Ezra Levant and Sheila Gunn Reid scrutinize Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s November 27th MOU with PM Mark Carney, a former anti-oil advocate tied to GFANZ’s $6B+ pressure on BlackRock and Brookfield, demanding carbon tax hikes by April 1st, 2026, and pipeline completion by 2040. Smith pivots toward gas as a "foundational fuel" amid Ukraine/Middle East instability but faces opposition from Forest Ethics and legal hurdles, while oil firms flee Alberta for U.S. or Kazakhstan—TC Energy even rebranded to escape stigma. Meanwhile, Australia’s Pauline Hanson surges to 20% polling after Senate censure for her burqa stunt, exposing hypocrisy among senators like Payman, a Taliban-oppressed refugee now opposing her. Carney’s pipeline skepticism and Hanson’s defiance reveal deeper tensions: climate mandates vs. energy sovereignty and free speech under attack. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, will an oil pipeline actually be built under Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney?
I'm a bit of a skeptic, but we'll tell you what happened today in Calgary.
It's November 27th.
This is the Ezra LeBanch show.
shame on you you sensorious bug oh hi everybody i'm I'm standing in the McDougall Center that is the equivalent of the legislature, but here in Calgary, it's the provincial head office for the Premier in Calgary.
I'm standing with my friend, our senior reporter, our chief reporter, Sheila Gunnrid.
Hey, Ezra, I am a skeptic of what happened here today.
I think that the province, although they got a lot of wins, they did get a lot of carve-outs.
I feel like we're going down the whole social license road that we went with Rachel Notley.
If we concede to all these green things that we'll get to build the pipeline, and that didn't happen in four years under Rachel Notley, and that was her plan to get pipelines built.
Just to back up for a second, a couple of days ago, rumors started circulating.
I think Rick Bell of the Calgary Sun was the first one with it, that, oh my God, was there a deal between the Alberta Premier and the notorious anti-oil extremist Mark Carney.
When I say he's an anti-oil extremist, he doesn't look like Stephen Gilgo, a madman, criminal convict, scaling the CN Tower in a Greenpeace stud.
He looks actually the opposite.
He always wears the $5,000 suits.
I'm talking about Mark Carney, but he's actually been a far more effective anti-oil extremist.
For years, he led the UN's anti-carbon agenda, and he was ahead of something called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which is exactly what it sounds like.
It was an attempt to get investment firms like Brookfield Asset Management, like BlackRock, like State Street, to have a capital strike.
By that, I mean to say to oil companies, if you don't support carbon credits and do all these BS environmentalist things, we will basically shut off all investments to you.
Even though the people who were saying this, it wasn't their money.
I mean, BlackRock Brookfield, they manage other people's money.
So it was a kind of extortion.
And you may recall that the U.S. Congress actually investigated G-Fans, the Glasgow Financial Alliance, and they interrogated Mark Carney.
I think that's something that has not been widely reported.
Anyways, so here's a guy who for more than a decade has hated the oil patch and has done everything he could to attack the oil patch.
And now suddenly he signed a memorandum of understanding that would, if the best outcome were to happen, have a 1 million barrel a day pipeline to the West Coast.
I don't know.
I'm such a skeptic, Sheila, because this guy is a smarter Stephen Gilbo.
The Premier today seemed to suggest she was hopeful.
Well, and the thing is, there's no private sector partner right now.
And that's a key condition of this memorandum of understanding is that it has to be a private sector partner.
I'm grateful for that.
I think the government shouldn't be building pipelines.
We saw what happened with Trans Mountain, 800% over budget, way late.
But there's not that partner yet.
And looking at this, I think, why would there be a partner when you have these upstream emissions, carbon taxes being slapped on these projects, and the guy he wrote values in the prime minister's office, you are going to look to more favorable investment climates like the United States, who doesn't have any of these regulations and has a mantra of drill baby drill.
Premier's Pipeline Paradox00:15:12
Just a week ago, a large mineral company called Nutrien, it's a fertilizer company based in Saskatchewan.
They decided to have a port to export their good stuff.
They didn't decide to go to Canada.
They go, go to the U.S. and build a port in Washington State.
