One Nation warned about Labor’s housing policies — and now young buyers are paying the price.
Negative equity, tax hikes and soaring interest rates have created the perfect storm.
We won’t stop exposing this incompetent government’s selling out of young Australians trying to get ahead and own their own home.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: When the government released its housing policy, we warned about the debt trap, which is exactly what is happening. The debt trap has closed on young buyers. We warned about the negative equity arising. Here it is. Thank you, Labor! We warned about changes to capital gains tax. Look at the consequences. We warned about negative gearing being abolished. Here it is. We warned about interest rates increasing because of Labor government spending. Here it is. It’s the perfect storm, thanks to the Labor Party. We will continue to expose this lazy, tired, dishonest, incompetent government.
While market competition and cost-of-living relief are urgently needed, the Greens’ proposal for state-run supermarkets and price caps is economically flawed and infeasible.
Instead, One Nation supports increasing competition by funding the ACCC to investigate and prosecute restrictive trade practices, dishonest advertising, and unfair competitor advantages used by major supermarkets (Coles, Woolworths, Aldi). We propose shrinking government waste and passing those savings directly to Australians through tax cuts.
State-run supermarkets historically fail.
Will the Greens’ proposal to acquire existing Coles and Woolworths sites offer fair compensation, or will they rely on state acquisition tricks similar to what John Howard used to steal farmer’s property rights in the past?
Supermarket profits (around $1 billion combined from $100 billion in sales) represent a thin profit margin on actual sales. A 1% reduction in retail prices would completely erase those profits. And the Greens’ promise of a 30% price reduction is mathematically unrealistic without massive taxpayer subsidies, which ultimately will require raising taxes.
While the Greens’ policies will add to your cost of living through higher taxes, One Nation’s policies will put more money back in your pocket, delivering genuine, lasting cost-of-living relief.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: This motion is two-thirds of a good idea. Yes, the Colesworth duopoly needs competition. One Nation would do that, funding the ACCC to investigate and prosecute restrictive trade practices in the industry used for the market advantage of Coles, Woolies and Aldi, including supplier agreements, side agreements, rebates, dishonest advertising and disadvantaging competitors, sweetheart union agreements and government policy designed to damage small and medium competitors. Secondly, yes, everyday Australians desperately need cost-of-living relief. One Nation would do that, shrinking the government to fit the constitution, as we said, in early 2025, eliminating government waste and duplication, then passing on the savings in the form of tax cuts, with more people keeping more money of their own. That’s One Nation’s way.
It’s the third part that One Nation opposes: a government run supermarket. With this policy, the Greens looked across the Pacific to New York and its communist mayor, Mamdani, and thought: ‘You know what? We’re going to try to run state run supermarkets.’ That’s always failed badly. And price caps have been another disaster wherever they’ve been tried. At least Mamdani is building his supermarket. The Greens just want to steal Coles’s and Woolies’s existing sites. Mamdani doesn’t open his first supermarket until next year, and already the Greens are declaring the idea a winner. There’s no talk of just compensation, because it’s against the federal constitution, so I assume the Greens will use state governments for acquisition—the same trick John Howard used to steal farmers’ property rights to comply with the UN Kyoto protocol. Strange bedfellows, indeed! Supermarkets are low-margin operations. Yes, they’re getting greedy, and this is where One Nation would step in, as I mentioned. The $2.1 billion figure is not accurate. The figure includes all divisions: supermarkets, variety stores, pet stores, liquor, property, hotel businesses, and online and loyalty programs in Australia and New Zealand. Coles has funds employed—the investment to build and run supermarkets—of $12 billion on a 12 per cent return on investment. Woolworths has $19 billion invested on a 17 per cent return on investment. Those are healthy returns and suggest more competition is needed—not much, though. The actual $1 billion or so in profit that ‘Colesworth’ makes from supermarket sales comes from around $100 billion in annual sales. A one per cent reduction in prices would wipe that out completely. Are the Greens promising to subsidise their supermarkets with taxpayers’ money? If so, be honest about it. How much will be needed, and whose taxes will you put up to pay for it? The most this idea will save is between one and two per cent. The Greens are promising a 30 per cent saving. It just doesn’t add up.
The Greens are trying to force higher taxes onto Australia’s resource sector and I have to ask: how much is enough?
With the mining, oil and gas industries contributing $45 billion in taxes and royalties last year alone and $335 billion over the past five years, true economic growth comes from expanding, not shutting down, natural resource projects.
A recent meeting with Tamboran in the Northern Territory emphasised the life-changing impact of resource jobs for regional and Aboriginal communities. Providing real skills, stable incomes and financial independence, these projects offer a path out of welfare dependency and toward home ownership and prosperity.
Everyday Australians already see returns in their superannuation from our resource industry, while governments receive critical royalties to fund essential public services, as well as the “free stuff” they love to dish out. The Beetaloo project is already attracting interest from data centres seeking direct access to the Northern Territory’s national internet backbone. With guaranteed gas for power and water for cooling, planning could begin today.
This is One Nation’s approach: maximising resource development for the benefit of all Australians, while maintaining genuine, practical environmental protections. We will focus on our real landscape, not the climate orthodoxy pushed by Labor, the Greens, Teals and globalist Liberals.
Blocking new coal, gas and mine extensions will crush jobs and cripple regional towns. The Federal Court’s recent decision to overturn the government’s ban on the $1.3 billion McPhillamys goldmine reaffirms One Nation’s commitment to sound, responsible resource extraction that delivers long-term abundance for all Australians.
Taxing the resource industry into extinction while expecting it to fund the nation is pure madness!
Transcript
Senator Roberts: I thank Senator McKim for this motion. The first thought I had after reading this motion was simply ‘how much is enough?’ The resource industry, mining, oil and gas paid $45 billion last year in company tax and royalties in Australia. Over the last five years, they’ve contributed $335 billion in tax. If the Greens want even more, there is a simple way to achieve that: more mines, more gas wells, more utilisation of Australia’s immense natural resources to bring in taxation and to create the wealth and opportunity for all who are here, especially in rural and remote areas where the workforce has a large Aboriginal component.
My office met this afternoon with Tamboran, who operate a new gas well in the Northern Territory, and included hearing about their successful Aboriginal employment program. Tamboran are giving Aboriginals breadwinner jobs, training and a future independent of government handouts, empowering Aboriginal workers to break free of welfare dependency. I can see why the Greens don’t like it. Who knows? Once Aboriginals own their own homes, are married with families and enjoying the benefits of resource job brings, they may vote One Nation.
Resources already provide returns into their superannuation funds of everyday Australians, as well as extra royalty into government coffers, to pay for the free stuff that government offers. The Beetaloo project has already attracted inquiries from data centres looking for a location connected to the national internet backbone, which is the Northern Territory. Data centres could start planning today, knowing the gas for power and the water for cooling are available. This is One Nation’s solution: more resource utilisation for the benefit of all Australians while, of course, ensuring the protection of our natural environment—the natural environment, not the sky god of warming as Labor, Greens, teals and globalist Liberals still believe. The green solution is to tax the resource industry while shutting down the resource industry. This is insane. Yes, I know it doesn’t make any sense to me.
Published Greens party policy is no new coal, no new gas and no extensions to coal or gas leases. High taxes will force resource projects out of business and, importantly to the Greens, prevent new developments. Massive job losses will result from this Greens party policy. Huge communities will be cast into poverty, heat and isolation because wind and solar are a useless way to drive air conditioners, transport and industry. Government revenue to pay for all the free stuff goes, and superannuation returns fall, and the Greens celebrated the refusal of a $1.3 billion extension to the McPhillamys goldmine in New South Wales. The reason Minister Plibersek gave for the refusal was the section 10 Aboriginal protection order, as the site hosted a mythical blue-banded bee important to Aboriginal culture, apparently.
Today, the Federal Court officially overturned the mining ban. Justice James Stellios ruled that Minister Plibersek’s protection order was legally invalid due to a procedural failure and a lack of procedural fairness. The company that owns the mine paid $900 million in taxes last year on other projects. The taxes on this mine will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Who knows, there may be enough to cover the operating losses of one of Senator McKim’s Greens supermarkets.
