I called out the Prime Minister’s jet set lifestyle during parliament. Australians can see how out of touch and ineffective Anthony Albanese is as a leader.
The Prime Minister has spent too much time rubbing shoulders with pop stars, sucking up to billionaires and flying around the world in long overseas trips and too little time talking with everyday Australians.
Meanwhile Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen and his Ministry of Misery is making life harder for everyday Australians with every new net zero measure.
This is a PM who clearly cares more about globalists and celebrities than he does for the people of the country he was born into.
If ever the comparison to ‘Nero Fiddling While Rome Burned’ was appropriate for a political leader, it is Anthony Albanese.
Transcript
In a speech earlier this year, I made the point that one can judge a man by the company he keeps. I observed that one of Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese’s first orders of business was a private meeting with globalist billionaire and manipulator extraordinaire Bill Gates. And I spoke to a more recent meeting the Prime Minister had with Larry Fink, chairman of BlackRock, the merchant bank that now owns Australia and tries to control Australia.
In the break, the Prime Minister once again used taxpayers money and a taxpayers plane to hobnob at concerts, exhibition openings and attend a billionaire’s birthday soiree. In so doing, the Prime Minister has demonstrated he will show fealty to anyone he needs to, in order to keep swanning around as though the weight of responsibility of running this beautiful country of ours was somehow not on his shoulders.
It’s not the job of the Prime Minister to party at a time when everyday Australians are struggling to pay their rent, pay their mortgages, find a roof to put over their heads and pay their electricity bills. Especially because of his government’s policies. Can someone on the Government benches remind Prime Minister Anthony Albanese the word party in Labor Party doesn’t mean what he seems to think it means.
All the while, Chris Bowen MP, Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and now known as the Ministry of Misery, has been out there destroying our productive capacity, making people’s lives harder. His latest policy is a tax on commercial vehicles, including utes that tradies need to be a tradie. How can a so-called party of working Australians introduce a ute tax that will make it harder for tradies to own what is an essential tool of their trade?
Have you considered what that tax will do to housing construction? It will cut house production and raise house costs. If ever the analogy of fiddling while Rome burns is appropriate to a modern leader, it’s now: Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. What a bloody disgrace!
https://img.youtube.com/vi/xYT_53pabRA/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-02-27 17:42:512024-02-27 17:42:55PM Partying Instead of Running the Country
The PMs frequent visits to foreign countries is a way of avoiding responsibility. The PM does not understand that leaders lead from the front, not from 30,000 feet. PM Albanese needs to pick up his leadership game instead of his carry-on baggage.
Australia desperately needs leadership. We have the worst outcome for real wages of any OECD country. Housing is unaffordable and our inflation is now home-grown. Two million new migrants is driving demand-inflation, making staples harder to get and more expensive. This situation will become worse after the passage of Minister Plibersek’s new bill to nobble agriculture in the Senate today, which reduces water available to farmers and will without doubt drive up food prices.
The PM needs to stop dodging responsibility and get back here to clean up the mess he’s made.
Transcript
As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community I started this week with my usual check to see if the Prime Minister is in the country today. He is. Hitting ‘home’ on his GPS still brings him back to Australia. What a memory that device has. Prime Minister Albanese clearly doesn’t suffer from airsickness, yet he has managed a medical first—spreading airsickness to the rest of the country. We are all thoroughly sick of his air travel. The Prime Minister doesn’t get that and with every flight he is crashing the government’s poll numbers. It’s why the internet has unkindly, though accurately, given the Prime Minister’s plane the new name—’Air Albatross’.
Leaders lead from the front, not from 30,000 feet. Australia needs leadership. Inflation can no longer be blamed on world events beyond our control. All along our inflation has been and is homegrown—demand driven from this government’s record new arrivals. There was a time when Australia could have ramped up manufacturing and agriculture to meet demand from the 2.2 million new long-stay arrivals in just the last 12 months, but not anymore. The Hawke-Keating Labor government and the Howard Liberal government sent manufacturing to China. Now we’re at the mercy of the Chinese and world markets to source goods, including building materials, to meet the needs of new arrivals.
Minister Plibersek is deliberately nobbling agricultural expansion, with another bill in the Senate today to take away farmers’ ability to grow food and fibre for new arrivals. Per capita income has gone backward faster than in any other developed nation in the world, as national wealth is spread across more and more people. A looming federal deficit will force interest rates up and steal even more wealth and opportunity from everyday Australians. Prime Minister, stop dodging responsibility, hang up your Biggles hat, get to work and clean up your mess.
When will this Labor government make the decision to cut unsustainable, record high immigration? This is a government that is halfway through its term, yet it’s still blaming the previous government. Are we really supposed to swallow this fairy-tale?
