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Australians are being priced out of their own country — and I’m calling it out.

In this full interview, I expose the real forces behind our housing crisis. Foreign buyers are snapping up homes while everyday Aussies are left struggling to afford a roof over their heads.

44% of the cost of a new home is TAX. That’s right — nearly half the price is government greed.

I lay out my bold plan: every foreign property owner will have two years to sell — no exceptions. It’s time we put Australians first.

I also dive into:

  • The massive impact of immigration on housing demand
  • How climate policies are wrecking our economy
  • And the banking system that’s bleeding families dry

Unemployable Media – not just a channel; they are a community that celebrates and uplifts individuals charting unconventional paths.

Unemployable Media is your go-to destination for content, online courses, live events, and a vibrant community that embraces those who defy standard career norms.

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Transcript

Adam Hudson: What’s up, guys?  Welcome to this very special episode of UNEMPLOYABLE.  This is our discussion with Senator Malcolm Roberts.  He is a federal member for One Nation.  It was a really insightful chat.  We covered a lot of stuff. 

If you don’t know anything about Senator Roberts, he is a very controversial figure in Australian politics. He does not believe in climate change. He is very vocal about immigration. He’s very vocal about our energy and how we are giving it away for literally nothing. He is very vocal about our overspending and waste as a nation.  He’s very vocal about what makes great children and great parenting. 

And I think you’re going to find this really interesting.  We talk about free speech.  We specifically spoke about why he and Pauline Hanson abstained from the recent hate crimes bill and so much more. I think you’re going to really enjoy it. 

It goes a lot of directions over the course of nearly two hours. 

Make sure you like and subscribe.  Put a comment below as well, guys, because, you know, engaging with this kind of media helps people of power and influence like Malcolm know that the attention is now in places like this podcast, independent media. 

We are not paid. We don’t have sponsors.  We fund this ourselves.  And so, you know, your engagement shines a light on where they should go and be heard. 

So, with that said, please enjoy this discussion with Senator Malcolm Roberts. 

What is up everybody?  Welcome to this very special episode of Unemployable.  This is our second ever political interview.  The first one went absolutely nuts on YouTube.  Don’t mean to brag, but we outperformed both of the major parties by bringing none other than Senator Pauline Hanson, who at the time of this recording has gone to nearly 200,000 views on YouTube – absolutely blitzing any other political interview in the podcast space this cycle, which is really, really encouraging.  And today we have with us Senator Malcolm Roberts, who is also with One Nation. 

And just for the record guys, we have invited Albo on, we’ve invited Peter on, we’ve invited on a couple of independents.  We do have Gerard Rennick coming in as well.  So, it’s not that we are just playing One Nation. We happen to be very receptive to Nation’s message and I think all Australians leading into this election should be absolutely opening their minds and listening.  And that is the point of these long form podcasts. 

Mark Di Paola: Yeah, the listeners have been great and the comments on Instagram and what not have been great in suggesting guests as well.  So, if anyone, you know, we put the message out to Dutton and Albo, but if anyone has a contact to them. 

Adam Hudson: Yep. 

Mark Di Paola: Let them know. 

Adam Hudson:  We want to – I’d really like to talk to them as well.  I got a few hard questions.  I don’t think I’d like to come on here because they’re not going to be softballs, let me tell you that, but Senator Malcolm Roberts, thank you for coming in.  We really do appreciate it.  Thank you so much for your time.  Welcome. 

Malcolm ROBERTS:  Well, thank you for the welcome.  And first of all I want to say how much I appreciate the new independent people’s media, the truth media, the freedom media, because the other two forms of media – the anti-social media – social media is really anti-social and it’s censored.   And the other one is the globalist mouthpiece, Big Brother media, whatever you want, it’s owned. So, this is the only way we can get our voice out. So thank you so much for what you’re doing. 

Adam Hudson: Yeah.  One thing I noticed as soon as you walked in the studio just now and this is what gets lost in media of all kinds, we sit in a very privileged position here on the panel, being able to meet politicians face to face. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: What’s privileged about that? 

Adam Hudson: Well, what I mean is I get to look you in the eye.  A lot of people just see through a lens and when you meet Malcolm, for the listeners and those who are on Spotify, he looks you dead in the eye and he keeps your gaze.  And that’s something to be said for that and a firm handshake, and I love that in people generally.  I got the same from Pauline.  And it’s refreshing. 

So, I’m sure this pod’s going to be good because I’ve watched a lot of your clips. I’ve watched you go into Senate hearings, and I’ve watched you battle it out on the on the floor of Parliament in Australia.   
And I’ll say to you the same thing I said to Pauline, which was thank you, because we need people like you who are prepared to sit there, and I’ve watched the smug look on these politicians faces as you grill them thinking this guy’s just a conspiracy theorist extremist, and they’re kind of dismissing you. 

And I watch how you just let it go off your back and you just keep pushing them on the facts, on the point and you won’t let it go.  And I think the tide is turning.  And I think Australians more than ever are secretly laughing at the politicians who are looking down their noses at you, even though you’re a politician, but looking down their noses at you dismissively, like when is this clown going to stop talking – and the Australians watching are going, Malcolm, keep going, keep pushing these guys because so much trust has been lost in the last few years that I think there’s more swing vote now than there has been for a long time.  What’s your feeling out there in the electorate as you go out and talk to people? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: I get constantly bombarded wherever I go – thank you for what you’re doing and, which is really disturbing in a way, because they mean it and they’re saying keep going, but for someone to thank me for doing my job?  That shows how few people are doing their job.  So, it’s very encouraging, of course, but people definitely are starting to see that the two tired old parties, the Uni-Party is really just that – they’re not alternatives.  They’re both pushing the same basic policies, immigration, energy, climate, the same #$&!*%@*’s coming out of both of them. 

Mark Di Paola: It’s really interesting because Mark Bouris, who has more subscribers, you know – the Yellow Brick Road – has more subscribers than the Unemployable pod does, had Albo and Dutton on.  I think the Dutton podcast got 60,000 views and the Albo podcast got 20,000 views on YouTube – just YouTube, and ours I think is sitting at about 200,000 views with Pauline. 

Adam Hudson: With 1/10th of the subscriber base. 

Mark Di Paola: With 1/10th of the subscriber base.  So yeah, talk us through that a little bit more. Does it come down to people’s frustration with the two major parties, or what do you – how do you see it? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: The vote overall for the two tired old parties – if that’s a graph, it has gone from 95% to Labor and Liberal in a matter of a few decades ago to now 65% and falling.  People are swinging.  They’re starting to wake up.  It used to be the days of – oh, I’ll just go in and which one, Labor’s not doing good job, I’ll vote for Liberal, Liberal’s not doing good job, I’ll vote for Labor, but now they’re starting to wake up and are really starting to look at independents and minor parties. 

Mark Di Paola: Wow! I didn’t realise it swung that much. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, we’ve got a government Mark, in Albanese’s government, the Labor government, that has got less than 1/3rd of the vote, less than 1/3rd of the vote.  And what people don’t realise is that that they’re in cahoots – that’s in the lower house – in the Senate, they’re in cahoots with the Greens, which are the most destructive force in this country.  And they have to buy off a couple of independents every now and then to get things through the Senate.  We’ve had 205 bills dragged into the Senate and guillotined.  No debate or debate shut. Albanese is not a democratic Prime Minister. 

Mark Di Paola: I’m pretty interested in politics, I must say and I had no idea that he only had 1/3rd of the vote. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Just slightly under 1/3rd

Adam Hudson: Interesting.  There’s so much I want to dive into and I know from the comments that we’ve gotten when we’ve said we’ve got you coming on and since Pauline’s come on, the number one thing that we’re getting at the moment and we won’t address it now, we’ll address it at the right moment, but for the listeners because I know they’re sitting there going “ask why did they refrain from the free speech vote? You know that bill that went in and didn’t vote against that. We’ll get to that in a minute. So if you’re listening … 

Malcolm ROBERTS: I’d love to get to that. 

Adam Hudon: Yeah.  So don’t worry guys, we are going to cover that.  But I want to set this interview up before we get into the meat and potatoes because I think it’s really important to get some context about you.  You were born in Africa, right? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: India. 

Adam Hudson: Oh, sorry! India.  My mistake.  So born in Bengal, wasn’t it?  West Bengal? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: West Bengal. 

Adam Hudson: Yeah, India.  And you grew up a son of a coal miner.  You were a coal miner for a period of time.  So maybe just give us that.  And you’re an engineer by profession.  So maybe just give us that little bit of early background because of what I want to understand, I’ve watched you on many, many clips and you’ve got a dog in you that’s really strong.  And I love that. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: I’m being called a dog now. 

Adam Hudson: But you know what I mean? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: No, no, I, I get it.  Thank you for that.  That’s a compliment. 

Adam Hudson: That’s what I mean.  Absolutely is a compliment.  Like you are very, very strong on your opinions.  And I’d like to understand what is, where does that drive come from?  And I suspect it’s from a lifetime that’s now here in your political career.  But where, where are these beliefs forming and what led you to align yourself fully with Pauline?  Where’s that fire coming from? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: OK, I’ll have to remember all of those parts of the question.  I don’t know where the drive comes from.  I was born with it.  When I was under one I think, I was being taken, in Wales with my father’s parents, my grandparents and apparently Mum and Dad used to take me down a road and they’d take the right fork – this is less than one, and my grandparents took me for a walk one day and they took me down the left fork and I went (hand movement) the other way you know, so I’m not afraid to speak up. I get a bit nervous, like I’m nervous now. So, I still get nervous when I speak in the Senate.   But it’s like Pauline – the thing is that Pauline does not like fighting. She doesn’t like a fight. You can tell it in her voice.  I mean, she has first 30 seconds she’s nervous, speaks up with a high pitch, but then she relaxes into it.  One thing worse than a fight and that’s running away from a fight and so that’s why we’re both tentative in the sense that we’re not relaxed doing that, but we tell the truth, and we’ve got to do it because I just can’t live with myself if I don’t do it. So that came from my parents, I think. What else? 

Adam Hudson: How did you grow up?  Like where you did you grow up in a where did you grow up?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: The formative years – Maria Montessori, who’s the most powerful, the most eloquent – she’s dead now, she died about 85 in the 50’s I think – she had the most comprehensive understanding of human development and human behaviour.  And she said the critical years for the formation of both character and intellect, character and intellect, are birth to six.  So, my formative years were spent in India and I got, I mixed with Muslims, Hindis, Buddhists, probably atheists, Christians, so it didn’t matter where I was, I would talk to people and listen to them. The other thing that my mother taught me is that it’s very important to listen first, so we listen. And the other thing my father taught me is to be calm and factual. There’s no point in going off at people. It doesn’t do any good.  The strength comes from how you address the issue, not on what label you use and not on what abuse you give them and Pauline is much the same.  So, my approach is calm and factual. Let the lunatics do all the raving, carrying on.  When they’re finished, I’ll still be here.  Now what have you got to say?  So, I’ve used that with industrial relations.  One of the things that that surprised me – I graduated as a mining engineer and then I decided I better go and learn something. So, I worked as a coalface miner. I mean that sincerely.  I learned more as a coalface miner because mining is about people and it’s about different conditions underground. And conditions can change from like working in a car park in a parking station, really safe to treacherous within a metre. And sometimes we don’t even know it. So, you’ve got to rely upon people, and you’ve got to develop in people the skills and the accountability to take responsibility for themselves. And that means letting go. So, I don’t believe in micromanaging.  I believe in setting standards, laying down my expectations and then making sure that people can do their job, get out of their way. Because that’s the problem with a lot of managers in Australia. We’re rambling a bit here, but a lot of managers in Australia want to tell people how to do things and they miss the talent. And I guess that’s the other thing that I’m very, very pro human. We’ve had our dickheads, we’ve had our authoritarian rulers – Hitler, Stalin, Maurice Strong, who you might want to ask about, Chairman Mao, Morrison, Palaszczuk, these lunatics and I mean that, they’re lunatics, but the majority of people are absolutely wonderful. Humans are wonderful.  And the overriding traits in people are care. You’re only here because you care about what’s happening to our country, correct? 

Adam Hudson: Mmm hmm. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: And you want to do something about it and you want to give voice to the majority.  So, humans are absolutely wonderful.  And I’ve learned from my mother I suppose. that that’s the case.  So, we can’t trust everyone.  We can’t rely on everyone, but we’ve got to extend to them an opportunity to use their talent.  And that’s something that I found very, very important and I love – when I was managing Westworld’s End mine, when I arrived, it was in turmoil industrially. Every night the evening shift would have a stop work meeting and decide whether or not they’d go home or stay at work. And I thought, wow, this is strange.  Then I realised the previous manager was telling lies. So, they didn’t trust us. So, it took a lot of time for me to go underground, be with people because you can’t run a mine from the surface.  So, one day after about 18 months there, I was walking out to the car park, just on dark, and I remember just thinking, why am I happy? And I turned around behind me and looked at the coal stockpiles, record coal stockpiles, record production, safety statistics that were really, really very, very powerful. And I thought it’s not the record coal, it’s the fact that people come to work, get changed, put their mining gear on and go down the mine and come back out. And not always lack of argument because we still had our arguments, but they trusted and people when they’re allowed to do their job, they love doing their job. People are just wonderful.  

Adam Hudson: And they rely on leadership not to lie to them.   

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yes, and it’s not – leadership is not about just saying do whatever you want. Leadership is about saying here are the expectations I have for you and quite often developing those expectations together.  But ultimately, I’m representing the shareholder, I’m in charge of the mine. And I draw a line because we did have, when I first arrived there, we did have union delegates who were, they didn’t trust anyone. I had meetings with 10 delegates in the room, because there were five unions, they didn’t trust each other and each union had to bring two people because they didn’t trust their mate. So that was the level of trust.  Yeah, it’s shocking. So, there were a couple of times when I’d have to say – that’s it, we’ll take it to court.  And sometimes we just, you know, some people – I’d sack someone and for example, we sacked 8 people and after six months, all for good, documented reasons, and after six months, the mechanical engineer came to me and said, I didn’t know you could sack people in the mining industry.  If you have a reason and you give them notice and they don’t respond, of course you’ve got to.  So, it’s a matter of building trust and the union delegate in charge of the lodge, that’s the branch at the mine, he actually was up in arms within the first six months trying to intimidate me. So, I didn’t yield back. I didn’t scream, just calm and when he saw me just being calm, he would deflate like a big, big bag and then he was like putty. But he was a good guy, but he had a terrible reputation. And then two years later we went through massive retrenchments in the Hunter. He came to me and said, what do you need?  And we made some major changes that he got into trouble from with his with his national delegates. So, it’s just stunning because that’s what happens when trust comes. But you’ve got to have the standards in there and you must be prepared to enforce those standards. But you do it responsibly. 

Adam Hudson: A politician that has worked outside of Canberra.  That’s amazing. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, Pauline’s worked outside of Canberra. 

Adam Hudson: I know, I know. 