This motion shows the stark contrast between the Greens and One Nation. The Greens will use high taxes to force resource companies out of business in the name of social justice virtue signalling while One Nation will encourage environmentally sound resource extraction in the name of providing abundance for everyday Australians for many, many, many years to come. Voters of Australia, the choice is yours.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/EFifNtBTy7w/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-10-22 15:48:062026-10-22 15:48:12Killing the Golden Goose
The 2026 Chalmers-Albanese budget and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 represent a cynical, ideological attack on everyday Australians under the guise of intergenerational equity. Instead of fostering wealth creation, Labor is driving a strategy of division to fund social engineering and buy votes.
We support the modest tax cuts and the $1,000 deduction placeholder. What we don’t support is the harmful capital gains tax and negative gearing measures.
Labor relies on “poison pills” — packaging toxic tax grabs alongside popular measures to deceive the public.
One Nation is committed to fighting for smaller government, protecting essential services and allowing Australians to keep their hard-earned money and secure their financial future.
Transcript
The 2026 Chalmers-Albanese budget was a victory of ideology over decency. The fundamental ideology of this Labor government is one which ignores wealth creation in favour of wealth redistribution and division, otherwise known as buying votes with other people’s money. This is a deliberate strategy of division or, more accurately, a strategy of ‘divide and conquer’. Implicit in this strategy is a simple maxim: ‘It doesn’t matter how much hate you get from those whose votes you don’t need.’ It’s callous policy, cynical, dishonest and in the end self-defeating, as every communist government in history has found out the hard way. When you take people’s stuff, they stop creating new stuff and the nation descends into poverty—time after time after time.
Despite the lesson of history, here we are with the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026, which rakes in $1.38 billion in additional taxation in the first full year, 2027-28. This is a tax grab. This is before the $350 million backdown announced last week. How badly does this government need that money to take the electoral criticism they’ve received over a measure which is 0.2 per cent of budget revenue?
This bill takes from those who have created wealth to buy votes from those who have not yet created wealth—our young. And yet, according to the Productivity Commission and updated JBWere financial modelling, an estimated $3.5 trillion to $5.4 trillion in assets will pass from Baby Boomers to younger generations through to 2050. The speed of the transfer is increasing. Inheritances have more than doubled since 2002. Wealth passing between generations has risen from roughly $120 billion per year to an expected $500 billion per year in 2045. This government is trying to buy votes amongst young people with money they would have received anyway. That’s the fatal flaw in this bill—the lie, the deceit. It’s these trillions of dollars in inheritance that have become the grand prize of this communist Labor government’s theft.
Labor wants to steal more of everyone’s money, including from the young, and lock the young out of building assets for later in life. Lock you out! Labor’s intergenerational equity and intergenerational wealth transfer lies will in fact really create intergenerational poverty—a veritable gold mine of money from taxing everyone for Labor and its bureaucrats to use to bankroll Labor’s social engineering and to buy votes from their target demographics, which, for the record, are ABC journalists, university academics, immigrants from any country as long as it’s not a Christian country and union bosses, although only the militant kind. Not only will our young people receive less in the long run, they will receive less in the short term, owing to changes in the capital gains tax. Previously, any capital gain was discounted 50 per cent and then taxed as part of your normal income. This meant young people just starting out did not pay a lot of tax, especially those trading while at uni or TAFE. Not anymore. Now the full value of the profit will be taxed and at a minimum rate of 30 per cent, not your marginal rate. Even worse, more value trades and assets like trading cards or parts of a bitcoin over $500 are now treated the same for compliance purposes as large stocks portfolios. Do you have a $500 Pokemon card? Congratulations! Here’s the compliance you’ll need to meet, including valuations and notifications for a Pokemon card, you evil capitalist you. Off to the re-education camp you go. There will be none of this ‘trying to get ahead’ under this Labor government. The deceit of this government to pretend this bill is about intergenerational wealth when the real impact will be to make it harder for young people to get ahead—that’s why the budget has been called the worst in living memory. Not only were the key measures toxic, the justification for taking those measures was a lie. It doesn’t add wealth and opportunity for young people. It takes it away. Everyone except rusted-on Labor diehards saw straight through it. Our young have seen through it, and baby boomers are furious. They didn’t work their whole lives to create wealth just so the government could come along and take a massive chunk to fund social engineering.
One Nation’s response to these measures is simple: don’t do it. Let Australians create their own wealth and use that wealth to benefit their children. For many Australians, the bank of mum and dad is in play to help young people get their own home. Assistance from parents has risen from 15 per cent of new mortgages in the 1980s to 40 per cent of new mortgages today. I know when I mention family that a lot of our constituents will be thinking, ‘I don’t have a family, since my parents got divorced and my parents lost their house in the divorce. What do you have to pass on?’ I acknowledge those who are in that position. Your feelings and concerns are real. One Nation understands that, which is why our low-start mortgage will allow your personal superannuation account to provide a large share of your home deposit. This will allow you to get into your own home once you have a job, a work history and proven capacity to repay.
When it comes to the broader policy environment, including taxation and regulation, the response to Senator Hanson’s amazing speech at the GetUp! press club in Canberra last week carries a warning. Our opponents will spin One Nation’s policies and words so far, so tightly that Pauline Hanson could knit a sweater with them. Our policies do take a moment of serious thought to grasp. On one hand, One Nation policy does contain measures which need to be funded through some level of taxation. We will support and defend Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, aged pensions and the National Disability Insurance Scheme for those who are actually disabled, along with unemployment benefits for those looking for work and sickness benefits for those who legitimately can’t work, amongst other measures. These are what make Australia a civilised society.
On the other hand, our campaign for smaller government is based on an overarching principle of allowing Australians to keep more of their own money and providing an economic environment that encourages people to get ahead through their own hard work and endeavour. This is not an absolutist argument. It’s one of degree—a balance between a government of decency and a government of waste. The Chalmers-Albanese government has crossed over the line out of decency into waste and hypocrisy and deceit, and, as a result, One Nation ranks are swelling. Labor obviously feel that entrepreneurs are not their demographic. You show that repeatedly. Interestingly, a large number of small-business people coming into One Nation are saying the same thing about the Liberals. ALP arrogance has been on display in the development of these proposals. No open consultation occurred and no white papers. The measures were drawn up behind closed doors and then dumped on the public, vomited onto the public. The committee stage for this bill was a farce engineered to manipulate a favourable report—deceit yet again.
This Labor government has made a mockery of the committee system across legislation, referrals and Senate estimates to the point where a review is needed to find a way to stop this abuse from ever happening again. The government has been forced to remove some of the worst elements of their tax grab. Great—now remove the rest!
The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 includes a provision to limit negative gearing to new properties only. Negative gearing allows someone on a wage or salary to buy a second property, or more, and claim the net cost of that property against their tax. Any net profit is considered taxable income—it’s taxed. Many Australians have used this method to get ahead. It’s most common in retirement, with couples purchasing their retirement home near retirement and then renting it out to help pay it off until they’re ready to move in. Then they rent out their family home to fund their retirement.
It’s true that this is a concession which tends to be used at higher-income levels. Here are the facts. The top 20 per cent of wage and salary earners own 40 per cent of investment properties and claim 60 per cent of the tax deductions. Before this bill, there was no limit to the number of homes that a person could negatively gear other than the ability of their income to cover the cost.
One Nation believes—our policy has shown this before today and shows this right now—that a large property portfolio is not something that should be set against a salary. It’s a business, and the person should have a corporate structure which is appropriate for that business. One Nation will limit negative gearing to two properties. This is enough for Australians to invest in real estate and lift themselves up without misusing the tax system.
The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026, though, cancels negative gearing on existing homes entirely, and it allows unlimited negative gearing on new builds. So that older couple I mentioned before, buying their retirement home and renting it out to help pay for it—they can’t negatively gear. Yet a high-income earner can buy up a whole new block of flats and negatively gear that. Where’s the justice? How is that fair? How does that advance intergenerational equity? It doesn’t. It drives intergenerational poverty.
