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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to support this bill, yet I must, in loyalty to the farmers and the people of Queensland, expose a contradiction—and my comments will highlight that. My comments will also highlight a deepening unfolding crisis, and that will be at the core of what I have to say. May I say before Senator Carr leaves the chamber that I applaud his comments in many regards because they do need to be highlighted, and we look forward to seeing your party's amendments.

The Criminal Code Amendment (Agricultural Protection) Bill 2019 will amend the Criminal Code Act 1995 to safeguard Australian farmers and primary production businesses from those who incite trespass or other property offences on agricultural land. Trespass into agricultural land has the potential to cause food contamination and breach biosecurity protocols. It can also lead to farmers and their families feeling unsafe on their own land and in their own homes—and in fact being unsafe.

The bill will address this by creating a new offence of using a carriage service like the internet to transmit, make available, publish or otherwise distribute material with the intention to incite another person to trespass on agricultural land. This offence would require that a person is reckless as to whether the other person's trespass or related conduct could cause detriment to a primary production business being carried out on the land.

The law would cover dairy and meat farmers but also other agricultural premises, such as abattoirs, meat exporters, fish farms, livestock saleyards and tree, fruit, vegetable and crop growers. This is a comprehensive defence of our people engaged in these vital businesses for our national security and, in fact, the nutrition of every Australian. This offence would apply whether or not actual trespass or detriment resulted from the incitement. A person found guilty of this offence could face up to 12 months imprisonment, and I say, 'Fair enough.'

The bill will also create an aggravated offence for those who use a carriage service to incite more serious forms of harm—property damage and destruction or theft from agriculture land. Vegan terrorists are causing havoc and actually putting lives at risk—not just animal lives but human lives. This offence and the substantial penalty proposed reflect the gravity of these more serious forms of conduct and the substantial loss of income that could follow. This offence will carry a maximum penalty of five years.

It is critical that journalists and those who lawfully disclose animal cruelty or other criminal activity where it exists in the agricultural industry are protected under the bill. For this reason, the bill contains appropriate exemptions for journalists and whistleblowers.

Now I'm going to speak to our farmers and to all Queenslanders. I am going to express their view on the core issue. You farmers, you Queenslanders, are a vital part of not only the Australian community but the world economy. You deserve to go about your business free from harassment and threats of harm. You deserve to feel safe in your own homes. There was a time when feeding the hungry was a good thing—not anymore. In this green nightmare world, feeding the hungry is being demonised. Farmers are being hounded from their properties, deprived of water, forced to pay power and water charges that are beyond common sense and made to pay for concocted imaginary damage to reefs hundreds and, in fact, thousands of kilometres away, with no evidence that the farming is doing any damage. Further, innocent farmers are being bashed at a time when they are facing severe drought and incredibly—and artificially—high energy costs. Not content with that level of persecution, antihumanists are now storming rural properties, destroying equipment, cutting water pipes, scaring the animals and even stealing or hurting animals. They're cutting brake lines on vehicles, which indicates that they don't seem to understand that human life is important.

These farms are often biosecurity zones. The ability of those properties to maintain their production, in accordance with the laws of the land for the protection of humans right across the country and internationally and in accordance with export requirements, is being compromised by these foolish zealots and ideologues. If this keeps up, the only agriculture in this country will be run by large corporate farms owned by multinational corporations. Do the Greens even think these things through?

This legislation does not make it illegal to protest. People can protest outside a property. People can protest in the cities. People can even protest here at Parliament House. One more thing: this bill still allows antihumanist food haters to protest at the ballot box, which is fundamental. That right has not been taken away. The only place these terrorists can't protest now is inside someone's home. I use those words because these protesters do not seem to comprehend that these properties are peoples' homes—farmers' homes, lawfully acquired residential premises. Would these protesters accept a pro-food demonstrator marching through their Newtown, Melbourne or West End share house, disconnecting the pipes and scaring the occupants? No, of course they wouldn't. But they would take that right away from others. They want to steal peoples' lawful freedom.

This reprehensible conduct was enabled and encouraged by the sharing of information online—including personal details such as farmers' names, addresses and workplaces—on websites like Aussie Farms, which, despite the name, is not about supporting farming; it is about shutting down Aussie farmers and their families. This bill, the Criminal Code Amendment (Agricultural Protection) Bill 2019, will prevent the incitement of online hate against hardworking, decent farmers, and that is entirely appropriate. The introduction of the bill is an encouraging step towards protecting Australian farmers and agricultural businesses from trespass, property damage and theft incited through the online distribution of activist materials. It has been introduced as a deterrent for people considering entering farms, premises and other agricultural land illegally, and has wide-ranging support from farming communities and from Australians generally. One Nation will be supporting this bill.

However, we do call for the government to address other actions that are far, far more crippling and damaging to farmers in a state like Queensland that depends heavily on rural producers. Just like the trespassing on farming properties and agricultural processing plants, these actions are driven by activists without data, contradicting the real-world data, and these actions are driven by the same people that drive the destruction of farmers' property that we've talked about.

Let me talk first about property rights. The stealing of farmers' property rights without compensation, against our Constitution, was brought on by the UN's Kyoto protocol, was based on no data and was promoted by not only the Liberal government that started it federally but also the Labor governments that pushed it in Queensland. My heart goes out to the McDonald family at Charleville and many other families. Dan McDonald is branded a criminal because of the Queensland government legislation. A second issue is water—that is, the lack of infrastructure and the high prices of water, driven by the UN's Rio de Janeiro declaration in 1992 signed by the Keating government—again, no data; again, pushed by the Liberal and Labor Party policies. We now have people like Debbie Gibson in North Queensland not wanting to grow fodder in a drought because of high electricity prices. This brings me to energy: the UN's Kyoto protocol in 1996, the Rio declaration in 1992 and the Paris Agreement in 2015—again, all driven by the UN, a foreign body—based on no data, pushed by the Liberal and Labor parties, and affecting every single Australian and every small business who uses electricity. Then we've got carbon farming, driven by the UN's Kyoto protocol—again, based on no data and pushed by the Liberal and Labor parties.

