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How much does the U.N. cost Australia? DFAT at Senate Estimates

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SIMPLE QUESTION: HOW MUCH DOES THE U.N. COST AUSTRALIA?

I could not believe no one in government could give me a total cost on what we pay to the UN, its subsidiaries and how much we spend in complying with their dictates.

Transcript

[Senator Roberts] And thank you all for attending today. My questions are about the United Nations. So I don’t know who will answer those questions. In total, how much does Australia pay to the United Nations or subsidiaries each year, in dollar terms? Do we need to take that on notice?

[Minister Payne] No, I don’t think we do, I think someone’s coming down from upstairs. We will unfortunately get into questions of definition about which subsidiary agencies and all the rest of it, we may need to… in order to give a completely comprehensive answer, we may need to take it on notice, that there’ll be a number of things that we can say that are general level that I hope will be what you’re after Senator.

[Senator Roberts] I’m after a comprehensive level, yeah.

[Minister Payne] Well if you need comprehensive Senator, I’ll ask officials to do their best at the table.

[Senator Roberts] Yes.

And then if parts of it needs to be taken on notice, we’ll return to the committee.

[Senator Roberts] Of course. – Thank you.

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. Apologies. I just had to come down the stairs. Justin Lee, first assistant secretary multilateral policy division. Senator, can I just ask you to repeat the question?

[Senator Roberts] Yes. In total, how much does Australia pay to the United Nations, or its subsidiaries, each year, in dollar terms?

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. The key contribution that Australia makes is our assessed contribution to the United Nations and that’s based upon the size of Australia’s economy. Australia contributes 2.21% to the UN regular budget.

[Chair] The question was in dollar terms.

[Justin Lee] Yes. And that equates to, in 2021, around $82.2 million, is our assessed contribution to the UN. We also make other contributions for example, to UN peacekeeping. And that is also based on an assessed contribution to the United Nations. And in 2019/20, which was the last year, we had a figure out for that. Australia provided $212 million in assessed contributions to support UN peacekeeping missions. Senator that is not the total of course though, of our contribution to the United Nations. And I don’t have a figure because that is provided by a range of contributions that may be made through the development corporation programme. It may be made through contributions to UN specialised agencies. They would be looked after by other Australian government agencies as well. So getting the total contribution that Australia makes to the UN, and all of the subsidiary agencies, requires a collation of data from across government, which we don’t have.

[Senator Roberts] I’ll be happy to take that on notice. Thank you. This is a very important issue for our constituents because they’re concerned at the cost and the impact on the country. The next one is along the same vein. In total, how much does it cost Australia to comply with, or to implement, UN dictates in the form of various forms, treaties, agreements declarations, protocols that are expected of the UN members?

[Justin Lee] Thank you, Senator. I don’t think that we would be able to provide a figure on that because if Australia, Australia of course seeks to adhere to its international obligations, including treaty reporting processes, a lot of that would be the responsibility of Australian government agencies and, and to to calculate that, you would need to look at the the staff costs, the time costs. Sorry, I, I… I just don’t think that we would have that figure or be able to collect a figure, on implementation of international obligations in that, in the way that you portray it.

[Senator Roberts] It would be. Thank you for your openness. It would be enormous. I’m thinking of the compliance with the UN Kyoto protocol. That’s cost a lot of farmers to lose their property rights. That’s been estimated by some people to be either a 100 or $200 billion. So it’s rubbery but it’s a difficult thing. Compliance with the water act, which puts compliance with international obligations as it’s, one of its primary aims, right through. Compliance with the UN Paris agreement, particularly when other nations don’t have to wreck their economy to comply because their goals are so easy. So manufacturing the UN Lima agreement, a declaration from 1975 and the governance impacts from the UN Rio declaration in 1992. So just take it, but I am. I am wondering if anyone has figured out the cost to this country in dollar terms, the cost to our economy the cost to a loss of our governance and sovereignty.

[Justin Lee] Senator, I think the only other way to portray it though is the, is the benefits that, that Australia gets from these arrangements and these agreements.

[Chair] With respect, I understand that but this isn’t the forum for arguing somebody seeking costs. And if somebody else wants to ask a question about the benefits, then that’s up to them. But time is very limited. I’m sorry.

[Senator Roberts] So that, that leads to my third question which is given the globalist approach of the UN, what value is there for Australia to constantly pay out money directly and at huge indirect cost to our governance and our economy?

[Justin Lee] Oh, well, I think the answer to that would be the benefits that we get from those, those arrangements, both in terms of having, having rules that are that guide many things that, that guide the Australian economy. If we look for example, all the work that we have been doing around rules that guide international aviation, international shipping, telecommunications, all of those rules are set by the United Nations. That means that we’ve got a global economy that we can participate in that sets equal rules between countries which Australia is a, is an open trading economy and an economy of our size can, can benefit from. Similarly, we have international organisations dealing with global challenges. So the roles that the WHO is playing in response to COVID. Dealing with, dealing with those challenges that we want addressed in the world, by making contributions to those, we get benefit from that. So we appreciate that there are costs, both direct costs and obligations that Australia has to adhere but we also get a number of very significant benefits.