There are two other measures in this bill. One Nation will support the $5-a-week tax cut. Although $250 a year is nothing towards offsetting the rising cost of living, it’s money better off in workers’ pockets than in the government’s pockets, where it’d be eaten up before it even gets into play in 2027. As a reminder, One Nation policy will put a lot more into the pockets of everyday Australians. We will index the tax thresholds to ensure nobody is forced into a higher tax bracket because they got a pay rise to make up for inflation. That’s the stealth tax. I’ve tried twice to amend Treasury bills, once under the Liberals and once under Labor. Both times, both parties said they loved the idea—but not now.
One Nation will leave schedule 4 in the bill. That is the no-documentation-required $1,000 for tax deductible expenses. I’m concerned that people who are entitled to more than $1,000 will lazily tick that box to save time, although opposing what is a benefit for the many on the basis of what it could do for the few is the wrong decision.
One Nation is moving an amendment to remove schedule 1, capital gains tax, and schedule 2, negative gearing, from the bill. If that amendment fails, we will oppose this bill.
The Labor Party have taken to using a deceitful trick to make it look like One Nation opposed pay rises for workers, which is false. Instead, this is to add a measure to a bill which they know One Nation will not support. In this case, it’s the capital gains tax and negative gearing changes hurting the young and the old. It’s called a poison pill. It’s not their idea; the parties of globalisation around the world are using it to frame conservative parties as hateful of workers when the reverse is true. Tricks destroy trust and kill truth. Prime Minister Albanese gives so much material himself to the Fire the Liar campaign across the nation. Poison pills allow their fake ‘independent’ websites like They Vote For You to lie and say One Nation voted against tax cuts, for instance, when, in fact, the Albanese government wrapped the tax cuts in legislation that could not be supported—it had to be opposed. Labor refuses to put the measures separately. Had they put the measures separately, we would have supported the tax cut, minuscule though it is. Another Labor lie is its claim this bill is tax reform. It’s not. Instead it increases tax complexity, which leads to increased fees for accountants, lawyers and valuers when preparing tax returns for which the people pay. Taxpayers pay even more when doing their return. This is not reform; it’s a rip-off for which you, the people of Australia, pay—including the young. Anyone interested in honest political discussion should treat the OpenAustralia Foundation and their propaganda arm They Vote for You with utter contempt. Their subscribers apparently do, because their most recent report admits a $50,000 loss. It’s not working—perhaps try impartiality and honesty next time—nor is it having any effect.
The growth of One Nation is proof the public are breaking what has been a lifelong allegiance to the tired old parties—yes, you two—and are instead embracing One Nation policies that will restore wealth and abundance for all Australians. Labor’s dirty tricks and lies will not stop One Nation from voting in the best interests of everyday Australians. We want to make Australia a land of abundance and opportunity again for the old and the young.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/VRYgf3wLZWg/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-10-13 11:41:052026-10-13 11:55:00Taxes, Traps and Tactics in the 2026 Budget
Cheap illicit tobacco keeps smoking rates alive – and the Health Department confirmed it.
They admitted that illicit cigarettes are cheaper because they avoid excise, and that cheap cigarettes encourage people to smoke.
When criminals flood the market with excise-free cigarettes, people keep smoking. It’s that simple.
Yet the government refuses to reduce the tobacco excise, clinging to the claim that high prices are the key to lowering smoking rates.
Make that make sense.
Transcript
CHAIR: Thank you very much. Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing today. We are all agreed that smoking is very, very harmful to human health. Let’s put that aside. We are not agreed that the low price that people face when it comes to buying tobacco illicitly is overwhelmingly attractive to people. We know of policemen and policewomen and public servants who are buying illicit tobacco. The barriers to entry are very small. How much do you allocate to the quit smoking campaign? Isn’t it true that in recent years the decline in smoking rates has stopped and it’s been flat in Australia? It’s continuing to decline in other countries but it is flat in Australia.
Ms Clancy: Thank you for your question, Senator. I will take the second part first, if I may, and then come back to the first part. Smoking prevalence has trended downwards over three decades, with some occasional flattening or plateaus as we go. Recent studies have shown that this decline continues. Our highest quality data is brought out every three years. At the moment, our most recent is 2022 data. One in 10 adults, 10.6 per cent, were current daily smokers. That is a steady decline from 22.4 per cent in 2001. More recent national representative estimates support this trend. In 2022-23, 8.3 per cent of people aged 14 and over smoked daily. In 2023, approximately one in 10, 10.8 per cent of representative adults, were current daily smokers in the HILDA study, which is a slightly different cut or set of data. The next high-quality data release will be at the end of this year, which will look at 2025 rates. We are very much anticipating those rates and will use those to tweak our policy settings as necessary. There are also a number of other data sources we use in the intervening years that tend to show that we’re still on a downward trajectory, although we are concerned. Our job is to be concerned about smoking rates.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I agree with you that the data shows that, over decades, smoking rates did decline. But the data I’ve seen shows a graph that clearly shows that in the last few years it has been flat, whereas in other countries it has continued declining. How much is budgeted for the quit smoking campaign? How much has been paid?
Ms Brown: I don’t have the expenditure amounts here. The government has committed, since 2023-24, $78.7 million over a four-year period. That’s invested in the Give up for Good smoking, vaping and tobacco public health campaigns. That’s at the Commonwealth level. As I mentioned in relation to other measures, there are also campaigns implemented through the states and territories to varying levels.
Senator ROBERTS: Is the total spending around about half a billion dollars over four years, the total projected spending?
Ms Brown: On the campaign, no, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: On all the campaigns.
Ms Brown: I am not sure that the Commonwealth has the total figure of investment in all campaigns across all states and territories. The federal government has committed $78.7 million over four years, since 2023-24.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you agree that the low price of cigarettes through the illicit tobacco industry makes it attractive to smoke?
Ms Clancy: We know that price is a determinant of whether people smoke and how much they smoke.
Senator ROBERTS: Is the driver of the cheap price of illicit tobacco the fact that it is illicit tobacco and is not paying excess?
Ms Clancy: Sorry; can you repeat the question?
Senator ROBERTS: Is the driver of low priced illicit tobacco the fact that it is escaping paying any excise, so we have very low priced cigarettes illicitly?
Ms Clancy: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.
Ms Clancy: Criminals are bringing tobacco into the country without paying the excise they should pay and therefore their products are cheaper.
Senator ROBERTS: We have got, as Senator Colbeck tried to establish, a low-price cigarette/tobacco industry; it’s illicit but it’s still there.
Ms Clancy: Yes, illicit tobacco is available and it is evading the excise.
Senator ROBERTS: It makes it very attractive to smoke because the price is low. This is an issue for the department of health in terms of preventing people smoking, because it is encouraging people to smoke because of illicit tobacco.
Ms Clancy: Cheap cigarettes do encourage people to smoke. We, along with all of our partner agencies in the Commonwealth and the states and territories, are looking at a range of measures—some of which you’ve heard about this morning and in previous hearings—to tackle the illicit market and reduce their ability to sell in this country.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. These questions are for the ATO. The revenue decrease has been around about three-quarters of the revenue it was a few years ago, which is a big impact on the ATO revenue and a big impact on the people. Could you walk us all through the process of how the excise rate is set and particularly what is the minister’s role? Do you consult the department of health?
Ms Hawkins: Thank you for the question. As I mentioned earlier, the excise rate is legislated through government. A change would be a policy issue for Treasury. That is set and then the ATO’s role is to administer it. It’s important to recognise, though, that it’s been illegal to grow or manufacture tobacco in Australia without a licence. There are no current licences. What that means is that all tobacco sold in Australia that’s legal is imported. As such, there is actually no excise collected on domestic tobacco. The Department of Home Affairs is responsible for the administration of the Customs Act and the Customs Tariff Act, from which customs duty is applied to imported tobacco at rates which are equivalent to excise duty. It is a policy issue. It is legislated through government and it is not a rate that is determined by the ATO.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for that clarification. That’s understood. Could you tell me what consultation is asked of the ATO? Do you provide advice in that process? What is your role in the process of developing the excise rate? You don’t have responsibility for it. I accept that’s the government and the Treasury. But how do you get involved in that? Do you get involved in it? Are you concerned about losing $12 billion in tax revenue?