Mark Di Paola:  I was just about to say, trust and leadership is such an important topic and sometimes when we’ve previously spoken about politics on this show before having a politician on, people would say, why are you talking about politics – we’re tuning in because this is a business show and I think what people sometimes forget is that running a country is the biggest business in your economy.  You know, the American government is the biggest business in their economy.  The Australian government is the biggest business in our economy and sometimes it’s being run by people who don’t have business experience or don’t have the trust of the nation and that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.  You know, you’re seeing the Elon Musk thing.  I mean, that guy is the world’s richest person ever by a long shot.  Not because he’s stupid.  He must know something and he’s getting demonised, demonised. And it’s like, you know, we had a couple of people in the comments on the Pauline clips say, oh, ask her how her mate Gina is going.  And it’s like, why do we have that mentality?  We’re trying to tear down those partnerships.  I mean, don’t we want the best and the brightest and the most successful to help in whatever way possible, even if it is people who’ve had previous business experience coming into politics?  Don’t we want that? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Boy, there’s so much in that, Mark.  I strongly disagree with you that government is a business.  Governments should be there to create the environment so you can go and invest and do your job.  That’s what it is.  What we’ve got now is governments in control and we’ve got, and governments have long been whether they’re democratic or monarchs, monarchy or republican – Republic, and we are basically a Republic, but I diverge, and I’ll come back to that.  Governments have long been a source or a vehicle for people to control others, whether they’re in government themselves or whether they’re puppets for people outside.  Our country is being destroyed.  It’s not being governed, it’s being destroyed. And so, you’re right that most people in politics don’t understand business. They don’t understand that you have to create an environment.  You know that if you create a shitty environment, your people won’t respond.  I turn up to work, you turn up to work, everyone turns up to work with a heart, a mind and a pair of hands. And that’s basically the physical, the mental and the spiritual or emotional. And you’ve got to get people engaged.  

And how the hell can investors get engaged in this country and create new employment when they’re having their electricity sector destroyed in front of their eyes?  And based on a lie? How the hell when government comes in to mandate so many things that are destroying our productivity and destroying our productive capacity, how the hell can you get investors? What happens is you get foreign investors in because they’re not paying tax, many of them. They’re not paying company tax.  
So, you as a family person – I assume you’re a family person – you’re paying tax to keep these bastards here and you know the government – so I’m rambling a bit, but government is not a business. Government is an enabler and should get the hell out of the way and create the environment, create the tax … The most destructive system in our country is the tax system.  

Mark Di Paola: So, if you don’t like the analogy that the government is like a business, what is the answer to allowing government to more properly govern?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Government has three basic responsibilities, three basic roles – protect life (security), protect property (again security … ) and protect freedom. Because one of the things that is really disturbing me is that, well, I’ll tell you a story – I’ve been chasing this climate fraud since 2007 and  I went around the country quite often, met up with Bob Carter, who’s dead now, but he was a professor, climatologist, paleoclimatologist, wonderful man, retired, doing this work voluntarily just like I was. And one day he said to me in a break, “you know mate, this is the biggest scam ever”. I said, Bob it’s not even close and he said, “what do you mean?”  I said it is a big scam, but a far bigger scam is the money scam, the ability to print more money. If you did it, you’d go to jail, but the banks can do it. So, he said, “oh, yeah, you’ve got a point. There’s no doubt about that – that’s a much bigger scam”. And I said, but there’s a bigger one – that’s the anti-human scam. 

The Club of Rome in the 1960’s started pushing the anti-human scam. They did it subtly and by saying your first duty is to protect the planet and everyone is like “oh yeah”.  It’s not.  Your first duty is to enhance your species, contribute to your species and the species, first of all, we must realise the truth about our species. Our species is not lazy, incompetent, dishonest, irresponsible, uncaring. We are the complete opposite on all of those things – I’m starting to get a bit fired up because I’m passionate. 

Hosts: It’s okay. 

Malcolm ROBERTS:  We are destroying these people.  From this age (hands spread) we’re telling them they are incompetent, dishonest, lazy, irresponsible, that their species doesn’t care – you’ve got to protect the planet. Then yeah, so that’s destroying the future leaders of our country. And then they’re saying your number one job is to protect the planet because civilization and the environment are mutually exclusive. That is complete bullshit.  If we want a future as a civilization, we have got to protect the environment. If we want to protect the environment, we’ve got to have civilization. You go to any country in the world, Mark, and you will find that the countries that are developed have a cleaner environment and are more aware of protecting the environment. And so, it’s not a matter of saving the environment or civilization, because some of these people are pushing climate fraud want us back in the dark ages. It’s a matter of saying we want both because they’re mutually dependent. And so, your job is to protect, is to enhance the human species as a member of our species. But to do that, you have to protect the environment. So, what I’m saying is it should be a very positive, very wonderful message and yet our kids are being bombarded, our adults are being bombarded with decades of bullshit about how we’re a bad species.  

Mark Di Paola: There’s so much in that but it’s, you can just see when you’ve got the kids destroying artwork and tying themselves to different things. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: And cutting bits of pieces off themselves. 

Mark Di Paola: And just doing crazy things. And it’s like they didn’t just wake up one day and decide to do that. It’s social conditioning that’s led them to believe that that’s the way to make a difference in the world. And anyone with a few years of maturity realises that’s not how you inflict any change. Even if you do believe in climate change, that’s not how you make change.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: It encourages virtue signalling because what they’re doing, Mark, when you look at it, they’re always creating a victim, the left, and then there becomes a perpetrator.  So, you’re a white male – you’re a perpetrator.  And that’s what they’ve done deliberately so that they can set us up against any minority group they want to. 

Adam Hudson: Constantly apologising for turning up anywhere.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah.  

Adam Hudson: You know, call to country, something that happens at all these major sporting events. What’s your position on that?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: I don’t need to be welcomed to my own country. And I know a lot of Aboriginals say exactly the same thing. They say it’s rubbish.  

Adam Hudson: So that’s my point as well – and I say to people, you know, like Mark’s child, his little daughter was born here in the same way the first Aboriginal child was born here. So why is one more entitled than the other through spiritual providence that they turned up on this land, right? Why should one have to do that.  I don’t get it – that’s her home. 

And that’s not saying that we shouldn’t care for the native Australian Aboriginal people and that we shouldn’t provide them services and programmes.  I just think that the two things are not – they get conflated together and they’re completely different things.  One is, like you said, is the virtue signalling that creates this negativity or this pessimism. 

Adam Hudson: Which is ruining the country. 

Mark Di Paola: Which is ruining the country.  It’s creating a divide. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Look at our NRL, look at our AFL. The elites in both those …  are Aboriginals. The proportion of Aboriginals in the country is about 3% and it’s now climbing to about 5% because a lot of whites are registering as Aboriginal. 

Host: Right, because of the incentives. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah because of the incentives.  Yes, that’s true, but in the AFL and the NRL it’s way above 3%, way above 5%.  If you look at the Parliament, it’s 11% Aboriginal or part Aboriginal. So there – when we say the Aboriginals need help – don’t set them apart from anyone else because what you’re actually doing is saying you can’t get on without that. We’ve got Warren Mundine, we’ve got Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, we’ve got Karen Little – wonderful, wonderful humans, wonderful contributors, wonderful Australians. They don’t need help, and they will tell you they don’t need help, but what they want is a fair go. And what’s happened is, again the same thing, wealth transfer.  Government is there to transfer wealth illegally.  So, what they do is they set up the inferior people and automatically Aboriginals then start being bashed with the fact that they’re with the nonsense, the myth that they’re inferior, which is a terrible way to try and help people. But when you go into the communities, you find the white and black aboriginal industry has got its claws around everything. And so, the billions and it is literally billions of dollars, somewhere up around $40   billion, but at least $25 – $30 billion spent, and most of the money goes to the black and white aboriginal industry. I said white and black.  Consultants, lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians – they don’t get the money – activists, academics, they’re feeding off this. And you walk into the communities and the people in the communities, the Aboriginal communities, the remote community say “why don’t we get any help?”  And so, the other thing is I was told by a Councillor up in Bardoo Island in Torres Strait, he said, “mate, the people on the Closing the Gap gravy train do not want to close the gap because they get money while the gap is there”. We have gone backwards in the gap in the last few years.  

Mark Di Paola: It’s kind of like the NDIS service provider, isn’t it?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, it is but think of the people that are missing out by the white and black aboriginal industry stealing that money, misappropriating that money. We’ve got white and black people getting very, very wealthy, but the people on the ground not getting it.  

Adam Hudson: Yeah, well … 

Malcolm ROBERTS: But they’ve created victims, and you don’t say to an Aboriginal you’re a victim because people, white or black will fall into the victimhood status. That’s crippling. 

Adam Hudson: It’s interesting you mentioned the role of government is to protect life, property and freedom.  

Mark Di Paola: Yeah.  

Adam Hudson: And I think in the last five years with what we went through with COVID and so on, if I give a scorecard to our government on protecting life and protecting our freedoms and what they did to the accessibility of property to a lot of people, it’s a disaster. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: It’s negative. Oh my God, they killed people. It was homicide.  

Adam Hudson: Yeah. Like, it’s like a you couldn’t get a worse score. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: No 

Adam Hudson: I mean, I don’t know where to start to talk about stuff because like there’s the COVID stuff that we can talk about. There’s the …  I want to get into all of that. I want to get into your views on the mismanagement of COVID and the gross egregious breaches of freedom that have pissed off so many Australians. And I think either of the two political majors need to start with an apology to the Australian people for what they put this country through and the damage they did. It’ll never come. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: We’re working on it.  

Adam Hudson: Oh my God. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: We’re not going to give up on that one.  

Adam Hudson: And a royal Commission into what happened. I don’t know.  What’s your suggestion with …, because I think a lot of Australians have lost trust as a result of what went on.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, the irony is, Adam, I’ve noticed this in private sector. I’ve noticed it in many places. The irony is that people say the boss is a dickhead, the boss is irresponsible, the boss is dishonest, you can’t trust politicians. Then where do they turn when something goes wrong? They become dependent on the boss. They automatically genuflect to the boss or the politicians. That’s one of the fundamental problem. Our country is a constitutional monarchy. It’s not a monarchy. Monarchy is where the king or queen has absolute power and says this is what you’re going to do Mark, gives you orders, makes all the rules, makes all the regulations. A constitutional monarchy is one where you have a constitution that is the supreme governing instrument. And that is the case in our country.  And the monarch in our country and I think it’s one, I used to criticise the monarchy because I don’t believe people should get a title because of their parents. But then what I realised is you look at the alternative, a president, and quite often that’s based on corruption. Who can spend the most money. I’m not saying that about Trump. Trump is wonderful. But so, and a constitutional monarchy, we’ve got the King or Queen of Britain acting as our monarch under the constitution. Their role is prescribed in the constitution.  They’re subordinate to the constitution. They have to serve. And Queen Elizabeth’s did a marvellous job of that.  Their powers are in reserve powers. If something happens then they can do this. So, we actually run the show. When I say we, I don’t mean the politicians, I mean the people of Australia, who … our country is the only country in the world in which the constitution was voted on by the people before it came in. Did you know that?  

Hosts: No. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: I didn’t know that till six years ago. Who are the only people who can change the constitution? The people through a referendum. So, who’s in charge? Who elects the government?  The people. Democracy in this country, like most of the Western countries, has become a passive sport, a passive activity. We need – a democracy can only survive and thrive when it’s active. So not only, I’m not just talking about voting, I’m talking about being pissed off with the parties, with your representative, making sure that they are representing you properly, holding them accountable. That might mean letters, it might mean turning up to their office.  

Mark Di Paola: It’s the freedom to be able to have the conversation. And, you know, one of the things that really has just killed my faith in our leaders is these misinformation and disinformation bills and all these bills that they’re just trying to ram through to stop people like us simply speaking about … 

Adam Hudson: Our thoughts.  

Mark Di Paola: Our thoughts, yeah. Yeah. On what we think, the problems that Australia is facing. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: You can’t even question. You can’t even question, let alone think.  

Mark Di Paola: And that’s a really like, that’s a really scary place for me.  

Adam Hudson: I think that freedom of speech, we can jump into that quickly because in order to have a functioning democracy, you need to be able to speak and share ideas.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yep.  

Adam Hudson: And if they are successful and you’ve done a wonderful job of highlighting the fact that they will sneak through what appears to be a harmless thing that nobody could vote against, like for example … 

Malcolm ROBERTS: The misinformation and disinformation?  Who could go against that? 

Adam Hudson:  Yeah, or children accessing social media. We all of course worry about kids’ addiction to social media. And it’s hard to vote against NDIS, right? What politician in Australia can get elected by saying we should stop funding people with disabilities because it’s so unpopular to defund that. I’m not saying we should defund it. I’m just saying it’s a very difficult bill to overturn because of the nature of it. But if we can’t speak and just to finish that point, they sneak these bills through and then they, we lose this freedom and then they use it as a Trojan Horse kind of thing. Free speech. I’d love to hear your thoughts on, in your language, the importance of free speech and how that’s under threat right now. And then I want to actually ask the question about why you guys abstained from the vote, even though I know and many people know that you are pro free speech by a mile.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: We are the leaders in that fight. We are the absolute leaders in that fight. 

Adam Hudson: So that’s why it is so important.  For the average punter out there, why is it, like I said to Pauline, why should a Pakistani immigrant be funding your defence against that Pakistani minister? Like why? Why should they care about free speech even if they really disagree with what you said?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Let’s go right back to basics. Our universe is based on freedom. It evolves freely. 

Nature is free to do whatever she or he, whatever you want to call it, wants to do, and it evolves freely.  The universe is free.  The stars are free.  The planets are free.  Animals, plants are free.  The universe is based on freedom. It’s a model. We are not part of the universe; we are of the universe. 

We’re one with the universe, so we are inherently – when you were born, you were granted every freedom there is just by being born. And people have long, long from the human condition, the ego,  

wants to come along and have control over you.  So, the constant battle is not left versus right. 

That’s a distraction, that’s a lie, That’s a diversion.  The battle is better looked at between freedom and control and always beneath control by the way, there is fear.  So, people who seek to control are afraid.  What are they afraid of?  Well, there are many things they’re afraid of, but let’s go to have a look at freedom.  Let’s go beyond freedom of speech, Adam.  Freedom is in freedom of thought, freedom of faith.  You can believe whatever you want to in terms of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, who you mix with, freedom of exchange, who you exchange agreements with, who you trade with, freedom of movement, freedom of political assembly.  There are so many freedoms. There’s about 10 of them – I can’t remember the rest of them.  But that is what freedoms about.  It’s about liberty.  And as the American Constitution or the American Bill of Rights says, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it’s fundamental to people. And that came from the universe. 

It came from – I happen to think there’s a God, if you don’t, but it came from the universe – it came from God.  You were born with it.  And the human condition is a fight to try and take some of that away from you.  That’s what it is. It’s a battle between control and freedom.  So, the primary freedom of the one I missed – how could I miss it – is the freedom of life, the right to live.  Okay and that’s being destroyed in our country, in many Western countries.  So, the primary freedom is the freedom of life, the freedom to exist and the primary vehicle for that is freedom of speech.  So, you can – all the other freedoms come from that freedom of speech.  So that’s why freedom of speech is so important.  It ignites everything. 

Adam Hudson: Yeah, and people say, even my wife and I when … and she goes, I think that hate speech thing is good.  People shouldn’t be able to say horrible things.  And I’m like, I, you know, no, because … 

Mark Di Paola: Freedom of speech is not – it’s not determining who can say what – it’s being sure that nobody can control who can’t.   

Adam Hudson: Well, that’s what I said to her.  Like it all comes down to who’s the arbiter of what defines hate speech, right?  And that’s why I personally – I’ve said it before, I’d rather know what somebody really thinks, even if I don’t, in fact especially if I don’t agree, because then I know. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yes. And that’s something that’s so important.  You can call me short.  Now you can call me a runt.  You can call me any kind of name you want. You cannot give offence. 

I can take offence. That is my choice. There’s nothing wrong with being short, right, Mark? 

Mark Di Paola: It’s the best thing in the world. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: I mean, we’re actually not short, we’re normal – these bastards are tall. 

Adam Hudson: He’s … 

Host: I’m in between. 

Mark Di Paola: Don’t know what’s in the water for these other guys. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: So, when we “protect” people because of – from being labelled, being called names, we are undermining their very being.  Call me anything you like.  When you call me something that’s not based on – not a statement based on data and fact, it shows that you haven’t got an argument.  So, you can call me a anti-vaxxer, a conspiracy theorist, tinfoil hat bearer, and all  

I have to say to you is, well, thank you very much for just admitting that I’ve won the argument. 

