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Responsible Oversight, Not Cuts to the PBS

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The New England Times published a hit piece falsely claiming One Nation plans to remove medications from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). This is an outright lie. One Nation will defend the PBS, just as we defend Medicare.

Here is the truth.

Our 2025 policy promises a sensible review of medications fast-tracked during COVID to ensure safety and efficacy. We are looking specifically at just three drugs — Paxlovid, Remdesivir and Molnupiravir — to examine safer, cost-effective alternatives.

No Australian will be left without medication. We are not changing PBS charges, altering existing government payments, or tearing up legally binding contracts.

Society benefits when the sick are healed quickly and cared for with dignity.

Financial barriers shouldn’t stand in the way of care and One Nation will protect the 40-year legacy of the PBS against Labor and Big Pharma’s attempt to spin sensible scrutiny into fearmongering.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Tonight I discuss the heart of Australia’s future: whether our higher education system is identifying and supporting excellence or whether elites have captured education to reward size, history and established reputation. How many Australians know that some of the highest rated higher education institutions in our country, in terms of student satisfaction, are not the sandstone Group of Eight universities or any public universities? They’re smaller, independent universities, one of which, Alphacrucis University College, records student satisfaction rates of 90 per cent for overall educational experience when the national average sits in the mid-70s. The national regulator recognises Alphacrucis as delivering superior quality education and granted it unlimited self-accrediting authority, in part because students studying a postgraduate teaching degree at Alphacrucis graduated with a job 100 per cent of the time. Until recently, I didn’t know that tertiary education institutions with this level of success existed. Australians need to know there are exemplary institutions leading our country, yet we’ve never heard of them. 

We need to reassess how our tertiary institutions are supported, because, if we don’t, we’re reinforcing the status quo, and that’s not working. Our universities have governance issues, financial issues, confidence issues and efficiency issues, yet there are higher education providers achieving excellent outcomes for students without the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in funding that our public universities receive, including grants and commercial activity. If institutions like Alphacrucis do not become well known, students who might have thrived in such a place will miss the opportunity. Students will be less satisfied with their education than they might otherwise have been. Students might be less likely to graduate into employment and less likely to leave their mark and their legacy on our society. Philanthropic foundations need to know that outside of the G8 there’s great teaching and research, and it’s worthy of support. Foundations need to be looking for opportunities to fund teaching and research institutions like Alphacrucis, because that’s where our future may well be. 

Government has set lofty aspirational targets for tertiary attainment through the Australian Universities Accord and has already acknowledged that public universities alone cannot achieve these targets. The system needs provider diversity and rewards for excellence. Our tertiary funding must move to a level playing field. We must allocate funds on actual performance, not past reputation. The government makes much noise of diversity, yet where’s the funding for real diversity in higher education? The G8 sandstone universities would benefit from increased competition. We must do all that we can to remove barriers from lesser known institutions to enable them to compete. Part of that is to raise their profile, and part of that is to shift funds from the sandstone G8s to institutions already delivering. 

One Nation is committed to greater scrutiny of tertiary institution funding and wants to know why funding favours established universities over new entries. I’m focusing on Alphacrucis, yet the issue is larger than one university college. It’s about whether Australia rewards performance or prestige. These are not the same thing. Reward is about working for today’s students. Prestige is about what’s been done for students in days past. It’s about whether new institutions with fresh ideas are given the opportunity to compete or whether the system remains tilted towards those who have always held advantage. 

Alphacrucis University College is a test case, an institution achieving outstanding student satisfaction, national recognition for quality and a growing reputation for excellence, yet most Australians have never heard of it. If we’re serious about innovation, competition and value for taxpayers, then institutions should be judged on what they actually deliver, not on how old they are, how large they are or how well connected they are. Australia’s future depends upon identifying excellence wherever it’s found and giving it the opportunity to flourish. The Australian people deserve a higher education system that rewards achievement, encourages competition and invests in results. That’s beneficial for students, for taxpayers and for Australia’s future. 

Tonight I address media misrepresentation of One Nation’s policy to review some drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the PBS. The New England Times newspaper flagrantly lied to readers in a story just published last Saturday, giving the false impression that One Nation will be removing medications from the PBS. Author RK Crosby’s hit piece was titled ‘Concern brewing as buried Hanson policy threatens affordable medicines’. Only last week, I included the PBS in a list of social welfare institutions that One Nation would defend in government—not tolerate or be afraid to touch but defend. This pathetic piece of journalism shows the lack of research the New England Times conducted for its story. I understand that, like many regional newspapers, the New England Times is short of staff. This leads them to accept a hit piece that Better Access Australia most likely prepared. It’s quoted extensively, and its mission statement is to transfer as much taxpayer money as it can into big pharma’s pockets. 