Can you imagine a Canadian company has done the math and at a risk-adjusted rate of return?
They say it's smarter business for us to go through a foreign country than our own country.
It's sort of comical to see the Premier of British Columbia up in arms about this when he's the guy blackballing all these pipelines.
Anyways, I want to let you know that Sheila and I had a bit of a role today because out of, I think, eight or twelve questions put to the Premier of Alberta, we had four of them.
Let me start by showing you: here's an excerpt of Danielle Smith's remarks today, where she makes the case for this MOU.
MOU stands for Memorandum of Understanding.
It's sort of like a baby contract.
It's like a deal.
That's right.
It's a promise of a promise.
Here, take a look.
This agreement means Alberta will work with our federal partners and the Pathways companies to commence and complete the world's largest carbon capture, utilization, and storage infrastructure project.
It will also make Alberta heavy oil the lowest intensity barrel on the market and displace millions of barrels of heavier-emitting fuels around the globe.
This is Alberta's moment of opportunity.
Our opportunity to show the nation, as well as the entire world, that resource development and emissions reduction cannot only coexist but can actually complement one another for the benefit of billions of people around the world.
Alberta is willing to take on and conquer the challenge as partners with the federal government.
Now, I need to be clear: the government is just this agreement with the government is just the first step in this journey.
There is much more hard work to be done.
Trust must be built and earned in the partnership as we move through the next steps of this process, whether that be working with the federal government to prepare our bitumen pipeline submission for the major projects office or putting together the final elements of a carbon pricing agreement that will be implemented through the province's tier program that balances competitiveness with accountability for heavy emitters.
And although I am not blind to the fact that the people of Alberta have had the rug pulled out from underneath them too many times to count over the past 10 years, I also know that a new relationship and a new beginning needs a starting point grounded in good faith.
And today, I hope, is that new starting point.
Well, I flew in from Toronto, as you know, and Sheila came down from northern Alberta.
And so we weren't going to be caught snoozing.
We got in line at the journalism microphone.
There were a couple mics in here, and I found which one the journalists, I asked around which one do the journalists get in.
And there was a lady from Global News who was ahead of us, good for her.
And then I was in second, and Sheila was in third.
And the rest of the government journalists were steaming mad.
Stopping.
It was just like at the leaders' debates.
Remember when we were in Montreal, the CBC building, and all these independent journalists got to the microphones faster than the sloppy government journalists?
Well, that happened here again.
So I was up second.
This lovely lady from Global News was ahead of me.
Full marks to her.
And I want to show you my two questions.
I confess they were a little bit speechifying.
You know, who would have thunk it?
Here's my questions to Danielle Smith and her answers.
Take a look.
Hi, Premier Ezra Levant from Rebel News.
The first deadline in the MOU, if I'm reading it right, is April, where the duty is on Alberta to jack up carbon taxes.
And the last date in the MOU, if I'm reading it right, correct me if I'm not, is 2040.
That's when this pipeline, you know, that's sort of the end date.
It can't be any later than that.
In terms of building trust with the anti-oil liberals, they're asking Alberta to raise carbon taxes now for a promise of an oil pipeline years or even more than a decade in the future.
Does that really build trust?
Well, you have to start somewhere.
And one thing I would say is that we did have the Supreme Court of Canada rule on the federal government's ability to set a price on emissions.
So the Supreme Court has ruled on that.
It's part of the reason why we negotiated a stringency agreement that would have seen the carbon tax price go up to $170 a barrel by 2030.
We've demonstrated, and I think the Prime Minister agrees, that's too high too fast.
So that's why we understand that there was always going to be a negotiation around that.
We froze the carbon tax at $95 pending consultation with the industry and greater work with the Prime Minister.
But remember, Alberta was the first to have an industrial carbon price.
We implemented that in 2007.
It's generated revenues that allowed us to invest billions of dollars in new technologies, including carbon capture.
So there is a commitment on the part of the industry to have a carbon price, and we did do some consultation on that.
We're just glad that we have the means to manage it our way in Alberta under our tier program.
And we'll see, as of April 1st, and no, that wasn't a joke.
