The SPEAKER ( Hon. Tony Smith ) took the chair at 10:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.
COMMITTEES
Petitions Committee
Report
Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (10:01): I present the seventh report of the Petitions Committee for the 46th Parliament.
The report read as follows—
Report relating to the consideration of petitions and matters relating to the petitions system
The committee met in private session on 27 November 2019.
1. The committee resolved to present the following petitions in accordance with standing order 207:
From 2015 petitioners—requesting a new pharmacy be approved for the Minto, Minto Heights and Bow Bowing area, NSW (PN0443)
From 1850 petitioners—regarding Australia's offshore detention policy for asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island (PN0445)
From 1 petitioner—regarding Australia's offshore detention policy for asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island (PN0446)
From 55 petitioners—regarding increasing Newstart Allowance (PN0447)
From 26 petitioners—requesting the amendment of Clause 329 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act regarding misleading advertising (PN0448)
From 1455 petitioners—requesting permanent resettlement of refugee and asylum seeker children in Australia or New Zealand (PN0449)
The following ministerial responses to petitions were received:
From the Minister for Foreign Affairs—to a petition requesting assistance for the family members of Mr Nizamidin based in China (EN0661)
From the Minister for Foreign Affairs—to a petition regarding the state of democracy in Cambodia (EN0668)
From the Minister for Foreign Affairs—to a petition requesting that Australia resign from and cease funding the United Nations Human Rights Council (EN0671)
From the Minister for Communications, Cyber Security and the Arts—to a petition regarding freedom of speech and harmful digital communications (EN0896)
From the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction—to a petition regarding adopting a policy of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (EN0910)
From the Attorney-General—to a petition regarding freedom of religion and discrimination on the basis of religious belief or activity (EN0918)
From the Minister for Home Affairs—to a petition requesting removal of Items 12 and 28 from the Cybercrime Act 2001 (EN0938)
From the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development—to a petition regarding Australia's water security (EN0945)
From the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development—to a petition regarding motorcycle construction and handlebar heights (EN0950)
From the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs—to a petition requesting access to Australia be denied to anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. (EN0951)
From the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs—to a petition requesting an increase to the maximum age of skilled migrants (EN0953)
From the Attorney-General—to a petition regarding freedom of religion and discrimination on the basis of religious belief or activity (EN0965)
From the Assistant Treasurer—regarding bail-in laws and a Separation of Banks Bill (EN0974)
From the Minister for the Environment—to a petition regarding Australia's plastic waste (EN1002)
From the Minister for the Environment—to a petition regarding the decision to close the climbing of Uluru in October 2019 (EN1004)
From the Minister for Health—to a petition regarding breast implants and cancer causality (EN1006)
From the Assistant Treasurer—to a petition regarding the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019 (EN1014)
From the Minister for Industrial Relations to a petition regarding workers' compensation arrangements in Australia (EN1015)
From the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction—to a petition regarding declaring a climate crisis (EN1020)
From the Assistant Treasurer—to a petition regarding stimulation of the Australian economy (EN1023)
From the Minister for Industrial Relations to a petition regarding economic security for women in Australia (EN1027)
From the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction—to a petition regarding declaring a climate emergency (EN1041)
From the Minister for Health—to a petition regarding the management of migraines in Australia (EN1046)
From the Minister for Home Affairs—to a petition regarding Australia's asylum seeker policy (PN0419)
From the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians—to a petition regarding the continuation of aged care services at Hazelwood House, Churchill, VIC (PN0423)
The terms of the petitions and the responses will be recorded in Hansard.
Mr Llew O'Brien MP Chair—Petitions Committee
PETITIONS
Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (10:01): I present the following six petitions:
Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
This petition of the residents of the community of Minto, Minto Heights, Bow Bowing and surrounds draws the attention of the House to the fact this community is without reasonable access to the supply of Pharmaceutical Benefits by a pharmacist approved under Section 90 of the National Heath Act 1953. This community of more than 19,000 residents has been denied reasonable access to the supply of Pharmaceutical Benefits due to an unintended consequence of the application of the Pharmacy Location Rules. The current level of three approved pharmacists to supply Pharmaceutical Benefits to this community does not provide the population of more than 19,000 residents with reasonable, timely nor adequate access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). The current level of supply of Pharmaceutical Benefits does not allow residents to improve their health outcomes through access to, and quality use of, medicines in a timely manner.
We therefore ask the House to give the community of Minto, Minto Heights, Bow Bowing and surrounds reasonable access to the supply of Pharmaceutical Benefits by requesting the Minister for Health exercise the Discretionary Power under subsection 90A(2) of the National Health Act 1953 to approve the pharmacy premises at Shop 1 B, 40 Ben Lomond Road, Minto, NSW, 2566.
from 2015 citizens (Petition No. PN0443)
Asylum Seekers
This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House that:
• Australia is in breach of Articles 31 and 32 of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees by its treatment of persons who are refugees seeking asylum from Australia who arrive to Australia by boat;
• Indefinite offshore detention is a breach and violation of human rights; • After the Federal election in May 2019 there has been a dramatic increase documented of attempts to suicide or self-harm by refugees held by Australia in offshore detention;
• The Australian Government must show compassion to all people who travel to Australia by any means who is a person who has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
We therefore ask the House to:
1. Stop all offshore detention practices for people who are refugees seeking asylum from Australia who meet the definition under the Migration Act 1958 as an unauthorised maritime arrival;
2. Repeal all the amendments made to the Migration Act 1958 by the Migration Amendment (Unauthorised Maritime Arrivals and Other Measures) Act 2013;
3. Evacuate all refugees on Manus Island and Nauru by re-settling them in Australia or by allowing the evacuation of the refugees to New Zealand.
from 1850 citizens (Petition No. PN0445)
Asylum Seekers
This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House: the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers on Australia's offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island, and the dire situation of refugees forced to live in the open camps at those locations
We therefore ask the House to:
1. Stop the Shame
2. Grant Australian residency to those already determined to be refugees
3. Bring the detained asylum seekers to Australia for refugee determination, and grant Australian residency to those found to be refugees.
from 1 citizen (Petition No. PN0446)
Newstart Allowance
This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House: The current rate of $40 per day for Newstart is too low to give people the support they need to survive and maintain a basic quality of life. Instead of supporting people, the current Newstart rate forces many people into a cycle of deprivation, social isolation and humiliation. Instead of allowing people to get on their feet and seek work, it entrenches poverty and puts up barriers to seeking work. Knox Infolink assists people on Newstart and similar Centrelink payments every week. With the cost of rent, food , utilities, and petrol continually rising, our clients are forced to come to us for help. We offer Emergency Relief and assistance for homeless people, but our resources can only cover so much. Newstart ($545 pfn) does not even cover the rent; (the median is $700 pfn for a 2 bedroom unit in Boronia). Food and housing insecurity makes it impossible for people to address other issues in their lives. It is time to recognise that people cannot live on $40 a day! Raising Newstart will allow people to survive, get back on their feet, and focus on their future - rather than always addressing their immediate financial crisis and working out how to cover food, housing and basic costs of living.
We therefore ask the House to: raise the rate of Newstart and similar Centrelink payments by at least $75 per week as a matter of urgency.
from 55 citizens (Petition No. PN0447)
Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918
This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House: We petitioners are members of a history class within a Brisbane institution. We have recently studied the history of global democracy with one paper specifically tracing the development of Australian democracy. We consider there has been unacceptable misleading, deceptive or false material distributed in print, radio and television during the last two federal election campaigns. Members of the class consider the offending material contains claims that are at best deceptive and at worst untrue. In our view such material unacceptably undermines our democracy and therefore we seek a process to achieve the cessation of such publications.
We therefore ask the House to: Amend Clause 329 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act to extend the meaning of the clause to include misleading advertising. The narrow interpretation of the current clause confines the clause to apply to the actual process of voting. The current clause is of limited value as there is no penalty for misleading voters in advertising of matters of past and future policy. Appropriate amendment of clause 329 would allow the Australian Electoral Commission to develop a process to address deception of voters by inappropriate advertising standards. We understand current interpretation of clause 329 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act outlined in correspondence received from the Australian Electoral Commissioner is based on a High Court decision of 1981.
from 26 citizens (Petition No. PN0448)
Asylum Seekers
This petition from Grandmothers Against Detention of Refugee Children NSW and other concerned citizens draws to the attention of the House the situation of refugee and asylum seeker children currently living in Australia, either having arrived here for medical treatment from Nauru, or who are already living in Australia on a temporary basis. These families have been informed that they will never call Australia home. The psychological damage created by denying children and their families permanent residency is cruel. All children need to live with hope, safety, security and certainty in order to thrive and flourish. Please give them permanent residency in Australia, or permit them to take up New Zealand's offer of a home.
We therefore ask the House to actively assist as a matter of urgency the process of the permanent resettlement of refugee and asylum seeker children and their families living currently in Australia.
from 1455 citizens (Petition No. PN0449)
Petitions received.
PETITIONS
Responses
Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (10:01): I present the following twenty-five ministerial responses to petitions previously presented:
China
Dear Mr O'Brien,
Thank you for your letter of 5 August 2019, regarding petition number EN0661, on behalf of Mr Almas Nizamidin, seeking assistance for his family members based in China, including his wife Ms Buzainafu Abudourexiti.
The support that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade can provide overseas to people who are not Australian citizens is limited. The Australian Government has, however, sought information from Chinese authorities, at the request of Uighur-Australians, about the whereabouts and welfare of family members who are Chinese citizens and are uncontactable or unable to depart Xinjiang. Where Chinese authorities have responded to our inquiries, we have passed these on to family members in Australia.
We will continue to raise specific cases of concern directly with Chinese authorities. Unfortunately, due to privacy considerations, I cannot discuss specific cases.
The Australian Government has significant concerns about the human rights situation in China, including China's arbitrary detention of Uighurs and other Muslim groups, and restrictions on Uighurs' freedom of movement and freedom of religion or belief.
I have raised these issues directly with the Chinese Government. In my three most recent meetings (on 24 September 2019, 2 August 2019 and 8 November 2018) with my Chinese counterpart, State Councilor Wang Yi, I raised concerns about the situation in Xinjiang. I have also raised Australia's concerns in international fora. In my 25 February statement to the Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, Iraised our concerns about the treatment of Uighurs in China and reiterated Australia's commitment to advocate for those suffering religious intolerance and abuse.
Australian officials have also regularly advocated for the rights of ethnic minorities in China, including in the HRC. Over the last year, we expressed our concerns on human rights in Xinjiang in Australia's national statements at the 39th, 40th, 41st and 42nd sessions of the HRC. On 8 July Australia, along with 21 other countries, delivered a joint letter to the President of the HRC about the situation in Xinjiang. On 6 November 2018 we expressed our concerns about China's treatment of Uighurs in Australia's national statement on China's third Universal Periodic Review.
The Australian Government advocates for the promotion and protection of human rights around the world as a matter of high priority. We will continue to raise human rights concerns with countries directly and through multilateral and regional fora.
I trust this information is of assistance.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Payne(Petition No. EN0661)
Cambodia
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your correspondence of 5 August 2019, regarding a petition submitted to the Standing Committee on Petitions about the state of democracy in Cambodia.
The Australian Government has regularly expressed its concerns about the narrowing political space and human rights situation in Cambodia, including directly to members of the Cambodian Government and at the United Nations Human Rights Council. I raised these issues most recently with Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Mr Prak Sokhonn, in New York on 26 September.
Sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, are one of a range of foreign policy tools available to the Government to address situations of serious international concern. The Government does not consider that the introduction of a new autonomous sanctions regime tor Cambodia would be a proportionate response to the current situation in that country.
There are, however, existing options in place for the Australian Government to consider refusing or cancelling visas on foreign policy and other grounds. Such cases are considered on a case-by-case basis and decisions are not made public
In the absence of further information, it is not possible to advise whether action could be taken under the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act 1987 or the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 against the assets of the unnamed Cambodian government official/s in this petition.
Where the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been made aware of allegations regarding individuals from Cambodia, they have been referred to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Anyone with information about possible criminal conduct in Australia is encouraged to contact the Australian Federal Police or their State or Territory police force.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms Payne(Petition No. EN0668)
United Nations
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your letter of 5 August 2019, regarding the petition requesting Australia follow the lead of the United States and resign from and cease funding the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), referred to me as Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Australia has been a constructive HRC member since 2018, reflecting our commitment to advancing human rights in the Indo-Pacific and more broadly. We believe that the promotion and protection of human rights globally, including though the HRC, makes us safer, more prosperous and more secure. In the most recent HRC session in Geneva from 927 September, Australia collaborated our key likeminded partners to respond to serious human rights concerns in specific countries, and protect important human rights issues worldwide, including religious freedom and the abolition of the death penalty.
When the United States withdrew from the HRC in Jun 2018, Australia expressed our disappointment. Australia shares many of the concerns held by the US about the UNHRC, particularly its anti-Israel bias, and we have consistently supported efforts to address other matters of contention. We acknowledge US concerns with the membership of the HRC, but have taken the approach to remain on the Council and scrutinise countries with questionable human rights records. For example, on 23 September 2019 Australia led a joint statement on the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia on behalf of 25 countries.
I thank you for your concerns and assure you that Australia is committed to progressing meaningful reform to enable the HRC to more effectively carry out its role.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Payne(Petition No. EN0671)
Social Media
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your letter dated 29 July 2019, on behalf of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Petitions about Petition EN0896 concerning harmful digital communications.
The Morrison Government is deeply committed to protecting freedom of speech, freedom of religion and other traditional rights and liberties. This includes protecting the rights of all Australians to express their views, provided they remain within the framework of Australian law.
Equally, the Government believes that all people are entitled to respect, dignity and the opportunity to participate in society and receive protection of the law, regardless of their personal attributes. There is no place for hate speech in Australia. The law applies equally online as it does offline.
Racial vilification and hate speech
Australia has civil and criminal penalties for conduct which constitutes online hate speech and racism, which balance the right to be free from racial discrimination with freedom of expression. The federal Racial Discrimination Act 1975 prohibits racial vilification, including online racial vilification.
The Criminal Code Act 1995 makes it an offence to intentionally urge violence against a group or members of a group on the basis of race, religion, nationality, national or ethnic origin or political opinion. These offences carry a maximum penalty of up to seven years imprisonment.
In addition, legislation in all states and territories (except for Western Australia) makes it a civil offence to incite hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule of a person on the grounds of race. In all jurisdictions (except for the Northern Territory) there are also a range of criminal offences in relation to the incitement of hatred towards a person or group, or actions that create, promote or increase animosity towards or harass a person or group on the basis of race.
While the Northern Territory does not have specific hate speech provisions, it does have general anti-discrimination laws under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1992 (NT).
Other laws and initiatives
Under the Criminal Code Act 1995, it is an offence to use the internet to menace, harass or cause offence. This provision is intended to cover online conduct, such as sending emails or publishing material online, that a reasonable person would find to be menacing, harassing or causing offence. This includes offensive material that may be of a racial or religious nature, amongst others.
eSafety Commissioner
The Government is also committed to enhancing the online safety of all Australians by ensuring there are proper regulatory controls and support systems in place to mitigate risks and to allow Australians to confidently take advantage of the benefits of the digital environment.
In 2015, the Government established the Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner (eSafety Commissioner) to take a national leadership role in online safety for Australian children and to help protect them from cyber-bullying harm. In recognition that vulnerable adults also face dangers online, the Government expanded the eSafety Commissioner's remit in 2017 to encompass all Australians.
The eSafety Commissioner works to promote online safety for children, women, older Australians and other vulnerable members of the community. Key functions of the eSafety Commissioner that may be relevant to the concerns raised in this petition include:
administering a complaints system for serious cyber-bullying material targeted at an Australian child;
administering a complaints system for the non-consensual sharing of intimate images;
addressing offensive and illegal online content (including child exploitation material) through the Online Content Scheme;
protecting Australians from access or exposure to material that promotes, incites, or instructs in, terrorist acts or violent crimes;
conducting and evaluating research relating to online safety;
supporting Australian families and women at risk of technology-facilitated abuse; and
enhancing the online safety of older Australians.
The eSafety Commissioner also plays an important role in educating Australians about technology risks and how to protect themselves and their personal information. Further information on the work of the eSafety Commissioner can be found at esafety.gov.au.
Social media terms of service
The petition also raises the importance of social media services updating their community standards in accordance with new laws. The Government is working with the major social media platforms to communicate the expectation that all social media sites have terms of use which sufficiently prohibit harmful material, as well as a complaints scheme for reporting and removing such material.
In December 2018, the Government announced that it would develop an Online Safety Charter. The aim of the Charter is to set out, on behalf of the community, the Government's expectations of technology firms and digital platforms in protecting the community from online harms.
The Government released a draft Charter for industry and public consultation on 16 February 2019 and submissions closed on 5 April. Although the Charter—once finalized—will not be mandatory or regulatory in nature, the industry's commitment to adopting the Charter principles will provide the Government with an indication of the seriousness with which technology firms treat this issue. This will guide future regulatory actions.
New online safety initiatives
The petition requests that the House introduce a Bill regarding online hate speech, offensive conduct and harmful digital communications. In the lead up to the 2019 election, the Government indicated that it will introduce a new Online Safety Act.
It is anticipated that the new Act will consolidate the regulatory arrangements in place for online safety and update them in light of the changes occurring in the digital media environment. This statutory overhaul was recommended by Ms Lynelle Briggs AO in her review of online safety legislation conducted in 2018.
The development of a new Online Safety Act will provide an opportunity to consider whether existing regulations provide adequate protections for Australians from harmful digital communications. The development of the new Act will include a public consultation process, and this will provide an opportunity for the petitioners to make submissions to this process.
In addition to developing a new Online Safety Act, the Government has committed to working with states and territories to develop national principles and a consistent approach to combatting criminal cyber-bullying and online harassment. This work will seek to address inconsistencies between approaches to criminal cyber-bullying across Australia.
The Government will also toughen penalties for online abuse and harassment, to allow the courts to impose penalties in line with the community expectation that online crime should be treated as seriously as offline crime.
The Government is leading work to increase maximum penalties for those using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence under section 474.17 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 from three to five years' imprisonment.
Thank you for bringing the concerns in this petition to my attention. I hope the information in this letter is of some help.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, Mr Fletcher(Petition No. EN0896)
Climate Change
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your correspondence of 9 September 2019 concerning petition EN0910 on adopting a policy of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The Liberal National Government is taking real and practical action to reduce our emissions while ensuring a strong and prosperous economy.
As a part of a coordinated global action to address climate change, we have strong targets to reduce our emissions by 2030 by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels. This target is achievable and responsible, and represents one of the most ambitious reductions in per capita emissions and emissions per unit of GDP among developed countries.
The Government has a track record in meeting and beating our targets. We are on track to overachieve our 2020 target by 367 million tonnes.
We have a clear plan to meet and beat our Paris commitment through our fully-funded 53.5 billion Climate Solutions Package that has mapped out, to the last tonne, how to meet our 2030 target. This package will:
Support farmers, businesses and indigenous communities reduce greenhouse gases;
Bring new electricity generation projects on-line, such as Snowy 2.0 and the Battery of the Nation; and
Support households and businesses improve energy efficiency and lower their power bills. We are also supporting renewable generation technology and funding research into new technologies.
Australia is a world leader in per capita investment in clean energy, with more than double the investment of countries like the United Kingdom, Germany and France. This is an achievement Australians can be proud of.
All of this is focused on achieving our emissions obligations while maintaining a strong economy. Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the matters raised in this petition.
Yours sincerely
From the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Mr Taylor(Petition No. EN0910)
Religious Freedom
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for contacting me in relation to petition number EN0918, presented to the House on 9 September 2019.
1 note the petition calls for legislation to protect freedom of religion and prohibit discrimination on the basis of religious belief or activity.
The Australian Government is a strong defender of traditional rights and liberties, and is committed to protecting freedom of religion. Australia is home to a diversity of faiths, united by tolerance, mutual respect and a commitment to democratic traditions. All Australians are free to choose their religion, and are entitled to express and practice their religion and their beliefs, without intimidation or interference within the framework of Australian law.
That is why on 29 August 2019, 1 released exposure drafts of three draft bills, which together form a legislative package on religious freedom. The three bills are:
The Religious Discrimination Bill 2019, which prohibits discrimination on the ground of religious belief or activity in key areas of public life.
The Religious Discrimination (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019, which makes consequential amendments necessary to support the implementation of the Religious Discrimination Bill.
The Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Freedom of Religion) Bill 2019, which amends existing Commonwealth legislation to better protect the right to freedom of religion.
This package gives effect to certain recommendations of the Report of the Expert Panel on Religious Freedom (the Religious Freedom Review), which recognised that there is an opportunity to enhance the statutory protection of the right to freedom of religion in Australia.
The Government conducted a consultation process on the content of the draft Bills, inviting public submissions between 29 August and 2 October 2019. Relevant submissions are now being considered during development of the legislative package for introduction to Parliament.
I expect that once introduced, the Bills will be considered by a parliamentary committee. This will provide a further opportunity for consultation and for people to provide their views on the legislation.
Thank you for raising this matter with me.
Yours sincerely
From the Attorney-General, Mr Porter(Petition No. EN0918)
Cybercrime Act 2001
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your correspondence of 9 September 2019 to the Attorney-General, the Hon Christian Porter MP, concerning petition EN0938. Your correspondence has been referred to me as 1 am the Minister responsible for the matter you have raised.
The petition raises concerns about items 12 and 28 of the Cybercrime Act 2001 (Cth) (the Cybercrime Act). Item 12 of the Cybercrime Act amended the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) to insert (amongst other sections) section 3LA. Section 3LA provides that a person with knowledge of a computer or a computer system may under certain circumstances and upon application for a warrant by an officer, be required to assist the officer to access data. Item 28 of the Cybercrime Act made the same amendment but in regard to the Customs Act 1901 (Cth).
Assistance orders are judicially authorised. These orders are important to ensure that there is a mechanism to compel a person to provide assistance in certain circumstances. The use of an assistance order is an essential tool in the investigation of serious criminal activity to ensure that law enforcement officers have access to devices subject to protections, such as passwords. They also ensure that there is criminal accountability in the event that a person refuses and a prosecution is in the public interest.
The Australian Government is of the view that assistance orders do not infringe on the right to not incriminate oneself. This is because an assistance order does not prevent a person from remaining silent, or compel a person to confess guilt. An assistance order allows a device to be searched. This is not dissimilar from a search warrant on a premises where access to the premises cannot be denied or frustrated on the basis of self-incrimination.
Assistance orders do not compel an individual to go into their device and disclose information or documents, they instead provide an avenue for law enforcement and national security agencies to lawfully gain access to that device, so that a lawful search of the device may be conducted as necessary.
Thank you for bringing this petition and the concerns raised to my attention.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Dutton(Petition No. EN0938)
Water
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your email of 9 September 2019 to the Hon David Littleproud MP, Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management regarding Petition EN0945 presented to the House of Representatives on 9 September 2019. Your email was forwarded to me as I am the minister responsible for the matter raised.
The National Water Grid Authority (the Authority) commenced operation on 1 October 2019, delivering on the Australian Government's election commitment of 30 April 2019.
The Authority's first order of business is to deliver the Government's commitment to invest $100 million into bringing the world's best science together to identify the opportunities to increase water supply and reliability. The Government is committed to the sustainable development of Australia's water resources and integrating our water infrastructure to support the growth of regional Australia and meet the demands of a growing population.
The Authority will look at unallocated water resources that can be harvested to increase the capacity, connectivity and resilience of Australia's water storage and supply infrastructure. As part of this work, the Authority will consider options for developing large-scale water capture and transfer schemes, to capture and transport rainwater to grow our agricultural sector, to improve stock and domestic supply, for flood mitigation and drought proofing.
In addition, the Authority will work in partnership with state and territory governments to develop a national pipeline of strategic water infrastructure initiatives to help make Australia's water supply more resilient during periods of drought.
In establishing the Authority, the Government is providing national leadership to plan for and meet the water needs of our farmers, businesses and regional communities and to secure the future prosperity of all Australians. Through the Authority, the Government is providing $3.3 billion through the $1.3 billion National Water Infrastructure Development Fund (the Fund) and the $2 billion National Water Infrastructure Loan Facility to help identify and build dams, weirs and pipelines that will deliver secure and affordable water for rural and regional Australia.
As at 1 September 2019, the Government has made funding commitments of over $800 million from the Fund for ten water infrastructure projects involving dams and/or weirs. All of these projects will increase long-term water availability and security for primary producers, businesses and regional communities.
The table below provides information on these projects:
Project Name |
State/Territory |
Funding |
Status |
|
|
commitment |
|
Scottsdale Irrigation Scheme |
Tasmania |
$25.27 million |
Under construction. |
McLaren Vale Treated Water Storage |
South Australia |
$2.5 million |
Contracted. |
Rookwood Weir |
Queensland |
$176.1 million |
Funding committed. Not yet contracted. |
Wellington-Myalup Project |
Western Australia |
$140 million |
Funding committed. Not yet contracted. |
Emu Swamp Dam |
Queensland |
$42 million $100 million |
Funding committed. Not yet contracted. Funding committed. Not yet contracted. |
Tasmania Tranche HI: Phase One |
Tasmania |
||
Southern Forests Irrigation Scheme |
Western Australia |
$39.72 million |
Funding committed. Not yet contracted. |
Big Rocks Weir (Hells Gates Dam Scheme) |
Queensland |
$30 million |
Funding committed. Not yet contracted. Funding committed. Not yet contracted. |
Hughenden Irrigation Scheme |
Queensland |
$180 million |
|
Dungow an Darn |
New South Wales |
$75 million |
Funding committed. Not yet contracted. |
Thank you again for your correspondence and I trust this is of assistance.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, Mr McCormack(Petition No. EN0945)
Road Vehicle Standards
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your email of 9 September 2019 regarding the House of Representatives petition EN0950 seeking amendments to the Motor Vehicle Standards Act 1989 (the Act), the National Code of Practice for Vehicle Construction and amendments to the Australian Design Rules (ADRs) pertaining to motorcycle construction and handlebar heights.
The Australian Government administers the Act, which requires that all new road vehicles (including motorcycles), whether manufactured in Australia or imported, comply with national vehicle standards known as the ADRs before they can be offered to the market for use in transport. The ADRs are mostly performance-based standards for vehicle safety, emissions, and anti-theft. Once a vehicle has been supplied to the market and the vehicle begins to operate in-service (registered), the obligation for regulating the vehicle becomes the state or territory government's responsibility.
Where possible the ADRs are harmonised with international vehicle regulations. We harmonise with United Nations (UN) regulations because vehicle sales in Australia represent a small percentage of the total world production of motor vehicles and regulation based on internationally agreed standards provides consumers with access to the safest vehicles from the global market at the lowest possible cost.
Mandating new or amended UN regulations under the ADRs is prioritised according to the overall benefit expected under the National Road Safety Strategy (NRSS) 2011-2020 and its associated national action plans. The development of the NRSS involved consultation with road and vehicle safety professionals, the light and heavy vehicle industry, as well as with motoring and consumer groups.
The NRSS has delivered several significant updates to existing ADRs to further improve stability, traction and braking standards on motorcycles supplied to the Australian market. The most recent NRSS outcome was the mandating of Anti-lock Braking Systems for motorcycles to improve the overall dynamic performance of a motorcycle under emergency braking conditions.
The specific ADR relating to handlebar height is Vehicle Standard (Australian Design Rule 57/00 — Special Requirements for L-Group Vehicles). ADR 57/00 currently applies to motorcycles manufactured after 1 July 1988 and along with other requirements, it mandates the steering gear and handlebar requirements for motorcycles. Specifically, ADR 57/00 clause 57.2.2.2 states the handlebar height must not exceed 380rrun from the upper surface of the driver's seat to the lowest part of the handgrip on the handlebar.
Before 1988, states and territories legislation did permit the handlebar attachment point as the datum point, however, this was problematic because it created several different interpretations that would vary the results depending on the style and layout of a particular type of motorcycle. Vehicle Standards Bulletin 14 (VSB14), the National Code of Practice for Light Vehicle Construction and Modification was subsequently amended to align with ADR 57/00 clause 57.2.2.2.
Whilst ADR 57/00 handlebar requirements are consistent with industry practice and accepted by the registering authorities for use on public roads, it is not harmonised in full with the UN requirements for motorcycles. Therefore, I have asked the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development to adopt a broader approach and consider harmonising ADR 57/00 (including the handlebar heights) with the UN requirements where possible. This process requires the Department to review the UN requirements and consult with the Australian Motor Vehicle Certification Board, which is the peak consultative forum for ADR related matters. Once the Department has completed its assessment, I have instructed the Department to provide a recommendation to harmonise, maintain, amend or delete the existing ADR 57/00 requirements for my consideration.
Thank you again for your correspondence and I trust this is of assistance.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, Mr McCormack(Petition No. EN0950)
Vaccination
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your correspondence of 9 September 2019 regarding petition EN0951 concerning Mr Robert F Kennedy Jr. I appreciate the time you have taken to bring this matter to my attention.
Due to privacy legislation, I cannot comment on the particulars of Mr Kennedy Jr's case, however, I am able to provide information on the provisions of the character test under section 501 of the Migration Act 1958 (the Act).
The Australian Government takes very seriously its role in protecting the Australian community from unacceptable risk of harm from criminal or other serious conduct by non-citizens. The Government supports freedom of speech and freedom of religious and political beliefs. However, the exercise of this freedom involves a responsibility to avoid vilification of, inciting discord in, or representing a danger to, the Australian community.
In cases where a person is assessed as representing a risk that they may vilify or incite discord, or otherwise represent a danger to the Australian community, the Department of Home Affairs must assess the level of risk and balance this against Australia's well-established tradition of freedom of expression. Non-citizens who wish to enter or remain in Australia must meet the character requirements under section 501 of the Act. There are strong provisions under the Act to refuse or cancel a visa where a person is found not to be of good character.
Thank you for raising this matter.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, Mr Coleman(Petition No EN0951)
Skilled Migration Visas
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your correspondence of 9 September 2019 concerning petition number EN0953 requesting an increase to the maximum age for skilled migrants. I appreciate the time you have taken to bring this matter to my attention.
Skilled migration is designed to meet Australia's economic, demographic and labour market needs. It aims to address domestic skill gaps and position Australia to better meet the challenges of an ageing population without displacing opportunities for Australians.
Skilled migration strikes a balance between ensuring Australians are considered first for jobs, maximising the number of young skilled migrants who come to Australia and having flexibility for highly talented and experienced migrants who may fall outside the preferred age bracket.
Age requirements differ across skilled visa types and include options for persons aged over 45.
Employer-sponsored and points tested migration visas require the primary applicant to be under 45 years at the time of application. The age limit was reduced from 50 to 45 following the Productivity Commission's 2016 Migrant Intake Into Australia report. This found "strong grounds for reducing the age limit below the current [50] years threshold for all skill stream immigrants and to provide a greater weight in the points based system for younger immigrants, while retaining a capacity to provide exemptions to the revised, lower age rule for particularly skilled applicants."
A number of exemptions to age requirements are available for employer-sponsored migrants based on their ability to make a valuable contribution or engagement in certain sectors (for example-health and academia). Age concessions can also be considered in labour agreements that can be developed between the Australian Government and a state and territory government/industry/employer where a genuine skills need is not covered by standard programs. For example, Designated Area Migration Agreements are formal agreements between the Government and a regional, state or territory authority. They provide employers in designated areas who are experiencing skills and labour shortages with access to skilled and semi-skilled overseas workers, and allow for concessions to age requirements for permanent skilled visas to be considered.
Most Business Innovation and Investment, Business Talent and Distinguished Talent visas require the primary applicant to be under 55 years. Waiver of the age limit is available for migrants who would be of exceptional economic benefit/value to Australia.
Thank you for bringing this petition to my attention.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, Mr Coleman(Petition No. EN0953)
Religious Freedom
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for contacting me in relation to petition number EN0965, presented to the House on 9 September 2019.
I note the petition calls for legislation to protect freedom of religion and prohibit discrimination on the basis of religious belief or activity.
The Australian Government is a strong defender of traditional rights and liberties, and is committed to protecting freedom of religion. Australia is home to a diversity of faiths, united by tolerance, mutual respect and a commitment to democratic traditions. All Australians are free to choose their religion, and are entitled to express and practise their religion and their beliefs, without intimidation or interference within the framework of Australian law,
That is why on 29 August 2019, I released exposure drafts of three draft bills, which together form a legislative package on religious freedom. The three bills are:
The Religious Discrimination Bill 2019, which prohibits discrimination on the ground of religious belief or activity in key areas of public life.
The Religious Discrimination (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019, which makes consequential amendments necessary to support the implementation of the Religious Discrimination Bill.
The Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Freedom of Religion) Bill 2019, which amends existing Commonwealth legislation to better protect the right to freedom of religion.
This package gives effect to recommendations of the Report of the Expert Panel on Religious Freedom (the Religious Freedom Review), which recognised that there is an opportunity to enhance the statutory protection of the right to freedom of religion in Australia.
The Government conducted a consultation process on the content of the draft Bills, inviting public submissions between 29 August and 2 October 2019. Relevant submissions are now being considered during development of the legislative package for introduction to Parliament.
I expect that once introduced, the Bills will be considered by a parliamentary committee. This will provide a further opportunity for consultation and for people to provide their views on the legislation.
Thank you for raising this matter with me.
from the Attorney-General, Mr Porter(Petition No. EN0965)
Banking and Financial Services
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your personal representation of 9 September 2019 originally directed to the Treasurer, concerning Petition EN0974. Your correspondence has been referred to me as I have responsibility for this matter. I apologise for the delay in responding to you.
The Australian Government does not intend to legislate to structurally separate retail and commercial banking from investment banking in Australia, as sought in the Banking System Reform (Separation of Banks) Bill 2018 and also the Banking System Reform (Separation of Banks) Bill 2019.
While such measures may be appropriate for some jurisdictions, it is not considered necessary in Australia at this time as our financial system already exhibits a high degree of structural separation. Foreign bank branches play a major role in investment banking but only have a small presence in retail and commercial banking. By contrast, Australia's major banks dominate retail and commercial banking, but do not have large investment banking businesses. As such, legislating to structurally separate retail and commercial banking from investment banking is unlikely have a material impact on reducing risks in the Australian financial system.
The Government considers the safety of deposits and the financial system of significant importance. That is why the Government passed the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Act 2018, passed on 14 February 2018 by Parliament, which strengthens the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority's (APRA) crisis management toolkit in relation to banks and insurers. This Act does not implement any sort of policy that would allow the seizure of deposits in times of financial instability.
The Act enhances APRA's crisis management powers by providing APRA with:
clear powers to set requirements on resolution planning and ensure banks and insurers are better prepared for a crisis
an expanded set of crisis resolution powers that equip APRA to act decisively to facilitate the orderly resolution of a distressed bank or insurer.
In line with international standards, APRA's capital requirements envisage banks and insurers issuing capital instruments which can be converted into ordinary shares or written off to absorb losses. To ensure that such capital instruments do function as intended, the above legislation provides certainty that capital instruments can be converted or written off as provided for in APRA's prudential standards. Critically, this aspect of the legislation does not apply to bank deposits because bank deposits are not capital instruments.
In addition, depositors' claims are explicitly protected by the Banking Act 1959. In the unlikely event of a bank failure, depositors have priority claim on the assets of a failed authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) ahead of other unsecured creditors. Depositors are also protected by the Financial Claims Scheme, which guarantees deposits up to a cap of $250,000 per person, per ADI.
I trust this information will be of assistance to you.
Yours sincerely
from the Assistant Treasurer, Mr Sukkar(Petition No. EN0974)
Environment
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your letter of 14 October 2019 concerning petition EN1002 about plastic waste.
The Australian Government has recognised plastic pollution as a problem and, along with state and territory governments, has identified it as one of our national waste and recycling priorities. In December 2018, Australia's environment ministers set a new unified direction for waste and recycling, agreeing to a new National Waste Policy. All governments are now developing an Action Plan to implement the Policy, which will be considered at the next Meeting of Environment Ministers in November 2019. The National Action Plan will address environment ministers' priorities, including reducing plastic pollution, appropriate funding, robust targets, and milestones.
As you mention in your petition, Australians care deeply about recycling and want to be confident that the waste we dispose of in our recycling bins and collection centres will be recycled. This is why at the recent 9 August 2019 meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, the Prime Minister committed, together with state, territory and local government leaders, to work towards banning the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres while building Australia's capacity to generate high-value recycled commodities and associated demand.
To support these objectives, the Government has committed $167 million to the Australian Recycling Investment Plan. This Plan includes a $100 million Australian Recycling Investment Fund to support the manufacturing of products containing recycled materials such as plastics, $20 million to find new and innovative solutions to plastic recycling and waste, and continue to work with state, territory and local governments on opportunities to get more recycled content into road construction, building on the funding provided to the Australian Road Research Board in the 2019 Budget.
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the issues raised in this petition.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for the Environment, Ms Ley(Petition No. EN1002)
Uluru
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your correspondence of 14 October 2019 concerning petition EN1004 on the decision to close the climb to Uluru in October.
As you may be aware, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park was handed back to its Aboriginal traditional owners (Anangu) on 26 October 1985. The park is leased to the Director of National Parks and jointly managed by the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Board of Management (the Board).
The decision to close the climb from 26 October 2019 hasn't been taken lightly by the Board, who undertook more than seven years of consultation, research and debate and was guided by the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Management Plan 2010-2020 (the Plan). The Plan stated that the climb will be permanently closed when one of three criteria are met:
the Board, in consultation with the tourism industry, is satisfied that adequate new visitor experiences have been successfully established, or
the proportion of visitors climbing Uluru falls below 20 per cent, or
the cultural and natural experiences on offer are the critical factors when visitors make their decision to visit the park.
In November 2017, the Board was provided with evidence the latter two of the three criteria had been fulfilled, and then unanimously agreed (and were obliged under the Plan) to close the climb. At the time of the Board's decision, less than 20 per cent of visitors climbed, down from 74 percent in the 1990s.
The Board is extremely supportive of the tourism industry, seeing future partnerships as a way to keep our park's living culture strong, as well as providing meaningful jobs and training opportunities for the next generation.
Thank you for bringing these concerns to my attention.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for the Environment, Ms Ley(Petition No. EN1004)
Breast Cancer
Dear Mr O'Brien
I refer to your letter of 14 October 2019 concerning Petition Number EN1006 relating to breast implants and cancer causality.
Australia's regulatory framework for medical devices is considered to be one of the most stringent in the world. Indeed its strictness has been a source of complaint from some companies in the devices industry as well as health professionals. Evidence requirements for regulatory approval of most medical devices in Australia currently exceed those in both Europe and the United States and in 2017 the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) published on its website, detailed requirements for clinical evidence for medical devices.
The TGA currently receives approximately 7,500 applications for inclusion of medical devices in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) per year and uses a risk-based approach to the degree of scrutiny that an application will receive prior to inclusion in the ARTG. This may involve utilising the work of comparable overseas regulators such as the US Food and Drug Administration and certificates issued by the European Union. For high risk devices including breast implants, that are supported by evidence from a comparable regulators, these are reviewed by the TGA upon application and are selected for audit to ensure safety, quality and performance of the device meets Australian requirements. Additional information from sponsors is often sought during the audit process.
The TGA has recently undertaken the most extensive post-market review of breast implants in the world. The review has been of critical interest to comparable regulators internationally, given the concerns raised globally about Breast Implant Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL). The review included on-site laboratory testing of over 150 samples, statistical analysis on the risk of BIA-ALCL and review of the clinical data and risk assessment plans submitted by the manufacturers of the implants. The TGA also sought advice from an expert working group on BIA-ALCL comprising of surgeons, clinical colleges, epidemiologists, and consumer representatives. The outcomes of the review, including the laboratory testing results have been published on the TGA website.
Following the review, on 26 September 2019, a number of regulatory decisions were announced by the TGA including the suspension and recall from supply of some implants and increased monitoring of all implants. For those suppliers who are able to continue to market their products in Australia, they now have a legal responsibility to provide six-monthly reporting of adverse events and incidence of BIA-ALCL to the TGA and are required to provide patient information leaflets and revised instructions for use that include warnings about the risks associated with breast implants, including BIA-ALCL. You can access information about the review and the TGA decisions at www.tga.gov.au/alert/breast-implants-and-anaplastic-large-cell-lymphoma: The website will be updated regularly to provide any new information to consumers and health professionals as it comes to hand.
The TGA has since convened workshops, in partnership with the Breast Cancer Network of Australia and the Cancer Council and prominent plastic, cosmetic and reconstructive breast surgeons, a range of consumer representative groups, professional colleges, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, the Australian Breast Device Registry and women who have experienced BIA-ALCL to discuss what information, services and supports will be needed going forward. A range of additional resources are currently being
developed, with input from women who have experienced BIA-ALCL and there is ongoing discussions with state and territory government health representatives and surgeon groups on ensuring appropriate patient informed consent processes are followed.
I can assure you that the concerns raised in the petition are being treated with the utmost importance.
Thank you for writing on this matter.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Health, Mr Hunt(Petition No. EN1006)
Banking and Financial Services
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your personal representation of 14 October 2019 on behalf of originally directed to the Treasurer, concerning the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019. Your correspondence (petition number EN1014) has been referred to meas I have responsibility for this matter.
On 19 September 2019, the Australian Government introduced legislation to implement an economy-wide cash payment limit of $10,000 to combat black economy behaviour. The Black Economy Taskforce Final Report found that large cash payments can be anonymous and untraceable allowing businesses to underreport their income and to offer consumers discounts for transactions that reflect the businesses' avoided obligations.
Under this legislation, the cash payment limit will apply to transactions where one of the parties is involved for business reasons or for the purchase of real property. Australians will continue to be able to use cash to pay for transactions that are less than $10,000 each.
The cash payment limit will help to disrupt organised crime syndicates, who try to launder cash from the proceeds of manufacturing and selling drugs and other serious crimes through the legitimate economy. The cash limit will make it harder for them to do so. The Government is committed to providing our intelligence agencies with the tools and laws that enable them to disrupt these criminal activities.
There are many misconceptions about the cash payment limit. The cash payment limit does not impact the way Australians interact with their bank. Australians will continue to be able to deposit and withdraw $10,000 or more in cash into and from their bank accounts, and to store $10,000 or more of their money outside a bank.
Monetary policy is in no way linked to the cash payment limit. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is an independent agency that sets monetary policy and the benchmark interest rate in Australia. While negative interest rates are a policy option for Australia, the RBA has indicated that a scenario in which unconventional monetary policy, including negative interest rates, would be necessary in Australia remains unlikely. Negative interest rates are also not in line with market expectations.
Additionally, there are a number of existing protections in place to ensure the safety of deposits, including deposits in bank accounts of self-managed superannuation funds.
Depositors are protected by the Financial Claims Scheme (FCS), which guarantees deposits up to a cap of $250,000 per person, per authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI). A wide range of deposits are covered under the FCS, including term deposits, savings accounts, call accounts, pensioner accounts, trustee accounts and retirement savings accounts.
In addition, depositors' claims are explicitly protected by the Banking Act 1959. In the unlikely event of a bank failure, Australian depositors have priority claim on the assets of a failed ADI, to the extent that depositors have not already been paid out under the FCS. This is known as 'depositor preference' and has been a long-standing feature of Australia's financial system.
I trust this information will be of assistance to you.
Yours sincerely
from the Assistant Treasurer, Mr Sukkar(Petition No. EN1014)
Workplace Relations
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your email of 14 October 2019 referring the petition received by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Petitions (EN1015) regarding workers' compensation arrangements in Australia.
Workers' compensation is for the most part the responsibility of state and territory governments in Australia. To date, there has been little appetite from states and territories to pursue harmonisation of workers' compensation arrangements. However, all Australian workers' compensation schemes are 'no fault'—that is, a worker is not required to show negligence on the part of their employer in order to have a claim accepted.
If the petitioners have concerns with specific state or territory workers' compensation schemes, I encourage them to contact the relevant state or territory WorkCover Authority or the responsible Minister.
Alternatively, if the concerns are with workers' compensation arrangements in Australia more generally. the petitioners may wish to contact the Heads of Workers' Compensation Authorities (HWCA). IIWCA is a high-level forum whose stated purpose is discussing, promoting and implementing best practice workers' compensation arrangements. Ii comprises the chief executives of the peak bodies responsible for the regulation of workers' compensation in Australia and New Zealand (or their representatives). This includes Australia's 10 workers' compensation authorities and the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation. IIWCA can be contacted at hwca@comcare.gov.au.
Thank you for bringing the petitioners' concerns to my attention. I trust this information is of assistance.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Porter(Petition No. EN1015)
Climate Change
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your correspondence of 14 October 2019 on declaring a climate crisis.
The Liberal National Government is taking real and practical action to reduce our emissions while ensuring a strong and prosperous economy.
We have strong targets as a part of a coordinated global action to reduce our emissions by 2030 by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels. This target is achievable and responsible, and represents one of the most ambitious reductions in per capita emissions and emissions per unit of GDP among developed countries.
The Government has a track record that is the envy of the world in meeting and beating our targets. We are on track to overachieve our 2020 target by 367 million tonnes. This is a 1.1 billion tonne turnaround from the position we inherited when we came to office.
We have a clear plan to meet and beat our 2030 target through our fully-funded 53.5 billion Climate Solutions Package that has mapped out, to the last tonne. how to meet our 2030 target. This package will:
Support farmers, businesses and Indigenous communities reduce greenhouse gases;
Bring new electricity generation projects on-line, such as Snowy 2.0 and the Battery of the Nation; and
Support households and businesses improve energy efficiency and lower their power bills.
The Government is working to improve energy efficiency by reducing the energy used in appliances, equipment and buildings. This will reduce energy costs for households and businesses.
We are also supporting renewable generation technology and funding research into new technologies. The Government is leading the development of a National Hydrogen Strategy, which will be published by the end of the year. We have already invested more than 5140 million into hydrogen projects, positioning Australia as a global leader in hydrogen production.
Australia is a world leader in per capita investment in clean energy, with more than double the investment of countries like the United Kingdom, Germany and France. This is an achievement Australians can be proud of.
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the matters raised in this petition.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Mr Taylor(Petition EN1020)
Economy
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your personal representation of 14 October 2019 originally directed to the Treasurer, concerning petition EN1023 to stimulate growth. Your correspondence has been referred to me as I have responsibility for this matter.
As mentioned in the petition referral, the reason of the petition lies in the committee's concerns about the current state of the economy, I will focus on this aspect in this response.
Australia completed its 28th consecutive year of annual economic growth in 2018-19, which is a remarkable achievement. While real GDP growth has slowed over the past year (to 1.4 per cent through the year to the June quarter 2019), the economy is faring well considering recent challenges including a moderation in global growth, international trade tensions, the recent housing market downturn, and the ongoing drought.
The current moderation in economic growth is different to that of the GFC where real GDP contracted sharply by 0.5 per cent in the December quarter 2008. This contraction was broad based across a number of components of private demand and was accompanied by an increase in the unemployment rate of almost 2 percentage points in under a year (from 4.0 per cent in August 2008 to 5.9 per cent in June 2009). Conversely today, quarterly GDP growth remains positive (at 0.5 per cent in the June quarter 2019) and although the unemployment rate has risen slightly since the beginning of the year (from 4.9 per cent in February 2019 to 5.2 per cent in September 2019) employment growth continues to be strong (2.5 per cent through the year to the June quarter 2019).
In Australia, as in other advanced economies, the response of wages to improving labour market conditions has been slower and more muted than in past cycles. This is partly explained by lower inflation expectations and broader measures of spare capacity such as underemployment. Wage growth has picked up from a low 1.9 per cent in 2016-17 to 2.3 per cent through the year to the June quarter 2019. Wage growth is forecast to increase further in coming years as spare capacity in the labour market is absorbed and growth in the economy picks up.
While government, international and private sector forecasters are expecting growth in the Australian economy to moderate in 2019, none are forecasting a recession. The Reserve Bank of Australia is forecasting real GDP to grow by 2 per cent in 2019, slightly above those of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) who are both forecasting economic growth for Australia of 1.7 per cent in 2019. Private sector forecasts for the Australian economy in 2019 range from a low of 1.7 per cent to a high of 2.0 per cent with an average of 1.9 per cent. All of these forecasters are also expecting the rate of growth to pick-up in 2020.
I trust this information will be of assistance to you.
Yours sincerely
from the Assistant Treasurer, Mr Sukkar(Petition No. EN1023)
Workplace Relations
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your email of 14 October 2019 regarding petition number EN1027. 1 appreciate the time you have taken to bring this matter to my attention.
Women's economic security is built around three pillars critical to the economic health of Australian women-workforce participation, economic independence, and earning potential. The Government's inaugural Women's Economic Security Statement, delivered in November 2018, commits $151.4 million over five years to help achieve this.
The National Employment Standards (NES) contained in the Fair Work Act 2009 together with modern awards form the minimum safety net of employment terms and conditions for national system employees, including in relation to redundancy entitlements. Under the NES, redundancy pay is based on the base rate of pay at the point of redundancy. This applies if an employee is working part-time at the point of the redundancy but previously worked full-time. or an employee is working full-time at the point of redundancy but previously worked part-time.
The NES is intended to be a minimum standard. Where appropriate to the workplace or industry, an employment contract or enterprise agreement may provide a more favourable entitlement above and beyond the safety net.
Thank you again for bringing the concerns referred to in the petition to my attention.
I trust this information is assistance.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Porter(Petition No. EN1027)
Climate Change
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your letter of 22 October 2019 concerning petition EN1041 on declaring a climate emergency.
The Liberal National Government is taking real and practical action to reduce our emissions while ensuring a strong and prosperous economy.
We have strong targets as a part of a coordinated global action to reduce our emissions by 2030 by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels. This target is achievable and responsible, and represents one of the most ambitious reductions in per capita emissions and emissions per unit of GDP among developed countries.
The Government has a track record that is the envy of the world in meeting and beating our targets. We are on track to overachieve our 2020 target by 367 million tonnes. This is a 1.1 billion tonne turnaround from the position we inherited when we came to office.
We have a clear plan to meet and beat our 2030 target through our fully-funded $3.5 billion Climate Solutions Package that has mapped out, to the last tonne, how to meet our 2030 target. This package will:
Support farmers, businesses and Indigenous communities reduce greenhouse gases;
Bring new electricity generation projects on-line, such as Snowy 2.0 and the Battery of the Nation; and
Support households and businesses improve energy efficiency and lower their power hills.
The Government is working to improve energy efficiency by reducing the energy used in appliances, equipment and buildings. This will reduce energy costs for households and businesses.
We are also supporting renewable generation technology and funding research into new technologies. The Government is leading the development of a National Hydrogen Strategy, which will be published by the end of the year. We have already invested more than $140 million into hydrogen projects, positioning Australia as a global leader in hydrogen production.
Australia is a world leader in per capita investment in clean energy, with more than double the investment of countries like the United Kingdom, Germany and France. This is an achievement Australians can be proud of.
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the matters raised in this petition.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Mr Taylor(Petition No. EN1041)
Migraine
Dear Mr O'Brien
I refer to your letter of 21 October 2019 concerning a petition on the management of migraines in Australia (EN1046).
The Australian Government is supportive of efforts to better understand migraines, and to identify improved ways for treating and managing migraine in Australia. Since 2009, $9.8 million has been expended for research into migraine through National Health and Medical Research Council grants.
It is essential that Australians affected by migraines have access to the treatment they need to manage them effectively. There are currently eight drugs listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) that are used for the management of migraines. In 2018-19, the Government spent $36.6 million on 1,976,892 scripts for these medicines.
While it is important endeavours continue to build the evidence-base regarding the impact of migraines on the Australian community, I do not see the issue as being a priority for a Standing Committee inquiry at this time.
Thank you for writing on this matter.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Health, Mr Hunt(Petition No. EN1046)
Asylum Seekers
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your correspondence of 9 September 2019 concerning petition PN0419. I appreciate the time you have taken to bring this matter to my attention. Your correspondence has been referred to me as the Minister for Home Affairs as the matter falls within my portfolio responsibilities.
The irregular movement of migrants is a complex issue that poses huge challenges for all destination countries. Australia's strong border policies aim to provide safe and legal migration pathways to those in need and to discourage people from relying on people smugglers. These policies have disrupted people smuggling and prevented vulnerable people risking their lives at sea.
Implementing Australia's border policies requires significant commitment and financial investment. Australia has committed to meet all costs associated with regional processing in Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG). Regional processing costs will reduce as transferees depart Nauru and PNG through resettlement, returns and removals.
Regional processing and third country resettlement arrangements are implemented in accordance with international law and with respect for human rights. Under the respective memoranda of understanding, Nauru and PNG have committed to treat people with dignity and respect in accordance with relevant human rights standards, and are parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention. The Governments of Nauru and PNG are responsible for all persons transferred under regional processing arrangements, with support provided by the Australian Government.
Transferees have a number of durable migration options available: refugees can engage in United States (US) resettlement or PNG-determined refugees can settle in PNG; Nauru-determined refugees can reside in Nauru for up to 20 years; and all transferees have the option to return home voluntarily or a country of which they have right to reside in and will be supported to do so.
As at 30 September 2019, 632 refugees have been resettled in the US.
Resettlement in third countries, not including Australia, ensures that people smugglers cannot sell a migration path to Australia. The Government's policy that persons who arrive in Australia illegally by boat will not be settled in Australia, remains steadfast.
The Government provides significant support to the Governments of Nauru and PNG to ensure refugees and transferees are provided with a range of health, welfare and support services. Medical services are provided by a range of healthcare professionals including general practitioners, psychiatrists, counsellors and mental health nurses who provide clinical assessment and treatment. Where specialist medical treatment is not available in a regional processing country, mechanisms are in place for temporary transfers to a third country, including Australia, for assessment or treatment.
The Government is committed to working with our regional partners, including Malaysia and Indonesia, to resolve the challenges of people smuggling and irregular migration. Australia's regional anti-trafficking and safe migration programs are some of the largest in Southeast Asia.
Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Dutton(Petition No. PN0419)
Aged Care
Dear Mr O'Brien
Thank you for your representations of 9 September 2019 concerning the Petition Ministerial (PN0423)—support for the continuation of aged care services at Hazelwood House in Churchill.
I acknowledge the concerns about the proposed relocation of Hazelwood House residents. The Australian Government, however, is not able to intervene in the business operations of approved providers. The decision to relocate residents is a business decision for Benetas, the approved provider of Hazelwood House.
It is important to note aged care providers have particular obligations and responsibilities to residents when delivering aged care services. This includes assisting them to find suitable alternative accommodation when they are no longer able to be cared for at their current home. No resident can be asked to leave Hazelwood House until alternative accommodation is available to meet their longer term care needs. Residential aged care providers are obliged to provide security of tenure under the User Rights Principles 2014, which is available at: www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2019C00619.
I appreciate you bringing the petition to the Government's attention and trust the information above assists the House in responding.
Yours sincerely
From the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Mr Colbeck(Petition No. PN0423)
PETITIONS
Statements
Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (10:01): All of the petitions presented this morning are paper petitions. Although small in number compared with last weeks all e-petition presentation, paper petitions demonstrate the strong commitment of the individuals who coordinate them. Only one signature is required for a petition to be presented, but in recent times the secretariat has received single paper petitions with, variously, 16,000, 8,000 and 6,000 signatures, on human rights issues, and one with 6,000 signatures, on climate change.
The individuals who create and manage these petitions do so because they believe the matter has the potential to improve people's lives and make the world a better place.
Upon presentation in the House, with rare exception, petitions are referred to the appropriate minister for response. Ministers are expected to respond within 90 days of referral. It is evident that the minister's response is important to petitioners, because of the number of inquiries to the secretariat asking if the response has been received yet. The timing and content of the responses from ministers show that the concerns and motivations of ordinary Australians are valued and acts to encourage future involvement in making life better for us all.
I look forward to further updating the House on the work of the Petitions Committee when Parliament resumes in 2020.
COMMITTEES
Procedure Committee
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Chief Government Whip) (10:03): On behalf of the Standing Committee on Procedure I wish to make a statement concerning the committee's inquiry into the practices and procedures relating to question time. The role of our committee is to inquire into and report on the practices and procedures of the House. In other words it's our role to make recommendations about possible changes, but then it is up to the House whether or not to adopt them. This means that we need to be considered and clear about what we might recommend and why. In August the committee began its inquiry to look at how question time in the House runs and whether it can be improved. A survey was launched, and this survey is a valuable first step in understanding some of the key issues that the public see as important.
While the submissions have given us additional insights, our next step is equally important—that is, to consider the responses to that survey. The public survey received more than 3,400 responses. The survey was a mixture of closed and open ended questions, and the committee was struck by the number of people who took the time to provide detailed comments. The committee also received over 40 submissions. The committee is also grateful to the speakers of the state legislatures, who have taken the time to write to us about their practices relating to question time, and we will look carefully at these in considering what might be appropriate in the federal context. As a result, the committee now has more than 500 pages of survey results to analyse and consider. We've begun to analyse the results, and there are some themes emerging. While there are some clear areas that the public would like us to explore, there was a wide range of responses to many of the questions which the committee will now need to work through to explore the nuances in the results.
The key themes that emerged from the survey are the format of questions and question time, and strengthening the rules on relevance. Some respondents reiterated the role of question time in holding the government of the day to account, whilst others saw that there could be increased opportunities for questions relating to constituency issues. There were also many other suggestions, ranging from permitting supplementary questions to introducing alternative models for allocating questions between members.
We will now take all of this feedback into account in considering the report in greater detail. At this stage, I would like to thank the work of the committee, and I note the deputy chair, the member for Oxley, is also going to make some comments in relation to this. I would also like to thank the secretariat in Natalie Cooke, Kate Roggeveen, Josephine Moa and Penny Branson for work they've done to bring the committee to this point in the inquiry.
Mr DICK (Oxley) (10:06): I also want to rise briefly to reflect on the work of the Procedure Committee and in particular the work of the inquiry into the practices and procedures relating to question time. I think it's fair to say that normally the Procedure Committee flies under the radar, but when the committee announced this inquiry by the first chair, Mr Vasta, the member for Bonner, and ably led by the current chair, Mr van Manen, the member for Forde, the place lit up. I don't think there is any other issue that probably unites the community more than views on question time, and I think that's why we received more than 3,000 submissions, feedback and bits of information. Whilst question time is an important part of the day, reading through the submissions it's pretty clear that the majority of respondents to our surveys and the feedback on Twitter and Facebook would like the tone of question time raised.
Our job, as the member for Forde said, is to look in detail at all the comments and suggestions that we've received. We also want to look into the areas identified, and I really want to see some concrete recommendations that would improve question time.
Question time was not in practice until about 1950. It was an informal arrangement, and I think in about 1962 it entered into Votes and Proceedings and developed along the way. While it's a feature of our parliament, it's a relatively new element of our parliament and I think there are areas for improvement. I want to thank the member for Forde for his constructive and bipartisan way of handling this issue as well as Mr Vasta. I think this is best tackled when we work together.
I want to note some of the submissions, particularly from our side of the chamber. The Manager of Opposition Business, in his submission, clearly focused on a new element of the Dorothy Dixer that has emerged into question time, which is alternative approaches. This is a common theme of our question time, and I think that's where some of the anger comes from. The Speaker of our parliament can only use the rules in his, or her, toolbox. Mr Speaker, I want to commend you, as our current Speaker, for doing an excellent job—and I've said that before. When you look at the 45th and 46th parliaments, the phrase 'alternative approaches' was used 460 times; in the past sitting fortnight, it was used around 25 times. So there is a pattern there, and I think that is one element that we can probably develop with some concrete outcomes.
I'm not in the camp that is looking to abolish question time. I do not sit in that category. I do believe that question time is an appropriate forum for the government of the day to highlight the work that they are doing for the Australian people. However, equally, and determinedly so, it is the role of whoever sits on this side of the chamber to use question time to hold the government of the day to account. With a full media, live on television and with a packed gallery, we should be able to ask questions of the government of the day. As one local student said, when I was running one of my parliamentary school programs, 'Why isn't it called "answer time"?' I thought that was a really good suggestion. When you ask questions, you expect answers. I've got my own feedback from a number of my schools and I'm looking forward to the committee continuing to engage with and listen to the wider community, particularly young people.
I want to thank committee members—the member for Lalor and Mr Gorman, the member for Perth, on this side of the chamber, for their constructive and bipartisan approach, and also, of course, other members of the committee from the government side. Whilst we are not there yet, I'm confident that we will come up with some concrete changes to make question time more informative, more accurate and, more importantly, involving the Australian people more.
BILLS
Australian Banks (Government Audit) Bill 2019
First Reading
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Katter.
Bill read a first time.
Second Reading
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (10:12): I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
The annual outlay by the Australian people on shares is $1,300 billion. The annual GDP of Australia is $1,800 billion. So almost all of Australia's income, indirectly, is going on shares. I'm not going to explain the intricacies of that. But I think it's significant enough to warrant a very close look at what is going on in the share market in derivatives, which brings me of course to the issue of banking. When I went to university we were taught—and I think every institution in the world teaches—that most of our money comes from banking loans. Who provides this money? The banks. Is it a good idea that the wealth of Australia goes into the share market? That's a decision made by the banks, not by you or me, because we have to borrow the money from the banks to invest in the share market.
Let me focus on the banks specifically. At present they are oversighted by APRA. I will go no further than my own personal experiences with APRA and with ASIC. An auditing firm audited the books of an account for a sugar mill in North Queensland turning over $300 million a year. It was a very substantial business indeed. They were appointed auditors, and they sold the sugar mill for $2 million. The year before they had been offered $54 million and two years later they were paid $72 million for the sale of the mill. They were laughed at when they made the offer of $54 million. If you sell an item, as a liquidator, for $2 million, when there is a second offer on the table—the most solid of solid offers coming from two government instrumentalities and a neighbouring sugar mill, which was much bigger and much more economically solid—and you take the first offer of $2 million when you know that two years ago you were offered $54 million and it was rejected by you, the auditor, and then two years later it sells for $72 million—I mean, the then Treasurer was so shocked that he got involved. He ordered ASIC and APRA to involve themselves in providing justice in this case. The mill is worth $200 million. Every sugar mill is valued at $200 a tonne and this mill had two million tonne through it. That did no good, so Treasurer Swan rang them up again and ordered them again. Treasurer Hockey then came in and he ordered them to do it and then he ordered them again. They were both so shocked and horrified by the case.
Never a glove was laid until 39 little farmers put some money together, took them to court and got a $23 million out-of-court settlement. That will give you the level of staggering and towering incompetence by the auditors in this country. They are not to be trusted. The greatest collapse in the human history, the GFC collapse, touched off in the United States. Ernst & Young gave a clean bill of health to Lehman Brothers in July 2008, two months before its bankruptcy precipitated the global banking crash. The New York Attorney-General accused Ernst & Young of helping Lehman Brothers engage in a massive accounting fraud. The wonderful quote, which is actually the transcript of a conversation with Standard & Poor's and the people inquiring into what was the impending disaster, which was the GFC, says: 'You've given a AAA rating to every single one of the CDOs. Have any of you checked them out? Do they warrant a AAA rating?' She said, 'They are within the bounds of our business model.' In other words, they're all right. He said, 'Have you ever knocked back a AAA rating on a CDO, collectivised debt obligation?'
The bank sold a stack of mortgages—some of them really bad and some of them really good. They mixed them up together and gave them to Standard & Poor's and Moody's and said, 'Rate them.' They all rated them as AAA, and that was the cause of the trouble where trillions of dollars were lost and millions of people were thrown out of their homes in the United States. Some seven million people lost their jobs, and that was just in the United States. In answer to the question, 'Have you ever knocked back a AAA rating?' she said, 'If we were to knock back a AAA rating, they would simply walk up the road to Moody's—it's only a block away—and get the AAA rating from them.' In answer to the question, 'So, you've never, ever knocked back a AAA rating?' she sort of nodded.
Where the business to be audited picks the auditor and the auditor works for that business, by definition it's not an audit. By definition it can't be an audit. You're employing the person. What will the person tell you—that you're a bad guy? Well, not to my knowledge in history. I do know of one case—a case that occurred in Queensland involving a very big company, the 17th biggest company in Australia. In this case, a good friend of mine was the boss of Arthur Andersen. He said, 'I can't clear this company,' in the deal that was taking place, so they were sacked and they used another auditor. That's how the machinery operates. In this case, the government gave a guarantee, and so they should. I agree with the guarantee. It's all banks. I tell my wife to invest in the banks because the government wouldn't go bankrupt—well, that could be on the cards, too, I suppose, but I don't think it's so at the present moment. So invest there. The government has given you the world's safest investment. It's been provided for you. The government has given this in the knowledge that there is no auditing taking place except by an auditor employed by the bank. If you pay the piper then you call the tune.
This situation has got to come to an end. When we see this impending doom upon the Australian economy, where $1,400 billion a year goes to the stock market and the total national income is only $1.800 billion, we have a big problem on our hands. What you're looking at is a giant Ponzi scheme, and, like all Ponzi schemes, eventually it comes to a very, very bad ending. I speak with very great authority, having been the development minister in Queensland for nearly a decade: all of the development that took place in the great economic miracle of Queensland—the Bjelke-Petersen economic miracle— (Time expired)
The SPEAKER: Is the motion seconded?
Mr Bandt: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
The SPEAKER: The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Live Animal Export Prohibition (Ending Cruelty) Bill 2019
First Reading
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Wilkie.
Bill read a first time.
Second Reading
Mr WILKIE (Clark) (10:24): I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
In essence this bill seeks to permanently ban the export of live animals for slaughter from 1 July 2022 and puts in place steps to ensure that, in the interim, live animals are treated humanely after they are exported. There is a desperate need for this bill to be progressed in this place, because there's a desperate need for this country to shut down the vile live animal export industry. It is an industry that is systemically cruel, it's clearly not in this nation's economic self-interest, and it lacks broad public support.
When I talk about cruelty, how many more exposes do we need to see in the media before everyone—including the government and the opposition—understands that the trade must be shut down? People would remember the shocking images on Four Corners in 2011 to do with the treatment of Australian beef cattle in slaughterhouses in Indonesia. More recently, last year, we saw the remarkable whistleblower revelations from the Awassi Express recorded in 2017—a ship of shame on which thousands of sheep were to die. All of the sheep travelled in appalling conditions. It is also important to note that this industry is not in Australia's economic self-interest. So I say to the members of the government and to the members of the opposition that even if you, bizarrely, don't care about animal welfare, surely you would care about the economic impact on this country. That can't be underestimated.
I don't know whether people in this place understand the scope of the live animal export industry. I'll illustrate it with some figures. In 2018 alone, there were 324 live export voyages. When I saw that figure this morning, I thought my offsider in my office had made a mistake. I thought that it must be 32 or something—but no. Last year, there were 324 live animal export voyages from this country, carrying between them well over one million beef cattle and almost 1.3 million sheep. That is a staggering number of livestock. With every one of those sheep or cattle that left our shores, with it went jobs that would have been in Australian abattoirs, that would have operated to the world's best animal welfare standards and that would have employed thousands upon thousands of Australians.
The live animal export trade doesn't have public support. Opinion poll after opinion poll shows clearly that, apart from a small number of producers in the sheep and cattle industry, apart from a very small number of exporters and apart from, seemingly, a lot of politicians in this place, there ain't much support elsewhere for the live animal export trade. In fact, it's the stuff of nightmares for many Australians. It's the stuff of nightmares for many of my constituents who are not being represented by the government or the opposition when it comes to their view on the live animal export industry.
After the Awassi Express, the government made a lot of promises and sought to reassure Australians that yes, there had been some problems with the live animal export trade, but they would fix it. The government said that it would listen to the science and it would ensure that a scientific response—not an emotional response—was forthcoming. But did they deliver? No, because all the government delivered this year was a ban from June until late September, when the Australian Veterinary Association unambiguously recommended a ban from May to October—an additional two months—to ensure that Australian sheep did not have to suffer through the horrid Northern Hemisphere summer on those ships and when they got there. So the government hasn't listened to the science.
The government also said that independent observers would be on every live animal export ship, but it had been revealed in Senate estimates that only about 36 per cent of live animal export ships have had independent observers—not good enough. The government said that things would improve, but those independent observers who are on the minority of ships have witnessed terrible things. Some of the things that those independent observers have seen over the last 18 months are 'sheep suffering from heat stress' and 'sheep mired in mounds of wet faeces'. These aren't my words; these are the reports of the independent observers on some of the live animal export ships—at least those on which there is an independent observer. There have been cattle mired in mounds of wet faeces; sheep blinded from infectious eye diseases; lambs being born and then killed on board; a steer suddenly dying during unloading; a steer breaking his leg during loading; a steer escaping during loading, being caught, then euthanased; cattle with leg injuries, lameness and eye infections; cattle suffering and dying from gastroenteritis; contaminated or empty water troughs; the failure to immediately treat injured and ill cattle on the vessels; the same syringe being used to administer medication to all animals throughout an entire voyage because apparently it was going to cost the exporters too much to use more than one syringe for a whole ship of animals; the inappropriate storing of medications; and, in one case, the crew of the export vessel killing and eating an animal on board—which, for the record, is not allowed. Thank God we have independent observers on at least some vessels, otherwise we wouldn't have the facts of the matter—that the government has not delivered on its promise to improve conditions for stock on those vessels.
The government also said—heavens, there have been a lot of things the government has promised and not delivered!—it would outlaw two-tier stock decking, which is when you put an extra little deck just above the heads of the stock on the lower deck. But, of course, what's happened? We've learned just in recent days through the media that the government has bowed to lobbyists and is going to allow two-tier decking on some vessels. Clearly we need to shut the live animal export trade down. It's systemically cruel. To quote members of the opposition: it's unredeemable; it can't be fixed. The only way to end the cruelty of the live animal export industry is to end the industry. That's what the community wants. That's what will enhance our country's reputation as an ethical producer of food.
And then we need to go beyond the live animal export industry and address the animal welfare crisis in this country. What about the shocking footage recently of the mistreatment of thoroughbred racehorses in Queensland and the revelation that thousands of horses are being turned into pet food because they're past their use-by date or they don't run fast enough? Or what about the story more recently of the young bull at the Royal Hobart Show, where it was being used to entertain the crowd but broke its leg and had to be put down? Or what about the news in TheMercurytoday that 18 thoroughbred racing horses have been put down in Tasmania during the last two years alone during races or during training?
And then there are all the other issues, such as the more broadly spread cruelty in the thoroughbred horseracing industry through the use of the whip, which has been outlawed in many countries overseas. There's the cruelty in steeplechasing and harness racing and the continuing and well-understood cruelty in the greyhound racing industry. There is the raising of poultry and particularly cage eggs. There is the use of racks for pigs. There is the cruelty in the dairy industry and the aquaculture industry. There is the use of rodeos. It is basically the use of cruelty to entertain human beings. Then there are puppy and kitten farms. Not only do we need to shut down the live animal export trade; we need the government to then establish a genuinely independent national office of animal welfare, an office with teeth that can investigate allegations of animal mistreatment and can punish those who would be cruel to our animals.
In closing, I offer a positive comment to the millions of people in this country who do care about animals. We have made some progress. Abattoirs in Indonesia have improved their practices. There has been some limit put on the shipping of sheep to the Middle East during the height of the northern summer. But there is so much more to do, starting with everyone in this place—the government and the opposition—starting to represent their constituents and not a small number of people in the live animal export industry. I commend the bill to the House.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Zimmerman ): Is the motion seconded?
Ms Steggall: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time allocated for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Climate Change Authority Amendment (Impact of 3 Degrees of Global Warming on Australia) Bill 2019
First Reading
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by MrBandt.
Bill read a first time.
Second Reading
Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (10:35): I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Global warming is much more advanced and much worse than most people think. The world signed up, in the Paris Agreement, to limit global warming to well below two degrees and ideally aim for 1½ degrees, but we're not on track for that. Already the planet has heated by a degree. We could hit the 1½ degree tipping point as soon as 2030, and we could exceed two degrees very, very quickly. Last week the European Parliament declared a climate emergency, following many other countries and cities around the world who have done the same. Increasingly in Europe and many other countries, Australia is seen as a rogue state—a rogue state drunk on our fossil fuels that we peddle to the rest of the world. The rest of the world knows the Prime Minister's three degree climate targets are a death sentence for our country. It is time the Australian people were told the truth.
This government does not have the climate crisis under control, it is not willing to work with other countries to bring it under control, and the government's own targets are consistent with a catastrophic three degrees of global warming—not the two degrees referred to in the Paris Agreement. That's why today I'm introducing the Climate Change Authority Amendment (Impact of 3 Degrees of Global Warming on Australia) Bill 2019. The bill will require the Climate Change Authority to report on the impact of three degrees or more of global warming on the Australian society, the Australian economy and the Australian environment. Three degrees of warming is the gravest threat to everyone in this country.
It's often said that the first duty of government is to protect its people. But the Prime Minister is completely failing in his first duty because, rather than protect Australians from the climate crisis, he has taken action to make the climate crisis worse. The Prime Minister's government's reckless pursuit of the expanded mining, export and burning of more coal, oil and gas is fuelling climate breakdown, including the record drought and the bushfire emergency. Even worse, the government's appalling climate targets are consistent with a track towards three degrees of global warming.
Currently in Australia we are witnessing just the beginning of the terrifying climate impacts and extreme weather that will ravage our country over the coming decades, but this is happening with one degree of global warming. We've seen the bushfire danger extend into winter and the creation of megafires that are stretching our fire services to breaking point. The south-east of our country is experiencing the most severe drought on record, driving farmers to the wall, and many of our towns are running out of what water. This is happening with just one degree of global warming, but the Prime Minister's targets are driving us to three degrees—three times as much warming as we are experiencing at the moment.
The impacts of such a temperature rise are not linear. It's not like a room where you can turn the thermostat up and then, if you realise it's got a bit too hot, you can turn it back down again. It's much more like the human body, where, if you exceed a certain band of temperature, it can cause permanent damage that you can't come back from. The climate system is a complex series of feedback loops that can intensify and exponentially accelerate the impacts and changes produced in the system. When the ice melts in the Arctic, for example, not only does that contribute to higher sea level but there's less white space reflecting heat back into the atmosphere. There's more dark space, and so the system feeds back on itself and speeds itself up.
It is similar with things like the exposure of permafrost and methane. Once that starts happening, it speeds the whole system up. That's why it's so important that we act to limit global warming to below two degrees, and that's why it's so important that people understand that when the Prime Minister blithely talks about targets that have us on track for three degrees and potentially higher he is talking about catastrophe for Australia. That's why the Paris Agreement seeks to keep global warming to 1½ degrees—because, while it is not safe, it's hoped that the catastrophic damage that temperatures beyond that threshold will cause can be minimised and, more importantly, tipping points that could drive us into runaway unstoppable warming will not be breached.
It is worrying that a recent report in Nature by some of the world's most eminent scientists has warned that even at current temperatures—what we've got now—such tipping points may have already been passed, with large-scale sea-level rise from ice sheet collapse and the thawing of permafrost releasing large amounts of methane, driving more warming, potentially already locked in. They say:
If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization. No amount of economic cost-benefit analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate problem.
In our view, the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency …
We know that Australia's 2030 climate change target, under this government, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels is consistent with at least three degrees of global warming. This reality will be highlighted again over the next two weeks as the world's countries meet in Spain, and Australia's failure will be naked before the world.
The Australian people need to know that the Morrison government's current climate targets will take us into a three-degree world, with catastrophic consequences for Australia. We're already seeing the severe impacts of a one-degree world with the climate crisis driving the fire emergency and the record drought. The Australian people need to know what the Prime Minister's targets will do to the country when they take us to three degrees. For example, Professor Ross Garnaut's 2010 seminal climate review predicted a 92 per cent decline in agricultural productivity in the Murray-Darling Basin if we don't get global warming under control. We may be witnessing the beginning of that now. That is a 92 per cent decline by the end of this century if we don't limit global warming to the goals that have been set. What we need now is an up-to-date review, using the best available current science, so that we know what is coming if we stick with the coalition's current targets and their climate failure. Here is just one more frightening example. Recent reports have shown that we're on track for many of the key cities of our Asian trading partners to be underwater in the next three decades. This is because of the sea level rise and storm surges produced by the pathway to a three-degree world. I'm talking about Mumbai underwater, Shanghai underwater, Bangkok underwater, Ho Chi Minh City underwater—and the list goes on. These are just some of the impacts on our economy and our society, but we need to know more.
Australia deserves the comprehensive detail so that people can understand the future that the Morrison government is locking us into. But, as we know, the Prime Minister doesn't want the Australian people to know the truth; he wants Australians to remain quiet, and the truth disturbs that. We saw what his ministers were prepared to do to avoid discussing the impacts of the climate crisis on the recent bushfires. They do not want Australians to know the full impacts of their folly and their negligence, and that is why this bill is needed. This bill will charge the Climate Change Authority with producing an up-to-date review of the impact of a three-degree world in Australia, which is consistent with the government's targets. That report would need to be tabled in parliament within 15 sitting days of the minister receiving it, and it would also be required to be published on the website once it is complete so that all of us can judge where the government's targets are taking us. The provisions of this bill mirror previous requests or directions to the Climate Change Authority to conduct reviews.
This bill doesn't contain binding targets. It does not force obligations on anyone to change their policy, and in that respect it's a modest bill, but one that's an important test for the government. The Prime Minister's changed his schtick. He says now, 'I accept that climate change is real but don't worry I've got it under control'. If that's right—and it's not—he should allow the Climate Change Authority to review the government's targets and tell Australia what it means to be on track for three degrees of warming. If the government believes that the targets are in line the with the Paris Agreement, and that somehow their targets will keep Australians safe, then they should embrace this bill and such a review with open arms. I suspect they won't. I suspect they won't, because the Prime Minister does not want the Australian people to know he does not have the climate crisis under control. A three-degree world, which he has us on track for, means catastrophe and death in Australia. I commend the bill to the House.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Zimmerman ): Is the motion seconded?
Mr Wilkie: I second the motion by the member for Melbourne and reserve my right to speak.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time allocated for debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Lowering the Donation Disclosure Threshold) Bill 2019
First Reading
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Ms Sharkie.
Bill read a first time.
Second Reading
Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (10:46): I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
A very wise man once said, 'Politicians should wear sponsor jackets like NASCAR drivers, then we know who owns them.' That very wise person was the late Robin Williams and I share his words. I've become increasingly concerned about the state of our Australian democracy, about the decreasing level of transparency and accountability of our political leadership. Abound in our media are disturbing stories of slowly fragmenting democracy, and democracy is a very fragile thing. Stories of political influence being traded and policy favours being procured, stories of foreign influence gaining purchase within our political landscape, stories of Aldi bags full of money changing hands to evade the gaze of the public interest—I've always said that if you want to see whose vested interests are being championed then follow the money.
This leads me to mention the gambling industry, one that we do absolutely nothing about in this place. Shocking allegations of money laundering were made against Crown Casino. Nothing was said in this place. I might remind the House that, just having a look at the Australian Electoral Commission website, I'm sure many in Australia were not surprised that over the last four years of disclosures around a million dollars were handed in donations just from Crown Casino to both of the major parties.
What can we conclude about water deals where we pay almost twice the recommended rate? Why is it that our government is merely disappointed that Westpac has turned a blind eye to money-laundering crimes that number in the millions? It is a matter for the bank, not a matter for us to deal with in here, is what we were told.
Right now a family of five can donate $60,000 to a political party and nobody in Australia would be any the wiser. They could donate $12,000 each, $60,000. Nobody would know. Well, I think they should know. This bill seeks to make it easier to follow the money that politicians and their parties receive. If enacted, the bill would lower the political donation disclosure threshold from $13,800 to $1,000 and remove the indexation of that threshold.