Ms Hawkins: The ATO are involved in that discussion, when it comes to Treasury, in providing any input that they seek from us, but we do not have direct control over what that rate is set at. We are always open to providing information, as requested, and being part of discussions where we can provide intelligence or information that would be useful in the process.
Senator ROBERTS: What advice have you given over the last four years?
Ms Hawkins: There was a question which I took on notice previously which was asking about whether the ATO was in direct discussions with regard to where the excise rate landed. I said I would take that on notice because I am not privy to, at that point in time, exactly what discussion we would have contributed to. I am more than happy to take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Could you specifically mention in the answer on notice the advice that the ATO has given to the government. I understand that the government sets the excise rate. Could you give us the advice you’ve given to the government?
During the February Estimates hearings, I pressed the government and the Illicit Tobacco Commissioner on the ineffectiveness of their strategy to combat the illicit tobacco market.
Tobacco excise revenue is projected to fall to just $1.9 billion by 2029-30, far below the $16 billion-plus previously collected. A clear sign the government does not expect its enforcement efforts to meaningfully reduce the black market.
The Commissioner’s own report lists 10 drivers of illicit tobacco yet fails to directly acknowledge that high excise and the resulting price gap are major contributors, despite everyday Australians, including police officers, confirming this reality.
Independent data from Roy Morgan shows smoking rates have increased from 16.8% to 17.1% following recent excise hikes, contradicting the government’s claim that higher taxes reduce smoking. Without knowing the true size of the black market, boasting about a 34% increase in seizures of illicit product is meaningless. We cannot measure success when you don’t know the scale of the problem.
The government continues to act without reliable data, ignores evidence that contradicts its assumptions, and refuses to confront the policy settings driving the illicit tobacco growth.
This is a failure that Australians should not be forced to tolerate. It’s costing taxpayers billions in lost revenue.
One Nation will take drastic action until the illicit market is wiped out, then return duty to a much lower, more sensible and sustainable rate.
— February | Senate Estimates
Trancript
CHAIR: Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: My questions are to the Commissioner for Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarettes. My question on notice No. 15 remains unanswered from last estimates. It read: How many acts of violence were committed in Australia that were directly related to illegal tobacco and vapes? I’m talking about murders, fire bombings, assaults and similar acts or threats of violence. I did get a part answer in that the question was best answered by law enforcement, which I assume would include various state and federal agencies. Your role, as you expressed it to me in last estimates is, ‘activities that support intergovernmental governance functions and support reporting on the size and consequence of the illicit market’. Doesn’t consequence include acts of violence related to the illicit industry and criminals associated with that?
Ms Shuhyta: We had looked at how to report on those statistics. At the moment, there isn’t a consistent way that we can report on the exact number of criminal activities related to illicit tobacco across states and territories. There are different datasets and definitions. For example, an arson might be coded or recorded as an arson but not necessarily if it is illicit tobacco related. It’s very hard for me to pull together the data from across Australia on those specific activity levels. We are continuing to work with states and territories in terms of what might be realistic there. We’re working with criminal intelligence agencies and AFP to look at the best way we can report as we move forward. The metrics that I have in the report to parliament this year are based on the data available to us. As we move forward over the years, we will definitely be looking at how we can mature that data and make it more sophisticated and comprehensive.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for admitting that you don’t know the consequences. I suggest listening to some people in the street. Secondly, the loss of tobacco excise revenue is stunning. In 2019-20, excise brought in $16.3 billion. In 2024-25, tax revenue had fallen to $7.8 billion, or about half, with a projection for 2025-26 of $5.5 billion, or one-third of what it was just five years ago. Minister, when will you accept that the Laffer curve applies to tobacco excise and the higher the tax rate the less revenue is received, especially with cheap illicit tobacco competing. I’m talking to police in Queensland who go to illicit tobacco to get cheaper cigarettes.
Senator Watt: We certainly agree that illicit tobacco is a very serious problem and the connection to organised crime. That’s why we’ve devoted so many more resources to tackling illicit tobacco. I’m sure the commissioner and others could talk to you about the operations they’ve undertaken. In fact, I don’t know if you were here when the commissioner gave his opening statement.
Senator ROBERTS: I was.
Senator Watt: He talked about the success of those operations in terms of the seizures that have been achieved.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, his people have seized plenty of material, but we don’t know the total size and it could be a tiny proportion, which is what this is.
Senator Watt: The commissioner might be able to give you some information about that. I’m not sure. On the excise, I understand why many people would like to see us reduce the excise. The government’s view is that we shouldn’t be giving in to organised crime. We should actually take them on and we should arrest them. We should confiscate the illegal tobacco. We know that tobacco kills thousands of Australians every single year. We know that higher prices for tobacco puts people off smoking, and that’s a good thing for their health. It’s a good thing for the health budget that we all pay for.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s why they buy it cheaper, Minister.
Senator Watt: I’m aware of that. That’s why we are so determined to break the organised crime rings that are behind illegal tobacco.
Senator ROBERTS: But, Minister, you’re not confident because you forecast, yet again, another reduction in revenue from tax. Page 8 of the Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner Report 2024-25 lists 10 factors behind the growth in the illicit market. Not one of those mentions the high level of tobacco excise. Commissioner, do you really believe the high price of legal cigarettes is not driving demand for illicit tobacco? Not even 10th out of 10?
Ms Shuhyta: Just a correction—excise is listed on that page. In terms of a number of drivers for the illicit market, price differential is listed as one of those drivers. Within price differential, there is a number of aspects. One is that the cost of illicit tobacco is pushed down because of cheap supply costs and an overabundance in the region of illicit tobacco—
Senator ROBERTS: And lack of excise.
Ms Shuhyta: And then excise and tobacco company profitability actually pushes up regulated tobacco. You’ve got those two things at play. Excise isn’t the be-all and end-all driver of the illicit market. We see different excise rates around the world in different countries that don’t correlate with the size of the illicit market. In fact, in some countries with the cheapest tobacco there are sizeable illicit markets. Or within the same country that has a standard excise rate, you’ll get different market shares of illicit tobacco in different cities. For me, it’s not as simple as advising government that excise is the solution.
Senator ROBERTS: Talking to people in the street, including policemen who use illicit tobacco, it’s certainly very significant. On page 9, Commissioner, you’re claiming success because the amount of illicit product being seized has increased by 34 per cent. Do you accept making a claim of success when you don’t know how much the black market has grown is pointless? If you don’t know the total size of the black market and no-one has any idea—I’ve asked before—you don’t know whether you’re having success or you’re failing. Looking at the criminal activities and the adoption of illicit tobacco widely, it looks like you’re failing.
Ms Shuhyta: I’m going to try to answer the question that is in there. We do have an estimate of the size of the illicit market. This report does estimate the size of the illicit market. It’s the first time that we’ve been able to do so. I think at the last estimates I wasn’t able to give you that size because the report hadn’t been finalised and tabled, but it is there now.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, I find it troubling that the budget projection for tobacco excise in forward estimates only shows revenue of $6.9 billion in 2028-29. That suggests you do not expect the commissioner to make a dent in the illegal trade. Shouldn’t that figure be closer to the $16 billion or more we used to get? Isn’t that an admission of failure or of ignorance?
Senator Watt: We’re absolutely not giving up in the fight against illegal tobacco. Again, I’m sure—
Senator ROBERTS: You said you are.
Senator Watt: I don’t think you should insult the efforts of the Border Force personnel.
Senator ROBERTS: That was a clever switch, Minister, but I’m not doing that. They’re doing a good job.
Senator Watt: You’ve just said it’s a failure. They’re the people who are on the front line, taking on organised crime.
Senator ROBERTS: Your failure to control illicit tobacco?
Senator Watt: You and I are sitting in this room. We have Border Force personnel out there on the front line taking on the organised crime elements behind illegal tobacco, and we are absolutely determined to keep that up.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, the report makes a statement on page 19 that reducing the tobacco excise will increase smoking rates and undo the gains made to date, which you said earlier. In July 2025, Roy Morgan showed recent excise increases on top of the normal CPI increase had caused an increase in smoking rates from 16.8 per cent to 17.1 per cent. The graph I’ve seen confirms that. Yet you are saying the opposite. The National Tobacco Strategy added large excise increases in September 2023, ’24 and ’25. Can you show any data that these massive increases have reduced smoking rates? I suggest that the opposite is true, and that’s what the data shows.
