Showing posts with label right wing rat bags. Show all posts
Showing posts with label right wing rat bags. Show all posts

Thursday 20 September 2018

Sometime Australian Prime Minister & MP for Cook, Scott Morrison, is the protector of religious freedom? Don't make me laugh


This was Australia’s most recent Liberal prime minister quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald on 17 September 2018:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will enact "preventative regulation and legislation" to shield freedom of religion from future enemies, giving his strongest hints to date about the government's intentions regarding "religious freedom" laws.

What a load of codswallop, manure, dung, heifers dust, cowpats, meadow cocktails – what ABSOLUTE BULLSH*T!

The Liberal Member for Cook Scott Morrison already knows that the Australian Constitution without qualification guarantees religious freedom in this country at federal level:

Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion
                   The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth. [my yellow highlighting]

As the Australian Constitution is the highest source in the land on this issue, one can only suspect that:

a) Scott Morrison has never read the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (as amended up to 1977); or

b) Scott Morrison is shamelessly pandering to his far-right, ideologically blind & bigoted supporter base, in the hope of being re-elected in 2019.

He appears to forget that Australia has also ratified a number of UN resolutions which directly or indirectly protect religious freedom and these have been upheld by the courts.

While he ignores the fact that Tasmania has had a religious freedom provision written into its state constitution since 1934 and Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory as well as the ACT have passed legislation prohibiting direct and indirect discrimination on the ground of religion. Only South Australia appears to have no legislation specifically covering religious freedom to date.

Morrison also forgets that whatever legislation he forces through this parliament, or whatever regulations he imposes, can all be undone in the first instance by subsequent federal parliaments and in the second instance by the minister of the day.

If he really wants to genuinely strengthen existing religious freedoms he would call a referendum to change the Australian Constitution.

Even a callow first-year-in-parliament politician knows that when state law is in conflict with federal law it is federal law which usually prevails and, if either is in conflict with the Constitution it will be the Constitution which prevails.

Having well and truly politicised his own faith Morrison may in fact be creating his own "future enemies" - he has all but guaranteed that someone will take his legislation and regulations to the High Court of Australia - where every word, phrase and punctuation mark will be studied closely.

Tuesday 18 September 2018

Prime Minister Shouty McShouty is just being his normal obnoxious self


There has been some advice offered to Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison by mainstream media.

Some journalists are suggesting that he should shout less.

That would be nigh impossible as it would be going against his very nature as the political version of a weekday schoolyard bully and a Sunday self-righteous prig.

Here are videos of his performance in the House of Representatives as Treasurer to demonstrate that he had little volume control even then :



Sunday 16 September 2018

The Scott Morrison Social Media Experience in 2018: expletives deleted


"QT was on fire today 🔥 Good work, team. https://t.co/M6UWcQO0HU"

Three hours after he posted this tweet on 13 September 2018, Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison deleted it;

Some hours later he apologised for the profanity included in the Fat Man Scoop "Be Faithful" hip hop song, part of which he had embedded in video of that afternoon's HoR Question Time - pleading ignorance.


Remove that dodgy tweet from his Twitter account he may have, but the twitterverse being faster than Morrison's digits meant there was still an echo left on that social media platform:
The reason why the government benches were conspicuous for so many arms upstretched in unison in the video is because, in true tent revival-style, Morrison was asking his colleagues to raise their hands:

I'll ask those on this side of the House: who's ever run a small business here? Here we go! Who's ever worked in the private sector here? Here we go! Who's been a police officer here? Here we go! We've got a police officer up the back. Who is a farmer on this side of the House? We've got some farmers over here. We've got medical practitioners. Who has ever served in the Australian defence forces on this side of the House? The Liberal-National Party is the party of ordinary, everyday Australians going out there every day, having a go and getting a go.


For the record here is the musical choice he doesn't want you to associate with him.....




"Who F#ckin Tonight? Who F#ckin tonight?
Who F#ckin Tonight? Oh!Oh! Who F#ckin tonight?
Who f#ckin Tonight? Who F#ckin Tonight? Oh!Oh!
Stop Playin, Keep It Movin! Stop playin, keep it movin!
Stop playin, keep it movin! Keep movin movin movin movin!
Hey sing along!" 
[Fat Man Scoop's "Be Faithfull"]

I'm still wondering which age demographic he was trying to impress. Particularly as these lyrics appear to have originally been penned in 1999.