Because if you had an argument, had the data, you would have given it to me in a logical structure. 

But you haven’t. You’ve given me a label – you’ve just lost the argument. 

Mark Di Paola: Sticks and stones. 

Adam Hudson: Yeah, that’s a very important point, though. Label in place of facts. And this is what’s happened in the world like – that people just want a simple label that they can just, oh, that’s right, labelled sorted. They don’t actually want to think. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Left, right.  What they do then is, oh, I’m emotionally attached to the left, I’m emotionally attached to the right.  I don’t think – I just go into battle, but that’s rubbish because you’re missing out on so much.  So, it’s control versus freedom. 

Mark Di Paola: I agree with that.  I think the problem largely comes from the fact that problem solving and critical thinking isn’t taught in schools and so it’s just easier for people to side with the left or the right or whatever because people are being taught to memorise, and they’re not being taught to think critically.  You’re obviously a person that has thought critically about things.  It seems like you’ve got some spiritual leanings as well.  So, there’s an open-minded thread to everything that you look into. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, that’s the way the universe is, right?  So, if I try to control – controlling things shows that I’m afraid.  Controlling things shows that I lack the courage to just stand up and say what I think.  So, that’s I’m opposed to control.  Now see, I’m still nervous at the moment and that shows me that I’ve got something going on in my mind.  So, about 2021 I did my first day of Vipassana meditation course, it’s actually 11 days – the most intense thing I’ve ever done.  But every morning I sit down for an hour and 10 minutes in the morning, and I try to – I’d love to do it for an hour and 10 minutes in the evening, which is what the practise is – it’s non-sectarian, it’s non-religious.  But I try to do 15 minutes in the evening before I go to bed, but my wife wants to talk to me for some reason. So, I try and respect that. But when I first did Vipassana, I was very fit, physically able, very strong, no fat on me, but it was the most intense thing I’d ever done, sitting still for an hour and eventually when I first arrived at Vipassana meditation, it’s a 2500-year-old practise.  The Buddha started it, but it’s not Buddhist.  He, you know, he said this is a wonderful practise for just developing consciousness. And it’s a very simple meditation.  There’s no rituals or anything like that. It’s just being with your – it’s basically, this sounds weird but scanning your body and going through – and you pick up little sensations here and there that you didn’t know about.  And what happens is if you – if I call you a name or make a threat to you, you will feel it somewhere in your body – might be diaphragm, might be a sphincter, might be your buttocks, whatever.  And that’ll drive you. So, you’re not choosing your response to me.  But if I can say “shit I’m feeling really tight in the diaphragm or sphincter” or whatever it is, and I can go why? That’s my stuff going on underneath from when I was a child.  Because the other thing – another thing that Maria Montessori said is that we don’t start developing, and this is proven now, we don’t start developing our intellectual reasoning skills and our knowledge of the world until about nine and then we start developing that. So, what it means is that the primary user for the formation of both character and intellect is birth to six.  So, at six, you’re pretty much locked in, but you haven’t started thinking yet. You haven’t started reasoning yet. So, Adam wasn’t created by God. Your being was created by God. Adam was fabricated by you during a very ignorant time of your life.  Birth to six and then that’ll determine in a large proportion. Mark, your responses to threats, your responses to the world, how you see the world. Do I see myself as incompetent? Do I see myself as vulnerable? Do I see myself as whatever I see? And then I’ve got to look beneath that. So, when I first started meditating, it was excruciating. I didn’t know how I would finish the 10 days, the 11 days but I got through it, and I got a little voice going on inside my head saying you can do it, you can do it. And it wasn’t my inner talk, it was something else.  

Adam Hudson: It’s a silent retreat, right? So, you don’t talk. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: You don’t talk for 11 days or 10 days, the first 10 days. Because when we talk, when someone says something to you or even gestures to you, you interpret that – that dickhead, why did he do that, you know? And so, that judgement just clouds almost everything we do.  And so, you might do something to me or with me, my judgement based upon my zero to six, then interprets that and then puts it onto me saying, he’s telling me I’m incompetent, he’s telling me my whatever.  That points to my insecurities, not your nastiness.  

Adam Hudson: Let’s move back.  I just want to move back while – we got really close to that freedom of speech thing and I just want to close that loop, because for a guy that is so pro freedom and so freedom of speech, a lot of people are up in arms about the abstaining from the freedom of speech, you know, hate speech bill.  So can you just give us the context on what that bill was for that vast majority of Australians that don’t follow politics closely. What was the bill? What happened with the voting and why did you abstain from it? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: OK, first of all, you’re spreading misinformation. 

Adam Hudson: Okay. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: It’s a hate crime bill.  That’s the title of the bill.  

Adam Hudson: Yeah. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: A lot of people think it’s a hate speech bill. The second thing is that we had very good reasons. Pauline and I tossed it around – it was introduced very quickly and rushed through. So, we would normally oppose a bill for on that basis alone. Senator Rennick told a lie.  He came on to – as soon as the bill was done, he came out and said words to this effect – “One Nation has joined with the Liberals and Labor Party in supporting the bill.”  That is a complete lie – complete lie. We abstained, as you said. Then other people piled on. Clive Palmer piled on with lies. He made two statements. He said we supported the bill. That is false. We did not support the bill. We totally opposed it.  Then he also said it’s a hate speech bill. It’s not. And that’s what people have been pushing. If you look at what we’ve actually done in the freedom space, Pauline was the first to move a motion in the Senate as part of the first step of getting a committee to develop the terms of reference for a referendum on enshrining freedom of speech in the Constitution, Because it’s not in the Constitution. It’s implicitly there because of High Court rulings, but it’s not in the Constitution. And what happened during COVID fraud was, was completely wrong. So then, so we oppose the guillotining of the bill cutting – that means cutting of debate.  We opposed the bill itself because it was so poorly worded and some of the provisions like mandatory sentences, but even then – in the morning, Pauline was asked a question at a media conference: do you support mandatory sentencing? Well, in some ways we do support mandatory sentencing as a concept.  Forget about the bill for a minute. As a concept, for example, for terrorist crimes.  We’re tired of weak judges, but generally we’re opposed to the mandatory sentencing.  But she said in her response she will consider the mandatory sentencing. So that was labelled as her agreement – she doesn’t agree with it. So, there are many misrepresentations. So, that bill was about saying that you cannot threaten someone based upon their associations with a group, whether it be disability, because there are people threatening people with AIDS, for example. There are many different groups. Religion is another one. Many people are being threatened because of their religion. We can’t live in Australia in a free society with that kind of thing going on.  We can’t have threats of physical violence, threats of physical force. That is completely un-Australian. So, Pauline and I sat there and thought, what the hell do we do? Because normally with a bill that’s guillotined and a bill that we don’t like, it’s straight out oppose and then we said, hang on a minute, what about the signal we’re sending to the people who actually need this protection?  We want to send a signal saying we will consider aspects of the bill, so we will abstain. And so many people have piled on saying we supported the removal of freedom of speech. We did not. It’s a hate crimes bill to protect Australians against physical violence, physical threats, force being used. And we wanted to say we like that. So, we didn’t want to just trash the bill altogether. But we absolutely detest and do not support the detailed provisions in that bill. But it’s not a hate speech bill. 

Adam Hudson: Yeah, so it a case of – its nuanced and you couldn’t vote for or against the entirety of the bill. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, we could have. 

Adam Hudson: No, I mean, you could have, but there are aspects that you’re probably for and aspects that you’re probably not. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: One aspect that we’re for and that is the concept that Australians need to live in safety and security free from physical threats, violence and use of force.  So that was the nuance. Now there are some good people – Alex Antic, Ralph Babett, who came to me and said what’s your stance? And Alex – Alex and I get on really well.  So does Ralph – I think Ralph’s really good. 

Adam Hudson: Ralph’s trying to get it enshrined in the Constitution as well. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, he’s following in Pauline’s footsteps.  He’s trying a different approach because he’s trying to introduce it as a bill. We went through – the only way we can get it in the Constitution is go through a referendum. So, we went through the legally proper way.  But because it was a motion, it was voted against by the Greens, the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Nationals, from memory.  When you introduce a bill, which is what Ralph’s done, then very rarely do people oppose it.  So, Ralph won’t get anywhere with it, but he’s sending a signal, just like we did with abstaining.  There’s another point I was going to mention in there … anyway. 

Adam Hudson: Do you think we’re a danger of seeing our mildly racist grandpa getting arrested in their house just like we saw in the UK for making a comment on Facebook?  That free speech has just gone out the window in Australia, like in the UK and people are getting – like teachers are getting arrested for saying, you know there are only two genders, that kind of stuff? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: We are in danger of that.  When you’ve got a premier like Dan Andrews bringing in – yeah, it’s almost like vomiting rather than laughing, Mark, not having a go at you. 

Mark Di Paola: I lived in Melbourne during that time, so. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Dan Andrews government brought in the affirmation laws, which mean that – this is one of the things that I’m really passionate about – the parenting responsibilities and duties have been completely undermined.  And many parents don’t see that.  They’ve been done subtly but pervasively, just like so many other things.  So, if I had a son who is, you know, four, five, fourteen years of age and he came to me and said, Dad, I want to be a girl. Let’s say, “mate, you know, first of all, that quite often happens, it’s not uncommon for that to happen in adolescence. People just going through lots of changes hormonally. So, let’s sit down and talk about it”.  That’s what he wants. He’s upset about something else. So, you don’t change the topic. You just say: let’s discuss it, connect with him, listen to him, support him, say he’s okay for doing that and then get to the bottom and the only way you can get to the bottom of that is by listening to him.  He needs to feel heard. And quite often he will just say, no that’s not really, you know.  If it persists and it’s really strong because he’s being indoctrinated at school, which is the case in many, many occasions, then what you might do is bring in some counsellors. But it’s your job to protect him rather than just say, yeah, mate, cut your dick off or to a girl, cut your breasts off.  That’s wrong. Now, if you stand up and actually have that conversation with your child and question your child’s desire to change sex, then you are guilty of not affirming their desire and you can go to jail in Victoria. You can go to jail. And yet imagine what – and so what happens is a lot of parents, and I mean quite a few parents, are afraid, not only because of that, but because of the gender transformation, has become a cult. As gender dysphoria is a completely natural thing.  People are not happy with their gender. So let them work their way through it.  By the time they get to eighteen, certainly by the time they get to twenty-five , they say: oh, geez, I’m glad I didn’t cut my dick off, you know? But the other thing is there are only two genders, two sexes, male and female.  With a male, you’ve got an XY chromosomes, with a female, double X chromosomes. You cannot change that. So, when you affirm someone and they cut off their bits and pieces, you’re trapping them in something they’re not very comfortable with at heart.  And the majority of the suicides come from people who were told it’s okay Adam, you can reverse your transition. It’s a complete lie. You cannot reverse your transition. You are buggered for life because in well, the critical years for the formation of life, character and intellect are birth to six. In adolescence we go through myelinisation of the brain, enormous changes going on, the physical changes as well, but also mental changes. You start playing with that, with puberty blockers and you know, oestrogen and testosterone, you’re going to screw up the people and then when they’re wanting to have kids later, they might come back to being the gender they were in the first place, but even if they haven’t cut the bits and pieces off, they can’t have kids. 

Mark Di Paola: I think it’s, I think what you’re saying as well, and what I’ve heard a lot from people in the know is that when we’re going, like you just said, scientifically, when we’re going through that age, we are unsure about ourselves. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah. 

Mark Di Paola: Not just our genders. We are just unsure about ourselves when we’re going through puberty. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yep, and you’re flooded with hormones. 

Mark Di Paola: All these hormones like when a woman is pregnant, she’s flooded with hormones and her mood may change because of the hormones, whatever, whatever those moods are, positive or negative. The same thing happens when kids are going through puberty, there’s a whole bunch of changes that are going on internally leading us to be unsure about what’s happening and who we are. The fact that that’s been linked to gender seems like more fashion than it is science. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: You nailed it.  That’s exactly what it is.  But there’s also … 

Mark Di Paola:  Like, how can people say that I want to be considered a cat or I’m a furry or like, that’s … preference. 

Adam Hudson: I think we’re moving out of this madness, to be honest. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, we are.  And Trump is a big, big part of that. 

Mark Di Paola: But the point is, is that it is normal.  Like you were saying. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah.  And if you look, Adam, at what happened in the Senate, the Greens first started talking about this madness.  And what they do normally is they, they not only talk about the madness, but they then say, if you don’t agree, you’re anti, you’re … 

Mark Di Paola: They demonise you. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: What is it?  Transphobic? 

Mark Di Paola: Transphobic. 

Adam Hudson: They label you. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: So, you want to shut up?  Well, I realised very early, and I was the first one to speak out consistently against this, and what happened was the Greens would have four or five speakers speaking for it and I’d oppose it. 

*** AD BREAK *** 

Malcolm ROBERTS: And then bit by bit more jumped in – Canavan, Renick, Antic, Hanson, a very big one on this.  We had parents coming to see us, Babet was another one.  And the last time this was raised in the Senate, it was to do with a bill that we cosponsored to stop the federal government spending money on any trans – attempts to change gender.  And I spoke first – and I said, I looked across at the Greens and said “you’re the people that are causing kids to suicide because they changed their bits and pieces and they realise it’s not reversible and they commit suicide.”  And that was the first time they had been accused of suicide, causing suicide. And Nick McKim came up and he jumped up and he spoke a whole lot of bullshit.  He just went off.  His speech was so embarrassing that I posted it on my website.  They have no facts to go by. And he was the last of the Green speakers, one speaker and then up came the others, on our side. So, we had five speakers against their one. So, we had reversed the tables. Now I’m not trying to claim sole credit for that, but initially people were afraid of speaking up against it because they’d be labelled transphobic.  You had the Australian New Zealand Psychologist or Psychiatrist Association come out last year and saying affirmation is the completely wrong treatment for gender dysphoria. Well hello, where were you for the last years? But they waited until we gave them space to be able to say that.  So, a lot of doctors were bullied and intimidated into it because they’d be called transphobic if they didn’t just go along with it. 

Mark Di Paola: Just to be clear as well, I’m not saying and I don’t think you’re saying that gender dysphoria … 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Dysphoria? 

Mark Di Paola: Doesn’t exist.  We’re agreeing that it exists. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: We’re saying it does exist. 

Mark Di Paola: We’re saying that it exists.  We’re saying that affirmation is not the correct way treatment. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: And it became very significant when some of the gender clinics in overseas were shut down, the largest in the world, I think was Tavistock in Britain, that have been doing things automatically.  And they have now got the large class action suit against them.  Sweden, I think Finland, they’re shutting these clinics down and what we’re doing is opening them up in this country. 

So, it’s also important to understand, Mark, that there is a tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of people who are hermaphrodites.  They’re genuinely – they’ve got bits and pieces of both sexes in them.  So, the way to look after them is not to pillory and confuse kids. The way to look after them is just understand them and love them and respect them as humans.  That’s all people want. 