April 1st is going to be the date that we have an agreement on that front.
When it comes to the building of a bitumen pipeline to Asian markets to the BC coast, if you read the MOU, those two things have to happen in tandem.
We have to see the Pathways project proceeding at the same time as an agreement to build that.
One is dependent on the other.
I don't know that the Prime Minister would have agreed to a new bitumen pipeline without Pathways, and we wouldn't have agreed to Pathways without a new bitumen pipeline.
So they are going to be staged.
They are going to go on together.
We've already had a meeting with Pathways about how we're going to do that.
That will require a trilateral negotiation as well.
But I'm very hopeful.
Since we have used carbon capture technology before for enhanced oil recovery, that's another part of this announcement: CO2 will be able to be used for enhanced oil recovery, which should allow us to generate more revenue.
So I would say that you don't always get 100% of what you want, but we addressed seven out of the nine bad laws that I'd put on the table to, I think, what will be the satisfaction of Albertans.
And I think that this will allow us to see some substantial investments.
I mean, that's the thing about a peace deal.
You have to make it with an enemy.
So I suppose the fact that for a decade, his Glasgow financial alliance for Net Zero, it was about putting a capital strike on the oil and gas sector.
Just a couple weeks ago, he was asked about pipelines, and he said, boring.
So is there anything, I mean, after a lifetime of attacking the oil patch, he was even interrogated by the U.S. Congress for an attempt to capital strike their oil companies.
Is there anything the Prime Minister has said to you in private that you could share with us that would signal that his lifetime's work of attacking carbon-based fuels will somehow be put to the side?
Like, I think he's just a slightly smarter version Of Stephen Gilbo.
I think he hates the oil patch as his life's work.
Is there anything he's said to you that make you believe that maybe he can be turned on this?
Well, I'll start by saying my joke has been that I would love for pipelines to be boring again.
I would love for no matter what party is in power, what level of government, that there wasn't sort of an overwrought response anytime anyone talked about building a pipeline.
It's actually quite remarkable that we're talking about expanding uranium mines, building nuclear power plants, building new transmission lines through pristine areas, massive new mining projects, and not one of them has raised any ire on the part of any environmental group or anyone in the media, but there has been all of this ire raised around a pipeline.
So I hope that we can make pipelines boring again because it's just a way to get our product to the consumers who need it.
I would say that, as you know, I was not a huge champion of carbon capture technology when I was in politics the first time.
I wasn't.
But I've seen with the passage of time, the investments being made, and the fact that the technology works and we're getting better and better at it, and you can create a product out of it, including so that you can enhance oil recovery.
I changed my mind.
And so I would say that the Prime Minister, maybe in the past 10 years, it looked like wind and solar and batteries were going to be the ability to power industrial economies.
I think the world discovered that's not true with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the instability in the Middle East.
Everyone is having to recalibrate and rethink that.
I was recently in the Middle East, and the conversation around the table now is talking about natural gas as a foundational fuel, not a transition fuel.
So I think that demonstrates that there is a global understanding of how important it is to have reliable electricity.
And so I have to just give the Prime Minister credit for perhaps he's recalibrating his own thinking on this.
It certainly seems to be in the agreement that we signed, but we will trust, but we will verify.
We will make sure that he lives up to the commitments in this agreement that we had.
And we have to proceed somewhere with a measure of good faith.
I can tell you 100% that the former Prime Minister would never have moved this far on these issues.
We tried for three years, we got nowhere.
And in my very first meeting with the Prime Minister, I said to him, you know, the way that we can get to an agreement is just orienting around a 2050 target.
Our industry is there.
We think it's achievable with technology.
And you'll see in the context of this MOU that the interim targets are gone.
And so that's what we're going to move forward on.
And we'll see as we meet these milestones whether I'm correct or whether your skepticism is correct.
Thanks, well, what do you think of that?
I think it's my role to be a skeptic because we can't all say, oh, yes, I'm totally trustworthy that this lifelong, decades-long enemy of the oil patch is suddenly our ally.
You've got to be a bit of a skeptic.
What do you think?
Well, I think so too.
And I mean, yes, it could potentially be a very big date for Alberta.