I am also curious as to why the Prime Minister of Australia chose to ignore the conditions imposed on use of footage of parliamentary proceedings.

In particular 15.12(c) broadcast material may not be digitally manipulated.

As for why the reason Morrison gave for deleting his tweet changed in the following days from inappropriate lyrics to being in breach of parliament's rules on use of video footage, well that is anyone's guess.


A sign of increasing desperation on Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton's part?


After threatening to bring into the House of Representatives files he kept on members of parliament when he Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Minister for Home Affairs and Liberal MP for Dickson Peter Dutton made sure two particular files were very visible on 11 September 2018.



Images found on Twitter

After he quoted from these files the Opposition requested that they be tabled. A request Dutton refused.



Watching these files deployed prior to and during Question Time, in what looked suspiciously like a form of visual intimidation, did little to enhance Dutton's defence of his own actions as immigration minister in 2015.

Friday 7 September 2018

The new Australian Minister for Energy & Liberal MP for Hume Angus Taylor has "thought hard" about climate change for over 30 years.....


..... and is holding firm to his 2014 decision to do nothing constructive about mitigating the effects of climate change either globally or nationally.

Excerpt form House of Representatives Hansard, 24 September 2014:

Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (15:44): It is a great pleasure to speak on this matter of public importance because I have had a deep concern about climate change for over 30 years. I have watched the snowline rise south of here, and it is something that I have thought hard about for over 30 years. That has meant that I have come to the conclusion that there are three things that taking climate change seriously really means. The first is effective and consistent policies that actually contain global atmospheric concentrations. Secondly, that you bring the Australian people along with you. Thirdly, you protect the Australian economy so that we can pay for all of this. Let me tell you what I believe it does not mean. It does not mean throwing lots of money at the problem for the sake of it. It does not mean passing encyclopedias of legislation. It does not mean putting endless programs in place. It does not mean establishing a cavalry of so-called independent advisers and advisory boards. It does not mean turning up at lots of global meetings.


Tuesday 4 September 2018

Michaelia Cash gets her just deserts


Once she finished knifing then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the back, Liberal Party Senator for WA  Michaelia Clare Cash was demoted from Minister for Jobs and Innovation to Minister for Small and Family Business, Skills and Vocational Education.

Then she was further ‘rewarded’ by this leak to the media……

Financial Review, 30 August 2018:

Cabinet minister Michaelia Cash has become the latest target of the payback culture inside the Liberal Party, after allegations emerged that she declined to provide a witness statement to the Australian Federal Police investigating the leaking of a union raid from within her office.

Senator Cash, who was demoted in Sunday's leadership reshuffle after turning on Malcolm Turnbull, rejected any assertion she refused to cooperate.

It is understood she told the officers that she did not need to make a fresh statement because she had been quizzed on the matter many times in Parliament and everything she knew was on the public record.

The AFP was investigating a tip-off to the media about a raid on the offices of the Australian Workers' Union last year.

The raids were conducted by the AFP at the behest of the union watchdog, the Registered Organisations Commission.

Senator Cash had asked the commission to investigate whether two political donations made by the AWU more than a decade ago, when Bill Shorten was the union's national secretary, accorded with union rules.

But the exercise backfired when it emerged a staffer inside her office had tipped off the media about the raid. The staffer resigned and Senator Cash denied having any advance knowledge of the raid nor of the tip-off to the media…..

Thursday 30 August 2018

Tony Abbott: unpopular and unwanted


Sacked former prime minister and current Liberal MP for Warringah Anthony John "Tony" Abbott in August 2018.......
Crikey, 28 August 2018:

For nearly 25 years, Tony Abbott has done nothing in politics but destroy and oppose. His party, and Australia, desperately need him to leave.

Next year, Tony Abbott will rack up 25 years as an MP. And the best way for him to celebrate it -- for his party, for the government, and most of all for Australia -- would be to retire. 2019 should be the election at which he calls time.

