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US Tariffs Could Hit Queensland Hard

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We need One Nation’s national-interest-first policies that will:

✔️ restore and protect Aussie industries

✔️ fix energy

✔️ cut immigration

✔️ restore sovereignty

Thanks for having me on your radio show Jason @2GB873

Transcript

Jason Morrison: There’s a lot of talk about Donald Trump, but there is actual stuff going on today with respect to tariffs.  There’s a whole batch of countries that have had letters sent to them from the US government in the most bizarre manner on Truth Social, signed letters from President Trump saying, “Dear Japan, Dear South Korea, Dear Malaysia, Dear Kazakhstan, Dear South Africa, Dear Laos” – informing their leaders of the tariff situation and what will be imposed on them.  Japan, Korea, 25% tariff to the US.  The other nations – Malaysia, South Africa, Myanmar, Laos – they’re at 40%.  You could go through the list.  Now we haven’t got ours yet. And perhaps we could be given an extension because we still haven’t had a conversation with the guy.  Right?

So maybe, just maybe, we might get it but there is a chance that we may get a letter too telling us what the outcome will be.  So, when you think about it, this puts at risk our food industry exports, our mining industry exports, our gas and you think – put all those together, there’s really, I mean Queensland is the home of gas, of coal, of food.  There’s a lot on the line for the state of Queensland, but a lot online for all of us here with this.

So, I thought I would just dip into Queensland for a second and talk about what the impact of this will be if this goes the way we fear it will go for Australia. 

Malcolm Roberts is Senator for QLD – One Nation and One Nation has got, you know, they’re heading towards as many senators in the parliament as the National Party.  So their view on this matters.  I thought I’d talk to him.  Malcolm Roberts, gidday.

Malcolm ROBERTS: Gidday.  What do you mean dipping into Queensland?  Is it just before the State of Origin, Jason?

Jason Morrison: Just before it, yeah.  Just a little trip up north.  I must say …

Malcolm ROBERTS: You’re not playing psychological games on us, are you?

Jason Morrison: I’ll tell you, we’ll try anything, anything at all.  But you’ve got to think about it.  Food exports, huge Queensland.  Coal, huge Queensland.  Gas, huge Queensland.  It all happens in Queensland.  And unfortunately NSW has made itself the recipient state, because if it wasn’t for you blokrd generating all the power, we wouldn’t have enough here too.  Now that’s got nothing to do with tariffs, but it does show that these economies are fragile, and tariffs could do something.

Malcolm ROBERTS: I’m glad you mentioned energy actually.  It’s not a distraction at all, Jason – it’s fundamental to a modern economy and modern civilization.  And when we’re destroying our electricity grid, as we are across the whole of the East Coast of Australia, you know, SA, Victoria, NSW and Queensland, we are making ourselves into a very precarious position. But there is something else that needs to be added. Queensland has the potential for enormous exports of rare earths in minerals from northwestern QLD – there’s a whole area there still to be opened up and our state government for decades now have neglected the northwest. But we have got the potential for really putting Australia on the map when it comes to rare earth metals.

Jason Morrison: I should point out, Malcolm is (was) a mining engineer and I guess you never stop being a mining engineer and thank goodness he understands it because very few in parliament do, but what would be the impact of these US tariffs on the Australian mining industry, which powers this country?

Malcolm ROBERTS: I don’t know enough about the actual details of what they’re what tariffs are putting on, but I think Trump has shown throughout his life that he’s a negotiator.  He throws the cards up in the air, catches everyone off guard and then jumps in when he’s picking up the cards.  So I don’t know what he’s got in mind, but he has shown signals with other countries that he’s after rare earth metals for America to compete in the modern age.  So there’s a huge opportunity for us there.  But you know what’s really – what this is really is a wake up call.  We haven’t been given a letter.  We’ve just been assumed that we’re going to be treated like we’re still at 10%.  But they are part of Trump’s agenda to put America first.  And that’s something that our country needs to start doing.  Under Liberal and Labor, for decades, we have not put Australia first.  We’ve sold out on free trade agreements. We’ve sold out our manufacturing with the Lima Declaration in 1975, which the Labor Party signed and the Liberal Party ratified the following year in 76.  So what we’ve got to do is take a lead from Donald Trump and start putting Australia first.

