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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I advise that One Nation will support the government's measures tackling COVID-19, coronavirus. We don't agree with them all, yet now is when the government that the people elected must be allowed to govern. I will raise serious questions about the government's approach to fulfilling its three core responsibilities: protecting life, protecting property and protecting freedom. All three are relevant tonight. We are well aware of the devastating effects and the human tragedy that this virus is leaving in its wake around the world. Now its attack is taking hold on Australia and on Australians. Many people have died, and, unfortunately, many more will die or be scarred.

The World Health Organization says that, of the people who contract the virus, 3.4 per cent will die, yet there are many factors, including transmission rate and whether or not a nation's healthcare system is overwhelmed. Experts tell us that everyone will eventually get coronavirus. Using these figures simplistically means 850,000 Australians would die. That's staggering, yet we must remain calm, though, because such broad figures cannot be applied so simply, and we can do much better when we are committed. Italy's early figures show a fatality rate much higher than this 3.4 per cent; South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore much lower, around one-tenth.

The first step is to protect people, to prevent deaths. That means stopping or reducing the transmission and that means, in part, stopping human interaction. This virus easily transmits itself from human to human. The second step is to prevent the overwhelming of our healthcare system, so that everyone can get effective treatment. The third step is to identify economic impacts and serious economic challenges, because, without human interactions, economies contract. The fourth step is to identify which industries, sectors and individuals will need assistance. The fifth step is to ask what the sources of financing and the areas for reducing people's expenses are. The final step is to consider how to restore our economy afterwards. That involves short-term and long-term factors to restore our nation's productive capacity and economic resilience.

Let's return to the first step. Some foreign governments acted swiftly to stop the virus. They immediately closed borders and sent people home to protect them and to help isolate and stop the virus. They proactively quarantined, including closing schools, while infection numbers were low. They took immediate action to help curb the spread of this killer. We may or may not know who shares this deadly virus with us—a friend, a relative who does not know they even have the virus themselves—yet the death rate isn't the only determining factor regarding how deadly a pandemic can be; it will be the impact on our families, our businesses, our economy and our way of life. Who knows what life will be like after this storm passes?

Minister, every day Australians are more and more concerned, and we rely on our governments to protect us, yet in Canberra yesterday we saw shoppers mingling normally, and the same in Brisbane restaurants. It is time for decisive action to protect our health, our children, our jobs and our country's future. The sooner we act to stop transmitting the virus and isolate it, the safer Australians will be and the fewer will die. The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was the deadliest flu season we know, killing around 50 million people. The coronavirus, COVID-19, is no less a killer and is easier for humans to catch than the 1918 Spanish flu.

I base my facts, my data, on reports from Taiwan, South Korea, China and Singapore and from the Western countries that are currently floundering, like Italy, the UK, the USA and more. I have become very concerned that we need decisive action and that we need a stronger, broader, deeper response—now. The question is which is more important: people's lives or the economy? It is not appropriate to try a balancing act. The higher priority is to protect people's health, and I commend the government for acting, yet we have to be both dynamic and aggressive in attacking this enemy, and to base decisions on data.

From a strategic point of view our choice in combating this deadly virus is either mitigation or suppression, yet what does this mean? Mitigation involves voluntary isolation and trying to reduce the impact, like Italy, France, Spain and Britain and the USA, yet this has the potential that very soon we will see the overwhelming of our healthcare system and the destruction of the economy, needlessly costing Australian lives. Mitigation takes time, and experience overseas, as in Italy, says that it is killing more people. Suppression, though, is preferred and is the enforced isolation of the population, as in Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. It involves aggressive testing and then managed treatment. Suppression could cut this horrendous mortality rate from five per cent in Italy to 0.6 per cent in South Korea. The harsh enforcement of suppression is against our democratic ideals and our friendly outdoors lifestyle. Yet doing it will save potentially hundreds of thousands of Australian lives—and this does not include the collateral damage, where people in need are not able to get into intensive care units.

