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Topics discussed:

* Introduction of the Digital ID Bill into the Senate

* The Pandemic Treaty and IHR Amendments

* And more …

Part 1

Part 2

Alan Moran was the Director of the Deregulation Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs from 1996 until 2014.   He was previously a senior official in Australia’s Productivity Commission and Director of the Commonwealth’s Office of Regulation Review.  He has also played a leading role in the development of energy policy and competition policy review as the Deputy Secretary (Energy) in the Victorian Government.

He was educated in the UK and has a PhD in transport economics from the University of Liverpool and degrees from the University of Salford and the London School of Economics.

Alan has published extensively on regulatory issues, particularly focusing on environmental issues, housing, network industries, and electricity and gas market matters. He has also contributed Australian chapters in a series of books on world electricity markets, edited by Fereidoon Sioshansi.

Alan’s most recent book is “Climate Change: Treaties and Policies in the Trump Era” published in 2017.  He also assembled and contributed to a compendium Climate Change: the Facts published in 2015

Transcript

Part 1

Speaker 1:

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk Radio TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well G’day, it’s Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. Thank you very much for having me as your guest, whether it’s in your lounge room, your kitchen, your shed, your car, or wherever you are right now. Thank you very much for listening. And I remind you before we get into our programme, we’ve got a wonderful programme again today.

Malcolm Roberts:

The two most important themes for all my programmes are freedom, specifically freedom versus control, the eternal human battle. And secondly, personal responsibility and integrity. Both freedom and responsibility and integrity are fundamental for human progress and for people’s livelihoods, and we’re going to be discussing them today.

Malcolm Roberts:

Did you just hear on the news that the Ukrainians have been asked to ignore their need for warmth? Australians are also being asked to ignore our need for warmth. We now face in a country that had the world’s most reliable electricity and the world’s cheapest electricity, we now face blackouts. The new term though sorry is demand management. There are so many politically correct terms being bandied around to hide the mismanagement and destruction of our electricity sector.

Malcolm Roberts:

Before going there, I want to share with everyone that I had two wonderful days in Brisbane in the last week. Thursday evening I met with and spoke at and listened to many doctors and health professionals at the Australian Medical Practitioners Society AMPS, A-M-P-S. The summit on Thursday evening was astounding. We had people from all over the world, literally experts, but we most importantly we had homegrown Aussie experts and they did a phenomenal job. It was an honour to be on the stage with them speaking, because what they want to do is to restore our health practitioners independence. They restore the doctor, patient relationship, restore informed consent, restore fair and objective oversight and accreditation.

Malcolm Roberts:

Then the next day, I had two wonderful meetings in my office, one after the other. Firstly, some of the doctors who spoke and these doctors, their courage is amazing. They’ve given up their jobs rather than get injected under mandates from state bodies. They’ve given up their jobs and some of them have had their jobs and livelihoods and professional careers, decades in the making ripped from their lives because they have dared to tell the truth when it comes to informing their patients about the injections and about the adverse effects.

Malcolm Roberts:

We learned about the adverse effects and there are millions of people threatened. So I had two meetings, one with the doctors and then with Senator Gerard Rennick who continues with us to restore health and restore safety for the people of Australia and restore fairness and good governance for the doctors and the health professionals, including the nurses. Ambulance workers were there. Paramedics were there. And we also had two very, very credentialed medical experts; one a retired doctor and the other, a retired former American doctor who’s been in Australia 30 years working with the TGA and he told us what was going on there. And it’s shocking.

Malcolm Roberts:

So there’ll be more about that in coming months. And then last night, my wife and I went to the AMPS, the Australian Medical Professional Society dance. It was really an opportunity for people to let their hair down and talk. And we had the same doctors there. We had many, many people from the public coming in and just appreciating what those doctors are doing. The courage of these men and women, the stress that they have been under, unfairly, dishonestly, inhumanely, and immorally as they try to protect their patients.

Malcolm Roberts:

I was blessed and honoured Thursday and Friday four times by these people. Thank you so much for what you are doing and we will back you. We will hound the people that have been hounding you. We will get them to stop and leave you alone and let you get on with truthful medicine to protect people’s lives to bring safety to people. There are enormous number of people with long COVID and even more, many, many more with severe, serious injection injuries, adverse effects, and we need to protect these people and we’ll be there helping them.

Malcolm Roberts:

But coming back to the topic of energy today, the primacy of energy at the moment, and I’ll ask my guess today to explain more about this, but there are strikes going on in Britain and parts of Europe because people are without their power or because they’re facing huge increases in energy costs, huge increases. And this is in the so-called third world. And these disastrous conditions, threatening conditions are due to neglect, dishonesty, deceit and our guest will explain that.

Malcolm Roberts:

Before we go on to discussing the primacy of energy, our whole standard of living today depends upon modern energy, reliable energy, affordable energy, stable energy, secure energy, environmentally responsible energy and energy price itself is not only significant for our standard of living, it’s a price multiplier because everything is affected by electricity, our raw materials, our agriculture, our food processing, our transport and our jobs. That’s why we’ve exported our jobs to China.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ll be talking about the benefits to the environment of having affordable, reliable, secure, safe, and environmentally responsible energy. We’ll be talking if we have time about the absurdities that are going on with our so-called modern electricity sector, which is a return to being dependent on nature. Australia has gone from the lowest price electricity to the highest price, despite having the world’s largest gas exports and the second largest coal exports. We have abundant resources. We’re the number one exporters of energy, and yet we can’t keep the lights on at home and people can’t afford to use electricity. Now my guest is Dr. Alan Moran. He was the director of the deregulation unit at the Institute of Public Affairs from 1996 until 2014.

Malcolm Roberts:

He was previously a senior official in Australia’s productivity commission when it was really doing a very, very good job, and director of the Commonwealth’s Office of Regulation Review. He has played a leading role in the development of energy policy and competition policy review as a Deputy Secretary of Energy in the Victorian government, previous Victorian government I’m sure he’ll hasten to add. He was educated in the UK and has a PhD in transport economics from the University of Liverpool and degrees from the University of Salford and the London School of Economics. Alan has published extensively on regulatory issues, particularly focusing on environmental issues, housing, network industries, and electricity and gas market matters.

Malcolm Roberts:

This man knows energy. He knows government. He knows how the bureaucrats work. He has contributed Australian chapters in a series of books on world electricity markets edited by [inaudible 00:08:27]. Dr. Moran’s most recent book is Climate Change: Treaties and Policies in the Trump Era published in 2017. He assembled and contributed to a compendium climate change, the facts published in 2015. This man knows his stuff and he’s got a diverse background. Welcome Alan.

Alan Moran:

Hi Malcolm. Thank you for that intro.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well thank you for coming on TNTradio.live. Let’s start with something you appreciate, mate.

Alan Moran:

That I appreciate.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. Anything at all, just to get the heart and mind synchronised.

Alan Moran:

Well, I think I appreciate living in comfort and being able to turn on the television, being warm, going and playing tennis and having a hot shower afterwards. All of these things are a variation of what we all I think appreciate in the civilised world and what we’ve become accustomed to thinking is just the norm. But of course it wasn’t always the norm and may not be the norm in the future.

Malcolm Roberts:

What do you mean by that, it wasn’t the norm in the past? What would we rely upon for energy before our modern sources?

Alan Moran:

Yeah, well, we probably used per capita at least a hundred times as much energy as we used before, say the 15th century humans per capita. Really energy defines our abilities to enjoy life, our income levels and whatever else. If you think in terms of the development of humanity from out of Africa, et cetera, we basically became somewhat better off when we managed to get forms of energy in terms of harnessing oxen to plough fields, in terms of sales ships to trade, et cetera. And this was, I guess, the first start of rising above just the hunter gatherer stage into something which we would now call civilization. And of course, if we think in terms…

Alan Moran:

If we think in terms of the progression from that early civilization with oxen and sailboats, et cetera, it was quite slow until the 15th or 16th century. The oxens became horses and we bred them better. The sailboats became more sophisticated sailboat, which traversed the world. And all of that contributed to a basic increase in our living standards, not only contributed, without it, we couldn’t have had that increase in the living standards. And this is in the sort of prior to the modern era, which I guess would’ve started maybe in the 19th century and with the ability to harness bigger licks of energy, which meant coal, oil and gas, and allowed us then to move very quickly from harnessing oxen and horses and sailboats into an era where we were using oil and gas and diesel, both to power our homes and light our streets and cook our meals and to traverse the world.

Alan Moran:

A manyfold increase in our productivity resulted from this increased use and the development of energy which we now call fossil fuel energy and has become since then expanded into nuclear energy and hydro energy, but basically the modern forms of energy until we discovered or thought we discovered an ability to go back to wind with windmills and to sun with sun farms and, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later, has partly crippled and may well much more fully cripple our ability to enjoy those quite obvious and universal pleasures that we have as a result of our consumption of energy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, it’s a very important point you make and I want to extend it. You say we released animals from being a burden on animals to produce our energy for us. And we all need to understand that what energy does when we get it from somewhere else other than their own body, what energy does is it leverages our productivity. It enables us to be more productive and therefore have an easier life. And I loved your term there, energy defines our ability to enjoy life. But it also increases our wealth. And many centuries ago, people would harness another man’s energy called slavery. People would harness animals, and now those animals and slaves fortunately have been liberated because we found other forms of energy, which are more moral and cleaner and much, much more effective and much higher productivity. And that’s why coal and oil and natural gas came in, correct?

Alan Moran:

That’s right. Yeah. And many, many times more efficient.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And the other thing, Alan, is that nature is very variable in its production of energy, sources of energy. We used to have sailing ships, but they were unreliable. We used to have windmills, but they were unreliable. And so what the hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas did was they made us independent of nature for our energy. And that’s extremely important, isn’t it? Because it enabled us to end the famines. It enabled us to minimise the impact of droughts, floods, not by changing the climate, but by adapting to it by using energy to make us more productive regardless of the climate. So that is extremely important for our wealth, for our ease of living, for our longevity. And the key point you’ve made is that that remarkable transition has occurred in 170 years, but has been due to hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, correct?

Alan Moran:

That’s right. And of course, without those assets that we now have developed, we would be back to a very primitive living standard and to ability on the vagaries of weather, we would see the sorts of things that mankind throughout most of his history has faced which is famines and droughts and mass near extinctions of people as a result of that weather dependency. The weather is something we talk about, we ramble about, but it was something which was so vital to living before we actually managed to harness it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And let’s talk about the fundamentals of energy so everyone understands it and sees where we’re going with our conversation. Correct me if I’m wrong, the fundamentals of energy are cost or affordability. That enables accessibility for everyone if it’s cheaper energy. The very important thing though is as energy prices decrease, productivity increases because we can spend more on energy. So it’s very important for productivity.

Malcolm Roberts:

And as we increase productivity, we increase prosperity. As we increase prosperity, we increase wealth, not just for a few, but for many because one of the things oil, coal and natural gas have done, have put slaves, mechanical slaves at our disposal for carting us around, for transporting our food, for refrigerating our food, for cooking our food, doing our dishes. So we’ve become much more productive and that’s gone down to ever lower income levels. So cost, affordability. Second one is reliability. Third one is security of supply. And the fourth is stability. And I’d add a fifth one there, and that is environmental responsibility. Any others you can think of and do you have any comments on those? Am I right?

Alan Moran:

No, I think you’re dead right. I think that’s all covers the gamut of energy, of what we mean by energy by its ability to enhance our human happiness and ability to live high standard of living. And indeed the great thing about the increase in energy supply is that it allowed what is sometimes called a trickle down effect, whereas gradually if we think in a modern economy today, there are very rich people, but there’s not very many very poor people. The energy that, or they may be very poor in terms of relative to, but compared to the historical poor, they’re immensely rich. And that’s largely because we have harnessed energy and we’ve technologically developed it and we’ve actually put it through wires to our homes, through pipes to our homes, et cetera, in factories.

Alan Moran:

And we’ve done so in ways that by and large have allowed it to become reliable, to be available when we want it, not when it becomes available. And that’s something which we may talk about later is the difference between energy developed by and controlled by humans, which is the fossil fuels, hydroelectricity and nuclear, and that which is not controlled by humans, but which is determined by nature. And which in the past, we made immense advances in harnessing nature in terms of animal power, in terms of shipping or sail ships, et cetera. But those advances were nothing like the ones that we’ve made in the last couple of centuries in terms of harnessing the fossil fuels and hydro and more recently nuclear.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’re on TNTradio.live. I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts. I’m the host. And I’ve got a wonderful guest on right now, an internationally accomplished economist, Dr. Alan Moran and we’re talking about energy. So we need to go to a break in a couple of minutes, Alan, so could you tell us why hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil, natural gas, what you call fossil fuels, it’s a term I refuse to use, but you can use it. Why are hydrocarbon fuels superior? Isn’t it because of the energy density, they provide high energy density?

Alan Moran:

Yeah, that’s in a nutshell what it means. There’s very low energy density with animal power, with human power, et cetera. And the denser the energy is, that is the more compact it is per the biggest bang per buck if you like it is then the better off we are. Now I’ve got to say the densest energy is nuclear, but nuclear is [inaudible 00:20:24] form of energy, but it’s not, certainly in Australia anyway, it’s not the cheapest form of energy because its density is such that it’s, well, it’s explosive, more explosive than other energy and therefore does require a great deal of sheltering from that to actually operate it. So nuclear, at least for the present is more expensive than other energies, which are less dense than the hydrocarbons and hydropower. But yeah, the energy density defines its cost, its basic cost.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you. And perhaps before we go to the break, I’ll just mention that you’ve raised an important point in that nuclear is even more dense than hydrocarbons coal, oil and natural gas, but it needs elaborate protection, which raises the cost. And fundamental to cost is the amount of resources going into produce the energy. So in a coal fired power station for the unit of energy that it produces, it’s on average $35, sorry, 35 tonnes of steel per unit of electricity produced.

Malcolm Roberts:

Alex Epstein has produced the figures in the states showing that wind, a wind turbine, requires a 546 tonnes of steel for the same amount of energy. Huge increase in resources, not only because it is a larger use of resources in developing wind power, but also much, much less energy comes out. So we’ve got very high cost of energy per unit of energy produced.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’re with Alan Moran and we’ve just established the superiority of hydrocarbon fuels and the benefits that they have blessed on humanity. We’ll have a quick ad break and then we’ll be back to listen to Alan Moran on what is happening to our energy sector.

Malcolm Roberts:

The voice of freedom is TNTradio.live. And we’ve been talking about a topic that I don’t think you’d hear about on the ABC, Alan or on channel 7, 9, 10, a topic that would be banned on many or downplayed or distorted and misrepresented many stations around the world.

Malcolm Roberts:

So let’s move to the replacements for hydrocarbon energy. Why are unreliable intermittents like solar and wind inherently inferior and fundamentally will never work because of their lower energy density and high resource consumption? Can you explain that to people?

Alan Moran:

Yeah. You start with the first base is you say, okay, well, the cost of the fuel inputs for solar and for wind is zero more or less. So basically the air’s free and the sun’s free. So building upon that, many then argue, “Well, this is the fuel of the future. It’s zero cost as an input.” But as you point out with quoting Epstein’s estimates on the amount of raw materials in harnessing that solar and wind, by the time you’ve actually produced it, it’s obviously far more than zero. But there’s been tremendous advances in terms of the ability to produce from wind and solar. It’s much more than halved over the past 20 years. And probably it will reduce a little bit further in the future, but it follows a kind of a trajectory of diminishing improvements in efficiency and it’s difficult to see major additional ones.

Alan Moran:

But if you look in terms of crude for Australia and other countries are slightly different, but for Australia, if you’re producing wind, by the time you put all the costs of capital involved and that’s from the wind generator, it might cost about 60 or $70 per megawatt hour. Solar would probably cost a bit more, about a hundred. But 60 or $70 isn’t that much more expensive than the cheapest form of sustainable power, which is with coal based, would be about the same amount.

Alan Moran:

So many people would draw off that and then say, “Well, this is obviously the future, and there’s no pollution involved” and we might want to talk about what pollution means here. And it’s going to get cheaper in the past. People have been saying that for 30 years since I’ve been involved in it, but the answer is that for some reason or another, it doesn’t quite cut the mustard that we have never come from a situation where these solar and wind resources are able to be produced and installed in any numbers without a subsidy.

Alan Moran:

And there’s a very good reason for that. Although you might be able to get wind at 60 or $70 per megawatt hour, which is fine, you get it A, from the factory, which is unlikely to be located in your backyard and B, you get it when the wind blows, not when you want it. So in order to actually bring that wind to factories, which produce goods to households which want heating and lighting, et cetera, you’ve got to spend a lot more money. And clearly one aspect of it is that, well, you’re only going to get the wind and solar when the suns shining and the winds blowing. So you’ve got to find out ways to, they call it firming that power by utilising other power to supplement it when it’s not available.

Malcolm Roberts:

So what you’re saying then is that with wind and solar, you still have to have other sources of power or storage devices. So that’s additional cost.

Alan Moran:

Right. Yeah. And not only that, but you talked about density before and because this is the less dense form of power, in other words, you think in terms of huge power stations, they pump out electricity and it then goes through the wires to the town and to the factories. This is far more dispersed as power. So there’s a lot more wires required. And I think this is graphically illustrated by the Labour parties policy in Australia, which is to say that they’re going to spend $20 billion of taxpayers money and another 70 billion or 60 billion in terms of private sector money to replace the grid. In other words, they call re-powering the future. So that grid today, the grid of tomorrow, which they envisioned would cost $80 billion. Now you can contrast that with the grid we have at present, which cost only $20 billion.

Alan Moran:

In other words, so you’re not only going to have this firming power, but you’re going to have a lot more poles and wires around the place to ensure it is delivered. And even then, you’re unlikely to ever have enough firming power to actually cope for situations where there are lengthy, what’s known as wind droughts. And these can go for weeks on end where there’s hardly any wind at all. And in that case you very quickly run out of any kind of [inaudible 00:28:56] that would be feasibly constructed batteries or pump hydro or whatever you quickly run out of that.

Alan Moran:

So you never get the degree of security. So it’s got the three strikes against it is A, you’ve got to firm it up. And that $50 very quickly becomes doubled or more, far more. And B, you’ve got to transport it to where people need it and that adds another 30 or 40%. So even before you started thinking about what the implications are for ensuring a hundred percent availability, which is what we have with fossil fuels and nuclear and hydro, you’re into a situation where the energy costs three or four times what it would cost under the previous systems or present systems of coal, oil, gas, et cetera.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s startling. So can you just answer and explain to me please and our listeners, you said that you have to get the power from the power generation at the solar panels or the wind turbines to the industrial areas, to the residential areas. You’d have to do the same with coal and nuclear and hydro. Why is it so much greater for solar and wind?

Alan Moran:

Yeah. If you’ve got a hydro or station, it’s compact. The energy is produced in a compact way. You just send it down a wire. Whereas if it’s from a wind farm, you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of turbines you’ve got to actually link together and push that power into where it’s needed into the households and into the factories where it’s needed. Hence the reason why the consultants who did the report for the Labour party in Australia came to the conclusion that you would need four times the amount of transmission that we need with the present system.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you. That’s a great explanation. And firming is just backup power for wind, solar and wind are unavailable due to nature’s variability. So that’s an additional cost that, excuse me, coal, hydro, and nuclear don’t face. There’s also the matter of stability isn’t there? There, I think it’s called synchronous power. Coal, hydro, and nuclear have synchronous power. They’re very, very stable. Whereas solar and wind are highly unstable because they’re asynchronous.

Alan Moran:

Right. So you have to spend a lot more money in terms of the grid in terms of capacity and various devices along the grid to actually allow the operations of this electricity without installing the whole system. It’s a bit like an air block in a peshel pipe in the car. You’ve got to prevent against that. And that does cost quite a lot of money and is an additional cost which you have to incur through a wind rich system, which is not there with the systems which are mechanical systems, a lot of heavy electricity and they continue churning along. Even if you stop the coal, they continue churn along. Whereas the wind farms, as soon as the wind stops blowing, they virtually stop straight away.

Alan Moran:

So you have this system where you’ve got to discontinuity, an immediate discontinuity, and you have to spend a lot more money in terms of either supplementing that and the modern way I suppose is batteries or adjusting the way it’s transmitted in the system to allow that continuity. Because of course, if you lose a continuity in [inaudible 00:32:51] a blackout and it’s quite a serious event to actually reconnect.

Malcolm Roberts:

Especially in some industries like aluminous melting and the whole thing is ruined.

Alan Moran:

Yes. Yeah. Aluminous melters have worked the way towards allowing cessations of power for some time, usually about an hour before they totally seize up. But aluminous melters could not survive more than an hour or so without constant power.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let’s just summarise quickly the various costs. Hydro, my understanding is hydro’s the cheapest.

Alan Moran:

It is the cheapest, but hydro typically only works for about quarter of the time. It’s not necessarily like that if you’re in a country like Norway, basically it’s a lot of water and not many people. So the hydro is operating for about maybe 80% of the time. But in Australia, even if we hadn’t stopped doing more hydro, hydro would never supply more than about 10% of our electricity.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. I accept the unreliability, except in areas where there’s constant rain and there aren’t many areas like that in Australia. We’ve got high rainfall areas, but they’re not necessarily constant. So places like Quebec in Canada, Norway like you said. So hydro in a pure sense is the cheapest by far, but it’s not always suitable. And in Australia it may not be reliable.

Malcolm Roberts:

The next cheapest, as I understand it, overall is coal. Then the next cheapest is nuclear. And it’s interesting by the way, they now classify hydro as renewable. And it seems to me that’s done to pump up the amount of renewables, give people confidence that they’re coming when they’re not. So hydro, coal, nuclear, and then a long way behind comes solar and wind. Is that correct?

Alan Moran:

Yeah, I think hydro is a special case, at least in any country other than say Norway and some degree in New Zealand as well, which you’ve got immense resources of hydro compared to the population. Hydro is only ever going to be used intermittently, but is controllable. So you’d only use it when for peak periods. Basically, that’s what it’s designed for. But in Australian terms, coal electricity would be 50, say $50 per megawatt hour when you’re going to quantify all this.

Alan Moran:

Gas, well, it depends on what the price of gas is, but when the gas price, before it took off like mad in the last few months, gas would be about $70. Now it would be three or $400. Nuclear is always difficult to place because my reading of it, nuclear would be rather more than that, more like $80, but the price could come down and we might talk about that a little bit later.

Alan Moran:

But yes, solar, firmed solar to the main grid, to the main demand nodes, you’re probably talking about 150 and wind about 120, 130, 140. And that’s before you actually start talking about some of the issues which you mentioned in terms of stability where they do cost a lot more management to actually offset their inherent disadvantages in terms of abilities to supply things which are called reactive power, for example. Inability to do that cost a lot more. So you’re talking again about that kind of hierarchy of costs. Now in terms of the future… Sorry, yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

So just summarising there, Alan. Coal, about $50 per megawatt hour. Gas around about 70 if you take away the current blip, but if we return to gas prices they were several months ago, then $70 per megawatt hour. Nuclear may be around $80 per megawatt hour, many variables. Solar wind, when they’re firmed, then they’re $150 per megawatt hour, which is three times the price of coal. And plus, on top of that, stability factors for managing their instability. What about storage? If we wanted to go to complete solar or even 70% solar and wind, wouldn’t we need to have mammoth storage capacity?

Alan Moran:

Oh yeah. Many more times the Snowy 2 proposal, which of course is a proposal which proposes-

Malcolm Roberts:

We can talk about that. We can talk about that later.

Alan Moran:

Yeah. The amount of stories from batteries… See, it would not even be conceivable to do it through batteries in the present technologies. Batteries can perform quite a useful task in a wind rich and solar rich environment which we have right now, but it’s just basically for seconds, rather than hours. Even the most comprehensive battery system you would conceive of in Australia, which would cost billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, even that would only give you a few hours supply if you were doing without fossil fuels and hydro, well, with some limited hydro and batteries, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but that would only give you a buffer of about a couple of hours. So batteries aren’t a solution in the end for the so-called wind droughts, which can go for days.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right. And solar droughts that can go for days in the same way with heavy cloud cover. So not only is solar and wind three times the price of coal, it is highly unreliable and very insecure and very unstable. So what the hell are we doing?

Alan Moran:

Well, and this is the irony where some of the detractors of coal will say, “Oh, all the coal power stations broke down and that caused a problem.” The irony is that wind breaks down every minute. It sort of varies almost by the minute, certainly by the hour. And solar varies quite considerably during the day as a result of cloud cover and of course [inaudible 00:39:51] varies from possibly a hundred percent capacity factor to zero in the night times. So the reliability issue of the renewables is massively understated in terms of its dangers by its adherents.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, on TNT Radio, we are free to actually tell that truth because the only thing TNT Radio mandates is truth.

Alan Moran:

Right.

Malcolm Roberts:

So let’s go to an ad break. And when we come back, we’ll talk about the term pollution and we’ll talk about the cost so far to Australia and to Australians and families and businesses and jobs and employment of this mad swing to solar and wind. And we’ll talk about how much it will cost to continue to a hundred percent of world energy coming from solar and wind. It’s fundamentally impossible. We know that. But if we were to do it, it would cost a huge amount. So you’re on TNTradio.live with economist, internationally renowned economist, Dr. Alan Moran and this is Senator Malcolm Roberts. Stay right there, come right back in a minute or so and we’ll have more of this amazing economist telling us the truth about energy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts with my guest, Dr. Alan Moran, internationally renowned economist. And we’re talking about energy, something that is really starting to come into people’s hearts and minds and lives and livelihoods these days. Alan, you raised the word pollution. Now in response, I would say two things. First of all, the word pollution comes to mean something like sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides, particulates, toxins that impact life. Now, carbon dioxide is a trace gas essential for all life on this planet. And the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not affect climate. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not affected by humans. So carbon dioxide is in no way a pollutant. We do not control the level of it when we produce it at the levels we do produce, it’s nothing like a threat to us.

Malcolm Roberts:

In fact, the CSIRO’s climate science team when I’ve put them under a scrutiny under cross examination, they have admitted that they have never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and needs to be cut. They’ve never said it, yet politicians tell us it is. Politicians also say that this gas that they’re exhaling is supposed to be a pollutant. So koala bears are polluting our planet according to them. Am I on track with that definition of pollutant? Because the real pollution, the sulphur dioxides and nitrous oxides and particulates and others that used to come out of coal-fired power stations no longer do because they’re scrubbed out. We’re basically pollution free and all we’re producing from a coal-fired power station is water vapour and carbon dioxide, both essential for life on this planet. Am I right?

Alan Moran:

That’s right. We’ve sort of gone into new speak in terms of what is pollution. It used to be, as you say, carbon monoxide or sulphates or whatever, and it’s now shorthand, everybody says, “Oh, highly polluting fossil fuel stations.” Well, the only pollution, and it’s not pollution, of course, is you just said, it’s carbon dioxide emerging from them. And the levels of people saying that this is a dangerous pollution, well, it’s a trace gas, and we’re talking about 300 parts per million that is gone up to more than 400 parts per million, was a lower 300. It’s been-

Malcolm Roberts:

400 parts per million is just 0.04%. It’s 4/100 of 1%. It’s a trace gas because it’s bugger all of it.

Alan Moran:

Yeah. If there was like 10 times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, you might start feeling a bit sleepy occasionally. Certainly that amounts people, some Mariners, for example, have that much carbon dioxide in their atmosphere and ships and appear operate, well, obviously operate successfully. It’s not a poison in that sense, in any conceivable amounts that it would reach or has reached in the past. The higher levels of carbon dioxide are associated with different climates.

Alan Moran:

Now whether the cause and the effects of this is debatable still. But it is argued that if carbon dioxide levels double in the atmosphere, which they may well do in the next a hundred years, that this will increase temperatures by about one degree Celsius and others then go on to argue that want to have a feedback of this through water vapour, then the temperatures could increase by more 2%, 3%, some even say 4% degrees. I’m talking Celsius.

Alan Moran:

All of which is said to be disadvantageous, although if you do the sums on that, you can’t really find any net disadvantage. And a lot of people would prefer to living in warmer climates than in colder climates, most people indeed. It is not a pollutant in that sense. The amount of additional carbon dioxide that could conceivably be put in the atmosphere is limited. And if there is a relationship between that and temperature, it’s a relationship that tails off with each increment until it becomes virtually zero.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I know that professor Ian Plimer, wonderful geologist and award-winning geologist, an Australian who’s worked overseas, worked in many fields, knows his stuff, he said that when carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, many millions of years ago, were five times what they are today. Instead of being 0.04%, they were 0.2%, that life flourished because carbon dioxide is a stimulant for life. It’s a fertiliser for plants and it’s essential for all animal and plant life on this planet. And the other thing, we don’t need to discuss this here because I’d like to move to another topic about carbon dioxide in regard to the environment, humans do not control the level. Some people have said, and I’ve cross-examined the CSIRO, they have never been able to provide me with any effect of carbon dioxide on climate.

Malcolm Roberts:

None at all. Not even temperature. None at all. And there isn’t any. But we’ve had an experiment twice now in recent years following the global financial crisis in 2008. 2009 was a major recession around the world because of the global financial crisis and there was less hydrocarbon fuel, coal, oil, natural gas used in 2009 then in 2008. And carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to increase, even though we had a massive cut in human production of carbon dioxide, which is what the UN wants and our governments want, but it had no impact on the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Malcolm Roberts:

The next experiment was in 2020 when we had an almost depression around the world because of government COVID restrictions and the level of carbon dioxide produced by humans decreased dramatically due to reduced use of hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas. And what happened to the level of carbon dioxide and atmosphere? Continued increasing. So we have no effect on that and that’s what the science shows as well. But there is another aspect and that is recycling. A coal fired power station lasts what, 50 years. A nuclear power station, I don’t know how long that lasts, perhaps you could explain. A dam lasts for many, many decades. Solar and wind installations last for about 10 to 15 years under current technology and then they can’t be recycled. Is that correct?

Alan Moran:

Yeah. More or less. Certainly coal power stations last a minimum 50 years. Some of them last much longer than that. I don’t know how long nuclear lasts because they’ve not been around that long, but certainly 50 years. And as you say, the best you could expect from wind and solar would be 30 years, but more likely far less than that, more likely 20 years. And yeah, there are issues because the raw materials in which their base can’t just be recycled or can’t be added onto, they’re totally different [inaudible 00:50:47] so you got to get rid of them and dump them. And there are a lot of suggestions, well, more than suggestions, there’s a knowledge that they’ve got highly toxic ingredients, which certainly need to be carefully treated to avoid getting into the water supply and polluting the land generally.

Alan Moran:

As you say, there’s no pollution from nuclear or fossil fuel plants or virtually no pollution at all. So yes, there are huge costs of actually eradicating the materials, which are longer used. And actually, unfortunately it is around the world is there are no bonds required of wind farm, solar farms.

Malcolm Roberts:

Good point.

Alan Moran:

Whereas, if you want to open a mine anyway, you’re paying a bond up front for electrification and certainly-

Malcolm Roberts:

So could you explain what that bond is?

Alan Moran:

The bond basically says… The authorities say, well, you built a mine, you built a power station, whatever else. And when it’s finished and whatever it is year’s time, you basically got to rectify the land so that people don’t fall down shafts or people that don’t live on what may be some toxic materials. You post a bond. Basically, it’s a requirement. Sometimes it’s a cash requirement, but it’s always enforceable on the power station or the mine. As far as I know, anywhere in the world, there are no bonds on wind farms or solar farms. There’s certainly none in Australia. And so basically we are coming to a situation where these facilities, many of them are 20 years old now, will be required to be removed and stored and dismantled. And it’s not quite clear how that will be covered-

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s being kind, not quite clear.

Alan Moran:

[inaudible 00:53:00] problem.

Malcolm Roberts:

I was just saying that’s being very kind. It’s not quite clear how they’ll be recovered and reclaimed. They’ve got no idea. And there’s no responsibility. As you said, when a mine owner clears some land, he or she must pay a bond to the government and they get the bond back if they reclaim the land and they’re supposed to reclaim the land. And that’s fair enough. But there’s no such bond for solar and wind, which gives them even more an unfair advantage. So there are many unfair advantages and yet, despite that, despite the fact that the society gives them a crutch, solar and wind now account for 2% of the world’s energy after decades and claims of price reductions. We’ve got 2%. And that’s cost us, I’ve forgotten the figures, but it’s many billions of dollars, Alan.

Alan Moran:

Yeah. Well, we know how much it’s costing us in Australia and Germany. I think we’re talking trillions of dollars there. It’s costing us somewhere north of $10 billion a year, we’re spending every year in terms of the subsidies for wind and solar. And we have more than 2%, it’s more like 15% of supply in Australia. But it’s a colossal cost, which isn’t present in hydrocarbons, which of course, as you pointed out, are not only cheaper as a result, but more reliable.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right. And we are coming to the top of the hour and we’ll be having a break for the news and some advertisements, then we’ll be coming right back. So stay right here because Alan Moran will be back. We’ll continue the talk about energy. We’ll talk about the moral case for hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and natural gas and current policies. Because Dr. Moran, to give you an inclination, has done a comprehensive report on the cost of solar and wind. $13 billion a year additional costs. $1,300 for each family on average. $19 billion to the economy. And for every so-called solar and wind job, there are 2.3 jobs in the real economy that have been destroyed and lost.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ll be right back after the news to hear more from this wonderful economist talking the facts and the truth accurately about something that is so important to human life, the primacy of energy.

