emissions reduction? You’ve now got a new objective.

Ms Savage: I don’t see it as compromise; I see it as optimising.

Senator Roberts: Can I take note of that?

Ms Savage: Absolutely.

Senator Roberts: It will be interesting in the future. What are you going to do if the objective of emissions reduction conflicts with those existing objectives?

Ms Savage: We will need to optimise against the current list of objectives, and the inclusion of emissions reduction which become another limb. Already, today, we have to make judgements and choices between the existing elements of those objectives. We constantly have to be thinking about trade-offs on behalf of customers in terms of price, quality, safety and reliability, and we will also be considering emissions reduction in that context.

Senator Roberts: I put it to you that there is no way that the objectives of price, reliability and emissions reduction can be achieved at the same time, so which one will you prioritise?

Chair: Senator Roberts, I wonder if your questions are getting a bit accusatory. You have asked questions, and Ms Savage is responding to your questions with her perspective.

Senator Roberts: I have constituents that are deeply concerned about electricity prices that have trebled in a couple of decades.

Chair: You are open to ask your questions, but I would ask you to mind your manner.

Senator Roberts: Thank you, Chair. I say it again: I put it to you that there is no way the objective of price reliability and emissions reduction can be achieved at the same time—the facts show that—so which one will you prioritise? You’ve actually supported the government and its policy, so which one will you prioritise?

Ms Savage: An example might help. Currently, we have to think about price, safety, security, reliability.  When we make a judgement, we have to think about price and reliability, and those two things aren’t always the same thing. More reliability can mean higher prices, and higher prices can mean lower reliability. On safety and security, we just gave, in response to Senator Van’s question, an example of abolishing gas connections; there is a safety issue there. We’re always and constantly in our work needing to optimise across those different objectives within the national electricity and gas objectives, and, with the inclusion of emissions, it will be the same type of task. We have to look at it in its whole, and we have to optimise across all of those objectives. We do it today and will be able to it tomorrow.

Senator Roberts: My view is that the people who tell us wind and solar are the cheapest form of electricity are lying. If they are the cheapest form of electricity, why do we need to change the electricity objectives to include emissions reductions, so they are favoured?

Ms Savage: You are thinking about generation technologies. We do a lot of work with the Australian Energy Regulator in electricity and gas networks, and that’s nothing to do with renewable energy necessarily. If I take a gas network, for example, and if you came to me as a gas company and said, ‘I need to invest in an electric compressor instead of a gas compressor because I’m trying to meet my emissions reduction objective,’ then that is something that we could not consider necessarily under the existing obligations. Under a future set of arrangements that’s something we could consider, so it’s not necessarily about wind and solar; it’s about lots of little choices that go along in the system to make sure it all adds up to the least-cost way of meeting our climate goals.

Senator Roberts: If the ministers past and present are not lying and solar and wind are cheap and reliable, it would fit into existing objectives of price and reliability. Why do we need to change the objectives if the climate ministers are not lying?

Ms Savage: As I just said—and I’ll repeat my answer—it’s not always about wind and solar.  Sometimes it will be about networks, and, in fact, most of the changes to the objective for the work of the Australian Energy Regulator will be about transmission, distribution, electricity and gas networks.

Senator Roberts: So it won’t be about price versus emissions, yet everywhere in the world every country that has a substantial proportion of solar and wind has had a dramatic increase in prices—that’s fact.

Ms Savage: Are you asking me a question?

Senator Roberts: Yes, I’m asking you a question. How can you justify the statement that there won’t be a trade-off between emissions and price?

Ms Savage: I have covered that in answering the question before, which is that we’ll be optimising across the new emissions reduction objective with the other elements of the national electricity and gas objectives.

Senator Roberts: What is the Australian Energy Regulator’s position on nuclear energy?

Ms Savage: We don’t have a position on nuclear energy.

Senator Roberts: So now you’re impartial?

Ms Savage: We’re always impartial.

Chair: Last question, Senator Roberts.

Senator Roberts: You say as part of your retail energy market regulation, your other roles include, secondly, reporting on performance of the market and energy businesses, including affordability and disconnection of customers for non-payment of energy bills. What is the latest disconnection rate in each state? Could you take that on notice?

Ms Savage: I can tell you at the macro level and take the state based data on notice. For ’21-22, which is the last full financial year of data we have, the number of disconnections was about 30,000, which is significantly less than what we saw before COVID. At the time before COVID it was 70,000 customers per year.

Senator Roberts: Could you take on notice to give us the five years—actually the three years?

Ms Savage: I have the five years here at the macro level if you’d like it.

Senator Roberts: I would like to know the states as well because I want to see how the different states are behaving.

Ms Savage: Actually, I have got the states here. Would you like me to read them out?

Senator Roberts: If you could put it in writing, that would be good.

Senator McAllister: As you can imagine, it ends up being like 20 numbers.

Chair: I wonder if we could just copy it in the break and circulate it—just for ease. Is that okay with you, Senator Roberts?

Senator Roberts: That’s fine.

Ms Savage: At a cumulative total, in 2017-18 it was 72,000 and in 2018-19 it was 70,000. The Australian Energy Regulator then asked retailers to stop disconnecting customers during COVID and we saw a big drop down: 43,000 in 2019-20; 17,000 and 2020-21; and then it’s back at 29,000 in 2021-22.

Senator Roberts: Thank you.

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Clean Energy Finance Corporation defends rubbish returns on wind and solar

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The ASX200 is the Australian benchmark for investment returns, if you’re not matching it many people will ask why you even bothered.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation “invests” your taxes into pipe dream “renewable” projects. We’re told that these investments are some of the best things in finance, in reality I think they are a scam.

My question was simple, if the CEFC is making such good investments, why would putting money into the ASX200 have made a 22% better profit over the last 10 years?

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Former Snowy 2.0 Boss slams Bowen’s Wind and Solar plan: “Bull***t”

Former Snowy 2.0 boss Paul Broad has just SLAMMED Bowen’s ‘transition to renewables’, calling it ‘bull***t’.

“The notion that you can have 80% renewable in our system by 2030 is, to use the vernacular, bull***t. The truth is, this transition, if it ever occurs, will take 80 years, not eight.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Paul.

Transcript

Ben: 17 minutes after 7:00. Well, we’ve said this line a number of times, don’t jump off the boat until you’ve reached the shore, and we say it about Australia’s dramatic switch to renewable energy. We’re switching off coal at rapid rates. The backup plan isn’t ready to go just yet. Take the massive hydro energy project, Snowy 2.0. It’s long been promised to store enough energy for 3 million homes. The project is disastrously delayed and over budget. The former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said in 2017 it would be up and running by 2021. Now they’re saying 2029. It’s gone from a $2 billion price tag to 10 billion, including all of the linked transmission lines.

