Why is Australia Willing to Give Up its Sovereignty? W/Robbie Barwick!!!

Hello everybody and welcome to Geopolitical Trends. So excited to be with you here because I have a great guest that we're gonna be talking about what's going on in Down Under. He is someone that I trust and you have a lot to sort of— the information he's going to share with us today is you, you won't find it anywhere else. So let me bring, without wasting any time here, guys, I'm going to bring in Robbie Barwick. Here you are. Hi, Robbie.

Hi, David. How are you?

Good, good, good, good to have you and good to see you. I know, how was your trip, by the way, to Canberra? I believe you went to Canberra, right?

Yes, I've been to Canberra a couple of times since we last spoke, but I was in Canberra last week. Yes. Wow, very good. Canberra and Sydney, actually, because I'm, I'm, I live in Melbourne, um, so always, I find I've got to talk, go to Canberra as often as I can to talk to as many politicians as I can, because left to their own devices, they don't make much sense. So they need some, they need some high-quality input. And one of the themes of the week was our, you know, overriding concern that we have to stop the, the rush to war. And so we're building up support for our coalition against AUKUS. Um, and against war.

Indeed. Well, that's what we're going to be detailing today. I, I, I can't wait to hear, uh, your inputs, your insights, your assessments. You're somebody on the ground, politically speaking. So, but before we get into all this, for, uh, my viewers who are not very familiar with you, can you please provide us like a brief bio about yourself, and this way they know who you are?

All right, well, I'm the research director of the Australian Citizens Party. I've been in politics for the last, well, 30 years this year actually. I, I've been, um, full-time in our party. I, I got into politics because, uh, there was a recession in the early 1990s and I saw that the government policy was making it worse, and the Citizens Party was a party with a solution because our party is a part— we're called the Citizens Party because we We want to break the left-right divide. We think that you can actually have a platform that represents all citizens, not just a section of the community. Um, and we— so we focus on those ideas, and we stand for Australia's sovereignty and Australia's economic development to benefit people. Um, and so I'll just highlight two policies, uh, quickly. In terms of our sovereignty and economic development, we— our main policy is for a national bank. We want We used to have a public bank, a great, a great bank in Australia owned by the government, um, and that bank took the responsibility to invest in Australia and serve the people and make sure the financial system served the people. And then it was privatized in the '90s, and since then our financial system has gone as crazy down the, the gambling casino path as the British and the Americans and the Europeans, etc. And we're really paying the consequences of that now, um, The other policy that also is about sovereignty is opposing war, because we— one, there's lots wrong with our economy in Australia, but the one bright spot in our economy is our trade relationship with the biggest and most successful economy in the world. And that trade relationship was growing fantastically, and it was benefiting Australia immensely. We probably had the most generous terms of trade with China of any country on Earth. It's, it's over $120 billion, um, for us as a surplus. And for the size of our economy, that's huge, right? $120 billion annual surplus in our favor with our trade with China. Yet suddenly, because we are so tied to the United States and the United Kingdom, the US took a strategic turn against China, and we've had to go along with it. And now we're risking all that. We're not just risking destroying our trade, We're risking our very lives because we are being talked into becoming a proxy for a United States war against China, which will be a war of annihilation against Australia. It is insane at all levels. But unfortunately, David, we're the only political party that actually— that's taking it head on. There's a lot of concern out there, but people are timid to take it head on. We take it head on because when I see— when I and we see something is nuts, is insane, we say it's insane. And we're hoping our the strength of our voice helps to, um, change opinions in Australia.

Well, great. And we're gonna get into, uh, later on into the strategic vision for the Citizen Party, and I'd like to have your, your intake in that. But let me, let me ask you this, and we're gonna have it just in form of a conversation, Robbie. You know, I did the research about Australia, especially when it comes down to the last 25 years, economically speaking. And I had the hard data, I had access to hard data, to the information as far as how the economy was performing. Now we're hearing a different story, and I know because of what took place with China. China cut off the trade. Now there is an emerging problem in Australia, has to do with housing. And what surprised me the most is that the Prime Minister himself, who came from the projects, right, He used to live in the housing that was provided by the government. Why is he taking a hard turn on the citizens and makes it very, very hard for them to afford the housing, knowing he came from that?

Well, that is the $64,000 question. Um, this Prime Minister David has proved to be an extreme disappointment. Um, the only reason he got elected is because the one before him was so terrible, so bad. Scott Morrison, still in my view, is the worst prime minister in Australian history, and anyone would have beaten him in election. And the person we got, uh, Anthony Albanese, happens to be— if he has good impulses, and sometimes he does things that make you think maybe he does have good impulses, overriding that is extreme timidity, political timidity, where he's more intent on following this, um, formula of thinking, well, to get elected we have to sound like the other side, and then to stay elected we have to govern like the other side. Whereas—