Part 2

Speaker 1:

This is the Malcolm Roberts Show on today’s news talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I’ve got my guest today, Dr. Alan Moran, an economist who specialises in understanding how governments waste money and what to do about stopping them from wasting money. And he’s a specialist on the cost of energy and the generation and supply of energy and its importance in society. Now, before the break, I mentioned four figures. The cost of subsidies and policies for solar and wind poses an additional $13 billion a year on the Australian economy. That’s the additional cost to our electricity sector, not the cost, the additional cost of solar and wind. That averages out at around $1,300 per household.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, Australia’s median income, perhaps Alan will correct me, but Australia’s median income, I understand, is about $49,000 a year. Half the people in Australia earn more than 49,000. Half earn less than 49,000. After tax, what’s that? Around, say, 39,000, $40,000. $1,300 a year is one hell of an impost to put on people earning less than $49,000 a year. The subsidies on solar and wind are a highly regressive tax. The poor are the ones who pay proportionately more for this government largess. And who benefits? Billionaires, Chinese multinationals, other multinationals, because we’re subsidising them to destroy our power sector with subsidies from solar and wind.

Malcolm Roberts:

Third figure, the additional cost to the economy is $19 billion a year. And I’ll ask Alan to explain these in a minute. And for every wind or solar job supposedly created, there are 2.3 jobs in the real economy lost. Australia has the highest level of subsidies for solar and wind in the world. Everywhere, as solar and wind subsidies increased, the price of electricity has increased dramatically. We have gone from being the lowest priced electricity in the world to the highest price. And in addition, the United States is the second. I think that’s correct, isn’t it, Alan? The United States has the second highest level of subsidies, and they’re half Australia’s levels. So, we are going crazy in this country supporting something that costs three times the cost of a coal fired power station to produce electricity. Solar and wind is three times the price. What the hell is happening, Alan?

Alan Moran:

Well, I mean, you can estimate those numbers a different way, but they’re certainly of that order. The actual costs that I’d estimate, the tax, the direct tax effects of the subsidies, is about $7 billion a year, but that has an effect in boosting the cost of electricity considerably, and perhaps to the level of 19 billion that you mentioned there. But whatever that taxes level was, the $19 billion has being demonstrated now to be a massive underestimate, because that was at a time when it was boosting the price of electricity from, say, it’s underlying value of $60, that’s a ex-generator, to something of the order of $100 ex-generator.

Alan Moran:

Well, since April of this year, well, right now, it’s 300, even though the market seems to have recovered. In other words, it’s three times as much as it was not long ago. And when we were in the crisis and the market was suspended, it was 10 times as much. Now, so, there’s issues about the subsidy as such, which is bad enough. You can figure what that is. But essentially, it’s poisoning the whole of the energy market. And repercussions of that is that the price goes shooting through the roof as a result. And I mean, not only is it hardship for individuals, indeed, it’s almost certain that in the next few months that the average price of electricity to households will double. I mean, it’s just the pure arithmetic.

Malcolm Roberts:

What?

Alan Moran:

They will double. The pure arithmetic is that the generation component is now three or four times what it was at Christmas time. That will have to pass through. There is no other way of doing it. It’s basically, here is the cost to the retailer, essentially, and that cost gets passed on to the consumer. So, they will do. This has already happened in the UK. UK doubled in 1st of June of this year as a result of these same factors. It will increase there again by another 50% in September. So, not only do we have this high cost imposed through the subsidies, which we all pay, but the subsidies are driving out the lowest cost available generation, which in our case is coal, and raising the aggregate price of electricity to astronomical levels, which are a real burden on the household in just of themselves, but then that burden is passed along the lines through it being incorporated in the goods and services we buy as well. So, we-

Malcolm Roberts:

So, let me just understand that. So, what you’re saying is that by themselves, the subsidies for solar and wind dramatically increase the price of electricity. I get that. But there’s an additional factor, and that is that solar and wind destroy the investment in coal. So, coal pulls out, which, because it’s the cheapest form, further raises the price of electricity.

Alan Moran:

Right. Well, I mean, basically, we first saw this in 2017 in Australia, with the loss of two major power stations, one in South Australia and one in Victoria. We saw then the price of electricity ratchet up by double. That’s with the ex-generators, which is a third of the total cost to the household, if you like. But we saw that cost double. And it came down because of COVID when we stopped using as much electricity, but with the recovery from COVID, we’ve now seen the prices escalate through the roof. And the reason is quite simple, because we’ve got subsidised renewables, which operate… The marginal cost of them is zero, more or less. We know that the cost of them is high, but the government subsidise them and sank costs in there. So, they will always make themselves available whenever they’re available at zero cost.

Alan Moran:

And that plays havoc with the economics of coal and gas, to some degree, and certainly uranium as well. And it’s forcing these into unprofitability. And when they’re unprofitable, they close. And when they close, the price shoots up again. And so you have this zigzag ratchet effect of the price of electricity going up and up and up as the poison in the system, which is the renewables, takes out the more efficient fossil fuel or nuclear plants and raises costs. And that’s happened. The nuclear plants, of course, are being taken out in the US and even in France, which has other problems with its nuclear plant, but even in France, and certainly Germany where the Greens are now in control and are closing nuclear as fast as they’re closing coal, in fact, faster than they’re closing coal. So-

Malcolm Roberts:

Germany’s actually opening coal.

Alan Moran:

They’re opening some new coal now, so they’re resurrecting coal. Actually, the irony is we can’t do that because when we closed ours, the state premiers arranged for them to be dynamited, which was just the most-

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah, crazy.

Alan Moran:

… criminal action you can imagine.

Malcolm Roberts:

Terrorism.

Alan Moran:

They’ll probably get away with it. But at least in Germany, being Germans, when they closed it on ideological grounds, they left the plant basically available to be resurrected. But yeah, so we’ve got these situations. It’s difficult to see the cost, the aggregate cost. I know there’s a McKinsey’s report came out recently saying, “Well, the cost of going net zero in Europe will be a 5% reduction in everyone’s incomes.” I mean, that seems much smaller than you would imagine given the fact, basically, that energy, as we’ve discussed, is so much a part of our ability to live comfortably and our ability to produce efficiently that if we are abolishing this low cost energy, which we’ve developed painstakingly over the last 100 years and replacing by a superior form of the wind that drove us until the middle of the 19th century, then we basically are going to be losing an awful lot more than that.

Alan Moran:

And we’ve got this malaise throughout the Western world. It’s hard to find a Western country which is bucking the trend. Certainly, President Trump’s America was at the time being, and certainly other countries are bucking it like India, like China, like Russia, like Indonesia. These countries basically pay lip service to the notions that the Western politically correct people require about the importance of renewables, but basically don’t know about it.

Speaker 4:

I’m learning how to choose the right audio apps for you.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, let’s have some idea of what it would cost to go 100% solar and wind. Because can you recall, I can’t recall it, the number of billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars that it has cost to get 2% of the world’s energy onto solar and wind? Do you know that figure?

Alan Moran:

Well, I think there’s a trillion dollar actually being mentioned, but that may have just been Europe. So, it’s probably a bit more than that. And the Germans have higher proportion of wind and solar than we do, a little bit higher anyway now. As you say, we have spent more per capita than anybody else. It’s difficult to know. It’s difficult to disaggregate what the taxes are because there are different local taxes and federal tax. It’s difficult enough in Australia for the work which you’ve cited before, where you’ve got to find out how much state governments are paying, how much federal governments are paying and that some of them aren’t. Obviously, they’re not just from the government budgets, they’re from the regulatory budgets. And the governments make it very difficult to actually estimate those sorts of numbers. Although, I’m sure they’re known internally how much they would be, they don’t publish them. They used to, actually. They used to publish back 15 years ago how much was being spent to assist renewables, but it became less fashionable once the cost became apparent.

Malcolm Roberts:

Oh, that was the other figure from that report too. Governments are telling us that the proportion of our electricity bill that we can attribute to solar and wind is just six and half percent. In fact, government’s own figures, state and federal, show it’s 39% of a power bill. So, we can lop off 40%, basically, off our power bill if we stop these stupid subsidies that are just killing our industry. So, let me tell everyone a story. This is a true story. Pauline Hanson, Senator Pauline Hanson, and I received phone calls from some farmers living in the valley of Neera Creek near Kilcoy, which is not far from Brisbane. And Neera Creek, the water flows into Brisbane River, which flows into Wivenhoe Dam, which is a storage for water that goes to two and a half million people in Southeastern Queensland, including all Brisbane people.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, Neera Creek, we got the call because farmers there were upset that the Chinese appeared to be convincing the state government, the state Labour government, to convert the area into a solar complex. I won’t call it a solar farm because that’s a cute term. That’s why they’ve used it. Solar and wind pushers are using the term “farm.” It’s a solar industrial complex. Neera Valley, Neera Creek, has very good agricultural land, tillable land for crops in the valley floor. On the lower slopes, prime beef country. They wanted to build the biggest solar industrial complex in the Southern hemisphere and possibly the world. There’d be 10 kilometres of a hillside completely covered in solar panels.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, think of the consequences. The farmers there know that in flooding, the solar panels in the lower parts of the valley would be seven metres underwater. We know that there are carcinogens coming off solar panels. I think it’s cadmium and two other toxins, and also lead. So, this water, and then this whole area is under threat from hail storms. And so what would happen is we would have these carcinogens going into Neera Creek, going into the Brisbane River, into Wivenhoe Dam and throughout Southeast Queensland, into drinking water. So, that’s the first impact. The second impact, sterilising wonderful land, increasing the erosion of top soil. The third aspect is that we users of electricity in Queensland would subsidise the Chinese. And I’ve got nothing against the Chinese. They’re savvy business people. We’re the mugs with voting the governments in that we’ve got. We would be subsidising the Chinese to instal these solar panels in Neera Valley.

Malcolm Roberts:

That would then raise the price of electricity in Queensland. That would then shut some manufacturing facilities. It would impact the livelihoods of many Australians. It even has stopped the pumping of water in agricultural land. So in a drought, there were some farmers in Central and Southern Queensland saying that they would not be planting fodder crops because of the price of pumping water due to electricity prices. Then it goes on. We take our coal, which is the best in the world, and we can’t burn it here because of the green policies, but we can export it to China. So it goes over land, then it goes over the sea thousands of kilometres, then over to China, then over land again to a power station in China. The Chinese use coal, and they produce nine times the amount of coal Australia produces. We produce 500 million. The Chinese produce 4.5 billion tonnes of coal a year, nine times what we produce.

Malcolm Roberts:

When they import our coal, they feed it into power stations and they produce coal reportedly at eight cents a kilowatt hour, and that’s what they sell it for. Australia sells it for 25 cents a kilowatt hour. So, the largest cost component of manufacturing used to be labour. It is now electricity because we’re using machines that use electricity instead of humans in manufacturing a lot. So, that means we are destroying our manufacturing sector and that goes to China. So, we dig up our coal and send it to China to make solar panels. We dig up our coal and send it to China to make wind turbines. They ship it back here. We pay them subsidies to do so. Then we pay some Chinese companies and other multinationals subsidies to run this, to destroy our energy sector. This is insane, Alan.

Alan Moran:

Yeah. And we’re seeing the results of this in terms of the closure of many parts of manufacturing, et cetera, and in terms of some of the costs of living which we’re seeing. The interesting thing we’re seeing in Australia at the present time, we had a wages case where the Commonwealth government advocated a 5% increase in wages. Fair enough, because prices have gone up. Well, why have prices gone up 5%? Well, they’ve gone up 5% because of the energy crisis which we’ve created, and that’s only the first instalment, 5%, by the way, which has resulted in these high costs.

Alan Moran:

There’s an interesting comparison of that with Europe, which has got lots of strikes. I think there’s a rail strike in the UK now, but lots of strikes breaking out in the EU and in the UK, because basically they’re facing a situation where the energy crisis has resulted in prices increasing at about 8%, whereas wages have only increased at 2%. Why have wages only increased at 2%? Well, because that’s all that can be afforded in terms of the productivity. The costs, and therefore the productivity of European industry, has dropped about 8% over the past year as a result of this energy crisis. And it will go down even further, as will ours. So, there’s an impasse occurring where politicians, populous politicians, and nothing wrong with politicians, as you know, but-

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I disagree with you. There’s a lot wrong with the bastards.

Alan Moran:

But politicians say, “Well, it’s unfair. It’s unfair that people should be forced to actually have their living standards reduced.” But the fact of the matter is is that living standards depend on productivity. And if your productivity goes down, so do your living standards. It’s just a law of gravity which is not possible to counter in any sense. So, we have a situation where we have purposely reduced the living standards in Australia, and in other developed countries as well, by adopting inefficient forms of energy. As a result of the Ukraine crisis, this has come to a head. It’s not caused by the Ukraine crisis, by the way, but it brought it to a head because it actually highlighted the deficiencies that we have in the economies. It’s brought it to a head and therefore then we can see that we are less well off now.

Alan Moran:

As a result of that, people are unhappy. They don’t understand why we’re less well off. Politicians told them the new world, we’re in this energy transition towards renewable energy away from the old stuff, and it’ll be great for us all. Well, wait a minute. It’s not. We’re losing a lot of dough. We’re losing productivity. If we lose productivity, your wages have to go down. There’s no alternative. So, we are facing this sort of crisis right now. And one of the answers to this is, “Oh, right, well, we’ve got to power ahead with the renewables.” And that’s a refrain we’re seeing in Australia, in the US, and in Europe. Well, this is what’s caused the problem in the first place and yet we’re going to actually double down on this problem. Essentially, the renewables have caused us to lose a lot of productivity by… It’s replaced with high prices. And we’re actually going to do more of those. It’s just crazy. And we are going to see further living standard falls as a result.

Malcolm Roberts:

I love your forthrightness. There’s one other thing that we’ll mention before going to a break, and that is that this is immoral because what’s happening is that in the developed nations, the UN basically is discouraging the use of hydrocarbon fuels. That means people have to keep burning dung, which is a heavy pollutant and a health hazard, or do without electricity, or have very expensive solar and wind, which is basically doing without electricity because they’re so unreliable.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, this is stopping humans in undeveloped countries or third world countries from actually enjoying what we used to enjoy. This is inhuman. It goes against the environment. It is destruction. It is anti-civilization, anti-environment, anti-human, and it’s all fed by deceit. When we come back, we will talk further about these matters with Alan Moran and then get onto some solutions, because this man has got some solutions. So, we’ll be right back. Stay with us. Hear from us again in a minute.

Speaker 1:

Telling the truth is the only mandate we believe in. Today’s news talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts with outstanding, internationally renowned economist Dr. Alan Moran. We’re discussing something very important for human progress, and that is the price of energy. The advertisement we just heard said, “It’s criminal to waste energy.” Alan, I would suggest it’s also criminal to destroy energy, which is what’s going on. The biggest factor in the last 170 years of unparalleled, unprecedented human progress, material, health, longevity of life, ease, comfort, security, safety, the biggest factor driving that dramatic improvement in 170 years, we were scratching around in the dirt, having being subjected to nature’s vagaries, being subjected to famines, and in the last 170 years, we’ve basically become free of that, we have been liberated, we have enormous standard of living improvements, unprecedented, and that was due to the ever decreasing real prices of energy, because that increased productivity, as you so eloquently said, that increased our prosperity, increased wealth, as you said, for everyone. And now we are reversing that with criminal, dishonest, deceitful political policies. Is that correct?

Alan Moran:

Yeah, it is. The politicians, in some respects, are leading this, but in most respects, as often happens in politics, they’re following others. And there is an ideology which is being developed through the institutions and whatever, through education institutions, that coal is bad and wind is good and that wind is cheap. And your very good friend from CSIRO produced a lot of material which purports to prove this. And when you actually ask them then, “Do you now support then the emasculation and prevention of all subsidies for wind?” they sort of hum and haw and look at their feet, in fact. So, they obviously know that’s untrue, but they hope that in future, it might be true.

Alan Moran:

And then there’s a whole lot of people who gain from this because they’re wind farm developers or whatever else, and they want the subsidies as well. And so you’ve got a mass psychosis. If you look at the last election in Australia, you call yourselves the Freedom Parties, but the Freedom Parties probably only got about 12% of the vote. We’re talking about Senate here. The Liberal Party maybe supports half of them, maybe support that, Liberals and Nationals. But you can come to a situation where 70% of people voted for, in some cases, we have this phenomenon of the Teals and the Greens, voted for an intensification of the eradication of fossil fuels, of hydrocarbons.

Alan Moran:

So with the politicians, basically, most of them were just led by the nose. There are very few political leaders in the country, and obviously you’re one, who basically call it out. The rest of them just give back what people want. And we’re seeing then, as a result of that, these very high prices which have come to a head this half year. And people are saying, “Well, that’s only a blip. The prices are going to come down.” Well, they won’t. They’ll come down from the $15,000 a megawatt hour from the $50, $15,000 a megawatt hour until recently. And then they were controlled at 300. But since they’ve become uncontrolled the last day or so, the price has stayed at $200 a megawatt hour.

Alan Moran:

Well, why is that? Well, basically, because we’ve not been investing in power stations because governments haven’t allowed it. They haven’t allowed access to new coal resources for power stations. They certainly have encouraged the attack on fossil fuels, which has come through the environmental, social governance kind of rules within finance capital. They certainly haven’t protected mines from depredations from activists. And essentially what we’ve seen is a slow down and decline and a reduction in the capital base of these very efficient producers of energy with the cataclysmic consequences we’re now seeing.

Malcolm Roberts:

And let’s go back to something you said a minute ago, people who gain from this distortion, this criminal activity. It was reported that Peabody Energy company used to be, and I think it still is, the world’s largest public company producing coal. I mean, the Indian government may produce more. It’s a state owned industry there, horribly inefficient, but it produces more. And other organisations, state owned, may produce more. But Peabody was the largest public company, privately owned, if you like, non-government. When Obama was in power, as the president, the Democratic Party really put a lot of pressure on Obama to talk down coal, to really badmouth coal. And it’s said that George Soros owns the Democratic Party. It’s basically his little puppy. It does what he says.

Malcolm Roberts:

Obama dutifully talked down coal because he said it would be banned. Basically, it would be. And the Department of Energy in the United States came up with the policies to destroy the use of coal. Such was the talk that Peabody Energy company shares went from $1,100 to 15. That’s a 98% drop. Guess who bought significant chunk of Peabody shares? George Soros became a very large shareholder in Peabody Energy company. Why would George Soros do that? This is his standard practise. It’s been reported many times that he drives down through deceit the value of an industry. And he goes in invests heavily and waits for it to come back up again. The international energy agencies, other forecasts, show that there will be dramatic increases in the use of coal in future. China is trying to make massive increases in coal production. It’s already producing nine times what Australia produces. Indonesia, to our north, produces more, sorry, exports more coal than Australia does now. It’s the world’s leading exporter of coal.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, what we’re doing is we’re destroying the crucible of human progress, and we’ve turned parasitic malinvestments in solar and wind into the destroyers of our economy. The cost of electricity is now prohibitive and hurting families, and it’ll go up higher, Dr. Moran says. It’s destroying industry. Alan Moran has already said that. Manufacturing jobs are being exported. De-industrialization means no future for Australia and no industrial security, no defence security. We don’t make our own defence provisions. It’s destroying agriculture. And then on top of that, these dopey politicians are now saying, “We want to transfer our transport fleet of cars and trucks to electricity.” So, that will add even more demand to electricity. And as we go further into solar and wind, it will destroy… So, we’ll get less production of electricity. So, with less production and doubling of demand due to the conversion of our transport fleet, what will that do to prices?

Alan Moran:

Obviously, it’ll increase them more. I mean, you opened up by talking about Obama. And I think when he first got elected, he said something like, “Now is the time when the oceans stop rising, when the wildfires have ceased and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And he also said, “Look, I won’t stop anybody investing in coal, but if you do invest in coal, you’re an idiot because the policies I have in place will kill coal as we move to this brand new world of solar and wind.” And indeed, in the Present Biden government, Granholm, I think, the Energy Minister, is saying the same sort of thing still.

Alan Moran:

So yeah, I don’t know to what degree Soros is the instigator of all this. Certainly, there are many people who would make money out of it. And certainly, that issue of the collapse in price for coal as a result of government statements is true. And one of the things, an interesting figure coming through in the last few days, is just the level of investment in gas and oil over the past four years is now one third of what it was in 2015 when, if you like, the madness came to a head with the Paris Agreement now on allegedly seeking or seeking-

Malcolm Roberts:

True.

Alan Moran:

… reductions in emission levels, and therefore the abolition of coal to some gas and oil. So, all of these things are self-inflicted. Certainly, there’s issues in the developed world. Some of them have been harassed to actually reduce their own emissions through aid, et cetera. Others, who are smarter, and you mentioned Indonesia, India, China, Vietnam, these are just sailing forward, paying lip service to the politically correct people but then building new coal power stations and gas stations and nuclear stations too. So, the smarter heads in the third world are taking advantage of the market opportunities, if you like, caused by the developing world increasing, purposely increasing, its own costs and industries migrating there. China has about 55% of the world’s steel production, coming on for 50% of aluminium, et cetera. All of this is because basically they have adopted sensible power policies in a context when the West has been retreating from those.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. And we see the absurdity of now subsidising electric vehicles, again, with a very troubling high use of resources. Electric vehicles are so much more expensive than petrol or diesel powered vehicles, simply because of their extraordinary appetite for natural resources, expensive materials, expensive metals, exotic minerals, earth, rare earths. But we also see the environmental legacy of their batteries. So, we are going in entirely the wrong direction for the environment. We are going entirely in the wrong direction for productivity because we’re feeding parasitic malinvestments. I think that was a term you coined once, Dr. Moran, parasitic malinvestments. And the instigator, I wasn’t accusing George Soros of being the instigator of this rubbish, I lay the blame firmly at the hands of Maurice Strong from the United Nations. He died in 2015, just before the Paris Agreement was signed. But that man caused all of this.

Malcolm Roberts:

He’s the granddaddy of climate change, the false claims on climate. He was the granddaddy of centralising a lot of the bureaucracy based upon UN policies. That’s the man who did it. Soros and other billionaires are just taking advantage of it. And it’s significant again that it’s the people who are paying. The people who are paying with loss of jobs, exported to China, with increased costs for families, increased cost for small business. And who do they pay it to? Because of the wealth transfer, it gets paid to billionaires who are benefiting from subsidies. It gets paid to Chinese and other multinationals who are benefiting from subsidies. So, we’re wrecking our economy, and we’re paying others to do it. And we’ve got billionaires in Australia and overseas who are making money out of this. That is theft. It’s fraud, because they’re presenting something as it is not for personal gain. There is no need to do this, and yet they’re doing it. So, let’s get onto some solutions. Well, before we go onto the solutions, tell us about the national electricity market, please, Alan.

Alan Moran:

Well, it’s a market which is based on trying to incentivize. It was developed about 25 years ago now, and I had something to do with it in its early days. It’s essentially to say, well, why don’t we have a situation where we inject competition? We have lots of different generators. In those days there was no wind or solar, but there were probably 50, no, more than that, 70 generation units there. Why don’t we get these bidding in how much they’re prepared to give, at different price bands, and the market cleared? It’s just the same way as happens in every other market, aluminium markets, or cotton markets, grain markets, et cetera. And it worked very well. It brought a massive reduction in prices. Partly this was also because there was quite a degree of privatisation at that time, not so much in your state of Queensland, but elsewhere around Australia. And that replaced what were essentially union controlled plants with massive overmanning by shareholder controlled plants which sought to reduce costs and increase profitability.

Alan Moran:

So, we had a situation where it worked very well. The lights stayed on. Prices fluctuated quite strongly, as they’re supposed to fluctuate strongly, but then the retailers took out contracts for different licks of power to ensure that they had insurance against this. So, we saw a massive reduction in the cost of generation in Australia, about a 50% reduction as soon as the market came into operation. And shortly afterwards, of course, the madness started, first of all by John Howard, actually, introducing a renewable requirement, which was progressively jacked up by Rudd. And Tony Abbott tried to stop it. The previous government tried to stop it as well or did something to arrest it, but essentially it ploughed its way forward until we now have 15 or 20% of our supply by this exorbitantly subsidised inefficient renewable power which has undermined the national market.

Alan Moran:

So, what happened then when this came to a head, well, this half year is suddenly, nobody had been investing in coal and we’d been disinvesting in coal. There were no incentives to do so, and, in fact, every incentive not to do so. And so once we started getting back to a reasonable degree of normality post-COVID, the price shot up. And indeed, it shot up all over the world. The gas price, because state governments, with the exception of Queensland, haven’t allowed firms to go exploring for gas, so we’re short of gas as well. They’ve put all sorts of impediments into new coal plants, not only especially domestic, but even international coal plant. We had the experience of Adani mining coal in Australia, selling it to India. It took 10 years to actually get approvals and massive increases in costs required of them.

Alan Moran:

So we are, we’re sort of tying our hands behind our backs and trying to walk forward in that way. And the upshot of once a price bubble started rising globally, we were caught in it. We haven’t developed enough gas locally, so the price of gas went up. The irony, one irony amongst many, is the Victorian Energy Minister started demanding that Queensland gas be sent south to Victoria. Whereas, when the Victorians don’t commit to any gas development whatsoever and the Queensland gas is pretty well fully acquitted in terms of contracts for supply. So this is some of the craziness, some of the stupidity we have of the people who have been elected to parliament and are running the place. So, that’s the national market. There’s nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with the concept of it, but it can get poisoned by subsidies on some sorts of fuel which affect others.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, yeah.

Alan Moran:

And people are now looking for ways out of that.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let’s have a debate one day on this, a discussion about the privatisation and about the markets for energy, because I’m a firm believer in competition, it’s excellent, and a firm believer in getting government out, but not where there’s a monopoly. And essentially in water supply, some transport corridors, and some transport facilities like ports, and also some energy sources and energy networks, they can only be one of them. They can’t duplicate them to have real competition. So, that means we’d be giving that to a monopoly. And then we know what happens in monopolies. But your point is, so putting that aside, I’ll just invite you back for a debate one day on that, or a discussion on that, Alan, I know your views are privatisation is good. My belief, and I’m not asking you to comment on this because we need to go to an ad break, and we’ll come back and deal with the solution, so you’ve got some solutions in mind, the national electricity market has been completely destroyed because politics and bureaucrats interfere.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, it’s no longer a market. It’s a racket. It’s a national electricity racket. And what we’ve seen is that government has become the agency for wealth transfer. Citizens of this country have been duped into transferring their wealth through subsidies to millionaires and billionaires in this country. And politicians have become wealth destroyers. Government should be the crucible, create the environment in which people create wealth. What the government’s policies are doing now is increasingly destroying wealth and transferring it to billionaires. So, this is Senator Malcolm Roberts. I’ve got a wonderful guest on with Alan Moran. We’ll be back to hear the solutions from Dr. Moran as to what’s needed to put our energy sector back on track.

Announcer:

This is today’s news talk and the voice of freedom, TNT Radio.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and my guest is Dr. Alan Moran, economist. Alan, what are the solutions? Over to you. I’ve handed you-

Alan Moran:

Well-

Malcolm Roberts:

… a hospital pass here.

Alan Moran:

… thanks very much. The solutions? I’ll tell you what aren’t the solutions first off. I mean, one has been highlighted, one possible solution is that we’ve got to double down on renewables. In fact, we heard this in the Australian newspaper. Rod Sims, who used to be head of the regulator, the ACCC in Australia, a corporate regulator, talking about, “We need a carbon tax.” I mean, basically, either he wasn’t aware that we do have a carbon tax, not a very efficient one, but it’s a tax on coal and gas, which is the corollary and the subsidies we give to the carbon-free wind and solar.

Alan Moran:

So, we have a carbon tax already. I don’t know how much he wanted that tax to be. He didn’t specify it, but certainly there’s some estimates of what a carbon tax would need to be to get to net zero, one from the New Zealand Productivity Commission which was something like of the order of 160, $170 per tonne of CO2, which would be a fivefold increase in the price for electricity. So, that’s one estimate of it. There are other estimates. They’re all around that same sort of level. So, carbon taxes are ridiculous. Basically, it’s pouring oil on the troubled waters.

Alan Moran:

Others have come around. A modern one is talking about, “Well, we need a capacity market.” So, we need a market which gives specific payment to coal and to gas and to water to be available when the sun isn’t shining. So, we give them a top-up in terms of their ability to earn income. Of course, that’s complicated straight away by socialist ministers, like the minister in Victoria saying, “Well, we’re not going to give that to coal or to gas or whatever.” So, it makes it absolutely ridiculous if you don’t give it to coal and gas.

Alan Moran:

But the other thing about a capacity market is another distortion. It is the regulator coming in saying how much capacity is needed, remunerating people that way. And we’ve got capacity markets around the world. UK’s got a capacity market. It hasn’t stopped half the retailers going bankrupt. It hasn’t stopped the price of electricity to the consumer doubling. So, I mean, you don’t need a capacity market. You basically need retailers to ensure that they have supplies available. And that’s the way our present market should operate and has been operating until it became unworkable once we subsidised so many renewables in there. So, that’s a couple of solutions.

Alan Moran:

Another one, oh, a great idea, lets ban exports of gas and of coal and redirect them to the domestic market. Well, that’s like saying to firms, “Well, you went and developed this productive capacity and you got some contracts from China and Japan and India or wherever else. Now we’re going to just stop you selling that and you’re going to have to sell it to the domestic market,” presumably at a cheaper price. Well, that’s a great way to go forward in terms of a sovereign risk placed on any investments and thereby undermining the investments, putting a greater premium on them.

Alan Moran:

So, the simple solutions don’t work like that. The only solution you can do is basically we have to get away from subsidising all power, all power or, in fact, almost everything. We have to get away with saying, “Those subsidies end now. End now.” But that is not going to be a quick fix because the subsidies have taken 15 years of subsidies before they actually undermined the market. And they won’t be wound down, or their detrimental effects won’t be wound down quickly. They will gradually be wound down. Say, if we stop all subsidies, then there will be no more renewables built. Believe me, there will be no renewables built if there are no subsidies.

Alan Moran:

We also have to pair that with certain aspects like forbidding firms to discriminate. We have a situation where banks and insurance companies will not give cover, will not give funding to selective sorts of investments in terms of coal, oil, and gas. And ironically, it reduces availability of investment to financial resources in China, of all places, and India, which makes it more difficult to actually maintain and to develop new capacities. But we have to then warn firms that they must not discriminate against certain sorts of legitimate customers, and we do that generally throughout the economy, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Alan Moran:

We have to ensure that we’ve stopped any planning, reverse planning decisions, which have made it very difficult to actually get stuff off the ground. I mentioned Adani had taken 10 years getting off the ground. Others are taking just as long. The gas developments in Queensland and Northern New South Wales are taking an awful long time. Because we have planning courts, which have been staffed by activists, and they hear advice from other activists who say, “If we develop more coal here, then it’ll add to global pollution of carbon dioxide. So, you’ve got to stop it,” and all that. That eventually gets quashed, but it all takes a long time to work its way through the courts. So, we have to stop doing that. We need political leadership above all. We need men and women who understand the politics, who understand the economics of this to start coming forward and saying, “This is just crazy. This is just crazy. We can’t do this. This is being caused by these actions. We’ve got to stop doing it.” And we need to actually reduce any other legislative barriers. We’ve mentioned nuclear.

Alan Moran:

I mean, I’m not sure how remunerative nuclear would be in Australia. Probably not very much at the moment. But we certainly ought to stop people from preventing nuclear developments. It’s just about the safest source of power. It’s been demonised by various adverse effects in Ukraine and difficulties that it sometimes does. But if you look at numbers of fatalities per units of energy, it’s massively less than coal, even, certainly less than hydroelectricity, all of which have faced disasters from time to time. So, these are the measures we’ve got to do to get back on track. We’ve got to actually get rid of all the regulations and encourage the most cheapest form and most reliable forms of electricity rather than discourage them.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, that’s a very comprehensive list. So, let me just go through them. What you’re basically saying is to start telling the truth, politicians start telling the truth. Stop policies that are pushing towards UN 2050 net zero, and put policies in place for our Australian nation. Stop subsidising solar and wind. Stop market distortions, and, for example, capacity markets. Stop the bureaucratic interference that has destroyed the national electricity market. Stop subsidising solar and wind. Stop subsidising electric vehicles. Ban discrimination of finance on political grounds. Reverse planning decisions that are impeding projects. What you’re really saying is get government the hell out of industry, decrease legislative burden, and remove regulations, restore our sovereignty, economic sovereignty, and find political leadership.

Malcolm Roberts:

And, Dr. Moran, that’s a wonderful list. I was very keen. I am sincere in saying, let’s have you back for a debate on privatisation, and I can see the benefits. But I would like to thank you very much for coming on today, being so frank and forthright, sharing your knowledge, sharing your experience with government. You know the evils of government. You know the need for some sensible regulation. We’ve got about 20 seconds. Is there anything you would like to say in terms of how people can contact you, or your books?

Alan Moran:

Well, my website is Regulation Economics. I’ve got a lot of material on there on-

Malcolm Roberts:

Regulationeconomics.com. Is it regulationeconomics.-

Alan Moran:

.com, yeah.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you very much, Alan.

After studying commerce at the University of Southern Queensland, instead of working as an accountant, Robbie joined the CEC, now Citizens Party, as a full-time staffer in its new HQ in Melbourne.

In the 30 years since, he has worked as a researcher, media liaison, campaigns director and research director, with a focus on Australian political history and especially the history of the Commonwealth Bank.