[Senator Roberts] And I’d put it to you that the benefits, for example in aviation, they could be done by a country hosting the other countries of the world to come up with a convention on that. So that doesn’t have to come from the UN. And we’ve shown that in the history of our planet. What would it mean to Australia, if Australia chose to withdraw from the United Nations? If we exited.

[Minister Payne] Senator, I can assure you that there is no consideration of that, that our engagement in the international system, and indeed Australia’s security and prosperity has been underpinned for a very long time, by what is known as the rules-based international order in the institutions that were created to support that. What we have seen in the last 12 months, frankly, the impact of COVID around the world. We’ve seen what happens when those systems can click into gear. And can support the countries and the communities that need them. The international cooperation that we have through those UN agencies and organisations is very important to that management. COVID-19, as I was saying, has really exposed the magnitude of the consequences if those global institutions are not working as well as they should, that does not mean, and I think the prime minister and you, have probably engaged on this before. It does not mean, as the prime minister said in his Lowy speech last year. He said, ‘We can’t be an indifferent bystander to these events that impact our livelihoods, our safety and our sovereignty. We must, as we have done previously, cultivate, marshal and bring our influence to bear to protect and promote our national interests.’ So what we seek, is an international system that respects the unique characteristics of individual states within it. In our case, Australia. That still provides a framework for cooperation on security and prosperity. Mr. Lee, Dr. Lee has advanced international aviation I think, if I was, if I was hearing correctly as a, as an example of that, but there are countless others, Senator, where we understand that working cooperatively with others is an important part of our national interest. It’s in our national interest, it allows us to pursue shared regional and global objectives. And it is a centrepiece of our international engagement. Now, we did a lot of work on this last year, a lot of work. And that has crystallised and firmed the government’s views on these matters.

[Senator Roberts] Well, thank you and I respect your right to have an opinion. I also have a different opinion.

[Minister Payne] As I do yours, Senator.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you. I know you’ve shown that in the past.

[Minister Payne] We’re in a very good democracy. Sorry. I took some of those minutes. My apologies.

[Senator Roberts] I do acknowledge the prime minister said, I think these words, on the 3rd of October, 2019 when he addressed the Lowy Institute in Sydney, ‘Unaccountable’ he spoke of, ‘The unaccountable internationalist bureaucrats or bureaucracies.’ I think those were the words. And then promptly gave, advocated to give World Health Organisation more power. I would argue with you about the World Health Organization’s benefits, because I think it contributed to the rampant spread of COVID, but nonetheless. How many funding arrangements between Australia and the UN are open-ended?

[Justin Lee] I, I’m not…

[Senator Roberts] They get ratcheted up automatically, or they’re they haven’t got a closing date.

[Justin Lee] Yes. I, I’ll try to take that on notice. But my, my initial reaction would be that we would have no open-ended commitments, or any commitment that we make would be on the basis of an agreement or an understanding. But I can take that on notice.

[Senator Roberts] I think there is some updates to our laws or our requirements, or our commitments that are made automatically if the UN document or protocol is, is changed. Are you aware of any of those?

[Justin Lee] You could be, I’m not sure Senator, you could be referring to what I mentioned earlier, which was our assessed contribution. And there is a committee that looks at our assessed contributions and adjusts that contribution according to changes and our national circumstances, our size of our economy, debt ratios and the like in comparison to other countries. That is still part of a committee which we participate in. But ultimately we would abide by the finding of that committee and at the end of that process. So there is that sort of process. And that was what I was referring to earlier about the calculation about assessing.

[Senator Roberts] It may be, I’ll finish up now, but it may be in the human rights area. Or the rights of the child area, where changes in the UN requirements are automatically fed through to us and we have to comply with them. So that may be something to consider, but I believe that’s the case.

[Justin Lee] I can take that on notice.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you, if you could. And, you know, from my, my questioning. I really question the need to stay in the UN and the advantage to this country because of the governance impact on our country, the sovereignty impact on a country and the economic impacts on a country. So, you know, I recognise and acknowledge that this country’s current government is not thinking about exiting the UN, but we certainly are. So a lot of our constituents want to.

[Minister Payne] Senator, can I also say, I understand the reform issues you’ve raised and we are strong supporters of the reform processes that have been underway in the UN and acknowledged, more to do. And I did raise that with the secretary general last week, in a conversation on a number of regional issues. But also in passing on the year-end reform questions.

[Senator Roberts] Thank you very much.

/3 Comments/by

Each-Way Albo at it again

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This morning I talked to Marcus Paul about coal-fired power, the mess our Industrial Relations are in and the fact that the corrupt World Health Organisation actually said Australia could be where COVID originated.

Transcript

[Marcus Paul]

Malcolm, good morning, mate.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Good morning, Marcus, how are you?

[Marcus Paul]

I’m okay. I’m very well. Listen, I just wanted to ask you first off the bat, a question without notice because I know you’re very good on your feet. New research has found Australia’s coal fired power stations are routinely breaching their licence conditions putting our community’s health and the environment at risk.

The newly released coal impacts index reveals there have been more than 150 publicly reported environmental breaches since 2015. However, the spokes person for Australia Beyond Coal, David Ridditz says only a fraction of these, 16, have resulted in penalties or enforceable undertakings. Now, if coal’s to be a part of our reliable energy future, we need to clean up our backyard I think.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Well, if that’s true then certainly we need to. No one should be exempt from those regulations, Marcus. The environment is very important. It’s also important to understand that solar power destroys the environment as well because they’re leaking cadmium and selenium and lead into the soil and into the water.