I wanted to have a chat to someone who knows about this backwards. His name is Paul Broad. He’s one of Australia’s leading experts on infrastructure. Now, Paul Broad was the CEO of Snowy 2.0 for a decade, but his tenure ended shortly after Chris Bowen became the federal energy minister. Paul Broad delivered Mr. Bowen some home truths about how the project was going. He was sent packing shortly after, or maybe he decided to leave. Paul Broad, the former boss of Snowy 2.0 is on the line. Paul, thanks for joining us.

Paul Broad: Thanks. My pleasure, Ben.

Ben: Did you leave or were you shoved?

Paul Broad: Oh, a bit of combination. The word was filtering down. In fact, I think when Bowen was elected, I was dead in the water, so it was only a matter of time. But I formally resigned.

Ben: Why were you dead in the water? What was it that was such a sticking point between where you stand and where Chris Bowen stood?

Paul Broad: Oh, a series of things, particularly the gas plant at Kurri Kurri, Angus Taylor and I were very strong that you needed gas to keep the lights on. And we had more gas in New South Wales than we know what to do with. We need gas. So when the sun’s not shining, wind’s not blowing, gas, hydro are incredibly important. And Chris Bowen was against Kurri Kurri. Then he said we’re going to run Kurri Kurri 30% on hydrogen. There is no hydrogen in the Hunter, and there won’t be for another 10, 20 years at the earliest.

Ben: You were just trying to help, right?

Paul Broad: Well, yeah, trying to help. I think in the 18 months leading up to it, in the senate estimate, the parliament asking us lots of these sort of questions. So you got a sense of where Chris was coming from, and that’s his political view. I respect that, I just didn’t agree with it and there’s no point being somewhere if you don’t agree with it.

Ben: You could have just drunk the Kool-Aid and said, “Oh yeah. No, this is going to be the answer to all of our problems. It’ll be able to carry the load.” But you were being realistic and he didn’t want to hear it?

Paul Broad: Yeah. Plus the fact, the notion that you can have 80% renewable in our system by 2030 is, to use the vernacular, is bullshit. It’s bullshit. Ben, the truth is, this transition, if it ever occurs, it will take 80 years, not eight. So there’s massive changes need to occur. And I’m deeply concerned about the rush, the notion that somehow this is all magic, I’m going to wave a magic wand, we’ll close a big baseload power plant that’s kept our lights on for yours of my life, we’re just going to close it and there’s all these alternatives out there. Well, it’s not. I can be absolutely 100% certain it’s not available, and the transmission lines are miles late. 2.0, which is a part of the thing is late. I think their own reports tell them you’ll need at least eight 2.0s to achieve their goal, and that’s 80 years not eight.

Ben: Let’s just have a look at 2.0. So the biggest issue is these giant tunnelling machines. They weigh 2000 tonnes. They keep falling through the soft ground. Do we know how far along this project is? Is it halfway? Beyond halfway?

Paul Broad: Yeah. Look, I’ve got to defend 2.0, it was a huge part of my creation, and I’m quite proud of the attempt to build a big pumped hydro, but it’s complex. These tunnel-boring machines have got to do through heaps of rock. There’s 28 kilometres of tunnels, 11 metres diameter. And one of them has got to actually bore uphill. So they’ve got to come in and get access to a cabin, and then you’ve got to drill out a cabin, which is 400 metres long, a kilometre under the mountain. So the complexity of this thing is enormous. So I’m not surprised that we’ve got delays. I suppose what worries me more is the lack of transmission.

So you have this big power plant, it’s of no use to you if you haven’t got a transmission line out the front to run it into where the people are. So the lack of transmission is going to be a big, big problem for us. The lack of transmission to bring all these renewables. The power plants we have are just up the road here in the Hunter, all these new renewables are out west or somewhere else. There’s no power lines to get it here. So the notion you can have all this occurring without transmission and all the other investment which will cost the customer, the consumers a lot, the suggestion you can do all that and price is going to come down. It’s just wrong. It’s absolutely wrong. It’s misleading, it’s false and to keep suggesting that, I think eventually, eventually the average punter wakes up, and there’ll be a reaction.

Ben: We’re listening to Paul Broad, the former of boss of Snowy 2.0. Just on the timeline, I actually had a meeting with someone who’s associated with the project about a month or so ago. And I said, “What’s going on with this thing? Because we were told it’d be done by 2021, and now you’re talking about 2027.” And then they said to me, “Oh, it might be late 2027.” And I said, “Well, that sounds to me like 2028.” Now they’re saying December 2029. When I hear December 2029, I think 2030. Realistically, when’s it going to be done?

Paul Broad: Well, the transmission line is ’27, so I suspect they’ll get first power, I suspect… Now something else will happen. I think the challenges for building it are still in front of them. The biggest challenge they have for this whole project is still to come. So there’s lots of risk with it yet, but I suspect, given the fudges the engineers do, I’m suspecting end of ’27, middle of ’27, that sort of timeframe. But Ben, there’s no point having it if the transmission line… So we’ve got to work out, someone’s got to tell us when are the farmers going to agree to run power lines over their properties? When are they going to agree to pay the farmers a reasonable annual sum to access and run their lines over their property? When all that’s agreed and they work out the direction these things are going to come… We haven’t upgraded them in 50 years, let alone in five.

Ben: We’ve spoken to some of those farmers and they’re worried because they say they’ve got to knock down all of these trees to put the lines in. We’re worried about bush fires. And the other issue is just that old line, “It’s my land, it’s my property.”

Paul Broad: Absolutely. Then well what happened, the truth of it, they had all these shiny asses from Sydney rock up to the farms and say, “I’m going to put a power line over your property.” Well, the farmers said, “Get lost. You’re not coming on my property.” It is their livelihood. It is what they live for. So they got off to a really bad start. All the people around Tumut and Gundagai, all those people are now up in arms because these things have got to be done right. You’ve got to sit down and you’ve got to be able to be flexible about the direction you go to minimise the impact on farmers. They had some power lines going right over the farmer’s house.

So there’s still a lot of work to be done on the transmission. There’s still a lot of work to be done on 2.0. And the reports out saying you’re going to need lots of 2.0. So it’s really just the start of the journey. It’s not the end and I think the notion that we can close these plants, no, Eraring can’t, cannot close. Even now, we’re closing Liddell. We’re on a knife’s edge. You watch when it gets really hot or really cold, just how tight it gets in New South Wales. If the lights don’t go out, I’ll be awfully surprised.

Ben: A couple of quick ones, one of the private contractors went into administration in December. We’ve heard there are still unpaid bills to both workers and to ongoing construction.

Paul Broad: Yeah, the contractor’s got a lot to answer for. And I don’t want to go on air and bag a contractor, but they’ve got a lot to answer for. And I think they were trying games by not paying the local small contractors, and as soon I was there, I was prepared to go and pay the contractors ourselves, and then extract it from the big contractor later. The major contractor has safety problems. They tragically lost a life down there a week or so ago. The contractor has a lot of questions to answer. They’re under a fixed-price contract, so these prices shouldn’t be going up, but they are. They’re on a performance-based contract, they’re not performing. There is some big question marks and Clough going broke halfway as well, 12 months ago, it’s been a big problem. The Clough guys were integral part of delivering it. So the contractor has a huge challenge in front of them and they’ve got huge questions to answer.