Eric Machado: Yeah.  You mentioned earlier trust and leadership. Now where do you feel, at the moment, in Australian politics that trust is being broken and leadership is lacking?  I know you probably have a long list, but what are some of the top things that you’re seeing? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: COVID, the anti-human lie, the belief that government can solve everything, every major problem in this country, Eric, comes out of Parliament House, Canberra – every major problem.  There are a few that come out of the state parliaments, but the federal government worsens them.  There’s another one, climate.  That’s a lie.  We have – I’ve done research on climate now for since 2007.  I’ve got an incredible colleague just South of Canberra. His IQ is off the scale, but more importantly, he’s very, very practical. He’s the sort of guy who says “I think I’ll build myself a magnetic levitation train” and you’re going what? And then – he doesn’t mean he’ll buy a few parts off eBay and assemble them.  He means going to his lathe and making them. This guy is off the scale when it comes to intelligence, but he’s very, very practical.  He loves research. He’s just inquisitive. He’s been that way ever since he was a boy, but he researches nature, he researches food, he researches climate. So, when he saw me flogging away on this thing he came and said I’ll help you. He developed computer programmes. He’s a computer programmer, but he’s also a wonderful human. He’s a Renaissance man. He can dabble in everything, and he wrote programmes to go into major sites around the world and scrape their climate data out – all legal – scrape that climate data. He’s amassed 24000 data sets on climate and energy. Not only does he do that, he then goes into statistical books, statistic books and works out ways of assembling them, combining them, mixing and matching them, and Mark and Eric, there is not a single climate factor – temperature, rainfall, drought severity, duration frequency, storm severity, duration frequency anywhere in the world that shows there is a change in climate.  

Eric Machado: Why are they pushing it? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Control and wealth transfer, is what they want.  And if you look at Maurice Strong, I wouldn’t mind talking about him in a minute.  Maurice Strong is the father of global warming in the 1970’s and then he became the father of the transformation to global climate change. They’re pushing it for control and wealth transfer. They want to control how we develop and what we can and can’t you. They’re wanting it also for funding the United Nations budget. At the moment, the United Nations relies upon donations, grants from member countries, particularly the United States. But what they want to do is develop their own budget so they’re independent and that’s what carbon tax, carbon dioxide taxes are eventually meant for.  They also want to look after parasitic bureaucrats, sorry parasitic billionaires and corporations that are going to feed off this. The major banks – Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Rothschilds Bank in Australia – their advisory boards included what was her name, the previous CSIRO chief executive – conflict of interest!  But the banks were looking at huge money exchanging, carbon dioxide credits, money and wealth transfer and what you’ve got, and these are not just my words, these are the words and admissions of the senior UN bureaucrats, including Christiana Figueres, who was head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC -she said this is about transforming the global economy, the economic world order and what they want to do is bring in socialism. Maurice Strong, as I said, he fabricated this.  Incredible intellect, incredible manipulator of people. He said he had two aims in life. One is to put in place an unelected socialist global government. These people are not our friends.  The second one was to deindustrialize Western civilisation. Get rid of these things (holds up mobile phone), get rid of our technology, get rid of this, get rid of what we’re seeing around us. These people are anti human and their practises, and their words are showing that. 

Adam Hudson: So, if they wanted to find, if I wanted to Google, is that true that those were his two aims in life, where would I find that information to confirm that?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: I’ve forgotten where I found it, but I checked it myself back in around 2007-2008. 

Adam Hudson: The guy’s name is what? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Maurice. M A U R I C E.  Strong. S T R O N G.  

Adam Hudson: So, verify guys.  Go out and look this up yourself, you know, and try to dig to this. Don’t just listen to Malcolm – do the work.  

Mark Di Paola: A lot of people give us flack about not fact checking it. But really like you were saying earlier, the responsibilities is on the listeners.  

Adam Hudson: So, this is a pretty evil dude, right? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: He is a very evil dude, but very, very slick. He was, he did, Maurice Strong, the most – oh where do you start?  The most significant thing – look up until about 1850, the middle of the start of the industrial revolution. Prior to that, our species were scratching around in the dirt, subject to famine, subject to all kinds of variations in weather, right? Very vulnerable. Then we developed hydrocarbon fuel – coal, oil and natural gas. They’re not fossil fuel, they’re hydrocarbon fuels. They’re combinations of hydrogen atoms and carbon atoms and they liberated humanity and the real price of energy until we started this climate crap was on a relentless decrease. The lower you get your price of energy, the more productive you are. Automatically.  The more productive you are, the more wealth and prosperity you have. And it’s not just the few billionaires who used to control the money, even though Rockefeller made a lot of money, everyone in society was lifted dramatically from 1850 to 1996.  Everyone!  We have never seen the human race move so much, and now we’ve seen China in just a space of 40 years emerge with material wealth.  Now we’re seeing India in on it and those countries want hydrocarbon fuel because they know that’s what the secret is.   

Mark Di Paola: And cheap energy? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Cheap energy, but it’s also reliable. See what we’ve done up until the use of hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, we were dependent on nature. We were dependent on beasts of burden; we were dependent on slaves. We were dependent on wind, solar, not solar as we know it today, but solar through crops. And if you had a prolonged drought, you’re buggered, that’s it, people died from famines.  Now we can store water, we can build dams, we can build clean water supply systems. So even the – for example – the dramatic improvement in health is due to that –  

Adam Hudson: All energy related? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: All energy related, it pervades, pervades everything. Now in 1996, John Howard came to power, and he said we will not comply. We will not sign the UN Kyoto agreement. I mean, you can check this out. And everyone went clap, clap, clap. But he said we will comply with it. What’s that mean? So, what he did was he started to reverse the cost of energy. Instead of relentlessly falling, he reversed it, which is reversing human progress. But what he also did was he recognised in 1996 the UNS Kyoto climate protocol came in 1997, all based on ********.  And what happens is when you’re at these gab fests, when you’re at Parliament House, you know, how a lot of people are sheep. There’s no difference amongst doctors, there’s no difference amongst politicians, there’s no difference amongst the political leaders from around the world who congregate and they just, they’re afraid to say sorry, but there’s no evidence for this. So, what he did was he put in place a renewable energy target, which we’re now seeing is destroying our electricity grid. We’ve gone from being the cheapest electricity in the world to the most expensive. Among the most expensive. He put in place the national electricity market, which is not a market, it’s a racket. It’s ********. It’s not a free exchange of, of electricity. It’s ruled by the bureaucrats who favour solar and wind. No doubt about it.  

Adam Hudson: This is what’s pushing price of everything up as well, right?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Then they say, oh, solar and wind are the cheapest. Well, why have we got record amounts of solar and wind and our and our prices are the highest they’ve ever been? Every country around the world, if that’s a graph of electricity price and percentage of solar, as you get more solar in, you get a higher price. Every country that’s done significant changes, John Howard brought that in, but here’s what he did. The liberals are supposed to – one of the things that they will die on the Hill for is secure property rights, because it’s fundamental to responsibility, fundamental to innovation, fundamental to human progress, fundamental to development. Property rights are absolutely essential. Well, John Howard said – his government said – people are not ready to buy off this carbon dioxide trading yet. This carbon – it’s a tax – and for the UN. So, what he said was let’s – what his government said was – let’s put in place credits for that. So instead of shutting down our factories, our cars, our trucks, our farming, our power stations, what we’ll do is we’ll go to the UN and say, mate, if we stop the clearing of land, that will save trees so they can absorb carbon dioxide. So would you give us a credit rather than shut down carbon dioxide production? We will stop the clearing of land. To do that, he had to confront Section 51, Clause 31 of the federal Constitution, which is that if you interfere with someone’s rights to use their property, you must pay just terms, compensation. Now, at the same time, the states do not have that protection.  

So, what John Howard did, it’s all documented. He went to the States and said, can you stop the clearing of land? You won’t have to pay compensation because Howard was looking at $100 to $200 billion dollars of compensation for the farmers. And they did that. Peter Beatty’s written about it, he was the premier at the time and, and Queensland and Bob Carr was the environment minister or the premier at the time in NSW. So, here’s a key plank of Liberal philosophy protecting property rights being completely trashed, completely trashed. So, you think of it, a farmer buys a farm, he’s got the right to clear the land because he wants to go from beef farming to a more value added, like wheat or something like that, whatever. Just, he can’t do it without getting permission. And that is the destruction of property rights. 

But it wasn’t just in the farms, it was in the towns. We’ve got a guy up in, Brisbane. 

I know his niece and he’s getting on in age and he said he wants to sell his blocks of land; He’s got a major site for development. So, this the City Council came in and said, yeah, you can sell them, but you’ll have to give us this area for park. Now, I don’t mind that the park’s been created, but you compensate him for it! You know, you don’t steal land off people.  

A fellow Mosman in Sydney, he told me that there are regulations in the Mosman City Council that say you’ve got to have a certain percentage of grass or Bush in your property. You can’t concrete it at all.  

Mark Di Paola: If you want to concrete it, go ahead and concrete it.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: You know, if you affect the drainage and it effects a neighbour, then you have to wear the cost of that, but you know what I mean? Property rights are fundamental.  

Mark Di Paola: Windfall tax is another one in Victoria. The windfall tax, like in taxing property, that’s another way of stealing property rights, isn’t it?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah. 

Adam Hudson: They just tax people on the Gold Coast, if you’re on level 5 or above, now their rates are up 40%. 

Mark Di Paola: One of the things that got the most attention on- 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Did I answer your question, by the way, about the hate crimes Bill? 

Adam Hudson: You did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: That’s right, I started just before we go on, with what you’re talking about, Mark. So, I mixed with Ralph Babet and Alex Antic in particular. And then Ralph said to me, what are you doing on the bill? And I said abstaining. He said, oh, mate, you got to oppose it. And I said, yeah, there’s grounds for that. And he had – I like Ralph – I was seriously considering opposing it. And I remember the conversation we had with Pauline; I was umming and ahing. So it’s not an easy thing to do because we also opposed all of the guillotines and we supported the motion that failed to extend the debate because that was what we’re really after. We’re after better debate, a better examination of the bill. The Labor Party combining with the Greens usually and often with the Liberals. In this case, it was the Liberals, guillotined 205 bills, as of now. 

Adam Hudson: No debate? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: No debate, no or minimal debate, just truncated debate. So what I’m saying is, quite often we would say just oppose it, but we had to send a signal. Pauline and I, we’re not afraid to be the only two, we’re not. Because we had to send a signal, and I’ve had people walk up to me and say, we understand what you did, thank you. Because it means you’re protecting our security.  

Mark Di Paola: I think This is why podcasts in this new medium of media, like you mentioned at the start is so important because, you know, I even responded to Pauline about the bill on X and she responded and I still didn’t quite understand it. But hearing you speak about it today, it’s helped me to understand that there’s parts of what is in that bill that you support and that’s, that everybody should feel safe from threat.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: The other thing, Mark, is that on the morning of the day of that bill being voted on, we released a suite of policies. And I’m happy to talk about them later, but they’re very comprehensive. And they’re all about putting more money in people’s pockets because we are going through a hell of a tough time with families and singles and small businesses in this country. And that needs to be addressed. We’ve got rampant government that is stealing this money and wasting it, ******* it up against the wall. That’s what we want to bring back. Our policies were released on the evening before to the major public, major newspapers in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne and they took off, you know, on the comments sections beneath the newspaper articles, online wonderfully positive. And some other minor parties went **** what do we do?  

Adam Hudson: Copy them.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: No, no, no, steal the airtime, steal the airtime and, and smash them and try and destroy us through lies. As I said, Gerard Rennick told a lie. We did not support the bill along with the Liberal and Labor Party. We abstained and I’ve explained that. 

Adam Hudson: I want to talk about you. You touched on something, because we are a business show and I’d love your input because I haven’t had the –  what?  

Mark Di Paola: I was just going to ask about the 44% on property. Well, we’re talking about property rights and taxes.  

Adam Hudson: Yeah, OK. 

Mark Di Paola: That’s one of the things that got a lot of comment, and a lot of feedback was Pauline mentioned that 44% of building a new house is in one form tax. And a lot of people said, oh, she’s a liar. You guys are lying. You guys, you should have fact checked it. Like it’s ******** it’s crap. I’m a developer. That’s not true. Can you clarify where that 44% comes from?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, that comes from-  in the first place, I knew about this ten years ago. 

Someone showed me a newspaper article in Sydney Sun Herald, I think, or the Herald Sun or whatever it’s called in Sydney or the Telegraph, might have been Telegraph, I can’t remember. 

Whichever one Murdoch owns and it was quoting the Housing Institute of Australia or the Housing Institute of NSW or NSW Realtors, whatever they said it’s 45% to 50%. And, if you look at, there are so many factors there, if you look at, I organised and led an economic summit in in our Senate office in one of the buildings at QLD Parliament House, Queensland State Parliament House in 2017. We had a number of economists there and Alan Moran, Doctor Alan Moran, he said that the cost of building a house in Houston, Texas and Sydney, Australia at that time were about the same. 

The cost of the land was astronomically high in this country. So there’s so many things. It’s not just land prices, which are just being raised dramatically by regulations. Red tape, blue tape, green tape- 

Mark Di Paola: Open space contributions, wind taxes – 

Malcolm ROBERTS: And green tap, we as you, as you know, because of my stance on the on the environment needing to be healthy for civilizations future. I’m a, really pro-environmental person, but I’m after sensible policies because I’m also pro human. And, the environmental movement has been hijacked by ideology. It’s a ******** movement. Now the,  greens, because they’re using the environment as a way of saying you’re evil. Let us control it. And, so that’s what they’re doing. So does that answer your question?  

Adam Hudson: Yeah. So, you mentioned in passing that the whole climate debate is a massive fraud, but the other one that you mentioned in passing was the debasement and the printing of money and the Fiat currency. Can you speak to that quickly though, because I’ve, I’ve been getting barbecued over the last few weeks about trying to highlight how, you know, I think it’s a, you know, money in the bank that you’ve gone out and worked for is, you know, just an abstracted form of your time and energy.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: You’re correct.  

Adam Hudson: And it’s sitting there in a bank account getting devalued. And we just accept. OK, well, it’s just inflation, but it shouldn’t be the case. Can you in like, Can you speak to that?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Sure. It’s a stealth tax. We – I’ll come back to that – Let’s have a look at a real example here in this country during the COVID fraud, the COVID mismanagement, the COVID response. It wasn’t COVID that caused the problems. It was government that caused the problems. And, I’m going to put my hand up and say that when it first arrived here, we were given these pictures of people dead in the streets of Italy and France and Greece and China and all the rest of it. We now know that they were propaganda. They were complete ********   – the death toll from COVID was less than the flu.  

Adam Hudson: Do you mean – we – are you talking about the political class?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, yeah, I’m not part of the political class, but- 

Adam Hudson: But you know what I mean. So, in Parliament, you’re not talking about general population, in Parliament. You guys were getting this stuff given to you.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah. And we could see it on the news. 

Adam Hudson: OK, so they sit you down and say all right, and who is they? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: No, no, no. The propaganda was everywhere through the media, and I’ll see if I can cover all the points. So we went, **** what if this is real? That means if it’s real, you have got to do something to prevent it. So we said OK to the government, Morrison’s government, go for it. Job. What was it called? Job seeker and job keeper.  

Adam Hudson: Job keeper or something?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, the second one was job keeper. Hundreds of billions of dollars – 

Adam Hudson: Printed. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Printed. And if people want a source of the printing, there are many, many very good books, credible books that discuss it. Henry Ford, who was no slouch, he was a well-known businessman. He said if the people knew what the what was going on with their money, there would be a revolution by morning. One of the best places to hide something is on people’s noses. 

They let them have a look at it every day. They get so used to it, people – This has been happening since 1913 with the Federal Reserve Bank, which is privately owned. That’s another fact. But I asked a question of the Reserve Bank of Australia governor at Senate Estimates and the deputy governor answered my question. I said, is it true that money is basically printed? I can’t remember my exact question. And he said an electronic ledgers and he paused and he sort of thought about it and he said, yes, Senator Roberts, electronic journal entries. So yes, it is. So what happens is they don’t have any assets at stake. They just make an entry in a Ledger and then they give you the loan and when you default, you lose your asset. But they haven’t got anything at stake, just reserves and they’re fabricated. So yes, it’s very true. Now, if you have a look at what Morrison did and the Reserve Bank of Australia during COVID, they flooded the joint with cash. 

We told them that will lead to severe inflation. No, no, no, no it won’t. Well, it did. And then we had Chalmers come in as the treasurer and Albanese as the Prime Minister and continuing to hand out cash and that’s what perpetuated inflation.  