One phone call would have cleared this up. The story stems from a two-line election policy promise in 2025 which said One Nation will review all medications fast-tracked during COVID to ensure safety and efficacy have been proven. It’s perfectly sensible and responsible. In fact, most of the drugs that were given emergency use authorisation, officially known as the provisional use pathway, have already been withdrawn or had their use reduced to insignificance. Only three remain of interest to One Nation, and these are the drugs we will review: Paxlovid; remdesivir, or ‘Run—death is near’; and molnupiravir. With each of these, there are alternatives which anecdotally carry a lower cost and better safety and efficacy outcomes. No Australian will be left without medication—not one Australian. This is actually a small promise that the pharmaceutical lobby has deliberately taken out of context. During COVID, big pharma benefited to the tune of billions of dollars and is terrified of any scrutiny. 

To open their story, RK Crosby offered a vignette suggesting One Nation will remove asthma medication from the PBS—an outright lie; a fabrication, pure and simple. One Nation threatening affordable medicines is an outright lie. One Nation will not change PBS charges nor change the amounts government pays under the existing arrangements. Contracts signed will be honoured. If we start tearing up legally-binding contracts, confidence in government will never recover. We’re not going to tear up contracts. Negotiate? Yes. Tear up? No. For clarity, no PBS contracts are in our sights. 

The COVID vaccines will be looked at in our terms of reference for a royal commission, although these were not supplied through the PBS. Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry didn’t want to mention their COVID products and instead chose to lie about our PBS policy. For the record, here’s the philosophy behind our policy. As I said last week in the Senate, One Nation supports the PBS for the same reason we support Medicare. Society benefits when our sick are healed quickly and returned to looking after themselves. For those with permanent conditions, the basic laws of humanity require society to care for those people with love and respect. The financial cost of medication and related devices should not detract from this care. 

Last week, Minister Butler made similar comments. On this, we’re in alignment. Over the last 40 years, the PBS has balanced prices paid to pharmaceutical companies against product benefits. Sometimes negotiation has delayed drugs, and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee displayed a sensible balance, making our PBS the envy of the world. We will defend the process of negotiating drug prices to ensure no compromise on the principles that have informed the PBS for 40 years. 

I’ll discuss two more policies. One Nation will introduce legislation in the next parliament for the right to try. This means that, if a person is being treated for an illness the outcome of which could be death and all existing measures have failed, the patient has a right to request from their doctor, or a doctor has a right to suggest, a drug not listed for that condition. It may be an alternative therapy or an unlisted drug. To put this simply, the patient has nothing to lose and everything to gain. This may expand the market for existing pharmaceutical products—who knows? That’s the point. It’s a free clinical trial that a patient has voluntarily entered into, reducing drug prices and saving lives. 

The other policy is to introduce an eight-year wait for new arrivals to access the PBS, unless you’re a citizen or a permanent resident. Under One Nation, there’ll be an eight-year wait for citizenship and for permanent residence. This will not be backdated. You can’t be unmade as citizen. This will not deny medical care for new arrivals, who will pay for that care themselves. Anyone on prescription medication can vote One Nation without fear of losing access to or paying more for their medication. I trust that’s clear.

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Smears, Lies, and Clickbait

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Mainstream media is manufacturing outrage for clicks to compensate for its declining influence. They’ve taken my past comments out of context, and in one case, edited them to mean the exact opposite of what was said.

TV audiences have halved, newspapers have lost billions, and one in three Australians now openly distrust the news. Instead of fixing their credibility crisis, they’ve doubled down on woke propaganda, false reporting and partisan hit jobs on One Nation.

I laid out the hard numbers in Parliament last week – from the media’s market freefall to the truth about COVID policies, excess mortality and the fear campaigns they helped sell. When I ask data-based questions, they smear me as a “conspiracy theorist” because they can’t defend their own record.

Australians deserve facts, not fear porn. And as One Nation’s support grows, the media attacks will only get louder. We won’t be backing down.

Transcript

It’s obvious the media recently declared war on One Nation, and tonight I ask the obvious: what’s really going on? Over the last 20 years, the mainstream media’s market penetration has crashed. Broadcast television fell from a peak of 56 per cent of adult TV usage in 2006 down to just 20 per cent today. For young adults aged 18 to 35, it’s even lower, at just 12 per cent. Many still watch their favourite program online, mostly sporting telecasts. What they don’t watch are commentary shows, social engineering and opinion for hire. 

The last five years have seen the cancellation of commentary programming: 10 News+, The Project, 7NEWS’s, early and late editions, SBS’s The Feed and ABC’s Q+A. The Q+A format, where one leftist host and four leftist talking heads invite a conservative to be ritually sacrificed each week no longer resonates. This is why the media’s woke agenda has now been injected into sport, usually through welcoming the audience to their own country, men in women’s sports and woke commentary talking points. No opportunity is lost in the media’s quest to replace balanced, factual reporting with woke propaganda, at dramatic cost to the media’s shareholder value. 