Abbott said to one of his media friends on Monday that he still sees himself as a young man. In fact, Abbott has always been an old man; he is the classic example of Keating's "young fogey", from his days as a student politician through his stint as a seminarian and his devotion to BA Santamaria, through his entry into politics first as a staffer and then as an MP. Abbott has only ever seen the world through the eyes of an old man furious at the changes wrought by young people, determined to reverse the desecration of all that is sacred in his world where Christian white males hold unquestioned authority.

The Monthly, 27 August 2018:

What did the rest of Australia ever do to the voters of Warringah? Lucky to live in one of the most blessed constituencies on earth, stretching from Sydney’s leafy north shore to the northern beaches, its residents have nevertheless foisted on Australia the single most destructive politician of our time: Tony Abbott. The failed priest, nicknamed the “mad monk”, has done incalculable damage to this country. And for someone who aspired to be a “junkyard dog savaging the other side”, Abbott has lately mostly savaged his own, culminating in last week’s Pyrrhic victory over Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, which slaked his thirst for revenge but left the Liberals in their worst position for a decade.

As a former director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, Abbott was a key wrecker of the 1999 republic referendum, denying this country a head of state who was one of us. Abbott employed David Oldfield, who moonlighted for Pauline Hanson and helped create One Nation. Realising the threat that Hanson posed to the Liberals’ right front, Abbott was the brains behind shabby outfit Australians for Honest Politics, which helped put her in jail for electoral fraud. As a pro-life health minister, under John Howard, he tried to block women’s access to the abortion drug RU486.

In 2009, Warringah’s local member tore down Liberal Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull over climate change. It was desperately cynical even then: Abbott admitted to Turnbull at the time that he’d been a “bit of a weather vane” on the issue. But Abbott decided it was “absolute crap” that the science of climate change was settled and, right there and then, introduced a kind of madness into our politics. Ever since, the country has found it impossible to agree on an energy or climate policy.

Emboldened after toppling Turnbull, the member for Warringah went on to launch a misogynistic campaign against our first female prime minister; he also embarked on a misleading “axe the tax” campaign against Labor’s emissions trading scheme, which his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, later excused as an exercise in “brutal retail politics”, given the ETS wasn’t a carbon tax at all. As prime minister, Abbott’s first great achievement was to kill off our car industry, and he went on betray his promise to the electorate that his government would make “no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS”. His first budget in 2014, possibly the worst in living memory, defunded schools and hospitals to the tune of $80 billion compared with forecast funding levels under Labor, and failed to pass the Senate. That year Abbott made Australia the first country in the world to abolish a carbon price. Then in 2015 he knighted Prince Philip on Australia Day, turning himself into a laughing stock, and his downfall began. When the Liberal Party turfed Abbott in September 2015, a grateful nation rewarded the new PM Turnbull with approval ratings of 68 per cent.

Ever since, Abbott has sniped, wrecked and undermined the Coalition. Although he describes his aim as being the “best possible member for Warringah”, he has never cared to represent his constituency faithfully. In the equal marriage postal survey, 75 per cent of his electorate voted “Yes” – the highest proportion in New South Wales – but Tony Abbott, a loud “No” campaigner, later scarpered from the House of Representatives.

Now, without care for the national interest, the institution of parliament, the office of PM or the electoral fate of the Liberal Party, Abbott has torn down Turnbull a second time. To what end? Not policy: Turnbull had conceded everything the hard right demanded of him. Not politics: today’s Newspoll[$] shows the damage caused by last week’s spill; the Coalition now trails Labor 44–56, and Bill Shorten is preferred PM. The member for Warringah will reportedly [$] give a “call-to-arms” speech to rally Liberal members behind new prime minister Scott Morrison. But can Abbott be trusted to serve Morrison loyally? Or will he start the work of tearing down another Liberal prime minister?

The party is desperate to put the Abbott-Turnbull wars behind it. Federal Liberal president Nick Greiner said yesterday [$] that Abbott is at least partly to blame for the divisions in the party: “Tony is an excellent political salesman, a political warrior; he should have been spending his time – and I of course said this to him – much more on bringing down our political opponents rather than focusing on internal differences.” Columnist Niki Savva was less politic on the weekend, writing: “If he had any decency Abbott would resign too, now that he has accomplished his mission.”