Adam Hudson: So what’s One Nation’s view of Bitcoin?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: We don’t have an official view of Bitcoin. I’m still doing my research on that at the moment, I would say, and I’ve read one book on it. I’m about to read another and I’ve listened to people. There seems to be. I’ll see if I can put my thoughts together on this. There seems to be genuine merit in it. They’re worth exploring. There seems to be. What’s attractive to me is I can’t understand this yet or put my finger on it, but it seems to be it’s a way of bypassing central banks, which I love. Sorry, I don’t love central banks. I love the bypassing of central banks. It makes money honest again, because with printing of money, money is not honest. With gold standard, the money is honest. But people are telling me that Bitcoin is a bit like the gold standard. So I’m really keen to learn more. Trump sent the right signals about that. So maybe that’s correct. What was the other thing? I was going to say it, it takes it out of the hands of the central bank and puts it in the hands of the people, which I love. But there are, that’s right. The other thing is I’ve got a very good one of my, well, I’ve got fantastic staff, but one, one of them is an economist by training, but he’s practical, he’s run businesses. He’s not just a theoretical economist. He said Bitcoin at the moment is still highly volatile. And so he said do not buy Bitcoin in one hit because you could buy it up here and lose your money. He said buy it on weekly instalments and they said they’re not, you’ll average out overall. 

But he said- 

Adam Hudson: *inaudible* cost average, yeah. The one book to read is the Bitcoin Standard. That’s  the Bible if you want to learn that space.  

Mark Di Paola: And we always talk about money printing and debasement. And there’s a really, really good book by Lynn Olden called Broken Money and it just talks about the history of money and, how like it’s a very abstract thought money printing.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Is that Lynn? 

Mark Di Paola: Lynn Olden.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, I watched her half hour video. There was nothing there new, well a couple of things that were new. But when I when I first started on this climate scam, because as an engineer, I’ve been taught that science is the basis of engineering. So I understand what science really is. And as a mining engineer, I had to keep people alive underground. That meant ventilating mines, that meant understanding atmospheric gases. And when I realised that they were telling us that carbon dioxide from human activity was destroying the planet, I went ******** because the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 0.04%. And somebody said, Oh yeah, but one of the, you know, you can have that much arsenic in your in your food and you’ll die. And I said, yeah, but this is not a chemical effect. This is a physical effect. 0.04% of the Earth’s atmosphere is not going to cause any problems. We now know that’s true because if you look at what they’re telling us about climate is that we’re causing an increase in levels of carbon dioxide which is causing heating. Now what we need to do then is stop the production of human carbon dioxide, which is cut back on livestock, see the control of food cut back, especially on the use of coal, oil and natural gas, cars, etcetera. Now we’ve had two natural experiments on that. What they said was if we cut back on the use of these fuels, we will do that to our production of- to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been going up, but that’s controlled entirely by nature. So let me explain why in 2009, we had a severe recession around the world, almost a depression because of the global financial crisis. So when you go into a recession, you produce- you use less hydrocarbon fuels and you produce less carbon dioxide. 

So what happened to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, you’d expect it to go like that. 

It didn’t. That’s what they told us. It went like that, continued increasing. And then in 2020, we had the COVID near depression around the world because everyone’s shut down. And again, you’d expect it to cut level of carbon dioxide to do that. 

That’s what they told us it did, that there’s not even an Inflexion, not even an Inflexion because people don’t realise that according to Henry’s law, the oceans control the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because the oceans have in dissolved form 50 to 70 times more carbon dioxide than in the entire atmosphere. And that’s, that’s from the United Nations figures themselves. So what it means is that if you have slight increases in temperature, carbon dioxide gets released from the oceans. If you have slight decreases in temperature, carbon dioxide gets absorbed into the oceans. So that’s what controls it. And you can see every year there’s a seasonal level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And- 

Adam Hudson: It’s fascinating.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: It’s just- 

Adam Hudson: We’re running out of time. So we’ve got Eric here. I’d love to just run through before we finish. And I’ll get Eric to just some of these policies that you and Pauline announced from, it looked like you’re in Parliament House when you were- 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah. 

Adam Hudson: -Press conference. I’d love to run through those quickly. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Sure. 

Adam Hudson: If people are thinking of voting for One Nation, you can run through the reasons why before we wind it up. Did you have a question, Eric? 

Eric Machado: Yeah. Earlier you mentioned people saying thank you, keep going, job well done. And Pauline Hanson said the same thing off camera. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: She’s a walking logo, they see the red hair and just flock. 

Eric Machado: Yeah. But she says that it’s not reflecting in the voting as much as she wants. Why is that? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Two reasons. One is that people are ingrained to vote like mum and dad. If their mum voted Liberal and dad voted Liberal, they vote Liberal. If they vote Labour, they vote Labour. That’s entrenched. Another part of that, Eric, is that the media you watch, it’s already started. They will focus on Labour, Liberal, Labour, Liberal, Labour, Liberal Albanese, Dutton, Albanese, Dutton, Albanese, Dutton. They’re indoctrinating people to think that they’re the only two choices. So if you don’t like Labour, vote Liberal. So that that that’s what’s going on. We also saw in the Queensland election for example, Labour has been so bad in Queensland that they just barely got in 2020 because of COVID. Because when they had the COVID mismanagement people thought that Anna kept us safe. A complete lie. But that’s what they did so they kept her back. 

If she, if COVID hadn’t happened she would have been out on her ***. In February of 2020 she was gone. So people are misled. But the second thing is that they got so bad in the following four years that in October of 2024, when we had the state election, people were saying we got to get rid of Labour. That was the overriding thing, got to get rid of Labour. So people walked into the, into the ballot box thinking can’t have Labour back, can’t have Labour back. So I’ll vote for the other guys. The other guys, the Liberal Party. I saw time and time again people would walk out of the polling booth and say voted for you Malcolm, love your work. I put One nation #2. Put Liberals #1 because they were scared. So what we’re saying to people is we understand you don’t want Labour back. 

And I think the same is with Albanese. For goodness sake, vote conviction because we’ve got so many people who are saying One Nation’s policies are the right ones for us. Vote conviction. So put One nation #1 and I will guarantee you that whoever you put #2 we will do a better job then. 

But then the second thing is, OK, now you’re worried about Labour getting back. All you have to do is put Liberal before Labour and your vote. If we don’t get in, and the other minor parties don’t get in. Your vote will stop at Liberal. So vote two things, vote conviction and vote protection. Vote conviction, put One Nation number one. If we don’t get in, you’re at the right protection, which means your vote will go to Liberal. And if you don’t like Liberal and you want to make sure that Liberals don’t get in and just put Labour before Liberal. But above all, put One Nation number one. 

Mark Di Paola: That’s a great explanation on how that works. 

Adam Hudson: And if you are interested, we actually built this for Pauline’s visit, but we’re going to reuse it here. If you go to unemployable.com dot AU/OneNation   -ONE, not the numeral one, but the spelling ONE. So unemployable.com dot AU/OneNation, we’ve set up a page here where we had gotten all your policies from the website and we’ve put them into AI and it’s turned it into a podcast where for 20 minutes you can hear AI explain to you. And they haven’t leftied it. They’ve, they’ve left it really quite balanced where they’ve unpacked all of your policies and explained it to you and planning yourself. If you’re not a reader and you’re not going to sit there and download the PDFs or whatever. Download, go there, we’ll give you the print out and we’ll give you the audio and you can just hear it read to you by an, well, as impartial as AI can be, it’s not by us, it’s by AI and it’ll, give you a rundown of all their policies for free. Just go to our web page. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: The, the key thing is that, as I said earlier, our policies have been costed. They’re based on budget costs, based on Parliamentary Budget Office estimates. The, key part of it is putting more money in your pocket. And where do we get the money from? We get more than enough. We get 40 million, $40 billion to put money into people’s pockets. And that the things we’re doing there are productivity enhancements like cutting the cost of fuel, which is in everything, cutting through that. 

Adam Hudson: That was cool. So 50% fuel, excise cut, wasn’t it? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, 26c a litre.  

Adam Hudson: 26 cents a litre. You’re delivering that by cutting the fuel excise for the first 12 months of your election, straight away. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, I’m, working on getting Pauline to make that three years. 

Adam Hudson: OK.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: That’ll send a stronger signal to the Reserve Bank. These policies the Reserve Bank will love. 

Adam Hudson: So that’s one getting aged care, sorry, older people back to work, who want to be in work? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, there’s a really powerful one called income splitting. So if a male and female or husband and wife, spouse, whatever partner, whatever you want to call it, if one of them’s working and the other one’s not looking after the kids, then you can combine your income and divide it by two as it so, so that dramatically drops your tax rate. So that will for a typical family on an average income with one stay at home parent, that will save about $9500 to $10,000 a year. 

Adam Hudson: Yeah. So that brings the threshold, I think before you pay taxes up to 35 grand. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, that’s for the self managed super annuit.  

Adam Hudson: Oh, sorry. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So income splitting is one.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yes, and the other thing is cutting the electricity prices because of the- at the moment coal is being smashed. It’s causing destruction of the, coal boilers, the generators for electricity because coal is meant to be stable base load power that’s being switched on and switched off and that’s destroying it. So there’s nothing cheaper than coal anywhere in the world. That’s why the Chinese are wanting it. We produce 560 million tonnes of coal roughly a year. Chinese produce 4.5 billion and they’re heading for more and they’re importing, they’re heading for five and they’re importing out. So coal is not dead. The forecasts for coal are dramatically increasing. We are shooting ourselves in the head economically in this this country. So, So what we want to do is change the national electricity- what we will do is change the national electricity market rules which govern the allocation of electricity rather than being artificially favouring solar and wind which destroys coal, makes it uncompetitive. We want to just let the cheapest go. 

Adam Hudson: And I know one of the things we hear over and over and over is we are just not getting anything for our resources. What’s your plan? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yes, we want to put an excise, a tax, sorry, not an excess, a tax on production and exporting of, of natural gas. At the moment, Norway does that, Qatar does that and they get so much money from doing that. Norway gives it to a wealth fund for their citizens. Qatar, I don’t know what happens to it, but in our country, Bob Hawke and John Howard, Labour and Liberal basically gave our gas away. And what we want to do is tax that based upon volume of production, not on profit and loss. Because as you know, with profit and loss, you can make it anything you want. 

Hosts: Exactly. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: So you can cut your tax dramatically to almost zero just by just by allocating costs to fire- 

Adam Hudson: So you’re basically proposing to tariff it, right? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah. 

Adam Hudson: Yeah. So you would tariff it so we get paid for it. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: We’re in a crazy situation, Adam. I’m told that the Japanese import our gas- 

Adam Hudson: And resell it. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, not only that, but they import our gas and they charge their importers $3 billion as import duty. And we get sweet FA and, and, and, but think about that. 

Hosts: *inaudible*  

Malcolm ROBERTS: We have got the world’s largest tax evader in Chevron, basically an American company taking our resources and paying zip and John Howard introduced, introduced the exporting of that gas. He authorised the exporting, his government. Prior to that, Bob Hawke changed the petroleum rent resources tax. It sounds wonderful. It guaranteed that they won’t pay any tax. So  both parties are doing it and then they don’t want to tax it. We also want to get a pipeline across the country because we know that our net Northwest shelf gas can be converted to liquid fuels, diesel and petrol. We can be self sufficient. 

Adam Hudson: OK, guys, you know, JFK said every country gets the government they deserve. That we live in a democracy. You can vote actually, guys, and you know how to vote if you want to, if you like what Malcolm’s saying anything else? What else are you guys going to get stuck into to put more money back in our pockets as a nation and as a people? I’ve got here some notes. NDIS, Medicare fraud. Fraud is huge in NDIS. Fraud is huge in Medicare. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Well, there are four components, as I said. The first one is putting more money in people’s pockets. So the second one is where do you get the money from? Third one is that the money that we can get from shutting down waste and duplication in the federal government is around about at least $90 billion. So that means $40 billion to put more money in people’s pockets. That leaves another 50, so another $20 billion a year in investing in infrastructure for the future productivity and the future wealth and the rest can go after paying the debt because at the moment we have got a debt of about $800 billion, eight hundred and something $860 billion in 2026/27 that will be- the interest payments will be the largest single budget item there is. That’s if NDIS doesn’t go rampant. So where are we getting the money from? From shutting down government waste and duplication. Shut down. Abolish the, the climate fraud department. Sorry, the climate change department, because that is that’ll, that’ll save us at least $30 billion a year. Then all the regulations, the subsidies, all the rest of the go to that and it’ll free up the price of electricity, reduce the price of electricity dramatically and it will also get the government the hell out of interfering in people’s lives. The government through the climate change, climate fraud policies, net zero from the United Nations Paris Agreement for the United Nations, which both the major parties are pushing. What we will do is take the government out of every aspect of your lives. It if you look at energy, it’s in everything.  

The second thing is the health and health, education, housing under the under the Constitution are state government responsibilities. And when you have states, this is really important. When you have states being responsible for something, then they compete on being better than other people. That gives us accountability. So what happens is if, if NSW does a better job on education than Queensland, people will actually leave Queensland and go to NSW because you’ve got choice. So when you’ve got no choice, you’ve got no accountability. So at the moment, the federal government has come in, John Howard again introduced the national curriculum, which has come, which has come in from the United Nations. That’s why our education standards are dropping, plummeting, because there’s no accountability now, because when the federal government has a curriculum, there’s no competing curriculum. So federal waste in duplicating the state and then on education and health and aged care and housing, that’ll go. That saves billions there. 

We also want to abolish the federal government looking after, well, no, they don’t look after. They destroy the federal government department of, of Aboriginal Affairs, well, all the racket and the white and black Aboriginal industry. And instead we would, we would fund grants to the local communities, bypass all the all the white and black Aboriginal aboriginal industry. There are other departments, NDIS bring that back into shape. That’s a real disaster. And it’s because, well, not only is, is there so much fraud going on, Adam, but people who deserve care are not getting it. And people who, who are, who are not entitled or are getting huge amounts spent on them. 

Adam Hudson: Providers are just milking it at a lot of providers. I’ve, I’ve just had story after story. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: You know, I didn’t learn about this until yesterday. I haven’t checked it out, but we had two really well-spoken a man and a woman from one of the they’re privately owned, but they’re one of the biggest providers of NDIS care, right? And they’re Australian and, they employ employees. Some of the foreign equity firms, you know, that signals they’re after money also have provide providers. They don’t employ them. They put them on an Uber type contract. So they don’t pay compensation, workers compensation, they don’t pay superannuation, they don’t pay payroll tax. And so what’s happening is the federal government reimburses them, and they skim off what, what would that be? 12, 14 15%. And that’s going straight overseas. It’s rampant. But there there’s a lack of accountability. So these guys were telling us, I forgot what I was going to say about that, but it’s just rife. I learned so many new things just when listening to these people. And we thought we’d have done our research on NDIS. It’s just been rorted.  But the important thing is it’s got to be brought into control because if you don’t, the people who need care won’t get it. 

Adam Hudson: That’s the sad irony of the whole thing is that that that’s what always happens with these things is the scammers get paid and the people who actually need it end up. 

To jump through more hoops and they’re already under enough stress and duress. 

It’s the mismanagement of the programme. It’s always problematic. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: It was brought in by Julia Gillard to try and win an election. She brought in the Gonski report which was for education. She brought in the NDIS just to get headlines for an election and they had no bone, no meat around the bones. And the late Liberal Party came in. What do we do with this? And then they became paranoid about fraud because- 

Adam Hudson: It’s approaching our military budget, isn’t it? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yes. 

Hosts: Yeah. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: I think it’s above. 

Adam Hudson: It’s above the military. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: I think so. 