I'm one of the few members in this place who relies on community and microdonations to fund their political campaigns. I refuse to take donations from big unions or from big business. I've always maintained that if you're donating in the thousands of dollars rather than the tens or hundreds, or even a bit of coin, then the public has the right to determine for themselves whether those donations are influencing the views and the political positions of the recipient candidate or party.
This bill acts to complement my earlier private member's bill in this place—that is, the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Real Time Disclosure of Donations) Bill 2019, which calls for a maximum of a five-day lag. The disclosure of political donations is currently being considered in an inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.
Together, these bills are based upon the belief that greater transparency in our democracy will lead to greater democratic accountability. The public should know whether our representative democracy is representative of the demos, the people, or whether it's representative of vested interests. Trust in our democracy is at an all-time low, and I'm sure we all feel that. These two pieces of legislation are part of a solution to turn that trust around. We need to restore the compact between the government and those for whom the government exists to serve, those for whom this parliament exists to serve.
The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Lowering the Donation Disclosure Threshold) Bill 2019 gives the Australian people the right to follow the money. I urge all members in this place to give the bill serious consideration and return more to the demos, the people. That is why we are here.
I commend this bill to the House. Mr Deputy Speaker, I would ask if my remaining time could be given to the member for Indi, who is seconding the bill. Thank you.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Zimmerman ): Is the motion seconded?
Dr HAINES (Indi) (10:51): I second the motion. I'm pleased to support this bill moved by the member for Mayo. Political, parliamentary and public service integrity is fundamental to the strength of Australian democracy. The transparency of campaign financing is key to its vitality. Capping donations at a modest limit is a powerful way of ensuring integrity.
The loss of political integrity concerns many people—I hear it consistently. It was an issue raised often with me in the 2019 federal campaign and since my election as member for Indi. It's an aspiration at the heart of a call from Transparency International Australia for a robust federal integrity commission, one which has the support of a majority of Australians. It's one also supported by more than 32 former senior judges and the Accountability Round Table.
Democracy 2025 Report No. 5, published in September, shows politicians are more satisfied than voters with our democratic system. It shows that public trust in government and Australian democracy is declining and that people expect politicians to be properly accountable for their conduct in public office. But I also found fascinating that 75 per cent of politicians and citizens actually agree that the amount of money political parties and candidates can spend on election campaigning and how much they can accept from donors should be limited. Yet the Commonwealth is still to enact this aspiration.
The parliaments of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland have set a disclosure threshold on political donations at $1,000. Victoria has a cap, but there is no limit on donations to federal campaigns. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia require near real-time disclosure of donations, yet the Commonwealth requires disclosure just once a year and then seven months after the reporting period has ended. There are caps on expenditure in some jurisdictions, but not for those of us here. The New South Wales Electoral Commission actively pursues breaches, yet the Australian Electoral Commission rarely employs its coercive powers, as the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee heard in 2017. So we see the campaign finance laws diverge between jurisdictions, but it should also concern us that they do so here too within the Electoral Act determined by the parliament.
I acknowledge that the member for Melbourne has been calling for campaign donations to be capped at $1,000 for some time, but it remains that the Electoral Act means that I and the members for Clark and Warringah are obliged to do things which party members are not. There are rules that are the same for 148 members but are quite different for the three of us, and I commend the member for Mayo for bringing to the attention of the House the issue of political donations.
There are some things that we share. We are all required to lodge a candidate return within 15 weeks of an election, to declare the total of donations and the identity of people or organisations giving to individual campaigns more than $13,800—the disclosure set by the parliament—to disclose gifts in kind, such as contributions of professional skills, valued at more than $13,800, and to disclose the sum of election expenditure. Yet, when the AEC published an election return on 4 November, candidate disclosures on the transparency register for the Indi electorate, for example, showed no donations, no donors and no expenditure for any candidate except me, the Independent, and one other.
Voters deserve to know how candidates are funded and who funds them, but the law today demands different levels of campaign funding transparency from the members for Clark, Indi and Warringah compared with that of the party candidates. In Indi, a personal business donating cash in kind or property to a party candidate can make the gift to the party's Indi branch. But Indi voters won't find out about this—the law allows that gift to be reported by the party's divisional organisation. The AEC, in fact, directs the party's candidates in Indi, and in every other electorate, to lodge a nil return. This means political parties contesting elections are not obliged to show how much money was given, raised or spent in each electorate. These gifts and spending, instead, go into the party's divisional stew and the only ingredients you can identify—when it's served many months later, cold and unappealing, as the parties probably want it to be—are donations of more than $13,800.
Voters should not be blinded by the law to what candidates raise and what they spend. We need comprehensive, robust reform of the system of federal political donations and disclosure. This bill improves transparency, but there's so much more to be done, and when it is the law it should be the same for all.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Zimmerman ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order for the next sitting day.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
International Day of People with Disability
Ms STANLEY ( Werriwa — Opposition Whip ) ( 10:54 ): I move:
That this House:
(1) acknowledges:
(a) 3 December 2019 is International Day of People with Disability; and
(b) the Human Rights Commission estimates the number of Australians with a disability to be around four million;
(2) respects the rights of all:
(a) people with disability in Australia, including having access to services and freedom from discrimination;
(b) persons with a disability to be welcomed as equal and positive contributors to Australian society; and
(c) people with disability to have choice and control in relation to any support services they receive; and
(3) encourages all:
(a) persons with disability as their own self-advocates;
(b) groups and individuals that advocate on behalf of people with disabilities; and
(c) Australians to respect the basic rights of all persons with disabilities.
Tomorrow, 3 December, will be International Day of People with Disability. It is an important day to remember, congratulate and celebrate the achievements of all Australians with a disability and the care and support that their families, friends and professional workers give to them.
Yet one of the most concerning and saddening parts of my job is meeting and assisting my constituents with issues that they are having with the NDIS. In a rich and wonderful country like ours there should be a safety net for people with disabilities. In 1974, Gough Whitlam first brought to the policy table the idea of a national insurance scheme to help people with a disability, and today is the 45th anniversary of his election to this place.
This was not a flash in the pan for Prime Minister Whitlam but a love for our country and a care for those who need it most, yet Mr Whitlam was, in short, provided with a choice: Medibank, which we now know as Medicare, or a disability insurance scheme. While we know the outcome of that choice, Mr Whitlam had identified a need and a policy solution for Australians with disabilities. After the Fraser government amended Medibank, Prime Minister Hawke made Medicare work.
Thirty-nine years on, Prime Minister Gillard introduced the legislation that would establish the National Disability Insurance Scheme. To quote then Prime Minister Gillard, 'This is a reform whose time has come, a reform that will deliver significant benefits to the people with disabilities, their carers, their families and the wider Australian community.' It was an idea that would be set in motion—a sweeping reform that would give Australians with a disability the choice of support and the product they need to have every opportunity of success. It had the support of all in this House. At the heart of the scheme was the empowerment of recipients—that they would retain choice. No more would there be a one-size-fits-all policy. After all, individuals know their lives, their struggles and their successes and should be able to make their own choices accordingly.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme encourages people with disability real success and real change, and it comes from real policy and real action. Success and change will not occur by short-changing those people to the tune of $4.6 billion to prop up the Liberals' bottom line. Success and change will not occur when there is no national disability strategy in place to ensure that support services are coordinated. Success and change will not occur by removing funding for the places that people with disability go to for independent advice on assistive technology, which will be no more by July 2020.
The NDIS has been a success for some of my constituents, but it has been a fraught process for far too many. The NDIS is a safety net. It is a structure that means to support and empower people. I acknowledge the hardworking staff of the NDIA, especially those who support my office and provide advice. But the processes and systems seem to make it impossible for them to consistently provide decisions and funding in a timely manner for those who need it. The modus operandi of this government is to strip, cut and slash funding and services that people need, and this is having a real impact on Australians with disabilities.
The slashes are also having a real and detrimental impact on my electorate of Werriwa. Constituents are consistently complaining there is too much paperwork, reviews are taking far too long and people for whom English is a second language are having extreme difficulty with the NDIS. In fact, one of my constituents came to see me last week. He's a double amputee, and I have spoken about this gentleman previously in his place. He hasn't yet been approved by the NDIS for assistive technology and he is stuck in limbo—and the terrible part is that it's been going on for three years, almost as long as I have been in this place.
This government needs to step up to the plate and make sure the NDIS and its agency have the appropriate resources to deliver the services and support that 4.4 million Australians need. Every Australian, especially on a day celebrating people with a disability, deserves that support. They deserve an NDIA and an NDIS that are properly funded and have processes that work for everyone so that all people with a disability have every opportunity to succeed like every one of their fellow Australians.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Zimmerman ): Order! Is the motion seconded?
Mr Dick: I'm happy to second the motion and I reserve my right to speak.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Ms HAMMOND (Curtin) (11:02): I thank the member for Werriwa for moving this motion and for raising some important issues. I would like to acknowledge that 3 December is International Day of People with a Disability. This is a UN-sanctioned day that aims to increase public awareness, understanding and acceptance of people with disability and to celebrate their achievements and contributions.
'Disability' is an umbrella term for impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions. There are varying degrees of disability, and they can be the result of genetic disorders, illnesses, accidents, ageing or a combination of factors. People living with disabilities make up a large part of our communities. In 2018, there were over four million Australians with a disability—approximately 18 per cent of the population. The prevalence of disability increases with age. One in eight people aged between zero and 64, and one in two people aged 65 or over have a disability. One in three of all people with a disability have a profound or severe disability. One in five of all people with disability reported a mental or behavioural disorder as the main condition. This includes intellectual or development disorders, mood affective disorders, dementia or Alzheimer's.
International Day of People with a Disability and similar initiatives are vital for raising awareness and understanding in our communities. Like all Australians, people with disability interact with every aspect of Australian life. However, some routinely face challenges in participating in everyday activities. These challenges are affected by the severity of their disability, the availability of services, the accessibility of the environment, and community attitudes and discrimination. The impact on participation is evidenced by the following statistics. One-third of people with a disability aged 15 years and over had completed year 12, compared to 62 per cent of people without a disability. Fifteen per cent of those 20 years or over with a disability had completed a bachelor's degree or above, compared to 31 per cent of those without a disability. Labour force participation was 53.4 per cent of those with a disability compared with 84 per cent of those without a disability. And 32 per cent of adults with a disability self-reported high or very high levels of psychological distress compared with eight per cent of adults without a disability.
In my previous life working in universities, I became acutely aware of some of the issues facing people with physical disabilities: access to premises, opening of doors, lecture theatre spaces, sound, access to materials in a readable format, sitting for long periods of time and handwriting speeds. I also became aware of footpaths that are uneven or not wide enough, no ramps, crosswalk troubles and shopping items on higher levels. I also became aware of the often-unintended discrimination experienced by people with a disability. I was told a story of a father who'd been travelling with his then-young daughter, who was confined to a wheelchair. They were travelling on a plane and, following the safety demonstration, an air host came up to them and told them that, in accordance with the rules, she would be the last person off the plane. There may well have been a legitimate reason for this rule, but it was the way it was said and the way it was heard: she was the least important person of all on that plane. In this context, I note data from 2015: one in 11 people with disability aged 15 years and over had experienced discrimination in the previous 12 months because of their disability and one in three avoided situations because of their disability. These rates are not acceptable.
There are many examples in my community of Curtin where people are working together to empower people who are living with a disability. One such example is the Lions Eye Institute. I recently attended the Lions Eye Institute Sensory Science exhibition, a unique blend of science and art combining the incredible artistry of legally blind artist Dr Erica Tandori and the scientific excellence of Professor Jamie Rossjohn and Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute. It's an absolutely fantastic exhibition that combines science and research in a tactile environment to bring it to more people. We need to continue to develop technologies and, more importantly, we need to continue to address our often-unknown biases, prejudices and assumptions.
Dr HAINES (Indi) (11:07): I thank the member for Werriwa for this motion. Tomorrow, on the International Day of People with Disability, a day to increase awareness of gains to be derived from inclusion of people with disability in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life, we have the opportunity to celebrate the achievements of people with a disability and the positive contributions they bring to our communities and families. The focus of the international day this year is on the empowerment of people with disability for inclusive, equitable and sustainable development across the world.
This year many Australian organisations are using 'The future is accessible' as their key theme to celebrate the day. Assisting people with disabilities to achieve this are devoted families, friends, carers and some extraordinary not-for-profit organisations. In my electorate of Indi, the Regional Disability Advocacy Service, RDAS, assists people with a disability living in the Ovens-Murray district of north-east Victoria and the Murrumbidgee district of southern New South Wales. Martin Butcher, the chief executive officer, and the RDAS team, including Deb Randich, provide free and independent advocacy and information to anyone with a disability, of any age, to ensure equality of rights and increased integration into the community. We really need such organisations.
Across Australia, the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme has had many positive outcomes for a more accessible future. However, for too many the aim of providing people with a disability with choice and control in relation to support services they need is yet to be fully realised. A fully accessible future is one where people living with a disability can easily access age-appropriate accommodation, including supported disability accommodation, supported independent living and public housing.
For carers with young adults at home, finding respite care is a critical part of NDIS support, and it's a challenge compounded in rural and regional areas such as mine, where there is little or no choice. The transition to a new funding model has further impacted services in the thin markets that characterise rural and regional communities. For example, in October this year the only short-term respite facility in Benalla notified participants it would close in early November, advising that it was no longer financially viable. While the provider worked hard to identify suitable alternative providers, these are located 50 to 100 kilometres away and, importantly, must be booked months in advance.
One single parent from the rural locale of Molyullah, Lee Harris, cares for her 21-year-old son, Taylor, who has severe autism. Lee described to me the reality of her situation now that the Benalla respite centre is closed. She'd recently required urgent medical care and needed hospital admission for surgery. Her son was able to go to respite that day and stay for a week in a place he knew well with support workers familiar to him until she came home. But, should that happen again, Lee now has nowhere to send Taylor where he's known and understood, and she certainly can't take him anywhere at short notice.
Universal access to education is a fundamental human right. I recently visited Belvoir Special School in Wodonga to meet the principal, students, parents and teachers. Belvoir is a foundation-to-year-12 school comprising 198 amazing students. The principal of Belvoir, Mr Jamie Gay, told me of the joys and the many challenges he faces in helping to achieve student goals. A key concern he raised with me was an extreme shortage of special education teachers and the anomalies of trying to work across the border with New South Wales—a common problem in my electorate.
And what of inclusion in the workplace? In the January 2019 edition of the Journal of Business and Psychology, Bonaccio et al summarised the international evidence for participation of people with disabilities in workplaces. They found that, while managers may express concern that workers with disabilities would have lower job performance and greater incidence of lateness or absenteeism, the empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Employers' testimonials make it clear that their inclusive practices do not stem from charity but from business decisions. Matched to the right job, people with disabilities are superb employees. Two young men, well known to me, who are invaluable employers at Merriwa Industries are Jed MacLeish and Jacob Grogan. I give a special shout-out to Jed, who with the support of his family recently purchased his first home and is living independently.
As we mark International Day of People with Disability, it's incumbent upon all of us to look across all aspects of daily life and make sure—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Zimmerman ): The honourable member's time has expired. I thank the member for Indi and I call the member for Ryan.
Mr SIMMONDS (Ryan) (11:12): It's a pleasure to rise the mark International Day of People with Disability, which is tomorrow. International Day of People with Disability is a day when we celebrate the achievements of people with a disability and aim to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilise support for the dignity, rights and wellbeing of people with a disability. Since 1996 the Australian government has been proud to provide funds to support, promote and raise awareness of this day around Australia. We have 4.5 million Australians living with a disability. That's one in five people, and many are doing remarkable things. I'd like to pay tribute to the local groups in the Ryan electorate who are working with those who have a disability and are doing tremendous and caring work.
In particular there is the Glenleighden School, which I have had a long association with. It is a local school for which people travel from around Australia in order to enrol their children who have a language or learning disability. Thanks to the specialised support of the Glenleighden School, many are often able to transition into general schools as they advance through the age groups. At the very least, many of them are talking and communicating with their families and friends far better than would otherwise have been the case without the work of those dedicated people at the school. For parents who have children with language disorder, simply to have a child who is able to communicate with them without getting too frustrated is an enormous thing for their lives.
I'd like to pay tribute to another group, Claire's Cottage, which operates in Ferny Grove in my electorate. I was able to meet Claire recently. She's the mum of twin daughters with cerebral palsy. Her daughters have long grown up, but she has a passion for looking after people with a disability. Indeed, she saw cracks in the system at the time that her girls were coming through and it led her to create something called Claire's Cottage. It is a residential support place in my electorate which allows participants with a disability to sleep over in what is otherwise a normal residential home and they learn important life skills to gain independence in order to live and sleep out of home. I congratulate these two organisations, but there are others in Ryan that are doing tremendous work.
Something that is also close to my heart and the heart of all Queenslanders is the State of Origin. For the last five years, a fiercely competitive State of Origin battle has been playing out on a 60-metre indoor court, and that is the NRL Wheelchair State of Origin. The Queensland team is made up of players from across the state, including Townsville, Rockhampton, Toowoomba, Ipswich and my home town of Brisbane. Unfortunately, New South Wales seems to have had the edge on us until now, but I know that 2020 will be our year. I just want to highlight this event. Wouldn't it be great if it were followed with the same vigour and passion as the traditional State of Origin? We will only get to that point through advocacy days like the one we are having tomorrow and through the great work that our communities do in promoting the day, promoting people like these athletes and promoting their achievements. We have some amazing stories of what people with disabilities are achieving. It's only through the kinds of days that we will have tomorrow that we will see significant improvements.
The life expectancy of Australians born with, for example, Down syndrome has more than tripled in the four decades to 2002, increasing from 18 years to 60 years. A significant contributing factor to this positive outcome is a shift in public attitude, no doubt down to days like we will have tomorrow. We're also continuing to see higher rates of participation in education of children with disabilities and children are staying in school longer. The Morrison government wants to see all Australians with a disability live life to their full potential, participate in our community, get a job if able and have greater independence. That's what we are working on delivering with the NDIS, a national endeavour that is changing lives. The NDIS quarterly report, which was recently released, shows real progress is being made. There are now 310,000 participants with an NDIS plan, including 114,000 participants who are receiving specialist disability support for the very first time. I congratulate Minister Roberts on his part of the work in rolling out the NDIS and seeing it making a positive contribution in the lives Australians with a disability.
Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (11:17): We're here to mark International Day of People with Disability, a day which says to the approximately four million Australians with a disability that we respect you and as a society we believe that you should have choice and control in your life. That's what the National Disability Insurance Scheme, designed by Labor and eventually given bipartisan support, is designed to do at its best. Sadly, too many participants are not experiencing it at its best, and nor do our other supports, like the Disability Support Pension, allow people to be equal and positive contributors to our society, free from discrimination. My office receives frequent calls from people being taken off disability support pension or being refused access to that support. They ask themselves and us: when is a disability not a disability? By the time they think that the problem is big enough to talk to their local member, they are almost at breaking point. That happens when Centrelink writes to you and tells you you don't meet the 20-point requirement, perhaps because you have an invisible disability such as mental health issues or hepatic encephalopathy, which is one of the most difficult conditions to articulate clearly! Because it's unusual, not known about and rare, it isn't as well understood by those making assessments. It causes memory loss that can lead to brain damage. The cost of assessments and more appointments with doctors, specialists and occupational therapists when you're not able to work makes progressing these claims really challenging.
I have one woman in my electorate who is also desperate for a job but is battling a health issue that restricts the work she can do. She's made the very reasonable request to have her job-finding support provided by a specialist disability provider—a very sensible approach. They'll understand her needs and support her to find the right workplace and the right job. But, no, the government has not allowed her to swap job providers. This woman wants to work, but the inadequate system in place for people with disabilities prevents her from making it happen. For people with disabilities, these are the frustrations that on a daily basis unfairly restrict them making the contribution they would like to make.
Then there are the imperfections of the NDIS that make participants continue to have to prove their disability on an annual basis. As one of my constituents, Riley, pointed out, he will still wake up a quadriplegic tomorrow. He should not have to keep proving his disability time and again. He can self-advocate. He can get out there and have the fight, even though it makes him weary, as it does many, but not everyone can self-advocate. Carers are often pushed to their limits, stretched between caring and advocacy.
Let's talk about some of the incredible people who I have come in contact with in the seat of Macquarie. I want to pay tribute to people like Gretta Serov, who in her late 20s has now completed a university degree, is a motivational speaker and has designed her own T-shirt with the message 'hands are overrated'. Greta has cerebral palsy and speaks using a voice-generating app on her iPad. She scuba dives. She has experienced indoor skydiving. She's a bit of an adrenalin junkie by the sounds of it! And she always maintains her sense of humour, and that shines through. Yet every time she has an NDIS review she has to appeal. Greta, like so many others, such as Bek and El, is an advocate. They deal with the challenges their own disabilities present and then they speak out so others don't have to experience the same humiliations and injustices.
Then there are the carers such as Rachel, who has fought the NDIA endlessly simply to get what her family needs to provide 24-hour-a-day care for her son Cameron, who has very complex needs. His big sisters are terrific carers, too, and the whole family deserves support to manage the additional needs that their much-loved brother has. Linda has stepped up to be an advocate using her experience of fighting for the very best early intervention and support for her daughter, Lucy. She helps others negotiate what is truly a complex system. Then there are the NDIS participants whose fight with the NDIA ended only days before tribunal hearings. They've argued and argued, and only now that's done can they get a good night's sleep. We need to do much better by all these people.
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (11:23): I give a big shout-out to the students up in the gallery at the moment. Tomorrow is the International Day of People with Disability. The theme for this year is: promoting the participation of persons with disabilities and their leadership. It's a reminder of the leaders that we all have in our community who inspire us with their achievements through adversity. I want to speak about three in particular today.
In October, my community came together to celebrate three young people who have overcome their intellectual disabilities to achieve fantastic sporting successes. From 12 October to 19 October, Brisbane hosted the 5th INAS Global Games. Athletes who take part in these games live with intellectual disability, Down Syndrome or autism. Across the week, around 1,000 athletes from 47 countries competed in 10 events. Australia has a terrific record of success at these games. The Australian team had finished top of the medal table at three of the previous four INAS Global Games. Hosting the event this year, our team was determined to maintain that record of success and, in total, Australia sent an incredible 164 athletes and 64 staff. I had the privilege, alongside my colleague, the member for Fairfax, to present three of these athletes from the Sunshine Coast with their green and gold uniforms: swimmers Liam Schluter, Liam Bailey-Rose and my own daughter Sarah Wallace. A fourth athlete from our region, cyclist Nathan Glarvey, also proudly competed for the first time.
The fact that four athletes from the Sunshine Coast represented Australia at these global games is not simply a testament to our local sporting excellence and the unbeatable outdoor lifestyle but is a reflection of the care and support that our community gives to everyone who lives on the coast to help them to achieve their dreams and to thrive as leaders among their peers. Simply by pulling on the green and gold uniforms and giving their all in representing this country, all of our athletes did our community very proudly. For Liam Bailey-Rose and for Sarah Wallace, this was their first time officially representing Australia in international competition and, though determined to do their best, their expectations were modest.
I'm very pleased to report to the House, however, that all of our local swimmers smashed their expectations and showed the very best of what the Sunshine Coast can do. International swimming meets are incredibly tough, and all three were competing in multiple events. Though fatigued and facing tough competition from all over the world, all three of the Sunshine Coast swimmers brought home medals for Australia. Liam Schluter, a veteran of international competition, led the way with gold and a new world record in the men's 1,500 metre freestyle in the II1 category. He won gold in the men's 200 metre freestyle, gold in the men's 400 metre freestyle and more golds in the men's four-by-200, four-by-100 and four-by-50 freestyle relays, setting records in almost every event. Liam also took home silver medals in the men's 100 metre freestyle, men's 100 metre butterfly, men's 200 metre medley and the four-by-100 metre mixed freestyle relay.
Liam Bailey-Rose absolutely did a sensational job. He exceeded all of his own expectations, with no fewer than four gold medals and three bronze medals. He won gold in the II3 category, the men's 50 metre and 100 metre butterfly, the men's 100 metre and 50 metre backstroke, and bronze in the men's 50 metre freestyle, men's 200 metre individual medley and men's 100 metre breaststroke. Sarah Wallace, after a gruelling week of events, broke through on the last day to take a hard fought bronze in her favourite event, the II category women's 50 metre breaststroke. In total, Australia ended the competition with 33 gold, 32 silver and 37 bronze medals.
I know firsthand how much work, resilience and commitment it takes for these athletes to reach this standard and compete on the world stage. Whether it be at the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics or Paralympics or the INAS Global Games, every Australian who wears the green and gold uniform becomes a local hero and a leader for our community to be very proud of. As we approach International Day of People with Disability, on behalf of all our constituents I say thank you for these athlete's contribution to our community.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Zimmerman ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be an order of the day for the next sitting.
Nelson, Hon. Dr Brendan, AO
Ms FLINT (Boothby—Government Whip) (11:28): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes:
(a) the importance of the Australian War Memorial to our nation in commemorating, acknowledging and recording the service of our defence force personnel; and
(b) that after seven years of service to the Australian War Memorial, the Hon Dr Brendan Nelson AO is retiring as its director;
(2) acknowledges the outstanding leadership Dr Nelson has provided at the Australian War Memorial, including:
(a) introducing the daily Last Post ceremony;
(b) leading the Memorial through the:
(i) Centenary of ANZAC and World War I commemorations; and
(ii) 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War commemorations;
(c) renovating the First World War galleries;
(d) recognising the need to incorporate the service of our 100,000 younger veterans and therefore introducing the Afghanistan exhibition;
(e) advocating for and securing, with Australian War Memorial Chairman Mr Kerry Stokes AC, a $500 million investment to expand the memorial to enable the stories of younger veterans to be told; and
(f) strengthening the relationship the Australian people have with the memorial and the men and women who have served our nation; and
(3) congratulates and sincerely thanks Dr Nelson for his service to the Australian War Memorial and the nation.
It is my great honour to move this motion today, recognising the service of the Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson AO to the Australian War Memorial and, more broadly, to our nation. I do so as someone who has had the great privilege of knowing Dr Nelson and his wife, Gillian, for over a decade and witnessing firsthand the remarkable impact they have had on our nation and how they have touched so many lives. Dr Nelson's achievements as Director of the Australian War Memorial are just the latest in his extraordinary career. Dr Nelson studied medicine at Flinders University in the heart of my electorate of Boothby and then worked as a general practitioner in Tasmania. He served as the state president of the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Medical Association and then as federal president of the Australian Medical Association.
In 1996 he was elected to the federal parliament, representing the people of Bradfield, and served until his resignation in 2009, having held many roles including as minister for education, Minister for Defence and Leader of the Opposition. He was then appointed as ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, the European Union and NATO and, upon his return to Australia, was appointed as Director of the Australian War Memorial. It is this role that Dr Nelson has held for seven years since 17 December 2012 that has cemented his place in the hearts of all Australians.
Anyone who's had the privilege of hearing Dr Nelson speak about the service of men and women of our Defence Force and the sacrifice they and their families have made usually cannot help but be moved to tears. He has travelled the nation throughout his tenure as Director of the War Memorial, letting Australians know about the importance of the work of the memorial, the centenary of World War I and the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. However, most importantly, he has told the stories of so many individuals and their families who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, for our safety and our security and for that of our friends around the world.
Dr Nelson has brought to life the work and sentiment of our first war historian and official war correspondent Charles Bean, who recorded the horrific death and destruction in World War I, including at Pozieres, where, as Dr Nelson notes in several of his speeches, a mortally wounded Australian asked Bean, 'Will they remember me in Australia?' Thanks to the work of Dr Nelson and his dedicated staff at the Australian War Memorial, we do remember them in Australia and we will continue to do so.
We remember them through the renovated First World War galleries. We remember them through the individual stories of men and women Dr Nelson has included in so many of his speeches over the years. Most importantly, we remember them through the daily Last Post ceremony, which each day brings to life the story of one Australian named on the role of honour, allowing families to honour their sacrifice, to remember and to heal and allowing all Australians to also honour their service. The Last Post ceremony is thanks to the work of Dr Nelson.
It's not just our World War I veterans Dr Nelson has helped us to remember. I was in attendance when he addressed the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Coral-Balmoral in Adelaide. He told the stories of the young men whose average age was just 22, who died, were wounded and were left with lifelong scars from their terrible experiences there and, to our national shame, their terrible experiences when they returned home. To them, Dr Nelson said:
With humility, gratitude and immense pride we say to you that what you did in Vietnam—at Coral and Balmoral—is as valued by us as those who landed at Gallipoli, endured the Kokoda track, held the line at Kapyong or fought under our flag in the dust of Uruzgan.
I want to also acknowledge the work Dr Nelson has done with his chairman, Mr Kerry Stokes AC, to secure a $500 million investment to expand the War Memorial and to enable the stories of younger veterans to be told. This is critical to support younger veterans who often struggle to explain to friends and family what they have faced in their roles here and overseas, particularly in areas of conflict. The expanded War Memorial will show friends and family, and our nation, what the veterans themselves are so often unable to explain.
On behalf of a grateful nation, on behalf of all those Australians who stop Dr Nelson on the street to thank him, on behalf of the returned service men and women whose lives he has touched, those who did not make it home and those whose memories he has kept alive today and on behalf of all the families related to the service men and women, I say to Dr Nelson: our most since thanks to you today.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Vamvakinou ): Is there is a seconder?
Mrs Wicks: I second my motion and reserve my right to speak.
Mr GOSLING (Solomon) (11:33): My father, John, who's a Vietnam veteran, sent me a message this morning, and it was around the events of 77 years ago, today. It was 1 December 1942 that the HMAS Armidale was sunk by Japanese dive bombers off East Timor. People would be familiar with the famous painting of Seaman Edward 'Teddy' Sheean, who strapped himself into the gun and went down with the ship, trying to shoot down those Japanese bombers and protect his mates who were in the water.
I still remember like it was yesterday when I first saw that painting in the Australian War Memorial and it still has an effect on me to this day, such is the power of Teddy Sheean's bravery as well as the importance of the War Memorial to tell those stories so that we never forget.
As my good friend the member for Boothby said, one of the greatest storytellers and custodians in recent times has been Brendan Nelson. I join with her and with others. Brendan Nelson has so many admirers for the work that he's done at the War Memorial in his capacity as the director over seven years. He's done an exemplary job. Today I pay tribute to him and to the ongoing importance of the Australian War Memorial in telling our national story. Of course, it was Labor in government that appointed Dr Nelson, someone from the other side of politics, such was the feeling about the job that he would do, and he's certainly done everyone proud in that role.
During his time as director, we've seen the upgrading and refreshing of so many stories around the First World War, the Korean and Vietnam conflicts and, more recently, the centenary of the First World War. It hasn't been an easy task, due to space limitations. The telling of the Second World War stories in those galleries is difficult, given the lack of space. I know that significant works are going to be happening over the next few years to redress that. I want to pass on my personal thanks, on behalf of people in the Territory, for Dr Nelson's willingness to work with me and other Territorians on expanding the storytelling around the bombing of Darwin in February 1942 but also the war in north Australia more generally. Some of those stories of the most significant attack on the Australian mainland are well known, but others are yet to be told, and I look forward to working with the War Memorial staff to do that.
The motion recognises the need to incorporate the service of our 100,000 younger veterans, with the inclusion of expanded galleries to tell contemporary stories of service to our nation. This is important and something I'm very keen to support. We need to tell the modern story of conflict and peacekeeping. I can't emphasise enough the importance of the War Memorial to continue telling those stories to all Australians. I know that those opposite join me when I say that investments like this in the Australian War Memorial should never be confused or used as an excuse to underinvest in other areas of support for veterans at both the state and federal levels. The War Memorial plays an important role telling stories about the service of Australians to our nation. It is incredibly important. But the veteran suicide statistics last week were a stern reminder that more work needs to be done in the veterans health space. I just reaffirm my pledge to work with the government on making sure that we tell stories and support our veterans in every way we can.
Mrs WICKS (Robertson) (11:38): I rise to support the member for Boothby's motion in recognition of the longstanding service of the Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson AO as he retires from his role as the Director of the Australian War Memorial at the end of this year. Brendan has been a tireless contributor to Australian life, and I'd really like to take this time to thank him for his service to his country, from when he began as the national President of the Australian Medical Association to his time in federal parliament, through to his work in recognising those men and women who have served our nation on the battlefields.
Brendan began his service to the Australian public as the President of the AMA, where he was elected unopposed after a decade as a medical practitioner in Hobart. During his time with the AMA, Dr Nelson led the charge in making Aboriginal health and immunisation a mainstream health issue in Australia, and it was through his various trips to remote Aboriginal communities that he was able to show the nation the inequality within Australia's healthcare system at the time, and this is something that the Commonwealth continually seeks to improve.
After three years in the role, Brendan was preselected as the Liberal candidate for Bradfield, where he served from 1996 to 2009. He first served as a cabinet minister in the Howard government, as the Minister for Education, Science and Training, where he was able to highlight the importance of a stronger higher education and VET system. He also served the parliament as the Minister for Defence, between 2006 and 2007, and as the Leader of the Opposition from 2007 to 2008. However, it's Brendan's leadership in Australia's Defence landscape and his advocacy for greater recognition of returned service men and women that he will, arguably, be remembered for the most.
Pursuing his interest in military history, Brendan was appointed Director of the Australian War Memorial in December 2012. During his time as director he oversaw the centenary of the First World War and implemented his vision to acknowledge the Anzacs who have served our nation and continue to serve on the battlefields across the globe. One of the lasting traditions that Brendan introduced early in his time as director was the Last Post Ceremony held at the memorial 364 days a year at 4.55 pm. Each ceremony recognises one of more than 102,700 names on the Roll of Honour each afternoon, meaning it will take almost 300 years to tell each individual story. Visitors to the memorial, including school groups, veterans and their families, are invited to lay a wreath and floral tributes at the Pool of Reflection, to mark their respects to those who have died while serving our nation.
As mentioned earlier, the memorial commemorated the centenary of the First World War. It was during this time that Brendan's vision for recognising the service of the past and current Australian Defence Force personnel was carefully implemented. Some of these projects include A camera on Gallipoli, a digital exhibition of the private collection of Charles Ryan during the Gallipoli campaign; the role of honour name projections on the exterior of the memorial building, for the duration of the centenary commemorative period; and the Commemorative Crosses project, which engaged Australian schoolchildren by allowing them to write messages of hope and thanks to our service men and women on 2,000 crosses that were placed on the graves of Australians who fought on the Western Front.
Also during Brendan's period as director was the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, where he helped lead the Australian recognition of the 60,000 Australians who served during the Vietnam War. His most recent achievement was securing an almost $500 million investment to redevelop and expand the memorial, which will mean future generations will have the opportunity to pay their respects to those who have fallen and allow all Australians who have served in our Defence Force the recognition they deserve.
I'd like to thank Brendan for his service to the Australian community, especially to those serving, past and present, in the Australian Defence Force. Former service men and women, including in my electorate of Robertson, are indebted to you for the role you have played in recognising the military service they have given to Australia.
On a personal note, I'd really like to thank Brendan for his support and mentorship, when I joined the Liberal Party as a Young Liberal—many years ago—for his advice, for his friendship and for his continual encouragement, and to thank him for being somebody who was known as a person of integrity and a person of authenticity. What you saw was what you got with Brendan. So I wish him, his wife, Gillian, and his three children all the very best for their future endeavours.
Mr DICK (Oxley) (11:43): Like many of my colleagues before me, I rise today to place on record my thanks, admiration and appreciation for Dr Brendan Nelson and his service to our country as Director of the Australian War Memorial. During his time as director, the Australian War Memorial has only grown in stature and entrenched its place as the epicentre of recognising the brave men and women who have served our nation. He has been quite an extraordinary leader at the Australian War Memorial, but more on that a little later. I would also like to describe him as a visionary leader. I don't know Dr Nelson that well, but I do think it important that today the House recognise his service to the nation, in particular, in a bipartisan fashion, because that's exactly how he has behaved as director.
The War Memorial is a special place for Australians, young and old, who come from all parts of our country not only to pay their respects but also to learn about the history and stories of our nation during wartime. On the many occasions that I've met with students from my electorate who have visited Canberra for their school trips, many of them are quick to tell me about their time at the War Memorial. In fact, Woodcrest State College, from the electorate of Oxley, will be visiting tomorrow as part of their year 6 school trip to Canberra and will be laying a wreath at 2.30 pm at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We're fortunate to live in a country that is largely free from the horrors of war and the War Memorial offers students a glimpse into what our serving men and women experience during these times, particularly, as we've heard in today's discussion, during World War I and World War II, along with all the conflicts our nation has been involved with.
I come from a military family myself with my late father, Allan Baxter Dick, having served during World War II on board the HMAS Ararat serving as a signalman in New Guinea. It was only in his later years that my father began to feel comfortable in sharing some of his experiences during the war. As many veterans do, he kept the scars of the past to himself for most of his life, not wanting to relive the experience or place a burden on others. It is for reasons like this the War Memorial is so important. It's a place where not only Australians but also international visitors can see firsthand pieces of military equipment and uniforms and see for themselves the great sacrifices our service men and women have given to our country. Dr Nelson has played an integral part in this. He has brought his considerable capacity, enthusiasm and diligence to a job that requires diligence and a special touch. With this in mind, Labor has supported the Australian War Memorial redevelopment project, which will ensure the memorial remains a solemn place of remembrance for future generations, especially in its mission to recognise and deepen our understanding of more recent conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq, and peacekeeping missions to the Solomon Islands and East Timor.
I have been honoured to visit some of these regions as part of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. Whilst you can read about it in the papers, or see it on the television, there's nothing like being there in person, side by side with our troops, to appreciate the great sacrifice they give to our country.
The Australian War Memorial holds a very important place in the hearts of Australians and is an important marker of the sacrifice our armed forces have made to keep our country safe. Its director, Dr Nelson, leaves very big shoes to fill and a high benchmark with the honour, enthusiasm and commitment that he has given the role.
On behalf of the Oxley electorate, and the thousands of Australians who have been fortunate to visit the Australian War Memorial, I thank Dr Nelson for his service and wish he and his family all the very best for the future.
Mr BROADBENT (Monash) (11:47): I've had the pleasure of knowing Dr Brendan Nelson very well, not only as the fire-brand, earring-wearing national President of the AMA, where he caused discomfort to every government and every minister that was around this building at the time, but also as a member of the backbench, a minister in the Howard government and his ambassadorial appointments. I've had interaction with Brendan in all those places. Most memorable, Brendan was an education minister that was an on-the-road education minister. He was everywhere and he came to people's electorates. As minister, he actually looked at the problems that they had. I'm not having a go at any other minister but Brendan was a real on-the-ground, face-to-face education minister. He wanted to know the issues.
If he came across an issue in an electorate that he thought was worthy of consideration he'd act on it. His department didn't like it, the bureaucrats didn't like it but Brendan loved it. If he could do something really worthwhile, especially for those who may not have been part of the mainstream, he'd act. He had a real heart for those who perhaps couldn't hold their ground at the school level and they were in a specialist centre, and it wasn't really the federal government's obligation to go in and fix those problems. I remember the department told me one time, 'Just remember, this is a one-off. It will never happen again.' But Brendan was the sort of minister that made things happen in his portfolio on behalf of constituents and on behalf of members that drew a problem to his attention.
But probably most importantly, I was hugely impressed with Brendan as an ambassador. He was a highly respected ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the European Union. I met Brendan, again in that capacity, when my wife and I joined Brendan for the celebration of Anzac Day. Brendan had us working like beavers from well before sun-up, all the way to sundown. He was amazing. His work ethic was exactly the same in everything he took on: President of the AMA, then a member of parliament, then a minister. It didn't matter what ministry he took on; he was like that battery—is it the Eveready battery?
Mr Falinski: The Energizer battery!
Mr BROADBENT: He was like the Energizer battery in every portfolio. He was great to be around. He was highly respected in Belgium and he briefed us in such an amazing way. He had a real talent for knowing what the best thing was that our delegation could have done on a trip, and he organised it beautifully; he had everything down pat. I think that's why he was so very successful when he went to the Australian War Memorial. Here's a man who, straightaway, had a bigger vision than just administration. In every area—whether it was Aboriginal affairs when he was AMA president; parliamentary secretary to the minister; backbencher; Minister for Education, Science and Training; cabinet minister; Minister for Defence—he had a vision. He took that vision from his parliamentary career into the Australian War Memorial and made changes that are going to last for time immemorial in the memorial. His name will be remembered by many of us because of what he did at the War Memorial, because the Australian War Memorial is in perpetual motion. It is one of the most visited places in Australia. So it was perfect to throw Brendan into that role.
I'm going to run out of time in 55 seconds, which is really a shame, because there's so much to say about the Hon. Brendan Nelson. More importantly, it has been mentioned that he has won a major funding boost, because he realised the depth and the heart of the Australian people for conflicts that we have been involved in after Korea—the most recent conflicts—and how important it was to the serving members and the ex-members that they be part of the War Memorial. As Brendan saw it—and I hope I'm not verballing him here—the War Memorial was a living, breathing entity that needed to reflect what's happening in this time, in this day.
To Brendan, Gill, and the kids: all the best. I knew you'd go on to do great things and I think there are great things in front of you still to do.
Dr LEIGH (Fenner) (11:52): Two and a half thousand years ago Pericles delivered a funeral oration, reading in part:
… for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her … none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger … reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk …
Thucydides quotes Pericles:
So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue.
In honouring those who have fallen in service of Australia, we follow in the footsteps of Pericles. The manner in which that is done fundamentally shapes the character of nations.
When I was at school I was often struck by the way in which the acknowledgement of Australia's military activities sometimes descended into vague bromides about courage and sacrifice, and honour and valour—all important notions, but somehow a little too divorced from the real individuals who had borne great burdens on our behalf. An initiative of Brendan Nelson's that will stand the test of time is the Last Post ceremony initiated in April 2013. The first person to be so honoured was Private Robert Poate, a Canberran who had spent two-thirds of his short life as a student at Canberra Grammar School. He died in a green-on-blue attack in Afghanistan. He was remembered by his close friend Rugby Paralympian Cody Meakin:
He was cheeky, always had a cheeky grin. Nothing ever fazed him. … He was just a top bloke, one of the most genuine and loyal blokes I had the pleasure of hanging out with.
Cody Meakin says that, after Private Poate's death, he had his wheelchair inscribed with a special tribute to his fallen friend.
Private Poate was acknowledged too by Justin Garrick, the head of Canberra Grammar School, who recalls his mother, Ms Jenny Poate, had been the receptionist at the front office of the senior school for much of the time that Private Poate was at school.
It is by telling these stories of real individuals, of their valour and their sacrifice, that the War Memorial comes to life for so many Australians. There's a good reason why it's the most visited site for tourists coming to Canberra: it is because they look to the wall of remembrance and to the galleries to understand what Australians have done on our behalf and to understand the importance of always treating war as a last resort. The 102,000 Australians whose names are recorded on the memorial's wall of honour come to life through these Last Post ceremonies. My friend and college Shayne Neumann has said of his own role:
There is no greater service than the defence of our nation, and no greater honour as a Parliamentarian than to advocate for the welfare of our service and ex-service personnel.
He notes that Labor took to the last election a comprehensive plan for the funding of a national family engagements support strategy to better engage and support families who experience suicide, suicidal ideation, post-traumatic stress disorder and major issues pre and post military service.
I commend the member for bringing forward this important motion and pay tribute too to Brendan Nelson for his work heading the War Memorial. I make the important point that Brendan Nelson was appointed to this role by a Labor government as he had previously been appointed to his diplomatic role by a Labor government. They recognise the fact that no party has a monopoly on talent. Labor in government chose to make appointments of appropriately qualified coalition former parliamentarians. But, from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to diplomatic appointments, we haven't seen very much of that kind of bipartisanship under the Abbott, Turnbull or Morrison government. I think that's a pity for Australians. I think Australians miss out by an overly partisan approach to appointments such as that of Brendan Nelson, whom we honour today.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Vamvakinou ): The time allotted for this debate is expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Federal Independent Commission Against Corruption
Mr WILKIE (Clark) (11:57): by leave—I move:
(1)the House notes that:
(a)over a long time now the behaviour of both major parties has made it abundantly clear that Parliament cannot deal with matters of ministerial integrity, and Australia urgently needs a Federal Integrity Commission;
(b)Australia needs a strong and independent integrity commission that can launch its own inquiries, hold public hearings, make public findings and examine federal politicians and their staff;
(c)the scope of this integrity commission must extend beyond criminal offences to a range of corrupt and unethical behaviour including donation-fuelled favouritism, cronyism and the rorting of parliamentary entitlements;
(d)the Federal Government's proposed National Integrity Commission is half-baked and would be the weakest watchdog in the country with its investigations being held behind closed doors and the results kept secret; and
(e)the Australian people's trust in members of parliament is at an all-time low and we need to rebuild the culture of integrity in this Parliament because it is essential that the community has faith in the institutions of government;
(2)the House further notes that, in September this year, the Senate passed a bill to establish a federal anti-corruption commission; and
(3)the Members for Clark, Kennedy, Mayo and Melbourne therefore call on the major parties for bipartisan support for a strong, well-funded, wide ranging and independent national integrity commission without delay.
I thank the minister. It's self-evident that politics, politicians and, indeed, some of the political parties have become an absolute laughing-stock in this country. Last week in here, we should have been preoccupied in debating and looking at making progress on the big issues, like the drought, the bushfires, climate change and Westpac and the shocking revelations that they were complicit with money laundering on a grand scale. As I've said, we have become—and, regrettably, this place has become—a national laughing-stock. Last week, we should have been in here working collegiately, addressing the big issues like the drought that's gripping this country and the terrible bushfires that are burning and are set to get worse over summer. We should have been talking about climate change and its relationship with the drought and the bushfires. We should have been talking in detail about the Westpac Banking Corporation and the remarkable and shocking revelations about how that bank has been complicit in money laundering on a grand scale. But do you know what we were doing here most of the time last week? We were arguing, disrupting and doing everything to make this place look like a complete shambles.
I very rarely abstain from voting in this place, because my job is to come in here and make a decision, but it got to a point late last week where I just couldn't bring myself to come in here. I think I speak for some of my crossbench colleagues as well. There were just nonsensical party games costing the taxpayer an enormous amount of money in both the cost of keeping this place open for no good reason and the great cost to the taxpayer and the community because we were not addressing the issues that concern them.
I would be the first to say—and I'm sure I speak for my colleagues—that the allegations swirling around the member for Hume are important. They're very important. So too is the controversy surrounding the Prime Minister's phone call to the New South Wales Police commissioner very important. We do need to debate those issues and shine a light on them, but those matters became a reason for a much broader ranging set of behaviour last week: bullying, arguing, demonising and disrupting—so much so that, at one point, the member for New England was delivering a very worthwhile speech about the case of Julian Assange and was shut down. Even worse, the member for Herbert was talking about the critically important issue of veterans and veteran suicides and was shut down, and not for any good reason. It was not because he should have been shut down. I think the opposition at the time made clear what he was talking about. It was simply to disrupt this place. It's not okay.
Once again, it's been left to the crossbench to represent the community and to talk about the big issues, like this morning: the member for Kennedy spoke about misconduct in the banking sector and among the auditors and the need for reform; I spoke about the need to shut down live exports; the member for Melbourne spoke about climate change; and the member for Mayo spoke about donation reform. These are the issues the community wants us to be in here talking about—not shutting down the member for Herbert when he's talking about veterans and the rate of veteran suicide and not shutting down the member for New England when he's talking about the case of Julian Assange and the injustice that's been meted out to him.
The fact is that this parliament has become completely and utterly incapable of addressing issues of parliamentary integrity. Either it doesn't go there or it just turns it into a slanging match and a political pointscoring exercise. Just some names that come to mind in the nine years I've been in this place and the nine years the member for Melbourne's been in this place—and, heavens, I reckon if we had a list for the time during which the member Kennedy has been in two parliaments it'd be a very long list!—are Sam Dastyari, Susan Ley, Angus Taylor, Stuart Robert, Bronwyn Bishop, Peter Dutton, Christopher Pyne, Andrew Robb, Stephen Conroy and Bruce Billson. These were all very important episodes where there was a question of behaviour and integrity and in every case it just became a catalyst for a slanging match and pointscoring, instead of dealing objectively, carefully and fairly with the facts of the matter. I make the point again: this place has become incapable and is seen by the community as being incapable of dealing with matters of integrity.
The government would say that they're working on—they have indeed been working on it for some time—some sort of federal integrity commission. But it's not going to solve the problem, because the federal integrity commission that is being worked up by the government will be completely, utterly and, to any reasonable observer, undeniably ineffective. For example, the integrity commission that's being progressed by the government will be able to investigate only conduct that is 'capable of constituting a nominated range of specific criminal offences', to quote the government. In other words, it will be set up to fail. It will be set up by design to not be able to investigate what we'll call corruption that isn't a very specific criminal offence.
Another concern: the integrity commission that the government is working up will not be able to hold public hearings, even though it is essential that the integrity commission be given the ability to hold public hearings when it is carefully judged to be in the public interest to do so. In other words, it's able to look at only some very specific acts of misconduct that might be criminal, and it can do it only behind closed doors. So we won't even see what they're up to and what they're doing. Thirdly, referrals to the integrity commission that the government's working on can be made only by certain agencies—not by members of the public, not by whistleblowers and not even on the integrity commission's own initiative. This is a breathtaking shortfall in the integrity commission that the government has on the table again. And I'll make that point again: if we're to believe the government, we're to believe that it is okay for the integrity commission not to listen to complaints from members of the public and not to listen to whistleblowers, who increasingly in this country are the only people who are actually publicising and bringing to everyone's attention misconduct.
Finally, the model proposed by the government is prevented from making findings of 'corruption, criminal conduct or misconduct at large', and the results of the integrity commission's investigations cannot be made public. It's a sham—a complete and utter sham. No wonder the community has had a gutful of politics, politicians and some political parties. It's to the great credit of our country that it runs so well despite us, despite the way this parliament works, despite the way politicians claim to represent them—because they don't. The fact is that this place has become unable to deal with issues of integrity, and the integrity commission that the government has on the table will be completely and utterly ineffective and will do nothing to restore the public's confidence in this place. And remember: it's not just confidence that we might deal with stuff; it's that we're seen to deal with stuff. What did members of the public make of last week? No wonder they have the view of us that they do.
I implore the government and the opposition to support the motion before the House today. It would go one small way towards restoring public confidence in this place. Of course, the alternative—if this motion is not supported by the government and not supported by the opposition—will just confirm in the minds of so many members of the public that we in here don't care about questions of integrity; that we don't care about dealing with questions of integrity; and that we're all in here just as part of a slanging match, which has everything to do, apparently, with political self-interest and nothing to do with the public interest. I commend the motion to the House.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Vamvakinou ): Is the motion seconded?
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (12:10): I second the motion. I was one of the two people that made the decision to call on the Fitzgerald inquiry in Queensland. I'm very proud to say that, after the most searching inquiry, there was not one single conviction against a member of the government I was associated with, contrary to the public belief that we were all corrupt. There were four people sent to jail for misuse of their parliamentary allowances—and everyone in this place take note, because the leading case, Brian Austin, went to jail because he used his government car to visit his kids on the weekend, and for that he served two years in a steel cage. There are grave downsides to these things, and the person at the heart of the police corruption in Queensland—from a group of people that had been responsible for 53 murders—got clean away. That is one form of corruption.
The form of corruption that is worrying me greatly has to do with the major part of the landmass of Australia that is available for use, noting that 52 per cent of it is desert, four per cent is national parks and 22 per cent is First Australians' land—but they're not allowed to use it, so forget about that. Of the land left, there's no doubt that foreigners are majority landholders in Australia. What sort of parliament allows that to happen? It's worse than allowing that to happen—both sides of this House have promoted what they call foreign investment. It's not foreign investment; it's a traitorous sell-out of your nation. They own almost all the milk processing in Australia, they own almost all of the beef processing in Australia and they own almost all of the sugar processing in Australia. Every single one of those things was Australian owned. The five major mining companies—two of them being amongst the top four mining companies in the world, BHP being the biggest company in the world—were all sold off with the agreement of both parties in this place.
When you've been around politics for as long as I have, you know that there is a stench out there, and if you follow a stench you'll find something dead or something dying. So we know there's a stench out there, because no government could have done this. If you want to stop it, then you'd better start finding out whose palms are being greased here. We both know that there are a hundred ways of circumventing the rules about donations. We're pretty innocent in our party, because we don't get any; therein lies our innocence. In this place, in the party that I belonged to when I came here, after the most searching inquiry, there was not one single conviction for corruption in the much-maligned Queensland Bjelke-Petersen government, contrary to public belief.
Having said that, Andrew Robb, once a senior minister in this place, sold the Darwin Port, which staggered, shocked and sickened every decent patriotic Australian. The major outlet of this country was sold to China and within eight months—I think it was—it was announced that he was on $880,000 a year in some role or other, being paid by the port of Darwin. If that is not corruption then I would like you to tell me what constitutes corruption—to sell off the major port coming into this country to a foreign corporation and then be on the payroll a few months later!
Ethanol was knocked back in this place. Australia remains the only country on earth that hasn't got ethanol. To quote Morris Iemma, 'I'm not going another day with a thousand people dying in Sydney that don't have to die.' He seems to be the only honest man in the parliaments of Australia, because no-one else has been too worried about the health issues. But every other country is worried about them. China is worried about them. America is worried about them. Europe is worried about them. They've all passed legislation. The only parliament in the world that hasn't passed the legislation is sitting right here. Was that corrupt? All I can say is that John Anderson, the first minister to make the decision, took off and was working for a mining-oil company the next year, according to newspapers. The next one was Mark Vaile. Mark left us after giving a $230 million donation to Saddam Hussein over wheat. Did Mark Vaile go to jail? No. Did he knock back ethanol? Yes. Where was he afterwards? Heading up two oil-gas mineral companies. Martin Ferguson knocked back ethanol. Where was Martin Ferguson the next year? Involved in the board of three mining and oil companies. The next one is Macfarlane. Where is he now? Heading up the oil, gas and minerals council of Queensland and on the board of Woodside-Burmah. If these things are not corruption then tell me what they are.
When I was a cabinet minister in Queensland, there would have been as much chance of getting away with something like that as there would have been of flying to the moon, but in this place you can get away with anything, anything at all. If you were running stakes on which was the most corrupt country on earth, you would start with ethanol. Let me go on with the National Party. Warren Truss was the next leader. He gave $1 million to his own electorate in the Dairy RAP, or Regional Assistance Program. I'm pretty certain I had more dairy cattle in my electorate than he had in his. We got virtually nothing out of it; nor did anyone else in Australia. With me threatening to take legal action, the Dairy RAP was immediately fixed up, but there is no doubt that, when you use public funds for your own private interest or political purposes, then that is misappropriation, by definition. The parliament appropriated that money, through Mr Anderson, to spend to help all Australia, and yet, when the figures came out, I think three-quarters of the funds had gone to two targeted electorates for the National Party—misappropriation.
In Queensland we have a situation where the Premier was found by senior counsel to have threatened a member of parliament, which of course is a breach of the criminal law. It went to the Criminal Justice Commission, which was called the 'criminal justification commission' by everyone who had anything to do with it. She was found to be guilty. She was found to have had a breach of the law. They referred it—heaven only knows why—not to the Attorney-General but to a parliamentary committee, the majority of which was Labor Party. They found that what she did was not good and that there was a breach but that no action should be taken against her. So much for the Premier! The Deputy Premier's family buys real estate at the end of a $7,000 million tunnel, which she pulls out of the air on the eve of an election. No-one had heard anything about it ever, and then we find out that her family own real estate where the tunnel exits. Of course, the value of that land has appreciated hugely, but nothing happens. When my honourable colleague, the member for Clark, says we need something, Truss's successor—this is the National Party—they get a perfect record, every single one of them. (Time expired)
Mr BUCHHOLZ (Wright—Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport) (12:20): I move:
That the motion be put.
The SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be put.
The House divided. [12:25]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
The SPEAKER (12:32): The question is that the motion moved by the member for Clark be agreed to.
The House divided. [12:32]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
BILLS
Education Legislation Amendment (2019 Measures No. 1) Bill 2019
Farm Household Support Amendment (Relief Measures) Bill (No. 1) 2019
Medical and Midwife Indemnity Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
National Health Amendment (Safety Net Thresholds) Bill 2019
Treasury Laws Amendment (International Tax Agreements) Bill 2019
Assent
Message from the Governor-General reported informing the House of assent to the bills.
COMMITTEES
Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade
Membership
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ) (12:38): Mr Speaker has received a message from the Senate informing the House that Senator Molan has been appointed a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.
BILLS
Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Ms BURNEY (Barton) (12:39): I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 and move as an amendment to the bill:
That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"the House:
(1) declines to give the bill a second reading;
(2) notes that, in every Budget, this Government has tried to cut the pension or increase the pension age to 70;
(3) further notes that the cuts to Newstart in this bill will hurt redundant workers and push them towards poverty; and
(4) criticises the Government for its cruel cuts to pensions and social security".
Labor opposes this bill, just as we have opposed the previous iterations of these same old cuts. I also note that we have another bill with 'integrity' in its name before the parliament—funny that. It's becoming a bit of a joke, because, whenever the word pops up in a bill title, the Australian public can be sure that the contents of the bill will have not a shred of integrity. Certainly, these old cuts do not.
These old cuts, as I said, were first announced by the then Treasurer and now Prime Minister in the 2016-17 MYEFO and then again in the 2017-18 budget. There was even a so-called payment integrity bill in 2017 in the last parliament, which was the last vehicle for these cuts. It was a bill which the government never brought on for debate, but here we debating a bill which the government simply should not be putting forward. It is as if the government has absolutely no legislative agenda at all, and bringing this back for the third time demonstrates that.
The bill contains more cuts to vulnerable Australians. Debating a bill which the government simply should not be putting forward is what this chamber is doing at this point. There will be more cuts to middle-aged and older Australian workers, more cuts to Newstart, more cuts to the pension and more cuts to Australians doing it tough. It has been barely six months since the election, and this tired old government is turning to its tired old tricks—more cuts.
The bill will rip over $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners. It will, in particular, impact older Australians who want to visit families overseas or need to spend extended time caring for relatives or grandchildren. It will disproportionately impact on migrant pensioners who have worked hard, paid their taxes, done the right thing and contributed so much to Australian communities.
Portability of the pension is a cornerstone of the Australian social security system. It is something that is very much part of the social security system in Australia that we should all be proud of. Migrant pensioners who have worked hard in Australia and who have built a life and a family here should be able to get the pension. Making people wait longer to get the pension will only force some older Australians to go without it and struggle or live in poverty. I remind the government that cuts to pensions not only impact on pensioners themselves; these cuts are felt by the families too—the sons, daughters and grandchildren.
Unfortunately, cuts to pensions are nothing new for this government. But pensioners will not be fooled. Cutting the pension is in the Liberals' very being. In every single budget as the Treasurer, the current Prime Minister tried to cut the pension and tried to raise the pension age to 70. In 2014—way back then—the Liberals said that there would be no cuts to pensions. Then, in the 2014 budget, they tried to cut pensioner indexation—a cut that would have meant pensioners would be forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. This unfair cut would have ripped $23 billion from the pockets of every single pensioner in Australia.
In the 2014 budget the government cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions—support designed to help pensioners with the costs of living. In 2014, they axed the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. In 2014, the Liberals tried to reset deeming rate thresholds, a cut that would have seen 500,000 part pensioners made worse off.
In the 2015 budget the Liberals did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. In the 2016 budget they tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks.
In the 2016 budget they also tried to cut the pension to over 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. The government's own figures show this would have left over 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or allowance worse off. Over 10 years, in excess of 1.5 million pensioners would have been worse off. On top of this, they spent five years trying to increase the pension age to 70.
More recently, we saw the government finally adjust the deeming rates after five consecutive rate cuts. The government uses deeming rates to calculate the level of a person's pension, assuming a rate of income from savings whether or not pensioners actually earn those returns. However, since March 2015, the Reserve Bank has cut the cash rate to a record low of one per cent. For years, Labor campaigned for the government to adjust the deeming rates to more accurately reflect the rates of return that pensioners can reasonably expect to receive on secured investments. And, for years, the Liberals and Nationals had to be dragged kicking and screaming about pensioner groups and Labor. Only recently the Prime Minister and his Liberal-National government adjusted the rate to three per cent. Seniors groups know that this is simply too little too late.
The government has short-changed pensioners. It has propped up its budget on the back of hardworking pensioners. Then, of course, the Prime Minister shamelessly went on to spruik this deeming rate adjustment as an $800 pensioner bonus. This, of course, was until he was caught out by his own figures. Less than one per cent of pensioners will receive anywhere near this amount. In fact, the figures actually show that nearly half of pensioner couples will receive less than $130 per year. That's just 36c a day. After waiting more than four years for the Prime Minister to do something about the deeming rates, this latest revelation simply adds insult to injury.
Pensioners have every right to feel concerned and to feel conned, and pensioners won't forget the Morrison government is continuing to profiteer by gouging pensioners with unreasonably high pension loan interest rates. The Pension Loans Scheme allows pensioners to top up their pension by borrowing money against the value of their property and then repaying the loan at the time of the administration of their estate. The scheme currently charges pensioners an interest rate of 5.25 per cent. Since the government took office, the cash rate has fallen from 2.5 per cent to an all-time low of 0.75 per cent. But the government hasn't changed the pensioner loan interest rate at all. It is up to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to justify how they continue to gouge pensioners by charging these unreasonably high pension loan interest rates. The Morrison government has displayed rank hypocrisy, accusing banks of profiteering by not passing on the cash rate but doing the same to pensioners.
Labor has fought each of these cuts to the pension tooth and nail, and Labor will oppose the Liberals' and Nationals' cruel cuts to the pension in this bill. To top it all off, we know this government has a fundamentally wrong idea about the pension and social security in general. The Minister for Social Services has described the pension as 'generous' and has said that giving people more money would do absolutely nothing and:
Probably all it would do is give drug dealers more money and give pubs more money.
Can I be explicit about this particular measure in relation to the age pension. It is particularly going to hit very hard people who migrated to Australia in the post-war period who take time out whilst they can to visit relatives overseas. It's going to particularly affect the Greek community, the Macedonian community, the Italian community and people who came out here to help build the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
Of course it's not limited to those groups, as the member for Cowan has said. But it will particularly affect people who, whilst they can, want to go back and visit their relatives, go back and meet their grandchildren, go back and see their children, in many cases. It will mean that they can only go for six weeks, and after six weeks this bill will bring in the taking away of the pensioner supplement. It is particularly going to affect communities that have come to Australia, have been proud Australians, have committed themselves to this country, have paid their taxes and have worked hard, and they should not be penalised in this way. It is also going to be a change for people who have become citizens of this country in that they will have to now wait 15 years instead of 10 years for the age pension. That is the insidious nature of this particular piece of legislation.
This bill is also about cuts to Newstart. This bill will force Australians who are trying, desperately, to re-enter the workforce to eat into their savings before they can access income support. Middle-aged men in their 50s and 60s who have recently been made redundant, who have worked hard all their lives, paid their taxes and done the right thing, will be forced into poverty before they can access support. Currently, people claiming Newstart, sickness allowance, youth allowance and Austudy must wait for up to 13 weeks to access the payment if they have liquid assets—for example, savings or a redundancy payout. It's over $5,500 for a single person with no dependants and $11,000 for someone with a partner or dependants. The existing waiting period at these levels is one week and increases to a maximum of 13 weeks for liquid assets of $11,500 for singles or $23,000 for those with dependants.
The government wants to extend the maximum liquid assets waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks—that's half a year—for claimants with liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles or $36,000 for couples and people with dependants. Let us be clear what this means. There is an expectation that people who have been made redundant, who are at the age of 45, 50 or 55, will find it very difficult to gain employment quickly. The statistics tell us that, absolutely, people in those age groups are taking from two to three years to find other work. And they all want to work, let me assure you.
It means that if there is an emergency in the family—like sickness, like the car needing replacement, like removal, relocating or retraining—the expectation is that there will be no support from the government. The support will come in the form of you having to use all your assets and that redundancy payment before you can even qualify for a social security payment. How is that fair? How is that right for people who have worked all their lives in an industry that's often closed—for example, the car industry in South Australia—through no fault of their own? The industry has closed or relocated. People in those positions, with a modest redundancy payment, will not be able to gain access to social security for half a year. I don't understand how people who have worked their whole lives, who have contributed their entire lives to this country and the tax system, should be forced into that terrible situation. The psychological pain that some of these people will be going through is absolutely enormous.
A liquid asset is not just cash in the bank. Liquid assets include, according to the department:
some payments made or due to be made by a person's last employer,
including redundancies yet to be made—
amounts deposited or lent to banks or other financial institutions whether or not the amount can be withdrawn or repaid immediately …
So there may be no assets at all sitting in a bank account—
assets given to a son or daughter in some circumstances,
loans to other people,
… … …
compensation payments.
They're the payments where the expectation is that you have to run those payments down before you're eligible for support from the government. This means that applicants will need to spend down more of their assets before becoming eligible to receive a payment. This is plain mean-spirited. There is no logic. There is no reasonable explanation of these changes other than money gouging. There is no rationale for increasing the liquid assets waiting period for people who lose their job or are made redundant.
This is nothing but a cash grab, taking money out of the pockets of workers at the very time when their savings matter the most. The current waiting period of up to 13 weeks is long enough. While some people will find another job in a 13-week period, it is important that those who do not are not forced to run down their savings to the point where they become vulnerable to losing their home or are unable to meet unexpected expenses. We know that for middle-aged and older Australians re-entering the workforce can be particularly difficult. They face structural barriers to finding a job, as well as workplace age discrimination. We know that middle-aged and older Australians who have recently been made redundant from industries that they have spent their whole life working in require just a bit more time to retrain to upskill.
I saw on television how things are going in South Australia in relation to the car industry. On the ABC, they were speaking to older workers who find themselves in very difficult circumstances. I draw people's attention to that show. Many of these people may need to spend time on further education. The number of Australians over the age of 55 on Newstart has skyrocketed by 45 per cent under the Liberals and Nationals. The over 55s represent the largest cohort, or over a quarter, of Newstart recipients. This is critically important to understand. I note that the member for Goldstein is leaving. It's a hard fact to understand that the profile—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr S Georganas ): The member for Goldstein, on a point of order?
Mr Tim Wilson: The member should refer to members by their title. I'm the member for 'Goldstein'.
Ms BURNEY: It's spelt the same way. We know that middle-age and older Australians who have recently been made redundant from industries they have spent their whole lives working in require just a bit more time to retrain to upskill. They may even need to spend more time, as I said, on further education.
As I mentioned, the number of Australians over the age of 55 on Newstart has skyrocketed, and the number of people over the age of 55 are now the largest cohort, over a quarter, of Newstart recipients. A waiting period that is too long or a liquid assets threshold that is too high is actually counterproductive. It doesn't help people get back on their feet; it pushes people towards desperation. For people who lose their jobs or are made redundant, having a financial buffer is incredibly important. It means being able to support yourself while retraining, being able to keep the car on the road so that you can look for work and being able to keep paying the rent or mortgage. If a person's circumstances spiral because they run out of savings, if they lose their home or their car, if their whitegoods or fridge break down or if a family member gets sick, this just makes it harder to get back into employment.
Australians are already doing it tough as it is. The economy is weak and getting weaker. And this government has no plan to turn things around. Many Australians can't remember the last time they received a pay rise. Wages are stagnant, yet the cost of living is leaving Australians with less. It is more difficult to find a secure job with decent pay and adequate hours. Over 1.1 million Australians remain underemployed. Over 130,000 Newstart recipients, or more than one in five, actually have a job; they just don't earn enough or receive enough hours to escape the payment. The Anglicare Jobs availability snapshot 2019 shows that there are not enough jobs for the number of jobseekers, with employers receiving an average of 19 applications per vacancy advertised. We are reminded that three million, or one in eight, Australians live in poverty. One in six, or three-quarters of a million, children live in poverty. These are people in the electorates that we all represent. They are not just statistics; they are real people.
At a time when Australians are doing it really tough, when the economy is weak and getting weaker, these cuts to the pension and cuts to Newstart are not only cruel and vindictive but also reckless. Not only does the Prime Minister not have a plan for the economy, for jobs, to lift vulnerable Australians out of poverty; he is cutting support to Australians who need it the most. These cuts to the pension and to Newstart will not only be felt by older Australians and Australians doing it tough but mean they have less to spend on the basics and the essentials and less to spend at local businesses, which means local businesses will have less to spend on pay rises or on hiring more staff. Those on Newstart and the pension, but especially those on Newstart, are more likely to spend their payment. The government should be growing the economy and lifting people out of poverty, not taking money out of the pockets of pensioners and workers who have been made redundant through no fault of their own.
Under this third-term government, Australia has the slowest growth in a decade, stagnant wages, productivity in decline, record household debt, high underemployment and declining living standards. The government needs a plan to turn the economy around, not more empty political tactics. There is nothing in this bill that will create jobs or grow the economy. It is vindictive and reckless. All it will do is rip money from the pockets of pensioners and those looking for work. As I have said, just look at the litany of very good dissenting reports from when Australian Labor Party senators looked at the 2017 version of this bill. We already said:
The committee heard evidence from a wide variety of community organisations that the changes in the Bill are unfair, and would result in groups of Australians facing significant financial pressures.
Catholic Social Services Australia said that this Bill places 'the burden of budget repair on those who can least afford it, while providing tax cuts to the wealthy and businesses, [which] is wrong morally and economically.'
The Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia said:
… the extension of the residency requirements for qualification for DSP and age pension and the removal of the pension supplement after six weeks of travel overseas disproportionately impact culturally and linguistically diverse communities and are therefore discriminatory in nature—
making a very salient point—
… older migrant Australians will become more reliant upon their families to support them ... but as with any family, young people now in Australia … have to move often in order to secure employment, and they're not often in a position to take care of their older relatives, either practically or financially.
The National Social Security Rights Network said:
The Australian system is based on residence and need. It has a very strong emphasis on residence already. Most of the older migrants who have the misfortune to need to access our system within the first 10 years in Australia are covered by an assurance from their families. So there is no cost to the taxpayer because the money is recovered from the family. So it's hard to see the case for strengthening the requirements. It's particularly hard to see the need or benefit that comes from introducing income support history into the test. It's a departure from a very fundamental principle.
In relation to the assets waiting period, the Australian Council of Social Services told the committee that:
... the latest HILDA data shows that a full 25 per cent of people who are unemployed are already being deprived of two or more essential items. In addition, the evidence shows that about 12 per cent of people at the moment could not raise $500 in the event of an emergency.
Catholic Social Services of Australia also made the point—the very important point—that:
Even with savings of $36,000 ... for a person with dependants it would not take long to expend these savings. For example, using the Household Expenditure Measure, a person with two dependants in the ACT, renting and having a basic lifestyle, would need a minimum of $21,792 over a six-month period. This assumes there are no contingencies such as medical bills—
and the sorts of things Labor is very much concerned about. They went on to say:
This leaves this household financially vulnerably with a small buffer to manage contingencies whilst on income support.
I'll finish up my contribution by once again reiterating that Labor moves the amendments circulated in my name that go to declining to give the bill a second reading; notes that this is a recurring theme from the government; notes that cuts to Newstart in this bill will hurt redundant workers and push them towards poverty; and, finally, criticises the government for its cruel cuts to pensions and social security. As I said, Labor opposes this bill.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is the amendment seconded?
Mr Clare: The amendment is seconded, and I reserve my right to speak.
Dr MARTIN (Reid) (13:07): I rise to speak about the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019. This government is committed to ensuring that our welfare system is delivering support to Australians who need it most and that payments are fair and sustainable for Australians for many, many years to come. This bill will reintroduce three measures that are just residency requirements for a number of payments, including the age pension and disability support pension, as well as adjustments to the liquid assets waiting period on a number of welfare payments.
In adjusting the residency requirements for migrants at retirement age, the government is bringing this requirement closer into line with other OECD nations and meeting community expectations that migrants could not expect immediate financial support from the Australian taxpayer, particularly if they arrive close to retirement age. Currently, to receive the age pension or disability support pension, an individual must be able to demonstrate 10 years of residency, of which five must be continuous. This new measure will require that applicants for these payments demonstrate at least five years of residency to have taken place during their working life or at least five years of their residency not receiving income supports. If an applicant cannot demonstrate this requirement, they will need to have 15 years of continuous residency. This will impact upon less than one per cent of people claiming the aged pension or disability support pension. I note exemptions are in place for a number of groups, including humanitarian arrivals and individuals who are incapacitated after their arrival in Australia.
This bill will also suspend payment of the pension supplement for pensioners who spend an extended period of time overseas. The pension supplement aims to minimise the impact of GST on pensioners across the cost of telephone bills, utilities and pharmaceuticals. Currently this payment is reduced after a six-week absence. This measure will result in payment of the pension supplement being suspended entirely after six weeks. This is because pensioners who spend extended periods of time overseas are unlikely to be impacted by the cost of GST during their absence. This is a minor adjustment to payments—currently $23.80 per fortnight for singles and $39.20 per fortnight combined for couples. Importantly, this will not impact the base rate of pensions being paid. Affected welfare recipients will still receive their core income support payment.
The final component of this bill is extending the waiting period for applicants where liquid assets are reported during the application period. This will impact applicants for a number of payments, including youth allowance, Austudy and Newstart allowance. While we want to support Australians who are doing it tough, it is fair to expect an individual to support themselves for a period of time after the loss of their job or income if they have the financial resources to do so. The vast majority of applicants for income support payments do not have sufficient liquid assets to support themselves for an extended period and so do not face any waiting period following their application. Under this measure, the current liquid assets waiting period will be extended from 13 weeks to 26 weeks. A significant proportion of claimants who serve the current maximum liquid assets waiting period of 13 weeks have liquid assets that far exceed the point at which the maximum liquid assets waiting period applies, with 18.3 per cent of people serving the maximum 13-week liquid asset waiting period having liquid asset reserves above $100,000. Different thresholds for the waiting period apply, depending upon the applicant's circumstances, but, as an example, it is currently $5,500 before you serve any liquid asset waiting period, and that's for a single person with no dependent children.
It is estimated that these measures will return over $290 million to the budget bottom line. They are sensible adjustments to the welfare system. We on this side of the House understand our duty to the Australian taxpayers to ensure that their taxes are spent responsibly and fairly and that welfare is available to those who need it most. I strongly support these measures as a means of safeguarding our welfare system.
Ms PAYNE (Canberra) (13:12): The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 is another example of misuse of the word 'integrity' by this government. We were very pleased to see last week the defeat of the 'ensuring integrity' bill in the other place, which was nothing but a disgraceful attack on working people and the unions that represent them. As I said, we were very pleased to see that bill defeated, and it's really a credit to the unions and the working people who campaigned against that, and that's a win for them.
Don't even get me started on the Prime Minister's current trouble with his Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction. But it's clear that this is a government that does not understand the meaning of 'integrity'. In fact, they use that word, such as in this case, to pretend that they are addressing problems that are not actually there. And we can be sure when we see the word 'integrity' in the name of one of their bills that it's just a cover for another of their ideological crusades. Calling this bill the 'payment integrity' bill implies that it is somehow addressing an issue with the payment system, that somehow people are rorting their entitlement to payments, that the system is out of control and that people are somehow getting something they don't deserve, something they shouldn't be entitled to. Again, it is just the ideology of those in the government. They are looking to make cuts to the most-vulnerable in our society by making out that they are not entitled to a social safety net, to a social security system that has been a huge part of ensuring that our country has been relatively egalitarian.
This bill does three things. First of all, it increases the residency requirements for pensioners from 10 to 15 years. So, they want people to wait 15 years to access the age or disability pension if they've been born overseas. The bill wants to stop the payment of the age pension supplement to pensioners if they're overseas for more than six weeks, perhaps going to meet their grandchildren or perhaps going to see family one last time while they're still well enough to do so. It also extends the liquid assets waiting period that applies to Newstart, youth allowance and other allowances. This is making sure that people are in dire poverty before they even begin to receive these inadequate payments. Labor opposed this when it was introduced in the last parliament, and we're proudly opposing it again. This is the third time this bill has been brought back, because this is a government that has no agenda other than demonising unions and people who receive social security. It is just dredging up the worst parts of the 2014 budget.
First of all I want to talk about pensioners, because the government always pretend to be the friend of pensioners, but the fact is that they have tried to cut the pension and increase the pension age to 70 in every budget, including in three budgets where the current Prime Minister had the job of Treasurer. They were happy to run scare campaigns in the last election to make pensioners believe that our policies on franking credits would affect them, when they did not. They were happy to perpetuate untruths about policies that they knew were untrue.
Mr Tim Wilson interjecting—
Ms PAYNE: I point towards interjections from the member for Goldstein when our shadow minister, the member for Barton, was speaking before, just in case the Hansard didn't pick them up. When she was speaking about pensioners travelling overseas to meet their grandchildren for the first time, he said, 'So they can pass the buck to their grandchildren, because they have no sense of responsibility,' or perhaps it was 'we have no sense of responsibility'. Either way, that is what these people are about. They believe that people who have worked their entire lives and paid their taxes shouldn't be entitled to a meagre pension in their retirement and to go and meet their families, to care for their loved ones, overseas. I don't know if he would have the guts to say that in his electorate, but that's what he says under his breath in this place. I think everyone needs to know what is at the heart of this government.
It is Labor that actually delivered the greatest increase to the pension in its history, under the Gillard government, and Labor is proud to always stand up for pensioners. I want to run through some of the cuts that this government have made or tried to make to the pension in the six years they've been in power. In the 2014 budget they tried to cut pension indexation, a cut that would have meant that pensioners would be forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years, a cut that would have ripped $23 billion from the pockets of Australian pensioners and affected every single one of them. They cut $1 billion from pension concessions, support designed to help pensioners with the cost of living. They axed the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. They tried to reset deeming rates thresholds, a cut that would have seen 500,000 part-pensioners made worse off. In 2015 they did a deal with the Greens party to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year, by changing the pension assets test. In the 2016 budget they tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners, as part of a plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks. They also tried to cut the pension for over 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. Their own figures show that this would have left over 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or allowance worse off. On top of this, they have spent five years trying to increase the pension age to 70.
Labor is proud to fight these cuts, and we will continue to do so. This bill will rip $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners. It will do this first by making people who were not born here wait longer to receive a pension. Currently people who were not born in Australia have to wait 10 years to receive an age or disability pension. This bill wants to extend that to 15 years. It adds a new self-sufficiency test, which will mean that people can still wait only 10 years if they have not received any income support payments such as Newstart. So we have another example of this government demonising people who are receiving payments that are designed to keep people out of poverty and keep our economy going, because they don't believe that people should receive these things. This change has no policy rationale except to make a saving from recently arrived migrants of pension age. And, of course, it disproportionately affects people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia have called this out and called on the parliament to vote against these changes.
The second schedule will cease the pension supplement after six weeks overseas. The pension supplement is an additional payment of around $620 a year for a single pensioner and just over $1,000 for couple pensioners, and this is paid fortnightly as part of their pension. Currently, when pensioners are overseas for more than six weeks, it is reduced, but this bill seeks to remove it entirely. There are no grandfathering arrangements, so people who are overseas would have it cut immediately. These are pensioners who are most likely still maintaining their homes here in Australia, paying their rents and paying their utilities, and, as the member for Barton was saying, they're going overseas to meet their grandchildren and going to see their own children and their families. They have worked their whole lives, saving up and planning to make perhaps the trip of a lifetime, something that many of us take for granted. People should be able to do that with the security that they will be getting the same income. It is a meagre pension as it is and they have expenses that they need to meet. This is another bill that will disproportionately impact culturally and linguistically diverse communities as well.