In fact, it’s monstrous what’s going on north of Brisbane. A proposed Chinese development of a solar panel farm. They’re not farms, they’re industrial complexes, directly affecting Brisbane’s water supply for two million people. So, I mean, we’ve got to protect the environment. That’s the number one thing. The environment can’t exist without civilization being productive and civilization can’t be productive without the environment being protected. So, the future of our civilization, the future of our environment are interdependent and rely on each other.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Anthony Albanese, the federal opposition leader yesterday, talked policy. He’ll be on the programme a little later this morning, but by the way, he’s promising workers a better deal with a suite of reforms to improve job security and provide minimum pay and entitlements to those in insecure work. What’s your take on this?

[Malcolm Roberts]

I think he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth. For a start, his policies on energy, his policies on lack of taxation reform, are cruelling job security. Secondly, his policies on energies just mentioned, don’t take into account the fact that Australian workers need to be productive and we can’t be productive when we’ve got energy costs that are now amongst the highest in the world due to labour policies under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and due to liberal national policies under John Howard and every prime minister since. So, what we need to do is look at the big picture.

But also, it’s very hypocritical and I believe dishonest of Anthony Abanese to talk what he’s talking about casual because Joe Fitzgibbon had plenty of opportunity to address the casual issues in the Hunter Valley. Instead, what he did was he tried to misrepresent me going after it and now, what we’re seeing is I was absolutely right, with Simon Turner and other’s in the Hunter Valley, loss of worker’s compensation, loss of their leave entitlements, loss of their long service leave, accruals being accurate, loss of their accident pay, being suppressed when they had an accident or injury and being told to cover it up.

Anthony Abanese has got to come clean on this. Joe Fitzgibbon had six years to fix this. So did the liberal party. They’ve done nothing until their big corporate mates get into trouble and now they’re wanting to take on the little guy again.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, all right, let’s move onto the World Health Organisation and that dopey, ridiculous, so called investigation into Covid.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yeah, can you believe it? That they think it might have come from our beef. I mean, this is absolutely monstrous. We know that the Chinese Communist Party and the UN, through the World Health Organisation, have colluded closely to suppress the news of Covid virus in China early last year. We know that.

That enabled the virus to get a march on around the world. I mean, the Chinese came out and the World Health Organisation echoed them saying, there is no human to human virus transmission, none at all. And then they suppressed news of that, they suppressed their own doctors of it and the World Health Organization’s chief has been beholden to China. So, this is not an investigation, it’s a cover up, it’s a complete cover up and can we really have confidence that this is a transparent and thorough investigation?

No, we can’t. What we need to do is get the hell out of the World Health Organisation and get out of the UN. That’s why I called for an Aus Exit from the UN back in 2016 and I keep calling for that. The UN is a corrupt, dishonest, incompetent, lazy organisation that is hurting our country.

[Marcus Paul]

Well, they say the likely scenario is that the virus passed from original animal host to intermediary animals including frozen and chilled animal products, including Australian beef to humans.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes. I mean, it’s ludicrous. They wouldn’t allow an investigation for 12 months basically. They covered everything up, they weren’t allowed to go to the lab. I mean, this is not an investigation, it’s a stitch up.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. What about the Nationals, are they backing away from manufacturing policy? They’ve collapsed on coal, they’re backing net-zero 2050. It means they’re, in your opinion, opposing jobs.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes. We talked last week about the fact that the Nationals came up with a lovely glossy booklet and the core of that booklet… Sorry, on their managing policy, but on the manufacturing policy, but the core of that booklet was a solid page on their support for coal.

Then we put a motion into the senate one week ago and we said we need to build a coal fired power station in Hunter Valley, which is exactly what the Nationals were proposing. In the face of the motion, in the senate, the Nationals ran away and voted with the Liberals against a coal fired power station in the Hunter, after they said just a week before, that they were supporting it. So, they abandoned coal last week.

Now, we see their manufacturing policy relies upon cheap energy, but with the net zero 2050, it means the liberal party will be opposing jobs and opposing cheap energy and opposing manufacturing. The Nationals have meekly rolled over again. Because this policy for net-zero, according to the IPA, will cost coal miners, farmers and steel and iron workers amongst the majority of the 654,000 jobs that will be lost by the adoption of Net-Zero. We can’t afford it. It’s absolute rubbish.

[Marcus Paul]

All right. Let’s move now to the north of the country. Western Australia in particular. The north west. Yet another overreach, you say, by Mark McGowan, the WA premier and closing down for some five days.

[Malcolm Roberts]

Yes. Marcus, I was supposed to be calling you from WA, up in the north west, up near the Kimberlys today. But unfortunately, we couldn’t go there because Mark McGowan capriciously locked down parts of WA again and made it impossible for us to get there and come back in the time without some risk.

So, we need a better way of managing our community and business in the face of the virus being here. It’s just ludicrous where we get one case and people get locked down. We get people jumping on a plane in Perth, coming to Brisbane, by the time they land in Brisbane, five hours later, they suddenly find out WA’s been locked down and they have to go into hotel quarantine for two weeks at their own expense.