wow—

so they end up, when it comes to, when it comes to economics and foreign policy, they end up pleasing the same people that are benefiting from the, the policies that were already existing. And so in the case of, in the case of, uh, housing, it's the banks, um, and the, and real estate companies, but the real estate companies are more expendable. Um, it's the banks that are fully exposed here to our housing bubble. And we, we didn't have a correction after the Global Financial Crisis. In fact, the government at that time in 2008 did everything they could to save the bubble and prop it up. Whereas if we had at least had a crash in house prices, they would have become more affordable and there would have been a clean out of debt at that stage. That didn't happen. So they just pushed the can down the road. And, and so you have a situation in Australia where it's not just the— it's not just the banks, but the banks are the biggest beneficiaries. But it's It's the whole system is now— we went from being an economy that was based on manufacturing to one that became based in financial services, and the biggest activity of financial services was housing. And so much of the economy is tied up in this housing edifice, right? Including the sense of financial security of the people who own the houses because they think they're millionaires because all their houses are worth millions of dollars now, especially if we live in a place like Sydney. But there's more debt than than house value, right? But they cannot afford to have a crash. Everyone would just totally freak out if there was a— if there was any kind of a, a crash now. Um, and so the government is more concerned with propping up that edifice than they are in supply, in meeting the need. Now the need is a massive expansion of affordable housing, and the history of how you do that is have what we call social housing in Australia, community housing, Government, the governments build houses. We always used to do it. Anthony Albanese did grow up in one. He, that's, that's his famous story, rags to riches story. He grew up in, in a government house, social housing. Um, but they claim that they want to do it. But let me give you a bit of a contrast. So my political heroes were the, were the prime ministers in World War II and immediate after World War II who were Labor prime ministers, John Curtin and Ben Chifley. And Ben Chifley, back in 1945, he used the Commonwealth Bank, which is the bank we want to bring back, to fund the biggest expansion of social housing in Australia's history. And at that time, they built 90,000 houses in a decade. Now, you got to understand, we had a much smaller population then, probably less than 10 million people, right? Yeah, that was a big expansion of social housing. What, what Anthony Albanese is talking about is 30,000 houses in a decade, even though he's bringing in 400,000 more people a year. Only 30,000 houses extra over a decade. And the way he pro— he proposes to fund it is they put up a $10 billion fund. Well, they want to pass a law to be able to do this, put $10 billion essentially in the stock market. So government funds in the stock market, which, which has the effect of helping to push up the stock market, right? Prop them up and use the return on that to eke out a few social houses a year to get to the 30,000. There is no commitment to just rolling up your sleeves and saying, here's the scale of the problem, let's get it done. Right? None of that at all. Everything they do is premised on, um, uh, helping out the vested interests that are already there, including in this case investors in the stock market. But of course, the only logic behind building so few social houses is to make sure that that expansion of housing doesn't undermine existing house prices, because that's sacred here. Even though if you own a house, you feel like a millionaire, But then you say, on the one hand, you pat yourself on the back and say, look how wealthy I am, I own a house. But you're also in your 60s or 70s by the time you do. And then you cry, you start crying because you think, but my son or my daughter will never be able to afford a house because that's how bad housing is in Australia. In Sydney, for instance, because of interest rate rises, you, you, this, the the wage, that your salary, the base, the minimum salary to be able to afford to buy the average house in Sydney now is over a quarter of a million dollars. That's, that's what you have to have. It's completely unaffordable. The whole thing needs a reset. But what the government is doing, and Albanese is doing, is putting the bubble and the welfare of the bubble ahead of the welfare of the people. So we find this to be, um, quite unacceptable. If you was, you know, if you were serious, well, first of all, he should, he should probably double-check how many people he wants to bring into Australia, because we have a vision for a big Australia with a big population. But our vision is premised on taking this whole landmass and developing it, right? Developing it so they're not all living in Sydney and Melbourne, um, because that's what's happening now. And if you spread out population growth across Australia you'd barely notice it because we are an empty country. But they're not doing that. They're bringing in hundreds of thousands of people a year in order to create that increased demand for housing that pushes up the price and keeps it unaffordable. And they pretend they go through the motions of solving the problem with their housing scheme, and that's all it is. So he's very disappointing in that respect.

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Now, when we— because that's what we've been hearing a lot about the housing issue and so forth. And yet we don't hear much about, for example, inflation. We don't hear about the prices of commodities. We don't hear about how, for example, the farmers in Australia are handling the— this, this changes when it comes down to— because there's no more trade with, with China. China shut the door, and all of a sudden businesses in Australia are like struggling. Why aren't we hearing? And is it, is it true that inflation in Australia is high as we speak?