Australia’s immigration levels have been allowed to escalate under the Albanese government and they’re driving both the housing crisis and the high cost of living. These two issues have worsened exponentially under Labor.
I had to remind the Minister to answer the question because he was determined to use up the time allotted for answering in banter with others in the chamber, or to deliberately twist my words. When I pressed him to answer he could only pass the buck, talk up Labor’s grossly inadequate housing fund and it’s clear he is not prepared to accept any responsibility. The arrogance and lack of respect he shows to his position and by default, the Australian people, is deplorable.
Failure to take responsibility is a symptom of the ways in which Labor is failing the Australian people. A recent Weekend Australian article has reported that the migration surge is fuelling inflation, and the Reserve Bank backs that up.
The recent tsunami of new arrivals is under Labor’s watch and Senator Murray Watt needs to own it. These performances in parliament he’s indulging in, rather than taking his position seriously, do nothing to restore the people’s trust in government.
Transcript
My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Watt. With Labor embarking on the largest immigration program in Australian history, bringing in more than 500,000 people this year alone, more and more economists are warning these numbers are driving inflation and hurting everyday Australian families. Following yesterday’s 12th interest rate rise since Labor was elected, when will the government acknowledge they are completely wrong about high immigration and cut the numbers to sustainable levels?
Senator McKenzie interjecting—
Senator Dean Smith interjecting—
The PRESIDENT: Senator McKenzie and Senator Dean Smith!
Senator WATT: Senator Smith, that’s most unlike you! I’m very disappointed in you! I’m very disappointed. Thank you for the question, Senator Roberts. I hear, again, in response to your question, Senator McKenzie demanding more spending for infrastructure. So I guess we’re back to, ‘Spend more in the economy, and drive up inflation!’ That’s where the opposition was at today—
Senator Rennick interjecting—
Senator WATT: Senator Rennick’s jumping up and saying no. The Liberals disagree. Okay!
The PRESIDENT: Senator Watt, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts, I am going to direct the minister to your question, and I will remind those in here that the crossbenchers are entitled to be heard in silence and are entitled to have their questions answered. They get less time than others in this place. I would expect everyone to be sitting in respectful silence. Minister Watt, I refer you to Senator Roberts’ question.
Senator WATT: Thank you. Senator Roberts, I think I answered a very similar question from you the other day. I did acknowledge that Australia’s migration system, after 10 years of Liberal and National government, mainly overseen by the now opposition leader, Mr Dutton, is in utter 	disarray. We have acknowledged that. I know that the minister—
The PRESIDENT: Minister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts.
Senator Roberts: On relevance—I’m asking when he will cut the numbers to sustainable levels.
The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Roberts. I will remind the minister of your question. Minister Watt.
Senator WATT: Thank you, Senator Roberts. It is important to put this in context, and we have acknowledged that the migration system that we inherited, overseen largely by Mr Dutton, the now opposition leader, is a mess. It is a completely broken system. We have already taken a number of measures—
The PRESIDENT: Minister Watt, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts?
Senator Roberts: When will they acknowledge they are completely wrong about high immigration and cut the numbers to sustainable levels? That’s simple.
The PRESIDENT: I believe the minister is going to your question, and I will continue to listen carefully. Minister Watt.
Senator WATT: We have taken a number of measures already since being elected to fix the mess of the broken migration system we inherited. For example, this government has ended the Pandemic Event visa, which was being abused in some cases—in many cases. We have changed the previously unlimited working hours that were available for international students, a system that was engineered by the former government, and we’ve also made changes to work exemptions for working holiday visa holders. We’ve also increase the temporary skilled migration income threshold from $53,900 to $70,000, and that is the first increase in a decade.
The PRESIDENT: Minister Watt, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts?
Senator Roberts: When will he deal with cutting the high numbers?
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, I think he’s being relevant to your question. Thank you, Minister.
Senator WATT: Senator Roberts, it’s up to you to choose whether you want to listen to my answer or not. But I’ve already outlined a number of measures that we have taken to fix the migration system, thoroughly broken, overseen by Mr Dutton, and to try to put in place a more manageable migration system and more manageable immigration numbers. We are conscious that this is an issue that needs to be addressed, and we’ll keep working on it. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, your first supplementary?
https://img.youtube.com/vi/CAlwC_sngko/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2023-11-14 14:07:022023-11-14 14:07:06Watt a Clown Show
The new Governor of the Reserve Bank is not ruling out raising the cash rate again to further control inflation. She refers to these measures as part of a tightening phase.