Robbie has been an active campaigner and has been at the forefront of many over the last decade, including:

  • a national bank
  • a Glass-Steagall separation of Australia’s bank
  • stopping the bail-in of Australian bank deposits, in which he worked closely with my office
  • reforming Australia Post and a post office “people’s bank”
  • justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of Australia’s banks and financial institutions and reforming the financial regulators

Transcript

Speaker 1:

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back to Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. I want to welcome my second guest now, Robbie Barwick. I’m very proud to have worked with Robbie and his organisation, the Citizens Electoral Council. Welcome, Robbie.

Robbie Barwick:

Hi, Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

I hope you’re listening to the first hour.

Robbie Barwick:

I was. I loved every bit of it. That was excellent.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’ve got a question for you before we take off, but first, I want to give you a proper introduction. So, Robbie studied commerce at the University of Southern Queensland. Instead of working as an accountant, Robbie joined the Citizens Electoral Council, now, the Citizens Party, as a full-time staffer in its new headquarters in Melbourne. In 30 years since then, he has worked as a researcher, media liaison, campaigns director, and research director with a focus on Australian political history and especially the history of the Commonwealth Bank. He knows government. He knows banking. He knows economics, and he’s a first rate individual. If he says something, it can be trusted. Robbie’s been an active campaigner.

Malcolm Roberts:

When I say campaigner, not electoral campaign, although he was a Senate candidate at the last election a couple of weeks ago. Robbie’s been an active campaigner working on many campaigns and it’s been at the forefront of the last decade, including a national bank, Glass-Steagall separation of Australia’s banks, stopping the bail-in of Australian bank deposits in which Robbie worked very closely with my office and with me, reforming Australia posts in a post office people’s bank, justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of Australia’s banks and financial institutions, and reforming the financial regulations. So, welcome, Robbie. You’ve just done a marvellous job. You continue to do a marvellous job.

Robbie Barwick:

Oh, thanks, Malcolm. That’s very kind, coming from you.

Malcolm Roberts:

What do you mean coming from me?

Robbie Barwick:

You do marvellous work too, mate.

Malcolm Roberts:

All right. Thank you. Well, the key is I’d say that we share, that we both look upon ourselves as serving the people and that’s what I could see coming out of Ellen’s work. Before we get into questions about banking and currency and money, what’s something you appreciate, Robbie?

Robbie Barwick:

A good sleeping. No, I’ll add to that, outspoken senators like yourself and a few others, but I reckon, in my work, I always value meeting ordinary people around Australia who can feedback to me their direct experience of the economy of the world, their life, how it works. I never cease to be amazed, Malcolm, at how much Australia relies on ordinary people who are prepared to go that extra mile to keep the system going keep in their own little way. The nurse who’s worked a double shift and she’ll stay on another 15, 20 minutes because there’s not enough people there. And this is all unfunded stuff, right?

Robbie Barwick:

The people in industry who make sure that machine works, et cetera, because without them, we don’t have an economic system that actually goes the extra mile for them, that makes sure those things happen. So much of our essential services are held together with the equivalent of elastic bands and sticky tape, which is the efforts of the people who provide them. And the most recent one I discovered, which we worked together on as well, was how licenced post officers provide our postal services. And these are all small businesses working very, very hard for peanuts, right around Australia, very tough business conditions and they provide an essential service for Australians. So, that’s what I appreciate more than anything.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, yes. And the only thing I would disagree with you on that and I do want to acknowledge the licence post office and especially Angela Cramp. The only thing I disagree with you is the term ordinary. I would call them and I do call people everyday Australians, because there’s nothing ordinary about any one of them.

Robbie Barwick:

That’s true.

Malcolm Roberts:

I know what you mean by ordinary. You mean average, typical, or every day. I know what you mean.

Robbie Barwick:

They’re not ordinary that’s for sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

No. And the whole economy based on them and what I think it boils down to, Robbie… Correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve been around a lot as well. … is that it boils down to a four letter word starting with C. They care. When you put a human in a position, most humans, almost every human, almost that they matter, then they show that care. The other thing about humans is that we know there are some fraudsters. We know there’s some crooks. There’s some dictators.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’ve had our Hitlers. We’ve had our Joe Bidens. We’ve had our globalist predators. We understand that, but the majority of people are honest and that the two words, care and honest, leave us vulnerable because most of us are caring. Most of us are honest and we think everyone else is like us. And so, when we are caring and honest, we can become vulnerable to the used car salesman, to the tyrannical global bankster, the global predator who wants to control us. And we become victims in a sense.

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, that’s true.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. So, our strength is also our vulnerability. Now, listen for our listeners, they won’t know this name that I’m about to use, Craig Isherwood. He’s a Citizen Electoral Council National Secretary when he wrote an astounding paper, very simple, but for very, very powerful paper called, “The Australian Precedents for a Hamiltonian Credit System”.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now, Robbie gave me that paper when we were starting to discuss this show, Robbie gave me that paper and I read it on my way to Darwin for holiday. And I read it again on the way back. And the second time I read it, I got so much more out of it. Now, Ellen hit exactly the first question. If you don’t mind, Robbie, this is the question I had. If you don’t mind, we’ll park our earlier discussions and just go through this paper and see where we go.

Robbie Barwick:

Sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay.

Robbie Barwick:

Let’s do that.

Malcolm Roberts:

I knew you’d be up for it. Okay. So, the very first point that I wrote as a key point is that Reserve Bank of Australia admitted to me in Senate estimates hearings that money is created in electronic journal entries, Ellen Hodson Brown reiterated that. She confirmed it. The question that I said was, “Who creates money?” It’s not whether it should be created or not. Clearly, for the system of credit, it needs to be created. Otherwise, people can’t invest. So, it needs to be created. The key question then is, “Who should create it?” And that’s exactly where Ellen got with her comment as well. That’s the key question. Is that the key question? Who creates credit?

Robbie Barwick:

Who controls the creation of credit? One thing to understand the financial system is so fluid and there’s so many clever people out there, Malcolm, always looking for an angle. You can forbid private banks from creating credit and they’ll find a way to create it anyway. So, your local store creates credit when they give you credit by selling you stuff something on credit. Credit is a pretty basic concept, actually. So, it’s more about who controls that. And that’s where the best form of control. Apart from having certain well-regulated banking system, the best form of control is to have a public banking presence that defines the terms for the whole system.

Robbie Barwick:

And so, the private banks have to work within those terms, because if they stray too far away from that, they won’t be competitive with the public bank, right? And so, the public bank can make sure that the creation of credit is fair, it’s productive, et cetera. And the private banks know that well, okay, they need customers. If they don’t have depositors, they’re not going to be banks. There’s a standard that they have to live up to. That’s served Australia very well for a long time, but it really does come down to the control. Who controls it? And my favourite quote, which isn’t in that Craig Isherwood article, although it might be, but the Labour Party once, upon a time in Australia, fought very hard on these issues.

Robbie Barwick:

We call it the old Labour position was about. Who controls money? And they called it the money power. Who controls the money power? And this became a name for the private banks. They called them the money power. They had this chokehold over Australia and they said the money power has to be brought under the control of the people. And by the people, it means the democratically elected government.

Robbie Barwick:

And John Curtin said in 1937, when he launched labor’s election campaign that year, which was seven years after the beginning of The Great Depression and this period of intense upheaval where the role of money was central, he demanded labour will legislate until the Commonwealth Bank would be able to control credit of the nation, rates of interest, direction of general investment, and currency relations with external markets. And he concluded, he said, “If the government of the Commonwealth deliberately excludes itself from all participation in the making or changing of monetary policy, it cannot govern except in a secondary degree.”

Robbie Barwick:

Meaning someone else is in charge of the economy, not us, not the people through their government. And so, what he was saying, it’s not just a good idea. It’s a question of sovereignty. A nation can’t be sovereign if the people through their elected government doesn’t control the credit of the nation.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. So, is it fair to summarise it by saying whoever controls the money creation controls the country?

Robbie Barwick:

100%.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s what I thought you’d say.

Robbie Barwick:

There is no more definitive power in a nation than that.

Malcolm Roberts:

And as you pointed out, it’s all about sovereignty as well as economics. And to me, it seems that my job as an elected representative is to serve the people. If you’re a grocer at a corner store, your job is to serve the people. If you’re a policeman, your job is to serve the people. Now, policeman’s job becomes a little bit more difficult because at times he has to apprehend someone and bring justice or at least arrest them to try them before the courts to ensure justice is conducted. But that service that’s the critical thing. At the moment, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m looking for your view, the people serve the banks rather than the banks serving the people. Is that a fair statement?

Robbie Barwick:

That is a fair statement. You can read a version of the explanation or the description of this in Adele Ferguson’s book that she wrote just towards the end of the Banking Royal Commission in 2018. And you’d be familiar with Adele Ferguson, Malcolm, the investigative journalist in Australia.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. Yup.

Robbie Barwick:

She had a lot to do with highlighting bank issues that led to the Royal Commission, but what she documents in that book, Banking Bad, I think it’s called, a play on the show Breaking Bad, is how from the time of the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank onwards, so the mid-1990s, the model of banking in Australia changed from one in which… Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to overstate it. The private banks were never perfect, but there was a general understanding that the private banks made their profits from the credit that helped their customers make their profits, right? They rightly got a cut from helping their customers get wealthy and preserving their deposits.

Robbie Barwick:

The model changed in the mid-90s to one in which the public, the customers became cows to be milked by the banks. Everything was about fleecing them, death by a thousand cuts. What can we sell these customers? What can we saddle them with so that through charges and interest rates, et cetera, we can just keep bleeding them for our profits? And that led to the abuses, that led to the Royal Commission.

Robbie Barwick:

And now, this became a standard model across the board from the mid-90s on, where the public absolutely served the banks, but a variation of that has always existed with private banks and banking. It’s always come up periodically in the rural debt crisis that erupt periodically around droughts and things, where it becomes a debt problem. And suddenly, instead of the banks being flexible, they’ll come in and mass foreclose. And you conducted an inquiry into that back in… Was it 2016, something like that?

Malcolm Roberts:

2017.

Robbie Barwick:

20 17. What’s happened in Australia with agriculture is we’ve gone from having something like 200,000 farmers in 1969, who between them had a billion dollars in debt to probably less than 30,000 farmers today who have $70 billion in debt. And now, the farmers do not get to accrue wealth. They’re so heavily indebted that all they’re waiting for is the next crop to be able to pay off or pay down their last lot of debt right before they incur more for the next crop. And they really have become debt slaves. And there’s a variation of that across the board in the way the economy where it’s unfortunately.

Malcolm Roberts:

So, I can recall reading a very short simple book. It was called End the Fed, the Federal Reserve Bank, End the Fed by former Senator Ron Paul in the United States, who was the only one really to hold the government accountable, held the Federal Reserve Bank accountable, wanted an audit of the gold reserves, et cetera.

Robbie Barwick:

Audit the fed. Yup.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yup. He said that every major recession since 1913 is directly attributable to the US Fed. Every major war since 1913 is directly attributable to the US Fed. Boom and bust cycles help the banks because they flood the joint with credit. Everyone goes hog, wild, and credit and overcommit themselves, and then they tighten it up. And next thing, people have to foreclose on their asset. The banks foreclose on their assets. So, private banking has failed repeatedly. Yet the banks continue to spread the bullshit that they make their money on the difference between what they charge for interest and for loans versus what they pay for deposits. Complete rubbish.

Malcolm Roberts:

The banks make their money by creating money, giving credit. And credit is essential, but they seem to have powers such that there’s no accountability. What I’m reading in Craig Isherwood’s article is something that I concluded as well, that if you have a public bank, it keeps the private banks honest. You’re not saying get rid of private banks. You’re saying let’s have both and then we’ll have accountability. Is that basically it?

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, 100%, in any sector. I think this applies to insurance as well. Queensland for a hundred years had a state government insurance office, which was incredibly important at providing insurance that the private insurers wouldn’t provide, but also setting a standard that the private insurers had to meet if they wanted to have customers. That was called SGIO. But for banking, it’s absolutely essential. There’s this enormous power to do with money, right? Where you get to create credit and then charge interest on it and direct where that credit goes and have people come to you cap in hand begging for that credit, because it is, as Ellen pointed out, even if you had a gold currency, that there’s never enough of the actual currency for the economy to work, right?

Robbie Barwick:

The credit is the lifeblood of the economy. So, these private banks, they get to determine all that. If there’s no public alternative that says, “Okay, we are going to make decisions slightly differently for the private banks,” the private banks naturally are accountable to shareholders and they want them to maximise their profits. So, they’re going to pour their credit into things that maximise their profits. They’ll enjoy the boom. They’ll monopolise the boom. And when it goes bad, then they will cut off that credit, foreclose on everybody, call in all those loans. So, they never lose. It’s the poor mug customer that loses and that’s how the private banks work, because their solvency and their profits come first.

Robbie Barwick:

Let us use the power of this credit as a public entity to do the things that actually benefit the economy, benefit the people. Let’s make low interest loans to build infrastructure, to keep important industries solvent and productive, not just solvent but productive. So, agriculture, manufacturing, et cetera. Every loan that public bank makes, Malcolm, will also be profitable, but you don’t have to have quite as much profit. You don’t have to have charge quite as much interest, right? This makes a world of difference. And in fact, because I’d hoped you read Craig Isherwood’s article, I was just brushing up on it before. And they pointed out there that one of the first things that Commonwealth Bank did when it started was the Melbourne Board of Works wanted a loan.

Robbie Barwick:

And in those days, 1913, the only place a government entity like the Melbourne Board of Works could get a loan was from London, the private banks in London. In addition to stiff underwriting charges, the best they could do, the private banks in London, was 1 million pounds at 4.5% interest. So, instead, they turned to Denison Miller, the Governor of the Commonwealth Bank and he offered them 3 million pounds at 4% interest, a lower interest rate. And when asked where the very new bank got all this money from, Denison Miller replied, “On the credit of the nation, it is unlimited.” And under Denison Miller, you’ve read the article, the first decade under Dennison Miller, this bank was spectacular.

Robbie Barwick:

And all it did was use its power as a bank, but for the public benefit. Everything was profitable. It just didn’t have to make a massive profit and Australia benefited from that. And that’s why this is, well, as King O’Malley said, the key pin or the master key to the financial system. This should be the master key. This is what solves all those various problems in the financial system.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I’m glad you raised that, Robbie, because there were so many things in Craig’s article. The first publicly owned-

Robbie Barwick:

Shipping line.

Malcolm Roberts:

… shipping line in Australia was created through funding and support from the Commonwealth Bank. The Light Horse Brigade was funded by the Commonwealth Bank. There were so many other infrastructure at a local government level, state government level funded by the Commonwealth Bank. It got us on our feet. It basically built us, and it did that by enabling credit. And it took that control out of the hands of the private banks that screw us and keep us under their control, rather than making money out of making us wealthy as a country.

Robbie Barwick:

And importantly, in those examples you’ve given, the private banks, including most importantly, the foreign private banks, the London banks that controlled us, the way the Commonwealth Bank functioned under Denison Miller showed this claim that you would’ve heard in parliament a thousand times, Australia depends on foreign investment. No, we do not.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you.

Robbie Barwick:

We do not. There’s no excuse for $1 of foreign debt.

Malcolm Roberts:

Another example was the second World War and we were poor in terms of having ability to make machine tools. Next thing that grew out of nowhere, because Australians are very resourceful. We’re very clever, very capable, very innovative. We punch above our weight. We’ve been held back by privately owned banks. And when people were given the free rein, look what we did.

Robbie Barwick:

Yeah, exactly. So, the thing with wars, it’s interesting. People like to discount the way a war economy works because of those are special circumstances. That’s what the banks say, right? The only thing that’s special about a war is in the emergency of a war conditions, the governments turn to a public banking option like Australia did in both World Wars, because a war is on the private banks aren’t game to say anything, right? They have to be seen to be supporting the effort. After the war, they go back to attacking the government. No, no, no, you cannot do that. The power of credit has to be back in our hands. So, during the war, when you see what the banks was able to do in both wars, it was extraordinary and it’s also an example.

Malcolm Roberts:

Can you hold that thought and we’ll discuss that very issue after the ad break?

Robbie Barwick:

Sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with Robbie to discuss some really fundamental stuff.

Malcolm Roberts:

Right. Robbie, over to you again, because you’re going to explain how the availability of credit during the war solved The Great Depression. Is that correct?

Robbie Barwick:

Well, no, no. The Great Depression impression was the exception. They didn’t do it in The Great Depression. They did it in the wars.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s right.

Robbie Barwick:

So, the first one was World War I and you gave some of those examples there, but it was things like the Commonwealth Bank didn’t fund the war per se. It funded part of it that you gave the example of the Light Horseman. And the story of the shipping line was quite extraordinary because we were stranded as a country. All the ships were controlled from the British as well and the Prime Minister Billy Hughes said, “We need ships.” And he said to treasury, “Give me £2 million.” There’s 15 ships available here in London, but he wanted to keep it secret because if it became public, that the Prime Minister of Australia was in the market for 15 ships for Australia, the British privately controlled shipping lines would’ve blocked the sale.

Robbie Barwick:

They didn’t want that. They didn’t want a government shipping line in Australia, right? So, he called back to the treasury in Australia and said, “I need £2 million.” They called Denison Miller and the money was there. He just made the money available. They bought the ships. And that was the beginning of the shipping line that eventually became Australian National Line. So, there were some things they directly did, but what they otherwise did was look after the economy in those war years. And one of the more extraordinary things was the commodities pools that they set up, Malcolm, for things like wheat and other agricultural products that we were producing that in those days we produced… You had a small population.

Robbie Barwick:

We produced for the British market, et cetera, but that was all disrupted. So, they created a pool and the Commonwealth Bank funded that. So, the farmers, when they brought their wheat crop in, they got paid straight away anyway, even though the wheat hadn’t been sold yet, because they’re putting in a pool and then the Commonwealth Bank managed the sale of that wheat over time, but the important thing was to keep the farmers going. So, they all were still productive because there was a war and that’s the thing that it could do. It funded 60 local governments around Australia. And you would’ve noticed that a lot of that funding was in things like very early electricity infrastructure, basic electricity infrastructure, small hydropower plants, this thing.

Robbie Barwick:

This was the early industrialization of Australia. The private banks weren’t going to fund that. These councils could turn to the Commonwealth Bank and the Commonwealth Bank funded it for them, important investments. Malcolm, because in the old days, things were built better than they are today. If you go to some of these places in the list, a lot of this information comes from a great book that was written on the 10th anniversary of the Commonwealth Bank to document all these amazing things it did.

Robbie Barwick:

And if you go to those places that it lists what the Commonwealth Bank invested in this infrastructure, you’d probably find a lot of that infrastructure is still there and still working order to this day, essentially later. This was the early economic development of Australia. World War II, even more spectacular and it was because of the Commonwealth Bank. Until John Curtin and Ben Chifley took over the government in 1942, the Commonwealth Bank had sat there idle as it had done all through the ’30s.

Malcolm Roberts:

Would it be fair to say that the private banks from Wall Street, London, the City of London were actively working with the Labour Party and its so-called conservative opposition to destabilise and undermine the Commonwealth Bank? Rather than just sitting there and used, it was being undermined.

Robbie Barwick:

No, 100%, but this is where a specific understanding in history is important. I know why you say that because of what you know about the Labour Party today. The Labour Party back then was a very different animal. It was the Labour Party that was fighting for the bank to be used properly. It was the Menzies’ liberals who were completely in the pockets of the private banks in London who made sure it wasn’t. And in the early ’30s, when they needed it the most, we had 25% male unemployment in Australia, Malcolm.

Malcolm Roberts:

Geez.

Robbie Barwick:

We were being crushed in The Depression and there was a proposal to get The Commonwealth Bank to issue £18 million. Six million pounds was to go to farmers. Twelve million pounds was to go to public works. That was the proposal of the labour government then in 1931 and the former Queensland premier, who was a treasurer named Ted Theodore. The Head of the Commonwealth Bank, so Robert Gibson said, “You are asking me to inflate the money supply. I tell you, I bloody well won’t.” Now, forget what he said about inflation, because that’s a longer story. It was quite overstated. The issue there was a public servant defied the order of the government that owned his bank. He was just the manager of it, right?

Robbie Barwick:

And this led to the 1937 Royal Commission on Banking. And that Royal Commission ruled that that public servant was wrong. He should have followed the orders, but why did he defy it? Because in those years, the bank was run by a board that he was the chairman of and all those boards were representative of the private sector. And they were very much in the pockets of the private banks who didn’t want the Commonwealth Bank to function like it had function under Miller. As soon as Miller died in 1922, I think it was or 1923, Malcolm, there had been a single governor up to that point. They replaced him with the board.

Robbie Barwick:

So, you would never have someone of that noise again, because they had the right person in the right place at the right time, who could show what the bank would do. And they had a board which was a representative of private banks and private industry and they made sure in the next 28 years, it didn’t do anything. So, you’re right. They were actively suppressing it. And it was the Labour Party that fought very, very hard over this and people like John Curtin was at the centre of those fights. So, when he came to power in 1942, he knew he had a tool at his disposal, which was the Commonwealth Bank. And in those years from 1942 to 1949, when Labour lost office, those seven years are the high watermark of the Commonwealth Bank.

Robbie Barwick:

They showed what the Commonwealth Bank is capable of, even more extraordinary than World War I, because it also had the powers of a central bank by then. It got to tell the private banks directly what to do, not just compete with them. And the combination led to the greatest economic transformation in a short period of time probably the world had ever seen. We were an agrarian backwater economy and that’s why that machine tool example is such a good one. In three years, we went from an economy that relied on imports for everything. We mainly provided raw materials to the British, et cetera. We went from that to an economy that could literally produce anything. And machine tools are very complicated.

Robbie Barwick:

They are the machines that make the machines. They represent how really productive an economy is. We went from importing them all to making our own. There was nothing that was beyond the capabilities of Australians and it’s instructed the way the Labour Government did it because they weren’t ideological, Malcolm. They knew they had the Commonwealth Bank to fund it, but who did they turn to run the actual wartime mobilisation? They turned to a blue blood to them, someone that is socialist. The Labour Party was socialist, et cetera. They turned to a captain of industry Essington Lewis from BHP.

Malcolm Roberts:

Oh, yes.

Robbie Barwick:

And in those days, BHP was not a mining company, right? It was a mining company, but it was a steel maker. That’s what BHP was. And Lewis ran it and he had developed a really good relationship with Ben Chifley, but nothing would’ve happened without the funding and the Commonwealth Bank provided that. And it was extraordinary. We could produce ships, we could produce planes, we could produce machine tools. We could do anything. By the end of the war, we were approaching something like the high 20s as a percentage of our economy of manufacturing.

Robbie Barwick:

And by the late ’50s, it peaked at the mid-30s. About 33% or 35% of our economy was manufacturing. Today, it’s less than 5%. It’s tiny. It’s pathetic. It’s been smashed completely, right? But it was a transformation that was powered by the Commonwealth Bank because the long term investments that it required, the Commonwealth Bank was able to do that. And in this article, we show the charts of government spending and how the money issued by the Commonwealth Bank fueled that government spending.

Malcolm Roberts:

Let me just repeat the title of that article. It’s called, The Australian Precedents, E-N-T-S, for a Hamiltonian Credit System. The author’s name is Craig Isherwood, I-S-H-E-R-W-O-O-D. At the time, he was the Citizens Electoral Council National Secretary. Where can they get that article? Where can people get that article?

Robbie Barwick:

That’s on our website, www.citizensparty.org.au. If it’s hard to find, they can call out tollfree number 1800-636-432 and ask for a copy of it.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. Just a quick little snippet, I’ve just had this realisation that Menzies has given the credit for opening up Australia, but what I think had happened now is… Some lights dawned on the wood heap in my brain. … Labour as a result of the second World War built the capacity, our productive capacity for manufacturing. After the second World War, Europe was devastated. Japan and China were devastated.

Malcolm Roberts:

The only large manufacturing facility available was in America, which had not been attacked apart from Pearl Harbour, and good old Australia where we had the raw materials as well. So, we actually then put that productive capacity to work. And it wasn’t Menzies at all who deserves the credit. It was really the Labour Party under Curtin and Chifley. Is that right?

Robbie Barwick:

I’m firmly of that view. Now that said, I will give Menzies the credit for not stuffing it up as such, though I’ve got some specific criticism.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, hang on, hang on. He bought in the double taxation legislation in 1953, which enabled foreign and Maldives nationals to completely avoid paying company tax in this country, which has really hurt us long term.

Robbie Barwick:

No, no, no. There’s a lot of those things that he does. Don’t worry, you got to hold me back not to blast Robert Menzies, but what I mean by not stuffing it up is by the time Curtin and Chifley, the government, left office in 1949, the zeitgeist had changed. The public expectations had changed. In fact, it’s known as the post-war settlement. This was universal around the world.

Robbie Barwick:

The kind of economic policy represented by what Roosevelt had done in America in the 1930s that Ellen Brown described with the reconstruction finance corporation using a public bank to invest in infrastructure and industry. We did it in World War II. You know the first thing the Labour Government in Britain did after World War II when they replaced Churchill was nationalise the Bank of England. Up until then, the Bank of England had been a privately owned bank for 150 years.

Malcolm Roberts:

From 1694 when it was formed, it had been a private bank.

Robbie Barwick:

Exactly. The first thing they did was nationalised it because they were copying Australia’s success, right? We set the tone and the expectations changed. So, when Menzies took office, he knew that he couldn’t buck that system now. People expected that there would be this public presence in the economy, but I’ll give you an example of why Menzies doesn’t deserve very much credit at all. The great Snowy Mountains Scheme, the defining infrastructure project of our history. Robert Menzies boycotted the opening of that in 1949. He opposed it. And only when it was immensely popular while he was prime minister, because it was Chifley who started it, he then went to the opening of the first stage, the second stage, et cetera, to capitalise.

Robbie Barwick:

But the fact he boycotted it was an ideological position he had and he even tried to sabotage it. He didn’t succeed, but that project was supposed to be funded by the Commonwealth Bank, Malcolm. And when he took office in 1949, he scrapped all that and he would only fund it out of revenue, the annual budget. And even then, he made the project, the Snowy Mountains Authority pay 5% interest to the government on the money that it gave them to fund the project, right? Whereas that could have all been done off the annual budget through the Commonwealth Bank, which is what the original plan had been.

Malcolm Roberts:

As I understand it, Robbie, Menzies tried to undermine the Snowy Mountains Scheme and McKell stood up to him and gave him hell and read the right act to him. Menzies pulled back his horns, but didn’t help it too much.

Robbie Barwick:

No. That would make sense, because I was going to say, the other man in the Menzies era who deserves credit for keeping him in line was Black Jack McEwen. Because Curtin and Chifley created the productive capacity of Australia. Black Jack McEwen did everything in his power to protect it, to make sure it survived, it lasted, right? In this era that we are in, the neoliberal era, all those policies that these guys stood for, they’re criticised for. I mean these liberals are so extreme now. These neoliberal liberals that you’ve been dealing with in parliament are so extreme now that by their standards, they would call Menzies a socialist. And of course, Menzies is the last thing. Menzies was a socialist.

Robbie Barwick:

It’s just that Menzies had to accept and everyone accepted in those days that you needed to have a public presence, including a public bank. The existence of the public bank, even when Menzies neutralised it a bit in 1959, he split the reserve bank function off from the Commonwealth Bank to weaken its power. Even when that happened, though, just the existence of the Commonwealth Bank and the Commonwealth Development Bank, as something the private banks had to compete with and the Commonwealth Development Bank was able to issue long term credit. It was able to provide flexible lending for farmers and all those things. It still performed a very useful function in the economy that helped stabilise the economy until Keating finally scrapped it in the mid-90s.

Malcolm Roberts:

Something for you to think about, we may or may not discuss it after, I’d like to continue with the priorities on the banking. But to me, the Labour Party is the party in the history. Even though I disagree with this ideology, the Labour Party in the era of Curtin and Chifley and some of the early Labour Party prime ministers were dinky-di. They were fair dinkum Australians. They were doing what they thought was the best for the country. Now whether you agree with them or not, that’s another thing.

Malcolm Roberts:

But what I’m saying is they were genuine. I do not see that in today’s Labour Party. They do not look after the worker. Their policies are selling out to the globalists. They’re completely enemy of the worker. Same with the liberal, the modern liberals are really socialists in many ways, because what I see, Robbie, is both Labour Party and the Liberal Nationals cow towering to the major banks and doing the bidding of the banks and the globalist predators through the UN, the World Economic Forum. That’s where we’ve gone. So, Menzies was far, far better than today’s liberals. Curtin and Chifley were immensely better than today’s Labour Party.

Robbie Barwick:

They were patriots.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you.

Robbie Barwick:

They fought for sovereignty. And yeah, in terms of modern labour, they’ll be outraged at me saying this, they hate our party for saying it, but they bear no resemblance at all to the old Labour Party. And even the last hurrah of old labour and it was slightly messier, even the Whitlam government, there was an economic component to the Whitlam government where they tried to do things that if they had to succeeded would’ve been incredibly useful now, but because it involved this issue of taking on the private sector and the private banks and the private resources companies was a big one, a really big one. They wanted to buy back the farm. What’s his name?

Malcolm Roberts:

Connor.

Robbie Barwick:

Rex Connor was the real soul of old labour in the old Labour Party and so was the treasurer, Jim Cairns who was quite a lefty, but a very, very decent person. I got to know Jim in his final years and he told me something. He had been the treasurer under Whitlam. And you know what he told me? He knew that Labour did not have to… Those loans that eventually brought them down, those foreign-

Malcolm Roberts:

King O’Malley loans.

Robbie Barwick:

… King O’Malley loans, the attempt to borrow those loans, that was not their first preference. He knew they didn’t have to borrow at all. They could have used the reserve bank as a national bank again, but unfortunately, the politics had changed and he and Connor could not persuade their colleagues to do so. And so, then they went to London and Wall Street, which is where they usually went. But those banks wouldn’t lend for the programme that Connor and Whitlam and Cairns wanted, which was to encourage Australian ownership of Australian resources. That’s what they wanted to do. Those banks wouldn’t lend that.

Malcolm Roberts:

We have to go to an ad break now, Robbie. So, everyone will be back straight after the ad break with Robbie Barwick. And let’s talk first of all about King O’Malley coming from a family of bankers and then maybe talk about whatever you want to talk about, Robbie. You take the show home for the last 10 minutes or so.

Robbie Barwick:

I’ll go with Wayne.

Malcolm Roberts:

Welcome back and people all over the world will be very interested in the figures I’m about to give before I ask Robbie to take the show home. This is from Craig Ishwood’s article, a paper presented to the federal cabinet calculated the value difference in exporting bauxite, which is raw material for aluminium versus processed aluminium in $19.70. One million tonnes of bauxite exported as the raw material, bauxite, earned 5 million back then. Processed one step into alumina, it earned $27 million, five times as much. Processed again into aluminium, it earned $125 million. That’s 25 times as much, but wait for it. When processed finally into aluminium products, it would earn $600 million.

Malcolm Roberts:

Robbie, we have become a quarry and we are letting people overseas get the value added. And it comes back to what King O’Malley did. King O’Malley was a banker, came from a banking family. He was a yank and he came out of here and he represented Australia and Federal Parliament and became a member of the Fisher government that enacted the Commonwealth Bank legislation. He knew how currency is issued and he knew that it should be in government hands.

Robbie Barwick:

This was the gospel he preached. He gave the speech in parliament in 1909 and it went for five hours, Malcolm, this speech. They didn’t have limits like you have to deal with in those days. And in that speech where he laid out exactly how the Commonwealth Bank should work, because it was legislated a few years later, he said, “I am the Alexander Hamilton of Australia.” He was the greatest financial genius to ever walk the earth and his ideas have never been improved upon. And that was a reflection of the fact that he was an American. He grew up in the American system.

Robbie Barwick:

In his lifetime, he’d seen the effects of what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War using greenbacks to help fund the transcontinental railway line, which opened up the United States. The boom of productivity in the United States from the Civil War onwards around that investment has only been matched by what we’ve seen in China in the last 30 years. This was incredible in the United States in those years. And it was done using these American Hamiltonian methods and that’s what he was saying. He knew Australia’s potential, right? This is what we need.

Robbie Barwick:

And from the time he landed here in the late 1880s until he got that bank, he just did nothing but preached the gospel of national banking from one end of the country to the other, until he got it, until he persuaded them to set it up. And then the rest was history. I got something to read to you. A few years ago, we did some archive work in the National Library up there in Canberra. And we stumbled across this letter that O’Malley in 1937 when he was very old wrote to Franklin Roosevelt then the president. In the letter, he was introducing to Roosevelt, an economics writer, Dr. LC Jauncey, who was a friend of his. Then he gave a little bit of this history and it’s worth reading.

Robbie Barwick:

He said, “I had the honour of forcing the Commonwealth Bank onto the Australian statute book after 10 years of fighting in parliament while I was Minister for Home Affairs. Nobody would second it. We gave the late Denison Miller $50,000 to start the bank. And at the end of six months, he returned it and that is all the capital we ever put into the bank. Since its foundation, it has made $200 million net profit for the Australian taxpayers and now has a capital of over $50 million in reserves.”

Robbie Barwick:

And then he said, “I do hope Mr. President that before you retire, you will transform all the reserve regional banks or the federal reserve into government banks so that the American people will have the profits for themselves as we have here.” So, he kept his American patriotism as well and he’d succeeded in doing it here. And he wanted the Americans to reign in the fed and turned the fed into a proper national bank, which of course, it’s not, because it’s privately controlled.