Uh, yes, inflation is very high. It's not true though that China shut the door. Um, what happened was China, China put up some barriers against specific commodities, and essentially it has now unwound most of those barriers. The, like, the one last week, the that, that it unwound was on barley, uh, and now the only one left is on wine. Um, so, and we have a very large wine industry in Australia. Um, we're, we're big exporters of wine. Uh, so that still hurts, but the rest of it, uh, is actually pretty much back to normal. Um, and that's a sign of goodwill on China's behalf. However, that's just on that front. That's the trade front where there has been improvement. In terms of inflation, uh, it's crushing everybody. And a lot of it is, you know, I mean, we've had, you know, 15 years of money printing by central banks essentially, right? And now that's spilling over into the rest of the economy. But we've also got some pretty serious profiteering by corporations. We've got the effects of the sanctions on Russia over Ukraine. And so for people like farmers their inputs are sky high, and they're important inputs like fertilizer and fuel. All that's gone, uh, sky high. Energy— the price of energy in Australia is just mind-blowing, um, electricity, gas, etc., uh, because, uh, because we've, we've engineered it to be extremely expensive. It doesn't have to be expensive. Australia has all the natural resources to have the cheapest energy in the world, but we let investment bankers run it and and then we made it worse by the sanctions that we put on, um, uh, uh, Russia. We are— we, we vie with Qatar to be the biggest gas exporter on Earth, but we export gas at a fraction of the price that the Australian public pay to use gas in our homes, right? So we're, we're all being— and Australian industry pay. So we're all being charged through the nose by what's essentially a cartel that runs our, our, our gas industry, and the government is very, very reluctant to intervene and provide any kind of equity and justice for the Australian people who ultimately own the gas. So, so that system's rigged against us, and all these factors are what's driving up inflation. Um, and then as you know, there's components to inflation, David. So in Australia we call it the CPI, Consumer Price Index, and they that measures the price rises and falls in, in all these different areas. But that's not raw data because it's, it's, um, it's statistically manipulated. It's— and it's weighted. And, and this has always been the problem with inflation. In fact, I know a little bit about the backstory of inflation. In the '90s, um, under Bill Clinton in America, they revised the way they counted inflation to— they measured inflation and were able to revise it downwards, that such that if they had kept with the old system, they would have had, they would have had much higher inflation all along. But they hadn't. They had a new method. And because America is the dominant economy, we copied that straight away. We went ahead and copied inflation in, in the way of measuring inflation. So for instance, one of the, one of the things in Australia that they stopped counting towards inflation was land. The price of land was no longer counted in inflation. And that's been the case since the late 1990s. And of course, that makes it ridiculous when we've had this explosion in house prices, right, where the price of land's gone through the roof and it hasn't been shown up in the inflation figure. So we've had— we've had high inflation all along. Therefore, when we finally do get high inflation like we have now, it's not just high, it's astronomical, right? And you can see it every time you walk into the into the shop. My wife makes the point, you know, the size of the shopping coming home every week is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and it's really crushing people. But we have a Reserve Bank that's had a policy of making this much, much worse than it should be, because they have hit our economy with 13 interest rate rises in now 13 months. We've gone from 0.1% official central bank cash rate to over 4% official central bank cash rate. The interest that people are paying who have mortgages, that they're paying, has gone from— it got as low as 2%, and in some cases some people might have got a really generous mortgage of 1%, but we have these variable rate mortgages here, David. We only have fixed rates on mortgages for just for a very short time at the beginning, like 2 years, 3 years, sometimes 5 years, but no more than that. So they're all resetting, those interest rates are resetting from 2% to 7%, right? And there are warnings. I'll quote you one economist here from Judo Bank. There's an economist who said this: young professionals age between 30 to 45 are having repayments increased by up to $6,000 a month. That's the increase in their repayments. They are paying up to 70% of their income in debt servicing. They're the people that are carrying the burden of this. And so if you're in the mortgage belt and you're struggling with the price increase in all the consumables, on top of that, you're being smashed by these interest rate rises. And it's, it's really bringing the country to its knees.

Wow. Well, and yet the government of the Prime Minister Albanese seems to be oblivious. I, I don't know even if I can describe them as oblivious because they are to be out of their mind not to see where the reality, uh, on the ground or how the reality on the ground is. And my reference is to what you mentioned earlier about the housing, uh, projects and so forth. How come the Albanese government couldn't find, couldn't find the money for the housing, but they found the money for the submarine deals with the US and UK? You know, that's kind of, I find it mind-boggling, especially now with this USS Canberra.

Well, that's, look, that's the question that every day more and more people are asking.

Ask it.

And frankly, we're pinning our hopes on that being the thing that, that destroys the public's, um, support for AUKUS, the Australia-United Kingdom-United States, um, partnership, and the, the submarines purchase that's attached to that. Because that, that, that price tag of $368 billion is looking worse and worse every day compared to the needs of the Australian people, right? And so, um, uh, the housing is one aspect of it, right? All they can put up is $10 billion as a sinking fund that then you get a little bit of the, the cream off the top of that every year to build housing, which is, which is, you know, maybe $500 million to build housing. Yet they can put $368 billion into submarines against an— against a supposed threat from a country that's actually our biggest benefactor in terms of trade, right? It's crazy. Um, but that's true across the board with all sorts of services, right? It's, it's, it's the, the government is contracting services, uh, across the board, and they're making life— they say that they're good at paying lip service to problems, right? But by their actions, they're showing that They're not serious. And so what's happening now is, and this is overdue, this is over time, um, the party that Anthony Albanese is from, the Australian Labor Party, Labor Party, yeah, they, the grassroots of that party, the membership, are starting to revolt, and they are passing resolutions at their branch meetings against AUKUS.. And a big part of that motivation is the price tag, right? Because they know that it's unjustifiable to cut services in all these other areas, make life more expensive for people, and yet commit to this price tag. So there's about 40— I know of about 40 branches of the Labor Party that now passed resolutions against that. And like I said, it's overdue. And hopefully this, this this, um, this becomes the unraveling of it. And that's just the— by the way, that's just the submarine price tag. We are ex— we are increasing defense expenditure across the board, right? It's just a lot of extra money going out in those areas, but it's not doing anything to help the people of Australia. And it's going to be the, the, um, the thing that might turn the public against the government on this policy.

Yeah, well, I was, uh, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, Robbie, uh, if, if I'm gonna say share a statement with you, but please feel free tell me you're wrong, David, on this. Will it be fair if I am to say that Australia, under the Prime Minister, the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the current one Albanese, have surrendered Australia's sovereignty to the US.