The third schedule of this bill will increase the liquid assets waiting period to six months, doubling the time that people need to wait before they can access payments like Newstart or youth allowance if they have a minor amount of savings in the bank. Currently, people claiming Newstart, sickness allowance, youth allowance or Austudy must wait up to 13 weeks to access payments if they have savings or a redundancy payout of over $5,500 if they are single; and, if they have a partner or dependants, it is $11,000. This measure would increase that to six months for people with liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles, or $36,000 for couples and people with dependants. This means that people are driven into poverty before they even begin to receive these payments—payments that everyone except this government agrees are too low.
The Department of Social Services estimates that around 13,800 claimants will be affected by this extension, and, of those, around 11,000 will have to wait the full six months. Everything we know about financial resilience says how important it is to have a buffer for when people face crises such as the car breaking down, or needing a new fridge or needing to pay a rental bond to keep a roof over your head. We're not talking about huge wealth here. Of course social security should be targeted, and of course that includes your wealth or your savings, but this drives people into poverty, which will only deepen when they have to survive on Newstart, when they have to try and survive on less than $40 a day. Why does this government want people to be destitute? Why isn't it using this system to avoid poverty and inequality in our society?
The majority of people impacted by these changes will be older Australians, because this is the current cohort who most commonly serve the liquid assets waiting period, and it will particularly impact people who have lost their jobs and received redundancy payouts. Catholic Social Services Australia provided the Senate committee, when it reviewed this bill in 2017, with some calculations to step through the impact of this. Even for a person with dependants and with savings of $36,000, it would not take very long to expend these savings. For example, using the household expenditure measure, a person with two dependants—perhaps a single parent—in the ACT, renting and having a basic lifestyle, would need a minimum of $21,792 to survive over a six-month period. This assumes there are no contingencies such as medical bills, costs for retraining or vehicle repairs and maintenance. After six months, over 60 per cent of these savings would have been spent on basic household expenditure. So you can see that it leaves very little for these people to survive on.
The thing about Newstart allowance is that it is designed to be a short-term allowance while people are between jobs, to support them to get another job. Even the Business Council of Australia acknowledges that this payment is now so low that it is actually preventing people from getting jobs, and the poverty that people are driven into by this inadequate allowance is worsened when they are on it for long periods of time.
Under this government, which refuses to do anything about our currently floundering economy, people are on Newstart for increasing amounts of time. Currently, people under 25 spend, on average, 45 weeks or just less than a year on Newstart, but by the age of 50 that has blown out to 188 weeks or almost four years that people are supposed to survive on $40 a day. You can see how having a small amount of money in the bank to cope with the things that come up in day-to-day life is very important to keep these people out of crisis—out of homelessness. These are real issues, and this government wants to make it even harder for these people.
Another issue is youth allowance. This payment will remove any incentive for young people to save up before they might have to move away to study in order to support themselves. Youth allowance is based on the Newstart rate. Recently, when our shadow minister the member for Barton visited Canberra, we talked with a group of students about how difficult it is for them to continue with their study when they have to work so much to meet the huge rents in Canberra and that we see in capital cities around the country. They talked about feeling excluded when they couldn't afford to go to events at the university or focus on their studies.
We have high dropout rates at the moment from TAFE and university, and the reason is the costs of living as a student. This is the greatest challenge to equal access to university, higher education, and TAFE in this country. Think about moving from a regional area, perhaps, to a capital city where you've got increasingly high rents. People can't do it on these payments. A survey released by the National Union of Students this week shows that 90 per cent of recipients are skipping meals and most have $14 a day left, after paying rent, for the rest of their expenses.
This bill is another example of how out of touch with these issues this government is. Don't they talk to people in their electorates about these challenges—or maybe just to people not receiving social security? It is wrong that in a wealthy country like ours we are not supporting those in our society with a basic social safety net. In fact, every day, this government is demonising them and wanting to make life harder for them. St Vincent de Paul have said of the measures that they are morally, socially and economically indefensible. I agree. Labor is proud to oppose this bill.
Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (13:27): We've heard, from the previous two speakers, the perfect rendition of a Labor mantra. There is no tax dollar earned by the hard work of Australians that they don't consider theirs for their own agenda. There is no respect for taxpayers, there is no respect for people who have worked hard to save and be independent, on their own two feet—only hip pockets to be raided for their own interests. It's no surprise that the member for Canberra got up and opposed this bill. After all, the whole basis of the Canberra economy is, literally, government: the raiding of taxpayers' hip pockets for the benefit of the few.
This is a fundamental issue at the heart of this legislation. Those members of the opposition simply do not understand the consequences of what they advocate for. They simply don't understand that hard work should be encouraged and respected and that Australians' hip pockets are not simply theirs for financial gain. We saw this at the election. They stand here talking about the consequences of modest shifts in the welfare system to make it sustainable, while at the same time they went to the last election demanding $387 billion of taxes, including the $57 billion tax specifically on Australian retirees—specifically designed so that people would have lost one-third of their income on 1 July this year, had there been a change of government. Do you know what their response to the Australians was? It was nothing but contempt. To be fair, they said: 'Don't vote for us.' And I think they were right not to do so. But they called it a gift, their hard-earned money, their reward for effort, their tax refund raided by the Labor Party.
Labor had the temerity and the gumption to come into this place and lecture a government that wants to be prudent and responsible in spending money, that wants to make sure that we can have a pension system that's sustainable for the future, to have a pension system that is able to deliver for those who need it today and into the future. The objective of this bill is very straightforward. It is what we need to do to keep—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour where the member for Goldstein will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
Goss, Mr Wayne
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (13:30): On 2 December it is a very special day for the Labor Party. It is the date in 1972 that Gough ended 23 years of conservative rule but also the date in 1989 when Wayne Goss ended 32 years of National Party government in Queensland. Today is the 30th anniversary of that remarkable moment in time. 'Goss the boss' was inspirational and his Queensland Labor government was transformational. He campaigned as 'the only change for the better'. He delivered electoral reform, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the abolition of the police special branch, the lifting of the ban on street marches and the Queensland conservation act, and he stopped rainforest logging, put wet tropics on the World Heritage List, put the teaching of Asian languages in Queensland schools and modernised the Queensland state economy. These were the tangible things. Wayne Goss changed the way that we govern ourselves, but he also changed the way that we see ourselves. He represented my local community and he led our state. He made us proud to be Queenslanders after a long and bleak period of cronyism and corruption under the National Party. He was our Hawke. He was our Rann. He was our Dunstan. He dragged our state out of the darkness and into the light. We thank his family for it and we won't ever forget it.
EDMONDS, Mr Douglas Montgomerie (Monty)
Mr CHRISTENSEN (Dawson) (13:31): Today I pay tribute to one of Mackay's World War II veterans, Douglas Montgomerie Edmonds, better known as Monty, who died on 22 November aged 95 and whose funeral is being held in Mackay today. Born in 1924 Monty was about six months shy of enlistment age but he fudged some figures to sign up in November of 1942. He went from the family cane farm at Hampden outside of Mackay to the tropical rainforests of Port Moresby where he was one of the diggers who defended Australia from Japanese forces in the jungles of New Guinea. Monty's 2/12th Battalion was later posted to Borneo where he fought in the battle of Balikpapan.
In a book of memoirs entitled Too Young for War written many years later for family members, Monty gave an insight into the horrors he had faced. He told of prayers before battle, celebrating his 21st birthday with a tin of bully beef and biscuits and the joyous return home on the HMAS Implacable among 2,000 singing troops.
Monty was a regular at Anzac Day services. He was in fine form when I saw him last at the Kuttabul RSL service this year. Monty was a Mackay boy who became a man on the battlefields of New Guinea and Borneo. He fought bravely and with honour. On behalf of all the people of Dawson, and I would assume all of the people in this chamber, I thank him and his family for his service. Monty Edmonds, we salute you.
Economy
Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (13:33): Soaring profits but weakness in pretty much everything else, that is how the Deloitte economics report sums up the Australian economy and that's what my community is feeling. Wages growth is stagnant while cost of living skyrockets. Living standards are flatlining while business profits soar. Deloitte, like others, spells it out pretty clearly; the economic woes are home grown. Their report underlines what Australian workers already know, what people in my community already know, and that is that they just can't get ahead no matter how hard they work.
This is what happens when an ad man with no plan is sitting in the decision-making chair. The boy who grew up in Bronte doesn't get that his economic mismanagement is hurting the hospitality worker from Hoppers Crossing. The economy isn't working in the interests of those who need it. The Prime Minister's 'have a go, get a go' slogan is just that, a slogan. It is not an economic plan. Whenever questioned on his mismanagement of the Australian economy, does he listen, does he hear, does he care? No. His response in the face of any criticism is to dial up the smugness, to dial up the arrogance, to bestow on the questioners in the people's House every day that self-satisfied smirk.
Stirling Electorate: Business
Mr CONNELLY (Stirling) (13:34): Since being elected, I have visited as many of the 19,818 small to medium businesses in my electorate of Stirling as I can. I was pleased to be joined by some of my ministerial colleagues as well. The Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, Senator Cash, joined me to visit internationally awarded hair salon Hairloom in Osborne Park, where Tony and Connie explained which government policies supported their family-run business and where else we can help.
I learned from Sam, at Silvestro Butchers in Osborne Park, how to make sausages. Sam and I chatted about the improvements technology has made to his business. The extension of the instant asset write-off and reductions in company tax will now help Sam take Silvestro Butchers to the next level.
I was joined by Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar at Perth Swedish Auto Centre, where Dick, Lisa and the team voiced support for the government's proposed mandatory sharing of vehicle service and repair information. We then headed to Karrinyup shops to view the $700 million redevelopment being undertaken by AMP Capital, a project creating 2½ thousand jobs during construction and another 2½ thousand ongoing jobs.
Lastly, I acknowledge IMDEX Ltd, a global mining tech company in Balcatta, where Burnie and Sean took me on an in-depth tour of their operations. I was blown away by their innovative success. IMDEX is a finalist in tomorrow's Australian Export Awards. I wish them the very best of luck.
Newcastle Airport
Ms SWANSON (Paterson) (13:36): I stand here today to implore this government to fund the $50 million upgrade of Newcastle Airport. The upgrade will allow a code E runway, which will in turn provide our region with the ability to accommodate long-range aircraft, unlocking international freight and passenger routes. This will generate significant economic growth across the region—it's quite remarkable when you look at it—the creation of 4,410 extra full-time jobs, $12.7 billion in regional economic benefit, $6.2 billion in extra income added to the visitor economy and $6½ billion in additional freight activity.
Recent independent analysis of the benefit-cost ratio came out at a compelling 2.8—talk about bang for your buck. However, this project really is urgent. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to undertake this strengthening of the runway at Newcastle Airport. Newcastle Airport shares the runway with RAAF Base Williamtown. The base has scheduled maintenance due early next year, which presents this once-in-15-years opportunity to complete this work. The community want this to happen. The March 2019 ReachTEL survey found that five local government areas across the Hunter said that 95 per cent of the Hunter residents want international flights out of Williamtown. We need this— (Time expired)
Meldrum, Ms Arcadia
Mr CONAGHAN (Cowper) (13:37): I rise to talk about an inspiring young woman from my electorate, Arcadia Meldrum. Arcadia won the Australian School-based Apprentice of the Year Award for 2019, and her work ethic and attitude to life is truly inspiring. Just 18 years of age, she has a dream and a plan of how to achieve that dream.
This year Arcadia completed her high school certificate with Newman Senior Technical College in Port Macquarie. She also completed a certificate III in tourism and, during that certificate III, Arcadia undertook work placement at Rydges Hotel on the foreshore or Port Macquarie. There she gained a love of managing events. She helped with everything from corporate events to weddings and gala dinners.
She is a go-getter. She managed all this while holding down two different jobs, one as a retail assistant and one as a cafe waitress. Arcadia's dream job is to be doing event management at the 2024 Olympic Games, assisting to run a big event that the Australian Olympic team will be involved in. It is wonderful to see such a strong work ethic in someone so young. Congratulations, Arcadia. I wish you all the best with your future. Thank you for inspiring all the young people in Cowper.
Climate Change
Ms KEARNEY (Cooper) (13:39): I'm going to ask the House today to do some imagining: 12 years after Kevin Rudd declared climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time, I want us to stop and imagine what would have happened if, 10 years ago, we had support from the Greens to implement a CPRS. Just imagine if they'd had a little bit of foresight or a little bit of common sense and actually supported us. It's hard to imagine where we would be now with attacking climate change and the climate emergency. A little while later, Labor implemented a carbon price, which we knew worked. Our emissions went down by 10 per cent over three years. Just imagine where would be now if Tony Abbott hadn't come along and taken a wrecking ball to that policy. He started the downward trajectory from which this government's ineptitude has been unable to recover. Imagine if he hadn't done that. So today I want to make a plea for cooperation, not for wrecking.
Earlier today, the member for Grayndler spoke to leaders from our Pacific neighbours and said that, for them, climate change is not a theoretical threat, it is an existential threat, and so it is for all of us. Now is the time to move forward. The member for Shortland said, 'In an ideal world, energy and climate policy would be driven by the best science, the latest technology, rigorous economic analysis and well-designed regulation.' Imagine if we had that happening now. The 46th Parliament can and should make this the most urgent piece of work that we tackle. Imagine that.
Type 1 Diabetes
Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (13:40): I received my first Christmas card of the season this week from an energetic young man from Birchip named Blair Gould. Many people across Australia will understand the impact that type 1 diabetes can have an on individual's quality of life. Having been diagnosed with this disease at the age of 10, Blair and his family have firsthand knowledge of this reality. But Blair has never let his condition slow him down. Along with his parents, Blair started an organisation called Mallee Kids-T1D, which provides welfare and emotional support for kids, teenagers and families living with this disease. At just 17 years old, he has also been active in lobbying politicians for funding towards continuous glucose monitoring products. These products are now fully subsidised for young people under the age of 21 years, thanks in part to Blair's hard work. When I met with Blair recently he asked that this subsidy be extended to everyone with type 1 diabetes, regardless of their age. I have sent a letter to Minister Hunt's office conveying Blair's views and requesting that his office assess the feasibility of extending this subsidy to people over the age of 21. I would like to thank Blair for his continued advocacy and acknowledge his outstanding leadership and determination. With young voices like Blair's, the future is bright indeed for Mallee.
Melbourne Electorate: Albanian Australian Islamic Society
Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (13:42): Last month, I was proud to attend the 50th anniversary of Melbourne's first mosque, in Carlton. Albanian Australian Islamic Society hosted a lively festival on Drummond Street, which was closed off so that the food trucks and stalls could be rolled in, accompanied by a jumping castle that kept my kids and many others happy. I was also happy to present a plaque to the mosque with my colleague the state member for Melbourne, Ellen Sandell, congratulating and thanking the AAIS for their service to the community. I was proud and moved to witness the first ever Adhaan, or call to prayer, from the mosque's minaret. It was a humbling moment demonstrating everything that I love about Melbourne. This mosque, which for 50 years has stood alongside heritage listed Victorian cottages that are up the road from Lygon Street and around the corner from churches, coffee shops and parks, is one of the many institutions that make Melbourne the culturally rich and diverse epicentre I am honoured to represent.
I would particularly like to pass on my thanks and congratulations to the key volunteers involved in making the day such a success: the AAIS president, Urim Balla; youth community member, Iman Balla; the Iman, Dr Bekim Hassan; 50th anniversary organisational committee members, Bari Nuhiji, Rami Kulafi and Indira Kulafi; and all the event subcommittee volunteers. I congratulate the AAIS again on this anniversary and thank them for hosting me. Although I don't think I'll be in parliament for the 100th anniversary of the mosque, I hope the Greens MP for Melbourne in 2069 will be as proud to attend as I was.
Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility
Mr THOMPSON (Herbert) (13:43): The Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility is delivering for the city and people of Townsville. The NAIF, as it's more commonly known, is supporting three major projects in my electorate of Herbert. The most recent, which I had the pleasure of announcing a couple of weeks ago, is the North Queensland Cowboys community, training and high-performance centre, which will be co-located with the North Queensland Stadium. This will be an amazing facility that will be the envy of the nation and the sporting world at large. It will be utilised by the Cowboys, Townsville Fire, James Cook University, Mater Health and other community groups. James Cook University will host the cutting-edge sports science and research facility and Mater Health will provide consulting and rehabilitation services at the centre. The multisport, high-performance training spaces will aim to attract touring sporting teams and their fans to our great city. This project will see 200 construction jobs created and over 60 ongoing jobs after the project is complete.
Townsville will also soon be benefiting from the extra construction and ongoing jobs of two other projects: $98 million to build a technology innovation complex at JCU; $50 million to expand the upgrade to the Townsville Airport terminal to ensure it can accommodate the needs of the diverse community. The NAIF is delivering for Townsville, and I thank the minister for signing off on this project.
Climate Change
Mr BURNS (Macnamara) (13:45): Happy anniversary of the 10 years since the flat-earthers took over the Liberal Party. It has been 10 years since the hard Right of the Liberal Party gained power. The good news is that Malcolm Turnbull is still doing speeches riling up the moderate parts of the Liberal Party. He's saying, 'Don't be a quiet Australian,' to his friends over there who are still left; 'be a loud Australian and stand up against the Prime Minister's inaction on climate change.' Right now we have a situation where our emissions are going up and, instead of having a minister for emissions reduction who is actually doing what his job title says, he's running around doing all sorts of other things—things he shouldn't be doing. Of course, history famously shows that the unholy alliance between the flat-earthers in the Liberal Party and the Greens political party join together to join forces to kill off the CPRS, to kill off a bipartisan approach to emission reduction. It is not good enough!
Mr Bandt interjecting—
Mr BURNS: I hear the member for Melbourne interjecting. Not once has the member for Melbourne apologised for voting with Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce in this place. We need to do something about our emissions. The people in Macnamara expect more, and we have a government that is more focused on waging wars in the city of Sydney than lowering our emissions and it's a disgrace.
New South Wales Bushfires
Mr FALINSKI (Mackellar) (13:46): I can't follow that. I rise today to commend some Australian heroes, our Rural Fire Service. Australia has suffered a devastating bushfire season already. New South Wales has been hit severely with some 600 homes having been lost to date, and our firefighters battled a fire front of about 6,000 kilometres long. Tragically, six lives have been lost and countless lives changed forever. Whilst the damage across the country is vast, it would have been much worse without the extraordinary efforts of the RFS.
Crews from Mackellar have spent the last few weeks deployed all over the state, fighting some of the harshest of bushfires. All our volunteers deserve praise, but I'd like to make mention of Captain Luke Robinson from the Northern Beaches headquarters brigade, who has recently led numerous RFS crews through some treacherous times. To the countless volunteers from the Northern Beaches, who have been on regular deployment at the northern New South Wales coast since early September, we say, 'Thank you.' You can't build a nation without sacrifice and you can't build a community without volunteers. To the volunteers across the country, and particularly to those in Mackellar, thank you for your selflessness and all you do to make our community safe and better.
Climate Change
Mr GORMAN (Perth) (13:48): Most people are raised to know that, when you make a mistake, you say sorry, but today is 10 years of the Greens political party refusing to say sorry for giving us a decade of inaction on climate change, helped by those in the Liberal Party and helped by those in the National Party—a coalition of inaction. It's an absolute disgrace.
Ten years ago today this building was the scene of a political crime. I've had so many lectures from the Greens political party about what Labor should be doing. They move motions. They do all of the tactical stuff. When it comes to actual legislation that would have done something about climate change, what did they do? They voted with the Liberal Party. They acted in their political self-interest, because they know that they don't actually want action on climate change. They don't want to do anything about it; they just want to be able to throw bombs at others. Then they start saying the most outrageous things. The Greens accused those on the Labor side of arson. It's just unbelievable that they would go that low in the gutter. What's next? Necrophilia? Who knows? It was disgraceful of the Greens political party.
They failed to stop 218 million tonnes of carbon emissions. They have done nothing to help us meet the Sustainable Development Goals. They are more Lex Luthor than Captain Planet. They should apologise to the Australian people and they should start moving in the course of action on climate change. (Time expired)
Repatriation General Hospital
Ms FLINT (Boothby—Government Whip) (13:49): Sunday 24 November saw another significant milestone in the reactivation of the Repat hospital site in my electorate of Boothby. On the 24th I joined Premier Steven Marshall, Health Minister Stephen Wade and my state colleagues Sam Duluk MP and Carolyn Power MP at the Repat to announce a landmark partnership with nationally respected aged-care provider HammondCare to deliver a brand new fit-for-purpose 78-bed dementia care facility on the site. Residents living at the site will receive care tailored to their individual needs, restoring confidence for families that their loved ones are safe and receiving the careful attention they deserve. This project represents a multimillion dollar investment in caring for people with dementia, which will also provide 120 jobs for South Australians.
I'm proud that the Morrison government is investing more than $40 million to help create an innovative health precinct at the Repat site and will also feature in this important partnership with HammondCare through the Commonwealth Specialist Dementia Care Program. I recognise Alma Krecu and Barb Spriggs, who have been instrumental in advocating for better patient care as a result of their own heartbreaking family experiences at Oakden under the former state Labor government. Never again will our vulnerable older Australians be out of sight or out of mind like they were at Oakden, and this announcement is another significant step towards ensuring that. I am so proud that the Morrison and Marshall Liberal governments are working together for the very best health care for my local community.
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney) (13:51): Ten years ago this parliament had the opportunity of coming together and doing something important: reducing carbon pollution, reducing power prices and improving power reliability. Instead of coming together and voting to do that, those from the Greens political party, combined with those from the Liberal and National political parties, voted against Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and we've seen the fruits of that over the last 10 years. I have lost count of the times people committed to action on climate change have stopped me in the street, often parents with young children, saying to me, 'I could never understand why they did that; I could never understand why the Greens let us down in that way, making the perfect the enemy of the good,' and I say to them: I can't understand it either.
What would have happened if those parties had joined with Labor to support real action on climate change? By 2020 we would have seen 218 million fewer tonnes of carbon pollution in our environment. Surely, taking 218 million tonnes of carbon pollution out of our atmosphere is something this whole parliament could have gotten behind. Instead, what we have is higher pollution, higher power prices and lower reliability because of those in that corner joining with those opposite. (Time expired)
Speedflow Products
DownTown Kustoms
Dr GILLESPIE (Lyne) (13:52): Recently I had the pleasure of visiting a local Taree company called Speedflow manufacturing operations. It's a wonderful local Manning Valley company that has been operating for 37 years and currently employs 25 local engineers. This high-tech innovative manufacturer is going from strength to strength, delivering quality performance in the hose-fitting industry in motor sport, marine, industrial hydraulics, aviation and even the space program. Shaun and Travis Liefting have developed a niche market which has created so many opportunities for the company, and I know they'll continue to expand and take their manufacturing operations to the next level.
Another local manufacturer doing great things in my electorate is DownTown Kustoms of Taree. The owner, Graeme Brewer, is an amazing engineer, designer and builder. They specialise in bespoke, unique design and manufacture of muscle cars, hot rods and custom and classic cars. Graeme and his highly-skilled team of tradesmen utilise high-tech equipment and facilities to undertake high-end restoration in custom-built vehicles, literally from the ground up. Congratulations to Graeme and the whole team at DownTown Kustoms. Some of these machines are absolutely amazing, including supersize replicas of old classic cars that put the cost of a Lamborghini in the shade. Well done, DownTown Kustoms of Taree. (Time expired)
Climate Change
Mr CONROY (Shortland) (13:54): Ten years ago today, on this very day, the Greens betrayed the planet they were formed to protect. They betrayed the planet they profess to love so much, because on that day they joined in an unholy alliance with the tinfoil hat brigade of the coalition to vote down the CPRS, and we've paid the price every day since. As a result, emissions in 2020 will be 81 million tonnes higher and, cumulatively, 218 million tonnes higher over the decade. The coalition and the Greens bear joint responsibility for the policy failure and environmental damage this has incurred. What is the Greens defence? 'Boohoo. Labor wouldn't talk to us on the day.' That is seriously their only defence to defend blocking the emissions trading scheme.
Mr Bandt: Support a carbon price now!
Mr CONROY: How petulant can you be? How weak and passive can you be? That is your only defence: Labor was mean to you. Australians are already bearing the cost of this, and the cost will only rise higher—higher electricity prices, severe drought devastating rural communities, damage to iconic assets like the Great Barrier Reef, and health costs from heatwaves. The member for Melbourne and all the Greens have the blood of the planet on their hands. They betrayed the environment by teaming up with the dinosaurs in the coalition to vote down the CPRS 10 years ago to this day.
Curtin Electorate: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
Ms HAMMOND (Curtin) (13:56): I'm delighted to say world-leading research is going to continue to take place in my electorate of Curtin, with over $2 million awarded to fund five research projects at UWA through the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. It was fascinating to recently meet with some of the UWA researchers and learn more about their research projects: Dr Catie Gressier, who is looking at rare-breed poultry and livestock conservation, regenerative farming approaches and food security; Dr Hugh Wolgamot, who is looking at combining fluid mechanics, statistics and applied maths to help improve our understanding of ocean waves so as to improve how we design offshore gas platforms and wind farms; and Dr Benjamin Grafton, who is investigating the cognitive basis of anxiety linked heightened negative expectancies to assist in treating people with anxiety. These are world-leading research projects addressing important issues that will make a real difference by generating new knowledge, developing new technologies and treatments, and leading to new products and jobs. My congratulations to UWA. The number and range of research grants awarded through DECRA show the high regard with which your researchers are held nationally and internationally.
Climate Change
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (13:57): It is indeed 10 years since the coalition and the Greens political party combined in the Senate to oppose the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. We need to look back and analyse what a lost opportunity that was. It was economy-wide: it applied to transport, it applied to fugitive emissions and it applied to energy. It would have driven change through the economy. A couple of Libs crossed the floor in the Senate. All that it required was for the five Greens senators to get up off their seats and to walk and vote in favour of action on climate change. As those great philosophers Jagger and Richards once said:
You can't always get what you want
But … You get what you need
What we needed was economy-wide action on climate change. As a result, 218 million additional tonnes of carbon have been put into the atmosphere. It has been a decade, after which we have today no energy policy, no emissions policy. We have an emissions reduction minister when emissions are rising. The fact is that action on climate change, done properly through the economy, will create jobs and will lead to lower emissions and lower prices. That's why we need, going forward, to ensure that it occurs. (Time expired)
Pollies versus Press Cricket Match
Mr PASIN (Barker) (13:58): It's my distinct privilege to announce to the House that the annual pollie versus press cricket game was played on the weekend at Reid Oval. We of course contest the Peter Veness Memorial Cup, and it's my distinct privilege to announce to the House that the politicians won that by four runs. I got a distinct feeling of deja vu when I attended the oval. There was a feeling that the press had written us off, but of course we won, notwithstanding that: six for 202 defeated seven for 198. The teams were led by Andrew Probyn for the journos and the Deputy Prime Minister for the politicians. There were outstanding efforts from Col Bettles, at 46 runs; Robbie Reinhardt, 51 not out; and a fat bloke from Barker as well! Graham Perrett was two for 29, best of the bowling; Coughlan two for 25. I also give a shout-out to Phil Coorey—incredibly independent. It was down to a very tight outcome in the last over and there he was, umpiring a lineball call; he didn't call it 'no ball'—independent as always. There was also Gilbert, at 53, for the journos. We're holding onto this again, much to Andrew Probyn's chagrin.
The SPEAKER: In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Economy
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:00): My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that, in the past few weeks alone, it has been revealed that weak wages growth has slowed even further; business capital expenditure is now 30 per cent lower than when this government came to office; retail trade has gone backwards, with the worst result in 30 years; and labour productivity has declined for the first time since records began?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister and Minister for the Public Service) (14:01): I can confirm that, after the election, people's taxes didn't go up. I can confirm that, after the election, the National Skills Commission was established, and we brought forward some $9½ billion worth of investment in support of the Australian economy. I can confirm that thousands upon thousands of people have got extra jobs in this economy. I can confirm that businesses in this country kept putting people into work as a result of not having to face the higher taxes that those opposite were proposing at the last election. I can confirm that, in the most recent figures, capital-city house prices have gone up by two per cent; that's the strongest result since 2003.
And I can confirm that because, at the last election, Australians had a choice. Did they want a government, led by the Labor Party, that wanted to increase their taxes, thinking that was what the economy needed at a time when the economy was facing great challenges, both overseas and at home, in particular with the drought? Australians rightly concluded they didn't. They believed that they should have a government that wanted to invest $100 billion in infrastructure, and to proceed with trade agreements, whether with Indonesia or other countries, to ensure we expanded the frontiers of our economy. Every single time, it would seem, we have to drag the Labor Party kicking and screaming to support these trade agreements. They tried to start plenty, but they couldn't conclude any. And the reason they had that trouble is within their own ranks: they remain divided. They remain divided on the taxes that they still want to put on the Australian people. They remain divided on the issues of climate policy, for which there are about seven different positions across the opposition. They remind divided on whether we should be a friend of China's or we should be a foe of China's. They can't even deliver a coherent international policy.
The Australian people got it right on 18 May. They voted for keeping the economy strong in the hands of Australian politicians who know how to handle the money—that is, the Liberals and the Nationals. The Australian people know that they cannot trust Labor with money, and they know that the second the Labor Party gets its hands on the treasury bench it gets its hands on the wallets of Australians. They do not trust Labor with money. But they do trust this government and, in the difficult times that we face as a country, they know that our stable and certain economic management has the policies that are needed at this very important time for their economic futures.
Morrison Government
Mr BROADBENT (Monash) (14:03): My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, will you update the House on how the Morrison government is building our national, economic and environmental security, both now and into the future, to deliver the stability and certainty Australians need to plan their future with great confidence?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister and Minister for the Public Service) (14:04): I thank the member for Monash for his question. In the last six months, since we were re-elected as a government, we have delivered that tax relief for Australians that we promised—a generational change in their tax to ensure that they can keep more of what they earn. On top of that, we have brought infrastructure investment, some $3.8 billion, into the forward estimates—about $1.8 billion in this year alone, and next year. Those are important investments in the future of our economy which bring benefits today and benefits tomorrow as opposed to the fiscal stimulus measures pursued by the Labor Party when they were in government, which was a moment on the lips and a decade on the debt of this country and more.
So we have been delivering the important investments in our economy. We have seen a resurgence in the confidence in the housing market, which has been noted by economists as one of the key ingredients to boosting confidence more generally in the economy. The reason for that is we did not pursue the higher taxing policies on housing which Labor was seeking to do at the last election, and there was a sense of relief for Australians that their housing wouldn't be hit with higher taxes, their investments that they'd worked hard for wouldn't be hit with higher taxes and all of those matters had been addressed.
The Deloitte fiscal monitor today says the government's economic policy settings are right and our policies of tax cuts and accelerated and increased infrastructure investment are helping to underpin our economic growth. It's not just that; on national security today we announced the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, which builds on the work we've been doing to give our agencies the tools and resources to counter the evolving threat of foreign interference. On top of that, we have passed the temporary exclusion orders into law to ensure that we're protected against, in these cases, the return of foreign fighters. We have acted on child sexual exploitation laws, and we've released and are acting on the Illicit Drugs Action Plan.
I also note, when it comes to emissions reduction, that the latest inventory of Australia's emissions shows that, at the year to June 2019, economy-wide emissions fell 0.1 per cent, or 0.4 million tonnes and they are lower than they were at the time we came to government in 2013 and have fallen for the past two years. On top of that, since the election we've announced a ban on the export of waste of plastic, glass, paper and tyres. These are the things we're doing to act on the security of Australians, whether it's on their national security, their safety, their economic security or their environmental security. In the last six months, we've been getting on with it; the Labor Party have been playing political games.
Employment
Dr CHALMERS ( Rankin ) ( 14:0 7 ): My question is to the Treasurer. Given the finance minister's boast that low wages growth is a 'deliberate design feature of the government's economic management' and the Reserve Bank's recent statement that low wages growth under those opposite is now 'the new normal', is this a case of mission accomplished?
Mr FRYDENBERG (Kooyong—Treasurer) (14:07): I thank the member for Rankin and I thank the Leader of the Opposition for letting him out of witness protection, because he's been averaging one question a sitting week since the election—not bad for a shadow Treasurer! He's been kept in the dark.
He asks about wages. Let me inform the House that real wages have been growing at 0.6 per cent, which is around the historical average, and when we came to government it was only 0.5 per cent. Real minimum wages have increased every year under us—whereas, under the Labor Party, three out of six years they went backwards—and we now have one of the highest, if not the highest, minimum wage in the world.
Compensation of employees, which is the wages bill of the economy, according to the last national accounts was at five per cent. This compares to 3½ per cent when we came into government. Employment growth—because we know that jobs are so important for the Australian people—today in Australia is at two per cent. That compares to an OECD average of 0.9 per cent. Do you know what it was when we came to government—under Labor? It was 0.7 per cent. It was nearly a third of what it is today, and we know that we've helped create more than 1.4 million new jobs—34 out of the last 36 months have seen jobs growth, whereas under the Labor Party, six out of their last 12 months saw negative jobs numbers.
When it comes to the participation rate, it is now at a record high of around 66 per cent. Again, when we came to government, it was 64.8 per cent. Female participation is at a record high. Employment growth of females has been around two-thirds of the overall employment growth over the past year. Female participation is at 61.2 per cent, whereas under Labor it was at 58.7 per cent. I know the member for Rankin rarely gets to ask a question, but, when he does, I appreciate it!
Economy
Dr MARTIN (Reid) (14:10): My question is to the Treasurer. Will the minister explain the Morrison government's strong budgetary management and why a stable and certain approach is essential to ensuring our economy remains resilient against future challenges? Is the Treasurer aware of any alternative policies?
Mr FRYDENBERG (Kooyong—Treasurer) (14:10): I thank the member for Reid for her question and acknowledge her background in small business and also acknowledge that in her electorate more than 80,000 taxpayers are getting a tax cut as a result of legislation that we on this side of the House have supported. More than 20,000 small businesses in the electorate of Reid are going to be able to access the instant asset write-off we extended in this year's budget.
When we came to government, unemployment had been rising under Labor, investment had been falling and Labor had racked up $240 billion in accumulated deficit. In contrast, since we've come to government, we have the first current account surplus in 40 years. We now have welfare dependency at its lowest level in 30 years. We have passed through the parliament tax cuts which are the biggest in more than 20 years. We have the first balanced budget in 11 years and we will deliver the first surplus in 12 years. That's unlike those opposite. If they had ever got the chance with their housing tax, housing prices would have fallen. Under this government, housing prices have been rising, helping to boost the confidence of the Australian people.
We know that today Deloitte have put out their report which says not only that the decade of deficit should end but that budget surpluses help protect prosperity. They also said that there is a growth momentum in the Australian economy which has been lifting and that, as a result of those tax cuts which we on this side of the House support and those opposite were against, the Australian economy is stronger. We also know that the words of Deloitte are consistent with what Standard & Poor's said just over a week ago—that the Australian economic outlook is sound and that strong fiscal outcomes are really important to Australia maintaining its AAA credit rating. These numbers show that the Australian economy continues to grow. Indeed, the IMF and the OECD have said that our growth in 2020 will be higher than for any G7 nation.
Just think if the Australian people and the Australian economy had to handle Labor's $387 billion of higher taxes on housing, on retirees, on income earners, on family businesses and on superannuation. We know the member for Rankin wants to hold on to the $387 billion because he and the member for McMahon, who is looking at his phone, were the co-architects of those higher taxes. We know that the member for Rankin is telling the Leader of the Opposition: 'Don't give up those taxes. I want those higher taxes.' If you want lower taxes then only the coalition will deliver more jobs and— (Time expired)
Trade
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): My question is to the Prime Minister. It goes to his answer to my earlier question, where he said about trade agreements:
They tried to start plenty, but they couldn't conclude any.
That's not true, Prime Minister, is it? Isn't it a fact that we concluded the Chile agreement in 2009, the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand agreement, including Brunei, Burma, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, in 2010— (Time expired)
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister and Minister for the Public Service) (14:14): All I know is that when we came to government 26 per cent of our trade was covered by trade agreements. Right now it's at 70 per cent.
Opposition members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: Order, members on my left!
Mr MORRISON: I've only been going for ten seconds!
Ms Plibersek interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The Prime Minister will resume his seat. Members on my left, the member for Sydney!—I feel I should say it every 10 seconds at the moment. The member for Sydney is warned. The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order?
Mr Albanese: Yes. I invited the Prime Minister to correct the record. He has misled parliament. I don't suggest it's deliberate—
The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat.
Opposition members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: Members on my left! The Leader of the Opposition has asked his question. The Prime Minister is only about 20 or 25 seconds into the answer. The Prime Minister is being, certainly, relevant to the policy topic. I call the Prime Minister.
Mr MORRISON: Start and finish is the test. When you start an agreement and finish an agreement then I suppose you can claim those. I'm happy to acknowledge that some were concluded under the former Labor government, but what I can acknowledge also is that, when they left government, just 26 per cent of our trade was covered by trade agreements. It's 70 per cent now. When it comes to trade, the Labor Party were a dud.
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS
The SPEAKER (14:16): I inform the House we have present in the gallery this afternoon the Fijian Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence led by the chair, the Hon. Alexander O'Connor. On behalf of the House, a very warm welcome to you all.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Infrastructure
Dr McVEIGH (Groom) (14:16): My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure,Transport and Regional Development. Will the Deputy Prime Minister outline the Morrison-McCormack government's achievements on delivering critical infrastructure for regional Australia, including building the Inland Rail? How will the government continue to work in a stable and certain way to address those real issues of importance to regional Australians?
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development and Leader of the Nationals) (14:17): They've all gone too early, like normally. Good Morning Cereals in Toowoomba is owned by Michael and Jill Allwright. They have a wonderful little niche business. They puff organic grain. What they do by puffing that organic grain is make it have eight times more volume than the original grain, which, of course, makes it eight times more expensive to transfer from their Toowoomba factory to Melbourne.
They are going to be benefiting from the Inland Rail, which is going to bring down costs. It was predicated on a $10 saving per tonne. For post-processed food, it's going to be up to a $94 per tonne saving, according CSIRO's report last year, but, indeed, an average of a $76 per tonne saving. That's thrilled Jill Allwright, because she knows that any cost is going to affect her bottom line and that any saving is going to be beneficial to her business. When 20 per cent of their turnover is going into the freight line, it's going to be beneficial for her business to make sure that she has that saving. She's very much looking forward to inland rail coming through Toowoomba. She decentralised that business with her husband, Michael, in 2012—another great regional decentralisation story on the back of a public business taking a risk in themselves.
I was with the member for Groom just last Friday when we signed the intergovernmental agreement with Queensland. Minister Mark Bailey was there with us signing the Inland Rail agreement following on from Victoria. They were first up, and then, of course, New South Wales signed that intergovernmental agreement to allow us to get on with the job of building the $9.3 billion nation-building piece of infrastructure.
It was first talked about in the 1890s, plans were first drawn up in the early 1900s, and it's taken a Liberal-Nationals government to get on with the job of building it. Now that we've those states signed up, this $9.3 billion facility is going to be built. That's going to bring considerable savings, particularly for regional Australia. On the Parkes to Narromine section, $46.7 million has already gone into local businesses such as Calvani Crushing and AusRock Quarries, who are providing ballast. Those two businesses have already benefitted to the tune of around $7 million. It's going to create more than 15,000 jobs. For Queensland, this is particularly important because, of the $9.3 billion, they're going to potentially benefit to the order of $7 billion. This is infrastructure-building at its best, and it's thanks to the Liberals and Nationals listening to people and delivering.
Climate Change
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:20): My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Malcolm Turnbull has told the Prime Minister's colleagues, including the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts and the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, that the government's climate change policy is incoherent and is holding back billions of dollars of investment. Does the Prime Minister agree with Mr Turnbull that it's time government members started acting like 'real liberals' and took effective action on climate change?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister and Minister for the Public Service) (14:20): The government is implementing the policies on emissions reduction that began under Prime Minister Turnbull.
An opposition member interjecting—
Mr MORRISON: I take the interjection from the member opposite who said, 'Emissions are going up.' Well, she's misleading, as the Leader of the Opposition did before question time, because emissions have fallen in the 2018-19 year. That is the official evidence which has been provided by the Quarterly update of Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory. That shows that, in the year to June 2019, economy-wide emissions fell 0.1 per cent, or 0.4 million tonnes, to 532 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Emissions are now lower than they were when the coalition government came to office, and they've declined each year since 2016-17. Emissions are 12.9 per cent below 2005 levels, and emissions per capita are at their lowest level in 29 years. And I note that in 2018-19 electricity generation emissions fell for the third year, down 1.2 per cent.
We continue to implement the policies that were first commenced by Prime Minister Turnbull when it came to emissions reduction, and of course that has most significantly included getting on with the project of Snowy 2.0, which has been brought to a final investment decision by this government. We continue to proceed with that policy, as we do with the Climate Solutions Fund, which will mean that we'll meet our Paris targets but, importantly, we will meet the Kyoto 2020 targets and we will be able to beat the commitments that we made—I correct the record: the commitments that the Labor Party made. When we came to government, they were 700 million tonnes off achieving those targets. Under our policies, we will have ensured that we beat the Kyoto 2020 targets by more than 360 million tonnes. Our policies are working.
On the other side, they cannot say whether they are still for the policy they took to the last election. They've had six months to deliberate. I tell you what, Mr Speaker: if you want to get rid of a policy you don't like, you can do it in week one. This Leader of the Opposition has been holding onto those tax hikes ever since the election, just like he's been holding onto the 45 per cent emissions reduction target. He just can't let it go.
The SPEAKER: Has the Prime Minister concluded his answer? He has.
Dairy Industry
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (14:23): My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture. Our dairy farmers are receiving 58c a litre, 1c less than pre-deregulation, 22 years ago. Wouldn't you agree that, since Woolworths and Coles apply, at their discretion, 20c per litre, then clearly supply and demand are not determining price? Wouldn't describing 6,000 sellers meeting two buyers as a free market be an ultimate hypocrisy? Surely you'd agree that anything less than a minimum price will ensure continued decline and unspeakable cruelty to farmers, employees and all other persons who depend upon this industry?
Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa—Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management) (14:24): To the member for Kennedy: I respectfully disagree. He will know full well that the last time we had a floor price for an agricultural commodity was with wool. What floor prices effectively do is that they create an oversupply. They create an oversupply and, when you're talking about an industry that has a perishable product, you would be creating a cruel hoax in what is a complicated situation, more so than the simplistic notions—
Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—
Mr LITTLEPROUD: I take the interjection from the member for Hunter, who after his near-death political experience on 18 May by the National Party and One Nation has found a conscience and a voice by giving a cruel hoax to those dairy farmers and not tackling the problem with common sense and maturity. It is far more complicated than that. Not only would you create an oversupply but you will also recklessly put at risk the international trade agreements that we have put in place, not just for dairy but for every other commodity. If you are a beef producer in Kennedy, you will be terrified by the fact that this would tear away at the trade agreements this government has put in place.
We are a nation of 25 million people. We produce enough food for 75 million people. If we don't engage with the world and we don't trade with the world, then you do not need rural communities. You do not need agriculture. So it's important that we have a multifaceted approach. One is around the mandatory code of conduct, which will be in place as soon as the final consultation takes place. It's important to ensure we get that right, that we don't have reckless actions like those opposite would have which would put at risk getting the mandatory code of conduct right. We're also putting in place a market platform that will allow dairy farmers, like with other commodities, to have more market balance and trade their commodities like with grain, cotton or any other agricultural commodity, equalising the balance within the marketplace. We've also created a unit within the ACCC to ensure that dairy is looked at in isolation and make sure that any market manipulation is dealt with by the regulator.
But we've all got a role to play in making sure we fix this. It's not just governments—and those are the actions the governments are taking—but also processors and supermarkets. The supermarkets, at my insistence, got rid of the $1-a-litre milk when I was agriculture minister and they found a mechanism to get that back to the farm gate. The Australian supermarkets need to lead with the Australian government and the industry to allow this transition of policy framework to take place to ensure that the marketplace is equitable and viable for all dairy farmers into the future.
National Security
Mr THOMPSON (Herbert) (14:27): My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister outline the Morrison government's achievements in protecting our nation from the evolving threat of foreign interference? How will the government continue to work in a stable and certain way to keep Australians safe from this threat?
Mr DUTTON (Dickson—Minister for Home Affairs) (14:27): I thank the honourable member for his question and his very genuine interest in what is a very important topic for our country. As the Prime Minister and I announced today, we're investing another $88 million into our national security and intelligence agencies to deal with the threat of foreign interference. It builds on the $35 million that we provided in the last budget. That's money that goes directly to ASIO, to the Australian Federal Police and to our agencies who are otherwise involved in protecting Australians. I want to say in particular to the officers at ASIO—most Australians won't ever meet an officer from ASIO, I hope; perhaps that's a good thing for some! You may never meet someone from ASIS or ONI, but you should be reassured that they are working to keep Australians safe. When we saw the tragedy of what happened on the streets in London only within the last couple of days, we were very grateful for their work, of course, in relation to the counterterrorism work that they undertake to keep our nation safe, but just as important is the work that they do to protect our sovereignty, to protect us against foreign interference.
The money today will go toward not just ASIO and the Australian Federal Police but also AUSTRAC. They've done an incredible job in recent weeks and months in enforcing the law here in Australia. They are an integral part to looking at financial transactions—transactions that may give investigators a lead in relation to counterterrorism investigations or, indeed, to a counter-foreign-interference investigation. It also puts money, importantly, into the Australian Signals Directorate, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Intelligence, and all of that support will help keep Australians safe.
There's a lot of work that our agencies have been doing with universities to make sure that we can deal with the threat as it may present on university campuses. As we know, the threat of foreign interference has been with us as a democracy for many decades. It's a threat that exists in other Western democracies, and we need to make sure that we put extra investment in—and not just additional money but also an updating and hardening of our legislation, which the government has done on countless occasions, on the advice of the agencies. I want to pay tribute in particular to the Director-General of ASIO, Mike Burgess, and also the new police commissioner in the Australian Federal Police, Reece Kershaw. Both of those leaders provide significant support to their frontline staff. The other agencies that I've mentioned also support the work of those two principal agencies. And the work of this government will never stop. We want to make sure that we continue to keep Australians safe, not just in countering terrorism but in countering foreign interference in our country as well.
Mr Gosling interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Solomon can keep walking.
Mr Gosling interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Solomon's about the get named, if he doesn't leave the chamber.
The member for Solomon then left the chamber.
Prime Minister
Mr MARLES (Corio—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:30): My question is to the Attorney-General. Was the New South Wales police commissioner made aware that the Attorney-General was on the call with the Prime Minister that discussed the instigation, nature and substance of the criminal investigation into the minister for emissions reduction, Strike Force Garrad?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Leader of the House) (14:31): Yes, he was. And I note that with respect to that call he said that the Prime Minister didn't ask him any questions that were inappropriate. I also note with respect to that call that he said something else very interesting. He said that matters like the one that was referred by the shadow Attorney-General are, in his words, 'a great diverter of my time'. And of course the question goes to the nature of the interaction, so let's have a look at some interactions.
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr PORTER: They don't like this, do they? Let's have a look at some of the interactions. How many political referrals to police in Australia do you think you need where nothing comes of them before it starts to look like a negative time-wasting interaction with the police? Two? Four? Six? Eight? The shadow Attorney-General has overseen and himself directly written eight referrals to police of coalition members. And what has come of those referrals? Absolutely nothing. So, how many referrals until it starts to look vexatious? How many referrals?
The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order.
Mr Albanese: This minister is the first law officer of the land—
The SPEAKER: No, you've just got to go to the point of order.
Mr Albanese: Well, is it appropriate that he be commenting in this way on an ongoing investigation?
The SPEAKER: No, you haven't raised a point of order.
Mr Albanese: I just find it extraordinary.
The SPEAKER: That is not a point of order, Leader of the Opposition. I will say to the Leader of the Opposition, if he seeks the call on a point of order he's got to immediately say what the point of order is.
Mr PORTER: Two of those referrals from the shadow Attorney-General were about the sitting Attorney-General, one with respect to the former Attorney-General, George Brandis, and in fact one with respect to myself. And on 24 February 2015 the shadow Attorney-General referred the then Attorney-General, George Brandis, to the AFP with an accusation of corruption and unlawful conduct. In a proper sense, and in the real world not that long ago, if you referred a standing Attorney-General to the AFP and absolutely nothing came of it, you would have a question to answer. And what came of that referral? Absolutely nothing—just as it did from the other seven referrals.
In fact, the obsession that you had for George Brandis—you were like the Wile E. Coyote of referral, and making the George Brandises of the world look like roadrunners is the easiest thing to do. But he was looking over his shoulder at you, going 'Beep beep'! There were 24 calls for George Brandis's resignation—and then again, and then again. The letter that the shadow Attorney-General sent referring George Brandis to the AFP for corruption was so lame that it couldn't even name the offence that was said to have been committed. At least when I got referred to the AFP for bribery you were able to nominate the offence that you said was committed. But what came of that? Absolutely nothing—a serial offender in terms of vexatious complaints that waste the time of the AFP when the AFP could be using their time looking into things like drug dealing, terrorism or child sex offences. What a joke.
National Security
Mr HASTIE (Canning) (14:35): My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney outline the Morrison government's achievements in protecting Australians from dangerous terrorists and how the government will continue to work in a stable and certain way to keep Australians safe?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Leader of the House) (14:35): When the AFP's time isn't being wasted by the shadow Attorney-General, they have the capacity to investigate matters like terrorism. That's what they do. That's what their real job is. Very sadly, the threat of terrorism is very real. We in this place know that 16 terrorist plots have been foiled. We have, unfortunately, had seven terrorist attacks. The tragic events in United Kingdom, again on London Bridge, are obviously the subject of our country's deepest sympathy to the victims and to their families, but those events are also a very real illustration of a very real risk. That is a risk that our government has acted very swiftly and strongly to counter. That is the undeniably high risk that individuals who have undertaken violent terrorist acts exhibit a very high tendency to reoffend. The evidence of that phenomenon in Australia is undeniable. Of the 30 Australians who fought and trained with extremist groups between 1990 and 2010 in conflict zones, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, 25 returned and eight of those were convicted of terrorist-related offences. Very sadly, the recent London Bridge accused, Mr Khan, was in 2012 convicted for an al-Qaeda-inspired plot to attack the London Stock Exchange and to start a terrorist training camp in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The sentencing judge at the time described Mr Khan has a serious jihadi who should not be released until he was no longer a threat to the public.
Right now in the Senate our government's critical counterterrorism bill is presently being debated. That bill goes to precisely the type of risk that we've seen in this recent terrorist attack in London—that is, the risk to the community of people reoffending once they are released, after they have had terrorist links or committed terrorist offences. The government bill ensures that anyone who has links with terrorists, who has shown support for other terrorist activities, will have a standing presumption against bail for other Commonwealth offences and will not be released on parole unless there are absolutely demonstrable exceptional circumstances. It also provides that continuing detention orders can be levied against the individual irrespective of whether the last day they serve in jail was on a state or on a federal offence. The absolutely critical nature of those laws arises from the fact that we have seen in England and in Australia that people who have links and who have offended with respect to terrorism have a very high risk of reoffending. At the moment there are 54 individuals serving sentences for Commonwealth terrorism offences, and 10 are due for release by the end of 2020. This is critical legislation and demonstrates how the government takes this issue with the utmost seriousness.
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction
Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (14:38): My question is to the Attorney-General. I refer to the Attorney-General's confirmation that he was in the room when the Prime Minister called the New South Wales police commissioner about the criminal investigation into the minister for emissions reduction. Before the phone call did the Prime Minister ask the Attorney-General whether the phone call should be made? Did the Attorney-General seek advice from his department or agencies on whether the Prime Minister calling the commissioner one of his 'best friends' gave rise to a further conflict?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Leader of the House) (14:38): I was present during the call. It was a very short call. The descriptions of that call, provided by the Prime Minister and Commissioner Fuller, have been absolutely accurate. But I won't be lectured to about taking advice by someone who has an 8-0 record of referring coalition members to the police: eight referrals; zero success—nothing! For the shadow Attorney-General the day the letter of referral goes off is a serious day in the media. We're up early and we finish late. We're before every radio person in Australia. We're on the front page of every newspaper with the very, very serious referral of the former A-G to the AFP, and the other six coalition members to the police. But then the day when nothing happens, when the inevitable response comes from the AFP that this is a big fat no—nothing to answer, no investigation, nothing—where is the silence? Absolute silence. That's what happened with respect to those eight referrals, isn't it, member for Isaacs? There was no substance, no merit, no nothing—eight referrals and nothing.
Economy
Mrs ARCHER (Bass) (14:40): My question is to the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology. Will the minister outline the Morrison government's achievements in backing Australian industry and businesses to grow and create more jobs and how the government will continue to work in a stable and certain way to address issues of importance to Australian businesses and workers?
Mrs ANDREWS (McPherson—Minister for Industry, Science and Technology) (14:41): I thank the member for Bass for her question. The member, like everyone on this side of the House, knows that the Morrison government is all about backing Australian workers. We're doing that by backing Australian businesses and growing industries so that we can create the jobs that we need for the industries of the future. The coalition doesn't see this as a zero-sum game. We don't see this as an either/or; we see this as an and—that is, we can back our existing core traditional industries at the same time as we can support and back our emerging industries. In fact sometimes the existing and traditional industries and the new and emerging industries are very complementary. The best example of this is the mining sector, where we are one of the most technologically advanced in the world. That's why NASA is so interested in working with our mining sector and looking at mining and remote operations. What you can see is the existing business of mining working closely with the emerging industry of the space sector to grow business opportunities, to grow our industries and to create more jobs.
In the time remaining I'd like to run through a couple of the other areas where we are making sure that we are growing Australian industries and supporting jobs of the future. Firstly, we launched the $160 million Manufacturing Modernisation Fund. This provides grants of up to $1 million in matched funding to help our manufacturing businesses to upgrade and to ensure workers are able to upskill. Secondly, we're investing $150 million into Australian businesses so that they can be part of NASA's Moon to Mars project. This is part of our plan to triple the size of the space sector here in Australia, so that it goes from $4 billion to $12 billion by 2030 and creates an additional 20,000 jobs. We're backing advanced manufacturers like XTEK in South Australia, which I recently visited. They're looking, over the next few years, to hire 45 new engineers, technicians and machinists. We've engaged in the critical minerals industry, so we now have a formal agreement with the US on critical minerals. Australia vanadium was given major project status in September this year. In regional Western Australia they will create 500 construction jobs and 240 ongoing jobs. That's without me even having time to talk about hydrogen and the benefits that the hydrogen sector has in terms of exports and jobs growth here in this nation.
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction
Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (14:44): My question is to the Attorney-General. I refer to the Attorney-General's previous answer. Did he seek advice from his department or agencies or not?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Leader of the House) (14:44): The phone call was very brief. The description of it by the Prime Minister was completely accurate. The description of it by the police commissioner was completely accurate. It was not the sort of phone call, because it was so basic and simple, that required any advice to be sought or given.
Trade
Mr CONNELLY (Stirling) (14:44): My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Will the minister outline the Morrison government's achievements in trade policy and how the government will continue to work in a stable and certain way to address this issue of real importance to Australians?
Mr TEHAN (Wannon—Minister for Education) (14:45): I thank the member for Stirling for his question. I know he, like a lot of members, will be taking great note of the Australian Export Awards tomorrow night, because there's a business, IMDEX Limited, from his electorate which is up for an award. I wish them, and all the other export businesses that are up for awards tomorrow night, all the best
Since we came to office we have concluded FTAs with China, Korea, Japan and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP-11. As the Prime Minister rightly said, we now cover 70 per cent of our trade through our free trade agreements, providing stability and certainty for our exporters. Last week we took another step when we started finalising FTAs with Indonesia, Peru and Hong Kong by taking legislation through the parliament. This is incredibly important. It's incredibly important because Australian businesses that export, on average, hire 23 per cent more staff, pay 11 per cent higher wages and have labour productivity 13 per cent higher than non-exporters—that is, our exporters help drive our economy. When it comes to what's happening to our exporters: over 53,000 businesses are now exporting; 46,000 of those are small businesses. That's an 18.5 per cent increase since we came to office. That is why we are backing Australia's exporters. This is creating more jobs, with one in five Australians employed in trade-related employment. And that is even stronger when it comes to regional and rural Australia. It's one in four in regional and rural Australia.
Why do we want to continue pushing our trade agenda? Because we want to keep creating jobs. We've already created 1.5 million jobs, and our target, under the Prime Minister's excellent stewardship, is 1.25 million jobs over the next five years. If we keep creating jobs, if we keep driving the economy through trade, we know that this will lift our productivity, it will lift wages, and that is what we're going to do. We're already looking at free trade agreements with the European Union, with the Pacific Alliance—Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia—and through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. We're not going to rest on our laurels on this side. We have seen great success when it comes to trade. We've seen great success when it's come to creating jobs. We're going to keep doing that every single day we're in office for the rest of this term and many terms to come, hopefully.
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction
Ms BUTLER (Griffith) (14:48): My question is to the Attorney-General. As the first law officer in this country and the minister in charge of drafting national integrity legislation, how on earth did the Attorney-General judge it appropriate for the Prime Minister to call the New South Wales police commissioner about the instigation, nature and substance of the criminal investigation into one of his own cabinet ministers?
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Leader of the House) (14:48): Because the call was totally appropriate. It's precisely what the Prime Minister undertook to do. He did it. He came back to the House with the response to that call. And, indeed, it is precisely the description that Commissioner Fuller has given when he said that 'absolutely nothing inappropriate' occurred in that phone call. With respect to your question about being the first law officer, it is a responsibility. There's someone over there who wants the job of first law officer, and that person has previously referred two officers to the AFP for investigation. He is now looking down at his phone—
Mr Brendan O'Connor: Because you're boring.
The SPEAKER: The member for Gorton is warned.
Mr PORTER: maybe trying to see whether or not there was any follow-up from those two letters. They were some time ago. Whose advice was being sought and received when the shadow Attorney-General thinks that it's a good idea to send a politicised referral of George Brandis off for a charge of corruption to the AFP? Whose advice is being sought or received when the shadow Attorney-General decides that it's a wise idea to send the present Attorney-General and myself off to the AFP for a charge, under the Australian Electoral Commission, of bribery? Whose advice is being sought about that? And how many hopeless no-response referrals does this shadow Attorney-General have to preside over before a problem starts to tick on the horizon of the Leader of the Opposition? You are responsible for those referrals, all eight of them: 8-0.
Primary Industries
Mr DRUM ( Nicholls — Chief Nationals Whip ) ( 14:5 0 ): My question is to the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management. Will the minister outline the Morrison-McCormack government's achievements in protecting our primary industries, including our forest industry, and how the government will continue to work in a way that guarantees jobs for Australians, and is the minister aware of any alternative policies?
Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa—Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management) (14:51): I thank the member for Nicholls for his question. He, like the member for Gippsland, in particular, and many regional Victorian members of parliament, has been appalled by the sudden cancellation and destruction of the native forest industry in Victoria. It was done, with the stroke of a pen, without any proper consultation with industry or the community. This is one of the most sustainably managed resources in the country. In fact, only four in every 10,000 trees in native forests in Victoria are harvested, and every one of those are replaced. They are replaced. It's also an important aspect to our fire mitigation work in Victoria, in keeping Victorians safe, making sure they're protected during fire season.
What's more important are the 2½ thousand direct jobs that are going to be wiped out. That's on top of the thousands of jobs indirectly in the hardwood industry—basically, gone. The blue-collar workforce of regional Australia will be gone, decimated in one fell swoop. It also means that, effectively, we may be forced to import hardwood timber that isn't managed in the sustainable way that we in Australia can be proud of, that our native forests have been able to undertake, in a mature and sensible way.
The Victorian government have come up with a solution. Their solution—and we've some admiration—is to plant 50,000 hectares of plantation timber over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, the math doesn't add up, because they're saying we'll transition these jobs out of the native into the plantation. It takes 20 to30 years plus for those trees to mature to a harvestable product. So those jobs are gone. There is no transition. That is a cruel hoax. It is a lie. It is a lie to those people who are hardworking, who are blue-collar workers.
I have to say, while I don't always agree with the member for Hunter, he has, in all honesty, shown the courage of conviction you would expect on this. And recently, at the Australian Forest Products Association dinner, he called out the fallacy of Premier Andrews' claim that the hardwood timber industry in Victoria can transition to plantation by 2030. Australia cannot sustain a forest and forest products industry, and all the jobs and wealth it creates, without a native forest industry. That is the truth. That is what you would expect from someone who's meant to stand up for blue-collar workers—with the coalition members here who are going to stand shoulder to shoulder with those men and women, those communities, that will be destroyed.
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr LITTLEPROUD: While they want to make noise over here, it would be great if they'd do the same as the member for Hunter would and come out and knock the Andrews government for this callous and reckless decision to destroy the livelihoods of regional Australians and regional communities.
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction
Mr BUTLER (Hindmarsh) (14:54): My question is to the minister for emissions reduction. On 1 August the minister told parliament:
All my interests are declared in accordance with the rules.
Does the minister stand by that statement?
Mr TAYLOR (Hume—Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) (14:54): Yes, I do.
Housing Affordability
Mrs WICKS ( Robertson ) ( 14:54 ): My question is to the Minister for Housing and Assistant Treasurer. Will the minister outline to the House the Morrison government's achievements in getting Australians into their first home and how the government will continue to work in a stable and certain way to address the real issue of housing affordability, and is the minister aware of any alternative policies?
Mr SUKKAR (Deakin—Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Housing ) (14:54): I thank the member for Robertson for her question. Every member on this side of the parliament, from the Prime Minister downwards, believes that every single Australian who aspires to own a home should be able to do so, and we believe that we should provide safe and secure housing, where possible, to everybody across the housing spectrum.
In relation to first home buyers, though, we are progressing with our signature policy that was taken to the election, the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme, a policy which will enable 10,000 first home buyers to get into the market with a deposit of as little as five per cent. We know, on this side of the House, that the big challenge for people who are trying to get into the housing market is saving that deposit. It's taking 10 years in Sydney to save a deposit for an average home and eight years in Melbourne to save for that deposit. So this First Home Loan Deposit Scheme, from 1 January, will deliver 10,000 guarantees per annum to help those people into the market. This builds on the First Home Super Saver Scheme, which enables first home buyers to save tax through superannuation, again to help them save that deposit more quickly. Shamefully, the Labor Party voted against the First Home Super Saver Scheme and promised, at the election, to repeal the policy. It's helped 5,000 first home buyers accelerate their deposit.
In addition, we are trying to support older Australians, removing the impediments to downsizing. We've helped 6,000 senior Australians downsize from their family homes by contributing up to $300,000 into their superannuation fund, removing one of the biggest impediments to those people who are living in their family homes. In addition to all of that, last week we had the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation issue a bond of $315 million—the second bond issuance of that amount—which funnels cheap debt into the hands of community housing providers who provide social and affordable housing throughout our country. In its first 12 months, it's delivered well over 1,000 additional social and affordable dwellings.
That's what we've been doing on this side of the House. I'm asked by the member for Robertson about alternative policies. I suppose it's no surprise to the House that, last week, there was an article in theAFR titled 'Labor's negative gearing policy not dead yet'. The shadow minister for housing is obviously in the corner with the shadow Treasurer fighting the Leader of the Opposition to hold onto those $387 billion of taxes. The Australian people delivered their verdict on your housing taxes, and I'd suggest that the Leader of the Opposition speak to the shadow housing minister— (Time expired)
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction
Mr BUTLER (Hindmarsh) (14:58): My question again is to the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction. I refer to his previous answer. Why then has the minister failed to declare his partnership shares in GFA F1 Pty Limited for more than five years?
Mr TAYLOR (Hume—Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) (14:58): My interests are declared in accordance with the rules, as I have said many times in this House.
Infrastructure
Ms BELL (Moncrieff) (14:58): My question is to the Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure. Will the minister outline to the House the Morrison-McCormack government's achievements in delivering critical infrastructure across Australia and how the government will continue to work in a stable and certain way to deliver this infrastructure for Australians? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?
Mr TUDGE (Aston—Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure) (14:59): I thank the member for Moncrieff for her question. Just a couple of weeks ago she joined the Prime Minister in delivering a further $157 million to the Gold Coast Light Rail stage 2A, and that means that project can get underway right now, along with many other projects. We would not be able to make projects like the Gold Coast Light Rail a reality if it weren't for our stable and economic plan.
It's this plan that has enabled us to carve out $100 billion of infrastructure funding over the next decade. That means we're able to fund massive projects like the Gold Coast Light Rail but also projects in other places such as Sydney, with the WestConnex project, which is providing 10,000 jobs. People already using the M4, part of the WestConnex project, are saving up to 5½ hours per week. The Western Sydney Airport is also underway, transforming the Western Sydney landscape as we speak. Inland Rail, another project under our $10 billion pipeline, as the DPM said earlier in the day, is a $10 billion project underway and will transform the way freight is moved inside Australia. There is NorthLink in Western Australia. By the year's end, that project will be complete and will save commuters up to an hour every single week. Similarly, with the North-South Corridor in South Australia, the first section is already done, saving people up to an hour a week. Another three sections of that massive project are also underway. There are 130 major projects underway as we speak and another 140 in the planning phase. These are only able to be done because we're able to manage the budget and fund things accordingly.
Contrast with when Labor was last in office. Because they couldn't manage money, they stuffed the budget. They prioritised spending money on pink batts, school halls and sending cheques to dead people. It means they didn't have the money to fund the major infrastructure projects—not even ones which they themselves said were critical, such as the Western Sydney Airport. The Leader of the Opposition, back in 2009, said in relation to the Western Sydney Airport, 'It is vital that we commence work now'. Nothing happened. He talked about fast rail up hill and down dale but didn't put a cent towards it. He talked about Inland Rail being absolutely essential. Again, not a sod was turned. None of these projects were able to be delivered, because they couldn't manage money. They stuffed the budget. They prioritised other things above infrastructure. Only the coalition can manage money and get on with the job.
The SPEAKER: The minister's time has concluded. The Leader of the Opposition has the call.
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (15:02): My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm his emissions reduction minister has been embroiled in four scandals this year, routinely failed to disclose his interests, has questions over an $80 million water purchase involving the former Deputy Prime Minister, has not declared shares in a company being investigated for poisoning critically endangered grasslands involving the now Treasurer and is part of a criminal investigation into the use of a fraudulent document, involving the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister himself? How many more government members have to be dragged into this—
The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition's time has concluded. The Prime Minister.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister and Minister for the Public Service) (15:02): For a start, I can confirm that the Leader of the Opposition can't get a question out in 30 seconds! But I can confirm this about the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction: he has introduced the default market offer, which puts price caps on for our electricity consumers. He has committed to establishing the $1 billion Grid Reliability Fund, which secures Australia's energy future. He has delivered a $370 million investment into hydrogen and announced the National Hydrogen Strategy. He has put an end to dodgy discounts and late payment fees from the big electricity retailers. He has implemented the Retailer Reliability Obligation. He has passed the big-stick legislation. It was sought to be opposed by those opposite, so we took it to the election; they backed us at election and the opposition rolled over. He delivered the Business Energy Advice Program. He advanced our gas reform package. He has established the Liddell Taskforce. He has invested in four hydrogen and one bioenergy projects. He has agreed to underwrite the New South Wales-Queensland interconnector. He has invested in two electric vehicle development projects and he's opened formal negotiations with the US around access to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And that's just recently.
What I like is that we've got a Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction with emissions going down. He's getting on with the job like all of my colleagues. He is creating jobs. He is getting electricity prices under control, concluding trade agreements, guaranteeing funding for essential services in health and education, looking after our national security, protecting us against terrorists, ensuring we're taking action on countering foreign interference, ensuring we're taking action on waste management and getting plastics out of our ocean, and bringing forward $3.8 billion worth of infrastructure investment to invest in our economy.
For the last six months, and before then, our government has just been getting on with the job. Those opposite are just getting on with their grubby smears and political games because they can't face up to the fact that they were given a message on 18 May: they don't want your higher taxes, they don't want your job-destroying emissions reduction targets, they don't want the fact that you blow a budget any time you see it. Those opposite were rejected, and they've been sulking ever since.
Mr Dreyfus interjecting—
The SPEAKER: Just before I call the member for Higgins, the member for Isaacs is warned. I call the member for Higgins.
Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
Dr ALLEN (Higgins) (15:05): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister outline to the House the Morrison government's achievements in making critical medicines more available for Australians and how the government will continue to work in a stable and certain way to address this real issue for Australians, including those with cystic fibrosis and severe asthma?
Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for Health and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service and Cabinet) (15:06): I want to thank the member for Higgins, who comes to this place with a history as a distinguished paediatric physician, and, amongst other things, is aware of the importance of a stable and certain budget environment, because in 2011 she witnessed new medicines being deferred by the government of the day due to the fact that they had run out of money. As the budget of the day said, 'Due to fiscal circumstances, the government will defer the listing of some new medicines until fiscal circumstances permit.' That included medicines for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—the medicine Symbicort, for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
I am delighted to say that under this government, because of the strong economic conditions that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and the government as a whole have helped to support and helped to generate, we are able to list new medicines. Yesterday, 1 December, was PBS listing day. Some of the new medicines which we have been able to list include Orkambi and Symdeko. These are medicines for beautiful young children with cystic fibrosis, and these medicines would otherwise have cost $250,000. I met little Xavier on the day on which we announced this launch, and his life has been transformed through early access. But there are numerous other children who will benefit as a result of this, whether it's in relation to acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and access to Blincyto at $150,000; whether it's in relation to Keytruda and access to medicines for lung cancer, which would otherwise cost $120,000; or, as we announced only yesterday, access to Fasenra and Nucala for severe asthma—a medicine which would have cost approximately $20,000. And it is worth recalling that medicines for severe asthma were stopped, were blocked, were deferred because the budget ran out of money under Labor in 2011. By contrast, only yesterday, Fasenra and Nucala were listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Why does a strong economy matter? Because it allows us to give people the dignity of work. But why does it also matter? Because, ultimately, at the heart of the government is the ability to provide essential services so that what happened in 2011 never, ever happens again in Australia, as we saw only yesterday.
Mr Albanese: Are you going early?
Mr Morrison: I'm not going early. We've done over 20 questions, Mr Speaker. I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE
Morrison, Mr John
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister and Minister for the Public Service) (15:09): If I may take this moment of indulgence, as my father is watching from an aged-care facility near his home, I'd just like to wish him all the very best for his 84th birthday. Dad, we're all thinking of you at this very difficult time, and I wish I could be there with you.
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (15:09): I reckon some things are above politics and the Prime Minister's father's birthday is one of them, so I say 'Happy birthday' from everyone on this side as well.
COMMITTEES
Public Works Committee
Report
Dr McVEIGH (Groom) (15:10): by leave—On behalf of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, I present the committee's report No. 6 for 2019—Referrals made September 2019.
Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).
Dr McVEIGH: Report No. 6 considers four projects referred to the committee in September 2019. The total value of the proposed works for the four projects is $2.39 billion. The projects will be undertaken across Australia and in Kiribati. The Department of Defence sought approval to proceed with the following three projects: HMAS Watson Redevelopment Project in Sydney, valued at $430 million; the Shoalwater Bay training area remediation project in Queensland, valued at between $105 million and $140 million; and the Navy Capability Infrastructure Sub-Program, in various locations, valued at $1.8 billion. In addition, the Department of Foreign Affairs sought approval to proceed with the proposed Australian High Commission Property Replacement Project in Tarawa, Kiribati, valued at $19.6 million.
As part of its statutory role under the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the committee scrutinised each project, considering the purpose of the work and its suitability, the need for the work, whether the money expended is cost-effective, whether any revenue is generated, and the present and prospective value of the work. The committee travelled to and inspected the proposed works where feasible. In each case, the committee recommended that it is expedient that the works are carried out.
I'd like to take the remaining time I have available to update the House on the statutory role of the Public Works Committee and its work over the last few years. At the end of the 45th Parliament, the committee completed a very busy program of works, scrutinising 39 separate projects with a combined value of $2.85 billion, taking, on average, 15 weeks to complete its scrutiny. This compares favourably with the timing of approval processes from the Public Works Committee procedure manual, which states that 14 weeks is the average approval time.
It is important to note that the committee undertakes its scrutiny as expeditiously as possible, as prescribed in section 17 of the act. But, more importantly, it does not report to the House unless it is satisfied that it is expedient for works to be carried out. In some instances, this means the scrutiny process takes longer than the suggested time as the committee may need to seek additional information from the entity to assist its consideration. Entities also need to take into account the sitting calendar, obviously, as well as time allocated for calling of submissions and the expected time between public hearings and the tabling of reports. In addition, the committee considered 406 medium works projects, with a total value of $2.2 billion. Medium works projects have a value of between $2 million and $15 million. The number of medium works considered in the 45th Parliament was the highest on record and contributed to an extremely busy agenda for the committee.
In the 46th Parliament, the committee has considered and recommended expediency on nine projects thus far, taking, on average, nine weeks from referral to tabling. Five of these projects were lapsed projects from the 45th Parliament. Lapsed projects occur when an election is called before the committee is able to finalise its consideration; however, the committee generally prioritises their scrutiny and reporting following such a referral. The committee has also considered 149 medium works projects in this parliament with a value of over $700 million, including four medium works for defence purposes with a value of between $17 million and $15 million.
As the oldest continuing committee of the parliament, this committee takes its statutory role in scrutinising proposed public works very seriously. This is amply demonstrated by both the quality of the scrutiny it conducts and the time frames in which the scrutiny takes place. I'd like to take this opportunity, therefore, to thank my colleagues on the committee in this the 46th Parliament and, given the projects we inherited from the 45th Parliament, that parliament as well, including the previous chair, the member for Wright. Without the tireless efforts of my fellow colleagues across the committee, this focus on the effective expenditure of public money on public works would not be possible. I commend this report to the House.
Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (15:16): by leave—Firstly, can I say I concur with the comments made by the member for Groom with respect to this report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works. I believe that the member for Groom, as the chairman of that committee, has summarised the importance of the work of the committee and of this particular report very, very well. As he quite rightly pointed out, the report refers to four projects, three of which refer to defence projects with a total value of approximately $2.3 billion. The other project, in respect of the Australian High Commission at Tarawa, Kiribati, has a cost of $19.6 million for a new building there.
I wish to confine my remarks to the defence projects, which, in my view, represent some of the most significant defence infrastructure expenditure that has come before the Public Works Committee, at least during my time on that committee—and that has been some years. Because of the scale and scope of the works proposed, the committee's focus has been on ensuring that proper process has been adhered to by the Defence department and that the works are necessary. When we are looking at works of this nature, it is sometimes, very, very difficult to ensure that the costs provided to us will in fact be accurate, given that, in many cases, the works are likely to be carried out over several years and there is every likelihood that there will be some variations in the costs put to us.
In summary, $1.79 billion has been allocated for the Navy Capability Infrastructure Sub-Program; $430 million for the upgrade of HMAS Watson in Sydney; and up to $140 million for the Shoalwater Bay Training Area Remediation Project in Queensland. The works are expected to be carried out over about a seven-year period across all of them, and that also, as I said a moment ago, creates a degree of uncertainty as to what the final costs of those projects will be.
The Navy Capability Infrastructure Sub-Program has some 22 work elements at nine locations across Australia. Around half of that expenditure will be at HMAS Stirling and Henderson in Western Australia. None of those projects attracted any significant concern from interested parties—nor, it is my understanding, do any of the proposed works arise from the new submarine acquisitions.
The proposed $430 million upgrade of HMAS Watson on Sydney Harbour did attract considerable interest from adjoining residents to the base, who were primarily concerned about the impact of around five years of ongoing construction work at the base and the long-term suitability of naval facilities in Sydney Harbour. The view of some representatives is that whilst HMAS Watson has been used as a military site since 1871 and specifically by the Navy since 1942 the growth of Sydney over recent decades raised legitimate questions about the long-term wisdom of having naval facilities in Sydney Harbour. The department rebutted those concerns with arguments that previous reviews had considered relocating naval facilities and found that the relocation could not be justified.
Regardless of the merits of the arguments put, I believe that those are decisions for government and not for the committee. On a specific matter, HMAS Watson is situated on a unique part of the Australian coastline that the wider community should have access to. The committee saw no practical or security reason that public access to the coastline should not be allowed as requested by one of the representatives. To facilitate that objective, the committee has recommended that the proposed works at HMAS Watson not preclude the building of a clifftop track along the eastern perimeter of the base as part of the Bondi-to-Sydney walk. Presently there is a track only on the western side. Completion of the track around the base will make the Bondi-to-Manly walk an international attraction.
Lastly, the committee has also focused heavily on ensuring that each of those projects which are located throughout the country award contracts to local communities so that local communities benefit not only from the long-term presence of those facilities but also from the considerable expenditure that is going to be made over the coming years. To that extent, the committee has been working as closely as it can with the department to ensure that that does happen and that everyone benefits from the expenditure of these sums of money—which, as I said, are some of the largest the committee has had to approve. With those comments, I commend the recommendations to the House.
BILLS
Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
to which the following amendment was moved:
That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"the House:
(1) declines to give the bill a second reading;
(2) notes that, in every Budget, this Government has tried to cut the pension or increase the pension age to 70;
(3) further notes that the cuts to Newstart in this bill will hurt redundant workers and push them towards poverty; and
(4) criticises the Government for its cruel cuts to pensions and social security".
Dr ALY (Cowan) (15:22): The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 is yet another example of this coalition government's attacks on pensioners and people on welfare. This bill contains more cuts to vulnerable Australians. There are three parts to this bill. The first part is to increase the residency requirements for age and disability pensioners from 10 to 15 years. The second part is to stop the payment of the age pension supplement after six weeks overseas for Australian pensioners who travel overseas. And the third part of this bill extends the liquid assets waiting period that applies to Newstart, to youth allowance and to other allowances.
The thing about this bill is that it's not a new bill. It's not a new bill at all. It was first introduced by this coalition government in 2017. It was a bad bill then, it's a bad bill now and it will continue to be a bad bill. The government want to punish pensioners. It's not enough that they demonise people on welfare. It's not enough that the Minister for Social Services claims that people on welfare will be spending all their money on drugs and sending their money to drug traffickers. That's not enough, no. They also have to attack people on welfare with every part of their breath. This bill will rip $185 million—think about that—from who? Not from big business, not from those who aren't paying their taxes—no: $185 million will be ripped from Australian pensioners.
This government has proven itself to be the enemy of Australian pensioners. It has tried to cut the pension and increase the pension age in every budget, including in three budgets when the current Prime Minister was the Treasurer. In the 2014 budget it tried to cut pension indexation, which would have meant that pensioners would be forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. That cut would have ripped $23 billion, again, from the pockets of Australian pensioners. Also in the 2014 budget the government cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions. Again in the 2014 budget—wow, that 2014 budget was a doozy—it axed the $900 seniors supplement and, in that same budget, tried to reset deeming rate thresholds that would have seen 500,000 part-pensioners made worse off.
What do we have in 2015? This government did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. What about 2016? In the 2016 budget they tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners as part of their plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks—the same plan that they're trying to pull with this bill. But also in the 2016 budget they tried to cut the pension to over 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. By their own figures, that measure would have left over 563,000 Australians, who are currently receiving a pension or allowance, worse off. Over 10 years, in excess 1.5 million pensioners would be worse off. On top of all of that, this government has spent five years trying to increase the pension age to 70, and it took five consecutive rate cuts before it even adjusted the deeming rates—and only then after a concerted campaign and pressure from seniors groups and from Labor.