The Reserve Bank is unwinding the massive expansionary monetary policy it took during the COVID response which created $500 billion out of thin air. Meanwhile the States and the Federal ALP are spending money like it is play money.
This spending acts against the Reserve Bank’s rate rises. This is why I say this Government is hitting the brake and the accelerator at the same time.
The high rate of immigration is expanding the economy and that also acts against the dampening effect of rate rises. The pain and stress of mortgage rate hikes can be attributed to the costly COVID response and to immigration. That is all on Prime Minister Albanese and Treasurer Chalmers.
One Nation will reduce immigration to reduce rents and take the heat of the property market, removing the need for further rate rises.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Congratulations on your appointment.
Ms Bullock: Thank you, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: How does it feel being in a highly complex job which is affecting so many people’s lives and livelihoods?
Ms Bullock: I do feel a great deal of responsibility, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Inflation has gone from 7.8 per cent, peak, to 5.4 per cent. In your speech yesterday you went on record to say the Reserve Bank will not hesitate to raise rates again if it looks like inflation is not coming under control. Is inflation coming under control? I’m guessing from your comments so far that you’re wary and there are signs that it’s not.
Ms Bullock: I’d say what I said earlier, which is that we got an important piece of information yesterday. We need to take that away, analyse it and figure out what it means for our forecast going forward. That’s no different to the comment we’ve been making to date, which is that we are—’wary’ is a good word. We’re looking at some of the more persistent parts of inflation and asking ourselves: are there signs that those might be coming down in the future? So, yes, we are wary. We don’t know if the job is done yet, and we’ve made that very clear. Even though we haven’t raised interest rates since our last interest rate rise in June, we’ve made it very clear that we might need to go again. We had not ruled that out, and we’re in the same position now.
Senator ROBERTS: When debating the need for a rate rise, is the effect on mortgage affordability, especially mortgage stress, taken into account? If so, what measure do you use, and what is that measure telling you about how hard life is getting for mortgagees?
Ms Bullock: We do understand that there is a distribution—let me step back for one moment. Higher interest rates and monetary policy work through a number of channels. The one that gets the most attention is what we call the cash flow channel, which is the impact on people who have debt. That gets a lot of attention, particularly in Australia, because, as Chris already mentioned, most of the debt of households and businesses is variable rate debt or very short fixed-rate debt. That’s why that channel gets the most attention, but there are other channels. In fact, Chris gave a speech on that fairly recently. One is the intertemporal channel, which basically means: as interest rates go up, people are incentivised to save rather than to spend, and in fact we are observing that. We are still seeing people in aggregate save, and there’s an incentive even for mortgage holders to save. Their interest rates have gone up, so, for them, there’s an incentive now to try and put even more away into their offset and redraw accounts if they can. That’s the other way that it works. Another channel is the exchange rate channel. The way that works is: as interest rates rise, the exchange rate—if everyone else wasn’t raising their interest rates the exchange rate would rise, but at the moment it means that it hasn’t fallen very much. It has been reasonably stable over the last year. We’re not getting inflation through that particular channel. There are other channels as well.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you measure the stress?
Ms Bullock: No. We can’t very precisely say: particular channels contribute X to inflation. We can’t do it that way. But they’re all the channels that we’re watching and trying to understand how they might impact.
Senator ROBERTS: How do you assess whether or not people are under mortgage stress? Ms Bullock: We don’t do individual mortgage stress assessments. What we can observe is data we get from the banks on hardship calls that they’ve got, arrears rates and those sorts of things. We can observe those at aggregate level. The feedback we’re getting at the moment, from the banks and from the data we see, is that that has risen but it’s still at very low levels.
CHAIR: Last question.
Senator ROBERTS: Surely the inflation that’s still hitting Australians has something to do with the Reserve Bank creating $500 billion out of thin air—or, as Dr Debelle said, electronic journal entries—over COVID. Have you thought about that? Your predecessor admitted it was a cause of the inflation problem, creating that $500 billion out of thin air.
Ms Bullock: Basically, you’re referring to the massive expansionary monetary policy that we undertook during the pandemic?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Ms Bullock: I think my response would be that, at the time, we were facing a very, very dire economic situation, and the appropriate response at the time was to run a very expansionary monetary policy. We have now unwound that and we’re in a tightening phase, so, yes, the purpose of the expansionary monetary policy was in fact to encourage demand and encourage growth. That was very much the intention. To the extent that we look back and now say, ‘Well, demand is too strong,’ we are now in a tightening phase to wind that back. But I wouldn’t say it was the sole reason for the increase in inflation. You might remember that there were very big supply chain issues as well, and when constrained supply meets high demand, you get inflation.