It would be fair, and I'm going to show you a picture to prove it. So please just bear with me. Um, I'm going to change my background. I set this up earlier. Um, so this— oh my gosh, that image you can see, there's two kangaroos behind me now. Um, The one with the Star-Spangled Banner on the kangaroo was a gesture, a good— apparently a goodwill gesture, David, by the United States, because the United States has just named one of its newest warships after Australia's capital, Canberra, and it's called the USS Canberra. Now my screen might be freezing up here. So I won't keep this on for too long, but I just want to quickly make the contrast. This, this, this, this one here— sorry, this, this one here— this was at the launch of the— they launched this ship in Australia, even though it's an American warship, they launched it in Australia, and they put this cardboard cutout of a kangaroo and they covered it in the Star-Spangled Banner. And it was almost like throwing a trinket to the natives. I'm sorry, but anyone who saw it got enraged thinking, what on Earth. Hello, Consortium News over there in the United States, which I read a lot, actually said, how would Americans feel if we went and put the Australian flag all over the bald eagle, or whatever your favorite symbol is, right? This was on— this, this was like marking its territory. And I put this image up to contrast to it because this is back in 1982— no, no, sorry, '83. Back in 1983, Australia won for the first time the America's Cup yacht race, and this was our symbol. This one was our symbol, the boxing kangaroo, right? Where we were, we were punching the United States in the nose. That's, that's how we thought of it. That, that was just a sporting thing, not that serious. But, um, that's how we like our kangaroos, with gloves on, right, and standing up for themselves. Instead, we've got, we've got our American friends giving us this image. I'll just turn that off now. Um, so I, I guess, uh, just bear with me.

All right, that's a great picture, Robbie.

So this is, this is a symbol though, yeah, right? And, and the very worst thing is that the, the people who in the United States who came up with that— and Caroline Kennedy was at this launch, oh yes— they thought they were doing something we would like, right? They, they cannot help now And now I'm going to be very, um, broad-minded here, very forgiving of our American friends, because I, I do regard America as our friend. I don't have a problem with that. But America is treating us the way we are acting, right? We are acting like sycophants. We are acting like underlings, and we are ingratiating ourselves to the United States. And so the United States is treating us that way. And the only way the Americans will treat us as a sovereign country is if we start acting like it. And there's a couple of cases at— in point that can help with that. And the big one is Julian Assange, right? Julian Assange, I think at the moment, David, is the Achilles heel of the Australia-US relationship. Because the Australian public are behind him. You know, it's always when you're a small country in terms of population and some one of your countrymen makes a big splash on the world stage, there's always a little bit of, um, you know, pride in that. Oh yeah, that's an Aussie. But then Julian Assange is this quirky character, and, and, you know, um, uh, before he went to prison, you know, and, and, and before he was in the, uh, the Ecuadorian embassy for so long You had to really be paying attention to the Assange issue just to appreciate his significance, because otherwise you might just see in the, you know, the popular magazines the sort of the quirky stuff highlighted, right? But if you watched Collateral Murder, the video, and saw the crimes that he exposed, then you realize, hang on, he really did damage here to the Anglo-American Empire, and that's why they're going after him. But that's people like me. Most people, it's like, oh, he's an Aussie, etc. What do I think about him? Most of our politicians at the beginning were like, well, we very much disapprove of what Mr. Assange did, that was no good, because they were too busy trying to oppress the United States. But as this has dragged on, and especially as he's been in prison facing this extradition for a crime, for charges on something that he didn't commit in Australia, like he didn't break the law in the— he wasn't in the United States, so this is extraterritorial. The Australian people have got behind him, and even Anthony Albanese, before he became Prime Minister, was part of the parliamentary group calling for Assange's freedom, right? Now, Anthony Albanese wasn't doing that because he's truly convinced about Assange. He was doing that because he knew it was popular. This is now— Assange is a popular figure in Australia now. The public are behind him, and two Fridays ago Anthony Blinken came to Australia, and we all have been told that the Prime Minister Albanese and Penny Wong, the Foreign Minister, have repeatedly told the Americans that Assange's case must be brought to an end. It's enough is enough. That's Albanese's words, enough is enough. So Anthony Blinken was at a press conference in Brisbane beside, um, Penny Wong, and he shat all over our country. Because he was asked about Assange and he didn't say— he didn't say, um, he didn't even have the grace to, um, say in public something that could support the Prime Minister's position, right, without committing himself. He didn't have the grace to do that. He doubled down and said Assange has committed— is facing serious charges and we are 100% justified in going after him. And that was— I put out a tweet saying that was the lapdog, us, because Australia is acting like a lapdog. That was, that was our, our owner saying, 'Down boy,' right, in public. It was disgusting. And you can get it, you can get mad at the Americans all you like, we've got to stop acting like a lapdog. And, and the, the part— the, the government, Albanese and Penny Wong are feeling intense pressure on this. Penny Wong should have gone back into the building with Blinken and torn strips off him, right? She should have waved her finger in his face, right, and treated him like Americans treat any other country they choose to, right? Because frankly, in terms of America's plans right now, they need us more than we need them. Right, we, we, we've followed them into every damn war. We have shown nothing but extreme loyalty, far too much loyalty. We've committed war crimes with them. We are party to their war crimes. We should be hanging our heads in shame. And it's— and we cannot even get them to, for the sake of Albanese's political position, yeah, to, to back off on the Assange prosecution. So this is an interesting part of this issue, and it does come down to the question of sovereignty, and that's how people are starting to see it. And David, just to illustrate, like, the zeitgeist here, yeah, there's a— the media in Australia is very much like the United States, where nowadays no one respects the media as impartial. It's all seen as very politicized. Right? You'll never— no one thinks, oh, this, you know, these journalists are impartial. Whoever you work for, you, you shill for. That's, that's how people see the media now. But we can all remember a time when we didn't think of the media that way. We, we saw the media figures as people who tried to be impartial and objective, etc., right?

That's true.

