On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, I present the committee's report entitled NDIS planning final report.
Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).
by leave—Planning is central to the success of the NDIS, with a plan determining whether a participant can achieve their goals, access therapeutic supports and achieve quality of life. As one participant submitted:
I want the Committee to get an understanding into how unimaginably stressful planning is – the stakes are too high. Planning determines so many things about my life and the NDIS has absolute control. This can never not be terrifying for anybody who is severely disabled.
If anything goes really wrong… my worst nightmare is that I lose my remaining independence and in the worst case would have to move into a hospital or aged care facility …
However, planning, when it works well, changes lives for the better. As one participant reported to People with Disabilities WA, NDIS funding for supports:
… has greatly increased my quality of life. I went from being a home bound person to having a big social and recreational calendar.
For years, participants, advocacy groups and the sector have been calling for reform in the planning arena. This inquiry, including the committee's interim report tabled in December 2019 and the review of the NDIS Act and the new NDIS Participant Service Guarantee, the Tune review, make broad-ranging recommendations to address longstanding issues with the planning process.
The committee was informed that there may be major inconsistencies in planned funding between participants with the same disability type and even, in some instances, between siblings with the same disability type. Some plans are not including funded supports for the reason that a participant has informal supports, including family members, who can provide these supports instead, despite the participant having no informal supports or having elderly parents with dementia who are no longer able to take a caregiving role. A further example of the reasons the National Disability Insurance Agency provided for refusing to fund particular supports included that these supports should be available in another service system, such as health, without determining first that these supports are in fact available and that the participant is eligible for them. Such decisions, the committee learned, can have significant consequences for participants and may be a matter of life and death.
Evidence also indicated that planner errors, such as listing the wrong disability in participants' plans, were a result of high workloads. Planners, the committee heard, were sometimes unaware of participant's disabilities and were relying on internet search engines for their information. In addition, planners may be ignoring or changing expert recommendations provided by allied health practitioners about the supports that are appropriate for a particular participant.
Where participants are unhappy with an NDIA decision, and the NDIA's internal review process upholds this decision, they are able to appeal the decision to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). However, the committee was informed that there are major concerns with the NDIA's response to AAT applications, including the NDIA using private lawyers to argue cases while participants may be unable to afford similar representation, and the lack of transparency around cases that are settled in the conciliation process. An issue the committee was especially concerned about was that some plans the NDIA has offered to participants after an order by the AAT may not reflect the order or, after the plan has ended, the supports that the AAT ordered have not been included in the new plan.
Evidence also suggested that problems remain with the NDIA's communication processes, with planners sometimes replying to queries from participants and their nominees months later, or not replying at all. Participants, in some instances, have not been invited to planning meetings, or been spoken to appropriately during planning meetings. The NDIA often points to its participant satisfaction ratings as proof that participants and their nominees are happy with the NDIA's performance but these may not be an accurate reflection of actual satisfaction with the planning process because of their wording.
Many issues identified in this report have arisen because many participants never meet with the NDIA delegate who makes decisions about the content and funding of their plans. The Australian government in March 2020 began the national rollout of joint planning meetings, which involve the participant meeting with the NDIA delegate and, if relevant, their local area coordinator or early childhood early intervention partner, and seeing a draft plan. The rollout of joint planning has been paused because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The committee made 14 recommendations in its interim report and it makes another 42 recommendations in this final report. These recommendations are intended to bring greater transparency, consistency and accountability to how the NDIS is administered and implemented.
Finally, as noted throughout this report, a number of the issues raised in evidence to the inquiry have been the subject of recent government announcements, such as joint planning, improved transparency and a commitment to clear time frames for decisions. This does not mean that all of these issues are resolved, merely that the NDIA and the Australian government have recognised the need to address them. The committee welcomes these efforts, and urges the government to continue to improve the planning process. The committee will continue to observe reforms and changes in the planning arena and make recommendations in future inquiries if it considers that this is needed.
The committee thanks all those who contributed to the inquiry, particularly participants, their family members and advocates who gave the inquiry firsthand information about their experiences with the NDIS planning process. I thank the members of the secretariat for their ongoing efforts. I move:
That the House take note of the report.
In accordance with standing order 39, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
I move:
That the order of the day be referred to the Federation Chamber for debate.
Question agreed to.
() (): On behalf of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System, I present a corrigendum to the committee's report entitled Improvements in family law proceedings: interim report.
If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.
In speaking to this legislation, I speak in support of the amendment moved by the member for Isaacs. In his address to the House on the matter he articulated why this legislation, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill 2019 and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019, should be opposed. This legislation merges the Family Court of Australia with the Federal Circuit Court. It is a move that, in my view, and in the view of many others, makes no sense at all. It is a move that has been poorly thought through with questionable community consultation and, not surprisingly, it has been widely opposed. Indeed, it is difficult to understand the rationale for the merger. It is even more difficult to see how the merger will lead to greater efficiencies and improvements to the court system, which, as other speakers have already highlighted, is already under stress.
Not surprisingly, only one coalition member attempted to defend this legislation in the House. If the legislation is, indeed, in the public interest, why are government members not prepared to come into the chamber and to defend the legislation, particularly in the face of so much opposition to it. When legislation is non-controversial it quite often flies through this House, but when it is controversial it is important that members come into the chamber and either defend or oppose it and state their grounds for doing so, yet we have seen almost none of that from the government. This leads me to conclude that the government simply cannot justify this legislation and wants to ram it through for its own ideological purposes. I can only conclude that one of those purposes is that it's a backdoor attempt to cut costs in the long term, and, whilst the government will argue that they are putting more money into the court system right here and now, the reality is that over a long period of time I suspect that it is another cost-cutting measure by this government. It will be a cost-cutting measure that will be paid dearly for by struggling families, by children and by people in domestic violence situations—people who are already vulnerable. These are people who are already in a crisis or a very stressful situation and who need the intervention of a court system that unfortunately right now is itself under stress.
We have heard statistics by members who have spoken in this debate of judges with case loads of some 337 cases and hearing waiting times of some 18 months. I can only imagine the stress to those families that are waiting for 18 months to have their matters heard by a court. Going to court for any person is always a stressful matter, regardless of what the issue is, but particularly for family matters the stress, I suspect, is much greater. To then have to wait months and months to have your hearing would be something that I believe would unduly add to the stress for those families.
The Law Council refers to some Federal Circuit Court judges also having more than 600 cases in their dockets. Again, waiting times are 18 months to two years, and, again, for those parties to those court cases it's totally unreasonable.
It's been pointed out that there have been 110 stakeholders, all with expertise in this matter, that have opposed the court mergers. When I look through the list of those parties who have made submissions, I note the expertise that they have. These are people that understand the court system well and understand what needs to be done to improve it. Therefore, they are in a very good position to pass judgement as to whether this is a good move or not.
I want to summarise one of the statements put out by the Law Council of Australia. It highlights six matters with respect to why this merger should be opposed. They are: (1) it will abolish the standalone specialist Family Court as we know it and collapse it into one of the busiest, under-resourced, overburdened, lower level Federal Circuit Courts; (2) it will harm vulnerable children and families in need of specialist family law assistance; (3) it will increase cost, time and stress for families and children; (4) it will place further stress on Federal Circuit Court judges already struggling under unsafe workloads; (5) it will fail to alleviate the fundamental problems plaguing the family law system; and (6) it will fail to address the risk of family violence victims falling through the cracks. The statement goes on to say, 'The strongest protection for children, families and survivors of family violence is to maintain and strengthen a standalone specialist family law court involving a holistic specialist system of interrelated, co-located services and resources as was intended when the Family Court was created.'
If the Law Council of Australia makes those statements, we should take note of them. The Law Council is the body that deals with these matters on a daily basis and listens to its own members and so on. These are the experts in making judgements about what should and should not work within the court system. Yet it's clear that this government is totally ignoring those serious matters being raised by the Law Council of Australia.
In a dissenting Senate report, Labor senators articulated in 25 clear and concise statements why this legislation should be opposed. I want to quote one statement, at paragraph 12 of the report. It says:
The government's proposed abolition of the Family Court as a stand-alone specialist family court is not merely friendless. It has been almost universally condemned.
This highlights the fact. Why is the government proceeding with this merger and why is it ignoring the voices of so many out there who are telling the government it is the wrong thing to do?
I note that this legislation has been on the table for nearly two years. I think it was first brought in in 2018, then it lapsed, then it was brought in again about a year ago and now, a year later, we are finally debating it. It tells me that the government knows it is introducing legislation that will not achieve the objectives it claims it will, legislation that is widely opposed, and is somewhat nervous about it. The fact that we are now dealing with it almost two years later suggests to me that the government knows full well this legislation should not be passed; nevertheless, it wants to push it through.
Forty-five years ago the standalone Family Court was established because of the specialist nature of the matters dealt with in family courts. In his second reading speech, the minister said:
… there is widespread recognition that the current structural arrangements in the courts are simply not working to the benefit of Australian families.
Of course those arrangements are not working to the benefit of families. We have waiting times of 18 months to two years, we have case loads for judges of around 337, on average, and we have a system that is not supported sufficiently by the government and is underfunded. The system is under stress. That is why it is not working properly. It's not because of the structure of the courts themselves. Rather than fiddling around the edges trying to amalgamate the two courts, it is high time the government addressed the real issue of under-resourcing and underfunding. That would resolve the problems the minister himself referred to in his second reading speech on this matter.
On that issue, the Australian Law Reform Commission's statement—and this is a statement that has been quoted by other speakers, but I believe it's important enough to requote it—found the family law system:
… has been deprived of resources to such an extent that it cannot deliver the quality of justice expected of a country like Australia, and to whose family law system other countries once looked and tried to emulate.
If other countries once looked to Australia's system and tried to emulate it, it tells me that it is a system that has been looked at as a model for the rest of the world. It tells me that the model itself is the correct model, and so therefore, if we have the correct model that other countries and other jurisdictions are trying to emulate, why are we wanting to change it? And, indeed, to whose system are we looking to change it to? I saw no reference in the minister's second reading speech to any other country that has a similar system to what is being proposed and that works better than the one we currently have. So why are we wanting to move from a good system that has been looked at by other jurisdictions to a system that has not been tried anywhere else, to my knowledge?
The ability of courts to function properly directly impacts on their ability to deliver justice. Judges are also real people, and workloads and work pressures undoubtedly affect their ability to do their job, and yet their job matters so much to the people that appear before them. The first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, Elizabeth Evatt AC, and the second Chief Justice, the Hon. Alastair Nicholson, who both understand the workings of the Family Court as well as anyone else, have criticised the proposed merger. Both former Chief Justices would be in the best position possible to know how the courts function, how they can be improved and what changes are necessary. This legislation is not what they recommend. Again, if we are not prepared to listen to the people that were part of the system, that oversaw the system and that would understand the system as well as anybody else in this country, then on whose advice are we making the changes that are being proposed? Indeed, it is quite an insult to those people with that level of expertise to suggest to them that they don't know what they are talking about by ignoring their submissions and their comments on this legislation. These are people who were part of the system for years and years and possibly the people who put it together and brought to us the very arrangements we currently have.
In closing, I make this point: the standalone Family Court was a Whitlam Labor government initiative, as so many other speakers on this side of the House have already pointed out. It was an initiative that recognised the unique and specialised nature of the court's functions and the sensitive family matters that the court had to deal with. I can think of very few other matters that would be as sensitive as Family Court matters, matters that deal with family separations and the stresses that go with all of that, often matters that include domestic violence and, most importantly, matters that deal with the best interests of children.
Children are the innocent parties in all of these matters, and the whole intent of the system is ultimately to ensure that those innocent parties are looked after as best as possible. It requires a court that has specialists and people with expertise attached to it, a process that is unique and a process that focuses on that very issue. That is what was put in place around 45 years ago. For all the faults that others might have about it—and, indeed, that have been highlighted over some of the inquiries—the reality is that it's a system that has worked well. Yes, it is a system that is under stress right now, and, yes, it is a system that needs additional support. But it doesn't need to be changed to get that additional support. What it needs is a government that is committed to a process that has been tried and proven—a process that has been looked at by outside jurisdictions in an endeavour to copy it and a process that has served this country well for 45 years and will do so into the future if the government is prepared to support the system we currently have, and that's why this legislation should be opposed.
I rise to speak on the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill 2019 with an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu. It has become a characteristic of modern conservatism epitomised by those opposite to trash the institutions that serve our society. It used to be the case that conservatives were the defenders of institutions in our society. It used to be the case that conservatives were the defenders of moderation and proper process and carefully stepping through significant changes in our society. That's not what we've seen in recent times from conservatives in Australia and abroad. This bill really epitomises this trend.
The effect of this bill would be to abolish the Family Court as a specialist standalone court in Australia. This coup de grace for the Family Court comes after seven years of neglect for the Family Court under first the Abbott government and then the Turnbull government and now the Morrison government. They've under-resourced the Family Court and failed to make the judicial appointments necessary for the court to expediently deal with its case load. Nobody disagrees that the family law system isn't functioning effectively in Australia at the moment. There is a need for change. What there is not a need for is the radical destruction of an institution, represented by the bill before this House. That's what we're talking about here. We're not talking about the acts of a conservative government; we're talking about the acts of a radical government. This is vandalism, not conservatism. I have to say it gives me a very strange feeling as a progressive member of parliament, usually someone who is an advocate of change for the betterment of the nation, to consistently be forced to defend the strength of our institutions in society. It would be great if we saw those opposite taking this course as well.
Frankly, the need for a standalone specialist Family Court in the 45 years since it was established has never been greater than today—the member for Isaacs, the shadow Attorney-General, has made that case compellingly in his contribution to this debate—and I want to dwell very briefly on why this is. Family law is a specialist area of law but, more so, it deals with a very special cohort of people appearing in litigation. We're not talking about corporations arguing about things with well-resourced in-house legal counsels and barristers. We're talking about families confronting family breakdown. We're talking about vulnerable Australians. In the 45 years since the establishment of the Family Court, we've come to far better understand the particular vulnerability of two groups within this cohort: the victims of family violence and the victims of child sexual abuse. Dealing with these matters requires not just expertise in law, in the subject matter, but also experience and understanding into the nature of these abhorrent behaviours and how to proceed in a legal system in a way that protects the victims of these horrible crimes.
The Family Court, as I said, is not perfect in dealing with these issues, but a standalone specialist court is far better equipped to deal with this than a Federal Circuit Court dealing with the full gamut of issues appearing before the Federal Court. Corporate insolvency, bankruptcies, tax litigation: all these things do not deserve to be wound up together with family breakdown and the litigants going into family law issues. There is great reason to tread carefully in reform in this area, but the bill before the House is a travesty of process. There's nothing conservative about the way that this bill has been developed. The bill represents fundamental structural changes that have not been recommended anywhere by any substantive process. The 2019 Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into this issue, a landmark inquiry that the government has since ignored, did not recommend this. Indeed, there are five separate reports that are claimed by the government as the supporting evidence—as arguments for the radical vandalism represented in the bill before the House today—and which they describe as the evidence base for these reforms. Five separate reports are listed on the Attorney-General's website, but none of the reports recommend these radical changes. In fact, none of these reports even considered structural changes of this kind. These changes were cooked up in the mind of the Attorney-General and then brought into this House for debate.
And what kind of a debate are we having in the House at the moment? When the Family Court was established 45 years ago, we had a debate in this chamber that went for 28 hours. There was robust discussion and debate between both sides of the House about what were very significant changes at a time of very significant change during the Whitlam government: the establishment of no-fault divorce at the same time as the establishment of the Family Court. Members engaged in a very substantive discussion about this. Where are the members opposite engaged in the discussion about the radical change contained in this bill? They're completely absent. Only one member of the coalition government proposing these radical changes has come into this chamber in order to defend them: the member for Fisher, who I do acknowledge has a long interest in these issues and engages in these issues frequently. But he's alone. There's no-one else, and that should tell you something. This is a radical act of vandalism against one of the institutions in our legal system that have best served some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and one member of the government fronts up to explain it. This is no way to do change in our society.
This travesty of a process might be why this bill is utterly friendless. Of the 110 stakeholders that have engaged with the government on this bill, 110 are opposed to these changes. These stakeholders are the people at the coalface. These are the people on the front lines of the family law system, and they are unanimous in their view that, yes, change is needed, yes, the system needs to be better resourced and, yes, the system is not serving people that engage with it as well as it should but, no, the abolition of a standalone specialist Family Court is not the answer. Look at the gamut of people and organisations opposing this bill: the Law Council of Australia, the women's legal services, community legal centres, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal centres, child protection advocates and disability services. From across Australia, they've written to the Attorney-General asking him to think again, to withdraw this act of radical vandalism, to act as a true conservative would and to step cautiously into these very significant changes. Those 110 individuals and organisations oppose this bill because there are real-life consequences from this bill. Australian families, and particularly the victims of family violence and child abuse, will be the ones that will pay the price for the vandalism of this bill.
The 110 stakeholders who have made submissions to the Attorney-General asking him to change course have made it clear that they believe that this bill, the destruction of a standalone specialist Family Court, will harm vulnerable children and families in need of specialist family law assistance. It will increase rather than decrease the cost, time and stress for families and children in the family law system—the very purpose of this bill. It will place further stresses on the Federal Circuit Court judges who are already struggling under unsafe, unsustainable and unconscionable workloads. Some of the case loads in the dockets around the country are just mind-boggling, but it's not a consequence of the structure of the Family Court; it's a consequence of seven years of neglect of the Family Court by those opposite—of under-resourcing and failing to make judicial appointments.
It's the two-card trick from the conservatives these days: undermine government institutions, under-resource them, kneecap them, stop them from being able to be effective in serving the purposes for which they were established and then have the chutzpah to point at them and say, 'Look, they're broken; they're not working, and we need to destroy them.' We, on this side of the House, don't fall for it. We know that the need for a specialist and standalone Family Court is stronger than ever before, because of the greater understanding we have today of family violence, child sexual abuse and the need to protect those vulnerable cohorts. We get that.
Finally, those 110 organisations that are asking the Attorney-General to think again have made it clear that this bill fails to address any of the fundamental problems plaguing the family law system, including the risk of family violence survivors falling through the cracks. It's worth dwelling a little bit on some of the specific quotes from some of these organisations about what these consequences are. Community Legal Centres Australia said of this bill:
… moving away from a specialist family court model would be a retrograde step and expose survivors of family violence to unnecessary risk.
Women's Legal Services Australia said its opposition of the bill is:
… centred on ensuring the safety and best interests of the child and the safety of adult victim-survivors of family violence in family law proceedings.
The President of the Law Council of Australia, Pauline Wright, said this bill:
… would result in the effective abolition of the Family Court of Australia, a respected, specialised and focused court dealing with family law issues. The 2019 merger bills, if passed, would also mean that Australian families and children will have to compete for the resourcing and hearing time with all federal matters—that is, other matters like migration bankruptcy and those sorts of things that the Federal Circuit Courts and the Federal Courts deal with. There must be an increase not a decrease in specialisation in family law and violence issues. This is critical for the safety of children and victims of family violence.
I ask those opposite to stop, to pause, to listen and to not be gulled by the arrogance of this Attorney-General—an incompetent Attorney-General whose time in the role has been characterised by one debacle after the other. Now is the time to stop and pause and listen to the tidal wave of opposition to this bill from those who will be affected by it.
It's completely unacceptable that an act of vandalism like this bill can be brought through this parliament with only one member of the government willing to speak for it. Why bother to be elected to this parliament? Front up. This is a substantial change that will affect not only one of the most important legal institutions in this country but also one of the core institutions of our society: the family unit. But those opposite have nothing to say about it. They won't speak in support; they won't oppose it. They have got nothing to say and nothing to contribute. They're happy to outsource their judgement to the Attorney-General. Well, good luck to them.
This bill, after this debate, will presumably head up to the Senate for debate there. I implore the crossbench in the Senate to exercise their brains in a way that the coalition have not on this bill—that government members have not. I implore them to listen: listen to everybody in the legal community and to advocates for victims of family violence and child sexual abuse who are begging this government to listen, to stop and to take a different path. Surely there is no cause more deserving of a little bit of judicious reflection than family violence and child sexual abuse. Those opposite, particularly the home affairs minister, like to thump the dispatch box when talking about these issues. They like to make these issues into binary issues: whether you are for victims of child sexual abuse and family violence or against them. I say to those opposite: this is a bill that many advocates and victims of family violence and child sexual abuse say will have a very negative impact on the people that they represent. Take the time to listen. Pause, withdraw this bill and develop a new path that protects these most vulnerable people and our family law system. And rediscover your conservative roots. It's getting a bit tiring being a progressive—being the only people willing to stand up in this parliament and defend the institutions of this country.
We need to start by recognising the importance of the family law system to the wellbeing and safety of children and families, and the role that the Family Court has played over the years since its inception in 1975 under the Whitlam government—and, when we look at major reforms in this country, they're always under a Labor government. Whether it's Medicare, whether it's the Family Court system or whether it's the NDIS, it's always a Labor government that produces the big reforms that benefit the country. Again, in those important reforms to the family law system in 1975, the focus was on the wellbeing and safety of families across the nation. That was the purpose of the Family Law Act in 1975, when the Family Court of Australia was produced under the Whitlam government.
But what we've seen in the last seven years is seven years of neglect by this coalition government. The family law system, we know, is in a state of unprecedented crisis. We know that, if you really want to intervene in this area and make it better, you need to fund it properly. We've seen funding go backwards, despite the number of cases that are going before the family courts. We need to ensure that we protect families, as I said, and especially children. If the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill 2019 and the cognate bill are passed, they will cause further harm to vulnerable children and families, and that is the concern that we all should have here. We know that, if these bills pass—and it's been said by many speakers on this side—it will cause harm to the families and children who are in need of specialist family law assistance. That's exactly what the federal Family Court of Australia is; it's the specialist court for these particular things.
We on this side have been calling, and again I will call, for the government to withdraw this damaging bill and instead get to work on things that will actually help Australian families in a time of need—for example, by responding to the 60 recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission's landmark 2019 review of the family law system. That would be a start. That would be a good beginning that we would all be happy to support, knowing that it would enhance the system. The government need to increase resources to the Family Court of Australia and the Federal Circuit Court in order to reduce case backlogs, in order to reduce the waiting times and the frustration that go with that and in order to finalise never-ending cases and end the stress that that causes families.
If the government want to do something to ensure that it operates smoothly, increase the resources. Increase the funding. Increase the resources to the legal assistance services that provide vital help to vulnerable families at a time of particular crisis and stress, including legal aid commissions, family violence prevention legal services, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, women's legal services and other community legal centres. We've seen diminishing resources for all of these services over the last seven years. Most importantly, the government should be consulting people, experts, to progress meaningful reforms—meaningful reforms—to improve the experience of all people using the family law system.
We know that the bill that that was put before the parliament for those reforms in 1975 was opposed by the then opposition. There were arguments and debates. We know that there's always been resistance from those opposite to improving our family law system, especially the Family Court, which is a standalone specialist and superior court. Prior to the Family Law Act, there were 14 grounds for granting a divorce. They included things like adultery, desertion, habitual drunkenness and imprisonment. Insanity was one of them. To get a divorce, a spouse had to prove the other party was at fault. All this did was ensure there was plenty of work for private investigators around the place. None of us want to see us go back to that. I'm not saying the bill does that, but through diminishing the court system—by chipping away at it, bit by bit—we could end up in that same position in years to come if we're not all vigilant, in this place, about ensuring that this Family Court is resourced properly. That's what this government should do. If they want to enhance the system, if they want to make it better, if they want to streamline it, they should resource it, fund it and ensure that the judiciary, judges, are appointed in a timely fashion. They should do the things that actually help people.
When the Family Law Bill 1974 was debated in the House of Representatives over 45 years ago, nearly half the House spoke on it. Fifty-nine members made speeches. The House spent nearly a month—a month—debating it. There was disagreement; there were different views and different arguments, but the House showed a real interest in it, on both sides: those who opposed it and those who supported it. But today we see hardly anyone from the other side speaking on this important change that's being proposed. It's such an important change, such a serious change, to the legal system of our country. Yet no-one on the other side wants to come up and argue the points, debate it or tell us why they think it will improve the system. There have only been a handful of people. It's a contrast to the seriousness that was given to this bill 45 years ago by the then opposition, the Liberal Party. If you want to make these changes, come into this House, debate them, tell us your views, tell us why this change will enhance the community. None of that is happening.
If anything, the need for a specialist Family Court has only become more pronounced over time, as the Australian Law Reform Commission noted in its landmark 2019 report on the family law system—a report the government commissioned but has completely ignored. They commissioned it, they went through with it, but they have ignored this report on the family law system.
There is no way that the Whitlam government, back in 1974-75, would have foreseen the growth in the incidence—and awareness—of family violence and child abuse. Case numbers have grown, obviously, and there are longer lists. But specialisation does not just mean specialist judges. The Whitlam government's vision of a specialist law court was of a court with interrelated, co-located services and resources. It was about creating an environment that would have regard to what Whitlam back then described as the 'human problems'. We're talking about the human problems—of couples, families and children—not just the legal rights. That's what it was specialised for. The realisation of that vision has never been more important than today, especially for vulnerable children and for families who need the Family Court system. Not only do they need it to be efficient; they need it to be safe for and sensitive to their particular needs and vulnerabilities. What this bill will do, if it is successful and goes through this place, is diminish those things, those absolutely essential things, that were at the forefront for the MPs of the day who were producing this law in 1975. It was to be efficient but also—and this is very important—safe for and sensitive to those with particular needs and vulnerabilities. They're the people who will be hurt most by this bill.
Everyone accepts that there are problems in the Family Court at present. We have constituents that come and see us regularly and we know there are issues. But if you really want to fix it, it's not a mystery, it's not rocket science. The Australian Law Reform Commission found:
… the family law system has been deprived of resources to such an extent that it cannot deliver the quality of justice expected of a country like Australia, and to whose family law system other countries once looked and tried to emulate.
That is really important because we need the system to be efficient, but to make it efficient it has to be resourced, and that's the area that this government has absolutely forgotten about. This is an area, like many other areas, this government claimed that they don't know anything about. It's not rocket science. Everyone accepts that there are problems with waiting times, et cetera—but if you want to fix it, that's the way to do it.
Over the last seven years, the story of the Australian family law system has been a story of neglect, neglect and more neglect—neglect by this government, led by Tony Abbott to begin with, then neglect by the Malcolm Turnbull Liberal government, and neglect by this current government led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. This is what the report says: Family Court and Federal Circuit Court judges have not been replaced in a timely manner; funding has not increased in response to increasing demand; and review after review, including many dozens of sensible and measured recommendations, have all been ignored. When you have increasing demand, nearly doubling over the last 10 to 15 years, and review after review saying you have to resource it to keep up with that demand, and those resources aren't put the to the system, well, of course we're going to have problems. But this is not the way to fix it. This bill does nothing to fix those issues. The government should be working really hard to fix the family law system, but instead the government remains determined to talk about restructuring the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court in a way that will make a bad situation an even worse situation for the most vulnerable Australian families, including vulnerable children. This bill does nothing to fix the problems that exist. Those problems are about making appointments in a timely fashion and ensuring that resources are put in to keep up with the demand that is required.
Deputy Speaker, you'd also expect that such radical reform by this government would be based on good evidence, good advice and research. You'd expect that the government would have consulted widely, but it hasn't. The Morrison government claims that the proposed merger has been informed by independent reviews and inquiries over a decade. The evidence base for the reforms is not there. The only problem with these inquiries is that none of the reports listed on the website recommended these radical reforms. All these reports and investigations were done, but not one actually recommends these reforms. So why is the government pushing ahead with this particular bill? None of the reports even considered that these reforms would better the system. In fact, the only one of the five reports that recommended restructuring the Family Court and Federal Circuit Court recommended an entirely different model from the one that's being proposed today—an entirely different model.
We should go back to the vision of those MPs in this House, 45 years ago, that spoke about enhancing the system, making it simpler and protecting vulnerable families and vulnerable children. This bill will only take us backwards; it is not going to take us forwards. If we're not all vigilant about this particular bill, then the chipping away of the Family Court system through this bill and maybe another one next year and maybe another one the year after, will diminish the entire system and we could see ourselves back in the position that we were in 45 years ago, where the only ones making money are the private investigators.