They have done hard work negotiating to get this deal for a deal done.
But we have to always remember who we're dealing with.
And a leopard doesn't change his spots that click on it.
It's like the scorpion and the toad crossing the stream.
When the scorpion kills the frog, the frog says, what did you do?
And the scorpion says, it's in my nature.
It's the old Aesop's fable.
Sheila, you were next in line behind me, but as a generous collegial courtesy, you let someone go in front of you.
Very nice of you.
But then you did get a couple of questions yourself.
Let's take a look at those.
Sheila Gunread with Rebel News.
Just staying on the topic of British Columbia.
The Prime Minister has said in the House of Commons just two days ago, we believe the government of British Columbia has to agree.
Now, just now, after he left the signing with you, his press release says these projects will only be built in consultation and partnership with Indigenous rights holders and British Columbia.
So what is the real strength of this MOU when you have a partner who keeps giving veto?
to British Columbia.
Well, you'll see in the agreement, there's no mention of veto.
I think that there obviously has to be trilateral discussions with British Columbia to find areas of common ground, and I think we will.
And there's also clearly going to have to be a formal consultation process with Indigenous bands.
And we're prepared to do all of that.
What I have seen is that there have been a number of projects in British Columbia that may have started off with a lot of opposition that over time got a lot of enthusiasm.
Look at all of the LNG projects down the coast.
Look at Coastal Gas Link.
Look at the opportunity now for additional LNG projects.
Look at even the Premier of British Columbia talking about expanding TMX.
That was not the conversation that was happening five or six years ago.
So I would say that some of it is in the proving.
You have to prove that you're listening, prove that you are being genuine in the consultation, genuine in addressing the environmental and other issues that are raised.
And that's what we intend to do.
We intend to be involved every step of the way to make sure that we're able to bring people on board with this.
But it's a process.
We know this is the first stage of it.
But having the Prime Minister agree in principle that getting a million additional barrels to Asian markets is a good thing for us and for Canada, I think that's a major milestone.
Now, British Columbia, however, says that they're blindsided.
They say they're considering a lawsuit, which could tie up any potential private sector proposal for years.
It might even act as a deterrent to a private sector pipeline proposal.
Has the Prime Minister given you any assurances that he would use constitutional means like the notwithstanding clause to prevent a proposed project from getting bogged down in a legal quagmire for years?
Well, I don't think he needs to use the notwithstanding clause because this is federal jurisdiction.
Trans border pipelines, trans-border infrastructure, ports, those are all federal jurisdiction.
And I think that British Columbia has tried to use every tool in the toolbox, I guess was the term that they used before, and failed.
It was clearly affirmed by the courts that this is not British Columbia's decision to make.
That being said, we understand that there's a process we have to go through.
We understand that Indigenous partnership is key to that.
And so we are wanting to get the project to a point where it's on the major projects list, at which point there's a two-year window to get to approval.
So we've got our work to do over the next number of months, but that's the commitment on the part of the federal government, is that once something is on the major projects list, it will have a new approach so that it can be approved in two years.
And again, trust but verify, we're going to hold them to that.
Well, Sheila, you are pointing out the methods by which people kill pipelines in Canada, go to the courts, bog things down with Indigenous consultations, have a bunch of fog.
And you know what it is?
Often it's oil companies and pipeline companies saying, you know what?
We're going to go to a lease, a less risky jurisdiction like Kazakhstan.
I mean, and it's not even a joke.
If you look at the companies that have exited Alberta and where they have entered, they have gone to places that are physically, literally dangerous.
It's easier to pay off the local warlord than to do business in Canada.
And that's just a fact of the oil and gas sector.
TC Energy changed its name because of the stigma of being trans-Canada pipeline.
Skeptical Allies of Alberta00:04:02
You know, and I really like Danielle Smith for a lot of reasons.
I've known her since we were in university at the same time, and I respect the fact that she's open to new ideas.
She's always been an ideas person.
This MOU Memorandum of Understanding is a starting point.
As I mentioned in my question, April of 2026, there's going to be a jacked up carbon tax.
Like, hang on a second, no pipeline, but the carbon tax goes up.