There's a doyen, there's a, there's a media figure in Australia named Laurie Oakes who hails from that time. So he's an old— he's a much older man now but that's what he's known for, right? And he tweeted last week about this Assange incident and Antony Blinken. He said, show some gumption, Prime Minister, right? Gumption meaning backbone. If even Laurie Oakes is saying that in public to the Prime Minister of Australia, if he even— he's coming out of retirement to say that, that shows you what people are starting to think. It's representative of the whole country. Um, so that's a sovereignty issue. And the other one is, you know, I showed you this map last time. Yeah, we're effectively ceding the whole north end to the United States military. We are, we are allowing such a massive buildup of military assets in the, in Northern Australia in order to be, to be targeting China, again, our number one and most important trading partner. Um, you look at it and you go, we, we do have no sovereignty left, right? And the, the politicians, uh, no one in, in the building in Canberra is game to speak out against this in sovereignty terms. Yet all their predecessors— last time you and I talked about Paul Keating, but I can tell you Paul Keating's just the latest— all their predecessors, all the previous generations of politicians would have found this completely unthinkable because they're always friends of America, they're always allies of America. We've been allies since 1949, um, and, and in World War II, right? I mean, you know, there's reasons to be, to be close allies with the United States in principle, but we've gone to this— we're allies of these neocons and we've subjugated ourselves to them. And we— if you look at the scale of that We, we absolutely have no sovereignty left. And one of the— it's not just nuclear submarines, it's nuclear-equipped or nuclear-capable B-52 bombers are now going to be stationed up there in Darwin, top end of Australia. And, um, we've just made the whole region a much more dangerous place and made— we've destroyed our own security. We call this national security, that we're doing this for security. We're undermining our security.

Yeah, for sure. Well, there's no different than, for example, for with the Philippines and South Korea and, uh, Japan. I mean, we're all going in the same direction that I see. And this is why, you know, I didn't— literally, I had to think hard before I start to feel comfortable using the term surrender of sovereignty when it comes down to Australia, because I look at the leadership and I look at Penny Wong, I look at Prime Minister— I mean, they're so weak politically speaking. They can't extend. And, and I know, I know some Aussies, you know, I worked with some, I met some, you know, they stand their ground on principles, you know. But with this current government, it's, it's kind of, uh, and that's why I felt comfortable using the term.

So this leads me to—

yeah, go ahead, Robbie.

One final thought. It's why I'll reiterate, the Assange issue is the Achilles heel. Yeah, because just the contrast to that and say China. I'm outspoken on China and saying to the Australian people, China— our relationship with China is beneficial to Australia. But most of the Australian people have been influenced by the propaganda against China. So they're not— there's a— the Australian public have all these, you know, fears about China that have been incited in them. So they're not, you know, if, if Anthony Albanese is doing, um, is going along with the Americans against China. People aren't questioning that as much. But, but Assange is the thing where the whole public are behind this, such that it's not just Anthony Albanese calling for his release, it's even the opposition leader, right? The, the, the opposition leader Peter Dutton, I mean, he's a thug, right? Every time I see him, I've got the Darth Vader music in my, in my mind. He's Mr. Five Eyes in Australia, right?

He—

America, you know, he's that close with the whole American Five Eyes establishment. Um, yet he's called for the end of the Assange thing. So it's a bipartisan position. America knows the whole country wants this, right? And, and if they're going to be so bloody-minded and so arrogant that they refuse to budge on it, they will destroy their own standing in Australia And I'm saying good.

Yeah, it's about time to see some new faces and, you know, like the Citizen Party, your party, for it to, you know, move forward in the political process. Because I think, and I'm an outsider, I'm not an Aussie, you know, I'm an outsider, but I do have an understanding about the geopolitical landscape in that part of the world. The time is upon Aussies now to have a a different leadership, different perspective, different point of views, and different people at the helm of power. Because enough of Labour Party, enough of the old school per se. And I think it's up to Aussies now to decide, you know, you either change— change doesn't happen on its own, you make change happen. That's the way I see it. So let me get your take, Robbie, on, uh, You got a neighboring country to yours, and that's by the name of New Zealand. You don't want to hear much about New Zealand here. We don't hear much about it. So most Americans, you ask them, New Zealand, where is New Zealand? Like, what?

All your rich people, all your rich people flew to New Zealand to wait out COVID in 2020. Yeah, furthest away they could get.

Interesting. So Yeah, I'd like to take— I'd like to have your take on how do you assess the recent decision by the Foreign Minister, uh, Mahuta, when she straightforward looked at Secretary of State Antony Blinken into his eyes and said no to AUKUS?