We should not assume that there will be a hospital bed waiting for us if we get sick or injured. The data suggest that, using mitigation strategies, only one in 30 infected people will be able to get into an ICU bed in Australia. That means that intensive care units in our healthcare system will be completely overwhelmed. Patients will be lying in hospital corridors. Nurses and doctors will decide who survives and who dies—and that's a terrible, scary responsibility for professionals who care. Media reports from Italy say that people over 80 years of age are now not treated. Some victims of coronavirus—and there could likely be many—will need intensive care units, because COVID-19 is a respiratory disease and many people will need intubation. What is going to happen to those who would normally be referred to an ICU unit for other causes, like major trauma or severe burns, respiratory failure, organ transplant or car accidents? Sick or injured Australians may not find a bed that does not already have a coronavirus patient in it, and that means more deaths.

According to the experts and overseas data, suppression is best. But we're not doing it. After that, it's going to take an effective vaccine, which is up to a year away, and then herd immunity, which blocks out the virus when we become immune, from already having had COVID-19. The overseas data seems to show that, right now, we need a suppression strategy, until we develop a vaccine. Our government isn't there yet. And complacency kills.

Reportedly, in South Korea, comprehensive testing for body temperature is followed with testing high-temperature people for COVID-19. Those with the virus are isolated, as are those with weaker immunity. The majority of people stay at work and keep going. That means much less economic disruption to the economy.

Until the government takes stronger action, we're all going to need to practice social distancing, to help minimise the number of people who contract the virus. In simple terms, we all need to keep our distance from others; practice good hygiene, including regular hand-washing and surface-cleaning; eat well; rest; and be considerate of others. We will need to work together to limit exposure to one another, especially with older adults and people with underlying illnesses, who have the greatest risk of developing severe symptoms. Though we do need to take action to contain the spread and to protect our most vulnerable Australians, we all have to take responsibility for the health and welfare of ourselves and others. It is time to care and to be kind.

We have every reason to stay calm and make decisions based on data and facts. Minister, a matter of importance is that every day Australians are calling now for detailed and regular information and updates, and people want information when and where we need it—often. Australians deserve to know the data and the facts about what the government is doing and what is happening to us, here and overseas. Television and the internet may not be available or enough. The government must engage effectively to keep us all up to date with facts.

I especially want to express Australia's thanks and best wishes to all of our healthcare professionals, our heroes, for what they are doing and for what they are going to do in the tough months ahead. Some have talked about bringing health professionals out of retirement. This may be a good idea, provided the older professionals themselves are not in a group at high risk of getting this sinister virus. To all those who step up to the challenge, and to those who support our healthcare heroes: we thank you.

Who knows what Australia and, indeed, the world will look like after this menace is overcome. I just hope that the actions that our national and state governments are taking today will be quick and decisive and ensure that we are saving as many Australian lives as possible. The sooner we are through this event, the sooner we can all get back to normal.

One Nation has scrutinised the bill and, in the interests of speedy action and support for people across our country, will vote in favour. I do, though, want to address two measures we oppose strongly. The first is the business growth fund. Recently the crossbench came together to oppose this legislation. We raised many, many problems with how this terrible legislation would work in practice. We pointed out that there is already a patient capital industry in this country. This legislation will eliminate it. That will reduce competition for the major banks. That will increase returns for the banks. We pointed out that Australian taxpayers would now subsidise the local arm of foreign corporations, to the detriment of Australian owned businesses. We said that the government has no place trying to pick winners in the venture capital space, and no place eliminating competition for the banks. All these objections and more have been ignored. Now I find the bill has been included in the rescue package, so we can no longer oppose it. The Liberals, Nationals and Labor worked on this together. The Liberal-Labor duopoly will do whatever it takes to transfer wealth from everyday Australians to their mates in the banks, even at the cost of wiping out our entire venture capital industry. I thought this was a rescue package, not a 'wipe out the competition to the banks' package.