Jason Morrison: So let me turn that around.  Would you support Australia having a tariff attitude?

Malcolm ROBERTS: I think we have – yes, I would.

Jason Morrison: So let’s put this practically speaking.  So we could have maybe protected the Australian car industry from where it is now, which is almost non-existent.  I mean we make buses and caravans here, we don’t make cars here, we could have actually kept one going?

Malcolm ROBERTS: Correct.  We do need to consider – you know Whitlam signed the Lima Declaration which basically transferred our manufacturing to China and other Asian countries.  That was done deliberately under the UN Lima Declaration in 1975.  The Liberals have ratified that in 76 and have perpetuated it.  Manufacturing has been shot.  It’s not only tariffs that have caused the problem.  The number one cost component in manufacturing, Jason, is not labour anymore, it’s not wages. It’s electricity by far and what we’ve done in this country with putting up UN policies, Net-Zero Paris Agreement etc, we are destroying our electricity sector.  We’ve now got – we’ve gone from being the cheapest power in the world to amongst the most expensive.  All due to the UN policies. And that is destroying our manufacturing. What we’re doing is we’re subsidising with our taxes and with electricity prices, the Chinese to build subsidised solar and wind complexes in this country.  And we’re subsidising the Chinese to do it and to run it.  And we’re then sending our manufacturing jobs to China.

Jason Morrison: It’s a really interesting point.  I think people do forget that often.  We think because this is an expensive country, our labour’s expensive versus the rest of the world, we pay big money per hour for people working manufacturing versus what other nations do, but they’re not dumb enough to put their power through the roof.  Son we’ve done both.

Malcolm ROBERTS: Correct.  And it’s not just power – power on manufacturers, on employers and businesses, it’s the higher cost of living due to failed energy policies. The rampant inhuman – I would call it inhuman – excessive immigration in this country, which is shooting house prices through the roof, making it unaffordable. People in – we’re really screwing the lives of people in their 20’s, the young adults, the future leaders of this country, future citizens of this country are being jacked off because they’re just facing HUGE cost increases.  And electricity is a critical component in every part of our economy. And then we’ve got COVID fraud and mismanagement, which led to Pfizer and Moderna getting $18 billion in wealth transfers.

Jason Morrison: Oh, gosh, we don’t have enough time to do that.  But yeah, you’re right.

Malcolm ROBERTS: But we have looked after foreign corporations, Jason.

Jason Morrison: Over the top.

Malcolm ROBERTS: That’s just one example.

Jason Morrison: Yeah, and you know, I always think about it because people always – people in their 20’s – I have kids that are in their – 13, 11 and 9, they don’t have a vote, they don’t have a say.  And yet the decisions being made today are going to be decisions that they will pay for.  And the kids of today are being punished by the stupidity and ignorance of so many people that are electing clowns to high office.  And we’re getting basically – we’re not paying for it because they’ll be the ones that end up paying for it.

Malcolm ROBERTS: Correct.  You hit the nail on the head and the reason is because, you know, our constitution is the only constitution in the world in which the people got a vote on the constitution before it was introduced.  The only one!  And that the constitution puts the people at the top of the sovereignty arrangements in this country.  And yet what we’re doing – what we’re seeing in this country for decades under Labor and Liberal is people serving the government.  It should be the government serving the people.  Put Australia’s interests first. We need to be working to restore independence and that means freeing up electricity, stopping immigration at the moment and until we catch up with infrastructure and housing and until we can start to understand what’s really going on.

Jason Morrison: Yeah, hear, hear!  I mean, you know there will be people listening – “listen to this radical stuff being spoken” – never a truer thing has been said.  That is it!  Good on you.