It makes me really nervous that the bad guys are getting something before they give something.
But as I said in the preamble to my lengthy question, when you make peace, you make peace with an enemy.
It's the nature of making peace.
Here's what I think that we're going to do going forward.
Going forward, it's our job at Rebel News to be skeptical allies of the Premier of Alberta.
What I mean by that is, obviously, she has the interests of Alberta and Canada at heart.
Obviously, the whole reason she did this MOU was to blast through the Liberal barriers.
And as she said to me, or maybe she said it to you, Sheila, Justin Trudeau in 10 years would never have agreed to any of this stuff.
And she's got a point there.
In fact, I saw a little news story that Stephen Gilbo was having a bit of a reaction in caucus.
He was being a little fussy and having a little bit of a pout.
That's actually the only thing I've seen in the last day that gives me encouragement.
But if our job is to be skeptical and to shine a light of scrutiny on the feds to make sure they live up to Danielle Smith's hopes, then I think that's a, I don't want to be a cheerleader of this just yet.
I want to be a supporter, but with a skeptical eye, because somebody's going to be.
Well, and I think I'm not telling any secrets when I say that I am from the oil patch.
Everybody in my family works in the oil and gas sector.
I would love nothing more than to see a pipeline, a spider web of pipelines actually coming out of Alberta.
But today, all the forces of no are going to mobilize against Danielle Smith.
You're going to see an EB tantrum like we haven't seen quite yet.
You're going to see the foreign-funded anti-oil activists reactivate.
They never had to work all that hard under Justin Trudeau because he was giving them all that they wanted.
But now I think you're going to see the likes of Forest Ethics and whatever tides is calling itself now and all that foreign money flowing in from the United States to activate against any potential pipeline project and they're going to do it using the coastal Indigenous bans to oppose this pipeline and BC is going to take advantage of that.
I think you're right.
I think that our side has to stay on the offensive.
I think the Keystone XL pipeline, that was another 800,000 barrel a day pipeline that was going to go from Alberta to Saskatchewan and then into the States.
That has to be revived again.
Donald Trump wants it.
There's no reason that half-built thing shouldn't proceed.
I think that we have to stay on the front foot, keep moving.
If these rumors of Stephen Gilbo having a tantrum are right, that's the best news I've heard.
We've got to keep the bad guys on the back foot.
But they've got a lot of tricks.
And you're going to see, if this is legit, you're going to see people in the Liberal government leaking against Kearney.
Because there are some true believers who, I mean, you're going to see freakouts from certain parts of the Liberal Party base.
That's one of the reasons I'm a skeptic.
I simply don't believe that the Liberal Party, whose chief belief is in their own reelection, they'll do anything to be re-elected.
Look, they abandoned the carbon tax to get elected, right?
They will do anything to get re-elected.
And if this pipeline proposal jeopardizes that, well, they'll do and be whoever they have to be to win.
Sheila, I'm really glad you came down.
Thank you for that.
I'm glad I came out too.
Of course, Mark Carney took no questions from anybody.
And didn't stand with her in this announcement.
Wasn't that interesting visually.
But I'm glad we were here.
Pauline Hanson's Senate Stand00:15:50
I hope you are glad we were here too.
And I hope you don't mind my questions.
Sheila's questions were better.
Mine were a little speech-ifying, but it's in my nature.
Listen, that's a show for today.
And we're going to be up in Edmonton for the United Conservative Party conference in a couple days.
I'm excited about that.
It'll be interesting to see what the delegates, a lot of the people who are members of the party at the conference are in the oil and gas industry.
They hate the Liberals as much as I do.
I'll give them that.
So it will be interesting to see.
What do you think we're going to see up there at the conference?
Do you know what?
I think we're going to see the separatist movement really involved in the United Conservative Party AGM because I think really it's a circle, the Venn diagram of United Conservative Party supporters and people who want to see separation.
I think they see Premier Smith as an adequate caretaker until those things happen.
I think the separatists are going to play a strong role in the AGM as well as parental rights legislation, free speech legislation.
I think some of those policy issues are going to make it to the floor.
Do you know?