This bill, as it is, will have a differential impact on migrant pensioners—people like my mum. My mum's a pensioner. She's been in Australia for 50 years. For most of those years she worked as an aged-care worker. It is quite well known that my mother actually nursed former Prime Minister John Howard's mother in her final days. She was very close to Mrs Howard at that time. I believe my mother's earned her pension, as have many other Australian pensioners and as have many migrants who came to Australia and worked hard in building Australia, building the infrastructure that we need and looking after our elderly, like my mum did. They've earned their pensions.
In my electorate I've got pensioners from the United Kingdom, from South Africa, from Portugal, from Macedonia, from Greece and from Italy. Every now and then, they like to go back to their mother country. They like to see their extended family. My parents spent 50 years here, and not once did we have any family come to visit us. They spent 50 years away from their sisters, their brothers, their nieces, their nephews, their great nieces and their great nephews. That's not unusual for migrant families who come here. It's not unusual for them to want to go back and visit their extended family and reconnect with their extended family. So this bill cutting the pension for six weeks away is going to differentially impact on them.
I've already had migrant pensioners from my electorate come to tell me just how much this is going to affect them. I've had them in tears telling me that they really want to go back, but six weeks is not enough and they're not going to be able to afford to go back if their pensions are cut after six weeks. Think about this. Many pensioners are older, they're frail and they have health issues. For some of them, it's a really long way to travel. For some of them, it's a 25-hour aeroplane trip. When they get there, they want to be able to spend as much time as they can there. In other cases, they might go there and there might be circumstances which keep them there. This is a really unfair measure that's going to differentially impact on migrant pensioners across all our electorates.
When the member for Barton was talking about this particular part of the bill, the member for Goldstein interjected. I'd like to challenge the member for Goldstein to actually go out and talk to some of the migrant pensioners in his electorate and ask their opinion of this bill, because I'm pretty sure that the migrant pensioners in his electorate—people who came here 30, 40, 50 years ago, who worked hard, who contributed to the Australian economy in so many different ways, as well as to our social fabric, and who deserve the pension that they are on—will have something to say about this to the member for Goldstein.
One of the other things that this bill does is seek to increase the liquid assets waiting period, which is currently at 13 weeks. It's currently at 13 weeks for people with modest savings. We believe that 13 weeks is long enough. I want to talk here about what this means for people in the electorate of Cowan who have found themselves on hard times, who have found themselves relying on the social welfare safety net—something which Australia should be very proud of and which we are very proud of. There aren't a lot of countries in the world where, if you lose your job or if you find yourself on hard times, you don't have to suffer in many of the ways that people suffer in countries without the robust welfare program that we have here in Australia.
In my electorate, people aren't waiting 13 weeks to get a job. People, many of them over the age of 50, who have found themselves retrenched after many years of working for an organisation or company, are waiting, on average, 22½ weeks to get a job. That is the average waiting period in the northern suburbs of Perth. In the north-east it's 25.9 weeks. These are the longest job queues in the state. People in the electorate of Cowan who, for reasons beyond their control, lose their jobs and find themselves reliant on our social security safety net aren't getting jobs within 13 weeks. They are waiting, on average, well over 20 weeks.
What does this bill mean to them? Many of those in the northern suburbs are also suffering high household debt and mortgage stress, which means they have very meagre savings, if any, because all of their wages are being spent on rent or on keeping a roof over their heads and keeping their families heads above water. This means that those who have any kinds of assets may have to sell those assets just in order to be able to survive until they find a job. These aren't people who want to be on social security, the people who this government seeks to demonise with every breath. These are people who are trying to find work. These are people who have worked, who have paid taxes, who have contributed. Maybe they've worked two jobs, maybe three. But the state of the economy at the moment means that they simply can't find more work. Many of them are older workers and they simply can't find more work and are having to wait over 20 weeks until they find a job. Putting in this liquid assets waiting period also means that, after 13 weeks, after people have run down their savings, they may be forced to sell their homes, they may be forced out of their homes, they may be forced into poverty. If they lose their home, if they lose their car, if they're forced into these situations, then finding employment will be just that much more difficult.
This entire bill is nothing but a cash grab. And it's really telling that a number of bills that we've seen this government introduce over the last few weeks have all been about reaching into the pockets of the pensioners, of people on welfare and of people on Newstart, and it seems to me that this government is reaching into the pockets of the wrong people. It seems to me that this government is trying to reach into the pockets of the most vulnerable.
Labor cannot support this bill. We cannot support this government continuing to demonise and to hit and attack pensioners and people on welfare—this is who they are; this is in their DNA; this is what this government stands for.
Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (15:35): I thank the member for Cowan for articulating what a lot of us on this side of the chamber are feeling, and that is that a bunch of people in our community have become easy targets, really easy targets, because they are the most vulnerable people in our community. The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, which we do not support, absolutely targets groups within our community when, actually, we should be asking ourselves, 'How do we better support these people?' not, 'How do we kick them while they're down?'
This bill targets two groups of people, the first being age pensioners. On one hand you've got a government who says it cares for older people. We're not seeing a lot of action on that. There is lots of rhetoric but not a lot of action: 10,000 new home care packages is hardly the action we expect to see for protecting that older cohort. We're talking about the same groups of people here, and yet again, on two measures, there is an attempt to further punish people for being old and on the pension. The second group being targeted are people on Newstart, youth allowance and other allowances. Again, they are being targeted because of the circumstances in which they find themselves.
Let's look at the two measures in this bill that apply to pensioners. One is to increase the residency requirement for age and disability pensioners from 10 years to 15 years. I looked at this and looked at the numbers involved and thought, 'This is just mean.' This is just something mean that some bean counter thought up, that didn't take into account who these people are. I'll speak in a bit more detail on that. The second measure applies to age pensioners who travel overseas. Both of these groups are migrant pensioners, people who have chosen to make Australia their home, who deliberately set out to say, 'We want to be part of Australia,' and now that they've been here, they've contributed, they've worked, they are not going to get any of the entitlements that they really deserve. The bill rips out $185 million from Australian pensioners.
The group that I think is so unfairly targeted are people who have built a life and raised a family here. Not a lot of us in this chamber have made the conscious decision to uproot ourselves and go and live somewhere else. Some have come from migrant families. I've spent three years of my life living overseas, and I know the member for Wentworth, who sits opposite, has spent a considerable amount of time living overseas; but, like me, probably not once did he seriously consider relocating permanently. These are people who have made that very big choice, and we won't know all the stories behind their reasons for doing that.
In my electorate, Macquarie, the group who have done this so effectively—the largest ethnic group in the electorate—are the Maltese. They've been here for many years. I'm not suggesting that most of them will be affected by the increased residency requirements, but they will be impacted by the stopping of the payment of the age pension supplement when they go home. When you go home to Malta, you don't just pop over there for a week or two. You haven't seen family for many years. You've been dislocated from those large families. It is very common for people to want to go and spend significant amounts of time, a couple of months, over there. It might not be with only one family member. It's an opportunity to reconnect.
These are people who have worked hard. In my electorate, the work they have often done is the hard yards of producing the vegetables that we eat. They were market gardeners originally; they are now on sometimes quite large farming operations in the Hawkesbury. They are the people who put the fresh food on our tables. As part of what should continue to be the Sydney food bowl, the Hawkesbury is very grateful to the work that the Maltese community have done in ensuring we still have that produce thriving. These are people who have worked hard on the land, and I really don't understand how we can be so mean as to say, 'Sorry, that extra supplement's going to be cut off after six weeks.' You think about the work involved in saving up for this trip in the first place. It isn't something you can do every couple of years. It is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go home and see even more elderly family members.
I hope that the government has a change of heart on this and thinks about the human impact. I know that's a big ask. I know it doesn't happen very often with this government, but I happen to be an optimistic person and I live in hope. But you need only look at the track record of the government in recent years to see how the government has treated pensioners to see that I am probably being way too optimistic. I watched this government come to office. I lost the 2013 election but then watched very closely to see how this government behaved and, in the 2014 budget, it tried to cut the pension indexation—the cut that would mean the pension doesn't increase as it needs to in order to help people cope with the additional costs that they face. That cut would have meant pensioners would have been forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. It might not sound like a lot to those opposite, not with their pretty hefty packets, but to a pensioner that is a massive amount when the costs of your bills keep going up, particularly for energy. Of course, something else this government has tried very hard to take away from pensioners, and just about everyone who receives some sort of government allowance or concession, is the energy supplement.
Also in the 2014 budget there was a billion dollars cut from those pensioner concessions. Also cut was the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees, who, like any older person, this government is happy to take a whack at if they get some form of government assistance. In the 2014 budget the government also tried to reset deeming rate thresholds. That's a cut that would have seen half a million part-pensioners made worse off. While I'm on deeming rates, it was like drawing blood from a stone to get this government to change the deeming rates. I think there were five interest rates falls before the government decided, 'Maybe deeming rates need to be adjusted,' and even then the adjustment was pretty minor. These are the sorts of things we've seen.
In 2015 was the really big blow. This was the decision by the Greens to do a deal with the Liberals so that the pension was cut to around 3,700 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year because of a change in the pension assets test. I have pensioners that are still reeling and still trying to find their way and their footing as a result of those decisions. It didn't stop in 2015. In 2016, we saw the first attempt to cut the pension as part of this plan to limit overseas travel. In the 2016 budget the government also tried to cut the pension for 1.5 million Australians. That was the attempt to cut the energy supplement. I think what this shows—and I could go on—is a pattern of deliberately targeting people who are the least able to find alternative sources of income. They can't just go and sell a wad of shares. They've been forced to downsize and to try to find ways to reduce their costs of living. The reality of that is that in summer they don't always use their air conditioners and in winter they don't always turn on their heating. These are the sorts of challenges that pensioners face right now, even with many of these attempts having been thwarted.
The other cruel blow is that for five years, I think it is, this government has tried to increase the pension age to 70. That's great if you spend your life sitting on a green bench but not so great if you're out there fixing cars or doing anything physical. Construction's the obvious one, but there's also nursing—hard, hard yards there. So this is the attitude that we're up against, and I would really urge the government to think closely about the people who are going to be affected here.
The other thing that's bolted on to this attack on pensioners is the attempt to extend the waiting period for people who lose their job or are made redundant. Now, let's get really clear. If someone has lost their job or been made redundant, they are now going to be asked to wait another—let's see; now I'm even stunning myself in terms of the length of time. Right now it's 13 weeks, and I think that is a long enough period to wait. Any longer than that is really forcing people to dig into the assets that they have. And this liquid assets waiting period, as it is known, is going to have a whole lot of consequences, not just for the person. That person is going to have to dig into their savings for just their normal costs of living. What if medical needs then arise? What if a car needs repairing? What sort of precarious financial position are these people going to find themselves in?
One of the inevitable consequences is that they will turn to shonky payday lenders. They will turn to people who will lend them money at exorbitant rates, and the government have failed to tackle that sector at all. What they're really doing here is driving more customers in the direction of those sorts of shonky lenders. But what it's also going to do—and this is the thing that makes me angriest of all—is make the stress on these individuals and their families even greater. It is already well established that financial stress has mental health consequences for some people, and we're saying to these people: 'We're going to make you suffer financially. You're already suffering because you're not working, not only the financial suffering but the sense of not having a job'—and it's not a great feeling—'and you're just going to have to deal with the consequences of that for your mental health.' It is simply cruel. It is mean and cruel to be doing these sorts of things to groups of people who just don't deserve it. I'd really urge those opposite to go and talk to people who are in this situation and ask, 'What effect does it really have on you?' It might actually be a better question, instead of asking how much harder they can make their lives, to ask, 'What can we do to help you move on from where you are?'
The other thing that concerns me about this is that, for people who've been made redundant and have been given a certain amount of money, the purpose of that often is to assist them in retraining and in working out what direction they want to go in. Yet now we're going to say: 'Just rely on it for the basics. There are no extras there. You're just going to have to dig into that.' In the Senate inquiries into this, some of the evidence highlighted that it will really impact on a particular group of people who've been made redundant—middle-aged men in their 50s and 60s. They've worked hard all their lives, they've paid taxes and they've been made redundant, perhaps because their industry is going through a transition and there's no alternative industry there for them to easily slot into. The people who spoke to the senators described that it will actually force people to go into poverty before they can access any government support. Is that really the intention of this legislation? It's called payment integrity. Should it really have poverty creation in there? I cannot imagine that that is the government's intention. If these are unintentional consequences then I'd really urge you to read the dissenting report from the Labor senators about what the real consequences of this legislation are.
I think this is actually a really good point: we can see that it will be assessed. The money that you have won't just be the cash in the bank; it'll be some of the payments made or that are due to be paid by your last employer; it's obviously the amount of money you've got in the bank, whether you can access that money or not, whether it's on long-term deposit or absolutely available; in some circumstances it might be assets that you've given to a son or a daughter; it might be loans you've made to other people; and it might be compensation payments. All of these will be assessed. It is just plain mean-spirited. It won't just be felt by older Australians and their families; it will flow to local economies like my small businesses in the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains who really need people to be able to spend a little bit of money on that cup of coffee or that haircut.
Mr HILL (Bruce) (15:51): It's telling, isn't it? The government will not show up to defend their own legislation. And why would they want to speak on this bill? The first thing I say to the House is: don't be fooled by the Orwellian title. The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 is a bill to cut the age pension. This is a bill to cut Newstart. It's not about payment integrity. They may as well call it, as the member for Macquarie was saying, the 'Drive up poverty bill'. Only a government led by a cheap, failed marketing guy could come up with 'payment integrity' as a description for a bill that cuts the age pension and cuts Newstart.
What this bill does is cruel. It cuts the age pension supplement to pensioners who are overseas for six weeks or more. It takes $185 million from the pockets of pensioners. That equates to, I think, for someone on the single base rate of the pension supplement, a grand total of $11.88 per week for that single pensioner. Well done to the government; well done you. Even for this government that is a mean-spirited, nasty little cut. The main targets of these cuts, of course, are pensioners with families living overseas, many thousands of whom reside in my electorate—people who came to this country in the 1950s and 1960s from Greece, from Italy and then later from Serbia, from Vietnam and from all over the world, who've contributed to this country for the whole of their working lives. They've paid their taxes. They've put in, and now they might want to visit their families overseas in retirement. They want to spend quality time with their families even later in their lives, but this government's bill makes it harder to do so.
Many people might listen to this and think: 'How many pensioners can afford to go overseas for six weeks? If they can afford that, surely we can take $11 off them.' The truth is that, if you're a pensioner, you would have to save up for a very long time for the flights to get overseas, so it makes sense to go and stay with family for two, three or four months. Often people travel to care for the grandkids overseas, when a new baby is born, or for a sick relative. Indeed, in that regard—I talked about this at a recent seniors morning tea I had—people were horrified. The government hasn't told people about this bill; it's been buried in the background on the Notice Paper for some years now.
But it's not just migrants; it's people born in this country, because we're a globalised society now. Children of pensioners move overseas and get jobs, fall in love, get married, live in London or wherever they may be and have children. And, of course, the pensioners of Australia want to go and visit their children and connect with their grandkids. Pensioner are not rich. Staying for two, three or four months means saving for airfares. Often, of course, those airfares are paid for by their kids, but they still have the bills to pay at home when they're not here. They still have the council rates. They still have the electricity bills, most of which are the connection fees for many pensioners.
So why is the government doing this? They're cutting $11.88 a week from vulnerable people for a few weeks of the year to save $185 million by attacking pensioners. And yet this very year the government voted themselves a tax cut of $16,000 a year. That says everything you need to know about the government's priorities. Everyone on the government benches gets a tax cut of $16,000 a year, and now we're debating a bill to cut $11.88 from pensioners.
This is a government with the wrong priorities. Their budget surplus that we hear so much about is built entirely on these kinds of cuts and on attacking the most vulnerable people in Australia—the $1.6 billion cut to the NDIS, for example. Now, there are two possibilities: possibility 1, that the Liberals are just mean and don't care, and possibility 2, that they think now the election's out of the way they can get away with it. Well, the truth is, I think, probably both are true.
The fact that pensioners travel overseas for an extended period of time is the reality of life in modern Australia. This is the kind of society we are now. Pensioners don't just sit at home, government, waiting to die. They go overseas to see their grandkids, to be with family and to visit the place they have not been able to go to for 40 years. And, yes, they might want to stay for four months in the village where they were born and grew up. Cutting the pension in this way is an attack on the Australian way of life. You may not see it, but we will make sure that every pensioner, if this bill passes, knows.
The Liberals' efforts to cut the age pension are not new. This in fact is the third time they've tried to make this cut to the age pension supplement. In 2017—I'll give them this—at least they were a bit more honest. The bill that was buried in at that point was called the omnibus savings and child care reform bill—at least it had savings in the title. In 2017 they also introduced, astoundingly, another bill that sat on the Notice Paper—this time called payment integrity—but it was never debated. The Liberals have been too scared to debate this bill the whole of the last term, even though they had this cut to the age pension sitting on the Notice Paper for years. Of course it died on the Notice Paper in the last parliament but, like the political necrophiles they are, they just couldn't stop themselves and reintroduced it to the House—reanimated it.
Let's just record for the House the Liberals' age pension cuts—the history thereof. In 2014 they tried to cut pension indexation, a cut that would have meant that pensioners would be forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. In 2014 they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions—support designed to help pensioners with the cost of living. In 2014 they also axed the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees for receiving the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. In 2014—that was a good year for them, wasn't it?—they tried to reset deeming rates thresholds, a cut that would have seen half a million part-pensioners made worse off. In 2015 they did that famous deal with the Greens political party to cut the pension for around 370 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by fiddling the pension assets test. Not stopping there, in 2016 they tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners—again, this was the early version of the plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks. In 2016 they tried to cut the pension for over 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. The government's own figures—this is their own admission—showed that this would have left over 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or allowance worse off. Over 10 years in excess of 1.5 million pensioners would have been worse off.
They then spent five long years trying to increase the pension age to 70. I think when the current Prime Minister did in Malcolm Turnbull he freaked out because he realised that wasn't exactly popular in real Australia and they dropped that one—it may well return. And then they took five consecutive RBA rate cuts before they even adjusted the deeming rates, and that was only after a concerted campaign from seniors groups and Labor.
This bill, though, doesn't stop there. It is not just a bill to cut the age pension; this bill attempts to cut Newstart, astoundingly. It's hard to actually understand where they think up this nonsense. At a time when almost everyone in Australia except those opposite understand that the rate of Newstart is too low, at just $40 a day, and even the Business Council of Australia, those well-known socialist lefties, say Newstart has to be raised, what do the Liberals do? They cut Newstart in this bill.
To be clear, there is no public policy rationale for increasing the liquid assets waiting period for people who lose their job or are made redundant. This a cash grab from vulnerable Australians, pure and simple. Again, in a year when the government voted themselves a tax cut—everyone opposite got a tax cut of $16,000 a year from the government—their answer now is to try and cut Newstart to prop up the budget surplus.
The Liberals are proposing to take money from workers experiencing unemployment, who are Australia's most vulnerable people, because currently there is a maximum waiting period of 13 weeks for people with very modest savings, if they're made redundant or lose their job, to access Newstart, sickness allowance, youth allowance and Austudy. This bill would double the waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks; that's six months. The government wants vulnerable people to wait six months to access basic support through Centrelink. Applicants therefore would be forced to spend down what meagre savings they might have before being eligible to receive a payment.
Now, a savings buffer is incredibly important for the financial resilience of everyday Australians. This bill would force people to eat into their emergency savings. What happens, then, when the car breaks down? What happens when you need to pay a rental bond because you lost your last house and have to move? What happens when the fridge stops working? What happens when your suit pants rip before a job interview? The government might as well call this, if they were being honest, the 'Drive up payday lending bill' or the 'Drive up poverty bill', because that's what it will do.
As the Senate inquiry made clear, these changes will particularly impact unemployed older Australians—men between 50 and 65, and people who have received redundancy payments. We know what the government's doing. They've always loved demonising people on welfare, people on Newstart, summoning up that old stereotype of the dole bludger and making people think that just about everyone claiming unemployment benefits is somehow a dole bludger. They know that's not true. It is not true. The integrity mechanisms within Centrelink stop just about all of that happening. Of course there are a few people who rort the system, and they should be caught and they should be dealt with. But the vast majority of people on Newstart are on Newstart because they cannot get a job and they need the support to survive. These cuts don't help people to get back on their feet. They just push vulnerable people into desperate situations and further isolate them from support.
The Department of Human Services—just to put some numbers around this—expect that these cuts would impact 13,800 Australians annually, and that 11,000 Australians would be forced to wait an entire six months, if they got made redundant, before they could access Newstart. It's a continuation of six years of cuts based on the Liberals' obsession with attacking ordinary working Australians doing it tough and their ideological obsession with punishing people because they are poor. This is a bill to cut the age pension and to cut Newstart, and they should be honest, at least, and call it that.
Ms MURPHY (Dunkley) (16:02): This Liberal government has never seen a group of vulnerable people that it didn't want to target. It's a government in search of a policy agenda, it's a government in search of a reason for being, but it's never a government in search of a group of Australians to target and it's always, always, vulnerable Australians that it sets its sights on. This bill targets pensioners. It targets young people looking for work. It targets older workers who have lost their jobs. It targets people at a time in their lives when they need assistance, not punishment. It targets people who have worked hard, who have paid their taxes, who want to go and see their family who live overseas or perhaps support sick family members who live overseas. It targets hardworking vulnerable Australians in their time of need.
If you feel like you've seen this Liberal government trying to make these cuts before, if you feel a bit of deja vu, it's because you have seen it before. These cuts to allowances for pensioners and other people who need them were bad when the then Treasurer, now the Prime Minister, announced them in the 2016-17 MYEFO. They were bad when he put them in the 2017-18 budget. They were bad when they were introduced into the parliament in 2017 in what was called, ironically, the payment integrity bill. And they're bad now. At least the 2017 Liberal government were apparently too embarrassed to bring on for debate a bill ripping $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners. They introduced it, but they didn't bring it on for debate. Not so the Morrison government—no, this Morrison government is apparently not at all ashamed of trying to bring in more cuts for vulnerable Australians, more cuts for middle-aged and older Australian workers, more cuts to Newstart, more cuts to pensions. It is not at all ashamed of its legislation which would make life even harder for Australians who are already doing it tough.
So here we are, debating what is still called the payment integrity bill—and you might ask yourself if everyone in this chamber understands what the word 'integrity' means, particularly those on the other side—and Labor is opposing it because this is legislation which would make it even harder for Australians who are already doing it tough to get by and would punish Australians simply for wanting to live their lives. Australia has had the slowest growth in a decade. We have stagnant wages, productivity in decline, record household debt, high underemployment and declining living standards. What do the Morrison government have as a plan to address the floundering economy and make life just that little bit easier for the people in my community of Dunkley who are struggling to pay the bills on their low wages? Businesses are finding it difficult to find customers who have enough disposable income to spend, and people right now are working out how they're going to pay the out-of-pocket costs for their health care and the aged-care costs for their parents and their loved ones; how they're going to pay for child care so they can go back to work; and how they're going to find stable, secure and well-paid employment. What do the Morrison government have as a plan for people in my community? Nothing. But they do have this bill—an old, bad idea to rip money from the pockets of pensioners and those looking for work. They have a plan to make it worse, not better.
This bill cuts Newstart—have no illusions about that. It will force Australians who are desperately trying to re-enter the workforce to eat into their meagre savings before they can access income support. I am deeply concerned about how this government's attempts to make people who have lost their job expend their meagre savings and assets before they can access Newstart or sickness allowance and will impact on older workers in my community in Dunkley. As I go around my community, when I'm not in Canberra—when I'm at home every day; when I'm out holding seniors' morning teas for 650 people in a week; when I'm talking to people in the local malls and shopping centres in Langwarrin and Karingal; when I'm at the shopping strips in Carrum Downs, Frankston North and Monterey; when I'm holding community drop-in clinics at the community centres at Orwell and Belvedere—I am constantly faced with stories of men and women in their 50s and older who simply cannot find work. Sometimes their parents approach me and say that they're retired and should be enjoying their life, but they're spending their days worried sick for their daughter or son who's 55, has worked their entire life and has been made redundant, not through any fault of their own, after they have paid their taxes and done the right thing, because their employer has gone out of business or because the changing nature of work means that the job they're doing is no longer needed. Sometimes they've lost their job and they can't get back into the market, because of age discrimination. I am told about people who, in desperation, have taken their age off their CV and managed to get interviews, but then for some reason they don't get the job when people find out how old they are. It's a real problem. Sometimes it's simply because the economy is floundering and there just isn't enough work for everyone who wants it. They might get a job, but they certainly wouldn't get enough hours and it's not secure.
Every day across my electorate of Dunkley I meet people who want to work and people who need to work to support themselves and their family; people who have taken course after course to try to reskill, to try to upskill, to try to get themselves in a position where they can find a job; and people who need a federal government that will back them in, not one which attacks them with cuts to allowances. Of course, we know that this is an issue across Australia. We know that middle-aged and older Australians who are re-entering the workforce find it particularly difficult not just in my community. It's because of the structural barriers to finding a job and the age discrimination that we know exists. Again, we know that it's not just in Dunkley that older workers will need to retrain and upskill and will need to spend more time on further education. If you're lucky enough to live in Victoria and you want to do one of the courses that the Labor state government has made free, you can do it at TAFE, but for too many Australians—many, many Australians across the country—that further education costs money and it's often money that they don't have. The number of Australians over the age of 55 on Newstart has skyrocketed by 45 per cent under the Liberal-National government. Over 55s represent the largest cohort, or over a quarter, of all Newstart recipients. This bill attacks those very people, make no doubt about it.
Currently people claiming Newstart, sickness allowance, Austudy and youth allowance—because young people aren't left out of this list of vulnerable Australians who are attacked—have to wait up to 13 weeks to access the payments if they have liquid assets, for example, savings or a redundancy payment, which are over $5,500 for a single with no dependents or $11,000 for someone with a partner or dependants. These are hardly enormous sums of money. The existing waiting period at these levels is a week and increases up to a maximum of 13 weeks for liquid assets of $11,500 for singles or $23,000 for those with dependants. What does this government want to do? It wants to extend the maximum liquid asset waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks for people with liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles, or $36,000 for couples and people with dependants. Again, they're hardly staggering amounts of money, particularly when you're talking about having to pay unaffordable rents, rising electricity costs, childcare costs, healthcare costs and education costs—let alone putting food on the table. But it's not just cash in the bank, of course, that liquid assets are made up of. The government's own department says liquid assets include: some payments made, or due to be made, by a person's last employer—including redundancies that haven't been made; amounts deposited or lent to banks or other financial institutions, whether or not you can access it immediately; assets given to a son or a daughter in some circumstances; loans to other people and compensation payments.
This bill means that applicants will need to spend down more of their assets before becoming eligible to receive a payment. As many of my colleagues on this side of the House have said before me, this is just mean. It is mean-spirited. It will not help anyone to find a job. It does nothing to help people find a job. There is no rationale for increasing the liquid asset waiting period for people who lose their jobs or who are made redundant, no rationale other than a cash grab, no rationale other than taking money out of the pockets of workers just when they need their savings the most.
The current waiting period of up to 13 weeks is long enough. Some people find another job in 13 weeks. But it is really important that those who don't aren't forced to run down their savings to the point where they become vulnerable to losing their home. They're not able to meet unexpected expenses. They can't do the things that they need to do to keep on looking for a job. They have to spend their time wondering how they are going to feed themselves, feed their family and pay their rent as well as trying to stay strong when day after day they're putting in job applications and not getting jobs or when day after day they're going to work but they can't get enough hours. They have to be on Newstart because their job isn't enough for them to survive.
We need people to be able to concentrate on how to get a job and how to help themselves to get qualified to get a better job, not being made vulnerable to unexpected expenses, unaffordable housing and simply not knowing how they're going to get by day-to-day. That financial buffer is really important. It is really important. This bill just wants to erode it. This government just wants to erode it.
How can it be the case that we can have a government that wants to have more people in a position where they've eroded all of their savings and they get put on Newstart and they're expected to live on $40 a day? The current rate of Newstart is not enough to live on and it is not enough to support people looking for work. It is time to raise the rate of Newstart. This government should be raising the rate, not cutting Newstart.
I recently sat down with volunteers from St Vincent de Paul conferences from across my electorate of Dunkley. They asked me to support their call to raise the rate. I support them absolutely. St Vincent de Paul conferences across Dunkley have assisted almost 10,000 people over 12 months in my electorate—5,500 adults and 4,000 children—with food, household assistance and other assistance totalling $360,000. These are good people volunteering and putting their hands in their own pockets to help vulnerable people. They came to my electorate office in Frankston to tell me that they are seeing that the number of people on Newstart who urgently need assistance to supplement the current meagre rate is on the increase, and they are desperately worried about how they're going to be able to continue to help those people and everyone else who needs help.
St Vincent de Paul—like ACOSS, like the Business Council of Australia, like social welfare and business groups across our country—are calling on the government to increase the rate of Newstart. They are right to do so and it is time to do so. It's not just unemployed people needing Newstart; it's also the underemployed. More than 1.1 million Australians are underemployed. Over 130,000 Newstart recipients actually have a job. They just don't earn enough or receive enough hours to escape having the payment. Employers are receiving an average of 19 applications per vacancy advertised. And, to our shame, three million, or one in eight, Australians live in poverty and one in six children, or three-quarters of a million, live in poverty.
At a time when Australians are doing it tough, when the economy is weak and getting weaker, these cuts to the pension and Newstart are not only cruel and vindictive; they are reckless. The name of this bill is so ironic. How dare a government that brought us robodebt try to talk about payment integrity? My constituent Graeme Howarth, from Carrum Downs, called my electorate office last month about having an age pension robodebt of nearly $7,000 and how Centrelink wouldn't help him. Centrelink gave him the run-around and didn't know where the debt came from. So he started to pay it back. We told him: 'In order to get your robodebt looked into, you have to put in a formal appeal. Call the robodebt appeal line.' He did. Lo and behold, Centrelink have cancelled the debt and are refunding the amount he's already repaid. It's toxic. It's flawed. The government has had to admit it. It's time to completely scrap robodebt and look after vulnerable Australians instead of targeting them.
Mr GILES (Scullin) (16:17): I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, to join my Labor colleagues in opposing this bill and supporting the amendment moved by the member for Barton. I was very pleased to be here for my friend the member for Dunkley's contribution and to hear the passion with which she spoke about the people who are going to be adversely affected by this bill and by so many decisions and failures to take decisions by this government. It's her attitude and the attitude of my colleagues that should be brought to bear when we think about our social services legislation. She really nailed this bill, in a nutshell, at the end. The use of the word 'integrity'—often used by this government, much talked of by members of this government but oh so very rarely upheld—we saw in question time, yet again, today.
Let's think about the ensuring integrity bill, which, happily, failed to pass the other place last week. It's union-busting legislation under a different name, the disastrous robodebt debacle. We on this side of the House remember that that was introduced, again, in the name of so-called integrity. And today we have the payment integrity bill, which is code—and not very convincing code—for more cuts to pensioners and Australians who are looking for work.
At the same time, the Morrison government has failed, conspicuously, to ensure integrity on its frontbench, with the minister for emissions reduction embroiled in a police investigation. We still await, much later than we were promised, steps towards a national integrity commission. Those of us who have been in this place last week and today for question time see why a national integrity commission is so urgently needed and why members of this government are in no rush to move on with this critical aspect of restoring real integrity and trust to politics and decision-making in Australia.
This bill was of course first introduced in 2017. As my colleagues have noted, it was bad legislation two years ago and it continues to be bad legislation today. The bill incorporates a number of cuts that were originally contained in the 2017 budget, and these really go into three categories. The first is increasing residency requirements for age and disability pensioners from 10 to 15 years. I want to touch on this now, because, in doing so, this bill introduces a very significant change to the principles of our social security system, as the Bills Digest notes. By setting a lower residency requirement for those with residence in Australia during their working life and those without long periods of income support receipt compared to those who do not fit these criteria, the measure adds, for the first time, an explicit link between working and paying income tax and qualification for a pension payment. This is the sort of change that should follow considerable public debate, not be introduced in this manner. Of course, this change of principle has a very, very significant practical effect and, I would say, a very significant discriminatory practical effect, which I will touch on further. But this question of the change in principle is an important one and it deserves to be properly attended to by members of this government. Perhaps in doing so they could also have regard to the very, very thin statement of compatibility with human rights, which really fails to touch upon this issue in an adequate way.
The second limb of the bill is to stop the payment of the age pension supplement after the recipient has spent six weeks overseas, and the last one is to extend the liquid assets waiting period that applies to Newstart, youth allowance and other allowances. This bill will rip over $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners, including older Australians who just want to visit family overseas or who need to spend an extended time overseas caring for relatives or grandchildren. In our multicultural society, particularly in my electorate—and, I'm sure, in the electorate of the member for Greenway—this is an essential part of life. It is not a luxury, as government members seem to believe it should be. Of course, on this side of the House we know that portability of the pension is, has been and should continue to be a cornerstone of the Australian social security system. Migrant pensioners who've worked hard in Australia, who've built a life and raised a family here, should be able to get the pension. Making people wait longer to get the pension will only force some older Australians to go without, struggle or live in poverty.
These cuts are an area of great concern to me, as the shadow minister for multicultural affairs. I've been approached by a wide range of stakeholders who've expressed their serious concerns with these proposed cuts to migrant pensioners as well as many other constituents. The Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia said that the changes in this bill are discriminatory, as I touched on before in reference to the statement of compatibility with human rights. They said:
... the extension of the residency requirements for qualification for DSP and age pension and the removal of the pension supplement after six weeks of travel overseas disproportionately impact culturally and linguistically diverse communities and are therefore discriminatory in nature.
FECCA went on to say:
Every dollar counts when you're living on the age pension so it is punitive and cruel to take away that additional amount just because someone, for very good reasons, is having to spend an extended period of time overseas.
Indeed, I know many older migrants in my electorate of Scullin who save up for years to go on one last big trip back to Italy or Greece or Turkey to visit family and loved ones. These are Australians who've worked hard and deserve this support when they reach the pension age. The St Vincent de Paul Society said:
By increasing waiting periods and reducing access to support payments, the proposed measures would further erode an already fragile social safety net, contributing to inequality and disproportionately impacting on people on low incomes. Such proposals are morally, socially and economically indefensible.
Labor understands this. We also understand that these pensioners have worked hard all their lives and fundamentally deserve dignity in their retirement. The last thing they need is to be treated like a burden by this Prime Minister, by his Treasurer and by the Minister for Government Services, with the completely inadequate rationale in his second reading speech, which seems to have no regard whatsoever for the human beings who will be impacted by this legislation if we do not stop it in this place. Let's not forget the extraordinary and contemptuous contribution from the member for Goldstein, one of only two government members who participated in this debate—someone who, again, seems to have no regard for the human beings that are the subject of this bill before the House.
I want to also speak briefly about the enhanced residency requirement for pensioners. The Department of Social Services has indicated that approximately 2,300 people each year would be required to wait longer before becoming eligible for the age pension or the disability support pension as a result of increasing the required period of residence from 10 to 15 years. Again we see here, put very simply, the Morrison government trying to find budget savings at the expense of older migrants. It will be older migrants in Australia who face difficulties as a result of extending the residency requirements. This isn't fair, and for this reason Labor will not support it.
Unfortunately the record of the Liberal and National parties when it comes to protecting pensioners leaves plenty to be desired. These parties in government have tried to cut the pension and increase the pension age to 70 in every budget, including in those three budgets when the now Prime Minister had the job of being Australia's Treasurer. It's a particular obsession of his, it would appear. We recall that in the infamous 2014 'lifters and leaners' budget the Liberals declared war on Australia's social safety net. They tried to cut the pension indexation, a cut that would have meant pensioners were forced to live on $80 a week less within a decade. This unfair cut would have ripped $23 billion from the pockets of pensioners in Australia. In the 2014 budget they cut a billion dollars from pensioner concessions, supports designed—and very necessary—to help pensioners with the cost of living. Also in the 2014 budget they axed the $900 senior supplement to self-funded retirees in receipt of the Commonwealth seniors health card. Also in the budget—there's more!—the Liberals tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds, a cut that would have seen half a million part pensioners made even worse off.
It didn't end in 2014. In 2015 we saw the deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the assets test. In the 2016 budget they tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners as part of this plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks, showing no understanding of the realities of life for so many older Australians with family overseas. Again in in the 2016 budget they tried to cut the pension to over 1.5 million Australians through scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. The government's own figures show that this would have left over 563,000 Australians currently receiving a pension or allowance worse off. Over 10 years in excess of 1.5 million pensioners, as I said, would have been worse off through this.
On top of this they spent five years trying to increase the pension age to 70. It took five consecutive rate cuts before they even adjusted the deeming rate—then only after a concerted campaign through those seniors groups who work hard to represent older Australians, including older Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, joined by the Labor Party, and we were proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. You know what? The Prime Minister was sitting around the cabinet table when these decisions to take the axe to pensioners were made. He can't run away from any of these cuts. He can't run away from his record over the last six years. He owns all of these cuts, and Labor will continue to hold him to account for them and for their impact on the lives of too many Australians.
This bill, as the member for Dunkley was touching on earlier, will also cut Newstart by extending the liquid assets waiting period. This bill, in so doing, will force Australians who are trying desperately to re-enter a tough labour market to eat into their savings before they can access income support. It will force into poverty, before they can access support, middle-aged men—men in their 50s and 60s who have worked hard all their lives, paid the taxes and done the right thing—who have recently been made redundant. What good does this do? What good does all the aspirational language we hear from government members do? Currently people claiming Newstart, sickness allowance, youth allowance and Austudy must wait up to 13 weeks to access the payments if they have liquid assets, savings or perhaps a redundancy: over $5,500 for a single with no dependants, or $11,000 for someone with a partner or dependants. The government now wants to extend the maximum liquid assets waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks for people with liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles or $36,000 for couples and people with dependants. But they've advanced no rationale for increasing this for people who have lost a job or been made redundant.
While many will find a job within the 13-week period, it's important that those who do not are not forced to run down their savings to the point where they become vulnerable to losing their home or unable to meet unexpected expenses. In other words, a waiting period that is too long or a threshold that's too high will be counterproductive to any reasonable approach to the public policy priority here of helping people get back on their feet. In fact, this will make life harder for these people and their families.
Income support means support for retraining. It means being able to keep the car on the road so you can look for work and keep paying the rent or the mortgage. The Parenthood have condemned this bill, saying that extending the liquid assets test period is a measure which is:
... designed to put vulnerable people in an even more desperate position than they already find themselves. Making people wait six months for income support is dangerous and risks leaving people with absolutely nothing.
The National Social Security Rights Network went on to say:
The social security system is not fit for purpose if it erodes people's ability to deal with one-off and extraordinary expenses. Measures like this, which undermine people's savings, can have the effect of pushing people into improvident lending practices and a range of other negative situations, which are of concern to the community, government and parliament.
So it is quite clear that this bill is unfair and would push vulnerable Australians into poverty.
What the government should be doing is seeking to grow the economy and to lift people out of poverty. Instead, they are disgracefully taking money out of the pockets of pensioners and workers made redundant out of no fault of their own. Under the Morrison government we know that Australia is not as it should be and that Australia's economy is not where it should be. We have the slowest growth in a decade, stagnant wages, productivity in decline, record household debt, high underemployment and significant structural unemployment as well as declining living standards. After all of this, the government has no plan for the economy. All the government seems intent on doing is making unfair cuts, impacting on some of the most vulnerable Australians and impacting also in a discriminatory way on migrants. There's no plan to increase Newstart, no plan to tackle poverty and no plan to boost economic growth or productivity. All we have in this Prime Minister is an ad man without a plan.
Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (16:32): It seems that the Liberal Party think it's a good idea to reintroduce their failed bill of 2017 into the parliament again. This bill was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now. It's no surprise, therefore, to see that our speaking list today includes a mere two members of the government prepared to come in and defend the legislation they are putting into this House compared to a long, long list of Labor members who are prepared to stand here and argue against its introduction.
The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 proposed by this government is specifically targeting those groups who require the government's support. It is targeting pensioners, it is targeting unemployed Australians and it's targeting anyone trying to access Newstart, sickness allowance, youth allowance and Austudy. There is no-one on this side of the chamber surprised to see these attacks begin again. But it is a little ironic that a party which, during the recent election, claimed to be such huge advocates for retirees are, therefore, trying to make changes to the pension, which will force retirees to wait longer to access their pension.
What happened to: a pensioner's 'reward for a lifetime of hard work should always be a long, healthy and dignified retirement'? Those are words from those opposite, and yet, today, we've got this government confirming, by bringing in this legislation reintroducing the 2017 legislation, that they were empty promises made to retirees in May. The government said that they would support retirees' independence and dignity. They said they would ensure their savings are protected. They said they'd not undermine the value of their home, and they said they would protect and expand access to self-managed super. Isn't it ironic that this same party is making changes which would cease pension supplement payments entirely once pensioners have been out of Australia for six weeks?
This will affect not only pensioners currently in Australia but also pensioners who are already travelling overseas.
Older Australians who want to visit family overseas, or who simply want to travel after finally having the time off to travel, will be negatively affected by this legislation. It's just extraordinary. I think of the pensioners in my electorate. I think of the years and years of hard work. I think of the time and effort put into raising families. I think of them looking forward to the horizon, where they're going to retire, where many of them will have a chance to go home and visit families that they haven't seen for possibly 20 or 30 years, or perhaps they will be called back to look after a relative who is unwell. For them to realise that this government thinks their travel should be limited to six weeks or they will have their pension reduced because they are out of the country is a punishment. It is a punitive measure for those people who have spent years and years working in this country and raising their families. This government would determine that the trip of a lifetime, which is going to cost these people a lot of money in their minds, should be limited to six weeks. So, I have to tell you, if I were saving now for this once-in-a-lifetime trip overseas, I wouldn't want to fork out for those airfares for a mere six weeks. I certainly wouldn't want to do it if I hadn't been to my home country for decades. This government is choosing to curtail their travel or curtail their pension—that is their choice.
The portability of the pension has been a cornerstone of the Australian social security system, and the pension supplement is critical. By ceasing pension supplements entirely when pensioners are out of Australia for six weeks, the government is punishing pensioners. They are preventing Australians who need to go overseas to visit family or care for relatives, or who just want to take the trip of a lifetime, from doing so.
By increasing the residency requirements for age and disability pensioners from 10 years to 15 years, the government is forcing 2,390 people to wait longer to receive pension payments. That's an assessment annually—10 to 15 years, a 50 per cent increase. It's extraordinary the lengths this government's going to, really, to affect their budget bottom line at the expense of pensioners.
We know that older migrant Australians will have to become more reliant upon their families to support them. However, young families in Australia are facing so many financial pressures of their own, it's not practically viable for them to fully financially support their older relatives. If you think about that in the context of stagnant wage growth, if you think about that in the context of increased childcare costs, if you think about that just in terms of the increase in cost of living—is this how devoid of ideas the Liberal Party has become? They're trying to achieve their so-called budget surplus by ripping over $185 million out of the pockets of Australian pensioners.
And there's more. The bill is also proposing to extend the maximum liquid assets waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks. There is no obvious policy rationale for this decision. It is simply a budget decision designed to flatter the government and hurt Australians by not allowing them to access their pension or Newstart or youth allowance for up to 26 weeks where liquid assets are involved. What does it mean? It means that those who claim Newstart, sickness allowance, youth allowance and Austudy must wait up to 26 weeks—that's six months, double the current time wait time—to access their payments if they have liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles or $36,000 for couples or those with dependants. This means that in order to even be eligible to access the payments they need people are going to be forced to spend down their savings—spend down what I would term minimal savings.
It seems the government is suffering from cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, they claim that government support such as Centrelink exists to make those who access it self-sufficient in the future. Yet, on the other hand, they propose measures which will inevitably result in people being forced to spend down their current savings. It just doesn't make any sense, because spending down savings reduces people's financial independence. We know that we've got an issue at the moment in this country with payday lending practices and people taking out incredibly high interest loans. Reducing this savings before accessing social security may lead to an increase in the people becoming dependent on those loans. How do we achieve the aim of future self-sufficiency when bills such as this one serve to achieve the opposite?
The bill will impact on older Australians. They are the ones who form the largest group that currently endures the liquid asset waiting periods. This bill means that these older Australians may have to wait double the wait time they currently have. Increasing the waiting times for seniors applying for the pension will leave them to struggle and increases their likelihood of living in poverty. Think about that in tandem with the stories that we're hearing in our electorates and in our offices every day—stories of people's perception that the waiting times for the pension are increasing anyway, because they're not getting a response once they complete their application process. It is taking much longer, up to six months, for people to receive their first pension payment, and now we're going to have the liquid assets increase as well if this government gets its way.
The bill also impacts on students. Of course our students are going to be disinclined to save in order to support themselves through study if saving means that their ability to access youth allowance is impeded. This creates an absolute disincentive for our students who are on youth allowance. This creates a disincentive for them to save while they possibly get work over the summer and put a handy few thousand dollars aside. This disincentivises that process.
According to the Department of Social Services, 13,800 Australians are going to be affected by this bill each year. Eleven thousand of these people will be required to wait the full 26 weeks. On average, people would have to wait an additional 11 weeks before receiving their initial payment. The bill unfairly targets those who need government support the most. Is this how the government is planning to achieve their so-called budget surplus: by picking and choosing vulnerable groups to target? They not only have tried to cut the pension; they've also tried increasing the pension age to 70 for the past five years. They have a track record in this space. Again today we see that they're going to continue to target pensioners.
If we have a look at the time line of events, we see that, starting with the 2014 budget, they tried to cut the pension indexation, which would have left pensioners to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. So, an actual reduction in the pension was proposed. This would have caused an unfair cut of $23 billion that would have been reaped from pensioners across Australia. In the same year, 2014, they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions and axed the $900 seniors supplement. In 2016 this government tried to reduce the pensions of 190,000 pensioners with their plan to limit overseas travel to six weeks, and here we have it back again. They tried to cut the pension for over 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. Why is it that Australians who are reliant on social services are left to wait? We're hearing about it every day from people who live in our electorates. Originally they were expected to wait one week. This has increased to 13 weeks of waiting for their liquid assets. There is no rationale behind this, as increasing the liquid assets waiting period will only leave people more vulnerable. This does the complete opposite of what this government had originally stated in its campaign before the election. It doesn't help people get back on their feet; it drives people towards poverty.
The government is trying to prevent individuals from having the financial buffer we all need in times of hardship. It is important that those who have savings are not forced to run down their accounts to the point of losing their homes or being unable to pay for everyday expenses. When I think about the liquid assets test, I'm often thinking about the women who are coming to see me. They are over 50, have lost their jobs and are still trying to pay a mortgage off, and they're looking at me and saying, 'I've got some savings where, if I get Newstart and I can use some of the savings, I can see a way where I can possibly pay the mortgage into the next four-month period.' Those plans will be washed up here. The buffer will be ripped from under them. The buffer will be absolutely ripped from under people at the worst time of their lives, and this government is going to tell them to spend down all of their savings before they can access the support that they've worked a long, long time for, assuming they might never need it but knowing and being comforted by the fact it was there if they did.
We need to see this legislation in the frame of our current economic situation. We've got a Liberal Party desperately looking for something to do, or so it seems today by their bringing in this legislation. They should start by paying some attention to the economy. We're currently facing wage stagnation, declines in productivity, higher unemployment, declining living standards and high underemployment. We've got two million Australians looking for work or for more work. Those are some things the government could put on their to-do list this week. They are all issues which need urgent attention, yet we are not hearing anything about that from the government. Instead, we are seeing this bill, designed to rip money out of the pockets of pensioners, a bill which will cause people to eat away at their savings and a bill which will create more stress for those who are currently looking for work. There is nothing in this bill that will create more jobs or grow the economy.
The government need a plan to fix the economy. They need to be paying attention to the things that this country needs them to do instead of sitting around a table brainstorming how they might hurt pensioners again this week and instead of coming up with ways for people to take a longer period of time to access social security. Let's cut to the chase—that's what this is about. They're saying: 'If you go overseas for longer than six weeks we're going to take part of your pension.' If you're a young person on youth allowance who's managed to put some savings away to buy a car, potentially, one day when you have finished studying and might need that car to get work, they're saying, 'No, you need to spend that down before you can access youth allowance.' If you're a young person with some savings from one job and you lose your job, the government want you to spend down those savings before you get any kind of support. So you can forget about paying your rent; it's home to mum and dad. That's what the government see as the future for young people. This bill pretty much bells the cat that the government need to pay more attention to what Australians expect them to be concerned about and stop bringing back legislation that has already failed in this place.
Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (16:47): This bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, would rip over $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners, and this pathetic government calls it the payment integrity bill. This bill is not about integrity; it is an attack on Australian pensioners. It is yet another cruel and dishonest grab for cash by the Morrison government from those who can afford it least. There is no low this government will not stoop to in trying to squeeze money out of those who are struggling to keep up with the cost of living, which continues to go up under this government.
The so-called ensuring integrity bill was not about integrity either. It was an attack on Australian workers. The government think they can fool the Australian people by slapping the word 'integrity' on a piece of legislation. They have been trying the same trick for years. When the current Attorney-General oversaw the expansion of the so-called Online Compliance Intervention program, or robodebt, as Minister for Social Services in 2017, he said that was about ensuring integrity too. As recently as last week, the current Minister for Government Services repeated that ridiculous assertion. Any suggestion that the robodebt scheme ever had anything to do with integrity was blown out of the water after key aspects of the scheme were ruled unlawful by the Federal Court last week. And yet, after over two years and thousands of illegal debt notices being sent to vulnerable Australians, subjecting them to emotional trauma, stress and shame, the Liberal government still have the gall to say that this unlawful program is about 'ensuring the integrity of the welfare system'.
From the very beginning, this government's robodebt scheme has been an extortion racket. It has only ever been about extorting money from Australian citizens to prop up this government's shaky budget. You can slap the word 'integrity' on an extortion racket, but it doesn't change the fact that it's an extortion racket. And now the same government, the government of robodebt, is proposing rip money out of the pockets of Australian pensioners in the name of integrity. You couldn't make this up. This Liberal government has no integrity; it never has. The Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues should stop talking about integrity and start acting with some. The Prime Minister could make a good start by standing down the member for Hume from his cabinet position. This is the member who's currently under police investigation for having used a forged document as part of a pathetic attempt to embarrass the Lord Mayor of Sydney. The member for Hume's imbecilic attempt to embarrass the Lord Mayor of Sydney exploded in his grinning face, and the soot from that exploding act of idiocy by the member for Hume—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ): The member for Isaacs will resume his seat. I call the member for Parkes.
Mr Coulton: The member for Isaacs is way off the terms of the legislation we are debating at the moment, and I ask him to return to the topic at hand.
Mr DREYFUS: This is a second reading amendment, Deputy Speaker, which I'm well within the terms of. This bill is about integrity, according to the government. I understand when members opposite don't like members of the Labor Party talking about integrity, but that's precisely what I'm talking about. I'll go back to the soot from the exploding act of idiocy by the member for Hume: it has not only covered him; it has also caked the face of the Prime Minister.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Forde.
Mr van Manen: I appreciate what the member for Isaacs is trying to do, but it's still not on the substantive matter of the bill. Equally, I think he's reflecting in an unparliamentary way on a member of the chamber. On his earlier remarks in relation to the member for Hume, he would be quite right to withdraw in the interests of the House.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Isaacs and ask him to please be relevant to the topic.
Mr DREYFUS: I commend to those opposite, who seem to be troubled by the lack of integrity in their own government, the fact that we have an amendment before the House which is to this effect:
That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"the House:
(1) declines to give the bill a second reading;
(2) notes that, in every Budget, this Government has tried to cut the pension or increase the pension age to 70;
(3) further notes that the cuts to Newstart in this bill will hurt redundant workers and push them towards poverty; and
(4) criticises the Government for its cruel cuts to pensions and social security".
I'm talking generally about the integrity that this government does not have and won't get by adding the word 'integrity' to this bill or any other bill or any other program that this government thinks it can claim integrity for when it does not have any integrity. And chief among the proofs that this government doesn't have any integrity is its disgraceful performance in circling around to protect the member for Hume, which has now tainted the Attorney-General after his performance in question time today. We can understand why the Attorney-General might have kept silent last week, when the member for Hume and the Prime Minister were questioned about the scant—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Forde.
Mr van Manen: The member for Isaacs has just sold himself up the river, because he's just read out the amendment and he's not even speaking to the substance of the amendment. How about he speaks to the substance of the amendment and the bill and refrains from reflecting in an unparliamentary way on the member for Hume.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Isaacs and ask him to please be relevant.
Mr DREYFUS: I'm being entirely relevant to a bill that has in the title—and it's staring all those in this House in the face, because it's up on the screen—'payment integrity'. And I'll say again: the government does not create integrity by putting the word 'integrity' in the name of a bill. The government does not create integrity or act with integrity by using the word. They tried it last week with their ensuring integrity bill, which was voted down in the Senate and which had nothing to do with integrity and everything to do with attacking Australian workers and attacking unions. This government would not know integrity if it fell over it. It is entirely apparent in the way in which it has circled around to protect the member for Hume. This is the same member for Hume who's still got questions to answer about the alleged illegal poisoning of critically endangered grasslands on a property partly owned by—guess who?—the member for Hume.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Isaacs will resume his seat.
Mr Coulton: I fail to see how grasslands have anything to do with this bill. The member for Isaacs is clearly flouting your direction, Mr Deputy Speaker. I asked him to return to the substance of the amendment, which he just outlined so well himself.
Mr Dreyfus: I am speaking to the substance of the bill and the substance of the amendment.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Isaacs and ask him to please be relevant.
Mr DREYFUS: I certainly will continue to be relevant, as I have been up until now, to a bill which has within it this term 'payment integrity' when all it is actually about is ripping money off pensioners.
This government lacks integrity. I can say to this House that one can understand why the Prime Minister might be reluctant to sack the member for Hume. If the Prime Minister started sacking ministers who lack integrity, there'd hardly be anyone left! Would he have to sack Senator Cash, for example, for her refusal to cooperate with an Australian Federal Police investigation into the leaking of sensitive information about police operations—leaks that came from her own office? Would he have to sack Senator Cormann for his lack of integrity in accepting free overseas holidays from Liberal Party donors and failing to declare them, linked to the whole shady Helloworld travel scandal involving former Liberal Treasurer Joe Hockey? And what would have to be done about the integrity—or lack of it—of the Minister for Home Affairs in this government, a minister who's so incompetent and so negligent in his duties that he had, in his words, 'no sight' of the payment of $423 million by his own department to a company called Paladin that was based in an empty beach shack on Kangaroo Island, all without an open tender or other transparent process? Why didn't that Minister for Home Affairs—or indeed the Prime Minister, who presides over this sorry mess—show any interest in protecting the integrity of that payment of government money?
Or what about the integrity of another payment of government money that the same Minister for Home Affairs mysteriously awarded in the form of a $591 million contract to a private Brisbane based family company to run garrison and welfare services on Nauru without an open tender or a transparent process?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Forde on a point of order?
Mr van Manen: At the risk of repeating myself, once again, I've listened carefully to the remarks of the member for Isaacs and, with the greatest respect, I cannot see how they in any way relate to this bill. I'd ask you to bring him to the substance of the bill or sit him down.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the member for Isaacs and ask him to be relevant.
Mr DREYFUS: Thank you very much, Deputy Speaker. You couldn't make up these examples of the lack of integrity of this government that thinks that by labelling a bill 'integrity' it somehow confers integrity on this government or confers integrity on its legislation. The Attorney-General, who's the architect of 'ensuring integrity' for unions, has appointed dozens of his Liberal mates to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. That situation has become so bad that a review of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal by a former High Court judge whose report the Attorney-General sat on for seven months recommended that all future appointments to the tribunal be made on the basis of merit.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I ask the member to be relevant and return to the substance.
Mr DREYFUS: I say again, Deputy Speaker: you couldn't make this up. Under the third-term government that we have here, Australia has the slowest growth in a decade. We have stagnant wages. We have productivity in decline. We have record household debt. We have high underemployment and declining living standards. But nothing in this bill would create jobs or grow the economy. And there's nothing in this bill that would create integrity—just the one word in the title. It's pathetic to see this government thinking that it can claim integrity or confer integrity simply by using the word.
Just to remind members, this government went to the election promising to establish a Commonwealth integrity commission, and according to the Prime Minister the government's been working on the establishment of a Commonwealth integrity commission for nearly two years. So, where is it? Of course, even if they did bring it forward, the Liberal Party's preferred model for an integrity commission is a joke. As many experts observed at the time, when the Prime Minister made his policy announcement, the integrity commission's the kind of model you announce when you don't want an integrity commission. Putting to one side the many problems with the Liberal Party's understanding of integrity, I ask again, where is the integrity commission that the government has promised? It has been two years and we've seen nothing.
Stop attacking pensioners, stop attacking Australian workers and stop extorting money from vulnerable Australians. Instead, try to introduce legislation that actually does what it says on the label. A good start, if you really wanted to act on integrity, would be to introduce a bill to establish a national integrity commission that is worthy of the name.
Mr HAYES (Fowler—Chief Opposition Whip) (17:00): I also rise to speak against the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 but speak in support of the amendment that was moved. I know a lot has been said about integrity. I would imagine Crosby Textor consulting services probably had some focus groups working overtime to work out how you get bills passed in this place with a minimum amount of fuss. It does seem there is overuse of the word 'integrity' in various bills being introduced here. It does seem passing strange to include in the social services legislation amendment 'payment integrity'. I'm not sure about those opposite—but maybe it is true because so few participate in this debate—but if they look around their electorates they will find that they have many, many people who are going to be captured by this so-called Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019.
The Labor Party opposed this bill when it was originally introduced in 2017. We opposed it as it was a bad bill then, and it is a bad bill now. We will stay opposed to this legislation as is being introduced, because what it is seeking to do is make it more difficult for some of the most vulnerable members of our community.
We will always move to hold this government to account. We will not let the government get away with the savage cuts—unfair cuts—to Australian pensioners, families and the unemployed. These people need people to stand up for them. They need champions. They don't need what this government is doing now, which is effectively going to rip $185 million away from some of the most vulnerable members of our community. History shows that time and again the Liberals', and this government's, notion of fairness is absolutely misplaced. As the former CEO of the Catholic Social Services, Father Frank Brennan, known to most of us in this chamber, put it:
Our tax and transfer system is critical to ensuring a fairer Australia … Placing the burden of budget repair on those who can least afford it, while providing tax cuts to the wealthy and businesses, is wrong morally and economically.
I think he's right. It is absolutely shifting the burden. No-one is going to say that a surplus is not a good thing, and no-one is going to say we should not move towards budget repair, but making the burden to be borne by those least able is not a fair way to start and certainly takes this government and its members a long way away from their pre-election rhetoric.
Accordingly, there are significant problems that I see with the bill. It certainly adds to a growing rate of poverty in this country. It's estimated that 2½ million people, or 13.9 per cent of Australians, are currently living below the poverty line, as accepted by an international measure. I also note the report produced by the Australian Council of Social Service titled Poverty in Australia, which clearly points out those living on this arrangement and those living on Newstart are being punished by this government for, in the main, reasons that are of no fault of their own.
Australians are entitled to know they are being let down by this government. It is a government that had much to say before the election about welfare, particularly looking after pensioners, but has done little since then other than introduce the social security integrity bill, which, as I said, is going to be responsible for taking about $185 million away from the most vulnerable people in our community.
Schedule 1 of the bill introduces a tighter residential requirement for eligibility to receive the age pension or disability support pension. Currently, people who are not born in Australia must have an aggregate of 10 years of permanent residency before becoming eligible for the age pension or the DSP, including a continuous period of at least five years. This bill proposes to increase the residential requirement to a period of 15 years. Applicants could continue on a 10-year residency requirement if they satisfy the self-sufficiency test introduced in the bill, which includes that they have not been in receipt of an activity-tested income support payment for more than five years of a continuous 10-year period. It's basically saying that they weren't on a disability support payment, they weren't on Newstart, they weren't retrenched—all those things come into it. It is such a broad-brush approach to take to some of the most vulnerable people in the community. As I said, these are people who, through no fault of their own, may find themselves unemployed. They might suffer a disability that prevents them working. They might be retrenched—which, regrettably, is a common occurrence for people aged 50 and above in my community and, no doubt, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, in your own community. In particular, people in blue-collar jobs who leave employment at 50 or above are not finding further employment, so they've been relegated to Newstart. The simple fact is that the bill we're talking about today impacts the application of these payments.
It affects my community more, because, as most people in this chamber know, I represent one of the most multicultural communities in the country and one which is also heavily made up of direct refugees. Many of them come to this country with all sorts of issues that need to be worked through, and they're very hardworking when they can get a job. But what we are finding more and more now is that, with barriers to employment, particularly language capability, they are being laid off, and it is very difficult for these refugees and first-generation migrants to do anything other than apply for welfare.
It's not just about the contribution that the first generation make to this country. We often talk about some of the community events we attend, and if you look around you see all sorts of people with different faces and from different backgrounds—as indeed your own, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough—and whose forebears have come here from the four corners of the globe to make this their home for two reasons, fundamentally: a better life for themselves and a better life for their families. It's also about what their offspring go on to achieve in this country.
Immigration is one of the things that have made our country great. To think that we are going to penalise those at the sharp end of this, those of the first generation, those who are struggling to support families—and, if they enter into welfare arrangements, if they go on the dole or on Newstart or, regrettably, disability support, that can trigger a mechanism that prevents them from being able to access welfare payments, as this bill proposes. This legislation, to me, is fundamentally un-Australian. This is just so fundamentally against what we stand for, what we should all stand for, and that is the betterment of our respective communities.
I note the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council in Australia points out that Australians with migrant backgrounds generally retire with the lowest superannuation because they're predominantly in low-paid employment during their working lives. They could have been talking about people in my electorate of Fowler who came as refugees to this country—women who have worked in sweatshops, people working in labouring jobs. That is precisely a description of people who will not have great savings in superannuation. And, as no doubt the government is aware, many people from those backgrounds are working in the black economy, where they aren't being paid anything in superannuation. The government has been very lax to date about going out and capturing those employers who are flagrantly breaking the law in respect of their superannuation commitments and, in effect, ensuring that people retire without adequate superannuation cover. That is an impact on many of the migrants in our community. Migrants also face a significant barrier to employment because of the nonrecognition of their overseas qualifications and—what is becoming more and more apparent—very discriminatory hiring practices these days. Retiring with lower superannuation means that those Australians of migrant backgrounds are more likely to require income support in older age, compromising their independence and forcing them to rely on family members for support.
We also oppose basing eligibility for income support on previous receipt of a payment. As the Australian Council of Social Service states:
Unemployment is a structural issue, not an individual issue. This proposal will disadvantage people who live in areas of high unemployment or who have been retrenched. It will also penalise people who have undertaken study.
Again, many aspects of that quote could be speaking for people that I represent in my community.
Schedule 2 of the bill removes the pension supplement paid to recipients of the age pension or DSP if they've been out of Australia for six weeks or longer or immediately upon their permanent departure. Mr Deputy Speaker, I don't know about your electorate, but mine is very much a migrant community, and I have members of my migrant community regularly visiting overseas, particularly to see sick relatives or, more likely, to attend funerals of friends and family. In many instances, for various cultural reasons, that will take six weeks or more. To reduce the rate of the pension on that basis is certainly going to impact on people who are still doing it relatively tough in our community. The Refugee Council of Australia raised a significant concern about the amendments in schedule 2 of the bill, as they say they unfairly affect new migrants, particularly refugees, who are often obliged to travel overseas for reasons such as family reunion or to fulfil caring responsibilities for elderly family members who may be sick or dying—which, as I say, is something that I have been regularly informed of in my office.
Schedule 3 of the bill will extend the maximum liquid assets waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks for claimants with liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles or $36,000 for couples with dependants. In my electorate the predominant industry used to be light manufacturing, although it's been hard to find any existence of it over the last five years. Most of the people in that industry have been retrenched. Hopefully they received a redundancy payment in their retrenchment. Knowing that they will be struggling to find another job in that predicament, I hope that they're being prudent in how they manage their payments in that regard. But to require them now to spend down their redundancy payment before they're going to be eligible for assistance is once again putting the onus for budget repair—which is what underpins all this—on those who can least afford it.
We should be happy if people are taking a forthright view to helping to manage their own financial affairs, not trying to penalise them for maintaining a level of savings that can accommodate repairs to a vehicle or house, or other things that may require their immediate assistance, rather than simply going back to some financial agency to borrow money on probably an exorbitant interest rate, because the government, by the way, hasn't done much about short-term lenders at this stage. We need to actually take some responsibility with this legislation. We need to ensure that it's not those who can least afford it who are forced to pay for it. (Time expired)
Mr KHALIL (Wills) (17:15): I also rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019. I join my colleagues in opposing this bill in its current form. In the first instance, the bill is mean-spirited, illogical and cruel to hardworking Australians. We already know that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have a skewed perspective on social services. When this bill was first introduced in 2017, it was a bad bill then, and it's still a bad bill now. If it's passed, it will do three things to vulnerable Australians. First, it will increase the residency requirements for age and disability pensioners from 10 to 15 years. Second, it will stop the payment of the age pension supplement after six weeks of that person being overseas. And, third, it will extend the liquid assets waiting period that applies to Newstart, youth allowance and other allowances.
The Prime Minister will rip $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners, punishing pensioners who have worked so hard for all of their lives and are entitled to their pension. This is not just out of the blue. In 2015, the freshly-minted Treasurer, Scott Morrison, made comments stating that the age pension should not be regarded as an entitlement for all. The Treasurer also outlined the then Turnbull government's vision for an overhaul of the country's retirement income system by both reducing expenditure on welfare payments and limiting the amount of revenue foregone through tax concessions. To that comment, and in strong contrast to those particular views, I say to the pensioners in my electorate, and indeed pensioners across Australia: the pension is not a privilege, unlike what the then Treasurer, the current Prime Minister, stated. It is not a privilege and it's not an entitlement; it's a right and you have worked for that right, you have earned that right to the pension. You had a social contract with the government of this country, you paid your taxes, you worked hard for decades, and the pension is part of that contract.
Let me talk about a particular demographic of migrants: migrants who are now pensioners—people who migrated to Australia post World War II in the fifties and sixties; people who came here and helped build this country into the wonderful country it is today. They worked hard in factories, in business or the post office. My dad worked for Australia Post. It's a common story; it's not a unique story. Millions of Australians who came to this country to build a better life for themselves and their children worked so hard, paid their taxes and were great citizens of this country. They built up this country. They're at an age now where they're receiving a pension. Instead, the Prime Minister is making people wait longer for the pension, forcing older Australians to struggle even more than they already were and to go without.
Pensioners won't be surprised by this bill. They're not fooled by this government. It's in this government's DNA to cut pensions. The Prime Minister, in 2015, when he was doing such a fantastic job as Treasurer, tried to cut the pension and increase the age of entitlement. In every budget that this government have passed they have tried to cut welfare payments.
In 2014 the government tried to cut pension indexation—a cut that would have meant pensioners would be forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. This unfair cut would have ripped $23 billion from the pockets of every single pensioner in Australia. In the infamous 2014 budget, they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions—support designed to help pensioners with the cost of living. Again, in that same infamous budget, they axed the $900 senior supplement to self-funded retirees in receipt of a Commonwealth seniors health card. They also tried to reset deeming-rate thresholds—a cut that would have seen 500,000 part-pensioners made worse off. These are facts. I don't think you can dispute them. The other side can't dispute them.
In 2015 the coalition did a deal with the Greens political party to cut the pension for around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. In the 2016 budget, they tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit overseas travel by pensioners to six weeks. We fought that at the time—I remember. They also tried, in that budget, to cut the pension for over 1½ million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. By their own figures it would have left worse off the over 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or an allowance.
We now before us have a bill that, in its current form, will punish pensioners who want to visit families overseas or need to spend time caring for relatives or grandchildren. You might be someone who has worked for 40 to 50 years in this country and you're now on a pension, and you want to go to Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Egypt, Vietnam or wherever it is you migrated from, for the Northern Hemisphere summer. Is this government really saying that someone who's 80 or 75 or whatever it might be is going to get on a plane and travel to the other side of the world to visit family—having saved up for years to make this trip—for just a couple of weeks, after the time they spent getting there? Is the government saying that they have to get back on the plane and come back or their pension's going to get cut? Is that what you're saying? Are you telling tens of thousands of Australian pensioners that they can't visit their family, their friends, loved ones, sick ones, for a couple of months in the Northern Hemisphere summer? You're going to cut off their pension—a pension which they earned through the taxes that they've paid and through the decades of hard work and toil that they have gone through to build their lives in this country and in the social contract they made with this government. You're going to cut it because they want to go overseas for a trip in the twilight of their lives, in their retirement. That's what you're telling them. It's an absolute disgrace. It was a disgrace when the government tried to pass it a couple of years ago, and it's a disgrace now.
I can tell you, all the pensioners in my electorate were up in arms. When I went to the Italian pensioners club, and to the Greeks, the Lebanese and all the different migrant groups, they were absolutely shocked that the government would be trying to do this them after all the work that they've put in.
There's also nothing rational about the government wanting to increase the liquid assets waiting period for people who have lost their jobs or been made redundant. It's just another attempt by this government to take money out of hardworking Australians' pockets when they need their savings the most. It's nothing but another cash grab by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer.
People who have probably very modest savings already have to wait 13 weeks—a waiting period that is already long enough—and now they're going to have to wait 26 weeks. That's six months. It's half a year. Some people will find a job within that period, but some won't be that lucky. In particular, as the previous speaker, the member for Fowler, was saying, people who are of an older age group or demographic, who have limited English skills or who might have worked for decades in a factory find it more difficult now to get another job. It's important that we note that these people shouldn't have to run down their life savings to the point where they're vulnerable to losing their home or other important assets or are unable to meet any unexpected expenses. At that age in life, there are a lot of unexpected expenses that come up around health and so on.
This bill will unfairly affect older Australians. It's already difficult enough for them to re-enter the workforce, given their situation. I don't understand it. I'd love to get an explanation from one of the government speakers on the bench as to why they think it is so important to take money from people who are already doing it tough. They are already doing it tough. You've got to have, if you lose your job, somewhat of a buffer so you can support yourself and your family as you re-train or look for work. This bill is just going to make it harder for those people. But isn't it a wonderful way to prop up the government's surplus! Along with going after the most vulnerable people in society with their robodebt scam, along with underfunding the NDIS by billions of dollars, they've said, 'Oh, let's go and rip some more money from the most vulnerable people in our society so we can tell everyone we have a surplus.' That's what the government are doing. Stopping the payment of pension supplements will give the government $154 million. The changes to the liquid assets test will give them another $105 million.
As I said, mine is a very diverse electorate, and there are people in my electorate who are going to be absolutely horrified by this bill. In my electorate about 48 per cent of the population either were born overseas or have one parent who was born overseas. It's a very diverse electorate. A lot of people migrated to my electorate post World War II. A lot of Greeks, Italians and Lebanese people came to call Australia home. These are people who will be disproportionately affected by this bill, by this law. All of them, as I said, go back to their country of origin to visit family. They're retired now. They go back and visit people they have not seen in years or decades. They save up and do this special trip. Are you telling me you are going to cut their pensions after they've saved to go away and visit family they haven't seen for years and that they will lose their pension because of this trip? These are older Australians who have worked hard. They deserve a break to visit family or to even go on a holiday overseas for more than six weeks. At that age, it takes you a couple of weeks to get over jet lag anyway. Are you then going to jump on a plane and come back before you've even had time to spend time wherever you were going? Of course, every dollar counts when you're living on the age pension. A lot of these people have worked all their lives. They have one property—the house that they bought in the sixties or seventies. It's their family home. They worked in factories, they worked hard and this is what this government wants to dish up to them. It's an absolute disgrace.
While this government is busy worrying about its budget bottom line, literally taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of the pockets of pensioners and workers who have been made redundant through no fault of their own, while this is all going on, we have seen stagnant wages, the slowest growth in a decade, productivity in decline, high underemployment and declining living standards—all under a coalition government, the supposed great economic managers. What a myth! What spin that is, because the facts don't add up. The facts give you a completely different picture of this government. The facts give you a picture of incompetence, underperformance, meanness of spirit and an obscene obsession with going after money from the most vulnerable people in our society.
On top of all that, they have no plan going forward. They don't even know what their next step is. They have no plan to turn the economy around. The Treasurer keeps holding on to the rope of monetary policy, which is fast running out, refusing to look at any fiscal policy. It's all about political tactics. That's what it's about. It's about trying to wedge us and blame Labor—'We can't govern this country in any meaningful way, so let's just blame the opposition. That makes more sense.'
There's nothing in this bill that will help vulnerable Australians. Everything in this bill will punish those vulnerable Australians. It will rip money out of the pockets of pensioners and vulnerable Australians who have been made redundant and are looking for work. It's an absolute disgrace. This is why we on this side opposed this bill in the past and oppose this bill today.
Mr STEPHEN JONES (Whitlam) (17:29): Nobody does Christmas cheer like the Liberal and National parties. Here we are a couple of weeks before Christmas, and their gift to the pensioners of Australia is a pension cut. If you walk through a shopping mall anywhere in Australia at the moment the bells are ringing with Christmas carols, but the present that this government has got for people who are down on their luck is to deny them a job search allowance. Really? You have never found a more mean-spirited, petty, pea-hearted, thimble-headed initiative from this government than what we see before the House today.
We oppose the bill, of course; it's not the first time we have. We oppose the bill. It was first introduced as a part of the 2016 budget when Malcolm Turnbull was the Prime Minister. Now, he got woken up and he dropped it, and so should this ad man who's running the country at the moment. It should be dropped, because it simply does not make sense.
You might recall a few months ago there was a fair bit of noise in this country about retirees. You couldn't bump into a Liberal Party politician without them waving a placard at you, saying: 'We're going to fight for retirees. We've got the interests of retirees at heart, and we're going to fight for retirees.' Obviously, they didn't mean all retirees because in this bill they've singled out one group of retirees, and they've lined them up and they're going for them. Of course I'm talking about migrant retirees or retirees who've got a relative or family overseas. They're the ones that they've lined up. They're the ones that this bill has squarely lined up to ensure that they're going to cut their entitlements.
This bill means that your age pension supplement will completely stop after six weeks overseas, if you're on a holiday overseas. It's a terrible proposition. In a community such as mine around 26,000 people were born overseas, and many of them, particularly once they hit retirement, like to go back to the old country, to visit relatives, to catch up with a cousin—maybe it's the last time they're going to see that person before they pass away; maybe to go back to care for an ageing relative; or maybe to go back for a lengthy period of time to warm their aching bones in the Mediterranean sun during the heart of an Australian winter. And what does this government say? 'If you're there for six weeks fine, but if you're there for six weeks and one day we're going to cut your pension.' It's miserable and should be knocked off. It doesn't make sense.
I have so many residents in my electorate who come from the United Kingdom, who come from the Republic of Macedonia. There are close to 1,600 people who were born in the Republic of Macedonia, and when they retire they like to go back there regularly. Because there are so many people from Macedonia, I thought I'd inquire into some of the pension arrangements that exist between Australia and Macedonia. Something stood out that just did not make sense. You would know, Deputy Speaker Goodenough, that Australia has around 30 pension agreements, social security arrangements or treaties, if you like, between Australia and other countries: the United Kingdom, Denmark, Macedonia as I've already mentioned. These treaties have a commitment between one government and another. If our citizens, or former citizens, have moved to another country and go and reside there, there's a knock-for-knock arrangement where we agree to pay a pension arrangement or a social security arrangement with another country. And when their citizens come to live here, their government supplements their pension or their retirement payments for their citizens who've come to live permanently in Australia. Under the agreement we have with the Republic of Macedonia—and I'm quoting directly from the Department of Social Security's website:
Australia will treat somebody who resides in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia—
that's actually offensive to most people who come from Macedonia; they've got to update their web page or just abbreviate that to Macedonia—
as being a resident of Australia, so that the person can lodge a claim for an Australian Age Pension.
What's more:
Australia guarantees to pay Age Pension indefinitely into the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, provided the person remains otherwise qualified to receive it.
Now, I want you to think about that for a moment, because what's quite clear here is that if you go over there permanently, if you move from Australia to Macedonia, to Great Britain, to Denmark or to any of these other countries that we've reached a pension treaty arrangement with, we'll continue to pay your pension. You can go over there to live and we'll continue to pay the pension. But don't go there for six weeks and one day, because we'll cut off your pension.
It does not make sense. The only conclusion you can get is that this miserable bloke over here is against holidays. That's the only conclusion you can take from this absurd arrangement, where we will continue to pay a pension if you go and live overseas permanently but not if you go over there on holidays. Do you realise that that's what you're about to vote for? It is an absolutely absurd proposition. And believe me, the migrant communities know exactly what's going on here. They can still hear the echo from six months ago, when every Liberal and National Party coalition member was running around the country saying, 'We will stick up for retirees,' who now know that when this government said they were going to stick up for retirees they didn't mean them. They've squared them up, they've lined them up—six weeks and one day, and you're off your pension. It's not right, it's not fair and it doesn't make sense.
We know that the economy is lagging. There are almost two million Australians who either are looking for more work or are unemployed. It is a pretty tough time of year for those people. They're going into the Christmas period. They're seeing the ads up in the shops. If they've got young kids, maybe last year they had a generous Christmas and this year they're thinking it's not going to be so flash for them, can you imagine what is going through their minds when they realise that under this miserable government the waiting period is going to be extended and the government is going to ensure that it is going to be that much harder, during this Christmas period, for them to get access to job search allowance? Through changes to the liquid asset test, the payments that they may have got through a redundancy payment, the government is lifting the bar to ensure that they're going to have to run down that small stock of capital that they may have before they gain access to Newstart.
If I'd got a redundancy at this time of year, I'd know that it was going to be pretty damn tough to get a job over the next few months—not the best time of year to be going and looking for a job. The bills are coming in, but the number of job adverts isn't going up. It's going to be tough. This government's about to make it harder. And those people who have a modest redundancy payment that this government's going to make them run down through the changes envisaged in this bill are probably thinking to themselves: 'I've got my car rego coming in; if I don't have my car, I can't go out and look for a job. That's a big grumpy bill coming my way in a few months time. I've got the kids going back to school in a few months time; I'd better put some money away to ensure that I can afford to put school shoes on their feet, have a bag for them to carry their lunch in to school and ensure that they can turn up to school again next year, just the same as every other kid.' But this government's miserable answer to people who are finding themselves down on their luck at this time of year is to say, 'We're going to make it even harder.'
It's a miserable bill from a pea-hearted, cold-minded opposition that don't know what it is like to be struggling, and it should be rejected. Nobody does Christmas cheer like the coalition. We've got to knock this bill off, because it's the wrong bill, directed at a group of Australians who deserve and expected so much more from this group.
Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (17:39): Centre Alliance does not support the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 in its current form. And, although there are elements of this bill that we may be willing to consider with the government, the flaws in the bill would need to change substantially in order for it to garner our support.