Senator Watt: The trouble with—
Senator ROBERTS: Criminals don’t ask for ID.
Senator Watt: No, I’m aware of that. They’re very bad people who deserve to be locked up, which is what we’re trying to do. Your question about smoking rates is probably one you should take up in the Health estimates. That’s not the work of this department. The work of this department is going after organised crime. We’d appreciate your support in that effort.
Senator ROBERTS: You’ve got my support. That’s why I’m talking about this and that’s why I’ve been raising it for a couple of years now. Decades of shoddy governance show that our biggest problem is governments acting without data, going without data and contradicting the data in so many areas.
00Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-07-10 09:59:022026-07-10 09:59:06The Illicit Tobacco Market Must Be Wiped Out
… government greed for other people’s money is our biggest threat.
Productivity and prosperity – these are two concepts intimately linked and yet wrongly separated thanks to the over-taxing demands of Treasury.
Productivity is not about taxation.
Taxation is a reward taken by the Treasury from productivity in the private sector.
This has led some ministers to view tax revenue as the chief goal of productivity instead of a reflection of economic success – a catastrophic error that speaks to the financial illiteracy plaguing the Labor government.
The recent Budget saw Labor propose raising taxes on the few remaining productive sectors of the economy. These represent the small corners of investment occupied with people trying to make ends meet in an increasingly unfair system. The result has been … predictable. A flat, weakening investment sector and stagnating housing markets.
Panic has spread. Money has retreated. Productivity has taken a hit it could not afford.
It was only last week that the Treasurer had to be told that his new Capital Gains Taxes threatened future productivity within the business sector and the investment market.
Think about it. When doubling taxes on risky investment returns, the government misses out on the taxes it could have collected when investors transition into home ownership. Which is what most young people say they intend to do with their capital gains… Because of these new taxes, young people will purchase fewer homes. It is just one example of stifling economic growth in favour of short-term tax grabs. And this is without mentioning the reduced productivity of renters already facing price hikes as a result.
Government greed for other people’s money is the biggest threat to productivity.
This government has strongly disincentivised productive risk-takers.
Business owners are punished and over-taxed workers are conditioned to blame their employers for economic hardship. This creates unproductive economic tension.
Instead, the true culprit is the acute failure of government to contain inflation and tighten its own belt. Labor has acquired substantial debts through mismanagement, hubris, panic, and delusion. What did we see in this budget? The Treasurer is still spending money he doesn’t have on things this country doesn’t need.
Meanwhile, businesses are collapsing are record rates. The public sector is growing. Wealth generation is shrinking. This is not productive.
Australia is becoming an incoherent economic mess that rewards a culture of hand-outs – be they corporate or private – instead of offering a hand-up to those who want to succeed.
Here is the truth. We are almost at a trillion dollars in debt, chasing our tail to keep up with interest repayments worth $28 billion per annum. Dead money. The Treasury is in desperate need of productivity while having no idea – whatsoever – about how to nurture productivity in a complex Western democracy full of free people making independent choices about their economic future.
The economy requires incentive, not the punishment.
What is ‘productivity’?
Productivity is cheap, reliable, Australian-sourced energy. It is good roads connecting regional areas with city centres. High speed rail lines and Australian-controlled ports. Refineries guaranteeing fuel supply when the world is in crisis. A competitive construction industry. It is the cutting of petty and unnecessary red tape. It is cutting UN and foreign agency imposed green and blue tape. It is high-speed, reliable internet – everywhere – including along highways and in regional areas. It is the freedom to take risks and earn a reward. It is a reliable nation of stable economic rules to encourage investment.
Productivity means placing trust and respect in businesses – freeing them of unnecessary cost burdens so they can hire staff, reward the hardest workers, and voluntarily pay above minimum wage.
Labor is spending all of its time focused on the minimum wage, because the economy is dying. Low wages are becoming the standard, rather than the baseline, because businesses are giving too much of their capital to the Treasury.
A Treasury that has run out of money and wants to dip into the pockets of Australians who did nothing wrong.
Productivity is not about working harder – it is about working smarter.
The Woke-Left have taken over the economy and built an economic prison rather than a promise.
One Nation wants to free the Australian people so they can be productive – on their own terms – to build a future they want for their children and their children’s children. Also, a nation worth living in for the people alive now, who deserve to enjoy the sacrifices of their ancestors.
To the Prime Minister, I say this, you don’t make the next generation of Australians productive through saddling them with an education debt larger than a housing deposit, selling their jobs to an imported workforce, and then tempting them into home deposit schemes they can never hope to pay off while depreciating the value of their asset. These Australians will never have the financial security to invest their money or take the risk of starting a business that creates productivity. What they are doing is surviving. Not thriving.
One Nation have been presenting policies for productivity for years. Since rising in the polls, these policies have gained traction. The response? Our political opponents are seeking to tear them down. They complain that any drop in revenue is an affront to the status quo of Treasury.
When we offered income splitting to give families a fairer tax policy and the flexibility to raise their own children, we were told this would ‘hurt income tax returns’ and ‘cause women to leave the workforce’. I’m sorry? What about the savings to childcare, which are currently costing the Budget a fortune? What about the humanity of allowing one parent to stay home, if that is what they wish? What about the benefits to the child? The community benefits? The education benefits? One Nation offers economic freedom – and the economists whinge.
When One Nation offered to end bracket creep – Labor, the Coalition, and Greens united to stop us. Then the government tossed a measly $250 at working Australians in compensation. It is … disgusting. It is … dishonest.
When One Nation offered greater freedom to businesses so they can grow and hire more staff, we are told that we are denting corporate tax. One Nation does not want minimum wage to be the anchor dragging down prosperity – we want the private sector to reward merit, pay better wages, and give proper benefits to the hardest workers and brightest staff because the most skilled should rise to the top. Productive societies are merit-driven. Always.
Merit makes money. Hard work makes money. Businesses make money. Government spends money other people have made.
And it should spend that money in a way that encourages productivity – not fantasy obsessions, like a non-existent climate crisis. The green apocalypse made a lot of corporations very rich at the expense of taxpayers. You think we didn’t notice – we did.
Of course, One Nation will retain the minimum award system and seeks to elevate wages above the minimum level through productivity increases.
One Nation understands that productivity has nothing to do with forcing people to work harder. They already work hard. Instead, Australia requires bold changes in regulation to unchain the economy and release its potential.
A smaller government.
This is our message to the Treasurer. If you have to sit around mulling over productivity at a roundtable it means you don’t understand productivity. You have no clue what to do.
Just as you cannot subsidise your way to becoming an energy super-power, you cannot tax your way to productivity.
A One Nation leadership will force – force – the government to tighten its belt, stop wasting money, and cut off parasitic departments and bureaucracies. We will shrink the government to fit the constitution, saving $90 billion a year of waste and duplication, so that we can offer the Australian people lower taxes, less red tape, and more personal flexibility. One Nation wants tax money put to use to build transit lines and infrastructure required to increase productivity – not into wasteful projects that tick a Net Zero box at the UN.
We cannot keep sending billions ($31 billion a year) of dollars offshore and billions more into the hands of domestic fraudsters and criminals.
Cheap, reliable energy. Proper infrastructure. Real wealth. Lower taxes. Less bureaucracy.
That is the formula for productivity.
I will finish with this. And this will hurt. If the Treasury wants productivity, it will have to take a leaf out of the private sector. It will have to take a risk. Take a hit to its balance sheet. Make an investment. It will have to lower taxes and allow the private sector to keep more of it what it earns so that the men and women of Australia can choose what sections of the economy to grow – to pick the best parts to invest in – to cultivate what actually works, not what the government wants to work.
The Australian people have always been financially responsible and economically intelligent. They will dig the government out of this financial hole – only if the government lets them.
For decades, the Liberal-Labor uniparty has sold out Australians to a globalist agenda.
