Senator Gerard Rennick

Senator Rennick speaks up for the people who have suffered adverse events from Covid shots. He said it’s bad enough people weren’t given a choice, which is their right, but it’s downright inhumane to force someone to take a second shot if they suffered an adverse event from the first. Furthermore, Senator Rennick will continue to fight to ensure people receive immediate income support for those who cannot return to work while they have to recuperate. No one should be left behind.

I rise today to speak again on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest release, just last month. I want to talk about TS17, where they say there is a 'near linear relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions and maximum global surface temperature' caused by carbon dioxide. .... for my full speech visit my website at: www.gerardrennick.com.au

I'm glad to rise today to speak on this motion to take note of answers. In particular, I'd like to just remind Senator Keneally of the boats, because, when the Labor Party was last in power, over 1,200 people died at sea in the boats by something that was totally brought on by the Labor Party. Compare that with the number of people who died with COVID, which is only just past 1,000, and a lot of those had co-morbidities. I can assure you that the Morrison government didn't design COVID, unlike the boat crisis that was designed by the Labor Party and was totally self-inflicted. So it's a bit rich for them to come in here and play games and accuse the Morrison government of causing deaths in a situation which was basically out of their control. For my full speech visit my website at: www.gerardrennick.com.au

I rise to speak to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their so-called reporting of the temperature change in Australia since 1910, saying that the temperature has risen by 1.44 degrees. When I read that number, I nearly fell off my chair, because in estimates I asked the Bureau of Meteorology whether they report actual observations or their homogenised data. Their homogenised data is based on shoddy mathematical practices that were highlighted in the 2011 independent peer review that was commissioned by the then Gillard government and whose recommendations have been completely ignored... For the full speech visit my website at: www.gerardrennick.com.au

I rise to speak to the report of the Rural and Regional Affairs References Committee on the Inland Rail. It's about a part of Queensland that, like Senator Chisholm, I'm very passionate about, not least because I grew up there.... for the full speech visit my website at www.gerardrennick.com.au

It's great to be up here tonight to speak to this bill, the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Subsidy) Bill 2021. Let's just get a couple of things out on the table before I start getting taunts about being a dinosaur and all that sort of stuff. I stayed at home for four years, at my choice, so I could help raise my children. I happily attended mothers groups and things like that. I want to be clear, I'm not talking about kindergarten either. I come from a long line of working mothers. Indeed, my great-great-aunt taught maths and physics at All Hallows' School for 50 years. She had a hall named after her. My grandmother was a teacher who had eight children, four before the war and four after the war. My mother, my wife and my sisters all worked. So this is not an attack on working mothers or anything like that. However, I would like to see greater choice in child care.... For the full speech visit my website at www.gerardrennick.com.au

I seem to recall it wasn't all that long ago that we had Labor actually condoning the robodebt scheme. They themselves were the ones that brought in the averaging scheme, under the Paul Keating government, in the late eighties. The member for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek, said... For the full speech visit my website at: www.gerardrennick.com.au

This matter of public importance is typical Labor: it's all about playing the man and not the facts. I just want to touch on Senator O'Neill's comments about the bushfires. That was one of the most egregious displays of political partisanism I've ever seen. State governments are responsible for national parks, they're responsible for fire and emergency services, and they're responsible for zoning. And can I add that in 2009, when 180 people died in Victoria on Black Saturday, you didn't see the federal coalition, who was in opposition at the time, blaming Kevin Rudd for the bushfires, because it was a state issue—all the things that deal with bushfires. Obviously these things will happen in Australia at the worst of times, when you have a dry summer, but Senator O'Neill makes a partisan political point out of this when the responsibility lies with the state governments... For my full speech visit my website at www.gerardrennick.com.au

The great Roman writer Juvenal asked: who will judge the judges? Today the question needs to be asked: who will audit the Auditor-General? Why do I ask that question? It's because the Auditor-General is refusing to hand over minutes of a meeting between his staff and the staff in the infrastructure department about the purchase of Leppington Triangle. Why does that matter.... For the full speech visit my website at: gerardrennick.com.au

I rise in support of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Charges) Bill 2021 and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2021. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, TEQSA, as the national regulator of our universities, plays a very important role in maintaining the quality of our nation's higher education. Australia has world-class universities, thanks in no small part to the regulating work that TEQSA does. These bills will continue to support this work by enabling TEQSA to charge universities an annual fee for the work that it does. This will take the monetary burden off the taxpayer and create a self-sustaining system between universities and their regulator to keep higher education in Australia strong.... For the full speech visit my website at: gerardrennick.com.au

I will quote from a speech by the father of modern superannuation, Paul Keating. It's from a speech he gave in 2007. He said: In other words, had employers not paid nine percentage points of wages, as superannuation contributions to employee superannuation accounts, they would have paid it in cash as wages.... For the full speech visit my website at: gerardrennick.com.au

Things you should know about COVID that the media haven't told you.

