The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Scott Ryan) took the chair at 10:00, read prayers and made an acknowledgement of country.
DOCUMENTS
Tabling
The Clerk: I table documents pursuant to statute as listed on the Dynamic Red.
Full d etails of the documents are recorded in the Journals of the Senate.
Ministerial Conduct
Order for the Production of Documents
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (10:01): I table documents in response to an order for the production of documents in relation to complaints with regard to the Statement of Ministerial Standards.
COMMITTEES
Meeting
The Clerk: Proposals to meet have been lodged as follows:
Education and Employment Legislation and References Committees on Wednesday, 24 July 2019, from 11 am.
Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee on Tuesday, 23 July 2019, from 1.30 pm.
The PRESIDENT (10:01): I remind senators that the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator.
PARLIAMENTARY OFFICE HOLDERS
Temporary Chairs of Committees
The PRESIDENT (10:01): Pursuant to standing order 12, I lay on the table a warrant revoking the warrant nominating Senator McCarthy as a Temporary Chair of Committees.
BUSINESS
Consideration of Legislation
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (10:01): I move:
That the following general business orders of the day be considered today at the time for private senators' bills:
No. 23 Social Services Legislation Amendment (Ending the Poverty Trap) Bill 2018
No. 21 Murray-Darling Basin Commission of Inquiry Bill 2019, which may be proceeded with (second reading speeches only) before the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee reports.
Question agreed to.
BILLS
Social Services Legislation Amendment (Ending the Poverty Trap) Bill 2018
Second Reading
Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (10:02): I move:
That this bill now be read a second time.
I rise today to speak on the Australian Greens' Social Services Legislation Amendment (Ending the Poverty Trap) Bill 2018. This is in fact my fifth attempt to introduce a bill to raise Newstart. Last week was the Raise the Rate Week of Action, and we heard from people across the country about the difficulties they experienced living below the poverty line while on Newstart. I'll outline a few of those later in this contribution.
This bill provides additional financial assistance to single recipients of the basic rate of the Newstart allowance, youth allowance, Austudy, sickness allowance, special benefit, widow allowance and crisis payment, increasing them by $75 a week. The bill will provide additional financial assistance to single recipients of the maximum rate of away-from-home rates of youth allowance, increasing it by an amount of $75 a week.
The intention is for Abstudy to be increased by the amount of $75 a week as well. However, this payment is based in policy rather than in legislation.
Newstart, youth allowance and the other payments mentioned above have not had a real increase in 25 years. The current rate of Newstart and related payments is so low that people are unable to cover basic living costs, such as housing, food, transport, health care and utilities. One of the reasons these payments have fallen so far behind the real cost of living is that they have different indexation arrangements to the pension rate. This bill seeks to rectify this by improving indexation for these payments in line with the pension rate.
The bill will change the indexation arrangements for these payments and other income support payments to bring them into line with the higher of the CPI, the consumer price index, and the pensioner and beneficiary living cost index, the PBLCI. This will ensure that these payments better keep up with the real cost of living similarly to the age pension.
There have been growing calls from the social services sector, from the business sector and from economists to raise the rate of Newstart and youth allowance. This has been going on for many years. Recent research shows the majority of Australians also agree that the current levels of income support payments are too low. A poll commissioned by ACOSS in April this year found that 72 per cent of Australians agree that Newstart should be increased to help people better cover the basic costs of living and search for work. It is absolutely abundantly clear that the government is out of step with the community's expectations.
Last week a number of politicians from across the spectrum joined the ranks of people calling for an increase to Newstart. A number of Labor MPs have publicly come out in support of raising the rate, including Mike Freelander, Nick Champion, Patrick Gorman, Josh Wilson, Ged Kearney, Chris Hayes and in fact Labor leader Anthony Albanese. He said in Perth last Tuesday, 'The bells are ringing for an increase in Newstart.' Former Leader of the Nationals Barnaby Joyce joined current and former coalition colleagues John Howard, Matthew Canavan and Arthur Sinodinos in calling for an increase to Newstart.
I'm glad these members are taking the time to listen to the community and recognise that the current rate is inadequate. Every single parliamentary vote for the bill is a show of solidarity with unemployed workers in this country. I urge all members of parliament to vote on this bill according to their professed beliefs. Every vote for this bill is a vote for the unemployed, for those living in poverty and for members of our community who are doing it tough.
Last year the Productivity Commission found that, despite our having experienced 27 years of uninterrupted economic growth, the proportion of Australians experiencing relative income poverty—around nine to 10 per cent—has not changed. The fact that poverty rates have remained entrenched for decades demonstrates the lack of political will from previous governments and the current one to help those struggling to make ends meet. Today about three million people in Australia are living below the poverty line. This includes 739,000 children and 410,000 young people. Most of the people affected are living in deep poverty, well below the poverty line.
The Poverty in Australia 2018 report measured the average poverty gap in Australia, which is the difference between the incomes of people in poverty and the poverty line. It found that people in poverty are living $135 per week below the poverty line. This is unacceptable in this wealthy country. In a wealthy country like ours, no-one deserves to or should be living in poverty.
These figures paint a picture of a country and a government that are letting down people on the lowest incomes. We are an incredibly wealthy country. We are currently the wealthiest nation in the world when it comes to the median wealth per adult. Today we have a clear choice to make. We can choose to strengthen our social security system of which we were once so proud. This is one of the best levers we have available to reduce poverty in this country. We can choose to help people on income support payments cover everyday essentials like health, heating, food and rent. An immediate increase in Newstart and related payments will change this picture. It will assist in alleviating poverty, help reduce income inequality and help people who are studying and seeking employment. I hope today we can make the right choice for children living in poverty, for families, for students, for single parents and for disabled people.
ACOSS, the Australian Council of Social Service, and the University of New South Wales released the Poverty in Australia 2018 report. The report found that households relying mainly on income support payments are five times more likely to experience poverty compared to those households relying mainly on wages and salaries. This reflects the fact that income support payments are usually below the poverty line. Unsurprisingly, those who experience the highest poverty rates are on youth allowance and Newstart, with 64 per cent of people on youth allowance and 55 per cent of people on Newstart experiencing poverty. The report also revealed that the freezing of Newstart since 1994 has contributed to a progressive deepening of poverty in households that are mainly reliant on Newstart. I find it utterly shameful that this country has the second-worst poverty rate in the OECD amongst unemployed people.
The Salvation Army's 2018 Economic and Social Impact Survey found that, after paying for accommodation, Newstart recipients were left with just $17 a day. How are people expected to look for work when they are living below the poverty line and trying to survive on $17 a day? Poverty can have devastating impacts on a person's health and mental health. It increases a person's risk of homelessness, social isolation and loneliness. How are these circumstances conducive to helping someone find work?
The ACOSS and Jobs Australia report Faces of unemploymentvery clearly demonstrates that Newstart is not a temporary payment. The report found that, in March 2018, 64 per cent of people had received unemployment payments for more than a year, 44 per cent for over two years and 15 per cent for more than five years. It also highlighted how a person's chances of leaving unemployment payments sharply diminish over time. Seeing Newstart as a temporary payment also masks the number of youth allowance recipients who move from youth allowance to Newstart when they turn 22. The latest data from the Department of Social Services shows that people spend an average of 156 weeks on Newstart. So the government is either wilfully ignorant or misleading our nation when it says that two-thirds of people move off Newstart very quickly. It says that but then doesn't acknowledge how many people are on this for over a year—44 per cent for over two years and 15 per cent for over five years.
When faced with increasing calls to raise the rate, this government resorts to the line that 99 per cent of people on Newstart also receive other benefits. Let me be clear: these additional payments in no way substitute for the woefully low rate of Newstart and youth allowance. For most Newstart recipients, the only additional payment they receive is the energy supplement, which is 65c per day. Sixty-five cents per day for a week won't even buy you a cup of coffee; we actually made that point when the energy supplement was put in place. While I argued very strongly for it to be maintained because it helps a tiny bit, it does not raise people out of poverty. Around a third of Newstart recipients receive rent assistance of around $10 a day. Even after you combine the maximum rate of the energy supplement, rent assistance and Newstart, it doesn't come close to covering the basic costs of living.
I ask Australians to not believe what the government says; this is not a transition payment anymore. The employment situation in this country has changed from when the unemployment benefits first came in, and it's certainly changed since 1994. People have to survive on this payment long term. We know that poverty can act as a barrier to finding work. By keeping payments so low, Newstart is doing the opposite of what it is meant to do.
The abysmally low rate of Newstart isn't only affecting adults; it also has a detrimental impact on children. The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth report released in 2019, To have and to have not: measuring child deprivation and opportunity in Australia, found that children living in poverty felt impacts in all areas of their wellbeing, spreading far wider than just the material basics. The report found that children living below the poverty line were 1.7 times more likely to face food insecurity and 2½ times more likely to be missing out on learning at home. We know this has a negative impact on children in the long term because children who grow up in adverse conditions are more likely to experience poorer outcomes as adults. As you might expect, the No. 1 recommendation of the report was to raise the rate of Newstart by $75 a week to give all kids a fair go.
An increase to Newstart would also have an immediate effect on single parents doing it tough. In 2013, following on from the initial legislation that went through in 2006, 80,000 single parents who were originally grandfathered were transferred from parenting payment (single) to Newstart. This resulted in a sharp rise in poverty among unemployed single parents—from 35 per cent in 2013 to 59 per cent in 2015. Every day, single parents are being forced onto Newstart when their youngest child turns eight and being pushed into further poverty. This situation unfairly impacts on women, because over 80 per cent of single parents are women. Children in single-parent families are three times more likely to live in poverty than children in coupled families are. We should be alleviating poverty, not exacerbating it along gender lines. Raising Newstart and the related payments provides us with a real opportunity to change the poverty rates of single-parent families across this country.
One of the distressing scenarios that is all too often left out of the debate is the impact of Newstart on older Australians. The share of older unemployed workers is growing, with 43 per cent of Newstart recipients now older than 45 years. There are now more unemployed workers aged between 55 and 64 receiving Newstart than any other age cohort. Older Australians also spend the most time on Newstart compared to other age groups. I hear too often from older people who are dismissed by potential employers and their employment service providers because of their age. They are considered too old for employment but too young for the age pension. But instead of being able to live with dignity older Australians on Newstart are pushed into poverty long term. Having had to use up virtually all of their savings to qualify for Newstart, they then age on Newstart and go onto the age pension with no savings.
The research paints a stark picture of the devastating impacts of poverty, inequality and deprivation. But what does it mean to actually live on as little as $40 a day? I asked the community to share their personal experiences of living on Newstart. The responses I received were profound, and highlighted the constant stress and anxiety felt by many income support recipients. The words they used to describe what it's like to be on Newstart included 'demeaning', 'humiliating', 'stigmatising', 'degrading' and 'trapped'. One person told me about the worry and despair they felt about being on Newstart:
It's eating one meal (and nothing extravagant) a day, because, in order to pay the minimal bills you have, that's all you can afford. It's being constantly cold in winter. It's getting sick but not going to the doctor unless you really have to. It's wearing your mostly secondhand clothes until they pretty much fall apart. It's dreading socialising because it's likely to cost and if your friends pay your way, they get sick of it and you feel like a dreg for accepting. It's being treated as if you are a useless, bludging scunge by officials, media and others in society. It's despair, loss of ability to see a future for yourself, it's constantly worrying about your ability to keep a roof above your head, to keep Centrelink and compliance agencies happy so you don't get breached and lose your home, your ability to pay your bills and the stigma that goes along with failing at those things which makes it hard in future to get a rental etc. It's not living, it's barely existence.
One parent told me about the consequences of living on Newstart for her and her son:
It breeds depression and anxiety. It leads to social isolation. The stress of worrying about how you will feed your family leads to health issues which cost the Government far more than an increase would. I have gone without food to feed my son, not let him go to birthday parties because I couldn't afford a present to give. I've kept him home from school because I didn't have food to send or petrol to get him there. The depression associated with being financially way under the poverty line leads to mental health issues that are there for life, needing medication which again costs money we don't have and costs the Government. Making people live on the current rate of Newstart is a breach of human rights. It affects mostly single parents and it takes away you dignity.
Another person told me about the damaging impacts of Newstart on her health:
The day I get paid doesn't give me relief at all instead it's when the panic sinks in. I don't eat breakfast or lunch most days because I can't afford it once I've paid bills. Right now I'm sitting here with my last $13 trying to work out how to make it stretch till Tuesday. I go hungry a lot and when you're hungry you feel hopeless it's a constant state of living in despair. I feel like a burden to my family and friends. I had to borrow money off of my dad and he's on a pension. I've been hospitalized before because I've been suicidal over the stress of it all. On Newstart you can't afford to live at all you just exist.
Increasing Newstart and related payments and amending the indexation rate will help reduce poverty for hundreds of thousands of Australians. The cost associated with increasing these payments is far outweighed by the multitude of benefits to the people who are trying to survive on them, but doing so will also benefit our economy and our society. Independent modelling by Deloitte Access Economics last year demonstrated that increasing Newstart by $75 a week would boost the Australian economy by over $4 billion as a result of extra spending. We know it will boost spending because, when people living below the poverty line get access to a few more dollars, they spend them on the basic costs of living. It'll go straight back into the economy. Deloitte also found that increasing Newstart would create an extra 12,000 jobs. If we can afford to hand out tax cuts to people earning $200,000 a year—and those tax cuts, by the way, are about $11,000, and Newstart is $15,000, so they'll get a tax cut of almost the same amount as Newstart—this country can afford to raise Newstart and youth allowance by $75 a week.
We should not overlook the powerful impact that raising these payments will have on our communities. It will help strengthen our local communities by lifting people out of poverty. It will increase people's social and economic participation while they seek employment or undertake study. It will reduce pressure on the charities that are already struggling to keep up with demand as to food relief, housing and homelessness. Last year the proportion of food insecure Australians seeking food relief increased from 46 per cent to 51 per cent.
This country can afford to increase Newstart and youth allowance. We can afford to. And we must enable people to live with dignity. This government is wilfully misleading the community in saying that we can't afford it and that people are only living on these as transition payments. That is just not true, and the statistics bear that out. The statistics from its own Department of Social Security bear out that people are stuck on these payments, living in poverty. I recommend this bill to the chamber.
Senator ASKEW (Tasmania) (10:22): This bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Ending the Poverty Trap) Bill 2018, proposed by the Greens, seeks to amend the Social Security Act to increase Newstart, Austudy and other welfare payments by $150 per fortnight and to standardise indexation for some of these welfare payments. Yet, in spite of its name, it doesn't actually do what the Greens have said it will do, nor does it propose a clear direction to end the so-called poverty trap. Section 53 of the Constitution makes clear that a measure appropriating revenue or moneys shall not originate in the Senate, so this bill includes a clause in part 5 to state that there will in fact be no increase in any of the social security benefits mentioned in the bill, including the Newstart allowance, unless money is appropriated by the parliament for that purpose. It is, in plain language, a stunt.
But, putting that fact to one side, it is sadly true to say that there are people in our country living in poverty and for a wide range of reasons. The issue of poverty within Australia cannot be dealt with by some one-size-fits-all approach. You can't just wave a magic wand and give welfare recipients a few more dollars and say you have fixed the so-called poverty trap.
Simply throwing money at something will not necessarily fix it and the consequences that flow from the issue. For example, we need to address the issues in some communities within Australia where there is a large proportion of intergenerational welfare dependency. Without addressing what can sadly develop into ingrained behaviours, we will not reduce that dependency—in fact, the opposite will be the case: we will actually further cement welfare dependency for many people in those communities.
As I mentioned, this is not a one-size-fits-all approach. That is exactly why the Morrison government has continually reviewed existing programs and introduced new ones aimed at reducing the number of people on welfare. Our focus is on getting the unemployed into work. As my colleagues on this side of the chamber know all too well, the best form of welfare is a job, and this is not just a throwaway line, even if it is something the Greens hate to hear. The Morrison Liberal-National coalition government is actively boosting employment, getting more Australians into work and reducing dependency on welfare. I think we all understand that the Newstart allowance and other income support payments are intended to be a safety net for those members of the community who require financial assistance while they look for employment. These allowances are not designed as a long-term payment for people, and this is shown by the fact that around two-thirds of jobseekers who are granted Newstart exit income support within 12 months.
A hundred and seventy-two billion dollars was allocated last financial year to welfare expenditure in our budget. This represents 35 per cent of all government spending for the financial year. Our welfare system is designed to be there to help those in need. At the same time, the government—any government—must undertake a balancing act to both provide fair payments to welfare recipients and manage taxpayer funds. Every cent that is spent on welfare is a cent that has come from the hip pocket of working Australians. As the old saying goes, governments don't have any money; they only have your money. It's the government's responsibility to ensure welfare and social services are sustainable and managed responsibly both now and into the future. We need to be able to provide support for those Australians in need when they need it most and also ensure that our children, the future generations of Australians, are not burdened with government overspending for decades to come.
The Morrison government takes a philosophical approach that welfare payments should generally be seen as a hand up, not a handout, and this approach continues to bear fruit and be supported by the coalition government's employment achievements. Since the coalition government came into office in September 2013, around 1.4 million jobs have been created, which is an increase of 12.2 per cent. That's around 240,000 jobs per year. This compares to an average of just 155,000 per year the last time Labor was in government. The unemployment rate has declined by 0.2 percentage points over the year, to 5.2 per cent in May 2019, while the participation rate is at a record high of 66 per cent. In figures announced last week, full-time employment had risen by 21,100 to stand at a record high of 8,815,600, which is 2.9 per cent higher than it was a year ago. Due to our measures, more Australians are getting out of the social welfare cycle and into jobs. There are now—as at June 2019—230,000 fewer working-age Australians on welfare than in June 2014. We now see the lowest number of working-age Australians on income support payments in 30 years, with welfare dependence at 14.3 per cent. This is all achieved under a strong coalition government.
The coalition government is delivering a range of programs to help jobseekers into employment. The government has invested $18.4 million into the Regional Employment Trials Program, which has been rolled out in 10 regions across the country, including in the north and north-west of my home state, Tasmania. The program is designed to bring local organisations, training providers, not-for-profit organisations and other services together to assist unemployed Australians to prepare for and find work, by providing employment and training opportunities tailored to their local needs. Over 3,200 unemployed people are expected to participate in these projects Australia wide.
Another coalition government initiative for areas where the local labour market is facing difficulties is the Stronger Transitions program. Employment facilitators are located on the ground to provide support and connect workers with potential employers, training and support services. Stronger Transitions has been assisting workers facing retrenchment to transition to new jobs and also prepare for the jobs of the future. In Tasmania, for example, a Devonport jobs fair last year was attended by 802 people. There were 44 exhibitors and 114 jobs on offer that day. Similar fairs have been held and continue to be held across the country.
Earlier this month, the Career Transition Assistance program was rolled out nationwide. The scheme will support mature-aged jobseekers to build the skills they need to transition into work by better identifying their transferable skills and improving their job readiness for jobs in their area. This will be tailored to local job markets and develop the skills needed in the area. It will also include assistance in developing digital and technological literacy.
The coalition government also continues to support a range of programs and activities for jobseekers to gain experience in the workforce. These include the PaTH internships for young jobseekers, which provide short-term work placement opportunities, allowing them to demonstrate and develop skills to improve their employment prospects. Participants of the PaTH internships are also eligible for an additional incentive payment of $200 per fortnight. More than 76,000 young people have already participated in the PaTH program, with over 62.5 per cent moving into employment after participating in at least one element of the program. The National Work Experience Program, as the name suggests, places jobseekers in work experience to gain confidence in the workforce and develop skills. There are also incentive payments available and wage subsidies for businesses that provide ongoing employment to the participants after they have completed their work experience. These are just a few of the ways that the coalition government has been encouraging more Australians to move off welfare and into work. Our goal is to get as many people into work as possible.
For those who have not yet been successful in gaining employment, the safety net provided by the government continues to be available through a range of services and relief measures. As the Senate has heard in previous contributions on this bill, 99 per cent of Newstart recipients also receive other benefit payments or allowances. These benefits include the energy supplement. Earlier this year the coalition government extended the one-off energy assistance payment to Newstart recipients in order to help with increases in energy prices. Those on Newstart who rent are eligible for rent assistance. Newstart allowance recipients are also eligible for the telephone allowance and pharmaceutical allowance. Newstart recipients with children and families are also likely to receive family tax benefit part A and/or family tax benefit part B. The coalition government invests around $29 billion each year to support families through these family tax benefits, childcare payments and the paid parental leave schemes.
The government has also invested around $2 billion in funding to support community organisations around the country. These community organisations provide help and support to vulnerable Australians when they need it most. The Department of Social Services Families and Communities Program provides further support to vulnerable families to improve children's wellbeing, to help improve financial capability and literacy and to build stronger and more resilient communities.
The coalition government is actively working to break down the barriers to unemployment, to provide the hand-up that people need to get off welfare and into the workforce. I'm sure the majority of those senators sitting opposite recognise that this bill will not fix the wide range of issues surrounding unemployment. Only a few days ago the Leader of the Opposition was quoted in The Australian newspaper as saying that this bill is 'just a little stunt' and stated that the problem with the Greens bill is that it 'was about them, not about the unemployed'. When Senator Watt spoke on the bill in the last parliament, in 2018, he made similar comments.
Labor have made these sorts of remarks about this Greens' bill but they have been much less clear about their position on Newstart. Before the election, the then opposition leader, Mr Shorten, stated that Labor would initiate some sort of review into the rate of Newstart but, curiously, when pressed would not be specific about what that meant. Even more curiously, their pre-election costings made no provision for an increase in the Newstart allowance. Just last month, when asked about Labor's position, the new shadow Treasurer, Dr Chalmers, apparently ruled out a review into Newstart from the opposition. Labor have been talking about the Greens making political stunts yet at the same time don't seem to have their own policy position on Newstart—or, if they do, they haven't shared it with the Australian people. We only know that they are doing the right thing in this instance and voting down this stunt of a bill.
There is one thing I will say about the Greens, and that is that they are consistent in their cavalier disregard for the consequences of public spending. Unlike the major political parties in this place, they have never actually had to take the responsibility of managing government finances, and in this bill seemed to adopt their usual approach that the Consolidated Revenue Fund is some sort of magic pudding which can be spent without any financial consequences for other public expenditure.
It would be more useful if all of us in this chamber and, more importantly, as citizens of this great nation returned our minds to encouraging and supporting more people to move off Newstart and into jobs. The coalition government has the track record of doing this and is continuing to assist more Australians than ever before into work and off welfare. I urge the Senate to oppose this bill.
Senator DODSON (Western Australia) (10:35): I rise to speak in relation to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Ending the Poverty Trap) Bill 2018. The rate of Newstart is obviously too low, and the government needs to increase it. It's a very simple matter, but complex. But it has to be addressed. It's just not possible to live with dignity on $40 a day. I don't know whether you've ever seen people walking in the streets hoping to find someone that might give them a dollar to supplement their meagre bit of income in order to buy something to eat or to pay for something that they need to fix. It's not a pleasant sight.
I remember an old lady once coming from Bathurst Island. She came to Darwin, and she saw Aboriginal people and white people looking into the rubbish bins—these are the public rubbish bins on the streets—for things to take out either to eat, to sell or to use in some other manner. She remarked to me that Australia must be a poor place, because people have to live by going to the rubbish bins, and that she felt very sympathetic to the Aboriginal people. I see many things on a daily basis where I come from, in Broome, and in Fitzroy Crossing, Kununurra or any of those towns in the Kimberley and the Pilbara. I don't see the lauded words about how people are well off, how they're getting ahead, where the jobs are and how people are actually participating in a world that we would like to see them participating in. Newstart is trapping people in poverty. It's pushing them into homelessness and, if you're homeless, that's the start of many other social problems, of course. It's preventing people from getting work. If there's work to be had, it prevents people from getting it.
The refusal of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to even acknowledge the seriousness of this problem appears very cruel and heartless. We're talking about fellow human beings, whether they're First Nations peoples or others or whether they're in their 50s or are young people. We're talking about people who have, for one reason or another, come to rely upon a measure that the government believes is very generous but in reality is not. How does the government expect people to find work if they can't afford a haircut, new shoes or a decent shirt? How are people meant to get to an interview if they can't afford to keep a car on the road or pay for public transport—if it exists? It does not in some of these places. How does the government expect people to keep healthy if they can't afford to eat well and eat good food, to replace a refrigerator or the air conditioning if it's broken down, or to go to the doctor and have their prescriptions actually filled?
This is why Labor took to the election a commitment to review the payment, the purpose of which was to address Newstart's inadequacy by increasing the rate and lifting people out of poverty, just as we did with the pension when we were last in government. But we did not win the election, and the ball is now in the government's court, sitting there waiting for the Treasurer and Prime Minister to act, to show some compassion and empathy with those in our society who live in poverty.
The current rate of Newstart is simply not enough to live on, and the government must increase it. There are over 722,000 Australians who rely on Newstart and almost one million Australians who rely on Newstart and other allowances, like sickness allowance and youth allowance, that are linked to the Newstart rate,. We've already heard that there is broad support for boosting Newstart. Boosting it is backed by the Business Council of Australia, as well as former Liberal leaders John Howard and John Hewson—I bet they live on more than $40 a day. COTA, the Council on the Ageing, and National Seniors have called for its increase as have COSBOA, the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, the Small Business Association of Australia, Deloitte, KPMG and the Local Government Association. We can also add the Hon. Barnaby Joyce, Senator Canavan and Senator Sinodinos to the list because of their concerns about it. Even the Reserve Bank has lent its support to an increase. When the governor, Philip Lowe, was asked recently in Adelaide whether Newstart should be increased, he said:
Anything at the moment that can boost income growth is good for the economy.
… … …
… stronger support payments for unemployed people will help as well but that's up to the government.
He's right. It is up to the government, and they need to explain why they keep ruling it out.
Increasing Newstart would be a very quick and very effective form of economic stimulus, as so many economists have pointed out. It would help people in those regions under the most economic pressure. An increase would be spent locally, creating jobs where they are needed and boosting the local economy. With interest rates lower than during the GFC, wages growth at a record low and unemployment and underemployment hurting families, the government has an economic opportunity here to again show how great it is at managing our economy by dealing with the least within it. Of course, the government is trying desperately to say, 'There's nothing to see here; you're all mistaken. Newstart's okay.'
In defending the indefensible, there are three red herrings that Liberal and National ministers, MPs and senators have in high rotation: people get other payments; Newstart is indexed; it's only a temporary payment. Each of these arguments is disingenuous. People on Newstart deserve to be treated with much more respect by this government. It's their government, after all, as well.
'People get other payments.' A favourite argument of ministers at the moment is to say, 'Yes, 40 bucks a day isn't very much, but, don't worry, people get other payments.' The Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg, said last week:
We're not changing Newstart and the reason why is Newstart recipients, 99 per cent of [them] receive other benefits, so it might be a parenting benefit or another benefit.
This is a very sneaky line for the Treasurer to put forward, especially when he has literally thousands of bureaucrats to make sure his numbers are right.
Let's look at the facts according to the government's own figures. In answers provided to Senate estimates, the Department of Social Security confirmed that 52 per cent of all Newstart recipients receive only the base rate of Newstart plus supplements. The most common of these is the energy supplement, which is just $8.80 a fortnight. The department has also confirmed that, on average, 52 per cent of Newstart recipients receive just $14.64 a fortnight in supplements. This means the majority of people on Newstart are getting by on $40 a day plus a dollar. 'A Dollar Down and a Dollar a Week'—haven't we heard that song before! One of the most egregious examples of out-of-touch politicians was the Treasurer seriously arguing that Newstart doesn't need to go up because most Australians get a dollar a day of other payments. This line is nothing more than a cynical sound bite. Even rent assistance is only received by 21 per cent of couples and singles on Newstart. The average rent people are paying is $456 a fortnight, and only $115, on average, is covered by rent assistance. The Treasurer should choose his words more carefully when he's talking about people in such difficult circumstances because he does wield an enormous amount of influence and, if the poor and the struggling and those who live in hopelessness do not hear words of encouragement from the second most powerful person in the country—the Treasurer—then what hope is there for them?
'Newstart is indexed.' The second red herring is the Liberals and Nationals claiming that Newstart doesn't need to be increased because it's indexed twice a year. But this is the problem: it only goes up by CPI, not the cost of living and not in line with wages. That is why people on Newstart have fallen so far behind. There hasn't been a single real increase in Newstart payments in 25 years. It simply hasn't kept up with community living standards. This compares to the pension, which Labor reviewed and boosted significantly when we were in government. Labor's changes mean the pension is indexed by whichever is higher between the CPI and the Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index, which is a better measure of cost of living. The pension is also pegged to wages. Of course, the government wants to cut pensions by linking indexation to CPI, which would be a cut of $80 a week within 10 years.
'Newstart is a temporary payment.' The third red herring regularly deployed by the Liberal and Nationals is that Newstart is only a temporary payment. This is not the case for many people, particularly if they're in regions where local economies have been hit hard by structural change. In fact, the average time a person is on Newstart is three years. Can you imagine living on $40 a day for three years? One month would drive you insane. Three years would make you give up hope that your country cared for you or that your government had any compassion for your circumstances. The question the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and the minister for social security really need to answer is not 'Could you live on $40 a day' but 'Could you live on $40 a day for three years?' That's the question. Of course no-one can do that without falling into poverty.
Older people are on Newstart. Many of those on Newstart for long periods are older Australians. People over 55 make up the single largest group on Newstart. There are more than 183,000 Australians between 55 and the pension age who are on Newstart. That is one in four people on Newstart.
It is very difficult to get another job if you have been made redundant in your late 50s. After working for decades at Holden, Ford or Toyota—most of those are gone—or at whatever employment you had, it's very hard to get re-employed in your 50s, particularly if you worked in the trades areas or other hard areas. There are many men, in particular, in this situation who are struggling to live with any dignity after working for so long.
We also speak of people on the land. There are many women who have struggled to get back into the workforce after caring for their children, looking after aged parents or divorce. This is counter to the tired old stereotype that those people opposite like to rely on, which is linking unemployment to young people. It's time the government stopped simply ignoring those on Newstart.
The head of COTA Australia, Ian Yates, has called out the government's weak arguments for refusing to increase Newstart. He said:
Just blanket saying no on the basis that it is a short-term benefit is flying in the face of reality when people over the aged of 50, and particularly over the age of 60, are regularly staying on it for many years.
It is very difficult to live on Newstart, so for older unemployed people they run down their assets and they make decisions in terms of what they eat, medicines that they might have … that again is counterproductive because that ends up costing the Government more in the health system.
Ministers claim that the pension is generous. Of course, a dismissive and uncaring attitude towards pensioners and people who rely on social security is what Australians expect from the Liberals and Nationals. Just last week, the Minister for Families and Social Services described the pension as generous. She said:
I don't think a debate about whether I could live on (the pension) or not is relevant. It is a generous amount of money …
If the pension is generous, what would the minister describe Newstart as?
All of this does matter because she's in charge. Any increase in Newstart won't happen until the minister and her government drop their opposition to it. Newstart can only increase if the government want it to increase. We all know that Newstart cannot increase until the government want it to increase; they have the numbers in the House of Representatives. It's only the government that can get money bills through the House of Representatives, as was ably told to us earlier.
Increasing Newstart is very important, but this bill we are debating today is itself simply playing politics. That's because we know the government is responsible for this and the government has to do something about it. There is absolutely no chance of increasing Newstart unless the government comes to the party. We know that's not going to happen, so we've wasted a bit of time here this morning. It's something that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have ruled out. It is time the government reviewed the payment and put forward an increase which it will support. Until it does that, hundreds of thousands of Australians will remain needlessly stuck in poverty, shut out of work and cut off from playing a full role in our community.
Australians are worried about inequality and disadvantage. We don't view ourselves as an unequal society. We don't want to tread the American pathway, but we see poverty, disadvantage and homelessness in our country. (Time expired)
Senator WATERS (Queensland) (10:55): I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Ending the Poverty Trap) Bill 2018, which my fantastic and dedicated colleague Senator Siewert has brought before this parliament once again. I laud her for doing so.
It brings to mind the purpose of us being here. We've just heard Senator Dodson deliver, in the main, a really moving speech which set out all of the beautiful arguments for the economic and social imperative for increasing Newstart. Very disappointingly, at the end of his speech he just described the whole exercise as, 'We've wasted a bit of time this morning in talking about these issues,' because he thinks that the government isn't going to do this. Well, what's the point of parliament if we are not here to advocate for the right thing to do to help people and to argue our case for good policy measures that help genuine human beings? That is, in fact, our job: to be in here and represent them.
So I feel very disappointed at the lack of hope. Sure, we've got a hideous government that doesn't give a damn about anyone except its wealthy donors; but we see positive steps, with people in the business community calling for an increase in Newstart. Of course we have ACOSS and other fantastic community organisations that have long called for an increase in Newstart, but we now have people in the Nationals calling for an increase in Newstart and we now have people in the Labor ranks calling for an increase in Newstart. So I just don't accept that it is a waste of time for us to continue to raise this and to put out the actual experiences of people who are being forced to live so far below the poverty line. It is beyond a lack of dignity; it is a crime, in my view. I think that is actually a really important task for us. That is how we convince people to change their minds and to do the right thing, to step up and actually act like a government and act in the interests of people.
The evidence is really clear. We saw, just two weeks ago, in some misguided attempt at economic stimulus, $158 billion dished out—$90-odd billion of which is going to people who are already extremely wealthy. All of the economic commentators say that is not the way to create stimulus. Those people will bank that money. We have three million Australians who are living in poverty, below the poverty line, on Newstart. If they want economic stimulus, even if they don't care about the human face of these people—and it's pretty clear that they haven't so far—then lift Newstart. These people are desperate to spend that money because they don't actually have enough money to meet their basic needs. I'm sure they want a second-hand pair of shoes to go to that interview. I'm sure they want the bus fare or the petrol money to get to that interview. I'm sure they want to buy their child lunch for school.
These are real people we are talking about, and it's very disappointing, when there is clear drive in the community and across the business and community sectors—and now amongst the backbench—for this to happen, that hope is given up too early. We will not give up fighting for this, and more and more people are going to join the call for this. I think it's inevitable that we will get an increase in Newstart, because that is actually our job here in parliament. It's to act in the interests of Australians. It is perfectly clear, when you have three million Australians who cannot afford to feed their children or to get to a job interview, that there is an unmet need here. I have confidence that ultimately this rate will be lifted, and I, personally, hope that it's by more than $75.
They have to live on 40 bucks a day, and after they've paid their rent it's less than $17. It often gets asked rhetorically, 'Could you live on $40 a day?' It's just really embarrassing to listen to people like Minister Cormann refuse to answer that question. The answer is obvious: no-one can live on $40 a day, let alone for the average of three years that we condemn people to live on it for. Why don't they just come out and be honest about it? A transition payment! I wish! But there are actually more people than jobs. The statistics show that it's a good three years that people are stuck on it. In fact, 15 per cent of people have been on it for more than five years. A particularly heartbreaking thing is that these are often older workers. These people are desperate to get back into the workforce. No-one will hire them.
When you add to that the housing crisis that we are in—and we saw that Anglicare study, I think, last year; Senator Siewert reminded me of it earlier. It showed that, actually, there was one property in the whole of the nation that was considered affordable to rent if you were on Newstart. That is one property for the three million people that are in poverty on Newstart. If the government aren't going to raise Newstart, what are they going to do about fixing the housing crisis? Unfortunately, they will not do much, by the sound of their policy platform. They'd rather run scare campaigns about franking credits for rich people.
I am very embarrassed by the agenda of this government and I think it brings the entire institution into disrepute when we see massive tax cuts handed out to wealthy people, massive corporate tax cuts and favours done for big donors, while ordinary Australians and the environment on which we all rely are utterly neglected, derided and degraded. The cheek of you. Have some dignity, have some compassion and please reflect on what your role is in this place. Are you here just to go out for lunch with lobbyists and line up the job that you want to move into after you finish in politics? I hope that doesn't describe everyone in this place. I certainly know it doesn't describe us Greens. But, seriously, we've got an opportunity to do the right thing here.
I also heard one of our newer senators describe this bill as a stunt. We in this party will continue to raise issues that need action. We will continue to stand up for people that deserve a bit of extra help in this incredibly wealthy nation of ours, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is growing. We make no apology for putting these issues on the agenda. You might find it awkward, inconvenient or a waste of time, as it was, sadly, described, but we do not. There are three million people that need our help. It's up to you how you vote on this bill, and I believe you're not even going to let us have a vote on this bill today. When this bill does eventually come to a vote, I hope that people vote with their conscience and vote according to their professed values. Let's just get this done, folks. Let's be honest; we spend a lot of time wasting time in this place. This is one of the real issues that could materially improve people's lives. We could help many millions of people, hundreds of thousands of those children. What more noble and worthy cause could there be?
So I urge people to back up the pretty words, to back up your backbench statements supporting this and to listen to the business community that wants this done. You normally listen to them on everything else; I don't know why you've got a tin ear when it comes to increasing Newstart. Please, let's get this done, folks. Let's actually rise out of the mud and the embarrassment of the way in which this place normally conducts itself and do something good for a change.
Senator DEAN SMITH (Western Australia—Chief Government Whip in the Senate) (11:03): I'm delighted to rise this morning just to make some brief remarks on the private senator's bill moved by Senator Siewert on behalf of the Australian Greens, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Ending the Poverty Trap) Bill 2018. I'd like to restrict my comments to three themes. The first is a very interesting point that Senator Askew made in her contribution. I'm surprised that Senator Waters hasn't yet tackled what I thought was a very substantive issue that Senator Askew raised. Second, I want to draw attention to the point that the Newstart issue should be seen in the broader context of what is happening to employment growth and employment opportunities for Australians more generally. And, in the interests of complete frankness and transparency, I think it is important that we reflect on some of the comments that have been made, particularly by those on the centre-right of Australian politics. I do think it always curious—and those who were watching would have seen the smile on my face—when Senator Waters reaches out to bring to her side of the argument the likes of the member for New England, the former senator Barnaby Joyce; and Senator Canavan. You just can't help but grin when you think that the strength of the argument that the Australian Greens are making relies heavily on the contributions or the points of view of Senator Canavan and the former Senator Barnaby Joyce, though they are people that I pay close attention to.
Let me just read from Senator Askew's opening statement in her contribution, which I think might have been Senator Askew's first contribution on a piece of legislation since her maiden speech. Let me just remind the Senate what Senator Askew said, and when we debate this again in the future before we do bring it to a vote, which I understand will not be today, I hope that the Greens might just reflect on this point and bring back to the Senate a response. Senator Askew said in her opening remarks:
This bill … proposed by the Greens, seeks to amend the Social Security Act to increase Newstart, Austudy and other welfare payments by $150 per fortnight and to standardise indexation for some of those welfare payments.
I have no argument with that.
Yet, in spite of its name, it doesn't actually do what the Greens have said it will do, nor does it propose a clear direction to end the so-called poverty trap.
Senator Askew says:
Section 53 of the Constitution makes clear that a measure appropriating revenue or moneys shall not originate in the Senate, so this bill includes a clause in part 5 to state that there will in fact be no increase in any of the social security benefits mentioned in the bill, including the Newstart allowance, unless money is appropriated by the parliament for that purpose. It is … a stunt.
It's a stunt—not my words. I do believe it is a political stunt, but that is not to distract from the substantive issue about whether Newstart should be increased, and I'll come to that in a moment. But who else called this particular private senator's bill a stunt? Who else called it a stunt? I notice Senator Sterle and Senator McCarthy are here in the chamber. I wonder if they call recall who else called this a stunt just in the last few days? It was none other than the Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese. A few days ago the Leader of the Opposition was quoted in The Australian newspaper as saying, 'This bill is just a little stunt.' So the problem with the Greens bill is that it is about them and not about the unemployed.
This is not the first Leader of the Opposition to have made such remarks. Before the election, the opposition leader, Mr Shorten, stated that Labor would initiate some sort of review into the rate of Newstart but, curiously, when pressed, would not be specific about what that meant. Even more curiously, Labor's pre-election costings made no provision for any increase in Newstart allowance. Just in front of me here, I also have some comments from the member for Rankin, Mr Chalmers, who I think is now the shadow Treasurer. I might stand corrected but I'm happy to come back in a future contribution if that's required. I think he said that Labor wouldn't be progressing with that review that had been proposed prior to the election. I've heard in this place before a bit of tit for tat between Labor and the Greens about whether the review was suitable, whether or not the Greens bill is actually a stunt. But, putting all of that aside for a moment, I think it is important to reflect on the very, very substantial achievements of what is now the Morrison government and the governments under prime ministers Turnbull and Morrison in regard to employment growth in our country, because an increase in the Newstart allowance should be seen in the context of what is happening more broadly with employment growth.
Let me run through a key few points. The first is—no surprise, and this was endorsed by the country at the recent election—an endorsement for the Morrison government to continue its focus on delivering a strong economy that has seen the largest increase in jobs since the global financial crisis, with more than 1.3 million jobs created since the coalition was elected. The proportion of Australians receiving working-age income support payments has fallen to its lowest level in 13 years and is now just at 14.3 per cent. There were 230,000 fewer working-age recipients on income support payments between June 2014 and June 2018, and add to that that more than 100,000 young Australians between the ages of 15 and 24 found employment—the highest number in our history. To put that in perspective, 52,000 jobs were lost in the same category between November 2007 and August 2013.
But, despite making some political statements at the beginning of my contribution, and moving to the more substantive issue of what is happening to employment growth in our country, which is a positive story, I am someone who believes that the Newstart allowance amount must be more than reviewed, which was Labor's position; it should be increased. I think that Liberals should pay very, very close attention to the comments of former leader John Howard on this matter. And, while I'm someone who treats with a degree of caution what the big business community might say in our country, I do think that the comments of the Reserve Bank Governor, Philip Lowe—I don't think the way that those comments have been represented in this place is necessarily completely accurate—in terms of the importance of wages growth in our country is something that should weigh heavily on the mind of every coalition member and senator.
I might just add this point: the accusation that the coalition is somehow mean-spirited or cold-hearted when it comes to the real living costs of Australians is a shallow political statement. Nothing demonstrates the fact that these issues are alive to members of the government more than the government's very quick responsiveness to the matter of deeming for older Australians. I think even the commentary today on the front page of The Australian newspaper, where coalition members and senators are actively thinking about alternative ways of generating wages growth in our country, and as a consequence of that advanced economic growth, demonstrates that economic issues are top-of-mind, first-order issues for this government. And I am someone who argues for being open-minded about Newstart, giving heavy attention to the comments of Mr Howard and the Reserve Bank Governor as being a very powerful starting point.
Just for the record, I think it's important to share with the Senate what it was that Mr Howard did actually say in May 2018. Mr Howard was asked a question at the PricewaterhouseCoopers post-budget breakfast. The interviewer asked Mr Howard, 'Mr Howard, do you agree Newstart should increase?' Mr Howard responded:
Yes, I actually think there is an argument about that, I do …
The interviewer said, 'What is that argument?' Mr Howard responded:
I think it is—I was in favour of freezing it when it happened, but I think that probably that freeze has gone on too long.
So I do think that these matters should be top of mind. They do deserve careful consideration. And, with those brief remarks, I look forward to coming back to the Senate to continue my contribution. With that, I seek leave to continue my remarks later.
Leave granted; debate adjourned.
Murray-Darling Basin Commission of Inquiry Bill 2019
Second Reading
Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia) (11:13): I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
I rise today to speak in favour of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission of Inquiry Bill, put forward by the Greens, to establish a commission of inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin. Now we know that this place here in the Senate can be incredibly powerful for setting the tone of how we inquire into and really take on some of the big issues plaguing government policy from time to time. We did it with the banking royal commission. My colleague Senator Whish-Wilson put forward a very similar piece of legislation to establish a commission of inquiry into the banks, and at the time we got the response from Labor and the Liberal-National government that this was a stunt. Of course it wasn't; it was putting on the agenda the fact that everyday Australians were sick and tired of the big banks ruling within their own rules, not meeting public expectation and screwing over little people and little businesses all over the place.
Here today we have a very similar piece of legislation, to establish, essentially, a royal commission into another scandal—that is, the management of the Murray-Darling Basin. We need this because there have been years and years of evidence—and scandal after scandal—that the management of the Murray-Darling Basin is a joke. It has been an expensive use of public money to not deliver the results that the Australian people expected, and, indeed, that this parliament set—the results that the $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan was meant to achieve. We know that after decades and decades of infighting and blame-shifting between the different states, upstream and downstream, and the federal government, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was meant to deal with the real issue that confronts us all, which is that the system has been overallocated. Too much water is being taken out and not enough is being left there to keep the river alive—to give it a chance for sustainability.
Of course, those river communities right throughout the basin need a living river if they are going to be communities that are able to survive. We've got farmers—family farms right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin—who are struggling today because they can't access the water they need at an affordable price, the water that allows them to keep doing what they're doing.
Meanwhile, even under this Murray-Darling Basin Plan, with $13 billion put on the table, we've seen big business expand irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin. Some six or seven years ago, this place and the other place decided that we needed to reform the system. We needed to get more water back into the river to give it a fighting chance, to ensure that river communities would be sustainable, because everybody knows there are no jobs on a dead river. What we've got is that most of that money's now been spent, there were a million dead fish in Menindee at the beginning of this year, farming communities are struggling and there is an environment in crisis.
However, there are a select handful of people—businesses—who have done pretty damn well, actually, out of the mismanagement of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and they're laughing all the way to the bank. They've had huge public funded handouts. They've had water bought from them at an inflated price. They've had public money handed to them to implement irrigation and efficiency works that they were going to fund themselves anyway; they've had it subsidised now by the taxpayer. Meanwhile, communities are still struggling.
The previous South Australian government, the Weatherill government, was of course very concerned about what this meant for those of us who live at the bottom end of the system. I must say, former Premier Jay Weatherill did the right thing when he took on Mr Barnaby Joyce, who had been the water minister under the Abbott and Turnbull governments. Jay Weatherill took on Barnaby Joyce after Barnaby Joyce had been busted bragging in a pub that he was going to manage the Murray-Darling Basin in such a way that it would look after his big corporate irrigator mates at the expense of the environment and everybody else—that he had rigged the system, and he wanted a good slap on the back and a, 'Good job, mate,' from them because he had rigged the system in their favour. It was that astonishing, brazen attitude which spurred the South Australian government at the time into action. They established their own South Australian commission, and it got to work at trying to dig into the management of the system. What it found was that mismanagement is rife; maladministration is rife. In fact, even the legality of the plan itself is in question.
There's the South Australian royal commission, but, of course, we've had both the Department of the Environment and Energy, whose job is responsible for a lot of this, and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority stopped and gagged from participating in the South Australian royal commission because the federal government, the Liberal-National Party, did not want the truth to be uncovered. They didn't want senior bureaucrats to have to sit across the table from the commissioner and be asked the right questions, so they gagged them from being able to participate in the South Australian inquiry. That in and of itself I would argue is a reason why it's time to blow this whole thing open, to shine a spotlight on what is going on and to make sure that the people responsible for stuffing up the Murray-Darling Basin so badly are held to account.
Of course, it's not just the South Australian royal commission that has uncovered a lot of this evidence and has been so damning in its assessment of the management of the plan; the Productivity Commission delivered a scathing report over summer. The government sat on it for quite some time and tried to release it at 4 or 5 pm in the afternoon on a Friday in the middle of summer—that's what they do, of course, when they don't want the public to know what's really going on. The Productivity Commission was scathing in its assessment of how things had been managed. The Productivity Commission's five-year assessment of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan presented a bleak picture. Only two of the 11 metrics were on track. They raised concerns about the current management and governance arrangements. They said that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority cannot be trusted to oversee itself and that it 'lacked candour and transparency with stakeholders'—well, we know about that, here in this place, from the amount of times that I and other senators have asked for information to be put on the table and it has been denied or, when something is finally delivered through an order for the production of documents, it's so heavily redacted it's useless. Secrecy and cover-up are rife in the management of the Murray-Darling Basin under the guise of the National Party, who are in charge of the water portfolio, and, of course, the mismanagement from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority itself.
The Productivity Commission's report went on, raising serious concerns that the remaining funds spent on efficiency projects were 'likely to fail or be implemented properly.' And in the last two weeks we've seen evidence of that through exposes and reporting from Four Corners. Indeed, it wasn't just the journalists, the farmers and the locals talking about how badly managed and what a rort these efficiency projects have been; the Productivity Commission say it is, in black and white, as well. The Productivity Commission highlighted the conflicting role of the MDBA, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, being both the implementers of the plan and those who are meant to be in charge of the compliance. They simply can't be trusted to manage themselves.
The Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, as I've mentioned, named the elephant in the room: is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan even legal if it has been so politicised and corrupted that it's not actually achieving the objectives of the Water Act? The royal commission in South Australia asked whether the plan itself may be illegal, contravening the Water Act and drastically underestimating the environmentally sustainable level of take. It questioned the whole politicisation of the plan and the ignorance of the science. Numbers have been chosen, figures have been declared and money has been handed over, yet it is not in line with what the science requires if we are to save the river. The Commissioner of the Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, Bret Walker, found instances of corruption and maladministration. He found that the plan and its implementation lacked transparency and meaningful consultation, particularly with First Nations communities right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin. He highlighted the dangers presented by the lack of metering and the uncertain nature of flood plain harvesting.
