George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Seventy-five years ago, the great Sir Robert Menzies delivered his now famous speech 'The Forgotten People'. Sadly, those people are mostly still forgotten. In that speech he defined a forgotten people not by who they were but by who they were not. Three-quarters of a century later, we might define those people in a similar way. The rich and powerful are not so much forgotten as left to their own devices. They have the means by which to look after themselves, and they are only mentioned in this place when Labor wants to create a division by means of class war.

At the other end of the scale, there would not be a parliamentary sitting day go by without multiple references to the poor, the needy and the most vulnerable people in our community. While a focus on those people and a government that provides support for those who need it most is welcome, these are not the only people in this country. There are those in the vast middle ground that pay for that support. While much of the focus is on those at the bottom of the income scale, the media cycle is dominated by people who are at the upper end of the scale, the elite—the media elite, the cultural elite and, perhaps the least qualified of all the elite, the academic elite. In terms of annual income, some of the agenda setters fall around the upper-middle of the scale, but they are not Middle Australia. They are the noisy, attention-seeking fringe. This fringe often panders to the elite and aspires to be the elite. They co-opt the poor and the needy and hang them out with pride, dangling them over their lofty balconies to demonstrate how tolerant and inclusive they are. They tell the vast Middle Australia that it must give up more of its income to pursue elitist-driven political ideology. Meanwhile, Middle Australia is forgotten, neglected, censored and abused. The forgotten people are labelled racist, bigoted, homophobic or Islamophobic if they do not fall into line with what the elites and the elitist wannabes think is right.

What happened to Australian tennis great Margaret Court over the weekend is a perfect example of such intolerance. Margaret Court made the mistake of publicly saying she believed marriage was between a man and a woman, and that happens to be a point of view shared by millions of Australians. But, instead of whispering her opinion amongst her friends or her church friends or, better still, keeping it to herself, she had the audacity to say this in public! The result was that the media elites jumped all over her, and then social media reacted. The media then fed the reaction back into the news cycle, with a fresh round of headlines to perpetuate the abuse. There were headlines of news reports such as 'Social media went into meltdown' and 'Twitter storm has erupted'. The abuse is a warning to anyone who dares to have an opinion that does not fit the elitist narrative or who objects to having the LGBTIQ agenda shoved down their throats. What would be real news these days would be a headline that said, 'Ordinary Australian was allowed to have an opinion.'

It is not just the LGBTQ lobby, gender theory and identity politics on the fringe; it is the green activists who want to stop all industry. It is the violent fascism of 'antifa'. It is the anti-democracy and anti-capitalist organisations like the 'Occupy Everything' movement and the Socialist Alliance that rents the same jobless criminals to rally in the streets and bash anyone who commits what they think is a thought crime. It is the animal rights activists that shut down the live cattle trade and rejoiced at the death of a hunter, that place more value on the life of a shark or a crocodile than on the life of a human being but get the exterminators in to do their home for pests every year. This fringe is very loud and it works with a very compliant media elite, but it is very far from a majority and certainly does not represent middle Australia.

The concerns of middle Australia—the forgotten people—go mostly unnoticed. They have legitimate concerns about jobs and the cost of living. They are sick of seeing foreign workers with 457 visas take local jobs. They worry about the rise of foreign ownership in land, business and agriculture. They hear news of another $300 million being spent on foreign aid while victims of Cyclone Debbie here at home are denied recovery funds because of a bungle by the Queensland Labor government. They wonder why their taxes are so high when large corporations seem to pay nothing. They watch the banks make millions of dollars and then take a farm off a family who never missed a payment. They have pride in the flag and in being Australian, but they are told they are racist for celebrating Australia Day. They love the Australian way of life, but they are told Australian culture must be rejected to avoid offending fake refugees. They are concerned for their safety, but they are told that such concerns are racist or Islamophobic. In North Queensland, they pay outrageous insurance premiums on houses that have never been flooded and have survived cyclones unscathed. In North Queensland, people want jobs. But the fringe dwellers at groups like GetUp! and the Greens are spending millions of dollars to prevent job-creating ventures, such as the Carmichael coal project.