It's great to be here tonight to talk about this legislation. I'm not going to lie to you: it's still ultimately lipstick on a pig. There isn't a plastic surgeon in the world that can bring this dead, stinking carcass called superannuation and make it look attractive—I can assure you of that. I will tell you why: it's because superannuation is a lie. If you look at the statistics that come out every month, these are the latest. The median balance for women aged 55 to 64 is $118,000. That's the median balance after 28 years. For men it's $183,000. Most of these 55- to 64-year-olds would have had 30 years of superannuation, albeit the early years were at a lower rate, but that's still less than half to get to the cut-off for the full pension. Long story short: 50 per cent of the people in this country are still never going to come off the pension. We drop $40 billion a year in lost tax revenue that goes to the wealthy—it's only the top 10 to 20 per cent of the people who get these taxation concessions. They don't need the incentives. They're already wealthy as it is. For 13 million workers in the country, that's 3,000 bucks a pop to basically subsidise the wealthy.... For the full speech visit my website at: gerardrennick.com.au

What a time to be alive! Never before have the forces between darkness and evil been more clear than here today. What we've had here today is nothing but a vile session of putrid, personal smears—a fantasy target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Senator Watt has the audacity to come in here and talk about regional Queensland and somehow blame the Nationals for everything that's gone wrong in regional Queensland. Let me tell you something, Acting Madam Deputy President, state Labor is responsible for the destruction of .... For the full speech visit my website at: gerardrennick.com.au

First of all, I'd like to touch on Senator Waters' comments about public money being used for energy projects in this country. The Morrison government has committed billions and billions of dollars to renewable energy—not the least $10 billion in the Clean Energy Fund; $5 billion in the Snowy Hydro; $3.5 billion for the Climate Solutions Package; $2.5 billion for the Emissions Reduction Fund; $1.5 billion for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency; $1 billion for the Grid Reliability Fund, which has now become another fund; and $0.5 billion for the Hydrogen Strategy. That comes to about $24 billion all up. My view is that you either nationalise the energy market or let the market rip. But this idea of going around subsidising energy producers regardless of the type of energy is not on. I think the private industry should pay their fair share of tax. If they make money, they should pay money. In terms of putting in roads to enable this to happen, I'm more than happy to argue that they should pay their fair share of tax on that. However, the Beetaloo Basin does have over 200,000 petajoules of shale gas in place. To put that in perspective, Australia currently uses 1,920 petajoules a year, both for domestic use and for export. So there is over 100 years of gas just for Australia in the Beetaloo Basin. So we'd be mad not to use our own natural resources where we can. We cannot rely on wind and solar alone. It's intermittent energy, and, ultimately, it's not renewable and it's not clean either—which I'll talk about in a minute... For the full speech visit my website at: gerardrennick.com.au

The great Franklin Roosevelt once said that there's nothing to fear but fear itself, so it's good to speak to this urgency motion. For the record, I don't support any subsidies at all to any type of energy. Twenty years ago we were fed the neoliberal line that if you privatise the energy market, the market would fix itself. I can assure you that the market hasn't fixed itself, despite governments basically shovelling subsidies into all sorts of energy. We've heard a lot about the fossil fuel subsidies, which I don't think are all that high at all. I'll go into the renewable subsidies: there's $10 billion for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation; $5 billion for the Snowy Hydro, which purely exists so we can have a big battery for solar and wind; $3½ billion for the Climate Solutions Package; $2½ billion for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency; and another $1½ billion for the Grid Reliability Fund which got pulled and is now used for gas and things like that. Long story short: at just the federal level there's $20 billion in subsidies for renewable energy. Then we've got the state subsidies, whereby we have the ridiculous proposition that the Queensland state government, for example, is paying foreign renewable providers for their energy, undermining our own home-grown coal, which is basically free and owned by the Queensland people. Kogan Creek Power Station actually sits on the coal mine, and coal gets funnelled straight up the conveyor belt, and it's all free because it's owned by the Queensland people. That used to generate about $1 billion to $2 billion in profits for the state government every year, and now last year it lost a billion dollars because it kept getting turned on and off. So there are lots of things I think that we should address. I think we've got 10 energy agencies just at the federal level. The whole energy market is completely ruined, and there needs to be a discussion about whether or not we nationalise all the base energy and start again, because it's out of control.... For the full speech visit my website at: gerardrennick.com.au

Are there double standards at the national broadcaster? It certainly seems so. There seems to be a habit of ABC journalists going after conservative politicians for political purposes. Surely there isn't a political bias at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation? It’s time the ABC had an external independent reviewer to examine and police their conduct rather than reviewing complaints made against them internally, as it currently does. The ABC is publicly funded. Australians deserve better.