Former PM Kevin Rudd absolutely let rip this morning: “I cannot remember a single positive policy initiative that Abbott has championed and then implemented. Not one. As a result, unconstrained by policy, the entire energy of this giant wrecking ball of Australian politics has been focused on destroying his opponents – within the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. Of all modern politicians, Abbott is sui generis. His singular, destructive impact on national politics cannot be underestimated.”

Saturday 25 August 2018

Who do we blame as matters go from bad to worse over the next eight months in Australia?


The country is being crippled by the effects of drought and basic food prices will soon begin to rise, while at the same time wages growth remains stagnant. Cost cutting by successive Coalition federal governments is impacting service delivery on everything from health and welfare through to national broadband connectivity.

The federal government is still a policy-free zone with regard to energy and climate change due to toxic infighting between members of the Liberal Party of Australia which, along with its coalition partner the National Party, has an ideological inability to drag itself into the 21st century to face the consequences of ongoing land degradation and water insecurity.

Australia now has a new prime minister, but this situation is unlikely to change as the hard right remains holding the reins of government.

The next federal election is still over eight months away. 

So who do we blame for the situation the country finds itself in between now and the election?

Take your pick.......

According to News.com.au this is the list of federal parliamentary members of the Liberal Party of Australia who voted to bring on the leadership spill of 24 August 2018:

1. Andrew Hastie
2. Tony Pasin
3. Craig Kelly
4. Michael Sukkar
5. Kevin Andrews
6. Tony Abbott
7. Ian Goodenough
8. Nicolle Flint
9. Peter Dutton
10. Jason Wood
11. Ross Vasta
12. Luke Howarth
13. Rick Wilson
14. Ted O’Brien
15. Zed Seselja
16 Greg Hunt
17 Steven Ciobo
18 Angus Taylor
19 Alan Tudge
20. Michael Keenan
21 Andrew Wallace
22 Scott Buchholz
23 Jim Molan
24 Slade Brockman
25 Dean Smith
26 Jane Hume
27 Mitch Fifield
28. John McVeigh
29. David Fawcett
30. Amanda Stoker
31. Jonathon Duniam
32. David Bushby
33. James Paterson
34 Eric Abetz
35. Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
36. James McGrath
37. Mathias Cormann
38. Michaelia Cash
39. Karen Andrews
40. Andrew Laming
41 Ben Morton
42. Sussan Ley
43. Warren Entsch

Friday 24 August 2018

Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan tries to straddle the Coalition fence by becoming a Faux Independent after the new Morrison Government is sworn-in


The political situation in Australia thus far this week..............
Thinking to hedge his bets in a toxic political environment and remain in the federal parliament beyond the forthcoming federal election, Kevin Hogan sent out this media release on 23 August 2018: 


STATEMENT FROM KEVIN HOGAN

This constant rotation of Prime Ministers by both the Labor Party and the Liberal party, I cannot condone.

 I am announcing today, that if there is another leadership spill for the position of Prime Minister prior to the next federal election, I will remove myself from the government benches and sit on the cross benches.

 I have made this decision because my community is fed up. What we have been seeing in Canberra with leadership changes over the last 10 years, is letting our great country down.

This is not about Peter Dutton, Malcolm Turnbull or Kevin Hogan, it is about the Office of Prime Minister.

I remain 100 per cent committed to delivering for my community. I remain committed to the National Party.

If this occurs, I will still attend National Party meetings if invited. I will not attend Coalition Party Room meetings.

 I will support the Government in No Confidence Motions and Supply.  Any other legislation I will take on a case by case basis.

The model I intend to follow is similar to what the Western Australian National, Tony Crook did.

I will continue to focus on what my community has sent me here to do. I thank them for their overwhelming support. [my yellow hightlighting]

Hogan has been in the federal parliament and a member of the Abbott & Turnbull Coalition governments for almost five years and in that time has never voted against Liberal-Nationals party policy.

What Hogan is doing with this media release is taking a hollow stance.

He fully intends to support the new Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Nationals Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack.