Ben: Just on question marks, were you hiding some of the delays from Chris Bowen? Because I’ve seen the Financial Review. A spokeswoman for Mr. Bowen told the Financial Review that, “It was no secret that the government was disappointed in the hiding of delays to major energy projects by the former government including Snowy Hydro 2.0.”

Paul Broad: That is just bullshit. The first meeting with Bowen, my first meeting with Bowen, he asked me and I said, “Yeah, 12 to 18 months.” When I was with last meeting with Angus, which was back in April when the contractor rocked into Angus’s office and said that, “We think you’re going to be delaying going [inaudible 00:09:41] cost increase,” Angus kicked him out of the office and said, “It’s got to be delivered on time and on budget.” That’s the truth. I mean why does his office on this political spin? What is he trying to do? Fair dinkum. Why not just tell the truth? It’s really easy. In life, I find if you tell the truth, you can remember it and you don’t get yourself in too much trouble.

Ben: I said at the start of my introduction, that line that a talk back caller said to me once about the switch to renewables, “Don’t jump off the boat until you’ve reached the shore.” Can you reflect on that for a moment before we say goodbye?

Paul Broad: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. We can’t make this transition until we’re absolutely convinced that the alternative’s going to work, and is going to be at a price point that it won’t kill the economy. At the moment, we’ve got neither of those.

Ben: You say the idea of getting to 80% renewables by 2030 is complete BS. You say closer to 80 years?

Paul Broad: Yeah. Well, you got to build these things. Transmission lines, their own reports say you’ll need eight 2.0s or their equivalents. One 2.0 takes 10 years, so get eight. I could do my maths, it’s got to be 80, 70, so it’ll be another generation before anything like what they’re talking about occurs.

Ben: We know it’s never too late to learn a lesson. What would you say to Chris Bowen if he’s listening this morning?

Paul Broad: Oh, take a big deep breath. You’re a minister now, you’ve got responsibilities. You got to put it all on the line and you got to be honest to everybody about it.

Ben: We really appreciate you coming on the line. You haven’t mucked about, you’re pulling no punches this morning, and we appreciate that, Paul.

Paul Broad: Thanks, Ben.

Ben: Paul Broad, the former boss of Snowy 2.0 and I can only imagine the reaction in Chris Bowen’s office right now. They won’t be liking what they’re hearing, but it sounds to me like he’s just given a unfiltered view of Snowy 2.0, and also the transition to renewables. And you heard what he said about the government’s targets, BS. And he didn’t put it the way I just put it then. He’s also weighed into the other issue, which is just so obvious, about needing to keep our major coal plant open. That is something that Chris Minns entertained during the election campaign, and thankfully since winning the election, he suggested that that is a must, that he’s got to work out how we can keep the supply going and keep the prices low. And the discussions are underway with the operators.

/6 Comments/by

My 1 hour speech to a town hall on COVID mismanagement

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We are winning. The truth always wins in the long run.

My address to a community event last week at Mudjimba on the Sunshine Coast.

Transcript

Thank you. Thank you so much for the welcome. My first task is to apologise. I plugged into the Apple Maps to be here at 10 to 1. I got here at 10 to 2. Yeah, I’m very sorry about that. I didn’t see any car smashes on the way up, but lots of traffic jams, so I don’t know what was going on. Second thing I want to do is thank everyone for being here. It’s wonderful to be here with you. I know you’re concerned about the country and I’ll explain what’s happening in the country, or why we need to be concerned and what we can all do about it. I want to thank Abby, because Abby has really struck a chord up in the Sunshine Coast, with what she’s doing. I want to acknowledge, wait for it, Case Smit and Curry Smit, because they formed the Galileo movement in the early days of, what? 2011, ’12? Yeah, that did a lot of good work.

I was very proudly a volunteer in the Galileo movement exposing the climate road. I’m happy to talk more about that, but I want to say that we are winning. Very important to understand. I’m not giving you a line, we are genuinely winning. Have we cracked it yet, in terms of the COVID mismanagement? No, we haven’t, but I’ve been very heartened with Naomi Wolf, who spoke at Hillsdale College. I can see a lot of people nodding their heads. She is wonderful and we’ll talk about her later, in question and answer, but I want to get through the core parts. Why do I say we’re winning? The LNP, which put in place the heinous, inhuman mismanagement of COVID now supports revealing the Pfizer contract that they wouldn’t reveal when they’re in office. Yes. The Labour Party, the Greens, and David Pocock still suppress the Pfizer contract.

The LNP now supports a motion on inquiry into excess deaths. We are having enough excess deaths that would cover two plane crashes every week for a year. If we had one plane crash, people would say, “What the hell’s going on?” If we had two in a week, we’d say, “What’s going on?” We are having around about 30,000 excess deaths a year and they didn’t start until after the COVID injections. They are clearly due to the COVID injections, we’re starting to crack people on that. The mouthpiece media is starting to crack. Adam Creighton, who’s part of The Weekend Australian, has been against mass injections, restrictions, mandates from the start, but he’s now starting to speak up about the injection deaths. Look at the ridicule that the World Economic Forum had globally as a result of its Davos meeting. It’s now the source of ridicule, because we bashed them over it and we exposed it. Now it’s okay, that’s very important to understand. Just by telling the truth. We’ve seen the resignations of Greg Hunt, who introduced…

What did he say now? With regard to the COVID injections, “We are engaged in the largest clinical vaccination trial.” It is a gene therapy experiment. That man and Scott Morrison enabled it to be mandated and now we’re seeing the penalties of that. I don’t care if someone’s been injected or not, what I care about is whether it was voluntary or not. We’ve seen Skerritt now going from the head of the TGA. In Senate estimates, the last Senate estimates in February, I asked him a question about approval. We already knew this, but he admitted that the TGA has not done testing of these experimental gene therapy-based treatments in this country. Why not? Because they rely upon the 15,000 employees and billions of dollars in the budget of the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration in America. Guess what? The Food and Drug Administration did not test the damn things either. The Food and Drug Administration relied upon the word of Pfizer. We can talk in question and answer about Naomi Wolf. We can see now Brendan Murphy, another one of the unholy trinity. He’s the Federal Health Department secretary, he has now announced his resignation. Agencies are getting nervous as the news emerges. These agencies… I’ve got a lot to cover, so I won’t get into detail there. I’m happy to answer in question and answer. The people now are becoming aware of the injection injuries. They’re not vaccines, I don’t call them vaccines. They are injections and they’re hideous. I’ll say it, I’m not a doctor, but if you’ve had one injection, that’s potentially harmful. If you’ve had two, much more harmful. If you had three, it is serious stuff. Four? Highly serious stuff. The people are waking up. Recently, we saw demonstrations in Paris, and where did they demonstrate?

Speaker 2: Outside BlackRock.