Malcolm Roberts:

Robbie, we have three minutes until we have to start winding up.

Robbie Barwick:

Here’s the solution. Here’s what I want people to think about in terms of a solution that is immediately available to Australians, Malcolm. We can bring back a national bank. We can bring back the Commonwealth Bank through a stepwise process. And the first step is to start a type of bank that’s actually quite common around the world, but quite effective. And it’s a postal bank and that’s how the Commonwealth Bank started anyway. When they set it up in 1912, there were no bank branches and they used the post officers as bank branches. And what we propose is let’s get a public bank again, a public bank that the public can use. Not just own, but use it, but you can put your deposits in there.

Robbie Barwick:

They’ll be safe from financial speculation. They’ll be safe from things like bail-in, because it’s 100% government guaranteed. Your branch won’t shut down because we have this network of post officers right around Australia, right? There’s 1,500 towns in Australia that don’t have any banks, but they have post officers, right? So, your branch won’t shut down. It will always be there for face-to-face banking services. It will lend loans into local communities, because that’s what a lot of private banks, most of them don’t care about that. They’ve got one obsession, which is mortgages in the big markets. You can do that. And most important, it’ll break their monopoly. The big four are effectively… They’re an oligopoly, but they’re effectively a cartel.

Robbie Barwick:

So, you might as well call them a monopoly. If they have to go back to competing with a public option like they did for 80 years in Australia, that breaks that monopoly, they will have to compete again. They’ll have to compete on services. They’ll have to compete on the way they provide credit, right? They will see that if they don’t lift their standards, they will lose their customers to this public bank. The public bank’s going to get a lot of customers anyway. And I’ve found in talking to a lot of people across the board in parliament, I talked to all the parties, Malcolm, as you know, there is broad support for this. Even in the major parties, there’s support for this idea. But see, what happens is that every party has specific agendas, et cetera.

Robbie Barwick:

The big two major parties, they don’t have institutional support at the top, but they have individual MPs who support it. That has to be galvanised, right? If the public realise how important this solution is to the number one control over our economy and how it works and get behind this campaign, this is something we can force through into the political agenda in Australia and actually get it passed. We need to use a policy like this to get the Labour Party to go back to its roots. We talked about Labour being different to the old Labour. That’s in terms of parliamentarians. What you find at the grassroots of the Labour Party, Malcolm, the union guy, who’s still the union guy and in the Labour Party, et cetera, they think their party’s a sellout.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. Yeah.

Robbie Barwick:

Let’s get them rallying around these policies that used to be fine. We’ve got a Labour government now. Let’s force this Labour government to go back to its own tradition.

Malcolm Roberts:

Amen, amen to that. This is why a public bank is one-nation policy. The key area that we have to win though, is the narrative because the media has denigrated it, but it will bring back accountability. And I want to thank you so much, Robbie, for coming on, just being your normal frank, blunt self. Thank you so much and your informed self. You come with the facts and the data.

Robbie Barwick:

Thanks for the invitation.

Malcolm Roberts:

We’d like to have you back again, because we can also talk about-

Robbie Barwick:

No worries.

Malcolm Roberts:

… peace being a very, very formative time, not just war, for currency creation in government hands.

Robbie Barwick:

Yes. Yes. Hear, hear.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you, Robbie.

I talk to author and activist Ellen Brown on banking, debt and the need for a people’s bank.

Ellen Brown is an American author, attorney, public speaker, and advocate for financial reform, in particular public banking.

She is the founder and chairman of the Public Banking Institute, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to the creation of publicly-owned banks. She is the author of thirteen books and over 350 articles published globally.

Ellen began her career as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. Her interest in financial reform was sparked during 11 years spent in Africa and South America, where she began to explore solutions to the challenges of the developing world. She researched the private banking cartels, their hegemony over Wall Street and control of the Federal Reserve.   She also looked at public banking, which she discovered is a very successful model. The only operating state-owned public bank in the United States today is the Bank of North Dakota and has been touted as outperforming the big Wall Street banks.

In 2007 Ellen published the first edition of her best-selling book Web of Debt (now in its 5th edition). The book details how the private banking cartels have usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how the people can get it back. Her writings proved prescient, as the financial collapse of 2008 laid bare the systemic problems she had identified.

In her 2013 book The Public Bank Solution, she traces the evolution of two banking models that have historically competed—public and private—and explores contemporary public banking systems around the world. Her latest book is Banking on the People: Democratizing Finance in the Digital Age (2019).

The Web of Debt is one of the best books I’ve read. Ellen is a dynamic woman with considerable energy and extraordinary research skills. Amazingly, much of her research was done painstakingly before use of the internet became widespread.

Transcript

Speaker 1:

This is the Malcolm Roberts Show on Today’s News Talk radio, TNT.

Malcolm Roberts:

This is Senator Malcolm Roberts. This is Today’s News Talk radio tntradio.live. I want to thank you for having me as your guest, whether it’s in your car, your kitchen, your lounge, your shed, or wherever you are right now. As regular listeners understand there are two most important themes for my programme. Firstly, freedom and specifically the age old freedom versus control challenge. Secondly, personal responsibility and integrity. Both are fundamental for human progress and for people’s livelihoods.

Malcolm Roberts:

On this show, we’re going to talk about money, money, money. We’re going to cover the eighth and final key to human progress. So I’ll list those eight keys to human progress. The first is freedom, the second is rule of law, the third is stable constitutional succession. The fourth is secure private property rights. The fifth, sorry, I’m losing track of counting. The fifth is strong families, sixth affordable, efficient, reliable energy.

Malcolm Roberts:

Then we did the next one last time, which is taxation. And this one, the eighth key is honest money. Now I’ve just introduced the word there honest money. We’re going to learn today from international and Australian experts about something we all take for granted. That’s right money. Think about it. It’s intimately involved in almost every aspect of our lives yet we take it so much for granted that we don’t see where it is, where it comes from. And we are living in misery at times. So many people living in misery.

Malcolm Roberts:

I’m going to refer to a quote from my website on the CSIRO looking at what’s pushing the global climate scam, but I’m going to quote from Ellen Brown’s book, where she’s referring to Louis McFadden, who is a senior member of the American House of Representatives, quote, “In 1934, he filed a petition for articles of impeachment against the Federal Reserve Board charging the Federal Reserve Bank with fraud, conspiracy, unlawful conversion, and treason.

Malcolm Roberts:

Then I’m going to quote from his speech where he spoke of one instance of 60,000 home and farm owners losing their property to bankers at one stage of the great depression. Here’s what he said. Their children are the new slaves of the auction blocks in the revival of the institution of human slavery. A document that I referred to called the Bankers Manifesto of 1934 added weight to these claims from these charges from McFadden, an update of the banker’s manifestation of 1892. It was reportedly published in the civil servant’s yearbook in January 1934 and in the New American in February, 1934 and was circulated privately among leading bankers.

Malcolm Roberts:

It said in part, ‘Capital must protect itself in every way through combination monopoly and through legislation,” that’s controlling governments. “Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible.” Now listen to this bit. When through a process of law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of wealth under control of leading financiers.

Malcolm Roberts:

People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capital to govern the world. Now, Australian speaker and researcher, John MacRae cites the same quote independently via another credible publication. Note that the bankers rely on what they falsely refer to as the law yet they are in their dominant and powerful position due to supposedly legalised legislation past deceitfully and in breach of the American constitution in breach of the American constitution.

Malcolm Roberts:

Their position is legal in that it’s legislated yet it’s fraudulent and thus unlawful that enables the people to remove it using the law. So what I wanted to discuss today with two very credentialed people is covering the basics of what is money? What do banks provide? Why are they so powerful? Who pays for the transfer of wealth from people and businesses to banks? So we will learn today how money is not honest. And we will learn today what is honest money?

Malcolm Roberts:

My first guest for this hour is Ellen Hodgson Brown. She’s an American author, attorney, public speaker and advocate for financial reform in particular in public banking. She’s the founder and chairman of the Public Banking Institute, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to the creation of publicly owned banks. She’s the author of 13 books and over 350 articles published globally. Much of a research was done before the access to the web, the worldwide web. An amazing woman.

Malcolm Roberts:

Ellen began her career as an attorney, practising civil litigation in Los Angeles. Her interest in financial reform was sparked during 11 years spent in Africa and South America, where she began to explore solutions to the challenges of the developing world.

Malcolm Roberts:

That’s why I love people who look around and see what’s going on. She researched the private banking cartels, the hegemony money over wall street and control of the federal reserve bank. She looked at public banking which she discovered as a very successful model, a very successful model, it’s successful in Australia in last century as well. The only operating state-owned public bank in the United States today is the Bank of North Dakota and has been touted as outperforming the big Wall Street banks. Every year it’s made a profit since it started.

Malcolm Roberts:

In 2007, Ellen published the first edition of her best selling book, The Web of Debt and it’s now in its fifth edition. And I can thoroughly recommend that. I’ve read it. The book details, how the private banking cartels have usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how the people can get it back.

Malcolm Roberts:

Her writings prove prescient as the financial collapse of 2008, laid bare the systemic problems that she had identified. In her 2013 book, The Public Bank Solution, she traces the evolution of two banking models that have historically competed, public and private, and explores contemporary public banking systems around the world. The latest book is Banking On the People Democratising Finance in the Digital age and it was published in 2019. The Web of Debt is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Ellen is a dynamic intelligent woman with considerable energy and extraordinary research skills. Welcome Ellen.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, thanks Malcolm. It’s great to be talking to you. I’ve seen you on some little video clips lately, and you’re doing great work there.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you very much. And I’d like to talk about your work today. We always start Ellen with something you appreciate. What’s something you appreciate anything at all?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, I appreciate all the ordinary things that everybody appreciates, family and friends and health, and I used to appreciate travel, but I haven’t travelled since COVID. I think one advantage or one good thing about these lockdowns and about crises in general is that makes you appreciate things that you used to take for granted, like being out in public and able to breathe without having a mask on your face, simple things, or being able to travel without jumping through a lot of hoops that I’m not willing to jump through.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

But one thing I really appreciate is the computer. Because when I first started writing books, we didn’t have access like we have now. And I had two small children and I dragged these two kids up and down the elevators in the UCLA library with these great heavy books, xeroxing studies and you’d get them home and they wouldn’t be what you really needed or it would refer to something else that you didn’t have access to. And now everything’s just at your fingertips, which is quite amazing, a whole world of knowledge, plus the ability to see into other countries and what people are doing around the world and get a sense of you can travel without actually travelling.

Malcolm Roberts:

So I was filled with admiration for you. We’ve talked before you took part in the Senate hearings rather on lending to rural and primary production customers. And you did a marvellous job there. We’ve talked before on the phone, I’ve read your books. I was stunned that you’d done most of your research before the internet and now I’m even more stunned because you were carting two girls around with you wherever you went. How did you do that?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

One girl one boy.

Malcolm Roberts:

One girl one boy. Okay, well I’ve got to be fair 50:50. How did you do that?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

That’s the thing. It took a lot of legwork. So I never go into libraries anymore. It’s all just right there. I did see that there was somebody at the World Economic Forum said that the Metaverse is going to be more real to us than our real lives. Well, I hope not but that is sort of the computer is a whole world in itself with great depth. It’s censor, of course you can’t always be sure you’re getting real information, but it’s incredibly interesting.

Malcolm Roberts:

Well, I know you’re a very strong woman, a very determined woman. I’d like to explore that a little bit later on, a very strong human in fact. I don’t distinguish between men and women in that sense, women are incredibly strong. I asked you before we were putting this together a couple of weeks ago, your idea of what you’d like to talk about. And you said you only see one substantive pro question for you and that’s proposed questions about solutions.

Malcolm Roberts:

You suggested some. What can we do about our unsustainable unrepayable sovereign debts? The US federal debt is now $30 trillion, not counting unfunded future liabilities. Second question, what to do about inflation. Third question, how to make banks and banking work for the people. Fourth question, how to make national currencies honest? So they’re the questions I’d like to ask. But first of all, I think we have to define the problem. So let’s define the problem. Let’s understand the issue, which is the problem. So what’s money Ellen?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, economists say there are three critical factors in money, which is, it has to be a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. So virtually everything we call money today, doesn’t really qualify on all those points are not very well. Store value, that value keeps fluctuating. Well, even gold. I have some gold and I have some gold stocks and I totally think it’s a good idea but it does fluctuate a lot. And so it can go up $50 in a day. I think just from reading your email, I suspect you favour a gold backed currency, but it didn’t work in the 19th century. That’s why we went to Fiat money anyway. So there’s that. That’s one definition.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

There’s M1, M2, M3, the way the Federal Reserve defines it or M0 to start with. So those are all different levels of how liquid the money is or how accessible. So M0, they get kind of confused together, but say M1 is cash, which is obviously very fungible and your bank reserve or your bank deposits. And then bank reserves are created by the Federal Reserve and you can’t actually spend those, but those are I think they’re called M0. Anyway, M2 is the larger circulating money supply. M3 they no longer even count it anymore, but it included all the shadow banking, which is unregulated forms of money. I just read that estimates are that there are $50 trillion in Euro dollars traded every single day. And these are totally unregulated. The Federal Reserve has no control over them, they’re called dollars but they’re not even really dollars. They’re Euro dollars means any dollars created outside of the United States. So it could be Japan or anywhere.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

And they’re really just banking accounting. It’s an accounting thing where they’re basically creating credit and credits and debits that there’s no physical paper involved. Anyway, it’s a huge amount of money it’s in the shadow banking system, nobody knows for sure even how much it is. It’s certainly not transparent. It’s not trackable at all but it’s between banks. It’s legitimate. Apparently banks can’t operate without it. And I remember reading that on the gold system, the only reason it really worked was that you had a lot of credit that ways of expanding credit besides the gold, because there’s just not enough gold to do all the trades that need to be done.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Even if you take one single product, I think there’s [inaudible 00:14:31] was talking about this and he, he has a gold bug, but he said that to do like a hundred dollars product, you have to do many hundred dollars worth of credits because every producer in the chain of production operates on credit. So they have to pay their workers and materials before they get paid. And then the next step up also needs. So they would also need gold if we were only operating in gold. So you can’t do it in just one metal. The Euro Asian Economic Union that’s headed by Sergei Glazyev. I just wrote an article on that. They’re proposing a new monetary system where it wouldn’t be backed by gold in the sense of that you could take your dollars and cash them in for gold at the bank, which is what you actually could do in the 19th century.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

And that’s what happened. That’s what went wrong in the 1930s to ’33 collapsed where people were rushing to the bank and trading in their dollars for gold. The banks didn’t have that much gold and they were on a fractional reserve system. So they only had a certain percentage of actual gold. So they ran out of gold so the banks then went bankrupt. So you’ve got to have credit on top of your gold in some way. But anyway, so the Russian system that is being proposed and that maybe our new banking system is, it’s not exactly backed in the sense of you can cash in your dollars for gold, but it’s measured against.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

So it becomes a stable unit of value because it’s measured against a basket of commodities and currencies when I wrote Web of Debt, I was proposing that you could use the cost of living index. In other words, a basket of things that everybody uses. And then you could figure out what the value or how much it would cost in dollars, how much it would cost and pay us, et cetera. And that would be your exchange rate rather than what we have now, where exchange rates are easily manipulated by speculators that short sell the currencies. And we’ve had several crises over that. Anyway, so what money is, is very fluid.

Malcolm Roberts:

Wow. What an answer controversial, sorry your last word

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

And controversial.

Malcolm Roberts:

Controversial. I was just about to summarise it. I asked you a simple question, simple question. Money, what is it? No, no, you’ve done a brilliant job. It’s a medium of exchange, which enables people to exchange my work for someone else’s goods and someone else makes a different product. So he makes butter and he exchanges it with someone who makes clothes and she makes clothes. So it enables an exchange of… It’s a medium of exchange. So we have to have that. Otherwise, it’s back to barter system. And a medium of exchange enables us to specialise, which gives us efficiency.

Malcolm Roberts:

The butter maker will be far better at making butter than I will be. And I don’t have to have the dairy cattle to make the butter. Then you also said, it’s a unit of accounting. It’s a measure of an account. And then you also said, it’s a store of value. So wonderfully, clearly they’re the three things. And then you went on with how liquid the money is, the bank reserves, unstable, shadow banking, credit, fractional reserve, a stable unit of value, manipulated, speculators. It’s a real mess. It’s a real nightmare. No wonder people don’t take much interest in this because it’s so damn complex yet let’s try and simplify it before we get onto your-

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Yeah, well, I should have… The most important thing and the most what you might consider fraudulent thing is that it’s not created by the government. Virtually all of our money is created by banks when they make loans, which I actually think is a good thing. We need a credit system and that’s a way to do a credit system. But the problem is who controls the banks? Who owns the banks? Who has first access to the money, which is called the can Cantillon effect. Whoever gets their hands on the money. First is most able to profit from it. So obviously the private banks, Wall Street, City of London, et cetera, they can create money on their books for their cl their favourite clients who may be one big cartel.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

And so they have easy access to cheap money and they can raise the rates to whatever they want on the rest of us. So, anyway, there’s the problem is that money is created by banks. They do it by double entry bookkeeping. So if you go to the bank to take out a loan, let’s say you want to buy a house and you take out a loan for $500,000, the bank will write $500,000 on one side of its books just into your deposit account, your checking account. And you can now write checks on that. And on the other side of their books, they’ll write the same $500,000 as an asset because you have agreed to pay that back. You’ve signed a mortgage, et cetera. You’ll pay that back plus interest.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Whereas, on the deposit that they wrote on the other side of the books is a liability to them because when you pay your seller, if the seller is in another bank, then the bank will have to come up with that 500,000, which they probably don’t have. What they do is they borrow it somewhere. So they borrow it. It used to be, they borrowed it in the Fed funds market from each other, but they don’t do that much anymore although that’s the interest rate that the Fed is allegedly raising and that’s supposed to cure inflation, which it absolutely won’t right now under these circumstances. We know it’s not that kind of inflation. But anyway, so now I lost my train of thought.

Malcolm Roberts:

So what, what you’ve talked about now is there’s the way the banks create money. I’m not bragging here, but I went to the University of Chicago, which is in the city of Chicago, as you know and it’s won more Nobel prizes for economics and finance than any other university in the world anywhere. So it’s got a very good name for finance, and they never told us that. They never told us how they create money, who controls the money creation and what you’ve just said, I’m going to give you an example to back you up in a minute but what you’ve just said is that banks create money in the first place by ledger entries, journal entries. And I can confirm that because I asked the Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of Australia, Guy Debelle, he was the deputy governor at the time.

Malcolm Roberts:

And I said, so what you’re saying is that money is created using journal entries. And he looked at me hesitated, and then he said, “Electronic journal entries.” So it’s created as some people would say, it’s not quite right, but it’s created out of thin air. And as you just said, the person who creates the money has the greatest control, but then these same people, privately owned banks, the same people control the Federal Reserve Bank, the same people determine interest rates. The same people determine the money supply, how easy it is to get money. So they really control the government. They really control the economy, don’t they?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Right. And also to confirm that in 2014, that the Bank of England came out in their first quarterly report and said contrary to popular belief, banks do not act simply as intermediaries taking in deposits and lending them out again. In fact, banks create money when they make loans. And in fact, they said that 97% of the money supply is created in that way. So that was confirming what used to be conspiracy theory before that. When I wrote about it, in Web of Debt, it was considered quite controversial but now everybody agrees. That’s how it’s done.

Malcolm Roberts:

So what we’ve got here is a money creation system that’s privately owned and privately controlled in large measure. And you wrote very glowingly of the Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s Commonwealth bank early last century. And rightly so, you did a very good job on that. However, it was a rarity. And so the Commonwealth Bank had to be killed because it provided competition for the private banks, Wall Street and the City of London banks did not like it at all. It held them accountable, it controlled the money and it had to go and both Labour and Liberal party governments over the last a hundred years have well until 1995, ’96, when Keating sold off the last of the Commonwealth Bank.

Malcolm Roberts:

It was destroyed over a period of about 70 years. And my next guest will explore that further. So money is important in an economy. It’s important to economic health. You’ve already talked about how we measure it. M1, M2, M3, M0, volume of money. You’ve talked about the fact that money is not honest. Money is controlled, so let’s go on banks. What’s their role in relation to money Ellen?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, as the Bank of England is confirmed they’re not merely intermediaries taking in money and lending it out again. They’re actually creating the money, which sounds shocking but actually we do need that sort of system. We need a credit system. The question is just who owns the bank and who controls the bank. As you’ve said, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia originally was an excellent model. We’ve had several quite good models too. Historically Alexander Hamilton’s original plan was to have that sort of infrastructure and development bank in the end, it wound up privatised over his objection. He didn’t think that stocks should be… Well, it was sold to foreigners over his objection. But anyway, that was the intention was sovereign money and sovereign credit. And of course the American colonists started out with sovereign money, which was original to them at the time, not counting the fact that the Chinese did it like about a thousand years ago.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

But for Western civilization, anyway, that was unique that we didn’t have money. The colonies didn’t have money. And so it was the Governor of Massachusetts in 1691 I think who got the bright idea of paying his soldiers, but just by issuing these little receipts, which were considered an advance against taxes, which was the same system as the tally system which was done by the British from like 1100 to 1700, something like that where they would split a… Well, I hope I’m not getting too far out.

Malcolm Roberts:

No, no, keep going.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Okay. So in the tally system, they took a stick and notched it. So it was an accounting system and then they split the stick. And since no two sticks split the same way, it was foolproof against forgeries. So you could put the sticks together. So the government kept one half the stick, and then the payee kept the other, other half of the stick. And then those sticks circulated in the economy as money. And that’s basically the same thing that the American colonist paper money was, which was, and you’d pay it to somebody who had delivered goods or services to the government. So the collective body of the people acknowledged that this was a debt owed to this person or whatever. And then that paper would circulate in the economy and when tax time rolled around, you could use it to pay taxes.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

We actually did that in California in 2008, but the problem was that the government, the local government wouldn’t take the money back in taxes. So it did work. It would work, it works as an advance, but you have to agree to use this to take it back. And that’s what does give it its value and stability and so forth. But anyway, it worked well for the colonists, except for the fact that it was a lot easier to issue the money than to pull it back in taxes. Because these are frontiers when they didn’t like the idea of taxes in the first place, they were kind of hard to nail down.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

We didn’t have a computer system at that time. But anyway, it worked pretty well except that they wound up hyper inflating or over printing and devaluing the currency until the Pennsylvanians, the Quakers in Pennsylvania got the idea of forming their own bank. So instead of just printing money and spending it, they printed money and lent it to the farmers. So that’s the ideal. That was the first US public bank was this the Pennsylvania state or colonial bank where they printed money, lent it to the farmers at 5% interest, which at that time was a quite good interest rate. And then the farmers would pay it back. So it went out and it came back. So it was stabilised. It was sustainable. It wasn’t just money going out and going out and going out.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. So we’re going to go for an ad break now, but before we do, I’ll just make a statement that we can ponder over the ad break. Ron Paul who’s very, very highly regarded. Former Senator says that the Federal Reserve Bank in America is neither federal, it’s not a government body, nor has it got any reserves. It’s a privately owned entity. Beyond the reach of the president, beyond the reach of Congress. And that leads to complete absence of restraints on bank’s power.

Malcolm Roberts:

Now we have bailouts and we have bail ins, which have been enabled to protect the banks at the cost of the everyday Australian. We’ve seen you’ve documented the international role and power of banking associations, like the bank for international settlements, the world bank, the international monetary foundation, their role in ruining nations and making nations dependent. The IMF international monetary I’ve forgotten what’s the F for? Foundation. I’ve forgotten.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Fund. International Monetary Fund.

Malcolm Roberts:

Thank you. I just had a complete blank will crippling, Mexico, crippling Russia, the Malaysian Prime Minister at the time McCarty he’s one of the feud have called out the globalist banks their power is enormous. So when we come back, let’s talk about the fact that Henry Ford said, “If the American people knew what was going on with banking, there’d be a revolution by morning.” So rather than have that revolution on the streets, could you talk about your main questions and I’ll remind them of remind you of them. What can we do about our unsustainable unrepayable, sovereign debts? What can we do about inflation? How do we make banks and banking work for the people? How to make national currencies honest? We’ll go for the ad break. And then we be right back with Ellen Hodgson brown to give us the solutions.

Speaker 1:

The midterms and America votes on November 8th, with his expert analysis and opinion. This is TNT radio with Jeremy Beck.

Jeremy Beck:

An important recall vote in San Francisco took place on the 7th of June alongside the many primary elections on the same day. Voters decided to oust the radical District Attorney Chesa Boudin whose soft on prime approach has overseen a horror show of lawlessness for the many victims of crime. Boudin is one of several dozen rogue prosecutors elected to public office largely thanks to funds from billionaire George Soros.

Malcolm Roberts:

So we’re back with Ellen Hodgson Brown discussing money and banking. So Ellen, what can we do about our unsustainable unrepayable sovereign debts? You’ve mentioned that the United States federal debt is now about $30 trillion, not counting unfunded future liabilities. What can we do about it?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, sovereign debt of course is the debt of the government. Dealing with personal debt is a lot harder. Actually the first money system I probably should have mentioned this was that the first money system in recorded history was the Sumerian money system, which Michael Hudson’s written a lot about. And it was just an accounting system, but they did charge interest. And when the debts got too high, they would have a debt Jubilee periodically. So they would wipe out all the debts and start all over. And that’s obviously the ideal, if you can do it. But the reason they could do it was that the king was considered the representative of the gods and the gods owned the land. And so the king could just order that the debts would be wiped off the clean slate. But today the debts are owed to private banks and we just wouldn’t be able to do it legally.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

So doing a debt Jubilee for the people would be a lot harder, although it certainly would be, it seems like it’s needed because one problem with the way we create money is that banks create the principle, but they don’t create the interest. So debt always grows faster than the money supply, and there’s not enough money to pay it all back without borrowing more which means the debt just goes up and up and up. It’s a pyramid scheme. So how do we bring about a debt Jubilee under today’s circumstances? Alexander Hamilton actually had a very good plan, which I think we could do. Although you know obviously it’s probably not going to happen, but what Hamilton did with the state’s deaths, the colonies debts that became the states was to roll them to accept them in exchange for stock in the first US banks.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

So you could pay partly in gold and partly in these debts. And we could actually take that $30 trillion in debt and turn it into stock in a big bank and pay some dividend on it. And actually, there is a bill that we have here in the US right now, a National Infrastructure Bank Bill, where they’re modelling it on the first US banker, the Hamiltonian model, where they would take federal securities and in exchange for stock in the bank. And that’s how they would capitalise it. So that’s one possibility. Another possibility, as long as you don’t pay interest on it, really the debt doesn’t hurt. If you just keep rolling it over and over and over. So you could just have the Federal Reserve buy all the debt. The central bank returns its profits to the treasury.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

So it doesn’t keep the interest. It’s really the interest that’s the problem. That’s the thing that we have to pay year after year and projections are that in a few years, it’s going to be up to something like a trillion dollars a year just for the interest. So that’s getting right up there with the military and are really expensive things in the budget. But that’s another possibility. In other words, you can just keep rolling it over and hold it by your own central bank assuming your central bank were actually publicly owned and controlled and serving the people. So it could be dealt with. Now foreign sovereign debts, it does look like half the world is likely to join this new [inaudible 00:37:10] system and just walk away from their debts. That’s what Sergei Glazyev said that they don’t need to pay their debts.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

They just walk away from the debts in dollars and start their own system. And that could happen. Would it destroy the dollar? I don’t think so. Because of the amount of dollars that are out there in the Euro dollar system, I mean the dollar is basically our unit of account. It’s just how people measure value. And it’s so entrenched that I’ve read other experts who say that it probably can’t be shaken loose even if half the world does abandon the dollar and take up some other currency, but I’m getting far a field again. Sorry.

Malcolm Roberts:

So Ellen, before we move on to the solving inflation your ideas on comments on that, there are many different ways of do doing this, but what seems to be coming out of it is that we need to talk about it. We need to have an open Frank discussion about it. We need to have the truth on the table. We need to understand who owns what in this, who controls what so that we can then establish a system that is good for the people rather than just for a few globalist predators.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Right. Transparency and accountability. Totally.

Malcolm Roberts:

And they’re the enemies at the moment and so there’s no transparency. A lot of this is hidden. Okay. So the solution is not an easy one, but it must be achieved. If we don’t achieve a solution by open honest frank discussion, then it’ll come through some form of control and that’ll be devastating for everyone ultimately for the global predators themselves. So what to do about inflation Ellen?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, the argument is that this is a monetary inflation, and they’re trying to tighten the money supply and not supposed to fix it, but it’s not a monetary inflation. It’s a supply problem. There’s two sides to inflation that you often hear that inflation is always and everywhere, monetary phenomenon. But that’s not true. It’s half a monetary phenomenon, it’s a half a supply phenomenon. In other words, if money goes up and supply goes down, you’re going to have too much money competing for too few goods.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

But if you can keep the supply and the money in balance, then you don’t have inflation, then prices remain stable. So what we need to do is up the supply, which a good infrastructure bank would do it, we’ve got the amazing model of China that in a couple of decades, they came up from absolute poverty for most of their people up into well, anyway, how did they do it?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

But they have these infrastructure banks where they just basically create the money as credit build the thing like the high speed rail, and then the fees from the trains pay back the loan. And that’s the way it should be. You extend the credit, you use the credit to build something productive, don’t keep pumping it into existing houses, which will just drive the price of houses up. But you put it into new productivity, new infrastructure, which we desperately need in the US and probably, I don’t know how Australia is, but here we got a serious infrastructure problem, build new infrastructure, put money into all sorts of productive things. That’s what Roosevelt did in the 1930s with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, he funded anything that was productive that would pay back, not speculative, but actual producing assets. So that’s what we need to do.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. That makes sense, because if you generate something in terms of productive infrastructure, and then you use that to generate wealth, then you don’t have inflation and you do have prosperity wealth.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

The interest rates is going to just make it worse because all the producers have credit lines and they’re not going to be able to afford their credit lines. We’re already seeing that business is falling off.

Malcolm Roberts:

And what you just said worked in the Commonwealth Bank when it was a true public bank in the early part of last century generated infrastructure and we… We’ll come to that more later. I won’t go on any more of that now. How do we make banks, coming to your fourth question, how do we make banks and banking work for the people Ellen?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, they need to be public institutions, publicly owned and controlled, the sustainable, transparent and accountable that they need to be. When we have this, the public banking institute, our mission is to try to get public banks established in the US like the Bank of North Dakota. And you often hear people say, you want to give the government a bake, because people don’t trust the government anymore than they trust bakers, but you need to design the system so that it is responsive to the people, accountable, transparent and so that we actually have control over it.

Malcolm Roberts:

So that again mimics what happened with the Commonwealth Bank. The Commonwealth Bank, when it was formed. The first governor was a man named Dennison Miller who was very energetic man who really aspired to do something really well. And he was working for the Bank of New south Wales. What is now known as Westpac. He was taken from Westpac of Bank of New South Wales and made in charge of the Commonwealth Bank. And he had a wonderful objective then to do the best for the country.

Malcolm Roberts:

And he basically ran the Commonwealth Bank very, very well and worked for the country despite Labour Party and Liberal Party or the precursor Liberal Party, trying to undo it all because one of the things that the Commonwealth Bank did when it was a true people’s bank in the early part of last century, was it provided competition for the private banks. The private banks were then held accountable, which is what you just said. The accountability is so important, but that accountability has to be to the people you’d agree with that.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Right. Totally.

Malcolm Roberts:

Okay. Thank you for mentioning the Commonwealth Bank in your book, the Web of Debt. The fourth question, your last question.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

[inaudible 00:43:57] very inspiring.

Malcolm Roberts:

Yes. The fourth question you suggested was how to make national currencies honest? How do we make them honest? Because as you pointed out at the moment, whether it’s seashells or paper or trinkets or tally sticks or whatever medium is that it can be corrupted. It’s not necessarily backed by anything. There’s no real reserve there. There’s no real value there other than what it’s deemed to be valued. It’s Fiat. It’s an announcement, a pronouncement. So how do you make national currencies honest?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, I’m not actually opposed to national currencies. I’m not sure I know the answer to that. There are a lot of people attempting to establish an alternative currency system, like a cryptocurrency system, a crypto currency would be honest if it’s backed by something like food back currencies, I think would be a great idea where it’s basically an advance against the future productivity of the farmers. They could issue their own cryptocurrency. But anyway, I think our Fiat system is not that bad. It’s who creates it and who controls its creation. In other words, if you had public banks that were actually accountable and sustainable and what was the other word I forgot now, anyway, it’s getting late here. So if you had public banks that were there to serve the people and the people in control of it actually had that sort of sense of mission that you could have an honest fiat currency.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Fiat currency is not really unbacked. It’s backed by the full faith and credit of the people, which means the people agree that to accept it. It so if I went to the grocery with a gold coin and tried to pay for my groceries and said this is worth 1800, whatever it’s at right now at 1850 or something, the grocer wouldn’t know what to do with it because they wouldn’t know for sure that it was valid. He’d say, “No, give me paper money or give me your credit card.” Because things are valued in the Fiat currency and that’s one of the properties of a good currency. I don’t know what, how do you answer it?