In 2006, Channel 9 was worth $7.5 billion. Today, Channel 9 is worth just $960 million—less than a billion. Channel 7 fell from $4 billion 20 years ago to just $115 million today. For accuracy and fairness, by the way, both values are inflation adjusted. Channel 10 was worth $1.5 billion 20 years ago and today is on the books of owner Paramount at just $20 million. 

Movies suffered, with theatre attendance over the last 20 years falling 50 per cent—an inevitable outcome of gender and race swapping of lead roles; the compulsory inclusion of a gay storyline and a transgender character; the endless negative portrayal of men; the refusal to show a happy, loving nuclear family; and generally propagandising the woke agenda while pretending it’s entertainment. 

Let’s move on to newspapers. News Corp was valued 20 years ago at $85 billion worldwide. Today, it’s worth just $14 billion, including REA Group and Dow Jones. Fairfax Media was valued at $9 billion in 2006. Twenty years later, it was forced to sell to Channel 9, whose value of $960 million today includes Channel 9, Fairfax Media, Stan and Domain Real Estate. Again, I’m using inflation adjusted figures to compare 2006 with 2026 for fairness and accuracy—things Fairfax does not extend to us in One Nation. 

Last week saw what is a low point for Australian journalism. The Sydney Morning Herald falsely reported Senator Hanson had used party funds to keep a luxury hotel room vacant for six days while visiting Italy and played up the waste of donations. This ignored the facts. Firstly, the $5 million donated in the Fire the Liar campaign has gone into a term deposit, gathering interest until it’s needed for the next federal election. Secondly, the story was false. Senator Hanson immediately provided receipts to show the room was not booked in this period and cost One Nation nothing. Rather than admit its mistake, the Sydney Morning Herald replied with a headline saying ‘Hanson feuds with media, concedes using party funds for luxury hotel’—no apology and no correcting the record, just a story and a headline which doubled down on their lie. This is not journalism; it’s partisan propaganda. If this continues during the next election, it will clearly and patently be election interference. 

What was a scandal was Minister Bowen spending $345,000 of taxpayer money in the last 12 months alone on junkets to Brazil, Denmark, Finland, USA, Germany and Fiji—and on and on the list goes. How does a minister with a domestic portfolio spend $100,000 more on overseas trips than the Minister for Foreign Affairs and $110,000 more than the Minister for Trade? How? These trips were designed to promote Minister Bowen’s personal gains on climate change and, in part, his attempt to chair a UN climate change group. Instead of questioning this expense in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and a budget deficit, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story portraying Minister Bowen positively for not claiming any family travel as part of these junkets. Fairfax Media has lost 90 per cent of its market value and still can’t help itself. A company that was properly run would not be allowing injection of journalists’ personal and political vendettas into a supposed news story. It would have presented the facts without partisan attacks and left the public to make up their own minds. 

Our media have skipped the whole balanced and impartial part and gone straight to telling you who to vote for. Conservatives make up 50 per cent of their potential audience. One Nation alone is 30 per cent. To alienate, ridicule, insult and lie to half their potential audience at a time of falling market share, falling profits and eroding shareholder value is business suicide. The fable of the scorpion and the snake was written for the Australian media, hopelessly ensconced in their urban bubbles, preaching to an ever-shrinking base of champagne socialists raging at the dying of wokeism, a perfect demonstration of the classic logical fallacy: they do not see the world as it is; they see the world as they are. Conservatives can turn, by the way, to the Spectator and the Epoch Times for accurate news and current affairs. If you haven’t discovered these publications, have a look. 

Meanwhile, a casualty is media’s credibility. The Australian Communications and Media Authority says the proportion of Australians who explicitly distrust the news rose from 25 per cent in 2016 to 32 per cent last year. That’s a huge proportion of Australians—one in three—who do not believe what the newspaper or television tells them. This figure will grow as the truth around Australia’s COVID response emerges. The media went all in on promoting baseless COVID policies, using what can only be described as ‘fear porn’. I called for caution in Australia’s COVID response in a letter to Prime Minister Morrison in April 2020, pointing out the fatality rate was simply not what the Chinese suggested. At that time, Anthony Fauci, in his private diary, recorded his comments to the American CDC saying COVID was ‘acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility’ and would have a fatality rate of between 0.2 per cent and 0.3 per cent, not the two to three per cent publicly claimed. Zero point two per cent to 0.3 per cent is in line with the 0.1 per cent fatality rate of an average influenza. It’s 0.13 per cent for a more serious flu. The current known fatality rate of the original COVID strain from 2019-20 worldwide is between 0.2 per cent and 0.3 per cent, exactly what Fauci privately predicted in February of 2020. 

