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

The United Nations food systems presummit last week in Rome recommended a dietary limit of 14 grams of red meat per person per day. That's one bite. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I'm appalled, and I'll explain how this is an attack on our farmers and on every Australian.

The presummit recommended the introduction of a worldwide environmental tax on meat of $1.60 per kilo for cattle grazing on pasture, yet not for cattle raised in intensive feedlots. That distinction reflects the influence of large multinational feedlot operators and the lack of influence that family farms have in the UN's eyes. As my colleague Bob Katter rightly pointed out, this UN measure will take 2.4 billion kilos of protein off the market, starving 80 million people of protein. Yes, go the UN!

The third recommendation of the food systems presummit is to move food production within reach of population centres and produce whatever protein and nutrition is possible in that region. It's called short chain food supply. We did it 200 years ago. People starved. Nutrition was poor. Life expectancy was less than half what we enjoy today. Then along came long chain food supply, allowing countries like Australia to grow crops to feed and clothe those in need. World hunger fell to less than 10 per cent. The only reason there are still areas of poverty and hunger in 2021 is because of war and civil unrest—you know, the things that the United Nations were supposed to solve. World peace has eluded the UN, yet cows have not. The United Nations is proposing to eliminate global food chains that have brought good food to the world for hundreds of years.

I recently spoke about the false water shortage brought to you thanks to the UN's directive to not build new dams. This is the start of a false food shortage. The motivation is to eliminate broadacre agriculture, eliminate food exports and return all that land to nature.

Rural voters will be annoyed to hear that the Morrison government bankrolled this attack on our farming community with a $64 million donation. The Liberal-National government is funding our own demise—the betrayal and demise of our farmers, of our country. Australian farms employ 326,000 people directly. They contribute $75 billion to the economy and $60 billion to our exports. Without the bush, we'd be stuffed, broke and hungry. These three United Nations proposals will destroy rural Australia, wipe out family farms, crash real estate prices and further hollow out country towns for no benefit to us.

There's no better source of protein than red meat, yet our supermarkets stock protein and fake food products made from crickets. Why? It's because billionaires can't make enough profit out of cattle. It's a variable industry, with good times and bad. Billionaires can, though, make money on intensive cultivation of bugs for protein. This breaks the reliance on nature's weather and allows scheduled production of a food-like substance with great profit margins and low fulfilment costs. This satisfies the UN dictate for short chain supply. The United Nations food and agriculture organisation is literally directing the replacement of red meat with bug protein. Sceptics can even attend one of the regular UN bug tastings, where journalists are encouraged to extoll the virtues of bug cuisine.

The CSIRO has fallen in line behind the UN, publishing a 64-page love letter on the delights of eating bugs entitled Edible insects: a roadmap for the strategic growth of an emerging Australian industry. Looking through the glossy pages, we see that the CSIRO advocates our future should include insect milkshakes, bug ice-cream and granola bars made from dried cockroaches.

I'm not making any of this up. It's real. This is happening, and we taxpayers are paying for it thanks to the Morrison-Joyce government.

For those who think they're eating an environmentally friendly product, think again A fake hamburger patty using plant or bug protein contains 20 chemicals found in pet food. That's all the UN and their quislings in our federal government think the public deserve: pet food. How does it make sense to grow good food and, instead of eating that food, feed it to crickets and then eat the crickets?

Fellow Australians, there is no protein shortage. There will be, though, if the UN succeeds in wiping out red meat production so that they can hand the protein industry over to their big business, corporate partners. One Nation rejects this attack on our farming community. We reject state and federal parliaments around our country continuing to demonise and isolate farmers. We will continue to oppose the UN dictating to federal and state governments. One Nation will continue to oppose ideology over humanity. We will continue to stand up for a fair society based on a citizen's right to exercise free choice about diet, health and business. We have one flag. We are one community. We are one sovereign nation. It's time to withdraw from the United Nations.