These are the forgotten people that Sir Robert Menzies set out to represent, and in the 2017-18 budget this government, I have to say, has addressed a good many of the concerns of those forgotten people. The banks will be forced to pay a fairer share. If they want to rebel by squeezing more profits out of customers, those customers will have an incentive to switch to one of the smaller banks, who do not pay the levy and who do not treat their customers like limitless cash cows. I am generally not in favour of higher taxes, but the big banks were major beneficiaries of a government policy during the GFC. I am generally not in favour of expensive interference in commercial enterprise either, but the arrogant behaviour of the banks indicates there is not enough competition and/or not enough regulation. The banks seem to believe they are a law unto themselves and that they can get away with unconscionable behaviour. I had hoped that measures introduced by this government would help to rein in the banks, but my faith in their better nature is still wanting. I do think a royal commission may be required to bring some balance, some competition, and some decency back into the banking system.

Another budget measure applauded by middle Australia is the cut to foreign aid, which would have been a better announcement in the wake of Cyclone Debbie. The savings will be spent on the safety of Australians, with an additional $300 million to strengthen security and boost the ability of the Australian Federal Police to combat terrorism and organised crime. While there is still a general reluctance across the political and media elite to acknowledge the dangers posed by the ideology of radical Islam, we are starting to hear some common sense. We cannot allow fear of being called a racist, a bigot or an Islamophobe to cloud our judgement on issues of national security and immigration. The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection announced earlier this month that fake refugees would have welfare revoked and would have to leave this country, and I congratulate him on having the guts to call out fake refugees for what they are. It is a shame there was not greater support for this move on all sides of this parliament. This is precisely what middle Australia wants and what all of Australia should be demanding.

A measure announced prior to the budget was the scrapping of 457 visas completely. This was excellent news for North Queensland and, no doubt, many other regional areas. Unemployment levels in North Queensland are high, running at above five per cent in Mackay and more than 11 per cent in Townsville. It is very disheartening for locals who are desperate for a job to see foreign workers with 457 visas coming into regions of high unemployment and taking Australian jobs that ultimately should go to Australian workers. Last year I called for the scrapping of 457 visas in North Queensland, where there simply are not enough jobs to go around. The number of 457-visa workers exploded under the previous Labor governments. When the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government was sent packing, the Liberal-National government tightened up the regulations. But the program was still being exploited at the expense of local workers, so I am encouraged to see the government is scrapping that program completely.

I was also encouraged to see in the budget a drug-testing trial for welfare recipients. Many workers in my electorate are forced to take regular and random drug tests as part of their job. If workers have to submit to drug tests to earn the taxes that are then spent on welfare, it is only just that the recipients of that welfare, people who are supposed to be looking for jobs, are doing the same. In a region where so many jobs include compulsory drug testing, job seekers are excluding themselves from the workforce if they are indulging in illicit substances. Newstart is about getting people job ready and into the workforce. A job seeker is not job ready if they have drugs in their system. The drug-testing trial announced in the budget is a very popular measure with the majority in my electorate, and I believe it will be popular across the nation. The idea was not so well received by the elites and the fringe dwellers. The outcry from the so-called human rights activists and the welfare lobbyists was predictable but baseless. They repeated claims like: 'We must give these people free money to stop them stealing,' a claim that is both defeatist and ludicrously laughable. The argument that we must expect and accept failure or crime is an insult to people who are subjected to the same measure in order to earn the money through their own sweat.

It is also good to see in the budget the adoption of the recommendations, the real recommendations, from the Gonski report. The Liberal-National government is implementing a real needs based school funding model as intended by David Gonski. Labor attempted to introduce 27 different models and the only need considered in their needs based funding was their own political survival. They could not even fund their hodgepodge of ideas. We have heard about the 'billions of dollars' worth of cuts,' but if there are billions of dollars' worth of cuts, where is it in your costings? Where is it in your own budgeting?

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