It’s just not right. We’ve got people in New South Wales contacted me saying they’d love to spend a holiday in Northern Queensland, beautiful up there, and they’re not going to do it because they just don’t know what Annastacia Palaszczuk’s going to do. McGowan, Palaszczuk, the control freak in Victoria, they’re using lock downs capriciously and even the UN’s corrupt World Health Organisation has admitted that lock downs are a blunt instrument to be used when things are out of control to get control.

So, the premiers of Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria simply admitting that they can’t control their states properly with the virus in their state.

[Marcus Paul]

Always good to have you on for your views. I appreciate it.

[Malcolm Roberts]

You’re welcome, Marcus. Have a good day, mate.

[Marcus Paul]

Take care, Malcolm.

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North Australia Gutted by Government Mess

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Transcript

[Marcus] Malcolm Roberts, good morning to you, Malcolm?

[Malcolm] Good morning, Marcus, how are you doing?

[Marcus] I’m okay. First thing first. I wanna play you something back from a couple of weeks ago when you and I had a discussion on this radio programme, are you ready?

[Malcolm] Yes, I am.

[Marcus] Okay.

[Malcolm] Trump is in the box seat, he knows what he’s doing.

[Marcus] All right, you wanna bet me a bottle of wine on this? Australian wine.

[Malcolm] I definitely do but not yet, I’m very happy to send you a bottle of Stanthorpe wine if you win, but Trump is still in the box seat, mate.

[Marcus] Oh, Malcolm.

[Malcolm] Trump is coming home.

[Marcus] Hang on, Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm. No he’s not in the box seat.

[Malcolm] Yes, I haven’t seen the other, any headlines tonight, but he has got a process in play that’s been done before in the United States, it’s been upholding the constitution, it’s all proven and that’s underway and it will be unfolding in the next few weeks.

[Malcolm] I’m serious, Marcus.

[Marcus] I know you are, that’s the worry.

[Malcolm] I love the bet but I’m serious.

[Marcus] All right, let’s get on to some other issues. The Northern Australian agenda, the Torres Straits, Horn Island, Thursday Islands, Senate Select Committees on the Government’s agenda for Northern Australia in a nutshell, not going anywhere and deeply disappointing. What are the issues preventing development in Northern Australia, Malcolm?

[Malcolm] Have a listen to these, energy prices, property rights and land tenures, infrastructure, water, transport, telecommunications, a hopeless jumble of government services, all three layers of the government that’s state, federal, and local are not working together, there’s massive duplication, massive waste, huge gaps in service delivery. Now those things are occurring right throughout Australia.

And so how can we expect a development of productive capacity here in the North where there’s low population and lack of infrastructure, when the Southern areas of New South Wales, the rest of our country are being gutted by the same things, the destruction of productive capacity. And so what we’re really seeing up here, I mean, you, you’ve got problems in New South Wales I understand with ferries and trains that are built overseas and we have the same.

In Brisbane Queensland, we’ve had trains built overseas by both the liberal and labour governments in the past, they’ve come here with faults in them that had to be fixed. We have the ability, we just have lost the productive capacity because our governments, state and federal have destroyed that productive capacity.

[Marcus] I heard something, yeah, sorry, Malcolm, I heard something really interesting yesterday. In Victoria, and I know that Dan Andrews has copped a fair bit this year, trying to keep his constituents safe, but in Victoria to their credit, they have public transports, whether it’s buses, various trams, whatever, running around saying, “Proudly manufactured in Victoria.” Why is it that in Victoria, they can make their trams and their trains and their public transport infrastructure there but in New South Wales, in Queensland, we cannot.

[Malcolm] Well, I wonder how old those trams are because you know, our productive capacity is being destroyed over the last few decades, Marcus and I just wonder how long, how old those trams are. They still got the ability to make those trams? I don’t know. And you know, Victoria lost the Ford production facilities for cars, they’ve lost the Toyota production facility for cars, had lost various General Motors facilities, we haven’t got that productive capacity anymore. And so Victoria has done a very bad job.

Victoria has shut down it’s large power stations, which now make it vulnerable and dependent on New South Wales. I mean, this is a mess, our whole country and it’s a security issue, and it is a dead set security issue.

[Marcus] JobSeeker, my understanding from some stories floating around this morning, again, JobSeeker is blown out. In relation to costs, it’s gonna cost our economy billions of dollars more. I don’t know who’s doing the maths or the accounting treasury, but again, we see that job seekers, JobSeeker, the federal government’s plans through COVID 19 will end up costing more in the longer term.

[Malcolm] One of the things we have to start facing is the reality that state and federal governments have made a mess of the coronavirus, real mess of the way they’ve handled it. And I’ll give you some examples about JobSeeker in a minute up here in Queensland and especially in the North. But you know, Taiwan, Marcus have done by far the best job in the world, they’ve had no decrease in their economy, they’re bubbling along at the same rate as normal.

Our economy has been smashed and same with most economies. Taiwan, what they’ve done is they’ve tested people rigorously, they’ve traced people and they’ve quarantined people. They have isolated the sick and the vulnerable. We have shut down everyone. I mean, that is not the way you handle a pandemic. Now, initially, because it looks so bad because remember the people dying in Italy, we had to do something like that.