I rise to oppose this bill, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill 2019, and the accompanying bill, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019. These bills propose one of the most sizable structural reforms to the court system, merging the Federal Circuit Court and the Family Court. The government should own up to what they are seeking to do with these bills. They are seeking to abolish the Family Court as a specialist standalone superior court. The Family Court of Australia is a proud Whitlam legacy like most of the great social reforms that have occurred in Australia, from Medicare to our world-leading superannuation system to free legal assistance services for Australians in need. The Family Court of Australia is an institution that has served our nation admirably.
The Family Law Act 1975 instituted two major changes. Firstly, it instituted no-fault divorce. Secondly, it established the Family Court of Australia, a specialist multidisciplinary court, for the resolution of family disputes. When the Family Law Bill 1974 was debated in the House of Representatives over 45 years ago, nearly half the House—a total of 59 members—made speeches. The House spent 28 sitting hours debating that bill. There was disagreement. There was debate. But across the political spectrum members of the House took the reform seriously. Australian families deserved no less. By contrast, how many people on the other side of the House are going to speak on these bills today? Do Liberal backbenchers even know what they are voting for, and do they care?
Prior to the Family Law Act, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959 set up 14 grounds for the grant of a divorce, including adultery, desertion, habitual drunkenness, imprisonment and insanity. To get a divorce a spouse had to prove the other party was at fault. Private investigators did very well out of divorce law as it existed prior to the Family Law Act, but since the commencement of the act in January 1976 the only ground for divorce in Australia has been that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. This can be established if the court is satisfied that the parties have lived separately and apart for a continuous period of 12 months. Neither party has to prove that the other person is at fault.
As Gough Whitlam said on 19 May 1975:
Let us keep in mind that marriage is essentially a human relationship between 2 people. It takes 2 people to make a marriage but it takes only one to break it. Idealists might wish that it were otherwise, but it is not. It is time society acknowledged that simple fact. We have no right to condemn 2 people to live together in misery and suffering for a moment longer than necessary. Ultimately the only test of a marriage is whether both parties agree to maintain it. If one party is unwilling to maintain it the marriage has broken down. I do not believe any reasonable person would suggest that 12 months is not sufficient time to prove that a marriage has broken down.
The Family Court system is an important mechanism through which we can protect individuals experiencing family and domestic violence. We know that many matters which pass through the Family Court relate to or involve family violence. According to Women's Legal Services Australia, 50 per cent of Family Court matters involve domestic violence and child abuse. We also note the Family Court is a specialist court, with specialist judges and specialist staff, which works to resolve some of the most complex and, I would add, highly emotional and often traumatic matters. The Family Court with its staff and resources is best placed to manage these types of cases.
We all acknowledge the major challenges confronting the Family Court—in particular, the lengthy court wait times, delays and backlogs—in resolving family law disputes. According to the Australian Law Council, parties are waiting up to three years in the Family Court to finalise cases involving family violence. Of course this is unacceptable. Justice delayed is justice denied. Nor is it acceptable, however, that we replace one evil with another. Some community groups, such as Women's Legal Services Australia, have also expressed serious concerns, particularly in relation to how this message may impact the lives and safety of individuals experiencing family or domestic violence. Indeed, the Federal Circuit Court does deal with a large proportion of family law matters. However, the reality is that the Federal Circuit Court is a generalist court; it's charged with dealing with the more simple, straightforward and less complex family law matters. The more complex matters are considered by the Family Court.
Family law matters are inherently complex, as I said. They are highly emotional, deeply personal and often traumatic. Family Court Justice Diana Bryant said that family violence features in a high proportion of contested cases—something like 41 per cent. As I mentioned earlier, Women's Legal Services Australia says 50 per cent of Family Court matters involve violence. According to Miranda Kaye and Jane Wangmann of the University of Technology Sydney, these matters often involve concerns about substance abuse, mental health, parenting capacity and, of course, family and domestic violence. They have written, 'It is disappointing the new court appears to be merely an expansion of the generalist Federal Circuit Court at the cost of destroying the more specialist Family Court of Australia.' They also write, 'One of the requirements for appointment to this court is that a judge must have the expertise to be considered a suitable person to deal with matters of family law.' The most difficult and complex cases are saved for specialist judges with appropriate experience. This is, ultimately, why the Family Court matters do take longer to resolve. That complexity is only compounded by the presence of family or domestic violence. The specialist nature of the Family Court means that it has an important role to play in protecting individuals experiencing family violence. Former Family Court Justice Diana Bryant says:
I can say that I have spent my whole career—40 years—in family law. I think I have a reasonable knowledge of all those areas gained over that time, but I am still learning and it's not something you can pick up in five minutes. I think having specialised judges is important.
Wendy Kayler-Thomson of the Law Council said:
It would be disastrous to have a trial judge who has not had any family law experience and then to have a single judge on appeal also having no family law experience.
What is clear from these cases is that they—both legal as well as domestic violence advocates—are seriously concerned that this measure will end specialist expertise within the Family Court.
The government also wants to abolish the specialist appeals division of the Family Court and transfer this responsibility to the Federal Court. Beyond concerns expressed about the constitutional validity of this, there is also the concern about the most complex cases, those which reach the appeals stage, being heard by the Federal Court. When I think of the complexity of the cases of family and domestic violence which we hear enter our courts and of the pain and trauma of having to relive these experiences, I want to make sure—and I think we would all want to ensure—that the judge or the justice presiding over the case is trained, skilled and experienced to take on this case. The Australian Bar Association has expressed concern about not only the loss of the specialist capabilities that the Family Court brings but also the adequacy of funding and resourcing of the court.
A big part of the conversation around backlogs and delays comes down to resourcing. Our courts are under-resourced, legal assistance services are under-resourced and this government has failed to appoint replacements for a number of judges who have retired. Labor has had much to say about the funding of legal services in the context of family violence matters.
The Morrison government's proposal to effectively abolish the Family Court of Australia as a standalone specialist court is friendless, but it has many opponents. No fewer than 110 stakeholders, ranging from the Law Council of Australia to Women's Legal Services Australia, Community Legal Centres Australia, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, child protection advocates and disability services from across Australia, have written to the Attorney-General to ask him to abandon this proposal. The Attorney-General has ignored their pleas. These 110 individuals and organisations oppose this proposal because they believe that it will harm vulnerable children and families in need of specialist family law assistance; increase rather than decrease cost, time and stress for families and children in the family law system; place further stresses on Federal Circuit Court judges who are struggling under unsafe, unsustainable and unconscionable workloads; and, finally, fail to address any of the fundamental problems plaguing the family law system, including the risk of family violence survivors falling through the cracks.
In the time that I have left, let me just read into the Hansard some of those objections. The very first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, someone I know personally, the Hon. Elizabeth Evatt AC, has said:
The proposed merger of the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court … will lead to undesirable outcomes for children and families.
… … …
Merging the Family Court into a generalist court will undermine the integrity and the structural specialisation of the Family Court. The impact of losing this institutional specialisation is not properly understood, and has been downplayed
The Hon. Alastair Nicholson AO RFD QC, the second Chief Justice of the Family Court, who served in that position for many years, has fully supported Ms Evatt's remarks. Mr Nicholson also said:
It is unbelievable that Government would propose the dissolution of a Federal Superior Court in this fashion without the most careful and searching Public Inquiry and without carrying out significant research and without consulting the many experts in this field.
Cases can be extremely complex and require specialist knowledge of the type that has always been available in the Family Court, which has provided leadership in the proper interpretation and principles to be applied by other courts with family law jurisdiction.
The President of the Law Council of Australia, Pauline Wright, has said of the proposed merger:
It would result in the effective abolition of the Family Court of Australia, a respected, specialised and focused court dealing with family law issues.
National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services said:
… the bill "will disproportionately impact the most vulnerable including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families who need the most support".
The Attorney-General has shown his arrogance by dismissing these concerns with a wave of his hand, in the face of overwhelming opposition from family law experts across the country, instead of working with experienced practitioners and experts to improve the family law system for the benefit of Australian families. The Morrison government has instead decided to let everything rest on the findings of a discredited six-week desktop review by two accountants. Australian families deserve better, and the Labor Party, as I said, will be opposing this legislation vigorously.
I know that in this place it's all about politics and sometimes—or often—about ideology when bills are put forward and when policies are pushed forward by the government. That plays a big part in it. This is a political place. We are political representatives. But sometimes it becomes a little bit bewildering why a government would insist on certain changes when it's quite clear, based on what's before them, the damage that it would cause. It's actually bewildering to me. What is the reason behind what they are trying to do with the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill?
They should own up to what they're seeking to do, which is basically abolish the Family Court as a specialist and standalone superior court. Why? Is it ideological? Is it because the Family Court of Australia is a proud legacy of the Whitlam Government? Is that what it is? Is it simply the same old, tired ideological fight that the Liberal Party often plays and has played for decades? Whether it's any of the great social reforms that have been put in place by Labor governments in the past; whether it's Medicare, which they never agreed with and always try to tear down; whether it's superannuation, which they're trying to tear down now right before us; whether it's free legal aid and assistance; or, in this case, the Family Court of Australia, an institution that since being put in place and being established has actually served our nation admirably—what is the reason? Can it be something else beyond ideology or pure political game playing? I can't see it if it's there. That's why I'm bewildered.
We know that the Family Law Act 1975 instituted two major changes: it instituted no-fault divorce and it established the Family Court of Australia, that specialist multidisciplinary court for the resolution of family disputes. The Family Law Bill 1974, back then, was debated in this House over 45 years ago and nearly half the House—a total of 59 members—made speeches. The House spent 28 sitting hours debating that bill. It was a clear and open debate with reasoning put forward and arguments put forward in the best traditions of our parliamentary democracy. Of course there was disagreement within that debate, as there would be, as there should be—we represent different views in this place. But, right across the political spectrum, members of this House took those reforms seriously, whether they were in government or in opposition, obviously. Exactly what Australian families deserved and still deserve today were the reforms that the members in this place debated all those years ago, yet today, this week—what have we got?—we've got a handful of speakers from the government benches on this bill. Sorry, how many?
Two.
Two speakers, I hear from the member for Fremantle. Maybe we might get a third if they're so ashamed of watching the current—I wouldn't even call it a debate, it is a one-sided expose—exposure of what is a pathetic ideological attempt to tear down something that has been so successful in the Australian legal system. Do the Liberal backbenchers even care? Do they even know what they're voting for? Have they even looked at the bill and what it means? Because, really, if they'd done their homework, they would understand that this bill proposes to undo what was the second of those major changes that was introduced in that Family Law Act 45 years ago, which was the establishment of the Family Court of Australia as a specialist superior court.
I will say, as other speakers have said on this side, that such a change would be a profound and catastrophic step backwards. It will harm Australian families and, in particular, it will harm children. And my bewilderment at this bill extends to not really understanding why, beyond the ideology and the political point-scoring, members on the other side, who are part of this debate—their party was, at least, all those years ago—could not see the damage that would be done. They do not even have a conscience to think about the damage that would be done to families and children in Australia.
What makes the court so essential to our legal system is the very specialisation which they're trying to rip away and tear down. Family law matters are not like any other matters. We know how deeply complex they can become. Of course other elements of the law are complex, but, in the family law space, the complexity also has a deep level of trauma and emotion, and serious consideration has to be given to those elements that require the specialisation to deal with them. These are matters that generalist courts don't tend to deal with because they don't have that expertise. They don't have the child psychologist. They don't have the lawyers and the court officials who have experience in these areas of law and the complexity of that law. The parties to family law matters are not like parties the generalist courts tend to deal with.
While some of the sentiments sound somewhat outdated in 2020, I think it's probably true to say that few said it better than the great Gough Whitlam, former Prime Minister, when he argued in favour of the establishment of specialised family courts back in November 1974. He spoke in this House—well, over the water in the old House—and he said the following:
The essence of the Family Courts is that they will be helping courts. Judges will be specially and carefully selected for their suitability for the work of the court. There will be attached to the court a specialist staff, notably marriage counsellors and welfare officers, to assist the parties at any stage—and even independently of any proceedings. These courts will therefore be very different from the courts that presently exercise family law jurisdiction. The Family Court will, of course, determine legal rights, which it is bound to do as a court, but it will do much more than that. Here will be a court, the expressly stated purpose of which is to provide help, encouragement and counselling to parties with marital problems, and to have regard to their human problems, not just their legal rights. Parties will not be driven to the court by their own despair as a last resort; they will be encouraged to come to the welfare and counselling staff of the court whenever they have a matrimonial problem, even if they are not contemplating proceedings of any kind. This help would also be available after divorce proceedings, and this would, as I have already indicated, be of great importance where there were young children.
That's the difference—that vision that Gough, the former Prime Minister, had. It went beyond the ideological; it was about help, it was about assistance, it was about empathy—something completely lacking on the government benches. It is about an understanding of the need for specialised staff to deal with complex, emotional, traumatic and very specialised legal problems and human problems. The sense of humanity, just from that quote from former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, tells you everything you need to know about the intention and the motivation for the reform that was debated in this House 45 years ago with respect to the Family Law Act.
If anything, the need for a specialist Family Court has only become more pronounced over the decades, as the Australian Law Reform Commission noted in its landmark 2019 report on the family law system—a report that the government commissioned but has completely ignored. The Whitlam government obviously could not have foreseen the growth, the incidence, the additional reporting and awareness that we as a society have around issues of family violence and child abuse that have occurred since 1975. Specialisation does not mean just specialist judges. The Whitlam government's vision of a specialist family law court was of a court with interrelated, co-located services and resources. It was about creating an environment that would have regard to what Whitlam described as those human problems that he described with such a degree of empathy in this place—the empathy to understand the needs of families, of couples and their children; not just their legal rights. There was a genuine care about people's emotional wellbeing and their mental state. They wouldn't have called it that back then, but that's what it was. It was a degree of kindness that was demonstrated in this place that was translated from a bill into an act of law. This government wants to tear that down and rip it apart. It wants to rip away the empathy, the regard for others, the care and the specialisation that come with the Family Court. The realisation of the vision that occurred has never been more important, especially for the vulnerable children and families who need that Family Court system, a system that has been not only efficient but also safe and sensitive to the particular needs and vulnerabilities of people who are suffering from those issues.
Everyone accepts that there are serious problems in the Family Court at present. I don't think there's a denial of that. The main cause of those problems is not a mystery. The Australian Law Reform Commission found:
… the family law system has been deprived of resources to such an extent that it cannot deliver the quality of justice expected of a country like Australia, and to whose family law system other countries once looked and tried to emulate.
In other words, the government have run it down, cut its funding and depleted its resources. It's not good enough to want to tear down a system and a court with specialised staff who deal with those human problems. No, they have to go further than that. They just want to run it down as well, even before they chop it.
What they've put forward in this bill has no evidence. There's no evidence base. There was no consultation with stakeholder groups. The claim was that the reforms were informed by a series of independent reviews and inquiries over a decade, and on the Attorney-General's website he listed five reports under the heading 'The evidence base for the reforms'. The only problem with that is that none of those reports listed on the website recommended any of these reforms that the government are suggesting—none. None of those reports even considered the so-called reforms that they're suggesting. Only one of those reports hinted at restructuring the Family Court, but it recommended a different model which would have maintained a standalone specialist family law court. So did the Attorney-General pull it out of thin air? Did he just decide some afternoon: 'You know what? We don't really like what Whitlam did. We don't like what Labor's done in the past, so we're not only going to go after superannuation and all of the other great social reforms that Labor governments have put in place but also go after the Family Court. We don't care what it will mean for families and children'?
All of the stakeholder groups that matter—and, as previous speakers have alluded to, there are over 110—have stated what they thought about this, whether it was the Law Council of Australia, women's legal services, community legal centres, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, child protection advocates or disability services from across Australia. They all wrote to the Attorney-General, and they were ignored. What they said, in summary, was that these changes will harm vulnerable children and families in need of specialist family law assistance; increase rather than decrease cost, time and stress for families and children in the family law system; place further stresses on Federal Circuit Court judges who are struggling already under unsafe, unsustainable and unconscionable workloads; and fail to address any of the fundamental problems plaguing the family law system, which basically arise from the depletion of resources that I mentioned earlier, including the risk of family violence survivors falling through the cracks. That's what they said. That's what they put to the Attorney-General, who ignored them. These are the very people who dedicate their lives and work to help others in this space, and in his arrogance the Attorney-General dismissed those concerns.
In the face of overwhelming opposition from family law experts across this country, instead of taking note of their lived experience as practitioners and understanding the needs of those experts to improve the family law system for the benefit of Australian families, the Morrison government has instead decided to bet everything on the findings of a discredited six-week desktop review by a couple of accountants. That was what it referred to as their so-called evidence base. That's not the way to do law. This government doesn't understand that it's not just about ideology and politics. What was done here 45 years ago was a testament to the best of this House. These changes are catastrophic and will impact so many children and families, and we oppose them.
It was only a couple of weeks back when the Prime Minister said, 'There's no greater thing that breaks my heart than a family breakdown.' I don't doubt for one moment the sincerity of the Prime Minister's words, but, unfortunately, the gap between what the Prime Minister says and what he does is huge, and it's having a devastating impact on families. The coalition's callous, bloody-minded decision to shut down the Family Court system, with virtually no consultation, will leave families to fend for themselves as they deal with the catastrophe of a family breakdown.
Any divorce lawyer will tell you that when a relationship ends people are often at their worst. The mix of volatile emotions, financial stress and the unexpected reality of co-parenting in separate homes is enough to test even the most resilient person. Too often when couples separate it's the children who suffer the most. Too often mothers find themselves in situations of real, and sometimes mortal, danger. Too often fathers are faced with a sense of insurmountable loss. Even without such extremes, the complexity of family law is bewildering and anxiety-inducing for the vast majority of families.
For 45 years the institution that is the Family Court of Australia has been there serving not just as an arbitrator of complex disputes but as a vital point of contact for wraparound services for families who need help. The key point here is that those services operate hand in hand with the legal proceedings. In this sense the Family Court is unique. They must be expert in not only family law but also family violence and intricate financial arrangements. In other words, being a family law judge is a highly specialised role within what is already a highly specialised profession.
Now we're not saying it's perfect. Anyone who's been through the system will say clearly it is not. The system has been swamped. Judges everywhere are struggling to deal with the overwhelming case numbers and ever-increasing complexity of the cases brought before them. I've had numerous conversations with Family Court lawyers in my area of the Illawarra. They talk about backlogs, the insufficient premises in which the court operates and the stress on the system. Lawyer Lorelle Longbottom has said that you can have a mum who has been a victim of family violence perpetrated by the other party, typically the father, so there's this huge history of family violence. They sit together in a complex, tense environment. The courtrooms are too small. There are not enough judges. The case load is going up and up.
It's not unsurprising in these stressful circumstances that you have altercations. The pressure is high, the consequences are immense and too often children are the victims. I'm informed that the registry service for Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama and the Shoalhaven also draws from the southern Sydney, Macarthur and Wollondilly regions as well as south down to Batemans Bay. Technically they're supposed to service a little over 400,000 people, but in reality they can be servicing twice as many.
You could lodge a matter in the court today and not have a final hearing for 2½ years. That's 2½ years with issues of custody and 2½ years with issues of property. All of the incumbent conflict that goes with that is unresolved and in many cases spiralling out of control. The answer to this problem is more resources for the Family Court—more judges and more registry staff—making this court more available.
Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.
In the past fortnight, the Coles Group has made the aggressive decision to lock workers out of its Smeaton Grange distribution centre in my electorate of Macarthur. This decision has resulted in over 350 local employees in Macarthur being locked out of their workplace. That's over 350 local residents and their families who are now expected to go without pay over the Christmas and new year period. This is a truly heartless, tone deaf and aggressive decision from the Coles Group. I want to make this perfectly clear: these workers are not on strike; they have in fact been locked out of their own workplace for three months over the holiday season. We are in the midst of a global pandemic and an economic recession, yet Coles has spitefully chosen to make things even worse for over 350 dedicated and loyal employees and their families.
It's worth noting the Coles Group made a profit of almost a billion dollars in the last year, and their CEO has received a 29 per cent increase in pay. This cruel decision to lock workers out of its Smeaton Grange distribution centre is nothing short of spiteful. Workers rightfully want to be treated fairly in their redundancies when the site is projected to shift towards automation in 2023. I implore Coles to end their harsh lockout and come back to the table to work constructively with their dedicated employees to resolve this terrible situation
In 151 days, Central Queensland will host Beef Australia 2021 at Rockhampton Showgrounds from 2 May to 8 May. Starting back in 1988 and happening every three years, this will be the 11th event. With guidance from the safety group on 26 November, Beef Australia was given the tick of approval to go ahead. More than 100,000 people are expected to pass through the gates. Normally this is a big international event, and the money visitors bring will flow throughout the economy.
The industry is on an upward trajectory and the future of the Aussie beef industry is bright. Abattoirs such as Teys Australia in Biloela and Rockhampton and JBS in Rockhampton are part of the fabric, along with live shipments underway at Port Alma. Our beef industry is worth over $11 billion and directly employs more than 190,000 people. It is the backbone of many regional communities, such as those in my electorate of Flynn. I'm looking forward to attending Beef Australia 2021, as it's a major economic driver for our region.
I've been contacted by many people in our community concerned with the growing escalation of tensions between Punjabi farmers and the Indian government in recent days. Thousands of small-scale farmers have walked onto the capital city of New Delhi to protest new laws allowing corporations to use valuable land and buy crops at reduced prices. There have been awful scenes of clashes between farmers and police with tear gas, water cannons and riot police called in to quell the protests over the passage of legislation which many farmers see as unfairly reducing their income.
This issue is not unique to India. Here in Australia family farming businesses have been preyed upon by corporate farming enterprises, and many families have been forced off the land. Recent studies show about 28 people who depend on farming in India die by suicide every day because of the growing debt, poor harvests and drought. We believe the right to peaceful process is fundamental in any democracy, and I join with many in our communities who are very disturbed by the treatment of Punjabi farmers in India and those who fear for their safety while peacefully protesting. On behalf of the many worried family members in our electorate of McEwen, I urge the Indian government to show restraint and compassion when dealing with protesters. Right across the world, we know that the best way to find a solution to a situation is through dialogue. Dialogue is always better than violence, and I hope that these calls are heard.
I am delighted that Carrick Hill, a historic house and garden in my electorate of Boothby, has reopened to visitors with an exciting new addition and art exhibition space. Thanks to the generosity of philanthropists Mr Ian Wall AM and Mrs Pamela Wall OAM, the Carrick Hill attic has been transformed into a dedicated exhibition space. Fittingly, it has been named the Wall Gallery in honour of Mr and Mrs Wall. Their generosity has also allowed the installation of a lift and a brand new staircase permitting public access to areas not previously possible, especially for those needing lift and disability access. Mr and Mrs Wall's philanthropy helps important causes like this across Adelaide. On behalf of our local community, I would like to record my sincere thanks to Mr and Mrs Wall for their tireless efforts for important projects like Carrick Hill that are reliant on fundraising and donations and generous philanthropists to achieve significant upgrades.
I would also like to record my thanks to the chair of the Carrick Hill Trust Mr Peter Kennedy, the Director of Benefaction Mr Richard Heathcote and the Foundation Chair the Hon. Robert Lawson QC, whose hard work and passion for Carrick Hill saw the successful completion of this upgrade. Working closely with Mr Kennedy and Mr Heathcote, I was able to secure $3 million of federal government funding to match the contribution of the foundation to construct a new visitor pavilion. This will finally allow the house to be returned to its full glory—a task already well underway thanks to the new Wall Gallery and associated renovations.
Company profits are rising and so is unemployment. The share market is booming, yet households are battling. The government is right to say that workers would have been worse off without JobKeeper. In fact, that's why Labor urged them to put it in place. But that doesn't mean that the $100 billion program should avoid scrutiny. What we know is that some firms got JobKeeper, yet made more money than last year. Gerry Harvey says his company will double its profits, calling it 'the greatest boom I've ever seen in my lifetime'. Harvey Norman got $9 million in JobKeeper. 'Thanks, taxpayers.' The business 1300SMILES will double its profits, buy a new dental practice and pay a stonking dividend. Their founder says it's all down to his hard work, so maybe he can repay the $2 million he got from JobKeeper. The Business Council of Australia and the tax office both say it's wrong to use JobKeeper to pay CEO bonuses. Even insiders are uneasy. After Accent Group got $13 million in JobKeeper and paid its CEO a $1.2 million bonus, 54 per cent of shareholders voted against the remuneration report. After the National Golf Club collected $1.2 million in JobKeeper and paid out millions to its holding company, the president quit. How many large firms got JobKeeper taxpayer support, yet increased their profits? The government knows, and it's about time they told the public.
I rise today to commend the heroic bravery of two young constituents within the Mackellar electorate. These two 16-year-old boys have displayed great strides of selflessness and courage throughout their work as surf lifesavers at Collaroy Beach. On 22 August 2019, two 16-year-old lifesavers—Mr Brock Dose and Mr Archie Viesis—were inside the surf club at Collaroy when they were told that someone was in trouble. A strong, cold southerly hung in the air as they looked out to the ocean. They could see a man in the distance waving a broken paddle in the air, trapped more than 100 metres out to sea. He had lost his kayak and was being weighed down by his broken paddle. The two daring teens jumped into action and set off to save the exhausted swimmer. They were quick to come to his rescue, bringing him safely back to shore on Archie's board. One year on, this incredible service has been recognised as the two boys earned the award of the Rescue of the Year on the Northern Beaches for 2020. Despite being their first rescue, the two young lifesavers demonstrated immense courage and initiative in order to help someone who was in desperate need. I would like to thank both Brock and Archie on behalf of the Northern Beaches community for making our beautiful beaches safer.
I thought it must be April Fools' Day when I heard today that Minister Tudge actually declared that the parents of Australians are not their immediate family members. It would be funny if it weren't actually so serious. Right now the minister is forcing the elderly parents of Australians—people who are already safe here in Australia—to fly overseas during the pandemic. They paid $50,000 each for their visa, and he's forcing them to fly back again just so they can have their visa granted. It's not just stupid; it's downright dangerous, making elderly people take an expensive, pointless round trip overseas, risking COVID-19 infection and wasting a precious quarantine place.
On Saturday night, the minister panicked ahead of my private member's bill and said he'd fix this exact same problem for the partners of Australians. So why not for their parents? This hopeless minister is actually telling thousands of Australians that their parents are not considered family by his department. This is madness. Over 36,000 Australians are desperate to come home, stranded, waiting for a quarantine place, yet the minister is wasting those precious quarantine places, forcing people who are already here to fly overseas and back again. He has the power to fix this today with the stroke of his pen. He could do it in question time. I'll help him draft the change. If he doesn't fix it today, the Prime Minister should sack him.
I rise today to pay tribute to the late Lucy Kathleen Germon. Lucy was a well-known personality in Gloucester and received the Order of Australia medal on the Queen's Birthday honours list in 2009 for her service to the Gloucester community. She grew up on a farm near Pitlochry and went to school at Bulliac and later at Gloucester high. Bulliac school had only 20 students and most rode bareback and barefoot to school. She famously said, 'We never wore shoes to school except when the inspector or the sewing teacher was coming.' Lucy was a loving mother to Doug and Janette and a proud nanna to six grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
Gloucester is a better and stronger community because of the service Lucy put in as an active member of the community since the 1950s. She was a Quota International member and a president during her 27 years of service. She was an inaugural member of the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service and served on the Rookhurst Gloucester Hospital Auxiliary for 30 years. She was an active member of the jersey herd society, the Gloucester Show society, the Presbyterian Women's Association, the Gloucester Tidy Towns and Australia Day committees, the Gloucester Meals on Wheels and the cricket club, and she was a life member of the Gloucester country music club, amongst many others. Lucy Germon loved Gloucester, and they loved her. Her services left an indelible mark on the region. On behalf of a grateful country and the country, I pass on our condolences to Doug, Janette and all the family. Vale Lucy Germon.
Much has been said in this place about how we're doing business differently as members of parliament and how we're using various media and online platforms to connect with our constituents and stakeholders, but nothing ever really replaces face-to-face contact. In a bid to keep that connection, I've been hosting socially distanced electorate office visits across Mayo. We were able to get to Kangaroo Island in August and also in June to hold mobile electorate offices, and in September we went to Aldinga, Willunga and McLaren Vale. Unfortunately, South Australia has had a recent resurgence of COVID-19, which made it very difficult for us to do the Coromandel Valley, Blackwood, Clarendon and Cherry Gardens mobile electorate office visits that we planned recently, in the last couple of weeks. But we did manage to continue with an outside mobile electorate office in Hawthorndene, and I was pleased to chat with lots of constituents in the area about the issues that they're experiencing. As I said, you can do it on the phone, but nothing beats face to face.