I do find one thing interesting. One of the suggestions by Senator Patrick was to turn this fund into an underwriting fund. That would allow the existing venture capital market to make loans the government underwrites. This is a much safer bet for the taxpayers: our risk ends as soon as the loan is made. Imagine my surprise when I opened the rescue package and saw the Guarantee of Lending to Small and Medium Enterprises (Coronavirus Economic Response Package) Bill. It is a $20 billion fund—not an underwriting fund but a guaranteed fund. The taxpayers will be guaranteed $20 billion worth of loans. My first thought was: doesn't this fund make a business growth fund moot? What has the venture capital industry done to bring the wrath of the banks down on them? The Liberal-Labor banking cheer squad have moved, from the banks to the taxpayers, the risk for $20 billion worth of small business loans. Yet risk is what the banks deal in. If the government is now picking up the banking sector risk, is the government becoming a bank? Let me take that a step further. It is One Nation policy to create a 'people's bank' to give the big four banks some real competition in the areas in which they are complete failures—honesty, integrity and accountability. A people's bank would be really handy right now. At least we would be propping up a bank we own.

The second area that causes us alarm is the $115 billion this government and the Reserve Bank are about to spend on securitised mortgages. At Senate estimates earlier this month, I asked the Reserve Bank if they had actually checked the $300 billion they are already holding in securitised mortgages. By 'checked' I meant picked a tranche at random, cracked it open and made sure the paperwork was in order, the properties were correctly valued and the mortgaging income and assets were correct. The Reserve Bank admitted to me that it has never opened any of these tranches. I know from the banking victims' cases that flood my office that mortgages are being altered after being issued. The scam is to make a mortgage look better so it can be securitised. This government must check these things before it buys them with taxpayer money.

Now let me turn to the one that is missing from this package, and that is simply the future. Can this government really only think a few months ahead? Where is the vision in this rescue package? Why are we not getting cracking today on nation-building schemes to create new productive capacity to power this nation to a future, to create fresh wealth for everyday Australians? Where is the Bradfield scheme? Where are the dams, the power stations, the ports and airports? Where are the railways to places that need them? We are selling off our farms, shrinking rural Australia, shedding jobs and sending the profits from this new corporate agriculture to the Cayman Islands.

Where are the government's measures to save rural Australia? Oh wait! The Liberal and Labor governments are the ones who have been killing rural Australia for 30 years! Where is the $1 billion for South Australia's south-east drainage project to turn the drains around and send 400 gigalitres of freshwater a year back into the Coorong? This will save a Ramsar listed wetland, with all the tourism and commerce that brings. It will save the Menindee Lakes wetland from being drained—again. It will free up hundreds of gigalitres of water for irrigation, to grow billions of dollars of food and fibre for the world and earn us exports.

Where is the government's response to the PFAS contamination? Yes, that will be expensive to fix. Yet it will inject billions into regions right across Australia as we move affected residents into like-for-like properties and remediate the environmental damage. What a perfect time to be doing that. What about restoring land-use rights to farmers who bought them? The Howard Liberal government and many state Labor government since have stolen without compensation. If not restored under our Constitution, farmers need to be compensated—restoration or compensation so our farmers can get on with the job. What about stopping the waste of billions on subsidies for expensive intermittent solar and wind power? Bring jobs back to Australia with affordable energy using our abundance of energy currently exported to our competitors for cheap energy.

The Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians told us today that a major global source of personal protective equipment for healthcare and aged-care workers is—wait for it—Wuhan, the virus epicentre. This virus has taught us about the stupidity and the cost of the globalist elites in the United Nations preaching 'interdependence'. This virus shows that interdependence is really dependency. We need to restore our productive capacity, our economic resilience and our economic independence. One Nation would build for our future and put people to work, not just put the entire nation onto unemployment benefits. We rely on our government to help protect our health, our economy, our jobs and our way of life. In all respects, we need decisive action and we need it now. People need reassurance, confidence, hope, support and care. (Time expired)