The rort that is going on in the northern basin with flood plain harvesting should anger every Australian. It is not the right of people, simply because they've got enough capital to build big dams, to stop overland flow being able to go into the system, into those small creeks and rivers that all link up to feed into the broader and bigger basin rivers. It is not their water—it is the Australian people's water. Yet they have been allowed to get away with harvesting these flood plains for their own greed. Why is it that the cotton industry in Australia recorded a bumper profit and crop last year, yet downstream, in places like Wilcannia and Menindee, in areas like the Riverina, where I was only a week or so ago, those communities are struggling? We're about to debate a multibillion-dollar package for drought relief this week in this place, yet we've got big corporations taking water for free and then charging the taxpayer to build the dams by which they're capturing all of that water. It is a rort. The environment's suffering, the river's dying and small farmers are at their wits' end. It is time that we cleaned up the rorting and corruption and got this plan back on track.
We'll hear, when other people debate this issue, that we shouldn't have a royal commission because we shouldn't put at risk the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. I put it to you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that the plan is not working. Billions of dollars are rolling out the door, filling the pockets of big business and big corporations, but small farmers are suffering, the river is dying and we've got a million dead fish. It is only madness that would suggest that we continue on as if nothing is wrong. Whether you are in the northern basin, whether you're in the southern basin, whether you're a scientist, whether you're somebody who understands the environmental imperative of this, or whether you are a dairy farmer in the Riverina, you know—we all know—that the management of the Murray-Darling Basin is absolutely failing. It's failing our nation's largest food bowl. It's failing the next generation of Australian farmers.
For far too long those who have not wanted us to put the river system back on a sustainable footing have said that this is about the environment versus farmers. Well, it's not. It's not the environment versus farmers; every farmer I know understands that they need a living river to keep their business alive. Every farmer who's grown up in their area for generations understands that the river is sicker than it's ever been. They don't want just a cash handout from a drought fund. They want the management of the Murray-Darling Basin back on track. Small farmers are being priced out by big corporates who have international and foreign interests, coming in, buying up water, pushing up the price so no-one else can afford it. We don't even know how many foreign owners of water licences we have in Australia, because that information isn't readily publicly available. What we do know is that the signs that we can see for ourselves are stark: millions of dead fish; no drinking water in Wilcannia—a town that used to be an inland river port. They can't even turn on the tap and drink the water. Nothing comes out anymore. You've got farmers right throughout the southern basin having to close up shop after generations because the big corporate next door has bought up all the water or has just dammed the flood plain so there's nothing coming when the rain next breaks.
Of course, as a senator from South Australia, I know all too well that if we don't manage this river system fairly, if we don't manage it properly, my state is done. We need a living Murray River for us to survive, and the best way of doing that is to make sure there is enough water left in the river system to let it flow. There are no jobs on a dead river, and, at a time when climate change is really starting to take hold, we have to be realistic about the management of our precious water resources. The current Murray-Darling Basin Plan doesn't even include the impacts of climate change. And why is that? It's because the politics at the time meant that we couldn't talk about what the real science was saying. This plan has been corrupted because of vested interests, and it continues to be used as a rort because of those same vested interests.
When Mr Joyce, as Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, bragged that he was going to manage the Murray-Darling Basin so it benefited his big corporate, big business mates, he wasn't just joking. It wasn't a joke. He meant it, and he's done it. Now we're left with a river system in further crisis, and yet most of the money has walked out the door and not into the hands of the small farmers and farming communities who needed that support to help transition. It's ended up in the coffers of big corporate irrigators, hedge funds and foreign pension funds in the US and in Canada—they're the people who are banking the money of Australian taxpayers because of the way this Murray-Darling Basin Plan is being managed.
We need a thorough royal commission into the management of this river before it is too late. This isn't about the environment versus farmers; this is about corporate vested interests against everybody else—the environment, the scientists, the economists and our farming communities. We can't afford to wait another three or four years to get things back on track. By that point all of the money is going to be gone, the river system will not be able to be restored and those farming communities and those of us who live downstream will yet again be wondering what on earth happened. I implore the opposition to get off the fence when it comes to this issue. You know that the National Party have stuffed this up for far too long.
Senator FAWCETT (South Australia) (11:33): I rise to make a contribution to this Greens bill, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission of Inquiry Bill, calling for a royal commission into the Murray-Darling Basin system and its management. I direct my remarks, in part, to the schoolchildren I see sitting above and whom I welcome to this place. It's important to understand that what you read in the papers and what you hear in places like this are the opinions of one group of people, and it's very important to test the facts before you accept at face value what one particular group says. That's because, whilst often there are elements of truth and good intent, bias, whether conscious or unconscious, can very definitely flavour what people say.
In the time that I have I'd like to address some of the facts and issues that Senator Hanson-Young raised. I'll have look at some historical context around our environment, our climate in Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin and the use of water in this country, and then go specifically to the management of the Murray-Darling Basin system and the irrigators—and the communities that in fact rely on irrigation, as well as our broader community, that sees it, rightly, as one of the great food bowls of Australia.
Senator Hanson-Young talked a lot about the river in crisis, and I do not deny that up and down the river there are areas that are in incredible stress—historically, it has always been thus. And yet the benefit we see from management means that last year, in the middle of this period where the east coast of Australia is suffering a very bad and prolonged drought, South Australian irrigators had 100 per cent of their allocation from the river. The current forecasts from the South Australian environment department indicate that even under dry conditions they can expect to get 100 per cent of their allocation this year. Even under very dry conditions, allocations are expected to get to 97 per cent this year. So, in a time when there is stress on the basin as a whole because of factors such as drought, the management of the river means that from a South Australian perspective we should actually look at the fact that we have had 100 per cent, and have every expectation that, after environmental and critical human needs have been accounted for, our communities that rely on irrigation will again receive 100 per cent of their allocations. That is a good news story. We should actually look at that and say that, in a time where there's great stress on other parts of the basin, the Murray-Darling management means our irrigators are in a good place.
I think it's also important to look critically at some of the reporting on some of those areas under stress. I go in part to the issue that Senator Hanson-Young raised about the Four Corners report. We would expect, given the criticisms of that report and the comments that Senator Hanson-Young has made, that groups like the National Farmers' Federation would indeed come out, as they have done, to criticise the kind of reporting and the lack of objective evidence—the lack of a broad range of witnesses from different sides of the argument—that Four Corners came out with. The NFF have made quite strong statements about the fact that since 2012 the plan has returned 2,100 gigalitres of water to the river system, with almost 700 gigalitres coming from efficiency and infrastructure projects, and that the majority of those projects were not carried out by large corporates but in fact by family farming operations with works valued on average at less than $152,000. And they went on to talk about the fact that for farmers to access the scheme they actually have to agree to sell water entitlements to the government—that is, return the water to the environment—and they ran through a number of the checks and balances. I understand that some people would go, 'Well, obviously, they have an interest'. I'm disappointed, personally, that if the ABC claims to be an organisation that puts forth news to the Australian people—and I think their little jingle says 'without bias or agenda'—they didn't, in fact, have an unbiased and wide set of witnesses for that report.
But let's put aside even the National Farmers' Federation and look at the open letter that was written by a group of top scientists, people who work with water and the environment, that criticised the ABC's reporting over that. They said that the ABC Four Corners episode propagated myths and misrepresented the science of the plan. They highlighted that the letter was written because of a growing frustration among experts that there was a widening gap between the broader public perception of the basin and what was actually happening on the ground. So the comment I made to the previous group of children, who are here from schools, was that they need to test the facts of what they see in the media. They need to test the facts of what people say in places like this so that they actually understand what is happening on the ground and not just take one perspective. The beauty of a democracy like ours is that there is an opportunity for people to come here with different perspectives. But if we are to work as a cohesive society then we need to look at a range of perspectives and understand how to work cohesively together to benefit our whole community.
I will make a few historical comments because I think they are important, particularly in the context of a bill which is seeking to set up another inquiry—in fact, a royal commission-style inquiry. In going back and looking at various what I would call independent groups—including the National Museum of Australia—and looking at the history of our environment and the Murray-Darling Basin system, they highlight that historical accounts and scientific analysis indicate that south-eastern Australia experienced 27 drought years between 1788 and 1860 and at least 10 major droughts between 1860 and 2000. So, well before any of the human-induced factors that people blame for either the management of the Murray-Darling Basin or broader climate impacts, here in Australia what we have is a country that has periods of good weather, of rains, and periods of droughts.
What my own state of South Australia, and my own family, who come from a broadacre farming background, saw in the 1870s and into the 1880s was an unprecedented period of good rains in the far north of the state. Despite the work of the well-renowned surveyor Goyder, who drew the now infamous Goyder's line, which separated arable land from pastoral land, people started believing that rains would follow the plough. We saw people—including my own family, who bought land at Tarcoola—who went north, bought land and planted crops with an expectation that rain would follow the plough. And, indeed, during the 1870 and 1890s, that did occur for a period, and there were productive areas in the far north of South Australia. But those areas then reverted to type and are now regarded—as, indeed, Goyder forecast—as pastoral lands with occasional good rain. They are not areas with reliable rainfall.
In that period, around the time of Federation, Australia suffered what was known as the Federation Drought between 1895 and 1903. To quote from the National Museum of Australia, the CSIRO:
… said that more than 60 bird, fish, mammal, reptile, and plant species were severely affected across more than a third of Australia's land mass.
… … …
In New South Wales, most rivers stopped flowing and dust storms filled dams, buried homesteads and created ghost towns as people fled,…
Wildlife and stock starved or died of thirst. Native birds and mammals died under trees, in creeks, and on the plains.
So what we see is that, well before there was a Murray-Darling Basin Plan, well before any of the factors that people say are accounting for climate change, Australia had a very variable climate. So we need to be careful to not attribute things like the fish kill that was widely reported in the media recently to something like the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, or the management thereof; we need to understand that the plan is an effort to moderate the impacts of an extremely variable environment, which, in Australia, throughout its recorded history, has included periods of floods and rains as well as devastating droughts.
But the important part from the National Museum of Australia and its history was: what was the response of governments to that? One of the criticisms that was made was that the responses of governments were a number of commissions and inquiries as opposed to practical measures to help. In terms of opposing this bill today from the Greens, that's the point I'd like to start from, because history tells us that these things occur as part of Australia's natural climate and that governments have been quick to put in place inquiries, whether they be commissions or parliamentary inquiries or others, but have been slow to put in place practical measures. After decades of disagreement between the basin states here in Australia about the Murray-Darling Basin, we have a plan that we're only halfway through which is seeking to invest in a collaborative approach and productive measures that will return water to the environment and will support communities who rely on irrigation through those systems, so that the water that we do receive is better managed for the benefit of all.
The government's focus—and I note the fact that the opposition has acted in a very bipartisan manner over the years and I commend, in particular, Mr Burke for his role in this—has been on trying to bring together a plan for the benefit of Australia and the states and communities that rely on the river. It provides certainty for them. Having said that, I recognise that, as the plan continues to unfold, there will be areas, particularly around transparency and compliance, where we need to continue to invest effort. We have seen already, as a result of the 2017 inquiries of the MBDA and others, a huge investment by the government and agreed plans across the ministers of the states and the Commonwealth around additional compliance and transparency measures so that the Australian public can have confidence that those who do the wrong thing—and there are some; we know that—will be held to account, and the full force of the law will be applied to them. But we don't throw out the whole plan because some people have done the wrong thing. We increase compliance checking and we increase the amount of resource we spend in encouraging the kinds of behaviours that have seen 2,100 gigalitres returned to the environment through this plan, which has secured that water for the environment each year on average.
The Basin Plan, as I said, can't prevent drought nor is it the cause of drought. In focusing on compliance and enforcement, the government is putting in place the 2017 review recommendations, and in 2018 the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council approved the basin compliance compact, and that was endorsed in September last year by the Council of Australian Governments. In 2018 also, Mick Keelty AO was appointed the Northern Basin Commissioner to monitor and to advise on compliance commitments. So here is someone who has served Australia in many years who is not associated with agricultural industry or the environment but who is associated with broader governance and compliance in Australia who will be running that effort. The government has also committed some $9.1 million specifically to the issue of compliance, and this year already we have announced an additional $35 million to expand metering as well as satellite remote-sensing technology in the Northern Basin as well as $25 million for the installation of meters so that we can do the kind of compliance checking that is required.
The findings and recommendations for things like the South Australian Royal Commission have been contested by a range of people, including the federal government, because of the simple fact that the plan, whilst not perfect, is still being rolled out and is working. There are benefits being delivered and, despite talks about calamities in the river, despite the fact that we have the dreadful stressors in the north of the basin, I repeat, as a senator from South Australia, the fact that we currently have 100 per cent allocation and we expect, according to the South Australian environment department, to have 100 per cent allocation next year even under dry conditions. That is not the mark of a system that is failing because of the plan. The plan is there to moderate the impacts of the extreme variability in climate that we have. We do see, particularly in the southern basin, concerns raised about the impact of water trading and how that has worked. Minister Littleproud has referred to the ACCC the requirement for them to look at how that trading is working and whether that system can be improved to make sure that it achieves the impacts that we're after: the best possible use of available water being the thing that drives the trading in water systems.
The government also—Senator Hanson-Young and others have mentioned this—has the Productivity Commission's five-year assessment of the Basin Plan. That report does make the comment that significant progress has been made. The commission said that arrangements for environmental water are working well, with evidence of improved ecological outcomes. So we're not going to support yet another inquiry into the basin and its management. We welcome transparency. We welcome the fact that people have had previous inquiries, and we are currently implementing funding around both compliance and transparency. But we do not resile from the fact that we would rather invest in efficiency measures, ensuring that water that is saved goes back to the environment, as opposed to taking away water from the very communities that make the Murray-Darling Basin Australia's food bowl. If you don't have water, then you can't actually grow the food that those communities and broader Australia rely on.
Senator Hanson-Young: You can't eat cotton!
Senator FAWCETT: Senator Hanson-Young talks about cotton. She knows or should know that, in times of water stress, allocations go down; so, while South Australian irrigators have 100 per cent allocation, cotton growers have zero allocation. They have the ability to carry over water from previous years, but even if you banned cotton they will just go to the next most profitable crop, because irrigators will use water to generate revenue. There will be the use of water, and, in a country that allows people to use things that they own for the purposes that they intend, as we look at the system in the river we see that environmental needs, critical human needs and then other high-value crops—for example, trees that need water to sustain them—get an allocation, well ahead of things like rice or cotton.
That's where it's important to understand the facts of this argument, as opposed to just pulling out the easy political whipping boy to say, 'Cotton and rice are bad; irrigators are bad.' In fact the system recognises the differing priorities for those crops that sometimes get zero allocation, which is the case at the moment in those northern regions. I come back to the point that the evidence that the plan, even in a time when there is great stress on the river, particularly in its northern regions—South Australia, the state with the most to lose if this plan collapses, has 100 per cent allocation for its irrigators because the plan is in place. By all means, we should continue to implement and improve, but we certainly won't be supporting the waste of millions of dollars that would come from yet another inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (11:53): I rise to speak on this proposed Murray-Darling Basin Commission of Inquiry Bill 2019 and put the position as determined by the opposition. Before I do that I would like to pick up on a reference by Senator Fawcett to Goyder's line, that famous historical line across the north of South Australia. I might add that it is mentioned in a Redgum song. Goyder originally did his line about 30 years after South Australia was first founded. One of the reasons was that they wanted to distinguish lands for cropping from those which were for grazing.
Mr Goyder, who was the Surveyor-General for South Australia, was sent out to work out what that line was, and he determined that. But for a number of years people thought that he was wrong and that the old concept that the rain follows the plough applied—that the further north you went beyond Goyder's line, the rain would simply follow. One of the reasons people speculated that there was so much rainfall in the years after Goyder for a relatively short period of time was the explosion of Krakatoa in Indonesia—it threw so much silt and dust into the air that it actually changed the rainfall patterns in the north of South Australia—and so families like my own family ended up in a place called Morchard, thinking that it was capable of being used for cropping. I say that as the first of us born in Murray Bridge, on the Murray River. Having a lifelong love of the river, I have always been committed to its sustainability, its health, so that future generations can use the river in the same way as current generations.
In September 2010, I was appointed to the position of Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water. From that time, I worked closely with the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke, to continue the good work of Senator Penny Wong to secure a sustainable future for the Murray-Darling Basin. The sign-off of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and its passage through the parliament in November 2012 were historic moments of basin-wide cooperation after decades of mismanagement of our most precious natural resource. We must not allow short memories to see us return to a situation where self-interest is prioritised above the national interest when it comes to this mighty river system, which of course is the lifeblood of such a vast region of our nation. The health and sustainability of the Murray-Darling Basin is, as I said in my maiden speech in this place, 'a national problem demanding a national solution'. That's true of any potential threats to the integrity of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan itself.
About two years ago, Four Corners aired allegations of water theft and corruption in New South Wales. In April this year, the Liberal-National government was faced with another water scandal, this time about a massive water buyback worth $80 million, from Eastern Australia Agriculture, which was linked to the Morrison government minister Angus Taylor. And, more recently, Four Corners this month reported concerning claims in respect to the Murray-Darling Basin Water Infrastructure Program. The Morrison government doesn't appear to know where and how taxpayer dollars are being spent or what environmental or water efficiency value is being achieved for these very significant investments. If that's the case, then this government has failed Australian farmers, communities and the environment.
We are in the middle of a very serious drought. In fact, one of my neighbours, who is into his 80s now, says that he believes this is the worst drought that he's encountered in his lifetime. Holding a royal commission would likely delay action that is urgently needed. We have seen it all before with this government: 'Let's wait for an outcome. Let's wait for the recommendations'. Well, the Murray-Darling Basin doesn't have time to wait. With public confidence and the plan being undermined by the government's water gaffes, the time for transparency and accountability in the plan is now. To restore confidence, transparency is needed first and foremost. That will require immediate physical, scientific study rather than a drawn-out lawyer-led process. The government must commit to a comprehensive independent audit of the water infrastructure scheme and come clean with the details of the payments under that scheme.
The Morrison government's water-related gaffes and controversies are undermining public trust in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Labor has been calling on the government to take real action in relation to the plan. The Productivity Commission told the government in December 2017 that better monitoring, evaluation, auditing and reporting is needed. The government needs to do its job and to act. The government needs to dramatically and urgently expand the monitoring and evaluation of river health right across the basin. There's a need for scientific monitoring. We cannot have a delay or allow this government to kick the can down the road while the Murray-Darling Basin waits for the urgent action it now requires.
The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was an historic agreement, delivered by a Labor government, in which all basin jurisdictions were to work together for the good of the whole basin. The plan forged a consensus after more than a century of intractable conflict, but it is meaningless if water theft is allowed by upstream states. For the same reason that the plan requires jurisdictions to work together, any potential threats to the plan need to be dealt with through means that will be effective across jurisdictional boundaries. Everyone knows that action is needed. I know it, Labor knows it and the Murraylands and Riverland Local Government Association of South Australia know it. Australians who live on and make their living from the Murray River know it.
Let me read what River Murray irrigators had to say about the issue. On 31 July 2017, Broken Hill farmer Robert McBride said: 'We watched our river die for 8½ months last year, and that's a catastrophe. It's your catastrophe and it's my catastrophe. What is critically important is the bipartisan support we're receiving. It's your river, and it's not going to last much longer unless it's protected accordingly.' On the same day, South Australian River Murray irrigator Sam Dodd said: 'The main issue is government and bureaucracy being complicit in undermining the Basin Plan. I certainly support the minister and the Premier and others to support a judicial inquiry.'
The Greens have struck a deal with the government today to be able to debate this bill. They were the ones who referred the bill to the Senate inquiry. This move by the Greens to debate the bill without first considering the report of the inquiry and understanding the bill's ramifications is premature and arrogant. Labor believes that the Senate should not pre-empt the outcome of the Senate inquiry into this bill.
Australians want accountability and transparency, but the Morrison government is asleep at the wheel in relation to the Murray-Darling. Across state borders, communities know what needs to happen, and they have asked the government to get on with it. Sadly, Liberal members from South Australia in the federal parliament are more interested in proving to their eastern state mates that they have their backs than they are in representing South Australian Murray River communities. They know that the Nationals can't be trusted with the water portfolio. In fact, the member for Barker, Mr Tony Pasin, said it himself. When Barnaby Joyce was given responsibility for water, on 21 September 2015, Tony Pasin said:
I'm just a little concerned about the fact that we now have a deeper involvement of the National Party with respect to the implementation of the plan.
The National Party don't have significant interests in the lower end of the river system …
When Senator Ruston took on responsibility as the Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, on 21 September 2015, she said she'd stand up for the full implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Senator Ruston told the ABC at the time:
We mustn't forget the framework is already in place. The plan has been passed and is in legislation.
She also said:
I'd like to think that I've got the negotiation skills to make sure we get an outcome for everyone.
Well, Senator Ruston, the framework is in place and the plan has been passed and is in legislation. Now is the time to demonstrate those negotiating skills to make sure that the plan is implemented as it should be. Now is the time to stand up and make the case on behalf of the communities who rely on the river and to understand the importance of utilising sustainability. It's time to make that case on behalf of the communities and the irrigators who have stood up and backed Labor's call for these serious allegations to be investigated in an appropriately thorough and transparent way.
In August 2017, Senator Ruston and Tony Pasin, in response to a letter I wrote to the editors of the Murray Pioneer and Loxton News in the Riverland, stated, 'We must also never forget that it will be our state which risks the most if it does not work with other jurisdictions to deliver it.' They're right about South Australia risking the most if the integrity of the plan is threatened, but, as elected representatives of South Australia, they have a duty to ensure that other jurisdictions are working just as faithfully as South Australia to deliver the plan. They have a duty to South Australian Murray River communities to ensure that irrigators upstream are working just as hard and investing just as much to deliver efficiencies as irrigators in our home state have been doing for years. Their duty isn't to Victorian, New South Wales or Queensland irrigators, or to their colleagues in those states; it's to the people of South Australia. If Senator Ruston and Tony Pasin are serious about representing South Australian Murray River communities, they'll stop parroting their eastern state mates and start standing up for the current and future health of the Murray River in the interests of the people of South Australia.
As a proud South Australian with a lifelong love of the River Murray, I'll always do my bit to ensure that this parliament protects a sustainable, healthy future for the entire river system, and I know all of my Labor colleagues here in the federal parliament and the basin states will do the same.
Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (12:06): I rise to speak in support of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission of Inquiry Bill 2019. At some stage on 15 November 2017—my first day in this chamber—I wandered out to the Table Office and tabled a motion for an OPD, an order for the production of documents. That order for the production of documents was returned to the Senate, and those documents became the source of the controversy that everyone understands as 'watergate'. That's where we had a purchase of 29 gigalitres of water from the Kia Ora and Clyde properties for $80 million. The water was overland flow water, which means it's tied to a property and, apart from that, doesn't have any legally tradeable basis. Originally, the property owners offered to sell the water for $2,200 per megalitre, but the government managed to negotiate them up to $2,745 per megalitre—not very impressive. It was sold by Eastern Australia Agriculture, a company that has ties to a Cayman Islands company called Eastern Australia Irrigation. We know that the company effectively booked a $52 million profit in relation to this particular sale, and then, of course, that was shifted off to the Cayman Islands, where I'm sure very little tax has been paid—certainly none from an Australian perspective. We also don't know who the beneficiaries are.
There have been two other sales. There was the Tandou sale, where the government bought water from Webster. They paid $38 million for 21 gigalitres—2.5 gigalitres of high-security water and 19 gigalitres of general-security water—and they also paid $40 million in compensation. That has never been seen. Nowhere else has compensation been paid in respect of water infrastructure across the basin when there have been buybacks. The interesting thing, of course, is that they bought Darling River water. For the benefit of the chamber, Tandou is just slightly south of Weir 32, which everyone knows is where the Menindee fish kill occurred. There is no water. We bought water that simply isn't there and, on the face of it, may never be there. We paid top dollar for that. In some sense, Webster saw the taxpayer coming and took the money, and now we see no water along the river there.
It's quite interesting, if you watch the cotton growers, that Cubbie Station is actually having problems with water now because of the amount of water that's been extracted upstream of them. We've seen all the cotton growers shifting further to the north, and now, because they're having difficulties even there, they're shifting to the Murrumbidgee, where they'll take that water as well and we'll end up with an ecological disaster.
Then there was the Warrego sale: 10.6 gigalitres of water for $16 million, which is two times the price paid when the Labor Party did some water buybacks in 2008. The very minister that approved that purchase, Minister Joyce, declared back in 2008 that this water would 'have no effect on solving the problems of the lower Murray-Darling'. So we've ended up buying water that we know flows down the Warrego and goes to marsh lands, and very little of it makes it to the Murray-Darling. Then what the government did was swap the entitlements to the border rivers so that water could, effectively, be used by the irrigators, predominantly cotton growers, up along the border rivers.
Of course, there were other things going on prior to my arrival in this chamber. As has already been mentioned by Senator Farrell, there was the 'Pumped' show by Four Corners, which showed there was theft, rorting, meter tampering and corruption going on. We had an investigation by ICAC in New South Wales on the lack of enforcement. Also, I was personally involved in investigating the activities of Norman Farming, up near Goondiwindi, where, unfortunately, Mr Lamey, a very small and ethical irrigator, was having trouble with a neighbour. I won't say too much more about that because the matter is before the court. There are fraud allegations before the court, so I'll leave that alone. But, for someone to stand up and suggest that the plan is running well—there are so many things going on that we need to be looking into.
In fact, it goes even further back than the 'Pumped' program. It goes back to the formation of the plan. If you've taken the time to read the well-written words of Bret Walker SC, the commissioner for the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, you'll know he has determined that the plan is not lawful because it is based on improper science. The Water Act requires the plan to be based on science and it is not—not proper science. It shouldn't be 2,750 gigalitres—not even 3,200 gigalitres. It should more likely be a number starting with four. Of course, we've all heard the jokes about whether or not the number for the sustainable diversion limits will be a New South Wales postcode. The royal commissioner also made findings of maladministration. The royal commissioner also made findings of political interference. So there's stuff going on here. I can understand maybe some people don't want to have an investigation, some people don't want to look into this, but there's $13 billion of taxpayers' money at stake here and, more importantly, there's a river system at stake.
Of course, whilst I was in this chamber, I saw everyone in this chamber, bar a few, including the Greens, vote for a 70-gigalitre increase to water allocations into the northern basin as part of the Northern Basin Review. Once again, there were claims of flawed science. Initially it was indicated that the effect on South Australia would be 20 gigalitres, but that became politically unpalatable, so the number got changed to four without any particular explanation. So that 70 gigalitres has gone. That was in the same year as the first fish kill occurred downstream of the northern basin at Menindee—a shocking situation. Walgett has run out of water, as we've put irrigation before water for the community.
Moving forward, we have the SDL projects. They were voted upon in this chamber but not by Centre Alliance; we didn't vote for the Northern Basin Review or the SDL projects. It was very clear that this chamber did not have the information that it needed to make a good decision in respect of the legislation. We were blind to the approvals that were given.
The Productivity Commission has looked at these projects and found that they are highly risky, which means the likelihood of them delivering what they intend to deliver is highly unlikely. That was also a view shared by the royal commissioner—once again, Bret Walker SC. In fact, there's been a fair amount of analysis that suggests that this is probably the most expensive way to recover water from the river. I know there's a need, or a want, to have no negative socioeconomic effects. I get that, but, actually, there are studies now that show that, instead of spending a whole bunch of money on infrastructure, you could simply take that money and invest it in the community and you would create four times the number of jobs. So we're not even achieving the objectives. There's very little doubt that the SDL projects will deliver water back to the river. It's hugely expensive and it creates fewer jobs than simply buying back water, which the river desperately needs.
The river is in a parlous state. We have had the Menindee fish kills. There's no question: the Academy of Science basically came to the scientific conclusion that the fish kills were the result of not just the drought but the overallocation of water. These are the facts. I know Senator Fawcett was suggesting that the facts are being made up, but these are from scientific bodies. This is the Productivity Commission. This is a royal commissioner. This is the ABC, with 'Pumped'. That led to several inquiries and massive change. It's not like these things were made up. The ABC did a fantastic job with that particular program in revealing issues with the river.
We're running out of water. As I mentioned, Cubbie Station is having trouble getting water now because all of the cotton growers have shifted north, upstream, and they're taking the water before it gets to Cubbie. That's why we have the absurd situation where the Foreign Investment Review Board has again extended the time frame for Cubbie's owners to sell the property, because it's actually worth nothing now. And it ain't going to get any better. I'll be interested to see—perhaps foreshadowing some questions on notice or a question in the chamber—exactly when the decision will now be made, or when the sale of shares, as is required by the Foreign Investment Review Board—and down from 80 per cent to 51 per cent—will in fact take place. As I mentioned before, we've seen cotton shifting to the Murrumbidgee, because that's the next place to get water—for now.
There's no place you can go with this Murray-Darling Basin Plan where you can get a good feeling for the inflows and the diversions, and who has the diversions, and how much overland flow there is. We're all blind to that. No-one can see that. When I asked questions at estimates about money that's getting spent on some of these programs, we hit a block when we got to, 'Money got transferred to New South Wales,' or, 'Money got transferred to Queensland.' We can't see what's happening there.
How can the government not support this very worthy bill that's been put up by the Greens to simply inquire into some of the allegations that are floating around—some of the issues that, if addressed, would make the plan work better? That's all that's being asked here, to try and make something better by shining a light on it. Senator Fawcett says, 'You've got to rely on the facts.' In some instances, we can't see the facts. Today—I note Senator Ruston is sitting there, and she'll be listening eagerly to what I'm about to say—we still don't know what the valuations are for these water buybacks. They are still redacted. What's there to hide? There are some real problems with the Murray-Darling, and right now we do need to inquire as to what is going on. That's pretty important—
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Patrick, I do believe we're moving to another matter.
Senator PATRICK: I seek leave to continue my remarks later.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: You'll be in continuation.
DOCUMENTS
Ministerial Conduct
Order for the Production of Documents
Senator KENEALLY (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (12:20): I ask the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Cormann, for an explanation of the minister's response to the order for the production of documents relating to former Ministers Pyne and Bishop.
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (12:20): On behalf of the government, and indeed on behalf of the Prime Minister, I tabled an explanation this morning.
Senator KENEALLY (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (12:20): I move:
That the Senate take note of the explanation.
In the Statement of Ministerial Standards that Prime Minister Morrison issued in September last year, he states:
The Australian people deserve a Government that will act with integrity and in the best interests of the people they serve.
… … …
I expect all ministers in the Australian Government to live up to the high standards expected of them by the Australian people at all times.
Well, we've just seen exactly what those standards are. We've barely been back a month and we have ministers and former ministers flouting these rules. And it's not just the opposition or the crossbench that is raising questions about this. Let's remember what Mr Pyne's former South Australian Liberal colleague, the member for Barker, said of Mr Pyne's new role:
It's disappointing that it doesn't meet the pub test, and it doesn't, and perhaps that's something that we need to reflect on …
Yes, the member for Barker is right. That is something we need to reflect on. This doesn't pass the pub test at all. And you know there are serious concerns when the Liberal MPs in this government are turning on each other.
Less than a month out from the recent election, we've seen two situations emerge involving former cabinet ministers—Mr Christopher Pyne and Ms Julie Bishop. These situations are flagrant breaches of the ministerial standards. Clause 2.25 of the standards states:
… Ministers are required to undertake that, for an eighteen month period after ceasing to be a Minister, they will not lobby, advocate or have business meetings with members of the government, parliament, public service or defence force on any matters on which they have had official dealings as Minister in their last eighteen months in office.
There's no ambiguity here. That's fairly straightforward. It is in fact so straightforward and such plain speaking that you would expect that someone who had served as a minister of the Crown and as a member of parliament would be able to understand it: they will not lobby, advocate, have business meetings with members of the government, parliament, Public Service or Defence Force on any matters on which they have had official dealings as minister in their last 18 months in office.
You might think that the consequences would have been quick and decisive, but instead we have seen the Prime Minister accept the behaviour of Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop. It is simply extraordinary that, within weeks of the end of his tenure as a cabinet minister, Mr Pyne would announce that he is commencing work which will directly contravene the ethical standards that he vowed to uphold. It is even more unbelievable that neither Mr Pyne nor Ms Bishop even bothered to tell the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, that they were taking these jobs. Today we have found out that the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, himself found out from the media about the jobs that Ms Bishop and Mr Pyne have decided to take. He found out when the media brought this situation to light. It must have been a rude shock for the Prime Minister to find out that his former colleagues had so little respect for him or his government that they would act in this manner.
How on earth can Australians believe that Mr Pyne will not use or divulge confidential information he obtained as Minister for Defence and as a member of the cabinet when he is working for one of the largest defence industry consultants in the country? It is absurd. How on earth can Australians believe that Mr Pyne and Ms Julie Bishop, who was until recently the Minister for Foreign Affairs, were not already preparing for their post-politics careers while serving out their final days in their ministerial offices?
These are important matters, and I would not be surprised if the Prime Minister or even the finance minister attempted to dismiss these concerns as being something 'inside the Canberra bubble'. This is not something just 'inside the Canberra bubble', Mr Morrison. These are the ethical standards that you and your ministerial colleagues vowed to uphold. You took a sacred oath to the Australian people that you would uphold them. They have been flagrantly flouted by Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop. The Prime Minister didn't even know about this. He was rudely surprised by it.
We are not only talking about ministerial standards; we are also talking about billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. Palladium, the board of which Ms Bishop has joined, received a $500 million contract from the government during her tenure as foreign minister. Palladium got a $500 million contract from the government while Julie Bishop was foreign minister; she left office; and then, not waiting the required 18 months, she took a paid board position with Palladium. Ernst & Young, where Mr Pyne has gone to work, has been awarded 838 contracts, worth $377 million, by the government. Of these contracts, 138 were awarded by the Department of Defence, Mr Pyne's former department, with a total worth of $148 million. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to defence contracts. Australia right now is in the process of a major defence procurement, which Ernst & Young themselves maintain will estimate more than $200 billion of taxpayers' money over the next decade. And who did Ernst & Young hire within just weeks of the federal election? They hired the former defence minister, Christopher Pyne. Who took a job with them? It was the former defence minister, Christopher Pyne. Of that $200 billion, $50 billion is for the Future Submarine project and $35 million for the Future Frigate project.
This is not just about the ministerial standards. It is about the integrity of the major initiatives to acquire new capabilities and assets for the Defence Force. Serious and legitimate questions have to be asked about whether Mr Pyne's insider knowledge as a former minister could create an unfair advantage for his new employer. This insider knowledge could taint processes or even raise the prospect of litigation. It's situations like these that ministerial standards are precisely designed to prevent. It is why these ministerial standards exist—to avoid these very types of questions, the potential tainting of processes, the prospect of litigation and conflicts of interest. No wonder Australians are cynical about politics and politicians.
In the weeks leading up to the federal election, the public saw high-paying jobs being awarded to the government's mates. Between the budget on 2 April and the election being called on 11 April—nine whole days—the government made 49 appointments to taxpayer funded roles. Of those 49, seven went to former Liberal or National MPs and senators. I guess it pays to know people, hey? The seven appointments are of former Liberal Party president, senator and arts minister Richard Alston to the National Gallery of Australia Council; former Liberal MP Phillip Barresi to the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation board; former Liberal MP Ewen Jones to the board of the National Film and Sound Archive; former Liberal MP Chris Pearce to the board of Creative Partnerships Australia; former Victorian state Nationals MP Hugh Delahunty to the Sports Australia board; former ACT Liberal MP Tony De Domenico to the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation board; and former Liberal senator Karen Synon to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute board. Prior to all of this, former National Party federal director Scott Mitchell was appointed to the board of Snowy Hydro.
The public have also seen this government award $423 million to a company run out of a beach shack on Kangaroo Island in a closed tender process. The public have watched as this government has awarded half a billion dollars to a tiny private foundation to look after our greatest public asset, the Great Barrier Reef—my goodness—when this tiny private foundation only had revenue of $10 million, six full-time staff and hadn't even asked for the money. Only the Liberals and the Nationals could attempt to claim that these sums of taxpayer money are not in the public interest. The public values which ministers are expected to uphold in their careers are, it seems, casually left to slide the moment they become former ministers. I turn to advice provided by the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet—advice tabled by the Leader of the Government in the Senate. In regard to Mr Pyne, Secretary Parkinson states:
I consider that he has put in place mechanisms to ensure … he will not impart direct or specific knowledge known to him only by virtue of his ministerial position.
Okay—except there is no detail on what these mechanisms are. Does Mr Parkinson know? Does the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, know what these mechanisms are? Did anyone ask Mr Pyne to explain what these mechanisms are? It is incumbent upon the government and the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, to explain what these mechanisms are that Mr Pyne has apparently put in place, and to explain if Mr Morrison is satisfied with them. In regard to Ms Bishop, Secretary Parkinson clearly states in his advice:
Ms Bishop has not provided a full public statement on her appointment or how she proposes to deal with any conflicts with her previous role as Minister for Foreign Affairs.
I just need to read that again because it is extraordinary:
Ms Bishop has not provided a full public statement on her appointment or how she proposes to deal with any conflicts with her previous role as Minister for Foreign Affairs.
It is almost laughable, that public position—which is not to have a public position on how, as a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, she's going to manage her conflict of interest while serving on the board of an organisation that got a $500 million contract from her government while she was Minister for Foreign Affairs. Ms Bishop has provided Secretary Parkinson with a response, saying she expects the projects she will work on will be in the United States or the United Kingdom. She's indicated that Palladium does not expect her to engage on Australian based projects. Well, isn't that interesting, because she was the Minister for Foreign Affairs and, by definition, that means she dealt with places like—oh, I don't know—the United States and the United Kingdom! It is laughable that Julie Bishop's only public statement as to how she's going to manage any conflicts of interest between her previous role as the Minister for Foreign Affairs and her current role as a board member of Palladium is that she will not be working on any Australian projects.
Julie Bishop did a lot of work, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, on foreign policy, on our relationships with places like the United States and the United Kingdom, but it's all okay, according to Ms Bishop, because those are the only projects. As a board member, what is she going to do—excuse herself from every item on the Palladium board agenda unless it relates to the United States or the United Kingdom? It's a laughable proposition that she has put forward here. And let's be clear about something—an expectation, as Julie Bishop called it. Ms Bishop indicated that Palladium does not 'expect' her to engage on Australian based projects. An expectation is not a guarantee. An assurance from Mr Pyne that he has put in place mechanisms is not a guarantee, especially when there is no detail as to what those mechanisms are. This is the equivalent of someone saying: 'Trust me. I know what I'm doing.' That's what Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop have essentially said: 'Trust me. I know what I'm doing.' And the Prime Minister just seems to have accepted it carte blanche. He doesn't seem to have asked any questions, made any inquiries. He didn't even know they were taking these jobs! And, having been forced by this parliament to make these inquiries, he's given them the most cursory glance. Is this how the Prime Minister intends to operate in this Australian parliament? What is the point of having ministerial standards if they are not upheld by the Prime Minister himself? If these standards are not enforced, they are essentially worthless.
This is a test of integrity for Prime Minister Morrison, and his lack of action is speaking volumes. If this is how the Prime Minister is beginning this new term of government, well, Australians will be deeply concerned about how it's all going to unfold over the next three years. It is further proof to Australians that the Morrison government, particularly the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, will always put political interests first, over the public interest. It tells Australians that Prime Minister Morrison will say and do anything, or indeed do nothing, if he thinks it suits his political agenda. And it tells Australians that, when it comes to public integrity, the Prime Minister is just another politician, another marketing man, another man inside the Canberra bubble and someone who cannot be trusted.
So let's just recap here. We have Mr Pyne, former defence minister, now going to work for one of the largest defence industry consultants in the country and looking down the barrel in the next decade at $200 billion of procurement, of taxpayer money, for our Defence Force. And he has just gone to work for them. He didn't sit around and wait for the prescribed waiting period; he just took up the job. He said he has mechanisms in place to manage his conflict of interest. We don't know what they are. It doesn't seem the Prime Minister knows what they are. We're all just supposed to take that at face value. We have Ms Bishop, who, as the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, was part of a government that gave $500 million to Palladium. She now sits on the Palladium board. She hasn't even bothered to explain how she's going to manage any potential conflicts of interest. She hasn't even provided a full public statement on her appointment.
Let's be clear about where the Prime Minister's responsibility lies. He learns about these issues via the media. He makes no inquiries until he is forced to do so by the parliament. He accepts the vague 'trust me' assurances from Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop. He has no detail from Mr Pyne on how he's going to manage his ethical obligations. He has no advice at all from Ms Bishop; she simply didn't provide it. The Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, now owns this process. He owns this report. He owns every action of Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop in these roles they have taken up—every conflict of interest they have and fail to manage; every contradiction between their previous words and actions and their future words and actions; every contract their organisations enter into with the government. This all now sits with the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison. He is now responsible for this.
Make no mistake: he has a divided party room. The member for Barker can see this doesn't pass the pub test. It's amazing that the Prime Minister can't see that. What is even more distressing is that the Prime Minister has simply shrugged his shoulders at what Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop have done. He has just shrugged his shoulders and said: 'Yes, it's all okay. They say "trust me". I say trust them. Nothing to see here. Don't worry about all those hundreds of millions—billions—of taxpayer dollars. Don't worry about that.' This is now the Prime Minister's problem, and he owns the consequences of what Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop do now. The Australian people and the Australian parliament will be watching, and we will hold this Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, to account.
Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (12:39): I rise to take note of the minister's answer and I share the concerns of my colleague Senator Keneally in respect of this particular issue. I do note that Senator Keneally didn't raise some of the comments made by Senator Abetz, who was also concerned, but thank you very much for the summary.
I think we need to focus on paragraph 2.25 of the Statement of Ministerial Standards, which places a requirement on former ministers to not lobby. But, perhaps more particularly, there's a statement in that paragraph that says:
Ministers … will not take personal advantage of information to which they have had access as a Minister, where that information is not generally available to the public.
Now, I'm not accusing Mr Pyne of taking documents from his former role as the Minister for Defence and perhaps passing them on to EY—I'm not suggesting that that's occurring at all—but you cannot 'unknow' what you know. Mr Pyne was the Minister for Defence Industry and then went on to become the Minister for Defence. He would have been briefed by the department on every project that is currently running and on every future project that is coming down the pipeline. He would have been briefed on operations, including where there are problems that might need industry's help to fix. He would have been briefed by commercial entities on what their solutions are to particular problems. He would have been briefed by foreign governments, foreign agencies and, indeed, our own security agencies in respect of a whole range of matters that are simply not in the public domain.
It's not possible for Mr Pyne to form advice without considering what he knows. He doesn't actually have to say to EY, 'I know this.' He simply knows what he knows when he forms his advice, and that's hugely problematic. And, as Senator Keneally said, it does raise issues of probity. It's problematic in itself because it creates an integrity issue for the minister, who I presume signed something to say that he would comply with the standards. I guess that's something we need to explore further—whether or not these are standards that just get waved around and for which there is no legal enforceable undertaking made. I think we need to get to the bottom of that because that goes to the integrity of the standards themselves.
But there's a difficulty here in that there will be other companies that will be looking and saying, 'You know what, I'm going to tender on a particular project that Mr Pyne has knowledge about.' That may give rise to litigation. That may give rise to probity issues, which aren't just a cost to companies; they are also a cost to Defence when a procurement is slowed down because there is litigation on foot. So it's quite problematic.
I have read the statement that Minister Cormann tabled today, and it's troubling not because of what's in there but because of what's not in there. Dr Parkinson spelt out the lines quoted by Mr Pyne and, indeed, EY on 27 June that talk about the role, but it's interesting that he failed to discover the statements that were hidden in The Australian Financial Review on the 26th and, indeed, in my motion in this chamber. Let me just read out what the Financial Review has recorded, which is an email from EY's defence leader Mark Stewart on 26 June. He says:
EY is ramping up its defence capability ahead of a surge in consolidation activity and the largest expansion of Australia's military capability in our peacetime history – $200 billion over 10 years out to 2026.
We've engaged Christopher Pyne to assist with this.
Large domestic defence players are looking for mergers to bulk up. Big multinational players are also shopping for acquisitions to scale their onshore delivery capability.
Christopher Pyne is also here to help lead conversations about what South Australia needs to do to meet the challenges and opportunities this huge defence investment will bring.
He was the Minister for Defence. There's no question that he's going from his defence industry portfolio to the Defence portfolio and then on to a defence company to give advice in relation to defence projects which EY will, they hope, monetise. And, of course, the response text back from former defence minister Pyne said:
I am looking forward to providing strategic advice to EY, as the firm looks to expand its footprint in the defence industry.
There can be no ambiguity here about what was being said. Mr Pyne is going to this company to assist them with defence, and we know he cannot 'unknow' what he knows. In fact, Dr Parkinson says that it's not possible for him to forget the information.
How was this missed? The head of PM&C is on $914,460 per annum, okay? He's paid well to do a very good job. I'm not suggesting any incompetence in this particular circumstance. What's happened here is that he's missed it because the terms of reference of the inquiry were designed to fix a government's political problem. So he's just doing what the circumstances require. He's done the political fix. And I'm very concerned when we have neutral public servants, who serve the public, coming in with these sorts of political fixes. How could he possibly have not seen what Mr Pyne had said himself and what EY had said themselves? How could that not have been included in the letter? It's unbelievable.
There are also other details that are missing. What were the roles for Mr Pyne—and Ms Bishop? What was the reason for the company hiring? You can only get that if you talk to EY, and that appears not to have occurred. What were the expectations of the parties in terms of what EY intend to provide Mr Pyne for remuneration for a particular activity? There would be expectations in place in respect of what is to come in exchange for that remuneration. We don't know, because it's not in the details that have been provided to us.
Mr Pyne made reference to 'rigorous processes and procedures' to prevent a breach. Now, I presume that doesn't mean rigorous processes and procedures for Mr Pyne but rather for EY. Well, we need to have a look at that. We need to have a bit of a look-see and find out what those processes are so that we can be assured, moving forward over the next 18 months, which is the time frame that certainly relates to lobbying—and I point out that, in respect of using knowledge that is not in the public domain, there is no time frame; that is perpetual until such time as the information comes into the public domain by other means. So we don't know what those processes are and we need to know what they are. If the Statement of Ministerial Standards is to have any real meaning or any real effect, we must look to the detail of how the standards are being enforced, and it's my view that they are not.
This is a test for the Prime Minister and thus far he's failing. He's allowed ministers to go to these industry players in contravention of or at great risk to the Statement of Ministerial Standards and he's done very little. He could have picked up the phone and said to Mr Pyne, who I like—I like Christopher Pyne; he's a nice chap. I always got on well with him—
Senator Watt: He's a fixer!
Senator PATRICK: He's a fixer. Thank you, Senator Watt. But, unfortunately, he's put himself in an unenviable position. He's put the Prime Minister in the same position. So it is a test for the Prime Minister. He could have rung him and said, 'Hey, let's rethink this,' but he hasn't done that.
Everyone is aware that on the Notice Paper today I am moving a motion for an inquiry into this particular paragraph of the Statement of Ministerial Standards and how they are enforced. Obviously that will be informed by some of the events that have taken place since Ms Bishop and Mr Pyne have taken up new positions. I foreshadow that we may need to call the Prime Minister to that inquiry—they are, of course, his standards. We need to find out the undertakings that he's made. There's information missing from Dr Parkinson, so we may need to call him and ask him to assist the Senate in respect of that inquiry. We almost certainly will need to invite Mr Pyne, such that his side of the story can be told and we can get to the bottom line. We'll probably have to talk to Ms Bishop as well. They're familiar with the building, so they'll know where the committee rooms are when we invite them! If this inquiry with the FPA committee gets up, EY will certainly get an invite, I'm sure, because we need to know what their thinking was and what they actually intended to achieve by employing Mr Pyne in this instance. We need to understand what their 'rigorous processes' are. So I'm very keen to look at that. Of course, we'll get some ethical experts in as well, if the inquiry goes ahead, to get a feeling of what the expectation is in the community, because clearly there are a bunch of people in this place that aren't able to gauge that very well. It is a wonder that we have a situation like this and parliamentarians feel that it's okay. I get a sense that Labor will support my motion today, so I hope that when I move it at 3.30 I get support for it.
Senator WATERS (Queensland) (12:51): I rise to speak to what we thought was going to be an explanation from Minister Cormann. In fact he just chucked a few bits of paper on the table and left the chamber. I have read those few bits of paper, and they amount to 'Nah, they didn't breach anything. Go back to sleep, everybody.'
We have had many examples, over the years, of ministers exiting this place lining up the next job—sometimes even before they have left—frequently in an industry that they had just purported to regulate, and going to work for that very industry.This has been going on for a very long time. There are a litany of examples that I'm going to delight in going through, as I have done before in this chamber. Sadly, the list has just gotten longer since the last time we checked. There is a revolving door between ex-politicians and industry lobby groups. So to have this bit of paper that says, 'No, it doesn't breach the standards,' simply shows how bloody useless the standards are. We need some actual standards with actual teeth that actually clean up this place.