There are three schedules to this bill. Schedule 1 is the enhanced residency requirements for pensioners. We can somewhat understand the government's desire for people to be residing in this country for a substantial period of time and, indeed, in their working years prior to receiving a pension. Schedule 2 I'd particularly like to make note of, and I have some real concerns here. Schedule 2 seeks to stop the payment of the pension supplement. I know what Labor said about stopping the pension but I think there is a bit of hyperbole over that. It's about stopping the pension supplement for people who are receiving the disability support pension or the age pension once they are overseas for six weeks.
The purpose of the pension supplement payment is to assist pensioners with their utility, telecommunications and medicine costs. Centre Alliance recognises that there should be some limit to this payment where a person is overseas for an extended period of time or they've chosen to permanently relocate overseas. However, we believe cutting the supplement after a mere six weeks is unfair. Centre Alliance will continue to have conversations with government about this. I think it's really important to recognise that for many pensioners, once they enter the age pension phase, in particular, return to their homeland often once, and they often do it for a substantial period of time. Sometimes it's for relieving other family members, in their homeland, with caring responsibilities. So we would really urge government to reconsider the six-week cap on this. We can understand if a person moves permanently overseas, because those supplement payments were designed to assist with the specific costs of living in Australia. But to cut it after six weeks, we feel, is grossly unfair.
Schedule 3 seeks to double the period a person will wait to receive a range of Centrelink payments if they have liquid assets over certain thresholds. Centre Alliance is opposed to schedule 3 of the bill. We believe Australians should not be penalised for having accrued savings at the time of becoming unemployed. The government's proposed policy would create a greater perverse incentive for people to quickly spend their savings or otherwise distort the allocation of their personal funds, to different asset classes, in order to fast track a Centrelink claim. COTA, the Council on the Ageing, is particularly concerned about this schedule. As a party we, instead, welcome and encourage Australians to continue to take individual responsibility for their financial futures, noting that the normal income and assets test for Newstart, youth allowance and Austudy will remain in place regardless of this proposal.
In closing, we understand that the social security aspect of the budget continues to grow. That is an accepted part of the fact that we have an ageing population, and we understand that the government is seeking to shape and reshape funding and how they allocate funding, with respect to that budget line. However, Centre Alliance will not be supporting this bill in its current form. We will continue, though, as always, to have an open door to government to see how the bill can be improved.
Mr DICK (Oxley) (17:44): I rise to enter the debate on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, yet another piece of Orwellian legislation. This government seems to invent weird titles to these bills to try to make itself relevant or mean anything. I want to start by commending the member for Barton and the members of the opposition who have spoken in today's debate. I think it is important that we place on record our concerns.
The old saying 'A leopard never changes its spots' is spot-on when it comes to how the government deal with pensioners and retirees in this country. Despite the government talking a big game and talking up their credentials around support for older Australians, the proof is always in the pudding when it comes to the impacts of what they are trying to do here. We've heard from a number of speakers about the wide range of voices that have concerns around this bill—organisations, peak bodies, individuals and, now, members of the opposition and the crossbench, who have also raised significant concerns.
Vulnerable and disadvantaged Australians will be worse off as a result of this legislation. Only two government speakers have had the guts to actually speak to this bill. I often say about the government: if their legislation is so good and they're so proud of it, why doesn't everyone get up and speak about it? I don't understand why, if people are in government, they don't get up and say, 'This is why we’re doing it.' It is on every single bill. If I were a member of the government, I'd just want to go in there once and say, 'Can someone explain to me why we don't ever speak on bills?' Never, ever is there more than one or two speakers. Why? It's so weird. I can tell you now that, if the Labor Party ever has the privilege of being in government, I'll want to sing from the rooftops about what we're doing. It's common sense, right? I can see the member for Mallee over there saying: 'I guess he's right in some ways. I don't know the answer to that.' But she's a good person and she may have the answer and she can tell me one day when we're in a lift together.
This legislation will have a huge impact on pensioners and those on Newstart. It was first introduced in 2017. It was a bad bill then and it's a bad bill now. All the bill does is introduce cuts to vulnerable Australians, including increasing the residency requirements for age and disability pensioners from 10 to 15 years; stopping the payment of the age pension supplement after the recipient has spent six weeks overseas, as we've heard from a number of speakers—and I want to touch on that, representing a multicultural and diverse community myself; and extending the liquid assets waiting period that applies to Newstart, youth allowance and other allowances. All up, it will rip around $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners.
These cuts were announced by the then Treasurer and now Prime Minister in the 2016-17 MYEFO and the 2017-18 budget. There was even a third iteration, in the last parliament, which was the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2017, which the government never brought on for debate. The only word I can think of when it comes to these sorts of cuts by the government is 'obsession'. This is a deep-rooted obsession whenever things aren't going their way. At the top of their list are pensioners and vulnerable Australians—people who are doing it tough, day in, day out. This government want to hit them even harder. On this side of the House, we've fought against these types of cuts before, and we will keep fighting against them, because it's the right thing to do. Where is the fairness in targeting those who have the least to give? Pensioners are our oldest Australians, who've worked hard their entire lives. They have built this country. They've saved and scraped every penny and dollar. And now this government and this Prime Minister say: 'That's not good enough. We're changing the rules.'
If passed, this bill will significantly impact older Australians who want to visit family overseas or need to spend an extended time overseas caring for relatives or grandchildren. It is simply not good enough. Migrant pensioners who have worked hard in Australia and have built a life here should be able to get the pension. In my electorate there are 60,000 people who were born overseas—a very large multicultural community, including a very large Vietnamese Australian community. Family is central to the Vietnamese community in this nation. They value their intergenerational links, and it is a beautiful thing to be part of and to witness—families supporting each other, back in Vietnam and here in Australia. This is part of the Australian fabric, because we are a multicultural society, and of course it is widely expected that people will return home to their place of birth to spend time with their family. But this government doesn't agree that this is a fact of life for many migrant pensioners.
Portability of the pension is a cornerstone of the Australian social security system. When the pension is your main source of income, consistency and reliability of the pension are absolutely fundamental to live week to week, and making people wait longer to get on the pension will only force some Australians to go without, struggle or live in poverty. I'd like an explanation from the government on why these changes are necessary. What is the reason behind this? Are they saying pensioners are ripping off the system, that it's too generous or that we feel that people shouldn't go to see family after six weeks? Just say it. Admit it. Don't hide what you're doing to pensioners behind these weasel words.
We've seen enough over the last 6½ years to know that going after pensioners is in the DNA of this Liberal-National government. They've tried to cut the pension and increase the pension age to 70 in every budget. We heard the Treasurer maybe a couple of weeks ago talking about people working longer—all the shifty, weasel language trying to soften the electorate up. We know it's been their policy for more than five years to increase the pension age to 70, and you can bet your bottom dollar that secretly it still is. Why on earth would bills like this continue to be brought before the House?
I want to say that, when its comes to the Liberals and Nationals, the number of ways they've attacked pensioners and tried to get their hands in pensioners' pockets make a long list. I'm glad the second reading amendment has been moved by the member for Barton, because I want to place on record again these deep cuts that the coalition has tried to deliver to pensioners.
In the 2014 budget they tried to cut pension indexation—a cut that would have meant pensioners would be forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. This would have been ripping about $23 billion from the pockets of all pensioners in Australia. In the same budget they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions—support designed to help pensioners with the cost of living. They axed the $900 senior supplements to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card. They tried to reset deeming rate thresholds—a cut that would have seen around 500,000 part pensioners worse off. The next year, the Liberals did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension for around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. They followed it up in the 2016 budget when they tried to cut the pension for around 190,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks. They also tried to cut the pension for over 1½ million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. The government's own figures show that this would have left over 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or allowance worse off, with this number increasing to in excess of 1½ million pensioners being worse off in 10 years time. So it's crystal clear that this government will go to any lengths to target pensioners when they're looking for money.
This leads me to the disgraceful practice I spoke about in the House last week: the robo-debt program run by the government and last week found to be illegal by the Federal Court of Australia. I want to underscore the importance of this, as my office, like many others around the country, has been inundated with calls and emails from pensioners coming in with letters that have been sent from this government, telling them they owe money and, 'If you don't pay up, we're coming to get you.' These families and pensioners—grandmothers and grandfathers—have worked their entire lives, paid taxes and done the right thing only for this greedy and selfish government to use some sort of back alley type of behaviour to scare people into paying money they simply don't owe. I said it last week and I'll say it again this week: not one of the members of the government has the guts to get up and say: 'Look, we oversaw a program that was wrong. We apologise'. 'Sorry' is always a hard word to say, but when I grew up I was told that, if you made a mistake, you were man enough to own up to it and you apologised.
I don't know why this is all so hard for the government. I don't know why it's all so complicated and it's all so difficult, because this happened. This isn't spin. This isn't made up. And the best we get from the government on this issue is to say, 'Well, Labor sort of said it was a good idea 8½ years ago'. Imagine telling that to someone in my office who was given a debt of $6,000. Imagine telling someone, 'I know you're a pensioner and you don't owe a dollar, but we're going to make you prove that you don't.' Is it any wonder that we found out that what the government was doing was illegal?
When it comes to pensioners, people seem to be scared to the bone and don't know what to do, so it's no wonder this government is bringing in legislation and nobody wants to speak about it. You can see the financial pressure that pensioners are under. You can see the financial stress and strain of the cost of living. We've got the highest energy prices that this nation has ever seen. Now, in the seventh year of this government, we're seeing everything go up and up and up but we're seeing cut and cut and cut from this government when it comes to pensioners.
It wasn't long ago that we learnt from a leak that the government was around $600 million short on its budget savings and was looking for ways to catch up, which involved capturing pensioners and other sensitive groups with robodebt. We know that was in place, but we also know that Newstart is central to this piece of legislation. I want to talk about this briefly in the time remaining. People currently claiming Newstart, sickness allowance and youth allowance must wait up to 13 weeks to access the payments if they have liquid assets—for example, savings or a redundancy payout of $5,500 for a single with no dependant or $11,000 for a person with a partner and dependants. Under this legislation we are debating—well, this side of the chamber is; that side of the chamber is too afraid to get up and defend its actions—now the government wants to extend the maximum liquid assets waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks for claimants with liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles or $36,000 for couples and people with dependants. It's not just cash in the bank. According to the department, liquid assets include some payments that are made or are due to be made by the person's last employer; amounts deposited or lent to banks or other financial institutions, whether or not the amounts can be withdrawn or paid immediately; assets given to a son or daughter in some circumstances; loans to other people; and compensation payments.
As the member for Isaacs indicated in his address to the parliament today, this is a government that is in search of every nook and cranny of pensioners' pockets and of those doing it tough. We know that, for middle-aged and older Australians, re-entering the workforce can be particularly difficult. The largest single group of people on Newstart is not teenagers or people who the government would like to frame as 'leaners' or whatever their revolting language is about people social welfare; it's people who are 55 years old. We know many middle-aged and older Australians have recently been made redundant from industries that they've spent their whole lives working in. They will require a bit more time to retrain and upskill. So what does the government want during this time? It wants to make it harder for them to receive the support they need. The number of Australians over the age of 55 on Newstart has skyrocketed by 45 per cent under this government. The cost of essentials is skyrocketing, electricity prices are increasing and child care has become unaffordable under this government. Rather than this bill coming in here to make life easier, it's making it tougher for those who can least afford it.
I simply say this to the government. First of all, start defending your policies; actually get up on your feet and explain to the Australian people why you are making these changes. If you're a government backbencher and you were proud of this legislation, you'd be advocating it. You'd get up and say, 'This is what we believe in.' Second of all, if you can't do that, stop attacking pensioners and those on low incomes. Go back to the drawing board and start coming up with policies that will actually help Australians, not hurt them.
Ms COKER (Corangamite) (17:59): I rise to oppose this bill. It was first introduced in 2017. As the member for Barton has said, it was a bad bill then and it is still a bad bill now. It has as much to do with the integrity of social security payments as the defeated 'ensuring integrity' bill had to do with protecting Australian workers: absolutely nothing. Hopefully this misnamed bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, will meet the same fate. This bill contains more cuts to vulnerable Australians who simply can't afford it. It will increase residency requirements for age and disability pensioners from 10 to 15 years for those born outside Australia; stop the payment of the age pension supplement after six weeks overseas; and extend the liquid assets waiting period that applies to Newstart, youth allowance and other allowances.
If there is one consistent theme from this government it is their absolute commitment to be Robin Hood in reverse—that is, rather than taking money from the rich to give to the poor, this government consistently takes money from the poor and struggling in order to give it to the wealthy. We've seen that billions, the bulk of the tax cuts legislated last year, will flow to those on incomes of over $100,000 a year and disproportionately to those on incomes of over $200,000 a year, but those on social security get none of this largesse. In fact they are being asked to pay for it to keep the budget in surplus. Catholic Social Services Australia said in 2017:
… this Bill places 'the burden of budget repair on those who can least afford it, while providing tax cuts to the wealthy and businesses, [which] is wrong morally and economically.'
It if implemented, this bill will rip out over $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners. You have to ask: why does this government want to punish pensioners? Why do they want to make it harder for older Australians who want to visit family overseas or to spend an extended time caring for relatives or grandchildren? Migrant pensioners who have worked hard in Australia and who have built a life and a family here should be able to get the pension; they shouldn't lose the supplement simply because they go overseas for an extended period, often through no choice of their own. Making people wait longer to get the pension will only force some older Australians to go without, struggle or live in poverty.
Of course, pensioners won't be fooled by this government. Attempts to cut the pension and social security are the raison d'etre of this Liberal government. They have tried to increase the pension and increase the pension age to 70 in every budget, including in three budgets where the current Prime Minister had the job of Treasurer. In the 2014 budget they tried to cut pension indexation, a cut that would have meant pensioners would be forced to live on $80 a week less within ten years. This unfair cut would have ripped $23 billion from the pockets of Australia's pensioners. In that budget they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions—support designed to help pensioners with the cost of living—and they also axed the $900 senior supplement to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card. In the 2014 budget the Liberals tried to reset deeming rate thresholds, a cut that would have seen 500,000 part pensioners made worse off. In 2015 the Liberals did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. In the 2016 budget they tried to cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks. They also tried to cut the pension for over 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. The government's own figures show that this would have left worse off over 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or allowance. On top of this they spent five years trying to increase the pension age to 70. To top it off it took five consecutive interest rate cuts before they even adjusted the deeming rates, and then only after enormous pressure from seniors groups and from Labor.
So this bill is part of a history of attempts to cut pension and other social security entitlements. Part of this bill is aimed at stopping the payment of the age pension supplement after six weeks overseas. Currently the pension supplement is reduced to the basic rate once a recipient has been overseas for six weeks. This bill would cease payment of the pension supplement entirely once a recipient has been out of Australia for six weeks or immediately upon a permanent departure. There are no grandfathering arrangements for these changes. They will apply immediately upon the commencement of the schedule, even to pensioners who are already overseas.
In the 2017 Senate hearing, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council said:
For the individuals who have to survive on the age pension, that additional supplement is critical. They would have also suffered in terms of having to save up to go overseas in the first place and probably for a long period of time. Every dollar counts when you're living on the age pension so it is punitive and cruel to take away that additional amount just because someone, for very good reasons, is having to spend an extended period of time overseas.
What was true in 2017 is still true today—the federation regards this proposal as 'unfair' and 'discriminatory', and so do I.
The bill also seeks to extend the period needed to qualify for age and disability pensions from 10- to 15-years residence for those born outside Australia. As a result of the change, around 2,390 people will have to wait longer for the pension. This means that, at best, these people of age-pension age will be able to access a special benefit equivalent to Newstart allowance. This will mostly affect people who have moved to Australia close to the pension age, perhaps to be with family. This change has no policy rationale except to make a saving from recently arrived migrants of pension age.
The Federation of Ethnic Communities Council told the Senate inquiry in 2017:
...older migrant Australians will become more reliant upon their families to support them...but as with any family, young people now in Australia...have to move often in order to secure employment, and they're not often in a position to take care of their older relatives, either practically or financially.
Part of the new requirement will be that a person must not be in receipt of an activity tested income support payment for more than five years of a continuous 10-year period. This introduces a dangerous new precedent. As ACOSS has said:
… it starts to introduce an approach to social security which says that, because you had to come here for help in the past, you've had enough.
The National Social Security Rights Network's experts on our social security system told the Senate inquiry in 2017:
The Australian system is based on residence and need. It has a very strong emphasis on residence already. Most of the older migrants who have the misfortune to need to access our system within the first 10 years in Australia are covered by an assurance from their families. So there is no cost to the taxpayer because the money is recovered from the family. So it's hard to see the case for strengthening the requirements. It's particularly hard to see the need or benefit that comes from introducing income support history into the test. It's a departure from a very fundamental principle.
Labor sees no need for such a change. It is unacceptable.
Finally, I turn to the aspects of the bill which propose to effectively double the liquid assets threshold and the waiting time for Newstart and other payments for couples from around $11,000 to $36,000 and from a maximum waiting time of 13 weeks to 26 weeks. In other words, applicants will need to spend down more of their assets before becoming eligible to receive a payment. As a result, they will be less able to make financial commitments, such as pay for a bond or a rental property or replace a broken appliance as they will not have sufficient savings to do so.
The Department of Social Services estimates that around 13,800 claimants would be affected each year by the extension. Of those, the department expects that around 11,000 would be required to wait the full 26 weeks and, on average, people would have to wait an additional 11 weeks before they would start to receive a payment. There is no rational for increasing the liquid assets waiting period for people who lose their job or are made redundant.
As many of my colleagues have pointed out, this is nothing but a cash grab and is taking money out of the pockets of workers at the very time when their savings matter the most. The current waiting period, up to 13 weeks for people with modest savings, is already more than enough. While many people will find another job in the 13-week period, it's important that those who do not are not forced to run down their savings to the point where they become vulnerable to losing their home or are unable to meet unexpected expenses.
A longer waiting period is counterproductive. It means people have less money to seek employment, undertake retraining, keep the car on the road—indeed, simply to deal with the emergencies that life throws up. If a person's circumstances spiral because they run out of savings, if they lose their home or their car, this just makes it harder to get back into employment.
During the Senate hearings in 2017 into this same bill, St Vincent de Paul said:
By increasing waiting periods and reducing access to support payments, the proposed measures would further erode an already fragile social safety net, contributing to inequality and disproportionately impacting on people on low incomes. Such proposals are morally, socially and economically indefensible …
The government should be stimulating the economy and lifting people out of poverty, not taking money out of the pockets of pensioners and workers who have been made redundant through no fault of their own. Nor should they be punished—punishing those who go overseas for longer than six weeks after having contributed to our society for many years.
It seems like this government's only plan is to improve the budget position. Under this government now in its third term, Australia has the slowest growth in a decade—stagnant wages, productivity in decline, record household debt, high underemployment and declining living standards. The government needs a plan to turn the economy around to make it grow, but all we see are constant efforts to take money away from those that can least afford it. Rather than develop a real plan to revitalise the economy, the government has simply recirculated the same bad idea. This is why Labor, quite rightly, opposes this bill—a bill that gives integrity a bad name.
Mr GEORGANAS (Adelaide) (18:11): I, too, rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 and to say that Labor opposes it. I say so because it's an unfair bill. It is a bill that attacks hardworking Australians who have worked all their lives. They've paid their taxes, they've contributed to this nation, they've built the foundations of this nation and now we're taking away from them—people who have worked so hard for us to be in the position that we're in today as the generation after them, through their hard work, through their blood, sweat and tears. Today what this government is doing is attacking those very people that have given us the benefits of the great Australian dream and great Australian life.
As I said, the bill is an attack on the most vulnerable Australians in our community. This is the same old government rhetoric that pensioners won't be surprised about. Because the history of this government from 2013 onwards at every single budget has been to attack and cut from pensioners, whether it be through the assets test, making them work longer or cutting their pension when they go overseas—a whole range of things have been put in place by this government which attacks pensioners. From 2013, that first budget under the Abbott Liberal government, through the Malcolm Turnbull Liberal government to the Morrison government, it's an unfair bill, and a bill that this side of the House will not stand for.
I want to put on record that we, on this side, are sick of seeing our pensioners being used as political footballs at every budget. It is unfair to treat people in this way. I know that pensioners in my electorate are telling me that they're sick of it. They've told me over and over again at street corner meetings and stalls that I set up at shopping centres. I hear it time and time again. They tell me that they've worked hard, they've done the right thing their entire lives, they've brought up kids and are now looking after grandkids. And what does this government do? It comes in and pulls the rug out from under them. They're made to feel like a burden by this very legislation before the House today. They're made to feel like a burden, a cost and a nuisance. That's what this bill is doing. We shouldn't have it.
These people, as I said, have worked hard all their lives. They've contributed to our society and our economy, and they deserve better. As I said, this is the history of this government: the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison's government record on pensions is nothing short of a disgrace. In every single budget the government's handed down, they've proposed cuts to the pension. There have been proposals for cuts to the pension at every single budget. They want to call themselves the friend of pensioners—that's what they were championing in the 2019 election campaign. The reality is that it's completely the opposite; they are the enemy of pensioners through these cuts. You can see it at every budget. This government wants to raise the pension age to 70—the oldest pension age in the developed world. If you're a bricklayer or a plumber or you've worked in manufacturing, your back is gone by the time you're 50, let alone 70. How are these people meant to work at that age? With manufacturing closing down in our state—we've seen the closure of GMH and Mitsubishi—the majority of those people are still unemployed or working in jobs with lesser pay and lesser conditions.
This bill proposes to rip over $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners. This will specifically hurt those people, and it will specifically hurt another group of pensioners—migrants who came to this country many years ago and made Australia what it is, a wonderful place to live, through their hard work and their commitment to Australia. It will particularly impact on older Australians who want to visit or go overseas for a holiday for an extended period. They may need to spend an extended period caring for family; they may have parents on their last legs; they may have children overseas who are having children themselves, so they want to visit their grandchildren or other relatives; or they may just want to go back to their homeland in their twilight years for a short time. What is wrong with that? You've worked your entire life, you've paid taxes, you've contributed to this nation and you decide to travel in your old age. That is the Australian dream. There is nothing more Australian than wanting to travel and spend time seeing other countries and doing other things in your old age. Why should those people be penalised by this government for doing what everyone else in this country has done for years? If they went to Brisbane or the Gold Coast or Cairns or WA, it would be fine. Why not overseas? What's the difference? It is their right—in the days they've stopped working because they've contributed and paid taxes all their lives—to be able to pick a place, travel to it and stay as long as they like. They've contributed and done everything for this nation. So this bill is extremely poor when it comes to looking after pensioners.
The portability of the pension is a cornerstone of the Australian social security system. Migrant pensioners who have worked hard in Australia and have built a life and a family here should be able to get that pension. Proposing to stop the pension supplement for pensioners who spend more than six weeks overseas is an attack on anyone that wants to travel overseas. This nation is made up of people from every corner of the world who migrated here—whether pre-war or post-war, refugees who have worked under the conditions and rules of the land—knowing that one day when they retire they may want to return and have an extended holiday, see family and just do the things that they couldn't do whilst they were having their life here in Australia. This bill will prevent that. It will prevent people from having the freedom to travel.
This will affect pensioners, especially in in my electorate, from the Greek community, the Italian community, the Chinese community and the Arabic community who spend time visiting family on a regular basis—and there is nothing wrong with that. As I said, they've worked all their lives—and many have been here for 50 years, 60 years, 30 years, 40 years—and they've paid their taxes. It is their right to have the ability to visit the people that they love—family they were estranged from because of poverty or war or whatever situation brought them here—and to spend time with them. Six weeks is a very short, minimal time. I know people who go overseas every few years for three months, and rightly so. They can afford it. They worked; they've got the money to do it. Why not? Why is this government preventing that? What is it that's so bad in that? No-one from the other side can give us the answer.
Returning home for an extended holiday is a dream for many older people—to spend time there with family and friends and to enjoy the things they enjoyed when they were kids, perhaps not seeing the poverty stricken land that they left but seeing it with the hindsight gained from having lived in Australia all their lives. It is wrong to do this to those people. Yet this government wants to take that very right away from them with this bill. They want to punish Australians who have lasting connections to their heritage in perhaps another country.
Cuts to pensioners are nothing new from this government. In every single budget, the Treasurer, this Prime Minister, tried to cut the pension and raise the pension age to 70. The government's own figures show this would have left over 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or allowance worse off. Over 10 years, in excess of 1.5 million pensioners would be worse off under this government. This government is hanging our pensioners out to dry, yet again, and it is the history of the last few years that this government's been in place. When these people should be enjoying their twilight years, they're fraught with fear that their pension will be changed, that there will be new legislation that will take something away from them and that they will be under attack. Why should they be living in fear? They've constantly been under attack.
This government will not be getting away with pulling the wool over the eyes of age pensioners and hardworking Australians. It shouldn't be able to do that, and it won't. The Prime Minister likes to say that he's all about the quiet Australians—he's the most out-of-touch PM in history with this bill. This nation is made up of people from every corner of the world, with a lifelong dream, for many of them, to visit their homeland and stay for three months, six months or maybe even 12 months, in many cases, and it is their right to do so. If the Prime Minister really cared about the living expenses of vulnerable Australians he wouldn't be trying this yet again, as we've seen, to deliver a pension cut.
It's sad to say, but this is a government that really has it in for pensioners. This government should think again. They have a very short memory. They will not get away with this. I remember in 2014 when the Liberals tried to cut the pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 a week poorer over 10 years. And I remember when this government tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds. Changing that would have negatively impacted half a million part pensioners. We also remember when the government changed the assets test and shifted the goalposts on hundreds of thousands of pensioners who had carefully planned their retirement. They had carefully planned their retirement, with a few assets—perhaps part pensioners—and that rug's been pulled from under their feet. Almost 100,000 pensioners lost their pension and many more had their payments reduced, many hundreds in my electorate.
Let's look back at 2017 and the attempt by this government to do the very same thing. They wanted to cut the pension after six weeks of being overseas, and here we are again with this same bill. They backflipped and said these cuts were gone for good. Well, they're not gone for good; they're here again today, because this government has it in for pensioners. There's one thing we know: you can't trust this government when it comes to pensioners.
What I see in this bill is a government that's still trying to make life harder for pensioners, for Australians that work their entire lives. This is not fair and it is not a reasonable bill. Lo and behold, these cuts haven't gone from the last budget: here they are again. In 2013 former Prime Minister Abbott promised no changes to the pension. That's what he said on the eve of the 2013 election: no changes to the pension, no changes to health, no changes to education. What have we seen? We've seen billions of dollars cut out of those three areas. But why the pensioners, the people we admire the most in our community, people who have worked so hard? Why are we attacking these people? It is not fair. We saw those broken promises, and we've seen them continuously. They couldn't be trusted then and they can't be now.
We on this side recognise that many Australians are doing it tough, especially pensioners. It's particularly true for income support recipients, such as old-age pensioners. History has shown, time and again, that the government doesn't understand them, it doesn't understand the fairness, and, if it did, it wouldn't be proposing bills like this here today.
Mr BURNS (Macnamara) (18:25): I, unfortunately, am not thrilled to be rising to talk about the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, as this is a bad bill and does not deserve the support of this place. I hope that the other place, as they did with the ensuring integrity bill, sees to it that it does not pass the other place.
Before I go into some of the parts of the bill, I am sure that when those opposite and their members got into this place, got elected, and managed to get the great privilege of being a part of this great parliament, these sorts of bills—when they won government—wouldn't be the things that they do in their day, that when they wake up, cutting funding from pensioners doesn't get them out of bed. I don't think that anyone on that side would have woken up this morning and said, 'You know what? We really need to take money off the pensioners, because that's going to make this country better, that's going to deal with the problems that face Australians today.' Yet that is what they do. For them, that's what government is all about. Government is about cutting. It's about cutting down services. It's about being punitive towards ordinary Australians. Yet none of them are willing to stand up and speak on this bill. I think it says a lot about the sort of quality of legislation that this government is putting in this House when it is only the Labor Party who are standing up and speaking against it. No government member is speaking for it, because it doesn't fill them with pride to talk about cutting pensions, it doesn't fill them with pride to talk about how to take money away from those vulnerable Australians and it doesn't fill them with pride to talk about how to squeeze every last dollar out of our welfare system.
It's hardly surprising given the leadership of the social services minister. She said:
Giving [people] more money would do absolutely nothing ... probably all it would do is give drug dealers more money and give pubs more money.
That is the social services minister. That is the person who is in charge of Australia's welfare system, our social safety net—something that I think is a great part of this country that says no Australian will be left behind, that we will be there as Australians to support you, that being an Australian is a thing of privilege, and it is a wonderful thing and we don't let Australians and fellow Australians suffer without support.
Yet they keep bringing these sorts of bills into the House. They keep bringing these sorts of bills that Joe Hockey would have been proud of—a punitive bill that is all about taking money away from pensioners. This bill will rip over $185 million from pensioners. This is not money that the government needs. This is money that the government is choosing to take off pensioners in Australia. Specifically with regard to those who have worked in Australia, who have given their time—many of the pensioners who are living in my electorate especially are ones who came here as migrants, who came to this country with very little and who have built a life here in this great country. For the small opportunity that we have given them, they have given back to this country far more. My grandparents were some of those people. My grandparents were pensioners. My grandfather somehow always had enough in his pension to give little gifts to his grandchildren. These are the sorts of people from whom this government is trying to rip out that little bit of funding to get them through the week.
I remember when I was doorknocking before the election and I was walking through Albert Park in Port Melbourne—
Mr Morton: That sounds terrible!
Mr BURNS: It was particularly nice. I hear the interjection from the front bench. I would come across a house with a family that had either an Italian or a Greek sounding surname. It was honestly my favourite stop because I was always greeted politely and respectfully. I can't say that was how I was always greeted at the doors, but the hospitality that was shown to me really demonstrated the wonderful communities that have been built here in Australia and the wonderful pensioners who live here. It was clear from my conversations with them that they had a deep appreciation for what this country had given to them and the hospitality that it had shown. Many of their families have ended up in multiple locations. Some kids have joined them here in Australia, many of them have families and communities overseas, and yet this government wants to penalise pensioners who spend a few weeks perhaps looking after a grandchild, perhaps supporting one of their children or perhaps going back and seeing the family they had left behind in other countries. The only inspiration and the only motivation for this government is to be cruel and to be punitive and to take $185 million out of the pockets of Australian pensioners.
The government have form. As the previous member clearly reminded us all, before the 2014 election the then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no cuts to the pension, no cuts to the ABC and no cuts to the SBS, and what did we see? We saw cuts, we saw cuts, we saw cuts, we saw some cuts, and, to wrap it up, we saw some cuts. It's good to see that the Liberals haven't lost their form when it comes to cutting. They're still very, very good at it. It's probably what the Liberals do best. They know how to cut with the best of them. In 2014, they tried to cut the pension indexation. While the whole world moved around Australia's pensioners, the government tried to say to them, 'You don't need any extra money to be able to afford all the things you did this year. You don't need a little bit extra to pay for your increasing bills or your increasing food costs. No, you can deal with it.' They did that to the ABC as well. Unfortunately they were successful in cutting the indexation on the ABC, squeezing out all of the funding they possibly could. Their list of cuts in this area is long and distinguished. I won't go into many of them. But, on this auspicious day when we mark the unholy alliance between the Greens political party and the Abbott conservatives around voting down the CPRS in 2015, we all remember the famous deal that the Greens did with the Liberals to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by changing the pension asset test. The Greens, in their world of unicorns and kale fairies—
Mr Morton interjecting—
Mr BURNS: I'm going to pay for that one—don't understand the needs of the people who have come to this country. It is the same motivation that we see in this bill. It is the same motivation in saying to those Australians, 'It doesn't matter that you've had a go, it doesn't matter that you've put your heart into this country, it doesn't matter that you've put your back into this country, it doesn't matter that you came to this country with nothing and you set up a life for yourselves, it doesn't matter that you paid your taxes for decades, and it doesn't matter that you as Australians have given more to this country than we could have hoped for.' It says to them: 'In your retirement, in your last few decades when you should be enjoying everything that this country has to offer, we are going to squeeze a little bit out of each of you.' It is a shame and it does not deserve our support.
But this has been a theme since we've come back to this parliament. For the six months that I've been a member in this place there has been an agenda of cruelty, an agenda of punitive approaches by this government, one after the other, where they are trying to squeeze money out of the welfare system, where they are trying to punish the most-vulnerable Australians, where they are sending debt letters to thousands and thousands of Australians who don't owe a single dollar to this government and then tweet about it in the most absurd way, saying that they want to build an 'ontology of capabilities across government'.
Well, they haven't achieved much through this bill. This bill is pretty damning, but the minister did achieve, I think, one of the highest ratios on Twitter, with 1,138 comments, compared with only 94 'likes' on his 'ontology of capabilities across government' tweet. It was quite an extraordinary tweet, and I hope his advisers at least change his password so that he's not allowed to tweet anymore, because it would be better for the entire country if we were spared his tweets. But it would also be better for the entire country if we were spared his punitive policy of sending vulnerable Australians robodebt notices. It would be better for the entire country if we were spared the sort of legislation that we see week after week from this government, looking to squeeze money out of our social services system, looking to squeeze money out of the most-vulnerable Australians. It would be better for this country if this bill, the 'payment integrity' bill, went the same way as the 'ensuring integrity' bill, defeated in the other place.
They are very quick to label all their bills as being full of integrity, yet they are very slow to bring any integrity to the way in which they conduct themselves. This bill should not pass the parliament. I do not support this bill, and it should be defeated in the other place.
Ms STANLEY (Werriwa—Opposition Whip) (18:37): I rise to make my contribution to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, and I oppose this bill with a sense of deja vu. The coalition government first tried to introduce this bill in 2017. It was a bad bill then, and now, two years later, nothing's changed; it's still a bad bill. Dig a little deeper and the details of this bill are so cruel and miserly that they would actually make Scrooge blush and are a shame at this time of the year. This bill seeks to increase the residential requirements for age and disability pensioners by five years. It stops the payment of the age pension supplement should they want to go overseas for more than six weeks. Allowances such as Newstart and youth allowance will now have to have the liquid asset test raised from 13 weeks to an impossible six months.
People who, through no fault of their own, are made redundant are now going to be cruelly punished. There is no rationale for increasing the liquid assets waiting period for people who lose their jobs or are made redundant. Let's face it: how many times do we see workers lose their jobs, be made redundant, and then find out that superannuation has not been set aside and all their other entitlements aren't paid? The government, on top of that, is now going to make them wait even longer to get something back. For people who lose their job and are made redundant, having a financial buffer is incredibly important. It allows them to make changes to their lifestyle if they need to, and it allows them the space to keep their mental health in check. Yet this government says, 'If you want a go, you get a go.' Again, this government says one thing but seemingly is doing quite another.
Being made redundant and being unemployed is not some form of punishment for moral failure. Social security is a safety net. It is what this country should be most proud of—supporting people when they need it most. This government is alienating these people, who have no other option but to turn to the safety net.
In every budget since 2014, this government has tried to increase the pension age to 70. Let's not forget about the axing of the $900 seniors supplement for self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card, nor forget the deal that was done with the help of the Greens last year to cut $12,000 from the pension to over a quarter of a million pensioners by changing the assets test. I have seen many pensioners who could not be counted as well off for whom this change has meant significant issues for them and their partners.
In 2016, right as energy prices were causing families and pensioners to go into debt and skip much-needed heating, what did the government do? It scrapped the energy supplement for new pensioners. Our pensioners, who've worked hard to build this country into what it is today, who contributed so much, are being financially choked by this government and the Treasurer. In fact, it took the government until the cash rate was at one per cent to change the deeming rate—a deeming rate that was set for a cash rate of 2.25 per cent, a rate we hadn't seen since April 2015, and that is just appalling. How you could not have done something about that earlier is really beyond belief, given that the only people that were winning out of that were the big banks, and look at what we've seen in the last week about what they do.
This government does not want those pensioners, of which a high number are migrants who helped build this country, to be able to visit their families overseas. We all know that it's a long way to go to places like Italy and Greece, where a majority of my constituents originally hail from, so you want to be there for some time. Many of the constituents that I see in my electorate office think this will be the last time they will be well enough to go. They want to say goodbye to family and friends, and they want to reacquaint themselves with the places of their childhood, which ultimately many of them left in really awful circumstances, just after the war or in the early fifties. They were coming to this country because they wanted a better life for their families. It's hard to speak to those people, in my electorate, at least, who have spent the best part of 30 or 40 years growing the food that we put on our tables—the tomatoes, the eggs, the chooks—and see in their eyes that they can't afford to go back and see brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews they left behind. Some of them have been saving up for this for the last 15 or 20 years. I really don't know what to say to those people, because this is not the Australia that I grew up in and it's not the Australia that we want for our future either. The government just doesn't seem to have an appreciation for the long years of hard work these pensioners have put into the country.
We've got a disgraceful list of age-care abuses, banks ripping off our elderly, and robodebt that isn't actually true also ripping off our elderly. Now the government is dipping into its pile of failed legislation to have another go at our aged Australians. All this is at a time when we have a stalling economy and a government and a Treasurer asleep at the controls of a fly-by-night operation. They have no ideas of their own, so they're looking to the failed ideas of their conservative colleagues abroad: austerity. The Treasurer seems to be grasping desperately at cuts, cuts, cuts but has no plans to save the stalling economy. At the risk of being heckled by those opposite, the last time we had an economy that looked like it was going to have problems, we as a government made a decision to create jobs for people. That kept us much better off over the global financial crisis. It's something that this government needs to think about again.
For hardworking Australians who find themselves redundant and out of a job, their savings can make the difference, enabling them to retrain and get back on their feet quickly. We all know that Newstart does not provide enough money for people to pay the rent, feed and clothe themselves and get to job interviews. The little money you have means you aren't able to do your best at these job interviews if you're thinking about other things.
The government seems to have no plan for the economy. It has been two years since this bill was sent away from this place, and it really should be sent away again. We find ourselves firmly in a rotating door of failed coalition policy. This bill is nothing but a nostalgic look back at the coalition's worst hits. Since being elected in 2013 the government has been determined to destroy everything that is good and decent. We need to stop this bill now; we need to think about our vulnerable Australians and we need to make sure that this bill is stopped.
Ms FLINT (Boothby—Government Whip) (18:45): I start my remarks today by noting and remembering that it was Sir Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party, who entrenched in our founding principles, the very basis of the modern Liberal Party, the important principle that we support those who are in need, that we take care of the most vulnerable in our society and that we do our very best to make sure that people in times of great need, in times of crisis, receive the financial support that they might need to keep going, to provide them with dignity, to make sure that they can look after their family and look after themselves until they get back on their feet. That was, as I said, one of the fundamental parts of the platform of the original Liberal Party when it was formed back in 1944-45—that we have a great responsibility to look after those people in need in our society.
I'm very proud of the work our government does in order to do that. We do it in a range of ways. We're doing it through the National Disability Insurance Scheme, we do it through the age pension and we do it through unemployment support as well. I know that we spend billions of dollars supporting Australians, especially those in need, each year. As a government we need to make sure our spending is fair, sustainable and doing what it was intended to do—that is, support people in need. Especially when they're on income support, we're doing our very best to ensure we can help them get back into the workforce. On this side of the House we believe that the best form of welfare is a job. We need to make sure our welfare system is fair and sustainable so we can continue to fund it, because it does cost the nation billions of dollars every year. Taxpayers, hardworking Australians around the country, help to provide support for those less fortunate on welfare and through the age pension. I understand the forecast figure for our social security and welfare system is more than $180 billion, or one in every three dollars the Commonwealth spends, which is a very large figure.
The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019 reintroduces three measures designed to improve the integrity and sustainability of the welfare payment system. It does this through enhancements to the residency requirements for pensioners, changes to the payment of the pension supplement for permanent departures overseas and temporary absences and an increase to the liquid assets test waiting period to increase self-reliance. The financial impact of these measures is significant. Taken together the measures in the bill are estimated to improve the budget bottom line by some $291.5 million over the forward estimates. As I said, we have a responsibility to carefully manage our finances, our budget, because it is taxpayers' money. It is not the government's money; it is money that is earned and then paid through taxes by hardworking Australians. And I believe they do so willingly because they believe that we all have a responsibility to help those in need. I think we see that in the incredible response from Australians around the nation to the bushfire tragedies and the tragedy of the drought, and the incredible generosity of hardworking Australians to help out those in need. I think that's also echoed in their willingness to help support people who may need welfare, the age pension, to make sure that they are able to care for themselves and their families.
The three measures I've outlined that are included in the bill make changes to improve the long-term sustainability of our welfare payment system while maintaining appropriate support for those in need. So, in terms of the enhanced residency requirement for Australian pensioners, we are making sure that people have gone through a range of requirements before they're able to qualify for the age pension.
I note that Australia's residency requirements are quite generous when compared to the qualifying contribution periods of time required by other countries in order to receive the age pension. For example, among other OECD countries, Austria has a requirement of 15 years residency before people can qualify for the age pension, and Poland has a requirement of 20 years residency. So that's quite a long period of time and an indication of what comparable OECD countries require.
This measure reinforces and strengthens the resident's connection required in order to receive the age pension or the disability support pension. Currently, to qualify for the Australian age pension or disability support pension, a person must have been an Australian resident for a total of 10 years with at least five of those years being continuous—that's the length of time that they have lived without interruption in Australia. There is no requirement for those 10 years to be during a person's working life to be able to qualify.
This measure strengthens a resident's connection that's required before a person can be granted the disability support or the age pension. This means that, from 1 January 2020, to qualify for the age pension and the disability support pension people will be required to have 10 years continuous Australian residence with either five years of this residence during their working life or greater than five cumulative years residence not in receipt of an activity-tested income support payment. There are other provisions that will apply if they don't meet these requirements.
The bill also makes changes in relation to the pension supplement, which is a payment designed to assist income support recipients with the cost of living in Australia. The pension supplement combined into a single payment is the value of the telephone allowance, utilities allowance, pharmaceutical allowance and the GST supplement. The basic amount is equivalent to the former GST supplement which was introduced in the year 2000 to compensate income support recipients for increases in the cost of living associated with the GST.
It seems obvious that residents who are overseas long term or, indeed, even permanently—people who have left Australia and moved overseas permanently—are unlikely to be impacted by the GST in Australia because they're no longer living in Australia. So there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to continue to compensate them for the impact of the GST in Australia while they are overseas, which, as I said, seems quite obvious. So, for anything other than a short-term absence, there will be changes to their payments. This measure reinforces and strengthens the residence based nature of Australia's social security system and will help to ensure the system remains sustainable into the future.
As I remarked at the outset, we do spend billions of dollars on welfare support, the age pension and the disability support pension each and every year so that we can support people in their times of need or in their retirement if they are no longer able to work. Although, I do note I have many people well past the age of requirement and well past the pension eligibility age in my electorate of Boothby who are still running successful small businesses, who are still self-employed and who are really proud of the fact that they're still working, paying taxes and making a wonderful contribution to our nation. Their stories are really impressive, and I just commend them today for the contribution they have made to our society and the contribution that they make to their fellow Australians through their hard-earned incomes and the taxes that they pay, because they help to support people who are less fortunate than themselves.
Currently, the pension supplement is reduced to the basic amount after six weeks of temporary absence from Australia or immediately for permanent departures. Under this measure in this bill, the pension supplement will cease altogether after six weeks overseas for a temporary absence or immediately for permanent departures, as I just noted. The measure will apply to both recipients already overseas and recipients departing Australia after the commencement date. I note that the bill also makes changes to increase the maximum liquid assets test waiting period, and I think others have remarked on this previously.
I, again, just want to acknowledge that we believe it is very important to make sure that we support those in need. As I said at the outset, it is one of the fundamental, formative tenets of the modern Liberal Party of Sir Robert Menzies that we as a society have a duty to care for people who need our help in times of need, and that's what we continue to do. I am delighted to commend the bill to the House today.
Mr MORTON (Tangney—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and Cabinet) (18:57): The government are committed to ensuring our welfare system is fair and sustainable so we can continue to support those who need it most. This bill, the Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, reintroduces three measures that will help to maintain the longer term sustainability of the system. The first measure in this bill will, from 1 January 2020, strengthen the residency requirements for the age pension and the disability support pension, or DSP. Currently to qualify for the age pension or the DSP a person must be an Australian resident for a total of 10 years, with at least five of those years being continuous. Under this measure, for a person to qualify for the age pension or the DSP they will be required to have 10 years continuous Australian residence and either five years of this during their working life or greater than five cumulative years residence while not in receipt of an activity tested income support payment. Where a person does not meet either of these requirements they will need to have 15 years of continuous Australian residence. This measure reflects community expectations that people should demonstrate an appropriate residence connection to Australia before testing eligibility to receive taxpayer funded payments.
The second measure in this bill will cease payment of the pension supplement for recipients outside of Australia after six weeks for temporary absences or immediately if the recipient has permanently departed Australia. This measure will commence on 1 January 2020 and will apply to both recipients already overseas and recipients departing Australia after commencement. The pension supplement is a payment designed to assist income support recipients with the cost of living in Australia and there is no economic reason to continue to pay recipients while they are overseas for any time longer than a short-term absence. Pensioners will once again be able to receive the pension supplement once they return to Australia.
Finally, this bill will also increase the maximum liquid assets test waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks for new claimants of youth allowance, Austudy, Newstart allowance or sickness allowance. This increase will commence from 1 January 2020. This measure reflects community expectations that people who can support themselves should do so before relying on taxpayer funded income support. Only the maximum length of the liquid assets test waiting period is changing. No changes are being made to the existing reserve amounts, liquid assets test waiting period calculation, range of exemptions or hardship waiver rules.
The measure will only apply to claimants with high levels of liquid assets and greater capacity to support themselves in the first instance. Those with low to modest levels of liquid assets will not be affected by this measure. All three measures which are included in the bill will make sensible changes to improve the long-term sustainability of our welfare payment system while maintaining appropriate support for those in need. I present to the House a correction to the explanatory memorandum.
The SPEAKER: The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Barton has moved as an amendment:
That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"the House:
(1) declines to give the bill a second reading;
(2) notes that, in every Budget, this Government has tried to cut the pension or increase the pension age to 70;
(3) further notes that the cuts to Newstart in this bill will hurt redundant workers and push them towards poverty; and
(4) criticises the Government for its cruel cuts to pensions and social security".
So, the immediate question is that the amendment moved by the member for Barton be agreed to.
The House divided. [19:05]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
The SPEAKER (19:09): (In division)The Manager of Opposition Business, on a point of order.
Mr Burke: Mr Speaker, given the rule that you're seeking the call when you cover your head during a division, the member for Flinders is clearly seeking the call, and I just ask that you give it to him!
The SPEAKER: I say to the Manager of Opposition business: his knowledge of history is right. Before you just put iPads over your heads, there used to be top hats! That's true. But the member for Flinders is not seeking the call. But it would probably be a good idea if he didn't wear a cap into the chamber! The question now is that the bill be read a second time.
The House divided. [19:11]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
Third Reading
Mr WATTS (Gellibrand) (19:15): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority Board and Other Improvements) Bill 2019
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
to which the following amendment was moved:
That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House criticises the Government for repeatedly failing to legislate on agricultural matters in a timely manner"
Mr JOYCE (New England) (19:16): I just want to go through a few things and note some of the increases and greater efficiencies in the results of the newly relocated APVMA to Armidale. The results show: from the December 2018 quarter 85 per cent of product registrations, active approvals and permits were finalised within the time frame, up from 74 per cent in December 2017 quarter; 86 per cent of pesticide applications were finalised within the time frame, up from 72 per cent in the December quarter 2017; 80 per cent of veterinary product applications were finalised within the time frame, up from 71 per cent in the December quarter 2017; 57 per cent of major pesticide applications were finalised in the time frame, up from 49 per cent in the December quarter 2017; and 61 per cent of major veterinary product applications were finalised within the time frame, up from 40 per cent in the 2017 quarter. This is an example, amongst many, of how the proficiency of the APVMA, now it's bedded down in Armadale, is working better and continues to work better. There are in excess of 120 people now working in Armadale under the APVMA. It was not only a change in location but a change in philosophy. It was to create the centre of excellence at Armidale.
Why Armidale? Because there's the University of New England that has the course that trains people to work for APVMA. It was a logical nexus. The CSIRO is there. BASF, a massive German research company, has a research facility at Dungowan near Tamworth. It has close proximity to the grain growing areas, like Gunnedah; beef areas such as Corindi and New England; the wool areas such as New England; the cotton areas such as Narrabri; and right up to the tropical sugar cane areas, such as northern New South Wales and Queensland.
We are creating a centre of excellence and we are decentralising. That is one of the ethoses of the National Party and the coalition. It is amazing how vehemently this was fought against by those who want to continue on with the centralisation in the major capitals and in Canberra. I have no problems with Canberra. It's a marvellous, beautiful city—a great adornment and icon of our nation—but Canberra was only created by a process of decentralisation. Remember Canberra was to take away the sitting of parliament in Melbourne.
If you look back in the 1940s, we've had about 13,000 people here. We now have in excess of 385,000 people in Canberra. It has been a roaring success. The vast majority of the GDP of Canberra now does not come from the Public Service; it comes from private enterprise. But why should we only have the success once in our nation? We should have the capacity for the evolution of centres of excellence and the incorporation of government expenditures in multiple places across our nation, not just in a few.
This was a systemic move to break the ice—that decentralisation works. I can say that in discussions—and I keep in close association with those who are working with APVMA—they admit to the epiphany. They were sceptical at the start, but now that they're living in Armidale they think it's one of the best moves they've ever made in their life. They have more money to put in their pocket. They're on the same wage. They live in a cheaper house. They're closer to work. They spend more time with their family. They're merely a couple of hours from the coast. They're associated with the national parks. They have a culture of people who are dealing in the agriculture industry in a more profound way, because the essence of Armidale is as an agricultural centre of excellence. This is surely something we should be building on. We should have the courage to do this in other areas.
I also note that it was not just the APVMA that went to Armidale. With the National Party we set up the Regional Investment Corporation, the RIC, and that is based in Orange. Why Orange? Because Paraway financials are there—part of Macquarie Bank. The National Australia Bank rural lending section is in Orange. It seemed that the obvious place to create a centre of excellence in finance was in Orange. AgriFutures Australia was moved to Wagga, when I was the minister, to work in with Charles Sturt University. Sections of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority were moved to Wodonga, and I know that other parts of it have now been moved to other parts of our nation, to be on the system that they're supposed to monitor. A section of the GRDC, the Grain Research Development Corporation, was moved to Toowoomba near the grain-growing areas of the Darling Downs; a section was moved to Northam in Western Australia where it's important. This, once more, shows the proficiency of this government to be brave enough to go through the path of decentralisation.
The Labor Party would have everything in Sydney. It's an absurdity. It's funny, though, that when you dig down and you find that the minerals department, at a state level, was moved, lo and behold, to Maitland in the Hunter Valley. I've got no problems with that. It should be there; that's where the coalmines are. That's in the member for Hunter's seat. He seems to have left that part out. He seems to leave these strategic decisions that are advantageous to him behind.
I'm happy for the Labor Party to stick to their guns and say that they don't believe in decentralisation, to say that they don't believe in regional Australia, to show by their actions that they don't believe in regional Australia, to fight against the things that could assist regional Australia—whether that's divestiture powers to get cheaper power prices into regional areas or whether it's decentralisation or whether it's standing behind farmers during the drought—to always be a follower and never a leader in policy positions so as to make the lives of people in regional Australia better. If that is their forte and that's what they believe in, then so be it. But we will continue to fight for decentralisation, and there's no better representation of that than the move of the APVMA to Armidale.
The member for Hunter also mentioned the board and if we could nominate who is on the board. Well, the bill hasn't been through the parliament yet. We can't start nominating who's going to be on something for a bill that hasn't passed yet. That is basically emblematic of the member for Hunter. It is always a joy to debate the member for Hunter every Monday morning on Sunrise. It is a joy because I've never come across a person so ill-prepared for an interview over and over and over again in my life as the member for Hunter. His capacity to hear facts that are the truth and then try to debunk them, and then being able to stumble across himself as he tries to correct himself on national television, is always a great joy and adds so much to my life on Monday mornings to have him there. It's probably one of the reasons I suggested him, because I knew he'd be hopeless.
I also note that the member for Hunter had a massive swing against him. I think he only got 37 per cent of the primary vote—it was disastrous. They used to have a saying about the Hunter Valley, 'Looks like Canberra, votes like Cessnock' or 'Looks like Chatswood, votes like Cessnock'—noting that Cessnock is about as Labor as you can possibly get. It was absolutely Labor to the bootstraps. Well, they almost booted the member for Hunter out of Hunter because they could no longer see the Labor Party as representing them. It was a close fight between the member for Hunter, the National Party and One Nation as to who won that seat and, to be quite frank, we never thought that there was going to be a great chance. We completely underestimated the fervour of discontent that was apparent in places such as the Hunter and Central Queensland that completely switched off from the Labor Party. They do this precisely because of the things that the member for Hunter goes on about at the moment—railing against decentralisation, railing against people trying to get a fair deal on power prices and railing against the agricultural sector being supported with things like new dams which the Labor Party didn't ever bother building. I remember Chaffey Dam when I got back to New England.
The Labor Party succumb to the allure of Greens preferences in Balmain and, by so doing, are always obstinately against the development of anything in regional Australia—supporting excessive vegetation management guidelines; supporting environmental conditions that stop us from building things such as dams; and always standing in the way of things we fought for and delivered such as the financing for the Inland Rail. I note the member for Gippsland is here, who was the transport minister when we got the money for the Inland Rail—$10 billion. So many others talked about it; we got it. And we started that program happening, and what did the Labor Party do? They just talked about it. It was always a long-term goal for them—a long-term goal that never arrived in regional Australia.
So we hope that the APVMA is a template for other forms of decentralisation that we can deliver to regional areas. In delivering to regional areas, we can deliver greater opportunities. We can deliver the prospect that, if someone goes there, goes to high school there and goes to university there, they can then get a good job, a well-paid job, there. We create that centre of excellence so that people can come to a place such as Armidale and say: if you want to go to somewhere that is the apex of research and agriculture, then Armidale is the place to go—as long as the Labor Party doesn't get in and rid of it.
Dr ALLEN (Higgins) (19:27): I rise to speak on the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority Board and Other Improvements) Bill 2019. Agriculture and veterinary chemicals play a vitally important role in primary production by protecting crops and livestock from unwanted weeds, disease and pests. When agvet chemicals are utilised, this in turn may yield greater productivity, improved quality in crops and an even more competitive and thriving marketplace.
Agriculture is the lifeblood of many rural and regional communities, with agriculture and affiliated industries providing jobs to around 329,000 Australians, placing us as one of the top 10 agricultural exporting countries in the world. We ship about two-thirds of our agricultural production to the world every year with efficiency second to none. Our government is helping to work towards agriculture becoming a $100 billion industry in 2030.
This bill seeks to amalgamate two bills in the creation of a governance board for the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. It's so important to Australians that we look after our agriculture sector, but many Australians don't realise that there's a greater extent to which agvet chemicals are used in our everyday lives. Through the introduction of the APVMA Board, this bill will ensure that increased oversight is provided for the use of the widespread nature of agvet chemicals like glyphosate, which is part of Roundup, and reduce the risks for everyday Australian consumers.
Furthermore, agvet chemicals aren't just used in agriculture; they are also used in veterinary practice. Today there are 25 million pets in Australia with the market for animal health products having grown by 14 per cent in the last three years. Safeguarding our animal health is very important to Australians. Continued monitoring and oversight are required to ensure compliance with Australia's regulatory standards and to safeguard animal health through the management of food manufacturing practice.
In enjoying the benefits of agvet chemicals, the community and industry have certain expectations of the APVMA as the national agvet chemical regulator to act as an active gatekeeper, ensuring that only those products that are appropriate are approved and that all agvet users follow compliance with regulatory standards.
The bill contains most of the measures included in two previous bills—the operation efficiency bill and the streamlining regulation bill. The measures have been widely welcomed by stakeholders. Improved oversight with a clear distinction for the roles and responsibilities of the APVMA will work to ensure that the integrity of the system is maintained, and this amendment bill will achieve just that. A more efficient and effective APVMA will benefit all who utilise agvet chemicals or reap the benefits of their use by improving access to new productivity-enhancing chemical products. I support this bill.
ADJOURNMENT
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ) (19:30): It being 7 pm, I propose the question:
That the House do now adjourn.
Pensions and Benefits
Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (19:30): I rise this evening to once again condemn the Morrison government for the robodebt scheme. The robodebt scheme is an outrageous abuse of power from a callous and arrogant government. In many ways, this rotten and likely unlawful scheme encapsulates all that the Morrison government stands for. The more we learn about this scheme the more we learn how it has hurt and continues to hurt vulnerable people across our nation. Let me be clear: robodebt is little more than an extortion racket. In many ways, robodebt is a kind of scam developed by the Morrison government to prey on the vulnerable. Under robodebt, hundreds of thousands of menacing letters have been sent to vulnerable Australians demanding that they pay money to the government. Astonishingly, rather than providing detailed proof of the alleged overpayments for the recipient of the demand to review, under this scheme the Morrison government turns the onus on the recipient of the letter to disprove the debt the government claims. This outrageous reversal of the onus of proof is essentially a presumption of guilt on the part of any Australian this government wants to hit up for money. It forces anyone wanting to dispute their alleged debt to provide documentary proof of the payments they've received from multiple sources, bank account details and records of correspondence with Centrelink, often stretching back over many years.
But the obscenity of the Liberal government's robodebt scheme doesn't stop there. The crowning abuse of this Liberal Party extortion racket is that this lose-with-the-truth government knows that, in many cases, on its own admission, as many as one in five of the letters of demand that it is sending out is incorrect. Knowing this, it sends the letters anyway. That's the government's own estimate of how many are false. The actual percentage of false demands is likely to be much higher. If a bank or other financial institution demanded money from their customers in such a reckless way, they'd be in court.
Through robodebt, this government has set out to use fear to try to prop up its budget, demanding money from those who can least afford to pay it, whether they owe it or not. The government has caused terrible harm in that process. As journalist Alex McKinnon wrote in The Saturday Paper in March this year:
Revelations that more than 2000 people died after receiving a Centrelink robo-debt notice highlight the failings of an already flawed system that continues to target the vulnerable.
As I outlined to the parliament last week, earlier this year a single mother of two contacted my office desperate for help because she had received a computer generated robodebt notice of demand. Two years ago, she tragically lost her partner to suicide. After this heartbreaking loss, she returned to full-time work to keep a roof over her children's heads. She relied on support from Centrelink and let Centrelink know when her hours and pay increased. At the end of the 2017-18 financial year, Centrelink applied its robodebt algorithm to average her increased earnings across the whole year. This fraudulent and discredited process claimed she owed a debt of $6,000, which is an extraordinary amount of money for anyone, particularly for a single parent trying to make ends meet to support her family. She spent months appealing the debt, but the government still forced her to pay it back in instalments, even though the appeal was not resolved.
A key priority of any decent government must be to protect its citizens, including by putting in place laws to prevent and punish attempts by scammers to extort money from the vulnerable, but, through robodebt, this desperate, third-term, failing Liberal government has done the opposite. This government is the scammer. I condemn the Morrison government for the despicable robodebt scheme which has caused suffering to thousands of Australians. The robodebt scheme is a brutal, unethical and almost certainly unlawful grab for cash. What an extraordinary thing that the government of Australia is making false demands, knowing that it is making false demands, of hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Australians in our community, who have received government benefits. The Prime Minister should be apologising to the nation for this atrocious failure of policy and of decency.
Mental Health
Dr McVEIGH (Groom) (19:35): I was privileged to officially launch a new service in the Groom electorate recently—just a few weeks ago, in fact—that will be at the front line of suicide prevention in our region. The launch happened at our magnificent Empire Theatre in the middle of Toowoomba. Our region includes the surrounding townships of Pittsworth, Oakey and many villages and small communities in between. The Way Back Support Service will now be operating out of the Toowoomba base hospital in order to provide specialised and personalised support to people who have attempted suicide or have experienced a suicidal crisis.
I congratulate the teams at Beyond Blue, the Richmond Fellowship Queensland and the Darling Downs and West Moreton Primary Health Network together with the Darling Downs health service. They are national, state and very much local health services and health bodies who have joined together to deliver this vital service to the Toowoomba region.
Under the way back program a support coordinator will be available on a daily basis at the Toowoomba base hospital to meet with clients and to guide them through safety planning and a personalised aftercare program for up to three months. Of course, it will integrate with other health support and healthcare services throughout our community. In this case, it can mean anything from helping them access financial advice, for example, through to connecting them with community groups or helping them attend healthcare appointments. Mostly, this support coordinator will maintain contact and provide encouragement and support, most importantly, on an ongoing basis.
Sadly, on average 65,000 people attempt suicide in Australia each year and eight per day are likely to die. That's almost 3,000 per year. The research shows that those who have previously attempted are amongst those most at risk of attempting again. It is these very people, most importantly our own people, that the way back program supports. Assertive aftercare is considered amongst the most effective ways for reducing suicide re-attempts.
During the launch of this service we heard, by way of a short video, from a participant in the way back program called Fiona. We learned she had attempted suicide on numerous occasions, but with the enormous support and help offered through this program she has been able to find her own way back to move forward with her life. In particular, Fiona explained to us that it was 'just such a relief to know that someone was there for me'. She referred to the fact that her support coordinator had actually contacted her during a suicide attempt and it was that contact that was critical in getting her through that particular drastic moment.
I very much thank the men and women in our community working every day to help people deal with mental illness. Those who work with these people are literally saving lives and giving individuals the message that they are not on their own, that it is okay to seek help, that we are all valued in our community and that their friends, their families and their communities are with them all the way through.
In particular, I note the broader activities in our community, reflected no doubt across Australia, particularly in my case and other examples across regional Australia. For example, I talk about the Men's Shed movement, Lifeline and, in our case, Queensland Health—our public health network, as I said. I talk about Sunrise Way, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation service in our city; various specialists; GPs; those focused on supporting our veterans, young and old; and, of course, those in our schools and various community groups. This is a message echoed time and time again across the aisles of this House—our national parliament. Again, I say to my own community and those around the country that it is okay to seek help.
Welfare Rights Centre South Australia
Mr GEORGANAS (Adelaide) (19:40): Today, I'd like to speak about the South Australian Welfare Rights Centre. In its 31-year history, it has provided community legal services. Its main work has been to provide free legal advice and assistance in the areas of tenancy and social security law, and even advice in assisting people who've been caught up in the robodebt debacle. Much of their work has, therefore, centred around Centrelink matters, homelessness issues and tenancy issues.
The Welfare Rights Centre has provided a well-utilised and much-needed duty solicitor program for people appearing in the South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Anyone appearing before these tribunals needs to be well versed in the criteria applicable to the matter, and it can be an intimidating atmosphere at the best of times even for those who deal with it on a daily basis and especially for people who perhaps have had no contact with law courts, courts et cetera.
The Welfare Rights Centre has also trained a number of volunteers. Many volunteers, such as law students, have worked in their offices to be able to assist the very many cases and calls for help in these jurisdictions. Some lawyers have also volunteered their time over the years, and this has always been much appreciated by the Welfare Rights Centre South Australia and the clients that they have supported and assisted. Sadly, in a climate where financial counselling and legal aid have suffered major cuts, the funding for the important work of the Welfare Rights Centre on both a state and a Commonwealth level has been cut back—and not for the very first time.
As is now all too often the case for community services of this kind and of this nature, government funding models and guidelines at both levels of government have been subject to change and have often become inconsistent, making it difficult for many of these great community legal services to continue their work and to continue assisting people in navigating their way through the complex government offices—whether it be Centrelink or whether it be robodebt or just things like tenancy contracts.
Despite all this uncertainty, up until recently, the Welfare Rights Centre volunteers have managed to assist hundreds and hundreds of clients each and every year. As these screws and cuts are applied, due to an ever-reducing welfare budget, the eligibility reduction and the opportunity to report changes face-to-face has almost been obliterated when we look at the systems that have been put in place. This is a march towards self-reporting on the myGov website, where even the most competent user may produce two outcomes in areas like the carers allowance, income tests for various pensions and social pensions, disability support pension eligibility and the appalling robodebt debacle that we just heard the member for Isaacs talk about, for example.
The legal support provided to many robodebt victims by this service often resulted in Centrelink admitting that there was no debt to pay. Where would those people be if they were not able to access these legal services? Sadly, we're going to figure it out soon, because they won't be in existence—because of the cuts that have been made by the federal government and the state government.
The Welfare Rights Centre wound up recently due to nonfunding by both the federal government and the state government, and it's going to affect our most vulnerable people—as I said, people who need assistance and help to navigate these complex issues. How could it be that this service with such a long and proven track record of cost-effective assistance, often to the most vulnerable in our communities, has been closed, which, in turn, delivers a dire outcome for its clients? It comes down to cost. That's what we hear.
It is not on that both state and federal Liberal governments allow this to happen. I commend the Welfare Rights Centre for its invaluable work over the past 31 years; the wonderful staff they've had, the volunteers, for all their commitment and dedication in assisting and helping people. I'd urge the federal Attorney-General to ask his department to review immediately this terrible decision, and I hope that something can be done to reopen the doors of this crucial service that has assisted some of our most vulnerable people for many years through hard work, through volunteering, doing it all on a shoestring budget.
Sport
Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (19:45): This coalition government has spent over $2.5 billion on sport and sporting activity since it came to office, an extraordinary feat—about $950 million on sporting infrastructure for local and national organisations, $113 million on the integrity of sport, $710 million in direct funding for our current and future elite athletes, $270 million for programs supporting Indigenous communities and their athletes, and $10 million that I know we put towards the 2032 Olympic bid.
I could go on, but the question is: why? Why do we invest in sport? The answer is: because sport represents far more than just running around and kicking a footy or throwing a javelin. Sport is also about social inclusion. Sport is an opportunity for communities to bind together. Sporting organisations today play a far larger role in our civil society than they have in the past, and that's only becoming more the case as time goes on. We all love our sport and Australia is renowned for it. I think everybody in this chamber would remember that first time they threw on goggles and jumped in the pool or first threw a football or a netball, or whatever it is. We love our sport. We also recognise that sport keeps us healthy, not just physically but emotionally. It's been proven time and again that if we are active as a people our mental health is so much better. I don't know about you, Deputy Speaker, but I feel better if I do a bit of exercise in the morning. I just have a better attitude for the day. Sport is vitally important.
A vision of this government is to see Australia become the most active and healthy place in the world. That is very much encapsulated in our 2030 strategy for sport or, as we call it, Sport 2030. As part of that strategy we have a KPI, which is to reduce the inactivity of Australians by 15 per cent by the year 2030. We need to make sure, therefore, that this enormous funding we're putting towards sport hits the ground at the local level.
I was delighted only a few weeks ago to attend the launch of RideScore Active Schools on the Sunshine Coast. Full credit to We Ride Australia, who have championed this program. The federal government is tipping in about $225,000. We're working in collaboration with the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, with the state government, with Stockland at their new development and a range of other partners but, in particular, We Ride Australia.
This program allows schoolchildren to ride to school—it encourages them. Up to about 70 per cent of kids get dropped off by car at school every day. You can imagine not just their health while they're young but the behaviours as their lives go on if they have the opportunity to get into the habit of getting on a scooter, getting on a bike or just walking to school. This particular RideScore Active Schools program will be rolled out at nine different schools on the Sunshine Coast, probably helping around 800 kids next year. The idea is that it overlays technology onto bicycles. So when children leave home and then clock in their bike at school it sends an automatic message to their parents, to mum and dad. It means, too, that there are safe routes mapped out for them so that they can go to school in a very safe way. In other words, it keeps kids active, it keeps kids safe and it gives mums, dads and carers peace of mind. This is yet another very simple but tangible way that we as a federal government are ensuring that our money spent on sport helps at the grassroots and keeps our kids in particular healthy and active. I'm delighted to be part of it.
Loneliness
Mr GILES (Scullin) (19:50): What if there was a condition that was more deadly than obesity and more lethal than smoking 15 cigarettes a day? What if the same condition has a greater risk of death than alcohol consumption and lack of exercise? What if this isn't a terrible disease but a social condition? Loneliness. In politics we don't always speak about the things that really matter and we certainly don't pay enough attention to loneliness and its consequences. As the recent ABC Australia Talks survey stated:
Our ignorance about the health consequences of loneliness is a reflection of the fact that loneliness is not part of our everyday conversations around health.
We might think that older Australians are the ones most commonly affected by loneliness—and it is true that for the elderly the loss of social contact is incredibly damaging to health and wellbeing—but the ABC report found that loneliness is a particular challenge for young people. More than a quarter of young people aged 18 to 24 said they felt lonely 'frequently' or 'always'.
Here in Australia, like in the rest of the developed world, the way we live, work and form and sustain relationships is being changed by technology. It's a strange irony that technology has made it easier for people to interact and connect at the same time as loneliness and social isolation are on the rise. However, the most concerning predictor of loneliness is poverty—21 per cent of people who earn less than $600 a week feel lonely frequently or always. By contrast, among people who earn more than $3,000 a week, less than half that say they feel lonely frequently or always, reflecting the fact that around the world poverty is one of the biggest predictors of poor health, especially depression and other mental illnesses.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the adequacy of Newstart in this debate. The current rate of Newstart is unacceptably low. Newstart should be increased. Living in poverty is stressful and it is socially isolating, too. There is no policy lever more readily available to policymakers to address poverty in Australia than increasing Newstart.
As Labor's shadow minister for cities and multicultural affairs, I have been thinking about how loneliness is connected to this portfolio. How our cities are shaped drives how people interact, of course, but we haven't paid nearly enough attention to how this can isolate people. Getting around town isn't just about the depth of our labour markets; it is fundamentally a driver of the quality of our relationships and connections, too.
Loneliness is also a problem for many new migrants settling in Australia. Many make the move without family or support networks. Some struggle to make new social connections. We need to know more about this. In the UK the issue of addressing loneliness was one that was being championed by the late Jo Cox, and it is now championed in her name. The UK Conservative government has built on this by appointing a minister for loneliness. The UK approach recognises that loneliness is an inevitable part of the human experience—for instance, after the death of a loved one or a relationship breakdown—and its focus is on reducing the number of people who say they feel lonely frequently, starting with the Let's Talk Loneliness campaign, which is aimed at reducing stigma. Importantly, loneliness has been entrenched as a consideration across government policy, recognising the wide range of factors that can exacerbate feelings of loneliness and to support people's social wellbeing and resilience. Of course in the UK the link between loneliness, austerity, poverty and a lack of social mobility have made some question the sincerity of the UK government's approach. There is a political dimension to loneliness. Political choices matter, whether it's through cuts, how we talk about people in relation to one another as well as how and whether we regard this as a policy area worthy of political attention.
Last month in TheNew York Times, Nicholas Kristof called for a war to be waged on loneliness. He's right. I've spoken previously about the prevalence of loneliness in Australia and the important work of academics like Dr Michelle Lim and civil society organisations like the Red Cross in highlighting this and which have called for a national response from our national government. I'm pleased that Labor's national platform put loneliness directly on the map as something demanding the attention of Australia's government. But, under the Morrison government, nothing seems to be happening and this is just not good enough.
Forestry Industry
Dairy Industry
Mr PASIN (Barker) (19:54): When I first came to this place in 2013, I was shocked at how few conversations were had on the positives of our national forestry industry. Since that time, we have had over six years of a coalition government, and it's a very different conversation. Forestry is truly a sunrise industry. It's in a really great position to grow and create jobs, and in Canberra I feel we have a bipartisan approach to this. I've always had an innate sense of the importance of forestry because I grew up in a timber town. Like my great state of South Australia, our friends across the border in Victoria have a thriving timber and forestry industry providing thousands of jobs, particularly in regional areas. Whilst most of the conversations I'm engaged in focus on softwood forestry plantations, I appreciate that our native forests play an important part in the overall industry and the economic contribution it provides to Australia's regions.
Timber harvesting of our native forests is highly regulated, highly restricted and carefully managed to take into account the environmental, social, cultural and economic values of the forest. And the products that flow from the industry are underpinned by some of the best practices in the world. Timber, of course, is the ultimate renewable, recyclable and sustainable resource. In Victoria, just four—I'll say it again, just four—out of every 10,000 trees are harvested from state forests each year. It beggars belief on that basis that the state government would take the decision to halt all logging in native forests by 2030.
Victoria has the most environmentally sustainable native timber harvesting industry in the world, with value-adding occurring in our timber manufacturing facilities. This is an economically reckless decision which has nothing to do with the environment or environmental science and everything to do with politics or political science. It's made clear for me that if you vote Labor in Victoria you get the Greens. It seems that Premier Andrews has done the numbers and decided that he values Greens preferences more than he does blue-collar jobs. By banning the felling of four trees in every 10,000, we will now see more imported paper and hardwood products from countries with lower environmental standards, worsening our current status as a net importer of wood and wood products. The demand for these products doesn't disappear; the supply just shifts. The decision is bad for the environment globally and bad for local communities. If more timber jobs go, we can say goodbye to the local footy club, the local netball club, schools, doctors, hospitals and other essential services and see populations decline in local towns. Indeed, as the member for Gippsland would agree, this decision will spell the end for many small timber towns in Victoria. I won't give up on local jobs and our small communities, whether they're in South Australia or Victoria.
Much of our nation is experiencing prolonged drought. Its effects on our farmers and our rural and regional communities is occupying much national attention, including the attention of those on both sides of this place. Self-evidently, farmers are facing tough times because of this drought. For our dairy farmers these difficulties are compounded by high input costs and, of course, the power imbalance in trying to achieve a fair price. Our government is working to deliver the dairy code of conduct and we're investing in $22 million worth of measures to support dairy farmers to address high input costs. In the meantime, while our government works to deliver for the future of the industry, we need supermarkets to come to the table and give fair returns to the farm gate. We need supermarkets to step up.
The drought is seeing the price of many products increase, whether it's beef, sheepmeat or fruit and veges, but the same can't be said for dairy. Home brand supermarket products across the dairy section of the supermarket, not just milk, remain at the same prices, regardless of the high production costs at the farm gate. I hope I'm speaking directly to supermarket executives: they need to come to the table and pay processors more in recognition of the drought and the impact it has on farmers. We are occupied in this place to ensure that our farmers survive this drought. I hope the boardrooms of the supermarkets in this country are equally well exercised.
House adjourned at 20:00
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Rob Mitchell) took the chair at 10:30.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Rob Mitchell) took the chair at 10:30.
CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Burge, Mr Dennis
Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (10:30): On Sunday 17 November, members of the South Australian branch of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia, Northern Suburbs Sub Branch, held a committal service at their clubrooms at the Peter Badcoe VC Complex, Edinburgh, to farewell their mate Dennis Burge, who passed away on 21 October. Sapper Dennis Burge enlisted in the Army, joining 1 Field Squadron, and served in Vietnam in 1967, mainly as a tunnel rat. He returned home in April 1968 after being injured in a mine incident. He recovered from his injury and returned to civilian life as a truck driver. At no time, however, did Dennis forget his Vietnam mates, the horrors of the war they had experienced and the residual effects it had on their lives.
The Vietnam War had its own uniqueness that only those people who served in Vietnam would understand. Many of them were deeply scarred by the war. They needed support, and that often came from others who served in Vietnam and who understood what service personnel had been through. Dennis was such a person even though, I'm sure, he had his own issues to deal with. He was instrumental in securing the clubrooms for the Northern Suburbs Sub Branch of the Vietnam Veterans Association. He served as president for several years, became an advocate for veterans dealing with the Department of Veterans' Affairs and regularly visited schools, talking to schoolchildren about Vietnam so they too could better understand how the war affected those who had served there. Even in his later years, when his own health was deteriorating, Dennis was at every veterans' event, proud of his service and that of his mates. Always level-headed, respectful and with immense humility, Dennis was very much respected by all.
The Vietnam War ended nearly half a century ago, but the mateship of those who served there has endured. I see it frequently at commemorative services and so many other community events that veterans are associated with. Not surprisingly, the committal service was very well attended, as veterans came to farewell their longstanding friend. In a final gesture of his loyalty, Dennis's ashes were interred in the memorial courtyard at the Vietnam Veterans Association Northern Sub Branch clubrooms. Some would say it was part of his long-term strategy to ensure that those clubrooms remained there well into the future, and I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, because Dennis always looked ahead. To his wife, Kat, to his children and to all of his veteran colleagues, I extend my condolences on the passing of Dennis Burge. I know that he will be missed but fondly remembered by all.
Petrie Electorate: Morrison Government
Mr HOWARTH (Petrie—Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services) (10:33): As we move into the last sitting week of the year and we prepare ourselves for Christmas and the new year season to come, I'd like to take this moment to acknowledge the continuation of the stable and secure federal government under the leadership of Scott Morrison and celebrate the wins we've had as a nation and, more importantly, back home in my electorate of Petrie. I want to thank my electorate for their ongoing support at this year's federal election and, in turn, I want them to know I've been working hard to deliver the infrastructure, jobs and funding that local families rely on and listening to them when I'm at home in my electorate.
We've delivered tax relief for local families, giving more than 70,000 locals tax relief back into their pockets. We've supported veterans and their families, including with the introduction of the veterans covenant, mental health support and the veterans discount card. We've also been able to protect Australians against foreign fighters This legislation will enable the government to prevent suspected extremists from returning to Australia and putting Australia and her people at risk. We've introduced legislation to make it easier for first home buyers to get into the market, with the First Home Super Saver Scheme and the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme starting next year. They're just a few things.
Locally, we've seen infrastructure milestones start. There has been $3 million in federal funding for the Mango Hill State School hall; work has started on that. There has been $500,000 for the Redcliffe Coast Guard, those volunteers who protect our boaties; the clubhouse upgrade has started. Work has officially begun on a jointly funded AEIOU North Brisbane and Pine Rivers autism hub, which is fantastic. We have local road projects in Bracken Ridge starting; that has been signed with the Brisbane City Council. There's $7½ million worth of work in Bracken Ridge. We've also secured a fully rebated MRI licence for Redcliffe Hospital; that room is currently being constructed by the state government.
Then there are the completed projects in Petrie. We've opened the $450,000 federally funded indoor sports facility and change rooms at Peninsula Power soccer. We've seen the completion and opening of the federally funded extension to the Redcliffe PCYC. We completed the $1.1 billion Gateway north upgrade in March this year, with a further $800 million committed to the final link between Bracken Ridge and Pine Rivers. I had the biggest jobseeker boot camp ever in the history of Petrie, with 150 people attending. There's a lot more to do in 2020, so I say to my electorate: thanks for your support, have a great Christmas and I'll continue to work hard for you next year.
Defence Procurement
Mr JOSH WILSON (Fremantle) (10:36): The government has a decision to make in terms of the full-cycle docking of the Collins class submarines. For Western Australia it will be a watershed decision that could literally be the difference between the development of a serious shipbuilding hub in WA and a scenario in which shipbuilding becomes a marginal feature of life at the Australian Marine Complex. For South Australia it's a matter of holding onto existing jobs out of a legitimate concern that the Morrison government is incapable of delivering on schedule the large quantity of prospective work. Make no mistake, the banquet table is set in South Australia. Of the $90 billion defence shipbuilding program, $85 billion worth of work will be focused in Adelaide in the form of the future frigates and the future submarines. The only question is whether Western Australia gets a half-decent meal out of this long-running work program.
There's no question that consolidating the submarine work in WA is in the national interest. It follows international best practice to have the sustainment occur where the submarines are based. WA has both the proven expertise and the training framework to accommodate the work. The AMC is ready to become a major regional hub for shipbuilding sustainment and sophisticated manufacturing.