Malcolm ROBERTS: Our Prime Minister has met with XI Ji Jingping four times.  Why so much effort into China?  I know they’re a big trading partner, but why so much effort into China?  What about the rest of the countries in the world, including America?

Jason Morrison: Yeah.  That’s so true.  Good on you.  Nice talking to you, Malcolm.  Thank you.

Malcolm ROBERTS: Thank you, Jason.

Jason Morrison: That’s Senator Malcolm Roberts from One Nation, who is a smart man and he’s one of these fellows when he speaks, it’s worth listening to what he’s got to say. Doesn’t just shoot from hip – you can tell he reads a lot and knows a lot. I think what we are seeing at the moment is just – it’s like they’ve pushed levers wrongly.  They’re pushing up wages, pushing up power and they’re just making everything in Australia uncompetitive at the moment, including living here. It’s just you can’t help but think there must be somebody behind them pushing the levers for them because it’s just so dumb.  And surely if you’re smart enough to get elected, you’re smart enough to know these are not smart.

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Free Trade a Race to the Bottom

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Despite their name, free trade agreements are never free. These agreements always come at a cost to someone, and that’s usually everyday Australians, workers and business owners. Once signed into existence, these agreements are not subject to sufficient scrutiny.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I say that One Nation supports fair trade agreements. Is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement the spawn of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Is it free trade or fair trade? It’s certainly not free trade. Each of the signatories have carved out substantial areas of their economies from the agreement. This information is tucked away, hidden away in annexes where it would seem not enough have looked. Tariffs are being defended. Schemes that protect the power base of local politicians are being defended, at Australia’s cost. There are hundreds of pages of carve-outs in this agreement. Many of them are ours. That’s probably a good thing. But the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement is not a free trade agreement. It is at best slightly freer trade.

In the Productivity Commission submission dated July 2022 to the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties into certain aspects of the treaty-making process in Australia, the Productivity Commission comes out and basically supports what I’m about to say. The government prepared a national interest analysis on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement and found it did provide a net benefit to Australia. This was relied upon by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties and subsequently endorsed by the Morrison-Joyce government and the alternative Albanese-Bandt government. This consensus of the establishment parties is disconcerting. Despite their name, free trade agreements are never free. These agreements always come at a cost to someone, and that’s usually everyday Australians, workers and business owners. Underdeveloped countries do not sign free trade agreements with industrialised nations in order to give away what they have. It’s the industrialised nations that give away their wealth, our wealth, through lower tariffs, greater market access of cheaper goods and greater incursion of foreign workers into our Australian economy. They’re facts.

Free trade in this situation is a race to the bottom. The nation with the worst environmental protections, the lowest wages, the worst working conditions, the crudest and most unsafe working conditions will win every time, in effect dragging our conditions down at the same time as dragging theirs up. Our environment loses. Our wages lose. Everyday Australians lose.

I saw nothing in the National Interest Analysis that constituted a genuine attempt to identify who the winners and losers will really be. That’s probably a design feature to allow the establishment parties to take all the electoral gain and protect themselves later from any electoral loss in this election cycle, because all too often in this country, in this parliament, it seems to be about looking good, not doing good.

Once signed into existence, these agreements are not subject to sufficient scrutiny. The last Productivity Commission inquiry into a free trade agreement was in 2010. The last review into Australia’s most important free trade agreement, the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, was in 2018. Before Australia enters into future trade agreements, this parliament must address the lack of transparency in the trade negotiation process and the signing of an agreement before this parliament ratifies it.

My next concern is to the new regulatory environment that this agreement will create. In his submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, Bryan Clark from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry highlighted: ‘There are five separate trade agreements with Malaysia. Businesses are getting very confused trying to work out how to use these agreements, and the best outcome for Australian business would actually come from sorting out all this red tape and creating clear rules for Australian businesses.’ I agree completely.