So we said to the government, “There is your open cheque, “just go for it, “do whatever you want.” That’s what we need to do when under such a crisis. When we realised, and we, but we said to them, “We’ll come looking for you “and holding you accountable,” when we realised that it wasn’t as bad as thought and then the total number of deaths in many countries around the world has not increased, the age deaths in Australia is lower than in the past years, so the total deaths have not increased, it’s not been what we’ve, what we were afraid of and that’s welcome news, the government hasn’t changed the tact.

And we’re still locked where we were until very recently locking down people. And we’re now, the coronavirus is still out there, we haven’t got a plan for managing the damn thing, and we’re still being managed by the Coronavirus. Victoria is still doing that. So what we have to do is actually look at what’s going on and come up with the plan. Never has the state or any federal government come up with the plan, never.

[Marcus] All right, the UK Climate Ambition Summit, we know that Scott Morrison was refused, well, basically, our nation is in the cold and all of these summits, you and I will disagree on the reasons why we’ve been cheating our way through our Kyoto agreements now for all- God, probably the best part of the last decade. But you and I differ on this, but just your thoughts on it.

[Malcolm] Well, it’s just another gabfest. The fortunate thing is that unlike all the other gabfests, there isn’t a huge transport demand pushing all these leaders together and producing carbon dioxide, which I know is got no problem, but they’re producing a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide to get to where they’re going and nothing comes out of it of any good.

And what we see is the United Nations pressuring nations to increase their carbon dioxide cast, which is insane, there’s no data to drive that, and Scott Morrison is now being pushed, and I think he’s relented and he is no longer going to use the Kyoto credits, that John Howard, stole, John Howard’s government, stole these credits, stole farmers’ property rights to get those credits, now we’re not even gonna use them. So we’ve got farmers owed somewhere between a hundred and $200 billion worth of compensation, or we need a restoration of their property rights right around the country.

[Marcus] Yeah.

[Malcolm] And so what we’re seeing is that the UN drove that stupidity from John Howard’s government, drove the state government in New South Wales and Queensland in particular to decimate their farmers, no compensation paid, and now we can’t even use them?

I mean, this is insane. And China’s commitment under these UN agreements is zero. They will continue in not only at their current levels of carbon dioxide output, they will continue increasing them. And so what they’ve got is their productive capacity continuing to grow by using our coals for their steel in the construction

[Marcus] Well I don’t know whether they’re gonna use, they’re going to use our coal considering what we’ve heard in the last week, Malcolm?

[Malcolm] Well, I think they will have to get back to it because they use coal for power generation, which is thermal coal exports. They’re about half of Japan’s intake of coal from Australia. Japan buys about almost $10 billion worth of coal from Australia, thermal coal for power stations, and China only buys 4 billion, but the key is in the metallurgical coal exports from Australia.

India has, buys $10 billion worth of coal, China just a fraction under that 9.7, Japan $7.4 billion worth. China needs our coal because our metallurgical coal for steel-making markets is the best in the world.

[Marcus] All right, I just want to move on to trade with China. It’s not getting any better, you know, we know that we’ve got a number of tariffs and a number of blockades if you like placed or put in place by Beijing, we’ve got Barley exports, we’ve got tariffs on other major exports including now, as I mentioned just before, the possibility that our coal will sit idle off the coast of China and not be allowed into the country. When is it gonna stop and what can we do about it, it’s not getting any better?

The reason China is picking on us I believe is that we have been very, very weak to ourselves. I’m not talking about standing up to China anyway, I’m talking about the Chinese are a totalitarian dictatorship, they are bullies. They’re being very subtle in the way they’re bringing people into the fold around the countries, through their belts and roads initiative, which Victoria has signed up to.

But what they can’t see, a bully always picks on the weakest first and the most vulnerable. Now China sees Australia as being allied with the United States. But China also sees Australia wrecking our own productive capacity. They see Australia kowtowing to UN agreements, ceding our sovereignty, giving up the control of our resources, the control of our productive capacity in this country.

China has said to the UN, “To hell with you lot, “we are going to continue our industrialization, we are ceding our jobs. we’re actually sending our jobs to China as we destroy our productive capacity. The Chinese also see us exporting coal and burning coal at very high cost in this country because of artificially inflated regulations that have destroyed the price of coal in this country, coal fired power.

And so what China is saying is we’re destroying ourselves. We’re subsidising the Chinese to build expensive renewable energy, solar, and wind in this country, which is destroying our electricity network even more, and then we’re seeing, they’re seeing us see that and they’re saying, “These people are contradicting “their own sovereignty, “they’re destroying their own values. “These people don’t know “what the hell they’re doing. “They have weakened their right.” And that’s what they’re doing. They’re sending us a very strong signal, “Get your house in order.”

[Marcus] And the human face of this, of course, 66 ships, 500 million to a billion dollars worth of coal currently sitting idle. We’ve got a thousand seafarers stuck out there. I mean, they’ve got families but hopefully, there’ll be some sort of a breakthrough. We need cool heads to prevail and I mean, I see, I tend to agree with you Malcolm, I can see, I can’t see China holding out for much longer.

[Malcolm] You know, it’s a very good point you’ve raised though the human face of it, but it’s true, but they’re not players in the trade dispute, the victims. Many haven’t been allowed to disembark apparently for about 20 months due to COVID, Marcus I think and the maximum time legally for seamen to be at sea is 11 months. The situation is deteriorating apparently for physically and mentally for these people.