It goes without saying that all such decisions should be made in the national interest, but the fact that the government keep repeating this mantra is cause for concern. It's as if they're saying that whatever decision they make will be beyond question. That is a dangerous and even arrogant proposition. It's essentially a form of pre-spin designed to give them cover for a decision that may well not be made in the national interest. I'm surprised that some in the community and some in the media seem to be falling for that, especially when you consider this government's form on defence procurement decisions under previous ministers. Was it really in the national interest to split the offshore patrol vessel construction program so that the first two OPVs are built in South Australia before the next 10 are moved to WA, if we're lucky?
It's not in the national interest for WA to get virtually nothing out of the defence shipbuilding program; it's not in the national interest to miss the opportunity to ensure that Australia has a properly developed shipbuilding hub on the Indian Ocean; and it's not in the national interest to put all our infrastructure and workforce eggs in a single basket. It will be a broken promise if the government dud Western Australia again or give us half a sandwich and try to pretend that they don't take us for granted. We're not interested in parochialism. We've seen that work against us in the past. We want a decision that is fair and sensible, and that means moving the full-cycle docking to WA in 2024. I've made those arguments since my election in 2016, and I'll continue to make them on behalf of my electorate, on behalf of my state of Western Australia and in the national interest.
Forde Electorate: City of Logan Safe City Awards
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Chief Government Whip) (10:39): I take this opportunity to recognise some of the fantastic volunteer groups and individuals across my electorate of Forde who have recently been recognised in the City of Logan Safe City Awards for their exemplary contribution to making our community a better and safer place to live.
The Logan and Beenleigh high-risk team received top honours in the partnership category for their cross-agency work in supporting women and children at risk of domestic and family violence across Logan. This is an exemplar of the corrective and health services, public servants and volunteers working together to keep women and children in our community safe and to hold domestic violence perpetrators accountable for their actions. In doing so, the team handled over 500 referrals since they began their work in 2017.
Rolando Pisia won the Safe City Volunteer Award as a proponent of Sturdee Park Youth Engagement Project in Loganlea. Rolando has been a champion of community safety and development in his work to engage with local youths to reduce organised crime and vandalism at Sturdee Park. I would also like to commend Logan City Council for the tremendous work they have done to upgrade the facilities there as well.
Katrina Whitfield, a teacher's aide at Beenleigh State High School was nominated for her dedication in her role as a school crossing supervisor. For the past five years she has made it her mission to ensure students get home safe from school every day, while also being a friendly face students can talk to in times of need. She is known in our community for her fearless dedication to keeping children safe on the road.
Youth Off the Streets took out the not-for-profit category award for their Logan outreach program supporting disadvantaged youths to recover from hardship or trauma. They host community barbecues, movie nights and other events to help young people connect with youth workers and create a positive outlook for their future.
It fills me with great confidence heading into 2020 to know that there are groups and individuals in Forde and everywhere else in Australia who make it their life's work to help our communities unite and be safe. I want to thank them for their work. I will take this opportunity to wish them all the best for the festive season and a fantastic and prosperous 2020.
International Day of People with Disability
Lilley Electorate: School Awards
Ms WELLS (Lilley) (10:42): Happy International Day of People with Disability. It has looked likely for some time that we parliamentarians will be trapped here in Canberra for the day itself, so I took the opportunity a few weeks ago to visit with parents at My Time Geebung. My Time is a community of parents who are based out of Geebung Special School, and it is a place for parents and carers of children with a disability to socialise, to get advice and to support each other. Thank you to Vanessa and Skye, who introduced me to the group in the first place and who I mentioned in my first speech in parliament. Thank you to the group, who so willingly gave me insights into their lives and some of the joys and challenges that they face as they care for children with disability. I look forward to working with you next year to action what we discussed and to work and advocate on your behalf as your federal representative.
It is awards season in Queensland. I have spent the last few weeks attending school graduations and awards ceremonies at some of the 43 state, private, religious and independent schools across my electorate. My South Australian husband tells me that speech nights and awards seasons are not something that occur too much in other parts of the country. But in Queensland it is a very big deal. I have been to many, and I wanted to take this opportunity to recognise some of the students in Lilley who have served their community and excelled in the fields of sport, trade, skills, arts and academia this year.
From the north of my electorate, Jarvis Poppleton won the Top Year 11 Student in Academia at Sandgate District State High School. At St Joseph's Nudgee College in Boondall, Leo De Clara won the Year 10 award for his contribution to social justice and community service, and Noah McFadyen, Reesjan Pasitoa and Harrison Vella won the Excellence in Sport award for reaching national representation in a GPS sport.
Moving over to St Pats in Shorncliffe, Jonah Le Bherz won the inaugural Anika Wells MP Award for Excellence in Music Extension—heights I never reached. Down at Mount Alvernia College in Kedron, Hannah Lowe was awarded the Clare School Community Service Award for Year 9 and Year 10 students. Just down the road at Padua College in Kedron, Thomas White and Cameron Plackett won the Brother Clem Kain Award for Dedication and Fellowship; Lincoln Dalton and Damon Humphrys won the Peter Stark Award for School Spirit; and Nate Bodel and Oscar Murphy won the Father Odoric Award for Christian Leadership. Well done, boys.
At Aspley State School I was honoured to sponsor the Award for Excellence which was awarded to Brendan Mitchell. Brendan, you should be very proud of this achievement. At Earnshaw State College in Banyo, Jemma Green was the dux of the college for 2019. I am sure that Jemma has a very bright future and I'm excited to see what it holds for her. At St Dympna's primary school in Aspley, Anvi Tanwar and Eden Tokuma were awarded the Anika Wells MP Community Service Award. To all these wonderful students, congratulations and have a very well-deserved break.
Townsville: Crime
Mr THOMPSON (Herbert) (10:45): It has been about six weeks since I rose in this place to talk about Townsville's crime crisis, and I'm sorry to say: very little has changed. Despite major public outcry, houses are still being broken into, cars are still being stolen and the community isn't feeling any safer. The three state Labor representatives are sitting on their hands and doing nothing to ensure that those responsible are held to account and punished for their actions.
The people of Townsville are so fed up with the city's crime problem and with not being listened to that passionate locals took to the streets just a few weekends ago to make their voices heard. More than 300 people came out in force, on a hot Saturday morning. They were carrying placards and being very clear about exactly what they wanted to achieve. The group was organised at the grassroots level by resident Julianne Wood and dubbed 'Take Back Townsville'. We marched and chanted passionately through the streets, and to quote Julianne on her Facebook page: 'We as a community are suffering. We are too scared to leave our homes, having our possessions stolen, taking our lives in our hands with the idiots that speed around in stolen cars driving down the wrong side of the streets, carjackings, attempts to stab people or someone with a bloodied syringe—just to name some of the pathetic behaviours. This is our city and I love it and we want it back.'
To their credit, local MPs from all sides of politics turned up to face a barrage of angry questions. But you only had to listen to the conversation for a few minutes to know that locals feel let down by their state representatives and the judicial system. I want to be clear: the police do an amazing job, but their hands are tied by the legislation. Among the locals' concerns were that there aren't enough police on the ground, as criminals are being released on bail almost as soon as they're locked up—only to commit further offences. It's a catch-and-release program that is hurting our city. The city's two helicopters, which should be reserved for their primary purposes of rescue and critical medevacs, are being utilised by police to track stolen cars, and much more. It is clear that the people of Townsville want a dedicated police helicopter.
I will continue to put pressure on the Queensland state Labor government to do better, to introduce harsher penalties and to keep criminals behind bars, to make our community safe again. Even we as a federal government have introduced funding for CCTV cameras for local schools, communities and councils, and more lighting to curb antisocial behaviour. Townsville deserves better.
Internet Content: TikTok
Mr WATTS (Gellibrand) (10:48): It began with a tutorial on eyelash curling and ended with Chinese video-sharing app TikTok suspending a US teenager's account, to international headlines. The teenager's offence was using make-up tips to disguise her real message of criticism of China's treatment of its Uygur minority.
TikTok was developed by Beijing company ByteDance, in a very different internet ecosystem to our own. It's based on an app in the domestic Chinese market called Douyin, which is heavily censored and surveilled. In 2018, Douyin purged British cartoon character Peppa Pig from the platform because authorities decided that it had taken on a subversive meaning. If Xinjiang residents post traditional Uygur music sung in their native language on the app, Douyin's machine-learning algorithm may flag it, the post may be deleted, and it may even lead to a visit from the police.
Over the past year, TikTok has transcended its origins and it has been downloaded over 1.5 billion times—the majority of these outside of China. In 2018, it had more downloads than Facebook and Instagram. Its success has propelled ByteDance to become the most valuable start-up in the world.
It raises important questions for liberal democracies. How should we treat international internet platforms developed and managed in illiberal societies? It's easy to imagine how such platforms could be used for illiberal purposes, to varying degrees of concern: data harvesting for intelligence purposes, data harvesting for foreign influence operations, data harvesting for coercion of individuals and foreign interference and censorship for propaganda purposes or even electoral interference.
According to TikTok's content moderation guidelines, leaked to The Guardian in September, the company censors a wide range of content, including videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence and Falun Gong as well as criticism of 'policies, social rules of any countries, such as constitutional monarchy, monarchy, parliamentary system, separation of powers or socialism system'. The Washington Post reported in September that TikTok censored content about the Hong Kong protests. ByteDance claims that the leaked guidelines for censorship were retired in May and professes to be taking a localised approach to content moderation now. It's also apologised for the suspension of the account of the eyelash-curling US human rights campaigner and has reinstated her account.
But, as with major internet companies from any country, it's hard to know from the outside. Questions remain about how the Australian government should respond when the opacity of foreign owned internet platforms leaves us wondering whether their practices are consistent with our values or laws. The least we can ask for is that the Australian government ensures that it is in a position to inform Australian users of any problematic practices they may be subjected to on these platforms. It's important that the government talk to the Australian public about these issues, and we've got a long way to go on this front. It's not even clear which minister has responsibility for these issues in Australia. We need to do better, and quickly. It may seem challenging to confront these platforms now, but the issue will only grow in significance. It will be easier to act sooner rather than later.
Longman Electorate: Police-Citizens Youth Club Caboolture
Mr YOUNG (Longman) (10:51): A few weeks ago I met with Senior Sergeant Ashley Freyling, from the Caboolture Police-Citizens Youth Club—or PCYC, as it's more affectionately known—and Kel Clarke, from PCYC Queensland, to chat with them about a project very near and dear to my heart, as it is to theirs and to the community of Longman. For PCYC Caboolture to continue to deliver their youth development and crime prevention programs to the entire community, as well as their excellent gymnastics, boxing and martial arts programs, they are in great need of a new PCYC facility.
Our current facility is located on Toovey Street in Caboolture. Since 1982 it has delivered fun, safe and healthy sports and recreational activities to the entire community. The club offers a range of low-cost activities for all age groups, from toddlers to seniors, with a gymnastics program run by a team of qualified coaches. Youth and community programs are a key part of PCYC Caboolture, with Braking the Cycle and RUBY on offer. In short, PCYC Caboolture goes above and beyond, for all the families and their children who live in the Longman electorate, by building a safer and healthier community through youth development. I can remember dropping my own teenage kids off at these facilities for the Blue Light discos on a Friday night, and I can testify to how much they enjoyed them.
Today PCYC Caboolture has in excess of 500 kids doing gymnastics. They also have a popular boxing program, which is now at full capacity, not to mention an extremely popular martial arts program. When I spoke with Sergeant Freyling, he mentioned that PCYC Caboolture has become a very aged facility. They are outgrowing the space they've got and are bursting at the seams. A new facility is desperately needed so that the PCYC can continue their important work in the community. A new, central location in the heart of Caboolture, right next to our new, state-of-the-art Caboolture Police Station on King Street, would be absolutely fantastic for the whole community, not only for its members. It would also provide security for families, who would know that their kids, when they drop them off there, would be safe and secure. A more centralised area would also give PCYC Caboolture greater access to facilities, transport and—more importantly—young people and the community.
The need for a new facility for PCYC Caboolture has never been greater. That is why, last week, I started a petition urging locals to voice their support for a new PCYC in the community of Caboolture. One government alone cannot fund this whole project, so I'm imploring all levels of governments—the federal government, the state government and the local government—to get behind this project, which will cost around $13 million. We must work together to make this new PCYC Caboolture facility possible so that we can create a cohesive and connected community for the community of Longman and for the families who live, work and play in our community. They deserve it.
Calwell Electorate: Community Events
Ms VAMVAKINOU (Calwell) (10:54): Being in Canberra last week saw me miss out on the Mount Ridley College graduation night, where year 12 student Dean Ieremia was awarded the inaugural Arthur Calwell Rising Star Award—an award recognising significant progress and early achievement in a student's professional or community field of endeavour. Dean Ieremia is a rising star in rugby league. In April this year he became the first student from Mount Ridley College to formally sign a contract with Melbourne Storm. It was an honour to have Mary Elizabeth Calwell, the daughter of Arthur Calwell, the former leader of the Australian Labor Party and the namesake of the electorate I represent, present the award to Dean. In all, it was a very special moment for the Mount Ridley College school community.
Whilst on youth matters, I want to mention the Calwell Youth Committee, an initiative developed and led by Sachetha Bamunusinghe, with the assistance of Aggelos Makrigiorgios, who both work in my office. I have always valued the importance of fostering and mentoring our local youth, who will be, as we all know, the leaders of tomorrow. Our Calwell Youth Committee brings together a collective of young people to discuss issues they find important to them, especially in the local area. The electorate of Calwell is itself a dynamic community, as you would be aware, Deputy Speaker Mitchell, and the youth committee has reflected this by involving a diversity of members from different backgrounds, skills and areas of interest.
According to the 2016 ABS census, there are 23,717—and possibly more now, three years later—young people between the ages of 15 and 24 living in Calwell. Fifty-one per cent of those young people are female and 49 per cent are male. Their top languages are English, Arabic and Turkish, and the top countries of birth are Australia, Iraq and India. Our Calwell Youth Committee will give the young people in my electorate an opportunity to enhance their knowledge of the federal political process; engage in high-level discussions on community and youth issues; encourage intercultural interactions and networking opportunities; and recommend policy suggestions and raise issues with me, as the federal member.
Our Calwell Youth Committee's inaugural event took place last month. It was the Zimbabwe country night. The idea and night itself was driven by one of the committee's members, Kevin Kapeke. As the president of ALIAS, A Look Into African Society, at La Trobe University, Kevin, along with Calwell Youth Committee members, put together an impressive program representing Zimbabwe. We had the opportunity to learn about Zimbabwe's history, food and arts and be treated to performances by local Zimbabwe artists. I want to close by quoting Kevin in his opening speech. He said, 'It is through events like this that we all take turns to speak about our experiences and, hopefully, get a better understanding of how we can work together to make life easier for all of us.'
Robertson Electorate: Local Sporting Champions
Mrs WICKS (Robertson) (10:57): The Federal government's Local Sporting Champions program provides some financial assistance to students aged between 12 and 18 to participate in state, national and international championships. I was pleased to host the Central Coast sporting champions afternoon tea at my electorate office earlier this month to recognise the successful grant applicants from the most recent round of the program.
Every time that I meet with these outstanding junior sports men and women, I am amazed at the level of dedication and the number of hours that they put into their chosen sport as well as the sacrifices that their families make to take their child to sporting events across the state, across the country and, in one instance this time, on the other side of the world. I would like to take some time to congratulate each of the students who received a grant and recognise the many hours they have put in to compete at the level they do today.
Kaylah from St Joseph's Catholic College represented Australia over at the Commonwealth Festival of Lifesaving on the other side of the world, in the UK. She is an amazing young lifesaver who will also be representing New South Wales in New Zealand and Perth over the coming months.
Makayla from Erina High School received a grant to travel to the Australian Goalball National Championships in October. As a student with vision impairment, Makayla shared with me the challenges that she has faced in competing in her sport and how the sport has helped her meet people who can relate to her disability.
Lachlan and Jeremy from Narara Valley High School are touch football players. Both received grants to represent NSW at the National Youth Championships on the Sunshine Coast.
Tane from Brisbane Water Secondary College travelled to Coffs Harbor to play soccer at the FFA National Youth Championships for Boys. He wants to one day be a role model for Indigenous Australians like himself.
Taylee from Erina High School competed in gymnastics at the National Clubs Gymnastics Carnival in September. She has her eyes set upon being selected for the 2023 world gymnastics championships in Amsterdam.
Nicole from Kariong Mountains High School will be attending the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships on the Gold Coast. The travel grant will assist her parents in attending the competition next year.
Seth from Central Coast Adventist School will this week be playing basketball at the Australian Schools Championship in Victoria. As a leader in his basketball team, he hopes to use the experience to guide local basketball players and lead by example.
Sienna from St John the Baptist Catholic Primary School attended the School Sport Australia Track and Field Championship in September. She is representing New South Wales at athletics for the first time.
Hanna from Narara Valley High School and Katie from Henry Kendall High School will both be travelling to Western Australia next week to compete at Athletics Australia's Australian All Schools Championships.
Finally, Nick and Daniel from St Edwards College; Cameron and Sophie from Kincumber High School; and Chloe from Central Coast Adventist School all received grant funding for their respective sports, where they will be travelling or have already travelled interstate to compete at a national level.
I wish these very talented students all the very best in their future sporting endeavours and look forward to watching them as they progress in their sporting and professional careers.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rob Mitchell ): In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has expired.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety Interim Report
Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (11:00): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes:
(a) that the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety handed down its interim report on 31 October 2019;
(b) the commissioners identified three areas where there is a need for urgent action—these include, to:
(i) provide more home care packages to reduce the waiting list for higher level care at home;
(ii) respond to the significant over-reliance on chemical restraint in aged care, including through the seventh community pharmacy agreement; and
(iii) stop the flow of younger people with disability going into aged care and expediting the process of getting those younger people who are already in aged care out;
(2) recognises:
(a) the commissioners stated in the interim report that they did not see any reason to delay action on these three areas;
(b) the Government’s own Royal Commission report stated it is ‘neglect’ to not provide more home care packages;
(c) the commissioners stated in the interim report that they have been alarmed to find that many people died while waiting for a home care package while others prematurely move into residential care;
(d) the commissioners also stated that funding should be forthcoming from the Government to ensure the timely delivery of home care services;
(e) more than 16,000 older Australians died waiting for their approved home care package they were assessed for in 2017-18—sadly, that was around 300 older Australians that died each week in that year waiting for care; and
(f) more than 14,000 older Australians entered residential aged care prematurely because they couldn’t get the care they were assessed and approved for in 2017-18—sadly, that was around 200 older Australians each week having no other choice but to enter residential aged care; and
(3) calls on the Government to take urgent action immediately and respond to the three areas included in the Royal Commission’s interim report.
When your own royal commission describes as 'neglect' the Morrison government's failure to provide more home care packages to support elderly Australians staying in their own home, you know you're facing a crisis.
The commissioners, in their interim report, say they can't see any reason why action should be delayed in this area and in two other areas, the over-reliance on chemical restraint in aged care, and the appalling situation of younger people with a disability going into aged care. If members have spoken to anyone involved in the sector—from residents to family members, to staff, volunteers and even operators—you could have predicted that we were well overdue for some tangible action in each of these areas. Yet you could almost blink and miss the government's response on in-home care. A mere 10,000 additional home care packages have been announced.
Let's put this in perspective. There are 120,000 older Australians waiting for home care. They've been assessed. They've been approved. Now what they're waiting for is for a package to become available. What does that actually mean? It means that someone who currently has a package at the level that they require has to either go into an aged-care facility and no longer need that package or, if they die, the package becomes available. That's what people on the waiting list are waiting for in lieu of a significant additional investment by this government.
There is simply not sufficient funding in the home care package system to meet the need—and 10,000 makes such a tiny difference. I recall when a similar announcement was made about a small increase in the number of available packages, and Thelma, from Blaxland, who is in her mid-90s, called me to say she had naively thought it might improve her chances of receiving the small amount of assistance that she requires—a level 1 package. She said she phoned the department to see if it would make any difference to the year-long wait that she'd been told to expect, and they broke the news to her that it wouldn't make any difference—none at all. There's no guarantee this latest miserly package will make a difference either. When I last spoke with Thelma, she was still waiting, joking that she'd be dead before it came through. Sadly, that isn't a joke, because 16,000 elderly people died in just one year waiting for home care.
I think what angers me most is the rhetoric from this Prime Minister about how he values older Australians, and yet his actions do not match his words. In his first budget as Treasurer, this was the man who ripped $1.2 billion from aged care. This is the man who has failed to act as the waiting list for home care grew from 88,000 to 120,000. And this is the man who ignores advice from the Department of Health—as recently as April, in the lead up to the last budget, that provided advice on how to fix the home care crisis, yet did absolutely nothing.
It's a similar story for the efforts being made to address the issue of younger people in aged care. The Morrison government, less than a month ago, claimed it was doing 'enough', despite the royal commission's demand for increased action. The minister for the NDIS must have missed the criticism of the government, as the commissioners described the issue as a 'national embarrassment' and a 'human rights issue'. How's this for an assessment of the government's action plan, released in March: significant gaps, lacks ambition and should not be relied on as a solution—the commission's words, not mine.
We will be closely monitoring the response of this government to the overuse of chemical restraint to ensure that it is actually an effective response. I personally believe a much more significant approach is going to be needed to change the practices in aged-care facilities, and I believe it will go to the heart of the problem, staffing levels and resources. I want to finish on that point. Aged-care operators themselves tell me that it is really tough to run a high-quality operation with the cuts to ACFI funding, which mean facilities have to do the same with less. More able residents raise with me things like the quality of food and general standards. And I've had a steady flow of feedback about the quality of places available around the state from families currently looking for suitable residential care for either a partner or a parent. Clearly, we are not consistently treating elderly people with respect and dignity, and the stories of the royal commission tell us that in too many cases it is not even humane. The government can't just do enough; it has to do more than that.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rob Mitchell ): Is the motion seconded?
Dr GILLESPIE (Lyne) (11:05): I second the motion. Aged care is one of the most important social services that the nation has a responsibility for, and the Morrison and McCormack government is certainly stepping up to the mark to deliver the reforms and the extra funding required to give the quality and safety of service that has, unfortunately, in some areas of the aged-care system been lacking. You only have to look at Oakden. I can't think of a strong enough word—not a debacle but a major disappointment and a failure of quality and standards.
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was commissioned by Prime Minister Morrison. It was one of his first major decisions as Prime Minister. As a result, we have had an intense focus on the area of government supervision of the actual system, which is very extensive. In my area of the country, the Lyne electorate, we have some of the largest numbers, per electorate, of people who require aged care, and we have had a massive expansion in services. But, getting back to this particular issue, just last week we announced a package of $496 million for an additional 10,000 home care places. But that isn't the only increase. When we were first put on the government benches, in 2013, there were only 60,300 home care places. That number went up to 125,119 places in 2018 and 2019, and this recent increase of 10,000 places will be well used.
One of the other things that have been identified by the royal commission is the overuse of chemical restraint. For those people who don't understand what chemical restraint means: it means using drugs to calm down anxious or aggressive people. Unfortunately, with dementia some people do become quite aggressive, agitated and distressed, and chemical restraint is part of the lexicon of manoeuvres to manage a person in that distressed state. But the royal commission found that there has been an overuse of it, so there will be new regulations stating that a second doctor has to provide an overview, after a certain period of time, of the long-term use of the drugs.
We've also got a $10 million commitment to additional dementia training and support for aged-care workers and providers, and we are using $25 million to involve professional bodies, such as the professional pharmacists association. The new guidelines, which involve getting a second look by a separate practitioner at the requirement for a chemical restraint, will mean we won't have people on these drugs ad infinitum—the drug is prescribed once and then never ceased.
One of the other problems identified by the royal commission is that increasingly, when young people who have disability need specialised accommodation, they end up by default in the aged-care system. It is very soul-destroying for a young person to be surrounded by people who they feel are at the other end of the spectrum, even though they themselves need a lot of physical support. They are embedded in an aged-care facility where there are people with high care needs, a lot of whom have dementia. That is the community that they're locked in with, and it doesn't help them with their recovery or their physical wellbeing.
So, in this latest package, we have also invested $4.7 million towards meeting new targets for removing younger people from aged care. We're also providing simpler aged-care assessment methods that need to be done. Aged-care assessment either puts people into a home care package or, at the other end of the spectrum, recommends residential aged care. The whole of residential aged care has had an increase of over $1.2 billion per year, year after year, over the last seven years of coalition governments. In 2012-13, the total funding was $13.3 billion. It is now up to $21.7 billion and will be at $25.4 billion by the end of 2022-23. (Time expired)
Mrs PHILLIPS (Gilmore) (11:11): I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this motion today, and I thank the member for Macquarie for again bringing this vitally important issue to the attention of the House. We were all shocked and appalled by the aged-care royal commission's revelations: 120,000 older Australians waiting for home care in Australia, wait times of more than two years for the highest level of care, overuse of chemical restraints in aged care, and unacceptable numbers of younger people entering residential aged care because they simply have nowhere else to go.
Recently I visited a wonderful facility in Moruya that is helping to provide accommodation for people with a disability. Yumaro Living is an innovative accommodation program for supported independent living. I was lucky enough to take a tour of their four-bedroom group home and five single-bedroom units recently to meet some of the residents and hear their stories. They also have a two-bedroom unit for respite or short-term accommodation. The site includes 24-hour professional on-site support staff, and it is an absolutely wonderful place that provides shared support while allowing people to live independently. One of Yumaro's residents is in his early 50s and, before this facility became available, he had been living in an aged-care facility. The Yumaro staff proudly told me how this gentleman had come out of his shell since coming to stay with them. He now has independence, freedom and a new lease on life. It is heartbreaking to hear of a man like this forced into an inappropriate facility because there is nowhere else for him to go. But places like Yumaro Living are few and far between, and it only has capacity for five permanent residents. We need more places like Yumaro. We need to invest more in supported independent living across Australia to keep younger people out of residential aged care.
The aged-care system is failing our community. I have spoken with carers who have struggled to give the level of care their loved ones need without the help that they deserve. Carers do such an admirable and fantastic job in our community. Often they are family members doing what they can to try to give their loved ones the dignity, comfort and support they need. Too often they go unrecognised and unacknowledged.
Our aged-care workers also do remarkable work. I have visited many of the aged-care homes and residential villages in my electorate, and it doesn't take long before you really start to appreciate the hard work that our aged-care workers do with such love and care. They do it without complaint, and they do amazing work. But there are simply not enough of them. We need more aged-care workers to support our ageing population, and we need to make sure they are being paid enough for the work they are doing.
I want to thank all the carers and aged-care workers in our community. I want to let them know that I have seen them and I have heard them. I will keep pushing to fix the system that is failing them. Older Australians in our community cannot afford to wait for this government to fix the broken aged-care system. They need help now, and the government's response so far has been totally inadequate.
The commission's interim report called for immediate action to provide more home care packages. It called the wait times for packages 'neglect' and urged the Morrison government to act without delay. Three weeks later the government finally announced 10,000 additional home care packages—10,000, when 16,000 older Australians passed away in only one year while waiting for home care. This hardly seems like the response the commission was calling for.
Only last week I spoke about an innovative home care program in Batemans Bay. Booraja has been providing a targeted home care program to older Indigenous Australians and getting great results. It is employing Aboriginal people to provide whole-of-community care. It has won awards and been recognised nationally. But the government won't commit to providing it with new funding. We need more programs like Booraja, not fewer. I truly hope that the government decides to see sense and fund this program as part of its response to the commission's report.
We need action now. Older people in our community deserve to age with independence and dignity. Their carers, families and friends deserve to have help and support. The government must urgently act to fix this broken system. Ten thousand new packages to fix a wait list of 160,000 people is simply not enough.
Ms BELL (Moncrieff) (11:16): As I outlined in the other chamber last week, Australians are sick and tired of the ALP using our most vulnerable citizens to score political points. It's both inappropriate and disappointing. It's one of the reasons Australians chose a Liberal-National government to rely on and not those opposite. There is no doubt all Australians want their loved ones looked after and well cared for, and want conditions to improve.
The royal commission said that just as striking as the shocking findings was the love, dedication and determination of people who are or have been a parent, relative, friend, carer or advocate. We have been left with a great sense of pride in the way most ordinary Australians care for their loved ones and are overwhelmed by their devotion and commitment. This is about the great people who built our country—our parents and grandparents, our most vulnerable and frail citizens. It's about them, not politics. 'People before politics' is what we say on our side.
I agree with the commission's view, as it was my very personal and sometimes confronting experience. I have visited 11 aged-care facilities in Moncrieff since July, and I continue to visit them. The staff I met are dedicated carers. I met Yolanda at Opal Ashmore; Marg and Jodie, along with Linda, a volunteer of 10 years, at Opal Leamington; Karen at Lady Small Haven; Donna at Estia Health; and Alison at HillView—all devoted carers. I met families, including Jane Hely, whose parents, Margaret and John Coker, were unfortunately separated in the Earle Haven event. I met residents themselves, like Vicki, who painted an artwork that now hangs in my office here in Canberra, and 94-year-old Faye, who wears her Camilla dress at Estia Health in Southport. These wonderful people are deeply dedicated to one another.
This is why I'll make a stand now in this place by not facilitating the continuation of political pointscoring in my patch on the central Gold Coast, where the member for Gaven and Senator Watt, since the events that unfolded at Earle Haven on 11 July, have been busy cooking up their schemes to raise their profiles. The good people of Moncrieff see through it, as do I.
I'm using my time to outline an update on what the government is actually doing to improve the lives of our elderly, their families and the workers. The Carnell report has indeed been released, the recommendations have been agreed to and work is well underway to reform the sector. The 2019-20 budgeted amount to go into the aged-care sector is $21.7 billion. The Morrison government's response to the interim report is $537 million—more than half a billion dollars—and it's immediate. There is $496.3 million for an additional 10,000 home care packages, increasing from 60,308 in 2012-13 under Labor to 150,412 in 2019-20 under the Liberal-National government; that's an increase of 149 per cent. There is $25.5 million to improve medication management programs to reduce the use of medication as a chemical restraint on residents in aged care and at home, and there are new restrictions on the use of medication as a chemical restraint. There is $10 million for additional dementia training and support for aged-care workers and providers, including to reduce the use of chemical restraints, and $4.7 million to help meet new targets to remove younger people with disabilities from residential aged care. In line with the long-term directions identified by the royal commission the government will also progress further measures, including the provision of simpler aged-care assessments by creating a single assessment workforce and network and the establishment of a single unified system for care of our elderly in the home.
To finish, I ask all of those opposite to support the changes and the reforms the government is undertaking for the aged in our communities, including all of those in my electorate of Moncrieff. There are so many workers, friends, family and children who take care of their parents day in and day out. They volunteer, look after one another and absolutely adore one another. I ask those opposite to support the reforms that the Morrison government is undertaking in the aged-care sector. I ask for their support. We will improve the lives of so many Queenslanders and Australians across the nation.
Mr PERRETT (Moreton) (11:20): I rise to speak to the motion moved by the member for Macquarie. I commend her on the motion. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety titled their interim report Neglect. The commissioners chose that word—'neglect'—and it sums up the Morrison government's treatment of vulnerable older Australians. It is nothing short of a disgrace. As deputy chair of the human rights committee, I tabled a majority report, along with a dissenting report, into the government's regulation about physical and chemical restraints in aged-care facilities. The dissenting report was by all the Labor members of the committee and the Greens political party members of the committee. The dissenting report called for the regulation to be disallowed.
The restraint of residents in aged-care facilities is an abhorrent practice. It should be considered only in the most limited of circumstances where all other options have been exhausted and where it is in the best interests of the person being restrained. No-one would want to see vulnerable older Australians being doped up to their eyeballs just for the convenience of the facility or, even worse, so fewer staff are required to provide bigger profits for shareholders. We know that this is happening. We know that there is far too much reliance on chemical restraint in some aged-care facilities. The failed aged-care facility on the Gold Coast, Earle Haven, is reported to have had 70 per cent of its residents under chemical restraint. This was on this government's watch. It's happening, and the Morrison government's responsibility to protect those residents and to make sure that they're being treated safely, appropriately and with the dignity that they deserve is not happening.
The regulation made by the government that commenced operation in July this year—the Quality of Care Amendment (Minimising the Use of Restraints) Principles 2019—was described by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety in their interim report as 'adding to, rather than overcoming, concerns regarding regulation of physical and chemical restraint, including on issues of consent'. The majority report by the Liberal members of the human rights committee agreed that there were serious issues with the regulation but did not call for the instrument to be disallowed.
The health minister has now tabled an additional regulation—the Quality of Care Amendment (Reviewing Restraints Principles) Principles 2019. This new instrument changes the wording of a heading, adds a note at the end of a provision and provides for a review after the regulation has been in operation for one year. This new regulation is an apparent attempt to bandaid the haemorrhaging wound created by the original, ill-thought-out instrument. It is not enough. The shambolic and ham-fisted regulation-making is a disgrace.
Australians in residential aged-care facilities are some of our most vulnerable citizens and they require a government that actually cares about their wellbeing, a government that doesn't neglect them. It is clear that this Morrison government doesn't care about older Australians. Embarrassed about the royal commission's interim report, the Morrison government responded by announcing 10,000 home care packages and only 5,500 packages in the first year. What a joke—although it's obviously far from funny if you're one of the 120,000 older Australians who are waiting for home care. There are extra places for 10,000 people, but that is less than the amount of older Australians who died last year while waiting for their home care package. More than 16,000 Australians died while waiting for their home care package that had been approved. That is neglect.
This government seem to think that, as long as they make some announcement, they're doing their job. Well, they're not. In fact, it's far from it. If they were doing their job, they would make sure that all of the 120,000 Australian citizens who are languishing on the waiting list for a home care package are receiving their package now. Remember that these 120,000 older Australians have all been assessed as actually needing a home care package. They should all have their packages and be able to live out their lives in the comfort of their homes with the support that they need—the support that this government promised them they would have.
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety's interim report called on the Morrison government to do three things immediately: to provide more home care packages; to respond to the significant overreliance on chemical restraints in aged care; and to stop the flow of younger people with disability going into aged care and expedite the process of getting those younger people who are already in aged care out of those facilities. The government's response to the royal commission's very considered interim report is a joke. They are facilitating continued neglect. Older Australians deserve better than this. We all deserve better than this for our loved ones, for our parents, for our grandparents and for our neighbours; for our citizens that have served our nation for so long. All these people who need home-care packages should be receiving extra support. We need to have safe and dignified care in aged-care facilities, or appropriate care if they are younger people with disability. This is an urgent need and it needs real action now.
Mr SIMMONDS: Save me from the righteous indignation of the member for Moreton and the Labor members opposite, who have suddenly discovered, virtually overnight they would have us believe, older Australians in our community. The idea that the member for Moreton can stand up in this place and say that the government's announcement of 10,000 new home care packages is a joke—when he and his Labor colleagues went to the last election with how many home care packages? A big fat zero. And that was despite promising $387 billion of extra taxes so they could tax 387 billion extra dollars out of the Australian community, including taxing older Australians with a retiree tax. And how many home care packages could they promise? Zero. The idea that they've suddenly woken up and remembered the older Australians in our community and the need to care for them is a joke—whereas, the Morrison government, time and time again, has shown its dedication to older Australians in our community by making sure that we are having the Aged Care Royal Commission and that we are responding to it.
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr SIMMONDS: Mr Deputy Speaker, the Labor members are up in arms about it because they don't like it being pointed out that at the last election they promised zero new home care packages. We all know why they did it: because they can't manage money. The Labor members cannot manage money, and when you can't manage money, you can't respond to the urgent needs of our community like we have done recently in responding to the interim report on aged care. Our senior Australians have given so much to our nation. They helped to build our community and they're role models for younger generations. So ensuring senior Australians are cared for with dignity and respect is a priority of the Morrison government.
One of the first decisions the Prime Minister made upon taking office was to establish a royal commission into aged care. He knew that we could be confronted with some very difficult stories, and we have been. But, without a full and complete understanding of the issues, we run the risk of doing what previous Labor governments have done: trying to stick a bandaid on things and not tackling the significant change that is required. The aged-care royal commission has shown us that some providers are falling well short of expectations in our community. Australians, rightly, expect safe, high-quality care when it comes to our loved ones, and it is with this in mind that we welcome the interim report from the royal commission. We all have work to do when it comes to fixing these failings: government, aged-care providers and the community, all working together.
Before I go on, I want to make it clear that, whilst we focus on the need to improve, this is not a broad brush that should tar all aged-care providers. There are some aged-care providers in my electorate of Ryan who are doing tremendous work in their community, and I'd like to pay tribute to them and all those who work providing aged care to our community.
The royal commission will continue their work and the government will continue to tackle the issues that it unmasks. But, in the meantime, the government has taken significant steps to respond to the interim report. Perhaps the Labor members opposite, including the member for Macquarie who moved this motion, have forgotten the significant investment that the Morrison government has made: a recently announced half a billion dollar investment to take on the findings of the interim report and to provide immediate action.
The $537 million goes towards three things. Firstly, as of yesterday, 1 December, there will be a further 10,000 home care packages rolled out. As I said, this stands in stark contrast with the Labor members opposite, who went to the last election promising a big fat zero. Since the 2018-19 budget the government has invested $2.7 billion in 44,000 new home-care packages. We have also more than doubled the number of home care packages available to a record 150,412 this financial year, up from 60,000 in 2012-13 under Labor. Let me just repeat that: Labor, when it left office, had managed a little over 60,000 home care packages; under this government, it's now over 150,000.
Secondly, we're funding better medication management and more training for those caring for people with dementia. Funding for medication management programs will be increased by $25 million— (Time expired)
Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (11:30): The Interim report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety describes the current state of Australia's aged-care service as 'a cruel lottery in which some people die before they ever find out if they have in fact won'. What a shocking statement from the royal commission. While this statement applies to both residential aged-care services and in-home care, the greatest need clearly lies with those who find themselves waiting for a home care package in the government's own form of purgatory: the national prioritisation queue.
The queue is a waiting list for individuals who have been assessed for a home care package but are yet to receive a package at their assessed level—or indeed any package at all. The waitlist figures are released quarterly. As at 30 June 2019, there were just shy of 120,000 people on the waitlist. While I appreciate the government has recently announced another 10,000 places, we have 120,000 elderly, vulnerable Australians waiting for care at home—dying while they're waiting for care.
While the Commonwealth home support package is providing at least basic supports to 96 per cent of individuals on the waitlist, this is a poor substitute for the care required by many older Australians. The approximately 120,000 people waiting on the prioritisation queue face a lengthy wait. According to the department's quarterly report of the Home Care Packages Program, individuals assessed at a level 1 package can expect to wait approximately three to six months for an interim package and a further three to six months for their final package. For those assessed as requiring a level 4 package, the individual can expect to wait 12 months for an interim level 2 package, and at least another 12 months for a level 4 package. That's effectively two years for the package that they were assessed as needing—not wanting; needing.
The royal commission noted in its interim report that those who are in greatest need must wait the longest. The situation worsens when consideration is given to the home care package data produced by the department to the royal commission, as these figures provide a more accurate representation of home care package waiting times than those disclosed to the public. While the publicly available data shows the wait time for a level 4 package to be in the vague vicinity of 12 months plus, the meaningful waiting time was actually 22 months, and it's unlikely that the average waiting time would have decreased in 2019. This uncertainty has a huge impact on older Australians. The royal commission heard evidence of avoidable hospital admissions, high risk of mortality, early admissions to residential aged care and a detrimental impact on the health and finances of family carers.
One of my own constituents spent over 18 months waiting for an approved level 2 package. During that time his health slowly deteriorated and he was no longer able to dress, feed or bathe himself. He received no supports, and his elderly wife struggled to meet his everyday care needs. When I raised this matter with the minister, I was advised my constituent would remain on the national waitlist as a medium priority with an approximate wait time of three to six months. Five months later, my constituent is still waiting. Regarding the challenges faced by his elderly wife, she can call the helpline or she can visit the Carer Gateway—the website—and try and seek further resources. This is unacceptable. It's not like we can say we don't know—because we do know. These are the most vulnerable people in Australia. They have worked all their life; they have worked so hard. As one gentleman said to me, 'I'm in my 90s, Rebekha—if I can't get a package, who can?' And what do we have ahead of this? We have the surplus: 'We need to have a surplus.' We have a government who is ensuring that we have a surplus, but they're doing it on the back of elderly people and they're doing it on the back of people with a disability. We are doing this on the back of our most vulnerable Australians. In my community, I know we want this money to go to people who need a package—who need help showering, who need help getting dressed. It's not that hard. It's a question of priorities, it's a question of values, and I think the values here are skewed and they need to change.
Dr ALLEN (Higgins) (11:35): I rise to speak on the member for Macquarie's motion and to inform her of the swift action taken by the Morrison government in response to the Interim report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. A society is measured by how it cares for its most vulnerable. The aged-care royal commission interim report highlighted that Australia needs to do better to respond to our rapidly ageing population and its impact on aged-care services. We are not shying away from our responsibility as a government or as a society for ensuring our elderly are well looked after and respected, with our swift and immediate response to the royal commission's interim report.
The royal commission identified three major areas that need urgent action. The first is to increase the number of home care packages. The home care package is one of the best ways we can help older Australians struggling with age-related issues to stay at home longer. This is what older Australians—including those in Higgins—want, have asked for and deserve. To deal with the triple complexity of people living longer, with more chronic health conditions, and wanting to stay in their homes longer, the Morrison government has committed $496 million for an additional 10,000 home care packages. These packages will focus on the high-level care packages, levels 3 and 4, which provide the highest levels of support for those most in need. These changes will ease the wait time for home care packages, meaning older Australians will receive the care they need when they need it, giving their family members peace of mind.
The royal commission also identified an overreliance on chemical restraint in aged care. $25 million will be allocated to improve medical management programs and to introduce safeguards and restrictions on the overprescribing of antipsychotics and benzodiazepines for aged-care patients. The government is seeking to reduce the incidence of repeat prescriptions of chemical restraints by providing an additional $10 million to increase dementia training and support for aged-care workers.
The prevalence of younger people being placed in residential aged care is too high. Currently there are approximately 5,600 young people living in aged care. Many aged-care facilities are not designed to meet the needs of young people living with a disability. Young people placed in aged care are isolated from people of their own age, are unable to participate in age-appropriate activities and are being cared for by people not specifically trained in helping young people living with a severe disability. This occurrence can be very distressing, not only for younger clients but also for their family, who already feel the burden and guilt of not being able to look after their loved ones at home. In response to the royal commission, the government has set incremental targets that will see no person under the age of 65 living in residential aged care by 2025. It will take time to build the infrastructure and resources to do this, but we are committed.
Often the transition into aged care or into not living entirely independently is a distressing time for those in need and they need to have a little bit of help. Streamlining the process will mean older Australians are connected to care sooner. This will reduce inefficiencies and end the never-ending assessments for programs from multiple organisations by creating a single assessment workforce.
Every Australian has the right to age well and with dignity. Our older generations have fought to defend our democracy and worked hard to build the Australia we see today, and they contribute an immeasurable amount to their community. It is up to the next generation—and our government—to ensure older Australians are well cared-for and live out their days comfortably. We all want to age well. After all, it's better than the alternative.
Ms COLLINS (Franklin) (11:40): The aged-care royal commission has been doing very important work, and I was surprised by the government's response to the aged-care royal commission's interim report when it announced it last Monday. The interim report made three specific urgent recommendations to government: (1) fix the home care wait list; (2) reduce chemical and physical restraints; and (3) get young people out of aged-care facilities. I was really shocked. I was expecting the government to have actually done its homework. It has, after all, had all the data and all the information it needed to respond to the home care wait list.
When you've got 120,000 older Australians waiting on a wait list, and when the government has called a royal commission and said it's going to implement any recommendations of the royal commission, you would have thought that, when the royal commissioners said it was 'neglect' not to provide more home care, the government could have done better than 10,000 packages, when 120,000 older Australians are waiting. Sixteen thousand of them died in just one year whilst waiting for their home care package. Another 14,000 in just one year went into residential care when they wanted to stay at home, and most of them probably could have stayed at home if they'd got the home care package that they had been assessed for and been approved for but could not get under this government. The fact that people are waiting 22 months on average for a level 4 package says it all about this government's priorities. When you call a royal commission, when you say you're going to respond and when your commissioners say it's neglect, what do you do? In the first year, you fund 5,000 packages, when 120,000 older Australians are waiting. It is simply not good enough from the government.
It is not only Labor saying that. I am going to quote from Leading Age Services Australia, who said:
… with 120,000 people currently on the queue, many others will be left disappointed in the lead up to Christmas.
Indeed, LASA called it 'a missed opportunity'. Aged and Community Services Australia, ACSA, has said:
… with approximately 120,000 people waiting for a package, this will not even touch the sides of demand …
National Seniors Australia said:
… the government's response to the Royal Commission is just not sufficient.
It said:
The government's response to fund an extra 10,000 places is less than the number of people who died last year waiting for a package … The Royal Commission into Aged Care was told that 16,000 people died in one year waiting for a package and the government's funding announcement barely addresses ten per cent of the current waiting list.
Indeed, I understand only 5,500 packages are available in the first year and that they're being made available from today, when 120,000 people are waiting. What does that say to the other 110,000 or 115,000 people waiting on this queue?
But it is not only that. There have been some interesting revelations in the media today about the former minister for aged care's office and how it functioned. The important point about that is about the data and transparency that was not there from the previous minister. The current wait list for home care is overdue. This government, somewhere, has the list of how many people are waiting today for home care from the last quarter, and we don't know what it is, and the government hasn't yet released it.
But it is not only that. We were promised in estimates that we would get the number of people that died last financial year waiting for their home care package, and we don't have that figure either. The figure of 16,000 that everybody refers to is for the 2017-18 year. How many people died waiting in 2018-19? We don't know, because this government won't tell us. We have been trying for the last two weeks. We have asked questions in estimates, and we have asked a question in Senate question time, trying to find out how many people died last financial year. The government knows, and the government is not telling.
Where is the transparency from this government? Why will it not tell the Australian public what is happening in aged care in Australia today? Is it because they don't want to have those figures available for the royal commissioners? Is it because they're embarrassed by their response to the royal commission's interim report? Well, they should be embarrassed. They should be ashamed. All of them come in here and talk about how great they are with older Australians and what a great response it was. It is simply not true, and it's not just Labor saying that; it is the entire community. People are devastated. When I talk to people who are currently in that queue and are being told it's not going to make any difference to how long they have to wait for a home care package, it just goes to show what a sham this government is. It's not good enough. They can and should do better.
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Chief Government Whip) (11:45): I'll get to the remarks of the shadow minister later in my comments. I'd first like to thank the member for Macquarie for bringing this motion to the House, because it gives me an opportunity to speak about something that I think all of us across the Chamber recognise as vitally important.
Ms Collins interjecting—
Mr VAN MANEN: I've allowed you to make your comments in silence and I'd ask that you do the same.
I do note, with deep sadness and disappointment, the revelations that have come out of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and its interim report, and the many stories that we have heard over the course of the royal commission. It's fair to say that the state of our aged-care sector is grim in many respects. It has systematically failed to support and protect our loved ones living in care. I think we should all be enormously disappointed by what has been uncovered in terms of the culture of abuse and neglect across the aged-care industry. We've seen a system that is overburdened—broken, it's fair to say—and certainly in need of a great deal of repair. But I'll also speak up for those organisations in the aged-care sector in my electorate of Forde and, I'm sure, right across the country who do an outstanding job each and every day. We shouldn't forget that those organisations also exist.
We have seen from the royal commission a reliance—in many cases an overreliance—on chemical restraints and other methods that are extraordinarily poor in terms of looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our country. It is a sad indictment on where the system has got to. Equally, we see a system—and I have had this discussion over my many years in this place—where younger people with disabilities are pushed into aged care regardless of their needs or desires. The interim report makes clear that as a country—as governments of all political persuasions, the aged-care sector and the entire Australian community—we can and must do better to support and protect our older Australians.
In establishing the royal commission, which was one of his first actions in becoming Prime Minister, the Prime Minister focused on dealing with the many stories that we have heard over the years. The Oakden events in South Australia were a particularly egregious case. We are committed, through this process, to righting the wrongs and ensuring that we can support older Australians to get the help, protection and support they deserve in their older years. That's why we're delivering a $537 million funding package, which includes $496 million to immediately release an additional 10,000 home care packages for those with the highest need, to reduce waiting times and connect people with the care they need sooner. Is 10,000 enough? Do we need to do more? No, it is not enough, and, yes, we need to do more. We all recognise that. I don't think there's anybody in this place who doesn't recognise that. And, as some of the revelations from the royal commission have been about chemical restraint, as I've just touched on, we're investing another $25½ million to overhaul medication management programs in the aged-care sector to stop the unnecessary use of chemical restraint on aged-care residents in facilities and at home.
I want to finish by reflecting on the shadow minister's comments. Those opposite provided no additional funding and made no additional commitments in their election campaign. All they do, again, is talk; they never have a solution. (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ): The time allotted for the debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the date will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Renewable Energy: Hydrogen Industry
Mr SIMMONDS (Ryan) (11:50): I move:
That this House:
(1) recognises that with research like that occurring at the CSIRO Advanced Research Facility in the electoral division of Ryan, Australia has the potential to be a world leader in hydrogen development, production and export which will create highly paid jobs and an industry potentially worth billions to the Australian economy;
(2) acknowledges that:
(a) Australia's availability of land, high quality renewable energy resources and fossil energy resources, as well as our well-established reputation for undertaking large-scale resource projects, position Australia well for becoming a key exporter in a future global hydrogen market;
(b) the combined direct and indirect benefits of establishing a hydrogen production and export industry in Australia under a medium demand scenario will deliver to the Australian economy $4.2 billion and over 7,100 jobs by 2040;
(c) greater use of hydrogen is one way that Australia can contribute to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, if Australian produced hydrogen replaces traditional fossil fuel sources in end user nations; and
(d) the National Hydrogen Strategy is to be released by the end of 2019, providing the Government with an opportunity to signal its long term policy and commitment to this industry;
(3) welcomes the Government's significant investment of more than $140 million into hydrogen projects, partnering with industry to develop tangible solutions that are important for bringing down energy prices for Australian households and small businesses; and
(4) encourages the Government to utilise the opportunity of the release of the National Hydrogen Strategy to confirm its long term commitment to the development of our hydrogen capability in order to encourage private investment in the sector, create jobs, create export capability and reduce global carbon emissions.
It is a pleasure to move this motion this morning in the chamber. It is a timely motion, because throughout the course of the year the Australian government has been working with all states and territories to develop a National Hydrogen Strategy, which has recently been released. We aim to build a clean, innovative, safe and competitive hydrogen industry by 2030 that benefits all Australians by giving them access to cleaner and more reliable energy. Indeed, today marks the launch of the national hydrogen RD&D road map. This report will explore the research, development and demonstration opportunities for Australia. I am passionate about this issue because my electorate of Ryan is home to the Pullenvale CSIRO facility in Brisbane, which is at the forefront of developing and researching the technology needed to make hydrogen power a reality for Australia.
Hydrogen represents a low-carbon renewable power source with the capacity to power homes, businesses and even heavy vehicles more efficiently than other renewable energy sources. Even more excitingly, scientists at CSIRO in my electorate are currently developing the technology needed to export Australia's hydrogen on a commercial scale. Already a world leader in per capita investment in clean energy, Australia can utilise hydrogen power as another opportunity to show its global leadership on reducing carbon emissions. Bloomberg found in 2018 that we have more than double the investment in clean energy of other countries like the UK, Germany and France.
The opportunities for the domestic market are exciting. By growing a strong domestic hydrogen industry, Australia will be able to see the practical benefits of hydrogen at home, with cheaper power bills and improved power. Hydrogen also has the potential to benefit Australian businesses across a wide range of sectors as diverse as transport, agriculture and generating electricity.
But it is in export where there is some real excitement and potential. Australia's availability of land and our well-established reputation for undertaking large-scale resource projects provide Australia with the capacity to become a key exporter in a future global hydrogen market. Exporting hydrogen to the international market has the potential to deliver $4.2 billion and over 7,000 jobs to the Australian economy by 2040. The Morrison government is backing the National Hydrogen Strategy with a $13.4 million commitment that will see the government take on a national coordination role for strategy implementation and take the lead on international negotiations to foster stronger trade relationships and develop an international certification scheme. Key energy export markets such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan are already looking for opportunities to diversify their energy sources, and the Morrison government is committed to making sure that Australian technology and Australian jobs are at the forefront of this.
We have significant investments to achieve this. The Morrison government will also make $370 million available through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to back new hydrogen products and projects. This includes $300 million of finance through a new Advancing Hydrogen Fund and $70 million through the ARENA fund to kickstart electrolyser projects.
As I said earlier, developing the export market is an opportunity to show leadership in reducing global carbon emissions. Developing our hydrogen industry will allow Australia to exercise leadership in global carbon reduction by exporting hydrogen power to other countries, reducing the carbon emissions in these end-user countries while simultaneously boosting the Australian economy.
To show the House just how important this technology could be, I'll give you an example. If one petajoule of diesel consumed in trucks globally was replaced by hydrogen, there would be a net reduction in emissions of 63,037 tonnes of carbon. In conclusion, a large domestic hydrogen industry will create numerous highly paid jobs and an industry worth potentially billions for the Australian economy. The government's National Hydrogen Strategy published last month outlines our long-term commitment to ensuring that this industry is fostered. Thank you to Minister Taylor for the work he is doing in this regard. Although I note Labor said they won't have a carbon policy for two years, I urge them to get on board and help us to achieve this in a bipartisan matter.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ): Is the motion seconded?
Dr Allen: I second the motion and I reserve my right to speak.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member for Higgins. The question is that the motion be agreed to. I give the call to the member for Shortland.
Mr CONROY (Shortland) (11:55): I'm proud to rise and talk about the potential of hydrogen. But it is incredibly hypocritical of the government to move this motion. Let me repeat that: it is rank hypocrisy of the government to move this motion. Clearly, the member for Ryan is a new guy in this place; he is a bit of a bunny and he has been put up to move this motion not realising the sordid history of the coalition. The coalition haven't met a renewable energy technology they haven't wanted to kill. For example, 60 per cent of the world's solar photovoltaic cells are based on technology developed at the University of New South Wales. But we got zero jobs out of it because John Howard was opposed to renewable energy. The government had a policy of actually abolishing the Renewable Energy Target. Now they have the chutzpah—
Mr Burns interjecting—
Mr CONROY: Sorry, I am corrected by the member for Macnamara, an expert on that matter—the chutzpah to claim the jobs and investment dollars from the RET, when they wanted to abolish it. Even in the member's remarks about all the investment ARENA and the CEFC want to put into hydrogen—they're two bodies that they want to abolish. Their election policy was to abolish ARENA and the CEFC. This is incredible hypocrisy from the government. It is just rank hypocrisy, and the people who are involved in this area—environmental activists, climate scientists and energy specialists—recognise it as such.
But I will agree on one thing: there is huge potential for hydrogen in this country. The Acil Allen report that the member was referring to before has a high-demand scenario that has the potential of a $10 billion a year export industry generating 16,000 jobs, if we can satisfy a decent share of the demand coming out of Japan and South Korea. Japan wants to make the 2020 Tokyo Olympics the 'Hydrogen Olympics', and Korea has made huge advances. For example, by 2035, all trucks and heavy vehicles in South Korea will have to be hydrogen powered. There is massive potential there. The member for Ryan failed to mention in his remarks that our potential customers have made it very clear that from 2030 onwards they will only accept clean hydrogen. That is a challenge. It is particularly a challenge for those opposite, given their love affair with fossil fuels.
They must be clean, but the real tragedy here is that government is moving way too slowly in this area. For example, investment in renewable energy is falling off the cliff. When the member opposite graduates from high school, he can look at some figures and realise that renewable energy is falling off a cliff because the RET has been satisfied. The RET has been satisfied, and the government has no policy to replace that. They have an energy policy vacuum. They are now up to 18 energy policies in six years. That's no surprise, given the Minister for Energy is too busy hiding from public scrutiny—given his performance with Clover Moore—to actually develop policies on hydrogen or anything else. I am proud, in contrast, that Labor took to the last election a hydrogen policy valued at $1.14 billion, which was overwhelmingly supported by the energy community. That policy would have driven a dramatic increase in that industry.
This is one part of Australia becoming a clean energy superpower. Our commitment to 50 per cent renewable energy in our hydrogen policy would have produced 87,000 jobs in the economy. We would have driven strong demand in other parts of the sector. For example, we will export 15.5 million tonnes of coking coal to satisfy our share of the steel that goes into wind farms around the world. We're also the second greatest producer of rare earths in the world. We've got the greatest reserves of iron and titanium, the second greatest of lithium and copper and the third greatest of silver. We are in a great position to take advantage of the transition to renewable energy that's happening all around the world through exports of our minerals, through manufacturing batteries here and through exporting electricity directly—either through high-voltage underwater DC cables to South-East Asia or through hydrogen to North Asia. These are all great policy opportunities. If only we had a government with a plan; if only we didn't have a government that denied the science of climate change; if only we had a government that hadn't had 18 energy policies in six years. So we need action. This government won't provide it because they're a bunch of fossils. (Time expired)
Dr ALLEN (Higgins) (12:00): I rise to support the important private member's motion from the member for Ryan, my good friend—that Australia has the potential to be a world leader in hydrogen development, production and export, and that this will be a massive benefit to the Australian economy. The Morrison government's National Hydrogen Strategy, recently released by the Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, sets out a vision for a clean, innovative and competitive hydrogen strategy that will benefit all Australians and position us as a major global player. These past weeks warn us that Australia now more than ever faces climate related challenges. Climate change is real and affects us all. We are now at the pointy end of action. Australia is already a world leader in investment in clean energy technology and now has one of the highest rates of per capita investment in renewables in the world. Much of this has happened in the last two years.
All around the country, there is evidence that things are quickly moving in the right direction through government and private sector investment in renewables. There is now an inexorable global pivot to renewable energy and low carbon fuels. This means the long game of transitioning towards renewables in a carbon-neutral future is not just an environmental imperative for Australia; it is also an economic inevitability. Australia is in a great position to lead the world in climate change solutions. As a country with a large continent, we are graced with cheap land and plentiful sun and wind to develop our strength in renewable energy. But more than that, we also have strong markets, world class R&D and universities, global businesses, productive free trade and a smart and willing citizenship to develop new and alternative forms of technology such as hydrogen to lead us to a clean and green future.
Our well-established reputation for undertaking large-scale resource projects will position Australia well for becoming a key exporter in future global hydrogen markets. Such a market promises to contribute over $4 billion to our local economy, with thousands of new jobs in the short term. Recently, the first pilot of hydrogen-fuelled direct reduction of iron ore into steel occurred in Europe—a hugely anticipated innovation that will be crucial to weaning the world's dependence off fossil fuels. We need to embrace the challenge and get on board the innovation wave, and invest in the development of energy and emission reduction products, new technologies to capture, store and transmit renewables such as hydrogen, and safer operating environments for carbon-neutral energy sources.
The federal government's investment is playing a key role in ensuring the potential of the hydrogen sector is realised. Along with $13.4 million already provided to implement the recently released National Hydrogen Strategy, the government will reserve $370 million from existing Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA—the Australian Renewable Energy Agency—funding to back new hydrogen projects. This package takes the government's commitment to the hydrogen industry to over $500 million since 2015, boosting the sector and helping our nation realise its high potential for hydrogen production.
The release of the National Hydrogen Strategy provides us with an opportunity to confirm our long-term commitment to the development of our hydrogen capability in order to encourage investment, the creation of jobs and the generation of export capability. This emerging pipeline of skills, training and business start-ups, coupled with changes in consumer behaviour and government investment, results in significant opportunities for us as a country. We will only move forward as a country if we bring both the community and the whole economy with us. I thank the member for Ryan for moving this motion.
Dr HAINES (Indi) (12:05): I thank the member for Ryan for this motion. Hydrogen could play an important role in the global transition to clean, renewable energy, and I welcome the chance to speak about this transition today. With the release of the National Hydrogen Strategy and the announcement of a new fund for hydrogen projects, there are lots of questions remaining about how we make the most of the opportunities that we have.
It's critically important, though, that our developing hydrogen industry doesn't rely on burning more gas and coal. It makes no sense to be burning brown coal to create hydrogen to export overseas. But that's what's happening in a project in the La Trobe Valley, with the Commonwealth giving $50 million to burn 160 tonnes of brown coal to create three tonnes of hydrogen. Thirty times more carbon dioxide than hydrogen will be produced and then shipped overseas. In doing so, we commit to capital infrastructure that cannot easily be converted to renewable-powered electrolysis. Rightly, people are concerned that these investments will lock us in to continual use of fossil fuels when we have better alternatives becoming available.
Across the world, there are projects demonstrating that green hydrogen can be used to sustainably power industry, homes and vehicles. If Australia truly is to be a leader in hydrogen production, we need to invest in renewable energy powered electrolysis. Yet, to date, there has not been enough investment in this sector. I welcome the new investment into hydrogen projects but lend my voice to those who say that green hydrogen projects must be the priority. If we get this right, our renewable energy sector will continue to drive down the cost of electrolysis and create cheaper hydrogen over time.
Luckily, we have a huge opportunity right now to invest in renewable energy that can be used to power our developing hydrogen industry and meet our own current domestic needs. I'm proud to be representing multiple communities across Indi who are leading the way on renewable energy projects. A mix of large-scale renewable energy farms, community projects and better storage are all part of Indi's energy future. We know this because over years our community and neighbouring regions have worked together on the Hume Renewable Energy Roadmap.
The Hume Renewable Energy Roadmap has recently shown the huge capacity of towns in our region. We produce 1.5 million tonnes of biomass every year that could generate electricity with a carbon-neutral biogas burner. The Barnawartha biodiesel plant will produce 50 million litres of biodiesel a year from tallow and vegetable oil. Across Indi people are installing rooftop solar and solar hot water, making the most of the clear sunny days. The Euroa Environment Group is behind a $6 million grassroots project to install 589 kilowatts of new solar photovoltaic panels and up to 400 kilowatts of new batteries. The town of Yackandandah is working to be totally renewable by 2022, with a minigrid supported by these community groups and the state government that will reduce energy prices and emissions.
We have several large-scale solar projects across the region, including the new solar farm in Winton, near Benalla, which is soon to be providing energy to 50,000 homes. There are other sites in the region that have great potential for solar and could be connected to existing transmission lines. Pumped hydro could also work for our communities living on Indi's many rivers and mountains. Across north-east Victoria, a community energy retailer, Indigo Power, has been hard at work drawing together the skills and experience to support energy transition. We have leaders in Euroa, Benalla, Alexandra, Mansfield, Beechworth, Yackandandah, Wangaratta, Wodonga, Tallangatta, Rutherglen and Bright.
So I want to encourage the development of green hydrogen as part of Australia's and Indi's renewable energy transition. This opportunity to power our communities with this clean and renewable energy resource is one that must take us to the future and not lock us in the past.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ): There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
Ms WELLS (Lilley) (12:10): I move:
That this House:
(1) recognises that:
(a) 25 November 2019 was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women; and
(b) this year's focus was 'Orange the World: Generation Equality Stands Against Rape';
(2) acknowledges that:
(a) sexual violence against women and girls is a widespread and persistent human rights issue;
(b) 1 in 5 Australian women report having experienced sexual violence;
(c) 1 in 6 Australian women report having experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner; and
(d) according to the United Nations, violence against women remains largely unreported due to the impunity, silence, stigma and shame surrounding it; and
(3) asks all Members to recognise that violence against women continues to be an obstacle to achieving gender equality in Australia and across the globe.
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women was marked on 25 November 2019. Every year 25 November marks the beginning of 16 days of activism against gender based violence, ending on 10 December—Human Rights Day. The United Nations General Assembly designated 25 November as the date for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the date in 1960 that the three Mirabal sisters, who were political activists, were assassinated. The premise of the day is to call to attention the urgent need to end violence against women and girls and to mobilise meaningful action.
Before tabling this motion I considered what the effect of the motion would be and whether it would fulfil any great purpose. I hesitated as to whether my motion would have any meaningful effect on the call to action that the day represents. Since the Mirabal sisters were assassinated in 1960 we have had countless campaigns, motions, treaties and media stories about ending violence against women. Almost 60 years on women and girls are still being violently abused, raped and murdered every week, both in Australia and across the globe. But I am angry. I am angry that, between the date I drafted this motion, roughly three weeks ago, and speaking in this chamber now, four women have been violently murdered in our country. I am angry that there is a dialogue in Australia around no-one being pro-violence against women but that, so far this year, 51 women have been violently murdered in Australia across only 48 weeks. I am angry that those 51 women haven't covered the front pages and been in the headlines of every news outlet and haven't featured at the top of every news bulletin; they've received brief mentions, if any at all. I am angry that, on the fourth day of the 16 days of activism against gender based violence, police found the body of a woman in her late 30s in a freezer in a unit in Pymble, New South Wales, and that, instead of reporting about the person who murdered her, an Australian media outlet reported that the murdered woman had a strong and aggressive personality and often nagged her quietly-spoken husband. Whatever her personality was, I would note that she doesn't have the privilege of it anymore.
I am angry that one in six Australian women have experienced violence from a partner, one in five Australian women have experienced sexual violence and one in three Australian women have experienced physical violence. I am angry that women and girls with disability are twice as likely as women and girls without disability to experience violence throughout their lifetime. I am angry that hospitalisation rates for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander women due to family violence are 30 times higher than for non-Indigenous women and girls. I am angry that Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander women and girls are 11 times more likely to die due to assault. I am angry that in 2019 there is still rhetoric about disgruntled women using false complaints of violence as a tool for revenge, and I am angry that the same people use this as justification for not acting with appropriate urgency and backing it with money.
Violence against women remains largely unreported due to the impunity, the silence, the stigma and the shame surrounding it. Australian women need to know that their elected representatives can hear them, that they care and that they are angry too. So I table this motion today for them, because Australian women and girls need more voices and need stronger voices here in this place, where we have the power to fund programs and make policy that can end violence against women and girls in Australia.
I would like to recognise some of the groups in my electorate that are actively working in the community to assist women who have experienced or who are experiencing violence and abuse. The Nundah neighbourhood centre runs journey programs for women who have experienced abuse in their intimate relationships, and encourages women to look after their physical and emotional wellbeing and rebuild their confidence. The Nundah community legal service acts as a first point of contact for women who need legal advice relating to domestic violence or family law issues, and I give a shout-out to all of the volunteers who continue to work there, as I did before my election.
Wayne and his team of workers and volunteers at Connected Inc. in Geebung run a not-for-profit charity that helps women and children fleeing domestic violence with clothes, furniture and manchester. The Youth Housing Project provides supported medium-term accommodation to young people, including young women who find themselves homeless or at risk of homelessness due to domestic violence. From the bottom of my heart, I thank these people and organisations who are working to provide a helping hand to women and girls experiencing violence in our country.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ): Is the motion seconded?
Mr Burns: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Dr HAINES (Indi) (12:15): I thank the member for Lilley for this important motion. Today I will not be citing statistics. I'll leave it to others to count the dead women, the prevalence of abuse and the scale of economic and social damage that violence against women does to our nation. Today I want to talk about stopping this scourge at the start. Violence against women isn't inevitable; it's preventable. There are thousands of hardworking police, lawyers, case workers, family violence workers and medical staff dealing with the consequences of this epidemic. Not one of them would be sorry to see us consign this to history.
Prevention means taking action to prevent the problem before it occurs. This is done by addressing the underlying cause, and research shows us that violence against women correlates with beliefs and behaviours reflecting disrespect for women, low support for gender equality and adherence to rigid or stereotypical gender roles. These causes are often replicated and reinforced in our homes, schools and workplaces. Emergency services, including those in my electorate of Indi, have been doing significant work to build positive attitudes and norms around women in their ranks. Women have always been an important part of emergency services, but they've historically been under-represented in operational roles and delegated instead to making cakes and cups of tea. In some parts, the belief persists that firefighting is inherently a man's job. Even though gender is irrelevant to the ability to be a firefighter, this stereotype is pervasive. Just last month, journalist Bettina Arndt posted a photograph of a female firefighter captioned:
… brave men fighting the ferocious fires. As always, it's usually men who do the really dangerous, difficult work.
Women can be invisible even if they are in front of the cameras on the front line.
But this is changing. The CFA has made recruitment of female firefighters a priority and regularly holds female-specific recruitment information sessions. The District 24 Women's Reference Group hosts workshops for its female members and now sits at the table to make decisions. In the neighbouring electorate of McEwen, the Rural Challenge partnership supports brigades to develop welcoming and family-friendly environments. We are celebrating the successes of our female firefighters. One example is the groundbreaking Bec Noye, who last year became third lieutenant of the Euroa CFA, the first female leader in that brigade's history. Another is Marelle Whitaker, Chiltern captain and chair of the reference group, a strong voice for female leadership in our brigades. We are in the midst of a cultural change. During this fire season, I give thanks for the hundreds of brave female firefighters rostered on to protect the lives and homes of friends, neighbours and strangers, including those on their way to fight the New South Wales fires right now.
I also acknowledge the councils in my electorate responding to our community's calls for leadership on family violence. During these 16 days of activism, Mansfield Shire Council will continue its long-running commitment by hosting events on the theme of bringing men into the conversation. Indigo Shire Council, Strathbogie Shire Council and Wodonga City Council, among others, will be hosting events. My favourite is Conversations in the Chair, which aims at equipping hairdressers, beauty therapists and tattooists to pick up cues and make referrals to appropriate services. This event was hosted by Rachael Mackay of Women's Health Goulburn North East, in partnership with Wangaratta council and Northeast Health Wangaratta. I recognise their collaboration in addressing the drivers of violence against women.
Over the last 40 years, family violence has been wrenched out from behind closed doors to be recognised for what it is: a public health crisis, criminal offending and our national shame. We have come so far, but I was alarmed to read that, while awareness of family violence has risen, awareness that men are more likely than women to commit acts of domestic violence has actually decreased. One in five Australians believe domestic violence is a normal reaction to stress. Given these figures, if we are to meet government's key measure of success, being an increase in the community's intolerance of violence against women, then we cannot rest. I urge the government to keep working for an Australia where, in the words of Our Watch. 'women are not only safe but also respected, valued and treated as equals in their work, private and public life'.
Mr HAYES (Fowler—Chief Opposition Whip) (12:20): I rise to speak on this motion on the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, marked this year on 25 November. In the lead-up to this day, a number of organisations in my community held various events to raise awareness about the dire situation with regard to domestic violence. On 20 November, I had the privilege of joining the annual Cabramatta Walk Against Domestic and Family Violence. The event was attended by over a thousand people and was hosted by the Fairfield local police together with Fairfield City Council and sponsored by one of our major clubs, Mounties. I'd like to give special thanks to Detective Chief Inspector Darren Newman for his initiative in starting this annual walk six years ago. This has become a worthwhile legacy in our community—
A division having been called in the House of Representatives—
Sitting suspended from 12 : 21 to 12 : 41
Mr HAYES: I'd also like to acknowledge Mr Lachlan Erskine, Deputy Principal of Cabramatta High School, for his efforts in leading the domestic violence organising committee. It was particularly moving to see the students from Lansvale Public School, Canley Vale Public School, Cabramatta Public School and Cabramatta High School get on board and show their support through art, poetry and songs, reflecting on the effect of domestic violence on our communities. The performances were certainly heartfelt and reinforced that the issue of domestic violence requires a holistic community effort.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Sydney Trains, particularly the Liverpool railway station and the indomitable Ragina Naidu, for the instrumental work they do each year in drawing attention to domestic violence. They certainly take a lot on in calling on members of our community to stand up, speak out and take steps to break the cycle of violence. Likewise, I'd like to thank Mr Sorn Yin, President of the Khmer Community of New South Wales, and his team for their efforts in uniting the Vietnamese, Lao, Thai and Burmese communities in my electorate on this important issue. They put together a very impressive showcase of cultural diversity as a means of drawing attention to domestic violence. It's always inspirational to see the community come together and stand in a public display against domestic violence and raise awareness about this longstanding complex issue facing our community. It is events such as these that help transform public awareness about domestic violence and give victims the courage and the support to report these crimes.
By now we should all be very familiar with the statistics. One in three women will have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from someone that they know and, regrettably, each week on average one woman is murdered by a current or former partner. I know from my police that more than 50 per cent of all the assaults reported in my area are domestic violence related. These statistics make it pretty clear that domestic violence is not just a matter that we can say is for the authorities. This is a matter that we must address in our communities. We must all work together to develop an integrated and coordinated multiagency response. However, for me, the issue of domestic violence becomes personal. As a grandfather of 10—six of which are granddaughters—I am petrified that, on that current statistic of one in three, my family is represented twofold to become affected by domestic violence.
Violence against women is real and it is happening in our communities and neighbourhoods. It involves women no matter how successful, resilient and strong and no matter their ethnic or religious beliefs. If we are to work towards eradicating domestic violence, we must give women the confidence to report these crimes and engage with our police. We need more men to stand up and say that this is not acceptable. We need more men promoting and educating the community about domestic violence. I think the simple truth is that we actually do need more real men.
It is not enough to just give speeches at this time each year; it is imperative that we as a community take responsibility and look out for our families, our friends, our workmates and our neighbours. We must be prepared to stand up and speak out when it comes to domestic violence. We must do all that we can and use all of our endeavours to help break this cycle; otherwise, we will see it perpetuate into the future—and that's not the legacy we want to bequeath to all those who follow us.
Ms LIU (Chisholm) (12:45): I rise to support this Chamber recognising 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and I would like to support recognising this year's focus of Orange the World: Generation Equality Stands Against Rape. As a society we must stand firm to say no to violence against women and girls. This violence is one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today.
The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993, defined violence against women as 'any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life'. Gender based violence can happen to anyone, anywhere; however, some women and girls are particularly vulnerable. For example, migrants and refugees face unique challenges when speaking out against the violence that women face.
Before entering parliament I saw the need to help women from these communities, I set up SHERO to address this need. SHERO stands for 'she is a hero'. Women from migrant communities can find it hard to reach traditional support structures for a variety of reasons, including language barriers or cultural norms that might be different to our own, or they do not know who to speak to. I am so proud to be part of the Morrison government, which is standing up for these women. This government has zero tolerance for violence against women and their children. Women have the right to be safe in their homes, communities and workplaces. I am especially proud that this government has made the single-largest Commonwealth investment to support the Fourth Action Plan of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. This government has committed $340 million in support.
The Commonwealth's contribution to the fourth action plan will see the funding of vital services, including $82.2 million to improve and build on frontline services to keep women and children safe; $68.3 million for prevention strategies to help stop domestic and family violence in our homes, workplaces, communities and clubs; $35 million in support and prevention measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities funded under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy; $78.4 million to provide safe places for people impacted by domestic and family violence; $64 million for 1800RESPECT, the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service; $7.8 million for dedicated men's support workers in Family Advocacy and Support Service locations, to work with male victims and alleged perpetrators of family violence involved in family law matters; and $4.9 million to better support former partners of veterans who are impacted by domestic violence. I hope to see this support make a tangible difference to the lives of women in my electorate of Chisholm.
I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the organisations in my electorate that are doing vital work in this field, and would like to offer them my full support. I commend this motion.
Mr JOSH WILSON (Fremantle) (12:49): I'm glad to speak to this motion. I thank the member for Lilley for bringing it forward, and all members for contributing to what is a very important debate. International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women reminds us that the struggle for women's basic rights is acute and desperate, and that women everywhere exist in circumstances where the threat of physical and sexual violence is never far away. No-one should kid themselves that it isn't the case in Australia too. We should remember, talk about and do something about the fact that eliminating violence against women is an effort that needs all of us and should be happening everywhere—in our families, in our schools and workplaces, at sporting and cultural events, in conversations and on our streets.
The motion sets out the hard and confronting facts of domestic violence here in Australia. It should shock us to acknowledge that intimate partner violence contributes to more death, disability and illness in women aged 15 to 44 than any other preventable risk factor in this country. On average, one woman is murdered by her partner each week, and across Australia one in five women will have experienced sexual violence, and one in six women has experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner.
For First Nations women in Western Australia, as many as one in two women have experienced violence and abuse. Indeed, WA police responded to a complaint of family or domestic violence every 10 minutes. While we know the rate of reporting in WA has increased by 50 per cent since 2009, data indicates that still only 20 per cent of victims make a police report. In terms of all homicide offences committed in the calendar year 2018, WA recorded the highest number of any state relating to family and domestic violence.
The National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-22, established by the former Labor government, is both an action plan and an ongoing survey of attitudes towards gender equality and violence. We should all be concerned about the fact that the 2017-18 progress report notes a decline in the number of people who recognise that a significant majority of perpetrators are men. It's even more concerning to note the proportion of people who believe that gender inequality is no longer an issue in this country. On the subject of workplace gender equality it's welcome that in the past year there's been a 13 per cent jump in employers who are implementing policies for domestic and family violence, and an 8.9 per cent increase in offers of paid domestic violence leave.
I want to recognise the work of the McGowan Labor government in addressing the unacceptable levels of family and domestic violence in my state of Western Australia and pay tribute to my friend and colleague, Simone McGurk, the state member for Fremantle and the first minister appointed in Western Australia with explicit responsibility for the prevention of family and domestic violence. Through the leadership of Minister McGurk, the WA government has delivered two additional women's refuges, expanded culturally appropriate services for First Nations people and for people of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and has ensured that all public servants have access to 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave entitlement. That was a policy that federal Labor took to the last election in respect of Commonwealth public servants, and I urge the government to take up the reform.
I recognise that this is a debate in which there is strong bipartisan support for the motion, but it is not an area in which we can be coy about the realities, and the reality is that this government cut $44 million in funding to support safe houses. It also tried in the last parliament to cut funds to community legal centres, which provide crucial support to women and children escaping violence. I know that just last week Minister McGurk drew attention to the Safer Venues WA Survey, which found that 67.5 per cent of Western Australians have experienced harassment at a live music or entertainment venue, with four out of five of those cases being experienced by women. She was joined in highlighting this issue by local musician Stella Donnelly, whose song 'Boys will be boys' calls out the prevalence of abuse against women and the tendency to excuse that behaviour in men, often by finding ways to question the conduct of victims. It has to stop.
When there is a problem that is so harmful and so deeply entrenched, we have to be prepared to assume that we have all been conditioned to some degree into a kind of blindness as to what is going on; we don't see it, we look past it and we stay silent when we should speak up. I'm sure that I have been guilty of that. I reckon we all have. This occasion that we mark through the motion is an opportunity to reflect on how we all need to look harder at ourselves and the world around us to see what's going on, to say something and to do something about it.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rick Wilson ): There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program
Dr McVEIGH (Groom) (12:55): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes the outstanding success of the 2019 Australian Defence Force (ADF) Parliamentary Program;
(2) recognises:
(a) the opportunity provided to both Senators and Members to participate in the ADF Parliamentary Program to experience the professionalism, skill and dedication of our world-class defence force; and
(b) the exchange element of the ADF Parliamentary Program, where senators and members host an ADF member during a sitting week in parliament; and
(3) acknowledges the 49 members and senators who participated, including those who hosted one of the 27 ADF members during the October 2019 sitting week.
The 2019 Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program has again provided the opportunity for both senators and members from the Australian federal parliament to live the experience of those that we are so proud of in our Defence Force—those, of course, from our Army, Navy and Air Force. As the motion outlines, the 2019 parliamentary program has again proven to be a tremendous success, certainly based on the feedback from participants, the feedback from our Defence Force hosts and the contributions from many members in various speeches in this House in recent sittings.