While you're at it, what about that ICAC that we have been waiting for for 10 years since the Greens first proposed it, including one that would apply to politicians—to MPs in this chamber and the other chamber? The government reluctantly announced in November last year that they would concede and establish an ICAC. Where is it? They made out that it was going to be coming really quickly, yet we haven't seen hide nor hair of it. Now we have the Prime Minister brushing off these two very serious breaches of the ministerial code.
It beggars belief that you can go and work for an industry that you were just regulating and somehow not draw upon the knowledge that you learned as a minister. I've read the document. I don't buy the explanations. I don't think it's possible to somehow have what are called 'Chinese walls' in our own head. I don't think the employers of former Minister Pyne and former Minister Bishop believe that either. They know why they have hired those people. We all do. The fact that the Prime Minister has brushed this off to a senior public servant to just prove how useless the standards are doesn't assure anyone that this government is acting with any integrity.
Sadly, we have seen that it's not just the government and the former ministers from that side of the chamber that routinely exit this place and go to work for industries that they used to regulate. There are a litany of examples on both sides of the chamber. I'll go through those in a minute. They serve to illustrate why we need a prime ministerial code of conduct that actually sets some high standards rather than the pathetic standards that not even these examples apparently breach—but we need them to have teeth. What's the point of having standards if they're (a) weak and (b) not even enforced? It makes a mockery of the standards and it makes a mockery of the Prime Minister, but I guess we're getting used to that.
I think the Australian people deserve to have confidence that ministers and former ministers are not using the knowledge that they've gained in their roles to further their own private profits or feather their own nest in future employment. I don't think that's too big an ask. Frankly, that is a very basic expectation. It is astounding that it is repeatedly not met and that we are seeing example after example of former high-flyers going to work for those industries on, no doubt, very large salaries and retainers. We just debated a Newstart bill. This mob don't want to increase Newstart for people who have nothing to live on, but they're very happy to continue to turn a blind eye when some of their own go off to fancy, cushy, well-paid jobs that breach the ministerial code of conduct, or standards as they're known.
We will be supporting the move for an inquiry into former ministers Pyne and Bishop, but it's not enough just to look at these two examples. This is a deeply unsatisfactory situation that has been going on for far too long, and if we are going to start looking at it then let's do the job properly. Let's take a full look at the level of non-enforcement of these standards through all the years since they have existed, as they apply to both sides of the chamber, and let's look at how we can fix that problem. Let's look at how we can make those standards enforceable. Let's give them some teeth. Do we need an independent enforcer to apply those standards? Clearly the Prime Minister doesn't care much about enforcing his own standards. Do we need an independent body to do that job and do it properly? We'll be supporting this inquiry, but we want to see it extended so that it actually looks at the root of the problem and at some real solutions to the problem.
Of course, the best solution for fixing up a corrupt system is to have an anticorruption body. Again, we've been pushing for that. It was in 2009 when we first moved a motion for that, and we've had many private members' bills for it ever since. We did some great work with former member Cathy McGowan that I believe helped to pressure the government to finally accept that an ICAC was needed. But where is this ICAC? We have heard nothing of it since February. It has totally gone off the boil. The pressure is now back on the government. They need to clean up their own patch. The Australian people have the right to expect that corruption is not rife in this building and that the revolving door between lobbyists and ex-MPs or their senior staff is firmly closed. So we will continue to push for an ICAC.
The other thing that we will be seeking to inquire into, hopefully, if this inquiry does, in fact, get the support from this chamber, is examples of not only former ministers flouting the very weak code of conduct but existing ministers breaching the code of conduct. There's been some coverage of Minister Taylor and Minister Frydenberg having what to me doesn't sound like a very above-board discussion about a piece of land in WA that would have been affected by a critical habitat declaration and that, inconveniently for Mr Taylor, is on a property that a family relation of his has a commercial interest in. As reported, Minister Taylor asked, 'Well, is there any way we can get out of this grassland declaration?' Apparently Minister Frydenberg agreed to have it looked into by the department.
Well, sorry, you don't get to rewrite the rules to make yourself more money just because you're in the cabinet. It is just laughable that they think they can get away with this stuff. So we want to make sure that the Senate inquiry that is to look into former ministers Pyne and Bishop also looks at current ministers undertaking what seems to me to be very dodgy conduct that is, I believe, in firm breach of the ministerial standards, which say that you're not meant to use your ministerial position for private and personal gain. I look forward to getting some more evidence on the table. In fact, we're awaiting an explanation addressing that from Minister Cormann tomorrow. Hopefully we will get an actual explanation, unlike the display that we saw earlier. Clearly, there are many examples to be investigated in this frame.
I want to list a few of the others. We saw former resources minister Mr Macfarlane leave the parliament and then, within the 18-month so-called cooling-off period—in fact, it was about a year later—go to head up the Queensland Resources Council. Nothing was done about that. We moved a motion in this place which, thankfully, got support, that called on existing ministers to at least boycott meetings with former Minister Macfarlane so that they could uphold the ministerial standard, even if former Minister Macfarlane himself was no longer complying with that standard. That time has now elapsed, but that was the most recent example of someone who purported to regulate the mining industry and then went off to work for them. Is it any wonder we have never seen a coalmine or a coal seam gas proposal rejected under federal environment laws yet? You would only need to look at the donations they make to both sides of politics to answer that question as well.
Former Minister Robb took a consulting role with a Chinese land developer which had an interest in the Darwin port, even though he had been previously working on trade matters as the former trade minister. Former Labor resources minister Martin Ferguson went to become the chair of APIA, the petroleum industry representative body that wants to frack the guts out of this country, poison everybody's land and water, and drive farmers off their productive lands. The former Liberal defence minister Peter Reith joined a defence contractor, and former Labor ministers Emerson and Combet became consultants to AGL and Santos. Former Minister Conroy, who recently left this place, now works for a gambling lobbyist group, even though he was at one time communications minister. The list goes on.
The irony of today's report by public servant Martin Parkinson is that he acknowledges that there is no way of enforcing the ministerial standards once a minister has left parliament. So not only does his advice show how weak the standards are but it even acknowledges, in the final paragraph, there's nothing that the Prime Minister can do about it anyway. Well, there is. He can rewrite the code, give it some teeth, give it to an independent body to enforce and set up an ICAC. We have been waiting for 10 years. The Commonwealth is the only jurisdiction that doesn't have an anticorruption body and, clearly, we desperately need one.
The Greens will continue to advocate these matters, and it's on the Prime Minister whether or not he wants to clean up his own patch. He doesn't have much else of an agenda, except attacking vegans and giving tax cuts to the rich. That will only last five minutes. Move onto the next decent thing. How about you lift Newstart and introduce an ICAC with real teeth? I won't hold my breath, but we live in hope. We have three years more of this government and we don't know what of their agenda they will try and wreak upon us, but let's hope that an ICAC is actually on it. We will move, and I hope we will have company, to give it real teeth, to make sure it can regulate the conduct of members of parliament and actually start meeting the standards that the Australian people have of us. We're very well paid. We have an important role to perform to represent the people. We are not just here to get our next job, working for an industry group. That list of examples is really quite cringeworthy. How about you act with some integrity, enforce these standards, stop turning a blind eye when your mates go off to work for your other mates that just made a massive donation to your campaign and introduce an ICAC?
Senator WATT (Queensland) (13:03): I also rise to make a few remarks in this debate. At the outset, the point to be made is this: ask any average person in the street in Australia and they will agree that the actions of Mr Pyne—I'll focus my remarks on Mr Pyne due to time constraints—are a clear breach of this government's ministerial standards. I remarked before that Mr Pyne used to parade around this place in his long period in parliament describing himself as a 'fixer'. He was a fixer; he would get things fixed. Well, I think there's no doubt that Mr Pyne has very much fixed himself a very good little earner for his life post politics and it's not the kind of fix that the Australian public want to see.
I've just had a look at the letter from Mr Parkinson, secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet, who was asked to review this situation by the Prime Minister. I've never met Mr Parkinson, but, from everyone I've ever spoken to who has met him, he's a highly respected public servant. I have no quibble with him, but I do have to take issue with the findings of his review, because, as I say, I think they fall a long way short of what most Australians would expect of their former politicians.
So what this all concerns is the government's Statement of Ministerial Standards. The particular clause that is relevant is clause 2.25 of those standards. Essentially, that clause requires two things of former ministers of this parliament and of the government. This is the first:
… for an eighteen month period after ceasing to be a Minister, they will not lobby, advocate or have business meetings with members of the government, parliament, public service or defence force on any matters on which they have had official dealings as Minister in their last eighteen months in office.
The second restriction imposed on former ministers by clause 2.25 is this:
Ministers are also required to undertake that, on leaving office, they will not take personal advantage of information to which they have had access as a Minister, where that information is not generally available to the public.
Now, I've got no reason to believe that Mr Pyne has already breached the first part of that clause, or indeed that he ever will. I take Mr Pyne at face value when he says that he will not 'lobby, advocate or have business dealings with members of the government, parliament, Public Service or Defence Force on matters with which he has had official dealings'. I would hope that Mr Pyne is not silly enough to commit such a flagrant breach of these standards by going and having those types of meetings in breach of the standard. But I don't think there can be any doubt that for a minister to take up an appointment, as Mr Pyne has done so soon after he has finished as a minister—I don't see any way Mr Pyne can arrange his affairs so that he won't end up breaching the second part of clause 2.25, which requires him to 'not take personal advantage of information' to which he has had access as a minister 'where that information is not generally available to the public'.
Mr Pyne's own statement on this matter talks about his very long history in parliament, his long history as a minister, his knowledge of politics, his knowledge that he has acquired over that period of time. I simply do not believe it is possible to just park all that knowledge—that 'information to which they have had access as a minister', which is the wording in the standards. It defies belief that you can just park, somewhere, all of that information that you have acquired as a minister and not have that in your head as you're undertaking meetings with a future employer on matters that are relevant to your former portfolio.
I will go through what Mr Pyne has said in his own media statement. He said:
I know my responsibilities under the Code and I will abide by them.
Well, thanks very much! We know how much we can trust this government to follow through on its promises. Here we've got a former minister saying it's all okay; he knows what he's got to do and he's going to abide by that. It's an open-and-shut case. As we used to say in Queensland about Joh Bjelke-Petersen, 'Don't you worry about that.' Well, I'm sorry, but I do worry about that, and I think most Australians do as well. Mr Pyne goes on to say:
I have not taken personal advantage of information I received as a Minister in the Defence portfolio that is not otherwise publicly available.
Okay, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he has not done so at this point in time. He goes on to say:
The providing of occasional high-level strategic advice does not require … using any information a former Minister may have learnt as a Minister that is not generally available to the public.
This seems to be the crux of Mr Pyne's argument as to why he is not and will not be in breach of the Statement of Ministerial Standards. What he's arguing is that the role that he has taken on in his post-political career will only involve providing occasional high-level strategic advice about matters related to his former portfolio, but that that won't use any of the information that he acquired in his official capacity. He says, 'For example, in the Defence portfolio,' and lists all these public documents that are out there, like the defence white paper and the Defence industry policy statement. There are the sorts of things that are freely available to the public, so the only information that he's going to make use of in providing high-level strategic advice is already on the public record. He says:
Giving advice about those policies does not require using information that a former minister has learnt that is not generally available to the public.
My question is: if all that EY or any prospective employer of Mr Pyne is going to get out of employing Mr Pyne is that he's going to walk into their office with a whole series of public reports that anyone can download off the internet, why would they bother employing him? I don't know how much he is getting paid. It's probably a lot of money. Why not save yourself the cost of engaging Mr Pyne and print out a copy of every one of those documents he's talking about? Some of those are big documents. They might cost $10 each to print out a copy of. That would be a whole lot cheaper than engaging Mr Pyne. Are we really expected to believe that Mr Pyne has not been engaged because of what he knows that lies behind those documents? If all EY or any other prospective employer of Mr Pyne wanted to do was to take advantage of information on the public record, they'd just go and do that. They don't need Mr Pyne or anyone else in order to do that. What employers are looking for is the information behind those public documents, the kind of information that is held by a former minister such as Mr Pyne. Mr Pyne's media statement is intended to assure us. He says:
I intend to ensure that anyone I provide advice to has rigorous processes and procedures in place to ensure I am not put in a position where the ministerial code of conduct might be breached.
We don't know what any of these processes that he's going to put in place are. Again, as Senator Keneally said before, Mr Pyne's argument simply comes down to two words. They are: 'Trust me.' He's saying: 'I know the code. I'm not going to breach the code. I won't have a meeting with someone I shouldn't. I'm not going to use information that I've got. I will park that over there and never touch it, never make use of it. I will practically forget it before I take on my role.'
That is just absurd. No-one believes that. No-one believes that that's what's required under the Statement of Ministerial Standards. That's why the public have reacted so badly to yet another example of a former minister of this government going off to line their pockets in the private sector armed with information that they acquired in their official capacity.
This is obviously an issue for Mr Pyne and his failure to comply with the ministerial standards. But, beyond Mr Pyne, it's also very directly an issue for the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison. It's very disappointing that, so soon after the election when the government was returned, we see the Prime Minister fail the integrity test at the very first hurdle. We've all seen the comments from Mr Morrison, the Prime Minister, since he won the election about how he was going to do politics differently. He was going to dial down the volume of politics. He has been promising us a new government. Don't look at all the rabble that we have had over the last six years, with two different Prime Ministers, a couple of different Deputy Prime Ministers and all sorts of knifings and assassinations. Don't worry about all that—everything is new under this Prime Minister.
I have to say that Mr Morrison might be promising a brand-new government, but what we're already seeing in this instance are the same old dodgy standards from this tired Liberal-National government that utterly lacks integrity. It doesn't take you long to think of examples from the last term of office where we saw ministers of this government fail the integrity test. We had Peter Dutton and the au pairs. We had numerous directors appointed by the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Senator Canavan, to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, and those directors had massive conflicts of interest and in some cases were LNP donors, members or supporters being appointed to bodies that were going to be doling out millions of dollars to projects from which they could potentially benefit themselves.
We've had all sorts of jobs-for-mates scandals, and Senator Keneally listed many of those. I don't think she got to the dozens of appointments to the AAT that have been made by this government, of former staffers, former members of parliaments, mates, people they met in the pub, people they met down the street. That seems to be the test for being appointed to the AAT by this government. We had Senator O'Sullivan, who sat in here, chairing estimates committees and asking questions of public servants about projects that he and his family businesses had direct financial stakes in. That's carried over into this term with the matters involving Mr Taylor, the energy minister, over having meetings with departmental officials regarding projects in which he and his family have personal interests as well.
In just the last three years we saw numerous examples where ministers in this government clearly had no regard for matters of integrity and couldn't separate their personal interests from their official interests. Within weeks of being re-elected, we've got another example where Mr Morrison is prepared to turn a blind eye to an absolutely clear breach of his own ministerial standards by one of his former ministers. Mr Morrison has been talking a lot. He's been out there lecturing all sorts of people about the need to restore the community's trust. He gave a speech to a business conference last year where he lectured businesses about the need for business to restore the community's trust, and that is something that needs to occur. He was out there lecturing Cricket Australia about the need to restore trust after the ball-tampering scandal and various other things that that sport was involved in. Again, he was right on that point. But what you won't see him do is lecture his own ministers or his own former ministers about the way—and the need—to restore trust in politics.
All of us who are involved in politics know that trust in politics in Australia is at an all-time low. Cynicism about politics could not be higher in Australia, and it's exactly because of matters like that involving Mr Pyne that trust is so low. This kind of thing, where you've got a minister who takes up an appointment related to his former portfolio within weeks of leaving parliament, is exactly what Australians hate about politics. And here it is happening again under a government which has consistently failed to meet the integrity test.
Mr Morrison also likes to talk a lot about the Canberra bubble, and how all the rest of us need to get out of the Canberra bubble and realise that the things we're obsessed with aren't what the average Australian cares about. I have to say that, by saying Mr Pyne has a clean bill of health, Mr Morrison has demonstrated that he, more than anyone, is stuck in the Canberra bubble. Just leave this chamber, just leave this building, and you will find that every single Australian you speak to says that what Mr Pyne has done here is inappropriate and is in clear breach of the ministerial standards. For Mr Morrison to deny that demonstrates that he, more than anyone, is stuck in the Canberra bubble.
If you don't want to believe me, if you think that I'm just having a bit of a political attack on Mr Morrison, just listen to some of the comments that have been made by some of the current serving Liberal and National Party members of parliament regarding this matter. We've had Senator Abetz—I think he is now the father of the Senate; he's the longest serving senator, if I'm right, from either party, and he knows a bit about ministerial standards as a former minister himself—on the public record in relation to Mr Pyne saying, 'There is an issue here; I acknowledge and accept that.' So this isn't just me as a member of the opposition saying that Mr Pyne has done the wrong thing and that Mr Morrison should take action. Senator Abetz has said it. Mr Pasin, one of the Liberal members of parliament for South Australia, has said that Mr Pyne's post-politics role doesn't meet the pub test:
Ultimately this a question of personal judgment - ministers who leave this place, who have been given the great privilege of those offices within the executive, should think seriously about whether decisions they make once they leave are in the spirit of the code or not. It doesn't reflect well on the political class.
So, again, it is not just me saying there's a problem here—that Mr Pyne has failed to meet the standards and that Mr Morrison has turned a blind eye; at least two members of his own government are saying the same thing.
I suppose what this also says, when we've got government backbenchers out there making these kinds of comments, is that all the division we saw within this government over the last three years is just simmering below the surface. It doesn't take a lot to get Senator Eric Abetz out there, criticising more moderate members of the Liberal Party. He took the first opportunity he could in coming and having a swing at Mr Pyne, and Mr Pasin wasn't far behind him. So I predict that, just as we saw a lack of integrity from this government and constant division within this government in the last term, we're going to be seeing it again. And it's on full display so early in the term, in the case of Mr Pyne.
Senator KITCHING (Victoria) (13:20): Mr Pyne left the parliament in May, convinced that there was no life left in this government, and even concerned that he would perhaps lose his seat. So he departed. And, as a lifelong political careerist who had never worked in any other capacity, he is the happy recipient of a parliamentary pension that is reported to be worth around $200,000 per annum.
Some have defended that extremely generous pension scheme on the basis that it was an anticorruption measure. We will see, though, that, in his case at least, it hasn't been very effective. I don't begrudge him the generosity of that pension, but we might have hoped that it might be enough. And I should not fail to point out the obvious, which is that a long way from this chamber, in the shopping centres, the mothers groups and sporting clubs of Australia, many Australians—the victims of bogus robo-debt claims, those waiting on NDIS plans to be approved and those literally starving on Newstart or on the age pension—might well think that taxpayers paying $4,000 a week for ex-politicians as sit-down money is a bit rich.
But, as we have now seen, that's not even enough for Christopher Maurice Pyne. His snout seeks out more than one trough. We have to ask, in this do-nothing response, what the basis is of his corporate arrangement. Is it a straight salary? Is there an incentive bonus scheme? Incentive bonus schemes are often very common in the large consulting firms, so we'd have to ask: what is Christopher Pyne going to avail himself of?
Where is his judgement? After all, Christopher Pyne was never one who was shy to point out other people's lack of judgement. He was quite happy being judge, jury and executioner on other colleagues. His behaviour here is of course both a matter of comedy and of legend. Where is the judgement of the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison? These are the standards of the Prime Minister. These are the standards the Prime Minister sets for his executive. But this 'move it along, nothing to see here' response is a total disgrace, and it does not bode well for this government. I take Senator Waters' point: if you are a Prime Minister with gravitas, you do not buck-pass to a public servant; you take care of business yourself.
Of course, Christopher Pyne has never had a real job, unless you count his hosting of the surprisingly excellent Pyne & Marles Sky News show, of which I was a regular viewer. The other host, I thought, was quite insightful, and most certainly tolerant! But the answer is clear enough, isn't it? Corporations are willing to pay him because they expect a return on their investment. They pay Pyne X in the hope of extracting a thousand X from his mates in the Commonwealth government. And the sad, terrible truth of this is that they might not even recognise it for what it is: corrupt. It is corrupt. It is a corrupt arrangement.
In their hillbilly, boastful enthusiasm, one of the largest accounting and consulting firms in Australia, Ernst & Young, boasted that they had appointed him in preparation for getting a bigger piece of the Defence outsourcing pie. Over the past few years there's been a boom in outsourcing out of Defence to EY's competitors, the principal beneficiary being KPMG. Senator Keneally went through some of those—the large scale of those projects and that consulting. That's why Pyne was appointed to a part-time job that, reportedly, pays more than his last full-time job, as a cabinet minister.
Normally, it would be my duty to stand here in this place and assert that such corrupt behaviour was the collective responsibility of an admittedly quite thoroughly dodgy government. There have been other egregious examples of government decision-makers finding themselves in highly lucrative post-decision-making sinecures after their terms expired. Andrew Robb is probably the most outrageous of these examples. In his case, it went to such an extent that a former security agency chief had to be appointed to the FIRB. But let's be fair about Pyne: there's no-one on our side of politics who loathes him quite like most of the Liberal Party room, who have had to endure his prissy, sanctimonious, smart alec, backstabbing, constantly treacherous, hateful and despicable ways. Think of the furore that eventuated from his comments at the casino in Sydney, his boastful speech to moderates of the Liberal Party, and think of the consequences that they unleashed.
John Howard made many mistakes in his term of office, but he judged Pyne quite correctly. John Howard judged him to be 'unworthy of promotion'. We now see just how unworthy. They are a remarkable contrast in conduct post office. Mr Howard retired gracefully, occasionally helping his side of politics and writing a sedate but popularly received memoir that settled few scores, and he certainly didn't sell himself to corporate Australia or to foreign interests. Pyne, within weeks of the election, has his snout in multiple troughs. It's a disgrace. It is little wonder Christopher Pyne's former colleagues Mr Pasin; Senator Abetz; and Peter Dutton, the member for Dickson, practically threw him under the bus on a very entertaining segment of morning television. It is little wonder that his former colleagues say that his appointment to EY does not pass the pub test.
It is little wonder his former colleagues are so gun-shy about introducing a national integrity commission. They will spend the next three years trying to avoid it, because they know that former members like Christopher Pyne, who've always believed in little else beyond self-entitlement, would be dragged in as witnesses and be caught in lies and corrupt schemes. Pyne, Robb and countless others could star in a Liberal version of Orange Is the New Black—of course, it might have to be 'orange is the new Liberal blue'! We won't have an integrity commission worthy of the name from this government. They've seen the damage that it can do to governing parties who've lost their way. But I don't think any of those other parties have really got the best of Christopher Pyne, or the worst, because what Christopher Pyne is thinking of engaging in is large-scale defrauding of the Commonwealth. But time will tell.
I'll end by asking why Christopher Pyne, on his social media, is posting photographs of himself walking the corridors of Parliament House. What is he doing here? Who is he meeting? And he gets no benefit of the doubt, because he appears to have no ethical standards whatsoever and no care for his own party, which is drunk on hubris, and this nonresponse is just another piece of proof of their hubristic nature. Above all else, the good of this country depends on government ministers and bureaucrats being trusted to make decisions free of favour and free of obligation or coercion from sleazy lobbyists, like Christopher Pyne, who know their secrets and weaknesses and are willing to exploit them in a series of side hustles. I believe this will emerge as the biggest scandal of this already plagued Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government.
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (13:28): As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I wish to comment on the most grave and angry concerns about the recent postministerial employment of Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop in the private sector, which, in my view, represent clear breaches of the ministerial standards, as anyone could see. Mr Pyne was Minister for Defence Industry from July 2016 until August 2018, and Minister for Defence from August 2018 until April 2019. He is now employed with the firm Ernst & Young, a firm that has received Department of Defence contracts worth more than $148 million over just the last four years. Ernst & Young has stated publicly that it is aiming for further Defence business opportunities.
The government would have us believe that this is not a breach of ministerial standards, which essentially state, at paragraph 2.25, Post-ministerial employment:
… for an eighteen month period after ceasing to be a Minister, they will not lobby, advocate or have business meetings with members of the government, parliament, public service or defence force on any matters on which they have had official dealings as Minister …
For that same period they must not 'take personal advantage of information' which they have accessed through their previous position which was otherwise not available to the public. Mr Pyne is not able to unlearn what he has been exposed to in his ministerial position.
The Australian public are not stupid. Australians do not think that this action is okay. This action is an insult to the Australian people, who are being asked to condone conduct that is clearly enriching Mr Pyne based on information that came to him during his time as minister. It is disrespectful to the electors of this country and a breach of the trust that was placed in him by both the electors and his colleagues. This is the 'Sixty Billion Dollar Man'. The $60 billion job creation scheme created just one job: Christopher Pyne's, when he was re-elected in the 2016 election. That $60 billion lasted just three years.
If this is allowed to be swept under the carpet, it makes a mockery of all the rules that this Senate has considered essential for the good and fair conduct of past ministers. Perhaps Mr Pyne—to reflect on his joke in his valedictory speech, when he was leaving parliament—wants to avoid squeezing his own lemons for his drinks in future. But it leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of Australian voters and Australian taxpayers.
Now let's turn to Ms Bishop. She served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from September 2013 until August 2018. She is now working as a board member for Palladium, a global investment and consultancy group that was awarded more than $500 million in Australian government contracts during the period when Ms Bishop was Minister for Foreign Affairs—half a billion dollars. This conjures up in my mind the name 'Hillary' and the images that go with that.
It is clear that each of these people has in fact gained financially from what they gleaned from their ministerial roles, and this is not good enough. It speaks to the standards, sadly, of the government, the Prime Minister and the Liberal-Labor duopoly. From the pubs of Thursday Island to the pubs of Tugun, Mr Pyne and Ms Bishop fail the pub test. This is not what Australian taxpayers expect from their ex-politicians. Parliament is not for the members of parliament. We are servants to the people, and we should be serving in parliament and after parliament in accordance with parliamentary procedures and what the people expect.
Ms Bishop's and Mr Pyne's actions are not acceptable, and the Australian public need to know that One Nation will stand up against these abuses of office. From Cairns to Cunnamulla and from Bamaga to Burleigh, One Nation wants to restore honest and competent government to Australia for the benefit of all Australians.
Question agreed to.
BILLS
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Worker Screening Database) Bill 2019
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Senator CAROL BROWN (Tasmania) (13:33): I rise to support the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Worker Screening Database) Bill 2019. This bill establishes the legislative framework for the commencement of a national worker screening database for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the NDIS. In line with the nationally consistent way that NDIS workers are screened, this bill will establish a central database administered by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner, with the assistance of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, in order to provide current and accurate information to registered providers providing support to NDIS participants, among others.
One of the principal purposes of the database for nationally consistent worker screening is to minimise the risk of harm to people with disability from those who work closely with them. The Council of Australian Governments Disability Reform Council agreed to establish a nationally consistent approach to worker screening in which states and territories would collect and analyse worker screening applications for the NDIS, and the Commonwealth would establish and maintain a national database. The national worker screening database will make it more difficult for workers with poor records in one jurisdiction to move to another jurisdiction and continue to work with people with disability.
Labor welcome this legislation because we know that people with disability are at a greater risk of abuse than others in our community. Too often this abuse comes at the hands of those who people with disability should be able to trust the most. There are many horrific cases of people with disability being abused and assaulted in institutions and in residential and educational settings. According to Disabled People's Organisations Australia, 92 per cent of women with an intellectual disability have been sexually assaulted, with 60 per cent of these assaults occurring before they turn 18. Children with disability are at least three times more likely to experience abuse than other children are.
The government says that the NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework, including the national worker screening database, will be enough to protect people with disability. This is of course not true. While the national worker screening database will be an important tool to prevent abuse occurring in the future, it can never investigate the crimes of the past and will not cover other mainstream sectors, including health, education, mental health and justice. The voices of people who have been abused must be heard. That is why Labor campaigned for and welcomed the fact that there would be, finally, a royal commission—the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. This is a policy that Labor announced in May 2017. It is a critically important step for Australia. People will now, finally, be listened to and believed. It will be a difficult and traumatic process for many people and it will be shocking and confronting for us all, but the abuse of Australians with disability is a national shame. The royal commission must be a turning point for our country. It must lead to deep and lasting changes not just in the way governments and services work but in the way people with disability are regarded and included by society. Australians with disability deserve full and equal citizenship. That means equal opportunities in all parts of life, including education, employment, health, justice and civil society. We have a long, long way to go before we can claim that Australia is a genuinely inclusive and accessible place. This royal commission must play a critical role in leading the change people with disability and their families and carers have long campaigned for and deserve.
Of course, this legislation before us only covers people who are in the NDIS and receive services and support. While Labor welcomes this legislation for the protection it offers people, we know that this will not address the failings of the Liberal government and their management of the NDIS. The Liberals try to pretend their management of the NDIS is perfect. The reality is that the Liberals have ripped $1.6 billion out of the system, leaving people with disability and those who care for them without support they need. When the government's budget was released, the underspend of $1.6 billion was exposed. The underspend means that around 77,000 Australians will miss out on the NDIS because of delays in the rollout. The government are using the underspend on the NDIS so they can prop up their budget position. It's because of the government's incompetence in the rollout and their deliberate actions that we see this underspend, and they're doing it all at the expense of Australians with disability. The effect of this underspend is that NDIS participants are, on average, $20,000 worse off and that, because of the Liberals' maladministration and their lack of any leadership, people are falling through the cracks as the NDIS is rolled out. This is the consistent feedback of NDIS participants, providers, their families and states and territory governments. The very poor implementation of this scheme is clear from the state of the agency responsible for its implementation—without a CEO, with a mass exodus of its senior leadership in the past few months, a staffing cap that means longer waiting times and less access to services for NDIS participants, and a substantial lack of proper representation and understanding at the staff and board level of lived experience of disability.
We have seen countless examples of the real-world impact that the Liberals' cuts and neglect have had, including families who can only get a response from the NDIA or the government when they start a community campaign exposing the neglect, like Angus and his mum in Queensland, who rely on a wheelbarrow for transport on the family farm because Angus couldn't access a suitable wheelchair. That story appeared in the Courier-Mail on 1 July. A wheelchair-bound man in Brisbane with progressive spastic paraplegia was initially told that he 'wasn't disabled enough', despite being almost paralysed from the waist down. Again, that was a story in the media on 5 July. There are countless people with disability who end up in hospital because they don't have suitable NDIS plans. There are inconsistent and inadequate transport arrangements, like the cap on subsidies in Tasmania that will leave people with disability isolated. NDIS advocates and participants have voiced concerns as the NDIS is not equipped to replace the taxi subsidy in Tasmania. The transport subsidy, which the Tasmanian government will cap at $1,000 this year and then reduce to $350 from July 2020, was designed to complement the NDIS and to meet the transport needs of people with disability, especially in regional and isolated geographic areas. This has resulted in buck-passing between the Australian government and the state Liberal government, with the Tasmanian Liberal infrastructure minister, Jeremy Rockliff, telling the Launceston Examiner newspaper that his government 'stepped in to pick up the shortfall of the federally operated NDIA.' In response to that, a spokesperson for the NDIA, whose responsible minister is federal Liberal MP Stuart Robert, told the newspaper that 'NDIS supports were not intended to replace state and territory responsibilities for ensuring accessible public transport and community transport.' That shows how little regard both these governments have for people with disability and their families.
Labor wants to ensure that Australians with disabilities get the support they deserve. Labor wants to ensure that the NDIS delivers on the promise that so many Australians expect of it and that Labor intended, and that it improves the lives of Australians with disability.
We support this legislation because we recognise the importance of creating a central national database to store and disclose information as required on worker screening information, which is also, of course, about state and territory arrangements. We welcome this legislation because we know how important it is for people with disability to receive high-quality care. I commend the legislation to the Senate.
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (13:43): I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Worker Screening Database) Bill 2019. The NDIS was started by Labor with very, very vague terms, extremely vague terms, and lofty goals put out there. Then the Liberals came along and decided to try to fill it. We had a wild, unplanned, grand vision with no substance. This is now open to abuse, while not supporting the very people it was meant to support. We must support, we need to support people with services and physical support for the vulnerable and the down-trodden in our society. One Nation is in favour of that. But instead of doing that, under the Liberal-Labor duopoly we have now created a monster, created an industry. At the core of this bill is the abuse of privacy because there seems to be open access to records.
As I said, as a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to look after the taxpayers of our country while also making sure that the needy and the vulnerable are taken care of. We now have $2 billion per annum in providers—10,000 providers. Who audits this? Who controls it? Who oversees it? Who gives it direction? There seems to be a lack of direction. And yet the needy suffer. I know of the experience of a constituent in Toowoomba who took many years to sort out with the Queensland state government a scheme to look after her son and give her son proper care and to give herself a break as carer. That has failed to be replicated. It has just withered and died. They are not getting the care and the support that they need and to which they're entitled and that the Liberals and Labor promised.
Yet we also hear other stories of incredible wastage of money—people doing menial jobs, jobs without any real service being provided, people just getting money off the taxpayer for nothing. I'm not talking about the needy. I'm talking about the consultants. I'm talking about the labourers that feed off this growing empire. We are giving money in bucketloads to those who don't really need it while withholding it from those who do need it. It is becoming a huge extortion, and there is no accountability. We used to have, under competitive federalism, accountability from the various states competing to provide better services. Now we are seeing the opposite and we are seeing the state governments withdraw from providing disability protection and disability care and services.
One Nation proudly supports and stands for the vulnerable and needy—and for having a fair go for all Australians and for giving all Australians a fair go, including taxpayers. We will not be supporting this bill, because it just continues to magnify the industry that is growing like topsy and that has no accountability, leaving the taxpayers vulnerable while not supporting the needy. We want to see some real accountability come into this, not open slather on the privacy of many individuals.
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (13:47): This bill establishes the National Disability Insurance Scheme worker screening database. The database will keep an up-to-date national record of information about NDIS worker screening checks. A clearance recorded in the database means that the NDIS worker has undergone a background check and been found not to pose an unacceptable risk of harm to NDIS participants.
The NDIS is a transformational social policy that's being delivered by this government. It requires a new, nationally consistent approach to quality and safeguards. Stakeholders have consistently supported robust risk based worker screening in the disability sector that is portable across all jurisdictions. We are committed to meeting this objective and ensuring people with disability are not exposed to harm from those who are there to support them.
We've established the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and provided $209 million over four years to support the integral work of the NDIS commission. The NDIS commission commenced operations in New South Wales and South Australia from 1 July 2018 and will be working in all states and territories by July 2020. The NDIS commission will lead the overall design and broad policy settings for nationally consistent NDIS worker screening.
Under the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Worker Screening Database) Bill, the NDIS commission is responsible for establishing and maintaining the national database as an accurate, up-to-date source of information about decisions made on NDIS workers' clearances. This reflects the NDIS commission's role as the national leader in quality and safeguards. The cost of developing and maintaining the database over the next four years is $13.6 million. States and territories are expected to contribute $6.8 million of this, representing half of the total cost.
The measures in the bill were funded as part of the 2017-18 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The bill meets the government's responsibilities under the Intergovernmental Agreement on Nationally Consistent Worker Screening for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Disability ministers from all Australian governments have provided in principle support for the intergovernmental agreement, which establishes NDIS worker screening to help create a safe and trusted workforce in the NDIS and minimise the risk of harm to people with disability. To this end, all Australian governments are working together to establish the NDIS worker screening check.
The new check will be introduced in each state and territory progressively over the next year, with all states and territories having the check in place by 1 July 2020. Until the check becomes available in a jurisdiction, transitional arrangements provide recognition of current state based checks such as working with children or vulnerable persons check. Once the NDIS check is operational, state based checks for existing workers will continue to be recognised until they expire. This approach will provide for a gradual transition to the new system and provide continuity of service provision.
Under a nationally consistent approach, worker screening units in each state and territory will be responsible for conducting the NDIS worker screening checks. They will consider an applicant's criminal history information, any relevant disciplinary and misconduct information, and information taken from the NDIS commission's complaints and reportable incident system. Information about the status of the checks will be stored in a single national database managed by the NDIS commission and accessible for NDIS purposes. Worker clearances will be portable across jurisdictions and employers, reducing duplication and complexity for workers moving between or providers operating across jurisdictions. The database enables this portability, meaning workers only need one clearance. There will be one reference point for a worker who holds a current clearance. This represents a major step forward from the existing fragmented arrangements operating in each state and territory. It reduces duplication and complexity for workers and providers operating in more than one jurisdiction.
Although recruitment, selection and screening processes are an employer responsibility, the database will provide a tool to ensure people chosen to work in the NDIS are safe to work with people with disability. Employers and self-managed participants will be able to verify that workers hold a clearance using up-to-date accurate information in the database to be established under this bill. Participants and their families can be assured workers with clearances do not pose an unacceptable risk of harm. Nationally consistent worker screening will deter and prevent those who seek to do the wrong thing from entering the NDIS workforce. The national database eliminates the opportunity for people to make multiple attempts at gaining a clearance in different states or territories. It provides for the ongoing monitoring of clearance holders' criminal history information, meaning unsuitable individuals will not remain in the sector. This sends a clear message to those who pose an unacceptable risk of harm to NDIS participants that they are not welcome.
The Morrison government is committed to the rights of people with disability to live lives free from abuse, violence, neglect and exploitation. The central database to be established under this bill will support nationally consistent NDIS worker screening in pursuit of this objective. This is an important measure to ensure people with disability have access to quality and safe support and services under the NDIS, and are not at risk of harm from people who work closely with them. I commend the bill to the chamber.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ) (13:52): As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (13:53): I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Road Vehicle Standards Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Senator STERLE (Western Australia) (13:53): I rise to contribute to the Road Vehicle Standards Legislation Amendment Bill 2019. It's very clear that safety on our roads could never, ever be underestimated. As a former shadow assistant minister for road safety, I know how important safety standards are for vehicles in our country. Almost 1.2 million cars are sold in this country every year in addition to the thousands of trucks, caravans and road vehicles, as you had would well know, Mr Acting Deputy President Gallacher, as the chair of the road safety friendship group and from your vast experience in this area as a TAC commissioner amongst other things. At a time when Australia's road toll has sadly been plateauing after many years of continued improvement, it is important that all elements of road safety are continually looked at and, more importantly, improved.
Labor is the party of road safety. There is no secret. It was the former leader of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Bill Shorten, who introduced the new portfolio for a shadow assistant minister. It was good to see that the government extracted a digit, followed and then appointed one of their own. It's more interesting to see that that digit has remained on the table and there is now an assistant minister for road safety in the government—a long time coming. Let's not forget it was that mob over there under the leadership of Mr Howard that dismantled the office of road safety. As you would well know, Mr Acting Deputy President, it was in Labor's platform that, if elected, Labor would reintroduce the Office of Road Safety. Once again another digit was extracted, and I'm happy to say that the Morrison government have said that they are going to reinitiate the Office of Road Safety. There are many questions around its funding and what it will actually do, but I look forward to it. Labor have always shown leadership in keeping people safe on our roads, and I'm very pleased that the government have followed suit, as I've said, and have said they're going to have this new group established in the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development. We will continue to monitor the work of this important office to make sure it's properly resourced, as I said earlier.
One death on our roads is one too many, which brings me to the government's Road Vehicle Standards Bill 2017 overview. Going back to 2017, they clearly said that the focus of change is to strengthen and modernise the legislation—this is this bill now we're talking about—and continue to deliver world-leading standards in community and environmental safety. In addition, the reforms are expected to save industry up to $70 million a year and lower regulatory compliance costs. That's why we recognised it was important and we backed it in.
Seventeen years have elapsed since the current act—the Motor Vehicle Standards Act—and its regulation were last reviewed. The new legislative package sets in place a regulatory regime that is more streamlined, we're told. Based on the government's figures, the saving to industry is not insignificant. Whilst Labor held some concerns about the finer detail of the legislation, we supported its passage through the parliament, including that it would commence in the latter part of this year, 2019. That also takes me back to their documentation where they said—I feel like I'm stuck in a time warp—that the Australian government will introduce the Road Vehicle Standards Bill into the parliament in early 2018. They said: 'It is expected to be debated and passed by the parliament in 2018, although both the timing and the decision are ultimately a matter for the parliament to decide. The reforms will commence 12 months after'—if you get your calculator out, after 2018 comes 2019—'the passage of legislation of the Road Vehicle Standards Act.' Quite simply, it is not acceptable for this government to say that it has been put off—they've been talking about it for six years—because it is a request of industry. That is not the case. Labor honestly believes that the mob over there have no plan; they have no idea. You can't sit here and tell everyone six years is still not long enough because you're consulting. What a lot of bulldust.
Time is against me, but I will say: we will continue to back this piece of legislation in but we're not going to sit back and wait until 2021. It's taken eight years to develop a piece of legislation that we've already passed, that we've already accepted, that we've already said we're going to support and going to continue to support. So I urge the government over there to at least tell the truth. If you haven't got a plan, tell us you haven't got a plan, but, for what remaining digits may be stuck, can you just extract them? Can you just get it done for crying out loud? I can understand you wanting to stretch it out because you've got nothing else on your plate and nothing else to talk about. Day by day, it's make up some legislation, make up some regulation and hope to hell it all falls into place. I'm saying that we will support the passage of the bill.
Senator RICE (Victoria) (13:58): I'm also rising to speak on the Road Vehicle Standards Legislation Amendment Bill 2019. This amendment bill seeks to defer the commencement date of the new Road Vehicle Standards regime following consultation with industry, pushing out the beginning of the regime from December this year to no later than July 2021 and then a year-long transitional period before full commencement. It's been a long time coming, as Senator Sterle just pointed out.
The Greens are actually sympathetic to the challenges that are posed by the short time line that's currently in place for industry to transition. We note, however, that the reason we've got such a short time line is partially because the government took so long to pass the Road Vehicle Standards Bill. This bill is about road vehicle standards—setting up the new regime through which vehicles are approved for sale in Australia by setting up type approvals so that every vehicle to be sold gets individually approved as a specific type. It streamlines the approvals, and it has been a very long time coming. Yep, 17 years since—
Debate interrupted.
MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:00): I table for the information of the Senate a revised ministry list. I seek leave to have the document incorporated into Hansard and make a short statement.
Leave granted.
The document read as follows—
Title |
Minister |
OTHER CHAMBER |
Prime Minister |
The Hon Scott Morrison MP |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
Minister for the Public Service |
The Hon Scott Morrison MP |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
Minister for Women |
Senator the Hon Marise Payne |
The Hon Karen Andrews MP |
Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service and Cabinet |
The Hon Greg Hunt MP |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
Minister for Indigenous Australians |
The Hon Ken Wyatt AM MP |
Senator the Hon Anne Ruston |
Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and Cabinet |
The Hon Ben Morton MP |
|
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development |
The Hon Michael McCormack MP |
Senator the Hon Matthew Canavan |
Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management |
The Hon David Littleproud MP |
Senator the Hon Bridget McKenzie |
Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure |
The Hon Alan Tudge MP |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
Minister for Regional Services, Decentralisation and Local Government |
The Hon Mark Coulton MP |
Senator the Hon Bridget McKenzie |
Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport |
The Hon Scott Buchholz MP |
|
Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister |
The Hon Andrew Gee MP |
|
Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Territories |
The Hon Nola Marino MP |
|
Treasurer |
The Hon Josh Frydenberg MP |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure |
The Hon Alan Tudge MP |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
Assistant Treasurer |
The Hon Michael Sukkar MP |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
Minister for Housing |
The Hon Michael Sukkar MP |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology |
Senator the Hon Jane Hume |
|
Minister for Finance (Vice-President of the Executive Council) (Leader of the Government in the Senate) |
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann |
The Hon Josh Frydenberg MP |
Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters |
Senator the Hon Zed Seselja |
|
Minister for Agriculture |
Senator the Hon Bridget McKenzie |
The Hon David Littleproud MP |
Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries |
Senator the Hon Jonathon Duniam |
|
Minister for Foreign Affairs |
Senator the Hon Marise Payne |
The Hon Scott Morrison MP |
Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment (Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) |
Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham |
The Hon Josh Frydenberg MP |
Minister for International Development and the Pacific |
The Hon Alex Hawke MP |
Senator the Hon Marise Payne |
Assistant Trade and Investment Minister |
The Hon Mark Coulton MP |
Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham |
Assistant Minister for Regional Tourism |
Senator the Hon Jonathon Duniam |
|
Attorney-General (Leader of the House) |
The Hon Christian Porter MP |
Senator the Hon Marise Payne |
Minister for Industrial Relations |
The Hon Christian Porter MP |
Senator the Hon Marise Payne |
Minister for Health |
The Hon Greg Hunt MP |
Senator the Hon Michaelia Cash |
Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians |
Senator the Hon Richard Colbeck |
The Hon Greg Hunt MP |
Minister for Youth and Sport |
Senator the Hon Richard Colbeck |
The Hon Greg Hunt MP |
Minister for Home Affairs |
The Hon Peter Dutton MP |
Senator the Hon Michaelia Cash |
Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management |
The Hon David Littleproud MP |
Senator the Hon Bridget McKenzie |
Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs |
The Hon David Coleman MP |
Senator the Hon Michaelia Cash |
Assistant Minister for Customs, Community Safety and Multicultural Affairs |
The Hon Jason Wood MP |
|
Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts |
The Hon Paul Fletcher MP |
Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC |
Minister for Education |
The Hon Dan Tehan MP |
Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham |
Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business |
Senator the Hon Michaelia Cash |
The Hon Dan Tehan MP |
Assistant Minister for Vocational Education, Training and Apprenticeships |
The Hon Steve Irons MP |
|
Minister for Industry, Science and Technology |
The Hon Karen Andrews MP |
Senator the Hon Matthew Canavan |
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia |
Senator the Hon Matthew Canavan |
The Hon Angus Taylor MP |
Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction |
The Hon Angus Taylor MP |
Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham |
Minister for the Environment |
The Hon Sussan Ley MP |
Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham |
Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management |
The Hon Trevor Evans MP |
|
Minister for Defence |
Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC |
The Hon Peter Dutton MP |
Assistant Defence Minister |
The Hon Alex Hawke MP |
Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC |
Minister for Veterans and Defence Personnel (Deputy Leader of the House) |
The Hon Darren Chester MP |
Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC |
Minister for Defence Industry |
The Hon Melissa Price MP |
Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC |
Minister for Families and Social Services (Manager of Government Business in the Senate) |
Senator the Hon Anne Ruston |
The Hon Paul Fletcher MP |
Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme |
The Hon Stuart Robert MP |
Senator the Hon Anne Ruston |
Minister for Government Services |
The Hon Stuart Robert MP |
Senator the Hon Anne Ruston |
Assistant Minister for Children and Families |
The Hon Michelle Landry MP |
|
Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services |
The Hon Luke Howarth MP |
|
I advise the Senate that the updated ministry list reflects the updated representing arrangements for the Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development portfolio moving to Senator Canavan.
I also advise the Senate that Senator Cash will be absent from question time all week due to personal reasons. In Senator Cash's absence, Senator Canavan will represent the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business. Senator Colbeck will represent the Minister for Health. Senator Reynolds will represent the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Age Pension
Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (14:00): My question is to the Minister for Families and Social Services, Senator Ruston. Last week in an interview with 3AW's Neil Mitchell, the minister described the age pension as 'generous'.
An honourable senator: What!
Senator FARRELL: Yes, that's what she described it as. Can the minister explain why pensioners doing it tough should accept her view that the payment is generous?
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (14:01): I thank the senator for his question and for the opportunity to clarify this particular statement. I understand that many older Australians, particularly our age pensioners, are impacted significantly by cost-of-living pressures. But I would like to say that, with the comments that were reported in the paper last week, I certainly did not intend to say or to infer that older Australians who rely on the age pension are doing it easy. I am concerned that any offence may have been taken by or caused to our older Australians. As I said, I know older Australians are doing it tough and that's why one of the first things I did, on becoming the Minister for Families and Social Services, was to seek advice from my department in relation to deeming rates, which was the subject of the interview to which Senator Farrell is referring. In doing this, we managed to provide assistance to nearly a million older Australians and other recipients of allowances by reducing the deeming rates from the lower threshold by 75 basis points, or 0.75 per cent, and for the upper deeming rate by 25 basis points, or 0.25 per cent. This way we will see older Australians, about 360,000 older Australians, actually end up with more money in their pockets in their fortnightly payments.
The other thing, too, is that the track record of this government since it came into government is a very strong track record of supporting older Australians. We have increased the pension for singles by $117.80 a fortnight and by $177.40 per fortnight for couples. You can be assured that this government will make a priority of looking after our older Australians.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Farrell, a supplementary question.
Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (14:03): The Treasurer refused to endorse Senator Ruston's description of the pension as generous. Instead, he said, 'I understand pensioners have challenging times; a number of pensioners do it really, really tough'. Has the Treasurer, or any other member of the government, raised concerns with the minister about her comments?
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (14:03): I thank Senator Farrell for his follow-up question. I agree entirely with the comments that the Treasurer made in relation to older Australians, particularly our age pensioners doing it tough at the moment. Cost-of-living pressures, financial pressures on older Australians, particularly those on pensions—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Farrell, on a point of order?
Senator Farrell: My question wasn't whether the minister agreed with the Treasurer. My question was: has the Treasurer spoken to her about her comments?
The PRESIDENT: Senator Farrell, the minister's been speaking for 15 seconds. I might also say that the minister can be directly relevant to the question by directly addressing part of the question, as she is doing in this case.