Well, Her words were excellent, and they were like a shot heard round the world, actually. All, all my enemies in Australia winced. There was a lot of, there was a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over her saying that. Because what she said was, she was asked, because Anthony Blinken visited there before he visited here, and she was asked, would New Zealand join AUKUS? And she was pretty emphatic. She said, we will not sell our souls to join AUKUS. Now that's very, very strong language. Um, and that's why all these people associated with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, um, that is the, that the US government funds in Australia, in Canberra, to pump out all this anti-China propaganda and pro-war propaganda— it's funded by the big weapons companies as well, like Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems— um, the people associated with that, they were all up in arms about, oh, hot, No, New Zealand, New Zealand doesn't get it. New Zealand's got to toe the line. Um, and even yesterday, the Australian newspaper, which is the, the only national newspaper we have, and it's one of— it's Rupert Murdoch's flagship newspaper in Australia, so it's the News Corp flagship— they had an editorial where the editors, um, editorialized that New Zealand better get with the program. New Zealand better fall into line here, right? Because we white people involved in, in Five Eyes, right, of white people, white Five Eyes people of the world unite, you know, because, um, you know, they— it— New Zealand makes our position actually looks, look really ridiculous, David. Our official position as Australia is, oh, we are, we are so insecure down here in the bottom of Asia 'Look at all those Asians, billions of Asians above us. They're a threat to us. We need America for our security.' Right? That's our position. We are telling the Americans, 'You must stick here with us and be secure.' We freaked out more than Americans did when Donald Trump got elected and said, 'We don't want to be the world's policeman anymore.' And half the people in Canberra wet their pants. 'Oh no, what would happen to us if we didn't have America's protection?' And the smarter people in Australia go, protection from what? You're inventing a threat that doesn't exist. So that's our position. New Zealand, which is a much smaller country than us, has about 5 million people. We have 25 million people, but they're very similar to us in every other way. They just have a slight, slightly different accent. You will probably— you probably couldn't tell the difference if you're listening to me or a Kiwi, but, um, they have a slightly different accent. That's all. Very similar histories. In fact, they they, they, they could have been part of our country in the— when we federated in 1901, and they chose not to. Um, their attitude up until now has been, well, we get on fine with Asia, thank you very much. We're not afraid of Asia. We want to do deals with Asia. In fact, New Zealand did the first trade deal, uh, with, with China of any country. New Zealand did it, right? Um, so they've been going along well. However, they're now coming under enormous pressure. So the, the, the good thing about, um, uh, the New Zealand Foreign Minister's statement is, you know, the language she used and how emphatic it was. Um, unfortunately, it's getting to the point in New Zealand where that is, is starting to become just words, because what they've— it's— she hasn't— she had no option but to say that because of the history of New Zealand going back to the '80s. So in the '80s, the, the Labour Prime Minister then, David Oualaalou, made a name for himself by ordering US nuclear warships out of New Zealand, right? And New Zealand became a nuclear-free zone, and New Zealand has led— has been a leader of the, um, nuclear non-proliferation movement, right? And for the abolition of nuclear weapons. That's New Zealand's policy. It leads that at the United Nations and things like that. And the problem with, uh, and so that was, that was essentially suspended from the ANZUS Alliance, what we had— Australia, New Zealand, United States— they were essentially suspended from that. And their attitude was, so we're fine, um, you know, because they didn't feel, uh, any kind of threat, because there is no threat. Yeah, uh, New Zealanders are pretty proud of that, right, that position. And the problem with anything to do with AUKUS, uh, and NATO is that brings New Zealand back under the nuclear— the US nuclear umbrella, which is against their stated position. So what she was saying is, no, we're not going to have anything to do with AUKUS. They see how difficult it is for Australia to justify the nuclear-enabled B-52s in Darwin. We've— we're party to a treaty in the Pacific that says we will not have nuclear weapons in this country, yet we're trying to find a loophole to allow us to— as long as the Americans don't tell us whether they got nuclear weapons, we won't ask. It's like a don't ask, don't tell policy. And therefore, it's, it's Schrödinger's— it's Schrödinger's nuclear-equipped B-52, right? Um, if we don't know, we can pretend it's not there, and therefore it's le— it's legal for it to be in Australia. So we're twisting ourselves in knots to try and justify this. And the Kiwis clearly don't want a part of that. However, I have a friend who's a former foreign minister in New Zealand, Matt Robson. I interviewed him on, um, my show last year, and Matt is, um, keeping me updated on this all the time. The position is very much weakening, and it's weakening because of the Five Eyes. So the Five Eyes includes New Zealand, right? It's United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. They're the Five Eyes. That is the core. There's now Nine Eyes and Twelve Eyes and all, but the core of it is the white countries that make up Five Eyes, the old British Empire basically, plus the United States. It's the British Empire's way of reconquering the United States, right? We've brought it where they're all part of Five Eyes together. Um, but New Zealand— there's a joke in the Five Eyes— New Zealand is the one that's winking because New Zealand hasn't been with the program of everybody else. But the, but the New Zealand intelligence agencies have been. And they said to their international counterparts, they said, listen, don't mind the government here, we will come back. We the intelligence agents will make sure we get back into Five Eyes and toe the line. And they are trying to make that come true. And so there's been a, a bombardment of New Zealanders with all this disinformation about China to fabricate the threat, um, ideal idea that, you know, okay, we're under some kind of a threat here, foreign interference, all the same stuff they've done to us they've done to New Zealand. Um, they— Jacinda Ardern, now I think Jacinda Ardern was very much two-faced as a politician because she's one of these politicians that got to go around the world, pretend to be almost saintly, like the, like the prime minister, I think, of Norway did that recently, right? And on the international stage, they're young, they're good-looking, they're well-spoken, and they're treated like they're glamour models, right? But at home, both of them destroyed their own political support. And that's why Jacinda, you know, she wasn't that good a prime minister. She had one or two bright spots, um, but she destroyed her political support because of the policies that she followed. And before she, before she became a politician In 2008, she went and worked as an intern for Tony Blair. Now, Tony Blair was the star of international Labour parties, but not in 2008. That was, that was in the late '90s. In 2008, he was a reviled war criminal because that's what he was, a war criminal. Yet she went and worked for him then, not back when he was— not before Iraq War when he was a star. When he was a war criminal. And so therefore, it's no surprise to me that she's the Prime Minister who found a way to walk New Zealand as an observer into NATO by accepting these invitations to go to the NATO summits, right? So she weakened New Zealand's resolve on NATO, and now the latest is that the— they're going to try and destroy New Zealand's resolve through bureaucratic means And by that I mean the, the Defense Department in New Zealand, Defense Minister has just reported a review of, um, uh, New Zealand's defense policy. And so when you have a review, all the bureaucrats and military bureaucrats and generals and, and, uh, experts, most of whom are on the payroll of the weapons companies, etc., they have input into the review. And suddenly, what does the review say? Oh, there's a grave strategic, um, danger in the Pacific now. Um, this could— this, this is a threat to New Zealand. Therefore, New Zealand has to take countermeasures against that threat. And those countermeasures end up being what? Closer working with Australia, AUKUS, etc., right? So they will find a— they're finding a way as we speak to water down the resolve in the foreign minister's words. Don't be surprised if there's a justification for changing it very soon. However, we're trying to change Australia's policy on this, and hopefully what we do in Australia is noticed in, in New Zealand, and New Zealanders there, um, engage in the same resistance and make sure they don't go down this path.