An arrogant new prime minister with a history since 2013 of human rights abuses as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, of welfare recipient bashing as Minister for Social Services, of relentless cost cutting as Treasurer and as a strong supporter of propping up the rich at the expense of low income families.

Wednesday 22 August 2018

A definitive list of the far right nutters within the current federal Liberal Party?


Sky News stated this as a list of those in the Liberal party room who backed, then Minister for Home Affairs and now backbencher, Peter Dutton's attempt to overthrow Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull:




A Who’s Who of those voting against Malcolm Bligh Turnbull in the Liberal party room leadership ballot on 21 August 2018:

Peter Dutton himself,
Michael Sukkar, MP for Deakin (Vic) & Assistant Minister to the Treasurer,
Greg Hunt, MP for Flinders (Vic) & Minister for Health,
Tony Abbott, MP for Warringah (NSW) & former sacked prime minister,
Zed Seselja, Senator for ACT & Assistant Minister for Science, Jobs and Innovation,
Steven Ciobo, MP for Moncrieff (Qld) & Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment,
Michael Keenan, MP for Stirling (WA) & Minister for Human Services,
Alan Tudge, MP for Aston (Vic) & Minister for Human Services,
Angus Taylor, MP for Hume (NSW) & Minister for Law Enforcement and Cyber Security,
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Senator for NSW & Minister for International Development and the Pacific,
Tony Pasin, MP for Barker (SA),
Jason Wood, MP for La Trobe (Vic),
Andrew Hastie, MP for Canning (WA),
Kevin Andrews, MP for Menzies (Vic),
Eric Abetz, Senator for Tasmania,
Ted O'Brien, MP for Fairfax (Qld),
Amanda Stoker, Senator for Queensland,
Andrew Wallace, MP for Fisher (Qld),
Karen Andrews, MP for McPherson(Qld),
Jim Molan, Senator for NSW,
Luke Howarth, MP for Petrie (Qld),
Nicole Flint, MP for Boothby (SA),
James Paterson, Senator for Victoria,
David Bushby, Senator for Tasmania,
Ross Vasta, MP for Bonner (Qld),
Ben Morton, MP for Tangney (WA),
James McGrath, Senator for Queensland,
Rick Wilson, MP for O'Connor (WA),
Scott Buchholz, MP for Wright (Qld),
David Fawcett, Senator for SA,
Dean Smith, Senator for WA,
Ian Goodenough, MP for Moore (WA),
Andrew Laming, MP for Bowman (Qld),
Jonathan Duniam, Senator for Tasmania,
Bert Van Manen, MP for Forde (Qld).

What a gathering of 'entitled' climate change denialists, followers of King Coal, members of the IPA, homophobes and hardened welfare recipient bashers.

All in all, a handy list of who not to vote for at the forthcoming federal election if one prefers a world where Peter Dutton never becomes Prime Minister of Australia.

Tuesday 21 August 2018

William Fraser Anning - an ugly aspect of far-right politics in Australia


The Sydney Morning Herald, Fraser Anning

William Fraser Anning then a member of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party was declared elected to the Australian Senate on 10 November 2017, as a replacement for the recently disqualified dual citizen Malcolm Ieuan Roberts.

Less than seven months later he had joined Katter’s Australian Party.

In the 2016 general election Anning had received a grand total of 19 votes (59 if transferred votes are counted) out of a possible 2.72 million Queensland ballots cast. The Queensland electorate had firmly rejected him.

Hansard shows that at 17:06pm on Wednesday 14 August 2018, nine months after taking up his seat, Anning made his formal First Speech on the floor of the Senate.

This is how The Sydney Morning Herald reported this speech on 14 August 2018:

Queensland senator Fraser Anning has praised the White Australia Policy and called for a plebiscite as "the final solution to the immigration problem" in the most inflammatory maiden speech to an Australian Parliament since One Nation leader Pauline Hanson's in 1996.

The Katter's Australian Party senator, formerly of One Nation, used his first speech to the Senate on Tuesday to lament the demise of "our predominantly European identity" of the 1950s and '60s.


The Guardian’s opinion piece on 15 August 2018 pointed out the dangers before us:

Fraser Anning is in the parliament by accident. Having fluked his way into the Senate chamber because One Nation needed a replacement for Malcolm Roberts, he now wants your attention, and judging by his performance in the Senate on Tuesday night, he doesn’t care what lines he crosses to get it.