We were able to talk about mobile black spots, an issue I can't believe we are still talking about in this place after several years, as well as the NBN and a number of other issues. One perennial issue is the need for the federal integrity commission, and it is something that I and many other members in this place will continue to work on. I look forward to the next round in just a couple of weeks.
Residents of the Hepburn Heights estate are concerned about road safety for the busy intersection of Walter Padbury Boulevard and Hepburn Avenue in Padbury, in particular for vehicles making right-hand turns out of the estate onto the busy four-lane Hepburn Avenue and for vehicles turning right across two lanes of oncoming traffic into the estate. In recent years, a number of petitions have been presented to the City of Joondalup, calling for traffic signals to be installed at the intersection; however, engineers from Main Roads Western Australia have expressed the view that the intersection does not meet the criteria for traffic signals. However, it is apparent that some form of traffic management treatment is required to improve safety at the intersection. The project is worthy of priority funding under the Black Spot Program and an engineering solution should be implemented without delay. One suggestion is that a roundabout will facilitate the free flow of traffic safely without the need for traffic lights so close to the freeway entry and exit ramps. A number of local residents raised their concerns at the community consultation session which I jointly held last week with the state member for Hillarys, Peter Katsambanis MLA. They are frustrated that this issue has been ongoing for several years. Reserve funds have been set aside by the city of Joondalup from land transactions to provide a traffic management solution.
After reading the government's retirement income review I think the Treasurer needs to do himself a favour and go and watch the Australian classic, The Castle. Maybe then he'd understand the difference between a house and a home. Maybe then he'd stop scaring the pants off retirees by suggesting they sell off the family home, bit by bit, to pay for their retirement. Maybe then he'd drop his pay-as-you-die home-stealer scheme. To paraphrase Dennis Denuto in that classic, the Treasurer has got the vibe all wrong. Australians are simply not going to stand by and cop having their homes sacrificed on this government's war against workers' superannuation. They work their guts out to pay off their mortgages so they can retire with security and comfort. They expect to spend their retirement enjoying quality family time. They don't expect to be forced back into debt which grows and grows and grows. Let's just remind ourselves why the Treasurer is even floating this idea. Twice now the Liberals have frozen superannuation contributions, costing the average worker $100,000 in retirement income. Now they want to freeze it again. It's a diabolical plan. They'll cut your super, freeze the pension and make you sell your house if you run out of money. We won't cop it. We won't stand it, and neither will the retirees of Australia.
Christmas is just around the corner, and I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the talent and creativity of the over 300 primary school children across my Curtin community who participated in a Christmas card competition this year. Students were invited to create a drawing that reflected what they loved best about Christmas, and there was a wonderful mix of artistic, heartwarming and funny entries, from a Hemsworth inspired Santa on a surfboard, complete with phenomenal abdominals, through to beautiful nativities and drawings of Christmas family traditions like unwrapping gifts around the Christmas tree, family lunches and picnics at the beach. There were also some truly unique drawings, like one of an angry crab attacking a snowman. Of course, with so many brilliant drawings, narrowing down the ones which would feature on this year's Curtin Christmas cards was not an easy task. I want to congratulate Isha B from Scotch College, Jenna D and Fraser S from Woodlands Primary School, Jake from St Thomas's Primary School, Claire from Cottesloe Primary School and Mattea K from St Dominic's Primary School, whose artwork features on this year's Curtin Christmas cards. While all of us know that Christmas is going to be different this year, and there are many families who are not going to be able to travel to see one another, I do wish everybody in Curtin a very safe and happy Christmas.
Over 16 days of global activism, more than 6,000 organisations in 187 countries are leading the call for the elimination of all forms of gender based violence. Here in Australia, it's to our great national shame that, more than two decades after the United Nations adopted the declaration of the elimination of violence against women, one Australian woman is still being brutally murdered by a current or former partner each and every week. It is clear that there can be no higher priority for this parliament than to ensure that all women and children are safe in their homes, at school, at work, in their communities and wherever they might travel through the world.
Regrettably, there has been an unconscionable gap between the Morrison government's rhetoric and its behaviour in this critical area. The government has starved our community legal services of funding and failed to invest in critical frontline domestic services in the last budget, despite the tragic spike in domestic violence cases from COVID-19. Currently, women are entitled to just five days unpaid domestic violence leave, and that is not good enough. Paid domestic violence leave is important because financial security is crucial to enabling women to flee a violent partner. It's time this government backed in calls for 10 days paid domestic violence leave to be embedded in the National Employment Standards. The full resources of government must be brought to bear to enable women and children to find safety and exit violence. (Time expired)
Local sport is vital for a healthy community and a strong country. It encourages pride in our community, it instils service through volunteering, and it teaches our young people to strive for excellence and to be gracious in both victory and defeat.
So I was very pleased last week to attend the City of Mandurah Sports Awards, which recognise the outstanding achievements and service of sportspeople in my local community. I extend my congratulations to the following people: sportsperson of the year Kathryn Norris, for golf; masters sportsperson of the year Symonne Kennedy, for wakeboarding; and junior sportsperson of the year Corey Wasley, for cricket. The award for team of the year goes to Peel Thunder Football Club, from the Western Australian Women's Football League; the club of the year is the Mandurah Junior Cricket Club; the junior team of the year is Mandurah City Football Club's NPL under-14s; the award for inclusion program or event of the year went to Fishability Mandurah; the award for female volunteer of the year went to Joanne Fitzpatrick; the highly commended achievement award went to Zoe Beacham; the highly commended achievement award for team of the year went to the Mandurah Mustangs Football Club, the integrated football team; and the Ken Phillips male volunteer of the year award went to Jamie Hunter. I want to pay special tribute to the efforts of Jamie Hunter. The integrated football league is a competition designed exclusively for people living with an intellectual disability. The Mandurah Mustangs joined the competition thanks largely to Jamie's personal effort. I was there last year for their first home game, and I congratulate Jamie in this House for his efforts.
My dear friend Angela Buckingham just published her first book, Powerful Princesses, with stories about women from history who, as she puts it, 'took action because they had a sense of responsibility or a sense of the rights that came with their special social status'. This year we have seen women from the legal and political professions take action because they had a sense of responsibility to ensure that other women do not have to experience the sexual harassment and gender inequality that they had experienced in their workplaces. While my female colleagues and I had, and still have, magnificent male bosses, colleagues and mentors when I worked in the legal profession, our experiences accord with the results of a report published this year by the Victorian Legal Services Board after surveying 2,300 lawyers. Two-thirds of women lawyers had recently been sexually harassed, usually by a senior male in the profession. The harassment was destructive to their wellbeing and careers, and commonly perpetrators engaged in serial incidents. Why didn't I call it out, and why is it rare for it to be called out in the profession? It's partly because it's too often women whose reputations and careers suffer when they do, partly because there's nowhere to go with a complaint, and partly because of a culture where everybody knows the men who are doing it but no-one does anything about it. It has to change, and those of us with the special status of being elected to this parliament should show the leadership to change it. So today I'm calling it out, and I'm asking everyone to join with me in doing so.
John Maynard Keynes said: 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?' Well, I tell you what: I'm going to change my mind on my previous statements about Christine Holgate. I think I was pulling the wrong rein. I don't think she's a bad person; I think she actually did a really good job, and I'll tell you why. I've been speaking to some of the country post offices, and they said if it weren't for Christine Holgate they would be broke. She was the one who managed to carve out a deal from the banks so that they got paid a fair amount, which is what kept their businesses going. We've got to make sure that these country post offices aren't bundled up, cut up and sold off so that we don't have postal services in regional areas, and we've got to be really careful that we don't fall into the trap of the 'pile on Christine' brigade, because that's not where the real game is. The real game is making sure that we keep these post offices open, and I'll tell you why: because the average investment by the people in those post offices is about $1.1 million per investment. That's why these mums and dads are a bit concerned about losing Christine Holgate. In many of these communities, you don't have street deliveries. If you don't have a post office, you don't get the mail. What they're worried about is that there's a Boston Consulting Group report—we haven't seen it—that we believe is going to say, 'Sell off the post offices.' What we're going to say, in regional areas, is: how on earth do we now get the mail?
I'm really proud to be part of a Labor team that will introduce a private member's bill into this place to provide for 10 days paid family violence leave. At the moment, five days unpaid leave is in the national employment standards, but we need paid family violence leave for those who are impacted by family and domestic violence. Indeed, 2020 has been a difficult year, but particularly difficult for those that have had to spend more time at home with their abuser. Some of the advocates and some of the service providers say: '2020 will be remembered as the worst year for domestic violence that any of us, who are in the sector now, have ever experienced.'
In July, a survey by the Australian Institute of Criminology revealed almost 10 per cent of women—that is, one in 10 women—who are currently in a relationship experienced domestic violence this year during the COVID crisis. One in 10 women at home with their abusers experienced violence. It cannot go on. We also know that women are most at risk of very serious violence, including death, when they make the decision to leave to protect the children in particular and themselves. Sadly, at least 50 women have died this year to date in fleeing family and domestic violence. Paid domestic violence leave will contribute to cultural and attitudinal change that will make a difference. (Time expired)
The Sutherland shire and areas around Wattle Grove have a long history of bushfire, with a major bushfire occurring every few years over the past century. Hopefully, with the cooler weather predicted for this summer we might have a quiet year. However, we know that there are no guarantees, as our history tells us that major bushfires, like those devastating fires of the 1990s, will occur again.
On the previous weekend I was honoured to attend both the Sandy Point Rural Fire Brigade and Menai Rural Fire Brigade's presentation ceremonies to assist with the presentation of their long-service medals and the Premier's Bushfire Emergency Citation. These were held at the Sandy Point and Menai stations. For Menai, it was also a celebration of their 80 years as a brigade, and it was great to see two of Menai's long-serving members, Don and Len Carter, there to cut the cake in celebration. To all our amazing bushfire brigade volunteers throughout my electorate, I simply say to you: thank you and please, this bushfire season, stay safe.
Labor will introduce into the parliament a private member's bill to provide 10 days paid domestic violence leave as a universal workplace right in the national employment standards. There must be cultural change around this issue in Australia. Family and domestic violence is the leading cause of death, disability and illness among women between 15 and 44 years of age. Income and financial capacity are key determinants of whether a woman is able to escape family or domestic violence. In leaving abuse or violence, women incur significant time and financial cost, including in potentially finding a new place to live, seeking legal support, receiving medical treatment or enrolling their children in a new school. No-one should have to make the choice between their own incapacity and their safety. This is why Labor is introducing a private member's bill.
KPMG estimates family violence against women and children cost the Australian economy a whopping $22 billion a year. Jim Stanford said paid domestic violence leave would reduce absenteeism and reduce turnover. Paid domestic violence leave will contribute to cultural and attitudinal change in this country. (Time expired)
I call the member for Berowra for about a minute.
New Line Road is a major bottleneck in my electorate. It causes headaches for people getting to and from work and for families getting their children to and from school. It's one of the major arterial roads linking the growth suburbs in north-western Sydney through Dural, Cherrybrook and Pennant Hills to the city. In some places this road, whose load is increasing every year, is only a single carriageway. The peak times travelled between Pennant Hills and Dural can be over an hour.
New Line Road was built when my constituency was orchards and horticulturalists. It's not fit for traffic in modern suburban Sydney. That's why I'm delighted that the Morrison government has invested $10 million to plan for the upgrade of New Line Road—a planning process that has recently commenced. After the completion of the planning process the road will be ready for state government investment. This road is a state government responsibility. Local residents will see in coming weeks many engineers and other people looking at the planning of the road, going along the road and marking out spots to ensure that an upgraded New Line Road will improve travel times, improve pedestrian safety and provide a better experience for my constituents and the broader north-western Sydney community.
In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded.
My question is to the Treasurer. Why has the Treasurer been congratulating himself on the economy when there are still 2.4 million unemployed or underemployed Australians and the jobless queues are growing?
I thank the member for Rankin for that dorothy dixer! There were 178,000 jobs created last month—including jobs in the construction industry due to HomeBuilder, which the member for Rankin and the Labor Party didn't support. The reality is that 80 per cent of the 1.3 million Australians who either lost their jobs or saw their working hours reduced to zero at the start of this crisis are now back at work.
When it comes to JobKeeper, it has been an economic lifeline for the people of Australia. It has been a remarkable program. They are not my words; they are the words of the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. There were 3.6 million Australians benefiting from JobKeeper in the month of September. From the ATO data for the month of October, there are 1.5 million Australians on JobKeeper. There are over two million fewer Australians on JobKeeper in October compared to September because the economic momentum, the economic recovery, is underway, because there is a comeback in the Australian economy. It is showing remarkable resilience.
Our AAA credit rating has been reaffirmed. The Governor of the Reserve Bank has said that the Morrison government is on the right track when it comes to fiscal policy. And we continue to undertake and to announce significant new initiatives, like the one today to support travel agents around the country and like the one on Sunday extending HomeBuilder for another three months.
In the budget there were more measures—immediate expensing for businesses with turnover up to $5 billion so that they can invest. Of course there was also the loss carry-back measure. There was support for apprentices right across the country. I can inform the member for Rankin that today consumer confidence is up by 2.9 per cent. It has now been up 12 of the last 13 weeks. We have also seen strong building approval numbers, strong house price numbers and business confidence coming back.
The member for Rankin asked me why we are celebrating the fact that people are back in work. It is because we on this side of the House stand for jobs—jobs, jobs and more jobs. That is what the Morrison government is doing and that is what is occurring across the economy as we are coming back from the biggest hit in over a century.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the Morrison government's economic recovery plan to drive our comeback from the COVID-19 recession and how this plan is backing Australian workers and businesses to get and create more jobs?
[by video link] I thank the member for Robertson for her question. You have just heard from the Treasurer very eloquently the significant steps we're making in the economic comeback from the COVID-19 recession. But today is a very special day. A very important milestone has been reached in this comeback from the COVID-19 recession. Today is the day when the borders are tumbling down. Australia was not built for borders, and I welcome the announcements that have been made and the initiation of the opening up of those borders, whether it's between Queensland and New South Wales or, indeed, the announcement by the Western Australian Premier, who I spoke to earlier today, that Western Australian borders will also be open to those in New South Wales and other places.
This is an important part of the comeback. We said we would work to get Australia open by Christmas and, on the record of the achievement so far, we are well and truly on that path. So I thank the premiers and the chief ministers for the way we've worked together patiently. There have been a few disagreements, but the outcome is what matters, and that outcome is an Australia that is opening safely. The challenge now is to remain safely open. This is important to opening businesses. This is important to opening up more job opportunities. The work that has been done has been underpinned by a confidence in a public health response that has been put in place; working together at state, territory and federal levels; and not just treasurers working together but health ministers working together. I acknowledge all of those who have been working, to that end, to get the confidence to the point where we are today, which puts Australia in stark contrast to so many other countries around the world.
The results of this comeback are there to see. The results of that comeback, as the Treasurer said, are some 80 per cent of jobs and lost hours restored and 75 per cent on the figures of measured employment, and that is something we welcome—648,000 measured employment jobs coming back into the economy. The effective unemployment rate, which takes into account the people who have had to leave the labour force or have their hours reduced to zero, has fallen from almost 15 per cent to 7.4 per cent and continues to fall—a strong outcome, in the labour market, in the face of the biggest and most significant impact to our jobs in this country since the Great Depression.
We have seen more than two million Australians graduate off JobKeeper in the recent months alone—the JobKeeper program has been a lifeline, and it has now proved to be a springboard for those businesses and those Australians now able to be supported by businesses, in their own right, without the need for taxpayer assistance. Business and consumer confidence has returned to pre-COVID levels and private dwelling approvals have reached a 20-year high, all of this demonstrating that a comeback is on, but we know there is a lot more to go. The figures are encouraging but there is more support and there is more standing by Australians needed, and we will do that. (Time expired)
I'd like to welcome to the gallery, welcome back, former Treasurer and former Ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey. It's good to see you.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
My question is to the Treasurer. Why is the Treasurer congratulating himself on the economy when in the eighth year of this Liberal government wages growth has never been weaker?
I'm not going to take a lecture from an opposition spokesman as, when they were in government, for three out of the six years they saw a reduction in real minimum wages. The fact of the matter is we're celebrating the Australian people and the Australian economy's resilience in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic. We're celebrating the fact that Australia has fared better than nearly every other country in the world in both the health and the economic front. We still have a long way to go and a lot of ground to make up, but we are celebrating the fact that Australians are getting back into work.
The member for Rankin would know that payroll jobs data was up today, and it's now been up for three consecutive fortnights. When it comes to real wages, when we take into account inflation, they have grown by an average of 0.7 per cent under the coalition. That's in line with the 20-year average. Of course we've had a terrible hit to the economy with the pandemic, and, as the RBA Governor has said, this is a very challenging time for the economy. But our focus has been on jobs, creating more jobs and helping Australians get back into work. That is what occurred and that is what the numbers are showing.
My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Morrison-McCormack government's delivery of infrastructure is boosting regional communities and supporting our comeback from the COVID-19 recession?
I thank the member for Lyne for his question. Infrastructure, as he knows and as we on this side of the House know, is a core component of our nation's comeback from COVID-19. This government's record pipeline of investment—$110 billion over 10 years—is delivering jobs, delivering stimulus and making sure that we have the critical infrastructure in the right places right now.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, infrastructure construction has continued. We thank the contractors and the workers, the men and women in the industry, for powering on, for getting on with the job and for making sure that they back themselves as we as a government have backed them too. This ongoing delivery is creating jobs and direct economic stimulus via the projects which are making sure that we transform the nation and the way we live, getting people home sooner and safer. More than $60 billion is budgeted over the next four years. Around 400 major projects have been completed since 2013—since, in fact, when Joe Hockey was Treasurer, and a fine Treasurer he was. I bet you he didn't think he'd come back from America and see me sitting in the chair. Anyway, we will move on. Two hundred major projects are under construction right now. Under—
Opposition members interjecting—
that's got them going, Mr Speaker—the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program, we've approved more than 2,500 projects totalling $447 million.
In the member for Lyne's electorate, works have started on the Clarence Town Road. It's upgrading more than 17 kilometres of this important link, beginning construction across Woodville and Wirragulla. The president of the chamber of commerce of Dungog—a town made famous by Dougie Walters, who will celebrate his 75th birthday later this month and will probably get to 100 in one over—is Marion Stuart. She's the president of that fine district chamber of commerce, and she described the funding for that particular road by saying, 'This road is a major artery into town, and we are very happy works have commenced.' She said, 'We have seen a resurgence of visitors to Dungog, and these works will deliver a safer and more inviting welcome.'
Wherever you go across regional Australia, across urban Australia and across metropolitan areas, you can see the benefit of the infrastructure rollout writ large. It is getting Australians home sooner and safer. It is creating jobs. It is creating procurement for all of those regional, local, urban and metropolitan small businesses, which benefit so much from the infrastructure that this government is putting in place. This Treasurer's budget determined that and made sure of that, right now and going forward. That's what we're doing: building the infrastructure, whether it's in Lyne or in any other regional community right across Australia.
What about the Calder freeway?
The member for McEwen! You ended up there? Some sort of sick joke by the whips!
My question is to the Treasurer. Treasurer, why are you congratulating yourself on the economy when your budget shows that unemployment won't return to pre-COVID levels for more than four years?
It might be known to the member for Hotham that Australia has been hit by a once-in-a-century pandemic. To put it in perspective for the member for Hotham, during the GFC the global economy contracted by 0.1 per cent. It's the IMF's forecast that the global economy will contract this year by 4.4 per cent. With 1.3 million Australians who either lost their jobs or saw their working hours reduced to zero early on in this pandemic, it has been a huge task for the Australian economy to start the recovery. That recovery is now underway, with 80 per cent of those people back at work.
The fact that 178,000 jobs were created last month goes to the heart of the resilience of the Australian economy. The effective unemployment rate has fallen from 9.3 per cent to 7.4 per cent. In the state of Victoria—the member for Hotham's own state—we saw the effective unemployment rate rise to the highest in the country at 14 per cent, and it is now down to 10½ per cent. Today's economic data—showing that consumer confidence was up for 12 of the last 13 weeks, that house prices are up and that building approvals are up—all serve as extra indicators to show that the comeback is on. It might be uncomfortable for those opposite who like to talk down the Australian economy. At every opportunity, they are looking to talk down the Australian economy. Yesterday, when the JobKeeper numbers came out for the month of October, the member for Rankin came out and said, 'That's entirely unsurprising.' But, only two weeks prior, he was saying that the decisions by the Morrison government were going to lead to a deeper recession. He can't have it both ways. He can't be talking about a deeper recession and then saying that the strong comeback is entirely unsurprising. The former Treasurer, Joe Hockey, was part of a government that helped to see jobs created. Our Prime Minister, who was formerly the Treasurer, has helped put the bricks in place to see the Australian economy become the resilient economy it is. And, right now, we're saying to the Australian people that we have their backs—that we had their backs at the start of this crisis, through this crisis and to the end of this crisis.
My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, . South Australia produces half of the nation's wine and 80 per cent of the wine that's exported. Wine export to China is worth $1.2 billion annually. Given the spectacular collapse of the Australia to China wine market, what immediate support will the government provide to our winemakers, particularly mine in Mayo?
I thank the member for Mayo for her question. The Australian government is bitterly disappointed by the preliminary decision of the Chinese government to impose what is a tariff of between 107 per cent and 212 per cent. The immediate support that we will provide to the industry is to appeal that decision. We have 10 days in which to do that. We are working with industry around that appeal. We will vigorously defend the industry with respect to the dumping of wine—wine which has the second-highest price point in China. We, together with the industry, will vigorously defend that. Even before the imposition of what is a tariff on our wine, we had already been trying to open up other markets through agricultural counsellors—we now have 22 of them—through the free trade agreements that we have put in place, and we will continue to do that. We are particularly looking at emerging markets in ASEAN countries, and also the US and Canada. In Canada, we had a successful finding in the WTO. We will continue to work in those emerging markets. Tomorrow, the trade minister and I will meet with Tony Battaglene, who is the chairman of Australian Grape & Wine. We'll work with him as the leader of the peak body of his industry to work through other support mechanisms that the government can help with. Obviously, we will work through that in a constructive way, within the parameters of the WTO. We are a fair-trading nation; we are a rules based trading nation. We will stay within that, but we will continue to work with them in exploring new markets as quickly as we can and making investments in accelerating the brand 'Australian wine' right around the world.
My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on how the Morrison government's strong budget measures and programs are helping to ensure that our economic comeback from the COVID-19 recession is well underway?
I thank the member for Chisholm for her question and acknowledge her background in small business as a restauranteur and business owner and also as a speech pathologist prior to coming—sorry.
Here to help!
Thank you. I thank the member for Chisholm for her question. She understands how the Australian economy has continued to strengthen. Economic recovery is underway. Today consumer confidence numbers are up 2.9 per cent—12 out of the last 13 weeks. Consumer confidence is back to the level we last saw in February. We have seen payroll jobs data up again today. This is the third consecutive fortnight where we've seen positive payroll jobs data. We have seen building approvals up by 3.8 per cent, and 14 per cent through the year. Capital city house prices are up by 0.7 per cent. This is the first time we've seen capital city house prices up in every capital city across the country since the start of the pandemic, and the numbers are even stronger in regional Australia.
The measures of the Morrison government have helped support the economic recovery. Around $70 billion has gone out the door through JobKeeper. More than $30 billion has gone out the door through the cash flow boost. Around $14 billion has gone out the door through the coronavirus supplement. More than $9 billion has gone to pensioners and others on income support through two $750 payments, with two more $250 payments to come.
This is helping to create jobs across the economy—178,000 jobs came back last month. We know that our initiatives like JobKeeper, according to the RBA, have helped save at least 700,000 jobs. So our congratulations go to the people of Australia who are now getting back to work. With the national accounts tomorrow—and we've seen economic data in recent days—we will continue to see that Australia's economic recovery is underway. The comeback is on.
Mr Speaker, I join with you in giving a shout-out to Joe Hockey, who was part of the class of '96, and also to the refinery delegates who are here talking about their jobs. My question is addressed to the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I refer to the report of the disability royal commission on COVID-19, which found that the government failed to provide PPE to people with disability and support workers, failed to provide access to essential food and medications and left people with disability feeling forgotten and ignored. Why is it that the Morrison government keep leaving vulnerable Australians behind?
I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. Let me say categorically that the government responded with speed when COVID occurred. February was when planning commenced and 5 March was when engagement with the agency occurred. There were four meetings of the Disability Reform Council. All ministers got together to work through the planning and response. The first meeting was on 18 March.
The government made $90 million available to support people with disability as part of a broader community support package. There were $660 million in advance payments to more than 5,000 providers. Over 280,000 masks from the National Medical Stockpile were provided. Over 81,000 calls were made to individual vulnerable participants to ensure that they were managing and coping well.
I'll give an idea of the results. Tragically, 907 Australians have so far lost their lives. That is a tragedy—something everyone in this House shares. Of those 907, nine were NDIS participants. This represents less than one per cent of the tragic loss of life, but participants are 1.6 per cent of the population. The response that this government had to NDIS participants saw the loss of life half that of the national average. Look at infection rates. There were 179 NDIS participants infected, compared to 27,854 across Australia. The infection rate for participants is 0.6 per cent, and they are 1.6 per cent of Australians. That is one-third. These numbers are testimony to the speed at which the government—
The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order?
Yes, Mr Speaker. The question went to the—
On what is the point of order?
On relevance—the question went to the disability royal commission report that was released yesterday. The minister hasn't mentioned it at all.
Mr Hunt interjecting—
I ask the Leader of the Opposition to resume his seat. The Minister for Health will cease interjecting. The Leader of the Opposition in his preamble referred to a number of matters, but he only had one question at the end. It was a very open-ended question. The minister, therefore, has extreme latitude, and he's in order.
Thanks, Mr Speaker. After the 18 March DRC, the shadow minister for the NDIS, the member for Maribyrnong, was briefed on 23 March and the Greens spokesman was briefed on 25 March. At no point at all did the opposition raise any issues with the government's response—at no time at all. DRC then met again on 9 April, 11 May and 24 July. At each of the four emergency meetings of all disability ministers, state and federal, we worked together with over a billion dollars worth of supports to assist Australians with disability. The list goes on and on, as the health minister's press release showed, of the levels of engagement that this government put in place, and that is why the rate of infection and the tragic loss of life amongst NDIS participants are a third to a half of the national average.
My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison-McCormack government is providing critical support to our tourism sector, and in particular to travel agents, as part of our economic comeback from the COVID-19 pandemic?
I thank the member for Cowper for his question. I know the plight of our travel agents is something that he's been working very hard on. He's had representations from travel agents in New South Wales, Queensland and even the Northern Territory and Victoria, and he's met with the Australian Federation of Travel Agents. This is an issue he's been championing, and I commend him for that.
Travel agents have faced unique circumstances in having to refund existing bookings whilst having limited trade due to COVID-19. It has been a very, very difficult time for travel agents during COVID-19. It's why today, in consultation with the industry—very importantly in consultation with industry, and once again I commend the member for Cowper for the role he has played in that and the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Simon Birmingham, for the consultation he's had with the industry—we announced a $128 million scheme to assist our travel agents.
Eligible travel agents with a turnover of between $50,000 and $20 million a year will be able to apply for a one-off payment. Payments will be scaled from $1,500 for businesses with a turnover of $50,000 up to $100,000 for a business with a turnover of $20 million. This will go a long way to support those travel agents that have been through a very, very difficult time, as I mentioned before. This is on top of our significant support for the tourism and travel industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. That support included $50 million for the Recovery for Regional Tourism Fund to support nine regions heavily reliant on international tourism, $100 million for tourism infrastructure under a new round of the Building Better Regions Fund and a $50 million business events grant program.
Importantly, through Tourism Australia's latest domestic campaign we're asking Australians to talk to their local travel agent today for their next trip. They could inquire about going to visit those wonderful koala sculptures in the member for Cowper's electorate or they could think about coming down and seeing the Twelve Apostles along the Great Ocean Road. That is another great place where people can go. The reason we're doing this is that there are 660,000 people employed in the tourism industry. We want to make sure that those jobs come back into the tourism industry because it's all part of our economic comeback approach, which is focused on jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs.