The motion, I think quite rightly, suggests that the House recognises the opportunity provided to senators and members to experience the professionalism, the skill and the dedication of our world-class Defence Force. It also acknowledges the exchange element, where those of us in this House have the opportunity to host members of the Australian Defence Force so that they might see how the parliament works. And, in particular, I think it's an opportunity to acknowledge the members and senators who have participated in that exchange program and the ADF members that were here in the House during the October 2019 sitting week. But, ultimately, this motion is all about recognising the tremendous work of members of the Australian Defence Force.
Various programs are available under the parliamentary program to provide a good overview of those in our Army, Navy and Air Force elements, as I've mentioned, both domestically and internationally. This year I was very fortunate, along with colleagues from government and non-government seats across the country, to participate in the Middle East program, which included time on our main Middle East base, where training is provided, where orientation is provided for those coming and going, and where supplies are organised for our activities right across the Middle East, in association with our coalition partners. Our delegation of three also spent some enlightening days at Camp Taji in Baghdad and in the air with Air Force representatives across much of this region during our deployment. We had the opportunity to travel to and from the Middle East region with members of the Defence Force, both those commencing deployment in the Middle East and those returning either on leave or simply having completed their deployment.
What did we see? Amongst other things, I noted the relatively young age of our Defence Force representatives on deployment in the Middle East—women and men in their 20s and 30s doing something that we can all be proud of, most certainly, but something that puts them in harm's way and incurs personal costs in terms of time away from loved ones and away from their homes. We observed their professionalism; their respect for each other; their respect for us, their guests; their good humour; their hospitality; the camaraderie between them; and their focus on protection, amongst other things, whilst they were hosting us. Most of all, we recognised the risk that they place themselves in. Despite the fact that they are well trained and drilled, the risk remains.
Spending time with them out in the field, travelling with them on aircraft and just sharing a meal in the mess gave us the opportunity to understand their lives, what they're doing for our country, and the cost for them in terms of, as I mentioned earlier, time away from families and loved ones. We recognise their activities. This parliamentary program does give us a unique insight into what they're doing for all of us. And the fact is they are so humble, appreciating our respect and acknowledgement but not demanding it. This is certainly a way in which we can acknowledge them, and I encourage all members and senators to do so in the future.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rick Wilson ): Is there a seconder for the motion?
Mr WATTS (Gellibrand) (13:00): I'm happy to second the motion. I thank the member for Groom for moving this important motion about the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. It is one of the great institutions of this building, and one that, I think it is fair to say, shares the absolute support of all members of this parliament.
I had my third run in the ADFPP this year. In September I spent a few days underwater on the HMAS Sheean, one of the Royal Australian Navy's six Australian-made Collins class submarines. Australia's submarines are world class and are integral to protecting our national interests. The RAN's submarines are one of the most important ways in which our defence forces can shape Australia's strategic circumstances. The Future Submarine program, which will replace the Collins class subs, is the most expensive procurement Australia has ever made in any context. It will be by far the biggest public expenditure that all of us in the Chamber here today will see in our parliamentary careers.
In estimates on Friday Defence revealed that the cost of this program has blown out to $80 billion and the construction time line has been delayed till 2024. Given the significance of the program to our national security and the cost of it, it's important that we get it right. So it's incumbent on all members of parliament to understand the issues raised by this program to ensure that taxpayers get value for money and that we have the most regionally superior submarines at work in our national interest. The ADFPP is an outstanding opportunity for parliamentarians to get an insight into it firsthand. I really recommend that all parliamentarians interested in the Future Submarine program 'get their hands dirty' under this program on one of the existing Collins class subs.
Whilst I was on board the HMAS Sheean I learnt that Australia's submariners do this crucial job with both professionalism and a very tight fraternal bond. It's not just a job, it's not just a vocation; being a submariner means having a second family. I'd really like to thank the crew of the HMAS Sheean for welcoming me into that family. Thank you for your service on the Sheean and to our country.
I learnt what service and sacrifice in the ADF meant when it was my turn to play host in the exchange component of the ADFPP and I had the pleasure of hosting Commander Jenny Macklin in my parliamentary office. Commander Macklin had just returned from Syria, where she had been deployed as gender adviser to a US-led multinational mission to defeat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. I'm sure all members would join with me in saying that invariably the highlight of ADFPP—the thing we are most impressed with, the thing we come back to this building and our communities raving about, bragging about, after having done the exchange—isn't the fancy technology, the kit or the hardware; it's the servicemen in the ADF. We never fail to be impressed at their professionalism, the calibre of their intellect and their integrity. That was certainly the case in my experience with Commander Macklin, who in 2018 was recognised by TheAustralian Financial Review as one of Australia's 100 most influential women for her work in the diversity and inclusion field in the Navy and across government. She's also the first gender adviser to be deployed on a maritime exercise and the first gender adviser to be deployed to the multinational exercise in South Korea. I consider it an enormous privilege to have spent a few days with Commander Macklin, and I view my work in this place as being enriched by the conversations that we had.
The shared perspectives of the ADF and our parliamentarians are one of the real value-adds of this program. You are not just hosting someone on exchange in your office but enriching your own understanding of our country and the ADF. Because of this program, we learn from each other and understand each other's worlds a little bit better.
Thank you to Commander Macklin for her participation in the program. Thank you also to Lieutenant Colonel Andy Martin for organising and facilitating the ADFPP. It's a varied experience, dealing with members of parliament, trying to herd us and get us into the culture of the ADF for a week. I take my hat off to Andy for the long service he has put in for this cause. I'd also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the Defence Force personnel who are currently serving in the Middle East, Sudan, Israel, Afghanistan and the Philippines and those safeguarding Australia's maritime interests. Thank you also to our veterans community, to those men and women who have served our nation and have now transitioned out of the defence forces: Labor is committed to working with this government on a bipartisan basis to make sure that we continue to support you and your families.
Ms FLINT (Boothby—Government Whip) (13:05): I want to thank the member for Groom for moving this motion today. I am a very enthusiastic participant of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. As I reported to the House last week, I recently visited the RAAF Base Edinburgh in South Australia. I'm delighted to be able to add some further detail to my report to the House last week. I really want to encourage every single one of my colleagues who has not yet done the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program to please do so. You'll have an amazing time.
I was hosted throughout my visit by No. 24 (City of Adelaide) Squadron, who arranged for me to see the breadth of work undertaken at Edinburgh by the highly dedicated and professional men and women of our Army and Air Force. My visit started at the Air Warfare Centre, where I received a number of briefs demonstrating the crucial role it performs in establishing the Air Force as a modern and fully integrated combat force that can deliver air- and space-power effects in the information age.
I then visited the Institute of Aviation Medicine, where I learnt about the excellent work done to ensure military aviators are prepared for the physiological effects of flight. I was challenged firsthand with the difficulty of flying a simulator that mimicked a series of known safety events, including disorientation and hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygen, due to altitude. For the record, in terms of oxygen, I didn't quite make it to Everest, and I also crashed my plane. I have huge admiration for the men and women of our Air Force who undertake this training, who implement the skills they learn in real-life situations every single day, and for the wonderful people who provide the training to keep them safe.
I also visited No. 92 Wing, where I was provided with a unique aircrew experience through participating in a training mission aboard the P-8A Poseidon, a maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and response aircraft. The training flight included a demonstration of anti-submarine warfare, low-level flying and sonobuoy loading. It was an amazing experience. Upon landing back at RAAF Base Edinburgh, I was exposed to some of the state-of-the-art technology and practice at the innovation hub and I witnessed the growing importance of intelligence to ADF operations. I visited No. 3 Security Forces Squadron, where I was witness to a number of security procedures, protocols and equipment that ensure air bases around Australia are safe and secure, including the military working dog display. I also saw the Bushmaster in action. No. 453 Squadron hosted me and provided a tour of the airfield and a bird's-eye view of the base and their responsibilities.
Later I visited the 1st Armoured Regiment and the 7th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment. Both regiments are part of the Australian Army's 1st Brigade and are located at RAAF Base Edinburgh. Here I received capability briefs that also included a display of their combat capabilities, including main battle tanks and armoured personnel carriers. I was incredibly lucky to take an M113 armoured personnel carrier for a drive through the closed training area and vehicle obstacle course, an experience I won't soon forget—nor, I'm sure, will my passengers! Thanks to expert tuition, everyone, including the vehicle, returned safely to base.
My visit concluded with a tour of the No. 1 Remote Sensor Unit, where I was provided with an insight into how Air Force conducts effective operations in the air, surface and space domains, in support of the war fighter and national surveillance effort. During the entirety of my stay at RAAF Base Edinburgh, my experience extended to dining at the mess facilities on base, where I was able to meet a range of incredible men and women who perform the wide-ranging and complex jobs our Defence Force requires.
I learnt so much throughout the three days I spent on base, through both the platforms and the people of the Australian Defence Force. I consider the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program highly successful in achieving the aim of providing participants with practical experiences of defence in order to facilitate a well-informed national conversation about defence issues. There is no substitute for hands-on experience alongside our defence personnel at the working level.
I want to again recognise the highly dedicated and professional men and women who protect our security and our safety. These wonderful men and women explained to me the nature of their work, equipment, roles and capabilities, and they did so with confidence, professionalism and a great deal of patience. They are a credit to our nation, and I again want to thank them most sincerely for their service, and I want to thank their families most sincerely for enabling them to serve.
I also want to encourage every single one of my colleagues who has not yet participated in the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program to please do so. You will genuinely have the experience of a lifetime and meet some incredible men and women who do so much to keep our country safe and secure.
Ms OWENS (Parramatta) (13:10): I second that. Every member of this parliament should avail themselves of this wonderful exchange program with Australia's military. I'm looking forward to my ninth one next year. There's only one member of parliament who has done more than me, and, if I hadn't got the flu when I was supposed to go up in that jet that day, I would be No. 1. It is an amazing thing to do, and everybody should do it. It can be fun. It can also be incredibly scary. But we don't do it for the fun; we do it because we in this place have a significant role in the funding of our military and ensuring our military is capable of doing what we need it to do.
I don't live in a military town, although my father was in the Army, so I used to. But most of us live in places where you can live your life and not really give the military much of a thought, because they're not around. We're arguably one of the few countries in the world—probably the only one—which haven't had significant warfare on their own soil. People who live in Sydney, who were born in Australia and whose parents and grandparents lived in Australia have not experienced war on our own soil. So it's incredibly important that we, as members of parliament, get to know these extraordinary men and women who do things that we ask them to do in the defence of Australia. They are amazing people. They're incredibly highly trained. When you go to the places that I've been to and spend time with the people that I've spent time with, you understand that it isn't just a story that we have one of the best trained militaries in the world; we actually do. They are an extraordinary group of people.
I've been incredibly fortunate in the eight trips that I've done so far. I did my first one at NORFORCE up on the Tiwi Islands. I spent 10 days out in the bush in a swag with the Indigenous trainees. It was an amazing experience, getting to know the way the Australian military addresses defence of the incredibly vast desert in the Northern Territory, a place that you couldn't actually invade and that you can't actually defend. It is incredibly difficult. It has challenges of its own but was a wonderful experience.
Then I spent 10 days at Kapooka, where my father did his training when he joined the Army when he was 30. Again, my father had told me what to expect, but I think the high tower where I abseiled face-forward off the third floor was a new experience. I don't think they had that when Dad went through. Again, it is a way for people to experience absolutely genuine fear and come to terms with that.
I then spent 10 days in Afghanistan. I'm not going to talk much about that. It was something that everyone in this place should do: spend time with our military in a place of extraordinary danger, where they are doing something that most of us wouldn't dream of doing. It was extraordinary. The election was called while I was there, actually. Just as an aside, I couldn't tell anyone I was there, so I disappeared from the election for about eight days and arrived back a little late. But, again, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
I then went to East Timor the year before our reservists pulled out; I was with a Reserve troop there, one of the officers of which came from my electorate. We did riot training there with the Kiwis. It was, again, an amazing experience to see how good our peacekeepers are. We hear how good they are, but they really are as good as people say.
I then spent a stint with the Navy off Darwin. Then I went to the Gloucester Cup in Singleton. I went out with the troops into the field there, with live ammunition—again, an extraordinary opportunity. But the worst, I guess, and the best, was at HMAS Albatross and Creswell, where I did the upside-down-helicopter underwater escape training, where they strap you in with five points into a helicopter, flip it upside down and dump it six metres into a pool, and you have to get out before you drown. I also did their tear gas training; so I was tear-gassed as well. I think I'm the only member of parliament to do it. The commanding officer was very, very worried that I might not survive the underwater helicopter escape training, because all of the Navy people had emergency air on their chest; I didn't, because I hadn't done that training, so I went down without any emergency backup. But, again, it was extraordinary.
This year, I went to Jigalong remote community in north-western Australia with the Army. Again, it was amazing watching the engineering troops set up a camp in the desert, with full waste control and full water monitoring, leaving a very small footprint. They were an amazing group of people and everybody in this place should do it, more than once.
Mr STEVENS (Sturt) (13:15): I absolutely re-endorse what the previous speakers have said about encouraging any of our colleagues who haven't had the opportunity to participate in this program to absolutely do so. I was, of course, newly elected to this parliament in May. A lot of the things about becoming a member of parliament you can anticipate, but I had had no idea about this program before being elected to the parliament—which is not a surprise—but it was quite fascinating when it was outlined to us all, as part of the induction program, that we had this opportunity. I can say that it lived up to all the expectations that I had had for it.
I was thrilled to participate by spending a week on the HMAS Stuart, which is an Anzac class frigate based out of Garden Island in Sydney. As a South Australian, I was pretty keen to get experience on either a frigate or a submarine, given the heritage and the future that we've got in South Australia in naval shipbuilding. We are the home of naval shipbuilding for this country and for our Navy, and we will be building the Attack class submarines, and the Hunter class frigates to replace, ironically enough, the frigates, including the one that I was on, the HMAS Stuart.
We had a week at sea, and, as has been indicated, there are some things you are not allowed to speak about, which of course we respect. We were not so much not allowed to talk about it but not allowed to talk about it for a period of time, because they were actually running drills to be certified for their deployment to East Asia, which is now on the public record but of course was not until they embarked on that, and they will be returning this week or next week, from memory—quite a long deployment of three months. This was in the first week of September. It makes sense, after you've experienced it. It's not until you experience it that you realise that sending a vessel like that away for three months requires such an enormous amount of preparation and training. In the week that I was deployed with them—with the member for Petrie; it was the two of us together—we were running drills off Jervis Bay to make sure that all the different components of the vessel were fully tested and ready for whatever might befall them on the exercise and mission that they were to undertake through East Asia from which they'll return soon.
I was lucky enough to go with another member of parliament, and some people have talked about going with more colleagues than one. It was an excellent opportunity also to talk to them, with my colleague, about not just what they do on that vessel and what their role is within the Navy and within the Defence Force, but obviously also getting the perspective of the entirety of the ADF on what it is that they do, what the rationale is behind elements of the force structure that we've got and the decisions we'll be making into the future, which are so very important for us in this chamber and this House to understand.
We have a pretty healthy bipartisanship around defence in this country. There are always going to be specific, individual types of things that we might have mild disagreements on, but I don't think there's any debate about the importance of a strong ADF that's not supported very, very thoroughly by our government. But that might not always be the case into the future, and there may well be times when we do, as representatives, need to make the public argument for our Defence Force and its structure, and for the enormous investment, I would describe it as, that we make to defence each year to defend our country and our interests. This program gave me a fantastic understanding of that. I am a new member of parliament—I don't know how long my career will be in this place—but, for as long as I'm here, I hope every year to continue participating in the program and to continue to deepen my understanding of the ADF and what they do.
It was also my pleasure to reciprocate by hosting a member of the Australian Army, who was here in parliament for the week as part of the reciprocated program where they spend a week with a member of parliament. I thought that was extremely valuable as well. I think it's very important for members of the armed forces to have the access to and deepen their understanding of the processes that we have here in this parliament across a variety of the things that we do—not just in the chamber but also in committees et cetera—so that we've got that very deep symbiotic relationship between our defence forces and the leadership of our country.
Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (13:20): I'd like to thank my colleagues for their previous comments and I'd also like to thank the member for Groom for bringing the motion forward, in particular noting the outstanding success of the 2019 ADF Parliamentary Program. I've been involved with the ADF Parliamentary Program since the commencement of my parliamentary career, and it's worth noting that the program commenced in 2001, introduced by a private member's bill by the Hon. David Hawker and seconded by the Hon. Warren Snowdon, who is still in this place, indicating bipartisan support. Dr Brendan Nelson was the parliamentary secretary who actually started the program. The exchange element was introduced in 2003.
The program has enabled me to develop a much greater insight into the sacrifices that defence families make to defend and protect our society and also the quality of the personnel that we have in our defence forces. There is also, for my part, a great deal of self-interest in being in the program, as I've had some really fantastic learning experiences, including being on the biggest hospital ship in the world, the USNS Mercy, and practising with the Da Vinci remote surgical robot, which was absolutely unbelievable. This is where surgery can take place in the battlefield with the surgeon being remotely located offshore or even in a hospital in the United States. Amazing technology! This is an amazing ship. It is a 1,200-bed hospital on a ship with 20 operating theatres, six CT scanners and an amazing surgical ability to do cardiopulmonary bypass open heart surgery. There was all sorts of amazing technology, so I've had a really fantastic experience.
My most recent experience has also been fantastic. I spent some time in the 2019 program being posted to HMAS Penguin at Balmoral in Sydney. I was introduced to the Navy Medical School, who do fantastic work not only in naval medicine but also looking at things like veterans' health—mental health in particular. They do some really wonderful, state-of-the-art work now in preparing our veterans for life in and after the Defence Force. I was hosted by Lieutenant Commander Gary 'Curtis' Steeger, who is a wonderful character and a highly trained naval officer with a great insight into how our defence forces work, and I'm very grateful to him for hosting me. I was also able to visit HMAS Watson at Watsons Bay, where a lot of the high-technology naval services were trained.
I spent some time on the HMAS Adelaide, the Navy's largest ship, as it prepared to embark for the Pacific. I had a great insight into what some of the families and some of the men and women who were spending a long time away from their families at sea were going through. I've looked after many defence families and their children in my role as a paediatrician in the Macarthur area. We are close to the Holsworthy military barracks, and I've seen many of those families over the years. I talked to some of the naval officers and soldiers firsthand and realised the stresses that they were going through, which was a wonderful experience and a great learning experience for me.
I had as my exchange partner Colonel Rod Petersen, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who is employed full time by the Army. It is really important to note that, in this day and age, a lot of the work that the Australian Armed Forces will be doing in our area will be humanitarian work. The fact that they have an obstetrician and gynaecologist is really important to that work. In the days of global warming, climate change and natural disasters, which we believe will become more frequent—indeed, that has proven to be the case—our service personnel will be required to support in that area. I also, through Rod, met his charming wife, Professor Julie Quinlivan. I hope this is a friendship that will be able to be fostered over the next few years.
I was really impressed with the program. I have been impressed with the program since I have been in parliament. I recommend it to all my colleagues. It was a great learning experience for me and a really great time. I must confess to a degree of self-interest that will keep me wanting to go back to that program. I have had a great time. I thank Lieutenant Colonel Andy Martin, the executive officer of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. I will be going to the program for as long as I am in parliament.
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (13:26): I rise in support of this motion, because I am a huge fan of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. When I was a young fellow at school, all I wanted to do was fly Hornets. I remember going to a recruitment office in Melbourne at the age of about 16, and they said: 'Yeah, you're all right. You look okay, son. Come back when you've got high distinctions in maths 1, maths 2, physics, chemistry and English and stay fit, and we will have a look at you.' Sadly, I did not go back a second time, but I have always admired our men and women of the ADF for the absolutely outstanding work that they do.
I, as the member for Macarthur, and so many of my colleagues in this place have had the privilege of immersing ourselves with our members of the ADF. It has been an absolutely unbelievable experience on each and every occasion. In August of this year, I had the privilege of travelling to Iraq, Camp Taji in particular, with the member for Oxley and Senator Kitching. Once again, that was an incredible opportunity and experience for which I am eternally grateful.
One thing that shines through on each and every one of my ADF programs is the absolute professionalism of our ADF members. I have to say that I am singularly impressed with every single one of them that I have dealt with. Not only are they motivated, bright and intelligent but they are also thoroughly decent people. They are obviously very fit and excellent at whatever they do, but they are decent men and women too. I wish that more Australians could have the opportunity to be immersed in that environment, because clearly that environment is a very good environment as it turns out Australian men and women of the highest calibre. From the lowest of ranks to the senior ranks, they are incredible people.
I also had the opportunity to travel to Afghanistan in 2017 with the members for Whitlam, Burt, Oxley, Brand and Bass. There is one thing that has been consistent in both my trips to the Middle East, and that was that I was outnumbered greatly by those members opposite. But one thing that also rings true when we travel overseas on these ADF Parliamentary Programs is we leave, as best can, our guns at the door. When we travel over there, we travel as one and we travel as part of team Australia. I can honestly say that during both of those trips there was never a bad word spoken between us. I think it is really vital that our members of the ADF see from a cross-party perspective that we are behind them every single step of the way. I hate to say it but, sadly, one day the other lot will be in government—I hope it's a long way away—and members of the ADF need to know that, whenever that sad day comes, the men and women who serve in this place are absolutely rock-solid behind them and the work that they do.
I have never been more proud—apart from when I got married and on the birth of my children—than at the times when I have been overseas with these service men and women. One of the best parts of this program is that it is reciprocal. Flight Lieutenant Sacha Ivaschenko and Lieutenant Colonel Brendan Robinson worked in my office in 2017 and 2018. That gave them an opportunity to come into a politician's office and see what happens here. For most people, what goes on here is a great mystery, and I think it is very important that we keep those lines of discussion and experiences going. (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr S Georganas ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for a later hour this day.
Sitting suspended from 13:31 to 16:00
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
Iran
Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (15:59): News is finally starting to come out of Iran about the atrocities that have been committed. Recently, protests broke out over petrol prices and the Iranian government responded disproportionately and with appalling human rights abuses. TheNew York Times is reporting that at least 180 people have been killed, and possibly hundreds more. Many unarmed protesters were reportedly shot in the head and chest. At least 2,000 have been wounded and 7,000 detained. All of this has been obscured from international scrutiny by the regime's decision to cut off the internet for two weeks. This internet blackout has also meant that deeply worried Australian Iranians have been unable to contact their family and friends back in Iran. Iran's economy may be crippled by heavy US sanctions put in place after the US unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, but that cannot be an excuse for this brutal crackdown.
Thus far, it seems that the Morrison government and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Marise Payne, have been silent on the deaths and violence in Iran. It's time to add Australia's voice to the international concern. I urge the Australian government to make a public statement about this issue and to call in the Iranian Ambassador to Australia. The protests are not isolated to Iran. Similar protests are happening across the Middle East, including in Iraq and Lebanon, and we must show our support. As an Iranian friend of mine said last week, the youth are standing up 'right now in the streets with empty hands, with their lives'. We must make it clear that Australia will not tolerate the deaths of protesters and will not stand for the mistreatment of those who have been arrested.
Water for Fodder
Mr DRUM (Nicholls—Chief Nationals Whip) (16:01): Today the Liberal-National coalition released the guidelines for the Water for Fodder program. The first instalment of this program is providing 40 gigalitres of irrigation water for primary producers, including dairy farmers, in the southern connected Murray-Darling Basin. The water must be used only for the production of fodder or pasture and cannot be traded.
This water has been made available through a historic agreement between our government and the South Australian government, which involves ramping up the Adelaide desal plant. Producers will be able to purchase this water for $100 a megalitre, which is a fantastic saving on the $600 a megalitre that it costs on the Goulburn system currently. Farmers can apply for units of 50 megalitres of water per access licence and can submit up to a maximum of two applications per farm business. Some farmers will get 100 megalitres out of this deal. This means there will be 800 separate parcels of water. Brokers and agents are going to be ineligible to purchase this water, and any entity that already has access to over 1,000 megalitres also will be ineligible to purchase this water.
The guidelines to the program are already on the Department of Agriculture's web page for the Water for Fodder program, and I strongly recommend that fodder producers go to the website as soon as possible to assess their eligibility and for further updates. Applications to purchase this water will be open next Monday or Tuesday. If the program is overallocated, a ballot system will be used to decide who gets this water and who misses out.
Australian Young Labor
Ms KEARNEY (Cooper) (16:02): Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to thank some of the many wonderful members of Young Labor for their passion, dedication and hard work over the last year. It's been a tough year for this side of politics but, through it all, we've always been able to count on the good people of Young Labor to turn up, make their voices heard and fight back.
In the weeks and months prior to the election, I was overwhelmed with support from Young Labor members who came out every weekend and knocked on doors, who spent their evenings having conversations with locals, and who wanted to turn up and make a difference. I know that in my electorate of Cooper and across the country their work does make all the difference. Their conversations are powerful. Young people's passion and their commitment to the cause of progressive policy are powerful. I always will be grateful for their support in helping me campaign and connect with people in our community.
But Young Labor members are not just campaigners. They are vital sources of knowledge and have valuable connections to the communities around them. We as a party need to listen closely to what they have to say. They are the future of our party—of our country—and without them our movement would be lost. So today I say a huge thankyou to all members of Young Labor right around the country. We are indebted to you for all you do. I hope you know just how much your work matters. Don't forget that we need you and you are our future.
SHINE Community Services
Ms HAMMOND ( Curtin ) ( 16:04 ): WA Seniors Week, which runs from 10 to 17 November, is an opportunity to celebrate and acknowledge the very special contribution that WA seniors make to our communities and families. I was thrilled to attend, as part of Seniors Week, the SHINE Community Services open day in my electorate of Curtin to see firsthand the wonderful services they offer and meet some of the people who use their services. SHINE was established in 1980 by the combined towns of Cottesloe, Claremont and Mosman Park, and the Shire of Peppermint Grove. SHINE's work in the community has continued to evolve and now has over 500 clients, 40 volunteers and 30 employees.
SHINE provide personalised services, enabling people to live independently and safely in their own homes while remaining connected to their community. They offer a broad range of services, including domestic assistance, personal care, respite care, meal services, transport services, home and garden maintenance, and centre based activities. Many residents in my electorate of Curtin want to have the choice of living in the comfort of their own home when they get older. This is where bodies like SHINE truly shine. The services they provide greatly assist in allowing people to live independently and safely while remaining connected to their community. I congratulate and thank all of those who have been involved with SHINE for the services they have been providing for nearly 40 years.
National Disability Insurance Scheme
Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (16:05): Given tomorrow is the International Day of People with Disability, I wish to raise with the Chamber matters concerning the NDIS. Time and again I am contacted by constituents and service providers alike who not only have faced issues in gaining access to the NDIS but also, once they gain access, have had their plans inexplicably cut upon review—sometimes by as much as 50 per cent. Far too often my constituents' packages are slashed when it comes time for their annual review in spite of increasing needs. Macarthur residents are then made to jump over bureaucratic hurdles to navigate a complex appeals process.
I'm more than happy to help escalate these matters; however, my point is this: my constituents should not be made to go through this hassle and turmoil in the first place. They should not have to contact their federal representative because an appeal is taking too long and to get their packages or those of their dependants restored to appropriate levels. It is unfair and unjust. My constituents have needs that require long-term planning and long-term funding. The reason that they are having difficulty, I believe, is that the Morrison government are presiding over a $1.6 billion underspend in the NDIS, and the way that they are funding their surplus by slashing the NDIS packages is very unfair.
I must stress that the National Disability Insurance Scheme was a life-changing initiative for many when it was first created by the former Labor government. The scheme itself provides invaluable support to many in my community. I support this scheme wholeheartedly, but it's not operating to its full potential because of systemic issues. (Time expired)
Canning Electorate: Schools
Mr HASTIE (Canning) (16:07): I'm pleased to report that in the last month two Canning schools have officially opened new facilities, built and refurbished with the assistance of the Morrison government. The first of these was Salvado Catholic College in Byford. Salvado is the newest Catholic college in Western Australia. They first opened in 2016 and they are building as they grow—hopefully to one day be a K-12 school. On 15 November we officially opened Salvado's stage 2 construction. With assistance from the Morrison government they have built new classrooms, new staff facilities and new sports facilities, including a soccer pitch and hardcourts. Salvado are doing an excellent job providing more quality education for families in Byford, and I applaud their work in the community.
The second school where upgrades were recently completed is Fairbridge College, near Pinjarra—right in the heart of Canning. Fairbridge College offer a hands-on learning environment for students who might have otherwise fallen through the cracks. Their program includes a focus on practical skills training. I visited Fairbridge two weeks ago to officially open their refurbished hospitality education building. I was treated to some very nice food, a drink and warm friendship from the students who prepared for the morning. This professional kitchen and attached dining room set-up is designed to replicate a cafe or restaurant. In doing so, the school aims to prepare their students as much as possible for the real-world conditions of professional hospitality. Fairbridge want to make sure that kids have the skills and experience they need to find a job. The Morrison government is helping both Salvado college and Fairbridge College deliver this to our community.
Canberra: Community Organisations
Member for Fenner: Staff
Dr LEIGH (Fenner) (16:08): The Christmas season can be hard on those who are down on their luck. I thank organisations in Canberra who are doing their part to help the most disadvantaged in our community at this time. The Salvation Army in Scullin will be serving a Christmas lunch from 12.30 and St John's Care Reid will be serving its Christmas lunch from noon. St John's Care, UnitingCare Kippax and Canberra City Care are working together to make sure that they are helping as many people as they can during the Christmas season. Share the Dignity are working hard on their Christmas collection. Communities@Work will be helping people create their own Christmas hamper. I know many Canberra community organisations, including Northside ACT, Belconnen Community Services and Anglicare, will be doing their important work to help the most vulnerable.
I'd like to invite all honourable members to chip in tomorrow to attend the annual Vinnies charities fundraiser Christmas barbecue to be held in courtyard 27J/K, with the Leader of the Opposition in concert with Katy Gallagher, senator for the ACT; the member for Canberra and the member for Bean; and, of course, Santa Claus himself. Finally, in the spirit of Christmas, let me conclude by thanking my extraordinary staff: Nick Terrell, Stephanie Anderson, Lillian Hannock, Jeevan Haikerwal, Claire Osborne, Olivia Kerr, Tara Mack and Oscar Kaspi-Crutchett.
Page Electorate: Sporting Achievements
Mr HOGAN (Page—Deputy Speaker) (16:10): Students from Mummulgum Public School and Stratheden Public School represented their schools in the small schools relay at the New South Wales PSSA athletics championships on 7 November in Sydney—a wonderful achievement and level to attain for these small schools. Students in the relay team from Mummulgum were: Angeline Codrington, Ethan Briggs, Emily Bunney and Travis Simcox. The students from Stratheden Public School were: Fletcher Bennett, Grace Eyles, Scarlett Honey and Payton Summers. I wanted to congratulate all these students on a great performance and for making not only their school community but our whole region proud. It was a great effort from small schools in my community to make that level. Congratulations.
I want to acknowledge Rory McLean, who captained New South Wales in the Cricket Australia school sports 12-and-under championships held recently in Adelaide. Rory attends Wyrallah Road Public School and is an accomplished batsman and wicketkeeper. He was joined on the side by another promising young cricketer from Ballina called Kai Dalli. In his first match as captain, Rory's New South Wales team beat South Australia convincingly. In his second match as captain, Rory opened the batting, scoring 103 not out and taking the side to an impressive victory. I want to congratulate Rory. I know how proud his parents, Paul and Karen, and older brother, Sam, are of his achievements—as is the whole community.
Defence Facilities: Chemical Contamination
Mr MARLES (Corio—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (16:11): I recently visited the electorate of Paterson, where the member for Paterson and I met with community members about the impact of PFAS contamination in the vicinity of RAAF Base Williamtown. PFAS contamination in Williamtown, Salt Ash and Fullerton Cove, and the declaration by the New South Wales EPA in 2015 of a red zone, has seen land values impacted and residents become deeply concerned about possible health effects. The residents in the Williamtown area have launched a class action lawsuit against the Department of Defence. Indeed, the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is holding another hearing this afternoon into the remediation of PFAS. The committee is doing important work, but it should not be left to a parliamentary committee to lead the way on a response. PFAS contamination is not just a Defence issue; it is likely that PFAS is present at many non-Defence sites around the country.
There's been next to no engagement from members of the Morrison government with the Williamtown community on this serious issue. The government cannot continue to ignore the residents of Williamtown. The Prime Minister should face the community in Williamtown and hear firsthand about the impact that PFAS contamination is having on their lives. I first visited Williamtown in 2016, and since then I have met a number of passionate, courageous people who are working tirelessly to make sure the community is not forgotten. I would like to acknowledge Lindsay and Ann Clout, Rhianna and Cain Gorfine, Kim and Gavin Smith, and Jenny and Terry Robinson for their advocacy on behalf of their community. I thank the member for Paterson for hosting me in her community. It's now been four years and five Christmases since the declaration of a red zone. The Morrison government owes it to the people of Williamtown to provide a resolution to this issue.
The Nationals
Mr JOYCE (New England) (16:13): Mr Deputy Speaker, I'd like to bring your attention to a time in the past, when I first arrived here at Parliament House, when there were discussions by the then leader of us closing down the National Party—that it had passed its use-by date and we were to be rolled up with the Liberal Party. I remember there were a few of us at the time who said, 'Well, that's not going to happen under our watch,' and we fought strongly, decisively and deliberately over a long period of time to build the numbers of the National Party back up—in fact, to the highest numbers that it had had in 20 years. I want to acknowledge people such as Fiona Nash and Wacka Williams, who were so good in that space.
Just the other day, once again, the call to arms came when they said that the Nationals in South Australia would be deregistered because they'd fallen below their crucial constitutional numbers to be registered, and a number went into bat to make sure that that didn't happen. We've done it. We actually achieved it. I'd like to acknowledge the work of people such as Senator Matthew Canavan and, once more, former Senator Wacka Williams and former Senator Fiona Nash and others, who worked so hard and diligently to collect the numbers. I want to say to those people who support us that we take your support absolutely seriously, and we will make sure that federal members, once more, come from South Australia to represent the Nationals and represent our nation.
Lyons Electorate: Rural and Regional Health Services
Mr BRIAN MITCHELL (Lyons) (16:14): The Derwent Valley community has been well served for more than 50 years by two long-serving GPs, Dr Ralph Peters and Dr Micheil Sweet. Each has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia over the years for their unstinting service to medicine and the people in their community. However, Dr Peters and Dr Sweet have announced their respective retirements this month—which no-one begrudges them; both men have served their community admirably, they are in their 80s and 90s, and they have the best wishes of us all. But their retirement leaves the Derwent Valley with fewer options.
There is just one GP centre in New Norfolk, the Derwent Valley Medical Centre, which currently has more than 5,000 registered patients on its books and can't accept more. The centre is run off its feet, five days a week. It never stops. The Derwent Valley needs better medical services. And there is an answer to this. I've written to the health minister, Greg Hunt, about this, asking him to change the Monash funding model, because the Derwent Valley currently has the same funding category as Sandy Bay, in the middle of Hobart. The Derwent Valley services a rural and regional community. If he changes the funding model then the Derwent Valley Medical Centre can put on more people, offer more services and make sure that the people of the Derwent Valley get the health care and the health services that they need and they deserve. They can do better.
I wish those two gentlemen the very best for their retirement, and happy fishing!
North Sydney Electorate: Christmas 2019
Mr ZIMMERMAN (North Sydney) (16:16): The North Sydney school Christmas card competition is a great tradition started by my predecessor, Joe Hockey, which I've been delighted to continue. This year, the theme was 'What I love about Christmas', and I was overwhelmed with over a thousand inspired drawings—a wonderful insight into those things that children cherish and what makes Christmas so special to them. Very often, the entries focused on spending time with family and friends; enjoying iconic Australian activities, like surfing and the beach; presents and gathering around the Christmas tree.
Many also focused on the religious and spiritual meaning of Christmas, including the winner of this year's competition, Leif Ingwersen of St Aloysius College, a great school in my electorate, who submitted an engaging modern image of the baby Jesus under the stars of the Australian flag. A very big 'Congratulations!' also goes to Charlotte Gray from Lane Cove Public School for second place and Ella Hook from Willoughby Public School for third place. I have to say the most unique entry was one from Minseo Kim of Mowbray Public School, which featured the House of Representatives decorated for Christmas—although I was a little perturbed by the number of turkeys she placed on the front benches! Thankfully, however, she was bipartisan in her distribution of those Christmas turkeys! I want to thank all those students who entered. It was a very tough choice.
Finally, I want to give a plug for the Scout groups that will be selling beautiful Christmas trees across my electorate. It has certainly become a tradition in my home to support the Scouts by buying a Christmas tree from the 1st North Sydney Scout Group, and I look forward to joining them this weekend to make my 2019 purchase.
Wills Electorate: Community Events
Mr KHALIL (Wills) (16:17): It's time to reflect on what a year 2019 has been and to acknowledge and celebrate some particularly favourite moments in my electorate of Wills. In January, I launched the season of the new Fawkner Netball Club, and I'm proud to say that they had a very successful season for a new club. In February, Hakeem al-Araibi, who plays for Pascoe Vale Football Club in my electorate, was rightfully brought home to Australia after a very successful campaign, and he's now a citizen of Australia. In March, I attended the biggest ever Sydney Road Street Party in Brunswick, an annual highlight for the people who live in my electorate. In April, I marched with tens of thousands of workers in Melbourne in support of the Change the Rules campaign. In May, I celebrated the 30th anniversary of the restoration of Merri Creek—and got re-elected; but we won't mention the national result! In June, I joined local legend Alma Pearce for her 100th birthday party. In July, I celebrated Ramadan and a wonderful iftar dinner at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. In August, I had the honour of rolling the first ball at the Brunswick Bowling Club, and it was a good shot! In September, I visited some of my youngest constituents at the Coburg Children's Centre, for Early Learning Matters Week. In October, I voted to declare a climate emergency in this place and urged the government to take action. In November, I had the pleasure of giving the graduation speech for the year 12 class at Glenroy College.
And this month, December, I am looking forward to catching up with as many community groups, schools and sports clubs as I can, and go to graduations, presentations and, of course, the Christmas party. I am looking forward to another year of serving the people of Wills in the New Year. I wish everyone a happy holiday and merry Christmas!
Bowman Electorate: Leslie Harrison Dam
Mr LAMING (Bowman) (16:21): My fine city of Redlands has always paid it forward, and we had fabulous water infrastructure from the Straddie aquifer. But now, with Labor's interconnector, we are part of the SEQ Water Grid. A small part of Capalaba remains reliant, through a treatment facility, on the water from our magnificent Leslie Harrison Dam, just 20 minutes drive from the Brisbane CBD and one of the finest freshwater courses—crystal clear—you'll find anywhere. But there's no recreation on that dam: don't put so much as put a fingernail in that dam or you'll face arrest. They're fiercely protective—like a dog sitting on a haystack—so that everyone can look at this fine dam. Except that Labor mothballed the dam gates. It used to be a beautiful dam but, as they say with a hashtag: #damn Brown made our dam brown. Labor elected not to put those gates back on, leaving it as a naked spillway with no flood mitigation and no water security availability. They figured out how much it would be to put those gates back on and it was all too much for the Labor Party.
SEQ Water have taken a responsible attitude, getting the engineering advice from top-tier firms like GHD as to whether this dam can have a true future, not just for water security and not just for protecting all the downstream fields that flood every second year, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars—I want to see, ultimately, if it stacks up—but also recreational use of this fine freshwater dam just 20 minutes from the Brisbane CBD. This is a jewel in my electorate. At the moment, it is a mudflat and a swamp: State MP Don Brown stands responsible. We can do so much better.
New South Wales: Infrastructure
Ms STANLEY (Werriwa—Opposition Whip) (16:21): The state MP for Liverpool, Paul Lynch, Liverpool City Council and my constituents have all raised concerns, which I share, about the New South Wales government plan for the upgrade of Hoxton Park Road, which runs past my electorate office. While I welcome the upgrade, I strongly urge the state government to reconsider both the proposed kerbside bus lanes and the restricted access to Dorrigo Avenue and Hoxton Park shopping centre. The kerbside bus lanes are inconsistent both with the current transit lanes along Hoxton Park Road and with international best practice. The existing configuration, built by the state Labor government, has provided an improved and more reliable service since opening in 2003. For safety reasons alone, any extension of the transit lane should be consistent with those existing lanes.
Another concern is the proposed left-in, left-out configuration at Dorrigo Avenue. This will impose a significant limitation on the traffic able to easily access Hoxton Park shopping centre. This will hurt the many small businesses located at the centre. These businesses should not have to suffer adverse consequences due to poor planning by the New South Wales state Liberal government. Many of these businesses have been serving our community for decades. My electorate desperately needs infrastructure upgrades after the years of underfunding from both state and federal Liberal governments; however, it should not be at the expense of business owners and local residents.
New South Wales Bushfires
Mr LEESER (Berowra) (16:22): The northern boundary of my electorate is the Hawkesbury River, and residents have been closely watching the Gospers Mountain fire from there. On Friday I had the opportunity to visit the area and spoke to businesses in Wisemans Ferry, Canoelands and Maroota. These communities, which date back to the earliest days of colonial Australia, represent the Australian spirit in so many ways. Many people have gone out of their way to help each other. One such example is the way that Wisemans Ferry Public School has opened its doors to Macdonald Valley Public School, who have had to temporarily relocate their school due to the fires. I visited a number of businesses including Wisemans Inn Hotel, the Wisemans Ferry medical centre, Wisemans Ferry Grocer, WFR Real Estate Agents, Wisemans Ferry Bowling Club, Fish N Chips In The Stix, the Wisemans Ferry Pharmacy, the Stone House Cafe and Ferry Artists Gallery. All those businesses are facing challenging times, as tourists and locals avoid the area due to the recent fires.
Can I say to the House: these communities are open for business and we should all do our bit to support them. The RFS crews are working around the clock to prevent the fire jumping the river. For now, it's safe to visit, so come on up and support the local businesses on the Hawkesbury. If you're asking yourself whether you should have your usual waterski holiday on the Hawkesbury this year, the answer is yes, absolutely. Wisemans Ferry is open for business, as is Maroota, Lower Portland, Leets Vale, Sackville North and South Maroota. Get yourself down there, get on the river, and support our local communities.
Perth Electorate: Orana House
Mr GORMAN (Perth) (16:23): On 7 November, I joined members of the Perth community for the 30-year anniversary of Orana House. At The Rise in Maylands, we celebrated one of the best services in our community that deals with one of the toughest things that anyone faces—that is, escaping domestic violence. To Mel, Reggie, the board and the team at Orana House: I want to congratulate you on your 30-year journey and on 30 years of helping women and children escape family and domestic violence. They have published the 30-year history of Orana House, and they talk about the journey that the community has taken. They say: 'It has taken close to 50 years to bring recognition from the private into the public arena of the damaging impacts of family and domestic violence, not only for the individuals who experience violence but also on the long-term costs to our whole society.'
That long-term cost is something that we continue to bear every single week in this country. On 22 November, I joined members of the Western Australian community for a silent march through the streets of Perth. It honoured 11 Western Australians who had lost their lives to domestic violence in the last 12 months. There is so much more we can do as a nation. But today I just want to congratulate the team at Orana House for 30 years of helping people escape this horrible part of our society.
Chisholm Electorate: New Colombo Plan Scholarship Program
Ms LIU (Chisholm) (16:25): I first came to Australia as an international student from Hong Kong in my youth. I immediately fell in love with Australia's people and culture and decided to call this country home. My experience as an international student was truly life-changing. This is why I was so thrilled to learn about the recipients of the New Colombo Plan Scholarship Program living in Chisholm. Next year, Max Collett, Wei Man Tam, Savitri Thurairatnam and Neane Carter will be travelling to the Indo-Pacific as part of their university courses. These cross-cultural exchanges strengthen Australia's relationship with our Asian neighbours and help to forge long-lasting connections across borders.
The New Colombo Plan allows individual students to develop networks among their peers. These networks add value to both their personal and professional lives. This program is vital for Australia's future as an open, interconnected member of the Indo-Pacific region. I understand firsthand the life-changing opportunity of studying overseas and I wish Max, Wei Man, Savitri and Neane all the best with their studies.
Aged Care
Mr STEPHEN JONES (Whitlam) (16:26): Today I spoke to Ron Fletcher. He lives in Albion Park in my electorate. Ron spoke to me about his wife Mary, who sadly died in May 2017. They were just 10 days short of their golden wedding anniversary when she passed away. Ron described the final months of Mary's life and his role in caring for her, how she was moved from home to palliative care and finally to a nursing home. They both deserved better than the way they were treated. Ron told me that, while Mary was assessed as needing an in-home aged-care package in late 2016, the help never arrived. Ron tells me that a level 4 in-home aged-care package didn't become available until September this year. He received a letter advising him of that—years too late.
It's awful to have to say this but it needs to be said: Mrs Fletcher died waiting for the in-home care that she needed and deserved. We failed Mary and we failed her family and we're failing thousands of families just like them. Right now, there are approximately 120,000 people waiting for an in-home aged-care package. We're advised that around 16,000 died before they received them. Last week, the government said they'd fund 10,000 more. We welcome it, but it's a drop in the ocean. We need much more, much sooner.
Reid Electorate: Eurella Community Services
Dr MARTIN (Reid) (16:28): Tomorrow marks the International Day of People with Disability, and I would like to draw attention to a committed NDIS provider in my electorate, Eurella Community Services. I recently visited their centre in Burwood to learn more about what they do. Eurella has supported people with disabilities in our community for over 65 years, including those with autism and intellectual disabilities. Their programs are available across the lifespan, from childhood through to later stages of life. Eurella offers programs such as lifelong learning and life-skills programs, supported employment, shared living accommodation and other supported independent living options for adults.
As a psychologist who has worked in the disability space and one with a PhD in autism spectrum disorder, I understand the value that services like Eurella offer the community. I'm particularly pleased that the Morrison government was able to provide just over $15,000 for Eurella for the upgrade of outdoor facilities through the Stronger Communities program. Close by, in North Strathfield, Eurella Packaging and Assembly employ those with a disability, providing an opportunity to participate in meaningful work.
This month, the Morrison government has outlined a plan to address the key concerns of NDIS participants and providers to make sure the NDIS is accessible, collaborative and financially sustainable. Additionally, the Senate has recently announced a parliamentary inquiry into autism. We want to work with providers like Eurella, an organisation with substantial experience, to meet the needs of NDIS participants so they have greater choice and control in their lives.
Northern Territory: Australian Training Awards
Mr GOSLING (Solomon) (16:30): I'd like to acknowledge the Territorians who were honoured at the recent Australian Training Awards and make special mention of Judith McKay, the recipient of the National Achievement Award. Judith is a champion of VET in the NT. She started in VET as a frontline trainer and assessor in alcohol and other drugs with the Northern Territory government and 18 years on maintains her passion as an advocate for vocational training.
To the Territory winners: Rory Milner added to his growing awards, winning the Apprentice of the Year. Well done, Rory. Jack Short took out the runner-up position as the Trainee of the Year. We had many finalists from the Territory. Ashlee Gilder was a finalist for the Australian School-based Apprentice of the Year Award; Jacqui Culgan was a finalist for the Vocational Student of the Year Award; Raelene Collins was a finalist for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student of the Year Award; Patricia Fawcett was a finalist for the VET Teacher/Trainer of the Year Award; and Wendy Kennedy was nominated as a finalist for the Excellence in Language, Literacy and Numeracy Practice Award.
Well done to everyone from the Northern Territory working in the vocational education and training sector. It is so important to our future, as you are well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker Mitchell. It is vital, and it doesn't help when those VET funding streams get cut, because these kids are our future. We need young Australians having these trades for the future.
Penrith Community Christmas Tree Lighting
Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (16:31): When I got home on Friday I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Penrith community Christmas tree lighting in Memory Park with my family and thousands of locals. There was so much joy on this occasion, with everyone coming together to experience our wonderful community. Families, business owners and our local community took part in market stalls. I would like to thank the Penrith CBD Corporation, particularly Gai Hawthorn, and all the sponsors of this wonderful event.
With my team and my children I hosted a stall where we handed out education packs for kids and had activities. I had the privilege of lighting the 30-foot Penrith Christmas tree, alongside community representatives and, of course, Santa Claus. There was so much enthusiasm from the thousands of children. I'd like to congratulate Paws Studio on the wonderful performances they put on for the people in our community that evening.
There were over 12,000 people at this occasion last year and there were many more thousands this year, and I am sure it's only going to continue to grow. That's because it's events like this that show us who we really are, and many small businesses and not-for-profit organisations benefited from the fundraising at this event. I often say that in Lindsay we are full to the brim and overflowing with community spirit, and this was very much an event like that. I want to thank everyone who took part in this event and would like to wish everyone in my electorate a merry Christmas, a beautiful time with your families and God's blessings for the new year.
Adelaide Hills Landscape Arts Prize
Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (16:33): The Adelaide Hills Landscape Arts Prize for 2019 was awarded last night. This is a biennial arts prize. It's open only to South Australian artists for their depictions of our beautiful Adelaide Hills, which is in my electorate of Mayo. Seventy-nine entries were received; 46 works were selected as final works. The winning prize was $5,000. The person who came second—the commendation—received their own solo exhibition at the Hahndorf Academy.
I'd like to congratulate Joseph Haxan. He's a young artist and photographer, and his work was utterly spectacular. It truly captured the Adelaide Hills in all of its beauty. The commendation went to Andrew Stattman. Andrew did a stunning piece of work. He painted the Adelaide Hills in blue.
We are so fortunate to have so many amazing artists in Mayo. It is a beautiful place to live, and I think that's why we're so fortunate as to have so many artists who choose to live in our community. I congratulate the Hahndorf Academy and the sponsors on this fantastic arts prize and look forward to being involved with the Hahndorf Academy for many years to come.
Bondi to Bronte Ocean Swim
Mr SHARMA (Wentworth) (16:34): Yesterday, along with 1,900 others, I took part in one of Australia's most iconic ocean swims—the Bondi to Bronte. The water temperature was about 21 degrees and the swell was about a metre or two. It was a great way to see some of Sydney's most renowned beaches whilst raising money for The Kids' Cancer Project.
The 2½-kilometre course starts near the world-famous lifeguard tower at Bondi before curling around Mackenzies Point, past Tamarama Beach, and finishing on the shore of Bronte Beach. Since its creation in 2001 it has grown to attract thousands of participants each year, working hand in hand with the Bronte surf club and corporate sponsors to raise, so far, over $220,000 for medical research into more effective treatments for children diagnosed with cancer.
Congratulations to Jordan White, Kimberley Doyle and Zoe Whitfield for placing first, second and third respectively in the women's division, and to Ollie Signorini, Matthew Galea and Logan Kaye for placing first, second and third respectively in the men's division.
The Bondi to Bronte swim would not be possible without the hardworking volunteers. I would particularly like to thank here Stephen Ford, Kimberly Johns, Garry Luscombe, Anthony Burrows, Paul Wenck, Courtney Tallon, Tim Jeffries, Charles Johnstone, Mandi O'Sullivan-Jones and Dominic Villa. I would also like to congratulate Bronte Surf Life Saving Club on another successful year of this iconic swim and particularly acknowledge President Basil Scaffidi, James McLennan and David Finnimore for their ongoing involvement in ensuring that the day is a success for all.
Minister for Home Affairs
Mr HILL (Bruce) (16:36): The Minister for Home Affairs is now fighting a ridiculous legal battle to see whether he has the power to deport Aboriginal people from Australia—that's right. It sounds absurd, and it is. There is a High Court case scheduled for Wednesday this week. It wouldn't be happening if the Minister for Home Affairs had any decency or sense of judgement.
The case concerns an Aboriginal man who the minister is trying to deport from Australia. The man the minister wants to deport, Mr Thoms, is an Aboriginal Australian who was born in New Zealand. He is a common law holder of native title rights—those most unique, ancient and Australian of property rights. His parents never filled in the relevant paperwork to formalise his citizenship in Australia, but he has lived here since he was a child as part of his local mob—the Gunggari people. Mr Thoms committed a crime and was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. What he did was wrong, and our judicial system rightly punished him for it. But now the minister, acting as God, wants to punish him a second time and is seeking to kick this Aboriginal man, this native title holder, out of Australia and send him to New Zealand. This never should have happened.
The minister could simply exercise his discretion right now, stop wasting taxpayers' money on unnecessary legal costs and stop wasting the High Court's precious time by releasing Mr Thoms from detention. What is wrong with the Minister for Home Affairs's judgement? This man is an Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand is not a penal colony.
Riding for the Disabled Maryborough
Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (16:37): Recently, when I visited Riding for the Disabled Maryborough, I had the great pleasure of seeing kids from Maryborough Special School on their horses. They absolutely beamed as they rode around. Witnessing the joy they derive from this program is truly moving. I commend Noel Ryan and his team of 30-odd volunteers for the great job they do.
This program makes a world of difference to people with disability. It helps them physically, socially and emotionally. The families and volunteers at Maryborough RDA told me of the life-changing difference the program is making to the kids and adults who interact with the horses. It is boosting their confidence and they are gaining new skills.
I'm pleased I have been able to secure $85,000 for Maryborough RDA, including $68,000 for a covered arena. The new arena means that Maryborough RDA can help riders and horses avoid the sun, and extend their highly-regarded program for an extra two months and serve more people. I confess I am horse challenged—I am more suited to a motorbike—but I truly am a fan of Riding for the Disabled Maryborough. It's a program that I am so proud to be a part of.
Chiappetta, Mr Antonio
Mr HUSIC (Chifley) (16:39): I want to congratulate Chifley's own Antonio Chiappetta, who last week won the 2019 Telstra ARIA Music Teacher of the Year award. Well done! The award recognises music teachers for their passion and hard work in providing kids with a better education and the chance to play and enjoy music.
It is fantastic to have teachers like Antonio—teachers who grew up in Chifley and now teach in the electorate. Antonio has been the driving force behind St Andrews' music program for over 15 years, including Creative Arts Night—or CAN, as it's known—which started out as a simple event in the school hall and has now grown into a large outdoor music festival, with close to 2,000 in attendance. Antonio's students have told stories of how he would give up his recess and lunchbreaks to provide extra coaching. He would spend countless hours after school to help keep the music room open for kids who may not have instruments of their own so they could practice. It is absolutely fitting that Antonio's dedication to music education and inspiring his students has been recognised in this way.
Music teachers like Antonio help to keep the Australian music industry alive through supporting the next generation of performing artists. I think many across our community would be proud of Antonio's achievement but would be exceptionally grateful for his dedication to helping young people in our area achieve their ambitions. Well done, Antonio, and thank you to ARIA for recognising his efforts.
Fairfax Electorate: Surf Lifesaving
Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (16:40): On 27 October this year, three surf lifesavers from the Maroochydore Surf Life Saving Club were on roving patrol. They were Robin Smith, Taylah Kouvaras and Abigail Green. They spotted a motionless body on the edges of the Maroochy River. Of course, they had no time to reflect; they acted. This person was blue and motionless, so they performed CPR. Thankfully, they were also able to use a defibrillator. Again, there was no pulse. They continued to look after this person until an ambulance arrived and they were able to transport the person to the ambulance. Do you know what? He survived. It talks to the bravery and courage of our surf lifesavers. It was a delight today to attend a function here in Parliament House where these three brave people from Maroochydore were given the National Medal. Did you know that every single day there are about 30 people across this country who survive due to surf lifesavers saving them? To them, I say a very big thank you.
Climate Change
Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat) (16:42): Australia and nations all around the world need to take action to limit the effects of our changing climate, and adults and kids all around Australia know it. Recently I met with a group of students from Ballarat's St Patrick's College to accept a petition signed by hundreds of students calling on their leaders to do much better. These boys know that we need to act on climate change and that we need to do it now. The effects of climate change and our collective failure to act will be felt throughout their lives, if not necessarily ours. They will live in a world that is hotter, more extreme and more fire-prone than the world we in this place grew up in. But they also will not get the opportunity to benefit from the large amount of economic benefit that can come from acting on climate change, including on acting on renewables. They are left frustrated as we, their political leaders, are continually unable to actually deal with this issue.
Rather than sitting down and accepting that, these boys have decided that that was not good enough and felt that they wanted to have their voices heard. I want to commend the boys of St Pat's for taking a stand. I am proud to join with them and all the students from my electorate who joined in the climate strike earlier this year in calling on the government and, in fact, this parliament and our parliamentary leaders to finally act on climate change and work together for a better world.
Cowper Electorate: Bushfires
Mr CONAGHAN (Cowper) (16:43): Since 8 November this year, my electorate of Cowper has suffered greatly from the fires which have raged for the past three weeks. We have lost some 60 homes in Nambucca Shire, 61 homes in Kempsey and 22 in the Port Macquarie-Hastings Council area. Even more sadly is the loss of Barry Parsons, a man from Willawarrin. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.
Through the devastation, I must commend a number of people and organisations. Firstly, I commend the local councils, who were so good in communicating with the people around the electorate. I commend Liz Campbell, Rhonda Hoban, Peta Pinson and Denise Knight, who are all mayors of various councils, and their efforts through the fires. I also note the emergency centres at Maxwell RSL, Kempsey Showground, Bowraville Anglicare, Willawarrin pub and Bellbrook pub. Thank you to everybody who attended those centres and all those people who donated to those centres. Most importantly, thank you to Charles Stuart University, which has housed, since 8 November, 150 firefighters, providing over 3,000 nights of accommodation at its own expense; to Priceline for donating goods and equipment; and to many, many more. I say thank you to you all.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rob Mitchell ): Under standing order 43, the time for statements has expired.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
National Asbestos Awareness Week
Mr GEORGANAS (Adelaide) (16:45): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) 25 November to 1 December 2019 is National Asbestos Awareness Week;
(b) despite being outlawed in 2003, the impact of asbestos in Australia is ongoing; and
(c) an estimated 4,000 Australians die each year from asbestos-related diseases; and
(2) commends the Asbestos Diseases Society of South Australia and the Asbestos Victims Association South Australia for their tireless and often unrecognised work in raising awareness, training people to safely handle asbestos and supporting victims of asbestos-related diseases.
I rise to speak today about National Asbestos Awareness Week and the fantastic organisations, many voluntary, that not only assist victims of asbestos related disease but also, importantly, attempt to prevent more cases occurring. It's a fact that living in Australia means living with asbestos. Despite its use being banned since 2003, large amounts of asbestos are still present in many, many Australian homes, buildings and workplaces and in the environment. At the height of its use, asbestos was in over 3,000 products. Australia also has one of the highest rates of asbestos related disease in the world, and that means tradespeople and do-it-yourself renovators are among the most at risk for asbestos exposure. What's more concerning is that there is no known safe minimum level of exposure according to the World Health Organization.
Labor's proud of its record of being at the forefront of banning asbestos and tackling the risks and hazards associated with asbestos exposure. Six years ago, Labor set up the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency. During this time, the agency has worked with governments and stakeholders to implement the first national plan for asbestos eradication, handling and awareness, something that was not effectively coordinated in Australia prior to this time. Nevertheless, and despite our efforts thus far, asbestos related diseases still kill an estimated 4,000 Australians every year. Furthermore, 700 people were diagnosed with mesothelioma last year alone in Australia. It is clear that much more work needs to be done.
Asbestos Awareness Week was held last week, as it has been held annually for over 30 years, and the stats that I just went through show us why it is so critical to continue. It can be difficult at times to detect what might contain asbestos, as in many cases it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a product that contains asbestos and one that does not. Some companies manufactured identical-looking products after the asbestos ban. That is why it is a concern that research is showing that, while Australians know asbestos is dangerous, this knowledge does not translate into awareness of where asbestos could be, how they could potentially become exposed or how people can stay safe and avoid fibre exposure.
Organisations like the Asbestos Diseases Society of South Australia and the Asbestos Victims Association of South Australia work tirelessly with volunteers, often unrecognised, in raising awareness, training people to safely handle asbestos, supporting victims of asbestos related disease and educating younger people who are going into trades on the likelihood that they may be working with asbestos and on knowing the dangers and the safety precautions to take. I must take my hat off to Peter Photakis, the President of the Asbestos Diseases Society of South Australia, and to his team for all that they do tirelessly every day on a voluntary basis.
I must say as well that Mr Photakis runs this organisation on the fumes of an oily rag, and it was cruel and gobsmacking to see that the state Liberal government discontinued the minimal government revenue that they receive. We're talking about a very small amount of money that was used for education—a tiny amount in the context of government budgets. It is a tiny amount that Premier Marshall and Treasurer Rob Lucas will no longer provide to this organisation, which does such great work educating people about the dangers of asbestos, how to avoid it and the safety precautions that they can take. This funding was used by the Asbestos Diseases Society to go into high schools and TAFEs to talk to apprentices and highlight the dangers of working with asbestos. It was literally a life-saving activity, and that minimal funding has been cut.
I've written to the Liberal state government urging them to restore the funding, saying that by not funding this they're putting people's lives in danger. I know that the work that this organisation does actually saves lives. They go in and let young people know about the dangers—people who perhaps will be working with asbestos but do not know how to avoid it and the precautions they should take. I congratulate all these groups on the great work they do not only in South Australia but in all of Australia.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rob Mitchell ): Is the motion seconded?
Ms HAMMOND (Curtin) (16:50): I second the motion. I thank the member for Adelaide for moving this important motion. I would like to acknowledge Asbestos Awareness Week, which was held between 25 November and 1 December.
Australia's history with asbestos, from mining to manufacturing to its use in building homes and public buildings, has left a deadly legacy which will continue to need coordinated action across all levels of government and non-government organisations for decades to come. It is our history with asbestos and its continued impact on our lives that have led us to being a world leader in asbestos safety and management and to our work as a global leader in advocating for a global asbestos ban.
In 2003 the Howard government banned all products containing asbestos throughout Australia, yet in Australia the incidence of mesothelioma is still one of the highest in the world today, with approximately 4,000 Australians dying each year from asbestos exposure. The Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency was established in 2013 to coordinate, monitor and report on the implementation of the National Strategic Plan for Asbestos Awareness and Management. ASEA plays a critical role in driving national action on asbestos management and safety. That is why the government have doubled the funding of the agency. Our strict stance on the ban on the use of asbestos was reinforced when we introduced tougher penalties for illegal importation of asbestos earlier this year. We are one of the only countries in the world with a dedicated asbestos specialist agency.
On that note, and to coincide with National Asbestos Awareness Week, the government tabled a review of the roles and functions of the agency. The review found that ASEA:
… has been successful in providing a strong national and international focus on asbestos issues by bringing together stakeholders, sharing information, encouraging collaboration and building knowledge and capability.
The review recommended that the government continue and broaden ASEA's activities in recognition of this valuable work. The government accepted all recommendations of the review in principle, and the Attorney-General has asked his department to consult with key stakeholders and develop options for their implementation to help ASEA continue its important work.
Dealing with Australia's harmful asbestos legacy requires nationwide action undertaken in a coordinated and systematic way. In this context, I recently represented the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations to officially launch the National Strategic Plan for Asbestos Awareness and Management for 2019 to 2023 at the annual asbestos safety conference, organised by ASEA in Perth. This plan has been developed by the agency and has received support from state and territory governments. The aim of the plan is to prevent exposure to asbestos fibres in order to eliminate asbestos related disease in Australia. Crucial to achieving this aim is cooperation between the various players involved in asbestos management, including there being effective collaboration between government and non-government organisations. This includes local government and non-government organisations like asbestos disease support groups, employer associations, unions and medical research groups. It is essential that we utilise the skills, knowledge and experience of all of these bodies to ensure that the plan is successfully implemented.
Australia's history with asbestos has left a harmful legacy, and we know this all too well in my home state of Western Australia. Many thousands of lives have been lost as a result of the blue asbestos mining at Wittenoom. There are also the ever-present asbestos-containing building materials that were used for housing and fencing across our suburbs over many decades. Given the sheer scale of past asbestos use, not just in WA but across Australia, it is a sad reality that arrangements to safely manage asbestos will be required for decades to come.
Mrs ELLIOT (Richmond) (16:55): I too rise to speak in support of the member for Adelaide's motion relating to Asbestos Awareness Week. The motion notes that November is Asbestos Awareness Month and as part of that campaign 25 November to 1 December was National Asbestos Awareness Week. It is so important that we are all critically aware of the devastating impacts asbestos related diseases have on individuals and indeed on the broader community, especially because Australia has one of the highest rates of mesothelioma in the world. As mesothelioma's latency period is between 20 and 50 years, a peak is yet to be reached in relation to this matter.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's analysis found an average period of 11 months between diagnosis and death. Australia has one of the highest rates of asbestos related disease in the world. Tradespeople and renovators are among the most at risk for asbestos exposure. At least one in three homes built between 1940 and 1990 is believed to contain asbestos, and in some parts of Australia this may potentially rise to as many as one in two houses. Asbestos was used in over 3,000 products prior to 1990, and a great many of these were in residential construction and fit-outs. What's more, there is no known safe minimum level of exposure. In fact, houses built or renovated before 1987 are highly likely to contain asbestos in fibre sheeting, cement pipes, roofing shingles, guttering and textured paints and textiles. So many people, especially those in the building related trades and their families, were exposed to asbestos just from earning their living or going about their day-to-day lives.
Thus far, treatment of mesothelioma has been limited to radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. However, immunotherapy is an emerging treatment showing some promising results. In some cases, immunotherapy has provided longer life expectancy for some who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma. Keytruda is an immunotherapy quite different to the traditional treatments of cancers, like radiation and chemotherapy. I understand that Keytruda has been examined in over 600 worldwide cancer trials, with some promising results. Reports indicate that there are also benefits of Keytruda to those with late-stage malignant melanoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and non-small-cell lung cancer.
I was very privileged recently to meet with Peter and Nyrie Tillotson, two local volunteers from the Asbestosis & Mesothelioma Association of Australia, AMAA. It's a non-profit charity that operates in my electorate of Richmond. The AMAA has an outreach centre based on the ground floor at the Tweed Heads Bowls Club and it's run by local volunteers who offer a number of support services, including telephone support, home and hospital visits and monthly support group meetings. The AMAA raise awareness within the community of the dangers posed by asbestos exposure, and they work to minimise the risk of asbestos exposure for future generations.
It's a devastating fact that mesothelioma kills approximately 700 Australians per year, and that number, sadly, is predicted to rise in the coming years. Even though Australia banned the use of asbestos in 2003, asbestos related disease kills an estimated 4,000 Australians every year—this is double our annual road toll—and asbestos is the only known cause of mesothelioma in Australia.
Over the last four years, the AMAA has been gathering handwritten signatures petitioning for Keytruda to be listed on the PBS. They're doing this because the cost of the medication is thousands of dollars for each treatment, with the number of treatments required unknown at this time. There are now just over 5,000 signatures on their petition. I commend them for working so hard to get all of these signatures. I now seek leave to table that petition with those 5,000 signatures collected by the AMAA.
Leave granted.
Mrs ELLIOT: I, therefore, present this petition relating to Keytruda and the PBS. I would also like to take this opportunity to commend the Asbestosis & Mesothelioma Association of Australia and all their volunteers for their tireless work in raising awareness, in training people to safely handle asbestos, and for providing important support for the victims of asbestos related diseases. I thank them for getting all those signatures and raising this important issue. The government is well aware of the community support for a PBS subsidised Keytruda treatment for mesothelioma, and I call on the Minister for Health to look favourably upon the petition signed by those 5,000 people. I commend the member for Adelaide for this most important motion and for raising this very vital issue.
Mr BROADBENT (Monash) (17:00): As Tony Zappia, the member for Makin, knows, it is very difficult for me to speak on this motion at this time. We have had some occasions in the most recent times for this issue to become very, very close to home—too close to home. This disease is a shocker. I've just seen it firsthand. One of my friends, who worked for me for 10 years, is dead and a very close friend is suffering with this. Both were people who would have had no exposure to asbestosis—none that you would think of. Mary would have done some work with her dad when they first immigrated here—pulled down some sheds or built some things, as new Australians did in those days. Ken, a teacher who grew up in a country town, was diagnosed just after the election campaign and died four weeks ago. He had the particular asbestosis that goes rampant once it gets a hold.
Former Senator Singh, from Tasmania, has been for the last 10 years an absolute warrior with regard to asbestos awareness through the Parliamentary Group on Asbestos Related Disease. That role has now been taken over by Lisa Chesters. Standing in for Lisa, because Lisa is on maternity, Libby Croker is in that role. For 10 years I worked with Lisa Singh on this, and we have changed the world over those 10 years. We were a pretty unpopular lot when we started, actually. It wasn't a big issue for parliamentarians. But, with 4,000 people dying a year, it is probably starting to eat into and affect a whole lot of families now.
I would have said to you, 'It's not going to hurt anybody around me,' but the doctors and specialists said, 'Look, Russell, if we open up any of you, we will find asbestos.' I have a holiday house on Phillip Island. Asbestos is still on the ground everywhere. You can't walk anywhere on Phillip Island without seeing a bit of asbestos. That's the stuff that our kids have been playing in for years—the sand that our kids play in. All the old houses built just before the war and after the war were built of asbestos. They cut it, they broke it down, they threw it out and they buried it in their gardens. Everybody was exposed to it.
It's expected that it will affect 120,000 Australians before this is finished. I don't know whether that is a tiny underestimate, from what I have just experienced. But it is something that we can do something about locally and at home. A contractor turned up next door at my sister-in-law's place one day and said, 'This is asbestos; I'm not touching it. I'm not putting in your gas system. I won't touch it.' He may have had a different experience to others. Others do the work, put on their masks, put the covering on and do the work. At the moment we've still got people who say, 'It's not a big issue. Don't worry about it; we'll worry about it.' Breathing in that dust will kill you—and, if doesn't kill you then, it can kill you later on.
So a shout out to former Senator Singh: your work was greatly appreciated by all the organisations. To my group down at Morwell who have been absolute stars with regard to this, Vicki and her team at GARDS: good on you. The Latrobe Valley was particularly affected by this. To everybody who has participated in all the workshops we've done and all the meetings we've had: thank you so much, because you're making a difference. You're actually making a difference to the awareness of how people can be killed by this horrible stuff. It's just awful. So to everybody out there: for heaven's sake, if it comes across as asbestos, get the experts in. You owe it to your children.
Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (17:05): I begin by thanking the member for Monash, not only for the speech that he gave to the House just now but equally for his co-chairing of the Parliamentary Group on Asbestos Related Disease and for his many years of commitment to doing something about this product. Asbestos, as all speakers have made clear, kills people by the thousands every year, not only here in Australia but across the world.
On Friday morning, I attended the Asbestos Victims Association's annual memorial service at Pitman Park in Salisbury. The service has been going since 2005. Indeed, it was going before there was a memorial established at Pitman Park, dating back to about 2002. In those early days, there would be a handful of little white crosses that were placed in Pitman Park to identify people who had died from asbestos in that local area. At the service on Friday, there were several hundred crosses. That just highlights the magnitude of the destruction and deaths caused by asbestos just in my area in the northern part of Adelaide.
In the last year for which figures are available, 4,235 lives were lost here in Australia. That was in the year 2017. Those figures are projected to continue at about that rate for probably the next 20 years or so. Of those, 700 or thereabouts, each year for the last few years, have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, and the other 3,500 or thereabouts have been diagnosed with other asbestos related diseases that will ultimately take their lives. As others have quite rightly said, Australia has, per capita, one of the highest incidences of asbestos related diseases in the world. Even though we banned asbestos in this country in 2003, there are still inherent risks associated with it.
I put a question on notice to the Minister for Home Affairs asking him whether there have been, in the last five years, asbestos products detected at the border when they come into Australia, and his answer was:
Yes. Products detected at the border containing asbestos have included:
Children's crayons
Automotive parts within used vehicles: clutches, brake pads, gaskets, door sealants and insulation
Automotive spare parts
Cement fibre boards/panelling
Electric bicycles and scooters
Quad bikes
Industrial gaskets
Gas mask filters
Aircraft parts/insulation
Nut plug material (for mining)
That just highlights the extent to which asbestos is still being used within our community here in Australia, and it highlights the risks for those people who use those products. Sadly, those are the products that have been detected. There are probably many more that have never been detected and are not being detected that are also being used. So it's obviously important that we continue with the campaign of education, awareness and vigilance with respect to how and where asbestos ought to be used.
The other concern I have—and this concern was raised at the PGARD meeting that the member for Monash chaired in this place only last Wednesday—is that, whilst Australia is now slowly getting on top of the issue, that's not the case in Asia and in many developing countries, where they are still using asbestos products, mainly in the form of chrysotile. The suppliers of those products have launched an international campaign claiming that they are relatively safe, contrary to what all the medical opinion would say. It's a dishonest campaign being run in order that they can sell those products to developing countries. My concern is that those developing countries, which today don't have a high rate of asbestos related disease within their countries, will have in the years to come.
There are things we can do. Apart from the education and awareness campaign, we can ensure that there is some consistency in the way we monitor and police the use of asbestos, including the removal of asbestos from homes right around Australia that we know have it within them. But we can also put more money into research because, quite frankly, for all of those people who have been diagnosed with asbestosis, and for those who will be diagnosed—because, more often than not, it takes many years before people are actually diagnosed with the illness—their only hope is medical research, which might ultimately be able to find a cure or at least something that will help them live a much longer and better life.
Ms VAMVAKINOU (Calwell) (17:10): I, too, rise to speak on this very important member's motion on National Asbestos Awareness Week moved by the member for Adelaide. In doing so, can I commend the members for Monash and Bendigo, who, as the co-chairs of Parliamentary Group on Asbestos Related Disease, do an exceptional job in continuing the tradition of raising awareness about the dangers of asbestos exposure. I also want to take this opportunity to associate myself with the comments made by the member for Monash in relation to former senator Lisa Singh, who, alongside the member for Monash, did an incredible amount of work in this place on raising awareness.
This year's theme for National Asbestos Awareness Week is 'Asbestos lurks in more places than you'd think', and is about the dangers that lurk in our homes. The truth is we do love a good do-it-yourself project. It's almost an Aussie way of life. I know, at my home, my husband likes to potter around the backyard and do things that he enjoys doing and that he doesn't necessarily need to engage a tradie to do for us. Home improvements are an important part of the Australian way of life. The possibility of asbestos lurking in every corner of our homes is something that we all need to be very much aware of.
Renovating one's home is also very popular in this country, and it has been for some time. When we renovated our home, the builders checked the house for asbestos and did find some panels in a part of the old shed at the back of our house. I was quite taken aback that I'd been living in a house for 10 years and I wasn't aware that there were asbestos panels in the shed. And of course, you start to worry about it: did we go anywhere near the panels and did we disturb them? But I was very impressed with the professional way in which the builders, adhering to a very strict code, actually moved that asbestos. We need to continue that vigilance and that tradition. According to the Australian government's Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency, one in three homes built between 1940 and 1990 is believed to contain asbestos. In some parts of the country, that can equate to one in every two homes, which is a large number of homes. Asbestos is also not just in homes. We're familiar with the fact that schools, universities and workplaces have asbestos.
Fifteen years ago, we banned the use of asbestos in Australia. However, as I said and as all other speakers have said, it's still present in our homes and in our workplaces, and, as the member for Makin referred to, it's still being imported into this country in products. I want to commend ASEA for choosing to focus on the potential for asbestos in residential environments in this year's National Asbestos Awareness Week. Even though the week officially ended yesterday, I think that we need to be dedicated every day of every week of the year to protecting Australians from unsuspecting access and exposure to hidden asbestos. An estimated 4,000 Australians will die annually from asbestos-related diseases. It is very important for us to keep our communities and our constituents as safe as possible from the dangers of asbestos, and this motion seeks to make that point very strongly. We know that asbestos is dangerous. Many colleagues have spoken about people that they know who have suffered and consequently lost their lives as a result of exposure to asbestos. The battle is never won. There will be more cases as we move forward into the future. We therefore need to continue to raise awareness, to talk about asbestos and to make sure that we don't drop the ball, so to speak.
It is important to note that, in someone's home—often our homes are our castles—it can be in unassuming places such as roofs, insulation, downpipes, walls, bathrooms, kitchens and laundries and under the tiles, carpet and lino. There is always a possibility that it is lurking in the pipes, the fuse boxes or the ventilation shafts and even outdoors like in sheds and fences and in small construction sites. There is always the possibility that you may be unwittingly exposed to asbestos. Therefore, I commend this motion to the Chamber. I congratulate the member for Adelaide for bringing it to the attention of the Chamber for discussion, and I thank all members who have spoken on the motion.
Ms COKER (Corangamite) (17:15): I am pleased to be able to support this motion. Last week was Asbestos Awareness Week, and I urge all Australians to be aware of the danger lurking in our homes. Around 700 people a year are diagnosed with deadly mesothelioma, which is only caused by asbestos. Over 3,300 'other cancer' deaths a year are attributed to asbestos. The victims are tradies, manufacturing and construction workers, power and utility workers and those from many other occupations, but increasingly the victims are home renovators or kids playing in contaminated yards. Many suburban homes still contain asbestos.
Last week, at our parliamentary friends event, I learnt that asbestos does not discriminate. Sadly, one Liberal MP has recently lost a long-serving staff member to asbestos disease. A Labor staffer has also been diagnosed with meso. I pay tribute to the bipartisan work of the member for Monash, Russell Broadbent, along with the member for Bendigo, Lisa Chesters, as co-chairs of the parliamentary group on asbestos. However, for too long it has been left to unions, victims groups and law firms to raise awareness of the dangers of asbestos and to force change.
Raw asbestos was still imported in bulk in the mid-2000s. It was only the action of members of the Maritime Union of Australia, who finally refused to unload any more of this deadly cargo, that brought the trade to a complete halt. Their action was not legal, but it was moral and necessary. Governments had failed workers, and after seeing many of their own members succumb to asbestos related disease, the MUA had had enough. In 2004 and 2005, it was only unions and victims groups which forced James Hardie to leave money in trust in Australia to meet their obligations arising from negligence actions against them. You will recall that they had restructured their business to set up in Europe and to remove all assets from our shores. In my electorate of Corangamite, in one large workplace, now closed, literally dozens have died because of the raw asbestos that was used to channel molten metal as it flowed from furnaces. I note that the youngest recorded victim of mesothelioma was only in his early 20s, despite the very long latency period of this disease. As a three-year-old, he played in the dust as his parents sanded down the asbestos of their home for painting.
Of course, thanks to the Gillard government, we now have the national Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency. Last week, the agency released the National strategic plan for asbestos management and awareness. It has four key elements: improve asbestos awareness to influence behavioural change; identification and effective management of asbestos; safe prioritised removal and effective waste management; and international collaboration and leadership. In a bipartisan way, we must give the agency every support we can. They have produced a great householder awareness kit, and I urge all members and senators to promote it in their social media.
On the fourth priority, international leadership and collaboration, I want to mention two issues. The first is that, together, we should be working to list chrysotile, or white asbestos, as a hazardous substance under the Rotterdam Convention. The listing is being blocked by Russia, a major asbestos exporter. They argue that white asbestos is not dangerous, but we know it has caused meso and cancer here and is recognised as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Russia and Kazakhstan use the fact that white asbestos is not listed under the Rotterdam Convention to argue that it is therefore safe to export to countries. I urge the Morrison government to support the listing. Secondly, Asia is now using huge amounts of asbestos—about the same amount as Australia used at the peak in the early 1980s. Asian countries will face a tsunami of deaths in the coming decades, unless they ban its use and import.
