ARE WE BUILDING AUSTRALIA'S LONGEST RUST LINE?
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By Senator Pauline Hanson
In order to lessen traffic congestion, Australia relies heavily on multi-model freight transportation.
The once symbiotic relationship between rail, road, and shipping ensured everyday household and commercial items were moved across vast distances, with limited effect on day-to-day road users.
But without a properly regulated relationship between the three predominant transport modes, the Federal Government could be building Australia’s longest rust line - the Inland Rail.
The disparity between Australia’s interstate rail industry and foreign-flagged coastal shipping vessels has led to the collapse of all but two rail freight companies - SCT Logistics and Pacific National.
And despite just two players left in this market, they too are teetering on the verge of collapse as Australia’s Coastal Trading Act enables foreign vessels to snatch an ever-increasing volume of domestic freight by exploiting foreign workers who are paid just $3 an hour.
Put simply, the Federal Governments' ineptitude is killing Australian enterprises while supporting foreign companies.
For just $400, foreign-flagged vessels can obtain a Temporary Coastal Trading Licence to conduct up to five voyages within Australian waters over a 12 month period.
There is no reliable obligation to pay foreign crews Australian wages, and foreign ships are exempt from all national safe work practices placed upon homegrown businesses.
It’s one thing for the Australian public to take for granted the sovereign security that our rail and trucking industries provide, but indefensible for the Government.
Scott Morrison was given an opportunity to meet face-to-face with SCT Logistics owner, Peter Smith in November 2020. Instead, the Prime Minister refused, leaving the countries largest, Australian-owned, interstate rail freight carrier in the waiting room while I was left to argue the industry's troubles.
The Prime Ministers' excuse. “I don’t meet with lobbyists.”
No Prime Minister, not unless they’re at a Liberal Party fundraiser.
And for the record, Peter Smith is not a lobbyist. He’s one of Australia’s most knowledgable transport industry people who started his private enterprise as a truck driver similar to Lindsay Fox.
Australia’s freight and logistics industry accounts for 8.6% of GDP. In simple terms around $150 billion and is set to increase by 35% between now and 2040.
The importance of interstate rail freight can be easily measured. 108 B-Double trucks are removed from our interstate highways for every freight train. Without rail operators, our roads will become congested parking lots.
Let’s face it, when foreign coastal shipping companies pay just $3 an hour for wages, versus an average of $60 per hour for rail workers, there are going to be significant cost variants too enticing for companies like Carlton and United Breweries and supermarket chains who move large volumes of interstate freight.
Australia’s Coastal Trading Act has triggered a price dumping war, allowing unfairly gained market share for foreign ships that will likely reduce the duopoly down to a single interstate rail carrier, and place at risk the viability of Australia’s Inland Rail project.
You see, the sustainability and profitability of the 1700km Inland Rail project only exists if Australia’s interstate rail freight operators survive.
Unless the Prime Minister and his Government rectify the iniquity between foreign coastal shipping vessels and our homegrown rail industry, Australia faces a risk to its supply chain sovereignty and creates the longest and most expensive rust line in the history of our nation.
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WHY WOULD ANYONE VOTE LABOR?
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By Mark Latham MLC
I asked this question yesterday of a longstanding Labor supporter in Singleton in the Upper Hunter and she replied, “That’s a very good question”.
Other than public sector employees and trade union officials I can’t find anyone in the Upper Hunter seat who has a good word to say about the ALP.
Most people have simply lost interest in them.
Labor believes in the climate change cult, instead of defending the jobs of coal miners tooth-and-nail.
They used to be a party of the workers. Now they have been overrun by the inner-city Left and become a party of the wokers.
They want to end coal mining and abolish all fossil fuel use, effectively exporting jobs to China.
Labor MPs now openly talk about NSW as a 'lifestyle economy’, declaring their support for arts, tourism, gig-economy and gendered jobs, but never mining and manufacturing. With the likes of Matt Kean, they are pushing for the deindustrialisation of NSW.
Six months ago in the NSW Parliament, Labor voted 60 times against the use of coal in generating electricity in our State. They were joined by the Liberals, Nationals and Greens in their dislike of coal and coal-reliant workers. I’m proud to say One Nation voted 60 times in favour of coal-fired electricity generation.