Senator RUSTON: In relation to older Australians, and, particularly, aged pensioners: I will reiterate again and again and again that I understand that older Australians are doing it tough and aged pensioners are doing it tough.
But Australia has a very comprehensive social welfare system. One part of that is the aged pension. The sustainability of our social security system is absolutely essential. But I do not move away from the comments—
The PRESIDENT: Order. Senator Farrell on a point of order.
Senator Farrell: You were very generous to the minister, but my question was a simple one. Has the Treasurer, or any other member of the government, spoken to the minister about her comments?
The PRESIDENT: You've restated part of the question, Senator Farrell, and I reiterate that a minister can be directly relevant to a question by being directly relevant to part of it. I believe the minister is being directly relevant.
Senator RUSTON: Thank you very much, Mr President. I will say it again: I accept the fact that older Australians, particularly, aged pensioners, are doing it tough. The Morrison government has quite clearly made it a priority to look after older Australians, and our track record stands for itself. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Farrell, a final supplementary question.
Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (14:05): In response to the minister's offensive claim, the National Seniors Australia chief advocate, that very fine man, Mr Ian Henschke, from South Australia, said:
Look, I realise the minister is very new, but maybe she should go read a report that was done by the Per Capita group, that one in four pensioners are living in poverty.
Has the minister now read the report by the Per Capita Group? Does the minister still consider the pension to be generous?
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (14:06): I thank Senator Farrell for his follow-up question.
The track record of the Morrison government when it comes to prioritising older Australians is one of which we can be proud. Notwithstanding the fact that many older Australians are doing it tough with cost-of-living pressures, the track record of the Morrison government is in ensuring that twice yearly we don't just increase pensions by CPI but take into account a suite of other impacts that impact on our older Australians and our pensioners. There is the fact that we have introduced $365 million over two years for the—
The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Ruston. Senator Wong on a point of order.
Senator Wong: The question didn't go to a history of the social security system. The question went to whether or not the minister still considers the pension to be generous.
The PRESIDENT: Given the quote read out by Senator Farrell, the material I am listening very carefully to from Senator Ruston, I believe, is directly relevant to the quote. You've restated the question; I can't instruct a minister how to answer a question as long as they are directly relevant.
Senator RUSTON: I'm not sure whether Senator Wong actually heard the answer to the first question that was asked by Senator Farrell. I said in response to the first question from Senator Farrell that I certainly did not intend to infer that older Australians were doing it easy. And I am concerned about any offence that may have occurred or been taken by older Australians over comments that were made.
Taxation
Senator PATERSON (Victoria) (14:07): My question is to the minister representing the Treasurer, Minister Cormann. Can the minister update the Senate on how many people have already lodged their tax returns and received their income tax cuts?
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:08): I thank Senator Paterson for that question. I am pleased to advise the Senate that hardworking Australians are embracing our lower income taxes agenda with gusto. They are embracing, of course, the opportunity that it brings in terms of strengthening the economy moving forward, creating more jobs. Indeed, I can advise the Senate that the number of tax returns already submitted to the Australian Taxation Office is exceeding those which have been submitted in previous years very strongly.
As of this morning, the tax office has received over 2.9 million lodgements, which is a 19 per cent increase, or more than 460,000 more lodgements, than this time last year. Already, more than 1.3 million individual taxpayers have received their income tax refunds, with the ATO having processed over 1.3 million individual 2019 income tax refunds, with a total value of $3.1 billion.
Senator Payne: It's real money!
Senator CORMANN: This equates to an average tax refund amount of $2,381 and, as Senator Payne quite rightly says, that is real money. That is real money into workers' pockets, it is real money into the economy and it is real money that will stimulate the economy and help create more jobs into the future. Of course, on behalf of millions of Australians that stand to benefit from our lower income taxes agenda, we again thank the Senate for having strongly, in the end, endorsed our plan for lower taxes, a stronger economy and more jobs, even though it took some perhaps a bit longer than others.
In addition, the ATO has received over 1.3 million calls, which is over 500,000 more than this time last year. The response by hardworking Australians once again demonstrates why it was so important that the government worked so hard with the Senate and others to get our tax cut package through the parliament.
The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Cormann. Senator Paterson, a supplementary question.
Senator PATERSON (Victoria) (14:10): What is the impact of so many Australians claiming their tax cuts early?
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:10): What it does is it ensures that hardworking Australians get to keep more of their own money. That was, of course, our promise leading into the election. This was the government delivering on one of the core promises that we took to the last election, and that is to ensure that hardworking Australians would get to keep more of their own money. As I say, our income tax cuts legislation delivers more money to workers' pockets. It means more money into the economy. It means that hardworking Australians—families around Australia—get to spend more of their own money on their priorities, which, of course, will help to strengthen the economy into the future. It will help create more jobs. It will help ensure that families around Australia have a better opportunity to get ahead.
Again, we will continue to explore opportunities for lower taxes, but we of course know that the Labor Party will continue to stand for higher taxes, which would lead to weaker growth and a weaker economy.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Paterson, a final supplementary question.
Senator PATERSON (Victoria) (14:11): Minister, I hope the answer to this question is 'no', but are there any risks to the personal income tax cuts that the government has legislated?
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:11): Sadly, I will have to disappoint Senator Paterson. We will have to be ever vigilant. There are risks and the name of the risk is Labor. While it was very difficult to ascertain what precisely their position on income taxes was, in the end we know one thing: when it's all said and done, Labor stands for higher taxes, and higher taxes would mean lower growth, a weaker economy, a weaker country and fewer jobs.
Of course, the Australian people can rest assured that, as long as we are the government of Australia, we will stand for lower taxes, stronger growth, more jobs and better opportunity for Australians to get ahead. Of course, that is the agenda that we took to the last election and that was overwhelmingly endorsed by the Australian people. That is the agenda we will continue to prosecute over the next three years all the way to the next election.
Immigration Detention
Senator KENEALLY (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (14:12): My question is to Senator Reynolds, the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs. The Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, the Rt Hon. James Marape, said today he would like to see 'the full closure of the entire asylum processes'. Prime Minister Marape has previously stated he wanted it to happen 'as soon as possible'. Can the minister detail what process the government will put in place to expedite a durable solution for refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:13): I thank Senator Keneally for that question. I just note, too, that I thank her for my first question as the Minister for Defence in this capacity. I would also acknowledge that there is no greater responsibility for any minister than this portfolio and the safety and security of our nation, and I look forward to working with all in this chamber and the other on all of these issues.
In relation to the question on the meeting with the Papua New Guinean Prime Minister and also the ministers, I can confirm that we had a very productive meeting this morning with the Prime Minister and his ministers. We had a very productive discussion with them. The governor of Manus was in attendance and, again, we had a discussion about the future of Manus and about the base and also the facility. We agreed that we will continue to work together to further develop the facilities there with a view to new employment opportunities for those on Manus Island and for others. So it was a very productive discussion, and we discussed all aspects of the facilities there and how we move forward together in relation to those facilities.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Keneally, a supplementary question.
Senator KENEALLY (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (14:14): The Minister for Home Affairs recently said that he wants the number of people 'down to zero'. Today it has been reported that taxpayers could fund resettlement packages to encourage refugees to live in Papua New Guinea. Can the minister advise how these resettlement packages will work, and when will the government have the number of people on Manus down to zero?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:14): Thank you for that question. That issue was discussed in further detail with the ministers, but further detail of that I'll have to take on notice because those discussions are still ongoing.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Keneally, a final supplementary question?
Senator KENEALLY (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (14:15): Given the government's failure to find a durable solution over the past six years, and that people are now being held indefinitely on Manus in detention, what backup plan is in place if the Papua New Guinean government withdraws its support for the Manus regional processing centre?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:15): I thank Senator Keneally for that question. I would highlight firstly that nobody is in detention on Manus Island. I would highlight again that it wasn't those on this side who put people into detention. That was solely those on the other side—your problem. We have spent the last six years working cooperatively with the Papua New Guinean government, and again I extend our thanks for the way in which they have engaged on this issue. There is nobody in detention on Manus Island.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Keneally, on a point of order?
Senator Keneally: The minister points out that people have been there for six years. If she doesn't want to characterise them as being in detention, she can at least tell us when they are going to be taken—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Keneally, please resume your seat. That is a debating point, not a point of order on the relevance of the answer.
Senator REYNOLDS: Again, there is nobody in detention there. The reason anybody was on that island is your responsibility. Australia takes its international obligations seriously, and we provide protection to refugees consistent with those obligations, which are set out in statutory refugee frameworks.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Keneally, on a point of order?
Senator Keneally: There are only 15 seconds left and the minister has not gone close to answering the question. What backup plan is in place if the Papua New Guinea government withdraws its support for the RPC on Manus?
The PRESIDENT: You have restated part of the question. The minister is being directly relevant to other parts of the question you asked. I cannot instruct the minister on how to answer a question. The minister is being directly relevant to part of the question asked.
Senator REYNOLDS: You might not like my answer because you're the one who is responsible for the mess that we are cleaning up. However, Australia, along with the United States of America and Canada, collectively offer the majority of global resettlement places every year.
Australian Defence Force: Middle East
Senator FAWCETT (South Australia) (14:17): My question is also to the Minister for Defence. Can the minister update the Senate on how Australia's military contribution to the Middle East is supporting efforts to increase security and stability in the region?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:17): I thank Senator Fawcett for this question. I also thank him for his service, both in uniform and now in this place in the committee work he does. First of all I have to say that all Australians should be extremely proud of the contribution that our men and women in the ADF are making to the security and stability of the Middle East. Today over 1,000 ADF members are deployed across the Middle East. Our people are contributing to international coalition efforts to combat Daesh and other terrorist groups, building the capacity of security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and supporting maritime security and peace operations.
The professionalism of our defence personnel and the high standards by which they all conduct themselves was pressed upon me repeatedly by officials in Afghanistan, Iraq and also the UAE. I saw firsthand the results of the efforts of our ADF men and women. Their contributions are utterly magnificent, and everybody here in this place and in our nation should be extremely proud of their contributions. When I spoke to our men and women, two things struck me. The first one is how incredibly proud they are of each other. When I asked what the one thing that they would take away from their experiences was, it was all about the men and women that they work with; also, how much they have learnt by working alongside their colleagues in Afghanistan, Iraq and the UAE. The second thing they said is that deploying into the Middle East also provided them with a greater degree of appreciation for what it means to be Australian and how lucky we all are that we were born here in Australia.
In Afghanistan, the ADF continues to support the Afghan government's efforts to provide stability for its people. For example, over eight million Afghan children are currently enrolled in schools in Afghanistan. Today 40 per cent are girls. We should all be very proud. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Fawcett, a supplementary question?
Senator FAWCETT (South Australia) (14:19): Could the minister outline how Australia is supporting efforts to counter Islamic State and other terrorist groups in both Iraq and Syria?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:19): Since 2014, Australia has been a leading contributor to the United States led global coalition to combat Daesh in both Iraq and Syria. The territorial defeat of Daesh in March this year was a significant achievement, freeing millions of people from a barbaric regime and also oppressive control. However, despite its territorial defeat, unfortunately, Daesh and other terror groups remain a potent threat in the Middle East and also, increasingly, in our own region.
The Morrison government is committed to continuing efforts to prevent any attempt by Daesh and groups like it from harming Australians or our interests overseas. As such, the coalition government recently extended the deployment of a Royal Australian Air Force KC30A air-to-air refuelling aircraft, and we will soon redeploy a Wedgetail aircraft to contribute to the ongoing fight against Daesh in the region.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Fawcett, a final supplementary question.
Senator FAWCETT (South Australia) (14:20): Can the minister inform the Senate also how Australia is supporting efforts to increase maritime security, stability and prosperity in the Middle East?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:21): Operation MANITOU is Australia's contribution to the combined maritime forces. This is a US-led, 33-nation partnership, focused on countering terrorism, preventing piracy and encouraging regional cooperation, and also on promoting a safe marine environment. Since 2014, Royal Australian Navy vessels, including the recently returned HMAS Ballarat, which returned home after a nine-month deployment to the region, have seized nearly 10 tonnes of heroin and 58 tonnes of hashish, equating to an estimated street value of over A$6 billion.
Our ships have also interdicted vessels carrying illicit weapons and ammunition destined for battlefields in such places as Yemen and also Syria. The HMAS Ballarat alone, during a nine-month deployment, seized nearly 20 tonnes of illicit drugs, nearly half a million rounds of small arms ammunition and several hundred bags of chemical fertiliser, likely destined for use in the manufacture of improvised explosives. (Time expired)
Environment
Senator DI NATALE (Victoria—Leader of the Australian Greens) (14:22): My question is for the Leader of the Government, representing the Prime Minister. On Thursday last week, the Bureau of Meteorology said that the drought that the Murray-Darling Basin was experiencing was 'the most severe in 120 years of records'. Minister, do you and the government accept the advice of the bureau and other scientific bodies that climate change is a significant contributor to current and future droughts?
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:22): The Australian government is committed to effective action on climate change. That's why we have taken measures which have ensured that we will meet and exceed our emissions reduction target for 2020 agreed to in Kyoto. And we have a plan to ensure that we meet our 2030 emissions reduction target agreed to in Paris.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Di Natale, a supplementary question.
Senator DI NATALE (Victoria—Leader of the Australian Greens) (14:23): Minister, given that you've accepted that climate change is a major contributor to drought, and given that the single biggest cause of climate change is the burning of coal, isn't it true that Australia won't have a real long-term plan for drought until we have a plan to phase out coal and gas use?
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:23): No.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Di Natale, a final supplementary question.
Senator DI NATALE (Victoria—Leader of the Australian Greens) (14:23): Minister, do you agree with the coalmining lobby, who, at the New South Wales bush summit earlier this month, presented themselves as the saviours of drought-stricken communities, despite the fact that their industry, the coal industry, is the major contributor to climate change? As you've accepted that will make droughts more frequent and more severe, isn't that industry making life harder for farmers right across Australia?
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:24): I'm somewhat intrigued by the line of questioning being pursued by Senator Di Natale, because one of his predecessors as Leader of the Australian Greens, Dr Bob Brown, of course stood in the way. He didn't want us to have hydro energy in Tasmania; he wanted coal instead of hydro.
And you could have knocked me over with a feather the other week, when he had the opportunity to come out fighting for wind energy. Apparently, now Dr Bob Brown is also against wind energy. Presumably, that is because he still thinks that we will need—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Di Natale on a point of order?
Senator Di Natale: It's a point of order on relevance, Mr President. I deliberately kept those questions very short with a very short preamble. I asked specifically about whether the minister agreed with the coalmining lobby that they are the saviours of drought-stricken communities rather than the cause of climate induced drought.
The PRESIDENT: You've reminded the minister of the question. I'll take the opportunity to do the same. He has 23 seconds to answer.
Senator CORMANN: I don't agree with the framing of the question. Our government believes that the best way forward in terms of energy supplies is a technology-neutral approach. Coal will of course continue to be an important energy source for Australia for a very long time to come. Indeed, coal is a very significant export for Australia and it will continue to be a significant part of our economy for a very, very long time. (Time expired)
Superannuation
Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Shadow Minister for Finance, Shadow Minister for the Public Service and Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (14:25): My question is to the Minister for Finance representing the Prime Minister, Senator Cormann. Reports in today's Australian newspaper reveal that at least seven members of the government, including your colleagues Senators Rennick, Stoker and Paterson, are publicly lobbying to stop the legislated increases to the superannuation guarantee from 9½ per cent to 12 per cent. Minister, can you rule out any changes to the timetable for the legislated increases to the superannuation guarantee as they are contained in the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992?
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:26): Yes.
Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Shadow Minister for Finance, Shadow Minister for the Public Service and Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (14:26): Earlier this year, ASFA, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, found that an average worker aged 30 and earning $70,000 a year would be about $1,000 worse off in retirement if the rate of SG remained at 9½ per cent as opposed to moving to the legislated 12 per cent. Can the minister guarantee that Australian workers will get superannuation increases as they are currently legislated and that the Prime Minister won't cave in to calls from his backbench to reduce working people's retirement incomes? (Time expired)
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:26): I refer the honourable senator to my previous answer.
Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Shadow Minister for Finance, Shadow Minister for the Public Service and Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (14:27): Minister, how can Australians trust this government with their super when successive governments have opposed superannuation and any increase to the superannuation guarantee rate, including stopping the planned superannuation guarantee increases back in 2014?
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:27): In the lead up to the 2013 election we took a policy position openly and transparently to the Australian people. The Australian people endorsed our plan and we acted consistently with the plan we took to the 2013 election. In relation to the remainder of the question, I refer the honourable senator to my previous answers.
Environment
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:27): My question is to Senator McKenzie, representing the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I know that farmers are doing it tough, yet in recent weeks they have been watching but not accessing high water flows in the Murray rushing past their farms. Where is all that water going? It's on its way to South Australia, to evaporate in a naturally marine estuary artificially made into a freshwater lake. Meanwhile, One Nation has long and vigorously advocated bringing waters into the Murray-Darling Basin from areas of consistently and reliably high rainfall outside the basin to droughtproof the basin and ensure water security for Melbourne and Adelaide. Minister, how can water be allocated objectively, honestly and fairly when so few creek and river flows are measured? Without accurate data on water flows, how do we know the allocations are fair and honest?
Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Minister for Agriculture and Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (14:28): Thank you very much, Senator Roberts, for your question. The government is also very, very concerned about our primary producers and wants to ensure that they are able to fulfil their productive capacity, particularly at this time, when we are facing one of the worst droughts in our nation's history. I know, having travelled through the basin communities of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, that it is very tough for those farmers, who are facing unprecedented dry conditions, to watch environmental flows destined for other states and other places flow past their communities. But that is what the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was actually set up to do—to ensure that water was secured for environmental purposes and was able to be delivered to certain identified environmental assets along and throughout the basin communities. It was also set up to underpin the economic security of our farmers and their productive capacity going forward and to ensure that those communities, those millions of Australians that live and raise families and businesses in basin communities, can actually look forward to a sustainable and prosperous future.
Getting that balance between four different basin states right has, as we all know in this chamber, been a very, very difficult process. It is not one that we here in the National Party and the Liberal Party have resiled away from. We've fought very hard to make sure that that is a fair plan and that the mechanisms we use to deliver it are actually fair. We're the ones that actually fought to make sure a socioeconomic detriment test was part of the ongoing measurement of the success of the plan, and that means making sure our farmers and their communities are still going to be able to raise a family and have a successful business in these communities going forward when we're looking at taking out— (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a supplementary question.
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:30): In my experience, Mr President, I have never seen a plan that works fairly or honestly without accurate data. Senator McKenzie, why then are New South Wales farmers paying $60,000 in water licences every year and not getting water allocation while precious water is released to become man-made floods and to evaporate in South Australia for no environmental benefit and much human and community suffering?
Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Minister for Agriculture and Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (14:31): I also, as one of the few people in this place with a science degree, like to base my policy decisions on science and data. It is very difficult to make key decisions on policy without accessing stringent data, and that's why our government has initiated a range of measures to strengthen compliance and enforcement, including $35 million to expand metering and satellite remote-sensing technology in the northern basin, $25 million to encourage the installation of meters by irrigators in the northern basin as part of a comprehensive package of measures regarding the fish death reports and $5 million for cameras to capture livestream river flows to provide transparency to the public. We're taking our role very seriously. It is also up to state governments—New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia—to support their farmers to measure the flows accurately.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a final supplementary question.
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (14:32): So it looks like we will get measurements some time which may give us some fairness in the future. Through you, Mr President: Senator McKenzie, if your rosy picture is so accurate, why are 500 desperate farmers suing the Murray-Darling Basin Authority for $750 million in compensation for alleged water mismanagement which has left them with zero water allocation while South Australian farmers are getting 97 to 100 per cent of their full allocation?
Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Minister for Agriculture and Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (14:32): Senator Roberts, as you know—you're a great fan of the Constitution; you often want to quote it to us all ad nauseam—the water entitlements, the allocation of licences and the management of water to particular irrigators is a responsibility, constitutionally, of the states, and so it is the New South Wales government who is responsible for issuing licences to New South Wales irrigators—sorry, through you, Mr President. It is, similarly, the purview of the Victorian and the South Australian governments to do likewise. So I would suggest that, rather than come here with questions that are not related to the Commonwealth's work, you actually pursue those in state parliaments throughout the Murray-Darling Basin.
Agriculture Industry
Senator McDONALD (Queensland) (14:33): My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. Can the minister update the Senate on how the government is getting on with the job of securing Australia's future by protecting farmers from the destructive behaviour of animal activists?
Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Minister for Agriculture and Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (14:34): Thank you, Senator McDonald, for your question. I know you have a deep and abiding passion for the sustainability and profitability of farmers. This side of the parliament has always supported our farmers and our farming communities through good times and through bad times. That's why we're progressing tough new laws through the Criminal Code Amendment (Agricultural Protection) Bill to protect our farmers from those keyboard warriors who would incite teams of animal activists to trespass on farmland, steal, damage property, and incite, intimidate and harass. That's in the House of Representatives today.
Farm trespass is an incredibly serious issue in regional Australia. Chaining yourself to conveyer belts in abattoirs is, similarly, a serious issue in regional Australia. Farmers have contacted me, questioning their place in the industry, and it's too late for others because they've left altogether. But here we have an opposition and, indeed, their partners in crime, the Greens, refusing to back Australian farmers and refusing to stand with the government to stand against animal activists who would seek to intimidate, harass, steal property and destroy. It's a pretty simple equation. Despite their weasel words, despite heading out into regional areas and despite going on their 'listening tours', it would seem that they haven't been listening, because if they were out in regional communities, and if they were talking to saleyard operators, abattoir operators, farmers and the like, they would know that farmers and regional communities feel very, very strongly about the right for them, their families, their stock and their workers to feel safe at work. This week is National Farm Safety Week, so this is the time for the Labor Party to stand up, break the nexus between the Greens—who really just want to see us stop farming in this country—and support the bill.
The PRESIDENT: Senator McDonald, a supplementary question?
Senator McDONALD (Queensland) (14:36): What are the risks to farmers and the wider community from these trespassing activists?
Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Minister for Agriculture and Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (14:36): Agricultural businesses should be operating their lawful businesses without being subjected to farm invasion. When you trespass and steal, you are not a protester, you are not someone to be lauded—as Richard Di Natale did in his comments around the bill that, somehow, civil disobedience is okay if you don't agree with the law—and you're not a protester. This is not a badge of honour. You're a criminal, and you deserve to be punished with the full force of the law. Those who choose to damage property or to steal need to be rightly and strongly held to account. These protections and the protections of their privacy are fundamental principles of our society. Activists' actions are a risk to farm biosecurity. They risk the introduction of pests and disease to farm operations, reducing our access to markets and costing farmers in our regional communities millions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Activists' actions are also a risk to animal welfare, with some incredibly disturbing animal outcomes as a result of farm invasions. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator McDonald, a final supplementary question?
Senator McDONALD (Queensland) (14:37): How will the new government measures help to protect Australian farmers?
Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Minister for Agriculture and Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (14:37): Our government is getting on with the job of delivering for the Australian people. We put protecting Australian farmers first, and that is why we're introducing this new, broad-ranging legislation as a priority. Protecting Australian farmers is what we do. It's what we've always done. We understand that our nation's wealth is built on the back of regional Australia, our farmers, our fishers and our foresters. We support farmers like the McNamee family, who farm near Millmerran in Queensland, whose farm was invaded by around 100 activists. These trespassers refused to leave, and harassed and disrupted the hardworking family and their employees. We must send a clear message to animal activists: if you use personal information to incite farm trespass, you will risk jail time of up to five years. Heading out to Dubbo to the bush summit, making claims that they're not going to play politics with regional Australia and they're not going to play politics with the fate of our farmers—this is your chance to do the right thing and stand up for them.
Earle Haven Retirement Village
Senator WATT (Queensland) (14:38): My question is to the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Senator Colbeck. The Earle Haven Retirement Village on the Gold Coast in Queensland recently closed, with more than 70 residents transported to other aged-care facilities and a public hospital. I want to acknowledge that we all feel deeply concerned about the sudden closure of this facility, and our thoughts are with those residents, families, carers and staff. When did the minister first become aware that there was a dispute at the Earle Haven aged-care facility, that it was going to close and that the safety of residents was at risk?
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (14:39): I thank Senator Watt for the question. I also, along with him, express my complete dismay at the events that occurred at Earle Haven on 11 July. What happened was a complete and utter disgrace. How what seems to be a contractual dispute between two parties could descend to the extent that 71 aged and frail Australians were left without care is, quite frankly, beyond me, and I suspect beyond Senator Watt and many others.
I first heard that there were concerns about what was happening at Earle Haven on the afternoon of 11 July. It was first transmitted to me as the suggestion of a facility going into administration. It wasn't until later in the evening, when more detailed reports came to me, that the appearance of a contractual dispute came to light. Later that evening, I had a much fuller briefing from the department, at which the circumstances of the events were then transmitted to me. At this point, I would also like to express my appreciation to, firstly, the staff at Earle Haven, who had the foresight to ring 000 when these events started to unfold, which led to the declaration of an emergency by Queensland Health. I also express my appreciation to Queensland Health for their actions. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Watt, a supplementary question.
Senator WATT (Queensland) (14:41): What is the impact on the availability of aged-care places on the Gold Coast, given over 70 Earle Haven residents have been transferred to other Gold Coast facilities?
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (14:41): With Senator Watt's indulgence, I'll just complete a couple of points I want to make in relation to where I just finished off the previous question. As I said, I want to express sincere appreciation to the staff who stayed—despite what I understand were instructions from their employer to leave the facility—to look after the residents. That needs to be acknowledged. Also, to Queensland Health and emergency services for the work that they did in relocating the residents to other facilities around the region. It took a considerable period of time. It was a difficult operation and it was important that it was conducted properly. I would also like to express my appreciation for the other facilities in the region who took up that capacity. In respect of Senator Watt's specific question, there are over 5,000 places in that particular region of Queensland with an occupancy level of about 88 per cent, so there is still some capacity in the region. (Time expired)
Senator WATT (Queensland) (14:42): I thank the minister for his remarks about the efforts made by staff and other people to rectify this situation. On that matter, what action has the minister taken to protect the Earle Haven workers who have not been paid outstanding wages and superannuation? Will the minister commit to ensuring these staff are paid what they are owed?
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (14:43): Like Senator Watt, and I expect everyone else in this place, I am also concerned at reports that staff have not been paid their full entitlements, including superannuation. As I understand it, this is a contractual dispute between two parties and not about the financial viability of either party. In that circumstance, the staff should be paid their full entitlements. I would urge the parties that have not paid—and I understand that is an organisation by the name of HelpStreet—to fully pay their staff, to fully pay all of the entitlements that are due to their staff, because the staff had no part in this. They are not party to the dispute and they should be paid.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Watt on a point of order.
Senator Watt: Just in the limited time the minister's got, what I'm asking for is whether the minister will commit to ensuring these staff are paid what they're owed.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Watt, the minister is being directly relevant. I can't instruct him how to answer a question. Senator Colbeck.
Senator COLBECK: Thank you, Mr President. The company should pay their staff. There are forms through which that can occur, including— (Time expired)
Trade
Senator HUGHES (New South Wales) (14:44): My question is to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Senator Birmingham. How is the government getting on with the job of delivering for the Australian people by increasing trade opportunities, and how does this help to create a stronger economy that guarantees the essential services that Australians rely on?
Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia—Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:44): I thank Senator Hughes for her question and I congratulate her on her first question in the chamber and welcome her to this Senate chamber after a slightly bumpy journey in getting here. I know that Senator Hughes will be a very strong advocate. I know Senator Hughes was delighted to see the Chief Justice on the day of the swearing in.
I should come back to the point. I know that Senator Hughes, like many of the new senators in this chamber, will be a strong and fierce advocate for the interests of Australia's exporters, particularly those in rural and regional communities around Australia. Australia's free trade partners today account for more than 55 per cent of global GDP, or over $44 trillion of economic activity. This has grown immeasurably during our time in government. In fact, in terms of Australian exporters having duty free or preferential access, they now enjoy that to around 2.8 billion consumers worldwide. That's estimated to be an increase of nearly 1.8 billion consumers since the Liberal and National parties came to government.
What's the result of that increased preferential access to more markets? It's that exports have surged by more than 30 per cent during the last five years. Trade is estimated to have contributed around one-quarter of Australia's economic growth over the past five years. As a nation, we have recorded trade surpluses in 27 out of the last 29 months. Indeed, Australia enjoyed a trade surplus of $34 billion during the last 12 months, having turned around what we inherited as a trade deficit of $20 billion in 2012-13.
This is a very strong track record. But what does it mean? It means that with that growth in exports, Australian businesses are doing better, employing more, paying more tax and creating more opportunities that stimulate the economy and create opportunities for all Australians.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Hughes, a supplementary question?
Senator HUGHES (New South Wales) (14:46): Will the minister inform the Senate about the key highlights of Australia's trade performance, and what that means for our economy?
Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia—Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:46): I pay tribute to our exporters around the country, our exporters in the goods sector, the farming sector, the services sector, who are recording record after record at present. In 2018, we achieved record exports of $438 billion as a nation. We achieved a record trade surplus in May this year of $5.7 billion. Indeed, the five largest monthly trade surpluses ever recorded have all been delivered in calendar year 2019. This is a tribute to those businesses—a tribute to our exporters, to the Australian businesses who get up and go out and seek and seize opportunities around the world. And there are benefits that flow through from that. Australian businesses that export, on average, hire 23 per cent more staff than those who do not. They pay their employees an estimated 11½ per cent more than those who don't export, and they have labour productivity rates around 13 per cent higher than those who don't export. So opening up to the world delivers real, tangible benefits to their employees and as a result to households around Australia.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Hughes, a final supplementary question?
Senator HUGHES (New South Wales) (14:48): Minister, how does ratifying our trade agreements lead to more jobs and a stronger economy without raising taxes?
Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia—Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:48): The type of preferential access that our trade agreements have opened up has enabled the types of records that I talked about before and, in doing so, seen benefits flow through. Nearly 52,000 Australian businesses were exporting in 2016-17. That number was up more than 16 per cent from just a few years earlier. That was a more than 16 per cent growth in the number of businesses exporting, and that's estimated to have contributed around 240,000 additional trade related jobs. All of that is partly accountable to the increased market access those businesses have. The Liberal and National parties know what we stand for when it comes to providing more market access and more opportunities for Australian farmers and businesses to export. That's why we'll continue to pursue the expansion of our free trade agreement networks, why we want to make sure that we ratify and bring into force agreements with Peru, Hong Kong and Indonesia and why we're determined to pursue opportunities with the European Union and our regional partners through the RCEP process as well.
Immigration Detention
Senator McKIM (Tasmania) (14:49): My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs, Senator Reynolds. Minister, I refer you to comments of Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Marape, who said he would like to see offshore detention ended there 'as soon as possible' and that he has requested your government to provide a timetable—
Honourable senators interjecting—
The PRESIDENT: Order! I'd like to hear the question. Order on both sides of the chamber, left and right. Order! Senator McKim, please continue.
Senator McKIM: Prime Minister Marape has requested your government to provide a timetable for ending offshore detention on Manus Island. What commitments have your government given to PNG's government about the future of offshore detention, and have you agreed to provide a timetable as requested by Mr Marape? Minister, after six long years, when will your political prisoners on Manus Island and Nauru finally be given the freedom and safety they need and deserve?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:50): Thank you, Senator McKim, for that question. As I said to Senator Keneally, you also keep perpetuating a complete falsehood. There is nobody detained on Manus Island. There is no detention centre there. I'd also note, Senator McKim, that you were not detained in Papua New Guinea either in your most recent visit. Senator McKim, the very short answer is that there is nobody in detention in Manus Island. As I said to Senator Keneally, we had a very productive meeting today. Senator Cormann was there. Senator Payne was there. We had very cordial discussions with the Papua New Guinea Prime Minister and ministers on the way forward, including on Manus Island. Again, I've got nothing further to add, because what you said is a complete falsehood.
The PRESIDENT: Order! Senator McKim on a point of order?
Senator McKim: The minister has just said she has nothing further to add, but a specific question I asked her was whether or not the Australian government has provided a timetable as requested by Mr Marape. I ask you to direct the minister to the question.
The PRESIDENT: Senator McKim, you know full well I cannot direct a minister to answer part of a question. You yourself said it was a question amongst the question you asked. The minister is being directly relevant.
Senator REYNOLDS: Just to be very clear: I completely reject the whole premise of your question because there is nobody in detention on Manus Island. In fact, you mentioned the six years, and who started those six years? Who was it who actually put people in detention there in the first place? That was those opposite. Labor and the Greens. We have worked tirelessly for six years because, remember, under all of you opposite, 50,000 people came by boat and 1,200 people that we know of died a horrific death. So that was not us. We have worked tirelessly internationally and in cooperation with the PNG government to fix the shameful mess that you left. We are very proud of our record and what we have done in that—
Senator Cormann interjecting—
Senator REYNOLDS: Minister Cormann reminds me that, in fact, the Prime Minister today, when talking about Manus, was noting how peaceful and beautiful Manus Island is and, in fact, would welcome tourists and others to come and visit Manus and to see for themselves. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator McKim, a supplementary question?
Senator McKIM (Tasmania) (14:53): Minister, both you here today and the Prime Minister have claimed that the people exiled to Manus Island six years ago are not in detention. If there are no detention centres, as you and the Prime Minister claim, what was that place with guards on the gate, with razor wire on the fences, that people are locked up in each and every night that I was denied entry to last week and, ultimately deported from Papua New Guinea for asking permission to enter? What exactly was that place?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:53): Senator McKim, no matter how much you scream in this place, no matter how disgracefully you act as a senator of this place in another country as a guest of another country, you cannot change the fact that there are no people in detention there on Manus Island. You have clearly learnt nothing over the last six years about the consequences of your policies. We have spent six years working with the Papua New Guinea government—and, again, that was reinforced today—to clean up your mess. Again I will say: there is nobody in detention on Manus Island. No matter how badly you behave in someone else's country, as a guest of their country, that does not change the facts as they sit. I've gone through this several times today in this chamber.
The PRESIDENT: Senator McKim, a final supplementary question.
Senator McKIM (Tasmania) (14:54): I categorically reject that I behaved in any way badly while I was on Papua New Guinea. I simply politely asked to enter that prison.
I note the comments of New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern, who has again reiterated her generous and kind offer to accept 150 people per year from Manus Island and Nauru. Minister, how can your government continue to reject that offer and deny desperate people the freedom and safety that they need and deserve?
Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia—Minister for Defence) (14:55): Thank you very much, Senator McKim. Again, I would say I completely reject the whole premise of your question. Nobody is in detention in Papua New Guinea. The government of Papua New Guinea determines who can enter the East Lorengau Transit Centre and respective entry requirements. If they denied you entry, that is a matter for the Papua New Guinean government. And they put out a press release to—
The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Reynolds. I've got Senator McKim on a point of order.
Senator McKim: Perhaps the minister didn't hear my final supplementary. It specifically asked about the offer from New Zealand and this government's rejection of that offer, but she is yet to approach that topic.
The PRESIDENT: Senator McKim, you did have a preamble to that question. I consider that to be part of the question and the minister is entitled to address that and be directly relevant.
Senator REYNOLDS: Thank you very much, Mr President. Again, this is a matter for the government of Papua New Guinea. You went, Senator McKim, to a friendly nation, a country with which we have very deep connections, and they denied you entry to a facility that is in their control, so it is an issue for them. I've got to say, reading a little about your conduct, I'm a little ashamed that somebody in this chamber went to a friend's country, a neighbour's country, and acted in the way that you did, Senator McKim. That is something for your conscience, but, again, it's not something that this government or anybody else, I would hope, in this chamber would support. (Time expired)
Earle Haven Retirement Village
Senator CHISHOLM (Queensland) (14:56): My question is to the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Senator Colbeck. People Care Pty Ltd is the company contracted to operate the Earle Haven aged care facility. Can the minister confirm that People Care Pty Ltd has been sanctioned on at least five separate occasions? Can the minister advise the Senate whether People Care Pty Ltd has been sanctioned on any further occasions?
The PRESIDENT: I'll preface this by saying there might have been a slight mix-up with the question order. I'll proceed with this, but we appear to have different documents. If an error has been made, I apologise in advance. I call Senator Colbeck.
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (14:57): Thank you, Mr President, and thanks, Senator, for the question. I don't have a full list with me of the sanctions against People Care over time, but I'm happy to provide that information to the Senate on notice. But I can confirm that on Saturday, 13 July further sanctions were applied against People Care as a result of the events of 11 July. There are limits to those particular sanctions. There is also further work that's being done by my department with respect to the approved provider status of the facility off the back of those events. Once the work has been completed, with respect to that work, there may be further requirements for People Care Pty Ltd with respect to its ongoing operations, but that work is not yet complete.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Chisholm, a supplementary question.
Senator CHISHOLM (Queensland) (14:58): Were there any complaints about Earle Haven in the past 12 months, prior to the closure of the aged-care facility? If so, what action will the minister take?
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (14:59): Thank you for the question. If you're talking about what action I will take versus what action was taken in respect of complaints, they're two very separate matters.
Senator Chisholm: I asked were there any complaints.
Senator COLBECK: Senator, I'll have to take the specifics of complaints in relation to the facility on notice.
Senator Wong: You've got a brief. I'm sure you have a copy.
Senator COLBECK: I do have a brief. With respect to what's happening with the facility right now: as I said, there are clearly sanctions in place against the facility that have the impact of seeing the facility not being able to— (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Chisholm, a final supplementary question.
Senator CHISHOLM (Queensland) (15:00): Wowsers! We'll see how we go, hey? When did the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission last visit the Earle Haven aged-care facility prior to it closing?
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (15:00): I'm not certain of the actual date when they last visited the facility. I'm happy to provide that information to the chamber on notice, as I've said. So—
The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Colbeck. Senator Watt on a point of order.
Senator Watt: Mr President, the minister hasn't been able to answer the most basic questions about a catastrophic closure of—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Watt, what is your point of order?
Senator Watt: Relevance. He has not been able to answer—
The PRESIDENT: Well, I'm afraid the minister—
Senator Watt: any question—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Watt, please! Senator Cormann.
Senator Cormann: There is clearly no point of order. The minister is absolutely within his rights to take a question on notice, which is what he's done. It is absolutely—
Senator Watt: Why doesn't he know?
Senator Cormann: It isn't a debating point, as you should know. There is absolutely no point of order.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Watt, I grant some liberality in people restating the question. That is a matter entirely for debate. There is an opportunity for that directly after question time. The minister is entitled, as the leader said, to take anything on notice. He is being directly relevant and I call on him to continue, if he wishes.
Senator COLBECK: Thank you, Mr President. As I said, I'm happy to take the specific details of all visits by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner to the facility on notice and provide you with a detailed list, because I think that is a reasonable question for the chamber to ask in respect of what happened last weekend. As I've said quite clearly, there are sanctions in place that severely impact on the capacity of the facility to operate, and until the conditions of those sanctions are met the facility won't be able to operate. (Time expired)
Senator Cormann: Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Age Pension
Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (15:02): I move:
That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Families and Social Services (Senator Ruston) to a question without notice asked by Senator Farrell today, relating to the age pension.
I am a little bit surprised at the answers that we got from Senator Ruston in respect of the questions that I asked regarding her statement that the pension is too generous. This was an opportunity for the minister to come clean and say that she made a mistake about the generosity of the pension and to apologise to those pensioners, particularly in her home state of South Australia.
As you would know, Deputy President, South Australia, per capita, has the highest number of pensioners in the country. Senator Ruston's comments were quite offensive to those pensioners, many of whom are struggling and doing it hard. The opportunity that Senator Ruston had was to say to those pensioners in South Australia and the rest of the country: 'Look, I made a mistake. The pension is not too generous and I'm going to apologise for saying that to those pensioners.'
Instead, the best we got was that she wanted to 'clarify' her comments. I don't think the comments needed clarification; we knew exactly what the minister was saying. She was saying to all those pensioners out there, 'Your pension is too generous'. What pensioners wanted, and what the community wanted, to hear the minister say was, 'Yes, I was mistaken; the pension is not too generous and I apologise for those comments.'
Then, in the second question I asked the minister, I said, 'Look, have you spoken to the Treasurer or any other member of the government about these comments?' Again the minister had an opportunity to tell the Australian people about the conversations that she's had with the Treasurer and other members of the government with regard to her comments about the generosity of the pension. But we didn't get an answer. I know it will surprise you that we didn't get an answer, but we didn't get an answer. There was an opportunity for Senator Ruston to say, 'Yes, I have spoken with the Treasurer, he has acknowledged the pension is not too generous and I agree with him in respect of that.' But again we missed that opportunity from Senator Ruston. So we still don't know who is right in the government. Is it Senator Ruston, the minister responsible for pensioners in this government, saying one thing, or is it Minister Frydenberg saying another thing? What is the position of the government? I'm sure you'd like to know that answer, Deputy President.
My third question related to a statement by Mr Ian Henschke. Ian Henschke is quite a famous South Australian. He was a famous, great broadcaster and an even better winemaker. But, on this occasion, he was talking in his capacity as an advocate for seniors. He got the ball rolling on the deeming rate and he nailed the government on this issue, because the government has been secretly squirrelling away money that ought to have been in the pockets of pensioners. How is the government doing that? Well, while the RBA was reducing interest rates, the government kept the so-called deeming rate way, way above the level that the RBA has set. Now, you might say that interest rates dropping are a good thing, but the reality is that, if you're trying to rely on those interest rates to supplement what is not a generous pension, of course you're struggling. More importantly, I think, it's worth noting that dropping interest rates are not the sign of a good economy, they're a sign of an economy in trouble. Of course, that's what we know is happening in this country at the moment. But, thanks to Mr Ian Henschke, he got the ball rolling on this and he nailed the government. They were squirrelling away money that should've been in in pockets of pensioners and keeping it for themselves. (Time expired)
Senator PATERSON (Victoria) (15:07): Well, you have to give them points for chutzpah. You have got to give the Labor Party points for chutzpah. There's only one political party in this chamber—maybe two if you include the Greens—who have an actual plan to cost retirees and pensioners money. There's only one political party or political movement proposing to take money away from retirees and to make their retirement less financially secure, and that is the Labor Party. By contrast, the Liberal and National parties, through a successful election victory, have saved 900,000 older Australians from a severe financial hit to be perpetrated by those opposite if they were successful at the election.
You took a policy to the election proposing to take away from 900,000 Australians the franking credits they had planned their retirement for and upon. They were reliant on those franking credits for their security in retirement, they made their plans when the rules were set and you planned to pull the rug from under them. You didn't even have the decency to protect those who are currently in retirement and well advanced in their years, who have no capacity to change their financial affairs to accommodate these changes, by grandfathering it. You didn't even have the decency do that. You wanted to smash and grab their bank accounts—raid their bank accounts for your own spending plans. We won't be taking any lectures from a political party that was proposing that 84 per cent of the people to be affected should earn $37,000 aa year or less and could lose up to a third of their retirement income.
By contrast, the Liberal and National parties under Prime Minister Morrison are actually improving the retirement security and financial security of older Australians. We have announced in just the last fortnight that older Australians who are on a part pension and who have investments will now be assessed as having received a lower deeming rate. That means real money into the real pockets of real Australians on the pension. They will be better off financially as a result of a decision this government has made, not as a result of any rhetoric you have brought into this chamber. That's a million Australians who can be up to $800 a year better off if you're a single, and up to $1,000 better off for couples.
I want to address one other question from question time today. That was by Senator Gallagher on the question of superannuation. She mentioned me in her question. It's entirely appropriate that the government has commissioned a retirement incomes review as a recommendation of the Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commission rightly recognised that it is no good putting more money into superannuation if that superannuation system is broken, as we believe it currently is. My good friend and colleague Senator Hume will be presenting legislation to this chamber soon to help fix some of those problems. I hope that in this parliament, in contrast to the last one, the Labor Party and the crossbench are more willing to work with the government to fix those problems, and that they're more willing to work with us to make sure that fees don't eat up the low balances of many Australians' superannuation. I hope they're willing to work with us to make sure that inappropriate insurance isn't given to people in their superannuation accounts, which also eats up their meagre balances. The government is rightly acting on the advice of the Productivity Commission on that.
I also think it's worthwhile for the government and for the retirement incomes tribunal to examine the wisdom of increasing the compulsory superannuation contribution from 9.5 per cent to 12 per cent. We know that when those opposite were previously in government the Treasury department under secretary Ken Henry advised against increasing the superannuation guarantee because, they advised, it would hurt the take-home pay of working Australians. That research has been replicated again in recent weeks by the Grattan Institute. I have to confess that I'm not always a fan of the work of the Grattan Institute. It was founded by Kevin Rudd and John Brumby with $30 million of taxpayers' money. Nonetheless, in this instance, I think they've done some very compelling work. Unlike the group that Senator Gallagher quoted in question time, they're not a vested interest that stands to gain from increasing superannuation contributions. The truth is that in this game, whether it's industry super, retail super, any super, they and their associations are not good sources of independent advice because they seek to reap the rewards of billions of dollars of more money of Australians' retirement savings. The truth is that we need to very carefully consider whether it's a good idea for Australians to potentially receive lower take-home pay, and maybe not even receive a higher retirement benefit as a result. The government will take no lectures at all from the Labor Party on the question of protecting the interests of older Australians.
Senator CAROL BROWN (Tasmania) (15:12): That was a very interesting contribution, because I think someone listening to that contribution wouldn't really understand what we were debating here today, what we're taking note of here today. We're taking note of the question from Senator Farrell to Minister Ruston around her comments on the radio interview with 3AW's Neil Mitchell, where she described the age pension as generous. Not once in Senator Paterson's contribution did we hear him trying to support her or defend her in any way. Because everyone in this chamber knows it is indefensible. Her comments were completely out of touch with what is going on in Australia and what is happening to people on the aged pension. Senator Ruston, in her response to Senator Farrell, refused to apologise. Let's get that on the record: she refused to apologise. You have to ask yourself why it is so hard to apologise for comments that were so obviously wrong, so obviously offensive, to hundreds of thousands of aged pensioners in Australia. Why is it so hard to apologise? Senator Ruston refused to apologise. She did accept that pensioners were doing it tough.
Now, the Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg—just like Senator Paterson did in his contribution—refused to endorse Senator Ruston's characterisation of the pension. We are talking about $66 a day. That's what we're talking about. That's the amount of money that age pensioners receive that Senator Ruston calls 'generous'. The Treasurer refused to endorse the comment. In fact, he said—and it's worth repeating, as it was part of Senator Farrell's question to Senator Ruston:
"I understand pensioners have challenging times, a number of pensioners do it really, really tough," …
That was in response to being asked about whether he supported Senator Ruston's comments about the pension. Of course he, using one of Senator Cormann's phrases, wibble-wobbled around that and refused to support those comments. And you can't blame him. You can't blame him for refusing to endorse those comments, because they were wrong and they were out of touch. We're talking about $66 a day.
We also have enough reports, evidence and research, some of which have been funded by the minister's own department, on poverty and people living in poverty on the age pension. Some of that research has been funded by the minister's own department. Maybe the problem is that this is a government that has had six or seven ministers in this area since they came to government six years ago. What does that say? What does that say to Australians? It says that this government does not have an interest in the community services area. It has had six ministers, including the Prime Minister. The government should be ashamed. The minister should be ashamed. (Time expired)
Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory—Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) (15:17): I'm very pleased to respond to Senator Farrell's motion in relation to the question he asked of Minister Ruston. I'll deal firstly with some of Senator Brown's contribution, where she talked about what Senator Ruston had to say.
Senator Ruston has made it very clear that what she was referring to was, of course, the fact that as a nation we rightly make a decision to prioritise the largest part of our budget to the welfare of our nation. Many Australians benefit from those welfare payments, and no-one is suggesting anything other than that those who are on a pension, or any other payment, are doing it tough. That is why we see the twice-yearly increases in the age pension, and, of course, why we look to lower cost of living pressures for Australians across the board. Whether they're pensioners, whether they are low- or middle-income earners, we are always on the side of those who are doing it tough, those who have worked very hard over their working lives and who are now seeking to enjoy their retirements, be they pensioners or self-funded retirees. That is fundamentally what the Liberal and National parties have stood for, for generations.
Conversely, we just had a federal election where the Labor Party sought to punish a portion of the Australian community, namely retirees, to pay for their promises. These are people who the Labor Party and the former Labor leader, Mr Shorten, referred to as the top end of town. He talked about them receiving gifts from the taxpayers when they got their franking credits. Now the new Labor leader, Mr Albanese, acknowledges that, when they were talking about them being the top end of town, they were wrong; that, actually, that was just rhetoric designed to pit one part of the community against another part—to talk about the top end of town and to talk about the other. Mr Albanese talked about the Caboolture retiree who earned $1,200 a year from franking credits. He said they felt like we weren't giving them respect—no, they weren't—and that we were classifying them as wealthy but they weren't wealthy. Doesn't that go to the heart of what we saw at this election when it came to retired Australians and when it came to older Australians? It was absolute disdain from the Labor Party, something that won't be forgotten for a long time.
Let me deal with a couple of aspects of how disdainful they were of older Australians. The shadow Treasurer at the time, Mr Bowen, effectively said to older Australians who were concerned about losing, in some cases, $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 or $5,000 a year of their limited income, 'Well, you can just go vote for someone else,' because he was so confident that they would have enough votes, completely ignoring self-funded retirees and pensioners, that they would be able to skate into office and pit one group of Australians against another.