Malcolm Roberts: Thank you. As this lady says, outside BlackRock offices. People are waking up. We’ve also seen the digital identity bill that was raised by Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce, but now being foreshadowed to be introduced by Katie Gallagher as head of the Senate, for the Labour Party, and Anthony Albanese. The good news there is that we’ve exposed the incompetence of the Digital Transformation Agency, they won’t pull it off. They won’t pull it off, they’re not competent. You’ve heard of Errol Flynn? They’ve got the Errol Flynn complex. Everything they touched, they wreck. Then, if you look at it, though, this is good news for Australia, there’s not a single New Zealand member of Parliament who speaks up against the COVID mismanagement. It was coordinated globally, we know that. There is one, maybe two, United Kingdom MPs who speak against it, there are a few USA MPs, there are six of us in Australia. Six.

My topic today is rekindling human progress. We’ll cover human progress in a minute. It may seem overwhelming what we’re facing, but there are huge opportunities for Australia. Look at the material progress in the last 170 years. Look, these things weren’t invented until 2008. We’ve had them for 15 years, yet now they govern so much of our lives. That is a huge benefit. It’s also a huge risk, because they can use these things to control us. It’s up to us, though. We are now immune from famine in this country, immune from famine in most countries, except for some in Africa, some in Asia. That’s it. Humanity’s been lifted in just 170 years out of dependence on nature to become independent of nature, but that doesn’t mean we trash nature, because one of the most important things to recognise is that the environment is essential for civilization’s future.

If we trash the environment, we wreck civilization’s future. The best way to protect the environment is to protect civilization. Civilization gives us industry, which reduces, reduces, reduces our environmental footprint. Case I know as a scientist, he’s also an environmentalist. He knows that, he can back that up. Now, I don’t like everything humans do. There are people like Adolf Hitler, Maurice Strong. Anyone heard of Maurice Strong? I’ll talk about Maurice Strong in the Q and A. Maurice Strong, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, and a whole bunch of people in the World Economic Forum. They’re responsible for millions of deaths. I don’t like what they do, but I am fiercely pro-human. We are a wonderful, wonderful species. We are the best species on the planet. We don’t do everything right, but when we screw up, we look and we identify where we screwed up. The environment we were making a mess, because we were ignorant of it in the ’70s. Now, it’s far healthier than it was in the ’50s.

There are more trees in the developed continents now. There’s about 30% more trees in the developed continents than there were 100 years ago. Did you know that? Because we need less ground for agriculture, we need less ground for industry. That’s fact. Humans care and take responsibility, we fix things. What characterises most humans? This is your turn to answer. What characterises most humans. What traits? Love? Compassion? Resilience? Some greed, but most of the people in this room wouldn’t be here… None of us would be here except for this four letter word starting with C. Care, care. We would not be here, but for that word. I only realised what I almost said there. You thought of it, not me. That’s why I’m fiercely pro-human and I love human beings. I love our country and our forefathers. What do you appreciate about our country? Sorry? Freedom?

Speaker 3: The way it used to be.

Malcolm Roberts: We are going to go there, the way it used to be. All right, you’ve already beaten. This is what I appreciate. Did you know that this country, our country, Australia, had the highest per capita income of any country on earth about 120 years ago. Did you know that?

Speaker 3: With Argentina.

Malcolm Roberts: Yes, and Argentina collapsed more quickly than we did, because they went socialists, whereas we’re partly socialists, largely socialists. We’ve punched above our weight in sport, war, inventions, culture, business. Australians used to take responsibility, personal responsibility, and that’s fundamental for strength of character. Instead of blaming others, our politicians used to take responsibility. Freedom of choice is essential for responsibility. Anyone heard of Maria Montessori? She said that the essential years for the development of both character and intellect are birth to six.

We’ll come back to that, but another thing she said is, “Wherever you see a lack of responsibility, you’ll see a lack of freedom.” You cannot have responsibility if you don’t have choice. Fundamental to human development and strength of character. Choice leads to responsibility, ownership, respect, primacy of needs, efficiency, and many other benefits, but government has become about control. The opposite of freedom. I don’t believe in left versus right, that’s an abstraction that’s been concocted up to confuse us and distract us. The real message is “Control versus freedom.” It goes right through human history. Christ, Buddha, and other sages taught us responsibility as a source of personal power, and that leads to self-discipline and the sanctity of life. Why are we languishing? What concerns you about today’s culture? Lack of care. Selfishness. What else? Lack of education. We’ve got wonderful schools. Of course, that’s right.

Speaker 3: Lack of thinking and gullibility.

Malcolm Roberts: Lack of thinking and gullibility. Accepting what the government tells us. Sorry? Apathy. If you can’t have an effect on the government, you’re going to be apathetic to the government, aren’t you? We’ll talk about whose fault that is. What else? Would it be fair to say that many people in this room are feeling concerned? Frustration, confusion? You know where you’re going. Yeah. Compared to where we were 20, 30, 40 years ago, you’re confused as to why. You might not be, but many people are angry, uncertain, fearful. Not fearful of the rubbish they tell us through climate change lies, but fearful of why they’re doing it and where they’re trying to take us. Yeah? Okay. No common sense. You’re frustrated about that? Also, some people are feeling hurt and very uneasy. What are the needs? What are the needs you have that are not being met? Leadership, certainty.

Speaker 3: Truth.

Malcolm Roberts: Truth, who said that?

Speaker 3: I did.

Malcolm Roberts: Good on you.

Speaker 2: Trust.

Malcolm Roberts: Sorry?

Speaker 2: Trust.

Malcolm Roberts: Trust, yes.

Speaker 2: Respect.

Malcolm Roberts: Respect. Respect is two ways, isn’t it? If politicians don’t respect us, we don’t respect them.

Speaker 4: Transparency.

Malcolm Roberts: Transparency.

Speaker 5: Free will.

Malcolm Roberts: Free will. Thank you.

Speaker 6: Informed consent.

Malcolm Roberts: Informed consent. These are fundamental. Three years ago, would we have believed that we’d be saying these things today? Not at all. Governments need to serve the people. We need to be heard. We’re not heard, whereas Case said, “We’re indoctrinated and given propaganda, or they try to.” We need understanding, trust. We need to see governments that work in the national interest, don’t we? The national interest. We need fairness, leadership, restoring responsibility, choice, and resilience. What culture do we need? A bit like the old culture in our country where we had personal responsibility, free expression, we were safe, we were secure? Our property was secure, it’s not anymore.

Speaker 2: Incentive.

Malcolm Roberts: Incentive. You don’t want to be given incentive, you just want to let the government get out of the way, so you can use your own incentive. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3: Predictability.

Malcolm Roberts: Respected, predictability. Some kind of certainty. Honesty, honest leadership, be heard. People love to be heard, because it’s fundamental. I can tell you a lot of stories about the benefits of letting people be heard. How do we shape culture? It is now the most important thing in business. A switched-on business person will understand that he or she needs to provide leadership, but also develop a culture in which people can work freely and to the best of their ability. Culture is now far more important than a machinery, than buildings, than anything else in the business. Far more important. How did we slip out of our previous culture that was so productive, get to where we are now, and still in a downward spiral? How did we get into that? Think about how to shape and change culture.