Mark Di Paola: Isn’t all of the two biggest line items NDIS and interest rate payment? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: I think you’re right. Medicare, welfare, social services would be up there somewhere. 

Adam Hudson: I think as much in the vicinity of what it costs to defend the country on disability support. I mean, that to me is like that just does not sound correct. 

Mark Di Paola: Well, the numbers don’t- 

Adam Hudson: It just doesn’t work. In closing, probably one of the hottest topics right now with housing affordability and just the state of the nation is immigration. What’s One Nation’s net zero immigration policy? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Zero net, I call it because net zero, no, no, Net zero is the carbon dioxide scam. Zero net is immigration. What we want to do, I’ll make these very, very clear. There is no bigger threat to the housing prices to no bigger cause driver of housing prices which are now at record levels and unaffordable for many people and also rents than immigration. So what we want to do is both reduce the demand for houses and, increase the supply of houses and also reduce the cost of new houses and that’ll all drive down rents. Rents are just sky rocketing. So we want to stop immigration, not forever. So really it’s a pause. We want to deport , people who are here illegally. The federal government’s just, I don’t care. Both Liberal and Labour and the big immigration policy was brought in by John Howard and perpetuated by each of the prime ministers. Since then, Liberal, Labour, Nationals, all of them have perpetuated the big immigration. One of the one of the really sad things, inhuman things is that Albanese, Albanese said when he first came into power.  

We will continue big immigration until we catch up with pre COVID levels. Pre COVID there are 1.9 million people here on resident visas or temporary visas, temporary visas, I should say temporary visas. There are now 2.5 million people here on temporary visas and they each need a roof, they each need a bed that taking up houses. We’ve got so many of them here illegally. We want to deport them. So that will- stopping immigration until their infrastructure catches up because they haven’t been doing spending on major infrastructure for decades. Dams, railroads, roads, hospitals, schools that haven’t done that. That’ll allow the infrastructure to catch up, allow the housing to catch up. The quality of people is also something that’s really important. Albanese is telling us that we’re bringing in construction workers. That is complete ********. The percentage of people in amongst our immigrants that are construction workers is 0.6%. They’re supposed to build the houses for the other 99.4%. It is crap. What the reason Albanese is doing this massive immigration is that we have a per capita recession. So on the basis of per person, we’re in recession. So if the only way you can stop that becoming a recession and then him, then Charmer’s being labelled as the treasurer and Albanese the Prime Minister when the recession occurred is by bringing in more people to pump up the gross domestic product. That’s what it’s all about. 

So we would so, so that would stop, that would reduce demand by stopping immigration, pausing immigration, deporting people who are here illegally. Then the other thing about freeing up supply, stop all foreign ownership of housing and farms, stop it.  

Adam Hudson: Permanently or temporarily? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Permanently. And, the Liberal Party and Labor Party have both realised that people are waking up. We have been pushing this Adam for about 3 years now. Really severely. 

Adam Hudson: So like Indonesia, you can’t buy in Indonesia, you can lease the land-  

Malcolm ROBERTS: China you can’t. 

Adam Hudson: China so you can’t own you, could they do leasehold or something or what’s the plan? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: No ownership. 

Adam Hudson: no ownership. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: No ownership. New Zealand’s just done it. When I say just fairly recently. 

Adam Hudson: Even Australians, I think in New Zealand have to apply now for owning in New Zealand. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: The Canadians have done it though. But we wouldn’t say sell overnight. We’d say give them two or three years to sell, but well, I would say 2 years. 

Adam Hudson: You mean if they own, they have to sell?  

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yes. 

Adam Hudson: Even OK retrospectively. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: If they own it now they have to sell it. 

Adam Hudson: Wow. Wow. 

Mark Di Paola: Do you think that it’d stop like foreign-  like one of the big things that Trump seems to be running on and executing on is getting foreign investment into the USA, getting Japan and all these other countries to invest into the US economy. Do you think that would hurt our, our Australian economy stopping foreign investment? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: We don’t, we don’t mind in, in housing- 

Mark Di Paola: bringing housing prices down is one thing, but destroying the economy through a lack of investment, Not that far. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: We’re not opposed to foreign investment. We’re opposed to foreign control and ownership. 

Adam Hudson: Do you know, do you know any other numbers around that? Like how much of our property is owned by foreigners? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Housing property? 

Adam Hudson: yeah,  

Malcolm ROBERTS: OK. 

Adam Hudson: Residential. Yeah. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: According to the Australian Taxation Office and the Foreign Investment Review Board, it’s less than 1%. But that’s complete rubbish because the National Australia Bank have done surveys and it’s around about 14.9% in New South Wales. 

Adam Hudson: So OK. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: And then you’ve also got real estate agents telling us the same thing. 

Adam Hudson: So your policy would see 15% of residential properties in Australia all of a sudden come onto the market in two years? 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Over 2 years, Yeah, not overnight, but over 2 years. 

Adam Hudson: That’ll bring property prices down. I would say yeah, but I’m not saying, I’m not saying it’s a good or a bad thing. I’m just processing it. It’s an interesting idea. 

Mark Di Paola: It is a bad thing because it’ll crash the economy. 

Eric Machado: I just know that there’s a lot of Australians wealth is in property, right, Compared to US. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Yeah, and the banks are holding back lending to small businesses, medium sized businesses and just going for the property market. 

Adam Hudson: I think it’s interesting because you sort of got a divided nation right now. And so the, the young people are probably who don’t own assets are probably cheering and the rest of the country who are, who own assets are probably not. But it’s, well, I think Australia does have to make some hard decisions. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: We also want to take, stop the GST on building on house construction materials. 

Adam Hudson: That’s a great idea. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: which would reduce the cost of housing, making land more freely available because that’s being held back at the moment by some developers, but also by the regulations which are, which are way above what’s needed. There’s something else I was going to mention in there. 

Adam Hudson: I’ve got some notes here from the press conference, but I think you’ve covered most of them, energy prices was a good one, NDIS, Medicare. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: So just on energy prices and the excise for cutting 26 cents off the cost of a litre of fuel. They’re, very, very positive because they’ll improve productivity and they’ll reduce the cost. 

Energy transport and electricity are input costs right across the economy. So they will drop prices. These are not inflationary, but, but we’re putting more money back in people’s pockets. We’ll improve the productivity of the economy, which is generate wealth, not inflation. 

Adam Hudson: Senator Malcolm Roberts, it’s been an absolute pleasure listening to you and hearing your ideas for the country. And yeah, I really just want to say thank you on behalf of us and all the listeners for taking the time to actually have a long form discussion and all the work that politicians in this country do. I think it’s a tough job and you cop a lot of **** and the pay is not that good. So you, you must do it for, and it’s really clearly evident here, you do it because you believe in the country and you want to make a better place for us here. I was genuinely surprised by some of the aspects of the conversation pleasantly and I really enjoyed the chat. So thank you for coming in. Drop a comment guys below the video. By engaging in this content, guys, through a like or a comment, it sends a message to other politicians and people of power that, hey, we’re paying attention here. We’re paying attention to these alternative channels of communication and we’ll get more guests of this quality and calliper into the studio.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: And I want to thank you not only for the invitation but thank you all for what you’re doing. Because as I said, there is nothing more important than freedom of life, but very, very, close on the heels. And what makes freedom of life possible is freedom of speech and the only way to avoid the direct and also the implied censorship of the mouthpiece media, that globalist Big Brother media is free independent podcasters, because that’s the only way to get real opinions and facts out. 

Adam Hudson: Our pleasure. It’s days like this that I feel good about what we’re doing. Like we’re not-  

Eric Machado: It’s, education, right? Like in the Australian people. I think the Western world need to be a lot more educated and a lot more interested in politics because it’s not something that’s really learnt in school.  

Malcolm ROBERTS: It’s deliberately taken out.  

Eric Machado: Yeah. And it’s not something that, you know, my parents never really gave me the, you know, the birds and the bees. Talk about Pol-  you know, politics. It was basically, hey, my parents voted liberal. So what do you do? You vote liberal. It’s exactly what you said, right? You’re basically entrenched in that. So I think these pieces are very important because a lot of people don’t realise how much business and politics are intertwined. 

Malcolm ROBERTS: Harry Truman said, The former U.S. President, once U.S. President, said the only thing new in the world is the history you have not read. It’s all happened before. What they do, the globalist curriculum, is to take out civics, which you aren’t. You know how our political systems work, how democracy works, how the Constitution works, history. Because then people are completely ignorant and they don’t understand the significance of even voting.  

Adam Hudson: Yep, I agree. That’s it for today guys. Thank you for watching. We’ll see you on the next episode of Unemployable. 

Australia has a housing crisis fueled by excessive immigration and a shortage of skilled tradespeople. The Help to Buy Bill 2023 is fundamentally flawed and unlikely to offer real solutions.

Why are we importing millions of migrants when Australians are sleeping on the streets?

The major parties talk about the housing crisis but fail to make a real impact.

One Nation is the only party that can be trusted to put Australians first.

Transcript

We have a housing catastrophe due to rampant immigration—excessive, reckless, record immigration. We also have a housing crisis because we don’t have enough tradies to build the houses that we need. The Help to Buy Bill 2023 is a bill that won’t help anyone. Right now, Queenslanders, in what should be the richest state in the world, are sleeping under bridges and on riverbanks. In one of the world’s richest states, working families with children are living in cars, coming home at night to wonder if their kids are still there. Where do they toilet? Where do they shower? It’s plain inhuman. Rents are skyrocketing—if a rental can be found. House prices are reaching record highs. This is a housing crisis, one of the worst we’ve faced. It’s an inhuman catastrophe. 

Last year, the federal government under Anthony Albanese brought in 517,000 net migrants. This year, after being promised that we would have lower immigration, we are tracking to have another new record—one above last year’s. How can you bring in more than a million people in two years? That’s hundreds of thousands of houses. How can you build them? We aren’t catering for the people already here, and now we’re bringing in record numbers—a million in two years. That’s 400,000 new houses needed, in addition to the already high demand and the people living homeless at the moment. 

The Albanese government, though, wants to look like it’s doing something—not do something but look like. Enter this Help to Buy plan. Under this plan, the government wants to own a significant part of your house. If it’s an existing place, the government wants to own 30 per cent, and, if it’s a new place, 40 per cent, with the government paying for part of it with low-income earners. While a 40 per cent subsidy might sound attractive, it’s fatally flawed. If the government just borrows more money for this plan, then one thing is going to happen. When you give 40 per cent more money to people to buy a house, house prices are going to go up. House prices will go up. The bill’s core concept and premise is flawed and possibly a lie. We can’t subsidise our way out of a house price problem. Subsidies always increase prices and have throughout history. Looking at the bill’s details, or lack of details, the problem is worse. I’ll look at some of the criteria in a minute. 

Thirdly, let’s look at the constitutional basis. This bill is completely outside the federal government’s powers. It’s highly complex. The government has tabled a late amendment to the bill, attempting to clarify a set of constitutional issues—too complex. 

I’ll go back to the immigration. In addition to rampant immigration of people coming into the country, prior to COVID, the number of temporary visa holders in the country was around 2.3 million people. As of the end of 24 July, that number is now 2.8 million—more than 10 per cent of our population—all needing a roof and all needing a bed. These are hard numbers and facts. This is what’s causing the housing catastrophe. These are the hard numbers and facts, as I said, yet the government has continued to lie, claiming, ‘We’re just catching up with immigration.’ Really? We haven’t just caught up; we’ve blown the record out of the water, not only for people on resident visas but also for new immigrants coming in. We’re nearly half a million people above the record for resident visas. Using the average household size of 2½ people per household implies the need for more than 200,000 houses just to cater for new arrivals. It’s actually 400,000. This is what we’re seeing in our country. 

Then there are the details. For an Australian who enters into a Help to Buy arrangement, where the government owns part of their home, what happens if they renovate their home at their own expense, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours swinging hammers and pulling up carpet, and, as a result of their renovations, their $500,000 home increases in value to $600,000? I wonder whether the minister knows how much of that Australian’s renovation profit the government will take for doing nothing. I wonder whether the minister knows that the income thresholds are set nationally—$90,000 for singles and $120,000 for couples—despite the average house price varying from $504,000 in Darwin to $1.2 million in Sydney. I wonder why the government is not adjusting the income threshold from state to state. What are the price thresholds for houses eligible under this bill, and why haven’t these been set in the legislation? Why are we bringing yoga teachers into the country, through immigration, when we need tradies? Yoga teachers are wonderful, but we need tradies to get on with the job here. 

The government has appointed three sets of bureaucrats as part of its solution to the housing crisis. That’s just adding to the complexity and inefficiency. It’s adding to the catastrophe. We need tradies to come into this country. We need people to be vetted properly, to bring in their skills and to contribute. We have so many people in this country out of work, living on welfare, and not contributing. We have an abundance of people with good qualifications who want to come into this country. We can put them to work and fix the housing crisis quickly. These are just some of the issues that I’ll be exploring more in the committee stage. I want to put those comments back on the record. 

Peter Dutton’s immigration proposal still involves importing more people into the country in the middle of a housing crisis.

A cut isn’t enough, we need to start deporting temporary visa holders now.

Transcript

Liberals promise a huge cut to immigration. That’s the news headline – but is it actually huge? And is it even a cut? Not really – the devil is in the detail.

Peter Dutton has promised a small, temporary change to the permanent migration number. It’s important to remember there are two types of immigration, permanent and temporary. Dutton hasn’t made any promises about temporary migration and that’s our biggest problem. He’s proposed to make permanent migration 140,000 a year for two years. That’s still 140,000 additional people a year coming here permanently.

Considering permanent migration used to be 80,000 a year, it’s still too high. Temporary migration is another kettle of fish that even Dutton won’t touch. Temporary migration are the temporary visa holders in the country.

Prior to COVID there was about 2.3 million temporary visa holders in the country. As of February this year, that number has exploded to 2.8 million.

Government keeps saying we’re “just catching up” on migration, but that is obviously a lie. All of those extra people in the country are fighting Australians for a roof over their head.

Peter Dutton’s proposal won’t even get us close to normal, he’s still talking about accepting more! If we want cheaper houses, cheaper rent and less Australians sleeping in tents, we need about half a million temporary visa holders to leave the country, not the increase Peter Dutton is talking about.

There’s only one party who’s talking about a real cut to immigration, to make sure Australians have a roof over their head —– that’s One Nation. 

In trying to please everyone, the Treasurer’s third budget will please nobody.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ third budget fails to deliver affordable houses, cheaper power bills and groceries, and any hope for the future. That’s what a good budget should deliver.

A better way is putting Australians first and using our natural resources to drive wealth, abundance and opportunity for all.

Transcript

Cheap houses, cheap power bills, cheaper groceries and hope for the future—that’s what a good budget should deliver. Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s third budget fails to deliver on all of these issues. Once his short-term coupons expire, inflation will fire up. Handouts and subsidies don’t bring inflation down; they just hide it temporarily. The Treasurer even admitted as much in his budget speech last night. He said: 

Electricity prices would have risen 15 per cent in the last year if not for our efforts— 

the Treasurer means his handouts— 

instead, they rose two per cent. 

Has there ever been a greater admission of failure of the net zero pipe dream? With the most wind, solar, batteries and green schemes on the grid in our history, actual power prices rose 15 per cent in just 12 months. When the last budget’s power relief ran out, Australians would have faced that entire price rise in one hit. That’s right: Treasurer Chalmers has been forced to extend another round of power bill relief. Australians would have rejected what the net zero lunacy has done to our once cheap power. Cheaper houses—with 2.3 million visa holders needing housing in the country right now, Australia is in the grip of a terrible housing crisis. Good working families, Australian families, are sleeping in tents, in cars and under bridges. Treasurer Chalmers tells us to prepare for another 280,000 migrants. Given his track record on immigration predictions, we should prepare for more. With no hope of building enough homes to house those new arrivals, rent, house prices and homelessness will only get worse. 