Fauci was called last week to testify to the US Congress as to why his private diaries had the correct appraisal of COVID while his public pronouncements were entirely the opposite, whipping up unfounded terror and fear, and to inquire why he advocated measures like social distancing, masking, lockdowns and screens at check-outs, all which had no scientific basis. He pleaded his fifth amendment right to not answer based on his fear of self-incrimination 113 times. Nothing says ‘I am guilty and will lose my immunity if I lie to you’ more than what he did. The committee has now held Fauci in contempt. This he would rather than to admit under oath that the actions he took, the same actions the Australian media enabled with their fear porn, had no scientific basis. Fauci knew that at the time. These were actions taken to sell pharmaceutical products which were disproportionate to the health risks of COVID but which made big pharma rich. There was an opportunity to wind all this back in November 2021, when the omicron virus arrived in Australia and the fatality rate from COVID fell. The omicron fatality rate was between 0.03 per cent and 0.1 per cent; that’s way less than the flu. Nonetheless, at the time, the excess mortality rate was going through the roof—and we know it was not due to COVID. 

The unfounded fear that Fauci fomented meant that advocating for the cessation of vaccination would have been hard to explain, despite the fact that American and Australian health regulators knew that Pfizer had misled the public on its shoddy, skimpy, faulty testing that proved fatal for 1,230 people. Only a royal commission can deal with the critical point here: if the omicron fatality rate was as low as 0.03 per cent of infected persons, and most people had been infected and, at the time, had natural immunity anyway, why was excess mortality running at a staggering 13 per cent? It’s impossible for that mortality rate to have come from the COVID virus. What could it have been? Only one thing, it seems: COVID injections. 

Even now, five years later, Australia’s excess mortality rate is running at five per cent. This represents 10,000 additional people dying each year with no explanation. I asked about this in Senate estimates and was told it was the lockdowns delaying medical treatment. It was psychological trauma, despair and loneliness: ‘It’ll pass.’ It has not passed. Why is the media falsely labelling me a conspiracy theorist, and why is it lying about me for asking these questions based on hard data? The answer is that the media took their 30 pieces of gold in the first three years of Australia’s COVID response. The media banked over $600 million from COVID— (Time expired) 

What wasn’t said because of Time Expired:

related advertising from State and Federal Governments. 

That’s what’s going on.  

Only a Royal Commission can investigate Australian governments’ COVID response, the media’s role in this and the reason for excess deaths still occurring. 

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Who Are the REAL ‘Free Press’?

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Podcasts and social media have MSM running scared

One Nation were extremely proud to launch their Victorian candidates in front of the Rebel News cameras.

Rebel News, many may remember, aligned themselves with the Freedom Movement in Victoria during the darkest days of the Daniel Andrews’ Labor regime.

While mainstream broadcasters took hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars for Covid vaccine advertising and government assistance during the lockdowns – promoting unquestioned government propaganda, actively distorting truth, and discouraging critical safety questions – Rebel News stood with protesters as rubber bullets, pepper spray, and unforgivably heavy-handed policing intimidated people out of their rights. Their independent cameraman, Rukshan Fernando, provided an eternal record of government abuses of power in an era where many leaders would prefer the whole thing be swept aside and buried.

Transparency?

Not in a world where the state press takes over a billion dollars a year and media empires beg and scrape at the Treasury door for tax dollars while the internet rises up to replace them.

One Nation firmly supports the ‘free press’ as a pillar of democracy.

The question is – which press are actually ‘free’?

You decide…

In my opinion, the news channel that shared viral footage of a pregnant woman being handcuffed, beachgoers surrounded by armed officers, and pensioners being wrestled to the ground over mask violations, was doing its job. For this, they received door-knocks from police and thinly-veiled threats.

When One Nation is asked why it has given priority to independent media over The Guardian, ABC, and others – the reason should be obvious.

We reward those who upheld democracy and passed Australia’s first real test against tyranny since the war years.

Covid is important, because it was during this age of hysteria and sanctimonious propaganda that MSM died.

It wasn’t only a lesson about the need to reform our medical institutions and international oversight – it was a Litmus test on the relationship between the press and Parliament.

One that, MSM failed.

Qualified journalists, who have no excuse, presented obvious failures of logic and false claims from politicians as ‘fact’ – and persecuted anyone who dared to challenge them. Daily, they used their platforms and position of privilege, authority, and trust to encourage a culture of bullying and snitching between friends, family, and colleagues.

Had the press acted responsibly, politicians would not have been able to destroy so many Australian lives and livelihoods.

Instead, they shamelessly took the money.

Media empires coerced and threatened their own staff.

And now they want to re-write the record and pretend they were ‘always sceptical’.

What rot.

What lies.

The same journalists who now refer to me as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ went all-in on the most damaging lies of the Fauci-driven pandemic response. Subsequent hearings and releases from the US have shown how misguided this approach was.

How many people were harmed? We may never know – short of a true Royal Commission.