Most of the people in this room have got grey hair like I have. In the 1970s, what was the attitude towards drinking and driving under the influence of alcohol? Yeah. “We all did it,” she says. That’s true, that’s fundamental, and that’s a very important point, because we all did it. State governments then got concerned about the number of fatalities on the road, so they started bringing in advertisements on TV and in the media saying things like, “65% of fatalities involve alcohol.” What impact did that have? Nothing, nothing. So they got smart and they used what politicians use, and that’s emotion to sell. Advertisers use emotion to sell. They showed pictures of dead babies on the road, mothers crying, drivers behind bars. What impact did that have? It raised awareness, but it didn’t change any behaviour, so it didn’t change the culture. So then Victoria became the first state in the world to introduce random breath testing. What did that do?

Speaker 3: Fear.

Malcolm Roberts: It is fearful, yes, but only if you drink and drive. It changed behaviour, it changed behaviour. Sorry, I missed that. Ran around it. The cops work up to that, though. Good people with a sense of humour. Think about this, it fundamentally changed. [inaudible 00:17:27], one of Australia’s foremost sociologists said that it fundamentally changed the culture in Australia with regard to families, men, and women. Men, instead of going out on Friday nights and Saturday nights alone, they needed drivers, so they went with their girlfriends and wives. Now, that’s funny, and it’s meant to be funny, but it’s truthful. It’s truthful. It changed the culture dramatically with regard to the sexes in this country, because it used to be boys’ night on Friday and sometimes Saturday, right? Let me ask you. We just said that the behaviour in the past was drinking and driving is okay and the behaviour was people drank and drove. What’s the behaviour now largely? People do not drink and drive. What’s the attitude? You can legislate behaviour, you can’t legislate attitude.

But what’s the attitude now? If you’re caught drinking and driving, it’s shameful. The attitude has changed to catch up with the behaviour, and that’s significant. Culture is basically a combination of behaviour and attitudes. What people think about what they do and what they do. Remember that, legislation and laws are about behaviour. I won’t go into that in any more detail, but there are many other things there. Let’s look at some of the major global initiatives, global initiatives, that are occurring in this country, our country. Education is really indoctrination, corrupting our children. I haven’t gotten to this today. My wife is an American and Australian, very proudly dual citizen, very proudly citizen of Australia. She was reading on the lounge as I was leaving, and she said, “Get a load of this.”

They did a survey of people in America who believe in the woke rubbish. They were all college graduates, because university is the place where they infect people’s minds and they include that in teachers. Teachers go out and infect kids’ minds, so we’re now seeing our children’s sexuality being distorted as early as four or five years of age. We’re seeing gender dysphoria, which is a normal part of adolescents for a very small minority, now being distorted into mutilation and cutting off genitals, cutting off breasts. If a parent gets involved and says to the child, “Come and have a talk,” in Victoria, that parent can be thrown in jail.

Rockefeller, in the late 19th century, said, “We don’t want education systems to produce brain surgeons, ballet dancers, sportsmen, businessmen, doctors, we want them to produce cannon fodder, factory fodder.” Don’t think this has been a deliberate dumbing down. ABC, I questioned them in senate estimates, “Why have you got a page devoted to Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, which is complete crap?” Because, Senator Roberts, it’s in the national curriculum. We get the national curriculum in front of us in the senate estimates to say, “Is Dark Emu anywhere in the national curriculum?” “No, Senator Roberts. Not one bit.” The ABC is lying. Why is it lying? Okay, that’s our children being mutilated and corrupted by our education system. Let’s look at our health system. COVID has destroyed… Sorry, sorry. Government’s dishonest, deceitful, inhuman response to COVID has destroyed our healthcare system. We have 7,000 nurses still furloughed in Queensland, because they wouldn’t take an experimental gene therapy-based injection. Yet we were told by Palaszczuk and by Yvette D’Ath, “We need all hands on deck.”

We see a 40% increase in ambulances carrying coronary care patients. Yvette D’Ath, the health minister says, “I wonder what that could be.” All of this. I won’t go into the details, I don’t have time, but I asked for the data on COVID severity and transmissibility. The chief medical officer eventually gave it to me and it shows quite clearly on his graph, his graph, not mine, that the severity of COVID is low to moderate. We were told it was severe. Low to moderate, we were all going to die. If you think about it and you break that down, COVID is very stratified. It doesn’t affect children, it doesn’t affect teenagers, it affects very few young adults, middle-aged adults, it does affect some people over 65. Some, some. When you rule that out, COVID is very low severity compared to even some past flus. On the chief medical officer’s diagram, it showed lower severity than some past flus, but we turned our country upside down, stole freedoms, and disrespected people. Took away basic human rights. Why? That’s where we get to. We saw coercion, compulsion.

We saw the leader of this country, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, lie repeatedly every day for a fortnight saying there are no vaccine mandates in this country. He funded it, he bought them, he gave them to the states, indemnified the states, made the data accessible, so the states could enforce the vaccine mandates. Yeah. The TGA, supposed to look after people. I was talking about ivermectin. This is the first time anywhere that we have withdrawn a proven, safe, effective, affordable, accessible treatment. That works and where it’s been used around the world, it has worked. It has stopped COVID in its tracks, but that was withdrawn from us, so that people had no alternative, but this mad shot. I’ll say it again, I don’t, don’t demean anyone who’s taken the injection. I saw a wonderful lady at an inquiry we ran, she came down from Toowoomba. She jumped up in the middle of the inquiry, lifted her shirt, and there was a scar from there to her pubic bone.

She nearly died three times, the surgeon operated for 12 hours to save her. A massive rupture in her main artery. She said she only got it, because it was safe and effective, she was told by Scott Morrison, and because she wanted to see her parents overseas in Sweden. We saw a national cabinet… The TGA. I was talking a lot about ivermectin. Got banned on YouTube for a while for talking about it, we kept talking about it. Now, the TGA sent me a threatening letter about two and a half, three and a half pages long saying that I’m advertising ivermectin. It’s against the law and they inserted quotes in the letter from where I supposedly was breaching the law. With a bully, you don’t count out to them. I wrote back a very brief letter, “Thank you for your letter. How dare you interfere with the duties of a duly elected senator representing the people of his state?” By the way, the federal government has blood on its hands. I got a response, “Thank you for your letter.”

Now, it’s difficult to stand up to bullies, because many of the things were brought in… The mandates were brought in about. I’m very much in favour of proven, safe, effective, affordable, accessible drugs. Proven, tested, proven. I’m completely against unproven, untested drugs. Even more so against drugs that are untested and forced on people through coercion. Even more so when they say, “If you want to feed your child, to keep your job, you will take this shot.” I don’t care about your attitude towards the shot, that’s your choice, but when someone has to be forced to keep his girls and boys being fed, that’s just inhuman. That’s what we got to. Medicinal cannabis, a wonderful treatment that Pauline and I have been pushing for quite some time, and are starting to get relaxed slowly and slowly, is banned for access – has minimal accessibility now, because it is a proven, safe, effective, affordable treatment that you cannot overdose on and that is wonderful for so many things. In the 1930s, it was the most prescribed medical treatment in America, and it was banned because of big pharma. That’s why, because it works and they can’t patent it.