My question is to the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Why does the Morrison government keep leaving vulnerable Australians behind? Isn't that what the aged-care royal commission showed when it found the Morrison government had no COVID plan for aged care during a period when 685 aged-care residents died? Isn't that what the disability royal commission found when it said the Morrison government left Australians with a disability feeling 'forgotten and ignored'?
I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. The government of course rejects completely the premise of what the Leader of the Opposition says, and the facts bear witness to themselves. My last answer went through all the responses and all the areas where the government responded quickly, including 81,000 individual calls to vulnerable participants. At the same time, in terms of disability supports, plans were extended by 24 months, ensuring continuity of support and increasing the capacity of staff to focus on urgent and required changes. Massive phone planning meetings occurred to ensure that face-to-face wasn't required. Increased plan flexibility was put in place to allow participants to purchase additional hours of support coordination from their core or capacity-building budgets.
More importantly, the rate of expenditure of the NDIS ostensibly did not reduce. The same amount of payment, which is now upwards of $5 billion per quarter, increased. We temporarily increased flexibility for participants to purchase low-cost AT items, including smart devices, to enable them to continue to receive their disability supports. We enabled priority access to home delivery services from major supermarket chains so that Australians with disability received priority above all other Australians for Coles and Woolies to deliver their groceries. We allowed participants living in restricted areas to purchase PPE for their own use.
At the same time, we moved away from Labor's record of waiting 90 minutes on the phone to waiting 60 seconds, answering over 160,000 calls. We moved away from 500,000 logins a day on digital platforms to 2.6 million Australians logging in per day. Rather than over 70,000 Australians going into service centres every day, that's now down to 30,000 because of the high volume and high grade of service in telephony and digital channels that Australians can receive. This is the amount of effort that this government put in place to deliver services to vulnerable Australians, whether they were Australians with disability or otherwise, and we will continue to deliver this level of service. We will continue to follow the public health orders that come out of states as we continue to deliver the essential items that Australian citizens require.
I'm proud of what this government has done to stump up for Australians throughout the pandemic and I think everyone on this side should be extraordinarily proud of what we have done. The results globally speak for themselves. Whilst I appreciate that those opposite are the opposition, it would be good for us to sit back and reflect how, in the concert of nations, the performance of this government in taking care of Australians in a once-in-100-year pandemic has gone compared to other nations in the world.
My question is to the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology. Will the minister inform the House how the Morrison government's commitment to the manufacturing sector is helping create jobs and drive our recovery from the COVID-19 recession?
I thank the member for his question. It was great to join him last week in his electorate to open a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. ProForm is a brilliant Aussie company that makes plant based protein products, and we backed them with a grant in the first round of the Manufacturing Modernisation Fund. Since then they have gone from strength to strength. They are taking on new employees. In fact, this year alone the founders have scaled that company from five to 25 employees.
ProForm is a fantastic example of adding value to our world-class agriculture industry. Alongside our meat producers, they are primed to capitalise on Australia's reputation for producing safe, premium, high-quality food. ProForm also demonstrate how we harness science and technology to drive industry. They invested $2.3 million in a joint venture with CSIRO for their initial research and development. This is exactly what the Morrison government wants businesses to do. Collaboration is one of the key pillars of our government's modern manufacturing strategy, and that's designed to make our manufacturers more resilient, more competitive and able to scale up so that they can take on the world. Of course, scaling up means that there will be more jobs created. These will be quality jobs right along the manufacturing spectrum, from research and development through to manufacturing and production processes and through to sales, market and after-sales services, in particular.
We needed to make sure that we were putting in place the right economic conditions for all businesses, all of industry, to be able to thrive, and that is what we are doing. Our manufacturers, including the more than 440 in the electorate of Berowra, are benefiting from many of the things that this government has put in place. It's our investment in skills that is driving our comeback from COVID. It's the tax incentives, including the expansion of the instant asset write-off. I am so pleased we have such a magnificent Treasurer who is driving these reforms for us, we have an excellent energy minister who is working day and night to bring down our energy costs and, as a government, we are investing in research and development. We put our money where our mouths are. We are working day and night to make sure that we reduce red tape for Australian industry. (Time expired)
My question is to the Minister for Government Services. I refer to his answer yesterday concerning the tragic suicide of robodebt victim Jarrad Madgwick. I spoke to Kath, his mum, last night, and she asked me to ask, 'Can the minister explain how chasing Jarrad for almost $2,000 has been a sound economic decision given that Jarrad and I would have full employment now, but, due to my grief, PTSD and depression, I'm forced to rely on the welfare system?' Minister, what is the answer?
I thank the member for his question. First of all, let me acknowledge Mrs Madgwick's grief. The grief for the loss of any child is truly tragic. I think that's something that the whole House accepts.
The government, of course, has a requirement in terms of raising debts. I think we all accept that, and we all respect that. In the case of Mrs Madgwick, her son's debt was sufficient and lawful and was not raised by income averaging. This is a very important point. I grieve for Mrs Madgwick; I truly do. I can't even begin to understand her pain. But the debt wasn't income averaged, which is the issue at case in the settlement. It was a legitimate debt.
A million Australians right now will be receiving legitimate debts; debts started being raised from 2 November. We won't collect until February. It's going to be hard. Governments of all persuasions have raised legitimate debts. We've all done it. There are many ministers on the front bench, and I respect what you've done. You'll receive no criticism from me on the way that many ministers have done it. It's a lawful part of what we are required to do, and we do it sensibly and respectfully.
Every day my department—just to give you some context—gets from the social worker census database the numbers I'm drawing from. We receive on average one case of escalated harm a day which is of such significance that it gets escalated, literally, to the secretary level. We get many, many more every day that are dealt with. This has been going on for decades. The numbers haven't increased, per se; this is just what Services Australia do in our names. We deal with vulnerable Australians. At the same time in the last financial year, we answered 29.2 million calls from Australians who need service and support, and we'll continue to do so.
Dealing with human loss of life and tragedy is something my agency does every single day, and it's hard. I want to, quite genuinely, shout out to the Services Australia staff that deal with this every single day. Can I encourage everyone—there are 325 service centres; many of you have got service centres in your electorate—if you get a chance, to just pop in and say thank you. That's all.
Opposition members interjecting—
I'm not going to respond to those opposite, because I'm quite genuine about this. Our staff deal with quite genuine tragedy, and I think they do it really well. So let's just be cognisant of it. These are difficult issues, and we try and deal with them respectfully. Suicide and self-harm are tragic. They occur every day in our communities, and they're something we are all cognisant of and something that my agency is cognisant of. We will continue to do our legislated and mandated task, and we understand the challenges that come with that.
Is the member for Maribyrnong seeking to table a document?
I seek leave to table the statement of Kath Madgwick, the lady to whom the minister was referring, where she clearly says, 'If it were not for the compliance letter and the threat of debt, Jarrad wouldn't have taken his own life.'
Leave not granted.
My question as to the Minister representing the Minister for Defence. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government is working with international partners during our comeback from the COVID-19 pandemic to keep Australians safe?
I thank the honourable member for her question and for her great support of the Australian Defence Force. Of course, this government has been able to manage our budget successfully over a number of years, which has put us in a good position to deal with the response to COVID-19 and the comeback that is underway. But we've also been able to increase our investment in the Australian Defence Force. It is now above two per cent of GDP, and that is incredibly important, because we do know that we are in the midst of the most significant strategic realignment since the Second World War. The Morrison government is safeguarding our COVID-19 comeback at this critical time by ensuring the Indo-Pacific remains secure.
As many Australians would be aware, Australia participated in maritime exercise Malabar this month. We did so with our close partners India, Japan and the United States. I should acknowledge the former ambassador—Australia's greatest ever ambassador to the United States—Joe Hockey, who is up in the gallery today. There's bipartisan support of that statement, no doubt! Malabar occurred over two phases, and it showcased the deep trust between major Indo-Pacific democracies and their will to work together on common security interests. We have taken very significant steps to strengthen the Australia-Japan bilateral defence relationship. We are very special strategic partners. We work incredibly closely together on trade, security and defence, and our involvement in Malabar was just one demonstration of that.
While in Tokyo, Prime Minister Morrison met with Prime Minister Suga in releasing a statement reaffirming the importance of enhancing regular bilateral and multilateral cooperative activities to maintain a free, open, secure, inclusive and prosperous region. As we know, the Prime Minister is in isolation, with only a couple of days to go, but it was an absolute priority for him, for our government and for our country that he go to Tokyo to meet with Prime Minister Suga. It really reinforced the relationship. Obviously, the Prime Minister has announced that agreement in principle on a landmark defence treaty: the reciprocal access agreement. The agreement paves the way for a new chapter of advanced defence cooperation between our two nations. The RAA will facilitate more complex practical engagement and enhance our interoperability and cooperation in support of a stable Indo-Pacific. The Morrison government is committed to building strong regional partnerships that will ensure that our region continues to be secure and prosperous and that both large and small nations have their sovereignty respected.
My question is to the Minister for Government Services. Yesterday in this House, the minister promised parliament that he would deliver to me data relating to the reports the government received of victims of the illegal robodebt scheme threatening self-harm. Why has the minister reneged and not delivered this information? Why won't the minister admit the government received at least 14 official reports of robodebt victims threatening self-harm in 2017 and 2018? Is it because the number is even higher?
Let me thank the member for his question. For the benefit of the House, I'll table the letter I wrote to the member so everyone is absolutely clear what we're talking about. The member raised issues that were presented to the court as part of a second further amended statement of claim. As all members would be aware, the Commonwealth and Gordon Legal have acknowledged there is a settlement—it's not yet finalised in the court, but it's been agreed—but both the Commonwealth and Gordon Legal have acknowledged the settlement is not an admission of liability, does not reflect any acceptance of these allegations and does not reflect any knowledge of unlawfulness. The actual issues that the member for Maribyrnong raised are unsubstantiated claims that were presented by Gordon Legal to the court as part of the second further amended statement of claim. They were simply what Gordon Legal put through. If the Commonwealth and, indeed, Labor's lawyers can actually reach settlement and acknowledge that there is no admission of liability, no reflection of acceptance and, indeed, no acceptance of knowledge, why can't Labor accept that?
I'll just table the document that the minister was referring to.
My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison-McCormack government is driving our economic comeback from the COVID-19 recession by opening new trade markets for Australian agricultural exports and supporting our agricultural industry to export their world-class products?
I thank the member for Mallee for her question and acknowledge the significant contribution the electorate of Mallee makes not only to agriculture but to agricultural exports. She knows better than anyone the importance of that to her community. To put it in perspective and keep it simple, we are a nation of 25 million people and we produce enough food for 75 million, so, if we don't engage with the world and trade with the world, we don't need the communities that support those agricultural communities around Australia. There are 270,000 Australians employed in agriculture. Three in every five of those jobs are linked to agricultural trade. Last year we exported nearly $54 billion worth of agricultural product. That's up $4 billion over the last four years. Such is the importance of the investment we continue to make in securing new free trade agreements. In fact, the trade minister is working on agreements with the UK and the EU, and that's not long after we ratified one with Indonesia, which has 260 million people on our doorstep. That has opened up market access and reduced tariffs to make it easier for our primary producers to get their products around the world.
We've also taken COVID into account. There is $669 million committed in airfreight support to make sure that we can get our high-end agricultural product out on cargo planes; it was previously going out on passenger planes. We are making sure that we are seen not only as producing the best food and fibre in world but also as being one of the most reliable exporters in the world even through COVID. We're also putting boots on the ground. We now have 22 agricultural counsellors in embassies and high commissions around the world, and the job of those men and women is to work at government-to-government level to reduce technical barriers and get market access commodity by commodity.
We've also made a significant investment in this year's budget: over $300 million in modernising our export platform, making it single touch and allowing our exporters to apply to export their product. Where previously around 20 application forms were required, we are going back to one. We were issuing over 200,000 export permits a year on a manual basis; we are now going to do that on a digital basis. This is engaging with technology to streamline regulation but also to have complementary measures to support industries around the regulatory task—to protect Brand Australia but make sure that we can do that with the lightest regulatory touch by engaging technology. We're putting smart glasses on meat inspectors so that they can do external inspections to cut the cost. We expect that, for the meat industry alone, over $45 million a year will go back to the industry. Over 10 years across all our commodities, about $1.102 billion will be going back into those industries. This is about an investment in our agricultural sector and in achieving their ambitious goal of $100 billion by 2030.
My question is to the Minister for Government Services. Can the minister confirm the Administrative Appeals Tribunal first determined that robodebt was illegal in March 2017, and on at least 75 other occasions, but the government persisted with its illegal scheme right up until December 2019?
Let me thank the member for her question. As we all understand, the AAT is independent in reviewing administrative decisions. Each matter decided by the AAT is, of course, made on a case-by-case basis, having regard to the particular facts and circumstances of each case. AAT decisions are usually supported by clearly written statements of reason, having regard to the digital information the AAT has considered during its hearing.
As it reviews administrative decisions, the Commonwealth is always looking at those decisions and, in terms of the refund process, just so the member is aware, having raised the issue of the AAT—and I'm sure she has concern for those who have a debt raised insufficiently because of the longstanding 26-year practice of averaged income data—Services Australia will work closely with the AAT about debts raised wholly or partially based on income averaging that's been decided by the AAT. For those Australians who believe that they may have had a debt raised over the last 26 years because of the use of averaged income data, those Australians are able to seek from Services Australia, at any time, a review into a debt they believe may have been used by averaged income data over the last three decades.
My question is to the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations. Will the minister, please, outline to the House how the Morrison government's industrial relations reforms play a vital role in our economic comeback from the COVID-19 recession, particularly in the mining and resources sector?
I thank the member for her question. It is the case that a particular focus of our working groups, which are aiming at reform legislation we are hoping to bring to the parliament very soon, has been on the mining sector, because when we look at what the mining sector has done for this country and for every employee in this country during the COVID-19 pandemic it's been nothing short of remarkable. Perhaps when we think about the comeback that we're now in the middle of, economically there are few sectors that have played a greater role in preserving jobs during the crisis that we have been through, and there'll be few sectors that'll play a more important role as we come out and come back from the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
When we look at the mining and resources sector, it has remained remarkably strong during 2019-20 and during the COVID crisis. It accounts for nine per cent of Australia's GDP and for half of the Australian export earnings totalling $290 billion. But in the June 2020 quarter the national accounts showed that the mining sector still actually managed to grow by 0.2 per cent. So, in the height of the COVID pandemic, against the trends, compared to an economy-wide fall in growth of seven per cent, the mining sector still managed to grow by 0.2 per cent. The automatic stabilising effect that that employment had on our economy and for every single Australian cannot be underestimated. The mining industry did great things for us during the COVID pandemic and can be one of the central keys to working our way out. Even through all of the struggles that we've been through, mining investment has been on the rise. It's up by 1.3 per cent, or $13½ billion, in the June quarter and 7.9 per cent, or $52 billion, in the 12 months since the June quarter in 2019.
One of the things that we have been looking at with respect to the mining sector is the issue of greenfields agreements. We want to try and create an optimal regulatory setting to support the next wave of major resource and project investment. Why do we want to do that? Because we think these complicated investment decisions are very important, and they produce that countercyclical growth we have seen in the mining industry. In a 2019 survey of infrastructure market participants, there was pretty serious concern indicated about the level of regulatory burden and how that impacts on investments. Seventy-nine per cent of investors said North America provides a compelling investment opportunity; unfortunately, less than half said the same thing about Australia. Eighty-three per cent agreed that various uncertainties in Australia's policy and regulatory setting are limiting their willingness to invest. That is why we want to see life-of-project greenfield investments—to bring on more investment decisions, more investment and more employment in mining.
My question is to the Attorney-General. In January 2017 the Attorney-General described Labor's call to stop the illegal robodebt scheme as 'one of the dumber things I've heard'. Given the government has now agreed to pay $1.2 billion of taxpayer money to settle the claims of robodebt victims, does the Attorney-General regret that statement?
It was the reference to it as solely the government's scheme, when Labor maintained income averaging for many years, which to me made the question appear stupid, which it still is.
My question is to the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Housing. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison government's HomeBuilder grant is helping Australians build a home of their own while at the same time supporting construction jobs through to 2022 and helping drive our economy's comeback from the COVID-19 recession?
I thank the member for Boothby for her question. She knows that the coalition is unequivocally and unquestionably a government that supports the residential construction industry. Of course, we are the parties of homeownership, and we support first home buyers and we support people through the HomeBuilder grant to get into a new home.
HomeBuilder has been an enormous success. It's ignited the residential construction industry and it's been a key part of our comeback from the COVID-19 recession. That comeback was highlighted again today through the latest ABS data on building approvals. Today the ABS data on building approvals showed that approvals aren't just at their highest level since the pandemic commenced; they are at their highest level for 20 years. For those of us on this side of the House that have supported the HomeBuilder program and supported the residential construction industry, not in our wildest dreams did we think the industry would be elevated to those heights. But that is exactly what HomeBuilder has done.
There are few places around the country that have been more successful than South Australia, the home state of the member for Boothby, which has seen a rise in building approvals of 25 per cent in September and October combined. What does this all mean? It means new jobs; new homes and new construction mean new jobs. In South Australia alone, the HIA and, importantly, the ABS have said that 2,700 jobs have been created as a result of the HomeBuilder program. The HomeBuilder program was there to support the existing up to one million jobs in the industry, and now we're seeing jobs actually increasing in many parts of the country.
I hope the member for Boothby gets an opportunity to meet a couple of new constituents of hers, Erin and Matt, who were quoted in Adelaide's The Advertiser as saying that the HomeBuilder grant tipped the balance for them to buy a new home. That's what HomeBuilder did. Yes, HomeBuilder's there to support the million people who work in the industry. But for Erin and Matt it means a new home. The Labor Party has been out there criticising HomeBuilder for the last six months. There are tens of thousands of people like Erin and Matt who are now in their first home, and we've also got up to a million Australians who have had their jobs supported by the HomeBuilder program. That's why we've extended it through to 31 March. It's a key part of the economic comeback. The coalition is here for first home buyers and the residential construction industry.
My question is to the Minister for Government Services. Why did the government persist with its robodebt scheme when it knew the debt notices were inaccurate, and it kept sending them; it knew they were illegal, and it kept sending them; and it knew they were driving people to self-harm, and it kept sending them?
I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. The government rejects the premise of the Leader of the Opposition's question. But it is important the government put on the record exactly what we do know. We know that the use of averaged income data was widely used from 1994, under the Keating government. We know that, and we know that because yesterday I tabled not just an individual letter sent to a citizen but also the actual letter template that was pulled out of the ISIS mainframe and was widely used. We know it's been going on for at least 26 years, and, anecdotally, the use of averaged income data from taxation goes back further. What we know from that individual letter and from the form letter is that, from the Keating government onwards, letters were sent saying, 'If you don't engage with the department, averaged income data will be used and a bill will be sent.' We know that. It's not a question that's open. It's not an assertion. It's a fact. We know that—for 26 years. We know that from the work we've done to understand how far back this went.
We know that, in 2009, 16.8 per cent of reviews were done solely or partially using averaging. We know that, from 2011, when the member for Sydney was the minister, 24.4 per cent were used solely for averaging. Let's look at what else we know. In the budget 2009-10, on page 330 of Budget Paper No. 2—
Opposition members interjecting—
If the minister can just pause for a second and members cease interjecting. The minister's been able to compare and contrast, but the question didn't allow him to range as widely as he's starting to range. I'd just ask him to come back and be relevant to the question.
We know the widespread usage of this scheme. We know the widespread usage of income averaging, going back 26 years—
Mr Dreyfus interjecting—
The member for Isaacs!
We know full well from the second, further amended statement of claim that both the Commonwealth and Gordon Legal have accepted and acknowledged—it is not an admission of liability—that there was no understanding of lawfulness. And the government is not suggesting—
Mr Dreyfus interjecting—
The member for Isaacs in warned!
that those opposite knew it was unlawful from 2007 to 2013; the government is not acknowledging that at all. The government are working on the understanding that those opposite used exactly the same process from 2007 to 2013 and we accept that those opposite did that in good faith at the time. And the reason I know that is that I have a media release from June 2011 from the member for Maribyrnong and the member for Sydney saying:
A new data matching initiative between Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office is expected to claw back millions of dollars from welfare recipients who have debts with the Australian Government.
That is what we all now know.
My question is to the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction. Will the minister update the House on the Morrison government's progress on reaching Australia's emissions reduction targets?
I thank the member for Curtin for her question. I acknowledge that as a former vice chancellor of Notre Dame University in WA she knows the extraordinary role that technology can play in solving hard problems. One of those, of course, is bringing down emissions whilst maintaining a strong economy, and that's exactly what we're committed to doing as part of our comeback from the pandemic. We have strong targets, we have an enviable track record and we have a clear plan. And, when we make commitments, we keep them. Our commitment is clear: lower prices, keeping the lights on and bringing down emissions. I can confirm to the House that our plan is working, because the Kyoto era came to an end on 30 June this year, and we now know, from a report that was put out yesterday, that we beat our Kyoto-era targets by 459 million tonnes. That's almost a year's worth of emissions.
When we came into government the deficit to reach that target was 755 million tonnes. What an extraordinary turnaround. And, whilst others have walked away from their commitments, whilst others have done that, we've rolled up our sleeves and got on with the job. Now, thanks to significant reductions in electricity, in agriculture and in the land sector we've absolutely smashed our targets. In fact, this year, the year just past, our emissions were 519 million tonnes. That was 20 per cent lower than the forecast for this year when those opposite left government, and that was with a carbon tax. They had a carbon tax!
Australia's experience has been that when new technologies become commercially competitive Australians will adopt them. We know that's how to bring down emissions, and we're seeing that with renewables right now. We've seen $30 billion of investments in renewables since 2017. It's the same rate this year as last year, and we're deploying them 10 times faster than the global average and four times faster than the US, the UK, Europe and Japan.
Not all countries can boast our level of success. We've brought down emissions 16.6 per cent since 2005, the baseline year for Paris, and countries like Canada and New Zealand have barely budged. We're down 16.6 per cent in that time. We're getting on with the job of bringing down emissions by deploying technology, not taxation, because, if it's not technology, it is taxation. We're getting on with the job, with real and practical action, to bring down emissions as we come back from the pandemic.
My question is to the Minister for Government Services. The minister said in question time today that its robodebt scheme is neither unlawful nor that any documents exist that prove that the Commonwealth was warned robodebt victims were threatening self-harm. So, why did it pay $1.2 billion in the largest ever class action settlement to settle robodebt, including $112 million of compensation, and does the minister stand by his statement that there was no advice to the Commonwealth that victims of robodebt were threatening self-harm?
As I announced on 19 November last year, the government had come to the conclusion, after decades and decades of averaged ATO income data being used—at least back to 1994—
Opposition members interjecting—
Members on my left!
and I announced on 19 November that the use of raising a debt solely or partially based on averaged income data from the ATO was not sufficient. It was being used for at least 26 years, back to the Keating era, but it was this government that said it was not sufficient. And, based on the lack of sufficiency of proof points for a debt to be crystallised, that's when the government acted. But, be under no doubt, the automatic raising of debts is not an issue here—governments of all persuasions have been doing this quite rightly and quite legitimately for a long time. In the 2007-08 financial year, there was $1.8 billion, and in 2008-09 there was $1.9 billion—the list goes on. It's a legitimate process of government, but the use of income average—
The minister will resume his seat. The member for Maribyrnong on a point of order.
A point of order on relevance: acknowledging a preamble, my question specifically said: Why did the government pay $1.2 billion if you were perfectly legal?
Honourable members interjecting—
Members on both sides! The minister has the call.
As I announced on 19 November last year, the government came to the conclusion that a process that had been going for three decades lacked sufficiency. Therefore, the government responded. The government's data goes back—in terms of computing power—to 2015. Hence, we were able to provide refunds to Australians because our data went back to 2015, and we responded because of a lack of sufficiency. Hence, to date, we have paid back $707.3 million in refunds to 406,672 people. But considering the use of averaged income data has been going back for two or three decades, Australians always have the right to seek for their debts to be reviewed at any time. If there are Australians who believe that their debt going back that amount of time was raised solely or partially, and can demonstrate that, they should come to Services Australia and ask for a review. It was on that basis, after three decades, that the government reached the point of the lack of sufficiency and acted lawfully.
My question is to the Minister for the Environment. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government is protecting and preserving the natural environment and our native species, such as the koala?
Mr Albanese interjecting—
The Leader of the Opposition, you can't take a point of order on a question.
You can, in fact.
Yes, you're right. You can; but it doesn't end well!
You can on irony—you can indeed.
I just say to the Leader of the Opposition that I think he's made a compelling point, and that would lead me to rule out every question from the opposition today! So if he wants me to go down that path—the minister has the call.
I thank the member for Wentworth for his question and appreciate his interest in the koala, an iconic umbrella species, as we came out of the Black Summer bushfires. Last week the Morrison government announced a new koala package. This was a further $18 million investment in koala conservation, on top of the $26 million we have invested since 2014 and in advance of the release of the draft koala recovery plan, which is going out for public consultation early next year. As well as research and health science, the package announced a key approach in safeguarding the koala, which is a national koala census.
The member for Macarthur, on a point of order?
On relevance. The koalas in my community have been studied and tracked and their genetics have been known for years. Professor Close—
The member for Macarthur will resume his seat. I just say to the member: 90-second statements are between 1.30 and 2.00. The minister has the call.
I'm very happy to reassure the member for Macarthur that the Chair of the Independent Threatened Species Scientific Committee, Helene Marsh, called the census a significant move and said that it will put the whole koala strategy at a national level on a completely different footing than it's been in the past. The strategy and package have been welcomed by the Australian Conservation Foundation. They don't always line up in support of the government, but they have welcomed this funding for koala mapping and restoration as a good step at a critical time.
Back to the important package, despite their iconic status there's much to learn about how koala populations are faring. That's why this will fill in the gaps and give us better coordination and reporting, so that we can best protect this extraordinary marsupial. The census will be a standing item at the Meeting Of Environment Ministers, and a range of existing and innovative approaches, such as drones, thermal imaging, acoustic surveys, detector dogs and cameras will be used. Citizen science will be brought to the fore. Communities, schools and conservation volunteers are already doing much of this work, and they will continue. Since we've come to government, we've committed more than $500 million in funding towards our threatened species, including the koala. We've established the Threatened Species Commissioner and Threatened Species Strategy, and 99.9 per cent of the more than 1,900 listed species have either conservation advice or a recovery plan in action.
This koala package, which has been endorsed by scientists and backed by experts, underscores our approach to environmental protection, which is that, when it comes to environmental protection, we listen to the experts, we listen to the science and we take practical action that can make a difference.
I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
I present a chart showing the program of sittings for 2021. Copies of the program have been placed on the table. I ask leave of the House to move that the program be agreed to.
Leave granted.
I move:
That the program of sittings for 2021 be agreed to.
Question agreed to.
Documents are tabled today in accordance with the list circulated to honourable members earlier today. Full details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.
I seek to re-table Kath Madgwick's handwritten letter to parliament. During question time the government was tabling a plethora of documents. Kath Madgwick, I think, has earned the right to at least have her handwritten statement tabled. I spoke to her last night and have spoken to her at length. Talking about her son's suicide is very difficult, and some people didn't like it yesterday, while others have reached out and said they did. But I had a long conversation with Kath, and I think that this letter is important and should be tabled.
As the member for Maribyrnong knows, under the standing orders I need to ask whether leave is granted.
Mr Shorten interjecting—
The problem is, as I am trying to delicately point out, the House has already dealt with that matter.
Government members interjecting—
Members on my right, the House has already dealt with the matter. I've already put the question to the House, and leave was denied.
Mr Shorten interjecting —
No, I've already put the question to the House. What would follow if I agreed to put this question is to keep putting it again and again. What I would say to the member for Maribyrnong is there are other forms of the House where he can address the subject in the letter: the adjournment debate, 90-second statements and the like. But I'm compelled under the standing orders to ask whether leave is granted. If it's denied, the House has dealt with the matter.
I present the Auditor-General's performance audit report No. 20 of 2020-2021, entitled Management of the Australian Public Service's workforce response to COVID-19: Australian Public Service Commission; Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Document made a parliamentary paper in accordance with the resolution agreed to on 28 March 2018.