There’s a limited supply of food and medicines and so, yeah, good on you for bringing up the human aspect. These people are caught in the middle and they’ve done nothing wrong.

[Marcus] All right, just wanna finish with lobster seafood. I mean, that’s how I plan on, well, look, to be honest, I plan on washing down a bit of lobster and a couple of prawns and some crab over Christmas with the wine you’re going to send me, but tell me, how can we help out our rock lobster industry?

[Malcolm] Marcus, the election date will be settled when the vice president, Mike Pence selects the candidate, selects the votes in

[Marcus] All right, so

[Malcolm] On January 6th

[Marcus] I’ll be having

[Malcolm] That will be A new year celebration

[Marcus] A new year one I like it, fair enough. All right, but let’s talk lobsters, mate.

[Malcolm] Yes, it was predicted that customers would eat more than 35 tonnes of lobster this year compared to just six and a half tonnes in the previous year. But now apparently, you need to get in early, there’s a limit of four per person I’ve been told. They’re now a bargain at $20 each because the Chinese are not taking our lobsters, so what we’re saying is get into the lobsters and go for it. Now I’m not a lobster fan, I prefer the Queensland mud crab, best seafood you can get,

[Marcus] Fair enough.

[Malcolm] But that’s my deal, but yeah, grab, go for the lobsters and wash it down with some Hunter Valley wine or some Stanthorpe wine from Queensland and enjoy your Christmas.

[Marcus] And shop Australian over Christmas too. And that’s something that Pauline and I talked about on the programme on Tuesday, we need to ensure that we buy up as much Australian wine as much Australian seafood and beef and support Australian industries during this time.

[Malcolm] So right, thank you very much for, for reminding us of that, Marcus. And I’d like to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and happy new year

[Marcus] Thank you.

[Malcolm] And the same to all your team, Justin and everyone, and all your listeners, a very happy new year and a very Merry Christmas.

[Marcus] You too, mate. We’ll talk again in 2021, we’ll finally settle the issue of Trump V Biden and I look forward to, I dunno a case or a bottle of something from you Malcolm.

[Malcolm] If Mike Pence goes away, I think he will and the constitutional precedence then I think you’ll be sending me a bottle of the wine, mate but if I’m wrong, I’ll be very happy to send it to you.

[Marcus] All right, mate, great to chat to you. Thank you so much for your time this year, we’ll catch up again in 2021.

[Malcolm] Look forward to it, thanks very much, Marcus and Merry Christmas.

[Marcus] All right, you too, mate. There he is, Malcolm Roberts, One Nation Senator, and look obviously, you know, me and a number of my listeners don’t always agree with everything Malcolm comes up with. But he does talk sense on, I think when it comes to things like industrial relations, reform, our trade issue with China and all these sort of stuff. I think he’s a little more moderate on that than say Scomo and his mob are, and I just enjoy Malcolm, my chats with him. We, we’re not always gonna agree. But gee that wine, will taste nice.

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Ban PM from attending the Climate Ambition Summit

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Scott Morrison is due to attend another climate jamboree where he will no doubt promise to implement more of the United Nations agenda destroying more of our economy.

Well I have an idea. I can go in his place.

Transcript

One Nation opposes this motion. I for one, would be happy for our Prime Minister not to speak at the Climate Ambition Summit. Our prime minister has demonstrated that he will not put the interest of Australia first.

On the international stage under pressure, the prime minister turns to jelly and adopts the agenda of the United Nations without regard for the damage it does to our Australian economy or the lives of Australians.

If Australians want someone to represent and fight for Australia, may I suggest Senator Hanson or I would be happy to take the prime minister’s place. The greens won’t debate me, so maybe some of their globalist masters will.

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Trust in Politicians at rock bottom | BNAP Today

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This week I appeared on BUSINESS NOW ASIA PACIFIC to discuss the different approaches to COVID19 and how Australia needs to change course.

Transcript

[Mike

Senator Malcolm Roberts from Pauline Hanson’s One nation believes the lockdown in Victoria will succeed. However testing needs to be quicker. He also believes that government needs to be more truthful. Now, Victoria has serious problems with infection control will a harder breakdown be effective if they don’t know the source of so many infections.

[Malcolm]

Well, I think there are two things I need to say in response to that Mike. And that is that first of all, this is a very difficult issue. We said that right from the start on the single day sittings on 23rd of March and eighth of April, when we said, there’s no manual for this, it’s entirely new.

We’ve gotta give the government lots of room. We voted in favour that we supported them on their packages and away we went, but we said, you’ve got to get the data. And you’ve got to look elsewhere and start to manage this in accordance with the best practise around the world.

So we might come back to that more later, but what we’ve learned is that quite often, the places where people have prolonged contact in close quarters is where the virus is transmission is highest and that’s the family unit and workplaces. So the family unit in Melbourne is older than in any other city.

And that’s significant because I also saw these figures on one of the radio stations. I heard the figures rather than one of the radio stations. The other thing about Melbourne is that it’s flat and people travel very easily and they travelled to watch football matches, sporting events, games, social venues, et cetera.