Sky-high electricity prices, crushed farmers and unaffordable housing aren’t accidents; they are the result of the UN’s Agenda 21 and the psychopathic UN criminal Maurice Strong and his plan to deindustrialise the West.
From the UN’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the current “Net Zero” madness, elected Liberal-National-Labor leaders have been blindly following a foreign script. The Howard Liberal-National government started this dishonest madness. It stole farmers property rights, imposed renewable energy targets and proposed the first policy for a carbon dioxide TAX, an emissions trading scheme to make Maurice Strong a billionaire.
The current approach to climate and energy policy is built on scientific uncertainty and economic risk. Minister Chris Bowen’s department lacks scientific proof of climate change and defers instead to the UN IPCC, an organisation that relies on “guesses” rather than empirical data.
We are being driven off a $1.9 trillion cliff for climate prostitutes stealing subsidies for large solar and wind projects that lack cost-benefit analysis. Additionally, farmers’ rights have been stolen, affordable energy destroyed and $30 billion a year is being wasted on UN climate compliance.
One Nation is the only party with a plan to: ✅ Exit the UN Paris Agreement ✅ Abolish the Department of Climate Change, saving $30 billion/year in UN waste ✅ Restore affordable coal and gas ✅ Build dams and infrastructure ✅ Put AUSTRALIANS first, not globalist billionaires.
👉 Vote One Nation to secure a future for your children, your grandchildren – and every generation to follow.
Trancript
Senator Roberts: As people awaken to the Liberal-Labor uniparty facade, polls show the political status quo is changing and ending. The one thing I want everyone to remember is that Australia’s economic and environmental destruction is based on the psychopathic United Nations criminal Maurice Strong. It matters, because all Australians are suffering unaffordable energy prices, cruel cost of living and family-crushing house prices and rents. The Howard Liberal-National government started this dishonest madness. It stole farmers property rights to comply with the UN’s 1997 Kyoto protocol. It imposed its renewable energy target and proposed the first policy for a carbon dioxide tax—an emissions trading scheme to make Maurice Strong a billionaire.
Energy prices affect every aspect of our lives and lifestyles. It’s the foundation of modern civilisation and international competitiveness. In a recent Senate inquiry, Minister Chris Bowen’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water could not provide me with scientific proof climate is changing. They deferred to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the UN body that Maurice Strong spawned. The UN IPCC provides no hard data as proof. It guesses likelihoods and confidence levels to fraudulently imply statistical rigour where there is none.
The department then revealed it has no specific, measured policy basis for transition to unaffordable solar, wind and batteries under Maurice Strong’s UN Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development Goals. It has no specific impact of human carbon dioxide as basis for policy—confirming no cost-benefit analysis, no evaluation of policy options, no business case, no plan and no tracking implementation. We are not transitioning in this country. Minister Chris Bowen is blindly driving us off a cliff at a cost of $1.9 trillion for nothing. Australians now suffer the world’s most stupid and highest electricity prices. Meanwhile, President Trump in America uses real science to restore affordable hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas.
My team has 24,000 datasets from science agencies worldwide, including our own Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. They show no change in climate—temperature; rainfall; storm frequency, severity or duration; drought, ocean temperature; or extreme weather—but just show ongoing inherent natural variation in cycles: warm/cool, warm/cool.
Maurice Strong was a Canadian oil magnate who, in 1972, started the UN environmental program UNEP. Six months later he manipulated and schemed his way to be its head. In 1976 UNEP fabricated science to ban the insecticide DDT that had eradicated malaria in the West. After 40- to 50 million needless deaths from malaria—Indians, Asians and Africans—the UN restored the use of DDT in 2006. The world’s list of mass killers is Chairman Mao, 60 million deaths; Maurice Strong, 40- to 50 million; Joseph Stalin, 40 million; and Adolph Hitler, 20 million.
In 1980 Maurice Strong started systematically entrenching bogus claims of future climate catastrophe due to carbon dioxide from human activity—power stations, industry, transport, travel and animal farming. In 1988 he formed the UN’s political climate body, the IPCC, and fraudulently proclaimed it ‘scientific’. His purpose was to corrupt climate science to mislead and scare people worldwide with unfounded fear. For example, in its second science report in 1995, scientists concluded they could find no evidence of human carbon dioxide affecting climate, yet the IPCC’s Ben Santer—he’s still in the IPCC—single-handedly reversed that to say they did. All six UN science reports rely on distortion and fraud. Why?
Maurice Strong was a founding director of the Chicago Climate Exchange, trading carbon dioxide credits—a corrupt global carbon dioxide tax—to make its directors billionaires, to provide the UN with ongoing revenue independent of member-nation grants and to guarantee revenue for his ambitions of global governance. Maurice Strong then built paths and systems for climate prostitutes stealing subsidies for solar and wind. When American law enforcement wanted Maurice Strong for illegal water trading and the UN’s oil-for-food scandal, he exiled himself to China, a major beneficiary of the West’s climate and energy insanity.
In his report for the UN, the Club of Rome’s Maurice Strong stated:
In searching for a new enemy to unite us—
being humans globally—
we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.
He was a lying scaremonger.
In 1992 UN Earth Summit Secretary-General Maurice Strong—there he is again—said:
It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, ownership of motor vehicles, small electrical appliances, home and workplace air conditioning and suburban housing are not sustainable …
The reports said human activity caused these ‘dangers’ and needed a global response.
Maurice Strong stated his life’s aims as ‘deindustrialising Western civilisation’ and ‘putting in place an unelected socialist global governance’. In 1992 Paul Keating’s Labor government signed UN Agenda 21 that pushed 17 so-called sustainable development goals to control every aspect of every person’s life globally. John Howard’s Liberal-National government accelerated an entrenched implementation of UN Agenda 21, including its 2007 Water Act. Its energy transition is now destroying what had been the world’s best electricity supply grid, stealing farmers’ property rights and laying the foundation for pushing Maurice Strong’s policies across Australia. In 1996 one federal MP, Pauline Hanson, courageously exposed it all. In 2013 the South Australian MP Ann Bressington gave details of UN Agenda 21 fabricating bogus crises blamed on humans.
Maurice Strong said, ‘The enemy is humanity itself.’ They hate you and they want to control every aspect of our lives, lifestyles and society, transferring wealth from we the people to globalist climate prostitutes. An extraordinarily clever and scheming Maurice Strong manipulated national leaders to adopt his programs to save the planet and humanity from humans. In my first Senate speech, in 2016, I called out UN Agenda 21 and called for Australia to exit the UN. I’m pleased to say that’s now One Nation policy.
We want the people of Australia to regain control over their lives and over our nation. We want Australians to keep the billions of dollars currently being transferred to climate and energy whores, who are stealing your money through subsidies, grants and taxes, enabled by people in this Senate. As your financial position goes backwards, Labor, Greens and moderates in the Liberals drive social policies to attack and divide you as colonisers, degendered and disrespected.
Maurice Strong drove those attacks with policies to smash both foundations of human civilisation: the family and the nation-state. Maurice Strong died in 2015, one month before his UN Paris Agreement was signed and his legacy UN net zero program targets were set—targets to which Labor, Liberal, the teals and the Greens all remain committed. They silently and dishonestly impose UN restrictions, fraud and burdens on Australians to govern with invalid edicts from New York and Geneva.
One Nation will remove Maurice Strong’s psychopathic grip over Australia. Instead, One Nation will return you to affordable energy; affordable living; affordable housing; lifestyle choices, making families strong again; industry, with breadwinner jobs; and a future with abundance, built on realising Australia’s true potential. One Nation is changing Australia’s political status quo. One Nation will abolish the department of climate change, leave the UN Paris Agreement and the UN Kyoto protocol, and stop UN net zero and all associated regulations, schemes and spending to save more than $30 billion a year in duplication and waste. That $30 billion a year we will use to build infrastructure that benefits everyday Australians, starting with Queensland’s Urannah Dam irrigation project and a new greenfield hospital in Albury. A vote for One Nation will end Maurice Strong’s psychopathic, criminal control over our country and put Australia first.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has managed to spend $96 million of your money on a new website including live radar images that is a step backward.
I’ve been hearing from countless Australians who are not happy with the “new and improved” site. It’s harder to navigate, requires more clicks to find basic data and has stripped away the topographical detail that people actually rely on.