Malcolm Roberts:

It’s very difficult, but it seems to me that what you’ve said in answer to each of the four major questions is that it has to go back to being publicly owned bank, a government led bank, not, not necessarily led because governments can then do political things but an independent bank that’s independent from privately owned banks because privately owned banks are the root of the problem. These privately owned banks, these globalist predators, when things are going well, they love capitalism. When things are going badly, they want socialism.

Malcolm Roberts:

And that seems to be a major problem for these people because they make so many… Without any accountability, they make horrendous decisions which ultimately the people pay for in a loss of their house, the loss of their cars, the loss of productive capacity of the country, the decimation of a whole economy. And then you extend that power, that national power internationally through the Bank of International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, the world bank, et cetera. You’ve got a huge problem and they’re basically controlled by the same globalist predators. So that seems to be the core to take it back and give it to the people. But either way you’ve done a marvellous job in painting the fact that there are no simple solutions and yet there is a basic simple solution and that is people’s banking. Ellen, can I ask you some personal questions?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Sure.

Malcolm Roberts:

Because I’ve got just two minutes to go and I like to finish on the hour rather than early. First of all, I want to thank you so much for joining us. And I look forward to staying in touch, but I read that you were born in 1945, that makes you almost 77, 76. How do you do it?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Almost 77. Well, how do I do it?

Malcolm Roberts:

Yeah. You look at the research, you’ve done the clarity, your ability to say that it’s not all bad. Some things that need to be considered, but you’re juggling all these complex concepts in your head.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Well, it’s incredibly interesting. Don’t you think?

Malcolm Roberts:

Oh yes.

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

You’re doing marvellous work and just the idea of cracking this nut. Like how do we figure this out? And, well, actually I got divorced if you want to get really personal 20 years ago. And I was quite depressed. And so at some point I said, “I don’t want this body anymore, but if somebody up there has a good idea for [inaudible 00:49:03].”

Malcolm Roberts:

So you took it on as a challenge. I’d want to give you the last say we’ve got 20 seconds left. How do they learn more about you? What’s your website?

Ellen Hodgson Brown:

Oh, ellenbrown.com or publicbankinginstitute.org.

Malcolm Roberts:

ellenbrown.com or publicbankinginstitute.org. Thank you so much Ellen. What a wonderful person you are. Thank you for being so open and honest.

I talk to journalist Tony Thomas who is interested in climate change, indoctrination in schools and universities, the ABC, and Aboriginal politics. See all episodes of my show on TNT radio.

Recorded 19 February 2022

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk radio, TNT.

Senator Malcom Roberts (00:07):

And welcome back to Today’s News Talk radio, tntradio.live. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I just want to apologise for my amateurish approach to the microphone. I’m learning this game as we go. So bear with me, please. Hope this is much better now. I’ll look for some feedback from the panel in the gold coast. This hour coming, I’m going to be chatting with the real journalist. Tony Thomas is someone who hasn’t lost sight of the dignity and responsibility of journalism. Tony’s now 81, he’s been in journalism for more than 60 years. Since he started his cadetship, and I want to emphasise that word cadetship, in 1958 on The West Australian newspaper, he spent a decade there, followed by 10 years writing economics for the age in the Canberra Press Gallery. Through the 1970s. He’s an ideal person to talk about the Press Gallery and the media in Canberra reporting on politics.

Senator Malcom Roberts (01:04):

He spent 20 years with weekly business magazine, BRW, including as associate editor. Since retiring from salary journalism in 2001, he’s published more than 400 features for Quadrant and Spectator magazines, and his work is marvellous. It’s always factual and accurate. He’s done a part-time master’s degree in literature and a bachelor of economics at Australian National University and published nine books on history, business, and current affairs, including four books of collected essays in the past five years. So you can see that he’s across many different topics. One of his books on business won an award in 2000, from the chartered accountants body as quote, “A substantial contribution to the literature of the industry.” Tony’s major topics currently include climate change, indoctrination in schools and universities, the ABC and Aboriginal politics. Welcome to tntradio.live. Tony.

Tony Thomas (02:04):

Thanks very much Malcolm, a very nice introduction.

Senator Malcom Roberts (02:10):

We always start with appreciation. Tell me something you appreciate, no matter how briefly, no matter what topic, what do you appreciate?

Tony Thomas (02:18):

I appreciate the ability to research right, and get published with alacrity. There’s no fun writing for a publisher, and then your book comes out 15 months later, but writing for Quadrant Online, I put the article in within a day or two it’s up on the blog site. So, that’s very satisfying.

Senator Malcom Roberts (02:43):

Thank you. Now I want to go back to your cadetship. How did young journalists operate? Is it like the classical movies tell us 40 years ago, they would sniff an issue, they would go out and research it, they’d talk to people, above all, listen to people, give everyone a fair hearing. And then they would write an article without fear, without favour, objective. Is that the way you started? Is that the culture in which you started?

Tony Thomas (03:14):

Yes. In those days, the young journalists were monitored and herded by old veteran pot belly grizzled journalists changed [inaudible 00:03:27], who’d been in the game since before the war, who would roast you for the slightest grammatical mistake or sloppiness, and so on. I must say though, The West Australian was a monopoly in that capital city. So they weren’t as sharp as many other newspapers are where everybody’s competing, but still it was a four year cadetship. I did three years and you learn shorthand. I actually learned shorthand twice over once at school and once on the job. And you were put through all sorts of experiences, especially court reporting, which may seem quite okay for a young cadet. But in fact, it’s the most difficult and exacting form of reporting. And if you get one little thing wrong or you mishear something because of bad acoustics, you are in big trouble. So the training was quite slow in those days, but thorough.

Senator Malcom Roberts (04:30):

Thank you very much. So basically it’s an apprenticeship and you learn-

Tony Thomas (04:35):

That’s right.

Senator Malcom Roberts (04:35):

…the tools of your trade and the methods of your trade and the processes of your trade by the guidance of experienced people, successful people. You also said something else, implicitly. You said that The West Australian was a monopoly. And therefore it wasn’t as sharp as some of the other papers where there was cutthroat competition. You also said there’s shorthanded school as shorthand was at school, basic skills that are not taught today. Now, just of something of interest. And you also mentioned you were sent to court reporting, where you have to be accurate and precise and succinct, just a little sideline, whenever I’m approached by anyone in the media, whether it be by phone or personally, I always turn on my recording device.

Senator Malcom Roberts (05:23):

The other day in parliament, I was wandering through the corridors on my way to Senate estimates hearings, and Andrew Probyn now with the ABC saw me and he went past me and he said, “Can I just get your comment off the record, of course, about a topic?” And I said, “Hang on just a minute, I’ll just turn my recording device on.” And he said, “No, if that’s it, not interested.” So, there’s that kind of thing, he’s not willing to stand up to accountability because if he misreports, this is my opinion, if he missed reports, then I can hold him accountable for it. The moment I did that, he ran away. So journalists have prized impartiality, what happened?

Tony Thomas (06:09):

Well, what happened there, was the old story, as you said, of journalists not wanting to be accountable. Now, it’s 10 times worse with the TV journalism because the TV journalist will interview you for half an hour and then cut and snip the interview down to just a few sentences, according to whatever agenda he’s on. And some really clever people like Joanne Nova, the climate blogger in Perth, when she was met by the ABC filming team, had her own filming camera set up in the lounge room and she filmed the ABC filming. And so then she was able to say, this is what the ABC has done with that interview, where they’ve cut, how they’ve distorted it, and basically how much they left on the cutting room floor. So there’s an old saying about, trust me, I’m a journalist. Well, that’s ironic.

Senator Malcom Roberts (07:15):

Yes. That’s a really important point. You’ve just mentioned journalists, as we agreed is not accountable today. And it’s worse with TV because of the editing. That’s implicit in what you said, Joanne Nova’s filming the filmers. There’s a story, I was in Cannes with a candidate who was fairly inexperienced and he had a colourful background, nothing wrong with it, but he had background and some of the media locally were trying to distort that misrepresented to cast dispersions on him. And one of the journalists came up and I said to him that I was recording it in front of the candidate.

Senator Malcom Roberts (07:54):

And then I proceeded to answer his questions by asking him questions. And after a couple of minutes, he realised that he was being interviewed and I realised where the slant of his thrust was going to go. So what I did was I posted the recording on Facebook immediately. Now that’s taking away livelihood from a journalist, but in my opinion, it was also protecting an honest, innocent person from being slandered or being misrepresented. So that’s one way of fighting the media, but how else can we protect ourselves against the media?

Tony Thomas (08:36):

Well, before the online world happened, the journalists for print could write what they liked and the only response that any reader would have would be to write a letter of complaint to the editor. And then the editor, which is like complaining to your wife about your mother-in-law. The editor would normally pick a side of the journalist and throw the letter in the bin, or whatever. But now that there’s an online world, if a journalist writes a piece that people object to, either on that site itself or on their own blogs or anywhere, they can put a post up arguing back against the journalists. So, that’s what the online world has opened up. The journalists are now accountable to every person on the planet, which is an excellent thing.

Senator Malcom Roberts (09:32):

Yes, until we get censorship in social media, which is what Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn are doing. So how do we counter that?

Tony Thomas (09:43):

Well, as Trump and Joanne Nova, and people are doing, they’re finding other platforms, which are pretty obscure, and I’m not across them, I think a bit [inaudible 00:09:56], and these ones are open and not centering you. So that takes some power away from Twitter and Facebook.

Senator Malcom Roberts (10:05):

What about polls? What do they show about trust in the media these days, Tony?

Tony Thomas (10:09):

I’ve been looking into this and there, there was a poll by the Reader’s Digest of all things in Australia last year. And they wanted people to rank professions according to trust. And guess where journalists came, they came second last of 30 professions, just ahead of politicians. Sorry about that, Mal. And just-

Senator Malcom Roberts (10:32):

You’re not affecting me because we deal with honesty, Tony, I know exact be what you’re talking about. They’re [inaudible 00:10:38].

Tony Thomas (10:38):

Yeah. And just ahead of delivery drivers, and when you go to a place like the United States, there was a, I think a Pew poll, for how is trust in the media represented across 46 countries, and of the 46 countries trust in the media, in the US was bottom. You can’t get any lower than that. Only 29% of the population said they trusted the media. Whereas I looked up Australia, that was 43%, but Australian trust in the media is below what you got in Croatia, Poland and South Africa. If you want a bit more there’s other polls quite recently, where trust in the media overall in the US is only 36%, which is the second lowest ever since Gallup began polling, only 11% of Republican trust the media. But when you take all American adults, only 10% trust the media on their COVID coverage. Now that is truly remarkable and indicates that no matter what the press is saying, their audience frankly, is mostly not believing it.

Senator Malcom Roberts (11:59):

So, they’re startling figures. So trust is just about shot, which will ultimately lead to two things, correct me if I’m wrong, people will stop paying media. People will turn to alternatives as we are doing. We are turning to what I call independent truth media, podcasts, independent stations like tntradio.live. These are the things because ultimately there is a free market, but let me just check again. Pravda still exists, doesn’t it, in Russia?

Tony Thomas (12:36):

I think so. I’m not sure.

Senator Malcom Roberts (12:38):

I’m pretty sure it does. That means our journalists in this country, our media in this country are ranked below Pravda, who would’ve thought that 40 years ago before 1988? Who would’ve thought that?

Tony Thomas (12:52):

Well, I don’t know where the Russia who was on that list of 46 countries, but I’ll give you the benefit on the doubt there, Malcolm.

Senator Malcom Roberts (13:00):

Well, some of the Eastern block countries.

Tony Thomas (13:02):

Yes. Well, they were there. Poland, Croatia. You name it.

Senator Malcom Roberts (13:07):

Yeah. How effective is the ABC’s charter for impartiality?

Tony Thomas (13:12):

Oh, it’s really a joke. What it actually says is that the ABC reporters should follow the weight of evidence. So that means if there’s a consensus about something, they should reflect that consensus. But it says that all points of view should be covered over time. And what this has done is given a licence to the, in addition it said, you don’t have to worry about tinfoil hat conspiracists and [inaudible 00:13:44], and people like that who are not actually entitled to any sort of point of view in balanced coverage.

Tony Thomas (13:53):

Well, the ABC people of course have now lumped climate sceptics to take the most pertinent example, along with the tin hat foil conspirators, and they won’t touch any sceptic point of view. And on the rare occasions they have, such as on their science show where they interviewed Dr. Judith Curry, a very esteemed American climatologist with a sceptic point of view, they book ended her with two or three of their own pet climate scientists, so that everything that Judith said, they were able to drown out with opposing views from their several friends there. So, that’s how they pretend to keep their charter, while actually protecting the public from the views of a very large proportion of people on climate.

Senator Malcom Roberts (14:51):

Well, it’s very interesting you mentioned. I didn’t know those details about the ABC, even though we’d done some research and some work in response to some political activities a couple of years ago. They are a disgrace, in my opinion, I think they should be sold with the exception of the regional arm. And that should be retained, especially for natural disasters. So, I’ll come back to the ABC in a minute. Well, let’s deal with them first, before we go to-

Tony Thomas (15:16):

[crosstalk 00:15:16] Pilborough.

Senator Malcom Roberts (15:17):

…go to the Pilborough in 1980s, the ABC actually requires dealing with the consensus, supporting the consensus. Now, that’s very interesting because they don’t do their research. When it comes to climate, the consensus is with the scientists who don’t believe that carbon dioxides from human activity has to be cut. That is undoubted. The Oregon petition 33,000, 34,000 now scientists, who are opposed to what we are being told by the United Nations. Kevin Rudd as prime minister, what a disgrace he was, his behaviour was atrocious because he’d basically lied in parliament. He said that 4,000 scientists produced the IPCC’s report. I challenged him. I wrote to his office and I said that the claim is really 2,500, but of those 2,500, only about a 1,000 produced a science report.

Senator Malcom Roberts (16:24):

In the science report, and you would well know this, in 2007 there was one sole lonely chapter claiming carbon dioxides from human activity effects climate, needs to be cut. The rest was bumf, fluff. That was it. Chapter nine, from memory in 2007. In that chapter, the reviewers numbered about 57, of those reviewers, only five endorse a claim that carbon dioxides from human activity affects climate, only five. And there’s doubt that they were even accredited scientists. So we have, not 4,000 that Kevin Ruddd told us, we had five. That’s from the UN’s own process, the UN’s own data, which Dr. John McClain painstakingly took from UN documents. After that exposure by Dr. John McClain, the UN stopped producing reports on the numbers of scientists, but that is a blatant lie. Now what makes it even more so atrocious, Tony is that I wrote to Kevin Rudd, his department responded to me. I then told them why their response was nonsense. They then responded to me again, from memory. And then I told them why that was nonsense. I won the argument. They didn’t respond. Hard data they go against.

Tony Thomas (17:48):

Yeah, I actually am a friend of John McClain, here in Melbourne.

Senator Malcom Roberts (17:53):

Wonderful man.

Tony Thomas (17:54):

Yeah. He tipped me off that there’s a key chapter in the IPCC reports called Attribution Studies, where they have to literally attribute global warming to CO2, via their modelings. And I’m not sure which report it was. It could have been the 2007 one. There were only 60 scientists involved in that attribution exercise, and basically all of them were in a network where their peer reviewing each other’s work, and hobnobbing together, and you can do one of those spider graphs where you can link just about every one of them to every other one. So it was a small group, a closed shop of people, but there were 60 people basically dictating this entire global warming hysteria that’s been going on now for 30 years.

Senator Malcom Roberts (18:51):

Well, not only that, I’m pretty sure you’re citing the data there that I also cited. There were 60 authors of the critical chapter, the sole chapter, again. The overwhelming majority of them were climate modellers, not empirical scientists.

Tony Thomas (19:10):

Sure.

Senator Malcom Roberts (19:10):

And there’s no empirical data, which is the fundamental root foundation of science. Objectivity is based on empirical data, hard facts, hard observations. None of that appears in chapter nine, 2007, the sole chapter that claims warming and attributed to carbon dioxide from human activities. What’s more though, is we see… And why hasn’t the ABC reported that? Why hasn’t anyone reported that? Because they’re too lazy, in my opinion Tony, to go and do the work, do the research that you were trained to do. And now it’s that second nature to you, but not only that, they don’t report on the links, the links to, for example, the network of very close, I think about four institutions, those 60 odd scientists, I don’t call them scientists, I call them academics. The 60 academics that produce the chapter nine, but largely modellers overwhelmingly were modellers.

Senator Malcom Roberts (20:12):

But more importantly, they were from, I think about four different modelling organisations. All enrolled in spreading this climate crap. And so they feed off each other, they validate each other’s papers. And when you look through the peer reviewers, they’re all forming a very close club and they depend on each other to maintain their positions. But there’s also another connection, a colleague of mine in Canberra, who I think you know, Peter Bobrov, he did an analysis of those who are connected to the United Nations or globalist organisations. Overwhelmingly, the loud voices, the mouths that spread this nonsense, they’re academic activists, advocates. They’re all one in the same, it’s hard to tell the difference between academia and activists these days, but they’re overwhelmingly connected to the UN or associated globalist bodies.

Senator Malcom Roberts (21:14):

And then David Karoly, he was editor, lead author for one chapter, I think it was in 2001 for the sole chapter that claims warming and attributed to carbon dioxide. He was also one of the three primary reviewers of the same chapter, the equivalent chapter, sorry, chapter nine in 2007. And the 2007 report just built on the 2001 report. So if we’ve got crap at the start in 2001, and it was, then it was validated by the people who produced the crap. It was validated in 2007. And David Karoly, despite people saying the science was settled back then, received a grant for $1.9 million to research this climate science, despite it being settled. And it’s just stunning the money that taxpayers spread out through people like Kevin Rudd, and sadly the liberals. So there’s this very tight incestuous group, but the media doesn’t talk about it.

Tony Thomas (22:17):

Yeah. The Australian Academy of Science in 2015, put out a booklet called a Question and Answers on the Science of Climate Change. And I immediately went looking for where are they going to produce the evidence for the CO2 causing the warming? And it said, “Paleo climate studies plus outputs from modelling provide compelling evidence of the connection.” Well, since when is output from models, been compelling evidence, it’s just a scientific absurdity. And this booklet would’ve gone through the hands of dozens and dozens of academy of science people, making sure that they weren’t going to get caught out on anything, and this just goes through. Output of morals to them is compelling evidence. It’s shocking, really.

Senator Malcom Roberts (23:14):

But no media journalists pick it up apart from Adam Creighton and Tony McCrain and sometimes Graham Lloyd. The media seems to willfully ignore it. And when you challenge him, aren’t they still ignore it. You mention the Australian Academy of Science, I had dealings with will Stephan, who is a member of the Academy, from memory. He was on four government funded organisations. And yet when he was introduced as a newly selected member of the climate commission, or should that be climate [inaudible 00:23:44], but anyway, climate commission, the minister at the time for climate, pushing climate, he was Greg Combet, and he said that Will Stephan. And the others were all impartial.

Senator Malcom Roberts (23:55):

They already had strong connections to the government. And as you point out, that the only thing that they can hang their hats on now is modelling. We had 90 models producing vastly different outputs. So which one of these is the settle science? And now we have whittled that down from 90 to 40, they say. So as it was asked in Senate estimates last week, if you’ve got 40 models producing different results, what does that tell you about the science being settled?

Tony Thomas (24:29):

Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. What they’re now going for is to pretend that basically the consensus is overwhelming and there’s no more argument. And so if you start signing the pledge and so on, that is proof that everything’s okay, there’s this organisation called Covering Climate Now based in Columbia University, School of Journalism and The Guardian and a few other groups, and they’ve got 460 media groups worldwide to sign the pledge, to do their utmost to hide global warming and shun any critics of it. And to use words that the guardian recommends like global heating, global crisis, emergency climate breakdown. So they even want to constrict the language into this campaign of theirs. Well, once you realise that 460 media outlets have signed that pledge, how can you possibly imagine that any of them remain objective on the subject?

Senator Malcom Roberts (25:40):

Exactly. And I love your use of data. Your readily available at your fingertips data. And I note that News Corporation in its editorial, leading up to the Glasgow Conference of Parties with the UN back in, what was that? November last year. The news Corp said, “We’re going to change our editorial policy slightly. We’re going to be reporting more implicitly,” didn’t state it directly, a slanted view, but Tony, we’re going to go to an ad break now. What I’d like to do when we come back in a minute or so is have your views on the role of the now activist global news agencies like Associated Press, AFP, Reuters, AAP, et cetera. We go to the ad break.

Tony Thomas (26:29):

With pleasure. I’ve been researching that all week. Okay. Thanks Malcom.

Senator Malcom Roberts (28:38):

Welcome back you’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts interviewing a journalist with 60 years of experience, Tony Thomas. Tony, one of the advertisements a minute ago just said “Your future depends on how you think.” Could it be any better said? The quality of our decisions depend upon what we think or on how we think. And particularly based on data, how can we make a sound decision on voting, which will determine taxation and community policies, defence, social policies, industry policies, productivity, with a biassed media? People have been asleep in this country. The media perpetuates the two parties, which are so similar. It’s really a uni-party, but people are still asleep. COVID though have as awoken people, and no matter how much the bias is there, and it’s very solid. People seem to be waking up. What’s the role of the now activist global news agencies?

Tony Thomas (29:36):

Well, people don’t really realise or appreciate that if it wasn’t for the huge global news wholesalers like Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Bloomberg, their newspapers would be half empty and the same with the radio, news, and so on. That they just shovel in the output from these news global wholesalers. And I’ve just been checking, and I find that AFP, which has got literally thousands of journalists there and probably thousand or more media customers, and Reuters and Bloomberg have all signed this covering climate now petitioned to hype global warming and stamp out any dissenting views. And then I began to realise that The Australian newspaper, which has been my main reading and I’ve always respected it, is taking basically ghastly climate propaganda from AFP. And there is an example, just the other day about a headline, The acceleration of global warming code red for humanity.

Tony Thomas (30:58):

And it was illustrated with a picture of a cool city with beautiful green grasses, blue skies, pink, white, fluffy clouds. And then because of CO2 on the left side of the picture, it turns into a boiling hot hellscape, fires and cracked earth, not a green thing in sight. And this was all under the heading, Breaking News. And then I found that the same guy from AFP who’s their global head of climate coverage called Marlowe Hood has got more than 20 of these propaganda pieces into The Australian.

Tony Thomas (31:41):

And it’s just unbelievable that they wouldn’t at least be put under comment, but to have them all in the news section like that. And clearly The Australian having paid for a feed from AFP, just uncritically takes everything that they offer. But if we move on to Associated Press, there’s a huge scandal just broken in the United States, where five leaftist philanthropic foundations have given Associated Press $8 million to hire 20 new reporters to push the climate change message.

Tony Thomas (32:29):

So this means that when you are reading climate stuff from now on, from Associated Press, you could be reading material by people who’ve been hired with money from foundations like The Rockefeller Foundation, the James and Catherine Murdoch Quadrivium Foundation. There’s the Walton Foundation, there’s another one that I’ve forgotten. Anyway, they’ve all got green leaf credentials. They’re all determined to save the planet. And this is so contrary to the codes of ethics of Associated Press itself, which it says don’t allow money to influence anything you’re doing and always be wary of anyone offering money to influence your coverage. And in point, they even said, announcing this $8 million grant that they were no longer going to be so wary because the money from these foundations is such nice money, and we really need it. I mean you can’t make this stuff up.

Senator Malcom Roberts (33:41):

No. And we know that I think it was John Rockefeller. One of the early Rockefellers about a hundred years ago, thanked the New York times, that’s right, for keeping the global control under wraps. So not being impartial, just silencing the control of the major 46 newspapers in the United States that were biassed and controlled by the globalists. And then there’s another problem we have Tony, and that is that I think it was Julia Gillard’s Labour government that had in amongst its ministers and its staff, amongst its MPS. It had something like 150 journalists working for them. Anastasia Palache was recently reported, was it 30 journalists reporting to her or reporting in her department-

Tony Thomas (34:39):

There could have been.

Senator Malcom Roberts (34:39):

…and what’s happening, sorry?

Tony Thomas (34:41):

Well, it could have been triple figures for all the media Flex in the Palache Queensland government. And it’s much the same in the Andrew’s government. The teams of media flex that he owns are probably larger than the teams in any other media outlet stable.

Senator Malcom Roberts (35:03):

So the point I was getting to, that’s a really important thing to say that the biggest employers of media are in fact, the politicians because what’s happened with increasing competition, especially from the internet, is that some of the conventional, what I call the legacy media, especially the print media, are now shutting down. Well, have been for many years, shutting down the number of journalists they have. And so journalists go and are employed by the politicians, especially those in government with seemingly endless taxpayers money to employ journalists. And this army of journalists, writes crap. And then the under demand journalists in the mainstream media, the legacy media, they just take whatever they’re given and copy and paste it, straight into the media. And so what we’ve got is, we’ve got governments of both types, labour liberal, both virtually writing newspaper articles.

Senator Malcom Roberts (36:07):

I cancelled my subscription to Sky News because it’s now woke, lame. Prime Minister Morrison seem to do some favours for some of the journalists in Sky News. And now they just gush about him. It makes people sick. And Sky News is dropping in viewership now. I don’t buy any newspaper, other than The Weekend Australian because my wife likes The Weekend Australian magazine, some News Corp journalists are quite good, Alan Jones, but he’s sacked or he’d been let go. So, that tells you something about News Corp. Bolt has been throttled, Terry McCray’s good, Graham Lloyd is sometimes impartial. We’ve got these temperatures. The temperatures today are cooler in Australia than the temperatures in the 1880s, 1890s. Fact Bureau of Meteorology’s own record. We know that temperature hasn’t increased. There’s been no warming trend since 1995, none globally.

Senator Malcom Roberts (37:14):

If you take away where the El Niño and Southern Oscillation in this, which is cyclical, there’s been no warming in Australia. We see now that we’ve had two experiments, real life experiments, and that’s the key to science. In 2009, there was a massive recession, a pretty severe due to the global financial crisis near the end of 2008. So when we have a recession, industrial production goes down, which means the consumption of hydrocarbon fuels goes down, which means the production of carbon dioxide from human activity goes down. It went down enormously. So the human production of carbon dioxide went down enormously in 2009. Yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued increasing unabated, same linear trend of increase. In 2020, we had almost a depression around the world due to government restrictions on COVID, not due to COVID, but due to government restrictions because of COVID.

Senator Malcom Roberts (38:18):

And so again, we saw a reduction in carbon dioxide from human activity, and yet the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued increasing at a linear trend. We know from science that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are controlled entirely by nature. We know that there’s 50 to 70 times more carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans than there is in the entire atmosphere. And the UN has given us those figures. And so slight changes in temperature of the ocean, which is naturally variable, lead to either absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or liberation from the oceans to the atmosphere.

Senator Malcom Roberts (38:58):

So we’ve got this massive facts staring at us in the face. And yet we don’t see any of it reported in the media. So the media is destroying itself, people are losing trust. As you’ve pointed out, alarmingly. The people are losing faith in the science because they know there’s no overall warming, that people are losing faith in politics because of the lack of responsibility. And that means people don’t take responsibility because they don’t see that they can affect the outcome of politics. So these are not good science for our society, are they?

Tony Thomas (39:34):

No. Sure, the one sided reporting is pretty terrible, but even getting away from the climate issue, the public have got so many good reasons not to trust the media. I was just been looking into the scandal at the New York Times, which is the premier masthead in the world, old where-

Senator Malcom Roberts (39:56):

Well, I’ll disagree with you, but you can have that view.

Tony Thomas (40:00):

Yeah, well, but for 10 years, they were taking a $100,000.00 a month from the Chinese Communist Party to run Chinese communist propaganda in the guise of advertorials from the China Daily newspaper. And it only came to light because Republicans began demanding from China news, full details under probably the foreign lobbying act of just what they’d been up to with the American mainstream media. And it turned out that since 2016, they basically bought the American media for as little as $20 million, that included the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, New York Times, and running these propaganda pieces about which islands belong to China, and which don’t, and how nice the Chinese have been to the [inaudible 00:41:00].

Tony Thomas (41:00):

And it turned out that the New York times had run 200 of these pieces. And when China daily got sprung, the New York Times, which has kept their archives back to 1850, that’s how comprehensive they are. Sneakily went in and deleted all 200 pieces from their archives. So, this is an enormous scandal and you wonder the New York times would have any reputation at all left after this. So that’s just one of the latest scandals to hit the American media, which helps explain the low levels of trust there.

Senator Malcom Roberts (41:45):

What about the role of fact checkers these days? Are they a restraint on bad reporting?

Tony Thomas (41:51):

Well, they’ve been captured by the very same people, who are running so many, dare I say, fake news items. For example, Facebook contracted out fact checking to some group. And when somebody sued Facebook over their fact checks, Facebook said, but our fake checks are only opinion and that’s protected under the first amendment. Well, once they’ve said that, you know what fact checking’s all about. Now Agence France-Presse, and I think Associated Press have also got their fact checking outfits alongside, but of course, who needs fact check more than AFP and AP itself, there’s been a whole litany of leaks and stories from within these large media groups, like the New York Times where.

Tony Thomas (42:48):

For example, the New York Times editor, when it came out, the Trump collusion with Russia story was dead in the water, briefed the journalists to say, well, we gave that one, a good run. We focused our whole coverage on the collusion story. Now that’s gone. We need a new cause. So let’s focus on how racist America’s been since 1619, I think it was. And so that’s the new line that is being propagated through the New York Times, all about race and identity politics and so on. Well, once upon a time, or as the TV, people used to say, just the facts ma’am, just the facts. Well, now you’re getting just the narrative, thanks. Just the narrative that we’ve selected.

Senator Malcom Roberts (43:39):

And we’re getting something else too. I think Tony, from the use of these labels like racist, Islamophobe, homophobia, misogynist, et cetera. What I’ve noticed happen is that if I present something or when I present, so that is solidly backed by data, which is my habit, and a logical argument that shows cause and effect. Then people respond, especially journalists with either silence to shut me down, stop my common sense getting out or with labels. So they call me racists, Nazi, whatever they want to call me, tinfoil, hat wearer, a conspiracy theorist. And what I’ve learned to do to them is to turn around and say, well, thank you for just confirming that you have got no data or you can’t string together a logical argument for rebutting what I’m saying. Thank you for admitting that you’ve got no data and that I’ve won the argument, because if you had any argument, you wouldn’t be using labels, instead you’d be presenting the data in the argument, instead of valid response.

Tony Thomas (44:48):

Well, that’s an excellence response from you and basically name calling does lose you the argument in any debate. I must say there’s a new trend. It’s creeping in everywhere where the reporters are writing. What’s supposed to be a straight story and they’ll suddenly throw in the words “He falsely claimed,” or “He claimed without evidence,” or ” XYZ is a conspiracy theory.” And they attach these completely subjective labels to what they’re reporting. And I think as Joanne Nova said, “As soon as you see any of those labels, like false, misleading, without context and so on, have a good look because it’s very likely that what you’re reading’s correct.” And I could give you a recent example, the ABC 7:00 PM news last Sunday had a report on Scott Morrison, the prime minister accusing the opposition leader, Albanese of being soft on China. And the reporter said, Morrison accused Albanise, without evidence of being soft on China.

Tony Thomas (46:02):

So I put in a complaint to the ABC saying, what evidence would actually satisfy your reporter, that Albanese was a tool of China. Would you want a stat deck from three government ministers? Would you want a high court ruling? Would you want a Royal Commission that establishes the truth? Do you want a court case leading to a victory for Albanese, and how come you never say that Albanese, when he turned around and accused the prime minister of being the Manchurian Candidate no less, how come you never attach the label without evidence to that one? So I’ll be interested to see how the ABC replies to my complaint there. Sometimes I win these complaints. So that one time in three, I’d say.

Senator Malcom Roberts (46:51):

Well, I’m going to set aside. I’ve had questions that I prepared for you, further questions. We could go for hours, but I’m going to set them aside entirely because I’m sensing something far more interesting here. We’ve established what the media is like these days sadly, they’re propagandist. But I want to know about Tony Thomas, you’re 81, you’ve got the voice of someone in their 40s. You’re taking on these bastards in the media, you’re taking on these bastards in the government. Tell us what you do during the day. It’s fascinating.

Tony Thomas (47:28):

Well, I’ve been retired a long time and I don’t have too many babysitting duties. So I just think of a subject, research the hell out of it, wind up with maybe 30,000 or 40,000 words of raw material on it. And then I boil it all down to about 2,000 words and send it off to Roger Franklin at Quadrant Online. And as I said, he publishes it very, very promptly. And I love finding out stuff that’s so outrageous, that people have to say, Tony must be making that stuff up, but I’m always scrupulous to put in my links and evidence for everything I say. I mean the latest article I wrote-

Senator Malcom Roberts (48:12):

I’ve seen your work.

Tony Thomas (48:15):

…Biden’s new assistant deputy secretary for nuclear waste disposal, being a fetishist to do with gay men, pretending to be dogs with tails stuck up their rectum and all sorts of goings on there. And copiously illustrated with photographs. And this is the man now in charge of America’s nuclear waste industry, and as some of the commenters have said anything to do with nukes, you wouldn’t let a man like that, normally within a thousand miles of it, I mean, he’s entitled to his hobbies after work, but he’s making an absolute parade of his fetishisms. And as somebody else said, are his subordinates going to respect him in his role? Or is he basically shot his credibility, even in the nuclear waste area where he is qualified and nobody’s claimed that he’s not qualified. So, that’s the sort of article I love writing that just make people real back saying this can’t really be happening in the world I live in.