So I think that it is difficult. And number one priority is life, securing life, making sure people are healthy and secure and safe. And so a lockdown is essential because they’ve lost control of their borders. They’ve let it go and sorry, lost control of the virus within, in I think multi, foreign, where people are speaking foreign languages.

So they’ve lost control of that because people have not been able to understand the messages about the virus. So that’s where the outbreaks have been. And so I think the lockdown will be effective because it’ll stop families The extended family visits and it’ll stop work obviously.

And so I think the lock downs will be successful in Melbourne. The other thing is that they need to get testing done more quickly because some people are basically having a test and not getting the result back for about 10 days. Now they’re not gonna stay cooped up for 10 days if they don’t believe they’re sick.

And many of these cases that they’re asymptomatic. So I think that while it will work, the government has got to do its bit and getting testing to be more responsive and get results back in two or three days rather than 10. So yeah, there’s potential.

[Mike]

It’s interesting. In South Korea, the testing, from the testing to getting the results back now 12 hours and that’s what it should be when I was talking to professor Justin Fendos in South Korea last week, and he was saying that 12 hours and I mentioned that we have at times up to 10 days and I could hear his jaw hit the table. That’s just atrocious. What should the authorities be doing though?

[Malcolm]

Well, let’s come back to Taiwan if you don’t mind, because South Korea has done a marvellous job. They actually, do you mind if we talk about that?

[Mike]

Yeah, for sure.

[Malcolm]

Okay, South Korea has done a marvellous job. They actually let go let it go. And they had to recover. So given that, and by the way, I’ve watched your interview with professor Fendos. Fabulous interview, very well spoken man knows his facts. And he has been on the same track we’ve been from the right from the start on Monday, March 23rd and April the eighth, in the Senate single day hearings.

We also said, make sure that you get the data to the federal government when we gave them our support. And we said, make sure you looked at Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asian nations, Taiwan, especially South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, have done a marvellous job.

Singapore with the exception of Singapore, all the other three and Israel, which had also done a good job, Mike, they have eternal vigilance and they’re ready to do respond quickly to threats because they’re constantly under threat. So that is something we don’t have.

But the, in Taiwan, their population is about the same as Australia. They have 24 million we have 25. The population density in Taiwan is far, far higher than us because their 24 are crammed into a small Island. And they also had an earlier and stronger exchange with China because they’re Chinese themselves.

And so they had a lot more travelling between Taiwan and mainland China. And so they had a much greater problem. Now what the Taiwanese did, and we need to recognise that Australia has had 130 deaths and that’s good, but the Taiwanese have had seven, even despite they had an earlier virus, earlier contact with the virus, seven.

And the other significant point with the Taiwanese is that they didn’t lock down their economy. They actually kept their economy going and they gave responsibility to the people. Now, there are three things that they have done really well. First of all, their basic strategy was to isolate the sick and isolate the vulnerable.

That’s what real quarantine is. Quarantine is not isolating everyone into lockdown. Quarantine is isolating the sick and the vulnerable and separating them out. The second thing they did was that they implemented massive testing and they have a screening process for the testing. And I think South Korea is the same.

They test for high temperature knowing that that’s not always reliable, but they test for high temperature. If someone has a high temperature, then they go and get tested for COVID. And if they test negative, but they still have, for COVID, but still have a high temperature, then they’re allowed to go to work.

So they put responsibility on the workplaces, and what we’ve got in those countries is the responsibility on the individual citizens. And when you have that responsibility, there’s a far greater sense of accountability rather than when it’s imposed.

And the other thing that they’ve done, and I’ve only learned about this recently is they’ve got a much stricter tracing regime, but the tracing apparently doesn’t go right into people’s whereabouts it goes into their localities, and that helps the authorities then get one step in front.

So what I think the, what I think now with those lessons from Taiwan, and we encourage the government to look at Taiwan and South Korea. What I think that we should be doing now is we should be in Australia revising and reviewing our current work. How effective have we been? Where have we not been effective?

We need to recover and plan for recovery in two areas. First of all, to get our economy back to pre COVID, which is February, but then we need to aim far, far higher Mike, we need to get our economy back to, so to the point where we have our sovereignty, restored, our economic sovereignty and economic security and our independence.

We’ve been following this nonsense from the United nations now for almost 70 years. And it’s destroying our sovereignty and our economic independence. And so what the UN has been preaching and our governments have been preaching is interdependence, which means that we are dependent on other countries.

And so what we need to do is to get back at productive capacity, especially for manufacturing and agriculture. And then the third thing we need to do is to plan for future viruses, because this won’t be the last one. And so the biggest thing of all Mike, that we’ve learned is that the Taiwanese, the South Koreans, the Israelis, the Singaporeans, they trust their government.

They don’t give them carte blanche, but they do trust their government. And the government’s lead. In this country governments are too busy, fabricating policies and making and misrepresenting the circumstances.

We haven’t seen the truth on this from the prime minister. We haven’t seen the truth on this from Daniel Andrews, nor Annastacia Palaszczuk. We wrote to Annastacia Palaszczuk and said, “where’s your data. “We want to have a look at it.” She said, it’s in two locations, we went to both locations.

There’s no data. So Scott Morrison right up front. He was saying, six months hibernation, six months hibernation, six months hibernation. We knew there was no plan. And now we know there’s no data driving that plan. These governments are not trusted in this country on a range of issues, electricity, agriculture, stealing farmers property rights.