Fluoride. To get a little bit of fluoride in our teeth… Some dentists disagree, but let’s assume that fluoride’s good for our teeth. Do we need to flush it through our toilets, wash our car wash our cars with it, water our lawns with it, shower in it just to get it on our teeth? It’s rubbish. That is also enforced medication, unless you buy a reverse osmosis filter. Then we’ve got the World Health Organisation developing international health regulations and a treaty for future epidemics. They want to take control, through that treaty, of our health system in this country. They will be telling you whether or not to take an injection, whether or not you’ll be locked down, whether or not you’ll be having various restrictions, and get this, they’re writing it, so that they can declare a potential pandemic. That can only become law if the donkeys in Canberra accept it and pass the legislation making it possible.

The World Health Organisation is a criminal, corrupt, incompetent, dishonest organisation. I belled them from the start. My very first speech in parliament in 2016, I said, “Get out of the UN.” Oz exit. The World Health Organisation is funded primarily by Germany and the United States, which are the two biggest homes of pharmaceuticals. No, no. He’s number three. I thought he was number two, he’s number three. No, he’s number three. I was corrected the other day. Bill Gates, who invests in injections, but we can talk more about him. Look at that family. We’ve covered children, health, family. The Family Law Act was brought in, it’s sourced from the United Nations. It’s been the slaughterhouse of the country, been crippling families. Look at our energy, our economic lifeblood. They’re destroying our energy now. We had the cheapest electricity in the world, we’ve now got amongst the most expensive, because of subsidies due to the crap that they’ve put up there on climate change. We can talk about climate change later. Who benefits from solar and wind subsidies?

No, some people do. They’re billionaires, including Malcolm Turnbull’s son. The billionaires who are feeding off these subsidies. If they’re so damn good, why would they need subsidies? We have the highest level of subsidies of any country in the world. We are the world’s largest exporters of hydrocarbon fuels, coal, and natural gas. The largest exporters. We can’t use it here. We can ship it to China and then we’ll buy their products back. When you are buying a product made in China, you are buying something that came from coal. They turn a blind eye of that. Look at our science, been completely destroyed. I might read a quote from Carl Sagan. Basically, our science has been destroyed, because anything they want us to do, they say, “Do it for the science.” If you don’t get a shot, you’re a granny killer, so they tell us lies.

Maurice Strong is the father of global warming, he concocted it. The man is a mass murderer, he’s responsible directly… Sorry, indirectly for 40 to 50 million deaths, and I’m happy to talk more about that in detail later. We have now government grants that are being funded in various entities to control the science, to give us propaganda. It’s not science at all. In the name of science, carbon dioxide. Do you know, does anyone know how much carbon dioxide’s in the atmosphere? 0.04%. That’s four one hundredths of 1%. Although Case put up a wonderful slide showing the greening of the planet, we are not responsible for that, because our carbon dioxide that we produce has no impact whatsoever on the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. None at all.

There have been two massive global experiments in 2009 and 2020 that proved that fundamentally, and I can discuss that in questions. Let’s have a look at our economy and look at tax. Multinational companies, since 1953, have paid zero or little company tax. 90% of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and, since 1953, have paid zero or little company tax. Who pays the tax? We do. When you see the tax system… We’ll talk about that if I get time later. Our tax system is actually destroying competitive federalism, one of the core tenets of our constitution, and accountability in this country at state and federal level. Destroys it. Look at life itself. Some of the practises that have come in here that are anti-human. We can now have abortions in this state right up the term.

Yep. Three or four liberal nationals voted for it, the Labour Party voted for it, we didn’t vote for it, Katter didn’t vote for it. Yes. Not Victorian government, but in Victoria and in New York, some people are talking about legalising abortion to within three months after birth. Yes, that’s murder. Childhood mutilation, destroying life for kids for the rest of their lives. With puberty blockers destroying the adolescent mind, destroying accountability. Paedophiles are now being sanitised with the term… You don’t call them “Paedophiles,” you call them “Minor-attracted.” This is what they’re doing. Now, our food. We’re talking about fundamental things here, our food. They’re now talking about using lab meat. Meat that is not meat at all, but cultivated from fat cells and it’s thought that they’ll be carcinogenic. Highly cancerous. Certainly not fit for food. In-vitro meat. That’s what it’s called, lab meat or in-vitro meat. Grown in a Petri dish, fake meat, bugs. The Morrison Joyce government gave $64 million of taxpayer money in this country a few years ago to the 2021 UN Food Summit to develop bugs for food. Bill Gates was here in the country back in February and he met with Anthony Albanese. Anthony Albanese’s office said, “They talked about food, energy, climate, agriculture, and health.” Not one of those things does Bill Gates have any qualifications in. In every one of those things, he has enormous conflicts of financial interest and our prime minister’s listening to him. The banking system has been designed through regulation to enable the avoidance of accountability. The voice is a concoction to take control of our land as well, again, from the United Nations. It’ll destroy our constitution, it’ll feed the aboriginal industry. The aboriginal industry is one of the most serious blockers to the aboriginal advancement in this country. They are taking the money on the way through and controlling resources, controlling water, stealing this money. It’s unworkable, it’s hidden by deceit. Albanese won’t talk about the details of it (the voice), because he knows we will certainly reject it if we do, so he is madly trying to hide the details. There is no basis for it. The Uluru Statement from the Heart, I saw Nampijinpa Price, Jacinta Price, tear that apart.

There’s no basis for the Uluru Statement, none at all. It came originally from Zaire (Africa). Copy. Immigration. Anthony Albanese in February last year, before the election, said the federal government at the time was blowing up immigration to cover its sins. Used to be about 250,000 come in a year. Albanese wants to take it to over 300,000 a year, 330,000 a year. Amazing what happens when he gets into office. Then think about language, language is a system controlling thought. Examples of labels. If you have a certain expression of your own free will, you can be called a transphobia, a racist, a homophobe, Islamophobe, a Nazi, a climate denier. That’s all designed to suppress debate. People like Case and I, we won’t be suppressed. You can call us climate deniers, we don’t deny climate at all, but that has held back academics in this country from discussing a lot of the topics.