How about hope for the future? There is little hope. The Treasurer tells us to expect crippling, worse deficits for the next 10 years, starting with this year. A better way is possible with One Nation, by putting Australians first and using our natural resources to our advantage. Then we can again become the best in the world. 

In the middle of a housing crisis, why are we handing out hundreds of thousands of visas?

During Question Time, I asked Minister Watt about the number of homes that are required to house the 549,000 people who arrived on permanent visas in 2023, as well as the number of schools and hospitals that will be needed over the next five years to accommodate these new arrivals.

Minister Watt sidestepped my questions and instead underscored the government’s efforts to tackle migration-related challenges, notably reforms to the international student visa system. He once more criticized opposition parties for obstructing housing-related legislation and emphasised the government’s investments in health and education.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs and the Minister representing the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Senator Watt. Minister, what is the number of homes required to house the 549,000 people who arrived on permanent visas in 2023? How many houses? 

Senator WATT: Thank you, Senator Roberts, for your question. I know you asked a very similar question last week, and, as I pointed out to you last week, it is understood and expected that migration levels in Australia have peaked, that they peaked in 2022-23, and they are forecast to drop in half by next year. That is as a direct result of the changes made by the Albanese government to particularly to tackle the rorts that were occurring in the international student visa system that we inherited from the former government. The changes we made late last year are already having a significant and immediate impact, with student visa grants down by more than 35 per cent on last year’s level. 

We are obviously strong supporters of the international education system. It’s a very important export industry for Australia. It provides a wide range of benefits to Australia and the countries from which students come. But the reality is that the system unfortunately was being rorted by a number of companies and that needed to be tackled. It wasn’t tackled by the former government, but we are tackling it and that is having an effect. 

Senator ROBERTS, one of the things I also pointed out to you last week was that it’s a little bit ironic getting a question from a One Nation senator, a coalition senator or, at times, a Greens party senator about what this government is doing about housing numbers, because what we have seen over and over again is a coalition between the Liberals, the Nationals, One Nation and the Greens party teaming up to block action on housing by the Albanese Labor government. We saw it with the Housing Australia Future Fund. Senator ROBERTS, if you were actually sincere in your concern, you would have voted for the Housing Australia Future Fund to build more homes. If you were sincere in your concerns, you would be voting for the help-to-buy legislation that we’re currently trying to get through this parliament but which is being blocked again by the Greens party, One Nation, the Liberals and the Nationals. (Time expired) 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a first supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, what is the number of schools and hospitals required over the next five years to meet the needs of these 549,000 new permanent arrivals last year? How many schools and hospitals—a number, please? 

Senator WATT: It obviously stands to reason that Australia does need more hospitals and more schools in order to deal with a growing population, whether that be a population growing through natural increase or a population growing through migration. Again, Senator Roberts, we are trying to tackle 10 years of under-investment by a coalition government in our health system and in our education system. That’s why Minister Jason Clare has only just recently reached agreements with a number of states and territories to increase education funding to them and why, through National Cabinet in the last few months, the Prime Minister has reached agreements with the premiers about increased funding for health care across Australia. 

Opposition senators interjecting— 

The PRESIDENT: Order! 

Senator Henderson interjecting— 

The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Henderson! 

Senator WATT: We know that 10 years of coalition government, propped up by One Nation, saw underinvestment in health care, underinvestment in hospitals, underinvestment in our schools— 

Senator Henderson interjecting— 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Henderson, I called for order and I called you personally. I would ask you to come to order and stop being disrespectful. 

Senator WATT: Senator Roberts, one of these days you and your colleague, Senator Hanson, might like to back in a government that’s actually delivering on health and education. (Time expired) 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a second supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, planning for immigration requires planning for the houses, schools, hospitals, transport, food and drinking water that new arrivals need. We won’t let you dump 2.3 million long-stay arrivals on the states and then wash your hands of them. This is the second time this sitting I’ve asked for the numbers and the second time you have failed to provide them. If you have them, please provide them. If you don’t have them then clearly this government is not up to the job of running Australia. 

Senator WATT: Senator Roberts, for starters, I would take issue with your description of migrants as people who are dumped on the community. I think that is an offensive way to describe the contribution of millions of Australians who come from a migrant background. 

Senator ROBERTS interjecting— 

Senator WATT: It’s not funny, Senator Roberts. It’s not funny to talk about dumping people or people being dumped. 

The PRESIDENT: I’ll come to you, Senator Roberts. Minister, when answering the question, please direct your answers to the Chair. Senator Roberts.  

Senator ROBERTS: On a point of order: I’m not laughing at immigrants. I am laughing at the minister.  

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, that’s not a point of order. Minister Watt.  

Senator WATT: I think that is especially the case now that Australia—I think the figures are approximately one in two Australians is either born overseas or their parents are born overseas. We know migrants make a great contribution to our country. The reality is, though, that as a result of the increase in migration after the pandemic and as a result of the rorts in the international student system that were left behind by the coalition, action did need to be taken and that is what we’re doing. But what we’re also doing is investing in the houses that Senator Roberts and his colleagues in the Liberal-National Party and, most of all, the Greens party want to keep blocking. If you want more housing, there is a really simple thing you can do: vote with Labor for more housing, instead of always opposing it. 

Australians have never been asked what they think is a fair amount of immigration. The Lib-Lab parties both advocate for high immigration and as there are many different issues that go towards deciding the party to vote for on polling day, elections simply don’t provide a way for the public to express their opinion on migration.

The Plebiscite (Future Migration Level) Bill 2018 aims to give Australians a say on immigration levels through a plebiscite. Senator Hanson argues that high immigration is causing a per capita recession and is detrimental to Australians’ standard of living.

Current immigration policies favouring high numbers of immigrants are driving up housing costs, leading to catastrophic homelessness among Australians. The Morrison government and now the Albanese government have failed to address this issue.

Australians deserve to have a voice on immigration levels that are impacting their security, lifestyle and their ability to provide for their future.

Transcript

The Plebiscite (Future Migration Level) Bill 2018 is simply saying, ‘Give Australians a say.’ That’s all we want. We want to listen to the people and let the people decide. Give the people a say—a ‘voice’, if you like. Senator Hanson is driven to do what’s in the national interest. That means protecting Australians and protecting Australians’ lifestyle. This is simply a voice—give Australians a say. 

Make no mistake; the figures show that we are in a per capita recession. I’ve said that in the past in the Senate and I continue to say it. Labor lies and policies are hiding that because you, as a government, do not want to be blamed for putting the place in recession. This is something that’s been carried through from the Morrison government to the Albanese government. Australia is in a per capita recession, and you’re hiding it with high immigration numbers. They raise artificially the GDP, making sure that we don’t have two quarters with negative growth.  

Without high immigration, this country would be in recession. You are doing the people a disservice and you are hiding the fact that we are in recession. You’re doing the people a disservice because they’re now sleeping in cars, under bridges, in tents and in caravans. They’re being moved to showgrounds—moved along from parks—in Bundaberg, Gladstone, Townsville, Cairns, Logan, Ipswich and Brisbane. I can step out of the CBD in Brisbane and within minutes of walking I can find people living in tents. Through the chair: Senator Watt and Senator Ciccone, are you aware that in our state, which is so fundamentally wealthy, we have thousands of people living on the streets? They are being moved on daily because they can’t be kept in one place any more than three days. Some of these people have got jobs—and that’s where they live! We’re creating and exporting our wealth to the world—5½ million Queenslanders are creating wealth for the world and our own Queenslanders are living in tents and living in cars. Some of them are being picked on by rangers, and as they’re moved on their kids are confiscated. These are working people.  

The key issue here is trust. We cannot trust the Albanese Labor government, just like we could not trust the Morrison Liberal-National government. Another key issue is serving the people. Senator Hanson mentioned it. I mentioned it. As servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, we are raising this issue because it is fundamental to Australians’ lifestyle, security and productivity.  

Senator Hanson raised immigration many years ago. She’s famous for it. Three of her four grandparents were immigrants. She’s not against immigration; she’s against overimmigration. She’s making sure that the quality of migrants is suitable for our culture, our laws and our values. This, though, has nothing to do with Senator Hanson. It’s simply a plebiscite to give people a say. You wanted it for gay marriage, homosexual marriage, and now you won’t let the people have a say in something even more fundamental. Senator Hanson has a very simple approach to politics. She hasn’t an elaborate political philosophy. She has a simple approach: do what’s right for the national interest—that’s it. That means doing what’s right for the standard of living.  

Senator Hanson and I are proud to support this bill because it is about propping up and restoring our standard of living. I raised immigration, particularly in connection with housing, starting a couple of years ago and I’ve been bashing it ever since. Have a look at my Facebook page, my Instagram page and my Twitter page. This has been a sincere and genuine concern of mine for years now. We have, as I said, people living in cars, tents and caravans and getting moved around in showgrounds. We had in January, just two months ago, record immigration. We had 125,000 new arrivals in January alone. I haven’t done the maths, but that’s around about 1½ million a year. After removing the number of people who left Australia that left 55,375 net migration into our country in one month. That was 40 per cent above the previous record for January way back in 2009. We have returned to the days of very high immigration, but we have gone way beyond that. We have 2.3 million people on working visas in this country, meaning 2.3 million beds and 2.3 million roofs over beds are needed. We have 600,000 students. We only have beds for 100,000 university students. So the university students we are bringing in to give us income are taking beds off Australians who need beds. 

Politicians in this country, the Liberal-Nationals and the Labor-Greens, follow a ‘big Australia’ policy—a ‘massive Australia’ policy. The people do not. The people want a ‘fair Australia’ policy. Trust, as I raised a minute ago, has been languishing in this place, and trust in the Albanese government has plummeted. Trust is made up of two components basically: integrity or honesty and competence. The Albanese Labor government is showing neither. 

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, let me tell you about a phone call I had just yesterday. I had a New South Wales truckie call me. This man was looking for a job. He admires the way our office runs and he wanted a job. He’s a truckie. I’ve met him in the past. He’s a wonderful man with a wonderful family. He’s on the Central Coast of New South Wales. He helped out during the fires. It cost him a lot of money to help out during the fires of 2019. He stood up to the COVID injection mandates in 2021. He’s a really decent person, who was making sure that he stood up because the COVID injections killed his aunty. This is a man who’s got the same genetics as his aunty, and he knew that the COVID injections would kill him. As a result of the COVID mandates which Scott Morrison’s government put in place and drove, and as a result of the economic policies that Anthony Albanese’s government is driving, he lost his business, a vibrant business employing seven people. 

Let’s look at housing. As I’ve talked about many times in the Senate and outside, we have a critical shortage of houses in this country. How do you respond as a government? You jack up the bureaucracy. You call it a $10 billion investment in housing when we know that that is just the fund and it’s only the returns from that fund which will be invested in housing—a few hundred million dollars a year. But you’ve added three new bureaucracies. They build bugger-all. What we need to do in this country is to stop the castration of property rights and to free up land. We need to free up tradies from overregulation and get on with the job of letting our tradies build the houses. People can’t find rental homes at the moment. The vacancy rate is 0.7 per cent—a record low. There are no bloody houses. And there are foreigners who own a lot of our houses and lock them up. But, no, you don’t want to do anything about that either. You turn a blind eye to that. 

My mother was born in this country. My grandparents were born overseas. They were immigrants. My father was an immigrant. So I’m half immigrant and I’m proud of that. I’m proud of being Australian, but I’m ashamed that the people in this chamber and the people in this parliamentary building want Australians to suffer. When you’re in Queensland, one of the wealthiest places in the world, and you cannot get a house, so you sleep in a tent or in a car with your family, and you do it because they’re covering up a per capita recession, that is cruel and that is inhuman. It’s not just un-Australian. It is inhuman—the bureaucracy; the regulations; the United Nations World Economic Forum alliance; policies restricting land; big immigration policy; energy; inflation caused by the people in this chamber, the previous Morrison government and now the Anthony Albanese government; and energy prices. Our country is the largest exporter of hydrocarbon fuels in the world. When you add up our coal and our gas, we are the largest exporters of energy, but we can’t use it here. We drive up inflation. We drive up energy prices. We drive up housing costs, and then we see people living in the streets in tents in Queensland. 

We see that the Liberals and Nationals are waking up to this issue. Senator David Sharma last night mentioned housing and immigration. We’ve been talking about it for several years now. He also mentioned that we need to do something about bracket creep. Recently, the Liberals and Nationals had a perfect opportunity to vote for my amendment on tax changes that would have ended bracket creep. You said no. Instead, you’re going to help the Labor Party steal $38 billion in the next four years from Australians because of bracket creep. You both want bracket creep. That’s the truth. You say that you don’t want it but, when the time comes to have a vote, you don’t vote for ending bracket creep. You vote for bracket creep because that’s how you steal more money from Australians, just like you’re stealing their livelihoods and their accommodation. 

I proudly speak about people’s wants and needs. Australians have very simple wants and needs. They want security, they want a good Aussie lifestyle and they want a fair government that looks after them—not one that steals from them. They want people in this place and in the House of Representatives to put the national interest first —not to bring in 2,000 Gazan immigrants with just one hour of processing. 

Only One Nation wants to give Australians a say. Under Senator Hanson as our leader—we’re the only party with a female leader, I might add, and proudly so—we’ve had a policy of a citizen initiated referendum for 10 or so years or perhaps even more, because One Nation is about giving the people a voice. One Nation is about holding Labor-Greens coalitions and Liberal-National coalitions accountable. A plebiscite is very, very simple. There’s only one question in it: should we reduce immigration? What are you afraid of? Should we reduce immigration? Let’s hear from the people: yes or no. That’s all we want. We want to put the people first in this country. That’s what we’ve been doing and that’s what we will continue to do. That’s why we have our energy policies and our immigration policies. We want to stop the mess that is unfolding in this country. 

Australia used to have the highest per capita income in the world; that was 120 years ago. We’re now slipping below many other countries. We’re heading for 20th. Yet, according to the United Nations, we have the richest resources in the world. You and you are squandering those resources. You’re stealing from the Australian people and now you’re making sure that they don’t get a house and that they don’t get a rental. They’ll keep sleeping in parks. All Senator Hanson and I want is to put the people first, to serve the people and to give the people a say. Should we reduce immigration? It’s over to the people of Australia. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Allman-Payne): The question is that the bill be read a second time. 

The Senate divided. [10:03]  

(The Acting Deputy President—Senator Allman-Payne)  

On Thursday, I asked simple straightforward questions of the Government regarding Labor’s record high immigration levels, which have contributed to a housing shortage crisis, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe. I had hoped for Minister Watt to acknowledge that the Government recognizes the disastrous impact its policies have had on everyday Australians.

The Minister’s four minutes of waffle and deflection only underscores that the Albanese Government has no intention of reducing immigration.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Watt. Australia is experiencing the largest immigration intake on record. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that 518,000 net overseas migrants arrived last year and 55,375 migrants arrived in January this year alone—55,375 migrants in one month. That’s 40 per cent higher than the previous January record way back in 2009. Minister, how many migrants is this government going to let in this year? 

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management): Thank you, Senator Roberts. The first thing I’d like to say is that the Albanese government is very proud of the multicultural nature of the Australian population. I heard you earlier today in another debate, Senator Roberts, acknowledge that your own family has a fairly recent history of migration, and I think we should all recognise the very valuable contribution that migrants have played, and continue to play, in Australia. Having said that, we do acknowledge that there has been an increase in migration to Australia, particularly as a result of the pause to migration that occurred through the pandemic. The figures that have come out today are entirely expected and are consistent with the forecasts for net overseas migration that we set out in the mid-year budget review at the end of last year. 