The other part that was particularly disdainful towards older Australians was the fact that they chose not even to grandfather this policy. As bad as Labor's housing tax and negative gearing policies were, at the very least, in proposing to bring in those destructive tax changes, they acknowledged that they wouldn't hit members of the Labor Party, for instance. Many members of the shadow frontbench who own existing properties wouldn't be hit with changed tax arrangements. But when it came to the self-funded retiree in Caboolture relying on $1,200 a year in franking credits, they said: 'Bad luck. We're going to take that from you on day one. You may have structured your affairs in order to look after yourself and you may be on a modest income, but we're going to take that money away from you.' We're not going to be lectured on that by them.
It wasn't just bad policy, it wasn't just the politics of envy, it wasn't just referring to self-funded retirees as the top end of town; it was proposing to take away money that they were entitled to and that they had structured their affairs around. This is how the Labor Party treats older Australians. They sought to pit older Australians against younger Australians. They sought to pit those on middle incomes against those on somewhat higher incomes. The Australian people saw through it. Particularly, retired Australians saw through it. They took Chris Bowen's advice and did exactly what he said. They voted against the Labor Party as a result of those destructive policies. (Time expired)
Senator PRATT (Western Australia) (15:23): This government is out of touch, as shown by Senator Ruston's comment on pensions. It is absolutely symptomatic of what is a poor culture in our government in terms of looking after older Australians. Now, what is the government's position on the age pension in Australia at the moment? Senator Ruston seems to think it's generous, while Mr Frydenberg, the nation's Treasurer, says he understands that pensioners have challenging times and, indeed, that pensioners do it really, really tough. Senator Ruston did a disservice to this place this afternoon when she would not say whether she had been counselled for her remarks. I can only take that to mean that she was—although, frankly, the whole country was counselling her on the inappropriateness of those remarks, as the many pensioners who called in to 3AW after she made those remarks illustrated.
The government needs to make it clear: are pensioners doing it tough or is the pension generous? Is it little wonder that we on this side of the chamber are worried, or that the nation's pensioners are worried, about what might be in the next government's budget? Will they want to remove the energy supplement? Older Australians deserve much better than this out-of-touch government.
Let's have a look at exactly what Minister Ruston said. She said:
I don’t think a debate about whether I could live on—
the pension—
or not is relevant. It is a generous amount of money that the Australian taxpayers make available to our older Australians.
It doesn't seem very ambiguous to me. She said very clearly that the pension is generous. Neil Mitchell, the interviewer, asked, 'The pension is generous?' Senator Ruston did not respond to that at the time. She was already moving on. She said, 'The other thing that we also need to realise is …' and Neil said, 'I'm sorry; did you say the pension is generous?' Here, Senator Ruston finally seemed to wise up to the political problem she had made for herself. She said:
In terms of the amount of money that taxpayers fund our social welfare system, we put a lot of money into it.
Putting a lot of money into something does not equal generosity. Even if it is one of the highest and largest amounts of expenditure on the books for our nation, that doesn't equate to generosity. There is absolutely no correlation between the size of the amount of money that's put aside in our nation's budget and the need.
As the per capita report that we asked about shows, $66 a day is not generous. This per capita report makes clear that the age pension is barely effective in keeping our most financially vulnerable and older citizens out of poverty. They say that as one of the wealthiest nations in the world we should be looking beyond simple survival for our oldest citizens. What do I take that as code for? If we're going to look beyond simple survival, then that would have some quotient of generosity in it, I would think. But this report shows that age pension dependency in Australia means a life of poverty and deprivation for thousands of our fellow Australians. They highlight that Australia can and should do better than this.
It is little wonder that pensioners around Australia reacted so angrily to this, and I think Senator Ruston should continue to be held to account.
Question agreed to.
Environment
Senator DI NATALE (Victoria—Leader of the Australian Greens) (15:28): I move:
That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Di Natale today, relating to drought.
On Thursday last week, the Bureau of Meteorology said that the drought that the Murray-Darling Basin was experiencing was 'the most severe in 120 years of records'. There is no question that people right across the country, particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin, are struggling, and it's about time we started to address the issue of drought. It's a good thing it's on the parliamentary agenda over this fortnight. But let's be clear what's happening. The government has decided to set up a drought relief fund, which is effectively a slush fund for its National Party backers. We know what happens when you put the Nationals in charge of water. We've seen the rampant corruption and mismanagement of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. They establish a fund that overtly is to look after their mates, and then they dare the ALP to support it. They use it as a wedge against the ALP. People deserve better than that. They deserve better than the government deciding to play politics with an issue that is affecting the lives of people right across the country.
The single biggest contributor to this drought and indeed, future droughts—at least a major contributor—is the impact of climate change on drought. You can't be serious about drought unless you take strong action on climate change. We know that current and future droughts will be more severe and more frequent unless we're prepared to take strong action on climate change. We know that the single biggest cause of climate change is burning coal. So unless we've got a plan to transition out of coal into renewables, we actually don't have a plan to deal with climate change and, therefore, you can't be serious about tackling drought. Right now, Australia's pollution levels have never been higher. They've never been higher than they are right now. We are pumping so much heat-trapping gas into our oceans and our atmosphere that we are on track to shoot up to three to four degrees of warming, which will have catastrophic impacts both on the climate and also on those agricultural communities that are struggling.
We know that climate change has already contributed to a southward shift in weather systems and that is a big contributor to what's going on here. We know that rainfall has decreased by 15 per cent in south-east Australia and Western Australia's south-west region—another 15 per cent decline in cool season rainfall. Climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of hot days and heatwaves in Australia, exacerbating drought conditions.
So we've got to get serious about tackling climate change, rather than coming up with silly political wedges designed to show that you're more interested in the politics than the outcome. How about we get serious about the causes of drought? As I said earlier, one of the major contributors to drought is the breakdown of our climate. It's not just coal, it's gas: our gas exports are driving some of the biggest growth in emissions. You've got methane leaking out of fracking wells. You've got huge amounts of energy needed to convert it to LNG. And our accounts don't even include the pollution that occurs from the burning of that gas in other jurisdictions. We're now the biggest exporter of coal and gas. We have to get serious about tackling climate change if we're going to be serious about tackling drought.
Indeed, what we had at a summit only a few days ago was the mining industry putting themselves forward as the saviour of drought stricken agricultural communities. This stuff writes itself. The coal industry—responsible for the mining, burning and exporting of coal, the biggest contributor to climate change, one of the significant drivers of drought in this country, which is affecting regional communities—the coal industry is saying, 'We're here to help.' With friends like that, who needs enemies? It's about time we got serious about tackling climate change. That means a transition away from coal, oil and gas to renewable technologies, ushering in the tens of thousands of jobs that come with making that transition, and ensuring that agriculture is viable in this country for generations to come.
Question agreed to.
COMMITTEES
Appointment
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (15:34): Messages have been received from the House of Representatives transmitting for concurrence resolutions relating to the formation of joint committees as listed at item 19 of today's order of business.
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (15:34): by leave—I move:
That the Senate concurs with the resolutions of the House of Representatives contained in messages 2 to 15 relating to the appointment of joint committees.
Question agreed to.
Membership
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (14:54): The President has received letters nominating senators to be members of committees.
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (14:54): by leave—I move:
That senators be appointed to committees as follows:
Effectiveness of the Australian Government ' s Northern Australia agenda—Select Committee—
Appointed—
Senators Dodson, McCarthy, Roberts and Watt
Participating members: Senators Ayres, Bilyk, Brown, Carr, Chisholm, Ciccone, Farrell, Gallacher, Gallagher, Green, Hanson, Keneally, Kitching, Lines, McAllister, O'Neill, Polley, Pratt, Sheldon, Marielle Smith, Sterle, Urquhart, Walsh, and Wong
Electoral Matters—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Askew, Brown, McGrath and Marielle Smith
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Abetz, Ayres, Fawcett, Fierravanti-Wells, Kitching, McCarthy, McMahon, O'Neill, Sheldon and Sinodinos
Migration—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Ciccone, Rennick, Dean Smith and Walsh
National Broadband Network—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—
Senators Antic, Davey, Farrell, Sheldon and Walsh
Participating members: Senators Ayres, Bilyk, Brown, Carr, Chisholm, Ciccone, Dodson, Gallacher, Gallagher, Green, Keneally, Kitching, Lines, McAllister, McCarthy, O'Neill, Polley, Pratt, Marielle Smith, Sterle, Urquhart, Watt and Wong
National Capital and External Territories—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Brown, Keneally, McMahon and O'Sullivan
National Disability Insurance Scheme—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Askew, Brown, Chisholm and Hughes
Northern Australia—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Chisholm, Green, McMahon and Dean Smith
Parliamentary Library—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Askew, Paterson and Dean Smith
Trade and Investment Growth—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Ayres, Rennick and Van
Treaties—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senators Ayres, Bilyk, Bragg, Brockman, Rennick and Marielle Smith.
Question agreed to.
CONDOLENCES
Coleman, Mr William Peter, AO
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (15:34): It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death, on 31 March 2019, of William Peter Coleman, a former minister and member of the House of Representatives for the division of Wentworth, New South Wales from 1981 to 1987.
PETITIONS
The Clerk: A petition has been lodged, as follows:
Carers
To the Honourable President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled:
The petition of the undersigned residents of the Limestone Coast, shows: we do not believe that the proposed 5,000 packages of $1,500 - $3,000 for the 2.7 million carers in Australia is sufficient to support carers continue in their caring role, and we are not supportive of the introduction of an online based service leading to the closure of 100+ carers agencies to 16 across Australia under the proposed Integrated Carers Support Service (ICSS).
Your petitioners ask that the Senate: do not implement the proposed Integrated Carers Support Service due to our concerns that we will lose access to local carer supports services and we will lose existing supports in our caring roles, increasing the stress of maintaining being a carer.
by Senator Brown (from 26 citizens).
Petition received.
NOTICES
Presentation
Senator Ruston to move on the next day of sitting:
That consideration of the business before the Senate on the following days be interrupted at approximately 5 pm, but not so as to interrupt a senator speaking, to enable senators to make their first speeches without any question before the chair, as follows:
(a) Tuesday, 10 September 2019—Senators Scarr, Van and Rennick;
(b) Wednesday, 11 September 2019—Senators Marielle Smith and Walsh;
(c) Tuesday, 17 September 2019—Senators Antic and Davey; and
(d) Wednesday, 18 September 2019—Senator McMahon.
Senator Bernardi to move on the next day of sitting:
That the following bill be introduced: A Bill for an Act to amend the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011, and for related purposes. Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Amendment (Australian Freedoms) Bill 2019.
Senator Siewert to move on the next day of sitting:
That the Senate—
(a) notes that the age of criminal responsibility is currently set at 10 years old around Australia, meaning children as young as 10 are being charged, brought before courts, sentenced and imprisoned;
(b) acknowledges that:
(i) around 600 children below the age of 14 are locked up in youth detention centres each year and many hundreds more in adult prisons, and
(ii) the majority of these children are First Nations children;
(c) recognises that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recommends that the minimum age of criminal responsibility should be at least 12 years; and
(d) calls on state, territory and federal governments across Australia to work together to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years, as a minimum.
Senator Waters to move on the next day of sitting:
That the Senate—
(a) notes that:
(i) since the last sitting of the Senate, there have been a further 3 women killed by violence in Australia, taking the overall national toll for 2019 to 29, as reported by Counting Dead Women Australia from Destroy The Joint,
(ii) there is no national government reporting program to record the ongoing toll of women killed by violence in real time – this work is currently left to researchers at not-for-profit organisations like Destroy the Joint,
(iii) on average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner,
(iv) 1 in 3 Australian women has experienced physical violence since the age of 15,
(v) 1 in 5 Australian women has experienced sexual violence,
(vi) 1 in 6 Australian women has experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner,
(vii) 1 in 4 Australian women has experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner,
(viii) Australian women are nearly three times more likely than men to experience violence from an intimate partner,
(ix) there is growing evidence that women with disabilities are more likely to experience violence,
(x) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women report experiencing violence in the previous 12 months at 3.1 times the rate of non-Indigenous women, and
(xi) in 2014-15, Indigenous women were 32 times as likely to be hospitalised due to family violence as non-Indigenous women; and
(b) calls on the Federal Government to:
(i) recognise domestic violence against women as a national security crisis,
(ii) adequately fund frontline domestic violence and crisis housing services to ensure that all women seeking safety can access these services when and where they need them,
(iii) legislate for 10 days paid domestic violence leave so that women do not have to choose between paying the bills and seeking safety,
(iv) implement all 25 recommendations contained in the report of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee on domestic violence in Australia, tabled on 20 August 2015, and
(v) much like the national road toll, maintain and publish an official real-time national toll of women killed by violence in Australia.
Senators McDonald, McGrath, Stoker, Rennick and Scarrto move on the next day of sitting:
That the Senate—
(a) notes that:
(i) a strong and resilient agricultural sector is key to the continued growth and wealth of the Australian economy, especially rural and regional towns,
(ii) Australian farmers and graziers are world leaders in safe, ethical and humane methods, and
(iii) Australian farmers and graziers are typically 'mum and dad' operations, employing people throughout their local region and reinvesting in their local community; and
(b) condemns the actions of 'animal activists' like Aussie Farms Inc. and supports state and federal legislation that supports Australian farmers and graziers by ensuring they can go about their businesses safely.
Senator Lambie to move on the next day of sitting:
That the Senate—
(a) notes that:
(i) recommendation 2 contained in the report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee into suicide by Australian veterans, tabled on 15 August 2017, stated 'that the Australian Government commission an independent study into the mental health impacts of compensation claim assessment processes on veterans engaging with the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation. The results of this research should be utilised to improve compensation claim processesʼ,
(ii) the Federal Governmentʼs response to this recommendation was 'the Federal Government agrees to commission an independent study into the mental health impacts of compensation claim assessment processes on veterans engaging with the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporationʼ,
(iii) Phoenix Australia was commissioned to complete a report into the mental health effects of compensation claim processes on claimants and their families, which was completed in September 2018,
(iv) the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) subsequently commissioned Professor Alex Collie to review the Phoenix Australia report and to further explore potential for DVA actions that may mitigate potential mental health impacts of its compensation claims processes, and
(v) the Collie Review was completed on 5 March 2019; and
(b) orders that there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Veterans and Defence Personnel, by no later than 10 am on 31 July 2019, the complete report by Phoenix Australia into the mental health effects of compensation claim processes on claimants and their families, that formed the basis of the Collie Review.
Senator Whish-Wilson to move on 29 July 2019:
(1) That the Senate—
(a) notes that:
(i) on 23 February 2016, the then Treasurer, the Honourable Scott Morrison MP, announced his decision to approve the acquisition of the land and assets of the Tasmanian Land Company (TLC), including the Van Diemen's Land (VDL) Company, by Moon Lake Investments,
(ii) in announcing the approval, the then Treasurer noted the commitment by Moon Lake to create an additional 95 jobs and to invest an additional $100 million into VDL farms, including for ecological restoration; and that, given these considerations, inter alia, he was satisfied that Moon Lake's acquisition of TLC was not contrary to the national interest,
(iii) in June 2019, the media reported extracts of a letter written by senior managers at VDL to Moon Lake seeking indemnity from any animal welfare or workplace health and safety loss or damage, and citing inadequate repairs and maintenance as the reason for this request, and
(iv) Moon Lake has reportedly invested less than $20 million of the promised additional $100 million into VDL farms; and
(b) calls upon the Treasurer to impose a new condition on Moon Lake, under section 74 of the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1975, compelling the company to:
(i) make public the details on how it intends to invest the outstanding amount of the promised $100 million into VDL farms by 31 August 2019, and
(ii) invest the outstanding amount of the promised $100 million into VDL farms by 31 July 2020.
(2) That a message be sent to the House of Representatives seeking its concurrence in this resolution.
Senator Patrick to move 15 sitting days after today:
That the Civil Aviation (Community Service Flights - Conditions on Flight Crew Licences) Amendment Instrument 2019, made under the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998, be disallowed [F2019L00554].
Senator Patrick to move on the next day of sitting:
(1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on the Multi-Jurisdictional Management and Execution of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, be established to inquire and report on the following matters:
(a) responsibilities in relation to the management and execution of the Murray Darling Basin Plan consistent with the objects of the Water Act 2007, in particular:
(i) Commonwealth responsibilities,
(ii) state and territory responsibilities, and
(iii) areas of uncertainty or potential conflict in respect of responsibilities;
(b) the effects, positive or negative or otherwise, of the different approaches of the states and territories to water resource management in the Murray Darling Basin including, but not limited to:
(i) legislation, regulations and rules,
(ii) management and administration, including differences in management organisations,
(iii) measuring, monitoring and compliance,
(iv) enforcement, and
(v) openness and transparency;
(c) complications in respect of basin-wide or cross jurisdiction oversight, including the oversight roles and jurisdictional limitations of:
(i) state, territory and federal parliaments,
(ii) state, territory and federal courts, and
(iii) state, territory and federally-instituted inquiries and Royal Commissions;
(d) any bill related to the Murray Darling Basin referred to the committee; and
(e) any related matters.
(2) That the committee present its final report on or before 1 November 2020.
(3) That the committee consist of 6 senators:
(a) 2 nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate;
(b) 2 nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate;
(c) 1 nominated by the Leader of the Australian Greens; and
(d) Senator Patrick.
(4) That:
(a) participating members may be appointed to the committee on the nomination of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate or any minority party or independent senator;
(b) participating members may participate in hearings of evidence and deliberations of the committee, and have all the rights of members of the committee, but may not vote on any questions before the committee; and
(c) a participating member shall be taken to be a member of the committee for the purpose of forming a quorum of the committee if a majority of members of the committee is not present.
(5) That the committee may proceed to the dispatch of business notwithstanding that not all members have been duly nominated and appointed and notwithstanding any vacancy.
(6) That the committee elect as chair one of the members nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, and Senator Patrick as deputy chair.
(7) That the deputy chair shall act as chair when the chair is absent from a meeting of the committee or the position of chair is temporarily vacant.
(8) That the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, may appoint another member of the committee to act as chair during the temporary absence of both the chair and deputy chair at a meeting of the committee.
(9) That, in the event of an equally divided vote, the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, have a casting vote.
(10) That the committee have power to appoint subcommittees consisting of three or more of its members, and to refer to any such subcommittee any of the matters which the committee is empowered to examine.
(11) That the committee and any subcommittee have power to send for and examine persons and documents, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, and have leave to report from time to time its proceedings, the evidence taken and such interim recommendations as it may deem fit.
(12) That the committee be provided with all necessary staff, facilities and resources and be empowered to appoint persons with specialist knowledge for the purposes of the committee with the approval of the President.
(13) That the committee be empowered to print from day to day such documents and evidence as may be ordered by it, and a daily Hansard be published of such proceedings as take place in public.
Senator Faruqi to move on the next day of sitting:
That the Senate—
(a) notes that:
(i) the Higher Education Accommodation and Financial Stress Survey released on 8 July 2019 found that more than half of students reported high to very high levels of psychological distress and say that their studies are impacted by financial stress,
(ii) many students regularly go without food and other necessities while they study, with a quarter of surveyed students experiencing food insecurity, and
(iii) students should be able to focus on learning, not on where their next meal is coming from; and
(b) calls on the Federal Government to:
(i) make TAFE and university education free for all,
(ii) urgently increase student payments, such as Youth Allowance by at least $75 a week, and
(iii) properly fund mental health services to give students the support they need and deserve.
Senator Bilyk to move on the next day of sitting:
That the Senate—
(a) notes that 17 July 2019 marked the fifth anniversary since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine;
(b) expresses its deepest sympathy to the families of the 298 innocent people (passengers and crew), including 38 Australians, who were killed in this tragedy;
(c) commends the work of the Australian Federal Police for their integral role in the Joint Investigation Team (JIT);
(d) welcomes the decision of the JIT to charge three Russians and one Ukrainian with murder over the incident;
(e) calls on Russia to do everything in its power to ensure that the four men charged with this crime can stand trial in the Netherlands; and
(f) expresses its support for ongoing efforts by authorities in Australia, Ukraine, Malaysia, Belgium and the Netherlands to bring those responsible for this horrendous crime to justice.
Presentation
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (15:35): I give notice that, on the next sitting day, I shall move:
That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the following bills, allowing them to be considered during this period of sittings:
Future Drought Fund Bill 2019
Future Drought Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019
I also table a statement of reasons justifying the need for the bills to be considered during these sittings and seek leave to have the statement incorporated in Hansard.
The statement read as follows—
STATEMENT OF REASONS FOR INTRODUCTION AND PASSAGE IN THE 2019 winter/spring SITTINGS
future dRought fund Bill
future drought fund (consequential amendments) Bill
Purpose of the Bills
The Future Drought Fund Bill (the Bill) will establish the Future Drought Fund (the Fund), the Future Drought Fund Special Account, the Agriculture Future Drought Fund Special Account, the Future Drought Fund Consultative Committee and the Drought Resilience Funding Plan to fund initiatives which enhance future drought resilience, preparedness and response across Australia.
Uncommitted funds currently in the Building Australia Fund, approximately $3.9 billion, would be transferred to the Fund on establishment. By 2028-29 it is expected that the Fund would grow to approximately $5.0 billion through reinvestment of net earnings (less disbursements). The Fund would provide disbursements from 1 July 2020. The Fund would be managed by the Future Fund Board of Guardians.
The Future Drought Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill would make consequential amendments to a range of legislation including the Future Fund Act 2006 and other acts as a result of the Future Drought Fund Bill.
Reasons for Urgency
Introduction and passage of the bills in the 2019 Spring sittings is necessary to enable drawdowns from the Fund from 1 July 2020.
BUSINESS
Leave of Absence
Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (15:36): by leave—I move:
That leave of absence be granted to Senators Bilyk and O'Neill for today, 22 July, for personal reasons.
Question agreed to.
NOTICES
Postponement
The Clerk: Postponement notifications have been lodged as follows:
Business of the Senate notice of motion no. 1 standing in the name of Senator Rice for 23 July 2019, postponed till 30 July 2019.
General business notice of motion no. 31 standing in the name of Senator Hanson-Young for today, postponed till 25 July 2019.
General business notice of motion no. 32 standing in the name of Senators McKim and Hanson-Young for today, postponed till 23 July 2019.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (15:37): I remind senators that the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator.
BUSINESS
Rearrangement
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (15:37): I move:
(1) That consideration of the business before the Senate on the following days be interrupted at approximately 5 pm, but not so as to interrupt a senator speaking, to enable senators to make their first speeches without any question before the chair, as follows:
(a) Tuesday, 23 July 2019—Senators McDonald and Chandler;
(b) Wednesday, 24 July 2019—Senators Bragg and Ciccone;
(c) Tuesday, 30 July 2019—Senators Hughes, Ayres and O’Sullivan; and
(d) Wednesday, 31 July 2019—Senators Sheldon and Green.
(2) On Tuesday, 30 July 2019, immediately after Senator O’Sullivan’s first speech, valedictory statements may be made relating to Senator Fifield.
Question agreed to.
COMMITTEES
Finance and Public Administration References Committee
Reference
Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (15:38): I move:
(1) That the Senate notes—
(a) the Prime Minister's Statement of Ministerial Standards of 30 August 2018, at paragraph 2.25 concerning post-ministerial employment, states that "Ministers are required to undertake that, for an eighteen month period after ceasing to be a Minister, they will not lobby, advocate or have business meetings with members of the government, parliament, public service or defence force on any matters on which they have had official dealings as Minister in their last eighteen months in office. Ministers are also required to undertake that, on leaving office, they will not take personal advantage of information to which they have had access as a Minister, where that information is not generally available to the public";
(b) that Mr Christopher Maurice Pyne served as the Minister for Defence Industry from 19 July 2016 to 28 August 2018, and as the Minister for Defence from 28 August 2018 to 11 April 2019;
(c) that Mr Pyne has taken employment with consulting firm EY and that, in his own words, he is "looking forward to providing strategic advice to EY, as the firm looks to expand its footprint in the defence industry";
(d) that media reports indicate that AusTender government contract notices show that over the past four years EY has secured over 830 contracts with the Australian Government worth more than $370 million, including 138 contracts with the Department of Defence worth $148 million;
(e) that EY has publicly identified the Australian Government's investment in new defence capabilities, including the future submarines project and the future frigate project as major business opportunities;
(f) EY's statement that Mr Pyne will help build EY's defence-related business in South Australia and elsewhere, including helping to "lead conversations about what all states need to do to meet the challenges and opportunities this defence investment will bring";
(g) EY's subsequent statement that Mr Pyne "will not be lobbying or meeting with public sector MPs, public service or defence in his EY role" and that he will be "supporting the private sector side of the business"; and
(h) Mr Pyne's further statement that he intends "to ensure that anyone I provide advice to has rigorous processes and procedures in place to ensure that I am not put in a position where the Ministerial Code might be breached".
(2) That the following matter be referred to the Finance and Public Administration References Committee for inquiry and report by 10 September 2019:
(a) compliance by former Ministers of State with the requirements of paragraph 2.25 of the Prime Minister's Statement of Ministerial Standards, dated 30 August 2018, including, but not limited to the undertakings given by Ministers to comply with their obligations concerning post-ministerial employment, and action taken by the Prime Minister and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to ensure full compliance by former Ministers with paragraph 2.25 of the Ministerial Standards; and
(b) any related matters.
Senator WATERS (Queensland) (15:38): I seek leave to move amendments to business of the Senate notice of motion No. 1, moved by Senator Patrick.
Leave granted.
Senator WATERS: I move the amendments which have been circulated in the chamber in my name:
After subparagraph (1)(h), add:
(i) that current and previous Prime Minister's Statements of Ministerial Standards clearly provide that Ministers must act with honesty and integrity in all their activities. In particular, Ministers must:
(i) make arrangements to avoid conflicts arising from their private interests, also having regard to interests held by family members (paragraphs 2.9 and 2.17), and
(ii) not use public office for private purposes (paragraph 2.2);
(j) that on 19 June 2019, the Guardian reported that, while a company part-owned by Angus Taylor MP and his brother was under investigation by the Department of the Environment for alleged unlawful clearing of a critically endangered grassland species, Minister Taylor met with Department of the Environment staff. The Guardian further reported on 27 June 2019 that an investigator from the office responsible for investigating the clearing allegations was present at a meeting;
(k) that on 20 June 2019, the Guardian reported that former Minister for the Environment, Josh Frydenberg, was approached by Angus Taylor in relation to the listing of the grassland species. According to the report, Mr Frydenberg subsequently sought advice about his powers to amend the critically endangered listing; and
(l) that these meetings raise serious questions about whether such conduct complies with the Ministerial Standards.
After subparagraph (2)(a), insert:
(aa) extending the post-employment period during which former Ministers are prevented from lobbying, advocating or other activities under paragraph 2.25 of the Ministerial Standards to 5 years;
(ab) enforcement of the Ministerial Standards including, but not limited to:
(i) actions taken in response to allegations of improper conduct or other non-compliance with the Ministerial Standards,
(ii) investigation of allegations of improper conduct or other non-compliance with the Ministerial Standards by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet,
(iii) investigation of allegations of misconduct or other non-compliance with the Ministerial Standards by an independent authority,
(iv) penalties for non-compliance with the Ministerial Standards, and
(v) any policies developed to guide implementation of the Ministerial Standards;
(ac) appointment of a Parliamentary Integrity Commissioner tasked with enforcing compliance with the Ministerial Standards;
Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Shadow Minister for Finance, Shadow Minister for the Public Service and Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (15:38): I seek leave to make a short statement.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.
Senator GALLAGHER: I just want to flag that the opposition will be supporting Senator Patrick's motion. We won't be supporting the Greens' amendments. But, since this motion was lodged, the Prime Minister has provided a letter to the Senate from his departmental secretary relating to the inquiry into the compliance of former ministers Pyne and Bishop with the ministerial standards. The letter advised the Prime Minister that former Foreign Minister Bishop assured the secretary she'd had no contact with Palladium as Minister for Foreign Affairs. Yet, on 9 June 2017, former Foreign Minister Bishop appeared in a video filmed in her office and published on Palladium's Facebook page titled Australia's Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, commends Shared Value and Palladium's Business Partnership Platform. I think this does draw into question the findings relating to former Minister Bishop in the Parkinson report and supports the establishment of this inquiry. We do, however, have concerns with the Greens' amendments and won't be supporting them today.
Senator WATERS (Queensland) (15:39): I seek leave to make a short statement.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.
Senator WATERS: We'll be supporting the motion by Senator Patrick for an inquiry into the conduct of former ministers Pyne and Bishop, but it's tantamount to a protection racket to look at just those two isolated cases and not at the litany of examples from both sides of the chamber where the ministerial standards have been stretched at best, whether those folk be in the ministry or former ministers. Now, the amendment that I sought to move was to include scrutiny of ministers Taylor and Frydenberg and their conduct. I understand we'll be getting an explanation from Minister Cormann on those matters tomorrow, and we look forward to those and hope it's more fulsome than the one we received today, but the other parts of the amendment were actually to expand this inquiry to look at how we fix this code: how to give it teeth, how to make sure it's enforced and how to make sure it's not just at the whim of the Prime Minister to turn a blind eye by actually having an independent body. What a disappointment that none of you actually want to look at the source of the problem. You just want to play politics with it.
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (15:40): I seek leave to make a brief statement.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.
Senator CORMANN: I thank the Senate. The government will be opposing this motion. There's absolutely no credible proposition that there has been any breach of the Statement of Ministerial Standards. In fact, the inquiry conducted independently by the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Dr Parkinson, makes clear that there hasn't been any breach. I think we've got to be very, very careful with the proposition that a minister or member of parliament leaving this parliament would be prevented from taking on any job. I mean, clearly, former ministers need to be able to continue to work and be able to earn a living. I think we'd want to be very, very careful making that impossible for people leaving in these circumstances and for businesses to employ them. What does matter, of course, is that their employment doesn't breach ministerial standards. In relation to former ministers Payne and Bishop, clearly there is no breach and there's no case for this inquiry.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I remind senators that we are voting on the amendment to business of the Senate item No. 1 as moved by Senator Waters. The question is that the amendment as moved by Senator Waters be agreed to.
The Senate divided. [15:46]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (15:55): The question is that business of the Senate motion No. 1, as moved by Senator Patrick, be agreed to.
The Senate divided. [15:55]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)
DOCUMENTS
Commissioner of Taxation
Order for the Production of Documents
Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (15:58): I seek leave to amend general business notice of motion No. 2 standing in my name for today proposing an order for production of documents by the Commissioner of Taxation.
Leave granted.
Senator PATRICK: I move the motion as amended:
(1) That the Senate notes that—
(a) on 12 October 2017, Mr Richard Boyle made a disclosure under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (PID Act) as a former employee of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), alleging the ATO:
(i) had instructed employees to issue standard garnishee notices to seize funds from taxpayers' bank accounts without notice or consideration of their personal and business circumstances, and
(ii) in doing so, had required employees to engage in conduct that was unethical, unprofessional and against the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct;
(b) on 27 October 2017, the ATO decided not to further investigate Mr Boyle's disclosure on the basis that the information did not concern serious disclosable conduct as defined in the PID Act; and
(c) subsequent media inquiries found anomalies in the ATO's debt collection practices that appeared consistent with Mr Boyle's disclosure.
(2) That the Senate is of the opinion that examining the ATO's actions in relation to Mr Boyle's disclosure is consistent with the Senate's role in providing oversight of government administration.
(3) That the Senate orders the Commissioner of Taxation to provide all documents relating to the disclosure generated or received by Mr Boyle's supervisor, authorised officer and principal officer (as defined in the PID Act) including but not limited to notes, minutes, memoranda, letters, other external or internal correspondence, emails and/or Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC) conversations to the Economics Legislation Committee (the committee) by no later than 5 pm on 30 July 2019.
(4) That the committee, when it has considered the documents, report to the Senate as to whether the ATO's handling of disclosures by whistleblowers warrants further inquiry.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The question is that general business notice of motion No. 2 standing in the name of Senator Patrick be agreed to.
The Senate divided. [16:03]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)
MOTIONS
Infrastructure
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (16:07): I move:
That the Senate calls on the Federal Government to approve urgently needed nation-building projects that will lower the costs of energy generation and deliver water security to the people of Australia.
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (16:07): I seek leave to make a short statement.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.
Senator RUSTON: The Liberal-National government has established the $1.3 billion National Water Infrastructure Development Fund and the $2 billion Water Infrastructure Loan Facility as major parts of our commitment to build the water infrastructure of the 21st century. The fund is accelerating the detailed planning and construction of water infrastructure projects that will deliver new and affordable water, deliver enhanced water security and underpin regional economic growth, including irrigated agriculture and industry.
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (16:07): I seek leave to make a short statement.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.
Senator ROBERTS: Governance today as I see it is essentially about three things. First, it is about the cost of living and the economic efficiency of today's resources—that is, using today's production capacity. Second, it is about security—protecting today's productive capacity. Third, it is about ensuring future productive capacity. I look at what Liberal and Labor governments have done in the last 70 years and I see that we've destroyed our productive capacity, because we now have energy policy that's driven by the UN. We've gone from the lowest price of electricity to the highest and we're now giving handouts to foreigners. We're stealing farmers' property rights so as to comply with the UN's Kyoto protocol and we have water prices that are exorbitantly high and are punishing farmers and other users, due to UN policy. We need to restore our productive capacity, because this is the productive capacity that will provide the production and the opportunities for the future. We've got to stop stealing the opportunities from our people and actually start building the productive capacity.
Question agreed to.
MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Immigration Detention
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (16:09): I inform the Senate that at 8.30 am today five proposals were received in accordance with standing order No. 75. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator Seiwert:
Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:
That people fleeing conflict and oppression in their home countries, who legally and legitimately sought asylum in Australia, have been arbitrarily detained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru for 6 years.
Is the proposal supported?
More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.
Senator McKIM (Tasmania) (16:10): It's now been six long years since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Australia Labor Party took the fateful decision to restart the policy of indefinite offshore detention. They announced that policy on 19 July 2013. It's been six long years of torture, cruelty, deprivation and indefinite detention for the thousands of people who were exiled to Manus Island and Nauru under this cruel policy. Today we saw the Australian Prime Minister stand before our country and try to gaslight us—try to deny the truth about what is going on on Manus Island. That gaslighting is as abhorrent as it is dishonest. Contrary to what the Prime Minister claims, and contrary to what the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs claimed in this chamber only an hour or so ago, there are people detained on Manus Island. They are detained there, and the Prime Minister holds the key. They cannot leave because of decisions the Prime Minister and Australia's minister for immigration are making. Their lives have been stolen from them by the major political parties in this country. Six long years of their lives have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency by the LNP and the ALP in this country.
With a single phone call, Prime Minister Morrison could accept the kind and generous offer made by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. He could ensure that 150 people on Manus Island and Nauru who were exiled there, overwhelmingly, six long years ago could get the freedom and safety they so desperately need and deserve, the freedom and safety that Australia actually committed to providing to refugees when we signed the refugee convention. But Scott Morrison has not done so.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fawcett ): Order, Senator McKim. I just remind you to use correct titles.
Senator McKIM: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has not done so. He is using their suffering to serve as an example to others. He is torturing people because it suits his political purpose.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator McKim, I just remind you that you cannot impute motives to other members of the parliament.
Senator McKIM: If senators in this chamber don't think I'm right about conditions on Manus Island, if you think I'm over-egging the situation over there, have the courage of your convictions to go to Manus Island or Nauru and tell the people there who are being tortured that what they're suffering is actually worth it. But you won't do that, will you? You don't want to look in the eye these innocent people, your political prisoners, who you exiled there six long years ago. You don't want to look them in the eye, because it would make you grossly uncomfortable. You know that, if you went there, they would explain to you how terrible their situation is and they would ask you how you can possibly justify doing what you're doing to them just because you think it's in your political benefit in this country to do it.
Go and look them in the eye and tell them why you've stolen six years of their lives. Go and look them in the eye and tell them why they are suffering. Tell them why they've been abused. Tell them why they've had to watch their friends being murdered. Tell them why they've had to watch their children being sexually abused on Nauru. Tell them why they've had to watch their wives being sexually abused and raped on Nauru. Tell them why, on Manus Island, they were laid siege to for over three weeks after the Australian government ordered that food, drinking water, electricity and medical supports be cut off at midnight on 31 October 2017. Tell them why their friends have been attacked with machetes and grievously wounded. Tell them why they are incarcerated indefinitely in mental illness factories. Tell them why their gay friends on Manus Island have been exiled by Australia to a place where consenting sex between adult men is subject to many years imprisonment. Go and look them in the eye and tell them, if you've got the guts. But you know what? None of you have the courage to do that. None of you.
These people are like the corpses that used to get impaled on the walls of medieval cities in order to dissuade other desperate people from trying to gain entry. They are political prisoners, and they have been exiled to Manus Island and Nauru for over six years now. And yet we have a Prime Minister who claims that there are no detention centres in Papua New Guinea and that refugees are not detained on Manus Island. Well, what is that place with the guards on the gate and with the razor wire on the fences that people get locked into at six o'clock every night and are not allowed out of until six o'clock every morning? What is that place if it's not a prison? You know what? It's worse than a prison, because they have no end date on their sentence. It's worse than a prison, because they have no educational opportunities, they have massively substandard health care and they have no hope for the future. That is why we've seen a massive spike in self-harm since the election. When the LNP held onto power, the dreams of many of them, that one day they might be settled in New Zealand, were crushed. Many of them now simply don't get out of bed. They lie in their beds every day because they have no hope for the future. When you remove hope for the future from human beings, mental illness is an almost inevitable result.
We've got Prime Minister Marape making it very clear to the Australian government that he expects a timetable for the closure of indefinite detention on Manus Island. And, despite being asked by me today, the minister refused to answer my very simple question, which was whether or not the Australian government had agreed to provide such a timetable. I'll put money on this—I'll lay it on the table—the Australian government won't provide a timetable to the Papua New Guinean government as requested by Prime Minister Marape today. The reason they won't do it is that there are no meaningful negotiations for resettlement underway with third countries.
We know the US arrangement is coming to an end. There are a small number of people on Manus Island and Nauru who've been accepted and are scheduled for transfer at some stage in the near future. There are a smaller number of people in Papua New Guinea at least who are still in the US process. But the information I've got is that the Australian government is currently not in negotiation with any other country for a third-country resettlement option. That's why Prime Minister Morrison, the man who says he cries when he thinks about this, the man who says he prays for these people, needs to accept the New Zealand offer. He needs to show some compassion and he needs to show some humanity. If there's any group of people to whom our country owes a duty of care that is more deserving of compassion, humanity and understanding than the people we exiled to Manus Island and Nauru, I do not know of that group.
Senator STOKER (Queensland) (16:20): I applaud Senator Siewert and her colleagues for maintaining such a consistent position on this matter for many years now. Let's face it: that is more than can be said for their position on wind farms, which has quite literally gone whichever way the wind blows!
The Greens are trying to frame this debate as a matter of legitimate asylum seekers being denied their legitimate claims for asylum in this country. They prefer to perpetuate the myths that this government is placing people in offshore detention because we are just cold and heartless and that people are suffering at our hands from poor medical treatment.
Senator McKim: They are!
Senator STOKER: That hyperbole hit fever pitch not just in the speech by the previous speaker, Senator McKim, that we just heard but also when he described the actions of the government as 'cruelty for cruelty's sake', as if, in our spare time, we like to pull the wings off flies and bite the heads off chickens.
Senator McKim: It would not surprise me!
Senator STOKER: The Greens do not have a monopoly on compassion. Indeed, there is nothing compassionate or fair about encouraging people to pay tens of thousands of dollars to organised criminal people-smuggling rings. There is nothing compassionate or fair about leaving vulnerable women and children who don't have the money to pay a criminal people-smuggling ring to sit and rot in refugee camps year after year while others push them to the back of the queue. There is nothing compassionate or fair about penalising those people who go through proper processes and seek asylum by the book. There is nothing compassionate or fair about incentivising people to take a dangerous journey by sea on leaky boats, letting them drown and forcing our border protection officers to pull their wet bodies from the ocean. That is not kind, that is not compassionate and that is not fair.
Operation Sovereign Borders has three components: boat turnbacks, offshore processing and temporary protection visas. Offshore processing matters because it is vital to deterring the people-smuggling trade. When people know they won't get to live freely in Australia if they don't follow the proper processes, we stop deaths at sea and we make space for the truly vulnerable—those without the dough to jump the queue.
Senator McKim: There is no queue!
Senator STOKER: Under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments Australia experimented with policies of the kind the Greens advocate for, and it was an unequivocal disaster. The weakening of laws concerning immigration and access to benefits like Medicare and Newstart was like manna from heaven. It was perfect advertising for the people smugglers, so the arrivals started to come. And they came and they came and they came. Twelve hundred people—men, women and children—died at the hands of people smugglers trying to get them to Australia's shores. That is 1,200 souls. It breaks my heart to think of each and every one of those needless deaths, but the coalition stopped the boats with Operation Sovereign Borders. We stopped the boats, and we have reduced the number of deaths at sea through illegal people smuggling to zero.
Senator McKim: No you haven't!
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fawcett ): Senator Stoker, resume your seat. Senator McKim, you were heard in silence through your entire contribution. I ask you extend the same courtesy to members opposite.
Senator STOKER: The Greens policies, which Labor adopted in favour of preferences in inner city seats, saw 8,000 children put into detention, and 2,000 of them remained in detention when we came to government. Let the record show today: there are no children in detention—not one. And let's not forget about the 17 detention centres that Labor and the Greens had to open to deal with the influx of people who arrived under their watch, all of which have now been closed by coalition governments since 2015. Under Operation Sovereign Borders, we have taken back control of our borders, we have ended the illegal and dangerous trade of people smuggling and we have resettled 585 people from Manus Island and Nauru in the USA, with more to come.
Offshore processing is vital to border protection. Orderly immigration, including accepting people seeking asylum, is the only fair way to manage immigration in this country. And we are generous in our humanitarian intake. Per capita, we are second in the world for the number of people to whom we open our arms. But other arrivals, not asylum seekers, but queue jumpers, illegal entrants or visa overstayers—these are the people who are cheating the system, making it harder for genuine and real asylum seekers to gain a place in Australia where they can live in peace, raise their families with quality education, health care and housing, and contribute to our country in their many and unique ways.
Australia has reached our largest offshore intake in more than 30 years. We have provided a generous humanitarian response to the ongoing crisis in Syria, agreeing to take in an additional 12,000 Syrian refugees. As I mentioned, we have resettled people through our refugee resettlement deal with the United States. Yet Labor still persist with their policy of supporting the medevac laws that were pushed through last year, which we know weaken the border protection regime that has been proven to stop people smuggling in this country. And what they describe as a pretty modest piece of legislation is akin to unlocking the door and leaving it ajar.
The medevac laws remove the minister's ability to stop people accused of serious crimes and people without identity documents coming to Australia. Once they're here they can't be returned; they use the courts to push their case to stay. In a demonstration of the law of unintended consequences in action, the Federal Court has ruled that the two treating doctors that are only required to review a detainee's case files in order to approve a medical transfer don't even have to physically see a patient before making the call that they simply must come to Australia. Really, who didn't see this coming?
But let's not pretend that we weren't providing good medical care to those people who were in our care. Over a thousand people were brought to Australia under the previous arrangements for medical care that was not available in the relevant specialty on Manus Island or Nauru. Indeed, on Nauru, specialist and emergency health care is available around the clock. In PNG, a range of general and specialised healthcare services are available through qualified medical professionals.
It's dangerous to entertain the idea that removing the minister's ability to decide who comes to Australia is without consequences. As long as these laws are in place, the minister can only block the transfer of people who are considered dangerous, if they've been subject to an adverse ASIO assessment and/or have been sentenced to more than 12 months imprisonment. We will repeal the legislation because it risks our strong and successful border protection policies.
Operation Sovereign Borders works. We've ended the illegal people smuggling trade because they now have no product to sell. No amount of hyperbole from those in the Greens political party will make a jot of difference, because we have stopped the boats, we have taken children out of detention and we have ended the senseless deaths of men, women, and children at sea. No amount of moral posturing from those in the Greens will change that fact.
Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (16:30): I rise to talk about the matter of public importance regarding refugees and asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea, on Manus Island, and in Nauru. The offshore facilities on Manus Island and Nauru were set up as temporary offshore regional processing centres six years ago, but they have become a symbol of something much more. They have become a sign of the ongoing failure of this government and of one minister: the Minister for Home Affairs. This government and this minister blame Labor for a problem entirely of their own creation. They have been in charge now for six years and can no longer attempt to claim this is all Labor's fault. This is six years of Liberal failure and inaction that has been allowed to unfold under this government. Six years of detention is simply too long, and the reality remains that asylum seekers and refugees both on Nauru and in PNG have been left in limbo.
The offshore processing facilities on Manus Island and Nauru were only ever intended to be temporary offshore regional processing centres, but they have now become places of indefinite detention. Let's not forget who has led us to this place, where refugees and asylum seekers are kept in indefinite detention: the Minister for Home Affairs. If he was a minister who was capable of doing his job, then vulnerable people would not be left languishing. This government have created this ongoing problem themselves, and Minister Dutton has refused to act on it. But worst of all, he has constantly misled the Australian people.
I want to refer to a well-known fable that best encapsulates the minister and his actions: Aesop's fable 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'. It is a fable we all know reasonably well. We all know how awful the shepherd boy must have felt when he realised the consequences of crying wolf too many times. Aesop's fable was right then, and his fable is right now. We have a Minister for Home Affairs who has constantly been caught crying wolf. This is a minister who holds one of the most powerful positions in the Prime Minister's cabinet. This is a minister who has a key leadership role in keeping our nation safe. This is a minister responsible for national security, intelligence, immigration and border protection agencies. How can Australians believe a minister who routinely manipulates, misrepresents and mischaracterises the truth for political gain, as the Minister for Home Affairs has done so very often?
Let's take a look at the medevac debate. Since the medevac laws were enacted, the minister has approved the transfer of a number of sick and unwell refugees and asylum seekers to Australia. Some were transferred after being assessed by the Independent Health Advice Panel. This panel includes some of Australia's best doctors—doctors that the minister got to choose himself—including the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer and the Surgeon General of the Australian Border Force. But despite this, the minister has been vigorously arguing that two doctors from Nimbin can force the government to bring people from Manus or Nauru to Australia. These claims are simply not true, and the minister knows it. This is the same minister who claimed thousands of people would flood into Australia through medevac. This hasn't happened. This is all bluster from the minister, and it should worry us all when we have a minister that is so comfortable with regularly crying wolf, because what will happen when we face a serious risk? This should be a concern for all Australians.
But it isn't just his crying wolf on this issue that has damaged the Minister for Home Affairs. There is also a raft of other issues that go to his maladministration of his department. The failure of the Minister for Home Affairs to do his job, his mismanagement of basic legislative tasks and the mismanagement of the home affairs department are what should concern us. Whether it's overseeing a $300 million Australian Border Force budget blowout resulting in the Australian Border Force fleet being ordered to stop patrols to save money on fuel, putting Australia's borders at risk; the $7 million spent on a strategic review of the Department of Home Affairs that we're not allowed to see; ANAO report after report after report that highlights significant mismanagement and waste; or the minister's failure to manage offshore contracts, with hundreds of millions of dollars handed out without proper process, these issues of mismanagement simply go on and on. We must ask: when will the minister step up and take responsibility for his ongoing mismanagement?
So it is not a surprise that the minister hasn't been able to ensure the resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers currently on Manus Island and Nauru. And it is no wonder the minister has always played games with the issue when he has the backing of a prime minister who has tried to play politics with this issue as well. The Prime Minister has used every opportunity to spread fear, like his ridiculous decision to reopen the Christmas Island detention centre. This was a hysterical response from the Prime Minister, the minister and the government. The actions of the Prime Minister and the minister highlight the general attitude of this government and their resolve to provide a solution to the issue of offshore processing and indefinite detention.
This brings me to the point of resettlement deals and New Zealand. We have had a deal on the table for years, and there has been no action from this government even to accept it. It is a deal that would allow people to resettle and rebuild their lives after six years of indefinite detention on Manus Island and Nauru. Labor has long called for this deal to be accepted. It was an offer that the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinta Ardern, reiterated again only the other day. She has reiterated it again and again.
Now, there's an important issue and an important point to make on this debate. There are a number of refugees on Manus Island and Nauru who have been offered resettlement in the United States as part of the resettlement deal with the US. We need to make sure that those who have offers on the table take them up and make a start to rebuild their lives. The United States deal is one that should be grasped with both hands. It provides people with a chance to build a new home and to resettle. Labor strongly support the deal and we want to see people take it up. The minister should be working as hard as he can to ensure that these resettlement arrangements are taken up and that people do have the ability to be resettled and to take up new opportunities and new lives.
Finally, it is important to note that, on border protection, Labor's message is clear: if you try to make it to Australia by boat, you will not make it. You will be turned around if it is safe. Labor supports Operation Sovereign Borders. We support strong borders. But we fundamentally believe that you can have strong borders and also that you can show humanity and you can show compassion to refugees and asylum seekers. Humanity and compassion are both very simple to put forward, but they are definitely two things that this government seems to have completely forgotten about.