The scars of that time, however, live on as legislation with sunset clauses and exceptional emergency powers Parliament was never meant to have.

A One Nation government will seek to amend these injustices and return a sense of normality to our nation.

In the meantime, Pauline Hanson has put some of the worst behaved media networks and publications on notice.

Those who abused their position by fabricating outrage and misrepresenting One Nation in the past have been disinvited from high-profile events. And, like toddlers throwing a tantrum, they have stomped around and whinged about how ‘unfair’ it is that they were ‘banned’.

It’s a concern these politicians and competing media networks never extended to Rebel News or other independent conservative journalists who have been locked out of election press tours. Nor did they mind when the government sent orders to Silicon Valley to have their posts removed from social media.

My view is that The Guardian, ABC, and others are not genuinely distraught about the so-called ‘free’ press, rather they’re miffed about no longer holding a privileged position in the information economy.

Australians are not being denied access to One Nation, its policies, or its candidates.

Of all the political parties operating in this country, One Nation was the first to fully embrace social media and engage meaningfully with citizens. The ‘major’ parties rarely do this outside the lead-up to the election where they spend a few short weeks pretending to care about voters and then promptly slam the doors shut on public conversation.

I would argue that the cosy relationship enjoyed between the ‘major’ parties and legacy media networks, form the basis of an undemocratic system.

Why don’t they talk about the shadow bans and unspoken blacklists employed by networks where elected politicians are excluded from public discourse?

Media curates whose voices you hear.

They pick and choose who to exclude based on ratings, clicks, and personal bias.

Worse, for the ‘friendly’ politicians who appear daily, the comfy, pre-scripted questions and lack of proper questioning leaves me asking, why bother inviting them onto the screen? Media may as well print their press releases and move on.

Today’s media landscape looks nothing like the ‘rough and tumble’ debates of last century where politicians were perfectly capable of facing questions about their policies.

While One Nation puts an extraordinary amount of effort into each policy – and remains happy to answer detailed questions or even make adjustments following public feedback – you’re hard-pressed to find more than a few campaign lines embossed on professional (yet ideologically sparse) press releases from the other parties.

Given this, it does not surprise me that during the hysterical meltdown a few weeks ago, where I became the favourite chew toy of editors (who should be a lot more careful with their fact-checking and damaging false accusations), they took particular offence at my appearance on podcasts.

We’re always hearing Labor and the Coalition complain about Australians falling into ‘dangerous echo chambers online’. Ignoring that MSM is itself a dangerous echo chamber – the solution from the major parties appears to be to ban, restrict, or demonetise online discussions.

The whole of modern history tells us this approach is the least likely to change people’s minds or encourage a return to rational thought.

Instead, the lesson of Western Enlightenment has always been to err on the side of more conversation.

To have debates.

To talk to people whose views differ.

To challenge both yourself and others.

To wade into unfamiliar rooms and have difficult discussions.

How else can a politician hope to find out why it is that these voters have come to their views?

And so yes, I have made a point of going on many podcasts. Far more than most of my peers. I speak to everyone – from the largest and most controversial podcasters in America to start-up Australian journalists trying to break into the market. I’ve been on podcasts that host a wide range of topics – everything from forums on energy and its future, discussions about freedom of speech, I speak to medical professionals, I’ve spoken to economic professionals, Constitutional experts, Defence and Veterans podcasts, and conversations about migration. Most Fridays I speak directly to citizens about their concerns and catch people up with what’s going on in Parliament.

My peers on the other side of the blue, green, and red fence can scorn all they like – none of them are changing minds on their Insiders love-in.

The childish response to my record of sharing public discourse reveals how threatened media and politicians are by the simple act of talking outside the Canberra Bubble. Or should we say, safe space?

Last week, my critics were thoroughly embarrassed.

The ABC callously and wrongly ridiculed a discussion I had regarding the possibility that Covid vaccines could have an impact on miscarriages calling it a ‘debunked conspiracy theory’.

Referring to these as ‘unreported’ (meaning the ABC weren’t paying attention) livestream conversations with ‘anti-vax mandate activists’.

Well, yes, we still take the position that mandated Covid vaccination, on threat of job loss and lock-outs, was morally wrong and reprehensible. This is a mainstream view in hindsight, we might remind the ABC… The article continued to promote ‘anti-vaccine mandate’ as if it were a bad thing.

This was during the early days where the exact numbers and data were not known. It was a conversation about whether a risk to pregnant women existed at a time when women were being denied proper risk assessment. These women were contacting our office. They felt as if they were being lied to by authorities.

Well, we were right to ask questions. We were right to have discussions. And we were right to raise the alarm on possible harm to pregnant women.

Dr Anthony Fauci’s 2021 texts, revealed by Donald Trump’s executive order, show there was a discussion about ‘weigh[ing] the potential risks and benefits’ regarding pregnant women taking Covid vaccines.