Here’s a specific example of this, thanks to the Australian Fair trade and Investment Network. The United Nations Central Product Classification system used by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement— with the UN it’s always a mouthful, isn’t it; they twist and turn and hide and bury and camouflage in acronyms and long titles that confuse people, so I’ll start again. The United Nations Central Product Classification system used by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement has a separate classification for aged care, which implies that without a specific reservation by Australia any increase in the regulation of aged care would be a breach of this agreement. So if we find something we need to improve and regulate it, it could be a breach of this agreement. The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association agreed that: ‘At worst, aged care is exposed to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement. At best, there is sufficient ambiguity to allow overseas companies to exploit the framework for their own benefit.’ The globalists, the elites, moving our industries—whole industries, whole sectors, workers, farmers—as pawns in their game of ‘central’, of control and money, and parliaments in this country, without accountability, are their tool. They work through us—this parliament.

The government has responded that there is provision for a review of unexpected consequences so we should not worry aged-care standards will drop under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement. There is, though, no framework in place to ensure this action actually occurs. In the years ahead, we will read stories that the parliaments’ mates, be they union bosses or crony capitalists and globalists, are exploiting loopholes in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement for their own benefit. That’s how they get through unaccountable parliaments. Resolving that will be at the discretion of the minister. This is a terrible system. The benefit of a free-trade agreement must be tested annually. I call on the government to introduce a system of annual review of the economic gains and losses for each of the agreements. Australia will not restore its position as a leading world economy by exposing Australian businesses to unfair competition and multiple layers of red, green and blue tape. Red tape is the bureaucracy. Green tape is pseudo-environmental regulations, impositions, under the guise of environment but really with the intent to control. And blue tape is UN policy on behalf of the UN’s masters, the globalists, who move industries and people around the globe at will.

Australia will not emerge from our self-inflicted COVID-19 recession by destroying business and increasing reliance on government welfare. To restore the wealth of everyday Australians, we must get the government out of the way and let personal free enterprise create wealth again. Ideas, effort, energy, heart—that’s what brings life to an economy when it is a free economy with fair trade. Fair trade has an important role to play in that process—fair trade.

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Franchising Laws Amendment (Fairness in Franchising) Bill 2020

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Small franchisees are often taken advantage of by large corporate franchisers. They are in a much less powerful position and their fights look like David vs. Goliath. I congratulate Senator O’Neill for her leadership on this bill and actually wanting to protect small business owners, unlike many of her “woke” colleagues in the Labor party.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that Senator O’Neill has taken on a real David and Goliath battle, and she’s taken it on well. I point to one corner, in which we have General Motors, one of the world’s largest corporations, which ruthlessly abandoned its franchisees in this country. It did it without any consideration, and the government stood by and watched. Families had put their businesses together over decades.

There had been blood, sweat and tears, and lots of hard work. Small to medium businesses had ploughed so much work into their businesses as well. And what did we see? General Motors just divested themselves of them. They were tossed aside on the scrap heap, and the government delayed. It promised to address this issue, but still it failed to do so.

No wonder people are feeling concerned, afraid, vulnerable and very worried at the hands of large multinational companies with huge imbalances of power. General Motors is treating their franchisees, the Holden dealers right across this country—small businesses, often with decades of history—like dirt.

Now we have Mercedes lining up to do the same, as are Honda and Renault. Honda, a company that has worked with its dealers so admirably around the world, is now looking to quit its dealer network as well. These companies are stealing databases that have been built up over decades.

I turn to the Queensland rural dealerships. Look at our state. It’s the most decentralised of any. It’s the only state with more people in the rural areas than in the capital city. Those dealer networks need support. But it’s not just car dealers; it’s also boat dealers, marine dealers, water sport dealers and motorbike dealers.

And it’s not just wheeled dealers; it’s people with small business franchises right across this country. What they need is support. They need fairness and they need support for locals. They need some security and some certainty. There are 60,000 workers in the auto sector alone, according to Senator O’Neill, and that includes many, many tradesmen and many apprentices. There are good people and local community businesses.