In the Upper Hunter by-election with our excellent candidate Dale McNamara, our policy is to build the Bayswater 2 coal-fired power station, thereby avoiding the need for windmills and transmission towers destroying the landscape and interfering with prime agricultural land further up the Valley at places like Merriwa (which I visited on Saturday).
Other than unsightly windmills, the only thing Labor Governments will build in the Upper Hunter are extra Centrelink offices for the mass unemployment they are bound to create.
A TAFE teacher challenged me about this on Sunday in Singleton, saying he was a rusted-on Labor voter and proud member of the NSW Teachers Federation. I told him to look up the Federation’s policy on climate change: The immediate closure of coal mines, meaning welfare dependency in the Upper Hunter community. It ended our discussion pretty quickly.
Labor has also abandoned working class values. It now practices PC-censorship, depicting working people as bigots, racists and homophobes.
I sat through two days of Education Committee parliamentary hearings last week listening to the NSW Labor MP Anthony D’Adam attacking parents non-stop. He opposes the rights of parents to be in charge of the education of their children. He wants gender fluidity actively taught in every NSW classroom.
Labor has lost touch with the workers, forgetting about their job security and their down-to-earth values.
Working people want a good job, a good education for their children and the chance to leave something better for the next generation.
Labor MPs like D’Adam and his leader Jodi McKay now sneer at these common-sense aspirations.
McKay has endorsed a Labor Bill in NSW Parliament which would jail parents for simply being parents. It’s called 'Coercive Control’ legislation and the ALP would apply it to all domestic relationships.
If a parent said to their child, “You’ve behaved very badly, so now you’re grounded and I’m taking your pocket money off you”, Labor’s plan is to make that a criminal offence, with jail terms of up to 10 years. I kid you not.
Two weeks ago, NSW Labor’s upper house leader Adam Searle released a report to lift the age of criminality from 10 to 14 years of age. Searle hates Australia, calling us a society overwhelmed by ’systemic racism’.
He wants to let 13 year old criminals off the hook solely for the reason a majority of them are Indigenous. He has no problem with a system whereby young hoodlums can steal cars, sell drugs and break into people’s homes and the NSW Police are not allowed to touch them.
Searle lives in the leafy Blue Mountains, where these things are not an issue. He’s so far out of touch with working class values that the Hunter Federal Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon has told him to get out of Parliament because he’s such a disgrace to their party.
This is what the ALP has become, a pack of sneering, condescending elites who look down on working people, live apart from them, care nothing for their safety and want them to sacrifice their jobs for the sake of a change in global surface temperatures Labor MPs cannot even quantify.
There is no reason for the working class to vote for NSW Labor.
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VOTE DALE MCNAMARA FOR THE UPPER HUNTER!
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Born and bred in the Upper Hunter, Dale is an Australian success story and is One Nation's candidate for the Upper Hunter By-Election.
Click on the link below to like and follow Dale on Facebook.
LINK: https://www.facebook.com/DaleMcNamara.PHON
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PETITION TO PROTECT AND RESTORE TRADITIONAL LANGUAGE
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So far nearly 3000 of you have signed the One Nation petition to restore the use of traditional gendered options such as mother/father, husband/wife, son/daughter and grandmother/grandfather in all government forms or applications.
When the Parliament resumes in May, One Nation Senator for Queensland Malcolm Roberts will be tabling it in Parliament so you only have limited time to make sure your voice is heard on this issue.
So sign, share and help spread the word!
SIGN: https://www.onenation.org.au/gender-neutral-language
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That is this weeks recap from One Nation.
While you're here, we'd love to ask a favour. We are a party with fewer resources than Labor with their union donations and the Liberals with their big corporates, but with your help and by listening to the people, we can achieve real change in parliament for the betterment of the country.
One Nation is run on purely grassroots support. We rely on the contributions of mums, dads, daughters and sons from the top to bottom of Australia to stay running as a party and every dollar counts.
We appreciate times are tough but even a small amount of support makes a difference. Your help enables us to keep up the fight in politics and get Australia back on track.
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