Migration levels are expected to have peaked in 2022-23 and are forecast to drop in half by next year. Our government is doing the hard work—not done under the former government—to bring migration back to sustainable levels, after all comparable countries also experienced a surge post the pandemic. The changes that we made late last year are having a significant and immediate impact. For example, student visa grants are down more than 35 per cent on last year’s level, and I know for a fact that Minister O’Neil, Minister Clare and Minister O’Connor have been working very hard on trying to tackle some of the rorts that were left behind in the international student visa system. That is having results in terms of bringing those student visa grants down by more than 35 per cent on last year’s level. 

The data that has been released today doesn’t take into account the very substantial actions that our government has taken to bring down net overseas migration, and that’s because most of those actions were implemented mid to late last year. But we recognise that this as an issue for Australians, and we’re taking action to deal with it. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: With people in Queensland, including working families with real jobs, now living in tents, in caravans, in parks, in cars and under bridges, there is a human catastrophe unfolding in this country in our state. Will you suspend further immigration until everyone who is here now has a bed to sleep in with a roof over their head? 

Senator WATT: Thanks, Senator Roberts. I absolutely acknowledge that our country has a housing shortage. We have acknowledged that since the day that we were elected and had to deal with the massive housing shortage and housing affordability crisis that was left behind by the former government. That is exactly why we have been presenting a range of options to this parliament to deal with housing shortages, including the creation of the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. Senator Roberts, for someone who says that we should have more housing to deal with this, I’m surprised that you and Senator Hanson voted against the Housing Australia Future Fund. In fact, I was reminded that Senator Hanson, in the last 24 hours or so, has described the Housing Australia Future Fund as ‘useless’. You continue to argue that we need more housing, just as the coalition argues for more housing, but when you have an opportunity to do something about it, what do you do? You vote no. We know that you’re intending to vote no to the help to buy legislation as well, so be consistent. If you want more housing, vote for it. (Time expired) 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a second supplementary? 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, is immigration too high? 

Senator WATT: Thanks, Senator Roberts. The government is already taking action to try to deal with the increase in migration that we experienced after the pandemic and just as all other comparable nations experienced after the pandemic. That’s why we’ve made changes to student visa grants. They are down by more than 35 per cent on last year’s level—the settings that were left behind by the former government. That’s why we’ve taken a range of other actions to fix the utterly broken migration system that was left behind by Mr Dutton, the former home affairs minister. Yet again we’re fixing up the former government’s mess while at the same time we’re trying to build homes, even though we are obstructed every step of the way by the coalition, One Nation and, all too often, the Greens party. 

Senator Rennick: They want home ownership. 

Senator WATT: I heard an interjection that people don’t want public housing, they want home ownership. Firstly, they do want public housing; and, secondly, home ownership is exactly what we’re trying to do through our help to buy scheme. It’s in the name—help to buy. 

I asked the Treasury Department how they got immigration forecasts for the year so horribly wrong when they were already a third of the way through the year? In October 2022, the Government estimated total net overseas migration for the year July 2022 to June 2023 to be 235,000. The actual arrivals for 2022-23 ended up at 518,000. It’s hard to understand how Treasury was this wrong about those 12 months when they were already 4 months through them.

This is just more proof the government’s immigration program is totally out of control. Minister Gallagher is wrong when she claims this flood immigration is a benefit to Australia. Right now immigration is choking our country, making the housing problem, the cost of living crisis, energy shortages, the crisis in healthcare and other essential services even worse.

Only One Nation will make sure Australians get a roof over their heads first.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you to the officials for being here today. The 2022-23 budget, delivered in October 2022, predicted that net overseas migration would be 235,000 people for the financial year 2022-23. Can I ask whether the Treasury’s definition of net overseas migration differs from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ definition of overseas migration? 

Ms Reinhardt: Sorry; can you just— 

Senator ROBERTS: Do you have the same definition of net— 

Ms Reinhardt: Yes, we do. 

Senator ROBERTS: I want to go to your department’s immigration forecasts. I notice that in the October 2022 budget papers, four months into that financial year, you were predicting net overseas migration at 235,000 people for the year. Instead, the Australian Bureau of Statistics says Australia had 737,000 migrant arrivals, for a net overseas migration of 518,000—well over double what you said. 

Ms Reinhardt: In the budget, we had a figure for net overseas migration of 400,000. The MYEFO had 510,000, and I recognise that that is a significant miss. I would, however, flag a couple of things around that. The first is that the UK in the period between March and November last year had to double their NOM forecast, and New Zealand had a similar adjustment. There has been a significant uptick in student arrivals post-COVID in most countries—Canada, Australia, UK and New Zealand. There was, I guess, a catch-up that was much faster than any of those countries predicted. We are still below where we would otherwise have been had COVID not occurred. But I think you’re right in saying those forecasts could have been better, if that’s the point you’re making. I would say we are in company. I don’t say it’s good company, but we are in company, and that is something we do need to look at. The other point I’d make is that there have been some really significant changes that have been introduced in the last six months. They’re around closing off the pandemic event visa; introducing really significant integrity changes around student visas; looking at ways of targeting better temporary skilled migration; and indexing theTSMIT, the temporary skilled migration income threshold. We would expect those changes to have quite a substantial impact on arrivals and the NOM numbers. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I’ll stay with you, Ms Reinhardt. I think you talked about catching up on the pre-COVID-era statistics. My understanding is that we had 1.9 million people on visas before the COVID, and by October 2023 we had 2.3 million—we’d already caught up, well and truly, at the start of that year. I can’t tell you which group of visas— 

Ms Reinhardt: We haven’t fully caught up, but, in terms of visa numbers, I’ll see if my colleague— 

Senator ROBERTS: No, we’ve more than caught up in categories of working visas. 

Ms Horvat: No. 

Ms Reinhardt: No, not in terms of the stock of— 

Senator ROBERTS: In working visas? 

Ms Horvat: We look at net overseas migration in total— 

Senator ROBERTS: I’ve shifted to working visas. 

Ms Horvat: but Ms Reinhardt’s statement is correct, as we have not caught up to pre-COVID for total net overseas migration. 

Senator Gallagher: But Treasury don’t look at what particular visa type you’re on; that would be a matter for Home Affairs. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for pointing that out. Nonetheless, this huge increase in people has a huge impact on the people who are already here. What happens to the prices of houses, rentals, accommodation generally, energy, groceries—cost of living? There’s a huge impact on all of those things when we have so many people flooding into the country. 

Ms Reinhardt: I’m really not best placed to answer the broader inflation questions, but I would say that net overseas migration has really significant positive impacts for Australia. That’s been shown in the analysis year after year. We have maintained a very low unemployment rate in Australia whilst having pretty long-term migration to Australia for several hundred years, and that’s been a really important factor to our economic success. It has also, in recent times, not resulted in any substantial uptick in unemployment, and at the same time we’ve seen really high participation rates for Australians. So I would push back on the idea that that is an absolute negative for Australians, as it’s delivered substantial economic benefit to Australians. 

Senator ROBERTS: It would be, potentially, if it were done in a carefully calculated way and with infrastructure spending to match, but we haven’t build a dam in how many decades for water supply? 

Senator Gallagher: We’re moving into a different area. 

Senator ROBERTS: That’s right. I’m directing my question to you, Minister. This has a huge impact on people’s livelihoods. 

Senator Gallagher: The evidence that you’ve been given is that migration to this country has supported economic growth across the country for many years. We agree that we needed to tighten up some of the arrangements that we’re seeing, particularly around international students and some of the loopholes that were being used—some of the behavioural responses post COVID—and that work is being done. Because of those reforms, there will be 180,000 fewer people over the forward estimates than there would’ve been if we had left the situation unattended to, but there’s a huge amount of work. 

Senator ROBERTS: That’s still a large number. 

Senator Gallagher: It comes down to, I think, 250,000 in the final year of the forward estimates. The work that the Minister for Home Affairs is doing in the migration space has been complex. She inherited a lot of issues in that department—that’s probably putting it politely—and we’re working through them bit by bit. But those reforms are in place. The issues that you raise around infrastructure are real. I don’t think you can blame all of those, again, on overseas migration to this country. Infrastructure requires long-term planning. It involves investments from states and territories. Some of the pressures we’re seeing in housing supply haven’t happened overnight or in the last two years. It’s been a build-up over a much longer period of time, when we weren’t experiencing those high levels of overseas migration that we’ve seen in the last two years. It’s more complex than that. But, yes, we have to work on housing supply; we have to ensure that we’re building infrastructure that’s right for people in cities, towns and regions across Australia; we’ve got to fix the migration system; and we’ve got to make sure that it works for everybody.  

Senator ROBERTS: That’s my point, Minister: just adding more people without doing all the other creates a problem. Sure, it increases economic growth, which looks good in a book or on a whiteboard— 

Senator Gallagher: It supports jobs and incomes in this country, so it is interlinked. What I’m saying is, we will always want to have a migration program. We want to attract people to this country. We want them to live here and come from any country around the world. There are good social and economic reasons to have an approach like that, but, at the same time, you have to be looking after your back garden as well. You have to be making sure the infrastructure is there and that you’re building the housing, and we’re doing all of those things. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. 

Jim Chalmers has said the government has no idea how many homes bought by overseas investors are sitting vacant in Australia.

I asked in senate estimates how the government plans to fine foreign owners of empty houses if they can’t even find that out. It’s just a thought bubble so Labor can try to look good without actually doing anything.

Just ban foreign ownership altogether!

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing today. My questions are on Treasury’s plans to find foreign investors who leave properties that they own vacant. How you going to enforce that? Even Treasurer Jim Chalmers said we have no idea how many are being left vacant. Are you going to send people around doorknocking to see if there are any empty homes? It sounds like headline grabbing to me. 

Ms R Kelley: As we’ve mentioned before, the Australian Taxation Office does have a compliance function that specifically deals with the vacancy issue. I have a colleague here from the ATO who can assist in answering the question, but they have a very well-established compliance program. They do look at the vacancy rate and they do enforce that when houses are left vacant for more than 183 days per year; they do actually follow up. I’m sure we can get some numbers, if you like, in terms of recent action by the ATO, but part of the government’s announcements around the increase in fees was also that increased resources were being given to the ATO to assist in strengthening that compliance approach. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Ms Kelley. 

Mr Thompson : That’s correct. I thought I might briefly explain how we enforce the existing vacancy fee rules. Obviously, these are amendments to the rates, but they don’t change our enforcement approach. People who are in scope—in the population in 2022-23 that was about 12,500—that we track are required to lodge a vacancy fee return every year. Some of those foreign investors declare to us that the property is vacant, in which case we levy them the vacancy fee. We also conduct compliance activities on the remainder of the population. For those foreign investors who don’t lodge a return, we deem a vacancy fee on them and they need to contact us if they think that we have deemed that fee incorrectly. 

Senator ROBERTS: How accurate is your register of foreign owners? Have you done any testing on it to make sure all the foreign owners are in fact registering? 

Mr Thompson : Yes. As we explained in some questions on notice following the last estimates, we get the full data set for the real property transaction registry. For example, in 2022-23 the number was around 2.4 million individual entries. We work through a range of data-matching techniques to get that down to a potential compliance pool in the thousands and then we publish our compliance numbers, and they’re generally in the hundreds. In that sense, we’re very confident about the in-scope population under the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act rule. 

I would make the point that there is sometime debate about the exact numbers, and I think that goes to the different definitions that different regimes use. For example, we’re aware that the rule of the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act is slightly different from state and territory land tax acts. There’s also a NAB survey that is run every so often, and that asks the question about overseas buyers, as opposed to foreigners. When people talk about the numbers—I’d say we’re very confident of the numbers under the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act definition, but that’s not to say that, if people are using different definitions, you might not come up with different numbers. 

Senator ROBERTS: That’s a question I’ll ask later, in another session. When it made its release, the government said it expects to collect $500 million a year in these extra changes—$170,000 per person. If the charge is $170,000, that’s less than 3,000 homes, and many of those 3,000 will probably still stay vacant because foreign buyers are rich and can probably afford to just pay the charge. Has Treasury conducted any modelling on how many of those 3,000 they expect to become occupied because of this thought bubble? You just mentioned 12,500 vacancies. 

Ms R Kelley: I think we need to clarify that the predicted revenue is based on the total application fees as well as the vacancy fees. 

Senator ROBERTS: How many houses do you expect to be trapped in this scheme? 

Ms R Kelley : It depends. Every year there are different numbers. In the last financial year, 3,542 houses were purchased by foreign investors, so they would definitely be captured. The people who are purchasing are captured. The application fees have been tripled. They range with the value of the property, and the application fee increases with the increase in the property value. Then you have the numbers that Mr Thompson was talking about in terms of the number of houses that are already purchased and registered and that the vacancy fees apply to. The calculation around the revenue are based on those sorts of numbers as well. It’s both factors. 

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, it makes it really simple, doesn’t it? Why not ban all foreign ownership of housing? That would solve the housing crisis. 

Senator Gallagher: I am not sure it would when we look at the numbers involved in the evidence that’s just been given, and that is not the government’s position. 

Senator ROBERTS: Why isn’t it the government position? There are Australians in caravans, tents and cars. 

Senator Gallagher: Again, there are a number of reasons why there is pressure in the housing market at the moment, whether you be renting, homeless or seeking to buy your first home. Not all of that can be attributed, as I think you would like to argue, to foreign ownership. 

Senator ROBERTS: I am not saying ‘all,’ but I am saying massive immigration is driving up housing prices. 

Senator Gallagher: That, again, is a different issue to the subject of foreign ownership. You’ve been given the numbers today. 

Senator ROBERTS: We’re concerned about Australians residents and citizens in tents, caravans, cars, under bridges— 

Senator Gallagher: That is why we have all the effort on the housing side to generate supply. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. 

I spoke in parliament about the homelessness crisis in Australia and called out those responsible.

In Labor’s urban heartland, everyday Australians are sleeping in tents. These ‘tent cities’ are forming in public parks, showgrounds and under bridges. Australian citizens are being pushed aside to make room for the 2.3 million visa holders this government has let in during its term.

What the heck is this government doing? No stunts can cover up this failure. Imagine what kind of Christmas these Australians will have? The government is sending billions of dollars in foreign aid and contributions to organisations like the WHO and the United Nations, while letting its own people become homeless.

Albanese’s government is the Grinch that is stealing the Australian way of life.

Transcript

As we go about the business of the Senate today in the Labor Party’s normal chaotic, despotic manner, out there in Labor’s heartland, everyday Australians are sleeping in tents in public parks and in tents under bridges.

Australian citizens are being pushed aside to make room for the 2.3 million visa holders this government has let in during its term. That’s 2.3 million people being brought into a country that’s only building 120,000 new homes a year. That’s 2.3 million arrivals into a housing market that was already short 100,000 homes needed to put a roof over the heads of all those who were here when Labor took office—homeless Australians this government has turned its back on.

How must these people feel, watching this one-term Prime Minister jetting around the world in style, hobnobbing with predatory billionaires at elitist events in lovely locations, dining out on the best food and sleeping in the best hotels. Perhaps the next trip this failure of a prime minister should be taking is to the riverbank at West End, New Farm, South Bank, North Quay or Musgrave Park, all in Brisbane, or to the showgrounds in Gladstone or parks in Bundaberg.

The footage of these Depression-era tent camps is running on the ABC as we speak. I suggest the government watch it and ask themselves what the heck they are doing.

Tent cities are appearing right across Labor’s urban heartland—everyday Australians unable to keep a roof over their heads because there is no roof for them.

Thanks to Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and this Labor government, there’s no place in Australia for Australians. Every tent in these tent cities has a name stamped on it—the names of Prime Minister Albanese, of Treasurer Chalmers and of Immigration Minister Giles. Your heartland is hurting, and no stunts on a bill the Senate had mostly passed already will cover up your failures.

Bring on the next election, because you lot are done.