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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, in speaking on the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Productivity Commission Response Part 2 and Other Measures) Bill 2019 I want to speak mostly about the amendments to be proposed by Senator Patrick. I won't be voting on this bill, because our party will not be supporting any critical legislation until the government comes good with supporting dairy farmers with a code of conduct. That is essential. That is a matter of priority. But we also want to protect small business and we need to continue to ensure that small business is given a fair go in our country. Small business is the largest employer in Australia.

Coming back to this legislation, the purposes of the original legislation were to provide protections for the owners and developers of intellectual property in Australia, including providing protections through the innovation patent system. Many small businesses rely on incremental innovation, and this has been protected by using the rapid and low-cost protection provided in the innovation patent system. The bill before the house would phase out this important protection without replacing it with a system offering the same advantages that the innovation patent system provides. What would be left is the standard patent system, which is expensive and slow and provides uncertainty in the level of protection it should create for the business that is developing innovative technology and ideas.

The existing innovation patent process offers rapid and low-cost protection for these small businesses. Without that level of protection offered through the innovation patent system, small businesses, which provide substantial employment and potentially turn over millions of dollars annually, may lose all if an unscrupulous business should steal the technology related to commercially relevant operations before it is fully protected. This government has said that it will stand up and support small businesses—just as it said it will be building dams. Three days ago it said it will be building dams. It turns out it's two dams with incremental improvements to existing dams. That's it—no vision, no forethought, no rescuing of farmers today let alone in the future.

To dump the innovation patent system and erase the advantages of rapid and inexpensive patents is contrary to the interests of Australian small businesses relying on the protection of their innovative technology. In my experience, in my reading of history and technology, innovation comes from the individual. Small businesses rely on the individual and they create the perfect ground for the fertilising and developing of ideas. This is, in a sense, a trade measure that works contrary to Australian interests. That's what the government is proposing. Why would they do so?

Perhaps the Prime Minister's admission a week ago last Thursday, when he talked about unaccountable, internationalist bureaucrats who dictate the globalist agenda, leads to the answer.

Australia became a signatory to the UN's Lima Declaration in 1975, when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the Labor Prime Minister, signed the declaration. It was ratified the following year by Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal Prime Minister. The original signing was at the second general conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO, held in Lima, Peru. By the way, major countries around the world did not commit to it but Australia did. We committed to adopting trade measures designed to ensure increased exports from developing countries to developed countries, including Australia, and to stimulate free trade transfer of our processes, our management and our technology to the Third World. Look at what that has done. These measures have been devastating to Australian manufacturing, agriculture and industry generally and to the Australian economy in general. A global approach has not been good for Australian interests, when Australian interests must come first. The government's responsibility is to the people of Australia and to the country of Australia.

In 1994, the Liberal Premier of Western Australia, Richard Court, outlined the way in which our government had been usurped by the United Nations, in particular, and other globalist entities. That was 25 years ago. Two years later, 23 years ago, Pauline Hanson MP, as she was known at the time, also spoke about the erosion of Australian sovereignty and the decimation of Australian industry due to the UN and other globalist entities. Ten years ago, when I learned about it, I started speaking about it. We can assure everyday Australians that we will work relentlessly to restore Australian sovereignty. We are far too closely aligned with the UN, whose interests are not aligned with the interests of Australia. We need to restore governance in Australia that is working for Australia's interests, and we will continue to work to restore governance in Australia that is working for Australia's interests.

We need to protect small business intellectual property. The major parties—Liberal and Labor—have let down the Australian public in many ways. This bill, which neglects small business, is just another example of the sellout of the interests of Australians by the government. So I support the amendments that, as he foreshadowed, Senator Patrick will move, because they will maintain the protections achieved by the current innovation patent system, and we are opposed to the removal of the innovation patent system.