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (16:39): Could you please bear with me as I check for clowns behind me, because on the previous sitting day there was another Greens member who behaved like a clown.
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia and on behalf of One Nation, I would like to commend the Papua New Guinean authorities on the orderly deportation of Senator McKim. I understand that Senator McKim was asked to leave the country after illegally attempting to enter the Manus Regional Processing Centre. In taking these actions, the authorities determined that the senator violated the conditions of his visa and he was appropriately deported.
The Manus facility is an important part of Australia's immigration infrastructure. The centre serves to protect Australians from the threat posed by illegal immigration and potential terrorist infiltration. One Nation regards interference with the processing centre as a serious issue, particularly when the attempt to enter the facility appears to be part of a political stunt—yet another Greens clown act. I will remind my Greens colleagues that they are not above the law. Compliance with the rule of law is a major problem in my home state of Queensland. Anti-democracy control freaks—radicals—regularly try to shut down traffic in the Brisbane CBD to control and stop legitimate business activity that provides Queenslanders with their livelihoods. This legitimate business activity has been approved by both Labor and Liberal governments at state and federal level, and encouraged and supported for many years by One Nation. I would counsel Senator Nick 'I did nothing wrong' McKim to abide by the terms of his visa when visiting foreign countries. His actions as an Australian parliamentarian and the response they required reflect very poorly on Australia and bring shame on this house.
The Greens are not above the law. No matter how many times they tell us or try to demonstrate it, they are not above the law. Speaking of the law, firstly, we—Australians—control who enters our country, and the Papua New Guineans have the right to control who enters their country and who stays in their country. Secondly, it is compassion that encourages us to make sure that only genuine refugees come to this country. It is our humanity, our valuing of people's safety and livelihoods, that encourages us to stop the people who come to this country illegally.
Senator Nick 'I Did Nothing Wrong' McKim is not above the law. People who break the immigration law should not be allowed into our country. I know people who have served on Manus in security and they show that the way in which people are treated on Manus is with a lot of respect, a lot of consideration and a lot of safety. The people, though, who violate the terms of visas should be deported.
Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS (New South Wales) (16:42): Australia takes its international obligations seriously and provides protection to refugees consistent with these obligations. We are usually ranked amongst the top three countries globally with long-established annual resettlement programs. We have a proud history of resettling people. Since World War II, we have welcomed over 7.5 million migrants to Australia, including over 850,000 under our humanitarian program. We have committed to increasing this program from 13,750 places up to 18,750 places per annum by 2018-19, making this intake the largest in more than 30 years.
As a former minister responsible for settlement services, I say that we rank amongst the best in the world. The coalition has implemented tough border protection measures through Operation Sovereign Borders, under which anyone who comes to Australia illegally by boat, without a visa, will not be settled in Australia. There are two outcomes for people who travel illegally: they will be intercepted and safely removed from our waters or be sent to another country for regional processing. Processing and resettlement in Australia will never be an option. There has been a very substantial and sustained reduction in maritime ventures and potential illegal immigration attempting to reach Australia.
We must not forget that the only reason anyone is on Manus Island or Nauru is that Labor lost control of our borders. Let's not forget what happened during the Labor-Greens alliance years. There were 50,000 people who arrived on over 800 boats. There were 1,200 deaths at sea, and these are the ones we know of. There is nothing compassionate about a policy that led to so many deaths at sea. Over 8,000 illegal maritime arrival children were detained. At the height of Labor's policy failure, in July 2013, there were over 10,000 people in detention, including almost 2,000 children. Labor was forced to open 17 detention centres to deal with the influx, and there was a $16 billion border protection budget blowout. Indeed, during the Gillard government, three-quarters of a billion dollars was diverted from our aid budget to pay for Labor's border protection blowouts, and this made the Gillard government the third-largest recipient of its own overseas development program.
Under Operation Sovereign Borders, we have taken back control of our borders from the people smugglers. We are proud of our record: there have been no deaths at sea, we have closed 17 detention centres and we have removed all children from detention. As I have indicated, we not only increased the humanitarian program but also provided generous humanitarian response after the Syrian crisis, through an additional intake of 12,000 refugees. I've met many of these people from religious minorities. They are very grateful to have come to Australia under our programs. We've also announced a resettlement arrangement with the United States. Our program is about defeating people smugglers, who manipulate vulnerable men, women and children into risking their lives at sea, and it has acted as a very significant deterrent because it has denied the people smugglers a product to sell.
This MPI demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Greens. Before the last election, Labor, yet again, teamed up with the Greens to give the green light to people smugglers. They were waiting for a change of government. Of course, they've been extremely disappointed. Remember Kevin Rudd's promises in 2007? 'I'll turn back the boats.' The moment he became Prime Minister, the opposite happened. The people smugglers were back in business and 1,200 people died at sea. And that's exactly what would have happened if Labor had won the election.
In relation to Manus, we have significantly reduced the number of people Labor put on Manus and now we are pushing to get it as close to zero as we can. The Australian and PNG governments are committed to ensuring services are in place to support the health, welfare and safety of the transferees in PNG.
I'd like to reflect on some of the very negative aspersions that those opposite have made about Nauru. As Minister for International Development and the Pacific, I had the opportunity to visit Nauru. First of all, there is ample medical staff on Nauru. Every child who requires specialised medical treatment is getting it and has been transferred without compromising security. We have been doing this in a quiet and appropriate manner. Nauru's people are warm, friendly and hospitable, so I find the description by those opposite contemptible and offensive. Nauru has a population of about 12,000 people, including about 1,000 asylum seekers and refugees.
I visited and toured Nauru Secondary School and the adjacent learning village. There are about 10 schools on Nauru and over 3,000 students. Education is compulsory and it begins in preschool. There's also a centre for disabled children and youth of all ages. The government manages all the schools, and all children on Nauru, irrespective of whether they're Nauruan or non-Nauruan, attend school. We contributed to the construction of buildings at Nauru Secondary School, which opened in March 2010. Since then, with our support, the education system has contributed to increased enrolments, more qualified teachers and the introduction of a new national curriculum, which enables graduating secondary students to receive a Queensland Certificate of Education. The school's been refurbished, and there's been the construction of other facilities. We have contributed to the learning village, incorporating all higher education agencies in a single, disability-friendly area, including the University of the South Pacific, a technical and vocational education and training centre, and a community library.
I also visited the Nauru Lifeguard Service, which is supported by lifesaving groups in Australia. It was great to meet many of the local lifesavers. The lifeguard service is now part of Nauru's national emergency services, and it employs both Nauruans and refugee residents as staff. I spoke to local Nauruan businesspeople including expats. The local bank manager told me that there were about 8,000 bank accounts, including hundreds from the refugee cohort.
I visited the hospital. Following the fire there in August 2013, we have contributed funding to phases 1 and 2 of the hospital redevelopment projects. Many new facilities have been included, including new medical and surgical wings, X-ray machines, CT scanners, a paediatric ward, a pathology lab, water storage facilities, sewerage treatment and backup power. These facilities are comparable to services I have seen in Sydney. I visited the Nauru community resource centre, an Australian funded project in partnership with the Nauru Department of Multicultural Affairs, which provides assistance to local and refugee communities. They provide case management services to refugees in Nauru.
I recall a conversation with a young woman who wanted to come to Australia. I told her that it would not be possible. She told me that people in Australia had told her to wait for a change. That's code for: wait for a change of government. It is clear that advocates from Australia, hell-bent on their own publicity, are giving people false hope—creating the impression that things can change and giving young people false hope. You are the ones that are creating the angst. You are the ones who are playing with lives and holding out hope for these people. You are the ones distorting the facts and creating mental angst for your own base political purposes.
What does not emerge is that many in the refugee community have started little businesses. For example, there is the young man from Iran who started a restaurant from his home. It's now become a very popular place to eat and meet. There are the Iranian ladies who have started nail and beauty businesses which provide new services on Nauru. I've met many local Nauruans and their families on the island who are now well settled. As I drove around the island, I saw for myself the housing that had been provided for the refugee community—some of better standard than that of local Nauruans.
Those opposite often portray children behind wire fences. One of the biggest problems in Nauru is that, with the introduction of aggressive strains of dogs into the dog population, many more dog attacks have resulted. Therefore, fences are vital to protection. All of this highlights the lies that those opposite have perpetrated, describing Nauru as a hellhole. It's wrong, and it didn't surprise me to see that article in The Australian in November 2018 entitled 'Refugees pick Nauru over US'. We are one of the most culturally diverse countries, and we dictate who comes to Australia.
Senator WATT (Queensland) (16:53): Sitting here listening to Senator Fierravanti-Wells, who I get along with on a personal basis quite well, having shared a corridor with her for a period of time, I have to say, when it comes to the situation of asylum seekers and refugees on Manus and Nauru, she really is living in a parallel universe. To listen to Senator Fierravanti-Wells talk now about the conditions on Manus and Nauru—
Senator Fierravanti-Wells: I've seen it; you haven't.
Senator WATT: You're right, I haven't seen the conditions. Despite being part of a Senate committee in the last term which sought government permission to travel to Manus and Nauru, I was denied the ability to travel. I would have liked very much to have gone and seen with my own eyes the conditions, but I was prevented from doing so by this government. I remain interested in going and seeing the conditions there because, as you probably know, I have some history in representing some of the people who are detained and have been detained in Nauru, and I would like to see the conditions. If the government is prepared to allow a little bit more scrutiny of what is going on there, I think that would be a very healthy thing.
To listen to Senator Fierravanti-Wells, you would think that Manus and Nauru are tropical island paradise resorts. She's talking about the wonderful opportunities that people have taken up to set up businesses in these places, and I'm sure that there are some people who have made the best of a terrible situation, but I don't think that anyone who has observed it—whether firsthand or through listening to witness reports from credible organisations that have been contracted by this government to deliver services on those islands—would agree with the portrayal that Senator Fierravanti-Wells has just put forward.
I'm well aware that the issue of border protection and the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees has become one of the most toxic areas of political debate in this country over the last few years. It has been used by both extremes of politics as a weapon, as a culture war, to try to drive up the votes on the extreme end of politics, doing absolutely nothing to assist the people who are subjected to the conditions that continue in both Manus and Nauru. There remains, unfortunately, much that we will disagree on in how refugees and asylum seekers should be treated, whether they be people who are currently living in Australia or people who are currently in offshore detention as a result of this parliament's policies.
But while there is much that we can disagree on and will continue to disagree on, surely we can agree on one thing—that is, that people still in detention in Manus and Nauru have been there far too long and should be removed as a matter of urgency. Even in question time today, we continued to hear this government make the ridiculous assertion that these people are not in detention. It's not as if they can leave Manus. It's not as if they can leave Nauru and travel wherever they want. They are strictly controlled to this day. Their movement is strictly controlled. Their opportunities to rebuild a life are strictly controlled, so let's not have this ridiculous argument that these people are free to come and go as they please, because they're not. That is the truth.
Even the most ardent supporter of a tough position on border protection and offshore detention would accept that these unfortunate people—human beings: men, women and children—have been in detention in these places for far too long and it has, in far too many cases, caused irreparable harm to their lives, irreparable harm to their mental health and irreparable physical harm in some cases. Unfortunately—more than unfortunately, tragically—a number of people have died, sometimes at their own hand because of their own despondency about their situation. We've had report after report from independent observers, from organisations that have been contracted by this very government to support people in detention in Manus and Nauru, that have told us that the harm being perpetrated on people in these detention centres is dreadful and it must end.
The real tragedy is that there actually is a way through this to stop this human misery and to get these people out to get on with their lives—that is, by the government simply following through on its professed policy that these people will be resettled in third countries. This is something that Labor have consistently supported. We've supported the government's policy that people currently in detention in Manus and Nauru need to be resettled in third countries. We just want the government to get on and do it. And it's not as if the government doesn't have opportunities to do so. Shortly I'll talk about the opportunities that remain available to the government if it's actually serious about delivering on its policy to resettle people.
When it comes to Manus, which is obviously a part of Papua New Guinea, this very day we have the new Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea in this parliament undertaking official meetings. He is on the record as recently saying that he wants to see a deadline for ending offshore processing in his country. He says that it should end as soon as possible. I understand that, after his meetings today with various officials from the government, he said that 'we will ensure that we have a mutually workable timetable and closure program' for the offshore detention facilities. I think that all of us who have an interest in this issue would be very interested to know what this time line is. What time line is the government working towards to end the offshore detention program so that these people can be resettled in other countries and get on with their lives?
One of the other resettlement options that this government has put up involved Cambodia. We remember the government saying a number of years ago that it had reached an agreement with the government of Cambodia that that would be another place for people on Manus and Nauru to be resettled. This agreement has now lapsed, not surprisingly, because it's been such an abject failure. But not without cost—obviously, a cost to the people who undertook that program, but it's actually cost taxpayers $55 million to run a resettlement program with Cambodia. And guess how many people have actually been resettled in Cambodia? It's three. Three people were resettled in Cambodia at a cost of $55 million. So we're nearly up to $20 million per person who was resettled in Cambodia. What a terrific success that is from this government, which likes to say that it's a success in matters of border protection!
Obviously, we've got the arrangement with the US to resettle people. Again, Labor has been supportive of that. But that has moved far too slowly and has still not seen the full allocation taken up that was agreed to by the US government under President Obama. It would be good to see the government actually deliver on that agreement as well, and ensure that the full allocation that was committed to by the US is taken up.
Most obviously, we've got the resettlement arrangements involving New Zealand. For years now, governments in New Zealand of both political persuasions have offered to take people from Manus and Nauru. What could be better from an Australian perspective than having a near neighbour whose values and systems of government we share, like New Zealand, help be part of the solution here? And they remain willing to take 150 people, I think it is, from Manus and Nauru. But, day after day, despite that offer being on the table and being available to take some of these people who remain in detention out, to let them rebuild their lives—we've got a country which is actually willing to do this—this stubborn government, which thinks that it's solved this problem, continues to reject that offer that's been made available by New Zealand. As a consequence, these poor people remain in detention as a result of this government's decision.
We hear arguments from the government that to take up the New Zealand offer would restart the boats. Well, how many times have we heard that something would start up the boats, only to see that not occur? We were told last year, and we continue to be told, that the medevac legislation would restart the boats. It hasn't. Every time this government has claimed that something would restart the boats it hasn't happened. They should take up the New Zealand offer and get these people out.
Senator GRIFF (South Australia) (17:03): I personally do not support indefinite offshore detention. In fact, I don't actually support offshore detention at all. Unfortunately, this government not only embraces this policy but has worked particularly hard to demonise asylum seekers in order to keep on its course.
The minister now insists that asylum seekers be called 'illegal', even though he'd be well aware that they have done nothing illegal in seeking asylum in Australia. In fact, had they arrived by plane rather than by boat they would have had their refugee claims processed without problems years ago, and many would already have been settled in Australia. It suits government to treat these people as quasi criminals because it is so much easier to argue for their ongoing, and often inhumane, treatment if it can get the public to view asylum seekers without sympathy.
This almost came undone last year when there was snowballing momentum behind calls for all children to be removed from Nauru. In response, the government started to hustle to remove children from Nauru, but it was all too little too late. It took the medevac legislation to finally and speedily get every last child off that island, but not before some of these innocents had suffered severe psychological damage and physical illness. Of course, kids in offshore detention aren't necessarily doing much better, as we've seen in the media recently. In what sane universe do ministers who have children themselves turn a blind eye to the suffering of children, all in the name of an inhumane policy?
The government has backed itself into a corner by refusing to consider sincere offers from New Zealand to resettle asylum seekers who aren't settled in the United States. It can't seem to get its head around the fact that there are ways to deal humanely with the legacy case load without dismantling its border protection policy. In the black and white, reductionist world of this government, anything that strays from its hard-core policy will restart the boats—like the medevac legislation. That hasn't restarted the boats, has it? Not at all; far from it. We don't have hordes of leaky boats heading here because of the medevac bill—it won't benefit anybody who arrives now. It's also because boat turnbacks have been such an effective turnoff. We know that the US resettlement offer didn't restart the boats, and accepting the New Zealand offer won't do that either.
I'd like to remind the chamber of a well-researched article that former Home Affairs employee Shaun Hanns wrote for The Monthly last year. Mr Hanns worked at the coalface as a protection visa case officer. His previously sympathetic views of Australia's border protection policy changed dramatically after seeing the harm and loss he was creating in his fellow humans. His answer to the problem is simple, humane and well argued. It is, simply, 'keep the architecture; remove the people'. He makes the case that settling those currently in offshore detention in Australia will not restart the boats. In his words:
If you accept that the capacity of people smugglers has been seriously overestimated and that only concessions made to prospective arrivals change people’s decision-making, the answer to this vexing issue, at least in the short term, becomes obvious. Keep the architecture, remove the people.
The government needs to adopt this advice. It needs to change course and find a solution to this stalemate, because while it has enough of the public onside for now that will not always be the case. Its supporters will eventually demand an end to arbitrary and inhumane offshore detention, and that's assuming that PNG and Nauru will continue to play willing hosts, because it very much appears that this role is starting to wear very thin. When that happens, what will be the government's plan B?
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Bernardi ): There being no further speakers, we'll move on to the consideration of documents.
DOCUMENTS
Consideration
The government documents tabled today were called on but no motion was moved.
COMMITTEES
Stillbirth Research and Education Select Committee
Government Response to Report
Senator McCARTHY (Northern Territory—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (17:08): I move:
That the Senate take note of the document.
I seek leave to continue my remarks later.
Leave granted.
Senator RICE (Victoria) (17:09): I note the government's response to the Select Committee on Stillbirth Research and Education report and, in a rare measure of unanimity, congratulate the government on accepting the recommendations of the stillbirth report—in particular, the recommendations to accept the need to have an action plan to reduce the rate of stillbirth by 20 per cent over the coming years. There are a number of recommendations that the government accepted in principle. I hope, for the sake of all of the people who are concerned about stillbirths, particularly the people who've suffered the tragedy of stillbirth, that accepting those recommendations in principle still means that they are going to be acted upon.
In our committee hearings and the inquiry chaired by Senator McCarthy, with a degree of leadership from Senator Keneally, we heard about the tragic nature of stillbirth in Australia, the stark rate of six babies a day that were dying of stillbirth and the level of taboo and silence that was still around stillbirth in Australia. These are the key issues that we explored. Also explored were the fact that the rate is higher in culturally and linguistically diverse communities and in Indigenous communities, and the need for targeted action to address that; how so many of the actions were quite simple things, particularly listening to women and medical practitioners valuing what women are telling them; and having models of continuity of care so that women working with their medical practitioners through their pregnancy have a relationship with their health practitioners, know that they will be listened to and know that their opinions will be valued.
I look forward to seeing the outcomes of these recommendations and the government's acceptance of these recommendations being rolled out. I look forward to seeing the action plan on stillbirth being rolled out. I particularly look forward to seeing the reduction in rates of stillbirth in Australia coming to fruition so that we no longer have the tragedy of such unnecessary trauma, the unnecessary deaths of babies, and we can reduce that level of trauma in Australian society. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.
Leave granted; debate adjourned.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: ADDITIONAL ANSWERS
Minister for Small and Family Business, Skills and Vocational Education
Pyne, Mr Christopher
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (17:12): I table responses to questions taken on notice during question time on 13 February 2019 and 4 July 2019 asked by Senators Wong and Kitching in relation to statements by ministers and to the former Minister for Defence. I seek leave to have the documents incorporated in Hansard.
Leave granted.
The document s read as follows—
MINISTER FOR SMALL AND FAMILY BUSINESS, SKILLS AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
Dear Mr President
I write with regard to questions I took on notice from Senator Wong during Question Time on Wednesday 13 February 2019 on the matter of statements made by Minister Cash in the Senate and Minister Keenan in the House of Representatives.
I refer you to the Ministers' statements and note that as this relates to a matter currently before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment further.
I have copied this letter to the Prime Minister and Senator Wong.
Kind regards
Mathias Cormann
Minister for Finance and the Public Service
PYNE, MR CHRISTOPHER
Dear Mr President
I write with regard to a question I took on notice from Senator Kitching on Thursday, 4 July 2019, on the matter of former Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne's employment with EY.
I can confirm that neither the Prime Minister nor his office have discussed Mr Pyne's employment with EY or Mr Pyne.
I have copied this letter to the Prime Minister and Senator Kitching.
Mathias Cormann
Minister for Finance
MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS
Road Safety
Defence Facilities
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (17:12): I present two statements relating to road safety and joint defence facilities.
BILLS
Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Relief So Working Australians Keep More Of Their Money) Bill 2019
Assent
Message from the Governor-General reported informing the Senate of assent to the bill.
Road Vehicle Standards Legislation Amendment Bill 2019
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Senator RICE (Victoria) (17:13): As I was saying earlier today, the Road Vehicle Standards Legislation Amendment Bill 2019 has been a long time coming—17 years since the Motor Vehicle Standards Act, which it's replacing, was last reviewed. What we are doing here today is adding an extra year of delay before this new road vehicle standards bill is implemented.
Look, it's been a long time coming; I know that. By the time we get to the end, it looks like it's going to be worth it. What I want to focus on now, however, is another piece of legislation related to motor vehicles that is just as long time coming that is not getting the attention it needs, and that is the potential legislation around vehicle emissions. The Greens call upon the government, at the same time as its acting on road vehicle standards, to get its house in order on vehicle emissions. It's now been four years since the ministerial forum on vehicle emissions was set up, and it has achieved almost nothing. It is absolutely ploughing along in the slow lane. We've had four years of deliberation. We've had four infrastructure ministers. We've had discussion papers; we've had draft regulatory impact statements; and the only thing we have to show after those four years is a commitment from this government that we'll reduce the sulphur content of our fuel by 2027. 2027! After lobbying by the industry has had its impact, we have a firm commitment that in almost a decade's time we'll reduce the sulphur content to a standard that the European Union has had since 2009. That means that in total we're looking at virtually a two-decade delay in getting decent motor vehicle emissions standards operational in this country. How inspiring! What that means is that we are now the dumping ground of the worst performing variants of each and every vehicle on the world market, and we continue to have rising carbon pollution across our transport sector. It's the fastest growing sector of the last 30 years. Now a fifth of our carbon pollution comes from transport, and the lack of action on motor vehicle emissions standards is an incredibly significant part of why our transport pollution continues to rise year on year.
We have positively anaemic growth in electric vehicle uptake, while the rest of the world races on. The government's own regulatory impact statement on vehicle emissions showed the average driver is losing over $500 a year from increased fuel consumption. We know that 1,500 people are dying each year in Australia from air pollution billowing out of our cars and trucks, and there are many more hospitalisations and days lost to illness.
The work has been done on the model for vehicle emissions. Just like on the road vehicle standards, we're coming to the end of that work and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We can be doing that on vehicle emissions standards as well. The work has been done. I know it and the government knows it. But the government ran scared when industry started leaking to TheDaily Telegraph, the climate deniers came for it with baseball bats and their late-night-bully pulpits, and the big manufacturers and the oil and gas lobby came knocking on its door. You're looking for every excuse in the book to fight against the public interest. Well, you now have the opportunity to bring that legislation on vehicle pollution and fuel economy to the parliament. You've got a new parliament. Now is your opportunity—a whole clean slate. You can bring that legislation to parliament and deal with this mess. You could have it in place at the same time as the new road vehicle standards regime.
I want to conclude by saying that, yes, the Greens support this bill. But we call on the government to seize the moment. You can do it! You can tell the rent-seekers and their cheerleaders to get out of the way, and you can deliver on new laws that will save Australians money, protect their health, jump start the domestic electric vehicle industry and help us meet our Paris targets. The only thing standing in the way is yourselves.
Senator BROCKMAN (Western Australia—Deputy Government Whip in the Senate) (17:18): I rise to speak on the Road Vehicle Standards Legislation Amendment Bill 2019. I do so knowing that, particularly in my home state of Western Australia, this is an issue that affects people very much, because road accidents have a significant impact on local communities, particularly in rural and regional Western Australia. Over the last few years there have been a number of tragic accidents in rural and regional WA. So vehicle standards are very important. But it is also important to remember in this place that changes to laws do not suddenly introduce changes to the production of motor vehicles. In fact, motor vehicle standards have been improving, thanks to market forces, for the last 17 years that Senator Rice mentioned.
The vehicle I drove 17 years ago was from the same manufacturer as the vehicle I drive today, but if I compare them, I don't think the vehicle I was driving 17 years ago had any air bags, let alone seven or eight. It had no side impact protection. It had no radar system to detect cars ahead and behind. It had no impact warnings, and so on and so forth. Cars have become significantly safer over the years, and that has at least as much—I would probably say more—to do with innovation and development as with government regulation. However, it is important that we look at what the rest of the world is doing and continue to keep our vehicle standards up. We need always to bear in mind, though, that we must have vehicles that are affordable to the broader Australian population. We don't want vehicles to become unaffordable to the vast majority of the Australian population.
The Road Vehicle Standards Act, and related legislation, was passed with bipartisan and crossbench support last year. It strengthens and modernises the framework for the regulation of all road vehicles in Australia; it maintains and improves vehicle safety, providing more choice for specialist and enthusiast vehicles; and it is responsive to emerging technologies. Around 1,200 people die on Australian roads every year, so it is important that we get it right. This is a very extensive set of changes to the Australian government's regulation of road vehicles. In fact, these are the most extensive changes for almost three decades. The government is very well aware of that and accepts that is the case. It is a very important change. However, the scale of that change also means that we must handle the implementation carefully and in consultation with a large number of stakeholders.
The legislative change is a complete rewrite of the existing framework under the Motor Vehicle Standards Act 1989, which will be phased out as the Road Vehicle Standards Act is phased in. It's underpinned by best-practice regulatory logic and it reforms every aspect of existing practice. The substantive provisions of the road vehicle standards legislation are scheduled for commencement on 10 September 2019 and 10 December 2019. The government acknowledges that more time is needed to ensure the smooth implementation of these reforms. This is to avoid any needless disadvantage to Australian businesses in their transition.
The purpose of the Road Vehicle Standards Legislation Amendment Bill is to postpone the commencement of the substantive provisions of the Road Vehicle Standards Act 2018 and related legislation. The bill will ensure that the substantive provisions of the RVS legislation commence on a date fixed by proclamation or 1 July 2021, whichever is sooner. It also postpones minor consequential amendments to other legislation outlined in the Road Vehicle Standards (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Act 2018. The bill does not affect the operation of the substantive provisions of the road vehicle standards legislation once it commences. There will be no direct or indirect financial impact on the Commonwealth from the passage of this bill.
I'd like to turn to why it is necessary to postpone the commencement of the RVS Act. It's basically to ensure the smooth implementation of these reforms. We don't want to see any Australian businesses disadvantaged. It gives stakeholders—and there are many stakeholders in this space—an opportunity to become very familiar with their obligations under the new legislation and to engage in detailed planning with the government in the implementation phase, and it provides industry and other stakeholders with time to gain the guidance needed to make sure the implementation is done correctly. This delay will ensure that stakeholders can develop, test, properly sequence, and implement changes to business processes, maximising the benefits available to them once the substantive provisions of the legislation commence. The postponed commencement will also ensure that the government can coordinate readiness across the Commonwealth, state and territory governments to ensure the timing for commencement of the legislation is correct.
Building IT systems to support the administration of the new legislation is vital to ensuring the efficiency for both industry and government. As everyone in this place would no doubt appreciate, building such IT systems is extraordinarily complex and time consuming and is something you want to get right. The last thing you want to see with such a substantial change to a regulatory framework is new systems that are not completely fit for purpose and ready to work as close to 100 per cent capacity from day one. There are certain enablers that will ensure the effective operation of the road vehicle standards legislation. More time is required, to put it simply, to make sure that these enablers are in place. These include, for example, a sufficiently robust network of authorised vehicle verifiers who will be able to check that certain vehicles have met applicable standards before being allowed to drive on our roads.
The government's sole desire in this space is to ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible. Postponing the commencement of the road vehicle standards legislation is crucial to its successful implementation, which I'm sure is something that we all want, particularly given that the original bill was passed with bipartisan support. The substantive provisions of the road vehicle standards legislation are, as I said, currently scheduled for commencement on 10 September 2019 and 10 December 2019. The government remains committed to implementing these important reforms, and the postponement is crucial to that implementation.
The impact of this on stakeholders is, of course, of vital concern to the government. Stakeholders representing those who'll provide the vast majority of vehicles to the Australian market have expressed support for the postponement. Postponing the commencement will give stakeholders the opportunity to become familiar with their obligations under the RVS legislation and a further opportunity to engage with the government in the detailed planning phase, as well as ensure they can develop and test all that they need to do within their own individual businesses, which are, of course, very different. This will maximise the benefits that flow to consumers and to the general sector.
Again, the government, in consultation with industry stakeholders, needs to make sure that the IT systems are absolutely fit for purpose. That is not to say that some sections of the industry may not be disappointed by the postponed commencement. That is particularly true of some small businesses and their customers who have been looking forward to some of the benefits afforded by the new legislation. These benefits particularly include the choice of older or specialist or enthusiast vehicles. Obviously there is a very strong market for specialist vehicles within Australia, and so there are those who would like to see these reforms in place more quickly. However, they will come into place in the time frame I've outlined, and those benefits will flow. Unfortunately, it is necessary to prioritise certain things, and obviously prioritising successful implementation was key in this case.
The postponed commencement does not deprive the Australian community of a framework for the regulation of road vehicles at the point they are supplied to the Australian market. Obviously the Motor Vehicle Standards Act 1989, which, I think people will acknowledge, has been acting successfully for a long period of time, will continue to be in force, and the existing regulatory framework will ensure that vehicles supplied to the Australian market and used on public roads meet safety, environment, and anti-theft standards. The Competition and Consumer Act 2010 currently provides for safety recalls for road vehicles that are also consumer goods.
The intention of this bill is only to postpone the commencement of the substantive provisions of the road vehicle standards legislation, which, again, passed with bipartisan and crossbench support last year. The substance of those reforms are not at all at issue. All we are talking about is the commencement date of that legislation. Every manufacturer, importer and business needs the opportunity to fully understand their obligations under the act. Any sense that that was not the case was a very important factor in determining the government's decision to delay implementation. Road safety is of vital importance to the Australian people. They regularly list it as one of the key features in assessing the quality and safety of our automotive and road transport systems. I think it is important that all in this place acknowledge that fact, but we also have to acknowledge that these things are a balance and road standards need to function in practice as well as look good on paper.
The number of deaths on Australian roads is significant. This year alone there have been 635 deaths on Australian roads. Unfortunately that is up slightly—it's around 13 per cent higher than the same period last year. Western Australia has a significant road fatality rate, unfortunately. It has one of the worst road fatality rates in Australia at 7.3 fatalities per 100,000, compared to 5.39 throughout the rest of Australia. So these changes are of vital interest to my home state.
It is the responsibility of the Australian government to set safe and reliable road vehicle standards to ensure that everyone has the ability to get home safely every day. The government maintains jurisdictions over vehicles up to the point of first supply into the Australian market, and around 1.1 million cars are sold throughout Australia each year. In replacing the Motor Vehicle Standards Act of 1989 with the Road Vehicle Standards Act, we must ensure that we keep up with changes in the market, including changes in manufacturing technology and including changes in the automotive sector that have occurred in the past 30 years. However, we must do so in a way where the Australian market and Australian consumers get the largest benefit from the changes.
Some of the changes in the substantive act are that there are improved provisions for the recall of vehicles and of approved components. Manufacturers and importers are expected to issue a voluntary recall if there is a risk of harm to any person or if they do not comply with the standard. A minister can, of course, issue a compulsory recall. The act will replace identification plates with an online register, to be known as the Register of Approved Vehicles. Manufacturers and importers supplying vehicles will need to have details of a vehicle to supply it into the RAV, which will generally be accepted as suitable for road use. An online, publicly searchable database of vehicles approved for use on Australian roads will exist so that all consumers will know if the vehicle they are buying is acceptable and its safety rating. The substantive act creates an offence to import road vehicles without permission. This ensures that all vehicles have been vetted and are safe for Australians to drive. There's also an offence for altering a vehicle from its original state before the consumer has been provided with the vehicle. Again, this ensures that Australian consumers get what they expect when they buy it.
Consumer choice will be increased as variants of particular vehicles will be able to be imported as long as they meet a set of standard requirements. Those requirements are, of course, set out in the substantive legislation. This is why it's important to allow extra time for the new act to come into force. From the government's point of view, this is about getting it right, not getting it through quickly. We need efficient legislation to ensure the safety and environmental performance can respond flexibly to the evolution of new vehicles on our road. Stakeholders do need the time to be able to adjust their systems to the new regime. Again, this legislation passed with bipartisan support last year, and I hope this bill does the same.
Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory—Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) (17:34): The Road Vehicle Standards Act 2018 and later legislation provides a strengthened and modernised framework for the regulation of road vehicles in Australia which will maintain and improve vehicle safety, provide more choice for specialist and enthusiast vehicles and be responsive to emerging technologies. The substantive provisions of the road vehicle standards legislation are currently scheduled to commence on 10 September 2019 and 10 December 2019. However, more time is needed to give stakeholders an opportunity to understand their obligations and to allow industry to maximise benefits available to them under the road vehicle standards legislation.
More time is also needed to allow the government to continue to work with stakeholders to ensure readiness, to ensure that timing for the commencement of legislation is right and to make the transition as smooth as possible. The passage of the Road Vehicle Standards Legislation Amendment Bill 2019 will give the government, industry and other stakeholders the additional time needed to implement these important reforms. I would like to thank members of the Senate for their constructive contributions to the debate.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Bernardi ) (17:36): As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.
Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory—Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) (17:36): I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Civil Aviation Amendment Bill 2019
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
(Quorum formed)
Senator WATT (Queensland) (17:38): The opposition is pleased to support the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill 2019, as we have a proud record of bipartisanship when it comes to aviation safety. We supported the bill when it was passed by the House of Representatives in April this year, prior to the election being called, and will support it again through the 46th Parliament.
Labor understands the importance of the aviation industry, especially in regional Australia. This bill takes a balanced approach between the need to protect the travelling public and, of course, ensuring the viability of the sector. This bill is a response to concerns from some in the general aviation sector that CASA's strong focus on safety has resulted in overregulation, which can be costly for small operators. This bill is about general aviation and balancing the critically important need for safety with making sure that the regulatory burden is not too great for small operators to bear. The bill amends the Civil Aviation Act to ensure that when CASA develops aviation standards it takes into consideration the impacts and costs for those within the sector.
Labor will continue to monitor implementation and to work with the sector to bring forward additional reforms if they are required. Whilst we're comfortable with the bill, we do know that the Australian and International Pilots Association has called for the addition of a clause to legislate the requirement for CASA to ensure that aviation safety standards maintain or improve the overall safety of the civil aviation system. The opposition understands the main objective of the Civil Aviation Act is to enhance and promote safety in the aviation sector, so it will be important for the government to ensure that this focus is maintained.
Aviation is a critical part of Australian life. Unlike in times past, today's aviation services are much more affordable and aviation has become a critical component of our transport system. It is important for the movement of people, for the movement of freight, for access to medical services and expertise, for farming operations and to reduce isolation in the bush. A vibrant aviation sector is important for many industries, especially tourism. General aviation is the lifeblood of regional Australia. It is also where many of our commercial airline pilots learn their trade.
Labor has a strong track record when it comes to the aviation industry. When Labor was in government, Anthony Albanese, the member for Grayndler, as aviation minister, delivered Australia's first and only aviation white paper. An important element of this white paper was to ensure that the general aviation sector continued to be a safe, efficient and innovative part of Australia's transport system. Labor's aviation white paper was a comprehensive framework which brought all aspects of aviation policy together into a single, forward-looking policy direction. Labor initiated a number of key reforms in the aviation sector, including in relation to depreciation, restricted air spaces, secondary capital city airports, and the final burden of regulation being placed on airlines.
Labor will continue to advocate for the aviation sector to ensure safe, effective aviation services are available to the Australian community. Labor has heard the concerns of the general aviation sector that CASA's strong focus on safety has resulted in overregulation and associated financial cost burdens. The sector has pushed for the change that CASA, when formulating regulations, be required to consider not only safety but also the effect of any regulation on the viability of aviation businesses. Labor has worked in a bipartisan way with the government to ensure that they got the balance right. This bill amends the Civil Aviation Act to ensure that when CASA develops and promulgates aviation safety standards it must take into consideration the impacts and costs affecting the aviation sector. The bill incorporates existing regulatory practice in the legislation, making it clear that these issues cannot be overlooked.
The bill does not change CASA's primary objective, which is, and must always be, safety. Labor strongly supports aviation safety and the viability of the aviation sector. The opposition once again thanks the government for bringing this bill forward. I commend the bill to the Senate.
Senator RICE (Victoria) (17:43): I rise to speak on the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill 2019. The Greens believe this is a dangerous bill. This is a bill that would put at risk our aviation safety regime and, consequently, be putting at risk the lives of Australians. The law currently sets out that, in exercising its powers and performing its functions, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority must regard the safety of air navigation as the most important consideration. What this bill does is change the remit of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority so that it must consider the economic and the cost impact on individuals, businesses and communities of CASA's standards, and take into account the differing risks associated with differing industry sectors.
Taking account of the economic and the social costs of safety standards is, in fact, something that does need to be done. But it should not be done by CASA. CASA's remit is to be making recommendations on the basis of safety. It is up to us in the parliament, if we feel that there are other economic or social considerations that need to be taken into account, to make the judgement as to how those regulations should change and how CASA's recommendations maybe should change because of those economic or social considerations. It should not be the remit of CASA to be making those political judgements. CASA needs to have its remit as a safety focused organisation preserved.
This doesn't concern just the Greens. These changes to CASA's remit concern the people who are directly accountable for the safety and operation of our aviation industry: the pilots' unions. Both the Australian Federation of Air Pilots and the Australian and International Pilots Association have raised serious issues with this legislation. The Australian Federation of Air Pilots have said that they have significant concerns that this amendment could also be a source for those seeking to stymie genuinely necessary safety reforms when there exists any cost impact on their interests. The Australian and International Pilots Association's concern is even stronger. It says that resistance by private interests cannot be allowed to control the system. 'The aviation safety regulator', it continues, 'has a difficult and narrow path to tread in ensuring that the public safety interest is met without unnecessary constraint on the public economic benefit and the participating private interests. The danger to the public safety interest comes from a safety regulator that gets role confusion and starts to act like an economic regulator.' The Australian and International Pilots Association then continues: 'In our view, CASA has already demonstrated a propensity to dilute the former role for a taste of the latter, particularly in the areas of fatigue management, airports and airspace protection.'
It should not be the job of CASA, a safety authority, to assess, without the relevant expertise, the economic and social impacts of its proposed regulations. It's the job of parliament to balance those competing concerns—the competing concerns of safety, economics, accessibility and the public interest. That is parliament's job, not CASA's.
There are so many things that could go horribly wrong and that could have dire consequences as a result of this legislation. What would happen, for example, if a major airline decided that it could not meet the safety standards of its planes because that presented too much of an economic burden or if companies decided they simply didn't want to foot the bill? Would that be acceptable? If we let that happen, who would be responsible for a plane crash? You can see this scenario developing where you have airlines with ageing plane fleets serving rural and remote communities, who say, 'We just can't afford to keep our planes at the standard that they're currently at. If you're going to insist on this, CASA, then, sorry, we're going to have to just stop flying, and rural and regional communities aren't going to be able to get the services they need.' It's up to parliament to decide how to deal with that dilemma. It's not up to CASA. It's not up to CASA to say, 'We reckon that because we want these rural and regional communities to keep their air services we're going to reduce the standards and we're going to allow this airline to fly with lower safety standards than what they've had up until now.' But this is what this change will allow. In fact, the explanatory memorandum says:
Whilst the amendments will ensure that CASA considers the particular circumstances of different participants when developing and promulgating aviation safety standards, the safety of air navigation will remain the most important consideration for CASA…
But that means nothing. What does 'will remain the most important consideration' mean when it is being offset by those economic and social concerns? It means that safety is not just the prime consideration that CASA will be taking into account.
What I can see happening if this legislation goes through is that we'll quite likely be beholden to the business models of the big airlines, who don't want to compromise their bottom lines. And we know that big for-profit companies will do anything to trim budgets and expand their profit margins. All they're going to need to say is, 'We're just not going to be able to keep flying if you, CASA, insist that we have to maintain these standards.'
This bill has not been through sufficient scrutiny. These are very legitimate concerns and they need a robust hearing. It's not just the Greens and the pilots. What's the department's justification for this bill? How does CASA itself think that this bill will change how it functions? What do the independent aviation safety experts in academia and the private sector think will happen as a result of these changes? I would certainly like to know the answers to these questions, and the Senate should know the answers to these questions. So I move:
At the end of the motion, add:
", and the bill be referred to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 10 September 2019."
We should be having an inquiry into this bill. This bill has got far-reaching and potentially dangerous consequences. I call on the Senate to support my amendment. I call on the Senate to be concerned with maintaining the safety of our air services, which we are so justly proud of in Australia today. I hope that the Senate will support that inquiry. But, if it doesn't go to an inquiry, then this bill, as it stands, is too dangerous. We need to know more information. We don't have justification. We have such serious concerns from the pilots and other safety standards, and there is far too much uncertainty to support this bill today.
Senator FAWCETT (South Australia) (17:52): I wasn't planning to speak on this bill but, having heard some of the concerns just raised by Senator Rice, I want to make a very brief contribution. Back when David Forsyth ran the inquiry into Australia's safety regulation for aviation, I worked with former Minister Truss, travelling much of Australia, speaking at many of the same forums and getting feedback from people. One of the issues that was raised consistently was that there were multiple occurrences where the requirements of CASA were bureaucratically correct but didn't actually have a safety outcome. In some cases, advice was given by CASA to industry which they didn't follow through, because they basically didn't care about the economic impact. For example, if somebody wished to bring an aircraft into the country that was not the first of type, they would approach CASA and do all their due diligence about how long it would take them to bring the aircraft in and get it cleared, and they would debt fund the aircraft when it arrived, but it would then sit on the tarmac for months because they didn't get the paperwork cleared by CASA, as there was no regard for the economic impact of a lack of action on behalf of the regulator. Then there were things like check-in training. I know from my own aviation background—23-odd years both in the military and flying in the civil sector—that there are very sensible economies that can be had for things like check-in training. For example, as a pilot flying multiple types of aircrafts that are in a similar category—a twin-engine aircraft that's rated to fly in instruments—you can do an instrument rating on one complex aircraft and it very comfortably translates to another aircraft of the same category even if it's a different brand, if you like, of aircraft. Yet I'm hearing from the industry great concerns that CASA are now requiring them to do multiple tests every year on different aircraft types even though they're in the same category. So there are things that are not really economically viable for an individual pilot or company and that don't actually contribute to safety in a large way. I speak from experience.
So I hear the concerns, but the origin of this amendment goes back a number of years to when there was very extensive consultation with operators and pilots and aircraft mechanics—the LAMEs—into how CASA approached their regulation. The desire is not to provide an avenue for someone to say, 'We think that's going to lose us some profits, so we're not going to do it,' but for them to actually say, 'Can we achieve the same safety standard and take account of the economics for a small business?' That was the intent that came out of the Forsyth review and the associated discussions and has bounced around now for a number of years. I'm very pleased to see that the opposition has been able to work with the government to come up with a form of words that makes sure that we keep companies viable, because I've got to say: a safe company is a viable company. A company that's scraping to make ends meet is far more likely to also end up taking shortcuts. I commend the bill to the Senate.
Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (17:55): Centre Alliance will be supporting the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill 2019. I have a pilot's licence. That's not to say I would recommend anyone fly with me—I don't have current hours up—but I do have one by virtue of the fact that they are perpetual. What that leads to is some background in relation to some of the things I'm going to say.
When I learnt to fly back in the eighties—I was a bit confused: as a submariner, I wanted to go under water, but I wanted to fly on the weekends—you could go to just about any airport in Australia and there would be a flight school. You'd go to that flight school and you'd do your pilot training. It was very, very professional. It was a bit expensive but, nonetheless, it allowed you to learn to fly. From that, most pilots, once they learnt to fly, would either get their private licence or they'd get their commercial licence and move on to commercial activities. It was those pilots that then went into the GA sector, the general aviation sector. Unfortunately, we've now reached the situation where—Senator Rice is talking about aircraft not flying to rural areas. They're not flying to rural areas, because there are no pilots anymore. There are no planes, because everyone has been priced out of the market, and I'll give you some statistics on that shortly. It's not because they're unsafe; it is simply because of the overburden of regulation that CASA imposes upon general aviation. I'm sure if you put all of the documentation that you require to be able to fly into the back of your Cessna, it simply wouldn't take off it would be so heavy.
To be very clear: the United States and other countries have much slimmer sets of regulations, but they also have much more traffic flying in their airspace and in much harsher conditions. Australia is blessed in many senses because it always has relatively good weather. We don't have to worry about significant storms or de-icing aircraft before we take off. We've got a relatively safe environment compared to other nations that have regard to the fostering of the industry. That has not been happening here, and it hasn't been happening here because of the legislation, which basically requires only the consideration of safety.
Senator Rice is correct in saying that safety is really important, but it is only one factor. If you want to have safe flying with no risk of accident, then don't let anyone fly. That's the extreme position. We've got to find the right balance, and right now the balance has not been struck correctly. GA—general aviation—is in a perilous state. The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics did a report in 2015 that showed GA declined 18 per cent between 2010 and 2015. We've had AOPA suggest that this means we've lost about $500 million of economic activity out of the Australian economy per annum, not to mention the very devastating effect that this has had on regional communities.
I was involved in the inquiry into regional airfares, which found that one of the contributing factors to high airfares is simply that airlines like Rex and QantasLink can't get pilots and that adds to the cost of people in regional communities flying, even when they've moved into the regular public transport sector, and that flying is the lifeblood of some of these regional communities. It's the way in which people get to education, it's the way in which people get to health, it's the way in which businesses connect and it's the way in which agriculture flourishes. If you make things so expensive, what we end up with is a doctor deciding to leave the town because it's too expensive to go back on a regular basis to visit family. They leave the town and then five other people decide to leave the town. It has a flow-on effect on regional communities. So whilst the economy had 103 quarters of continuous growth, at the same time general aviation experienced a 34 per cent decline in pilot numbers over 10 years. There has been a 35 per cent decline in Avgas sales over 10 years, an indication of how little people were flying. There was an 18 per cent decline in aircraft hours over five years, a 20 per cent decline in the serviceability of aircraft for a 12-month period, and a 15 per cent decline in maintenance and repair organisations over a 12-month period.
I have mentioned that the regions are a fantastic training ground for pilots to go into regular public transport, but we also have the organisations that do pilot training, charter work, testing, ferrying, surveying, photography and aerial work. Unfortunately, we're seeing pilots in these regional areas almost becoming extinct, and that is harmful to Australians and harmful to our regional communities. It's not about saying let's not be safe; it's about, in some sense, reconfiguring CASA so they don't bombard people with regulation after regulation after regulation.
We've got this industry in decline, and it hasn't improved since that 2015 report. Indeed, between April 2016 and June 2017, we saw 15 new certificates of air worthiness issued. But in the same period, we saw 29 certificates of airworthiness cancelled and a further 27 in a state of suspension, so we saw 57 cancelled or suspended certificates of airworthiness. That's four about month. It's an industry in crisis. I'm not going to be kind here; I'm going to tell it the way it is. The Senate Standing Committees on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport received briefings over and over again on the state of general aviation. CASA has basically been regulating general aviation out of existence.
Let me talk about a new regulation that CASA has recently introduced. I did move a disallowance motion, and it's back on the Notice Paper tomorrow, in relation to community service flights, just to give you a perspective of what is happening inside CASA. If you don't know what a community service flight is, let me tell you. There are pilots who are willing to give their time and their experience, who are licenced, who are safe to fly, who I can jump into the aircraft with and fly off to Kangaroo Island on the weekend if I want to or whatever. They are normally declared safe to fly through an organisation that is responsible for making sure everyone meets all of the general safety requirements. They will give their time to fly sick people from remote locations to major centres.
Let me give you an example: if you live in Ceduna and you need chemotherapy, you can take the seven-hour drive from Ceduna to Adelaide, do the chemotherapy and then drive back. That's pretty demanding. In fact, it just makes that treatment almost impossible. Under one of these community service flights—Angel Flight in particular—they will send a pilot out who will pick you up, fly you to Adelaide and then return you after your chemotherapy. What happens in that instance is that the people are not charged; there is no commercial gain made by these pilots. All they get is a bit of assistance in terms of fuel—a bit of a kick along. It gives them an opportunity to enjoy the pleasure that they are safely licensed to fly and they are allowed to assist people.
There have been two unfortunate fatal crashes relating to Angel Flight, one in 2011 in Victoria and one in 2014 at Mount Gambier. People jumped onto one of these flights and ended up in a fatal air accident, and that is truly, truly upsetting. CASA looked at this and, in fact, the ATSB is still looking at the second accident right now. Hopefully, we'll see some reports on that shortly. But CASA then came along and introduced some new regulations about minimum hours and some maintenance related stuff to do with aircraft. Initially, when they introduced it they said, 'Helicopters can't be involved in these community service flights.' We asked why: 'What was the safety basis for that decision?' Very quickly, the instrument was put back to the parliament and amended, allowing helicopters to fly. That was within the space of a day or two of advocacy.