Wow, that's so— oh my gosh. And this is why, this is why I told my viewers we're gonna have to Listen to what Robby has to say. It's because that, you know, where are you going to get this information from? You know, you can't read it on newspaper. They're not going to disclose this stuff. So this is why I'm so grateful, Robby, that you truly— I truly appreciate you for carving out time for me here to spend this time with us here, just to help everybody see the reality and see the picture what is going on. I am so grateful to you for that. So, and this leads me to, uh, uh, our final, uh, talking point here is about the Citizen Party. If you can just share some insights about, you know, I have Aussies subscribers to the channel and, and they were like, yeah, we heard about Citizen Party, but in my mind I was asking, do you know what Citizen Party stands for? So if you can just provide us some insights about the party and also, Robbie, about the strategic vision for the party.

Well, I'm glad you asked. Let me start by, um, I want to say hi to, uh, a couple of your viewers who I met last week, and they met— they, they asked me to come and meet them because they saw me on your show. Um, and that's, uh, Romolo and Robert. In Sydney, um, and Romolo is an inventor. And hope you're watching this, Romolo. Hi. Romolo made a big impression on me last week. Romolo is an inventor, and he contacted me because, um, what we stand for is something that, uh, represents a, a vision for Australia that people like him want to contribute to and are not being allowed to. And his particular case Um, he's invented a technology that would be transformative of energy production in this country, and not, not some of these, um, free energy things that you hear about. But, you know, I'm talking about something that's actually good for the environment, good for, good for energy production. He's invented it, and like so many people before him, he's come up against bureaucracy in this country that has no commitment to developing Australia as an industrial country anymore, whereas once we were, right? And that was all dismantled. And our— the vision for our party is we want to get that back, right? So in World War II, we had a— we had an economic miracle, and it was brought about by these two prime ministers I mentioned earlier, John Curtin and Ben Chifley. They were the ones that started our alliance with the United States, but they did not enter into an alliance from a standpoint of sycophancy or begging, right? It was the standpoint of sovereignty. And they were, you know, John Curtin allied with Franklin Roosevelt. That's who he was allying with, right? And they shared a vision of what the world should look like. They did, they did not share— or they died, they both died in office, unfortunately. So they did not get to share, um, see what happened to the, to the relationship. But what they were committed to was developing Australia They use the Commonwealth Bank. And the, a national— the idea of a national bank was invented by an American, uh, David Oualaaloualou, Alexander Hamilton, right?

Yeah.

And they took Hamilton's concept, they used— ours was called the Commonwealth Bank, and they made it invest in the economic development of this country such that after, um, at the end of World War II, we had the most debt in the history of our country, 140% of GDP. But they had the vision to embark on the most expensive project in our history, which was a 15%, which one, it cost 15% of GDP, the equivalent of $300 billion now. But it was an engineering energy project called the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and it provided abundant water, and it's one of the Seven Engineering Wonders of the World, and it provided abundant water and power for Australia and really kick-started our development. By the mid-'60s, manufacturing that was supercharged in World War II had continued to grow to about 35% of our gross domestic product. It was manufacturing. We were a manufacturing powerhouse in this country. Manufacturing is now less than 5% of our gross domestic product. It's all been dismantled. And there's been case in this latter decade when it's all been dismantled decades— sorry, multiple decades— from the sort of '80s onwards, there's been cases after case after case where Australians have come up with fantastic development ideas and technology ideas that could have been manufactured here and sold to the whole world, and nobody in government has had the vision to back them like they did in the past, where they would have used the Commonwealth Bank as a development bank to fund it. They couldn't get even any private backing in Australia, let alone public. The government didn't want to be involved in the economy anymore, and the private banks, all they're interested in is the financial casino and housing, right? And so they've lost all visions. We've lost case after case after case of fantastic technologies that have been stolen overseas. When I say stolen, I'm not accusing the overseas countries. We said, you must steal this from us here. Steal it, steal it, steal it. We don't want to do it, you do it. And it's— and there's Australian technology that's involved in the most advanced industrial process around the world that we get no cent from because of this, right? So that's why he contacted us. So we're trying to— that's sort of an example of the vision we have for this country. Australia is an innovative country. Our history of being an isolated island has forced us to have an innovative streak in the best possible way. But we're squandering— we've been squandering that. And some people say to me, look, you can't go back to the past. And so my quick answer to that is this: we're talking about the economy. And while the basis of the economy has always been, is now, and always will be whether you can feed, clothe, house, transport, and, and energize people— that's what the base of the economy is. Can you do those things for your people? Right? If you don't get those things right, you can have sports stadiums, right? But they're just gonna, you know, they're going to become the centers of revolution. The core of the economy— are you meeting the needs of your people? And those needs are fundamentally physical. And then as you get richer, you get cultural needs and whatever that you can afford to enjoy as well. But are you meeting those? And when the answer is no, then borrow the best ideas from the past, right? China is a powerhouse because it has got its physical economy humming, and it's using things like state banks to, to provide the, the, the, um, the bulk of the investment to make that happen. And that's what we used to do here, right? And we want to go back to doing that here. We want to encourage our friends in the United States to go back and do that there. I've positioned a couple of strategic books here, uh, David. This is, this is my, um, I want to encourage people to look these books up on Amazon. Who We Are is America's Fight for Universal Progress from Franklin to Kennedy by a good friend of mine named Anton Chaikin. Look that up on Amazon, especially if you're an American. Read it sometime. This is by the late former Australian Prime Minister. Dangerous Allies by Malcolm Fraser. It's called Dangerous Allies, and he's talking about the United States, United Kingdom. So he's talking about how bad the relationship is now. He wrote this in 2014, he's passed away since. This though shows you there's a better side of American history that's responsible for the progress that did make America the greatest country in terms of power on Earth, right? A real power, um, that America's got— has lost. It's not doing it anymore, right? And if America went back to its roots as laid out in that book we won't have to see America as a dangerous ally, but an ally worth collaborating with, because we'd be more interested in collaborating with all the countries of the world on how to raise our living standards than we are in seeing them as a threat against which we have to fight. And I think for Australia and America, both of us, one thing we could focus on, I think, to our benefit would be high-speed rail, which China has mastered. Maybe we should invite them in to show us how to do it, and let's just start doing it. Stop talking about it. Let's just start doing it. Let's just start building these things and transform the way our internal economies work. And it'll take so much effort, and it'll be so good for our workforce, so it have all these positive knock-on effects, it'll change us, our perception of the planet. There's an example of our vision.

