Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Food quality in particular and our biosecurity in general are extremely important to the people of Australia and the people of Queensland. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to make some comments in support of the Biosecurity Amendment (Ballast Water and Other Measures) Bill 2017, but also to raise a significant issue that we have learnt about. Our rural sector is under pressure, so we need this biosecurity bill to provide some security for the rural sector in particular and for Australians in general. Our serious concerns refer to item 6, to change section 9 of the Biosecurity Act, which changes the definition of 'ballast water convention'. The proposed amendment adds the words 'as enforced from time to time' to the convention definition. I must say that alarm bells rang for us in One Nation when we read that amendment as we have a fundamental distrust for United Nations conventions and agencies. The idea of supporting a bill that prospectively binds Australia to future amendments to a United Nations convention is enough to give us serious doubts.

Honourable senators will not be surprised to learn that we immediately sought advice from Minister Joyce's office about the provision. The advice we received is that section 9 means what it says, namely that if the ballast water convention is amended in the future then that amended convention is the one to which the Biosecurity Act will refer. Of course, any amendment to the convention must, however, be ratified by Australia before it becomes binding on our country, and this is the reassurance I have received from Minister Joyce's office. No changes will be made to the convention without the proposals being agreed to by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, following a detailed inquiry and analysis of the implications of the changes.

I am further advised by the minister's office that no changes to the ballast water convention will be made without Australia's approval, and those changes will then be incorporated into Australian law by legislation passed by this parliament. The legislation currently before the Senate, and which One Nation senators are intending to support, cannot be altered by the United Nations without the approval of the Australian parliament. Our senators will not tolerate giving the United Nations a blank cheque on any matter, especially one as important as seawater ballast, nor will it cede sovereignty of our country to the United Nations. On this basis alone, One Nation senators will support section 9 of the bill. As I said, we had serious concerns about the automatic amendment provision in item 6, section 9, but we have been reassured by the minister that it will still need to be passed through and ratified by this parliament independently.

We are particularly concerned about the United Nations. I have said in the past, on repeated occasions, that we need to exit from the United Nations. We are concerned because the United Nations has become a trojan horse for destroying national sovereignty around the world. One Nation senators were in unity when we toured the Murray-Darling Basin last week. We learned a lot and we saw the impact of United Nations regulations being pushed through the Murray-Darling Basin, driving the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, along with the grubby interstate politics that is pushing that plan. We will be having much more to say about the Murray-Darling Basin in coming weeks, once we complete our research. We know that farmers in particular are under threat from having their property rights seized and removed. We know that they are under pressure from overregulation and energy prices, as is small business in our country. We also know that farmers are facing pressure from banks. Yet we have apparently signed more than 7,000 treaties! And we know that the United Nations' Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, or the 'Agenda 21' as it is known, which was signed by Paul Keating's government in 1992, is undermining the sovereignty of this country.

We support the government in its bill to improve biosecurity. This is needed to protect the key competitive advantage we have in the rural sector—the quality of our rural products. But we make it clear that we do not accept any ceding of our country's sovereignty to any foreign body. It would be ironic indeed, would it not, if we protected the biosecurity and then failed to protect the security of the people of Australia. So, with our qualification on item 6, section 9, we will be supporting this bill.