But if you go back and look at these new regulations, they're not focused on these accidents and safety. In fact, I've questioned CASA; I've talked to CASA and put questions on notice to the ATSB. I might foreshadow that when they get to estimates they can expect me to send some torpedoes their way. Their answer was quite contemptuous, in my view. But we'll have that discussion at estimates. None of the changes that have been made, had they been there back in 2011 or 2014, would have made one bit of difference in relation to these accidents. Not one thing in these new regulations, had they been implemented back when these terrible accidents took place, would in any way have changed the circumstances.
So CASA had gone off and looked at these two flights and decided they must do something. What they did, again, was introduce a burden on the industry that will see some of these flights no longer occur. Once again, it doesn't appear to be about safety. So, hopefully, when we get to 15 sitting days after tomorrow I'll be asking the Senate chamber to disallow that particular instrument. I'd encourage people about that, and I'll wander the halls of the building and make sure everyone understands how ridiculous it is. But this is what we face with CASA. As the industry has been declining, CASA has been building up its ranks; it's an empire that has grown quite significantly.
So I get where you're coming from, Senator Rice, in terms of safety. It is really important, but the words in this bill don't put economics ahead of safety. Safety is still the primary concern of CASA; it just says that they must have regard to making sure that we have a vibrant industry. That's the usual balance you have when you've got conflicting requirements: safety is paramount. Safety is paramount, so there is no problem here—
Senator Rice interjecting—
Senator PATRICK: Well, I've read the bill, and I sat in front of many, many pilots in the RRAT committee in the last parliament, and the industry is dying. You will get your ultimate aim, Senator Rice—there will be no planes flying in GA.
Senator Rice interjecting—
Senator PATRICK: You'll have ultimate safety in those circumstances! It's not like the airlines will dictate to CASA that they're not commercial if a certain regulation doesn't get pulled. That's not what's going to happen here. I want, as I think most people here want, an efficient and sustainable Australian aviation industry sector where safety is paramount and important and where CASA gives consideration to industry as it makes rules. That means it doesn't make rules like it did with Angel Flight—rules that are meaningless, add cost and don't do one thing for safety.
CASA, as I said, has focused on safety to the point of running aircraft out of the skies—to the point where one day we'll have no GA aircraft. All of our pilots will then have to come from overseas. In fact, we've got a situation now where we've got a great environment for people to learn how to fly because of the safe, open skies that we have with very little traffic when compared to somewhere like the United States or Asia—great opportunities—but it appears the only people who can now afford to set up schools are Qantas, Rex and some overseas entities. We have to change that, and it's in that context that I commend this bill to the Senate.
Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory—Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) (18:12): I thank senators for their contribution. Australia has an outstanding aviation safety record, and it's due to our strong regulatory framework. However, we need to continue to keep the balance right between risk and regulation.
The Civil Aviation Amendment Bill of 2019 ensures that CASA continues to consider the economic and cost impact on industry and communities when developing aviation safety standards. This bill is designed to support a regulatory environment which continues to maintain confidence in the safety of aviation in Australia without unnecessarily restricting innovation and growth.
It's important to note that this bill is not intended to, and would not in any way, impede CASA's ability to make operational decisions relating to safety. CASA must be allowed to ensure that aviation in Australia is safe and reliable. In practical terms, the bill relates to CASA's work in developing and promulgating standards, taking into account the differing risks posed by those sectors and not to individual decisions or directions. The bill would not, for instance, have altered CASA's ability to make its recent decision to stop flights of Boeing 737 MAX aircrafts on safety grounds. Safety of air navigation will still remain the most important consideration of CASA when it develops legislative safety standards, but CASA will also continue to take into consideration the cost—something I know is a key priority for our general aviation sector.
I'd like to thank those in the opposition and a number on the cross bench for their support for this bill. I'm pleased that this new bill will support local aviation businesses and communities while ensuring CASA can still do its vital work of keeping us safe in our skies. I'd like to thank all senators for their contribution, and I commend the bill to the Senate.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Carol Brown ): The question is that the amendment moved by Senator Rice be agreed to.
The Senate divided. [18:18]
(The Acting Deputy President—Senator Brown)
In Committee
Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.
Senator RICE (Victoria) (18:23): I'm extremely disappointed that, given the legitimate questions about this bill about watering down and undermining the role of CASA as a safety regulator, the bill didn't get sent to a committee. I think there are many unanswered questions that should have been sent to a committee. During the second reading debate, I heard Senator Fawcett and Senator Patrick talking about getting rid of unnecessarily bureaucratic requirements that CASA, they allege, was imposing upon aviation, which in fact didn't have anything to do with safety. I want to ask the minister: how can you assure me that in fact safety isn't being watered down? It may well be that the intent of these changes is to deal with bureaucratic, unnecessary requirements that add to the cost of aviation. But these changes allow for far more than that. These changes allow, basically, for safety to be undermined, traded off, reduced. Minister, can you give me some assurance that that in fact is not going to be the case?
Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory—Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) (18:24): Yes, I can. Safety remains the primary consideration for CASA and this bill does not change that. The bill is not intended to, and would not in any way, impede CASA's ability to make operational decisions relating to safety. The bill relates solely to CASA's work in developing and promulgating standards and not individual decisions or directions.
As mentioned earlier, the type of decision to stop flights of Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft on safety grounds would in no way be impacted. Subsection 9A(1) of the Civil Aviation Act instructs:
In exercising its powers and performing its functions CASA must regard the safety of air navigation as the most important consideration.
Subject to section 9A(1), the bill proposes that in developing and promulgating aviation safety standards, CASA must consider the economic and cost impacts on individuals, business in the community of such standards and take into account the differing risks associated with different industry sectors and that was something well articulated during the debate—the need to take these things into account. The short answer to your question is: there is no watering down of CASA's primary objective, which is to keep Australians safe in the air.
Senator RICE (Victoria) (18:26): I hear that, but by saying it's the 'primary', the 'most important', still doesn't mean that by putting in these economic and social considerations, you're not actually weighing these things off against each other. As I said, I understand that the intent was to get rid of unnecessary costs that in fact weren't helping with safety. But my reading of this bill is that it goes far further than that. It's not just my reading. The pilots that have written to us are concerned. The quote I read out from the pilots association said that the danger to the public safety interest comes from a regulator that gets role confused and starts to act like an economic regulator. These are the kinds of things that need to be considered in an inquiry into this bill, because there are different interpretations of what is being proposed here. By adding in these social and economic costs, it may have the best of intentions to not be impacting on safety, but I cannot see it. There's no way of reading it, other than to know that the primacy of safety as the thing that CASA is concerned about is being impacted.
I think the community service flights that Senator Patrick talked about were in fact a good case study of how the regime should work. If there was a sense that by putting safety as the primary consideration that there needed to be other factors that were taken into account, then it would be appropriate for the parliament to be disallowing the regulation, for us as a parliament to make that judgement, rather than for the safety regulator to make that judgement. I am deeply disappointed. There's probably nothing more that you will be able to tell me that will set my heart at rest that we are not undermining the safety standards of our civil aviation safety agency.
Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (18:28): by leave—I move Jacquie Lambie Network amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 8699 together:
(1) Schedule 1, page 3 (before line 4), before item 1, insert:
1A Subsection 9A(1)
Repeal the subsection, substitute:
(1) In exercising its powers and performing its functions, CASA must regard the achievement of the highest standard of safety of air navigation, at the lowest charges consistent with both public demand and an economic return to efficient operators, as the most important consideration.
(2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (before line 8), before paragraph 9A(3) (a), insert:
(aa) ensure that those aviation safety standards maintain or improve the overall safety of the civil aviation system; and
These amendments change the language in section 9A of the Civil Aviation Act, which states 'CASA must regard the safety of air navigation as the most important consideration'. Everybody wants a safe aviation sector, but we want to see an aviation sector that is sustainable as well as safe. When it comes to aviation safety, the safest passenger is the one that never gets in a plane in the first place. The easiest way to prevent aviation accidents is to shut down aviation altogether—if every plane is grounded, every plane is safe. Excessive regulation is doing just that—keeping planes safe by keeping planes grounded. This is all made possible by the rules around the regulator, CASA, which currently has to consider safety as the highest priority above all else. It is required to ignore other considerations like cost, as if it is unrelated. Putting one pilot in the cockpit isn't as safe as having two pilots in there. And having two pilots isn't as safe as having 10 or 12 or 20. But which airline could afford to fill half its seats with pilots on the payroll? Sure, you would be safer but your ticket would be so expensive that nobody would be able to afford it. The reality is that proposals to make aviation safer—
Sitting suspended from 18:30 to 19:30
Senator LAMBIE: The reality is that proposals to make aviation safer are already limited by what is affordable. If a regulation makes travel one per cent safe but doubles its cost, does anybody here seriously think cost is not worth considering? If a regulation can save a dollar and maintain the same level of safety it should be supported. Every regulation should be assessed for the costs and the benefits. Right now, the legislation is geared only to how regulations impact on safety. The reality is that cost always has to be considered. The regulation pretends that it doesn't, but that is a legal fiction. It makes you feel safe, but it doesn't keep you safe. If the only consideration was safety every seat on an aircraft would be fitted with an ejection capsule, every second row would be filled with security officers from the AFP and you'd require every plane to be replaced every five years, just in case. Every one of those changes would make air travel safer, but every one of those changes would send the sector broke in the process. The reason these safety standards have not been adopted is that the costs aren't worth the benefit. Cost is always considered. Cost is already being considered. But the Civil Aviation Act does not recognise it is happening or allow for it to happen.
Safety matters—nobody is arguing it doesn't—but every safety decision ends up being paid for by the end user. Some operators already are being squeezed out by ever-increasing costs, and every new regulation adds to the price of doing business in the sector. The impact of these changes is regressive. They hurt people on low incomes the most because they are the people least able to absorb the higher price of a ticket. The impact of these changes hurts the bush more than anywhere else. Small-town air services are shutting down because the cost of staying open is too expensive for them to maintain. This pushes people off planes and onto roads. Is that really safer for the traveller? People are driving on roads that aren't as well maintained, in vehicles that aren't as well regulated and with a licence that isn't as difficult to obtain. And that would happen in the name of safety.
These amendments ensure that safety remains a priority but not the only priority. That reflects what should be common sense. Making decisions about safety without thinking about cost simply leads to businesses with superb safety records being driven to closure. These amendments retain the commitment to safety but recognise that CASA has a responsibility to strike a balance. A plane in a hangar may be safe, but that's not what planes are meant for. It's not the job of the regulator to ground every aircraft in the country. It should be the job of the regulator to keep aircraft in the air and keep passengers and pilots safe while they're there, and that is what these amendments seek to do. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to support them.
Senator DUNIAM (Tasmania—Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries and Assistant Minister for Regional Tourism) (19:34): I thank Senator Lambie for her contribution. She places a lot of effort into these things, and she has with this. It is important to put on record that the view of the government is that Senator Lambie's first proposed amendment would compromise safety, because it would create ambiguity within the act. That ambiguity would be created by obscuring safety as the sole most important consideration for CASA in undertaking its safety and regulatory functions. Senator Lambie's other amendment, which has been raised by the pilots association, does not improve the bill and could in fact lead to further ambiguity. So I just place those points on record, with regard to those proposed amendments, but I do thank Senator Lambie for her contribution on that.
In general, though, there have been many contributions made to this debate, and we thank the opposition and Senator Patrick for their support of the bill. With regard to the key concern raised by Senator Rice, I think it's important to stress, on behalf of government, that safety will remain the most important consideration by CASA in all of this. I thank the Senate and commend the bill.
Senator WATT (Queensland) (19:35): I just want to take the opportunity to put the opposition's position on these amendments on the record. We won't be supporting the amendments moved by Senator Lambie—and I might also take the opportunity to explain why we opposed the amendment moved by Senator Rice; it's basically for related reasons.
But, more broadly, when it comes to aviation safety, the position Labor have tried to take is a bipartisan one. This bill has been around for some period of time. Prior to the election we worked with the government to strike what we thought was an appropriate balance between safety—which, of course, is absolutely vital and must always be CASA's paramount responsibility—on the one hand and easing the burden of red tape on small aviation operators on the other. We've worked very closely with the government to try and improve this, and we believe that the bill, as it now stands, moves us closer to achieving this balance.
We're aware that the government's bill was developed in close consultation with the general aviation industry over a number of months in 2018 and also earlier this year. We fully understand what Senator Lambie is seeking to achieve with her amendments. As I understand it, they are to give assurance to small aviation operators that excessive safety regulation will not put their viability at risk. That is a worthwhile objective, and we understand where Senator Lambie is coming from; however, we do think that the intent of the amendments from Senator Lambie is already captured in the government's bill.
From our perspective, the bill is seeking to balance safety with the risk, environment and cost involved, particularly for smaller operators. While we understand that there will always be groups in the community that will say that a particular piece of legislation gets the balance wrong, one way or another, and that no piece of legislation will ever be perfect, on balance we think that this bill does get us closer to achieving that important balance between safety and the impact on smaller aviation operators. That's why, on balance, we have decided to support the bill without the amendments being put forward by Senator Lambie.
It's for a similar reason that we opposed the amendment moved by Senator Rice. Again, we think that the bill, as put, does get the balance right. We don't think that it's necessary to refer it to an inquiry, and that's why we're prepared to support it as it currently stands and voted against Senator Rice's amendment as well.
Of course the opposition will continue to monitor the implementation of the bill, and if we think that it hasn't got that balance right and that additional reforms are necessary then of course we'll be willing to look at it and make further amendments as required. As I said, I thought it was important for us to put on the record why we've taken the position of opposing the amendments tonight.
Senator RICE (Victoria) (19:39): The Greens will be supporting Senator Lambie's amendments. We still don't think they make this bill something that we will support overall, but we feel they are an improvement on trying to reach what I understand is the intent of the bill of removing bureaucratic measures that don't actually improve safety and reducing costs by doing so. But we feel that this bill, as it stands, is still very ambiguous as to whether indeed safety remains the prime consideration and whether indeed, with or without Senator Lambie's amendments, that we will actually be reducing our safety standards.
In his summing up then, Senator Watt said that Labor felt that the bill was going to balance safety with the risk environment and cost, which, in and of its very self says that they are going to be weighing up economic and social factors and potentially reducing safety standards. We continue to be very concerned about that.
The TEMPORARY CHAIR ( Senator Griff ): The question is that the amendments moved by Senator Lambie be agreed to.
Bill agreed to.
Bill reported without amendments; report adopted.
The committee divided. [19:44]
(The Temporary Chair—Senator Griff)
Third Reading
Senator DUNIAM (Tasmania—Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries and Assistant Minister for Regional Tourism) (19:49): I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Griff ): The question is that the bill be read a third time.
Bill read a third time.
The Senate divided. [19:54]
(The Acting Deputy President—Senator Griff)
National Rental Affordability Scheme Amendment Bill 2019
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Senator WATT (Queensland) (19:57): At the very outset, I'd like to say that Labor supports the National Rental Affordability Scheme Amendment Bill 2019. In fact, the National Rental Affordability Scheme, or NRAS, as it's commonly known, is another proud achievement of previous Labor governments in the social policy and, particularly, housing space, because NRAS was actually set up by federal Labor when we were in government in 2008. Under the scheme, investors were provided with 10-year contracts through both state and federal funding, and rent was provided at 20 per cent below market rate to vulnerable Australians. Unfortunately, when the Abbott government came to power, they cut all new funding for the scheme and capped the scheme at 38,000 dwellings. They also didn't replace this scheme with anything else.
But, of course, as we all know, the housing affordability problem has not gone away over that period of time. In fact, homeownership rates are now at the lowest level we've seen in 50 years in this country. More Australians are behind in their mortgages than at any time since the global financial crisis. Rental stress is through the roof. More Australians are now homeless than ever before. This is a crisis that this government seems to be largely ignoring.
A report that came out last week from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that, over the last 10 years, we've lost more than 20,000 public housing units. Social housing construction hasn't kept pace with the growth in households. A quarter of the new public housing tenants in 2017-18 who were classified as 'in greatest need' had been on the waiting list for more than 12 months, and 13 per cent had been waiting longer than two years.
This bill makes a number of improvements to the existing NRAS that we on the Labor side support. In particular, it improves protections for tenants and investors. It ensures that any payments to investors are done in a timelier manner to ensure NRAS stock is not withdrawn from the scheme. It also removes ambiguity in relation to the calculation of below-market rents in any one year, and it provides flexibility in the way maximum periods of vacancy are prescribed.
This bill was examined by a parliamentary inquiry in the last parliament, and we are grateful that the government incorporated some of the Labor members' recommendations into this bill and also undertook to include the other recommendations in the new regulations when they are made. Labor has consulted with a number of stakeholders, including the National Affordable Housing Providers, the National Affordable Housing Consortium and the Community Housing Industry Association, who are supportive of this legislation. I hope, as they do, that as the government drafts the accompanying regulations the government engages in consultation with those who will continue to use the scheme.
Labor has moved an amendment to this legislation to ensure that the departmental secretary retains the ability to make new allocations under NRAS. Labor members believe this is a necessary amendment to ensure that this or a future government could extend NRAS funding and for the secretary to make new allocations should they so wish. I note that the government has indicated it will support this amendment, and we're grateful they've done so.
The government has decided to not allocate new funding to this scheme. Nothing in this act requires it to do so. However, it might change its mind, or a future government might wish to use this act to help build more affordable housing. Let's certainly hope so. Therefore it makes sense to leave this power to the departmental secretary in the act.
Let me reiterate: Labor supports this bill, and we commend our amendment to the Senate.
Senator FARUQI (New South Wales) (20:01): I rise to speak to the National Rental Affordability Scheme Amendment Bill 2019 on behalf of the Greens. While the Greens will be supporting this bill, I want to make it very clear that this bill does not address the real issues of rental affordability and housing stress that the community is facing more and more every single day. We know that our housing system is completely broken. There are no ifs and buts about that whatsoever. For many years now we have gone from one news headline to another about the housing crisis, only to be met with lukewarm policy responses by the government. They do not have an agenda to reduce homelessness, to pull struggling people out of housing stress and to make housing fairer for all. The government's response to the very serious and very real housing crisis in Australia has come to resemble busy work, to give the illusion of doing something. This bill that we are debating right here is an example of that busy work.
The National Rental Affordability Scheme Amendment Bill 2019 makes certain amendments to clarify and flesh out the legal authority for the scheme contained in the NRAS regulations, but only until the scheme ceases operation in 2026-27. What happens to the rental affordability scheme after that? That's what we should be debating here today. Through this bill, the government is trying to take away the ability of the secretary to allocate new housing to this scheme. I understand that Labor plan to move an amendment to change that, and the Greens will be supporting that amendment. Properties that came to the scheme when NRAS was first introduced in 2008 are starting to fall off now, with people and families, especially those on low incomes, facing eviction and potentially homelessness. The government has not put a replacement scheme on the table. Where's that plan? There is no plan, because this government sees homelessness as a public relations problem rather than the crisis that it is. It was only this month that the new Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services, Mr Luke Howarth, said that he wanted to put a positive spin on homelessness and housing stress. This is a government that would rather homeless people disappear at the snap of its fingers.
The community does have a message for the assistant minister and this government: homelessness is not a PR problem, and housing stress may not look good on their glossy pamphlets, but no spin doctor can help them hide the growing waiting lists for public housing in every single state and territory and the increasing number of people sleeping on footpaths and in alleyways. If the housing problem in this country makes them feel so uneasy then do something about it!
The fact that the minister thinks that the housing crisis needs a so-called positive spin and that it only affects a small number of people is extremely concerning. What about the more than 118,000 people who are homeless? The 140,000 people on public housing waiting lists? Or the more than one million Australians in housing stress? The 2016 census found that there was a 14 per cent increase in homelessness in the previous five years, with a staggeringly high jump of 30 per cent in my home state of New South Wales.
Instead of trying to spin their way out of the homelessness problem, the federal government must show leadership in tackling the housing crisis. And they can do this by making an unprecedented investment in public and community housing, and by getting rid of the unfair tax breaks that have gone to investors buying their fifth property over people looking for their first home. The commodification of housing is a huge problem. First home buyers compete with wealthy investors who benefit from these unfair tax breaks, resulting in over a million households paying more than they can afford on housing. So let's end negative gearing and phase out capital gains tax so we can have a fairer system for all, because everyone has the right to a safe, secure and permanent home.
The lack of affordable housing and rental stress are not happening in a vacuum. Private markets are dictating housing outcomes for Australians as our publicly owned housing stock has dwindled over time, with much of it being sold off by state governments. Public housing stock has been replaced by bandaid measures, with successive governments fiddling at the edges. With more and more people renting, and many people on low incomes living with rental stress, real rental assistance is absolutely crucial. With almost a third of Australians now renting, it is long overdue that their rights are considered a national issue by political parties.
Many countries, like Germany, have strong rental laws that ensure that people who rent can be guaranteed an affordable place to call home over the long term. Public housing lists have blown out in every single state and territory, yet the federal government sits on its hands. Governments of both stripes, actually, have failed to offer any long-term solutions. We need a national housing strategy that includes massive investment in public housing. We desperately need leadership from the federal government. Right now, 45,800 people are classified as being in greatest need of housing because they are homeless, their safety is at risk, or they have very high and unsustainable rental costs which mean that they are constantly faced with imminent homelessness. These are the most vulnerable people, and more and more Australians are being added to this most vulnerable list every single year.
People are living in poverty; people don't have a place to call home or a roof over their heads. The government won't increase Newstart and won't take action to fix the broken housing system. So why are they here in government? Waiting times for people classified as being in greatest need are increasing. The most vulnerable in our society shouldn't be forced to wait over a year for the basic right to have a roof over their heads; a place to call home, a bed to sleep in at night and a permanent address—all those things that most of us have the privilege to take for granted. If this is happening to those in the greatest need we can only imagine the distress of the hundreds of thousands of people living in housing stress.
Does the government have a plan for these people? Does it have a plan for people experiencing homelessness? Does it have a plan for those who can barely pay their rent each month or put food on the table? No, it does not. Clearly, that's the answer. This is a national shame. The government and its ministers should hang their heads in shame.
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (20:09): As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I rise to support the National Rental Affordability Scheme Amendment Bill 2019. This year under the National Rental Affordability Scheme more than 28,000 homeowners will receive $11,000 each from the government in tax-free cash and in tax credits. This is supposed to be used to encourage the construction of new homes to be let at reduced rents to Australians who cannot afford to pay full price. It sounds good, right? Here's the problem. So far this scheme has cost the taxpayer $3.5 billion. Those new homes are subsidised no matter their location around Australia and no matter the size of the property. So owners naturally took advantage. Why should someone subsidise the rent on a $600-a-week home at a cost of $8,000 a year and pocket $3,000 when they can subsidise student accommodation at cost of $3,000 and pocket the rest—$8,000? This is yet another example of Liberal and Labor economic mismanagement.
What about the people in regional Queensland who have lost their jobs, who are really suffering? What would they think of this? What would the farmers think when they've had their property rights stolen from them and can't manage their farms anymore? What about the farmers who are surrounded by farmers who have given in to so-called carbon farming? They now have increased costs for handling feral animals and noxious weeds—additional costs thanks to Liberal and Labor policies. What about energy prices that are rising? What about water prices that are high, if they can get water? What about these people who are really suffering? What would they think of this? Nobody is building new houses in depressed regional areas. These Australians cannot benefit from this boondoggle.
We are destroying the productive capacity of this country, a country we all love, and leaving those who have been disadvantaged to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, successive Liberal and Labor governments waste billions on supporting foreign students and blow-ins with low rent—at taxpayer expense. We support the tightening of this bill. Yet we ask: who thought this would be a good idea in the first place? One Nation will support this bill to take taxpayers off the hook, and we ask the government to join us in supporting a rekindling of productive capacity for this beautiful country.
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (20:12): The National Rental Affordability Scheme Amendment Bill 2019 makes amendments to the National Rental Affordability Scheme Act 2008 to streamline and simplify the administration of the National Rental Affordability Scheme, known as NRAS, until it ceases operation in 2026.
The amendments to the NRAS Act contained in this bill were included in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Housing Affordability) Bill 2017 introduced in the 2018 spring sittings. On 19 October 2017, the Senate referred the housing affordability bill to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report. The committee made a number of recommendations, which the government considered in consultation with participating states and territories. The committee recommended that the bill be passed.
NRAS is established by the National Rental Affordability Scheme Regulations 2008. In 2016 the Australian National Audit Office reported that the NRAS legislative framework is complex and unclear. The report noted the regulations could be reviewed with the aim of simplifying and clarifying aspects of their operation. NRAS stakeholders are of the same view. In December 2016 the Department of Social Services consulted with NRAS stakeholders to identify ways to improve the administration of NRAS and reduce the regulatory burden on approved participants.
Over 30 submissions were received with suggestions on how the regulations could be streamlined to support the efficient and effective administration of NRAS going forward. In its submission to the NRAS consultation paper in December 2016, the Commonwealth Ombudsman noted the need to improve transparency for investors in NRAS. The Ombudsman's submission also made recommendations on measures to strengthen the integrity and compliance of NRAS.
In January 2017, the Department of Social Services commenced a review of NRAS to address the concerns raised by the ANAO, the Ombudsman and the NRAS stakeholders. On 15 July 2017, minor regulatory amendments came into effect to address areas of NRAS that imposed disproportionate penalties for compliance which led to outcomes that were inconsistent with the objectives of NRAS. Further regulatory amendments were made in November 2017 and November 2018 to permit NRAS investors to request the transfer of an allocation in certain circumstances, and to provide other protections to investors. In March 2019, additional amendments were made to the NRAS regulations, strengthening the investor protection mechanisms available under the NRAS regulations and introducing a new compliance framework to manage and address misconduct by approved participants of the scheme.
The amendments introduced in this bill clarify ambiguous provisions in the NRAS Act relating to the power to make regulations, and lay the foundation to strengthen and simplify the future operation and administration of NRAS. The NRAS Act requires the NRAS regulations to prescribe that the rent charged for an approved rental dwelling must be at least 20 per cent less than the market rent at all times during the year. The term 'at all times during the year' has been subject to conflicting interpretations over the years. The first amendment supports the correct interpretation of this provision, which is that each time rent is charged it is to be at least 20 per cent less than the market rent. Some people interpreted it to mean the total rent charged across the year rather than each time the rent is charged.
The NRAS Act requires the NRAS regulations to prescribe maximum vacancy periods for approved rental dwellings. The prescriptive nature of the current vacancy provisions have been amended to allow greater flexibility for the NRAS regulations to prescribe permitted vacancy periods. This flexibility will assist the future administration of NRAS should changes be required on how the maximum vacancy periods are to operate.
Two new provisions will be added to the NRAS Act to provide express legislative authority for the NRAS regulations to vary conditions of allocation and put it beyond doubt that conditions may be varied or imposed after an allocation has been made. These provisions will reduce the risk of the Commonwealth when varying or imposing new conditions on allocations. The final amendment provides express legislative authority to transfer an allocation from one approved rental dwelling to another. The ability to substitute dwellings is crucial to achieve the objects of NRAS—to increase the supply of affordable rental dwellings. If an investor decides to leave NRAS, the ability to substitute a like-for-like dwelling ensures the level of NRAS housing stock is maintained.
The government's amendments make several important changes to schedule 1 of the bill. The amendments put beyond doubt that NRAS can include protections for investors, including by requiring approved participants to pass on state and territory incentives to investors in certain circumstances. The amendments also confirm that NRAS can provide protections for NRAS investors and allow for the adjustment of incentives where an allocation has been transferred for cause at an investor's request. NRAS relies on a number of Commonwealth legislative powers, and the amendments set out in these powers give the NRAS Act separate operation within the scope of each of these power.
The evidence given to the Senate inquiry suggested that there may be circumstances where, through inadvertence or oversight, a particular charge for rent may exceed the maximum rent that can be charged, which is 80 per cent of the market rent. The government's amendments permit NRAS to include a power for the Secretary of the Department of Social Services to grant an approved participant dispensation from an inadvertent breech of the 80 per cent rule in certain circumstances where the tenant has been fully compensated for that mistake.
While most approved participants in NRAS behave appropriately towards investors, a small number of approved participants do not do the right thing and make life difficult for investors by not passing on incentives promptly and engaging in other undesirable conduct. The government's amendments will permit the Secretary of the Department of Social Services to accept an enforceable undertaking from an approved participant. Enforceable undertakings are a useful compliance tool currently used by a number of Australian government agencies. The inclusion of this tool as part of the NRAS Act will assist the Department of Social Services to take appropriate action to protect investors where necessary.
The government is committed to reducing rental costs for low- and moderate-income households. NRAS was a flagship Labor program to improve rental affordability by providing a financial incentive to approved participants who rent dwellings at at least 20 per cent below market rents to eligible low- to moderate-income households. As was the case with many other programs, the former Labor government failed to put in the work in the planning stages in order to see the successful implementation of the well-intentioned policies. From the beginning, the scheme was poorly designed with multiple flaws, ambiguous legal requirements and red tape. The government is now fixing this and undertaking a series of legislative reforms to streamline and simplify the operation and administration of the scheme. This bill lays the foundation for improving the NRAS legislative framework to support the efficient administration of NRAS until it ceases operation in 2026. I commend the bill to this chamber.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
In Committee
Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.
Senator WATT (Queensland) (20:20): The opposition opposes schedule 1 in the following terms:
(1) Schedule 1, item 6, page 6 (lines 24 to 27), TO BE OPPOSED.
(2) Schedule 1, item 17, page 10 (lines 1 to 6), TO BE OPPOSED.
(3) Schedule 1, subitem 18(1), page 10 (lines 8 to 10), TO BE OPPOSED.
(4) Schedule 1, item 21, page 11 (lines 10 to 15), TO BE OPPOSED.
I won't labour the point, because I addressed this in my speech in the second reading debate, but I put on the record again that the reason Labor is moving these amendments is to ensure that the departmental secretary retains the ability to make new allocations under NRAS into the future. We want to make sure that either this government or a future government has the ability to extend NRAS funding if it chooses to do so and that the secretary has power to make new allocations, should they so wish. I know that the government has agreed to those amendments, and we thank it for doing so.
The TEMPORARY CHAIR ( Senator Griff ): The question is that items 6 and 17, subitem 18(1) and item 21 in schedule 1 stand as printed.
Question negatived.
Bill, as amended, agreed to.
Bill reported with amendments; report adopted.
Third Reading
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (20:23): I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
BUSINESS
Rearrangement
Senator WONG (South Australia—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (20:24): I understand that the government, having now finished what was not a particularly controversial piece of legislation, is proposing to move to the address-in-reply. Can I indicate to the crossbench that the reason the government has no legislation to present to us is that it is engaged in a political stoush in the House of Representatives because it wants to bring on the abolition of the Building Australia Fund. In these circumstances we don't think the Senate should be hanging around, so I seek leave to move that the Senate do now adjourn.
Leave not granted.
Senator WONG: We can either have a short—
Senator Ruston interjecting—
Senator WONG: I'll take that interjection by Senator Ruston. I'm not proposing to discuss with you when your Prime Minister, so-called, is in the House of Representatives negating the adjournment because he wants a political wedge, and therefore you have no legislation in the Senate. It's ridiculous. I can either move to suspend standing orders, or we can seek leave to have a number of short statements to deal with this issue. What would you like to do, Senator Ruston?
Senator Ruston: I denied leave, so do whatever you want.
Senator WONG: On that basis, pursuant to contingent notice of motion, I move:
That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion for the adjournment of the Senate.
Speaking to the suspension of standing orders motion, and to enable a discussion with the crossbench—I know that Centre Alliance, for possibly quite principled reasons, always say that the government ought to be able to run their own legislative agenda. I just say this: the government doesn't have a legislative agenda in the Senate. It's the Monday of this sitting week, and we have the government saying, 'Guess what? We have run out of legislation in the Senate. We want to go to the address-in-reply.' It's the same old tried and true delaying tactic that governments use when they have to fill Senate chamber time. They've already gone to that at 8.25 pm on the Monday night of the sitting week. What is the government's agenda? Where is the government's agenda? The government doesn't have an agenda for the Senate. Do you know why? Because you've just spent the day in the House of Representatives trying to gain a wedge on the Labor Party to abolish the Building Australia Fund, because you want to talk about drought. You've had a situation where the Prime Minister is so focused on playing politics that he hasn't even wanted to allow the shadow cabinet to meet to determine a position. He hasn't wanted to allow the caucus to meet to determine a position. He's so desperate to make sure he gets a political wedge up, and you come in here and, so embarrassingly, don't have any legislation for the Senate that you have to go to the address-in-reply at 8.25 pm on the Monday night of a sitting week. What are we all doing? We're all sitting here waiting for Mr Morrison to get the votes through the House of Representatives, which he hasn't got as yet, on legislation to abolish the Building Australia Fund because he wants to try and wedge the Labor Party on drought.
If you ever wanted an example of a government that doesn't have an agenda, you have it now. You have it with Senator Ruston sitting here saying: 'You do what you want, Senator Wong, because we don't have any legislation. I've got an address-in-reply I want to get in. That's what I want to do because I want delay tactics, as the government manager, as long as possible.' Here is Senator Cormann. He's coming in to make up an agenda. You're on to the address-in-reply at 8.25 on a Monday night because you haven't got any legislation. I say the Senate should adjourn until you've got an agenda to debate. The reason you haven't got an agenda today is because you've been so focused on playing politics in the lower house and you haven't got any legislation through. You could have put legislation through the lower house today. But you haven't. Instead you've chosen to delay because you want a political debate on the Building Australia Fund abolition. That is entirely what is occurring.
So I say to the crossbench—I don't know where Senator Patrick is; hopefully, he is somewhere in this building. Senator Griff is here. Senator Griff, I shouldn't address you in a partisan way, but I would ask that the Centre Alliance party consider this. You have, on a principled basis, asserted that the government has the right to its legislative agenda. I understand that. At times I haven't agreed with it, but as a principle I recognise it, and we have generally recognised a similar convention, frankly. They haven't got one. They want to go to the address-in-reply because they don't have any more legislation for this chamber.
It's another example of the fact that this government has nothing positive to say. All they are interested in is trying to wedge the Australian Labor Party. Well, they won the election and the time for simply engaging in partisan politics, I would have thought, is over. The time for governing is here. That's not governing. It's Monday night and they want us all to sit around debating the address-in-reply because they don't have any legislation. Well, I say that the Senate should be provided with legislation. I say that if they can't give us legislation to debate on the Monday night—it's not like it's Wednesday or Thursday; if you can't give us legislation to debate on a Wednesday or Thursday night then let's adjourn the Senate. Everybody knows that moving to the address-in-reply is simply a concession that you have nothing to say.
Senator Cormann interjecting—
Senator WONG: It's simply a concession that you have nothing to say! The fact is that the government is saying this on a Monday night, and if anybody wanted an example of the Morrison government not having a political agenda then, ladies and gentlemen, you have it here in the Australian Senate tonight! Monday night, 8:25 pm, and they're are already onto the address-in-reply. They've got no legislation—(Time expired)
Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (20:31): The arrogance of the Labor Party is breathtaking! The disrespect of the Australian Labor Party for the Australian people is breathtaking. The Labor Party clearly still does not respect the verdict of the Australian people at the election.
They are so arrogant that they think that somehow the Australian people got it wrong. They are so arrogant that they can't get used to the fact that they are still sitting on the opposition benches. Here they are! We want to ensure that we can look after farmers in drought-stricken communities. We want to ensure that we can provide additional support for regional communities in drought affected areas in a fiscally sustainable fashion. And what are they doing? They are playing political games! They are hurting so much about the fact that the Australian people denied them their God-given right to govern! They still can't believe the fact that the Australian people made such a terrible misjudgement—in their view—that they chose our plan for a stronger economy and for more jobs, and our agenda for lower taxes for aspiration and for opportunity against their agenda of higher taxes and the politics of envy and of class warfare, which the Australian people know would have made our country weaker, would have made the economy weaker and would have left every Australian worse off.
In the last sitting week they had more positions on tax than in the Kama Sutra. I'll say it again! They went to the election campaigning for $387 billion in higher taxes, which would have harmed our country, which would have harmed working families around Australia and which would have left every Australian worse off.
They should be ashamed of themselves for the stance they are trying to pull in the Senate here tonight. They should be absolutely ashamed! The Australian people will rightly condemn them for the stance they're pulling tonight because this is only about one thing: this is about the Labor Party trying to prevent the Australian parliament from dealing with another important coalition reform, which is to provide additional support for farmers and for rural communities in a way that is affordable and sustainable in the budget.
They are so arrogant and so disrespectful of the Australian people; it is breathtaking. Guess what? The Australian people made a considered judgement. The Australian people looked at their agenda of higher taxes, of sneering at the top end of town, of the politics of envy and turning Australian against Australian, and they decided they didn't want it. Get used to it! They decided that they didn't want it, so get used to it. They voted for our agenda to support aspiration and to support hardworking families wanting to get ahead. That is why they appreciate the fact that the Australian Senate in the last sitting week voted for our plan for lower income taxes in full.
Senator Wong: Where's your legislation, Mathias?
Senator CORMANN: Here we've got Senator Wong complaining, very disrespectfully and very arrogantly, about the fact that we are suggesting that we also deal with the address-in-reply. Well, do you know what? Again, it's more positions than in the Kama Sutra. In the last parliament, Senator Wong complained about the fact that it took us so long to deal with the address-in-reply, so here we are. We're from the government. We're here to help. We're here to be accommodating. We say: Senator Wong is keen for us to deal swiftly with the address-in-reply, so we are accommodating that by bringing it on and making appropriate time available.
It is actually arrogant and disrespectful to suggest that it is somehow a bad sign that the government has respect for our constitutional arrangement, for the Governor-General and for, of course, the importance of the address-in-reply in our constitutional arrangement. For you to come in here and suggest that that somehow is a sign of not having an agenda is incredibly disrespectful and a new low from the Australian Labor Party. Anybody who listened to the Governor-General's address to this chamber and to the parliament would have heard very clearly about the extensive agenda that this government has in this parliament—an extensive agenda to build a stronger economy, to create more jobs, to ensure that the Australian people have the best possible opportunity to get ahead and to ensure that the Australian people are safe and secure.
The Australian Labor Party need to decide whose side they're on. Whose side are you on in the Australian Labor Party? I mean, here you are suggesting that you're going to stand up for foreign terrorist fighters. Here you are suggesting that you're going to stop working families around Australia from getting more of their own money into their pockets. What are the priorities of the Labor Party under Mr Albanese? I thought it was bad when Mr Shorten was the leader of the Labor Party. Let me tell you: I never thought it could get worse. Well, it has. (Time expired)
Senator WATT (Queensland) (20:36): As my children sometimes say: 'How embarrassment.' How embarrassment that we can't even make it to the end of the second sitting day of this new term before this government runs out of an agenda. They've got not one piece of legislation ready to go. You can just imagine Senator Cormann's office this afternoon. They've worked out that they're going to run out of legislation by about 8.30 tonight—two hours before we're actually supposed to wind up on the second sitting day of the entire term. They've thought, 'Oh, jeez, we better get something organised—we better send out an email.' So they've got an email out to Senator Paterson, Senator Stoker, Senator McKenzie and the others saying: 'Jeez, guys, can you write up a speech? We've run out of legislation to talk about. We need you to get up and blabber on for 20 minutes each just to filibuster until we can get through to tomorrow.' What's going to happen tomorrow? You know what: tomorrow you haven't got to fill two hours—you've got to fill an entire day! You won't have a hope! Should we just call off parliament by about, what, two o'clock tomorrow afternoon? You will have completely run out of stuff.
If you haven't got legislation ready to debate here tonight, what gives us any confidence that we should remain here for the rest of the week? I've travelled here from Queensland and Senator Wong's come from South Australia. Senator Pratt and Senator Dodson are here. It takes Senator Dodson three days to get here! He's ready to debate legislation. You guys can't get your act together to have more than a couple of bills that everyone agrees with. What this shows, once and for all, is that this government did not expect to win the last election and has no agenda whatsoever for this third term. They are a tired, third-term government out of ideas and without an agenda. They had one idea that they took to the election—tax cuts. They got that done last week, and now they're out of things to do.
You know what? There are actually a lot of issues that the Australian public would like to see this government deal with. Let's start with wages. Wages under this government are barely rising. How about you introduce some legislation to reverse your penalty rate cuts? That might be a good start. How about you give a few more powers to the regulator to stop all the rampant wage theft we're seeing around the place? I'll give you a whole batch of private members' bills that I'm happy to stay back and debate. In fact, I'll move to extend hours if you want to!
Senator Cormann: Done!
Senator WATT: No, that's a theoretic possibility. I'm saying, hypothetically—
The PRESIDENT: Order!
Senator WATT: You know what I'm saying!
The PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Watt, I have a point of order from Senator Cormann. Senator Cormann, on a point of order.
Senator Cormann: I use my contingent motion to move a motion to suspend standing orders in order to facilitate a motion to give effect to what Senator Watt just indicated. Oh, you're now running for the hills, are you?
Senator Wong: On the point of order: I know that Senator Cormann is embarrassed because they are seeking to move to the address-in-reply on a Monday night because they've got no legislation, but he knows he can't move a contingent notice whilst there is a substantive debate before the chair.
The PRESIDENT: We must discharge the business currently before the chamber before anyone else may move a motion.
Senator WATT: I can assure Senator Cormann that I am not running for the hills. I'm going to be here for the next two minutes and thirty-eight seconds rubbing your nose in the fact that you've got no agenda! The Australian public, for very good reasons in their own minds, decided to bring you back so you can have another crack for your third term. We know that Senator Cormann—
Government senators interjecting—
Senator WATT: No, I said for their very good reasons they decided to bring you back for your third term. Go back and look at what I said. What I said is that for their very good reasons—
Senator Cormann interjecting—
Senator WATT: Senator Cormann, why don't you spend a little bit of time working out what you actually want to do? You've got nearly three more years to run this parliament, and you've got nothing that you want to do.
I've already talked about wage growth. The bill immediately prior to this motion was about housing. We know that under this government housing affordability is the worst we have seen in decades. How about you introduce some legislation on that so that we can actually debate doing something about that? We've talked about Newstart today. There might be something you can do on Newstart. There might be something you can do to assist all sorts of Australians with all sorts of issues, but you are so bereft of ideas. You'd given up on the Australian public before the last election. You don't know what you want to do.
We are all intrigued about what on earth we're going to be debating for the rest of this week, let alone next week, let alone the remainder of the term. What you clearly need to do is to send a few of your staff away to work out what you are actually going to do for an agenda? You've now got Senator McKenzie out there cooking up legislation on all sorts of things that no-one in regional Australia is talking about. This is the most embarrassing thing I have seen in three years.
Senator Colbeck has just walked in. Perhaps Senator Colbeck might like to do something about the aged care crisis that we're seeing in this country. It was revealed in question time today that the aged care regulator is completely asleep at the wheel when it comes to a nursing home that shut down a bit over a week ago on the Gold Coast. Maybe we should think about strengthening aged care legislation? Maybe we should think about strengthening Medicare? There are any number of issues that this government, if it actually was committed to serving the Australian people, could bring forward legislation for right now, but it is so out of ideas that it has no choice but to get its senators up giving address-in-reply speeches.
I remember that in the previous parliament it took the best part of an entire term to get through the address-in-replies because this government had legislation that it actually wanted to put forward. Maybe that's what you got under Prime Minister Turnbull? Maybe you actually had an agenda under Prime Minister Turnbull? Now you've got Prime Minister Morrison. Senator Cormann didn't want him leading the government, and half the people over there didn't either, and now I can see why—because you actually don't know what he wants to do. He doesn't know what he wants to do. He's the one who is stuck in the Canberra bubble, and is setting up these senators— (Time expired)
Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia—Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) (20:42): Do you want to look for the definition of 'sore losers'? Do you want to find the definition of 'sore losers'? There they all sit on the other side: sore, sad and sorry losers of the Australian Labor Party. The arrogance they had because they believed they were dead certs to win the last election, and they cannot cope with the fact that they don't run the parliament, they don't run the government, and the Australian people gave them a hiding—an absolute hiding—at the last election. The lowest primary vote in more than 100 years. Whatever happened to the proud old Australian Labor Party? The proud old Australian Labor Party copped the lowest primary vote in more than 100 years.
They've come into this chamber with performances like that from Senator Watt and Senator Wong, trying to convince us to believe that somehow they ought to be running the agenda, that they have better plans. Well, what we see from the Labor Party is a cheap and pathetic stunt tonight. Senator Watt just spoke about the fact that he remembers how the responses to the address-in-reply speech ran into the final year of the last parliament. Do you know what the Australian Labor Party had to say about that at that time? They criticised the government for what they claimed was mismanaging the Senate chamber at the time. They said the address-in-reply should have been dealt with earlier. Now the hypocrites come in here and say we're dealing with the address-in-reply too soon. That's right; there's a bunch of hypocrites sitting over there. They're sore losers. They're hypocrites who just come in and change their argument to suit the cause.
Today, the Senate has passed legislation. The Senate has dealt with multiple bills. The Senate's been getting on with its work. And now the Senate has an opportunity to progress the very first address-in-reply speeches. I saw Senator Carr was in the chamber here before—Senator Carr's still in the chamber. Do you know why Senator Carr is in the chamber? Because he's listed at No. 2 on the speakers list for the address-in-reply. Labor's Senator Carr is so keen to speak. He wants to be here speaking on the address-in-reply.
Senator Wong wants to talk about the government's agenda. Senator Wong, I would have thought, given the chaos and confusion raining from the Labor Party as to their position, that you would be breathing a sigh of relief for the hour or so respite from having to decide how you're going to vote on government legislation. Because, do you know what? When you've been tested, you've been found wanting time and time again. In the first sitting week, when we brought the government's tax relief agenda to the parliament, what was the Labor Party's position on tax relief? It was 'we don't know'. When it came to tax relief, you weren't sure whether you were for it or against it, and it wasn't until the final hour or so of that debate that you changed your mind and said you would vote for it.
Senator Wong interjecting—
Senator BIRMINGHAM: Senator Wong just mentioned the drought fund. Can anybody tell us what the Labor Party's final position on the drought fund will be? Will they vote for it? Will they vote against it? What are you going to do? That bill will come to this chamber this week, and you will have a chance to vote on it. But you could remove, Senator Wong, all uncertainty around the drought fund bill by saying you will let it through the Senate. But you won't do that, will you? You won't do that, Senator Wong.
When it comes to temporary exclusion orders, does the Labor Party have a clear position on temporary exclusion orders? The answer, again, is no. Those opposite have no clear position on any of the substantive issues, as they keep trying to have a bob each way. Why are those on the other side having a bob each way? Because we know that, internally, as a result of having lost the election that none of them could accept they might lose, they are so deeply divided and pointing the finger, blaming one another that they have to keep coming up with all of these policy positions where they say, 'We will sort of try to amend what the government's proposal is and we won't say whether we will vote for it or against it, and we will sit on this barbed wire fence right until the very end.'
Senator McKenzie: It gets very uncomfortable.
Senator BIRMINGHAM: It gets very uncomfortable indeed, Senator McKenzie. We can see that from those opposite right now. What all the proud old Australian Labor Party have left, with their lowest primary vote in more than 100 years, is cheap, pathetic, hypocritical stunts such as this that they bring to the chamber. We would encourage you to get on with debating the address-in-reply; it's your chance to respond to the comprehensive agenda that the Governor-General set out. And what you'll find is that each day when you come back here there will be new bills that are listed but, right now, you can go away and think about how you're going to vote on those bills, because you don't even know at this point in time how you intend to vote on our drought fund, on temporary exclusion orders, just as you didn't— (Time expired)
Senator KIM CARR (Victoria) (20:47): The minister has invited us to make a couple of observations. He, in fact, referred to me being on the speakers list for the address-in-reply, and he's quite right—I am more than happy to pursue that matter at whatever point the government chooses. But on this matter—and I'm sure the government will be delighted to hear what I've got to say—it needs to be appreciated that the motion that we have before the chamber is to actually deal with the fundamental problem that the Leader of the Opposition has put before us—that this is a government that's run out of steam. It's run out of steam already.
So the minister invited us to look at the Notice Paper, which I have done. On pages 4 and 5, it lists the government business. And what does that tell us? The government has no business! The point is that items listed here in orders of the day we've dealt with, and most of those were essentially non-controversial bills. Why is that the case? It is because the government never anticipated that it, in fact, would be in government. So what has it done to develop a forward program? Nothing. What it sought to do, in bringing these parliamentary sitting periods forward, was to essentially bring forward a number of pieces of legislation aimed at wedging the Labor Party.
Look at the agenda that the government now claims to be its main nation-building program—smash the trade unions, seek to smash the infrastructure fund on some alleged commitment to farming, having already had a commitment from the Labor Party that we would spend the equivalent amount of money from a properly funded source in support for drought relief. When in doubt, wrap yourself in the flag. That's the constant refrain with this mob over there, because they've got nothing else to say. This is a government that was elected on a lie. This is a government that's fundamentally illegitimate. I'll ask a simple question.