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Let me say thank you to, uh, I want to say thank you to Satyana Devaria for your Super Sticker. Truly appreciate it. She put a note here, uh, uh, Robbie, and it says, Robbie, get Assange home. Yeah, thank you, Tatiana. I really appreciate it. So Robbie, where, uh, if people want to get a hold of you and know where, where can they find you?

So, um, our main website is citizensparty.org.au, and it's updated very regularly. Um, it's a very dynamic website. There's a, um, there's a, uh, a store on the website where you can become— if you're an Australian, you can become a member, or you can subscribe to our weekly magazine called the Australian Alert Service. Uh, and our other main presence is on our YouTube channel, which is called, um, the Australian Citizens Party. And our weekly show is the Citizens Report. We do a 1-hour show a week, plus other content as well, long-form interviews and things like that. And you can stay very much abreast of our, our work. Um, we've got a big campaign on right now about bank branches, of all things, because the banks are shutting branches because they don't want to serve people for the money they get out of them. They just want everyone to go digital. So we're campaigning in Australia to save bank branches. And David, you and I talked in the past about ASPI. I mentioned it earlier, Australian Strategic Policy Institute. So last week they decided to attack us, and, and their claim when they attacked us was that our campaign to save bank branches is actually a covert Chinese influence operation. Somehow Xi Jinping cares whether banks close branches in regional towns in Australia, right? And the reason they did that, though, is they want to— they hate us, they want to attack us, and they've attacked us over something we're doing that's actually very popular. Um, and we're doing it because we do want to save services in towns, but we also want to show how bad the banks behave as an example of why we need our banking solution of a national bank.

Yeah, well, great. And I'm gonna put all the links to what you said on the description for all, uh, the channel's viewers, so they'll have it there and they will access this one.

So, well, Robbie, yeah, if you're in a real hurry, call our toll-free number, 1-800-636-432. If you want to talk to us, someone will, someone will, uh, call you back. Um, and please get involved.

And, and, uh, yeah, please get involved, especially if you are in Australia there. If you want to see a change to your country, it is an opportunity. Here is a party that you can support. And just, uh, because that's how it works. Otherwise, people is going to just be talking, no more, no less. So, well, Robbie, I can't thank you enough for being here. Truly, it means a lot. And, and, and I am sure our The viewers here learned a lot from what you had to share with us. So I thank you so much, and I look forward to next time.

Thanks, David. Me too.

My pleasure. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right, folks, I hope you enjoyed what Robbie had to share. Is somebody I, I've known Robbie now for quite a while, uh, I've spoken with him for the last few years, so he's, he's very, very well informative, and he cares for his country. Really, it's almost like, uh, in any time you hear a citizen of any country, when he or she speaks, uh, against the failed policies or some, all of a sudden they become labeled as, well, they hate the country, they do this, they— no, it's nonsense. That's a weak argument. It's because they are speaking the truth, because they care about that country. And that's usually how it works. And I, I, I do this on this channel here because I am hoping to raise awareness around the world here for people to just become a little bit more informed so they can think critically and see the change for where we need to go as human beings, all of us, for the sake of our peace, or all of us. No, it's not one country dominating the rest of the world. And for what? For what? We, since we are all just passing through this life. You know, that's the, that's the whole reason for why, at least in my opinion, what I'm doing, what I'm doing here. Like I said last time, guys, I gave up a full-time teaching position to do this because I believe in it. So, well, I hope you find it informative here. By the way, be on the lookout tomorrow for— I'm going to be releasing a video about Viktor Orbán. You really want to watch that video. It's, it's It's not that long, it's very, very short. So, and I'm preparing some other videos for you. I'm in touch with some other individuals that I'm going to invite, some guests here. Uh, you will be very, very impressed, uh, to hear what they have to say. So as always, I can't thank you enough for your support, and I hope you find this very informative. So as always, remember, geopolitics impact your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, guys. Bye-bye.