If a private company delivered a product this bad after spending nearly $100 million, heads would roll.
I asked the BOM: has anyone been fired, demoted, or even counselled for this failure?
The answer was a lot of nothing really. I did manage to get one win for common sense: The Bureau has committed to keeping the old radar site active until the new one is actually fit for purpose.
— Senate Estimates | February 2026
Transcript
Senator Roberts: Let’s go back to the new weather radar. Implementation of the new weather radar has been a failure. Has anyone been fired for wasting $96 million of taxpayers’ money?
Senator Watt: We went over this at the last estimates hearing. I think you were talking about the change to the bureau’s website rather than a weather radar.
Senator Roberts: The new website.
Senator Watt: Yes. It was explained at the last hearing that the portion of money attributable to the website costs was partly about an overall systems upgrade across the bureau’s meteorology systems in general. So, with that introduction, Dr Minchin might want to—
Senator Roberts: Minister, it has tarnished the reputation of the BOM.
Senator Watt: I understand that.
Senator Roberts: It has made a lot of people unhappy with the BOM’s service, so I’m wondering if anyone’s been counselled, demoted or had a note put on their service record for this failure.
Senator Watt: I’d need to have Dr Minchin answer.
Dr Minchin: Senator, I’m not aware of anyone being fired or demoted on this basis.
Senator Roberts: Chastised?
Dr Minchin: Senator, as I think you may be aware, I joined the bureau about three weeks after the website was launched. My focus as CEO is on moving forward, and, as I said at last hearing, I accepted that the website redesign had not met all users’ needs and that we were working hard with the team on addressing the feedback that we’ve received. We’ve received significant feedback from the Australian community and we are actively working on making releases to the website to improve it to meet people’s expectations. My philosophy on this as CEO is that I have a very committed team, who are working incredibly hard to meet the Australian public’s expectations. That doesn’t mean we get it right all the time, and I’m very confident that the team is totally focused on the task of improving Australians’ access to weather information, including through upgrades to the website as it goes forward.
Senator Roberts: I accept, Dr Minchin, that sometimes it’s not appropriate to chastise until you know the source of the problem, but has anyone been questioned about it? Have you done an investigation into it? It seems to be significant funds, and you’ve got to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. What reassurance can you give us that it won’t happen again?
Dr Minchin: What I can say is I don’t believe the website is a complete failure, and I’ve been public in saying that before. I think what has happened is it’s met 80 to 90 per cent of its intended outcomes and it’s missed the boat on a few key user experiences for some parts of the community, and we are working hard on addressing those. It’s clear the radar is part of the assessment. We moved quickly to adjust the view of the radar to improve that. We’ve made adjustments to the navigation of the website and we have a number of other rollouts happening over the next few months that will improve that. I can absolutely assure you that the team within the bureau are really dedicated to their task and are totally focused on improving the situation so that all Australians can have access to the weather data that they require.
Senator Roberts: Have you required contractors to complete the fixes for free, owing to their failure, or are you throwing more money from taxpayers at the problem? Are you rewarding contractors for failing?
Dr Minchin: You’ve categorised this as a contractor failure. The contractors have done what we asked them to do. What I think is very clear is we did not get all of the user experience testing and did not capture all of the subsequent detail and feedback that we’ve received from the community. So we’re working hard on addressing that. That will inevitably require investment, but that investment was already planned for as part of the website release. We always knew that there would be fixes that would be required. What probably caught the bureau a little bit unawares was the extent of the feedback that we received, but we’re working through that very actively.
Senator Roberts: It was pretty strong. If we look at topography, the colour graduations used to be based on topography, and now the national parks are just all green. Did the people who did the map understand topography?
Dr Minchin: Sorry, Senator, are you referring to the radar map?
Senator Roberts: Yes, I’m sorry.
Dr Minchin: The background to the radar map is a compromise, always, of the features that are of interest for the community—primarily about the townships. We are adjusting that. Just as one example of an upcoming upgrade, we will be bringing that into line with our iPhone and Android app that actually shows a background of the reach of the radars as well. So it will be clear where radar coverage exists and where it does not within the country. That’s an evolving process. I should also highlight that the public can choose their view of what appears on that map through various choices in the settings of the map view.
Senator Roberts: I’m told that the old map, which did show topography colour gradations, is appearing to visitors who search something like ‘weather Brisbane’, rather the new site, but the address is the new site. Have you gone back to using the old site for certain functions?
Dr Minchin: I think what you’re referring to is that there are a number of third-party providers who provide our radar data and other information through their applications. They receive those through our FTP service. They don’t access it directly from the website. In some cases they choose to visualise that data differently to the way that the bureau chooses to do that. I think that’s actually a good thing, meeting different user needs out in the community. They’re still accessing the same information, but it is, as I said, coming through our registered user services, which are not through the website itself.
Senator Roberts: Usability of the website is poor. Users are complaining that it takes multiple clicks to see what used to be available at a glance. What timeframe can you give people for getting the new site up to the standard of the old site?
Dr Minchin: There are ongoing releases happening over the next few months. We accept, as I said, that some users have found aspects of the website difficult and have been providing feedback on that. Another good example is navigation. We’ll be rolling out the ability to navigate by postcode in one of the next releases. We’re continually bringing those updates on board so that, as we get feedback about what is useful to the community to make their experience with the website better, we’re acting on that and we’re rolling that out with regular updates.
Senator Roberts: So what timeframe can you provide for getting the new site up to the standard of the old site, so that people will know?
Dr Minchin: I don’t accept that we’re trying to reach the standard of the old site, because the old site was a problem. It was very difficult to navigate. It was inaccessible to many sectors of the community. Website updates will never finish. As new information and new products come on board, we will continue developing the website. But we are hoping to address most of the major tranches of concern in releases over the next six months.
Senator Roberts: The old radar is still available on the ‘reg’ subdomain, I’m told. Will you give an undertaking that the old site will remain available until the new site can be made to work?
Dr Minchin: We certainly will not be turning off our ‘reg’ capability until we are confident that the Australian community are comfortable with our new radar capability. Senator Roberts: Thank you.
Thislegislation – The Superannuation Guarantee Charge Amendment Bill 2025 and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 – is a direct assault on small and medium businesses. Forcing employers to pay superannuation within seven days of payday, instead of the current quarterly system, is stripping away the “cash flow buffer” that keeps businesses afloat.
Here is the reality of what these bills do:
If a business is even slightly late, they face brutal penalties: 25% for a first offense and 50% for subsequent ones.
To cover the immediate cost of bringing these payments forward, businesses (especially in retail, hospitality, and tourism) will be forced to cut staff levels. This means tens of thousands of young Australians will lose work during peak seasons like Christmas and Easter.
The government is also scrapping the ATO’s Small Business Superannuation Clearing House. Instead of one bulk payment, small business owners will now be buried in paperwork, manually paying dozens of individual funds every single week or fortnight.
This isn’t about workers, it’s about funnelling more money faster into union-backed industry super funds. While small businesses collapse, these funds and large corporations get richer.
One Nation believes workers should be able to use their super for a home deposit — investing in their own future rather than being forced to rent from the very super funds getting fat off this legislation.
Ultimately, this is nothing but a revenue-raising exercise disguised as “virtue signalling.” It ignores the reality of record-high bankruptcies and unaffordable energy costs, choosing instead to “shaft” the very people, the workers and small business owners, it claims to protect.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: The Superannuation Guarantee Charge Amendment Bill 2025 and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 penalise employers who do not pay their employees’ superannuation guarantee contributions at the same time as salary and wages. The payment must reach the employee’s super account within seven business days of the employee’s payday. Currently, payments are due 28 days after the quarter to which they relate.
This is a major change in cash flow. It brings forward a significant expense for businesses, particularly small businesses, while only adding a small amount to their super across their working life—if they can get a job, of course. So many jobs these days require ABNs, in which case the person must pay their own super. It says in the legislation:
The reforms intend to ‘strengthen Australia’s superannuation system’ by reducing the SG gap—
which was estimated at $5 billion in 2022. Treasurer Chalmers wrongly says:
While most employers do the right thing, some disreputable ones are exploiting their employees.