Senator ROBERTS: Building on that, you have a very blunt tool to attack inflation, don’t you? Because the cash rate for the entire country is a very blunt tool to try to bring down inflation.
House prices are skyrocketing out of the average battler’s budget. Despite warnings of a possible housing bubble, APRA is banking on the banks only losing 2% from their mortgage books in their “stress testing”. This threshold sounds very favourable to the banks and allows them to get greedy at the possible expense of Australian homeowners.
Transcript
Stress testing banks during COVID-19 dated 15th of December, 2020. I have a question about one of the criteria APRA uses to stress test a bank, and that is a fall in real estate prices or to use a simple explanation, the ability of a bank to maintain liquidity during a real estate meltdown. Can I say it like that?
Well, I think Senator, it’s more a question of whether they can sustain their solvency, which for us it’s more of an issue of a capital, but liquidity is an important consideration as well.
Thank you. From the report, the figure APRA used as a proxy for a real estate meltdown was the loss of $49 billion in residential mortgages over three years. Is that correct?
That sounds about right, I think Senator. I don’t have the document in front of me, but-
That’s what I’m reading. Thank you. And with that loss being 30% of the total bank loss in the period of the stress test, as a loss rate, this would translate into 2% of Australian banks residential mortgage loan book. Is this correct? And please confirm your figure for the value of residential mortgages held by Australian banks. What is it?
Oh, well I think the, now I think the, if we’ve published that number, Senator, I’m quite comfortable to correct, total mortgages the banking system would be-
In the term of residential mortgages.
Yeah. Sorry. Total residential mortgages. Housing loams We’re talking about here. Owner-occupiers and investors would be, it’s in the order of a trillion dollars, I think Senator that’s something that we can come back to you on.
Thank you for that.
Very happy to take it on notice.
Okay. Thank you. Final question on this topic before moving onto a simple topic, can I confirm that APRA is projecting a real estate meltdown would only cost our banks $49 billion in losses on mortgages, and that loss would accrue over three years? That seems to be a very favourable assumption for the banks.
Well, that’s the, that’s the impact that we expect to have on the bank given they have collateral against their loans. Many loans have very low loan-to-value ratios. So in many cases of banks we have loans that even with a substantial fall in real estate values the banks would incur no loss, that’s not to say the borrowers would be unaffected by any means.
Well, I think that’s the concern. Sorry, go ahead.
Senator, I was going to add, I mean, it’s just to your question of projection or forecast, this is stress test. So, it is a set of assumptions that we use to look at the resilience of the sector and the entities involved. So, it’s not forecast or projection.
Okay. Thank you. It’s just that our constituents are concerned that we’ve had 20 years of the banks putting a lot of money into real estate, and taking it away from small businesses and funnelling it into real estate. And we’ve seen real estate prices increase a lot recently. Some people are calling it a bubble. So basically the question amounts to, are you letting the banks do as they please, and then sweetening the impact for the banks?
Well, Senator we don’t allow the banks to do what they please. We’ve got a raft of prudential standards that ask the banks as they’re making commercial decisions to take risk into account, and where we see risks, and I think an example of that would be the recent increase in the buffer, APRA acts and takes action.
Okay. Thank you.
I can just note for the record that, Mr. John Lonsdale was the one who provided that answer. Just leading into your next question.
Does APRA embed staff in financial institutions, like say the Big Four banks?
The Reserve Bank of Australia has just given $100 billion to prop up the banks but why is the government ignoring spending that would increase our productive capacity like road, coal power stations and dams?
Transcript
[Marcus Paul] All right, the RBA this week cut the interest rate down to you know, virtually nothing. 0.1% interest rates. So I mean, it’ll help people buy or stay in their homes, but there is a cost of course, self-funded retirees as we’ve talked about on the programme, who rely on investment income, and seeing their returns fall to basically nothing.
[Malcolm Roberts] That’s right. And then so, these people providing for their so-called own retirement is just hot air, because the legs had been cut out from under them now. We’re now at the point where retirees are having to spend their capital, because the return on their nest egg is almost non-existent and heading negative. And what’s disturbing is that, you know, this is going to create a lot of pressure for people at a time when people don’t need it. And by printing another a hundred billion, and giving it to the banks, they’re going to prop up the banks to do more mortgage lending. This government, the state and federal are completely ignoring the need to invest in productive capacity. We need to invest in power stations, dams, roads, ports bridges. The Iron Boomerang Scheme, the Bradfield Scheme. These and many other prime investments, opportunities in our country
[Marcus Paul] Yeah.
[Malcolm Roberts] Are being neglected. And we need to get into building the productive capacity of our country.