I have received a letter from the honourable Deputy Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The Government's failure to help Australians stranded overseas to come home.
I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.
More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—
It is now December. There are 24 days to go until Christmas, and on this day there are 37,000 Australians abroad who are seeking to come home. Eight thousand of those have been determined to be vulnerable. This government owes every one of them a promise that it made back in September to bring those people home by Christmas. In the next 3½ weeks we are going to discover whether there is any meaning whatsoever to the obligations and the promises which those opposite make to these Australians and, indeed, to the Australian people as a whole.
Everyone knows that this has been a year unlike any other. The COVID-19 crisis has affected all of our lives and the lives of humanity, as a health crisis and as an economic crisis. We are seeing the strategic landscape of the globe rewritten as we speak. But one of the most significant ways in which the COVID-19 crisis has manifested is in the way that borders around the world have become closed and in the way that international aviation and international travel has been reduced to a trickle. As our borders closed in February and as we started to see borders around the world closing through the months of March, April and May, we saw this crisis begin to unfold. On 10 July of this year, the government established a national review into the hotel quarantine arrangements, and it appointed to that the former Secretary to the Department of Health Jane Halton. Amongst the terms of reference that she was asked to consider, one was changing capacity requirements of hotel quarantine related to changes in border restrictions. As we start this story, the place to begin is that this is absolutely an obligation of the federal government. National borders belong to the these people. National borders belong to the Commonwealth government. Section 51 of the Constitution paragraph 51(ix) says:
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
… … …
quarantine.
That's an important point to make because quarantine is the responsibility of the Commonwealth government. As we have watched this government each and every day seek to avoid responsibility at every single level in relation to this crisis and go out and suggest that somehow quarantine is the issue of the states, never forget that, when it comes to the Constitution, it is spelled out in one word—in black and white. It is their job.
As this issue rose during the course of the northern summer, during the months of July and August as the effects of COVID-19 were affecting countries around the world, not surprisingly, we saw more and more Australians seeking to take the opportunity to come home. Indeed, on 2 September, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave evidence to Senate estimates and said that the department expected the number of Australians registering an interest in returning will continue to increase. It's at that moment that this government and this minister started to offer a promise to the Australian people. As he left this chamber on 13 September the Minister for Health said, 'We want to ensure that every Australian who wants to come home is home by Christmas.' That's what this minister said in September, and it was backed up by the Prime Minister who said, 'I would hope that we can get as many people home, if not all of them, by Christmas.'
That's the promise that this minister and this government made to those Australians who are stranded overseas. That's the promise that they made to all Australians. The minister says that there were a certain number who had registered at that point. That number was 26,800. At this moment in time, only 14,000 of that number have come home. But, since then, just as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade predicted, the numbers have continued to increase. As the flow of international travel has reduced to a trickle, what we've effectively seen is international airlines basically only selling business-class tickets to come back to Australia, which means that people are faced with bills of tens of thousands of dollars in order to come home.
All of the electorate offices of members on both side of this chamber have had a flood of people coming in and advocating to us on behalf of constituents who have been stranded overseas. David and Kate Jeffries, with their son Mitchell, are an example. They're still in Canada. They gave evidence in the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 and said that financial pressures built further as it became increasingly evident that if they are to have any hope of boarding a flight home:
… we will likely have to upgrade to business class tickets, which range anywhere from $9,000 to as high as $17,000 each to get us home. After the $5,000 bill from the Australian government for quarantine, we expect to have paid an absolute minimum of at least $25,000 just in travel expenses to get home. We estimate that the direct additional cost—
as a result of being stranded—
to be well over $50,000 to my family, money which we would much rather put toward Mitchell's education.
In the midst of all of that, this government has done essentially nothing. They have not responded to this.
The Halton review made a whole lot of practical recommendations which could have been implemented. The first thing Jane Halton pointed out is it is their power to legislate in respect of this. She gave advice about how the federal government could run quarantine safely, with exclusion zones around quarantine facilities. She made the point that additional quarantine centres could be opened up, like RAAF Base Learmonth. She suggested that there needs to be a national scalable quarantine facility to deal with exactly the sort of issues that we are facing right now. It was a thorough and thoughtful report and response, but from this government we have seen nothing.
On 15 September the Leader of the Opposition made the point that maybe we could use the Air Force to get our people home. Maybe we could use the VIP fleet to get some people home. It would make a difference. Well, we didn't see the VIP fleet go to Europe to bring stranded Australians back home, but the VIP fleet did go to Europe. It went to Europe carrying former senator Mathias Cormann from Perth. Mathias Cormann, in pursuit of a job for himself, has visited Turkey, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. It doesn't stop there! There are further visits planned to Austria, the Slovak Republic, Hungary and France. And all of that is at $4,300 per hour. So instead of using the VIP fleet of the Air Force to bring Australians home, we see that the priority of this government is to use that fleet to support a former colleague in pursuit of a job for himself. That says everything about the priorities of this government.
There is a fundamental obligation in this nation to allow Australians to return home. It is an obligation of our law and an obligation of international law. In Air Caledonie International v Commonwealth, in 1988, in the High Court it was put in these terms, as has been said: such a citizen had under the law the right to re-enter the country without need of any executive fee or clearance for so long as he retains his citizenship. That's the obligation that exists. We have a situation now where, despite that being the obligation at law, in order to get home as a stranded Australian, you are effectively faced with a bill of tens of thousands of dollars. What that means is that that fundamental obligation at law is not being met by this government. Much more significantly, the promise that this government offered to those 37,000 Australians who were stranded overseas is not being lived up to right now. We have 3½ weeks for this government to demonstrate that when it makes a promise it actually delivers on it. It is time for this government, on this day, to actually say something in respect of that promise and to stand up and deliver.
The opposition continues to be in denial about what has occurred in this very difficult year for Australia and the globe. We in the Morrison government know there has been a global pandemic; we have been dealing with it all year. Look at the structure of Australia. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition discovered here in his speech today that we are indeed a federation. Australia has led the way in how federations have dealt with what is the most challenging set of circumstances that we have faced in a long time. Other societies in the world today haven't coped as well as our society has, and that's because of the cohesion of the national cabinet of the states and territories working together with the Commonwealth, under the Commonwealth's leadership, to provide the certainty that the people in Australia need in handling an evolving and difficult situation.
It's important to know that since the beginning of this, since Australians were advised that they needed to reconsider their need to travel overseas, 432,000 Australians have returned home. Almost half a million Australians have come home, and we welcome them home. We have done everything possible within the evolving situation of the pandemic to ensure that people can get home. That isn't easy when the entire globe has been closed. That isn't easy when all airlines have had to reduce the number of flights, have had cancelled flights, have had increased costs of operation and, of course, have had to deal with rolling restrictions and changes in multijurisdictional situations with nation states around the world. For the opposition to pretend that, somehow, that has been a failure of this government again ignores the fundamental situation—the challenge posed by a pretty unique pandemic, a once-in-100-years circumstance. In fact, since the government made its announcement that we would return those people home by Christmas we have had over 31,900 Australians return on 370 flights, including 11,000 people on 74 government facilitated flights. Ten of these flights have been facilitated since 23 October, returning over 1,600 passengers. And there is more to do. When we think that almost half a million Australians have wanted to come home because of the work that the government has done, the states and territories have done and the people of Australia have done and the sacrifices they have made, we are a safe harbour in a very difficult world at the moment.
Of course, more Australians are going to want to return home, and we are going to have to continue to do the work and continue to work with people to get them home as soon as practicable. But, given we are now nine months into a pandemic and there is a long time to go until a vaccine is rolled out, we have to work with people as they make their choices and we have to work with them in a constrained environment, in which the airline industry is suffering its greatest hit in 100 years, as well. We'll keep doing it. We've worked to ensure the right priorities on returns have been there. Of course it hasn't been possible to get everybody home when they wanted to get home, but vulnerable people had to be dealt with first. It was the logical thing to do. It's what the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said we should be doing. In fact, the government prioritised vulnerable people. Nobody would think otherwise, that we shouldn't try to get people with medical needs, that we shouldn't get women who had pregnancies, that we shouldn't prioritise people who needed to get home first. Those people had to be prioritised. They have been prioritised. When you think about half a million Aussies coming home, that is more by far than our entire migrant intake in a year coming back to Australian shores. That's a lot of people coming home. We understand why more people will seek to come home when we look at the second and third waves in Europe and the US and at the safe harbour that Australia represents. We will welcome them home and we will work with those communities to get them home. We will get as many people home by Christmas as we can get home from now until Christmas, as well. There are many flights that are booked. There are many people who will come. There is much work that the Commonwealth and DFAT will do. As these lists expand we will keep getting more people back into the country, and that's what you would expect.
The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, of course, discovered the Constitution in all of this. I would say to him and to the opposition: it is not opposition for opposition's sake. The argument they have made today again demonstrates they are not serious about the business of dealing with the No. 1 challenge in front of Australians, because they are seeking to undermine the work of agencies like DFAT and the serious work of states and territories and to ignore the facts in relation to what has happened in our states and territories. We make no criticism. States and territories have had to do the things they have had to do. We have made arguments with them. We have had conversations with them about what we believe settings should be, but when you have an outbreak in Victoria and a quarantine failure in a hotel system operated by the state government, of course the second major port in Australia was offline for many, many months. The caps were reduced in other states, which were dealing with smaller outbreaks and which contained those outbreaks. That is supported by Australians. That is supported by us.
Whatever our disagreements about how things should opened and how soon they should be, the fundamental unity and the fundamental cohesion provided by the national cabinet, by the leadership of the Prime Minister, by the leadership of the states and territories in combination with the Commonwealth has meant that we've had an orderly return of people. It hasn't been perfect, that is true, but there are not many governments—in fact, there are no governments—that can point to a perfect record this year. There are not many societies that can point to a perfect record in handling what has been an evolving and difficult challenge. But I can tell you one thing, Deputy Speaker O'Brien: Australians can be proud of themselves and their government, and the cohesion that has been provided by the states and territories and the Commonwealth through the national cabinet in service of our citizens.
I know that the officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and in every consular office around the world have worked tirelessly from the beginning of this pandemic to do their absolute best to help Australians stranded in very difficult situations. When countries shut their borders, which is their sovereign right, and when countries contained areas, which is their sovereign right, to handle the pandemic, many Australians were stranded. It has been very difficult for everybody concerned; there is no denying it. But our officials worked tirelessly. They did an outstanding job of getting everybody back as soon as they could. They did an outstanding job in providing services. They are doing an outstanding job. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade know their business, and they work very, very hard, and they and all government agencies have stepped up this year. In fact, we can say to the whole Public Service this year: you have excelled in serving the Australian people at the Commonwealth and state level, and we thank everybody who has stepped up this year to do that. We say it genuinely and we should be joined in that by the opposition.
In fact, the opposition of course supports everything that we are doing to return Australians home. They are trying to find a point of opposition. There isn't one. They're trying to say something has been done wrong. Nothing has been done wrong, given that this has been an evolving, very difficult situation. On health advice, on scientific advice, on outbreaks within states, on the lowering of caps, we have had to work together as a federation. On balance, Australia has done that better than anywhere else, and we have done that because, whatever our arguments, we have essentially retained unity. We've stayed together.
Our message to the opposition today is: do not threaten that unity. We are not out of the woods yet. Don't question that solidarity that Australians have shown at the state and federal levels, that our Public Service has shown and that the people want us to keep showing on these essential questions. It is not a partisan issue to say we would love to get people here faster. Everybody knows that. Of course we'd love to move people around the world faster and get them to safety faster. Health safety is the top priority of this government, Australians here and Australians abroad, and we work on it every single day.
I finish by saying that the opposition can make cheap points about our candidacy for the OECD, but I go back to this essential point so that every Australian understands this: the Labor Party support the government pursuing this candidacy—not my statement; their statement. They support it. And, if they believe that you can legitimately campaign for a candidacy of this importance and not spend any money, that's in defiance of their own policy when they were in government and they sought a seat on the Security Council. We know that. The Australian people know that. Again, they are looking for division where no division exists. They support the government's attempts to secure this candidacy. It is important, and we hope that we can secure it for this country.
Australians have done an outstanding job this year. We know that there are still people that want to get home. We want to get them home. We will keep working on getting them home. It is a focus of government every day. We'll get as many people home as we can, and we'll keep getting them here—as many of those who want to come as we can.
Australians stuck overseas are telling me that they feel as if they've been abandoned by their own government and as if the government has for months ignored their pleas for help to return home. This government's failure to act is generating widespread anxiety among people stuck overseas and also their families at home. It's costing people huge amounts of money—enormous amounts—just to try and get a seat on a flight, and it's exacerbating pre-existing mental health conditions to a point where individuals and their families are fearful for their lives. This is a fear that runs through many of the emails and phone calls to my office, from parents who know the signs of adult children and can see slides into depression, and from trapped Aussies making disclosures of suicidal feelings. When John Howard declared in 2001 that under his leadership 'we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come', these Australians could never have imagined that there would be a Liberal government applying the same words to them. The Prime Minister's promise of getting everyone home by Christmas and now his attempt to spin it and say he's done what he promised are an absolute insult. There are 37,000 Australians stuck overseas. Eight thousand of them are considered vulnerable, and I have emails from some of those. The Prime Minister has just eight days to keep his promise to get all these Australians home to their families and out of quarantine by Christmas.
His claims are an insult to people like Liz, whose son has been stuck in Germany. He's been registered for months with DFAT, and he was recently told that his flight, booked for yesterday, had been cancelled. He has no access to a replacement flight, with three repatriation flights from Heathrow completely full. Like so many, Liz's son has had no work for two months, has no accommodation and is couch surfing. It's winter. It's minus two degrees. You can imagine the mental health impacts. There's Maddie, whose German visa to work as an au pair has expired. She's sleeping on a friend's mother's couch in Italy as her remaining funds run low, all the while trying to find a way home. Then there's Donna and her family in India. They were there for a year's work but were unable to get a flight until just last week, when they flew to England in order to get a flight home. As an Australian citizen, Donna said she had never thought she'd be on the wrong end of Australia's border policies. She points out that they had only three days between the advisory to come home and India going into lockdown, and it wasn't enough time to pack up an apartment and pack up their lives there.
I have constituents trying to get back from Dubai, Laos, Taiwan, Denmark, the UK and Canada—the list goes on, with example after example where the government has forced them to reveal personal, private details of their health in order to try to get special treatment and get themselves home. They should not have to do that and expose themselves to bureaucrats. Even when they do eventually return home, there's significant damage that will have been done to their mental health, to their finances and, depending on their exposure to COVID, to their physical health. You have to ask: why aren't there chartered flights, or why isn't the RAAF being used to bring these people home? We have no explanation from the government for why they are not prepared to do that. They're prepared to put on a plane for Mathias Cormann, and they're not prepared to bring Australians home.
Those opposite are going to blame the states and the caps on quarantine for the failure to get everyone home by Christmas. They'll single out Labor states even though it's the practice of every state. It begs the question: if border security is a federal responsibility, why has the federal government just handed it to the states? I'll tell you why: because it's a government that tries to absolve itself of any responsibility when it can pass it to someone else. It's done it with aged care during COVID, letting the states carry the can. It's done it with the royal commission recommendation for a national firefighting fleet, again letting the states take responsibility. Just as it did with Ruby Princess, it's doing it again with COVID and border protection, sitting back with a smirk and a shrug saying, 'Oh, it's not us.' Yes, it is. The Prime Minister could boost safety quarantine capacity. There's a report on his desk telling him how. Australians have a right to come home. This government has a responsibility to make it happen, and it looks like all those people stranded are only going to get a broken promise for Christmas. (Time expired)
Undoubtedly one of the most important and significant decisions this government made at the onset of this pandemic was the decision to regulate the international border—something that hasn't been done to the extent which it has in the last nine months in the history of our Federation. We have seen what has happened in countries around the world that didn't or couldn't put that kind of regulation in place. We are very lucky that we are an island continent nation. It is obviously much easier in a country like ours to put restrictions in place on our borders than it is in countries that have complicated land borders. But certainly it was still a very significant decision of the government, and I might say that it was undoubtedly a decision in cooperation through the national cabinet process that the Prime Minister established—one that had at the time and still has to this day the support of both Labor and Liberal governments across the state and territory jurisdictions. That was vitally important, because there is no way in the world you can put in place a regulation of our border without the Commonwealth government working hand in glove with the state and territory governments.
More importantly, to the erroneous point of the previous speaker, far from us not taking responsibility when it comes to this, we could have done the exact opposite of what we have done and said, 'We won't take any responsibility for initiating a cooperative approach to securing our border.' We could have easily said, 'At the end of the day we won't put any restrictions in place on people coming back into this country.' We could have said to the New South Wales government: 'We are responsible for the Sydney international airport. It's Commonwealth land and Commonwealth jurisdiction. We won't restrict who comes back into the country.' We could undertake our responsibilities when it comes to Customs border protection et cetera, but after that we could have said to the New South Wales government: 'You're on your own; there you go! These people are leaving the terminal, and you do what you will with them as they walk out, with their suitcases, completely unregulated.' That's what we could have done. Of course, we would never do that because that would have been completely ludicrous. It would have been outside of the spirit of our Federation. In quite the reverse, we recognised that the state and territory jurisdictions with the Commonwealth would have to work together to put in place the quarantine mechanisms and procedures that have now been in place since the end of March.
It's very important that we worked with the states on this, because, of course, the states run the health systems. When we were regulating the return of Australians into the country from a health point of view, there was no way in the world we could have done that without working with the states and territories. And that meant, of course, discussing, negotiating and agreeing with them on the quantity of people that could be brought back into the various jurisdictions around this country of ours in a manageable way that wouldn't put their systems, particularly their health systems, under a pressure that couldn't be borne.
We know, of course, that the greatest prevalence of this insidious virus has been in returning international travellers. There have been some notable exceptions, but by and large we are one of the great success stories across the planet in managing our border and more generally managing the spread of this virus within our community. Returning international travellers are the greatest risk that's posed, and we have ensured that, rather than having arguments with state jurisdictions about the number of people they believe they can handle in their various border checkpoints they share with us, we have come to agreement with them. That is the bottleneck in this process. All the other points are largely irrelevant, because in no jurisdiction do we have a situation where a state or territory government is saying, 'We'd love to take more internationally returning Australians but the Commonwealth won't facilitate it.' That is not happening anywhere—quite the reverse. We are agreeing with state and territory jurisdictions that we will not put more pressure than they have said they can bear on the capacities that they have created to manage quarantine.
On the concept of sending people to far-flung, remote destinations to quarantine: no health expert would ever say, 'Let's take people with potential life-threatening diseases and have them completely dislocated with the health infrastructure needed to care for them and keep them alive if, in the worst-case scenario, they are in the position where they are in quarantine and need to be urgently taken to significant health capability to look after them.' It is patently in the capital cities where we're undertaking this with the state and territories. We've got the support of state Labor jurisdictions as much as state Liberal jurisdictions. This is petty political pointscoring.
I thank the member for Sturt for his great contribution. It reminded us so well of the cold, dark hand that this government is putting out to Australians stuck overseas. Today there are 37,000 people feeling completely abandoned by their government—and this hasn't started today. It's a matter of public importance today because we need to ensure that the Australian public understand that the Prime Minister made a promise and the health minister made a promise to bring those Australians home. So the member for Sturt can give us as much of the weasel words as he likes and talk about negotiations with the states. As the member for Corio pointed out, so simply: borders are the federal government's responsibility. Quarantine is the federal government's responsibility. And this Prime Minister promised 30,000 Australians that they could come home.
From the outset, this has been a debacle. From the first days of the pandemic, members on this side of the chamber have supported locals in getting home from overseas. Our officers have worked just as hard as DFAT have worked to support people getting home. Every single person who works in my office has dealt with one of these cases. I want to share with the chamber one case study, an email I received this week. I want to contextualise that: remember that in the Northern Hemisphere winter is upon them. The third wave is upon those in Europe. There are still countless cases in the US, and countless cases in India and South Asia, where we have thousands and thousands of Australians.
When those countries decide that they're not renewing visas of Australians working overseas, when those countries decide—like this government decided that, if you're not a citizen and you're not a permanent resident and you're caught in Australia in a pandemic, you're on your own—that Australian citizens are on their own, which they are doing now, with companies in England now saying to workers, 'We're not going to renew your working visa; you need to get yourself home,' that is how the numbers are growing. People have lost their jobs.
I have one question I want to put to the Prime Minister: are we going to ask the British government to support the Australians stuck in the UK now without a job? How are we going to do that when we wouldn't support the UK citizens stuck here during the pandemic? This government needs to step up now to deliver on this promise. It's not just because Australians deserve to be home for Christmas. It's not just that there will be thousands—37,000—families without members at the Christmas table, at Christmas lunch, if this government doesn't get a move on. It's people like my constituent, who was planning to return to work in Sunshine Hospital's ICU. This is an Australian doctor needed in the western suburbs of Melbourne. To replace this doctor, who hasn't been able to get home, it's costing $200 an hour to get a locum in.
This person is stuck. They've had flights cancelled. They've now secured a flight, they think, to depart Heathrow on 12 January, after other flights had been cancelled. Meanwhile, Sunshine Hospital's ICU is a person down. So there's a cost to this that is more than just people who got stuck overseas because they chose not to be here. There is a cost here for Australia, and this government needs to really think about what it's going to put in place. We all know about their priorities. Their priorities throughout this pandemic have been to try and find ways to make everything someone else's problem. Prime Minister, this time you signed up. Your health minister signed you up. You made the promise. You both made the promise to get these Australians home.
On this side of the House, we're standing today to call you out on that promise and to say you've got three weeks. You've got three weeks to do something about this. You found the VIP flight for Cormann. That's the priority of this government: to have planes used for things other than bringing standard, abandoned Australians home, in the European winter, in the Northern Hemisphere winter, in a pandemic, with growing numbers every day. Shame on this government.
I can sense the frustration of every MP who has constituents overseas—Australian citizens hoping to return. But I'm somewhat disappointed by the candour of this debate. We've focused on Australian citizens trying to get home. We've forgotten equally important inputs into the Australian economy. There are the 10,000 skilled visa holders every month, the overseas residents who commit to supporting Australia's economy in the workforce in places where we can't provide Australians. Our economy has lost those arrivals as a result of COVID. Then there's the entire international education sector, around 900,000 students who come from overseas—because Australia is not just the food bowl, not just the provider of resources, but the educator of South-East Asia. All these things are in suspended animation through COVID.
I want to inject a little bit of fact. The House needs to know that, on 6 July, not one, not two, but all state premiers, in a concerted message, came to national cabinet and informed the Prime Minister there would have to be caps. This was because Tullamarine, with 27 per cent of Australia's inbound traffic, was closed due to the second wave. And what did other state premiers do? Did they say, 'We will support a mate; we will increase the number of arrivals through our airports to do our part to support this great federation'? No. The conversation was completely the opposite. Premiers of all backgrounds effectively mugged the economy, because COVID was too important in their states. They chose not to take a heavier load and support their Victorian friend but to cap arrivals.
The merits of that will be discussed in future histories. What I'm saying today is that those incredible arrivals into Sydney of 4,000 a month through those darkest weeks was utterly commendable. Gladys Berejiklian gets 10 out of 10 for that. But I've been extremely critical of Queensland's and WA's Labor premiers for taking barely 300 to 500 people a week, which is barely a third of a plane, into those states—Queensland, the great state, with 2,000 hotels, using just 12 of them for quarantine! Queensland and WA walked away from the federation. Now those numbers are slowly coming up, and it's due to the cajoling, the pushing, by the Prime Minister in the national cabinet.
Anyone on the other side who doesn't like the numbers and the caps can easily pick up the phone to their pal Anna. She'll take your call! Pick up the phone to your mate Mark in WA. He'll take your call! And pick up the phone to 'Disaster Dan', responsible for the 800 deaths in Victoria's second wave because as a premier he never figured out how to say yes to the ADF assisting. The Commonwealth has assisted, at every step, states to raise their caps, and it was Daniel Andrews who—bravely!—fought off that assistance by shredding the correspondence, ignoring it and then letting out that disease, which was let into other states directly from Victoria. Those deaths are not all the deaths there are. The Australian Bureau of Statistics will report that. When doctor-reported cases and cases that went off to the coroner are reported, we will find many more deaths that are not directly related to COVID but are related to the quarantine and the shutdown.
We need to raise these cap numbers. You've never ever, not once, heard the Prime Minister not say, 'Please raise your state caps.' You've never ever, not once, heard a state premier say, 'We'd like to raise our cap, but the Commonwealth's stopping us.' Some of our Labor friends, on the other side, have been saying, 'We need to set up some arrangement in the desert somewhere and make the Commonwealth responsible.' You need a quarantine centre where there are staff to man it. I noted that our friends on the other side didn't support Christmas Island. You didn't support Christmas Island opening up! That would have been a bright idea—and another failed one.
You've got state Labor premiers in Queensland and WA. I commend the Northern Territory for taking those first steps to bringing in not only citizens from other states but international students. You're happy to put Mike Gunner, the Chief Minister, into that position and let that state cop COVID in quarantine while he helps other states and territories. South Australia is trying to resuscitate the international student economy—doing the right thing as well. The ACT will be bringing in 360 before Christmas, and Tasmania, 450, but Queensland and WA have made gutless contributions to the federation.
MPs on that side have got the direct phone numbers to the premiers of those states but—oh no—no courage to phone them to say, 'Raise those caps.' They'll never do that, because they'd rather natter away to their constituents that they're doing all they can and try and blame a prime minister and a coalition government that have done everything they can to raise those caps. In finishing I say these caps could have been far higher. It's sad that we had a second wave, because the rest of the nation had this under control by April. The price we pay is predominantly due to Labor premiers.
It's absolutely clear that the government has failed Australians who are stuck overseas. The government simply does not get what stranded Aussies are going through, so I want to share the stories of local people who have been left stranded and feeling abandoned to help those opposite realise the seriousness of the situation for so many.
James is from Shoalhaven Heads, but he is currently stuck in south-western Siberia. James was due to return home in March, but when COVID-19 hit he was unable to leave. Since then, James has booked several flights home, all of which have been cancelled at the last minute. He was booked on a flight in July, in August, on 29 October and another due to leave today, Russian time. All of these flights were cancelled.
James' immediate concern was that his Russian visa was due to expire. Luckily, he has had it extended several times, but it has been an extremely anxious time for him, fearing that he will be left to languish in a foreign country illegally with no means of getting home. Here is some of what James said to me in recent emails: 'Unfortunately the chances of coming home via commercial airlines are becoming more remote. As of the last month, several airlines have cancelled Australian services in accordance with the arrival cap. Flights are getting increasingly expensive, and I simply cannot afford most of them. I have had my last flight cancel on me again.' He says, 'I want to know when I will be able to come home.' I want to know: what is the government doing to help James get home?
Amy from Surf Beach has been living in the UK for the last two years. At the time COVID-19 hit, Amy had a job and a home. Now she has neither. Amy had flights booked on 28 April, 12 July, 12 August, 3 September and 25 October. She was kicked off all of them. To be clear, the flights were not cancelled. Because of the government's arrival caps, Amy was kicked off so they could take more of the higher paying first- and business-class passengers. So what is the government going to do to help Amy get home?
One of the most heartbreaking examples of the government's failures to help and support Australians overseas is Colin from Berry. Thankfully, my office successfully helped to get him home, but his story is a stark reminder of why it is urgent and critical that we do more now to help stranded Aussies. Colin had been house-sitting with his wife in France when COVID-19 hit. His wife returned home, but Colin wanted to fulfil his commitment before coming home. Multiple flight cancellations left Colin up to $10,000 out of pocket. When the owners of the house returned, Colin was forced to live in his car while he awaited a flight home. In the meantime, Colin became very ill and required emergency surgery, which left him with significant and ongoing health issues. But his flights continued to be cancelled. Thankfully, Colin is now back in Australia. But why should he have had to suffer through this?