I commend the agency Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA for the leadership they are providing in Asia on this issue. They have had several wins in the last year. The government of Vietnam announced in 2018 that they would ban the use of asbestos in cement sheets in 2023, and the Bandung provincial government in Indonesia have also legislated for bans on asbestos. These countries need enormous support to identify and test for asbestos, to conduct air testing, and to set up registers and a range of other functions that we take for granted. Asbestos is still a killer. Only by working together can we defeat it both here and in our region.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Gillespie ): There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
New South Wales: Roads
Mr FALINSKI (Mackellar) (17:20): I move:
That this House:
(1) recognises the Government’s commitment to reducing traffic congestion through:
(a) a $4 billion Urban Congestion Fund, removing traffic pinch points;
(b) better public transport, improving access and liveability in our cities; and
(c) the dedicated Commuter Car Park Fund aimed at improving access to public transport and taking tens of thousands of cars off our roads;
(2) urge the New South Wales Government to commit to further congestion busting infrastructure on the Northern Beaches including:
(a) commencing construction on the Beaches Link Tunnel towards which the Commonwealth Government has already provided $50 million;
(b) investigate the feasibility of a light rail link connecting the Northern Beaches to Chatswood and the city; and
(c) improve the public transport bus system, including extending the B-Line to Newport; and
(3) acknowledges the benefits of local communities having better roads and reliable transport infrastructure as including:
(a) less cars on the road and therefore less carbon emissions; and
(b) faster travel time, allowing the Australian people to spend more time with their families than stuck in traffic.
When I ask my constituents, 'If you could fix but just one thing, what would it be?' the vast majority respond in a time period that cannot be measured. 'Fix the traffic!' The area I represent is a beautiful—in fact, the most beautiful—part of the world and attracts millions of tourists every year. But people's lives are being made—
Mr Husic interjecting—
Mr FALINSKI: The member for Chifley often flies over it! People's lives are being made miserable by spending hours each week sitting in traffic. In peak periods, it can take hours to get onto the peninsula and across the Spit Bridge and through Mona Vale Road. The Northern Beaches to North Sydney corridor has seen nearly 5,000 hours of delay so far this year, with Mona Vale Road commuters suffering over 7,000 hours worth of delays this year. That makes the southbound Mona Vale Road route the fourth most congested in Sydney.
But this issue is not just a matter of convenience. My constituents are spending hours each day sitting in traffic instead of spending that time with their families. We must say to ourselves as representatives: if we truly care about the welfare of the people we represent, then we must do everything we can to help people spend less time sitting bumper to bumper on busy roads and more time with their families. Improving roads, including widening and repaving; building new infrastructure, like tunnels and bypasses; and improving public transport are all ways in which we can help people.
State governments of the past have failed the Northern Beaches, have failed Sydney and have failed New South Wales. We've fallen behind the rest of the world for infrastructure development. The Northern Beaches are decades behind where they should be thanks to the Carr-Keneally Labor governments, which cancelled more infrastructure projects than they actually started. The Northern Beaches got nothing in terms of infrastructure for over a decade, other than increased housing targets. At a federal level, the government's $4 billion Urban Congestion Fund is going a long way to alleviating traffic congestion and removing pinch points in our road system, and I know Western Sydney has benefited greatly from this. The federal government have committed $50 million to the construction of the Beaches Link tunnel, and recent announcements prove that the project is moving in the right direction. However, the tunnel is not enough. We need more roads widened and better public transport, as well as new and innovative transport solutions.
There should also be an investigation into an east-west link between Dee Why and Chatswood, as well as Macquarie Park and Mona Vale. This could be in the form of a metro rail link or trackless trams. It is something that is being rolled out across China and could be a credible option for major cities in Australia. The evidence is in: the B-Line is helping, but in the next 10 years it will reach crush capacity, and we will be in yet another position of failure. Following the released Infrastructure Australia report, it is evident that simply adding more buses cannot solve our congestion problems, which is why we need to look to other transport solutions—not more regulation that would place more of a hindrance on people's lives but smarter regulation and smarter policies.
The government must look at other innovative solutions for alleviating traffic congestion. A few months ago, I met with Tom Piotrowski from Southern Cross Drones, who told me of his company's ability to transport medical supplies from Mona Vale Hospital to the new Northern Beaches Hospital, which is currently done by vans multiple times per day. A drone would not only mean less expense, less traffic and getting the blood test back to the patient and doctor faster but also reduce the number of vehicles on the road per trip, mean less pollution and be faster and more cost-effective. We've also seen trial dates announced for Uber Air in Melbourne.
These solutions are not fanciful; they are innovative and they are here now. Alleviating traffic congestion is not just a matter of convenience but also one of environmental sustainability. If we can get more cars off the road through shorter travel times and by diverting consumers onto more sustainable mass transport options, we will also reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The Northern Beaches have been neglected for long enough. It's time that they get their fair share, and I will continue to advocate strongly on this issue.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Gillespie ): Do we have a seconder for the motion?
Mr Simmonds: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Mr HUSIC (Chifley) (17:25): I wanted to start on a controversial basis and actually commend the member for Mackellar. He's doing his job. He should be standing up and speaking on behalf of his community, particularly in that part of Sydney, about the need for greater infrastructure investment. In a lot of communities across the country, there are a lot of representatives who think that there should be more infrastructure investment, particularly in crowded cities, to get people moving more. But the reality is, in this day and age, governments—particularly at the federal level—have not realised that if there was any time in which to invest more into infrastructure, this is the time. In terms of the cost and the opportunity to make a real difference, that time is right now.
The member for Mackellar, in doing so, is highlighting two things. The first is the inability of his own side to actually deal with the pressure points that are in his area and the inability to get that money flowing there. You would think the money could be there and it could be put in this time. But it's not happening. That's why he is bringing this resolution. The second thing is—I offer a ray of hope for the member for Mackellar—if you look at the way in which this government makes decisions on infrastructure, he won't have to wait too long. Based on what The Australian wrote on 23 November, when the government made its sudden announcement that it was going to be releasing all this cash for infrastructure, even The Australian acknowledged 'Roads cash splash a win for coalition seats'. The member for Mackellar doesn't have to wait too long. I'm sure if he waits in line, it will happen! It's clearly not being done on the basis of need; it is absolutely being done on the basis of political need.
In New South Wales, only $24 million was new money in the infrastructure spend that was announced by the government back at the tail end of last month. Only $24 million was new, and approximately $550 million had been brought forward. When I cast an eye over all the seats that got it: Page, coalition; Richmond, congratulations, that's a Labor seat; Calare, coalition; Parkes, coalition; Riverina, coalition—
Mr Simmonds: That's because we won more seats! There was an election!
Mr HUSIC: Gilmore was one that got it from the Labor side, as well as Lyne and Farrer. I will take the interjection that claims that, remarkably, they have more seats. The nature of the parliament itself is very close in relation to the numbers on both sides of politics, but the reality is they have shamefully skewed their spending towards the coalition, demonstrating that it's politics, not actual need, for why this has happened. It was not need at all, and this is wrong.
The member for Mackellar might be closer to getting the money that he needs, but in Western Sydney—where we see people being crammed on trains and roads and where they don't have investment in local public transport that could be done by the federal and state governments together to, for example, improve the parking around train stations to encourage greater public transport use—it is not there. It is not there at all in the places that need it. Instead of decongesting the Western Sydney rail line, the New South Wales government is going to spend $20 billion on the Sydney Metro West, which goes to Parramatta—that's as far west as it'll go—but won't put in the money that makes a difference.
Today the 'minister for roundabouts'—I think Alan Tudge is his name—got up and announced that the coalition's idea of congestion busting in Western Sydney is to build an airport. I'm sure a lot of Western Sydney residents will catch a plane to the CBD! But the reality is that they're not serious. They cannot seriously argue that an airport is going to decongest Western Sydney traffic or public transport. They have not put in anything seriously in terms of the M9—the other major motorway that's needed—or opening up the major traffic pressure point between Mount Druitt and Parramatta every morning, which is one of the worst-congested roads in the country according to Infrastructure Australia. They are not putting in money to decongest the rail line. It is an absolute joke that they can claim, in urban infrastructure terms, that the building of an airport is going to make life easier for one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation.
This is not a government that is serious about relieving congestion through urban infrastructure investment. They're not seriously investing in infrastructure now to help the economy or to deal with infrastructure black spots. This is a government more interested in advertising itself than fixing problems.
Mr SIMMONDS (Ryan) (17:31): I will start off by seeking your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker Gillespie; I have a case of the man flu coming on, which, as you can understand, is pretty diabolical! But I never miss an opportunity to talk about how important it is that the Morrison government is investing in delivering infrastructure solutions for our local bottlenecks.
I would like to commend the member for Mackellar for bringing on this motion. We know the coalition's investment—$100 billion in roads, rail and airports to ease congestion, particularly to fix local congestion bottlenecks. I pick up the member for Mackellar's theme: as a government, we are not reducing congestion just for the sake of it or because we like changing stats or anything like that. We do it because it's important to the families in our electorates. Reducing congestion is not an end in itself; it's a way to get people home sooner and safer to the ones that they love. It makes sure they can spend more time playing sport or in the backyard with their kids rather than sitting in congestion. The way that the Labor member for Chifley has just derided the minister, in relation to focusing on urban infrastructure projects like roundabouts, shows just how out of touch Labor is. It is these local projects that will make the biggest difference in the lives of people, certainly in the lives of people in my electorate of Ryan, when they're going home.
We have two very significant local urban infrastructure projects. Before I get onto that, there are a couple of ways that the Morrison government's investment is benefiting the residents of Ryan. First of all, as part of funding for the dedicated commuter car park fund for my electorate of Ryan, they will see increased car parking available at Ferny Grove station. This has been a source of contention for quite some time. As our local suburbs continue to grow, more car parks are required at our local train stations. We have also made a significant investment in the Brisbane Metro. This is set to revolutionise public transport in Brisbane by ensuring we reduce the bottleneck for buses in the Brisbane CBD. It stands in stark contrast to the current Labor state government. We have $300 million on the table and the LNP-led council has the rest of the money on the table. We don't need any money from the Labor state government; we just need them to get out of the way and let us build this important project to improve public transport in the Brisbane CBD. But, despite literally hundreds of meetings between the Brisbane City Council and state Labor officials, Labor still can't see their way to putting pen to paper and letting the council and the federal government get on with these projects. Unfortunately, it is an example that we see time and time again.
The federal government continues to work very well with the Brisbane City Council, nowhere more than on the Indooroopilly roundabout. The federal government has committed $25 million to fix this local congestion hotspot and to work alongside Mayor Adrian Schrinner. For the last few months there has been public consultation about the best option to fix this notorious and dangerous bottleneck. With 32 incidents recorded between 2013 and 2018—10 requiring hospitalisation and a further 17 requiring medical treatment—I know how important it is to my local community that we get on with the job of fixing it.
Hundreds of locals have responded to my call for feedback about the best option to fix this important congestion bottleneck. Overwhelmingly—90 per cent—locals have gone with the overpass option. I provided that feedback to Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner and just last week he announced that he will be progressing with this design so we can get on to fix this notorious intersection in the Ryan electorate.
Make no mistake, residents of Ryan, it is not bipartisan that you get home to your families sooner and safer. It was Labor's own lord mayoral candidate for Brisbane who came out and called this project a 'wicked, wicked waste'. So money is put in to reduce congestion in the western suburbs—which, for decades, have seen chronic underinvestment by Labor state governments—to finally get some projects kickstarted, thanks to this federal government, working in conjunction with an LNP council, and all Labor can do is to turn up their noses at it. It shows again how out of touch they are with local residents who are keen to see congestion reduced—not to mention, as I said, the importance of fixing this bottleneck as a safety issue.
We see it as well with the Kenmore roundabout project. As a federal government we have committed $12.5 million. Labor has been dragged kicking and screaming to match that funding but they show no signs of getting on with the job. I call on Minister Bailey to do that.
Ms WELLS (Lilley) (17:36): Almost six months ago, the Reserve Bank governor urged the Morrison government to get infrastructure projects shovel-ready. That is a forewarning the governor has repeated seven times since the election. I don't need this warning and I know my peers here don't need this warning from the RBA governor to know that Australia's economy is in trouble. I hear it every week from my constituents on the north side of Brisbane, who are struggling to pay for both food and medicine at the same time or to have anything left for Christmas presents after they have paid childcare fees and power bills.
Despite all the confected fanfare of the past fortnight, the actual funding being brought forward in infrastructure for Queensland is less than a quarter of the total package promised. This continues the government's disappointing record on infrastructure. We know that, in the 2018-19 financial year, the Morrison government did not spend a cent from the Urban Congestion Fund. They have spent $17 million of taxpayers' funds on advertising the Urban Congestion Fund, but not a cent on actual urban roads.
The Australian economy needs responsible, proportionate and measured stimulus, not an ad man with no plan. We have seen zero dollars actually promised or spent from the Morrison government on federal infrastructure in my electorate of Lilley. Not a cent has been spent. Out of the 30 projects in the planning stage for Queensland, none of them are planned for the residents of Lilley, despite Brisbane's north side being a booming growth corridor.
The Morrison government has said that Gympie Road, which goes through Lilley and Petrie, will receive $16 million a year for three years for lane augmentation and safety. Go on, I say. In Senate estimates, it was revealed that only the constituents of Petrie—the LNP's Luke Howarth's electorate—will benefit from this investment: 'Deidre Chambers, what a coincidence!' In fact, like the member for Chifley before me has said, The Australian has commented, and reviewed the 'Roads cash splash' as 'a win for Coalition seats':
Coalition seats are the big winners out of Scott Morrison’s $3.8bn in accelerated and new infrastructure spending, while the key battleground states of Queensland and Western Australia will receive the bulk of the funding.
However, in Queensland, it is a cavalcade of LNP seats that are actually going to receive the money: Cunningham Highway upgrade, Maranoa, coalition seat; roads upgrade for the Hinkler Regional Deal, Hinkler, coalition seat; North Brisbane, Bruce Highway western alternative, the seats of Longman, Dickson and Petrie. It is hard when planning infrastructure on the north side or Brisbane to avoid Lilley to get to Dickson, Longman and Petrie, but they have managed it, and credit to them for being that sneaky.
In December 2018, Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Michael McCormack stood on the side of the road in the rain in northern Brisbane and promised $100 million to the Linkfield Road Overpass upgrade. We are now one year on and the status of that project, by admission of the federal government's own website, is: 'Not started'. It is not even in the planning stage. It says, 'Not started'. Yet just a few weeks ago, Scott Morrison had the bravado to come back to Queensland and wave around more promises of accelerated infrastructure spending. What he failed to mention was that, of the $2.8 billion in funding for the bundle of five Queensland projects, only $225.6 million is actually being brought forward. This announcement was tricky, it was misleading and it wasn't good enough.
One of the Morrison government's favourite excuses is that roads and infrastructure are a state issue and not their responsibility, but just this weekend a number of constituents, including Roy and Marlene, came to my mobile offices in McDowall and Aspley and expressed their concerns that the Morrison LNP government and the LNP Brisbane City Council are teaming up to force a four- to six-lane motorway straight through quiet bushland in McDowall, Bridgeman Downs and Chermside West. The communities in McDowall, Bridgeman Downs and Chermside West live amongst the tranquil bushland and peaceful streets specifically because they have chosen this area to raise their young families or enjoy their retirement. They moved to the area specifically to avoid traffic and four- to six-lane motorways. They're now being told the Morrison government wants to put a motorway right through their bushland.
Why wasn't anybody asked about this? The Morrison government has completely bypassed the Queensland state government to give the LNP city council $10 million to do a case study on the feasibility of putting a motorway through bushland in what is a state corridor. It is absurd. The residents of McDowall, Bridgeman Downs and Chermside West rightfully have a lot of questions for their LNP representatives.
The federal government are happy to point the finger, play the blame game and say the state government is not doing enough, but I don't have a lot of patience for hearing what the states need to be doing when the federal government aren't listening to my constituents on the north side about what they actually want or need. We need infrastructure now, and we ask this federal government to do it.
Mrs WICKS (Robertson) (17:41): The Morrison government is demonstrating its commitment to reducing travel times for our hardworking commuters, getting people home sooner and safer and allowing them to spend more time at home with their families instead of being stuck on our roads or our rail networks. So today I want to rise in support of the member for Mackellar's motion and speak about the importance of delivering vital infrastructure for local communities across Australia.
The Morrison government's $4 billion investment in the Urban Congestion Fund over the last two budgets will specifically benefit constituents in my electorate of Robertson through the government's $70 million commitment to the Central Coast roads package and $35 million for commuter car parking upgrades in Gosford and Woy Woy. In 2007, I launched a local roads petition to pinpoint the local roads that were in desperate need of fixing for residents on the Central Coast. The feedback I've received since that time has been absolutely unbelievable. There was extensive input from local residents and there were local roads identified as a priority by Central Coast Council. As a result of that, the Morrison government committed $70 million to fix 29 of the worst roads on the Central Coast, with work on at least 20 expected to begin next year.
Ken Campbell of East Gosford is one of the many local residents who signed my local roads petition, and I do want to thank Ken for his important advocacy. He has been advocating for upgrades to his street in East Gosford, Lushington Street, since April 1983. After decades of Ken's pushing for these upgrades and taking up the fight with other local residents, I am pleased to say that, through the Urban Congestion Fund, $6.6 million has been allocated for Central Coast Council to finally upgrade the road. Without this government's investment through the fund, these upgrades may not have occurred for many, many more years or—who knows?—even decades.
The Ocean Beach Road and Rawson Road intersection at Woy Woy is another important section of road that will receive a $16½ million upgrade under this package. The arterial intersection is one of the most congested places to drive through on the peninsula, as it is located right near a hospital, a high school and the local train station. For years locals have asked for a solution to this bottleneck, and I look forward to seeing the intersection fixed for the residents and commuters who use it every day.
As part of the Urban Congestion Fund, the coalition government has allocated $500 million towards the Commuter Car Park Fund to encourage greater use of public transport and reduce congestion on our local roads. In my electorate of Robertson this will see $30 million for commuter car-parking upgrades at Gosford and $5 million for upgrades at Woy Woy. Wherever I go to speak with commuters at one of our major commuter hubs in the morning, the one issue that comes up time and time again is the lack of available, close parking for commuters on their way to Sydney or Newcastle for work. Tens of thousands of commuters use the Central Coast and Newcastle line every day. These upgrades wouldn't have been possible without the feedback of those people who took the time to have a chat with me at our local train station. The upgrades will help to alleviate the stress of commuters trying to find a car park every morning.
The two car park upgrades are part of a fully funded commitment, unlike upgrades that were promised by Labor in the lead-up to the last election. Labor announced a total of $15 million to improve three commuter car parks. However, $15 million would have built only half a car park. I'd like to suggest to some of my colleagues opposite that, instead of complaining about our commitment to commuter car parking, they should find out how much it costs to fund these projects before pointing the finger at those on this side of the chamber who, like the majority of Australians, are looking forward to seeing these vital infrastructure projects underway.
Finally, the coalition government's commitment to reducing travel times for commuters is further highlighted through our investment in faster rail projects across Australia, with the faster rail business case between Sydney and Newcastle currently underway and due for completion very soon. This business case, in conjunction with the New South Wales state government, is investigating how we can reduce travel times for hardworking commuters through new rail infrastructure or upgrades to existing rail infrastructure. Any improvements that can be made to our rail network will not only reduce travel time but also open up the Central Coast as a region of great opportunities for future growth and development. This is just another example of how the Morrison government is working to cut travel times for our hardworking commuters on the Central Coast. I commend the member for Mackellar for his commitment to better infrastructure on the Northern Beaches, in his local area, and I'm very pleased to support his motion.
Mrs PHILLIPS (Gilmore) (17:46): I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this motion today and to talk about the importance of improved roads and reliable transport for local communities. In rural and regional areas like those in my electorate, this is even more so, given the great distances local people have to travel to reach school, work or medical appointments or to visit family and friends.
In my electorate, the train line ends at Bomaderry and bus transport is extremely limited, so good-quality roads become twice as important—important for car travel but also important for the only public transport option. Local and state roads provide critical connections for local people, businesses, schools and primary producers who use the roads every day to go about their lives. Farming and tourism are two of our biggest industries, and we are proud of them, but both can impact substantially on the state of the roads. Our arterial road, the Princes Highway, is the key connecter for our communities to each other and the rest of New South Wales. It brings in feed for our cattle and transports our exports to their national and international markets. It takes our kids to school, and many people use it every day to travel to work. But the highway can also be dangerous, and our community has been waiting a long time for some of the hotspots to be fixed.
Since I had the absolute honour of being elected member for Gilmore, I have been working with the community to call on the government to bring forward the funding it committed at the election to fix the highway faster. Last week I told the House about the success of this campaign, as the government has announced it will bring forward $145 million in funding for the highway, including the Milton-Ulladulla bypass. This is long-awaited infrastructure that will make a significant impact on the lives of our community and our visitors. I want to see the funding brought forward as soon as possible, and I will continue working with the government and the community in a positive manner until we see this bypass built.
Christmas is fast approaching. It is a time when many in our community feel nervous about being on our roads. People worry about the increase in traffic and congestion, but they also worry about the increase in accidents, injuries and worse—an all too common occurrence. The bypass is not the only project that is desperately needed in our community to address this issue, and I would like to touch on a few others.
The Jervis Bay Road intersection is another project where the community and I have been working together in an effort to secure funding. This intersection is regularly raised with me by local people as being in need of serious and urgent upgrade. This is a notorious and dangerous intersection that has, sadly, claimed too many lives and continues to be a constant source of frustration for locals. The problem only increases in peak times like the school holidays, when tourists naturally flock to the beauty of Jervis Bay. Local group Vincentia Matters have been working tirelessly on this campaign, and I will continue to support them on this. The Princes Highway duplication is another essential project that will improve travel times, reduce congestion and improve safety on this road.
The cost of fixing roads can be quite high in areas as large as the Shoalhaven. The Shoalhaven City Council have over 1,700 kilometres of council serviced roads to maintain, and support from the Australian government is critical to their ability to keep these roads safe. I'm absolutely committed to making sure that our roads are receiving funding and attention from governments at all levels. The Black Spot Program is essential in ensuring local governments have the resources to undertake these necessary repairs and safety upgrades. I will continue to support the projects of the Kiama, Shoalhaven and Eurobodalla councils under this program. I encourage them to continue working with me to fix our local roads.
Again, I say that I'm absolutely thrilled that the government has started listening to the communities of the New South Wales South Coast and will bring forward funding for the Milton-Ulladulla bypass, but the job is not over. Much more needs to be done to make sure that local people are safe on our roads. I promise the community that I will not stop. I will keep working productively with all levels of government to pursue these important road upgrades. I will keep fighting to make sure that our roads are safe.
Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (17:51): I thank the member for Mackellar for his motion because it gives me the opportunity to talk about the Morrison government's investment in congestion-busting road upgrades throughout Western Sydney. Busting congestion means getting to the jobs of the future that we are creating in emerging industries. The Morrison government is creating local jobs in defence, space, advanced manufacturing and more. It is upgrading roads to boost our local economy to continue to create more jobs.
I did the commute out of Western Sydney for 10 years. I know exactly how the 300,000 people currently commuting out of Western Sydney feel every single day as they are stuck in traffic or are getting on the train. They have told me at 6 am at the train station that they don't want to be doing that long commute for work. That's why I'm so passionate about creating the jobs of the future in Western Sydney and delivering the roads, transport and rail infrastructure to get there.
There are many young families in my electorate of Lindsay. For them, busting congestion means getting home sooner and spending more time with their families—experiences and memories that they will cherish forever. For our many small and family businesses, busting congestion means broadening their horizons and getting their world-class produce to more customers. There are almost 15,000 small- and medium-sized businesses benefiting from tax relief delivered by the Morrison government, and we're backing them even further by making sure our local infrastructure is equipped to meet the demands of the future. Soon the Morrison government's $5.3 billion investment in the Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport will take their produce to new markets in South-East Asia and beyond.
Busting congestion means safer roads, and there is nothing I want more for our community than getting people home safely. The Morrison government's $4 billion Urban Congestion Fund will do all these things for people in Western Sydney—$235.5 million of which will fund projects in New South Wales. The $4 billion congestion-busting fund includes the $500 million national Commuter Car Park Fund. In Lindsay we're delivering more commuter parking in St Marys, Kingswood and Emu Plains. This will get more cars off our roads and make sure more commuters have access to public transport.
The Urban Congestion Fund is part of Australia's $100 billion 10-year investment in transport infrastructure. We're busting congestion, delivering safer roads, getting people home to their families quicker and making sure that business produce gets to customers faster. This will help ease congestion so that people get to where they need to be—for those getting to work in the morning and home to their families in the evening, for mum and dad getting the kids to school sport on Saturdays, and for businesses so that they can transport their goods.
The Morrison government is unlocking the potential of Western Sydney and creating local jobs in emerging industries. The Western Sydney City Deal, the $200 million Local Roads Package and, as I said, the $5.3 billion Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan will improve traffic efficiency and safety on our roads. Our considered approach means that we can prioritise the upgrades our community needs most. We're committed to realising the 30-minute city, by delivering the first stage of the North-South Rail Link. We're getting 200,000 jobs by supercharging the aerotropolis and agribusiness precinct as part of building the airport. We're building the skills in our local community through new education opportunities to ensure that the jobs of the future are in Western Sydney and that our local kids have all the opportunities to get those jobs.
The Morrison government has committed $63½ million to upgrade Dunheved Road. This corridor linking the Northern Road to Werrington arterial and Dunheved Business Park has been too congested and too dangerous for the commuters and families using it every day. My community petition to bust congestion and improve safety on this very critical road demonstrates the impact that a safer, less congested Dunheved Road will have for the people of Lindsay. We've committed $115 million to upgrade Mulgoa Road, another local congesting-busting project, to improve safety and traffic flow. Earlier this year I helped turn the first sod on the final stages of the Northern Road and Bringelly Road upgrades, easing congestion for over 15,000 vehicles on the Northern Road and 10,000 on the Bringelly Road every single day.
These are just some of the projects the Morrison government is delivering. We are getting on with the job of delivering programs, like the Urban Congestion Fund, which will ease congestion and deliver local jobs in Western Sydney.
Mr GILES (Scullin) (17:55): Just over 18 months ago the Morrison government—or it might have still been the Turnbull government then; it's easy to forget, isn't it?—announced the Urban Congestion Fund with great fanfare. And what's happened since? They've talked a huge game about busting congestion and getting commuters home sooner and safer, but this is all a political exercise—an exercise in which the rhetoric is not matched by reality. To be fair, the approach of the current government is a marked improvement on the government led by Tony Abbott, which can be best described as congestion boosting through his failure to fund much-needed urban public transport and his comprehensive retreat from national responsibility for urban policy, despite its critical importance to our productivity and, of course, to how people live their lives.
In question time today we heard, I think, a really effective illustration of this gap between the rhetoric of the government and the reality. We heard it in the contribution of Minister Tudge in response to a Dorothy Dixer. To those of us on our side of the House it was very clear that the minister was talking only to himself; the backbench were completely disengaged. To be fair, he was amusing himself—so I'll give him that—but no-one else was listening. The one simple reason for this is that there is very little worth talking about when it comes to the federal government's performance in the Urban Congestion Fund.
We on this side of the House remember—and I'm surprised that members opposite haven't touched on this—that in the first year of its operation not a cent was spent. I will correct myself—actually, some moneys were spent. Nothing was spent on actual infrastructure projects—perhaps a homage to the NAIF, the no actual infrastructure fund—on the congestion-busting projects that we've been hearing about from members opposite, but $16.9 million was signed off on by Minister Cormann for taxpayer funded pre-election advertising. So there was $17 million on advertising and not a cent on congestion. What a damning indictment of this government and this minister, and what an accurate description of the political priorities of Prime Minister Morrison. Everything he does is about politics—nothing about policy outcomes.
That's why I am so pleased that the member for Mackellar has brought forward this motion—because it gives us an opportunity to talk about the Urban Congestion Fund as it is, not as government members imagine it to be. Australians now know that Prime Minister Morrison is much more concerned about spending money on ads to try to make his government look better than he is in investing in infrastructure to improve our lives. Despite the rhetoric of government members, congestion is getting worse. Commuters in Sydney are experiencing a massive 71-minute average journey to and from work each day. For people in my town of Melbourne, it is an average of 65 minutes. Infrastructure Australia predicts road congestion costs in all our major cities will more than double by 2031. Infrastructure Australia's report on crowding and congestion states that in 2016 congestion cost $8 billion and that this is forecast to grow $15.7 billion by 2031. Importantly, it states: 'Notwithstanding current investment in extra capacity, the performance of Sydney’s transport network is not keeping pace.'
The member for Lindsay, in her contribution, talked about the considered approach the government has been taking—considered! In Senate estimates the department listed their Urban Congestion Fund projects and funding profiles, and the member for Lilley noted the striking resemblance between funding contributions and government-held seats in Brisbane. Actually, this is one thing that I share in common with the member for Mackellar. Scullin and Mackellar are both very hard to find in this table. The common theme: they are not marginal seats. This is not an assessment based on need. This is an assessment based purely on politics.
It would be nice to know precisely how Urban Congestion Fund projects are selected by the government. But, of course, we don't know. The department, at estimates, suggested there is a process the government may follow. An official stated:
… we've provided broad advice on urban congestion pinch points. Government took this and other information and took a decision. That will apply to all projects. Some were election commitments, which are obviously a matter for government.
I think this says it all. Scott Morrison's and Alan Tudge's urban congestion infrastructure program is a political document, not an economic plan; it's disgraceful to suggest otherwise. It's holding back our productivity and constraining people's lives in the suburbs.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): I thank the member for Scullin for his contribution. The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Captain Cook's Voyage to Australia: 250th Anniversary
Mr THISTLETHWAITE (Kingsford Smith) (18:01): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) 29 April 2020 is the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook's landing in Botany Bay; and
(b) the Government is planning a range of exhibitions, activities and events to commemorate this occasion;
(2) acknowledges:
(a) that during Captain Cook's expedition to Australia in 1770 a number of Aboriginal artefacts and cultural heritage materials were taken from local Aboriginal people and removed to Great Britain and other countries;
(b) many of these cultural heritage materials are now on display or housed in museums and colleges in Great Britain and other countries; and
(c) the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Return of Cultural Heritage Project has been working to intensify the effort to return material held overseas to their original custodians and owners;
(3) recognises:
(a) the historical, cultural and heritage significance of such cultural heritage materials to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Australian history;
(b) that such cultural items, where possible, should be returned to the original custodians and owners; and
(c) that these cultural materials:
(i) play an important role in truth telling about Captain Cook's expedition and British settlement in Australia; and
(ii) provide ongoing educational opportunities for all Australians about important Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and connection to country; and
(4) calls on the Government to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities, AIATSIS, foreign governments and authorities to:
(a) establish a process for the return of relevant cultural and historical artefacts to the original custodians and owners; and
(b) identify educational opportunities from the return of these important Australian cultural items.
'Aboriginal dispossession started there, in that very place.' They're the words of Gweagal elder Shayne Williams, referring to 29 April 1770, the day Captain Cook set foot on the sand at Kurnell in Botany Bay—or Kamay, as it's known to locals—to claim the east coast of Australia in the name of King George. Cook's historic declaration and his actions began the process of the First Australians being dispossessed of their land, robbed of their culture and cut off from their language. When Cook's expedition left our shores, it took with it the sovereignty of the First Australians over the land that they'd nurtured and inhabited for tens of thousands of years. It also took with it some of the symbols of that sovereignty—cultural artefacts, materials and human remains passed down through generations, through the longest continuing culture and the longest continuing connection with the land on the planet. When Cook and his crew left Botany Bay, they had in their possession many spears, shields and other cultural pieces that tell an important story about our nation's true history. These are deeply cherished and significant cultural relics that connect today's First Australians with their ancestors and with their traditions. They tell the truth about Australian history. In the journals of Sir Joseph Banks and John Hunter are entries recording their first encounters with local Aboriginal people and some of the cultural items that were collected. These items are now predominantly housed and displayed in museums throughout Europe. They belong on their country. They belong with the descendants of those who created them. They belong in Australia.
Next year, Australia will commemorate the 250th anniversary of Cook's journey to our nation. The Australian government is planning various exhibitions, activities and events to mark the occasion. Those government-sponsored commemorations must tell the truth about Australian history. The truth, uncomfortable as it is for some, must recognise that this great land was inhabited by the First Australians—Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—and their land was taken from them without agreement, without treaty and often through bloodshed and suffering. That was unjustified and wrong. The symbolic representation of that truth is the fact that many of those artefacts that belonged to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were taken without their consent by Cook's crew and those that followed and are now in England and other parts of Europe. Since that time, many Australian people have called for the return of those artefacts to communities in Australia. There are a few cases where these requests have been agreed to, but that practice is the exception.
As a gesture of truth-telling, as a gesture of recognition, as a gesture of reconciliation, those artefacts should be returned to their people in Australia, where requested. These artefacts should be returned to country so that the descendants of those from whom they were taken can learn their history and their culture and pass this important heritage on to their children. The Australian government should facilitate this through consultation with First Australians and foreign governments on a process for the return of significant Australian historical artefacts.
The 250th anniversary of Cook's landing is a perfect opportunity to announce an agreement with the British government on a process to identify and repatriate historic Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artefacts and remains, and I call on the Morrison government to make this an important priority of next year's commemorations. I acknowledge the wonderful work of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, which is leading the Return of Cultural Heritage project to intensify efforts to return material held overseas to country for the purposes of cultural revitalisation. I also acknowledge that the government has devoted some funding to this. It's widely recognised that there are thousands of pieces of cultural heritage that remain overseas and that it will take many years just to identify them. And, whilst the government's commitment to this project in conjunction with Cook's commemoration is welcomed, it's a job that must continue beyond 2020. Many have asked why this is important. I've asked myself this question before. The answer was provided perfectly by Rodney Kelly, a descendant who has been campaigning for the return of artefacts from Botany Bay, when he said, 'Our future will be better if we tell the truth about our past.' (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): Is there a seconder? I call the member for Barton.
Ms BURNEY (Barton) (18:06): Thank you, Deputy Speaker; I'm thrilled to be able to second this motion. I'm not going to make a lengthy speech, except to say I congratulate the member for Kingsford Smith, and to say that undertaking this project would make the recognition of James Cook's landing significant.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member for Barton. The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Dr MARTIN (Reid) (18:06): I rise today to acknowledge that 29 April 2020 will mark the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's first voyage to Australia in 1770. The anniversary presents a unique opportunity for us to come together in reflection of our nation's shared history. The government is planning a range of exhibitions, activities and events to commemorate this occasion.
We must acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had already been here for more than 60,000 years and had well-established societies when the Endeavour arrived. Indigenous Australians have a deep understanding of and connection to the land, waters and environment and have well-established art, languages and culture. The tradition and culture of Indigenous Australians has been deeply disrupted by Australia's history of colonial violence. To make matters more complex, in the past the perspectives of Indigenous Australians were erased from our historical narrative. Sadly, many European settlers collected Aboriginal artefacts in an act of dispossession. Ceremonial items, tools, clothing and many objects of cultural and spiritual significance were taken as curiosities for museums. Many of the cultural heritage materials are now on display housed in museums and colleges in England and in other countries. It is important to understand our story from multiple perspectives, including both the view from the shore and the view from the ship.
Truth telling from the perspective of our Indigenous communities is critical to a shared future and helps us build better relationships in the journey to repairing and revitalising the Indigenous spirit. It is through truth telling that we build a nation. With funding from the Morrison government, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies is leading the Return of Cultural Heritage project to intensify efforts to return material held overseas to their original custodians and owners. This project is part of a larger narrative to support the cultural resurgence of Australia's First Nations peoples and to support truth telling about Cook's voyage and our nation's history. At this point, over 100,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects have been identified in overseas collections, and the number is expected to increase as research continues.
I commend the work of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, which has already facilitated and secured the unconditional return of 42 objects from the Illinois State Museum and 43 objects from the University of Manchester directly back to the traditional custodians. The 85 objects secured for return consist of secret and sacred ceremonial and secular items, including but not limited to religious items, ceremonial body ornaments, spears, shields and boomerangs. These artefacts do not just hold historical significance for our nation's Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities; they speak to the ongoing traditions and customs of the oldest living cultures on earth.
The return of cultural heritage material is crucial for Australia's First Nations people, as it ensures significant ceremonies and cultural practices are revived, maintained and practised by future generations. Moreover, these important cultural materials play a critical role in truth-telling about Captain Cook's voyage and British settlement in Australia. They provide ongoing educational opportunities for all Australians about important Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and connection to country.
The spirit of Indigenous Australians is resilient and strong. We have fought to see meaningful change and historical acceptance within Australia's narrative of the past. Over the last half century, many significant steps towards reconciliation have been taken. Nonetheless, as a country, we know that there is much work to be done in order to achieve true national unity and empower Indigenous Australians to revitalise and share their culture. We must continue to honour and celebrate the spirit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in our journey towards restoring the spirit of Indigenous Australians, especially as we approach the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's voyage.
Ms PAYNE (Canberra) (18:11): Next year marks the 250th anniversary of James Cook's first voyage to the east coast of Australia. While there are mixed feelings about this anniversary, of course, it is hard to deny it is an especially significant anniversary for the land we now call Australia.
One project that I will certainly be celebrating is the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies' Return of Cultural Heritage project. AIATSIS, located on Lake Burley Griffin here in my electorate of Canberra, will investigate and facilitate the return of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage materials from overseas back to country. Through investigation of the holdings of international collecting institutions, many in Britain, a database of cultural heritage objects, audio visual and images held in overseas collections will be developed. In doing so, AIATSIS will continue to build relationships with overseas collecting institutions and First Nations communities, further establishing the case with these institutions of the importance of returning items held overseas to their country of origin. AIATSIS also hopes to build a business case for a future work program. The process of repatriation of cultural heritage will be a long one, and further funding by Australian governments and effort by Australian collecting institutions will be required.
The process of returning cultural heritage is important for a number of reasons. In my mind, the most important reason is that the return of cultural heritage will support a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the rich cultural heritage of our First Nations people. Non-indigenous Australia is waking up to this rich cultural heritage of this land's First Nations. We are waking up, with the help of thought leaders like Bruce Pascoe and his book, Dark Emu, to the sophistication of Aboriginal cultures and societies. We are waking up to the rich and numerous languages and dialects that have in many places survived colonisation. Other languages, such as the language of the Ngunawal people of the Canberra region, have been resurrected through a comprehensive process of research.
The thing that has struck me as I learn more about our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures is that these cultures have been staring us in the face in spite of the active suppression of these cultures by colonisers. Whether it is the artefacts still visible at Tidbinbilla or Namadgi here in the ACT, aquaculture systems in the Budj Bim cultural landscape of the Gunditjmara people in Victoria or the use of observations by early settlers and colonists to piece together cultural histories and languages, First Nations cultures are there to be understood and embraced if Australia as a nation chooses to do so. It is clear to me that Canberrans and Australians across the country are eager to learn more about the oldest continuing civilisations that inhabited this land before white settlement and continue to inhabit this country now.
In addition to work on international returns of cultural heritage, significant returns have occurred in Canberra, including the return of Mungo Man by the ANU to the Willandra Lakes area of western New South Wales in 2017. Mungo Man, Australia's oldest human remains, confirmed that people have lived in the Willandra Lakes for over 40,000 years. The significance of this return should not be underestimated, with traditional owners expressing the spiritual significance of the return, as well as its importance in the ongoing process of reconciliation in Australia. And now the Mungo Man story will be part of the Australian history curriculum, with a program designed for year 4 to year 7 students launched in Melbourne earlier this month. The Mungo Man example demonstrates the broad range of impacts the return of First Nations cultural heritage has, not only for First Nations communities but also for our nation as a whole.
I support the member for Kingsford Smith's motion calling on the government to support AIATSIS and the Return of Cultural Heritage project and to identify educational opportunities that the return of these important Australian cultural items provide. Australians, both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and the broader community, have a strong desire to see First Nations culture incorporated more broadly into our education systems, into our politics and into our everyday lives. Just like New Zealand has embraced Maori culture, the opportunities for Australia to incorporate First Nations cultural heritage are immense.
Here in the ACT, the Legislative Assembly moved a motion last week to begin each sitting day with an acknowledgement of country in the Ngunawal language. I call on this parliament to adopt this approach also, with our daily acknowledgement of country delivered in the language of the Canberra region.
The suffering of our First Nations peoples is significant and continues to be felt through the generations. It is projects like the AIATSIS Return of Cultural Heritage and regular acknowledgement of our first peoples in places like this parliament that provide the building blocks for achieving really significant changes. (Time expired)
Mr LEESER (Berowra) (18:17): Australia has a rich history, and we are richer for knowing it in all of its colour and all of its depth. Next year, next April, we will celebrate and commemorate the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's arrival in Australia. Captain Cook was one of the most remarkable men of his era. His voyages greatly contributed to the expansion of human knowledge. Responsible for navigating and mapping, among other places, Labrador, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Hawaii, New Guinea and the east coast of Australia and Tasmania, Cook created accurate maps, later confirmed by satellite images, using what were quite unsophisticated tools. With Sir Joseph Banks, he promoted a greater understanding and knowledge of a wide variety of Australian flora and fauna.
Cook was fastidious about health and hygiene, and, on his long voyage between 1768 and 1771, he lost not a single person to scurvy. This was an amazing feat because, although scurvy had been linked to bad diet, the link between it and vitamin C had not been established until that particular voyage of Captain Cook.
Last year, along with Senator Dodson, I had the honour and privilege of chairing a committee into the constitutional recognition of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and much has been said about the recommendations we made in relation to the Voice, but perhaps less has been focused on the recommendations that we made in relation to having a richer appreciation of our history. I just want to quote again, from the foreword to that very important report, what we both said about Australia's history:
We believe there is a strong desire among all Australians to know more about the history, traditions and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their contact with other Australians both good and bad. A fuller understanding of our history including the relationship between Black and White Australia will lead to a more reconciled nation.
And that is something that all people in this House wish to see. We made recommendations about how one might go about having a greater appreciation of one's history, and I see this in my own community, where school groups and community organisations want to know more about the Indigenous people who lived and continue to live in our area.
In relation to the issue of remains, the committee made a recommendation that:
… the Australian Government consider the establishment, in Canberra, of a National Resting Place, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander remains which could be a place of commemoration, healing and reflection.
I'm pleased to say that the government adopted all of the recommendations of that report, including those two recommendations.
Much has been said in this debate about the role of AIATSIS. I would like to talk about another one of Australia's great institutions and show how that institution has well and truly married the telling of the story of the Cook voyage with due respect to Indigenous people. That institution is the National Library of Australia, and I'm honoured to be the House's representative on that library's council. Last year the National Library of Australia opened the Cook and the Pacific exhibition. It opened on 22 September and ran until 10 February this year—it was timed to coincide with Cook's departure.
Cook and the Pacific told stories of exploration, contact and conflict of Europeans encountering people in the Pacific for the first time and the different ways of understanding the world. Some 80,000 people visited that exhibition, and 53 per cent of those people were from outside Canberra. That exhibit drew on the National Library's extensive collection of materials relating to Captain Cook, including manuscript No. 1, which is the World Heritage listed Cook Endeavour journals, as well as taking material from libraries in the UK, New Zealand and the United States and from other institutions in Australia.
In relation to First Nations, the exhibition content included a strong First Nations voice. The Library consulted with First Nations communities to ensure that the exhibition represented their stories in a culturally sensitive and appropriate way. Consultation with First Nations communities was a significant part of the development of the exhibition process. The curatorial team reached out to all First Nations communities represented in the exhibition in Australia and across the broader Pacific. In Australia, contact was made with the traditional custodians of the Ngunawal and Ngambri peoples of Canberra, the Guugu Yimidhirr of Cooktown, the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council, the Ulladulla Local Aboriginal Land Council, the Sydney Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation and the peoples of Cape York. The participation of each community varied, from minimal to highly engaged and involved, but the feedback that the Library received from those First Nations communities was that this was an incredibly successful process. Indeed, the Library, which had already developed a very strong reputation for engagement with First Nations people, further developed its connections and ways of engaging with people. I think what the Library did in the Cook and the Pacific exhibition shows what can be done with our cultural institutions telling a richer story of Australia's history. (Time expired)
Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (18:22): The electorate of Lindsay has vibrant and diverse communities. We are hardworking, generous and resilient. Our community spirit is strong enough and our relationships mature enough to have an important reflection on Captain James Cook's journey to Australia in 1770, which shaped our nation. This voyage is what made Australia the country it is today. Next year Australia will mark 250 years since Cook's journey, from the perspectives of the ship and from the shore. It is also a time to reflect on the Aboriginal historical and cultural perspectives.
This year's NAIDOC theme was 'Voice. Treaty. Truth.'. Truth-telling engages all Australians in the important process of understanding together. The messages and learnings of NAIDOC Week are not limited by the week itself. The continuation of these themes is integral to further reconciliation. When the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, joined Aboriginal members of our community in Lindsay for an open forum, we all experienced the value that comes from honest, mature local conversations. People in my community want a voice on the issues that matter to them—health, housing and, very importantly, education. I am passionate about ensuring all children have access to the best education and engagement in their education throughout their school journey so that they get the best opportunities to secure a job in the future and to have a secure future themselves.
With over 6,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in my electorate of Lindsay, truth-telling and understanding of our heritage and history deepens the relationships within our community. Cook's journey on the Endeavour to Australia holds historical and cultural significance for all Australians. The Endeavour encapsulates one of history's most storied maritime voyages of scientific exploration and discovery. As our Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, it contributed to making what Australia is today. The 2020 anniversary will see educational experiences along the ship's journey, to provide new generations with insight into this historic venture. We will encourage all Australians, on the anniversary, to take the opportunity to learn more about the voyage's contribution to knowledge, science and history and about its impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Sharing in this important process about this significant part of our nation's history will build on the path to reconciliation through open dialogue and a better understanding of our heritage and shared history.
The Cook 250-year anniversary also marks an important milestone in the repatriation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage. The significance of over 60,000 years of Indigenous culture, society, art and language is captured in over 100,000 objects in museum exhibits around the world. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies is leading the Return of Cultural Heritage project, making great strides in bringing cultural heritage material back to the traditional owners and custodians of country. I am proud that the Morrison government is funding these important efforts to return items of such rich historical and cultural significance. This cultural heritage material plays a key role in the intergenerational transfer of knowledge and the continuation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and tradition.
The anniversary of the Endeavour's journey to Australia offers a chance to revisit and further understand an event that shaped our nation's history. We all share in this history. While some have recently arrived and others have a connection to this land spanning tens of thousands of years, the diversity of heritage strengthens our country and makes it what it is today. Understanding the many perspectives that form the complexity and diversity of Australia brings us closer together. I look forward to continuing the important local conversations that I've started with members of my community of Lindsay. I encourage people in my community to be part of the 250-year anniversary from the perspectives of both the ship and the shore.
Mr GOSLING (Solomon) (18:26): As we heard in the fantastic contributions of the members who spoke before me, next year will be the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook's landing at Botany Bay, in the electorate of my friend the member for Kingsford Smith. It was Captain Cook's first voyage of scientific investigation to the South Pacific, and his mission was to seek evidence of the prophesied Terra Australis, or South Land.
During his voyage, Captain Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia and made several landings, most notably at Botany Bay on 29 April 1770. During these landings, a number of Aboriginal artefacts and cultural heritage materials were taken from First Australians and taken back to Great Britain, where they were archived in universities and displayed in museums. Many of these cultural heritage materials have since been moved and are now on display or housed in museums and colleges not just in the UK but around the world. The arrival of Captain Cook in 1770 marked the start of a process of removal of First Australian cultural heritage from Australia. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, AIATSIS, through its Return of Cultural Heritage project, has been working to return material held overseas to its original custodians and owners.
The repatriation of ancestral remains is of great significance to First Australians and many other indigenous peoples worldwide. Repatriation is an extraordinary achievement and has garnered a better relationship between First Australians, museums and universities. Its importance is enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Repatriation has revealed deep histories and stories, and it creates opportunities for understanding cross-cultural relations, reconciliation approaches and the work of First Australian organisations to achieve their aspirations.
Currently, over 32,000 sacred First Australian objects and ceremonial items held by British institutions have been identified by AIATSIS for return to communities. It's a lot! AIATSIS has identified more than 100,000 items in 220 institutions around the world, most of which were gathering dust in the basements of museums in the US, the UK and parts of Europe. We must recognise the historical, cultural and heritage significance of such items to First Australians and Australian history. Such cultural items, where possible, should be returned to the original custodians and owners.
In 2011, Ned David travelled 13,000 kilometres from his home in the Torres Strait to the Natural History Museum in London. He was on a mission to collect the bones of his ancestors that were collected as scientific specimens from the Torres Strait Islands by Europeans in the 19th century. Recently, sacred Indigenous artefacts have been returned to the Arrernte elders of central Australia after over 100 years in the United States. Arrernte elders spent years working for the return of these objects, which recently arrived in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory from the Manchester Museum in the UK and from the Illinois State Museum in the USA, amongst others.
These cultural materials play an important role in truth-telling about British settlement in Australia. This repatriation provides ongoing educational opportunities for all Australians about important First Australians history, culture and connection to country. I call on the federal government to expand work with First Australian people and communities, with AIATSIS and with foreign governments and authorities to establish an ongoing process for the return of relevant cultural and historical artefacts to the original custodians and owners.
I acknowledge the things that the federal government are doing, but additionally the federal government should identify educational opportunities from the return of these important First Australian cultural items to continue the understanding and recognition in our land. To quote my friend and fellow Territorian, Ted Egan, the return of these items must be done in a sensitive and research based approach that has at its heart mutual recognition and respect for our First Australians.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Human Rights Day
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (18:32): I move:
That this House:
(1) recognises that 10 December 2019 is United Nations Human Rights Day;
(2) acknowledges that the:
(a) United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948 was a milestone moment which formalised mankind's shared aspiration for the equal dignity and worth of every person;
(b) declaration was drafted by representatives of diverse legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world; and
(c) declaration's values and principles of equality, justice and freedom remain as relevant today as they were in 1948;
(3) notes that the promise of the universal declaration is yet to be fully realised and that many people worldwide continue to have their rights threatened, denied or impinged; and
(4) encourages people of all nations to acknowledge Human Rights Day on 10 December 2019 and in their daily lives to stand up for their own rights and the rights of others.
Next Tuesday, 10 December, is Human Rights Day. It is the 70th anniversary of the moment that the United Nations affirmed mankind's belief that, 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,' a restatement of and recommitment to those universal values and the inherent rights proclaimed in that document that were desperately needed in 1948. They are just as critical now. I know that colleagues will speak eloquently and in detail about them following this speech.
I'd like to take this opportunity to draw the House's attention to the deeply disturbing infringements, taking place every year, of the human rights of those who form the first defence for others—our fellow parliamentarians worldwide. Madam Deputy Speaker Wicks, as you know, we recently attended the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Serbia, where we joined 1,800 other parliamentarians from around the world in discussing many of the important issues which unite us. Throughout, I was impressed by my colleagues' commitment and passion for addressing the many challenges that we face. However, during a session of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, I was shocked by the dreadful stories that we heard.
We heard about five parliamentarians in Uganda who were violently arrested in August 2018 in the district of Arua, after the president's convoy was pelted with stones while passing. Two were tortured, while four sustained injuries during the arrest. We heard about credible reports of attacks, violent intimidation, politically motivated criminal proceedings, arbitrary detention and the confiscation of travel documents in Venezuela targeting 96 parliamentarians from the Democratic Unity Roundtable since 2017.
We heard about the abduction of independent MP Ms Seham Sergiwa from her home in Libya by masked men. They wounded her husband and daubed 'The army is a red line not to be crossed' on her house. Since her abduction in July, no trace of her has been found. We heard about the alleged attempted murder, abduction, arbitrary detention, property destruction and exile faced by 69 members of the Yemeni parliament since 2014. Of course, we also heard about the 600 separate criminal and terrorism charges brought against members of the Peoples' Democratic Party in the Turkish parliament over the last four years. Chillingly, many of these charges are for defamation of the president or the Turkish government. Some 29 Turkish parliamentarians are already in jail. In total, there are 468 cases around the world currently being addressed by the IPU's committee on the human rights of MPs.
I would understand if those outside watching this presentation asked, 'Why are the rights of MPs so important when people of all kinds face oppression?' Where the rights of members of parliament are infringed, the rights of all citizens are at great risk. In most countries, parliamentarians are afforded special privileges and freedoms. We spend a great deal of time in secure institutions. Often we are provided with the protection of police or security services. We are high-profile figures whose lives and work play out very visibly in the public domain. Parliamentarians have greater freedoms than most, they are better protected, and infringements of their rights are harder to conceal. Where parliamentarians are at risk, no-one is safe. We can be sure that their suffering is only the most visible part of a deeper and more widespread problem.
Further, when human rights are at risk, it is the people's elected representatives who form their first line of defence. Our unique privileges, our direct access to government and our national media platforms give parliamentarians worldwide the ability and the duty to stand up for their constituents. Sometimes this advocacy can bring about real change in itself. Other times it can be a powerful symbol and a rallying cry for those who would peacefully resist.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): Is the motion seconded?
Mr HAYES (Fowler—Chief Opposition Whip) (18:37): I second the motion. The 10th of December marks International Human Rights Day. On this day, we come together as part of the concerned global community to recommit to the cause of human rights.
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, Australia was among eight nations that played a very key role in its drafting, under the leadership of the Hon. Dr Herbert Vere Evatt. Since then, Australia's commitment to human rights has been enduring. We have advocated for social justice and human rights within our sphere of influence.
Despite the ongoing efforts to protect those rights, many across the world continue to live in deprivation of very basic human rights. In Vietnam, the crackdown on dissent continues. The Vietnamese government maintains a monopoly on political power, supported by a law enforcement system that operates at the direction of the government. I take the opportunity to draw attention to the case of an Australian citizen, Mr Van Kham Chau, who earlier this month was found guilty of terrorism pursuant to the Vietnamese Penal Code and sentenced to 12 years prison by a Vietnamese court. Human rights groups have called his trial a sham, a closed court, in which no entry was granted to the free media and family and friends. Mr Chau is a 70-year-old retired baker from Western Sydney. He is a human rights advocate and is known locally for his charitable work. With no evidence presented by the Vietnamese authorities to substantiate the charge of terrorism, it is imperative that the international community continues to place public pressure on Vietnam.
On behalf of many concerned Cambodian Australians, I also lend my voice in support of human rights and true democracy in Cambodia. In Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen has launched a broad crackdown against various critical independent voices. This includes the arrest of the opposition leaders, the dissolution of the main opposition parties and an assault on media organisations and others critical of his government. If this wasn't concerning enough, the influence of Hun Sen is now being played out in Australian universities, businesses and charities, given recent efforts to recruit students and members of the Cambodian diaspora in building a support base here in this country for the Cambodian dictator.
In the Philippines, extrajudicial killings have been the principal human rights concern, an issue which has escalated with President Duterte's war on drugs, which has now claimed the lives of many thousands of people. President Duterte seems to act with confidence of impunity, regardless of the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution for a transparent and independent inquiry.
In respect of both Cambodia and the Philippines, it appears that China is throwing its weight behind those administrations in order to help them avoid accountability. It also seems that China's Belt and Road Initiative is buying silence with respect to the situation currently on foot in Xinjiang province. I've been moved by the touching stories told by my constituent Zulfia Erk, a very passionate advocate for the Uygur community who is personally affected, as she has five brothers in detention camps in Xinjiang at present. Throughout the region, the Turkic Muslim population of 13 million people are being subjected to restrictions of movement, mass surveillance and significant limitations on their religious freedoms. Recent documents leaked from within the Chinese government have highlighted the government's clear and systematic policy of eradicating Muslim teachings in China as part of their detention and re-education camps for these religious minorities.
What is interesting about all these nations is that they seem to share the same flexible view about the rule of law. As members of the international community, we have a moral, if not legal, responsibility to do all we can to encourage countries in our region to adhere to their international obligations. Our international relationships should not just be built on economics, trade and regional stability but must include promoting and encouraging human rights and challenging our partners to honour their international obligations. We cannot and must not remain silent when people's human rights and the rule of law are being undermined so blatantly.
Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (18:42): One of the great privileges of being the member for Goldstein is that you're able, every time you mention the name, to honour the legacy of a suffragette, a woman by the name of Vida Goldstein who fought for the right of women to be able to vote, buy property and enter marriages on the same terms as men. She embodies part of Australia's human rights legacy because she is part of the continuing journey of our great country towards a greater perfection of pursuit of justice, freedom and fairness for all.
Of course, this great country has so many legacies that we can be proud of. Everybody thinks about New Zealand as the first country that allowed women the right to vote, but we were the first country in the world to allow women the right to vote and to stand for parliament so that you, Deputy Speaker Wicks, could reign over us at this very moment. We have a proud legacy of confronting our difficult past with regard to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and taking pathways to address those past injustices. Nothing could be clearer than the 1967 referendum which allowed for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as full citizens of this country to be counted in the census. We have continued on that journey every step of the way in making sure we recognise the fullness of everybody's equal dignity and worth.
That doesn't come by accident. It is because we're a country built on the rule of law and a respect under the common law for people's basic rights. Those were the values that were embodied in the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. If you go back and look at the UDHR and its development—and not many people have done this, but for my sins I have—you will see how it was ultimately the battleground for the great contest of ideas between collective and individual rights. The Soviet Union under Stalin, and many of the other collectivist countries, wanted a very different declaration focused on how to achieve their objectives around collective aspirations at the expense of the individual. But, in the end, Western liberal democracies won, in what was a principal document which paved the way for many peoples' conception of human rights. People forget that one of the big fights in the development of the UDHR in 1948 was over the concept of free speech. You had the Soviet countries that wanted to shut down any form of speech which merely offended some sections of the community. It was Western liberal democracies who stood up, particularly Australia, and we have a notable history of standing up for the importance of free speech as a cornerstone of people's individual dignity, because it is the manifestation of people's freedom of conscience.
Sadly, in subsequent treaties—in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which became the foundation for many laws that continue to this day—Stalin won the argument, and liberal democracies didn't. If you go back and compare the histories of the two documents, you can read that. Critically, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights understood that one of the most foundational principles of liberalism and liberal democratic rights itself was property rights—and how important that was. Again, when it got to the ICCPR, it was eradicated from that discussion. When you eradicate that legacy of liberal democratic values and what it means for a free people—about the idea of equal dignity and worth in the pursuit of happiness—you erase so much of the dignity that people enjoy. That's how we end up in modern day human rights abuses as much as the atrocities of the past.
I heard the previous speaker, rightly, talk about what is being done to the Uygurs in China, and he deserves commendation for doing so. Of course, it doesn't sit in isolation. The idea of dignity and individual empowerment sits at the heart of the rights of people to self-determine—whether it be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders here or the people of Hong Kong—or to live out the full expression of their individual worth. We see that under threat in any government on earth that imposes religious fundamentalism that prioritises collective religious aspirations over peoples' individual dignity, and the people who suffer are often those most marginalised or disempowered, whether it is women, homosexuals or other religious minorities who equally have a right to be able to live out their life with dignity and purpose.
On Human Rights Day we celebrate our achievements as a country, as one that continues towards a greater sense of perfection for human rights. But we should never allow ourselves to turn a blind eye to the challenges we face today and to call on aspiration from others around the world.
Mr KHALIL (Wills) (18:47): Sunday is Human Rights Day. The 10th of December marks 71 years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was a milestone that articulated the rights and freedoms to which every human being is equally and inalienably entitled. Australia, as a leader in the framing of the UN declaration and one of the world's oldest democracies, prides itself on its commitment to democracy and human rights.
We constantly see in the media that many people around the world continue to have their rights threatened, denied or impinged. As members of parliament, we all on both sides, being part of such a great democracy, believe it is part of our duty to stand up for human rights and speak up when we see those rights diminished or abused here or abroad. It is something I've tried to do since I was elected in 2016, whether it is speaking up about human rights with respect to the Uygur or religious persecution of the Baha'i or the Rohingya, who have been forced into IDP camps or across the border into Bangladesh, or the Kurdish community in northern Syria, or, of course, here at home with respect to upholding the rights of Australians. Many of us across the political spectrum have made those speeches and done that advocacy for so many people who have their human rights impinged upon. It is important we try and do this as part of a democracy that we enjoy, and we shouldn't take that for granted. It is part of our job in this place.
People in my electorate also raised with me a range of human rights issues around the world. They care, and I want to thank them for their passion and commitment on these issues and for taking the time to speak to me about them. Last week, I attended a rally in support of Chilean Australians and their brothers and sisters in Chile, and the right to protest. We have seen some of the images from what is going on in Santiago and other parts of that country.
Peaceful protest and freedom of association are among the founding elements of any decent democracy. If you start to impinge on those rights, you start to pull away at the threads that hold our democracies together. Some of us might take this for granted, as well as other rights such as the right to a good education, the right to good medical care and the right to freedom to practice our religion or to have no religion. They are not all equally available to people in other parts of the world. That is something that we enjoy here in Australia. The UN declaration has become a yardstick. It provides a foundation for a just future for all and has solidified standards for which we should aim. It is, I think, a powerful tool in the fight against oppression and repression around the world, because equality, justice and freedom are principles that remain just as relevant today as they were back in 1948.
Labor's foreign shadow minister, Penny Wong, often speaks about the need to put Australian values like respect for human rights at the centre of our foreign policies—a core element of how we do our foreign affairs. I think most would agree that the world we live in today shows that it is more necessary than ever. We are in a period that is more volatile, that is more problematic with respect to human rights than I can remember it ever being. Numerous demonstrations are occurring in countries around the world, with people rallying for basic political rights—the freedom to just protest without being repressed for better conditions, for economic justice, for economic equality. You are seeing this happen not just in Chile but in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Peru, Indonesia, Iraq and so many other countries. This is happening right now. And it does not really matter where in the world human rights breaches are occurring; it is still our responsibility and our duty as leaders—and we are leaders, to an extent, in our democracy—to speak out against these human rights abuses and to advocate for people who are suffering. I think it is of critical importance for us that we champion human rights whenever and wherever we can—to stand with people fighting for their freedoms, to make those human rights a living reality for everyone.
They know that we are speaking. I have had feedback from so many people who have said, 'Thank you for doing that 30-second or 90-second speech in parliament in support of us.' It does make a difference. In us celebrating this occasion, it is important for us to remember all of the wonderful things that we have in this country and to speak up for those who do not have them.
Ms PAYNE (Canberra) (18:52): Ten December is the United Nations' Human Rights Day. I would like to thank my colleague the member for Fisher for bringing forward this motion. As fellow members of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, we have heard countless stories of inadequate treatment of people with disabilities in Australia that tell us that human rights in this country certainly are not guaranteed. We must continue to fight for the rights of Australians with disability to live a life of choice and control. Tomorrow we will continue to do that, on International Day of People with Disability. We must continue to fight for the rights of our older Australians in aged care. We must continue to fight for the rights of our First Nations peoples, whose land was never ceded and who continue to live with the trauma and suffering inflicted by colonisers. With the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women just last week, we must work harder to make sure our women and girls can live lives free of violence.
In Australia, we have a system of governance that holds our leaders to account—a system where the power of the vote and the right to protest are upheld, despite efforts from our Prime Minister and home affairs minister. Yet these incredible privileges are not a given, and many people around the world simply do not enjoy them. Since the end of the First World War and the creation of the League of Nations, Australia has shown many impressive examples of human rights leadership. There is no doubt in my mind and in the minds of my constituents that our recent treatment of refugees and their ongoing detention in Nauru and Manus Island have damaged this reputation as a human rights leader. I hope that the Australian parliament can find a way to show more compassion to those refugees and treat them better. Nevertheless, Australia must continue to hold its international partners to account when it comes to human rights, including our valued international partners China and Indonesia.
The test of friendship is the ability to hold one another to account, and this Human Rights Day I want to take the opportunity to do so. A few weeks ago I met with a delegation from the Tibetan Parliament in Exile. For nearly 70 years China has consistently violated Tibetans' right to self-determination, their human rights and their liberties. I want to thank the delegation that came and visited me, and I hope that one day the Parliament in Exile can return to Tibet to take up governing once again.
The Chinese government's treatment of the Uygurs continues to be revealed to the international community. Australians have been shocked to read reports of the mass incarceration of Muslim Uygurs and the suppression of their religion and culture, and Australians have been shocked by the suppression of the rights and freedoms that the residents of Hong Kong have come to value so highly since the end of British rule. We urge Hong Kong authorities to engage in a genuine dialogue with the public that addresses widespread concerns, including police conduct, and builds trust between all parties. Labor will continue to call on the government to use its position as a member of the UN Human Rights Council to pursue these issues with Chinese government officials, and I commend the work of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Marise Payne, who has called on the Chinese government to observe the human rights of its people.
The treatment of West Papuans continues to raise concern, and I call on the Indonesian government to do more to ensure the safety of its citizens in the Papuan provinces. Last week I attended a briefing on the situation in West Papua on invitation by the member for Cooper, and it is clear, despite calls from the Australian government and Labor, that the rights of West Papuans continue to be violated. Access by media and human rights organisations continues to be controlled. The democratic rights of the people of West Papua, citizens of one of the world's largest democracies, continue to be suppressed, and the security and safety of West Papuans continues to be violated by government and non-government actors.
Finally, this Human Rights Day I call on the government of Israel to respect the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people to also live in peace and security within their own state. An enduring and just two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only answer, and we call on both Israeli and Palestinian authorities to again work together to achieve such a solution for the sake of your citizens and their safety and prosperity.
Human rights continue to be violated around the world. This Human Rights Day we must remind ourselves that this is the case and continue to push for governments and leaders here in Australia and around the world to uphold the rights of humanity.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Sikh Community
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this House:
(1) recognises that 2019 marks the 550th anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, with his birth being celebrated worldwide as Guru Nanak Gurpurab on Kartik Pooranmashi, the full-moon day in the month of Katak, October-November;
(2) joins with all Sikhs in Australia to acknowledge this significant anniversary; and
(3) notes:
(a) that the Sikh community forms an important and growing segment of our community, with the Sikh faith being one of the emerging religions in Australia; and
(b) the contribution that the growing Sikh community makes to our multicultural nation through its commitment to Guru Nanak's teachings of selfless service and social justice.
Ms ROWLAND (Greenway) (18:58): Waheguru ji ka khalsa waheguru ji ki fateh. It's my pleasure to rise in support of the motion from the member for McEwen. I'm very pleased that this motion has come back to the chamber, which gives me the opportunity to expand on some of my previous comments to the House and extend my heartfelt congratulations to the Australian Sikh community on the momentous occasion of the 550th anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak.
Guru Nanak was a leader, teacher and social reformer. Although he may be long gone, his teachings have had an enduring impact on the world, and he was indeed ahead of his time. He taught that the worth of a person was not determined by some innate quality, be that their gender or a social label, like the family into which one was born, but rather the way in which one interacted with one's neighbours and the world. Guru Nanak maintained, 'He who regards all men as equals is religious.' He rejected the caste system as antiquated and ridiculous, often resulting in strong criticism from many of his contemporaries. His recognition of the role of women in society and teachings about the equality of the sexes is an enduring legacy of the Guru's time on this earth. The Guru's emphasis on love and respect are everlasting, and, particularly during what can often feel like an increasingly divisive time in which to live, these lessons are as relevant as the day he taught them.
I had the wonderful opportunity and the great honour to celebrate this anniversary in Sydney and in my local community with so many Australian Sikhs from all walks of life. For example, Sikh Youth Australia hosted celebrations in Pyrmont which were a beautiful reminder of the way in which the Guru's teachings helped inspire and energise Sikhs hundreds of years after his birth. I acknowledge the member for Werriwa in the chamber: there were tremendous celebrations with the Sikh community in her electorate in south-west Sydney too, as well as right across west and north-west Sydney and, indeed, right across Australia.
Sikhism in Australia is continuing to grow. It's only fitting that this place should acknowledge the values of a religion that fits so well within both the Australian narrative and the Australian identity. Selflessness and social justice are quintessential Australian values. Lending a hand to those in need is something that Australians will always continue to do. We've seen that recently, with the terrible bushfires that have caused so much devastation: ordinary people doing extraordinary things. On that note, we saw the selflessness and community-mindedness of Sydney Sikhs when members of the Guru Nanak Gurudwara in Turramurra delivered food to volunteers from the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Support Rural Fire Brigade. The Guru would be so proud of your dedication to community. I want to acknowledge those Sydney Sikhs and also our many firefighters who have truly gone above and beyond to keep us safe in weeks.
As the federal member for Greenway, I have the privilege of representing a vibrant and welcoming Sikh community in north-west Sydney. Having worked closely with the community over many years, I say with all sincerity how grateful I am for your passionate advocacy and commitment to improving both our local community and this country.
A division having been called in the House of Representatives—
Sitting suspended from 19 : 01 to 19 : 18
Ms STANLEY (Werriwa—Opposition Whip) (19:18): I rise to support the motion and thank and congratulate the member for McEwen for his ongoing contribution to his diverse and multicultural community. Like the honourable member, my electorate of Werriwa has a strong and proud history of many religions, cultures and backgrounds. One of those religions, Sikhism, last month celebrated a significant event: the 550th birthday of its founder, Guru Nanak. Sikhs have a long history in this nation, dating back to the first half of the 19th century. Despite their small numbers, they've made a significant contribution and played a hand in many of this country's major historical milestones—they were at the gold rush, they fought in both world wars, including the Gallipoli campaign, and they made a sizeable contribution to our agriculture sector, especially in bananas and sugarcane.
Sikhism has grown rapidly over the last decade and is now the fifth-largest religion in Australia and the sixth-largest religion in my electorate of Werriwa. I'd like to take this opportunity to make specific mention of two Sikh organisations doing great work in my local community. The Sikh Mission Centre at Austral has been serving its local Sikh community since the early 1990s. For close to two decades, the centre has provided the community with religious service at the gurdwara and vegetarian meals out of its kitchen. It held its celebration for the birth of Guru Nanak in late November. While I was unable to attend, I am well informed that the event was a great success. I congratulate Bawa Singh, the team at the Austral Sikh Mission Centre and all of the devotees for the great work they've done in our local community over 20 years.
Turbans 4 Australia, a Sikh organisation based in my electorate, held their celebration for the birth of Guru Nanak in early November. The event featured a parade through the streets of Liverpool, followed by an event in Bigge Park. The event was very well attended by local Sikhs and wider members of the community, with stalls, performances and vegetarian meals for all in attendance. I also commend Turbans 4 Australia for a recent community campaign to assist our fellow Australians suffering from the tragic bushfires, particularly on the New South Wales north coast. The Sikh community came together, gathered their donations, filled a truck full of pallets and drove it from Sydney to the north coast and onwards to Tenterfield. Under the banner of mates helping mates, these amazing people donated their time, resources, money and possessions to ensure that our bushfire victims got just what they needed. Turbans 4 Australia are regularly involved in charity drives and are always willing to lend a hand to their fellow Australians. Like all Sikhs in this country, they make a contribution to our multicultural nation through the values first inspired by Guru Nanak over five centuries ago and shared by their fellow Australians: selfless service, social justice and equality.
Mr GILES (Scullin) (19:21): I'm very proud to have the opportunity to rise very briefly to make some remarks in support of this very important motion. I want to acknowledge and congratulate my friend the member for McEwen for bringing this before the chamber. He and I are both equally proud to represent, in our neighbouring electorates, a large, vibrant and growing Sikh community and, through them, to have been introduced to the tenets of Sikhism, tenets which have a great impact on how I see the world as well as how I go about my business as a member of parliament.
I was very pleased to have the opportunity to play a role in this place in various celebrations reflecting the 550th anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak. I joined many of my colleagues, in particular the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Grayndler, in paying tribute to Guru Nanak, the 550th anniversary of his birth and his enduring significance, not only to the Sikh community but also, through the celebrations, to the wider Australian community. I say to all those Australians who practise Sikhism: I acknowledge what a wonderful occasion this has been and I look forward to joining you in carrying on the celebrations.
Debate adjourned.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this House:
(1) notes the outstanding success of the 2019 Australian Defence Force (ADF) Parliamentary Program;
(2) recognises:
(a) the opportunity provided to both Senators and Members to participate in the ADF Parliamentary Program to experience the professionalism, skill and dedication of our world-class defence force; and
(b) the exchange element of the ADF Parliamentary Program, where senators and members host an ADF member during a sitting week in parliament; and
(3) acknowledges the 49 members and senators who participated, including those who hosted one of the 27 ADF members during the October 2019 sitting week.
Mr DICK (Oxley) (19:23): I'll be brief tonight to enable the member for Stirling to also contribute. I want to commend the motion to the chamber tonight. It's been an honour to participate in the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program, which has enjoyed bipartisan support since 2001. We know it provides members and senators with the opportunity to experience the professionalism, skill and dedication of the ADF. I was privileged to be on the 2019 trip and to support Operation Okra, which is the Australian Defence Force's contribution to the international effort to combat the Daesh terrorist threat in Iraq and Syria. It's part of Joint Task Force 633 in the Middle East. The operation commenced in 2014 to combat ISIL threats in Iraq. Currently there are around 2,000 ADF personnel deployed in the Middle East region. Our troops not only do an incredible job representing our country but are also working side by side with local forces to train and equip them.
One of the great opportunities I've also had as the member for Oxley has been to visit our troops on the ground in the Middle East and also to spend time in Kabul in Afghanistan. Our Defence personnel remain active in advising, assisting and training Iraqi security forces and training the Afghan National Security Forces. As the son of a World War II veteran, it is important that I honour and commit to those service men and women of our nation, who do such a great job protecting and serving our country. So tonight I want to thank the men and women of the ADF for their great service to our nation and extend my gratitude to Vice Admiral David Johnston AO RAN, the Vice Chief of the Defence Force, and to the service chiefs and the wider Defence community for their ongoing support for the ADF Parliamentary Program.
Mr CONNELLY (Stirling) (19:25): Last week my colleague the hardworking member for Boothby in South Australia, Nicolle Flint, came up to me and said, 'Vince, I've just had the opportunity to drive a minitank.' After a few questions of clarification, I confirmed my suspicion that what the member for Boothby meant by 'minitank' was actually an M113 armoured personnel carrier or APC. I was familiar with the vehicle because, as a new platoon commander in my first career, I had the opportunity to command four of those vehicles and 30 infantry soldiers. I agreed with the member for Boothby and said, 'Yes, it is an awesome vehicle, great fun to drive.' You'll be particularly pleased now, as Nicolle will be, to compare the M113 with the new infantry fighting vehicle which will come into service soon.
As my fellow veterans can attest, sometimes it's a bit hard to describe what it's like operating as a member of the Australian Defence Force. Equally, it's difficult to articulate, and I would have had very little idea before coming into this role, what it's like to be a parliamentarian. This is why I was so excited to hear about the ADF Parliamentary Program. This is a program where ADF men and women get to experience a bit about what policymaking looks like and, equally, parliamentarians get to get their boots on the ground and live in the shoes of our service men and women. Both parliamentarians and ADF people have a common goal, that of service. We are here to serve our nation and to uphold its interests and, of course, the values upon which our democracy is founded. We also share the very real job description of making a lot of sacrifice, spending a lot of time away from family and loved ones and certainly not working normal working hours.
This is the 19th year in which this program has been running, which is testament to its success. There were 45 members and senators who participated this year, and it's great to see that expansion. It's also pleasing to note that, of the 10 new program participants this year, seven were, in fact, only just elected in May this year. I was one of those seven. In October I hosted Squadron Leader Lisa Hubbard in my office for a week. It was wonderful, because Lisa and I had the opportunity to learn a bit from each other about our various roles and processes. This helps us to consider that critical link between national policymaking and Defence boots on the ground or, of course, ships at sea or aircraft in the air. It's really important that we as policymakers understand a bit about the impacts of our decisions on service personnel. I'm very pleased to be part of a government that absolutely takes its service men and women, both former and current, very seriously, and I thank the Prime Minister and the Minister for Veterans and Defence Personnel for their support.
As a former member of Defence and now as a parliamentarian, I cannot commend this program highly enough. It's a wonderful opportunity for parliamentarians to pull on a uniform and experience a little bit about the Australian Defence Force, and it's also an opportunity for ADF personnel to see a bit of what it's like behind the scenes here in parliament. So I encourage absolutely all members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to take the opportunity, when the ADF Parliamentary Program rolls around next year, to pull on that uniform, spend a day in the life of our service men and women and get an understanding of the fantastic work they do and where our policy decisions are implemented at the coalface.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hogan ): The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:30
QUESTIONS IN WRITING
Reserve Bank of Australia
(Question No. 225)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister representing the Minister for Families and Social Services in writing on 21 October 2019:
To ask the Minister representing the Minister for Families and Social Services—(1) In respect of the further reduction in the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cash rate on 2 October 2019, why has the Government not passed on this reduction to the deeming rate.(2) Is it a fact that the Government has instigated an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry into residential mortgage prices and the failure of banks and other financial institutions to pass on RBA cash rate cuts in full to their customers, and to make their pricing practices more transparent; if so, why does the Government not adopt transparency in its determination of deeming rates and why does it not pass on rate cuts in full to pensioners by way of deeming rates.
Mr Robert: The Minister for Families and Social Services has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:
Please refer to the answer provided in response to question in writing No. 28, from the 46th Parliament (House Hansard, 9 September 2019).
Health
(Question No. 229)
Mrs Elliot asked the Minister for Health, in writing, on 24 October 2019:
In respect to the Government's $63.4 million election commitment for expanded cancer treatment and services and the promise to fund a new radiation therapy center in Tweed Heads: (1) Have the funds been allocated; if not, why not and when will the funding be announced. (2) Has the location for the center been decided; if not why not and what community consultation will there be. (3) When will the project: (a) commence; and (b) be completed. (4) What is the average number of cancer patients awaiting radiation therapy in the Tweed Heads region. (5) What is the average out of pocket costs for patients in the Tweed Heads area requiring radiation therapy.
Mr Hunt: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
(1-3) Through the 2019-20 Budget, the Australian Government is providing funding to expand cancer treatment capacity through new radiation therapy services in 13 regional areas. The Tweed Heads region is one of the areas identified for a new centre. The specific locations and support for these services are not yet finalised, with funding to commence in 2020-21.
(4) The department does not collect data on radiotherapy waiting times at the regional level. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's Radiotherapy in Australia 2017-18 Report indicates the following for the period 2017-18:
Table 1 - Radiotherapy waiting times by state/territory (public providers) and national (private) for the period 2017-18 |
|||||
Year |
Measure |
State/territory and sector |
Sector |
Number of courses with valid waiting times data |
Waiting time (days) |
2017–18 |
50% started treatment within (days) |
NSW |
Public |
14,538 |
14 |
2017–18 |
90% started treatment within (days) |
NSW |
Public |
14,538 |
29 |
Table 2 - Radiotherapy emergencies treated with the emergency timeframe by state/territory (public providers) and national (private) for the period 2017–18 |
|||||
Year |
Measure |
State/territory and sector |
Sector |
Number of courses with valid waiting times data |
Per cent treated on the same or next day |
2017–18 |
% of emergencies treated on the same or the next day |
NSW |
Public |
419 |
96.2 |
(5) The department calculates average out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services at the electorate level, not for individual towns or cities. Tweed Heads is in the electorate of Richmond and the information requested appears in Table 3 below.
Table 3: MBS Radiation Oncology services: Average out-of-pocket and Bulk Billing Rate, 2018-19 |
||
Electorate |
Bulk Billing Rate |
Average Out-of-Pocket (for services that were not bulk billed) |
Richmond |
57.6% |
$56.69 |
New South Wales |
78.9% |
$61.25 |
Australia |
74.1% |
$59.17 |
Average Out-of-Pocket are based on patient billed out-of-hospital services
Radiation oncology services defined as MBS Group T02
Source: Unpublished Medicare data, Department of Health