I want to commend Senator O’Neill, because Senator O’Neill came to us to explain her bill. She asked for our support. She did her research. She was willing to be on call at any time to answer questions and to put her staff on call. I acknowledge that—through you, Deputy President—to Senator O’Neill. I appreciate it and I endorse her work. She works. If other Labor senators had the same enthusiasm in general as Senator O’Neill then we’d be able to work much, much better with them. We commend Senator O’Neill for the way in which she came to us freely to offer her bill.

Senator O’Neill, sadly, is one of the very few real Labor senators in this parliament. I know that at least 20 per cent of Labor senators are upset with the way Labor has turned against workers, abandoned workers, in favour of woke policies supporting the globalists’ agenda. Look at things like taxation policy. Look at things like energy policy destroying manufacturing. The Liberals and Nationals are similar; they’re just a matter of grades apart.

The Labor Party’s policies and the Liberal-National coalition’s policies are abandoning manufacturing. They’re swallowing the UN dictates: the UN Kyoto protocol, the UN Paris Agreement—which is not really an agreement—and, going back to 1975, the UN’s Lima Declaration. They all sell out manufacturing. They sell out, to some extent, all industry, including agriculture. What about the so-called free trade agreements? We want, instead, fair trade agreements.

Labor’s support for free trade agreements means that they’re selling out workers and Australian employers, small and large. There are the tax policies, as I said, that let foreign multinationals off the hook. The Labor Party in the era of Prime Minister Bob Hawke let them off the hook with the petroleum resource rent tax. A few Labor senators stand up for workers, but, sadly, they’re in a very small minority.

Look at pay rates, which are stagnant because of the rising immigration we had until COVID. Rising costs and stagnant pay mean living standards are falling. Look at the oversupply of workers. We have an oversupply of workers, which is driving wage rates down. Look at the pressure on housing, driving housing prices up.

Look at the pressure on infrastructure in this country because the labour is tied to this large-country policy of letting in many, many immigrants, far more than we need. Look at the gender bending, the indoctrination in schools and the trendy virtue signalling that is taking over the Labor Party. We have good senators, like Senators Sterle, Farrell, Gallacher, Sheldon and others, who are great to work with. They support workers. They’re honest people. They are saddened that their Labor Party has abandoned them; that the Labor Party has swamped them in woke policies.

While Senator O’Neill supports real Australian businesses, her party has largely abandoned workers. Look at the energy sector. Coal has been tossed on the scrapheap by Labor’s virtue signallers. Look at industrial relations, where Mr Joel Fitzgibbon has abandoned and neglected the abused and exploited workers in the Hunter Valley—workers that I had to come in from Queensland to support, with Stuart Bonds, our candidate in the Hunter.

They are selling out our sovereignty to the UN globalists. These are the things that Labor now stand for.

As Senator O’Neill has shown leadership in working with all the parties on the crossbench and the Greens—Senator Whish-Wilson has complimented her, and rightly so—we would expect that Labor would have a reasonable accommodation in play. We would reasonably expect that the Labor Party would have a more favourable attitude to Senator Hanson’s bill to get foreign companies to pay tax on petroleum resources. Yet Labor denied support to our bill. When we asked them why, there was just a blank stare, no reason or justification.

I will finish talking about this bill by emphasising the two major benefits. It brings compulsory arbitration to rectify the imbalance between those who have enormous power, like General Motors, and the franchisees who have limited power. And there is the massive increase in penalties, all justified to restore some balance in power. However, the Australian Financial Review rightly said today that this is just plugging a hole in the dike.

Labor has lost its way in policy. Labor has lost its way in our Senate. One Nation reiterates again that we would support all parties, yet we expect parties to work with us and to give us a fair go. I support this bill. I thank Senator O’Neill, again, for her leadership in reaching out to me and my office.

We will work happily with Senator O’Neill. I remind the Labor Party that if they ever get back into power they will need to work with us. We will be happy to work with people like Senator O’Neill, Senator Farrell, Senator Sterle, Senator Gallacher and Senator Sheldon—these people, sadly, are in a minority. We will happily work with Senator O’Neill and her like.

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