Here is Labor once again showing how much they don't know about Aboriginal Culture

Rural & Regional Affairs & Transport Committee on 23 March 2021. Senator RENNICK: My questions are regarding the Eastern Australia Agriculture buyback, Mr Metcalfe. I want to quote a part of the actual valuation by Colliers. They summarise in one part of the valuation: The Lower Balonne region as a water market does not have a mature trading market as the water rights are predominantly un-supplemented allocations, which are not traded as often or as easily as supplemented allocations. Secondly the volume of water … in the system is not large enough to see a reasonable turnover within the "market". With regards to the OLF water licences there is no true market as trading is limited to sales only to the Commonwealth … That tells me that the water market around the Lower Balonne and into the Condamine is illiquid. You often hear people say, of liquid markets, liquidity is very important for true price discovery. It's fair to say that, if you're going to have the Commonwealth step in to where you've got an illiquid market, a big buyer—and I'll quote from further on in the valuation: Land is not a limiting resource in the Lower Balonne, however, water is. Full transcript at: https://wp.me/pbfyTP-lg

Senator RENNICK: Dr Mann, you talk about a scientific consensus. My question is: what are the facts? I want to refer to two energy budgets I have here in front of me—one given to me by the CSIRO that had a downwelling radiation from greenhouse gases of 333 watts per square metre, and one from the Australian Academy of Science that had a downwelling radiation from greenhouse gases of 342 watts per square metre. There's a difference in downwelling radiation between the two scientific institutions, of what they claim to be in their energy budget, of nine watts per square metre. The IPCC has claimed that the radiative forcing from carbon dioxide has increased by two watts per square metre to 1,750, regardless of cause. Given the two scientific bodies have a difference of nine watts per square metre—that's over 400 per cent of what the IPCC is claiming in the increase of carbon dioxide—why is it we can't question facts like that? Dr Mann: You're citing some figures. I would have to look at them and put them in context and make sure that what you're describing is correct. It's actually irrelevant. You're talking about some large absolute numbers. What we're dealing with is the difference between these numbers. In a very real sense, it's easier to measure those differences. It's why we talk about temperature changes in terms of temperature anomalies. We don't report the actual temperature of the earth, because that depends on baselines, different elevations, and we'll have different temperatures so we measure differences, and we can often measure differences very accurately. Read the full transcript at: https://www.gerardrennick.com.au/senator-rennick-discusses-climate-data-accuracy-with-professor-michael-mann

Senator RENNICK (Queensland) (18 March 2021, 11:26): I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021, and it’s great to be here today, because I’m pumped. I’m usually pumped up at the best of times, but I feel like I’m a hot air balloon floating along the skies. I’ll tell you why that is: it’s because all work is 100 per cent insecure if businesses do not survive: all work is insecure if businesses do not survive, and it will be the taxpayer who picks up the cost of redundancies or unemployment benefits. Never forget: it is the employer who pays the employee; it is not the unions. Without the employer there is no employee. Do the unions pay the employee? Does the Labor Party pay the employee? No, they do not. Not only do they not pay the employee but they take from the employee. They take union fees, they take superannuation fees and, most importantly, they take jobs. There is no greater threat to the prosperity of this nation and jobs for working Australians than the Labor Party and the union movement: union bred, union fed and union led. With their bullying, their complexities and their gouging, unions steal the jobs of Australian workers and the livelihoods of working families. Now, unbelievably, they’ve come out and said that they want to steal casual workers’ loading. Sally McManus of the ACTU has told the ABCs Insiders that casual workers would lose their casual loading in return for portable sick leave, annual leave and long service leave. Who would manage this? Some union would, of course, no doubt clipping the ticket on the money being held on behalf of the worker. Read more at: https://www.gerardrennick.com.au/supporting-australias-jobs-and-economic-recovery/

During estimates I asked the RBA a number of questions about their management of the economy. These included constant market interventions by the world’s central banks making a mockery of the so called free market, the definition of capital and how soon the $200 billion term funding facility is to be repaid. The latter is particularly important to taxpayers as it is their hard earned taxes that has been used to underwrite privately owned banks (rather than infrastructure), thanks to the autonomy of unelected bureaucrats at the RBA. There is no greater example of just how powerful the RBA has become when they can use up to $200 billion of our currency to bailout their mates in the private sector without seeking approval from the people via parliament first. The authority given to the RBA make a mockery of the democracy we are led to believe we live in,. Watch the video...

Everyone has the right to a fair trial, but a fair trial is compromised when the media run stories based on allegations and not facts which influences public opinion and potentially a jury. The media should not undermine the judicial process and in Senate estimates this week, I askeda question of the Australian Communications and Media Authority about whether themedia have a code of conduct that they follow, regarding criminal allegations. The answer appeared to be no and that it may be up to the individual broadcasters in their policies, but the Australian Communications and Media Authority will get back to me with more information.

B.O.M. bureaucrats have a made an art form out of spewing gibberish rubbish in response to Senate estimate questions. Needless to say they refused to answer my question as to why they don’t provide supporting evidence for their statistical changes that occur outside of changing equipment or moving locations. It’s bad enough they only did parallel runs on 5 out of 112 Accorn stations when they changed Stevenson screens, but to change data without supporting evidence is poor quality assurance and in complete violation of the climate monitoring principals.

I believe SBS and it’s subsidiary NITV should drop the slogan “Always was, always will be”. While I understand the campaign “Always was, always will be” is intended to acknowledge Indigenous Australians, it does little more than foster an “us versus them” mentality amongst the broader community. Liberal democracies are built on the notion of mutual respect and that all people are created equal. Respect for the individual and how that individual treats other individuals are the foundation of a modern and fair society. The statements that emanate from our national broadcasters do not reflect this.