I just want to tell one more story of Matt and his young family, from Cunjurong Point in my electorate, who are stuck in Hong Kong. Matt's daughter was born on 10 November, and, sadly, she has a serious heart condition. Matt and his family are desperate to get her home to see a paediatric cardiologist at Westmead Children's Hospital. They were due to fly home on 3 December, but they were bumped from that flight, with the airline citing 'unexpected limitations imposed on flights by the Australian government'. They want to quarantine at home to protect their daughter on doctors' recommendations, but the New South Wales government has rejected this. In his email to me, Matt said they were totally devastated and that worse, come 14 December, they won't have anywhere to live as they have to leave their apartment. Matt has already lost his job, and they are feeling hopeless. They just want to be home. They are now due to leave on 7 December, but they have been given no guarantee they won't be bumped again. If that happens, Matt has been told there won't be another flight until April. What will Matt and his family do then?
The government needs to start taking the plight of Australians stranded overseas seriously. We need to bring them home now.
Let me assure those opposite that we do take those Australians stranded overseas very seriously. This is an extraordinary challenge that all governments around the world are living through. We are in a once-in-a-century pandemic, which has caused huge loss of life—1.4 million people around the world and still counting—which has caused a massive economic contraction around the world and which has caused a massive disruption to people's lives and lifestyles, with internal and external borders closed, with air travel dramatically wound back and with new health and movement restrictions introduced. This has undoubtedly caused hardship to many. Like others here, I've heard from many constituents, from many friends and from many family members who've been impacted by this. There are Australians who've wanted to go overseas to visit dying relatives. There are Australians who've wanted to go overseas to attend weddings, to visit children, to visit loved ones. We've had those who've wanted to visit close relatives in places like Queensland and Western Australia but have not been able to because of closed borders internally within Australia. And there are Australians, and I've got several within my family and many more within my electorate, who are overseas and who are keen to return home and who are finding it hard to do so. I share their distress and I empathise with them. Indeed, I want to do all that we can to ensure that we can fix it, but these are not normal times. We are operating within the constraints imposed by a once-in-a-century pandemic.
Australia has done remarkably well, better than nearly any other nation in the world, in protecting the health of our population and in saving lives in this pandemic. One of the key reasons that we have been able to do this is that we could close our international borders early and effectively. We've seen since that countries that have allowed free travel and have not been able to close their borders have seen second and even third waves of COVID-19. We've seen that in Australia it's been overwhelmingly overseas arrivals which have brought the disease back with them, and we've seen in Victoria the consequences of an ineffective quarantine arrangement. So we cannot afford to be reckless with our borders. The consequences would be all too real. And no-one in Australia would thank us for compromising their lives and compromising their health. This is why, at least for the foreseeable future, we must maintain effective quarantine for all international arrivals. I know that this is frustrating to many. I've heard from many within my own electorate, because demanding that people do compulsory quarantine on arrival means that there are fewer flights and fewer spaces available, and it means that there is a backlog of people who want to return. But the government and governments of all persuasions have to take the difficult but necessary decisions even when they may not be popular and they may not be easy. This is the very definition of responsible government: resisting the clamours of the day to govern long term in the national interest.
The availability of quarantine—not only beds but people to staff and manage and police quarantine effectively—and the willingness and ability of the states to manage the inflows will necessarily put an upwards limit on how many Australians can be returning to Australia on any given day and in any given week. Given these constraints, I think we've managed a great deal. Since the government urged people to reconsider their need to travel abroad on 13 March of this year, almost 426,600 Australians have returned home from overseas, half a million Australians. That's a massive amount; two per cent of our population has come back since we closed the borders. It's important to note that of those returning since we introduced that policy about 1.3 per cent have tested positive for COVID-19. As I have said, the main vector for new infections in Australia is international arrivals. Since the Prime Minister spoke about this issue on 18 September, we've had almost 36,000 Australians who've returned. DFAT, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has helped over 31,600 Australian citizens and permanent residents return home on more than 369 flights, of which 72 have been directly facilitated by the government. The government established the International Aviation Network in April, working with Qantas and Virgin Australia to run 62 commercial flights from London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Auckland. There are still many who wish to return home. As of 25 November there were 46,800 people registered, of whom 36,000 wish to return home, and we will do our best to get these people home. We'll do our best to get those Australians still wanting to return home back home for Christmas, but we are not going to compromise the health of those residing here now to do so.
I share the frustrations and the disappointment and the distress of those who are overseas and want to return home, and I share the frustrations and disappointment and distress of their families. But we are operating in the reality based world here. None of this is straightforward. For the opposition to pretend otherwise—that there is a magic wand which can just be waved to bring these people home—is irresponsible.
When the member for Bowman was in here just before he reminded us all that on 6 July, which is quite some time ago now, the Prime Minister met with the premiers and the chief ministers. The premiers and chief ministers obviously needed caps so that they could manage the numbers, line up quarantine facilities and get a process going that could return stranded Australians in an orderly way. The point is that there was obviously a limit to how many people could be quarantined and processed.
Knowing all of that, the Prime Minister promised to have stranded Australians home by Christmas. He promised that. It was an ironclad promise. As we've heard from previous speakers, Jane Halton told the Prime Minister how to expand quarantine above and beyond the capacity that the states and territories were informing the Prime Minister of. He has been ignoring her advice. There were many opportunities the Prime Minister could have taken since Jane Halton made those recommendations. As the Prime Minister failed to act, the number of Australian stranded overseas continued to climb and the number of stranded Australians categorised as vulnerable also continued to climb. As a local member I've been working with many families who have their loved ones stranded overseas and I've been endeavouring to get them home.
It is clear that the Prime Minister, through his own intransigence, has failed to keep his promise. There were ways and means open to him and recommended to him. He has decided not to take that advice. As a result, thousands upon thousands of Australians, including thousands who are categorised as vulnerable, will still be stranded overseas during Christmas and the new year. The Prime Minister hasn't admitted that there were ways and means available to him to get more stranded Australians home. Instead, he picked blues with Labor premiers. That behaviour is unbecoming of a leader of a country. In a time when we needed cooperation in the federation the Prime Minister showed he was incapable of providing that leadership.
He made a promise and then didn't act in order to fulfil that promise to Australians. I think Australians were looking for not only some action from their Prime Minister but for the Prime Minister to leave to the side the excuses and the fighting and bickering with the state and territory premiers and chief ministers. Australians expect so much more than that. The federal government is responsible for our international borders and it simply took far too long for the Prime Minister. He was too interested in passing the buck on quarantine to the states, just like he did with the Ruby Princess and the deaths in aged care.
The House has heard many of the arguments as to why getting stranded Australians home has to be racked up as an absolute failure by the Prime Minister, but in the time remaining I want to say how proud I am of the Northern Territory with the role it has played in getting stranded Australians home. We've recently increased the number of stranded Aussies who will be coming home through the Howard Springs quarantine facility in Darwin. We're proud of that. We play an important strategic role for the country. We could do more with federal support. Let's see more stranded Aussies home by Christmas.
It's fantastic to have an opportunity to rise in this place and put on the record the situation we have found ourselves in, with so many Australians stranded overseas. We must also understand that so many of the restrictions have been put in place by the various states. Victoria simply hasn't allowed any overseas travellers to come back into Victoria. They have just said: 'We're in such a mess here with what we've done with hotel quarantine. We've made such a mess of it, we've botched it up so badly that we are not going to take any risks. We will simply make 'zero' the number of people that we are willing to bring back into Victoria from overseas.' That just puts all the responsibility on other states and other premiers. As has been said by the previous speaker, thank goodness Howard Springs in the Northern Territory has opened up to bring a few stranded Australians back in through that facility. It's not going to be until 7 December that the Victorian government is going to be in a position where they can bring stranded Australians back into Victoria.
The previous speaker was talking about how political leaders are prepared—he was talking about the Prime Minister. How on earth can he do that with a straight face—talk about political leaders that aren't prepared to accept responsibility? In Victoria, we've got a Labor premier who is totally in control of what's gone on in Victoria, except for one critical decision, and they can't quite work out who made that decision. The greatest load of rubbish that the people of Victoria have ever been asked to swallow is the fact that Daniel Andrews wasn't in control and he didn't put a Labor mate's private security business in control of hotel quarantine. Apparently he didn't do that, even though that security company is a big donor of the Labor Party. Apparently Daniel Andrews, whilst he's in control of every other issue to do with COVID-19, had nothing to do with this decision. It is simply unbelievable. It's a stretch too far. We really do need some political leaders in Victoria to stand up and accept responsibility for their decisions and the deaths that have followed from those decisions.
Like every member in this House, I have been inundated with people's heartbreaking stories of loved ones that are stranded overseas. Many people have been booked on various flights and, on the sheer commerciality of it, those airline companies have been very cold-hearted. Fancy ringing people two days before their flight's due to take off, after they've been booked for three or four weeks, and saying, 'Unless you're prepared to pay business class you're going to be bumped.' Just recently I heard from a young lady from Cobram in my electorate, Millie Cassidy. Her mother, Karen, and her father, Mark, were absolutely beside themselves because Millie kept getting bumped from her flights from Europe to Australia. Eventually we got Millie home. She's done her two weeks quarantine in Sydney, and now she's enjoying being back home with mum and dad. As some of the speakers have said, since September, 31,000 Australians have found their way home. From the time we asked Australians to reconsider whether they should be travelling, 432,000 Australians have found their way home.
A whole range of assistance measures have been put in place by DFAT, and some $60 million for a hardship program for those people who have been caught overseas, have needed to stay there and have needed a bit of assistance. But so many of these restrictions that have been put in place around COVID have been put in place by state premiers. We've had people miss funerals of loved ones—all the stories associated with COVID have been incredibly heartbreaking.
The discussion has concluded.
The question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.
This legislation is designed to combine the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court into a single entity. Its effect is to abolish the Family Court as a standalone institution.
Of all marriages in Australia, a relatively small proportion end in divorce. For most of those marriages that end in divorce, the couple works out between themselves their financial settlement and arrangements regarding the children. I think in most cases, despite the sadness of the marriage ending, people understand their responsibilities to one another and their responsibilities to their children and try and come to an arrangement, which, of course, may not make everybody happy but is at least civil.
A small proportion of marriages that end in divorce end up in the Family Court, and the reason they end up in the Family Court is that there's something more complex about the divorce. In some cases, one member of the couple may be unable to compromise or the financial settlement is complex for some reason. In other cases—and these are the ones I am particularly worried about and, I believe, many others are particularly worried about—there is a history of domestic violence in the relationship, which means that any arrangements are fraught with danger, most often for the mother and often for the children. So it is absolutely vital that, in these circumstances, we have people hearing the case and assisting in the court who understand the dynamics of domestic violence in relationships.
That's the reason that we oppose this bill. We are opposing the bill because specialised family courts, run by people who understand the cycle and the dynamics of domestic violence, are absolutely critical to keeping women and children safe. They create an environment that is focused on the best interests of children and on keeping victims of violence safe—on the human needs of all those who enter into them. That's what the evidence tells us.
Mr Deputy Speaker O'Brien, I commend to you and others in this place an excellent opinion piece written by the journalist Jenna Price in today's Sydney Morning Herald about just how dangerous this proposed merger of the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court is. Jenna Price points out that this move is opposed by everyone who knows what they are talking about when it comes to family law and when it comes to domestic violence: the Law Council, women's legal services, community legal centres, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services and family violence legal services. Jenna Price goes on to quote a former Chief Justice of the Family Court, Elizabeth Evatt, a very distinguished jurist, who said:
We were a team with a single mission to help families in trouble … Merging would be a disaster. Australia should be proud of the Family Court and it should receive adequate resources.
Jenna Price also quotes former Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson, another jurist who has served this country with distinction. Former Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson said:
You will end up with circuit judges who don't have any family law expertise and are quite likely to misunderstand the system.
We know too that, in contrast to what the federal government is proposing, states are moving to more specialist domestic violence services in their court systems. If you look at state systems, particularly as they deal with apprehended violence orders, they are moving to more specialist knowledge. In Queensland, I went to the Southport Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Court a few years ago. When it was evaluated in 2017, the evaluation found that this approach of a specialist domestic violence court provided:
… strong collaborative relationships between the court, domestic violence services, police prosecutors and duty lawyers …
This 'resulted in improved coordination of matters and services'. It found higher 'ratings of satisfaction and perceived procedural justness of the process reported by victims compared to the comparison court' and higher 'levels of self-reported understanding of court outcomes for both victims and perpetrators compared to the comparison court'. There is absolutely no reason for us at a federal level to be moving away from specialised court processes and specialised courts when all of the evidence, both federally and at a state level, is that more specialist services are preferable.
It troubles me so deeply that we hear horrific stories, again and again, of victims of domestic violence, like Hannah Clarke and her three beautiful children, like Luke Batty and like Olga and her two beautiful children. We hear these stories again and again, and we have a vigil in front of the parliament. I've been to more than one of these candlelight vigils. We all ask each other, 'What can we possibly do to reduce this terrible toll that domestic violence is taking on our women and children?' yet what we should be doing is not a mystery. It's not a mystery that walking away from specialist services like this makes the situation worse, not better.
We saw also just last year the government cut funding to the National Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services Forum, the peak body representing Indigenous survivors of domestic violence. This year the money that was set aside for respectful relationships education in our schools was cut from $2.8 million to $1.36 million—more than halved.
Again and again, we hear of stories at our universities and even in this place of sexual harassment and sexual violence. The cut to respectful relationships funding comes at the same time as we have a survey that has found that one in three men think that punching or hitting your wife doesn't count as domestic violence, and 42 per cent of young men were found to think this in the recent survey. How can it be that we're actually cutting funding for respectful relationship programs at a time when two out of five young men don't think it's a problem to use physical violence in interpersonal relationships?
I can't reconcile this outpouring of grief when something monstrous happens in our community with this baffling unwillingness to follow the evidence on what keeps people safe. We need more support for education on respectful relationships, not less. We need more specialist services, not fewer.
The government is correct to point out that the backlog in Family Court cases is a problem. It is a problem because the longer these cases drag on the more likely it is that conflict will escalate and that violence will ensue. It is a problem. You don't fix the problem by abolishing the court. One of the big mistakes made during the Howard government years was to abolish the funding for specialist counselling in the Family Court. If that specialist counselling can defuse the situation and help the parties come to an arrangement between themselves, of course that is a good step forward.
Recently a group of colleagues and I spoke to the terrific author Jess Hill, who wrote a wonderful book called See What You Made Me Do, which has been a bestseller and has won multiple awards. We ask ourselves the question: How can this happen? How can these acts of violence occur in our midst? Jess Hill, in her book, endeavours to explain how this can occur. In a terrific article that was written by Madonna King in Good Weekend about Hannah Clarke and her children, Jess Hill says, 'There is no other form of torture that is permissible under law in Australia.' She says that in relation to coercive control.
In her book, Jess Hill writes about coercive control:
A victim's most frightening experiences may never be recorded by police or understood by a judge. That's because domestic abuse is a terrifying language that develops slowly and is spoken only by the people involved. Victims may feel breathless from a sideways look, a sarcastic tone or a stony silence, because these are the signals to which they have become hyper-attuned …
Hannah Clarke said more than once that her husband was not usually physically violent towards her, but he controlled every element of her life. He was listening to her phone calls, he was reading her messages, he was stalking her on social media and he was turning up unannounced after the relationship broke up. He was controlling what she wore, what she ate and who she was friends with.
Coercive control is subtle, but it is devastating. The idea that a court that doesn't have specialist understanding of domestic violence could ever understand elements such as coercive control is just fanciful. So, instead of moving to better protect victims of violence like Hannah Clarke and her children, by destroying a specialist Family Court and by losing the expertise of the people who are highly trained to recognise and deal with domestic violence we are actually making life more dangerous for people in this situation—people like Hannah Clarke and Olga Edwards and their children. It really is not enough to hold vigils, to give speeches and to say how horrified we are by these acts of extreme violence, of domestic terrorism, when, when we are given the chance to make life safer for the victims of this sort of domestic terrorism, we in fact do the opposite. We need to make sure that our court systems are more responsive to victims of domestic violence, not less responsive, as this proposal would do. Labor opposes this bill for good reason.
These bills, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill 2019 and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019, attempt to implement a really, really bad idea: the effective merging of the Federal Circuit Court and the Family Court into one court, effectively abolishing the specialist court that works with families through one of the worst times of their lives, the court that works with couples that are desperately trying to work out how they are both going to live with their children and each other, are separating property and are already emotionally invested in one of the worst times of their lives. These bills make that situation worse by abolishing the very place that specialises in dealing with those cases.
You'd expect, given that this government is always talking about following the evidence—evidence based this and evidence based that—that there would actually be an evidential basis for this. You'd expect that there'd be inquiries and reports that actually backed up this really odd idea, which is no less than to abolish the Australian Family Court. Yet, when you look, that's not what you find. The Morrison government claimed that the proposed merger had been 'informed by independent reviews and inquiries over a decade'. The Attorney General's Department website lists five reports under the heading 'The evidence base for the reforms'. But, when you look at the reports, none of them recommend this. None of these reports even considered these reforms. These reforms just seem to have come out of the blue. With all of the inquiries into the Family Court system, all of the experts around the country and all of the people who work in it, this one came out of the blue. The idea that you'd abolish the court—not work to improve it, not give it more resources and not help it overcome its extraordinary backlog due to those lack of resources but abolish it altogether—came out of the blue. Only one of the five reports recommended restructuring the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court, and it recommended something completely different, which would have maintained that specialist Family Court as a standalone entity.
So there is no evidence, no consultation and no report that actually recommends this, except a short report by two accountants from PwC who did a desktop review of the two courts and decided that merging them was a good idea. For a start, those two accountants made a series of heroic assumptions, including that there was an equivalent level of complexity between the matters in the Federal Circuit Court and those in the Family Court, and clearly that's not true. Nobody who has anything to do with the Family Court or who has walked past a Family Court location or spoken to a person who's been involved in the Family Court would actually believe that. These two accountants did not have any special skills in Family Court matters, yet it is their recommendations which this government has taken up.
After that, the proposal not only has no friends but has enemies. Virtually every single expert in this field has come out against this proposal. No fewer than 110 stakeholders—ranging from the Law Council of Australia to women's legal services, community legal services, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, child protection advocates and disability advocates from across Australia—have written to the Attorney-General asking him to abandon this foolish plan, which has not been thought through and comes not from experts but from two people who did a six-week desktop review and have no experience in the field, even though, for many, many families in Australia who end up in divorce, this is a crucial part of the solution-making for families in extreme crisis.
This proposal is opposed by 110 individuals because they believe it will harm vulnerable children and families in need of specialist family law assistance, increase rather than decrease the cost, time and stress for families and children in the family law system, place further stresses on Federal Circuit Court judges who are struggling under unsafe, unsustainable and unconscionable workloads and fail to address any of the fundamental problems plaguing the family law system, including the risk of family violence survivors falling through the cracks. No less than the very first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, Elizabeth Evatt, has said:
The proposed merger of the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court … will lead to undesirable outcomes for children …
These are absolutely clear statements from virtually every specialist. The President of the Law Council of Australia has said of the proposed merger:
It would result in the effective abolition of the Family Court … The … merger bills, if passed, would also mean that Australian families and children will have to compete for the resourcing and hearing time with all federal matters … There must be an increase not a decrease in specialisation in family law and violence issues. This is critical for the safety of children and victims of family violence.
You can't get clearer statements than these that this abolition of the Family Court will lead to greater risk for children. You can't get a clearer statement than that. On the advice of two accountants with no experience in family law, in a desktop review over six weeks, suddenly this government thinks those two accountants know more than all the people who have spent their lives working with family violence, with family break-up, in the best interests of children. It is astonishing that this conservative government that is supposed to have this admiration for institutions, that is supposed to understand the value of them, is breaking one apart because two accountants said it was a good idea. It is absolutely astonishing. Community Legal Centres Australia said:
… moving away from a specialist family court model would be a retrograde step and expose survivors of family violence to unnecessary risk.
The Law Council of Australia said the proposed merger is 'a terrible gamble with the lives of children and families'.
That's what we're debating here in this House today. That's what we're debating, except we're not debating it. I want you to think about what would have happened when Gough Whitlam introduced into the parliament the bill to establish the Family Court in 1974 if no government members had got up and spoken for it. Can you imagine if 25 members of the opposition had got up and spoken against it and not one government speaker thought it was a good enough idea to support it? That's what we've got here. When Whitlam introduced that bill there were 28 hours spent debating the bill. Fifty-nine members on both sides spoke on it. I looked at the speakers list this morning. I look at the speakers list every day. I know you won't be able to see it, and I can't hold it up, because it's a prop, but quite often we see a lot of speakers on our side and not many speakers on their side. That's quite common. The government doesn't seem to have a lot of members of parliament who actually want to get up and support the government in its bills. But for this one, there are virtually none. I understand maybe there was one. I have heard a rumour there might have been two. Two?
An opposition member interjecting—
One. Is that counting the minister or not?
An opposition member interjecting—
Two, counting the minister. The minister has to do it, so we will discount that one. One member has voluntarily got up and spoken on this bill, the bill that is going to abolish the Family Court, against the advice of the entire legal profession, on the advice of two accountants who know nothing about family law, and there's one member of the government who actually thinks it is worth getting up and speaking in favour of it—one. I don't blame them, by the way, because there is not much that they could say about it. Once they said two accountants thought it was a good idea, there'd be nothing else, because everything else that has been written about this says it puts children at risk. It increases the risk to children. Children's safety is being put at risk by this bill. So it's not surprising they're not getting up and talking about it. It is really not surprising. It is absolutely disgraceful, really, that they can sit on the government bench and not be interested in something as important as this is to children and families at the worst time of their life.
Nobody says there aren't problems with the Family Court at present, because there are. There are real problems with the Family Court. The main cause of the problem isn't a mystery at all. It's really clear. The Australian Law Reform Commission found:
… the family law system has been deprived of resources to such an extent that it cannot deliver the quality of justice expected of a country like Australia, and to whose family law system other countries once looked and tried to emulate.
Over the last seven years, in particular, the story of the Australian family law system has been a story of neglect, with the Abbott government, the Turnbull government—I get their order wrong; is it Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison?—and the Morrison government. It's been a story of neglect. In the Parramatta court, for example, we have fewer judges now than we had in 2008. I got up and made a speech in this House in 2016, way back then, when the queues and delays in the Parramatta Family Court were getting so long that judges were saying cases introduced in 2016 would not get a result until 2018 or 2019. When judges on stress leave—not surprisingly—had not been replaced, I got up and spoke.
We have fewer judges now than we did in 2008. After Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, we are next: the Family Court of Parramatta has the most cases. We are the fourth in terms of workload. We have eight judges—six in the Federal Court and two in the Family Court. We have delays of six to eight months for a family assessment. Even for a family assessment it can now take six months—or eight months for a family report by a family consultant, which forms the basis of many cases. It's an eight-month wait there, and that's before it even gets before a judge.
This is extraordinary. We have men and women and their children, trying to rebuild their lives, waiting years for an outcome. A one-year-old can be three or four before the decision is final. A 10-year-old goes through puberty before the decision is final. Can you imagine the additional strain this places on a family, the permanent damage it does to that relationship? What I know about this is that when two people have a child, they're connected for the rest of their lives. That connection is permanent. We as a nation want those connections to be healthy. We want children to be raised with both parents. We want them to have access if there isn't violence involved. We want it to work. We want parents to have a relationship, because they need that if they're going to raise their children well in a safe and secure environment.
It means parents can't make decisions about the school their child goes to or where they live—all the practical operational matters that families have to go through when they separate and try to figure out how to have two households with one child or two households with two children who move. They're incredibly complex matters. There's so much stress, so much anger, so much rage, so much hurt.
This incredible under-resourcing of the Family Court—for years—has made that worse. What do we get now? Now we get an Attorney-General who makes the extraordinary statement that, because the Family Court's struggling, he's not going to give the extra money in the budget to the Family Court until after it's abolished, until after it's merged. He says, 'Why would you give money to a system that's failing?' It's failing because you didn't give it money. It's failing because the government didn't properly resource it. There aren't enough judges. There aren't enough specialists. They've cut funding to legal aid. They've cut funding to community legal centres. They've cut the very structures that support families outside of the courts. The number of people going to the courts is growing year by year by year.
I'm going to come back to Parramatta, because it's really quite interesting. It is the fourth largest, but it also serves right out to New South Wales, right across the Blue Mountains out to the Central Tablelands. It has all of Western Sydney, across the Blue Mountains, into regional New South Wales. That's the area that it serves. And it has fewer judges now than it did in 2008.
If you look at population growth, you'll see that Western Sydney is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. Western Sydney will take an enormous number of people. There is development going on everywhere and there are new families moving in everywhere. Ask anybody in Western Sydney who has to commute what's happening in Western Sydney and they'll tell you about the number of people moving in, and the Parramatta court has fewer judges now than it did in 2008.
This legislation is going to make things worse. According to the experts in this area, this legislation is going to put children at greater risk. Just think about that. All the people on the government benches who aren't bothering to speak about this legislation should think about that. They should come in here and explain themselves. They should come in here and explain how, on the advice of two accountants with no experience, they're going to put children at greater risk.
I thank members for their contribution to this important debate. The Federal Circuit Court and Family Court of Australia Bill 2019 and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019 bring together the Federal Circuit Court of Australia and the Family Court of Australia. The main bill brings together the Family Court of Australia and the Federal Circuit Court of Australia, which will be known as the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia. The legislation provides a consistent federal family law court structure designed to make it as easy as possible for Australian families to get on with their lives. The consequential amendments bill will facilitate the transition for court users from the Family Court of Australia and the Federal Circuit Court of Australia to the new FCFC on the commencement of the provisions.
The FCFC will have common, streamlined processes and procedures that operate consistently and will provide the significant benefit of creating a single point of entry into the federal family law courts. This will make an enormous difference to Australian families. It will be a simpler, more efficient, more effective and more accessible court for Australian families to resolve their matters with as little complexity as possible.
It is unfortunate that so much of the debate on these bills focused on mischaracterisation of the bills and the current system. The bills do not abolish the Family Court. Judges appointed to the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court will continue their appointments. It is important to put in context the work of the two courts. The reality of the existing family law system is that the Federal Circuit Court already deals with close to 90 per cent of family law matters. When it comes specifically to final orders made, the FCC resolved almost 16,000 matters just in the last financial year and the Family Court resolved around 2,400 matters over the same period.
There are approximately 40 judges at the Federal Circuit Court who hear only family law matters. The average FCC judge hearing family law matters has, on average, 25 years of experience in family law. These judges have experience with matters involving families with complex needs. The unfortunate reality is that they have experience dealing with matters involving family violence.
There have also been suggestions that the Family Court provides some greater level of service to families than the Federal Circuit Court. However, the CEO of the Federal Circuit Court and the Family Court told the recent Senate committee inquiry:
… there have been some suggestions of a difference in wraparound services provided to each of the Family Court and the FCC. What is meant by this term is somewhat unclear. However, for the avoidance of doubt, the court's internal family law services are shared between the courts. This includes registrar resources, family counsellors and registry staff.
Members opposite have also suggested that there has been no engagement with stakeholders and the sector on this reform. This is a strange criticism for a bill that was first introduced in August 2018 and which has been subject to two separate Senate committee inquiries—one which lasted 18 months and the other which lasted almost a year. The proposed reforms have been developed in close consultation with the federal courts, including the heads of jurisdiction. Exposure drafts of the 2018 bills were provided to the Law Council of Australia and the Australian Bar Association for review and comment. Prior to reintroducing the bills the Attorney-General addressed the judges of both courts and held a roundtable with key stakeholders. The original bills had been developed and informed by a number of substantial inquiries over the last decade including the 2008 Semple review, a 2014 KPMG review, a 2015 EY report, the 2017 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiry and, most recently, a 2018 PwC report.
That the government has considered the views of stakeholders is evidenced by the amendments made to the current versions of the bills. To address some of the concerns identified by stakeholders, the government made several changes to the package as it was before the last parliament. The government will no longer create a family law appeals division in the Federal Court. The bill instead preserves the existing Family Court's appellate jurisdiction within the FCFC Division 1. The government has also agreed to set a floor of judges by regulation, to be set at 25 judges, which was the number previously recommended in the Semple report.
The bill marks real change for Australian families seeking to navigate a family law system at a stressful time in their lives. The structural failings of the current split family law system are widely agreed, and continuing to do nothing to fix the problem is not an option. Reform of any longstanding structural problem is challenging, but the proposed reforms are the least radical path to ending, for thousands of Australian families, the unnecessary confusion, costs and delays that have arisen by virtue of the current split system. I commend this bill to the House.