Senator Malcom Roberts (49:29):

Well, maybe giving Biden the button to obliterate the world through America’s nuclear arsenal is good because I don’t know if he’d be able to remember where it is. So may maybe very safe. Tell me what is most satisfying about your whole career spanning now 60 years? What are the highlights?

Tony Thomas (49:50):

When I was in the Press Gallery in the 70s, I was the only journalist who immediately spotted that Rex Connor, the minister for minerals and energy was a nut case. And I spotted this because he’d drawn a map with gas pipelines, going all over Australia, which is about 2,000 miles wide and high. And he apparently saw no technical problem with crisscrossing the country with these gas pipelines. And then he got up and told parliament, he was going to set up a nuclear enrichment plan on Spencer Gulf in south Australia, because there, it would be safe from enemy submarines.

Tony Thomas (50:30):

And I just knew that this man was short of a few kangaroos in the top paddock and began writing that way. So for a couple of years, I was almost the only writer who was critical of this minister for energy until he fell flat on his face, trying to do deals with raising $4 billion from Saudi Arabians. And it was all just a fantasy. And so he got sacked, his mate, Jim Cairns got sacked and then Whitlam, the prime minister got sacked, and that was the end of the labour government. So I think that was my proudest moment.

Senator Malcom Roberts (51:13):

And you weren’t proud, from what I can pick up, of leading to the dismissal of the labour government. You were proud of the fact that your facts eventually prevailed because of your gathering the data and your dogged persistence. And this is where it’s wonderful to be on a station like tntradio.live, because I happen to have been brought up in a family, and we’ve only got a minute or so to go now, Tony, before the news.

Senator Malcom Roberts (51:38):

But I was brought up in a family that ridiculed Connor, but later on, I talked to people and listened and there was some marvellous, what would you call it? Overall aims that he had for protecting our resources? Not for nationalising them, but for protecting them and getting a good price for them. So I can see both sides of the argument, but what’s important here is not whether I agree with you or disagree with you because in part I agree, I can see some things I disagree, but the fact that you were determined you would [inaudible 00:52:09] and you got the facts out and that’s extremely important, isn’t it?

Tony Thomas (52:12):

And unpopular, you could say.

Senator Malcom Roberts (52:16):

So that’s something to really wear proudly because it’s something that Pauline and I do as well. Proud of being honest. Tony, I want to thank you for speaking so bluntly, so refreshingly purely, so objectively, and thank you for coming loaded with data. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts on tntradio.live. Thank you very much, Tony Thomas.

Today I talk to Emeritus Professor of Law David Flint about our broken system of democracy, the monarchy and republic fight, China, ABC, Biden and much more. Listen above or read the transcript below. See all episodes of my show on TNT radio:

Recorded 19 February 2022

Transcript

(00:01):

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk Radio TNT.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (00:07):

Good afternoon, or wherever you are in the world. It may be good morning. This is Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. Thank you for having me as your guest in your car, your kitchen, your lounge, to your shed, or wherever you are right now. There are two themes to my show, freedom and personal responsibility. Freedom is specifically in the context of freedom versus control. As we can see under assault all over the world is freedom right now. The control freaks want to take over. It’s basic, freedom is basic for human progress and people’s livelihood. The second theme is personal responsibility and the importance of integrity. That’s also basic for personal progress and for people’s livelihoods.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (00:55):

Our show’s direction and tone are along these lines. I’m fiercely pro-human. I’ve had enough. I’ve had a gut full of the media and politicians bagging and ragging on humans. Excuse me. I’ve just been told that my mic level is too high. The second thing is that I’m very proud to be part of the species that is the only species in the world that is capable of logical thinking. Although sometimes I wonder if all people are capable of logical thinking. Another aspect and tone is that we are positive. While we are here to deal with issues that people face and are concerned about, I encourage our guests to provide solutions, lasting, meaningful solutions, as well as what’s wrong with politics, what’s needed in politics. As well as what’s wrong with politicians, what we need in politicians. As well as what’s wrong with the media, what’s needed in the media.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (01:58):

We’ll get to the core issues, words and all to develop solutions. We’ll cover the human aspects, the strengths, the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities, the failings, the highlights. What makes people real? We want to be data-driven. We will be and are data driven, factual, truthful, and honest. And we will speak out bluntly on the issues. I had the privilege, and I mean that sincerely, the privilege of being one of the many hundreds of thousands of protestors in Canberra last weekend. I was down there, was due to come home for the weekend, but decided to stay. And so glad am I that that happened. My wife and son drove down the 14-hour trip to join me and join hundreds of thousands of protesters in Canberra.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (02:47):

And those protesters were either ignored by the media or downplayed into just a few thousand or maybe one channel even had 10,000. That’s complete rubbish. It filled acres and acres of land between the old parliament house and new parliament house. And what an exciting buzz it was. It was phenomenal energy there. People are angry, but they weren’t violent. They were calm. They’re determined, they’re encouraging, supportive of each other. The posters that people had, the signs, it was just beautiful. It was absolutely stunning to be there. And after the protest, I went down to Camp Epic, which is where tens of thousands of people are camped out. People have driven here from Perth, driven to Canberra rather, from Perth, from Darwin, from Brisbane. It was absolutely stunning.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (03:37):

And the environment, the tone, the energy was electric, but it was also people having fun. People just being themselves. It was a real community, tens of thousands of people from all over the country showing what real Aussies are about. And they’re about respect, they’re about care. They’re about freedom and they’re about community and connecting with each other. It’s one of the highlights of my life to just feel that atmosphere. It was just absolutely marvellous to see that back in Australia, after months and months, two years of government control.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (04:11):

What I’d like to do today is talk about the media. And it was triggered, this topic, by something David Flint, Professor David Flint said during his talk on the conversation two weeks ago with me here on TNT Radio. He says that the first duty of the press, The Times newspaper declared in 1851, “The first duty is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time and instantly by disclosing them to make them the common property of the nation.” David Flint is a very honourable man, a highly respected man, and he’s nailed it right there with that quote from The Times. So I’m going to hold the media to account today with my two guests.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (04:58):

First up, it’s great to be talking with Professor David Flint again. He joined me last fortnight to chat about the constitution and we invited him back. I didn’t realise it would be just within two weeks. Professor David Flint, who has an order of Australian medal, is an emeritus professor of law. He read law and economics at Universities of Sydney, London, and Paris. After admission as a solicitor of the New South Wales Supreme Court in 1962, he practised as a solicitor from 1962 to ’72 before moving into university, teaching, holding several academic posts before becoming professor of law at the Sydney University of Technology in 1989.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (05:38):

Professor Flint is the author of numerous publications. His publications include books and articles and topics such as the media, international economic law, Australia’s Constitution, and on Australia’s 1999 Constitutional Referendum. And I almost made the mistake of voting for that referendum until I listened to some high court judges in Brisbane. And then I became totally in favour of our constitutional monarchy. He was recognised with the award of World Outstanding Legal Scholar. I’ll say that again, World Outstanding Legal Scholar, awarded by the World Jurist Association Barcelona in October, 1999. He was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1995.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (06:23):

There’s a higher qualification though, that David has. He has come from lofty academia. He works and rubbed shoulders with some of the most powerful people in the country, and he is respected by them. But he remains a man of the people. You’re just as likely to bump into him on the street, bump into him at a protest, bump into him at a conference. He challenges the elites and the establishment, but is still highly respected by even them. He’s aware the system is broken and the media is responsible for perpetrating the two party system, the pseudo-democracy. Well, we’re given a choice, but there’s no real choice because they’re both the same. Welcome, David.

David Flint (07:03):

Well, thank you very much. Lovely to be on your programme again, Malcolm.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (07:11):

Something you appreciate, David, what do you appreciate?

David Flint (07:14):

Well, I appreciate common sense. Particularly because I think it’s such a guide in relation to politics and all sorts of public activities. Common sense mixed with integrity, if you have those two, I think you’ll go a long way. And that is what is so missing in the management of society today. You quite rightly quoted that comment from The Times back in 1851 at the time of the referendum in 1999, which wasn’t just a referendum about royalists wanting to keep the monarchy. It was about requiring those who wanted to change the constitution to be doing something to improve the governance of the country. We had quite a few slogans in that campaign. And one which really cut through was vote no for the politician’s republic because this was going to increase the power of the politicians.

David Flint (08:25):

It was going to take away the role of the crown as providing leadership above politics, and playing a role as one of the guardians of the constitutional system. That’d be taken away, and what you would have would be a puppet president and the power of the politicians, that is the two-party cabal, would’ve been significantly increased. But what we found in that referendum was that most of the politicians wanted the politician’s republic. The extraordinary thing was that the media, which have a duty because they get all their freedom. They get their freedom in return for being responsible,, for giving that real information to the people without bias and without distorting emphasis and not suppressing anything that’s in their code of ethics.

David Flint (09:22):

They have that enormous freedom so that they can be responsible but they weren’t in the referendum. And this is where I particularly noticed it because I was chairing the vote no group. And we used to meet regularly every day, and we would be amazed sometimes by the way in which the arguments were distorted. But there was an independent observer of that referendum in 1999. This was Bill Deedes, and later on made Lord Deedes. He was a very distinguished fighter during the Second World War, and he was one of the very lofty stream of people who’ve been editors of London Telegraph. London Telegraph is one of the most reliable newspapers in the world.

David Flint (10:14):

But he wrote this about the Australian referendum, “I have really attended elections or votes in any country. Certainly not a democratic one in which the newspapers have displayed more shameless bias. One at all, they determined that Australians should have a republic and they used every device towards that end.” That’s all of the newspapers. Most of the electronic media, all of the public media, the ABC and SBS, all of them were pushing one way. There was only one major person in the media who offered something towards the no case, and that was Alan Jones. Alan Jones used to say when people rang in and said, “Alan, I don’t know how to vote. What should I do?” He’d say, “If you don’t know, vote no. If you don’t know, vote no.”

David Flint (11:18):

But the fact is, even with all that massive campaign, all of the politicians, almost all of them, just a handful of them who were coming out and saying this model’s no good, all of the media, except Alan Jones, as a major person in the media, and many of the elites, big businesses, they’re all saying vote for this republic, although it would’ve increased the powers of the politicians. And yet, we were able to get a vote, which shows the common sense of the Australian people. We were able to get a vote, which produced a national majority. It produced a majority in all states. In a referendum, you’ve got to win at least four states. We got all states and we won 72% of electorates. Not relevant to a referendum but it just shows how sweeping that decision was by the Australian people, which shows that there’s a lot of common sense out there among the electorate. And-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (12:22):

Let me jump in there, David.

David Flint (12:25):

Sure.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (12:27):

That is a remarkable statistic you’ve just given us. But overwhelmingly, the Australian people, despite the media, despite the politicians being almost exclusively in favour of the republic, and despite the propaganda, the constant barrage all through the media, with exception of Alan Jones, the people still kept their sanity and the people prevailed. So that’s really important to understand.

David Flint (12:56):

And remember, we didn’t have much money. We didn’t have the money for advertising that Malcolm turn … Malcolm [inaudible 00:13:04] funded most of the republican campaign, and he put a lot of money into it, but it didn’t make that much difference.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (13:13):

Let’s come back to the media because I’d like to include this in the summary when I give it in a minute. You’ve written articles on the degradation of today’s journalism. People worldwide are waking up to the death and the dearth of journalism talent. What is it that you have been railing against in your articles against the media and that people are now waking up to?

David Flint (13:37):

Well, I think we’ve seen the worst in the United States where the mainstream media and a lot of the social media have decided to become the propaganda arm of the democratic party of a democratic party, which is swung to the far left. And when the media decided to become a propaganda arm, it’s like living in a communist country. It’s not as bad because you still have other media. But we saw this, for example, when Hunter Biden lost his laptop, and that laptop contained an enormous amount of information, which demonstrated that the Biden family had been operating as an enterprise while he was a senator while Biden was vice president, and now as president. He was operating as an instrumentality, particularly when he was vice president, which offered to plutocrats, usually in authoritarian countries. Offered to them access and influence in Washington, but highly improper of course, but that laptop showed this.

David Flint (14:55):

What happened when that laptop came out and young Hunter Biden didn’t deny that what was on that laptop was his. He didn’t deny that, although some people are saying it’s a Russian setup, but it turned out to be perfectly real. What it showed was that the Biden family was behaving, offering access and influence to plutocrats and their favourite plutocrat, because they were the ones willing to pay the Chinese communists. Now, what did the mainstream media do? What did the social media do when this came out before the final voting and the election? They killed it. Twitter and Facebook closed down the New York Post to cut … But New York Post was one of the few journalist outlets that was willing to broadcast this and mention this.

David Flint (15:55):

And after the election, there was an opinion poll, which showed that the majority of people didn’t know about what was on the laptop. They didn’t know about the laptop story because the press managed to hide it. And the majority of them said that if they had known, they would have voted against Biden. Well, that just demonstrates that the median America, a lot of it owned by corporate interests who were making a lot of money out of slave labour in China and the sort of things that go on in China, and they hoped to make a killing in the Chinese market, they were willing to sacrifice their media ethics to make sure that Trump didn’t get in.

David Flint (16:48):

Because Trump had shown himself to be the first president of the United States since Clinton effectively, unleashed the communist by allowing the communist to join the world trade organisation in the hope that they would follow its rules, which they haven’t. I mean, that’s why we’ve got a tax, I think of about 280% on our barley, because they had questioned the origins of the virus, which we’ve suffered from. That’s the situation-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (17:23):

We suffered from the virus, David, or have we suffered from government restrictions and mismanagement?

David Flint (17:27):

You’re absolutely right. And this really comes to the question we’re discussing. You’re right. This virus is benign in relation to the majority of the people. It’s one of those viruses where we’re fortunate enough to know who the vulnerable are. The vulnerable aren’t the healthy children, they aren’t healthy people. It’s essentially those people who are both elderly and suffering from other illnesses, they’re the ones who are the most vulnerable. And they’re the ones who should have been looked after. You’re so right, we’ve suffered terribly from government decisions, but it hasn’t been the virus that has caused the suffering for the great majority of people. And even in relation to the vulnerable, more people, more vulnerable have died than should have died because of the activities of the government.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (18:28):

I agree entirely but nowhere have I seen that in the media, except for maybe Adam Creighton in The Australian, a wonderful economist who speaks with data and truth. Terry McCrann, similarly. Perhaps if I could give a summary, and then we’ll start the conversation about what triggered me to invite you back so quickly. First of all, you’ve mentioned the politician’s republic, the vote for a republic would’ve been a vote for a politician’s republic to increase people’s power. That’s a wonderful insight that I didn’t realise until you mentioned it to me last week and you’ve repeated it again. You also mentioned that the media gets its freedom, whether implicit or by law, if it presents impartially.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (19:15):

You chaired the no vote group and you saw yourself, shameless biassed back then, I was too young at the time to realise that, but I thought newspapers were objective, but I realised now it was completely biassed. And you mentioned that was across all forms of media, all papers, most electronic media, the ABC, the SPS, the public broadcasters. And you said quite rightly so, there’s only one major media person who was opposed to the republic vote. And that was Alan Jones. How many times have we heard Alan Jones being pilloried for being alone in dissenting from the majority view? Majority of the media view that is.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (20:02):

And I loved your comment about Alan Jones saying, “If you don’t know, vote no.” And I would say that right through almost every topic today. And you pointed out something that was the core to what you said, despite all the political propagandist, the overwhelming weight of political opinion, political experts, which are not really experts, and the media, the people prevailed. And that’s why in my opening comment, I support humans because when we’re aware, we prevail. You then went on to talk about the USA gives us the worst examples of media bias, democrat bias, social media, which is paid to shut down opposition, the media itself. You quite rightly pointed out. And that’s significant, Professor Flint, because the USA is known to be the home of modern democracy.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (20:56):

We could argue Britain is, but in terms of modern expression, the USA thumps its chest about that a lot. And yet the USA now has the worst censorship because it’s hidden censorship. And we know for example, that if the tanks roll in and the army gets out with guns, we know that we’re being controlled. But what you’ve done is you’ve highlighted the hidden control, the subtle control, the invisible control, which is every bit as effective as a gun or a tank. The media has silenced me. They sometimes silence Pauline Hanson. And it’s significant to understand, I don’t know if you mentioned this, but you did mention that the corporates control the media and the media has become a propaganda arm.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (21:40):

That was mentioned to me by someone called John McRay back about 10 years ago, that he showed me quotes from the owners of the media, the Rockefellers, controlled by the banks, the major banks pushing the bank propaganda. And we’ve been under this not just for the last two years of COVID, not just for the last 24 years since the referendum, but we’ve been under this for a hundred years and longer. And you also pointed out that the communist part, Chinese Communist Party controls many of the corporations or the same people who control those corporations are in bed with the Chinese Communist Party to control humans around the world, not just China.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (22:20):

So we are in fact, while not ruled by the Chinese with guns, we are ruled by the corporate globalists with silence and with propaganda. Now, you mentioned, Professor Flint, that in my show two weeks ago when we had a chat, that the media perpetuates the two party system. And it’s really a one party system because the policies are almost identical and we’re given a choice, we think, but in fact, there’s no real choice because we get shafted with the same policies. How is the media perpetuating the two party system that is effectively one party?

David Flint (23:01):

Well, I think we see this, for example, in relation to the Wuhan virus, which the communist wanted us to call COVID-19 and the WHO, which is under their control, agreed to. But they do this because they’ve become the propaganda arm of the politicians. And that means the two party system, which as you write this in many ways is becoming almost one party because like oligopolist in a small market, they’re not competing. In a small market, oligopolists don’t compete on price. They compete on product or brand distinctions, different ways they advertise, for example. And that’s what the politicians are doing. They’re both, for example, for net zero emissions, they have very similar policies on most things, but they make a slight difference by saying one will be harder on China than the other.

David Flint (24:02):

Although both sides demonstrate that some politicians when they retire seem to be able to get very good jobs with the Communist Chinese. I think they’ve become, in many ways, the propaganda arm. And you see this in relation to the virus. Their favourite phrase is doing the right thing or the people have done the right thing. These people are going to do the right thing. We have to do the right thing. The right thing means what the politicians have decided is right. And this is from a group of politicians in the national cabinet most of whom have had no life experience and really don’t know that much about doing the right thing. Because they’ve been so up to their necks in political manipulation that they’ve lost a lot of the ideas of what the right thing is.

David Flint (24:58):

And just take it, for example, just take it at the beginning. They’ve ignored the common sense rule in relation to [inaudible 00:25:06]. Two common sense rules. Firstly, you look after the vulnerable. And if the virus is such that we know who the vulnerable are, and here we do know who they are, you look after them and you let everybody else get on as best they can with their lives. But what do they do? They abandon the vulnerable, the premier of Victoria being the worst there. And they tied down the rest of us as though we were all sick so that we couldn’t go out. We had to stay home. I live near Bondi Beach. The first thing they did was to close the beach. Though anybody with any sense knew that the virus didn’t survive in the sun and the wind, but it was probably the healthiest place to go to. It was the first place they closed. And the second thing that they-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (25:58):

Excuse me, David. Oh, sorry, when you finish this point, we’ll go to the ad break.

David Flint (26:03):

Yes. The second thing they ignored is [inaudible 00:26:07] fundamental rule for any decent constitutional system, that is that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They’ve whittled away all of the controls on the politicians. We’ve had just some minister or the premier deciding on a whim, for example, in New South Wales that they’d closed down the construction industry. They didn’t even have medical advice to do that. She closed down the construction industry for two weeks costing one and a quarter billion dollars and it wasn’t justified. And the reason is these regulations, these regulations are now made by a minister in his office in the middle of the night. Whereas once upon at a time, the regulations were to be submitted for audit by the executive council, the government council, even in colonial terms this was done.

David Flint (27:07):

And the second big thing, even more important was the regulations were subject to parliamentary scrutiny, particularly by the upper house and how fortunate we are to have a senate as we have now, unlike the Canadians who have a weak senate, we’ve got a strong senate because we based it on the American senate rather than the appointed Canadian senate, which is just a political stitch up. And that senate and the upper house in the states, except Queensland, which the way the politicians took to work, the upper houses can disallow the regulations. That’s a very important power. And the politicians know they have a sword of Damocles above their heads when this political system works, but they’ve been whittling this away just like the republic. The weakness in-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (28:00):

Thank you very much. We’ll resume this conversation with Professor David Flint after a minute or so of advertisements. Thank you very much, David.

David Flint (28:11):

Certainly.

Automated (28:11):

TNT Radio’s, Mike Ryan.

Mike Ryan (28:13):

What do you miss the most about being able to, or not being able to practise medicine? What the actual, what it all means to you? Because I mean, it’s overall saying, oh, well he’s got to going to go to court. It’ll be handled legally, but it’s much more than that. It’s your whole life, your whole being. What’s the thing you miss the most about not being able to practise medicine?

Mark Hobart (28:42):

Being part of the community in North Sunshine where I grew up, where I went to school. A community is so important. It’s your connection to everybody else. We’re all connected to each other. We’re connected to each other through love. That is the number one binding force of the universe’s love. And the other force is not love. It’s the opposite, it’s destruction. And that’s what we’re facing.

Mike Ryan (29:23):

Dr. Mark Hobart, truly an honour to speak with you.

Automated (29:26):

Mike Ryan on Today’s News Talk TNT Radio.

Automated (29:31):

We want to show you what’s dangerous about this river, but we can’t. That’s the problem. You can’t see ice cold water, snags like tree branches or strong currents. So in enjoying our rivers, remember where a life jacket avoid alcohol around water, never swim alone and learn how to save a life. Our rivers are beautiful, but more Australians drown here than anywhere else. It’s simple, respect the river. Head to royallifesaving.com.au/respecttheriver for more information

Automated (30:11):

For the news and talk, you can’t hear anywhere else. It’s TNT Radio.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (30:18):

Welcome back. This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, and I’ve got a very intriguing and very expert guest, Professor David Flint. And I’m going to give you a summary now before we resume our conversation with David. David pointed out that the media is pushing the two party system and it’s really one party. It’s perpetuating the two party system. At the War Memorial last week, the week before last, I took part in the service that precedes the opening of parliament for the year. And they call on the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. At the church service before parliament started the next day on Tuesday two weeks ago, they called on the leader of the opposition and the prime minister to take readings from the Bible.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (31:08):

And as professor Flint pointed out, the policies are almost identical. They’re so similar. And so we need to understand who controls the parliament. I’m going to be asking Professor Flint that in a minute. During the week, David, I was in Senate estimates and I asked Senator Seselja a simple question that anybody should have been able to answer. He’s in the government, as you know. And we were questioning the CSIRO, and in that segment, I said to him, “Minister, your party, led by the prime minister, won the election in 2019 based largely on one particular issue.” He said that the labour party was in favour of the UN’s 2050 net zero policy that the Liberal Nationals Party was not, it opposed UN 2050 net zero.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (32:04):

“Where is the evidence for that change in policy? What changed in the science?” And David, I have never seen anyone so uncomfortable. He didn’t look me in the eye once. He looked down, head was bowed. He was squirming in his seat. He was just making up words as he went. Then I said to him, “Let’s go back in time. Tell me the basis of your policy.” And the same endless dribble. And he’s a nice man, Senator Seselja, but he was talking absolute nonsense. He could not tell me the basis of the policy that is now gutting air energy sector, stealing land from properties, stealing property rights from farmers, decimating our manufacturing, controlling our water, locking up our resources all on behalf of the UN.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (32:54):

Then I asked him a simple question, policies should be based upon hard data that shows the impact of a certain amount of a specified, quantified impact of carbon dioxide. What it will do to temperatures? Rainfall. I asked him, “Isn’t that fundamental?” And again, more waffle, looking down in the eyes, head bowed, squirming. They haven’t got anything but they get away with it because as Professor Flint said, the media pushes the two party system, which is really one party and the narrative. And then they come up with slogans, as Professor Flint said, doing the right thing. These politicians are lacking practical experience. Very few of them, none of them have worked for a few years at the coalface, as if literally at the coalface underground, lacking practical experience.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (33:43):

I asked a simple question, Professor Flint, who among the politicians came to Canberra to listen to the people at the protest of where every day Australians came out in the hundreds of thousands? I’ll tell you who. Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, Gerard Rennick, George Christensen. You just pointed out some fabulous points with COVID. They have ignored the fundamentals. They have ignored common sense. They have not looked after the vulnerable. They have betrayed the vulnerable. That’s something I’ve been talking about in the senate and publicly for many months now. Then they tied up or they tied down the rest of the people, the healthy people. They stopped exercise on beach. They stopped fresh air. They stopped access to the sun for vitamin D.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (34:33):

And as you said, Lord Acton said that the power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Regulations being made by the minister, just being introduced in the middle of the night. Professor Flint, one of the things that’s emerged from the response to the virus is that the state and federal governments, labour at state level, liberal at national level have worked together on this. That’s completely opposed to the intent behind our constitution. Isn’t it?

David Flint (35:11):

Yes, we’re supposed to have competition and the states are supposed to take decisions in relation to state interests and the federation in relation to federal interests. But you say right, they do work together. And one of the things the media does, which really irritates me is that they attribute to the politicians the fact that our death rate is lower than that of a number of other countries. This completely ignores the fact that the real reason for that is we are a remote island nation. And like all other remote island nations, we’ll have a lower death rate from this sort of virus. And to attribute that to the politicians is ridiculous.

David Flint (35:57):

But then we get them when they stand up there, the politicians will refer to the medical advice and the journalists just accept that. We never know who the medical advice was from or rarely know it. We never see it so it can’t be tested. We are given glib answers like follow the science. Whereas we know that the scientists are divided on a number of significant issues. And we saw that in relation, for example, to ulcers and Australia went to scientists, received the Nobel Prize because they went against the science view that it was just a disabling condition. It could never be a disease, and they found that it was a disease. And for that, they were given the Nobel Prize. And then you’re told, believe the experts.

David Flint (36:52):

Well, having worked in a law office when I was young, in a law office where you are involved in a case concerning two sides and you’re acting for one side and there’s another people, people acting for the other side, each side has their own experts. Whether they be medical experts or engineering experts. They’re all very well paid. And I’m not saying they act in any way improperly, but they give different views. Experts are divided all the time. This idea that you must believe the experts, which means you must believe the expert that the politicians that are trying to adopt as their view is ridiculous.

David Flint (37:32):

But I think the very worst thing they do, Malcolm, this is this rule against medical treatment, including prophylactic or preventative measures in relation to this virus. It’s the only malady I know of where doctors are instructed to do virtually nothing between somebody catching this virus and really getting a serious case of it, be aware when they start putting them onto a ventilator. But nothing happens in between because they’ve ruled that none of the medical treatments, which have been shown in a number of jurisdiction to be very effective, can be used. And we know also that most of the media won’t mention these things, particularly the social media, because it goes against the interest of big pharmacy.

David Flint (38:25):

And we know that big pharmacy needs under American law, they needed to get approval for their vaccines. They needed to be able to show that there were no preventative measures, which could be taken against the virus. Hence, this campaign to kill off Ivermectin and other. This is not just the magic cure but there a number of things used either to prevent it or to cure it in the early stages. And these proved very effective. Yet in Australia, we’re told that you can have no medical treatment and no serious medical treatment between catching it and really getting a very bad dose when you’re … There’s nothing much they can do if you are in a weak condition. Otherwise, you might get out of it and they put you onto a ventilator.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (39:26):

Well, David, perhaps I could summarise your points again. The media has been silent on the live and the prime minister has repeatedly said, “Australia has no vaccine mandates.” Yet the Morrison, Joyce Federal Government drives the vaccine mandates, and at the very least enables mandates through many means. The Morrison, Joyce government bought 280 million doses of these things. They could easily stop the mandates at the state level by withholding these injections from states that don’t make it optional, but make it compulsory through stealing people’s livelihoods. The federal government indemnified the states. Senator Hanson’s bill could amend that so that the federal government can stop mandated injections.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (40:15):

The states said, this is the fourth point I’m making, the states say that the vaccine mandates are in line with the unconstitutional so-called national cabinet that the prime minister leads. The prime minister, as you’ve just pointed out, his government withdrew the proven, safe, effective, affordable treatment using Ivermectin and various other drugs. And it’s significant, Professor Flint, that you can freely mention Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and alternative natural treatments on this TNT Radio station. But you can’t mention it on any other network apart from podcasts. You can’t mention it on social media without being banned.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (40:58):

The federal government health department provides the data and systems that the state’s access to enforce the mandates. The federal government mandated vaccines in aged care workers. The federal government mandated vaccines in the Australian electoral commission poll workers. They’re mandating it in some defence personnel to inject. They drove the employers to mandate injections, BHP, for example, and they funded ridiculous policies by the premiers of the states. And yet, despite all these things showing completely that the states could not have mandated injections without federal government enabling them to do so, supporting them to do so, the prime minister of this country has repeatedly lied to the people.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (41:47):

“Australia has no vaccine mandates,” he says. That doesn’t get reported in the media, or if it does, it’s done in a positive way that the prime minister says that. And yet at the rally last weekend in Canberra, hundreds of thousands of people were walking up and they were saying he’s a liar. The prime minister is a liar. So we come back to government control and that is only one on side controls the media, and that’s the money side, the corporate side. Professor Flint, do they also control the government?

David Flint (42:25):

Well, I think they have a very strong power over the government. It’s in the interest of government to follow what is in the interest of big pharmacy it seems. You can only judge politicians by their results when they’re in government, not what they say. For example, in education, for example, they say that they’re very interested in children’s education, but the fact is that we know that there’s a very strong Marxist influence in education departments. We know that notwithstanding the increase in funding, which I think is about 40% increase since that was introduced, we know that standards in Australia have fallen more than any other OECD country except perhaps Finland.

David Flint (43:22):

So the more money we’re putting in, the standards are falling and that’s because our education departments are not allowing or not encouraging the teaching of children in the really important disciplines. They’re filling their minds with all sorts of propaganda and Marxist rubbish. Their obsessions, for example, you get some new dogma for example, about gender fluidity or something like that. And that becomes an important issue as we saw in relation to the religious legislation. But as you say, there’s this obsession with vaccines as though it’s the only thing which should be followed. And that’s where the money is. That’s where the very big funds are being made by big pharmacy, instead of things which should be associated with vaccines.

David Flint (44:12):

For example, early treatment, that should be the first thing that they should be following because that would’ve saved lives in relation to the vulnerable. And it’s something which I don’t think we should be considering seriously for children, given that these only have a temporary authorization. We don’t know the long term consequences of some of the things which are being put into children’s bodies. They’re very serious things, which are being done. And the national cabinet has gone along with what a really communist solutions that is lockdowns. Lockdowns don’t work. They regiment the people even more, but they certainly have had no effect in relation to getting rid of the virus because they don’t get rid of the virus. And they’ve resulted in more deaths in Victoria, which had the most serious lockdowns, had more deaths among people from suffering from the virus. But you are so right-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (45:17):

Yeah, go ahead.

David Flint (45:17):

Certainly.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (45:20):

I’d like to interrupt to summarise what you’ve said before getting onto the solutions. Because I know you’re a man of solutions. So let me just summarise what you’ve just said. The media is culpable for serious damage, serious problems in our community. Medicine, it’s enabled deaths because it doesn’t hold the government accountable for its complete obsession with unproven injections and reliance on them. Greg Hunt, the federal health minister has said, “The world is engaged in the largest clinical vaccination trial. These drugs, these injections are experimental. It’s a trial. And we are now talking about injecting them into kids without any assessment of long term consequences.”

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:06):

In the United States you also mentioned that a lot of this is driven by money. In the United States, 70% of American advertising in the media is funded by big pharma. And yet, as you rightly pointed out, the obsession is leading to deaths through the mismanagement of COVID and the application of experimental injections. You pointed out the damage to our educational sector, the 40% collapse in measured outcomes. And yet the manipulation of kids growing at adulthood, children, I should say. You mentioned the early treatment that’s proven affordable, safe, successful around the world. And you also mentioned that lockdowns are effectively a communist solution.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:59):

Journalism, Professor Flint, over the decades, journalists have fought for freedom to tell the story and rights to privacy of sources. Yet, they’ve shown no regard for the freedoms and privacies of the people as you just pointed out. Yet, their duty is to provide, freely tell both sides of the story with accuracy and balance. Who holds them to account? And where do we go to from here? How do journalists restore their reputation? Because at the moment they’re feeding on each other and the people are watching them destroy themselves. But we do need a strong, solid press, don’t we? So what do we have to do now? What are the solutions?

David Flint (47:35):

Well, the solutions I think, are by going to those outlets such as this station where the truth is being presented. That is our best solution. I would not recommend the regulation. You can’t have the regulation of the press because they’re free. And there is some protection from defamation laws, but that only relates to individual reputation and not reputation of institutions and things such as early medical treatment, which is important. So we have the power. We have the power to deal with the media and we have the power to put the right politicians in office. And this is something which Australians must seriously do. They did that in America with President Trump, they got a man in who was obviously going, from what he promised, was going to change the direction of the United States.

David Flint (48:36):

And this had a magnificent effect because the Republican Party is so open in the way in which it pre-selects. And it doesn’t restrict pre-selection to even members of the party, any registered supporter of the party can vote in those pre-selections, which gives tremendous power to people in America. We don’t have that, but we can choose people from other parties or at least give our first preferences to people like yourself. Now, you One Nation, New AP parties, which are talking about this, what you said also about the federal government, I’d like to comment on that briefly.