Two vaccines in the US, Pfizer and Moderna, had been granted emergency use while data was still being collected on pregnant women – in other words, they didn’t know the risk profile.

These texts reveal that Fauci was aware of ‘fevers’ and ‘cytokine storms’ occurring in patients after the second dose which ‘theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester’. To which other experts replied, ‘Good point.’

The Health and Human Services Department in the US no longer recommends these vaccines for pregnant women or healthy children.

Our position has always been transparency. This means freedom for doctors and medical professionals to voice their concern without fear of losing their jobs – and freedom for Australians to have access to honest medical information, not ‘risk-assessments’ decided in the dark by foreign bodies and boards that we did not elect.

It is the ABC who failed and it is the ABC who should apologise for that failure to the Australian people.

Politicians such as myself were elected to have these conversations when others cannot, because we have additional protection. It’s shocking that Australia has reached a point where seeking data and questioning ‘authority’ has become an excuse for the ‘trusted’ media to whip themselves into a frenzy.

Perhaps if they asked more questions, they wouldn’t need taxpayer dollars or legislative assistance to survive.

Who are the REAL ‘free press’? by Senator Malcolm Roberts

Podcasts and social media have MSM running scared

Read on Substack

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Reality Check Radio

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Speaking in Support of Community TV

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Community TV provides a vital service to small business, to communities, and to developing future workers in the broader TV & Radio sector. It provides a training ground for emerging talent and provides programmes with heart. If it didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have this ‘free’ hands-on training ground for students.

Across refreshingly propaganda-free community television and radio, 17,000 volunteers and almost 1,000 employees generate $250 million in value each year. The federal government contributes $43 million each year towards the cost, or rather, the taxpayers do. I wish more recipients of government (taxpayer) funding demonstrated such a positive return on investment.

The bipartisan approach of the Lib-Lab Uniparty is jeopardising the future of Community TV. Why? Because mainstream TV desires the viewership, and telecommunication companies covet the bandwidth.

Welcome to Australia, where the power lies in the hands of foreign shareholders of television and telecommunication companies. If the government genuinely intended to counter the powerful financial sway of telecommunication and broadcast companies, it would have supported my amendment, which sought a guarantee that Community TV would always have free-to-air bandwidth.

The impending digital restack will involve moving broadcast television channels closer together to free up a sizable, contiguous band section of bandwidth, which will then be sold to telecommunication companies. Taxpayers stand to make over a billion dollars from the sale, while telecommunication companies will profit significantly more.

Community TV is likely to disappear permanently due to the interests of telecommunication companies and mainstream mouthpiece media.

Transcript

One Nation supports the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Community Television) Bill 2024. Across community television and radio, 17,000 volunteers and almost 1,000 employees generate $250 million in value each year, every year. The federal government contributes $43 million towards the cost—or, I should say, the taxpayers do. I wish there were more recipients of government funding—taxpayer funding—with that good a return on investment. 

In 2017, the national network of community TV stations was attracting more than one million unique viewers a week. Top programs were attracting 400,000 viewers, including off-peak repeats in the week of release. In 2024, those ratings would rank in the top 20 of free-to-air and cable shows. That’s why Malcolm Turnbull destroyed community TV, moving channels off free to air to an online model where a commercial business plan was impossible, thus returning a million viewers a week to commercial television, which was suffering from falling ratings and advertising revenue. Channel 31 and C44 in Adelaide resisted and were saved as a result of work by One Nation and the Greens. Ratings on free-to-air television have fallen since 2017 in terms of the percentage of available screens because mainstream television is mostly absolute rubbish, completely lacking in the creativity and anarchy that attracted such a large and loyal following to stations like C31. Community TV is at times weird and wonderful. Programs with heart and soul have been replaced with commercial programs devoid of those very qualities. 

The small cost of community TV must be considered in the wider context. Community TV provides a training ground for talent, scriptwriters, make-up artists, producers, directors, sound and lighting. The former TVS in Sydney was based out of the University of Western Sydney school of media in Kingswood, offering students both theoretical and practical tuition. C31 is based out of RMIT in Melbourne. The now closed C31 in Brisbane included programming using students from the Queensland University of Technology. Mainstream television look for graduates of community television when hiring staff. If community TV did not exist then the taxpayers would be on the hook for vocational education training places to teach those skills.  

As a result of the closure of all states except Melbourne and Adelaide, small businesses across the country have been deprived of the opportunity to access advertising on broadcast television. Many brands have grown their business and community TV and now find advertising on commercial TV is unaffordable. Often small business can’t even get a TV advertising salesman to return their calls.  

This legislation, which extends C31 and C44 licences into the future is welcome. Yet it’s half a solution. Community TV deserves to get their broadcast rights back in the upcoming digital television restack promise for 2024 and now apparently some years away, so it’ll survive for a while. The restack will involve moving our broadcast and television channels closer together to free up a large contiguous section of bandwidth that would then be sold off to telcos. The taxpayers will make north of $1 billion out of the sale; telcos will make much much more.  