Labels are the refuge of the ignorant or the dishonest. If someone calls me a label, I say, “Thank you very much for admitting that I’ve just won the debate, because you didn’t present any data, you didn’t present an argument. Therefore, I’ve won. If you had the data and the argument, you would’ve presented it, but you haven’t, because you haven’t got it.” They also use language to turn the hideous into attractive things using soft or attractive words. It’s gender affirmation, not mutilation. The identified sex and bodily mutilation is now called transitioning. A male body wearing lipstick and a dress is transgender. No, he’s still a she. I’m not downplaying the very, very small percentage of people who have serious gender dysphoria, they need our support, they need our love, and above all, they need our truth. They’re turning the beneficial to harmful. Affirmation, for example, as we’ve talked about. Greenhouse gases, fossil fuels. They call them fossil fuels. They have liberated humanity. What have we used for lighting 170 years ago? Whale oil. The whales think coal is wonderful. What do we use for cooking and for heating? Wood.

The forest thinks coal is wonderful. Coal has a far higher energy density than just about anything except uranium. They give us propaganda to dumb us down, to disengage us, to deceit, and hide us. The language is under attack, yet it’s hidden. The truth is under attack, yet people don’t see it. I’ve got that, I talked to Abby. Thank you. The next form of what drives behaviour and shapes culture is our leaders. Our leaders. People assume, don’t we? That our leaders are doing what’s best for the country and what’s best for us.

Speaker 3: Used to.

Malcolm Roberts: Used to. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. People follow leaders who are honest and effective, yet now we’re finding that our leaders are dishonest and corrosive. Adam Creighton, who is a pretty good journalist in my opinion. He’s an economist, he’s based in America, he works for News Corp. News Corp went woke, because they have a lot of investments and advertising coming from pharmaceutical companies. Adam Creighton, I’ll give him his due, he’s a conservative economist. You’d call him that, wouldn’t you, Case, conservative? He’s writing in The Australian, he wrote this. He quoted someone, I’m going to ask you who he quoted.

“Look what the West are doing to their own people. It is all about the destruction of family, of cultural and national identity, perversion and the abuse of children, including paedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their life.” Who said that? Yeah, it was Vladimir Putin who said that. He’s opposing the globalists. I’m not necessarily endorsing him, but I do take pride in the fact that I’m the only senator in the Senate, when they introduced their motion talking about going to support the Ukraine, I’m the only one who said, “Just wait and ask a few damn questions,” because I’m tired of following the Yanks. I love the Yanks, I’ve been in all 50 of their states, I’ve worked in eight of their states, I’ve been educated in the states. They’re wonderful, wonderful people, but their government is hideous. It’s been overtaken by the globalists for decades now. That’s a fact.

What the hell happened? I’ll tell you what happened. The United Nations and allied globalist agencies have captured our bureaucracy, some of our politicians, and changed the system. One of our politicians, who I’ve got a lot of time for, he’s now retired, because he didn’t get pre-selection in the Liberal Party. One of our senators, he spoke in 1994 or 1998 at a conference extolling the virtues of UN Agenda 21. When I found out about that in 2015, actually 2013, I wrote to him and said, “What are you doing?” Took him two years, but he finally met with me. This is before I got in the Senate. He dodged the question, but in doing so, he acknowledged the basis of my request, because he would’ve been conned into supporting Agenda 21, because Robert Hill, the senator, environment minister, is the one who pushed that rubbish.

He is the one, along with John Howard and John Anderson, who stole farmers’ property rights to comply with the UN’s Kyoto Protocol. Didn’t know that, did you? No. I thought John Howard was a wonderful prime minister, then I started doing some research. No, let’s talk about it. John Howard brought in the… He was the first leader of a major party in this country to have a carbon dioxide tax and emissions trading scheme. Did you know that? No. He was the one who brought in the renewable energy target, which is now destroying our electricity sector. Case knew that. He was the one who said we would not sign the Kyoto Protocol, but we will comply with it. He had a choice, his government had a choice. Do you shut down industry? No, because we would’ve revolted in 1996/97 if that had been the case, so what did he do?

He went to the people who are most vulnerable, the farmers, because they don’t have adequate representation, they’re small in number, and his government made a deal with the states to steal their property rights, to control what they grow, to control what they clear. Now, he had a problem. Section 51, Clause 31 of the Constitution says, “If the federal government interferes with someone’s property rights or rights to use their property, they must pay just terms compensation.” We’re looking at, back in those days, 100 to $200 billion in compensation. Whoa, can’t go there, so the Howard government did deals with the states, because the states don’t have any such restrictions. So they legislated native vegetation protection. How can you disagree with that? It was really stealing the farmer’s rights to use their land, because they’re telling them they couldn’t do certain things. That’s a fundamental for Western civilization. It’s a fundamental of the Liberal Party. You do not interfere with property rights, you defend them. That’s what that Howard Anderson government did, it stole farmers’ property rights and it’s been hollowed out even more. That’s what’s happened. The allied agencies I talk about are the World Economic Forum, Club of Rome, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, WWF, Greenpeace. All unelected, low accountability. This is the global governance that they would want to shove down our throat. The United Nations’ senior bureaucrats have told us their aim is to have an unelected, socialist global governance. Many of them have said that. Correct, Case? They’ve all said it. Not all, sorry, a lot of them have said it. And they have admitted that climate is about redistributing resources and redistributing control. They want to allocate resources and control the means of production. That’s communism. Without owning resources.

They want to hollow out the regions, our regions are being hollowed out. Our industry has been hollowed out, our industry has been exported to China. We pay subsidies to the Chinese to build wind turbines and solar panels using our coal. They install them here, we subsidise that. They run them, we subsidise that. That raises the price of electricity. The number one cost component of manufacturing is not labour, it is now electricity. When you raise that price artificially, what are you doing to your manufacturers? Shutting them down and sending them to China. Then we send them more of our coal, they produce 4.5 billion tonnes of coal. We produce 500 billion total and export most of it. They produce nine times the coal we do and they want our coal. They’re growing phenomenally, because they’re doing what we did in the West using hydrocarbon fuels. A miracle fuel, miracle fuel. As Case pointed out, hydrocarbon fuels produce no pollution these days. Tiny bit of pollution, car exhaust, but it’s almost nothing. It’s 1000th the amount that was in cars in the 1970s, just half a century ago. 1000th.

They’re hollowing out the individual spirit and the sense of responsibility. They’re hollowing out the family spirit, they’re hollowing out the national identity and spirit. Who pays for all of this? We do, that’s exactly it. Lost jobs, lost freedoms, and we lose financially by transferring our wealth to the wealthy. COVID, they didn’t shut Bunnings, they didn’t shut… Made the coals, but they shut the corner hardware store, they shut the corner grocery store, little restaurants. Small businesses got hammered, because you don’t control small businessmen and women. They keep people in fear and they make us afraid of being human, they make us afraid of other humans. These humans, we’ve got to… Humans, the UN tells us, are greedy, rapacious, uncaring, unreasonable, and irresponsible. They’re not, we’re not. Then they say, “To protect you against that sort of person, we need more government.” What makes up government? Humans. It’s illogical, and yet we fall for it.