Most of the shortfall is in small businesses and microbusinesses and includes solopreneurs not paying themselves super. The quality of data on this is surprisingly poor for something being used to justify this onerous bill. The government doesn’t want the facts to get in the way of their virtue-signalling and pork-barrelling of union backed industry super funds. That’s the target. That’s what the government wants to do here—look after their union bosses’ super industry funds.
If the employer hasn’t paid the super 28 days after payday, they will receive a notice giving them 28 more days to pay. If they still fail to pay, there is a penalty of 25 per cent of the missing super. That’s for the first offence. There’s a 50 per cent penalty for a second offence and for subsequent offences. This will be a nightmare for small and medium businesses, particularly in retail, hospitality and tourism, and it will be a gift for super funds, the unions and the Australian Taxation Office.
Treasurer Chalmers has no clue how businesses—especially small businesses and microbusinesses—work. The current quarterly super system increases the ability of small and medium businesses to smooth their cash flow over what is, effectively, a four-month period. Businesses could set their staffing levels to the expected revenue for a three-month period.
Let me give you an example. Retailers have mostly completed hiring their staff for over the Christmas period, even though Christmas spending doesn’t get going for another few weeks. They know they can afford the wages now but don’t need to pay super until the money comes in next month. What’s going to happen under this ignorant, anti-small-business legislation is that small and medium retailers will cut their staffing. They’ll reduce the number of their workers equal to the amount of the super contribution that they’re bringing forward. They’re taking the cost out of labour because there’s nowhere else to take it from. That’s what you don’t seem to understand. You certainly don’t understand rents or profits.
Most small and medium businesses in this country are struggling as it is. Business bankruptcies are at a record high under this Labor government, and now more will go under. Large retailers—wait for it—will simply pass this cost on to everyday Australians through higher prices, so the people of Australia, and the workers in particular, are going to get shafted by this bill. Treasurer Chalmers and this Labor government have ensured that tens of thousands of, mostly, young Australians will not have a job this Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Black Friday and other retail highlights.
It isn’t just retailers, though, who will lose. This bill will, in addition, harm markets, tourism and hospitality—all of which are weather dependent. These businesses will not be able to smooth out the ups and downs coming from good and bad weather—and there are ups and downs. That’s the way the earth operates; weather is variable. They will be forced to set staffing levels lower to ensure that they can cover the wages of staff and their super. I expect we will see a change to employment terms, with weather clauses being written into awards and further reductions in shifts to allow staff to be sent home if businesses are not busy.
This Labor government has already had a lesson in unintended consequences with its greedy hike in tobacco tariffs leading literally to open warfare, firebombings and killings in the industry, and lower tax revenues. Everyone loses except the criminals. Treasurer Chalmers is in for another such lesson here. It will not be the government that’s harmed. It will be young Australians—and retailers—who will be harmed. Of course, Labor won’t care. They don’t govern for young Australians. If they did, then the Albanese government would not have flooded the country with new arrivals, driving up rental and home prices, lowering wages and reducing living standards. Did anyone mention unaffordable power?
The winners from this bill will be the government’s mates. The unions’ super funds will get richer. The large corporations who can afford to carry staff for the few weeks will get richer. The big end of town gets richer, and Australians get poorer. I said last week that the Australian Labor Party spell ‘labor’ without a ‘U’, l-a-b-o-r, because the Labor Party do not care about ‘you’. They bypass the ‘you’. Young Australians are about to get another lesson on how little they matter to this government.
Workers will be sacked, and businesses will close as a direct result of this policy. It’s clear. The revenue-raising figures and estimates in this bill make no allowance for expected employment downturns, which will come—the unintended consequence of this bill. It’s not, as proposed in the legislation, better for employees because they get their super money earlier, because the job market and the private sector will immediately shrink.
After Treasurer Chalmers had his fantasy tax grab on unrealised capital gains trashed, he has evidently pivoted to recouping the money off the dying and struggling ecosystem of private industry, which has borne all the costs of unaffordable energy increases, foreign competition and Labor’s recent award changes.
These bills are estimated to increase taxation payments to $589 million over the next three years. This is about a taxation increase, which ignores as usual the decrease in revenue from business collapses and staff sackings. There will be lower employment.
Why is the government banking on this bill boosting their bottom line so much? Is this about superannuation or is it revenue raising—fining small businesses for laws the government knows they won’t be able to comply with on time? Maybe the government don’t know; that’s how out of touch they are. Despite this, this bill is disguised as being pro worker, when in fact compulsory super contributions are eating away at workers’ take-home pay and preventing them from saving for a home. The $4 trillion—that’s right; $4 trillion—in Australia’s super accounts is employees’ money. It’s the workers’ money. It’s come out of workers’ wages.
One Nation will counter this Albanese government attack on our young with better policy. We will allow young Australians to use their super balance towards a deposit on a new home. That’s been a standing part of our policy for a year now. The higher the deposit, the lower the repayments. The more the young are advantaged there, the more realistic purchasing a house becomes. The investment from the person’s own super account into their home is secured with a loan, so their super grows as the value of their home grows. You’ll never see that policy coming from the ALP, the Australian Labor Party, because their policy is for the government to own your home, or a share of it, so they can dictate to you how to live and who you should live with. Think about it. This has all been documented.
This measure adds to payroll complexity for large corporations, especially around employment mobility. Large corporations will not pay for this measure. The Australian public will, though, through higher prices or staff reductions.
Industry has already asked for a one- to two-year delay to make the necessary software changes. That’s how extreme the measures are. Accounting software giant Xero provides the software that 1.8 million businesses use and has recommended a two-year window for implementation. Instead, this bill is going to be rushed through, with an implementation date of July. Imagine the cash-flow burden on a medium business with a thousand staff across different states, on different awards, all taking leave and changing super funds during this period.
Treasurer Chalmers can’t imagine that. He has no business experience, and, quite honestly, he hasn’t a clue about the misery his policies are causing small and medium businesses in this country. That’s apparent with the decision in this bill to abolish the ATO’s Small Business Superannuation Clearing House. Small businesses today can pay a lump sum of all their employees’ superannuation contributions to the clearing house along with their employees’ super details. The clearing house then makes the necessary payments to the employee’s individual super fund. This saves small businesses a truckload of paperwork by letting them make one bulk payment instead of dozens to every employee’s individual fund. That will be gone with this bill. Small businesses will have to take care of dozens of extra super payments, and they will be penalised 60 per cent if they are later than seven days from payday.
Nonetheless, a lot of the blame for small-business hardship must be directed at the minister for climate change and sending Australia broke, Minister Chris Bowen. Unaffordable energy is driving the country to ruin. This legislation has come into this Senate at the same time as the government announcing it would require super funds to invest almost $2 trillion of Australia’s super money in the United States. That’s how much this Labor government cares about jobs for Australians. They are taking an amount equal to one-half of all the money in super funds in Australia at 30 June this year and sending it to America over a 10-year period. Prime Minister, superannuation is not your money! Yet the government is sending your super overseas to grow the American economy.
Imagine how many breadwinner jobs could be created in Australia with the $2 trillion being invested right here in projects like the Capricornia project, an integrated rail, steel and concrete project, to provide Australia with security on steel, ceramics, fertiliser, explosives and pharmaceutical precursors—steel, the foundation of modern civilisation. Instead, young people will be competing with millions of new arrivals in a labour market that’s currently in a race to the bottom of wages, conditions and security—Prime Minister, in case you’re not aware of it despite so many people shouting it from the streets, stop mass migration—a trend this bill will make worse.
The Albanese government is pursuing policies that ensure young Australians don’t have the abundance, wealth and income necessary to buy their own home in a country with more resources than any other country per capita. Instead, young people will have to rent from union super funds and predatory wealth funds like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and First State. Putting a roof over a young couple’s heads is critical to starting a family. Measures like this, combined with over migration, mass migration and unaffordable energy, will continue to steal opportunity from our young people. Never has a generation been so lied to as the people aged today between 18 and 45. One Nation opposes this bill because One Nation supports employment, workers and small businesses. We support a fair go and fairness for all.
