Senator Malcolm Roberts (Queensland) (Senate Speech Ministerial Statement 8/4/20): I seek to make a statement in response to the minister’s statement. We acknowledge that there is no manual for dealing with this virus and we empathise with the government’s challenge. That is, though, all the more reason for the government to openly share data, future projections and information with the people. As pressures mount regarding personal security, as well as emotionally and financially, on people across our nation, any shortage of data is being seen as an absence of trust by the government in the people, and that, in turn, will make it difficult for Australians to trust the government and the parliament. Government honesty and trust in the people will be met with trust from the people.
At this time, One Nation would also like to thank everyone who is caring for us and keeping us safe, including healthcare workers, police, defence and emergency workers, and everyone serving others, including those helping to supply and feed us, teach our children, generate electricity, collect garbage, clean, supply water and much more. They are people who are keeping services working for us all.
COVID-19 has exposed as severely lacking in our current economic and industrial structures the productive capacity and economic resilience that were once part of Australian culture and history. We need to take this opportunity to take stock and then rebuild our society on the values, systems and cultures that ensure a return to personal enterprise, instead of the creeping dead hand and suffocating blanket of a large and ever-growing central government. History shows that the secret of human happiness and human progress is nothing new and has been discovered, lost and rediscovered for millennia—and, more recently, lost in our country. We need to bring back Australia’s economic sovereignty, productive capacity and economic resilience, based on restoring personal enterprise and compliance with a constitution that enshrines competitive federalism and individual liberty. We all need, as representatives of the people and servants to the people, to ensure that the people’s government is held accountable for what it does and does not do during this emergency.
We are giving the government a blank cheque, and rightly so, because there are many uncertainties in this. There is such a complex system that we are already trying to amend. But ministers have the power to make these changes through regulations, and that is given to ensure that cracks in the legislation are closed quickly to ensure people are covered fairly right across our country. It is a blank cheque, but we must do our job as senators to make sure that we review that and the progress of it. What many Australians, looking beyond our health and financial safety, want is to make sure that we leave COVID-19 behind us, and that we are left with better freedoms and liberties and a stronger, freer economy than before.
Source Parliament of Australia Website