I mean, you could go on forever, selling ourselves out through international agreements, selling ourselves out the free trade agreements that are giving the other parties the power, we have got to establish trust in our government. And that can only become, can only come with reliance on data and reliance on telling the truth its time Australia got back to that.

[Mike]

Just wondering about the data to have the data we need all the input. We actually have that at our fingertips with credit cards and with Apple, for example, and the other Android devices. And we can, we can actually find out where people have been. The problem we have at the moment, according to professor Fendos, was that it’s reliant on us being honourable or telling the truth. So by having all that data available, it’s going to impact on inverted commas ‘civil liberties.’

[Malcolm]

Well, I get, I go back to my experience when I graduated from university with a mining engineering degree, I thought I’d better go out and start learning something that really mattered. So I worked as a miner for about three years, various mines around the country. And then I went overseas and worked in mines overseas.

So I’ve worked at the coalface and I developed a very healthy respect for miners for all people. And then when I became a mine manager, I would go underground a lot, not to do people’s work, but just to have, listen, and to look so that I can understand what they were going through and what their needs were.

And I can remember turning up at one mine brand new and the workforce detested the mine management because the mine management told lies and it took me a few months, but people started to trust me and that’s extremely important. And then what I was able to do was also to hand over responsibility and authority to the people doing the job.

I mean, not everything we can’t expect the miner to make every decision for the business, but their own jobs. And when people are given that responsibility and that authority they usually come good. And so what’s happening here is government tries to impose things in a crisis.

And we think we’re, a lot of Australians then distrust that, but in, Southeast Asia they’re already practising those things. And we’ve gotta give those governments credit because they’ve had SARS before. So we understand that that’s made it easier, but they’ve learned from that.

And they put it into practise and people are now trusting the government. So if the government tells the truth, if the government hands over responsibility to business owners, venue managers, then they’ll see the people respond because then people take accountability.

But when it’s shoved on them under threat and under control, it’s not taken that accountability is taken when there’s freedom for people to make decisions that autonomy is really important. And we’ve gotta keep giving trust back to people in this country and get the government the hell out of people’s lives.

[Mike]

What about state government? When we have this, where, we’re all Australians, but we have, the new country of Queensland, the new country of Victoria, the new country, new South Wales, South Australia, blah, blah, blah, blah. And each state has its own, not agenda, but it its own approach.

And maybe an agenda also it becomes a little bit political because where the Joan of arc of WA, with a Joan of arc of Victoria, Tasmania. So how do we get all the States working as one country instead of being a number of different countries within this terrible state of Australia?

[Malcolm]

Well, first of all, the thing that unites strategies is data. When everyone’s got the correct data, you’ll end up seeing strategies similar, but across every state, but they will be fine tuned for each state because Queensland is the only state in the country. Yes, that’s correct.

It’s the only state in the country where there are more people outside the capital city than inside the capital city, we’re more decentralised. We’re more spread up the coast with the sparse population inland. And so that’s different from Victoria. That’s different from Tassie.

That’s different from new South Wales and then Western Australia is different again. So I’m very much a believer in our constitution, federal constitution, which is based on competitive federalism, giving a huge amount of sovereignty to the independent States.

Only on national issues should we come together that’s defence, border security, foreign affairs, those kinds of things. And so I’m in favour of letting the state run, but the States themselves also need to get the data so that they can manage effectively. And they need to manage trust in a trustworthy way.

The fundamental thing that we did wrong in this country, I believe with COVID was that we looked automatically to Britain and to a man called Neil Ferguson. And that was a mistake. This Neil Ferguson has done I’ve forgotten the name of the school in medical school, medical college in Britain, but he’s in there and they’ve done a lot of modelling and his models have been proven to be completely wacky.

They have exaggerated the consequences of just about every virus they’ve cared to model every disease they’ve cared to model. Foot and mouth disease they cost the British government way back then when a billion was worth a billion, $10 billion, they cost the British farm economy. They have completely exaggerated.

They forecast millions of deaths, when out of the virus out of the disease in Britain when there were only 120 deaths. I mean, it’s completely ridiculous. We looked to them went straight to lockdown. We didn’t look to Asia. We should’ve looked at Taiwan as well as Britain and worked out where the reality is.

Donald Trump himself started calling out the British. And I don’t think he named Ferguson, but he that’s what he was implying. And we should be coming up with our own strategy, but looking at Taiwan, looking at everywhere in the world and then developing our own. So it’s up to the state governments.

I believe they should be independent. They should be working independently. That’s what gives us greater accountability. It worked up until about 1923, and then that’s been smashed and we’ve centralised more and more. So we need to get back to that competitive federalism, independent States working together. And when they’ve got data, they will have a solid plan. We’ve got to get back to truthful government that relies upon objective data.

[Mike]

Very interesting times we must continue more discussions. There’s so many questions or conversation pieces such as border control, the forthcoming Queensland elections in Australia, the economy and even football. So we can do that next time.

[Malcolm]

I look forward to it Mike. Happy to contact me anytime.

[Mike]

Senator Malcolm Roberts, thank you very much.

[Malcolm]

Thank you, Mike. All the best.

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