There we have it. Community TV is likely to disappear permanently because the interests of mainstream mouthpiece media and telcos have aligned against it. Mainstream TV want the viewers; telcos want the bandwidth. Welcome to Australia where the power is in the hands of foreign shareholders of television and telecommunication companies, and everyday Australians just don’t matter. Our kids are getting free hands-on tuition in television production does not seem to matter. Having a channel that doesn’t offer propaganda and prurient rubbish doesn’t seem to matter.  

It’s disappointing that Minister Rowland declined to support my second reading amendment, which I had intended to foreshadow to guarantee bandwidth for community TV in the upcoming digital restack. I understand the argument the government is using. There’s an inquiry into the future of free-to-air broadcasting—also called over-the-top broadcasting. Committing to community TV now though does get ahead of the inquiry findings. But, so what? If there was any real intention on the part of the government to go against the powerful financial influence of telcos and broadcast stations, the government would have supported my amendment.  

The government, sadly, is not prepared to guarantee one tiny little bit of bandwidth for community TV. One Nation is prepared to make that guarantee because we are not beholden to the foreign predatory billionaires and their wealth funds. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I urge community TV and radio to continue broadcasting. As the people’s media, you perform a vital service. Thank you.  

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One Nation is Proud to be a Populist Party

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Senator Hanson recently spoke about record immigration and the human catastrophe this is causing to everyday Australians. The Australian newspaper described her words as ‘populist’. Among members of the news media, or commentariat, that label offers mythical protection, insulating them from having to actually discuss the issues we’re raising.

The commentariat may be interested in the definition of ‘populist’ being ‘a politician who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups’. Damn right!

The elites have been ignoring everyday Australians’ concerns for 50 years. Populist is exactly who we are in One Nation—a party that cares about everyday Australians and the financial, housing, social, and medical crisis now engulfing us.

I’m proud that One Nation talks with the people and listens to what they have to say. I’m proud One Nation votes in the best interest of Australians in parliament and I’m proud our supporters have the courage to stand up for what’s right.

This country might not be in such a dire state if other political parties in Parliament showed the same level of interest in the concerns of everyday Australians as One Nation does. Instead, they, along with the commentariat, seem to view the term ‘populist’ as a slur, as if it challenges their self-perceived superiority and arrogance.

I will continue to represent the interests of everyday Australians!

Transcript

Last week Senator Hanson spoke about record immigration and the human catastrophe it’s causing everyday Australians. The Australian newspaper described her words as ‘populist’. Among the commentariat, that label offers mythical protection, preventing them from having to actually discuss the issues we’re raising. The commentariat may be interested in the definition of ‘populist’ being ‘a politician who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups’. Damn right! The elites have been ignoring everyday Australians’ concerns for 50 years. Populist is exactly who we are in One Nation—a party that cares about everyday Australians and the financial, housing, social and medical crisis now engulfing us. 

I’m proud that One Nation talk with the people and listen to what people have to say. I’m proud One Nation votes in parliament for the best interest of Australians, and I’m proud our supporters have the courage to stand up for what’s right. This country would not be so far down the toilet if other parties in this place were as interested as One Nation is in the wants and needs of everyday Australians. Instead, they, like the commentariat, spit the word ‘populist’ from their mouths as if it were poison—as if it were an affront to their self-perceived superiority and arrogance. 

Such contempt for the word ‘populist’ comes from a deep-seated sense of superiority amongst inner-city elites and their champagne socialist ideology—socialists whose wealth insulates them and their ideologies from human outcomes. These are the people who eat the food and drink the wine grown on farms that the same champagne socialists demonise as enemies of their net zero revolution—farmers who they wish would get off their land to make way for solar panels, wind turbines and powerlines erected in the bush so city socialists don’t have to look at them. All the while, they pat themselves on the back about how worthy they are, under the hubris of their spiritual guide and leader, the World Economic Forum, which steals wealth and sovereignty from everyday Australians on behalf of globalist, parasitic billionaires. 

To them, it doesn’t matter that we Australians don’t want to have our cars taxed until we can no longer afford to keep them; be locked into 15-minutes cities; never again be allowed to travel where we want, when we want and how we want; be living in homes rented from the billionaires because land taxes forced us to give up our own homes; be forced to rent furniture and whitegoods because green taxes made it too expensive to buy; and be forced to eat bugs and forced give up red meat in favour of cancerlike fake meat cultured in bioreactors. Who owns the companies making this slop? It is the same billionaires campaigning against red meat. 

And what is the greatest threat of all? It is digital currency that comes with a use-by date. Spend every cent of the money you earn or your money expires. There’ll be no saving and no passing wealth on to our children. Australians will live in economic and physical slavery, except those wealthy and well connected under a different set of rules. 