My heart goes out to people like Cate Stuart and other farmers who are doing it tough, facing the onslaught of the banks as well as government at both state and federal levels. We've now got the farmers on the eastern coast of Queensland facing absurd legislation, supposedly to stop their soil run-off, chemical run-off and fertiliser run-off, driven by the UN's Rio de Janeiro declaration in 1992—again, based on no data and pushed by the Liberal and Labor duopoly. My heart goes out to people like Robert Rossiter and others right along the Queensland coast, who are facing devastation because of this. Then my heart goes out to people like Timmsey in Innisfail and other fishermen—and fishermen right around Australia, not just in Queensland—who are being decimated by the UN Rio declaration's consequences—again, based on no data and driven by the Liberal-Labor duopoly for many years. And then I think of the tireless work of Bruce Wagner, who has exposed the Queensland government's ridiculous trigger mapping, which is just a sham and steals farmers' property rights. My support goes to Bruce, because the catastrophe that he and other farmers are facing is driven by the UN's Rio declaration in 1992—again, based on no data and, again, pushed largely by the Labor Party.

As the Green Shirts Movement is saying in Queensland—and as we've been saying and as Senator Pauline Hanson has been saying since 1993—this is an ideological assault on rural Australia. We need reversal with urgent action to relieve the pressure on farmers and to restore basic rights and freedoms. What the government are doing in imposing themselves on businesses is no different from the activists—vegan terrorists—imposing themselves on farmers. Farmers care for the land and they care for the animals. It's in their livelihood to look after both the land and the animals. I want to commend Steve Andrew, the One Nation member for Mirani, for the work that he is doing to restore the natural environment by working with farmers.

There is another topic causing severe stress to farmers, and that is the false and unfounded statements from the Greens and the ALP on climate, and these statements drive crippling policies that in fact drive the government of this country. I know many people in the LNP who advise me that they do not believe the UN's fraudulent lies pushing unfounded climate alarm. These are driving devastating policy and underpin the destruction of primary industry and our country's productive capacity—and our country's future productive capacity.

I could talk for hours, in great detail, on solid, empirical evidence proving that human carbon dioxide is not affecting the climate and does not affect the climate. I will, though, focus on just three points that the Greens-Liberal-Labor-Nats are pushing as a result of other activists' work. They're supporting activists here, not shutting them down. For now, I will simply supply some basic facts. Let me explain the basic claim that activists are pushing on climate. What they're saying is that the sun's energy comes down to the Earth, whether it be the land or the ocean, and warms the Earth, and that re-radiates energy out. That is then trapped, so they say, by carbon dioxide molecules and re-radiated back.

Now, this is absurd. The atmosphere is cooler than the land's surface and it's supposed to be warming the land surface. Let me explain. The atmosphere cools the Earth's surface. Through contact and conduction and through convection, it removes heat at an accelerated rate from Earth's surface. It cools the Earth's surface. Yet activists have convinced the government that the atmosphere, which cools the surface, warms the surface. It is patently absurd for another reason: carbon dioxide is a stable compound not capable of generating heat, not capable of trapping heat.

Regardless, let's just look at the actual physical quantities in the atmosphere. It is absurdly low: 0.04 per cent of the air is carbon dioxide. That's four molecules in 10,000 molecules of air, meaning one molecule of carbon dioxide in every 2,500 molecules of air. Nature, every year, produces 32 times more carbon dioxide than all human production of carbon dioxide, including the animals we farm, and Australians produce just one 1.3 per cent of the human carbon dioxide. That leads to one molecule of carbon dioxide from humans in 85,000 molecules of air. Even that is ridiculous and meaningless because, in 2009, carbon dioxide produced by humans fell as a result of the recession around the world, and yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued to increase. Why? Because nature controls carbon dioxide levels. There is 50 times more carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans, in dissolved form, than in the entire atmosphere. Slight changes in temperature lead to liberation or absorption of that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So nature has complete control of the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and it doesn't matter what we do to stop humans producing it; we cannot affect the level in the atmosphere. What it means is that, in our supposed work—driven by the Greens, followed by the Labor Party, followed by the Liberal-Nats—even if we wanted to cut carbon dioxide it wouldn't have any impact on the level in the atmosphere.

Hard, measured data, though, and physics show that carbon dioxide does not drive temperature on any time interval. On many time intervals, temperature drives carbon dioxide levels, as I've just explained. And, if we could control Earth's thermostat, we would increase the temperature—because warming is beneficial. If we could control our air's carbon dioxide level, we would increase it because carbon dioxide promotes plant growth. Hard data shows that Australia was warmer in the 1880s and 1890s than today; it was warmer a thousand years ago.

Why am I saying this? Because the government and the whole of this parliament are being driven by activists. There is no agency or university or person anywhere in the world who has provided the empirical evidence proving human carbon dioxide affects the climate and needs to be cut—not the CSIRO; not BOM; not NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, nor its head Gavin Schmidt, because I have interrogated all of these and none of them can provide the evidence. The UK Met Office has none. Its Hadley climate research centre has none. The UN climate body, or supposed climate body, the IPCC, has none. Its core chapters for 2001, 2007 and 2013—that's chapters 12, 9 and 10—provide no evidence, yet we're following activists. I have challenged the Greens to produce their evidence. Three times Senator Larissa Waters has run from my challenge to debate. Now her leader, Senator Di Natale, is on the run. I challenge anyone in the Greens—