The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Isaacs has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. So the immediate question before the House is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.
The question now is that this bill be read a second time.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
The question is that this bill be now read a third time.
The question is that this bill be now read a second time.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
The question is that the bill be read a third time.
I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020 and I move:
That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:
(1) notes the Government's plans to cut coronavirus support for businesses and individuals; and
(2) calls on the Government to permanently increase the base rate of the JobSeeker Payment".
I'd also like to indicate that Labor is planning to move detailed amendments to this bill with the aim of doing a number of things. We aim to stop the government from cutting payments to around two million people at Christmas, including people on unemployment support, students and apprentices and single parents. We also aim to require the minister to urgently consider a permanent increase to the base rate of JobSeeker Payment, because the only way unemployment support can be increased is if the government decides to do it. It simply cannot be done from the other side of this chamber because it involves expenditure. We also want to reverse the government's unfair reinstatement of the liquid assets waiting period and require the minister to urgently consider extending the beneficial changes that have been made to the income test, how much a person can earn before losing their payment and the eligibility rule for sole traders, among other things. I hope the government will support these amendments.
In relation to the bill itself, the effect of this bill will be to return unemployment support to the old base rate of Newstart on 31 March 2021 by earning the minister's power to make regulations extending the coronavirus supplement. Of course, the government could choose not to use that power and cut payments at any time, as they have done twice already, but the complete and total removal of this power gives a clear indication of the government's plan to take unemployment all the way back to the old Newstart rate in March, hence our amendments. One point eight million Australians are projected to be on unemployment support by the end of the year, and around two million Australians will be impacted by the government's scheduled cut to the coronavirus supplement next March. This includes people who have lost their job as well as single parents and students. The base rate of unemployment support is too low. Unemployment support can provide a barrier to hardship and poverty. Unemployment support is spent on local businesses, sustaining and creating local jobs. Returning unemployment support to the old base rate places millions of Australians at risk of hardship and jeopardises local jobs.
The government temporarily boosted JobSeeker at the outset of a pandemic, when the number of Australians requiring support doubled overnight. We all saw those lines at Centrelink. The number of Australians requiring support is expected to increase to 1.8 million by the end of this year. How does the government expect it can cut support? The bill strikes out the minister's existing ability to pay the coronavirus supplement indefinitely and replaces it with a time limited power that stops on 31 March 2021. This bill is a missed opportunity to lift people out of poverty, support the economy and protect local jobs. Labor calls on the government to deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of unemployment support and calls on the government to ensure continued beneficial support for people impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and recession.
There are many beneficial elements to this bill, including continuing the coronavirus supplement for the youth allowance, student and apprentice recipients after December as well as the increased income-free areas, taper rates and partner income test that have been introduced as part of the pandemic. But it does include a cut in JobSeeker in March, for a return to the old base rate of Newstart. The government introduced a coronavirus supplement because the number of Australians requiring unemployment support virtually doubled overnight at the outset of the pandemic. Labor welcomed this supplement. Labor had consistently called for an increase to unemployment support long before the pandemic, because it is simply too low and is inadequate to protect Australians from hardship and enable them to live with dignity.
The coronavirus supplement is paid to most people through regulation-making powers the minister has under the Social Security Act 1991. This means the government can extend the coronavirus supplement and set the rate in three-monthly intervals, so long as the impact of the pandemic persists. Of course, the government can choose not to use this power and cut support back to the old Newstart rate. Already, the government has cut support twice—once in September and they have announced another cut around Christmas time. The government has taken the coronavirus supplement from $550 a fortnight to $250 a fortnight and will make it $150 per fortnight from Christmas time. The impact of the pandemic will clearly persist for many years, with the Department of Social Services expecting the number of people to be relying on unemployment support to still be elevated in four years time.
This bill will repeal the minister's power to indefinitely extend the coronavirus supplementation on 1 April 2021. Labor's amendment aims to stop this occurring. Earlier this year, Labor negotiated with the government for a separate power to be included in the Coronavirus Economic Response Package Omnibus Act 2020 to enable the minister to make other changes to the social security system to help people impacted by the pandemic. This power, and the regulations made under it, end on 31 December 2020. This bill proposes to extend this power, but only to 31 March 2021. Labor supports this extension, but we also think this power needs to persist for longer, so the government can continue to flexibly respond to the ongoing economic challenges as they arise from the pandemic.
Because of this power, which Labor advocated for, the government has been able to introduce more generous partner income testing for JobSeeker payment, which Labor negotiated. It tapers at 27c in the dollar and cuts out at a partner income at $80,200 per year. This power has enabled the government to make changes to the JobSeeker and youth allowance personal income tests. It provides an income-free area of $300 per fortnight, up from $106 per fortnight prior to the pandemic, and that was a good thing. It has enabled the government to expand the eligibility criteria to the JobSeeker and youth allowance (other). It now includes sole traders and the self-employed, permanent employees who have been stood down and people self-isolating because they or someone they are caring for has been affected by the pandemic. The power has enabled the government to waive the ordinary waiting period for one week and the seasonal work preclusion period and the newly arrived residents waiting period. The government has been enabled to extend the time people can maintain eligibility for payment and keep concession cards and to make many other beneficial changes relating to the pension mobility allowance and self-declaration for couple assessments.
This current bill removes the minister's ability to make regulations that waive the liquid assets waiting period and the assets period. Labor does not support this, and our detailed amendments will seek to reverse it. The government should not have reinstated the liquid assets waiting period in September, and I have been very vocal about this. They should drop their cruel plan to make people wait 26 weeks to got unemployment support if they have modest savings. This is a false economy. It means people are forced to run down their last dollar, and it makes it is more likely that they will face hardships such as struggling to pay the mortgage or having to take a car off the road. It also means people are more likely to need to rely on other services such as food banks and emergency relief.
Labor is concerned about the Morrison government's plan to return JobSeeker to the old base rate of $40 per day on 31 March. By the end of the year, 1.8 million Australians are expected to be on unemployment support. The number of Australians on unemployment support is not expected to return to prepandemic levels for four years, as I have already stated. With more jobseekers than each job vacancy, there are simply not enough jobs for everyone who needs one. It is even more difficult to find a job in our regions, the result of the government's failure to deliver a jobs program for our regions.
Australians who are struggling to find work are struggling to find more hours, and they face an anxious new year. Many Australians will be wondering what level of support will be available to them after 31 March 2021. Many are worried about how they will afford essentials, cover rent and pay bills. Unemployment support should provide a barrier to hardship and poverty and enable vulnerable Australians to live with dignity. Cutting it will see many Australians placed at risk of falling into poverty.
Australians receiving unemployment support spend at local and small businesses. We know that for a fact. They play a vital role in helping to create local jobs, especially at times like these. When JobSeeker is cut in December and March, Australians on social security will have less to spend on local and small businesses. Anyone can see that. Local and small business will have less to spend on wages and on jobs in turn. How many jobs will be jeopardised or placed at risk when the government cuts JobSeeker in December and March? Many leading economists have articulated this in just the last few days.
The government continues to demonise the millions of Australians who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. The government continues to demonise the millions of Australians who for some reason or other find themselves on social security. The government continues to cynically insinuate that Australians who have lost their jobs have chosen to do so. It is cynical, cruel and wrong. It continues its ideological obsession with the cashless debit card, which it has failed to demonstrate actually works. It continues to pursue drug testing of welfare recipients, yet it has no plan for jobs. The government continues to gloss over the grim reality facing too many Australians at the moment. As I said, 1.8 million of them will require unemployment support by the end of the year. And many Australians are not receiving the hours they want or need to survive. Many Australians are anxious about job security.
I want to briefly take a moment to reflect on the testimony to the Senate committee that led an inquiry into this bill last week—in particular the testimony from economist professors Jeff Borland and Peter Whiteford. They said the temporary boost to unemployment support has not created a disincentive to work. Professor Whiteford told the committee: 'While there are always some employers who say applicants are refusing jobs, the reality was that the average number of applicants per job could be as high as 20.' I have heard just recently of friends of mine who have advertised for jobs where there have been hundreds of applications. Professor Borland told the committee that it was difficult to see how, with unemployment support below the minimum wage, it could present a disincentive for people to work. Professor Borland conducted a study which looked into the time taken to fill vacancies and the flow of workers into jobs. He went on to say that, if the rate of unemployment support presented a disincentive to work, we would have seen an appreciable effect on the entry to employment, but this has not been the case. Professor Borland summed up his work as follows:
That research has a couple of main findings. One is that you could have a substantial increase in JobSeeker without adversely affecting incentives to take up paid work. Secondly, with the COVID-19 supplement to JobSeeker, we have had, in 2020, an experiment, if you like, on what the effect on incentives to find work would be of a higher rate of JobSeeker, and my evaluation of the evidence is that there is no evidence that the higher level of JobSeeker during 2020, with the COVID-19 supplement, has had any appreciable effect on incentives to take up paid work for the people who are receiving JobSeeker.
Yet the government continues to contradict the evidence of the experts by perpetrating a myth about the rate of JobSeeker. In fact, this government has made an art of contradicting evidence in many fields. The Senate inquiry also heard evidence about the disproportionate impact that the government's scheduled March JobSeeker cut will have on Australians in their mid-50s and 60. This is really important.
We heard from the Council on the Ageing, who told a Senate committee that Australians over 55 experienced the greatest difficulty re-entering the workforce and were unlikely to find another job. COTA spoke of age discrimination facing Australians over the age of 55 in the workplace and the jobs market. COTA warn that a return of unemployment payments to the old base rate of Newstart could see Australians in their 50s and 60s driven further into poverty. In the past 18 years, the proportion of people on unemployment payments who are over 55 has gone from 8.8 per cent to 26.6 per cent. It has more than trebled. There are currently more than 307,000 people over 55 on unemployment support, and they are having the most trouble getting off the payment. Last month, almost one million Australians were excluded from the government's job hiring wage subsidy.
The Senate committee also heard from the Australian Retailers Association, who warned that scheduled cuts to unemployment support would jeopardise thousands of retail jobs. The ARA told the committee that an estimated 58 per cent of unemployment support payments were spent in retail. In light of this, the ARA said the full COVID-19 supplement represented $8.5 billion per year to the Australian retail sector—the equivalent of 130,000 retail jobs. The ARA told the committee that, with one in 10 Australian employees working in retail, the sector was the bellwether of the Australian economy. It described the boosted JobSeeker rate as the quiet achiever of the pandemic. The ARA said that members reported a reduction in spending on essentials after unemployment support was reduced in September. It called for a permanent increase to unemployment support, as this would provide certainty for social security recipients and the broader economy. The ARA's chief executive, Paul Zahra, told the inquiry:
… certainty drives confidence , and confidence drives spending.
He said that, without certainty, there will be no spending. He warned that the lack of certainty beyond March could affect Christmas spending. Small businesses and retail businesses are asking this government how many jobs will be lost when unemployment support returns to the old base rate. A permanent increase to JobSeeker will not only provide a barrier to hardship but also sustain local businesses and jobs.
Finally, I want to say that Labor is very concerned about the resumption of the current liquid assets waiting period. With almost 1.8 million Australians expected to require unemployment support by the end of the year, it really is unrealistic and inconceivable that the government would want to resume this waiting period. It is bloody-minded. We are also calling on the government to withdraw its cruel and unnecessary plan to double this waiting period to 26 weeks, or six months. The Morrison government wants people to eat through their savings, their only financial buffer against hardship, before they can access support. Australians who have lost work or lost hours should not be forced into hardship or poverty before they can access help.
This bill is a missed opportunity for the government to deliver permanent increases to unemployment payments. It absolutely lays bare the government's plans for unemployment payments and other payments to go back to the pre-pandemic rate on 31 March 2021. That is why Labor will move amendments. We are calling on the government to stop its Christmas cut to unemployment payments and to announce a permanent increase.
It seems everyone except this Prime Minister understands that returning to the old Newstart rate isn't good for individuals, isn't good for jobs and is certainly not good for the economy. The RBA, the BCA and the Retailers Association, as well as community groups and economists, support an increase to the base rate of unemployment payments. Even many on the government's side support it, including the member for New England and the member for Cowper, who recently said the idea of going back to $40 a day was 'fairly cruel and unusual punishment'. An increase would be good for local jobs and local economies, particularly in regional areas. Regional representatives in this chamber should take great note of that. It would lift people out of poverty. The old rate was so low that it was preventing people from being able to afford the basics and look for work. That is the reality.
I have moved a second reading amendment and, as I said, other amendments are being circulated in my name. I really urge the government to take note of what's being proposed here and to realise that a permanent increase to Newstart is what's absolutely needed. Labor negotiated in good faith that the minister, through regulation, would have power after 31 March to adjust the rates of the coronavirus supplement. The explanations I've been given for that being removed certainly are not credible.
I think that people right across this chamber in their heart of hearts know the base rate of Newstart is too low. The idea and the message that is being sent to those people on Newstart now is, 'This is your lot in life, and you will be returned to making decisions between paying the rent, getting the kids school shoes, getting medicine and having a meal.' That's the cold, hard reality. It is hard to think what poverty looks like for many people in this country, but let me assure you that it is real for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people. I ask people, in looking at these amendments, to think about the long-term effects that this poverty has on the children of those homes. The effects will be with them for life, and the idea that somehow or other you can just pull your socks up, strap your shoes on and get on with life is not the reality for many people living in this country. We in this place, elected representatives, have a duty to those people. We have a duty to care, and we have the capacity to make their lives ones of dignity. I urge people to consider that in considering the amendments to this bill.
Is the amendment seconded?
I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.
The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Barton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted stand as part of the question.
I rise to support the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020, or JobSeeker transition package, because I believe this bill needs to be passed now for the good of Australians who are dealing with a very severe crisis, as 2020 has been a year like no other—there's been both a health and an economic crisis like no other.
When the global COVID-19 pandemic hit Australia, the Morrison government acted decisively by boosting our health response and putting in place hundreds of billions of dollars of direct economic support measures to cushion the blow. We understood the crises we faced, and we understood the requirement for a swift, targeted, temporary and proportionate response to a state of emergency that has effectively spread around the globe.
In April, we understood the economic shock that lay ahead. Not everybody did. In fact, the Prime Minister was very clear that this was not going to be a two-week crisis—this was going to last for many months. I'm pleased to say that, other than in the unfortunate Victorian outbreak, we have weathered the storm admirably, and we are now at the point where Australia will be reunited by Christmas, with the last closed border today to be announced to be lifted by Western Australia. My constituents in Higgins are celebrating—that's for sure. So many can't wait to return to their families in Perth, families that they haven't seen all year.
It's also important to recognise that we have done very well with regard to our economic stimulus package and that 650,000 jobs have been returned in the past five months, with 80 per cent of those who've lost their jobs or had their hours reduced to zero back at work. It's important to recognise this because this is an economy that's in transition.
We also know that, even though there are enormously encouraging signs of revival, some are still struggling, whether someone's lost their job or their business through no fault of their own or they are struggling with mental health issues that the stress and uncertainty of COVID has exacted. That is why the Morrison government will extend our extra temporary COVID support for a further three months through the social security system for those Australians seeking work as economic confidence and momentum builds. This, coupled with far lower than expected unemployment rates and higher than hoped for consumer sentiment, means Australia is the envy of the world despite the fact we've had to deal with COVID.
The bill we are debating today will ensure that both existing and new jobseekers will be paid the coronavirus supplement at a rate of $150 per fortnight from 1 January 2021 through to 31 March 2021 on top of their base rate of payment and other supplements they are already eligible to receive. The extension of these supportive measures is estimated to cost an additional $3.2 billion. Jobseekers will continue to be able to earn up to $300 per fortnight without their social security payments being reduced. As the country is safely reopening and business is starting to return to full steam, we need to connect those seeking work with available jobs.
The Morrison government is committed to supporting individuals, families and the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic by providing this additional financial support to people who lose their jobs or have reduced income. And I repeat: this government understands and recognises that these extra economic stresses have occurred to people through no fault of their own.
Through this bill we are extending temporary enhanced financial support through this supplement and other temporary eligibility, because we understand the economy is in transition. To date our temporary measures have been successful. We understand the challenging conditions people are facing. The government continues to actively monitor economic conditions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and is responding by continuing assistance for individuals and families. The government has now committed unprecedented fiscal and economic support. This is actually unbelievable, and I think in February no-one would have believed that we would be in the situation we are in now both in terms of the government stretching to provide unprecedented economic support and what has happened around the globe. No-one could see this coming, and Australians should feel very proud of the response that we have had as a government, with the support of the Australian people.
Every Australian should have confidence in the Morrison government to deliver for them and their families in the way that is needed in this time of crisis. We are offering support now and into the future but we are not short-sighted; we are also planning our recovery on the other side of this virus. But to get there we must pass this bill, to ensure that those who need it most are supported through these difficult times.
I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the shadow minister for families and social services, who continues to tirelessly lobby the Morrison government for better outcomes for our pensioners, our parents, our young people and Australian families. She is a force to be reckoned with, but even so the government continues to leave too many people out and too many people behind. While there are elements of this bill that will be beneficial, it is a huge missed opportunity to deliver certainty for Australians who are doing it tough. In particular, it undermines far too many Australians—the 160,000 Australians who are expected to lose their jobs by the end of the year and the 1.8 million Australians who will be reliant on unemployment support by Christmas. In such a time of economic crisis, with so many losing their jobs, shouldn't the Morrison government do what is right and fair and increase the unemployment payment rate to more than $40 a day? This government should not make the unemployed wait 26 weeks before they can access support.
Every day I talk to residents in Corangamite who are facing increasing costs to protect their health because of the coronavirus pandemic. Every day I talk to pensioners in my electorate who are facing rising costs in energy and grocery bills. And every day I talk to residents in Corangamite who are dumbstruck that the Morrison government doesn't seem to care about them. In particular I've heard from many childcare workers, workers in the university and arts sector and many casual workers across my electorate who have been left out in the cold by this Morrison government. The government talk about consumer confidence on the radio, harp on about jobs on the telly and then come into this House and propose legislation that, apart from hurting many people, will decimate the economy.
At the start of the pandemic the government introduced the coronavirus supplement, a $550 fortnightly payment to those who were receiving unemployment support as well as to single parents and students. Labor supported this additional payment. Currently the coronavirus supplement is mostly paid to people through regulation-making powers that the minister has under the Social Security Act 1991. But while the impact of the pandemic will persist for many years this bill will end the government's authority to extend the coronavirus supplement. This is unnecessary and cruel. JobSeeker needs to be increased.
The KPMG chief economist, Brendan Rynne, recently said that the current payment of $40 a day is making it harder for the unemployed to find work due to the cost of travelling for interviews. The evidence of the benefits of increasing the unemployment payment is clear. Since the rate of JobSeeker was temporarily boosted, Australians on JobSeeker have been lifted out of hardship and poverty and have had more to spend at local businesses. They've been able to put food on the table to pay bills and to meet their rent.
In the wake of this pandemic, the budget was an opportunity for the government to deliver lasting structural change for vulnerable Australians while boosting business and jobs. The government has missed that opportunity, and here's why: they don't understand how employment works. When you apply for a job either you get the job or someone else gets the job. That's how it works in each individual case. So it's tempting to think that's how it works across the entire system; it's not. When more people are employed across the whole economy, they create more wealth, then they spend more money and then there is more demand for workers. Somebody else then gets a job indirectly, helping everyone else get or keep a job. The more jobs there are, the more jobs there will be, because jobs make jobs. This is fantastic news when things are going well, but it's really bad news when things are going poorly. When things are going poorly, unemployment makes more unemployment. When people lose their jobs, they spend less, then there is less demand for goods and services and then there is less demand for workers.
Because jobs make jobs and unemployment makes unemployment, the unemployment level goes up a lot faster than it goes down. When this country went into the recession in the 1980s, it took about two years for unemployment to rise above five per cent. Then it took almost 6½ years for it to come back down again. That's about three times slower on the way back to economic health. When this country went into recession in the 1990s, it took two years for unemployment to rise about 5½ per cent. Then it took over 7½ years for it to come back down again. That's three times slower on the way back to economic health. Unemployment arrives fast and leaves slow, so this is why the first thing to do in an economic crisis is protect jobs and this is why the first thing to do during an economic recovery is stimulate jobs. It's not rocket science, but it is essential.
The wealth of literally millions of Australians is at stake, and this is the exact moment when government should intervene and provide support to families during a time of hardship and crisis. This is just what Labor did, suggesting to the government the need for supports to keep people and the economy going. Thankfully, the government listened. But, with a number of branded and marketed supplements and schemes—including JobSeeker, HomeBuilder, the cash flow boost for businesses and employees, JobKeeper and apprenticeship support for small businesses—at the same time the Prime Minister made comments about a job being the best form of welfare. But where has all his keeping, seeking and building left us? Importantly, where has it left those who are unemployed or at risk of unemployment? In the budget the Morrison government released two months ago, they planned for unemployment to be worse next year than it was through the worst of the pandemic. That is their plan. Their plan is to withdraw support before the economy has recovered. A return to a pre-COVID unemployment payment of $40 per day will leave many people at risk of homelessness. It will leave many living below the poverty line.
On 6 October this government printed in black and white its intention to keep unemployment well above five per cent for the next four years. They plan for about one million Australians to be unemployed this year, next year and the year after that. That is their plan, and it is one of the worst economic plans any Australian government has ever stitched together. So what should the plan be? The plan should be for less pain and the plan should be for less unemployment. That's what the plan should be. It sounds expensive, but independent experts, including the Grattan Institute, estimate that if we invested about another $100 billion then we would return Australia to full employment by the end of 2022. This is worthy of serious consideration.
There is no shortage of ways the government can invest in this country—social housing, an energy grid that works, education, health, waste and recycling and, of course, child care. Strong investment would lead to less net debt, not more. Increasing the base rate of JobSeeker, as called for by every business and peak body worth their salt, including ACOSS, Brotherhood of St Laurence and even the Business Council of Australia and former Prime Minister John Howard, would be a good place to start. But this is not in the government's plan. The plan is for more unemployment and, I'm guessing, a few marketing campaigns along the way.
Catastrophic unemployment strategies aren't the only thing this government has lost its way on. The government was caught trying to freeze the pension—busted with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, except that cookie jar is filled with the livelihoods, independence and self-determination of 2.5 million pensioners. But this government doesn't care about that. This government thought it could sneak a freeze past the Australian people. The Morrison government thought it could sneak in a budget save, but the reality is that pensioners plan their lives around biannual indexation. Luckily, the shadow minister for social services led the charge to call out this sneak attack, naming it for what it is: a catastrophic proposal. The government has had a long track record of cutting or attempting to cut the pension, but the member for Barton will not stand for it and neither will the Labor Party.
There was a time when the Liberal Party was branded a party of strong economic management, but economic orthodoxy has long since been chased from the Liberal Party by populism welding a pitchfork. They don't believe in economic mobility. They don't believe in people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. This bill will damage the livelihoods of working families. It will mean fewer jobs, not more, and more hardship, and it will undermine the economy for decades to come.
My question for this House is: what does the Liberal Party believe in anymore? I know what Labor believes in. We believe in a permanent increase to the base rate of the former Newstart to more than $40 a day.
I speak strongly in favour of the government's conduct with the coronavirus supplement. I have to confess, I've travelled a fair few corners of my electorate and I've never met a Centrelink and Newstart income replacement recipient not happy with the coronavirus supplement. I challenge the other side of the chamber, in all their confected outrage, to find a single jobseeker not satisfied with the coalition government. I'm happy to meet that person and learn.
This is a nation that has overwhelmingly voted with their feet to say that the work we did in those early weeks, in February and March of this year—many members of parliament, certainly on this side, stood in Centrelink queues and talked to worried recipients. There were 600,000 or 700,000 Australians who found themselves, a number of them for the first time, seeking the support of the Australian welfare system. It fared so incredibly well, in no small part, due to the incredible work of staff in Centrelink offices around the country, who were exemplary. When we look back on that March period, everything was very uncertain. Once uncertainty has been stripped away, in a nation that dealt so wonderfully with COVID, we can look back at the welfare system and be truly grateful.
It's interesting that the so-called architects of the welfare system, on the other side of the chamber, often denigrate the system and call it '$40 a day'. They know damn well there's not a single Australian in this country on $40 a day. When you don't read the Centrelink documentation and you just take some headline number and ignore the supplementary payments you can come up with a fancy number, but there's not a single Australian receiving that payment. It's curious also because that's exactly the amount Australians were getting when Labor were in government. But I didn't hear the '$40 a day' echoing in these chambers from 2007 to 2013.
I think most Australians—certainly any taxpayers who talk to Labor members of parliament—would respect the fact that we tailor the Centrelink arrangements, and sometimes that requires tapering. Tapering is all about providing assistance based on need. You've seen JobKeeper, highly responsive for 700,000 Australians, probably halving the number of people who otherwise would have been completely in penury. We know that number of Australians, around 700,000, have come back into work or boosted their hours as a result of a recovery, predominantly, in household consumption and customer and business confidence. That's all coming back, and that's great news.
You'd expect, therefore, to have a tapering in government assistance. You'd expect there to be pathways back provided through income support for Australians to train—to be able to do online training at a time when face-to-face work wasn't always possible. We paused Work for the Dole projects and individual placements for a time. You'd expect a government to do that, and you'd expect a government to plan into the uncertainties of next year, when some of the restrictions and bottlenecks will be forced upon us by people in overseas countries, where people can neither travel nor confidently work, attempting to come back to Australia. I've mentioned in this chamber before how there's almost a tin ear on the other side to the idea of skilled visas—the 10,000 overseas workers who come here to keep the wheels turning in situations where we can't find Australian workers. That's also of great concern, because that number increases every month. These are overseas workers, working particularly in mining and agriculture as well as services in the major cities. Those overseas workers aren't there, and we're hoping that is a further stimulus to get Australians back to work.
This government is single-minded about getting Australians back to work. We're not over in the corner quibbling about whether it's $40 a day or not; we're actually doing everything we can to open up those pathways back to work. It's not easy to do it. Every job that's created is predominantly the result of an Australian thinking about how they can add more people to their workforce in their small business. They're real people, not just poring over spreadsheets but thinking practically about whether they dip into their own pockets and create another employment opportunity. It's not an easy process or an easy time to be doing it. We say to those Australians, 'Thank you so much for making those jobs possible where, probably, those opportunities may not have existed.' You'd understand an employer basically saying: 'Well, we'll write off the rest of the year; we'll cruise through to Christmas and think about employment next year.' But they're not doing that. They were doing it in September, October and November. They were doing it while states were shut down. They're doing it while people can't fly back into this nation. Employers around the country are the unsung heroes of COVID. That is because, when we dropped everything in March, the pathway back—and some on the other side have recognised it—is always harder, slower and more painful: skills wane, confidence falls and women, in particular, elect not to go back to work because it's all too difficult at the moment, conditions aren't right for them and the opportunities aren't there. So we need to be mindful that many young workers, utterly reliant on wanting to get into the workforce, never had that chance.
These are the great tragedies of COVID, but they're also opportunities for the government. The coronavirus supplement was done in an extremely short period of time. I want to emphasise just how hard it was for Commonwealth departments to basically redesign the payment system in such a short period of time. This is something that we should be supporting, and this legislation today is something about which the other side just need to be humble and honest enough to admit that it worked.
While we may be tapering, Australians intrinsically understand that in the new year we have to allow for that tapering and the tapering plays an important role. The tapering is a tiny signal that we're getting back to work next year. That's not to say that there's going to be a job for every person who seeks one, but remember that, since March of this year, final household consumption has returned to almost where it was, confidence at most levels is back to where it was pre COVID and the cost of living in Australia has not significantly changed. I'm not for one moment going to say it's easy to live on government payments, but it's not so fundamentally different that we have to be supplementing those payment systems in income replacement forever and a day.
It's opportunistic right now to do it if you're in the Labor Party, because there's not much else to talk about, is there? There's not much else to talk about when you're over there except playing on those fairly valid concerns about how things are going to work next year. A lot of people are very nervous about next year, but it doesn't stop the government from recognising the huge move back into the workforce and that, increasingly, it's going to be possible in every corner of this nation to do just that.