Some of us do. They lock in fear, they lock in insecurity, and then they say the problem is humans. Now, government. Thomas Jefferson said many years ago… Very, very, very wise American founding father, said, “The government has to be kept small and minimal at central level, because it is so open to the control of the ego and the control of other people. Government enables control, government invites control,” and that’s what you’re seeing. Our constitution was set up so that the federal government, just like the American government, which came up with the idea, had minimal central power, the states have most of the authority to do things. That was done deliberately. Joh Bjelke-Petersen, most people in this room would remember him. Joh abolished death duties, and what happened? They all came to Queensland to die.

Okay, that is funny. The reality is they came to Queensland, the retired people, so that if they died, or when they died, they would leave their money to their children here. What happened as a result of that? Queensland grew, Gold Coast took off. What else happened? What happened in the other states?

Speaker 3: Everybody lost money.

Malcolm Roberts: Yeah, they lost money, so what did they do? They abolished death duties. Now, Bill Shorten and the Labour Party are talking about bringing it back at a central level where you can’t abolish it. You can, but you’d have to get a lot of support. That’s what I mean. They centralise and they say the problem is humans, but the problem is government. Common themes of the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and the other globalists are fear-based. Their language is emotional, they wrap terms in lovely terms like sustainability, gender affirmation. Sustainability in the UN is only sustainable with subsidies. It’s not sustainable, it’s a crop.

They drive corrosive, anti-human culture based on spreading fear and guilt. Children in schools today, from when they first enter school right through the university, are riddled with guilt and fear. Completely unfounded, because we’re the best species on this planet. The UN World Economic Forum is driven with the aim of being in control. Then what they do is they transfer wealth through donkeys in parliament to multi-billionaires who then support their agenda, they then drive grants to academics to support their agenda, and then they label, berate, and humiliate anyone in academia who stands up.

So why are the climate sceptics all retired? Look at Peter Ridd, he stood up. Wonderful man. He stood up and he lost his job as a result of it. Maurice Strong knew that systems drove behaviour, so there are systems all around us… See the little labels when you go to buy a car or a refrigerator, an appliance. How much carbon dioxide [inaudible 00:49:23]. Oh, my god. Terrible. See what they’re doing? They’re reinforcing everywhere. How much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere? 0.04%. Some people will say, “Oh but Senator Roberts, cyanide can kill you at less concentration.” Yeah, it can kill you, but cyanide kills you through a chemical action. This is a physical action, which means 0.04 cannot hurt you. It cannot hurt you, it cannot hurt our climate.

They dumbed down society, which destroys responsibility. Then they create victims, whether it be women, whether it be aboriginals, whether it be Muslims, whether it be any other minority group, and some of them fall for it. When they create a victim, what are they doing to those people? Marginalising? Not quite, but what they’re doing now is they’re removing responsibility for their position. They’re destroying responsibility, they’re destroying people. Fortunately, a lot of people don’t believe it, but some do. What I’m saying is they’re destroying people just to get their narrative across. Destroys responsibility, creates and perpetuates dependence. Victims go through life in a dependent state and then, for every victim, what else do they create?

Speaker 2: Perpetrator.

Malcolm Roberts: Perpetrator, exactly. They sow division and separation. So they create people who don’t think for themselves, they make them malleable, so the thinking is gone, as this man said in the early days. They also destroy productive capacity, look at our electricity sector now. This has not been accidental. UN Agenda 21. It’s now 2030, because they didn’t get it in by the start of the 21st century. Not a thin book. According to governments in Canberra, initially, that didn’t exist. Didn’t exist. Then, when we proved it, or when other people proved it a few years ago, they said, “Oh yeah, but it doesn’t mean anything.” They then legislated as Australian legislation. Who drives the UN agenda? BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street. The UN was formed to actually push this stuff. That is part of their reason for being. Some of the destructive systems are… I’ll go into that in question and answer, I just want to come back to now – Australia’s potential. We have the people, our education is shot, but we still have good people. We’re very innovative, creative, and enthusiastic people, very good workers. We have the world’s best resources, the United Nations have said that in this report. We have huge opportunity with markets in Asia, the biggest markets in the world, and our country is clean, so we have huge potential. The solutions that I see are several. Small central governments, send the services back to the states where they belong. The education department, the health department, the environmental department should be abolished in Canberra and sent back to the states. That’s where they need to be. We don’t need 4000 bureaucrats in Canberra with not one skill. Not one skill. Who’s paying for that? We need to get back to restoring governance based on data and facts. I can tell you now, every major problem in this country is due to that building in Canberra. I’m serious, every major problem.

And they make decisions contradicting the facts and the data, not with the facts and data. Happy to go into that in more detail. We need to comprehensively fix our tax system, comprehensive tax reform. Who are the supreme sovereigns of this country? The people, because we’re the only ones who can change the constitution. That means we are the ones who determine the government. We’ve been asleep, we have just tolerated any crap they dish up. Instead of voting on emotion, we need to vote on strength of character, policies, and candidates’ values. We need everyone in this room to speak up, spread these words, we need to very much reinvigorate ourselves with our belief in humanity. Look at the person next to you. Are they criminals? They’re pretty decent and caring.

They’re pretty decent and caring. They’re not criminals, but that’s what they’re making out. We need to be very pro-nature, because nature is being ruined by the United Nations. We need to be very pro-freedom in all dimensions. Not only speech, but in all dimensions. Need to be pro-Australia, we need to be pro-Christian. Doesn’t mean we have to go to church, but I’m talking about Christian values. Christian values are fundamental to a free enterprise, personal responsibility. Freedom needs Christianity and Christianity needs freedom. They are fundamental. I don’t go to church, but I believe in the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, and many of the other sages, but we need to speak up when they start to dismantle our Christian churches. We need to restore sovereignty, get the hell out of the United Nations. Just remember that politicians are supposed to serve us, the people. Look at our policies, the federal and state government’s policy in terms of energy. Just think about the cost of these things to the everyday Australian. The cost of housing destroyed by huge immigration, which lifts demand for houses, whether you’re rental or ownership.

Energy, taxation, gas prices. The solution is reform and getting back to basics.

So what we have to do as citizens of this country is take responsibility. We have to call out the Greens, because the Greens keep saying, in their election campaigns – “Lots of free stuff here. Vote for us and we’ll get lots of free stuff.” That’s the road to ruin, as Argentinians found out, and we are on the road. We need to stand up for Christian values, we need to remember that we are inherently wonderful as humans, we need to call out the UN, and we need to work together to restore our country, our nation, and our families. Just remember this, please. Governments cannot create prosperity. They cannot. They can only consume it. They can distort it. Who creates prosperity? That’s right, the people. We need the government back in its role and citizens back to our role. Use our constitutional power, the power and the ballot box.

I’ll say again, we are winning, and I’d love to answer questions about Naomi Wolf and the podcast we made with her yesterday, because she’s got 11 points that are fabulous. We have a long way to go, but COVID has really woken people. We had some people awake to the climate scam before, now more people are awake to climate scam, because they’ve seen the COVID mismanagement and they’ve gone, “Hang on, this is similar to climate control.”

So let’s restore the truth about humanity and use it to rekindle human progress, so that we humans are bound and flourish.

Thank you.

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