I can't remember if we set up a special website for the conference yet.
UnitedConservatives.ca, and you can come to our meet and greet.
Oh, that's right.
I'm going to be there.
Sheila's going to be there.
We're going to have a little team there.
It's not too late to buy a ticket for a hospitality suite.
It'll be a fun night.
Hope to see you there.
I'm going to say goodbye now.
And boy, what a newsy morning.
Well, of course, Rebel News is based in Canada, and that's where most of our reporters are.
That's where most of us were born.
That's the center of gravity for Rebel News.
But we care about the wider world.
As you know, from time to time, I visit the United Kingdom and even Ireland because those countries are going through things that we are going through here in Canada.
They may be further down the road.
But don't forget down under.
It's a lot further away.
You can't just hop there overnight on a plane like you can to the UK or Ireland.
But we have a base of operations in the Australian city of Melbourne, which is the capital city of Victoria, which is one of the major states down there.
Avi Yamini, I call him a one-man army.
And so he's down there.
Of course, he did incredible coverage for us during the COVID lockdowns.
Melbourne was really the most locked-down city, not only in Australia, but probably the free world, maybe in competition with Canada's Montreal for that.
Avi's been covering a lot of things, and recently Islamification is being an issue in Australia, especially in Melbourne.
Really, a lot of similarities with Toronto.
But they have one improvement that we don't have.
They have one thing that I'm sort of jealous of, and namely their Senate is elected in Australia.
Not just that, it's a kind of proportional representation.
I'll make sure Avi corrects me if I'm wrong on that, that allows parties that are flavorful or more colorful than the medium to get actual seats there.
So you have Greens and you have sort of one-man bands.
And you also have a fixture in Australian politics.
Maybe you've heard of her.
Her name is Pauline Hanson.
And she's been the leader of the One Nation Party for decades.
And although the mainstream media hates her, well, the parliamentary system allows her to win her Senate seat.
Joining us now to talk about Pauline Hansen and her latest activities, which have got a lot of attention in Australia and around the world, is our friend Avi Yamini.
Abhi, did I properly introduce everything there?
Did I explain how the Senate works okay?
I think you've done a pretty good job quickly there.
Although I've got to criticize your bringing up my PTSD about COVID so early in the morning.
It's early in the morning there.
It's at night here in Toronto.
Thanks for doing that.
Listen, you, I mean, you really fly the flag for Rebel News down under all year round.
And then once a year, you and I both go to the World Economic Forum.
We sort of meet in the middle.
And you've interviewed our prime minister more than I have, by the way, because Mark Carney has talked to you, I think, three times.
I consider us friends at this point.
Well, you've had more interviews with him than any other independent journalist.
I want to talk about Pauline Hanson because she's quite a character.
Australia allows people to be characters.
There's a kind of acceptance that people can have spicy opinions down there.
Your political class isn't boring.
Am I right?
I think that the way our system is constructed, it allows it to happen.
I'm not sure that the establishment supports it or even would allow it.
In fact, Pauline Hansen herself was previously jailed during her political career, and actually by the conservatives, not even the left.
She's been around for decades.
I'd say she's one of the most consistent conservative voices.
She started off, you know, as this fish and chip owner that resonated only with the fringe.
But, you know, the way she talks resonated with everyday Aussies.
She was polling, you know, back then, she's been in this for decades, warning about mass immigration.
She's not a polished politician.
She's your average Aussie.
Like I said, she was a fish and chip owner, a fish and chip shop owner.
And, you know, she was polling back then at about 3 to 4%, which is still a lot.
But today, she's polling at about 20%.
That means one in five Aussies that actually support her message.
And I think the reason why so many Aussies are supporting her today is firstly, you know, obviously the cost of living and the way that Australia has gone, the failures of the conservative movement here.
She's picked up a lot of their votes and just the Labour Party, the direction that they've taken Australia.
But most importantly, I think because of how consistent she's been the whole time, no matter whether on, you know, no matter how much the left and the establishment media have tried to demonize her over the years, but also the fact that she's even on her own side, when they've gone, like we've seen in the last couple of years, they've gone kind of kooky on the right.