This is a Prime Minister that secured one more seat than his predecessor. His predecessor was a dud and a dunce and a dope who had to go because of his result. This Prime Minister gets one more seat: 'Oh, he's an expert. He's a genius. He's there forever.' This is a new framework, of course, aided and abetted by a highly sympathetic News Ltd that, of course, won the election. It was News Ltd that won the election, not this government, because you had nothing to say to the Australian people about the future of this country. All you had to say was that you were opposed to the Labor Party.
And, of course, you've won the unwinnable election, you said. And so what do you do when you come back into this building? You've got nothing to say, so you have to come forward with a series of wedge measures aimed at dividing, aimed at ultra-ultra-partisanship while at the same time getting the violin out, claiming, of course, that this is the new era in which we all seek to be one big, happy family.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Carr, please resume your seat. I have Senator Cormann on a point of order.
Senator Cormann: I would like to move a 10-minute extension of time for the senator from the great state of Victoria.
The PRESIDENT: I'll let Senator Carr continue.
Senator KIM CARR: You are, of course, a divided government that is not able to reconcile your own internal problems, and so what you have to do is seek to project onto the Labor Party these divisions, because your real claim, of course, is to try to undermine the trade union movement, so you can't deal with those great issues that are, in fact, affecting this country.
So what are we about? We're about trying to humiliate senior public servants. We're about trying to get the Reserve Bank governor in a position of ultimate humiliation where the independence of the Reserve Bank is brought into question. We're about trying to present a position to this country none of which was presented to the electorate. None of these matters came up through the election campaign. This was not the proposition you put to the Australian people. You, in fact, had nothing to say on the sorts of matters that you're presenting to this parliament, you allege, this week. These, of course, are devices you have sought to bring on because you've got nothing to say about the future of this country. The agenda that you claim to represent now is, of course, cobbled together in a desperate attempt to actually try to get through this parliamentary session, and that's why you've brought on this address-in-reply.
I anticipated that I would be speaking on Thursday. I'm more than happy to go whenever required, because I'm sure you'll deeply regret whatever I've got to say. The fact remains you have brought this on now because you have nothing to say to the Australian people about the future of this country. (Time expired)
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Minister for Families and Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (20:52): One of the things that I'm somewhat confused about here is that I was of the impression that the address-in-reply actually outlined the government's agenda. So I would think that there would be nothing more important for this place to be doing than actually replying to the Governor—
Senator Wong interjecting—
Senator RUSTON: It's interesting that Senator Wong is interjecting here about it taking three years to reply last time, and I remember the other side being highly critical of the length of time that it took for us to get the address-in-reply responded to and back to the Governor. Standing here, I can remember when I first came into this place. I was lucky enough to be the person who led off on the address-in-reply, and I remember thinking that that was something that was tremendously important for me to do. And I must admit that I was actually quite looking forward to hearing Senator Carr's contribution this afternoon on his address-in-reply and what he thought of the government's agenda—the one that he says that we don't actually have.
The other thing that I thought was quite extraordinary in the comments from Senator Carr was when he said the government was elected on a lie. I just wonder whether, Senator Carr, you're suggesting the Australian public is stupid for electing this government. This government was elected because we went to the people. We listened to the people. We didn't stay here in Canberra and listen to what was going on inside the Canberra bubble. We actually went out there and we talked to the people out there and asked them what it was they wanted. And one of the very, very important groups of people that we spoke to were the farmers.
I'd just like to point out that the matter of this debate tonight is because of what's going on in the other house in relation to our drought fund. Can I tell you that one of the greatest priorities of the Morrison government is to look after our famers. They are doing it really, really tough at the moment. I come from rural and regional South Australia. I don't know how many of you come from rural and regional areas in the states that you represent, but can I tell you that our farmers are absolutely at their wits' end at the moment. To think that this place is holding up making a decision on providing the kind of support and surety that they need to feel comfortable that their government is responding!
You might talk about two years. Let's talk about everything that's happened to date. This government—the Morrison government—has a fantastic track record in responding to the issues that our farmers have been suffering in drought. Drought and floods—you may muck around here and pretend they don't matter, but I can assure you that to every single person who lives outside the capital cities and finds themselves in trouble the response of the Morrison government is something that they really, really appreciate.
The simple question to those opposite is: are you going to support our farmers? Are you going to let this piece of legislation through, or are we going to continue to talk about the excuses for why you're not prepared to support our farmers in the Drought Future Fund? You need to get out there and you need to go and tell the farmers of Australia that you are mucking around in here with their futures, with their livelihoods, with their sanity, with their mental health. You're okay doing that. Mucking around in here doing that on some sort of spurious thing, and then suggesting that the government's agenda and the address-in-reply is somehow not an important thing for this place to be debating tonight, is really quite an interesting concept.
The arrogance of those over there who think that this is an okay thing to be playing around with tonight is an absolute shame. This Drought Future Fund is absolutely important to give our farmers the tools that they need and the confidence and the strength to know that their government actually cares about the absolutely harrowing time that they're going through at the moment. I'd like to know tonight, before we finish this debate, are those opposite going to guarantee that this bill is going to turn up into this place this week? I've got to tell you, I don't want to go home and tell my farming friends that this place mucked around this week and didn't do what it needed to do to help them and to build resilience into the rural and regional economies.
The value of rural and regional communities is tremendously important. For us to be sitting here is just another example of you on the other side living in the Canberra bubble and not listening to the people who are on the other side.
The PRESIDENT: The time for the debate has expired. The question is that the motion moved by Senator Wong to suspend standing orders be agreed to.
The Senate divided. [21:02]
(The President—Senator Ryan)
GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S SPEECH
Address-in-Reply
Senator Mc DONALD (Queensland) (20:42):
I move:
That the following address-in-reply be agreed to:
To His Excellency the Governor-General
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY—
We, the Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia, in Parliament assembled, desire to express our loyalty to our Most Gracious Sovereign, and to thank Your Excellency for the speech which you have been pleased to address to Parliament.
Senators, I am humbled to move this motion and look forward to making my contribution at a later time, following my first speech.
Senator PATERSON (Victoria) (21:05): I second the motion. After that, colleagues, thank you for staying for this address in reply. It's not typical to have an audience of this size for a speech like this, but I'm grateful for it. I hope we can take the temperature down just a few degrees and get back to the substantive issue before us, which is to respond to the excellent address the Governor-General gave us in this chamber only a few weeks ago outlining the government's very extensive agenda, which I will come to in a moment.
At the outset, I'd like to take the opportunity to congratulate all new members of this place, particularly the many new senators from the Liberal and National parties elected at this election. It is a very pleasing aspect of this election, I must say. I am sure that you will all make a very valuable contribution to this place in your service to the Australian people over the coming years.
The Governor-General's speech opening parliament is an important event in our political system. As His Excellency said in his speech, the opening of a new parliament marks the opening of a new chapter in our country's history. It is important that at times like this we reflect on where we are as a country and where we want to head. Too often, we forget the remarkable stability of our political system, a system that we have inherited and have improved, a system that combines the history and traditions of Westminster with aspects of America's federal system and adds features that are unique to Australia. Our political system, along with other institutions we have derived from the Western civilisation tradition, such as our common law legal system, individual rights and freedoms and our free market economy, deserves much of the credit for the country we have been able to create and enjoy. But nothing is preordained, and much of the credit must go to the wisdom of the Australian people.
Throughout our history, there have been many times, many forks in the road, when the Australian people were asked to make a decision that would have significantly altered the course our country was on. In its own way, this past election involved such a decision. That is because the 2019 election, more than any other election in recent memory, offered the Australian people a clear choice about how they wanted to be governed. This wasn't just a choice between personalities—between Mr Morrison and Mr Shorten—it was also a choice between two clear and distinct visions about the role government ought to play in the lives of everyday Australians. Much has been made, including in the chamber tonight, of the relatively restrained election policy platform that the Liberal and National parties took to the election. For some it has been a source of criticism. We have been accused of having an insufficiently ambitious legislative agenda. It is true we did not take a platform of radical change to the election, and there is a very good reason for that. While Australia certainly faces challenges, and there are issues this parliament must and will confront in this term, on this side of the chamber we did not believe that Australia was so fundamentally broken that it needed a radical overhaul. Australia is not a perfect country, but we have much to be proud of as a nation. We believe that Australia is a wonderful place to live, work, raise a family, and pursue your own vision of a happy life. We are prosperous, harmonious and free. A radical reform agenda is not needed to secure that. In fact, it's much more likely to put it at jeopardy. What is needed is evolutionary change which reaffirms and strengthens the values and institutions that have already made our country great.
The coalition's vision at the last election was fundamentally about trusting the Australian people. It was about trusting that they knew what was best for their own lives. It was about encouraging their aspirations and making sure that government policy empowered them so they could benefit from their own hard work. It's this vision of trust that is behind the policies we took to the election and it's behind the agenda that the Governor-General laid out in his speech on our behalf.
Take the personal income tax cuts that have passed the parliament in our first sitting week. These are fundamentally about ensuring that Australians are able to keep more of their own money because they know better how to spend it than anyone in this place ever will. They are designed to encourage Australians to work hard and to do the best for themselves and their families, whether that involves going for promotion, starting a new business or simply deciding to spend more time with their kids. These are decisions that people should be able to make without the disincentives that result from an excessive tax burden, unnecessary regulation or an overly technocratic state that attempts to tell them what decisions they ought to be making. This vision explains why the Morrison government is committed to cutting red tape, as the Prime Minister recently outlined in his speech to the Western Australian chamber of commerce.
When we were elected in 2013, the coalition embarked on a red-tape-reduction agenda. In our first three years we reduced the burden of red tape by an estimated $5.8 billion. Removing these outdated and excessive regulations was an important first step, but there is still much that needs to be done. According to the Institute of Public Affairs, red tape costs the Australian economy $176 billion every year. I was very pleased to see my friend, Mr Ben Morton, appointed to take responsibility for that red-tape-reduction agenda from the Prime Minister's department.
Some regulation may be necessary, but Australians don't need a bureaucrat constantly looking over their shoulders and monitoring everything they do as they attempt to go about their business. In order to enable Australians to thrive, we must continue to place trust in them and reduce the excessive regulation and unnecessary red tape that they currently have to deal with. That's why we will continue this project by consulting businesses across Australia and learning from them about the unnecessary or overly complex regulations that they have to deal with. We will then work together to reduce those burdens, if not eliminate them entirely.
Of course, the government has a broader agenda than cutting taxes and reducing red tape, as good as those things are. We are already committed to providing record funding for infrastructure, with $100 billion already allocated over the next decade. And we're providing record spending for health and education funding to ensure the high-quality services that the Australian people expect us to provide are secured. But this is only possible because of the hard work of returning the budget to surplus. In its own way, this is a reflection of the vision we took to the election. That's because, just as we trust the Australian people, the Australian people expect us to engage in prudent economic management so that future generations of Australians are not burdened with the debts of the current generation.
Contrast this to the vision that the Labor Party took to the election. Far from attempting to present themselves as economic conservatives, as Kevin Rudd did in the lead up to the 2007 election, Mr Shorten and the Labor Party got carried away with what they clearly thought was an imminent victory. And so they decided to abandon the caution that opposition leaders usually display. If they want a reminder of just how certain the Labor Party were that they would win the last election, I suggest people reacquaint themselves with what is now a very tragic video clip of Mr Shorten awkwardly telling Arnold Schwarzenegger that he was going to be Australia's next Prime Minister.
In abandoning their prudence, the Labor Party instead embraced a radical far-Left agenda centred around a set of massive tax increases. In total, they went to the election proposing $387 billion in additional taxes. This was not a Labor agenda in the mould of Hawke or Keating; it was a policy agenda much closer to that of Gough Whitlam or even Jeremy Corbyn. Fundamentally, this policy agenda was based on the premise that government bureaucrats, the political class, and in particular Labor MPs themselves, know what is best for the Australian public. In fact, they know so well that they know better than the public what is in their own best interests. Their vision for government was a vision that would disempower Australians, a vision based on the arrogant idea the government knows how to spend money better than the people who put in the hard work to earn it.
This arrogance was in full display when Mr Bowen, the then shadow Treasurer, was questioned about the impact of their $57 billion retirees tax. Let's remember that this was a policy that would have directly affected and damaged the financial security of 900,000 self-funded retirees, many of them on very modest incomes. In fact, 84 per cent of the people who would have been impacted by this tax on retirement savings were on taxable incomes of below $37,000 a year. Disproportionately they were women. How did Chris Bowen respond to the concerns of these Australians? By telling them, 'If you don't like our policies, don't vote for us.'
On one level, I guess, at least that is refreshingly honest. Thankfully, the Australian people did exactly that. So many people abandoned the Labor Party at the last election that their primary vote was the lowest it had ever been in more than 100 years. This election was the most dramatic repudiation of Labor's paternalistic economic policy agenda that is imaginable.
It's worth reflecting briefly on what the Labor Party would have done with this agenda had they in fact been successful at this election. Since the election, they have been advising the government that we should be doing more to stimulate the economy. But their election agenda was about as antistimulatory as it gets. Imagine the consequences for employment and the financial security of all Australians if, at this time of economic uncertainty, their $387 billion plan to increase taxes had been implemented. Thankfully we will never know how damaging that would have been.
One of the groups who abandoned the Labor Party at this election were voters of the faith. To be fair to those opposite, on this issue at least so far there has been some self-reflection on this point. Even Mr Bowen seemed to have changed his tune from the take-it-or-leave it approach mentioned earlier, telling the media that Labor needed to urgently re-engage with religious Australians, many of whom 'no longer feel that progressive politics cares about them.' These are 'people with a social conscience, who want to be included in the progressive movement,' Mr Bowen said.
Anyone who wants to understand why voters of faith are deserting the progressive side in politics in droves needs only to look at the case of Israel Folau. The question of whether Rugby Australia acted within the law in terminating his contract will be determined by the courts. But what we should all be able to agree on is that people shouldn't be fired from their jobs and hounded out of the public square simply for expressing religious beliefs in public. I want to be clear here: personally, I am agnostic. I don't believe that anyone is going to hell. But religious freedom is a fundamental freedom in any free society. It's the only way we can have people of different faiths and, indeed, no faiths live together in relative harmony, as they do in Australia and across much, though not all, of the Western world. Unfortunately, many on the modern left, particularly those who congregate on social media platforms like Twitter, seem to relish searching for anyone who deviates from the dominant progressive orthodoxy, and then doing all that they can to ruin their lives. This is not a recipe for a tolerant, pluralistic society. We're perfectly capable of living among each other, despite our different moral values, if we accept the basic right of our fellow Australians to hold and express their own views on religion or any other question. If we seek to use the state or mob tactics to enforce our own personal moral vision on Australians who don't share it, we will end up bitterly divided and resentful towards each other.
Australians of faith know that it's the Liberal and National parties who are committed to protecting religious freedoms. It is in our political DNA to respect the beliefs and choices of individuals, rather than to dictate to them or to attempt to run their lives. But I am hopeful that the Labor Party will heed the advice of Mr Bowen and others and come to the table with the government in due course to ensure that all Australians' freedoms are protected in this term of parliament.
Personally, I am honoured to have been returned again to represent the people of Victoria as a Liberal senator. It is a rare and special thing to have the opportunity to represent your fellow citizens in this place. I will continue, as I have in my first three years in the Senate, to be a voice for the values of the Liberal cause and to fight to protect the fundamental freedoms of all Australians.
Senator KIM CARR (Victoria) (21:20): This debate has been brought on quite early because the government has not been able to provide the Senate with the business that we'd normally do at this time. Within that context, it's important to acknowledge that the Governor-General made a speech which outlined a very, very thin series of propositions that this government intends to pursue through this parliament. There are many issues that were neglected in that speech that the country has to face in terms of the welfare of our people, which, frankly, has not been part of the government's thinking.
One of those has been the issue around the questions of cladding on buildings, non-compliant building products and public safety in terms of our housing. We now have a situation where there are tens of thousands of buildings in this country which are in a highly dangerous position, a position which has now become acute. The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews, does not seem to have any grasp of the importance of this question or the seriousness of the safety issues that are facing the building industry, nor the economic consequences for the tens of thousands of Australians who are now faced with a situation where they have units which are virtually worthless, with no capacity to get insurance or to sell.
We hear repeated statements from the minister—in fact, I acknowledge you've been getting quite a sympathetic response from the media, the way the media is running at the moment. As I say, the Murdoch empire won the election, and they feel that they've got to congratulate their champions in the fight, so we hear the minister tell the states they must act, and, of course, this is the position that many here in the gallery take to be the situation. But these headlines miss the essential points that concern this issue. First is that this government cannot pass the buck to the states, because the states and the Commonwealth are collectively responsible for building regulation in this country. Second, and more importantly, is that this crisis has emerged as a result of deregulation and privatisation in the building industry. It is the product of deregulation, privatisation and the cutting of red tape, which we've just heard so much about, that has produced a situation where no-one is held accountable for a major question of public safety affecting tens of thousands of buildings across this nation.
The minister, like her predecessors in the Morrison-Turnbull-Abbott governments, refused to acknowledge these facts, but they've been confirmed in inquiry after inquiry, which are available to those that have taken interest to actually understand these questions. The fundamental responsibility of government—and there can be no more fundamental responsibility of government—is to protect lives and to protect public safety. This is where the government has fundamentally failed, and I think its failure not to have a forward agenda is a matter that ought bring public condemnation, not applause.
This crisis is growing more acute. Last week, the Building Minister's Forum met in Sydney. The minister told the meeting, in an ABC interview, that the states were going to implement the recommendation of the latest review, which is the Shergold-Weir review into building regulations, which the forum itself had commissioned back in June 2017. This is a report that the government has had for 17 months. The minister sought to pass the buck to the states for the implementation of the recommendations. This is, of course, despite the fact that the government had signed off in 2017 to an intergovernmental agreement between the Commonwealth and the states and the territories—that is, the agreement which declares that it is the collective responsibility of the states and the Commonwealth to enforce the national building code. 'Collective responsibility' are the words used in that agreement.
At the forum's meeting, the minister triumphantly announced that she had produced an effective response to the crisis in the industry because, she says, the states had agreed to implement the Shergold-Weir recommendations. There had been no progress at that meeting last week. They had already agreed to that 12 months previously, and the communique for the forum's meeting in August 2018 outlines precisely that. It indicated the states and the Commonwealth were developing a paper to implement the reforms based on the recommendations of the Shergold-Weir report. In February this year the forum communique said:
Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to developing a joint response …
Last week they announced it all over again—except that they are even further away from producing actual details of any response. The meeting produced no solutions. There was no agreement on banning the use of flammable cladding in construction, despite the fact that the existing national code bans the use of that cladding in buildings higher than three storeys.
How is it then that this cladding is on tens of thousands of buildings across this country? There was no agreement on a national licencing scheme for building contractors. There was no response on the phoenixing of rogue builders or on a national registration of directors. There was no acknowledgment by the Commonwealth that it had responsibilities in this area. It was all said to be a matter for the states. So there was a catalogue of nothings. Like this government's forward agenda, it is a catalogue of nothings.
One only has to look at this briefly to understand that this is a situation whereby, as a result of what's developing in the insurance industry now, where there is rectification action being taken in some states, there are no surveyors to actually undertake that work. Surveyors can't get insurance because of the exemptions that have been imposed as part of the latest fix, which has been presented as the grand solution for the crisis that has emerged within the building industry. So in Victoria at the moment the exemptions in insurance policies mean the surveyors can't get coverage. They're not going to be exposed to the liabilities incurred in a privatised, deregulated inspection regime, so the cutting of red tape is not going to be the solution here.
The privatisation of the industry has meant there has been no accountability. No-one's been held accountable for the maintenance of safety standards. We're seeing people forced out of their homes and onto the streets because of the fires and because of the structural defects in the industry, and we have no idea when it will be safe for people to return. Thousands of buildings are encased in flammable cladding. In this city the airport is one of those. The new building at the airport is one of those buildings. People have bought into high-rise apartments in good faith, and they do not know who is responsible for fixing the buildings or who is going to pay for it. People don't know what their personal liability is going to be. What they do know is that the value of their homes is being irreparably reduced, and this is a government that wants to talk about improving home ownership.
It's not just flammable cladding here. What we have seen is inquiry after inquiry pointing out problems with water-proofing, sprinkler systems and structural defects in steel; non-conforming building products right throughout the industry for the installation of fire doors, firewalls, fire doorframes; lead in water pipes; imported brass plumbing components; non-compliant electrical cables.
The Victorian government has offered $300 million for these matters. Has the Commonwealth sought to provide any assistance on this? None whatsoever. The Victorian government will have to make up the shortfall by increasing charges on building permits. Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland have announced temporary measures to deal with the insurance problem, but these measures don't fix the problem. Of course, they go to removing some of the liability for the use of flammable cladding. The so-called solution of insurance problems defines away the reason why people need the insurance in the first place! It absolves certifiers from responsibility when the building is encased in what is effectively a petrol bomb. So it does nothing to solve the problem, which is the fundamental threat to public safety in this country.
The crisis in the building industry can't be overlooked or concealed, and the Commonwealth cannot evade its responsibilities by pointing the finger at someone else. I repeat: this is not just a state issue. This is collective responsibility, and the Commonwealth has signed document after document acknowledging that proposition. And yet in the media in this country we're constantly told that it's just a state problem and that the states should front up to it.
How weak is that? Unless this is exposed by the Labor Party we won't hear any more about it. That's what's happening. This is a tragedy, and the introduction of the system with the complementary legislation to push deregulation prevailed over good sense. This is a system based on a simple proposition that we could have a model built on an assumption that self-regulation could work. The so-called 'deeming to satisfy' provisions of the national building code have been standard practice throughout the industry. The evidence is overwhelming—absolutely overwhelming—of document fraud, product substitution and continued gross malpractice. But have we had any prosecutions? Even on matters involving direct breaches of the Commonwealth Customs Act, nothing!
What we've got here is their failure to provide a regulatory system in the industry with the resources needed to make the regulations effective. When government sought to privatise the building approval process, they made sure that the accountability mechanisms were taken away. The very people who signed off on these buildings are the same ones who are dependent on those that actually did the work, and therefore there is a fundamental conflict of interest. That is the fundamental problem with the way in which the codes actually operate at the moment—an inherent conflict of interest which is at the core of the deregulated system. And now we have a deregulated financial market fostered on our apartment and housing construction boom, and everyone pats everyone else on the back and pretends, of course, that we can blame somebody else when disputes arise.
During the boom, of course, they just onsell it—they hope—unless it catches fire. Despite the warnings of the fire brigades and the fire authorities around the country this allowed shoddy, unsafe products, including flammable cladding, to be used. The savings involved in this are what struck me as so amazing. They have been so small by comparison on a per square metre basis. But the cost to the country—not just the financial cost of repairing but the potential costs, given what we've seen in these overseas examples of fires in high-rise buildings—and the enormous potential loss of life strikes me as something we simply can't ignore.
The Lacrosse fire in Melbourne in 2014 brought it home to me just how serious this issue was, following of course what occurred in the United Kingdom with Grenfell. We've had the situation now where the Opal Tower in Western Sydney has been evacuated. We've had the Mascot Towers in Sydney and the Neo 200 building fire in Melbourne's CBD. And I repeat: it's not just cladding. We've had the good luck that no-one has been killed to this point, but the Grenfell fire, where 72 people were killed, demonstrated what the potential is.
This crisis has been documented meticulously. It is simply not good enough to say, 'Well, we didn't understand the implications of this in the period from 2014 onwards.' The Shergold-Weir review of building regulations was released in February last year. The findings were unequivocal. They declared the system was broken. And now we have a situation—what is it?—nearly 17 months later, when they'd said that their recommendations should be implemented within three years, where no action has been taken. The response has been to evade responsibility, just like all the other shoddy product suppliers.
What we've seen is people trying to hide behind the Constitution, with this government claiming the states are responsible for building regulation. The Commonwealth introduced the national—and I repeat: national—regulatory framework with the states. There is a national framework. It would not be a national framework without the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is responsible for the Australian standards process, which the system depends on.
The Senate has produced numerous reports on this matter and highlighted these issues. What we do know is that the states have made recommendations, but this government has failed to provide any support whatsoever. I know the minister keeps trying to avoid the responsibility here, but I repeat: the latest version of the agreement between the Commonwealth and states was signed by Minister Andrews's predecessor in December 2017. The agreement is quite clear:
Through this Agreement the Australian Government, the States and the Territories are facilitating the development of a more efficient, internationally competitive Building and Construction industry through reforms to regulation nationally—
Nationally. It's simply not enough to say that the agreement that regulates the relationships within the building industry is anything other than a collective responsibility—
This Agreement recognises that the States and Territories have primary responsibility for regulating Building and Construction—
Yes, but it is still a collective responsibility. The responsibility is exercised collectively through the Building Ministers' Forum—
The respective Ministers of these Parties responsible for Building and Construction policy, known as the Building Ministers' Forum, are collectively—
I repeat: collectively—
responsible for the policies, decisions and actions to ensure the Building and Construction requirements meet the expectations of the community.
The agreement to which Minister Andrews is now bound does not allow for a cop-out that's so routinely become the pattern of public discourse in this country.
Professor Shergold and Ms Weir spoke to the ministers' forum when their report was released a year ago. Their report followed upon reports that had already been received, including the Wallace report of 2014 and the 2015 Lambert report. There were two pertinent Victorian Auditor-General's reports. There was, of course, the Victorian task force into aluminium cladding, which found that there'd been systemic rorting of the system—systemic rorting of the system.
Their recommendations—there are 24 of them—suggested that everyone in the industry had been consulted and that the states had agreed to them. Seventeen months ago they said to the ministers that they had to get this done within a three-year period. Nothing has happened. We now have class actions underway. We now have an insurance crisis. In fact, what's occurred since that time is the situation's become more complicated, as entire buildings have had to be evacuated and thousands of people have been put out on the street.
It comes down to this: the Commonwealth must accept its share of responsibility that it signed up to back in 1994 and repeatedly in other agreements since that time. The Morrison government must ensure the Australian community's expectation of safe and secure homes and workplaces are actually met. If this minister can't do the job then this matter should be dealt with by a COAG meeting of premiers and should be convened as a matter of urgency.
Instead of blathering about cutting red tape, this Prime Minister should insist that Australia has a national system of building regulations, a system in which all building practitioners are held accountable and proper standards are enforced. The Morrison government must ensure that the Australian community's expectation of safe and secure homes and workplaces are met. It's simply not acceptable to pass the buck and to try and avoid your responsibilities when so much is at stake.
The report was called Building confidence. We've failed to do that. (Time expired)
Senator BROCKMAN (Western Australia—Deputy Government Whip in the Senate) (21:40): Before getting on to some remarks in address-in-reply, I do note that this is effectively the end of only the second full day of parliament of a new parliament with an extensive agenda, as we heard from the Governor-General just a few days ago. And yet what do we get from those opposite? We get stunts. We get arrogance. They didn't listen to the Australian people a few short weeks ago. They've forgotten already, if they ever took a lesson from what happened a few short weeks ago. We have seen stunts in this place and in the other place today aimed at delaying assistance to the hardworking men and women of rural and regional Australia, the hardworking small businesses of rural and regional Australia, those affected by drought.
Luckily, in my home state of WA, we had a pretty good season last year and, so far, even though the rains came a little bit late, we look like—touch wood—having a pretty reasonable season again. But those in the eastern states, particularly those in the home state of my colleague, Senator McGrath, have been suffering a terrible drought which is ongoing and continuing. One of the priorities of this government is to give assistance to those struggling rural communities affected by drought. And what do we get from those opposite? We get stunts and arrogance. We on this side have a long set of policy priorities. We have a significant agenda, not the least of which is helping those people struggling through the drought and that is certainly something we wish to progress through this parliament as quickly as possible. I would commend all in the other place and all senators to support those drought relief measures in the absolute most timely way they possibly can.
As the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and the finance minister have all acknowledged, there are some headwinds in the global economy that the Australian economy needs to face. We have the correct settings to face those headwinds. We have the ingenuity, the dynamism within our economy to face those headwinds, but they are there. They are acknowledged. They are very real. Dwelling investment is down. The iron ore price, which particularly affects our home state of Western Australia, is predicted to fall and that will obviously have a significant budgetary impact. It also has a significant impact on the men and women who work in that industry.
The metallurgical coal price is expected to fall as well. Obviously there are currently trade tensions in the globe which have the potential to negatively impact the Australian economy. That said, the settings and the fundamentals of the Australian economy are very good. The Australian economy grew by 2.7 per cent in the 2018 calendar year, faster than all of the other G7 nations with the exception of the United States. The wage price index, which is something those on the other side often talk about, is 2.3 per cent when inflation is 1.3 per cent. This is obviously a positive situation.
The budget has been turned around by $55 billion. The net impact of policy decisions on the payment side of the budget is $928 million, once offsetting spending reductions are taken into account. We're moving towards a net-positive position by the end of the decade and obviously there is a clear strategy in place now to pay off government net debt.
Spending growth has fallen, in fact, to half of what we inherited and is at the lowest level in 50 years—it's currently 1.9 per cent. The average annual growth in spending above inflation that we inherited from Labor was around 4 per cent. Spending to GDP is down to 24.6 per cent. Again, this is below the 25.4 per cent inherited from Labor and well below the 30-year average. Current revenue more than pays for our recurrent expenditure. Payments in the next financial year will be $4.2 billion lower than assumed, and payments over the 2019-20 forward estimates period will be $21 billion lower than assumed.
What do these settings, these fundamentals of the economy, allow this government to do? Those opposite, in carrying out their stunt this evening, say that the government hasn't got an agenda. Well, in less than two full days of parliament, we have got through this place a very significant tax relief package that will help hardworking Australians from all walks of life. How long is a week in politics? Normally, that phrase is used in the negative. When something goes wrong, we ask, 'How long is a week in politics?' This time, we can use it in the positive. In a week in politics, we heard the Governor-General's address. We heard it setting out the government's agenda, including a significant tax relief package. Within a week, it passed through this place and the other place and became law. We heard today in question time from Minister Cormann how many Australian taxpayers have already put their tax returns in for the last financial year in order to keep more of the hard-earned money that they receive in their pay packets.
In fact, from this year on, the government's tax relief plan will benefit more than 10 million Australian taxpayers earning up to $126,000 per year. From this year, we have reduced taxes for low- and middle-income earners. This tax relief will be immediately available: $1,080 for singles and $2,160 for couples and families. So this is a government that is already delivering on the promises that we took to the Australian people just a few short weeks ago—promises that were recognised by the Australian people and were valued by the Australian people to the point where they voted us back into government on the back of those commitments.
This government has now legislated to increase the 19 per cent tax bracket from $41,000 to $45,000 and increase the low-income tax offset from $645 to $700 from 2023. In 2024-25, the 32.5 per cent tax rate will be reduced to 30 per cent and, therefore, will abolish one tax rate altogether—94 per cent of all taxpayers will pay no more than 30 per cent.
There were accusations from those opposite during the election campaign—they seem to have struck this phrase out of their lexicon post-election—about targeting the 'the top end of town'. But, in fact, when you look at people who are within that under-$126,000 group, who do we find? We find heavy diesel mechanics earning, on average, $121,000 per annum; hardworking electricians in Western Australia earning, on average, $97,000; senior police constables—very hardworking senior police constables—earning, on average, around $92,000; and senior teachers in Western Australia earning around $109,000 a year. These aren't the top end of town; these are hardworking Australians who deserve to keep more of their own hard-earned money. These are aspirational Australians—people who want to have a go, who want to get ahead and who want to provide a better future for their children. They're not the top end of town. They're average Australians, and they're the average Australians who rejected the politics of envy that Labor promulgated and rejected the politics of dislike of aspiration that those opposite promulgated during the election campaign. This is a significant part of the reason why those Australians supported this government and returned this government to power, allowing us, in just our first two full days of parliament, to deliver the most significant tax relief package since the Howard government.
Debate interrupted.
COMMITTEES
Membership
THE ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sterle) (Western Australia) (21:50): With the indulgence of the Senate, I understand that the whips have agreed to the Senate considering further committee memberships. The President has received a letter nominating senators to be members of committees.
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (21:50): by leave—I move:
That senators be appointed to committees as follows:
Electoral Matters—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senator Waters
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senator Faruqi
Migration—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senator McKim
National Broadband Network—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senator McKim
National Disability Insurance Scheme—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senator Steele-John
Northern Australia—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senator Waters
Treaties—Joint Standing Committee—
Appointed—Senator Steele-John.
Question agreed to.
ADJOURNMENT
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sterle ) (21:50): Order! I propose the question:
That the Senate do now adjourn.
Earle Haven Retirement Village
Senator WATT (Queensland) (21:51): Before we adjourn tonight, I would like to make a contribution about some extremely distressing events which we saw unfold on the Gold Coast in Queensland a bit over a week ago at the Earle Haven Retirement Village. We obviously asked a number of questions of the minister during question time today. It is an incident that has attracted attention not just on the Gold Coast, where my office is based, but pretty much nationwide, I think, as a particularly awful incident involving vulnerable elderly people. I'm pleased the minister is here so that he can hear what I have to say. He might be able to take a few things away from this and follow up for tomorrow.
At the very beginning I want to make the point that I and anyone who has observed these incidents have been really shocked by what happened to around 70 elderly, frail people in their 80s and 90s, in some cases with dementia and a range of other illnesses, who were really left in the lurch a bit over a week ago when the nursing home that they live in—and that they presumably pay fees for and that taxpayers contribute towards—was shut down without any notice. I know that it's been an extremely distressing time for the residents, their families, the staff there and the community in general. I do want to acknowledge that the minister today in question time expressed his dismay as well, and I've seen that he has done so in the media in recent days as well. I appreciate him for acknowledging the distress that has been caused to people.
For those who haven't followed what occurred I might quickly give a little bit of background so that people know what I'm talking about. It's probably easiest if I just quote from a couple of the articles that were written, in particular, by the Gold Coast Bulletin after these events. The events happened on Thursday, 11 July. To quote the Gold Coast Bulletin: 'Vulnerable elderly residents of a private Gold Coast nursing home face uncertain futures after being left without carers, food and medical supplies due to a staff exodus yesterday. The state, Gold Coast Health, police and ambulance paramedics rushed to Nerang's Earle Haven Retirement Village aged-care wing in the afternoon and were relocating residents last night. Residents, many of whom are bedridden or suffer acute dementia, face a rushed relocation from the private facility to other city aged-care beds. Police had to use special powers to step in and relocate patients in the midst of the crisis yesterday.'
I think any of us who either have or have had elderly relatives in aged-care facilities—I'm sure all of us have been in that situation—know how vulnerable residents of these aged-care homes are at the best of times. The idea that all of a sudden a nursing home would effectively cease operations—thankfully, some of the staff stayed behind, contacted police, contacted ambulance services and made arrangements, but people were effectively left without proper medical care, without food, without arrangements being made. It was absolutely disgraceful and not what we want to see happen to any elderly person in our community.
Family members of the residents arrived. They were quoted as being 'shocked' to find the near-empty aged-care facility. There were reports of contractors arriving on site to remove medical equipment, medical records being removed, medical records being strewn all over the floor. I think we've all seen the photographs of that in the newspapers—absolutely disgraceful scenes, which shouldn't be occurring in a country like Australia. Staff have talked about valuables, including fridges, patient medication and documentation, being cleared by people they described as strangers. One nurse said that the only indication of the impending closure was the disappearance of patient medical record databases that morning, which management put down to a wifi outage. So total chaos in this nursing home, with highly vulnerable people bearing the brunt of it.
I think what's probably more distressing, arguably, than the events which unfolded is that it does seem that there had been a number of warning signs about trouble at this particular nursing home, which did not prompt action by any government figure. I know the minister's only been in the role a short time, but the regulators, the department, ministers, ministers' officers—there had been a number of warnings, and it didn't take a lot of effort for me to find out myself. All it takes is just going to the government's My Aged Care website and you can see the history of sanctions that have been issued against a company called People Care Pty Ltd, who were running this nursing home. They go back as far as 2007. There are sanctions issued back in April 2007, when People Care was deemed not eligible to receive Australian government subsidies for any new care recipients for a period of six months, ceasing on 3 December 2016. That was prompted by the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency providing a report that identified serious risks to care recipients at the services: failure to ensure that care recipients received appropriate clinical care; failure to ensure that care recipients' skin integrity is consistent with their general health; failure to ensure that care recipients receive adequate nutrition and hydration; and failure to provide care recipients with a safe and comfortable environment. I wouldn't have thought it gets a lot worse than that. That is a complete failure to provide a decent, safe service to residents. And that's back in 2007.
There have been other sanctions issued concerning failure to provide financial reports. I recognise that there is an investigation underway. We'll see what that reveals, but it seems pretty clear that there is some sort of financial dispute. It's possible that money hasn't been available to pay staff and other costs. Quite recently, I think in January this year, a sanction was issued against People Care for failing to comply with requirements under the Aged Care Act to provide an aged-care financial report within four months after the end of the financial year.
So, all up, prior to this event there were four different sanctions issued against People Care Pty Ltd, the service provider at this nursing home. I think many of us in Queensland who have been observing this are wondering why this didn't trigger more prompt action by the regulator and by the government as a whole. I would have thought that that number of sanctions against a particular nursing home would be enough to tell you that there's a serious problem and that perhaps even more serious action than simply issuing a sanction should be considered.
There was a report in the Gold Coast Bulletin today where former staff of the nursing home say they were purchasing their own equipment to cover shortages in the lead-up to the mass exodus of the facility. The Queensland Nurses and Midwives' Union has had to bring legal action in the Fair Work Commission to try to recover unpaid wages and superannuation, I'm told, going back several years. That is not a secret matter. This is stuff that's on the public record that would have been available to everyone concerned. There was another report in the Courier-Mail a few days ago which talked about the global owner of the subcontractor who was hired by People Care—a company called Help Street—the global owner of Help Street has previously been banned from managing companies by the federal government's own corporations watchdog, ASIC, because of unpaid debts.
So we've got a service provider that has been repeatedly sanctioned by the government's own aged-care regulators for failing to meet safety and care standards for its residents. We've got a subcontractor who is owned by someone who has been banned from managing companies in Australia. I think you really do have to wonder: what has it got to take before some sort of serious action is taken?
I have to say, I was a bit disappointed that the minister wasn't aware of some of these incidents when he was asked questions about it today. I know he took them on notice, and he may have an opportunity to provide us with some more information because all of that information is on the public record. Minister Colbeck, if I could just say: there are many of us based on the Gold Coast who are looking for some answers about how this happened and why the regulator didn't know. I know you've got an investigation underway, but we would appreciate some answers to these basic questions sooner than that.
In the time that I've got remaining, I want to pay tribute to the staff at this nursing home—the paramedics, people from Gold Coast Health and every single person who got involved in this emergency effort. I'm sure that when those people turned up to work that day they weren't expecting that they were going to be part of some mass evacuation exercise. But they did the job well and people have been looked after, so thank you to the staff. As we mentioned in question time today, I think there are some serious implications for the health system and the aged-care system on the Gold Coast generally, and I really do hope that places will be available for those who need them.
Parbo, Sir Arvi, AC
Senator CANAVAN (Queensland—Minister for Resources and Northern Australia and Deputy Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (22:01): I rise tonight to pay tribute to a titan of Australia's resources sector. On 1 May this year Australia lost one of its greatest contributors to our nation's mining and resources industry with the sad passing of Sir Arvi Parbo. Sir Arvi's long and successful career in Australian business continues to have its legacy felt today, and it will be felt for many decades more. His life and achievements contain many lessons for us.
Arvi's story was a common Australian one, but he had an uncommon impact on the lives of so many. As an 18-year-old he fled his Estonian homeland ahead of the Soviet occupation and migrated to Australia in 1949. He apparently chose to come to Australia instead of his alternative option of Canada because Australia was further from war-torn Europe than Canada.
After completing an engineering degree on a Commonwealth scholarship, he joined the Western Mining Corporation in 1956, where he would work for the next 43 years. Arvi was heavily involved in the development of some of Australia's greatest resource projects—some of our greatest nation-building endeavours—like Olympic Dam, the Kambalda nickel mine and the aluminium industry. Arvi's well-regarded leadership and vision made Australia a wealthier nation, and he helped improve the lives of thousands.
In the mid-1960s, Arvi, while at WMC, was a key driver in taking a risky decision to build Australia's first nickel mine at Kambalda. At the time there was a global temporary shortage of nickel, and the Western Mining Corporation had to act fast if it was to take advantage of this temporary shortage. Arvi and his team succeeded in delivering nickel concentrate to Japan and Canada within 18 months of the first drilling. They first drilled and found nickel on 28 January 1966 on the shores of Lake Lefroy, and by August 1967 the first consignment of nickel had left.
This was a nation-building achievement at a record pace. Later, the Western Mining Corporation was to develop our first nickel smelters and refineries. Today, nickel exports contribute $3 billion to Australia's economy, and we're the fifth largest miner of nickel in the world. Arvi's vision and achievements have put Australia in a strong position to take advantage of increasing demand for nickel in batteries and other modern products.
Despite entering tough times in the 1970s during a downturn in worldwide commodity demand, Arvi sustained WMC's famously aggressive exploration activities. Arvi declared in 1974 that, and I quote, 'When you're exploring today, you are thinking about conditions in 10 years time.' That investment was to pay off, ultimately, with the finding of the massive Olympic Dam deposit in South Australia. Unlike Kambalda, however, Olympic Dam was not built in 18 months. By then the law books had been built up like massive hurdles to job creation in Australia. Arvi would comment later that WMC could never have delivered the Kambalda project in today's regulatory environment.
This is an ongoing issue for our country. Our share of global mining exploration spending has fallen from over 20 per cent at the start of this century to around 10 per cent today. In the time that it took the Queensland government to assess a black-throated finch management plan for the Adani Carmichael mine, Arvi and his team had drilled exploration holes, built a mine, built a railway, founded a whole new town and shipped nickel concentrate overseas—all in the same time.
It does make you a little sad. In some respects, life has never moved faster than today, with instant communication and speedy air travel, yet the spider web of modern regulations makes us all progress slower. We're running faster to get nowhere, while our forebears appear to have achieved more real results faster with a pen, a slide rule and basic common sense. Most of these delays today are due to overlapping regulations and the politicisation of mining investment. Even back in the 1980s, this led Arvi to the view that business leaders must get more involved in the political process. In 1986, Arvi said:
The realisation of what happens in the public policy arena is today often more important in determining the success or otherwise of a mineral enterprise than what happens in the mine or the mill has brought about fundamental and permanent changes to the industry.
That fact led Arvi to take on the challenge of being the inaugural president of the Business Council of Australia. His foresight then remains as relevant today, especially for the resource sector.
Like most people with a passion for mining, Arvi was most passionate about the people who were involved in the industry, not the rocks under the earth. That meant, as chair of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Arvi visited 37 of their 38 branches around the region—Bougainville at the time was inactive. He met the people at the coalface of the industry. As a result of these travels, Arvi compiled an amazing and remarkable pictorial history of the Australian mining industry. In the preface to that history, Arvi wrote:
The discovery and production of minerals have made a tremendous contribution to the betterment of human life since the beginning of civilisation. We in the mineral industry in Australasia are very good at what we do. We have been, and are now, amongst the world leaders in our industry. But we have also been, and still are, very bad at explaining what we do, and how this benefits the community.
These words are probably still true today.
It was actually a picture of Arvi himself as a young man that struck me the most while looking at his remarkable career. The picture was taken in 1948 and it shows Arvi as a young man outside the Bergmannsgluck coal mine in Germany. With his face blackened, back stooped and leaning on a rail, Arvi shows the exhaustion of a hard day's work. It is a visual reminder that those that get things done tend not to mind getting their hands dirty. Arvi got things done. Arvi is a great loss for our nation but he contributed so much, and I pass on my deepest condolences and respects to his family.
Newstart Allowance
Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (22:07): I rise to speak tonight on the lived experiences of people in our community receiving Newstart and youth allowance. Today in this chamber we started debating the Greens' fifth bill to try and raise the rate of Newstart and related payments. I have reached out a number of times to people in the community about people's experiences of Newstart and youth allowance. Yet again, in response to a call out on Friday, I received an instant response from people outlining their experiences. Many of them asked us to raise their voices in the Senate so that their experiences could be heard and understood by not only this chamber but the rest of the country. I'll take some time over the next couple of weeks, whenever I can, to outline some of these experiences.
People have outlined their personal experiences of what it's like to live on Newstart on less than $40 a day. The responses I've received are heartbreaking. I've heard from hundreds of people about their experiences—having to rely on charity for food, having to choose between paying bills and eating, not being able to afford public transport, constantly worrying about money and endless sleepless nights. All I can take from that is that living on Newstart isn't living. It's barely surviving.
One single parent shared the daily choices they make to put their children first:
What's it like to live on new start? Relying on others to help feed my children. Living off community groups for help a lot. Saying no to my daughter who has been asking to do dance for years because we can't afford it. Going without so my kids get what they need. Wearing clothes until they have holes…and then…still wearing them.
I heard from many older Australians about the isolation and discrimination they experience receiving Newstart:
I'm 64 on the 26th of this month and I don't go out, as it's hard living on Newstart. I go to where there are meals are supplied for free, as when you go shopping for food it takes quite a bit to keep yourself fed for the fortnight. I do volunteer for the Salvation Army and I can get food from them too. By the time you have utilities deducted via Centrepay it does not leave much for anything else. When you apply for jobs they discriminate against you for your age so the hope has gone.
And:
At 63 trying to get a job is near impossible it's very demoralising. I became socially isolated while caring for my terminally ill husband for 3 years and now on Newstart I have no money to get out and due to the government moving pension age to 67 I have another 4 years of this. Fed up with the condescending attitude of this government with their slogan of the "Best Social Welfare is a job" also that everyone on Newstart has another source of income I must be missing something, as I'm only on Newstart.
Many people with health issues find it impossible to afford the medical care they need on Newstart. One person told me of their horrific experience of being forced to live in their car:
I have cancer and am unable to work. I'm not eligible for DSP so after surgery in November, I was forced to live in my car. $545/ft is my current entitlement. I have recently been granted a Department of Housing property. The rent is $160/ft, but you don't get rent assistance while in Government Housing. I can't afford to keep my car anymore and I am virtually housebound due to complications. I am 44 and never thought that this is where I would be after working for the last 30 years and raising 4 children.
Another person told me about how they are unable to afford treatment costs for mental health issues:
I have mental health problems, which cost a lot of money in therapy visits, that still cost a lot despite being on medicare and having a mental health care plan. Trying to spend $150+ a week on top of rent, food, fuel, bills, medicine is impossible. I've heard the same from every other physically or mentally ill people. It's hard enough to look after yourself while earning less than what the treatment costs.
So many people shared their tragic experiences of being trapped on Newstart while applying for DSP—that's the disability support pension:
I live in a leaky caravan in my mum's backyard as I am a DV survivor and have been left with nothing and cannot afford to rent privately. I have severe PTSD and other issues which prevent me being able to work, study or train. I generally eat once a day, rarely drive anywhere more than ten kilometres from home as I don't have money for fuel. I don't socialise as I can't afford to go anywhere other than medical appointments. Currently going through the nightmare process of appealing my DSP applications. I am unable to afford to pay for a clinical psych to give diagnosis report for Centrelink for DSP appeal.
Trying to survive or get well under this system is impossible. Newstart does not provide enough for well people to get by on, let alone those of us who are not well and have additional costs to try and manage due to being rejected for DSP. As if this isn't enough—to be living below the poverty line—many people described the humiliating treatment they receive from job service providers:
I was on Newstart for two years and it was the most humiliating and degrading period of my life. My job service provider didn't know what to do with me, and I suspect they just "parked" me - I was bounced from case worker to case worker every few months, and one of them all but called me a dole bludger in front of a room of fellow jobseekers. I can't decide whether I was treated more like a child or an inmate, the way I was constantly babysat and condescended to and regarded with suspicion. All that and the group lessons on "job skills " were unfathomably pointless - I can't think of one thing I "learned" there that actually helped.
Another person said:
On Newstart, your life becomes an endless series of bureaucratic, pointless tasks. You are under constant threat of having your payment cut off. You are at the mercy and whim of any official who forgets to log an appointment or click a button. You are treated like a criminal who is not to be trusted.
This is just a handful of the hundreds of personal accounts I've received.
It is time to listen to the community. Australia is an incredibly wealthy country. We have an opportunity to choose the level of poverty we're prepared to accept. It is time to raise Newstart, because the experiences that I've outlined here have common themes: feeling degraded, the system not working, people who can't afford to get the diagnosis and treatment they need to then do a proper application for the disability support pension. I've heard of people who were told that they wouldn't need the disability support pension if they had certain treatments, but the treatments cost more than they get per week on Newstart. It's a complete catch-22 situation. Somebody told to go for treatment every single week, and the treatment costs $400. That's ridiculous.
This system is nonsensical. It is nonsensical that people are treated the way they are; that they're forced to live in a car when they have cancer. How, in a country as wealthy and supposedly compassionate as ours, can we treat people like this? I'll continue to make sure this Senate bears witness to these accounts. They're not stories; these are accounts of people's lives. They are suffering because they're forced to live on a payment that is indecent.
Senate adjourned at 22:17