What we are witnessing in national politics is the latest manifestation of Australia’s cultural cringe. Far right political operatives, and the media voices prepared to give them succour, are importing the nationalist debates that have sprung up in the shadow of the global financial crisis – the biggest economic dislocation since the great depression.

We are building our own tinder box, bit by bit.

Debates about race, and sovereignty, and immigration have caught fire elsewhere because of deep resentments felt by the losers of globalisation. Australia didn’t suffer the biting effects of the global financial crisis, and the prolonged economic downturn that followed it. By comparison to the visceral experiences elsewhere, in this country we experienced a chilly, stiff breeze.

Notwithstanding these facts, we are importing the outrage consciousness that exists elsewhere, validating it, willingly projecting an alternate reality onto our own domestic circumstances as a grotesque form of entertainment.

We are building our own tinder box, bit by bit.

This would be pathetic. Almost laughable. Except in terms of race and politics, we are now in the most explosive period we’ve been in since John Howard sailed into choppy waters with his feelings on Asian immigration in the 1980s.

There is nothing to laugh about. Right now, there are all the ingredients of a perfect storm.

The first ingredient is a fractured bunch of far-right leaning political voices in mortal competition with one another for votes. The last 24 hours has been a public competition between Anning, and his new running mate Bob Katter, and One Nation, for attention. Anning and Katter apparently want to establish a new beach head, charting territory where Pauline won’t follow. Just let that happy thought settle on you for a minute or two.

The second ingredient is a polity profoundly disaffected by the repeated failings and default narcissism of Australia’s major party politics, frustrated by their congested cities and low wages growth and by governments who spent more time fighting their fractured internals than navigating the future. The third is a disrupted media landscape where conflict – the louder and more notorious the better – is hard currency.

Fraser Anning used his first speech to parliament to spin his own obscurity into notoriety: to try on a troll suit in full public view.

The Monthly spoke of  Anning as "unrepresentative", "accidental swill" on 15 August 2018:

Fraser Anning’s execrable first speech in the Senate yesterday, proposing a “final solution” on Muslim immigration, marks a new low for Australian politics, but assuredly not for long. Things are likely to get worse before they get better, as a bunch of illegitimate right-wing nobodies in the Senate compete for race-hate shock value in the lead-up to the next election. The combination of a double dissolution in 2016 and the citizenship crisis has burdened us with the least representative Senate in living memory. The crossbench is populated by senators who won on the donkey vote, defected, were elected on a countback or were hand-picked mid-term and are yet to face the people. Most face electoral oblivion in 2019. We are used to hearing of “unrepresentative swill” in the Senate, where one vote, one value has never applied, but a record number of our current senators literally don’t deserve to be there. Call them accidental swill.

Anning’s speech, in which he called for a return to the White Australia policy, did not come out of the blue. We have been building up to this steadily. From Pauline Hanson’s return to parliament, to Tony Abbott’s dog-whistling on immigration policy, to Peter Dutton’s attacks on “African gangs”, to Andrew Bolt’s comments about Chinese, Cambodian, Indian and Jewish communities“changing our culture”, to Sky News airing an interview with neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, the trend is clear: we are sliding ever-faster down a slippery slope towards an ugly, divisive race-card election.

Although his formal first speech was somewhat tardy, according to They Vote For You Anning has been busy voting strongly in support of:


On 14 August 2018 lawyer Richard McGilvray, an adviser to Senator Anning, resigned his position in protest.

Posting on Linkedin that: "I do not condone SenatorAnning's speech. His reference to 'the Final Solution' was not something I had seen, heard of, or discussed prior to his remarks last night and as a consequence, within hours of Senator Anning's speech, I resigned my position effective immediately. I'd like to thank many of you for your messages of support and encouragement this morning."

It is understood that the adviser who drafted Anning's First Speech was Richard Howard, who was formerly a staffer for One Nation's Malcolm Roberts and Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm.

As is to be expected Anning's speech has been fact checked and found to contain numerous errors.

To date, Senator Anning has not issued an apology for elements of that speech.