David Flint (49:18):

The federal government had the power to stop mandated vaccines. And you were quite right, the legislation that you proposed, I think One Nation introduced legislation to that effect that I think was within power. The commonwealth has the power to move in relation to quarantines. It can occupy the field. And that’s the core part of the management of vaccines, the control of quarantines. And I think that the commonwealth should have continued in that first case concerning the West Australian border. It should not have allowed the states to close off their borders, locking down whole states that achieved nothing in relation to controlling the virus.

David Flint (50:08):

And it was most inappropriate, in relation to Australia. The whole real economy should have continued. As you rightly have pointed out in the past, it’s not the politicians who are imposing this sort of thing, lockdowns and so on, who suffer. It’s the people who lose their jobs. It’s the people who lose their businesses. The people who are tied up, they’ve put their savings into some business quite often. They’ve mortgaged their house. And an enormous number of people have been ruined by the activities of the government, who’s only just beginning to start again.

David Flint (50:45):

There was no need to close down vast parts of the economy in Australia to stop this disease. What they should have done was looked after the vulnerable. What they should have done was encouraged early measures and preventative measures, prophylactic measures. If they’d done those things, as the media should have been calling on them to do, we would’ve been in a better situation than we are today. And we wouldn’t have this massive debt, which is going to be carried by the next generation of Australians.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (51:18):

So I’m going to have to summarise now before we end the show, because I wanted to do a summary. You’ve raised some marvellous points. The solutions you’ve said are up to the people. The market, choose the media well. We have a choice as to which media we watch. The media is sweating on that. We see Joe Rogan topping the media ratings in the United States with 11.5 million views of one of his podcasts with Robert Malone. The nearest competitor was Fox News with 3.5 million views. That’s a long way behind. CNN, the propaganda experts in America, around about 800,000 views [inaudible 00:51:59]. Don’t have regulation, that just gives more control to the globalists and to the government.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (52:04):

It’s up to the people through media choice and through political choice at votes. We have the power, you said, Professor Flint. I make a note that pre-selection in the liberal party now on New South Wales is becoming just like labour, fictionally written. You’ve pointed out that the commonwealth government has the power, it just hasn’t exercised it. And you’ve pointed out something that I’ve said repeatedly in the senate, people are paying the price for police stupidity.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (52:30):

The governments and the politicians make the mistakes regardless with no responsibility, and the people pay the price. For goodness sake, people of Australia, wake up. Choose who you listen to in the media with your wallet, follow and vote for politicians who work for you, serve you, and give your preferences at accordingly. Professor David Flint, thank you very much again for yet another wonderful session. I love your practicality, your common sense, your good sense. Thank you so much.

Dan lives with his wife of 25 years and three children on their property approx. 160 km north west of Charleville.  They run about 1000 head of cattle and have Droughtmaster breeders.

Like so many people in Rural Queensland, Dan and his wife Katrina have invested their working life of blood, sweat and tears into purchasing their own Freehold property so as to provide their family’s livelihood by breeding and grazing livestock.

While not one of the most willing students at school, Dan lives by the principles of respect, observing those around him, looking, listening and ‘having a go’ as the means of learning life’s valuable lessons.

Dan’s key interests are, in order of priority, his wife, his children and everything that makes up his livelihood from machinery to animals to the governance of not only his livelihood but the governance of our society as a whole.

Acknowledging the sacrifices made by our forefathers and the selfless conviction of the men and women of our current defence forces, Dan cannot and will not sit back and watch our government throw away our rights and freedoms so hard fought, won and defended by our nation’s most courageous people. Dan has first hand experience when the Constitution doesn’t work for us as it should.  In 2017 he was convicted of six tree clearing offences with the magistrate fining him $40,000 and ordering him to pay costs of more than $72,000.  Later it was dropped to $10,000.  He is going to share his story with me today.

Transcript

Senator Malcolm Roberts (00:05):

Welcome back to today’s news talk, radio TNTradio.live. We’ve just spent an hour with Professor David Flint learning more about Australia’s constitution. In this next hour, I’m going to chat with Queensland’s grazier, Dan McDonald. Now I said of Professor Flint, that he is an expert with international recognition, and international awards, yet he’s a man of the people. He’s one of us. He gets down and dirty, mixes with people in the streets, in rallies, in meetings, he attends functions and speaks knowingly, but also lovingly, with the people.

                Now we have a man who is of the people, but can mix it with the experts, and he’s self-taught. Dan McDonald lives with his wife of 25 years, Katrina and their three lovely children on their cattle property. About 160 kilometres Northwest of Charlottesville. They run about 1000 head of cattle and have drought masters breeders. Like so many people in rural Queensland, Dan and his wife Katrina have invested their working life of blood, sweat, and tears into purchase their own freehold property, so as to provide their families livelihood by breeding and grazing livestock. So he’s used his initiative, done this, they’ve both used their initiative to do this, and they’re try to make a living, which is a purpose; one of the things we have to do in life.

                While not one of the most willing students at school, Dan lives by principles of respect, observing those around him, looking, listening, and having a go as the means of learning life’s valuable lessons. Dan’s key interests are in this order of priority: his wife, his children, and everything that makes up his livelihood from machinery to animals, to governance of not only his livelihood, but the governance of our whole society, as a whole. This man has gone into battle for us all, and what he’s going to talk about affects every single Australian and their children, and our country itself and our country’s future. Acknowledging the sacrifices made by our forefathers, and the selfless can conviction of the men and women of our current defence forces, Dan cannot, will not sit back and just watch our government throw away our rights and freedoms so hard fought, won and defended by our nation’s most courageous people.

                Dan has firsthand experience when the constitution doesn’t work for us, as it should. In 2017, he was convicted of six tree clearing offences with the magistrate fining him $40,000 and ordering him to pay costs of more than 72,000, up for 112,000. Later in an appeal that was dropped to 10,000. Dan’s going to share his story with me today. And I want to remind people, I have eight keys to human progress, the first is freedom and the free exchange. Second is the rule of law. Dan is going to talk to us about the rule of law, because the law is supposed to protect people, not control people. Hello, Dan.

Dan McDonald (03:27):

Good day, Malcolm. How are you?

Senator Malcolm Roberts (03:29):

I’m very well made. What’s something you appreciate?

Dan McDonald (03:33):

Oh, Malcolm, I think the top of that list would be my family, and second to that would be honesty.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (03:40):

Amen. Okay. Dan, let’s get stuck into it. Property rights; tell us what they are and why they’re so important, so fundamentally important to everyone.

Dan McDonald (03:52):

Absolutely. So, Malcolm, we have two different elements here; we have property and we have of rights, and I think it’s important if we just touch on both. Essentially what property is, is anything tangible and intangible that is capable of ownership. So, quite often we have, and being related to land, we can say that’s tangible. It’s something that we can see, we can touch. But of course, we also have elements of property that are intangible; we can’t see them, we can’t touch them, but they certainly exist, and they certainly have a value, and they certainly play a very important role in all our lives. So when we combine the two and we talk about property rights, what whereas essentially doing is talking about our right to use our property. Rights in themself are essentially defined as a power over, or an authority to use, to enjoy, to occupy or to consume.

                If you have a right to something, that is what gives you the authority or the power over that thing. And when we combine those rights with property, essentially, we’re talking about the most valuable element; it is the right to property, that is, I say it again, the most valuable element. If we take rights of use away from any property, essentially it becomes absolutely worthless. We cannot underestimate or overestimate that it is the right of use of property, whether it be a cup of coffee, whether it be a motor car, or whether it be your house and land, it is the right of use of that property that actually affords it value. If we just use a cup of coffee, as an example, if we buy a cup of coffee, the most valuable element that we are purchasing there is the right to consume it. How many people out there would buy a cup of coffee if they did not have the right to drink it? So we can apply that same principle to all forms of property; they all have rights attached, and as I say, it’s usually a right of use a right of enjoyment, a right to consume. So there’s no doubt about it; property rights are extremely important. Indeed, they are the most fundamental element of a free and democratic society.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (06:30):

And just to interrupt, I’m hoping to not disturb your train of thought, but it’s so important that in our federal constitution our forefathers, the inserted Section 51 Clause 31, which basically says that if the federal government interferes with someone’s right to use their property, the federal government must pay them just terms compensation. In other words, if you destroy someone’s, or impair someone’s right to use their property, you must pay compensation, which is essentially you are buying their right to use that portion of their property.

Dan McDonald (07:08):

Absolutely. That’s right. And just to go back there just quickly, and give another example of how, how rights in property can work. We can have a land owner, owner parcel of land, and of course that gives them the absolute rights of use of that land, but then that land owner can of course, lease that property out or rent it out. Now, when someone enters into a lease or rental agreement on a home, they also acquire a right. The right they acquire specifically is the right to occupy. So if someone rents a home, the tenant that’s paying the rent actually holds the right to occupy that dwelling. Once again, that’s a property right; a very clear example of how rights can be owned, and obtained, and held without physically owning the tangible property. The tenant holds the most valuable element of that property when they enter into that agreement by physically owning the right to use that is whatever they comply with the terms of, of an agreement.

                So this is how it works, and this is why it’s so very important. Essentially, Malcolm, we could not have a stable society anywhere throughout the world without having secure property rights; it is absolutely fundamental. When we don’t have them, well, essentially we’re inviting outright anarchy, because we just cannot exist without them. I cannot overstate that. None of us, whether you are a farmer, whether you are a business owner in the city, no matter what you do, every element of your life every day involves the use of an enjoyment of rights, property rights, so, it’s something that we certainly cannot live without.

                When we talk specifically about an impact on, on farming, as you pointed out in your introduction, I’m in the business of farming, a food producer, it is extremely important to have property rights, because it is not actually the land itself that allows us to produce food; it is our right to use the land that allows us to produce food. It doesn’t matter how good our soil is. It doesn’t matter how much rain we get. It doesn’t matter how much fertiliser we use. If we don’t have the right to use our land, we can’t produce anything. So it’s extremely important. And of course, essentially in a civil setting as such, we don’t lose our property. We don’t lose property full stop, because we’re afforded protection by our legal system, supposedly. And I say that for this very reason, that in a civil setting, if someone comes and takes your property, you are able to, throughout our legal system, seek to recover that property, or certainly seek damages for it, if it’s unrecoverable.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (10:34):

So could I just jump in there for a minute because you’ve raised two extremely important points, firstly, a new slant on things, which will help us all; it certainly was new to me: rent. If I go to rent your property, then I am buying the right to use your property without owning that property.

Dan McDonald (10:53):

Absolutely.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (10:54):

So property rights, thank you so much for that clear, succinct example. It reinforces the fact that property rights is about, if you buy something, you have a right to use it. And so it’s not simply the owning of something, but it’s owning the right to use it. That’s very important.

Dan McDonald (11:15):

And that’s why, Malcolm, we need to always remember that rights in themself are property.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (11:21):

Yes. Thank you.

Dan McDonald (11:22):

They’re capable of ownership. As I said earlier, property is anything capable of ownership. And there are many examples where we can own rights. Where rights are owned and it’s no different. If we hire a motor car from a car rental company; when we hire that car, we purchased the right to use that motor car. Very similar to, as we said, with a tenant renting a home, a tenant actually acquires the right to occupy the dwelling. That is the whole purpose of it. So there are elements of ownership, of rights, right throughout everything we do.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (12:01):

And there are protections too, because, I hope we get onto, I’m going to let you just go wherever you want to go. Okay? Please, because you are so knowledgeable and so basic.

Dan McDonald (12:14):

As far as you go talking about protections, Malcolm, that is the most fundamental element of all when we talk about rights, when we talk about property-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (12:21):

But before we get into that in detail, if I, as a landholder, a grazier, destroy my land, and wash the top soil into the neighbouring property, and destroy his or her use of their land, then my neighbour has a right to Sue me for impairing his right to use his property, for stealing his right to use his property. Correct?

Dan McDonald (12:46):

That’s correct, because-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (12:47):

So there are natural protections. Away you go.

Dan McDonald (12:49):

If you cause damage to another party, you are liable.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (12:51):

Yep. So away you go. Now take off.

Dan McDonald (12:54):

So, it’s very important that we have security of property rights. Now, as we know, all throughout the developed world, we have elected governments in our supposed democratic societies, we have elected governments that are effectively administrators, and as you would well know, and I think your previous call had pointed out, effectively governments act as administrators to serve the people, and effectively provide us with security. Okay? So that’s one of the most fundamental elements of any democratic society is a government providing a secure environment for us all to live in. We have to be able to rely on our institutions of government to protect our property. That’s where the buck stops. That’s where our judicial system operates from. So essentially, we have to be able to have trust in government to protect our property. It’s the only foundation upon which any of us could invest or acquire any form of property. However, as I’ll get to a bit later on, in my own case, it was actually the administrator, it was actually government that have taken my property from me. And that, of course, not only does it add insult to injury, it really leaves you in a position where you are totally powerless, when the administrator that you have to go to for justice is actually the same body that’s taking from you, all hope is gone.

                So I’ll just touch on this, Malcolm; if a food producer loses property rights, they’re extremely vulnerable. It’s no different to someone living in a rented house. If a tenant has fully complied with the terms of their rental agreement, yet the landlord, the owner of the property comes along and says, “Well, I’m not happy with you being here today, get out.” Well, of course the tenant becomes extremely vulnerable. They’ve got an absolute reliance upon their right to occupy that dwelling. So in that same context, a food producer must have the right to the use of his land to produce food. If you don’t have the right to use your land, what have you got? How can you operate? Where is the security of your equity? Where is the security to invest your blood, sweat, and tears, if you don’t hold the right to use your land. So the loss of property rights in a farming context is extremely devastating for landholders, but it is also a situation that leaves the vast majority of populations all over the world, vulnerable.

                And as I say that for this reason, we have to, we have to never forget the fact that food producers are a very small sector of our overall population. Just to give a brief example, Malcolm, in Australia, we’ve got just under 26 million people. We have approximately 87,000 farm businesses, and the vast majority of those farm businesses are family operations; they’re husband, and wife and children. We have 65% of our production gets exported. Okay? And ironically, we actually import about 15% of our food consumption in this country. But if we average all of this out, Malcolm, it’s quite clear that 87,000 farmers in Australia feed 130 million people. So essentially you break that down, we’ve got just under 1500 people relying on one farmer to feed them. Okay?

Senator Malcolm Roberts (17:23):

So what were those numbers again? 87,000 farmers provide food for?

Dan McDonald (17:26):

We’ve got 87,000 farmers. We’ve got 26 million people in Australia. Okay? We actually export 65% of our produce, and we also import 15% of our consumption, so if we base a calculation on the calories of food that we produce, okay? And the calories of food that are, on an average basis, consumed by human beings, it’s quite clear that we feed Australian farmers feed 130 million people that is, we feed our own population and we feed a large number of people just over 100 million people elsewhere throughout the world. So we’re

Senator Malcolm Roberts (18:10):

Feeding five times. Yeah, more than that. Yeah, no five times our population. Okay, continue.

Dan McDonald (18:18):

So, you break it down, you’ve got every farm entity feeding 1,494 people. Now, to my way of thinking, and I’m sure most would agree. That’s a fairly vulnerable position for that 1,494 people; they’re reliant upon one farm entity to feed them. You got nearly 1500 people that are solely reliant on one person to feed them, essentially. Every time we see another farmer go out of business or of their productivity, detrimentally impacted, that 1400 people have got to go somewhere else to get their food. Now you can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep working on that trajectory for too long before you certainly have a very vulnerable population across the globe.

                You know, we live in an era at the moment where most times people can go to a grocery store, and they can fill their trolley and go home and they can do it, arguably at a reasonable cost. But of course, let’s not forget that it is only the abundance of supply that both protects, and effectively ensures the sustainability of the population, but an abundance of supply also is what controls the value, the cost. So the more supply we’ve got, the more affordable food is for people.

                To get back to the property rights aspect, we have to remember that in producing that food, we are 100% reliant upon the farmer’s right to use his land. So effectively, all these 130 million people across the globe are fed by Australian farmers, their food security is underpinned, not by the farmer’s piece of land, or how much rain he got, but primarily by the farmer’s right to use his land. If he loses the right to use all or part of his land, he can’t feed anybody.

                So I can find no clearer example to demonstrate just how vulnerable city people are when it comes to their own sustainability. It is 100% reliant upon the farmer having security of the right to use his land. And unfortunately, Malcolm, that is essentially what is missing in this country. That is a major problem that has to be addressed. At some point it has to be addressed. We’ve been losing farmers in this country for decades. We’ve lost 50% of our farmers in the last 40 years. We go forward another 40 years, how many of us will be left? But at the same time, we’re told we’re going to have a growing population.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (21:23):

So, let me take us to the ad break in a few minutes, and we’ll when we come back, Dan, could you tell us your story? What happened? How could that happen? The constitution is there to protect you, what compensation did you receive for the theft of your property rights, the rights to use your property? But let me give our listeners, we’re guests in their company right now, so let’s give our listeners a summary of what you’ve said. The security of property rights is essential. It is the right to use the property that you have a right over. Governments should act as administrators to provide security. But we’ll see, after the ad break, that government has been the thief of your rights to use your land.

                I add here, Dan, the government has three roles: to protect life, protect property, protect freedom. And freedom’s absolutely essential, but so is secure property rights. Government is now the administrator that is committing theft, not protecting people. If a farmer or anyone who has an asset, such as a small business, and this is affecting small businesses right around the country with the government’s capricious restrictions over COVID mismanagement, small businesses have us the right to use this, what they own. If we lose the right to use our land, then you as a farmer, Dan, cannot earn a living. So it becomes a means of shutting down your provision of feeding your family. That is a fundamental human right that you are being denied. It’s also significant that the communists want to take away land and property. That’s one of the first things they do. The World Economic Forum has said, “You will own nothing and you will be happy.” That’s what the plan is right around the world.

                The bankers though, I hope John McCrae is listening here, a wonderful man, he was on our show two weeks ago. We’ll be having John back. He gave me a quote from the Bankers’ Association in America many years ago, “The banks want people to lose their houses, because when they lose their houses, they are at complete control of the major banks.” Dan just told us that Australian farmers feed around 1500 people, each Australian farmer. Now let’s have a look at the restrictions on property rights, and the rights to use our land. Have a look at when Dan comes back with this in mind; all restrictions apart from natural restrictions, like drought, are due to government. We have an abundance of supply from our farmers. Southeast Australia is completely green, producing massive quantities of food after the drought broke, yet, some of the supermarket shelves are bare?

                Why? Not because of a shortage of food, not because of a shortage of supply, not because a shortage of truck drivers, but simply because truck drivers are not able to come to work because of injection mandates, and because of close contact rules, which are completely wrong. They’re completely capricious. So government is acting to control the supply. And I must remind people before we go to the ad: 100% reliance of farmers to use their land is essential for us to feed our bellies, drink a beer, have access to just about everything over to you with the ad break,

Senator Malcolm Roberts (27:39):

And thank you for allowing me into your company with my guest today, Dan McDonald. Dan, you’ve told us the background, the foundation, now tell us what they did to you. The people who are supposed to be protecting us all are the ones who are thieving from us to control us. What happened?

Dan McDonald (27:55):

So Malcolm, to go back to the start of my investing in this big business, I and my wife chose to, to develop a grazing business, a livestock grazing business, and in doing that, of course we needed land upon which to do it. In that process, we sought out to purchase, so we had the absolute rights to the use of freehold grazing land. And that’s exactly what we did; we found some freehold grazing land, and that’s what we purchased against the backdrop of a secure element of property that would be protected at all costs, and we would be able to not only produce food for a hell of a lot of people, but in doing so, we would be able to sustain ourself and our family. So, we bought the land, and said about doing what was necessary to improve it from the perspective of grazing. So, infrastructure like fencing, and water points in the like-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (29:06):

So let me just show you what a keen student I am. When you bought that, you say you bought the land, you bought the land and the right to use the land according to how you and Katrina wanted to.

Dan McDonald (29:18):

Well, essentially, exactly that. And just to go a little bit further there, Malcolm, land right across Australia and, and most developed nations throughout the world is classified into primary land uses. So, you don’t go to the middle of Brisbane to buy a grazing property. Land in cities and towns will either be classified as residential, or commercial, or industrial, and right across Australia it’s like that. And essentially we purchased land that was classified as grazing land. Okay? So ironically, the primary land use for this land, as classified by government is grazing. And of course, in freehold tenure, our most fundamental issue there was buying land that we had the right to use. That’s what we did. And we’ve invested essentially our life’s work into doing that.

                Everything went okay there quite some time, but along the way, of course, when you’re running a grazing business, you’re actually feeding livestock; that’s the whole purpose of your business. And that’s exactly what we did. We just, we used our land to feed our livestock, and everything we thought we were doing was right. And as far as the letter of the law goes, it was right. We hadn’t stolen anyone else’s land. We hadn’t ran our cows onto someone else’s property. We were using our own land. Anyway, along, came the government, and essentially said to us, “Well, hang on, you can’t do the that.” And I said, “Well, what’s wrong? What can’t we do?” “Oh, you can’t use your vegetation to feed your cows.”

Senator Malcolm Roberts (31:10):

When did you buy it, by the way?

Dan McDonald (31:12):

2003.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (31:14):

Thank you.

Dan McDonald (31:16):

So of course, this came as a fairly big shock to myself, and my wife, and my children to have a government body telling us that we could not use our land. And I said, well, hang on a minute. That’s what we bought it for. And ironically, Malcolm, some of the land here that we purchased, we actually purchased from the Queensland government. So it was land that was essentially in what was called leasehold tenure prior to us buying it. We purchased it, and then obviously purchased the lease of it. And then we repurchased through an approval process, the freehold tenure to that land. So that gave us the unimpeded, supposedly, right to use the land. And it was a all done so under the classification of being grazing land.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (32:07):

So, isn’t the selling of something as a con, a confidence trick, so the government are con artists, the government is also misrepresenting something; they’re basically committing fraud.

Dan McDonald (32:22):

Exactly. Malcolm, there is no other the way to describe it. So when we go into a process of purchasing land of any sort, we have a contract. We buy subject to certain terms and conditions, and also, there’s a duty of disclosure there from a selling party. And particularly when the selling party is the government, they have a duty to disclose any rights or encumbrances that they wish to hold over that land. This is the whole purpose of our land, our property law regime that we have in this country, but essentially, government are not complying with that. Government are committing fraud; they are failing to disclose. And I say, deliberately failing to disclose their true intentions.

                If government offered land for sale, and in that process, they disclosed the fact that the purchaser would not obtain the right to use the land, or quite clearly, very few people would want to buy the land. Would they no different to, if you go to a coffee shop and buy that cup of coffee, but you don’t buy right to drink it, well, you’re not likely to buy too many cups of coffee from that shop. So, the government are actually committing fraud. They are failing to disclose they are selling land under that regime. And of course, then it’s not until you physically make use of the land that they’ll then quite happily come along as they did in our case, and prosecute us.

                So, in about 2016 Malcolm, they commenced proceedings against us to prosecute us, essentially under what they called a regime of illegal tree clearing, which in real terms, and as it was certainly adopted in the court, was essentially feeding cows, feeding livestock. We were grazing livestock with our vegetation.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (34:28):

And perhaps I should clarify; I’ve been to your place a couple of times, the trees that the state government alleges you were killing, clearing, were mulga. There’s scrubby bush, they’re borderline calling it a tree.

Dan McDonald (34:47):

Well, that’s correct, Malcolm and-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (34:49):

And cattle love it in the drought. And you bought that property, did you not, because it had some mulga on it because in a drought, it provides all provides very much more security. So you purchased it because of the mulga, and your right to be able to use that mulga?

Dan McDonald (35:05):

That’s right. That’s the feed source, and it’s a renewable feed source, essentially, all we do is effectively prune it to feed livestock, and it grows back again. It grows back very quickly. As a matter of fact, it would be extremely difficult to eradicate it, it grows back so quickly. However, under the government’s regime of land clearing laws, they’ve effectively locked it up as conservation. Just, it’s ironic; we have land that is still classified by government as grazing land. We have a situation where the primary land use is effectively now conservation. Government have implemented a regime across us where we do not now have the right to use our land at all. We physically do not have the right to use it. They will allow us to use certain areas of our land, under very strict guidelines, and other than that, our property is effectively conservation.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (36:11):

So hang on, hang on. You are charged with the responsibility of providing a livelihood. You have the right to use your land, but the bureaucrats in the city of Brisbane and the city of Canberra tell you how to use it. They’re running your farm.

Dan McDonald (36:29):

Absolutely.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (36:30):

That’s communism.

Dan McDonald (36:30):

Absolutely.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (36:32):

And now that you have had the right to use your land stolen from you, that is communism. They basically own it, even though you paid for it.

Dan McDonald (36:42):

If we get into the nuts and bolts, just briefly of how it all come about. I mean, obviously when this matter-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (36:49):

Go for it, we’ve got 17 minutes left.

Dan McDonald (36:51):

Yeah. When this matter came upon, as I sought to obviously investigate and represent myself throughout the court proceedings, and I did so, but the primary thing I wanted to work out, Malcolm, was where this came from, what was the root cause of the fact that I had had my primary element of property stolen from me. And essentially, that all came down to the federal government. The regime itself of taking white land was implemented by the Queensland state government. It fundamentally came from the coercion and pressure of the federal government, as it done across many states throughout Australia, but there was certainly no state more heavily impacted than Queensland. And primarily, the whole goal of the federal government’s taking of our property and locking it up for conservation was all about securing carbon credits to go into this ridiculous emissions trading type regime we now have being implemented across the world.

                So, effectively, instead of government coming along and paying me for the property that they wished to acquire, which would’ve been consistent with the constitution, they effectively stole it, by way of regulation, and that’s the situation we are now in now. And as I said earlier, that’s been a devastating impact to myself, my family, but it’s also a detrimental impact across the broader population, not only of Australia, but the world. This is not just my own property that’s impacted by this; it’s right across Australia, it’s certainly right across Queensland. And the loss of production that comes from that is profound. And essentially, that loss of production will only continue to increase, as in the productivity is declining, of our land or all the time, and there’s nothing we can do about that.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (38:57):

Okay, we’ve just heard from Professor David Flint, one of the world’s best and Section 51 Clause 31 of our federal constitution says that wherever the federal government interferes with someone’s rights to use their land, their property, they must be paid just terms compensation. What exactly did they do? Why did they do it? Without paying compensation? And how did they get away?

Dan McDonald (39:29):

Malcolm, the federal government got around it by actually getting the states to do the dirty work. You know, states were coerced financially into enacting the appropriate legislation that would effectively acquire the property in question for the federal government. And that’s the exact mechanism they used to avoid compensating anybody. No one’s been compensated; we were certainly not compensated at all. The most valuable element of our property was stolen from us, and we’ve never been offered 1 cent of compensation. So that’s the mechanism they use. States have their own constitutions. Interestingly enough, whilst there’s no specific provision for states to compensate when taking property, it is actually embodied within the state’s constitution, and it is also embodied in the state’s legislature. They do have legislation that says, if they’re taking property, they must pay fair compensation. But of course they refuse to do it. So-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (40:38):

So the state government-

Dan McDonald (40:39):

The situation we are in, and somehow that’s the environment within which we’re expected to produce food.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (40:47):

So, so let me just give the people who have us as guests in their present company, some details. Because I first learned about back around 2008, ’09 ’10, something like that. We had the UN Kyoto protocol, which came in in 1996. That was the same time John Howard’s government, and John Anderson’s national party government came into, into power in Australia. So the Howard-Anderson liberal national government said, “We will not sign the UN’s Kyoto protocol, but we will comply with it.” Now they had a choice they thought, “To comply with that. We will have to shut down power stations, reduce car travelling, reduce industry.” And John Howard’s government realised that was not going to be accepted by Australians, and rightly so. So, they concocted the idea, and the UN blessed it, that what we could do is stop the farmers’ rights to use their land, stop them clearing the land that they bought. And in that way, they would save the trees and absorb carbon dioxide. Forget for a moment that grasslands absorb more carbon dioxide, and forget for a moment that it’s all crap anyway. Just forget about all of that.

                So then they had a problem. “Okay, so now we’ve protected our power stations from the UN, we’ve protected our cars, our industry from the UN, how do we steal it from the farmers? Because we have to pay just terms compensation, and that would be a couple of hundred billion dollars. Okay, so what do we do? Oh, I know. The states, they don’t have to pay compensation. It’s advisable to, but they don’t have to, so we’ll do deals with the state governments.” At the time in 1996, and I’ve seen this document, another property owner showed it to me. An agreement was started between the federal and state governments. At the time, the Prime Minister signed it on behalf of the federal liberal national government. The premier of Queensland signed it on behalf of the National Party government. At the time in 1996, Rob Borbidge was the State Premier. All the officials who signed this were either members of the National Party or members of the Liberal Party. Three from federal, three from state of Queensland.

                And later on, that was an understanding that they would comply with the federal request to curtail, to steal farmer’s rights to use their land. Correct me if I’m wrong here, anywhere Dan, and then-

Dan McDonald (40:47):

No, you’re spot on, Malcolm.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (43:47):

And then, when Peter Beattie came to power, the labour government in Queensland in 1998, the rubber started hitting the road. And Dan bought his property in 2003 with no understanding of this, no disclosure from the owners of the land, the Queensland state government.

Dan McDonald (44:04):

Absolutely.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (44:04):

Then when he started using it, he was penalised for doing so. Now it’s very important that people understand Queensland’s state [inaudible 00:44:16], the parliament entry record includes in its records letters from John Howard, the Prime Minister, federal liberal Prime Minister to Peter Beattie, the State Labour Premier saying basically, “Please stop farmers clearing their land, for the purposes of the UN Kyoto protocol.” And Peter Beattie responding saying that they would do so for John Howard’s governments to compliance with the UN. The similar thing happened in New South Wales and Bob Carr, I think he was in Environment Minister at the time, but he was on YouTube. I’ve seen it. He was gloating, laughing, saying that he stole farmers’ rights to use their land, so that the Howard government could comply with the UN’s Kyoto protocol. And what happened was John Howard’s government, the Howard-Anderson liberal national government went around the constitution deceitfully to steal farmers’ rights to use their land. Is that not correct?

Dan McDonald (45:22):

That is absolutely correct. So, the primary security mechanism we had to protect our land has been totally ignored. And of course, government acting as the primary administrator, yeah, they’ve just totally ignored it. And, and essentially we don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s a fundamental issue that will continue to play out for a number of years. And I think I’ve highlighted the vulnerability of the greater population. Malcolm, let’s never forget that besides water, food is the most valuable commodity on this planet.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:06):

Oh, hang on, hang on, also oxygen. Well, and now they want to tax our carbon dioxide that we exhale.

Dan McDonald (46:14):

We’d like to hope that we can continue to breathe without having to pay a tax.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:17):

But they’re taxing it.

Dan McDonald (46:19):

The most valuable on the planet, and the only protection, right? The only protection for consumers comes from an abundant supply, which stems from secure property rights. We are losing our property rights, and effectively, we are now losing our productive capacity.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:41):

Thank you. Thank you. This goes to other areas as well. There is a grazier, or at least he used to be a Grazer near Okie, which is an army defence base. It’s got an army Air Force squadron there, and they have to use PFAS chemicals well, they don’t have to, but the government chose to use PFAS chemicals for firefighting. That PFAS is now polluting the in underground water. It’s destroying the soil so much so I won’t go into the details now, but the Defence Department, after doing this to David [Jefferies 00:47:23] and Diane [inaudible 00:47:23] property, does not pay compensation. The state government under Campbell Newman, I think, liberal government, I can stand be corrected, but I’m pretty sure it was Liberal National Party government under Campbell Newman, took the water rights from David Jefferies and Diane [inaudible 00:47:41] with no compensation. Water is essential for farming. And then John Howard’s government, John Anderson’s government stole the farmer’s property rights before that. And so, the rights to use their land. So, our food production is really threatened. And this is all about control of land, is it not, Dan?

Dan McDonald (48:07):

Absolutely Malcolm. Absolutely. And look, let’s just never forget the fact that rights are property, and rights are always owned by somebody. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about rights to use land, to drink a cup of coffee, to drive your motor car, or indeed rights to breathe oxygen, those rights belong to somebody, okay? So, your rights are your property. All of us own property, we all do. Don’t think you need to own something tangible to own property. Your rights to breathe, your right to choose what you do with your body.,Those rights are your property. You own them. Nobody else, no one else has the right to them. They’re yours. And they must be protected. Unfortunately, this is the biggest downfall of our society and our government at the moment; our rights are not being protected. Indeed, if anything, they’re being totally denigrated and decimated by government.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (49:11):

Well, as I mentioned earlier on governments have three roles: protect life, protect property, protect freedom. The government in your case has hurt all three. They’re not protecting life; they’re creating a woody weed monoculture that is destroying life. They’re destroying your opportunity to provide a livelihood for your family. They’re destroying your rights to use your property. They are stealing your freedom in the name of protecting the environment, but really in the name of the United Nations to control land. We can see it in native title legislation; the land was taken from some people, and handed back to the Aboriginals we were told, but the aboriginals can’t use it. It was stolen to lock it up. Murray–Darling basin, more legislation that the Howard-Anderson government introduced in 2007 was done to do exactly the same thing. It’s to steal the right to use the land. And in Dan’s case, it was done without compensation. Is there anything you’d like to say; we’ve got about two minutes left before I have to wrap it up, Dan.