She hasn't.
She's maintained her position.
She's been, she's had this moral clarity as to what the threat to Australia is.
And it's shown it's cutting through and Aussies are supporting her and agreeing with her.
And what we saw, her latest kind of stunt shows it.
We'll get to that video in a second, but I want to expand on your point: how she's been consistent for decades.
And some of the most successful populist conservatives in the world, you know, for years they toil away in relative obscurity.
And then suddenly the world wakes up and says, holy smokes, that guy was right.
I mean, you and I are friends with Tommy Robinson.
He's been fighting this battle for more than a decade.
And it's only been in the last year that people have sort of said, wow, he was right.
Here at Builders in the Netherlands, for years he was considered fringe.
He got the most seats, if I'm not mistaken, in the recent vote.
Nigel Farage, same sort of thing, battling away on Brexit.
He doesn't quite have the courage on immigration yet, but he's finding him.
And even the Le Pen family in France.
I think that people, after 20 years, However, much people are opposed to, let's say, Pauline Hansen or Naja Farage, that number is really not going to change.
I mean, you're not going to convince someone today that Nigel Farage is bad or Thomas Robinson is bad because they've been attacked for 20 years.
And if they're still standing, you know, I think there's something to showing that you're firm for 20 years.
Anyhow, I'm rambling on a little bit, but Pauline Hansen, I remember even in Canada hearing about her 20 years ago.
Tell me her latest move because this goes to the Islamification of the public square, which is a big factor in Australia, just like it is in Canada.
Take it away.
Tell me the story of Pauline Hanson.
I think what she did was actually quite clever.
And it's not the first time she's done this specific stunt.
So let's start with what happened.
She tried to move, bring a motion into parliament, into the Senate, to ban face covering, including burkers in public places.
She was immediately shut down by the Labour government with the Greens.
So what she did was she walked outside the Senate, the chamber, and she put a burqa on and she walked into the chamber.
So this wasn't the first time she's done this specific move.
She did it about eight years ago.
So this wasn't the first time she was trying to move this motion.
She's been, like I said, the establishment's trying to paint her as this, you know, kooky, crazy fringe woman that just has one trick.
But the truth is, Aussies are seeing it as this is the one consistent politician who has been fighting for the same thing all these years.
So she walked out, came in.
You could see here in the footage, she's walking in casually into the Senate and she takes her seat and all hell breaks loose.
You have, you know, the usual suspects condemning her, screaming around.
In fact, on the official parliamentary, the Senate YouTube, or they have the stream there.
They cut the mics.
You can't hear it.
Rookshan, my friend who works sometimes with us at Rebel, he's there in parliament and he's saying when they cut it is when you heard the most outrageous, hateful kind of condemnation from the most extreme people like Lydia Thorpe and Maureen Faruqi, some of these characters who have done the craziest stunts within parliament, but we don't get to see that.
He saw it because he's there.
He goes, we don't get to see it.
They've cut the mics.
You see it, but you don't hear anything that's going on.
But even what we heard was bad enough.
So essentially, she was ordered to leave the Senate chamber.
She refused.
And her point being that I came in here to debate banning this burqa.
And instead of banning it, so you refuse to discuss banning it.
And then I walk in wearing it.
And now you want to ban me for wearing it.
So which way do you want to have it?
Yeah.
Very interesting and very visual.
And I think people are getting a little sick of face coverings.
I mean, people tolerated the unusual step during COVID, but I think a lot of people are tired because the Hamas types, the antifa types, they wear masks for duplicitous reasons.
And I cannot believe that any Muslim woman in Australia likes to have their face hidden from the sun.
I just don't think that's a good thing.
Well, it's quite funny because one of the loudest voices against her in parliament at the moment is a senator Payman, who is a refugee from Afghanistan, escaped the Taliban.
One of the reasons so many refugees got into Australia from Afghanistan was based on women's rights.
And one of the first things that happened when the Taliban fell back then, when they were escaping here to Australia, was before one of the women's rights.
And one of the laws that they had was the forced wearing of these face coverings.