When the commentariat dismiss us as populist, this is what they’re covering up. These people are the billionaires’ little minions—brainwashed ideologues and those simply greedy for money and power, operating in the bureaucracy, the media, corporations and parliaments around the world. Soviet Russia called these people the nomenklatura, and there’s evidence they’re in Australia, including here in this Senate. My words will be interpreted as some form of class warfare. Yes, they are. It was not One Nation, though, that started a war on working Australians. It will be One Nation that finishes it and wins it. 

Right now, fortunately, the public are waking to see the voice behind the curtain. The greed and ruthless self-interest are now obvious amongst the billionaires and the nomenklatura. This will not be an exercise in free will. You will be forced to comply. The elements of the control agenda are being shaped right now. 

The Digital ID Bill is on tomorrow’s Senate schedule. This bill ensures every Australian has a government-backed digital identity that must be shown to access daily services: transport; shopping; banking, including ATMs; the internet; and much more. If you’ve heard the phrase ‘papers, please’ in connection with totalitarian regimes and wondered how people accepted that, wonder no more. The legislation can be used to prevent troublesome populists like One Nation from being heard. 

The digital ID is paired with legislation previously passed through this parliament that allows government and business to scan everyday Australians’ faces in real time as we go about our business. The legislation that One Nation opposed yet the Senate passed allows police and any bureaucrat associated with penalties to determine your identity through a facial scan taken using your computer, your phone, your traffic cam, your street or shopping centre camera—even at supermarkets, which these days have more cameras than staff. The result is each Australian’s data history, which corporations are allowed to access. They will know everything about each of us, and this information will be traded to corporations and between corporations to build an even more detailed picture. Who is to blame for these tools of tyranny? Labor, the Greens, teal Senator Pocock and the globalist Liberals and Nationals. One Nation tried to pass an amendment to prevent this type of facial scanning yet the establishment parties voted our amendment down and out. They know this legislation’s real purpose is to extinguish populism so government can rule with total control. 

It was chilling last week to hear Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who graced business leaders with his thoughts on our future economy. The Treasurer believes Australia must become an ‘anti-fragile nation’ and invoked the philosophy of Nassim Nicholas Taleb—that strength and resilience emerge from confronting stress and disorder. The Treasurer said, ‘It is hard not to see the value in this idea.’ What may appear as a Treasurer trying to impress the big end of town with his pseudo-intellectual ‘wafflenomics’ on the nature of randomness is much, much more. The ‘non-fragile’ in that conversation means nothing the public can do, nothing the next ‘plandemic’ can do, will shape the total control held in the hands of government and their big business mates, the corporations. Nothing can and nothing will interfere with the flow of profit from everyday Australians into the pockets of the world’s predatory globalist billionaires. 

The Treasurer said ‘strength comes from confronting stress and disorder,’ which is a tenant of Communist political theory. To build a new world order one must first create chaos from which the public will beg to be rescued—climate fraud and fear, COVID panic and hysteria. We now see chaos in the housing market, in the food and cost-of-living crisis, in the hospital and medical crisis, in education and across social issues like the capture of language, and the erasure of women and gender. The Treasurer’s words were a frightening self-own. 

The government are not interested in solutions. They want chaos, to force the public to accept a loss of sovereignty and freedom in return for income, housing and false security. Many Australians are waking. Those who aren’t waking are running out of time. All that is needed to complete the suppression of opposition to this new tyranny is the misinformation and disinformation censorship bill that Minister Gallagher introduced. Free speech is the one thing preventing their plan from being complete, and the misinformation and disinformation censorship bill destroys speech.  

One Nation, being a proudly populist party will stick up for everyday Australians and oppose this control agenda. There is still hope. The internet is changing the ground rules, which is why they seek to control it. There is still time to sever the umbilical cord between the World Economic Forum and our parliament. Senator Hanson was right when she said last week ‘stop voting for parties that are deliberately making your lives harder. Stop voting for the Liberal and Labor uniparty. In the next election you have a choice: One Nation or tyranny. 

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Blatant dishonesty from the ABC

I’m not sure I have ever seen such a gross and deliberate misrepresentation of facts than this report from the ABC.

Blatant dishonesty.

I’m ashamed that the ABC has been allowed to become unaccountable to the Australian people and the money that we fund it with.

Transcript

[Presenter]

Well US President Donald Trump has taken credit for an upsurge in American jobs, saying the country is largely through the Coronavirus pandemic.

The US employment rate has fallen for the firsts time since the pandemic began, from 14.7% in April to 13.3% in May, an increase of more than two million people employed, but the President’s comments that George Floyd would be happy about rising job figures has been widely condemned.

What actually happened:

[President Trump]

Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day.

Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race, colour, gender, or creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. They have to receive it.

We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.

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