Dan McDonald (50:31):

Malcolm, I’d just say that we’ve got to remember the fact, and I would say that you spoke then of the impacts to people like myself, the impacts to farmers trying to generate a livelihood. Malcolm, I would contend that the impacts are far greater for the vast population. Because as I pointed out, every farmer is feeding almost 1500 people. The greater impacts of all of this are on the vast population. They haven’t seen it yet, but there’s one thing for sure, they will. The only protection that consumers have is abundant supply, which stems from our secure property rights. That’s where it all comes from. We cannot afford to have rights in any way, shape or form just denigrated, and not secured. It’s the fundamental pillar, fundamental foundation of our very existence.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (51:32):

So my eight keys to human progress, number one is freedom, because that’s where you invent, you initiate, you exchange ideas, you exchange concepts. Number two is the rule of law, so that what you earn, you keep, and your neighbour can’t steal it from you. Number three is a constitutional governance that provides continuity, so that provides security; a stable environment. Number four is secure property rights. And Dan’s explained that, and shown us how he’s fought to try and get them back, and failed. Dan, it is so important, a true liberal in terms of a Liberal Party, a true liberal says there is nothing more sacrosanct apart from the right to life, than the right to secure property rights, yet it’s the liberals and the nationals who stole them.

Dan McDonald (52:33):

Yes, that’s right, Malcolm. The fact are that that over the last 20 years, a little over 20 years now, the most detrimental impacts, and policy directions in this country have came from the supposedly conservative side of government, the Liberal National Party, it is the coalition at a federal level that have driven this all the way.

Professor David Flint AM is an Emeritus Professor of Law.  He read law and economics at Universities of Sydney, London and Paris. After admission as a Solicitor of the NSW Supreme Court in 1962, he practised as a solicitor (1962-72) before moving into University teaching, holding several academic posts before becoming Professor of Law at Sydney University of Technology in 1989.

Professor Flint is the author of numerous publications. His publications include books and articles on topics such as the media, international economic law, Australia’s constitution and on Australia’s 1999 constitutional referendum. He was recognised with the award of World Outstanding Legal Scholar, World Jurists Association, Barcelona, in October 1991.

He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1995.

So David is an expert in constitutional law and I am going to chat about with him about Australia’s Constitution – a document that most people never give a second thought to.  Over the last couple of years, as we have watched our freedoms being eroded, references to the Constitution have reached a level of popularity equivalent to “new best seller”. 

The Constitution is also being misused and mis-referenced and there are a whole lot of crazy stuff going on in the name of the Constitution.  David is going to help me make sense of it all.

Senator Roberts also interviewed David Flint a second time, expanding on these topics and discussing others.

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

You’re with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Today’s News Talk, TNT.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (00:05):

Thank you for having me as your guest in your car, your lounge room, your men’s shed your kitchen. It’s indeed an honour all over the world to be with you today. There are two themes to me and my show, freedom specifically versus control, and it’s basic for human progress and people’s livelihood. And the second theme is personal responsibility and the importance of integrity. That’s basic for personal progress and people’s livelihoods.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (00:35):

So we have three aims for the show in the terms of direction and tone. I just let you know, now that I’m under apologetically fiercely, pro-human. I’m tired of the media and the politicians ragging on humans. And I’m going to tell the truth about humans and humanity. I’m proud to be one of our planet’s only species capable of logic and loving care. We’ll be positive. We will certainly deal with what’s wrong with politics. But we’ll also deal with what’s needed in politics. We’ll deal with what’s wrong with politicians and what we need in politicians. We’ll deal with what’s wrong with the media, as well as what’s needed in media. We’ll get to the core issues, what’s and all to develop solutions. We’ll cover the human aspects, the strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, failings highlights, and what makes people real.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (01:24):

The second basic aim is to be data driven and factual, truthful and honest. And the third thing I’ve been given and that I comply with and why I’ve been invited to compare this show is to speak out, to be blunt and will certainly be that. Hubert Humphrey who lived from 1911 to 1978, served as the United States vice president from 1965 to 1969. And he said, and think about this as we remember that a private company is locking down private citizen in an age care facility. He said, “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the Dawn of life the children, those who are in the Twilight of life the elderly, those who are in the shadows of life the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Senator Malcolm Roberts (02:20):

Well, think about our society in Australia and growing around the world. This week in the news, there were stories continuing regarding age care residents being literally locked because residents and staff have COVID. In some cases, apparently there’s no COVID, but they have been locking down anyway. So today I have two very impressive guests. First up, I have the privilege of talking with Professor David Flint, and this man is not only an expert, he’s a wonderful person. Professor David Flint order of Australian medal is an Emeritus Professor of Law.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (02:57):

He read law and economics at universities of Sydney, London, and Paris. After admission as a solicitor of the New South Wales Supreme Court in 1962, he practised as a solicitor for 10 years before moving into university, teaching, holding several academic posts before becoming professor of law at Sydney University of Technology in 1989. Professor Flint is the author of numerous publications. These include books and articles on topics such as the media, international economic law, Australia’s constitution.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (03:30):

And on Australia’s 1999 constitutional referendum. He was recognised with the order of world outstanding legal scholar. I’ll say that again, world outstanding legal scholar. The World Juris Association Barcelona in October 1991, he was made a member of the order of Australia in 1995. So David’s an expert in constitutional law, and I’m going to chat with him about Australia’s constitution. A Document that most people never give a second thought to. Over the last couple of years, as we have watched our freedoms being eroded references to the constitution have reached the level of popularity equivalent to the new bestseller.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (04:12):

My office is handing them out will very, very frequently. The constitution is sadly also being misused and misreferenced. And there’s a whole array of crazy stuff going on in the name of the constitution. David’s going to help me make sense of it all. Now importantly about David he’s one of the world’s most eminent legal scholars, and professors, in academics, but more importantly he’s one of the people. This man you’ll see him at social functions, gatherings with speakers speaking in the street, he speaks at rallies.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (04:49):

He is truly a wonderful human being. And to give you context, there are eight keys that I have for human progress. The first is freedom. The second is the law rule of law. And the third is the constitution to provide continuing ongoing governance and succession. The purpose of law is to protect people, not control people. So welcome David.

Professor David Flint (05:16):

Well, thank you very much. That is a very kind introduction and I’m honoured to be on your programme.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (05:23):

Well, it’s a pleasure having you here and we’ve met a few times in the past. What is it… David, before we start what is it… Tell me something you appreciate.

Professor David Flint (05:33):

Well, listening to what you said. I do appreciate integrity, but I also appreciate common sense because common sense seems to be escaping so many in public life these days. And I suspect that goes back to belief, to strong belief in principles and a commitment by those in public life towards the national interest and not their personal interest. And I think there’s a lot of that missing today. And not only in Australia.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (06:06):

I think it’s rife in the Western world where there’s something afoot and it’s beyond our national borders, David, but we can see what’s going on. The governments and the parliaments, state and federal level. Their aim is not to control the virus because clearly they have failed at that. Other countries have succeeded in that and the recipes are simple, but the aim is not to control the virus, the aim is to control the people. And yet, we have a constitution to protect us. What is the constitution? What’s its purpose, role? Why is it significant and why is it failing?

Professor David Flint (06:46):

Well, I think we have to remember that we were already self-governing before we entered into our constitution. By the middle of the 19th century, the British had given us self government. We were still part of the empire, but we were governing ourselves with our own system of government and they gave us the one that they knew that is the Westminster system in contrast to the American system. Instead of having an executive who’s independent of the other two powers, we have an executive which is controlled by the lower house, must be responsible to the house of representatives.

Professor David Flint (07:26):

And ours is a collective executive, unlike the American, which is essentially an individual or president, ours is a collective like the British always responsible to the house of representatives and liable to lose office. If they lose a vote or lose the confidence of the house of representatives. Now that’s a good system. It works well. And it has been exported. I think between the American and the British, there’s not much difference except a difference way of dealing with the problem of government.

Professor David Flint (08:01):

And the essential problem of government was set out by Lord Acton. A great English peer and historian who stated an essential principle. And that goes with the nature of man. And that is that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If there’s a lesson in government, that’s the lesson because there’s Madison and all that. One of the great American founding fathers said, man is not perfect, and that’s why we need government.

Professor David Flint (08:38):

But we can’t give if absolute power, there must be checks and balances. The Americans have it in their constitution, we’ve got it in ours. But what our constitution was essentially, was a document to bring six self-governing countries, states, there were still self-governing colonies to bring them together into one country that was its purpose.

Professor David Flint (09:08):

There’s a constitutional system, and then there’s a federal constitution. The constitutional system is wider some of it is not as guaranteed as in the constitution. For a definition of constitution I think one of the very best definitions given by Berlin Broke in England a few centuries ago, in which he said a constitution is that body of laws, customs, and institutions by which the people have agreed to be governed. That assembly of laws, customs, and institutions by which the people have agreed to be governed. So it’s the people who are the essence of this. One of the really great things that happened when our six colonies decided to federate was that in the course of that, it was firstly, that was the process.

Professor David Flint (10:10):

When we first had a convention appointed by the state parliament, it met together, they drew up a constitution. And then when it was sent back to the sixth state parliament, they all bickered among themselves, tried to do it again. And there was a conference held at a place called Corowa, which was on the border of New South Wales in Victoria. Important in those days, because we had tariffs between the colonies. If you wanted to transfer goods from one colony to the other, you had to pay a tax. And that of course was inimical to forming one country.

Professor David Flint (10:50):

People met at Corowa was a private conference, a conference of people. And they came up with a solution to the problem of overcoming the politicians, and getting a constitution which could unite this country, the first continent of the world to be formed into one country. So they met in Corowa a man there called Sir John Quick, who’s not remember today, no school child wouldn’t know anything about him, but he came up with a proposal which was adopted by the conference.

Professor David Flint (11:25):

And that was the future conventions should instead of being appointed by the state or colonial parliament, they should be elected directly by the people. The second part of his proposal was that when the convention had decided on a constitution, on a draught and sent it out for discussion by the people, by the six colonial parliament, it would then come back to the convention. They’d settle the final form, and then the way of getting it approved would be to have referendums in every colony.

Professor David Flint (12:15):

So we had six referendums. New South Wales was proved to be a little difficult so it had to be done again, but eventually it was all passed. It was the people who agreed to the constitution and because they had that model in it, they put in a vital part of the constitution. In fact, the prime minister of South Australia as the premiers used to be called Charles Kingston, wanted to introduce into the constitution, not just having a referendum, not just require a referendum for changing the constitution, but also introducing more control over the politicians so that the people could in relation to any new legislation, stop that legislation. If they petitioned for a referendum and the people in that referendum decided they didn’t want that piece of legislation.

Professor David Flint (13:19):

So he was going to introduce much more of what we call direct democracy. America, Australia, Britain, we’re all representative democracies. We elect people to represent us. And then the past laws on our behalf. In Switzerland, and in later years in parts of the United States and Canada, they’ve introduced more direct democracy. And what that means is that the politicians are much more accountable to the people than they are in a pure representative democracy. There’s a Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of every politician, which is the ideal. I know you won’t like that Malcolm.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (14:11):

No, no. No, no. David, I love that idea.

Professor David Flint (14:15):

You’d love it. Good. And it’s wonderful because you are a good politician, but there are not many who follow, who do what the people want. And if the politicians did something which the people don’t like, the idea is, well, they could by petition ask for a referendum to decide whether that should happen. To take it a step further they could even have a referendum in which they propose their own legislation, which then has to be adopted.

Professor David Flint (14:50):

Now, some people say that won’t work, it works very well in Switzerland, every three months, every three months, they have a number of referendums, which the people propose and being a federation, they proposed at the central level, the federal level they’re also propose is at the state level, they call them cantons at the state level. But also at the municipal level, the local government level. And you don’t have to vote if you don’t want to.

Professor David Flint (15:21):

It’s not compulsory as in Australia, but it does mean that everybody can have a say and the people can make decisions, which doesn’t prove the quality of government and certainly improves the quality of politicians. So we have a federal constitution, and those parts which essentially relate to creating a single country. Those can only be changed by the federal parliament proposing referendum and the people then agreeing to that. But not everything is covered, not everything in that constitutional system is covered by that.

Professor David Flint (16:00):

And two things which are not covered in the constitutional system came out very much during the crisis over the pandemic. And this was that most of the decisions the politicians were made on the quite often on the spur of the moment too often for political reasons, rather than genuine health reasons. And they were made by way of regulations. That is by the executive government quite often just by a minister. And that was never envisaged to work that way.

Professor David Flint (16:47):

And this was done without any parliamentary scrutiny. Even in colonial times we had two checks and balances on the making of regulations, which seemed to have been whittled away. One was that for important regulations to be made, these had to be done by the governor in the executive council. The governors in Australia is appointed by the crown on the recommendation of the local premier or the federal government. But the role of the governor or the governor general is as a sort of auditor to see all the [inaudible 00:17:33]in the two he’s crossed that all the proper details are there before regulation is adopted and it’s adopted properly.

Professor David Flint (17:43):

Instead of, as for example in New South Wales, there’s a moment in New South Wales, one of the Australian states where during the pandemic, the premier that’s the first minister, the prime minister of the state. The premier decided suddenly that we should close down the building industry. It was closed down for two weeks until there was enormous amount of outrage over it. But that cost $2 billion put a lot of people out of work, stopped all building in the cities. And even the bureaucratic medical advisor said, “Well, I didn’t advise that, there were no health reasons for that. It was just that the premier thought this is a good idea at the time.”

Professor David Flint (18:36):

Now that should have gone to the executive council, it should have been put to the governor who wouldn’t decide on the merits. The governor would just make sure that all the documents there, the argue were there. And most importantly, that this was in power because the regulation about closing the building industry was being made under health legislation. And surely there would have to be documents there supporting the case for some health reason to do that. But in addition to having the executive council, what we thought of, and this was in colonial times. Wat we thought was also an important check and balance was that the two houses of parliament and all states except Queensland in Australia have two houses and governments rarely control the upper house.

Professor David Flint (19:31):

The two houses of a parliament exercised close scrutiny over regulations. They call for evidence. They call the minister before them to explain why this regulation was made. And they have a power of disallowance governments, as I say, rarely control the upper house. And if the cross bench and the opposition joined together, they can quite often get a majority. And a lot of the excesses might have been stopped in the upper house after a proper scrutiny. But those two things, both of those two things disappeared during this crisis. And quite often, the power to make regulations for health was abused.

Professor David Flint (20:24):

In what lawyers would call misfeasance in public office. The trouble with the laws, you would know Malcolm is it takes a terribly long time for a case to come on. If you want to argue that the government has exceeded it’s powers in making regulation, it can take years. A few years ago, we had a ban on the export of live cattle to Indonesia. There were complaints that in some abattoirs in Indonesia, the cattle were being treated cruelly. So the minister adopted a regulation banning cattle to those abattoirs were ones where there might be inhumanity to the cattle. They weren’t being treated properly. But then a few days later, because of pressure from the left, from the ABC and other sources, the minister issued a second regulation.

Professor David Flint (21:32):

And that was to totally ban all export of cattle from Australia. That was done suddenly, it ruined farmers, it ruined people working for farmers, it ruined people working the ports. People lost their jobs. Those people who suffered were indigenous people. We have a great concern in Australia about the indigenous people. They also suffered all done suddenly, and they all decided to assume about this. It took almost 10 years to get together the facts, get together a case and get a ruling by the judge who found that there was in fact misfeasance in public office that the minister went too far.

Professor David Flint (22:21):

Now, damages are being worked up, but guess who pays the damages? Not the minister he’s in retirement. He’s got other jobs, no doubts, consultancies, and so on. He’s living well. The government’s living well. When the damages are worked out, it’ll be the poor old taxpayer who’ll pay the damages, but it took a long time for that case to come on.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (22:44):

David, can I interrupt you there for a minute, please? Well, actually we’re going to have to go to an ad break. This is wonderful. It is absolutely wonderful. What I would like to do before going to the ad break is to summarise for our listeners and then go to the ad break and come back and let you continue. And I’d like to get onto a couple of specific things after we come back. For now my summary is that you mentioned Madison and you mentioned that man is not perfect.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (23:13):

And Jefferson recognised the failings of humans. And he recognised we need to protect individuals in government, in Congress, in parliament, from those failings, because everyone has them. The second thing is that you have made it very, very clear. The core of the whole parliamentary process should be the people. You’ve also said that there is a need for a solution to overcoming the politicians. You’ve also said that it was the people who agreed to the constitution. You’ve also said that it’s the politicians who must be accountable to the parliament and that they aren’t.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (23:56):

You’ve also said… Implicitly, sorry, I’m going to extend what you said here. Leaders, in my opinion are servants. There is so much material you are raising that I would like to invite you back now for a second show sometime in the future, if you could do that. But leaders are servants. Whether it be in business, corporations, clubs, parliament, football clubs, the community leaders go and listen to people and then develop a vision. And then they have to convince people that their vision is the best solution. If the people believe it is they will follow.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (24:33):

The whole of this COVID nightmare, this mismanagement has been atrocious in Australia. The whole thing is about control of people not serving the people. This is not… And the leadership has not been about leadership, it has been about coercion and forcing sometimes brutally and inhuman immoral ways. You’ve mentioned that there’s a lack of parliamentary scrutiny. I couldn’t agree more. David, this is echoing throughout the west because the west is under people now who want to control the people and it’s happening in the west. And perhaps that’s for another discussion in the future.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (25:12):

But I do want to finish with the words of Jeannette Young. She was chief health officer for Queensland during most of this mismanagement. She admitted to her credit that as chief health officer, she was responsible only for people’s physical health. The premier is a really guilty one here in Queensland and right throughout the country, because the premier abdicated, she said, “It’s all about physical health.” Well, that is complete rubbish. It is about people’s economic health now and in the future. You mentioned the construction industry in Victoria being brought to its knees for no valid reason. She also ignored the premier up here, ignored people’s mental health. They did nothing to do that. And they made it far, far worse, all to control people.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (26:06):

And now you’ve told us how suing parliament to prove malfeasance takes a decade. And that’s because the damn parliamentarians are not doing their job. And you finished with one key statement. Always the people pay the price. And that’s what makes me sick because I’ve noticed this time and time and again. The government stuffs it up. The parliament fails to hold them accountable because they’re both working together and the people pay the price. So let’s go to an ad break now and come back and listen more to professor David Flint.

Speaker 1 (26:44):

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This is the Malcolm Robert show on Today’s News Talk radio-TNT.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (28:40):

Welcome back. And thank you for having me as a guest along with professor David Flint, as a guest, wherever you are. Professor Flint has just given us a very, very comprehensive, yet succinct summary of the constitution in Australia. Professor Flint, before we move on to you’ve identified some problems in our constitution before we move on to discussing some of this solutions, perhaps you could deal with some questions on something that is at the moment, occupying a lot of hype, particularly on social media, regarding people serving papers to public officials under the banner of the wait for this, the international court of common law in the high hope that we can restore our freedoms. What is the common law courts?

Professor David Flint (29:31):

Well, the international court of common law or something I would suggest when people receive these documents, they should look up. They should Google it because I regret to say it doesn’t exist. The top court in Australia is the high court of Australia. There’s no such court above the high court of Australia. In fact, such a court does not exist and people are being misled by this. I can understand there’s a great need for change. And I don’t agree with all of the decisions of the high court. I disagree with a number of them, but one has to accept them because those are the decisions we have, but what we have to do rather than being way laid by something, which doesn’t exist.

Professor David Flint (30:21):

These documents concoct a court which has no presence. And you’ll notice that quite often, there are not many names on it of judges whom you could check on as to whether they exist. These documents relate to something that somebody is creating for their own purposes. And I can understand people feeling upset and dissatisfied with the system. And there’s a very full reason for this as I’ve quite often said it’s hard to think of any one problem confronting Australia, probably many other countries, hard to think of any one problem confronting Australia, which is weren’t created by politicians has not been made significantly worse by them.

Professor David Flint (31:06):

And we have to have a system which overcomes that. Australia is in a particularly poor position because in Australia, we have a situation where a rigorously controlled two-party system has been captured not by the members, but by cabals of power brokers who control pre-selections. Who are making quite often a lot of money out of government transactions. It is much more controlled in Australia, for example, than in the United Kingdom. Just take for example, question time in the house of representatives and compare it with question time in London, at Westminster.

Professor David Flint (31:49):

At Westminster, it works properly, real questions asked. In Australia questions asked from the government side are written by the whips, the officials in the party, the ministers know of them in advance. And they say, “Thank you for the question without notice.” And they know it’s not a question without notice. It is a choreographed third rate theatre, unlike the situation, in west minister, where quite often you get it in the house changes among the party members who just cannot abide with what their government is doing for example-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (32:28):

Can I jump in for a minute, please Dave?

Professor David Flint (32:30):

Sure.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (32:32):

In fact, members of the Labour party, the Liberal party, the National party have told me that question time is theatre. Much of parliament is theatre. And I sit back, I’ve never yelled out in parliament. And I sit back and I look at these monkeys and I think they are showing so much disrespect to the people, perhaps before we go on to the changes necessary. So what you’re saying about these, the international court of common law is that it’s not real. So who are the sheriffs? The judges that are mentioned are they self-appointed?

Professor David Flint (33:09):

Well, do they exist? There are names there. Sometimes there are names. Sometimes there are no names, but do they exist? Are they real people? And what is the purpose of this? People are being misled, unfortunately. And the solution is very simple as to ascertain whether this is real. Do a Google search or take it to a lawyer and say, “Well, can this be progressed?” And the lawyer will now tell you, “Well, this is not a real document. Quite often as a nice seal on it, but it’s not a real document.” And I cannot understand the purpose of this. We have a problem, a serious problem as this is not the solution. I think that if I may go onto the solution, the solution is-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (33:58):

Prof, before we do it, just a couple more questions on the specifics, please David.

Professor David Flint (34:01):

Certainly.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (34:01):

So someone’s put a lot of effort into creating these documents. What do you think they hope to achieve? And is it an act of desperation and can they get away with it?

Professor David Flint (34:09):

No.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (34:10):

They claim to be charging people under fake court orders.

Professor David Flint (34:14):

Well, you’ve got the declarations that they found a number of governors and premiers and the prime minister guilty of treason. And others, guilty of misprision of treason that is of hiding treason or letting people get away with treason. Now that’s a very serious offence that would involve life imprisonment in Australia, along with the death penalty but’s very serious. These just do not exist. There have been no such trials. There are no such courts. It is being run for some purpose, perhaps it’s somebody using this to try and get votes, to get into parliament. We don’t know what it’s all about, but it is not true. A few years ago, there was a similar thing where, because the government is registered on the financial markets in New York and it has the state as a corporation.

Professor David Flint (35:14):

This led to a great debate that the government had turned itself into a corporation. That the wrong seal was being used because the seal had changed. That the queen’s title had become the queen of Australia by legislation, which is perfectly proper. All of these were pointless, and they would’ve carried no water in any competent court. And it was very difficult to see for what purpose this was being undertaken? People have to do something about the serious problems that we just lived through, but they won’t do it by being sidetracked by this nonsense.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (35:53):

So these people are essentially misleading for potentially political purposes. Well as significantly they’re wasting politicians time. They’re wasting the public’s time. They’re wasting the people’s time. They’re diverting valuable attention, time, resources, and cruelly. They’re giving false hope.

Professor David Flint (36:15):

That’s the worst thing.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (36:17):

And to me, I know that a simple definition of fraud is the presentation of something as it is not for personal gain. So if people are doing this for political purposes and to mislead people and to scrounge votes, then this is fraud. And that’s very, very hurtful fraud.

Professor David Flint (36:34):

It is. It’s because people are being lulled into believing that there is a simple solution and there’s no such solution. This is fabricated. And as you say, this is a fraud and it should be ignored because it is such a fraud. And if the police are involved, they should be involved about the fraud. I noticed there’s a script there to go along, see your policeman, what to say about your police-

Senator Malcolm Roberts (37:00):

There is a script in this so-called international court of common law summons.

Professor David Flint (37:06):

You take eight people along to the police and you say, “Go through the script.” Now this it is unfortunately nonsense. And understandably. If people fabricated a statement concerning medical treatment, well, I wouldn’t know what it was all about, and it could well be fraudulent. And that would be just as bad because this is fraudulent. It has no effect and it will cause no advantage and it won’t solve anything.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (37:37):

And as a member of the federal Senate. I agree completely with you that our country has been dragged down. To me there is not a problem with the constitution, but with the way the processes outlined in the constitution are not being followed bypassed. You’ve already talked to us about two of those. Most decisions are being made by politicians on the spur of the moment. Secondly, for the political benefit. Thirdly, by regulations at a time when the Senate doesn’t sit to disallow. So you’ve already mentioned those. You’re going to mention a few solutions now. Could you tell us the solutions because understanding is our constitution is a wonderful document, but it’s not perfect. What would you do to make it perfect?

Professor David Flint (38:26):

Well, and if I may refer to it, I do have a petition on this. May I refer to the short title for that, that’s change.org/takebackyourcountry, change.org/takebackyourcountry. And firstly, people must be very careful in elections. The major political parties are under the control of cabals of power brokers, and people should be very careful how they vote. And in particular, which parties they give their first preferences to. And it would be a mistake I suspect to give your votes to the major parties, at least your first preference votes, who should be looking at the smaller parties who offer sensible solutions, that’s important.

Professor David Flint (39:22):

And the second thing is we desperately need significant change. We do need to make the politicians accountable. And the best way to do that is to demand that a convention be elected by the ordinary people of Australia, whereby certain important changes could be made to the constitution. The most important change is to empower the people so that the politicians don’t have to face the people quite often in confected election. The elections are confected because the pre-selection are often prearranged and people by habits tend to vote for the major parties.

Professor David Flint (40:07):

It’s not like the United States where there’s much greater flexibility in relation to choosing candidates. In Australia the choice of candidates is controlled very much. In America, particularly in the Republican party it’s a wonderful system. And that allowed Donald Trump to emerge as the dominant candidate in the last presidential election, because the control of the pre-selections is not in the party bosses because the selections are done not only by members of the party, but also registered supporters of the party. So you get a very democratic way of choosing candidates we don’t have them in Australia.

Professor David Flint (40:51):

What we need in Australia is we need a convention like the choral war convention, which wrote and founded our country. We needed a convention, an elected convention for the people to review the constitution on the Corowa principles. It’s all set out in my proposal. This is very important because if we don’t make changes to the constitution to block the politicians, to make accountable 24/7. You know, Malcolm in most jobs as you would know, you’ve held jobs, you’ve had real life experience. Unlike most politicians, who’ve only had a political life.

Professor David Flint (41:36):

You’ve had real life experience and you know as I know that in most jobs, in most businesses, you’re subject to accountability, you’re accountable to your customers, your clients, to your bosses and so on. You’re accountable, 24/7. The politicians aren’t, they’re only accountable in these elections. And when they confect the elections where the pre-selections are done by the party bosses, you’ve got a situation where the people’s voice is not there because of the habit of voting for one of the major parties like we desperately need change. And I’ve suggested in this petition, the changes which the convention should make to the constitution.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (42:21):

Are they the five Rs?

Professor David Flint (42:24):

Yes. The five Rs. And very briefly I set them out in that petition. The five Rs are that at this convention, we’ve got a return to the constitution because we’ve got a way for the constitution. Our high courts, like the American Supreme courts has too often indulged itself with the judges deciding that the constitution means what they want it to mean. And we’ve seen several cases of that in America, where the Supreme court has written things to the constitution that are just not there. For example, a constitution right to abort.

Professor David Flint (43:04):

There’s nothing in the constitution about that. They invented that. So firstly return to the constitution. Secondly, reduced Canberra’s powers and taxation because Canberra powers have been expanded beyond that in the constitution. The high court has given Canberra powers the people never agreed to. And I went through a number of powers. I was looking at them and I found sometimes the people had refused to give the federal government a power up to five times in referendums. They refused to give them that power up to five times.

Professor David Flint (43:45):

And what’s happened is the high court has given them that power, which is completely wrong. Then we’ve got to reform the political parties. The political parties get enormous advantages, financial they get a money for each vote. They get exemptions from a number of pieces of legislation, electoral privacy and so on. In return for that, they should have to be open, transparent and democratic. They don’t want to be open, transparent, and democratic and run by the members. Then they wouldn’t get all of those advantages. The third R is reform the political parties. The fourth is recall elections. We’ve got to be able to give the people the power to create an election as they can in California.

Professor David Flint (44:35):

We’ve got to have the same power in Australia, whereby petition there can be a vote on whether there should be an election. And finally referendums initiated by the people. The people should have the power to initiate referendums, to stop legislation, to initiate their own legislation, to initiate regulations if they wish. All sorts of things that the people should have the power to do. And we should give that power take it away from the politicians and give it to the people.

Professor David Flint (45:06):

This is what we must do, and that can only be done through a convention. And the politicians will only allow a convention to be elected with appropriate powers. If there’s an enormous demand for that, they’re not going to give the people of Australia any extra power they’re going to hold onto it and abuse it and use it for their own benefit.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (45:31):

Well said, well said, that’s exactly what happens. The everyday Australian though provides a conundrum because David, the people are responsible, ultimately. Who we vote for determines the composition of our parliament. And that means that we ultimately responsible for the mess and which our country is now in. However, what you are saying is that the system has been corrupted and the people are being bypassed. You’ve said that with the people being hoodwinked and bypassed yet the yet… Sorry, the people are quite smart.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:13):

We as voters are quite smart, we’ve knocked the politicians back on their changes to parliament on the changes to the constitution. Yet we are bypassed by the high court. So I just realised we’ve only got seven minutes left and I’d like you to take it right to the end of the programme. So let me go through a summary for people now. And then I’ve got one question and then let you continue. Your petition is at change.org/takebackyourcountry. The major parties you said are under the control of cabals of power brokers. That is exactly what is happening.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (46:51):

I know from being inside parliament, that is ex exactly what’s happening. So therefore what I’ve been saying to people is, and pretty much your message, put the majors last. You want a constitutional convention, elected by the people for representatives attended should be reelected by the people. I’d like to get your views sometime about Trump. You mentioned the key in all of this accountability, and that’s been missing in federal parliament. Pauline Hanson. And I try to get accountability. We held them accountable verbally at times, and we get the message through.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (47:29):

Yet it is so difficult being the only two that are really doing that. We need to return to our constitution. It’s been bypassed, undermined, we need to get back to it. Professor David Flint provides solutions with the five Rs. Return the first of all return the government to the country. Return the government of the country to the principles set out in the constitution and agreed in our old constitutional system. Get back to our constitution, return. Number two, reduce Canberra’s powers and excessive taxation, which is part of the first return to our constitution. Now, number three, reform the political parties.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (48:12):

Number four, recall elections. Number five referendums that is comprehensive. David before getting onto whatever you want to close the show with for the next five minutes. Could you tell me effectively we are a Republic already? Aren’t we? I know we’re a constitutional monarchy and as a young man, I didn’t want the British to be running out country. I realised they don’t. And When Malcolm Turnbull’s dreadful referendum proposal was put up, I listened to three high court judges, including Harry Gibbs, who was at the time, the chief justice, I believe. And I immediately changed my mind and protected this constitution. And I have been ever since. We’re effectively a Republic. Are we not or?

Professor David Flint (49:03):

Yes, we are. And even Britain in 1688, the Glorious Revolution that was referred by Montesquieu as a disguised Republic, because the idea of the king having great powers disappeared in 1688. But we have in Australia effectively, a crown Republic. If we’re anything, we’re a crown Republic. In fact, we are a constitutional Commonwealth. We chose the name Commonwealth, which is the English word for Republic. And if you look at the definition of Republic and the Corel dictionary, the Australian dictionary you’ll find that we fit in with easily most of the definitions of Republic and argument, certainly the other one.

Professor David Flint (49:49):

But the point is that the we’ve chosen the Westminster system. There was an option at the time. Not many people know about this, an option at the time during the conventions, there was a proposal that the governor general be allowed to develop into effectively, a president elected by the people that was a proposal. And that was rejected strongly, not because of a debate over monarchy or Republic. It was because our founders decided that after experience the United States and in the United Kingdom, they said it’s better to have a collective executive rather than a one person executive, who’s very difficult to remove. That was their argument. And sometimes I think that’s probably better, but when Margaret Thatcher lost office, I thought, “Well, that wasn’t so good.”

Professor David Flint (50:44):

When Donald Trump was elected, I thought it wonderful because I didn’t know anything about him. You asked me about him. I didn’t know anything about him, but when I looked at his Gettysburg address and I saw what he was going to do. I thought if he does a third of that, he will be wonderful compared with his predecessors back to Ronald Reagan. And I wrote two pieces for the Sydney daily Telegraph for, and received an email, for example, from a friend in Thailand saying, “Have you lost your marbles?” But I thought that Donald Trump would be a brilliant president. He turned out even better than I thought he was. And this is one of the problems we’ve got you.

Professor David Flint (51:20):

You talked about the people voting the wrong way. Well, the problem is the press, the media, the media supposed to be there to exercise their vast powers and liberties to tell the truth, to inform the people. But we saw in the United States, the mainstream media joined up with those power who wanted to get rid of Trump, who that they, for example, they suppressed with the social media, all the information that people ought to have known about Biden and his role, the Biden family in their role in selling access and influence when he was vice president to foreign oligarchs. And that was an outrage and a new book has just come out by Peter Schweitzer, who points out that the Biden family has received 31 million.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (52:21):

I’m going to have to interrupt you there, David, because we are getting to the news break. Would you come back, please?

Professor David Flint (52:29):

Certainly.

Senator Malcolm Roberts (52:30):

Thank you very much. We have a lot of more territory to cover. This is Malcolm Roberts. I am staunchly pro-human and believe in the inherent goodness of human beings. We need to care for and love one another and remain proud of who we are. We’ll be back after news with another guest to apply what David is telling us.