And then you fast forward to today and you're seeing payment in parliament condemning Pauline Hansen for making a mockery of wanting to ban the exact clothing that kind of gave her the reason to be here in Australia, the forced wearing of this.
And you see, if you look at Afghanistan today, as soon as the Taliban came back up, when the Taliban fell, everybody was, the majority of the country was women were pulling off these face coverings.
Probably the only ones left wearing it was the ones where their husbands were extremists, forcing them to still wear it.
And then as soon as the Taliban took control again, these face coverings became law once again.
And here you have in the safety of Australia, where we welcomed her in because of the abuse to women by that same terrorist organization.
Now she is in parliament condemning a woman for standing up.
You know, one of the reasons which Pauline Hansen says she's standing up against it is obviously the security.
We don't want face coverings here in Australia, whether it's the Burker or, you know, Balaclavas or, you know, the Hamas people railing on our streets, but also because she believes in women's rights and she knows that most of the women wearing this are not doing it because they want to.
It's not a personal choice.
And she says those that have the personal choice that want to do it, go ahead and do it in your home.
If you want to do it on our streets, then go do it in an Islamic country.
But to see Payment kind of fighting her on that point is ludicrous.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
Well, it sounds like her rivals in the Senate were able to shut her up, shut her down, shut off the mics, shut down debate.
But tell me how it's been in the wider country.
How have the media treated it?
How have grassroots?
How have Muslim groups?
Is she threatened with any human rights lawsuits?
What has been the reverberations of what she did?
Well, if you're following the mainstream media, you'll believe that she's being widely condemned by the entire country as a racist.
But if you look online, for example, and you just look at any post, even the mainstream media's own reporting on it, and look at all the comments, the vast majority is in support of her.
And those same senators that have stood up and condemned her, the loudest voices against her, their own posts, many of the comments are again with Pauline Hanson.
So she has wide public support.
She was censured by parliament.
In fact, she has received the harshest penalty in the history of our parliament for doing this stunt.
Remember, what did she do?
So the penalty is a seven days.
So she's not allowed to represent Australia in any official capacity on any of these trips that they do as senators.
But the harshest penalty is a seven days sitting.
She is banned from Parliament.
Now, the last seven-day ban was about 50 years ago, but even that wasn't seven sitting days.
It was seven days, which turns out to be about two or three sitting days.
So she's not allowed to sit in parliament that she was elected to represent her constituents for until next year, some point, in February.
I think it's the first time she's going to be allowed to sit again in parliament, all because she stood up and she said, you know what?
You don't want to ban it.
I'm going to wear it.
And look, I think it's going to have the opposite effect.
I think, you know, she's shrugged it off as, I'll cop it, whatever.
It doesn't bother me that you censure me.
That only creates, you know, has that messiah effect.
I think the average Aussie sees what they're trying to do, and it's not going to work.
It's only going to work in her favor.
Jealous of Freedom00:01:38
Yeah.
There's something wrong about other politicians saying you may not have certain views that we disagree with.
You may not sit in the We can't even debate it.
It's not even, you can't have the view.
We can't debate it.
And then if you end up doing the thing you wanted to ban, you see, like if they just debated it and they banned it, it would have been illegal for her to enter the chamber wearing it.
And that's why I think it was so masterful and so clever by it and so simple.
You know, like it's yes, she has done it before because it is so effective.
And it got the whole country talking about the issue that they didn't want anyone to talk about.
Isn't that amazing?
Well, Abby, thanks for the report from Down Under.
And I'm sort of jealous that you have people like Pauline Hanson that are allowed to express themselves.
I'm not saying I agree with every single thing the woman says.
I don't know everything she says.
I think you'll agree with more than you'll disagree.
I think she's, you know, she's a great friend to Rebel News.
She's a great friend to sanity.
And I'm just grateful, especially in these times, that we have sensible voices still on the right that don't flip-flop on issues that are consistent and are willing to take one for the team.
Well, you're making me jealous the way you describe her.
Thanks very much, Abi, for fighting the good fight down under and for giving us an update.
Thanks for having me.
All right, there he is.
Abhiyamini, the Bureau Chief for Australia for Rebel News.
On behalf of all of us at Rebel, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.