It's important to taper JobKeeper at the same time. The Australian Taxation Office has remarkably granular data through Single Touch Payroll for amounts of turnover. They can see how much GST is being paid. They can see the sectors that are recovering and the ones that are not. JobKeeper is agile enough to look after those who were in work back on 1 March. JobSeeker looks after everyone else, and it's done it impressively. My personal view is that we need to continue to watch the progress of the economy because Australia is just one cyclist in the global peloton of economies. We want to make sure we stay at the front. We stay at the front by looking after international education, our greatest service export. We stay at the front by making sure we get skilled visas in as soon as it's safe to do so and by making sure we have hotel quarantine that actually serves the needs of the nation on an industrial scale. We are living in an era of a global pandemic. For goodness's sake, you have to figure out a way to hand out food and dunny roll to people in a hotel room without infecting the workers that do it. That's not a hard challenge, but it's too much for 'Disaster Dan'. He let the disease out and it got into Queensland. Of all the public policy challenges we have seen in our time, delivering food and Uber Eats and dunny roll to people in a hotel room should not be the zenith. This should not be so incredibly complicated that we need to cap the hotel quarantine process and be the only nation in the world too timid, too gutless and too fearful to allow citizens to return. We really can do better than that.
As I return back to the context of this debate, the coronavirus supplement did its job and it did it marvellously. We can't yet predict where things are heading in 2021, but, by goodness, this final calendar quarter has looked really encouraging. I say to the government: we'll be watching carefully. There will be further tapers, and I support those tapers. I've personally made the case that if we were to taper, we could make the gap in the taper effectively an employment subsidy for jobseekers. If the coronavirus supplement were to fall by $50 a week in the future, that $50 a week could accumulate in the form of an income bank for jobseekers, so if they were to be employed, there is a wage subsidy available for the employer. What that does is actually move those who have been waiting for work the longest to the top of the queue. It's a proxy for the urgency of getting these people back to the workforce.
I want to finish with a little-known observation from the OECD; they do some interesting work. What they looked at across the developed world was the number of hours at the minimum wage that an individual has to work to escape poverty. They looked at a few family configurations and they looked at singles as well. What they found is that in Australia, just eight hours of employment a week is required for a single to escape the poverty line—which is a percentage of the median adult income—and around 15 hours for a family to do so. Just 15 hours of work a week to escape the poverty line. That may seem rather simplistic, but it was the lowest in the world. Australia has the greatest incentive to find a way to more evenly spread the pool of workable hours among our population, and we have the greatest likelihood of being able to achieve that. Despite some of the highest barriers to employment in the world and the highest minimum wage in the world, we know that if we can get people even some employment, they don't need many hours to escape poverty. This is our nation's great opportunity. If we were to save just some of that tapered payment in the form of an income bank for a jobseeker, that makes that jobseeker—potentially stream B or C—the most employable person in the shortlist. If we can assist those people, many of whom have no other employment in the household, then we can liberate that household from perennial welfare and intergenerational welfare. It is something to think about.
The tapers will continue, and I'll support the government in doing it. To be honest, if that team over there were in government, we'd be supporting them in tapering too; we wouldn't be taking cheap shots. We're in COVID and we should appreciate that one day COVID will end, and so too will the supplements.
I'm going to start by attempting to use the chamber as it's meant to be used, as a debating chamber. Unfortunately the member for Bowman has left, but I want to respond to some of the comments that he made in his stream of consciousness, including a challenge, as I understood it, to Labor members of the parliament to find a jobseeker unhappy with the COVID supplement. It's a strange challenge because of course we accept that people who are on JobSeeker are happy that there is a COVID supplement for two reasons. One is that people who were on JobSeeker—or Newstart, as it was previously known—before COVID now have enough money to live something more like a life of dignity above the poverty line. Of course they're happy about the COVID supplement. The second point is that those people who were employed before COVID hit but who lost their jobs—some of whom have never been on unemployment benefits in their lives—are happy that there is a COVID supplement because they're getting a rate of unemployment benefit that allows them to live a life of dignity above the poverty line. No-one on this side of the chamber is saying that the COVID supplement hasn't been successful, or that some of the measures that the government have put in place during this time haven't been successful. We argued for them. We negotiated them. We got them extended to people who had initially been left out by this government. The member for Bowman should know that, given he's been in this parliament during this year.
He also asked if we'd ever spoken to a taxpayer. I speak to taxpayers in my electorate all the time, and I'll tell you who I'm speaking to: people in my electorate who have been taxpayers their entire life and, because of the global pandemic, have found their family business has been smashed or have lost their job. I speak to people like Mark from my electorate, who is in a wheelchair and who after many years of unemployment found a job that he loved and was good at. He held it for 18 months and earned 40 per cent of the household's income. He was retrenched at the start of COVID and can't find another job. He's petrified that at the age of 56 he will never be employed again. He doesn't want to go on the disability support pension. He doesn't want to have to go on JobSeeker, be it at $40 a day or with the COVID supplement. He wants to work, but he doesn't qualify for the wage subsidy that the government introduced in the budget, and the Restart wage subsidy, which the Treasurer has tried to say is looking after older workers, has been an unmitigated failure, as we found out through estimates. Mark wants to work. He is an example of the people I am talking to. I am talking to people in my electorate of Dunkley who are feeling desperately the impact of the fact that in January of this year we had 4,572 people who were receiving Newstart and 459 young people on youth allowance and in October of this year we have 10,277 people on JobSeeker, what was Newstart—more than double. We've got 1,085 young people on youth allowance—more than double. They're the people I'm talking to. I can tell the member for Bowman and this chamber that the people I am talking to cannot believe that, if they cannot find a job in a jobs market where there are at least seven applicants for every available job, they are facing the prospect of the JobSeeker allowance reverting in March of next year to the base rate of $40 a day.
It's easy for people on the other side of the chamber to take cheap shots at us on the Labor side because we are standing up for people who need help. It's easy for the member for Bowman to call us opportunistic because, right now, at the time of almost the greatest need in Australia in a century, with a recession and a global pandemic, we are standing up and saying that this is the opportunity to increase allowances for people so that they can live above the poverty line, so that they can live a life of dignity and so that they can feed their family, pay their rent, afford to get on public transport to go and apply for a job or go to a job interview, put petrol in their car or go and buy a second-hand suit so they can go to a job interview. This debate shouldn't be ideological, because it's about people. It shouldn't be ideological, because we know that many of the groups that previously have said, 'Don't increase the rate of unemployment benefits, because it's a disincentive to work,' are now joining with the groups looking at it from the social welfare side and saying, 'Increase it so that people can live lives of dignity,' and saying to this government that the base rate of unemployment payments is not good enough. Yet this piece of legislation gets rid of the COVID supplement that the member for Bowman was rightly praising because it has worked. Apparently that is a reason to get rid of it in March next year, when no-one thinks we will be out of this recession. The RBA, the Business Council of Australia, the Retailers Association, community groups and economists across the spectrum support an increase in the base rate of unemployment payments. Yet we have before us a piece of legislation that in some respects holds unemployed people hostage because it allows COVID supplements and other improvements to the social security system that this government has brought in during the year, which are positives, at the same time as saying, 'Unemployed people will lose the COVID supplement and go back to $40 a day.' If you vote against the legislation, some people will miss out. If you vote for the legislation, other people will miss out. What a government! What a government to do that to the people who are most vulnerable in their time of need! Those are the people it should be representing. So don't accuse us of playing politics. Don't accuse us of being opportunistic. This government wrote the book on those things!
Last week, I held the second Dunkley community question time, where I asked members of my community to email me, Facebook me or otherwise contact me with the questions that they would like asked in the parliament if only they could get them asked. Deb from Seaford would like to know: why does the government not consider that people on JobSeeker over 64 who are not likely to find consistent work again after being made redundant need support? Deb has said: 'It's quite demoralising to be in this position at this time of life. There was support for under-35s in the budget, but more thought and care should be invested in looking out for the over-60s who've been made redundant and face greater challenges in finding employment again.' Deb is absolutely right. I've spoken about this in this parliament before and I will continue to speak about it until this government looks at employment programs for workers over the age of 50 that actually help them get back into employment. We know, if you lose your job when you're over the age of 50, it is nigh on impossible to find another one, and it is harder for women than for men. But this year's budget did nothing to help that, and this piece of legislation will do nothing to help that.
Marilyn wrote to me and said she would like to know: how do we get politicians to be accountable for their policies that do harm to the public? Well, if anyone has been following the absolute scandal of robodebt—unlawful debt notices being issued to the most vulnerable in our society and the government having to make a $1.2 billion payout to avoid going to trial and being exposed for exactly how culpable they are—they will know it's pretty hard at the moment to keep government politicians accountable for their policies that do harm to the public. Marilyn also wanted to know: how do we get JobSeeker raised to a livable level? Vote Labor, Marilyn, because it's not going to happen in a permanent way under this government when you listen to the contributions that are made on the other side of the chamber, when you hear someone describing cutting unemployment benefits back to $40 a day as 'tapering'. It's not going to happen under this government—having a proper increase to the base rate of unemployment benefits so that people can afford to look for a job. Vote Labor.
One in five people in Dunkley are on a pension—disability support pensioners; age pensioners; and carers, people who are spending their lives working to look after their friends and their family who can't care for themselves—and they have been abandoned by this government. I have had constituents say to me that the government's $250 payment before Christmas and another $250 payment after Christmas for aged-care pensioners feel like a slap in the face. It's almost an insult. Don't they know what electricity costs? Don't they know how hard it is to pay your rent or your mortgage when you're on a pension? Don't they know how much private health insurance is and how much food costs? It would seem that they don't. The member for Bowman invited us to talk to our constituents. I invite him to talk to his constituents. Perhaps he'll give another speech next time when he does.
A number of my Labor colleagues will talk about the evidence that has been presented to the Senate inquiry into this legislation and others that debunks the idea that increasing the base rate of unemployment benefits from $40 a day is somehow or another a disincentive to work. It's really important, so I'm going to talk about it as well. Professor Borland told that Senate committee:
Even before COVID, I would have thought, as many others have expressed, that there were strong arguments for making a permanent increase in the Newstart, now JobSeeker, payment.
… … …
… what COVID has done is give us a stronger evidentiary base for thinking that you could make that permanent increase without having significant adverse effects on the incentives to find work.
The research he has done has made a couple of main findings. They are:
One is that you could have a substantial increase in JobSeeker without adversely affecting incentives to take up paid work. Secondly, with the COVID-19 supplement to JobSeeker, we have had, in 2020, an experiment, if you like, on what the effect on incentives to find work would be of a higher rate of JobSeeker, and my evaluation of the evidence is that there is no evidence that the higher level of JobSeeker during 2020, with the COVID-19 supplement, has had any appreciable effect on incentives to take up paid work for the people who are receiving JobSeeker.
The Australian Retailers Association, which it's fair to say is not known as a leftie socialist organisation, said to the committee:
Social security recipients spend an estimated 58 per cent of their payments on retail goods or services at supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmacies … merchandise stores and … small businesses.
… … …
… the scheduled end of the JobSeeker payment will take the equivalent of $8½ billion per year from the retail sector. The equivalent of 130,000 Australian retail jobs are also on the line if we return the rate of the JobSeeker payment to its old base rate.
Next time any member of the Morrison government talks about their focus on jobs and their focus on the economy, you should remember that evidence—$8½ billion per year from the retail sector and the equivalent of 130,000 Australian retail jobs on the line. It's good for people and it's good for the economy. Raise the base rate of the unemployment benefit.
I'd like to finish my contribution by saying something on behalf of and to the amazing public servants who have worked at Centrelink for many years. They have written to me. A constituent has said, 'We all feel that we are also owed an apology.' Staff spoke up in the first instance about robodebt. They didn't believe it was right and they were told that it was going to happen and that, if they didn't like it, they should leave and find other employment. When I say 'first instance', I mean under this government, not the 1994 fairytale that the minister talked about in question time. Centrelink staff have dealt with anger, desperation, despair and frustration. They know why—because they were forced to implement decisions that weren't right and weren't accurate. They deserve an apology. I can't give them an apology on behalf of this government, but I can say, 'Thank you. We appreciate you.' (Time expired)
I rise to make a contribution to this debate across the chamber on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020. I'd like to talk about some evidence the member for Dunkley was asking for. She said that those on the other side of the chamber stand up for people who need help. I, on this side of the chamber, say that we are the ones who are delivering that help to all Australians. The Morrison government has not left any Australian behind. There are very many measures, including JobSeeker. I see that my argument is compelling enough for the member for Dunkley to sit down and listen.
Ms Murphy interjecting—
I'll take that interjection asking for evidence of what the Morrison government is delivering for Australians when it comes to the coronavirus supplement. Let me go right back to the very beginning when the coronavirus hit and talk about the emergency relief providers that the federal government already funds. One in my electorate that I love talking about is the St John's Crisis Centre, who do such a great job. When coronavirus hit, I worked very closely with the Minister for Social Services, Senator Ruston, to make sure that those emergency relief providers had the necessary extra funding to help. There was $200 million delivered across the country to those providers that were already in place—because, of course, state governments were a bit slow to come forward in Queensland with support for St John's Crisis Centre and for those people in Surfers Paradise who needed extra help, can I say. So we, the federal government, stepped up, with $200 million immediately on the table, delivered to emergency relief providers around the country, to help.
Soon after that, the coronavirus supplement was introduced by the federal government, $550 extra per fortnight for those people on JobSeeker. I have had some fantastic stories in my office of people who have actually saved the coronavirus supplement.
Ms Murphy interjecting—
Order! The member for Dunkley was heard in silence and she'll afford the same opportunity to other speakers.
They've come into my office and told stories about how they've managed to save part of their coronavirus supplement, on top of their JobSeeker payment, to put towards a deposit on a rental property. That is a great Australian story: given an opportunity out of this crisis, some Australians have been able to remain where they were before the coronavirus hit, save their supplement, put a payment down on a bond for a rental property and share with some of their friends. I think that's a fantastic outcome for Australians.
I will move on to some of the other things that the federal government has delivered. I'll talk about Moncrieff, because, obviously, I know the numbers in Moncrieff. When this pandemic hit, we had 5,900 people on JobSeeker. In the course of the following months, the unemployment numbers went up to 15,000 people in Moncrieff on JobSeeker. I can tell you that those people who live in Mermaid Beach or in Surfers Paradise who lost their jobs—one in six jobs on the Gold Coast is hospitality and tourism driven; it's one in 13 across the country but one in six on the Gold Coast—and were able to receive that coronavirus supplement are very grateful for that.
We've heard from the Treasurer, and I've seen with my own two eyes—particularly today, with the Queensland border reopening—that the economy is able to bounce back very quickly. The coronavirus supplement was designed to cushion the blow for Australians and to help them pay their bills during this difficult time—to help those Australians, those extra 10,000 in my electorate who went onto JobSeeker, pay their bills and to help them see their way forward. That coronavirus supplement has been absolutely celebrated on the Gold Coast—along with JobKeeper, can I say, because JobKeeper on the Gold Coast is what's been keeping the doors open. It's been keeping businesses in business and it's been keeping locals in jobs.
These are very many measures that the federal government has delivered, and I don't know why those on the other side keep interjecting and disagreeing with the government's coronavirus supplement.
Opposition members interjecting—
Those on the other side have been asking for an increase to JobSeeker for some time, and this is exactly what the Morrison government did in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It increased the payment to $550 per fortnight and then stepped it down to $250 as the economy and jobs started to bounce back. Now, through to March, it's going down again, to $150, as more and more jobs return. That's right: $150 for an extra three months, so actually it was extended to support those Australians back into work. The nation, next year, needs to stand up and go back to work wherever possible. This is very important for our economic recovery. The jobs have already started to come back. Those on the other side and those on the crossbench know that these jobs have started to come back, so it is right and it is appropriate that the federal government step down the coronavirus supplement for jobseekers. We really have to understand that the country will come back from this and that the economy will bounce back. The coronavirus supplement is something that was designed for Australians to help them look for work, to help them during this period, along with all the other measures that the federal government has delivered, including around $500 billion across the economy, in various areas, to support Australians through this pandemic.
I will say once again to those opposite that the coronavirus supplement was there for Australians who needed it most and who continue to need it, and that is why it has been extended through to March. JobKeeper too has been extended through to March. So, over the next four or so months, we will see more and more jobs come back into the economy. We have seen jobs all over the economy come back, and we are seeing Australians going back into work. So I'll say to those opposite: the coronavirus supplement has done the job and is doing the job. It is delivering for Australians and is making sure that no Australians, especially those in my electorate of Moncrieff and on the Gold Coast, are being left behind. We are the government that is delivering. We are not the government that supports Australians—we don't just support them—
Ms Murphy interjecting—
No, we don't, Member for Dunkley. We don't just support them; we act. We deliver for Australians, and we do not leave any Australians behind.
That's a classic example of jumping to your feet without notes because what we just heard from the member for Moncrieff was that the government doesn't support people in this country. They act, apparently. She might live in alternative universe, but there are one million Australians who are unemployed—
Order! Member for Moncrieff, on a point of order?
What the member is saying is not what I said.
No, that's not a point of order. The member for Oxley shall continue.
Learn the rules! The member for Moncrieff is trying to con the people of Australia and this chamber that unemployed people have never had it so good and that unemployed people in this country are a burden on the taxpayer. We've heard all of this before. We've heard the demonising. We had the former Treasurer sitting in the gallery today, the famous former failed Treasurer of this country. Who can forget the 'lifter and leaner' comments of the former Treasurer in describing people on unemployment benefits as he was chomping on a cigar as he cut benefits in this country?
I'm proud to rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020, and I strongly support the second reading amendments moved by the shadow minister for human services, the Hon. Linda Burney. I pay tribute to the member for Barton who has been listening to the community and listening to those Australians who are without a voice who are demanding that this government end their cruel and unnecessary cuts to benefits for those people who are the most vulnerable in this country. Tonight, we have the choice to do something to support those in need or to cut those people's support services at Christmas time. We have the choice to stop the government from cutting payments to around two million people at Christmas time, including people on unemployment support, students and apprentices and single parents. I want to raise my voice tonight on behalf of the people of Oxley, whom I represent proudly in this chamber, to say that the government has got this wrong. We should not be cutting benefits at this time.
I want to say to the member for Moncrieff that there are one million Australians unemployed. There are people in this country who, during the worst recession in our nation's history, need support and assistance. It's not good enough to be in the alternative universe and say: 'All of the bad times are behind us; look to the future. The jobs will magically come down from heaven.' That's not the real world. I don't know what kind of world the member for Moncrieff is living in, but she needs to come into my community and actually start talking to welfare groups and to the agencies that are delivering emergency relief. She needs to talk to St Vincent de Paul, the Salvation Army and the Smith Family. Whatever ivory tower she is in on the Gold Coast, she needs to get out into the real world and start listening. There are increases of 200 to 300 per cent for emergency relief support services, and there is a crisis in accommodation in emergency relief housing that is exploding in this country. That this government needs to be congratulated or patted on the back while they are cutting support benefits for those most in need is something I never thought I would hear in this parliament.
Tonight the Labor Party is requiring the minister to urgently consider a permanent increase to the base rate of JobSeeker payment because the only way unemployment support can be increased is if the government decides to do it. Who can remember the coalition members of parliament famously saying that they could live on Newstart? Well, my question to members of the government tonight is: can anyone in this chamber honestly put up their hand and say they could live on Newstart? I don't think believe they could in all good conscience. I know that they can't. It beggars belief that the government wants some kind of recognition for all of the cuts and all of the cruelty they are delivering, particularly at Christmas time.
I know that the government is completely aware, but repeatedly chooses to ignore, that we have one million people who are unemployed in this country. We know it is forecast that around an extra 160,000 people will be thrown to the unemployment queues as a result of this government's performance. The effect of the bill will be to return employment support to the old base rate of Newstart from 31 March 2021 by ending the minister's power to make regulations extending the coronavirus supplement. Currently the minister has the power under the Social Security Act 1991 to continue paying the coronavirus supplement in three-month intervals, subject to being satisfied that it is necessary to deal with the social and economic impacts of the coronavirus. Under this power the minister can set the rate of the coronavirus supplement. What we're dealing with tonight is a bill to repeal this ongoing power and prevent the minister from extending the coronavirus supplement post 31 March.
Earlier this month I was proud that Labor moved amendments to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2020, calling on the government to deliver a permanent increase, to better support pensioners in the pandemic and to not reduce the rate of the coronavirus supplement from $250 to $150 from January 2021. I know that amount of money is not a big deal to the member for Moncrieff. That doesn't seem to be an amount of money she's interested in. I talk to the welfare agencies in my electorate—St Alban's church, Inala Salvation Army, Inala St Vincent de Paul and the many church organisations—and they are exploding with requests for support as people are thrown onto the scrap heap by the government and they know that that reduction will have a huge impact.
Tonight I want to unpack what that means for my community. My electorate has the largest amount of payday lenders of any electorate in Australia. That's not a proud statistic in any way, shape or form. Under this government, the amount of vulnerable Australians who are being ripped off by the loan sharks in this country is appalling. Five years ago, this government was delivered a report under then minister Kelly O'Dwyer, to deal with small amount credit contracting, and 21 recommendations came forward. The government promised to implement two key recommendations. The then small business minister who had carriage for the legislation, the Hon. Michael McCormack, delivered a draft explanatory memorandum and it was promised to be enacted. Five years later, we are still waiting for that reform.
One of the first things I did when I was elected was second a private member's bill to deliver the government's legislation word for word. Yesterday, the member for Clark and the member for Mayo delivered that legislation in this place. Why is this important? How does this relate to this bill tonight?
It's because the reduction in the supplement that the government—the Christmas grinches—are intent on delivering and will continue to push through in the rest of this year will mean that more and more of the people who still need that support will need finance, and I know from speaking to financial counsellors in my community that they are fearful that people will turn to loan sharks. When the dryer or the fridge breaks down—or the car or the school laptop needs to be repaired—instead of paying $450 for a dryer or $700 for a fridge, they will be hit with $3,000 to $4,000 worth of interest payments.
It does not have to be that way. If this supplement could continue—if this government were not so mean-spirited that it is ripping out support for the community and for those who can least afford it—people would not be turning to these debt vultures. That is before we even get to the government's proposed plans to make it easier for the debt vultures, the loan sharks and the banks to lend money. The Consumer Action Law Centre, consumer rights advocate groups and all responsible lending organisations have decried what the government is planning to do. You can see that this Christmas the government is planning a toxic environment, going into the New Year, and it's only going to get worse as we head towards March.
I want to make this crystal clear if I can. Today is 1 December. That means that, in 30 days, it's the end of 2020, the end of what we thought would be a remarkable year that has brought absolute gloom and severe anxiety to so many Australians, many of whom, this Christmas, will hit the poverty line. What will that look like for families at Christmas—for presents under the tree or meals where families gather? For some, it means being reunited after nearly a year of living interstate, and we know how hard the separation has been for families. I'm just proud that the Queensland government, led by Anastacia Palaszczuk, had a strong response to the health crisis, making sure that our borders were kept safe and that Queenslanders were kept safe. I know that's not something those opposite were proud of. They were all decrying the borders staying closed. They campaigned, over and over again, for the borders to come down, but Queensland rejected that reckless and dangerous economic and health action, which the members of the Queensland LNP were promising Queenslanders.
This government has been talking a lot about support, but, when the pedal hits the metal, what we've seen is a reduction, and what that is going to mean, I fear, is an increase in hardship, leading to an increase in poverty. The jobs that the member for Moncrieff is promising are not magically appearing. There needs to be a long-term economic plan to deliver those jobs in this country. They are not going to be delivered in eight to 10 weeks, by 31 March. We're talking about four years until we get to pre-pandemic employment rates. This is not the right time to be cutting support. This is not the right time. And it is not fair to Australians to see a former finance minister using a private jet, paid for by the taxpayer, travelling the globe, trying to get himself a cushy job, when this government is so lousy and rotten that it's cutting the coronavirus supplement.
It's all very well for the member for Moncrieff to say, 'Some people have done well; they've saved the money. They're just rolling around in it, they've got so much money.' I've never met someone on the pension who said, 'Gee, Milton, I've got too much money; I don't know what to do with it.' Get real. What planet are these people living on, Mr Deputy Speaker Zimmerman? I know from speaking to pensioners in my electorate that they watch every penny. They have to. They have some of the highest electricity prices, thanks to this government. The member for Moncrieff just shakes her head and says, 'So what?' I say those pensioners should be able to turn on the air conditioner; they should be able to afford that. But, when the government are cutting supplements and cutting support, that means it's harder and harder, particularly for seniors, to make ends meet.
As if this year had not been bad enough—the heartache, the pain, the economic trauma that people have been through, the concern and anxiety that, as we know, is through the roof—we now see this government wanting to cut the base rate, meaning people will not have enough to live on. So, once again, we've had the evidence presented to the Senate inquiry and tabled in the parliament. We know that the evidence was crystal clear that now is not the right time to be cutting payments. We know that this is not a smart economic decision to withdraw money out of the local economy. That means less money for the cafes and less money for people to go out and spend. They are really going to be facing a grim Christmas thanks to this government.
So I will be strongly supporting the second reading amendment tonight. I want this parliament to make it very clear that now is not the right time to be reducing support and throwing people on the scrap heap. I will continue to speak out and to make sure that my community is heard, because this government has an appalling record when it comes to listening to those in need. I'm delighted and proud that this side of the parliament will always stick up for those who need it most.
In a wealthy country like Australia, no-one should be living in poverty while they're looking for a job, and that is especially the case in the middle of a recession, while we have one million people unemployed and many more underemployed and getting by on crappy jobs, with an hour or two of work a week here or there that doesn't allow them to pay the bills. We have an unemployment and underemployment jobs crisis in this country and, so long as that is the case and the government refuses to guarantee a job to everyone who wants one, we should be making sure that no-one lives in poverty. We know that before the pandemic hit hundreds of thousands of people in this country were living in poverty while trying to look for jobs that just weren't there, and they were living on $40 a day. You can't live on $40 a day, which is why, even before the pandemic hit, everyone from the Greens to business groups and economists was saying, 'We've got to lift the rate so that people aren't living in poverty.'
Then, when the pandemic came along, all of a sudden the government was about to be exposed, because a huge chunk of people in this country who had never thought they would find themselves without a job were all of a sudden about to find out just how tough the government had made it for people who don't have work. So the government introduced the coronavirus supplement, a move that we applauded because, all of a sudden, people in this country who were doing it tough had the ability to live above the poverty line. As one person was quoted during the Senate inquiry into this bill as having told Anglicare Australia:
This payment has been like lighting a dark room full of promise and wonder, only to turn the light out because the committee has the power to do so. Please ask the committee to leave the light on for us all.
That's what the person said, because, for this brief period when the government was forced to admit that Newstart or JobSeeker is not enough to survive on, people across this country were all of a sudden able to lead something like a normal life. Being on $40 a day isn't living; it's just barely surviving. You spend all your time just trying to survive and get by, and that actually makes it harder to get into work, because you don't have the money to go and get your hair cut or buy the clothes that you need or do the bit of training that might help you get that next job. You are forced to just spend every day working out how you are going to stretch that $40 a day to survive and feed yourself and ensure that you've got a roof over your head. So for this brief period, as that person told Anglicare Australia, it was like lighting a dark room full of promise and wonder, because all of a sudden so many people who had been living in poverty were now lifted out of poverty.
The fundamental point that the government had to acknowledge, and did acknowledge when they lifted the coronavirus supplement, was that Newstart or JobSeeker was never enough to live on before. The thing is that the cost of living didn't all of a sudden double during the COVID pandemic and it's not all of a sudden going to halve as we start to get the pandemic under control. The costs of keeping a roof over your head and feeding yourself and your family are going to stay. In fact, they're going to increase as the cost of living goes up. But, instead of acknowledging that, the government is actively choosing to plunge people into poverty, and that is what they are doing by cutting the supplement.
We've got to be crystal clear about this: the government could choose to keep people out of poverty, but it is choosing not to do so. And, as we head towards Christmas, the government is plunging an additional 330,000 people into poverty. That will mean the government will have forced a total of 1.16 million people below the poverty line by the end of this year. Just reflect on this for a moment. At a time when the government has managed in its budget to have $99 billion a year in handouts to the big corporations and to the ultrawealthy and at a time when the government has managed to legislate tax cuts of thousands and thousands of dollars a year to the top end of the income spectrum, it is choosing to force 1.16 million people into poverty.
About 2½ million adults and more than 1.1 million children will experience cuts to their income support payment just after Christmas time. And so, as we get towards the end of this hellish year and as we go towards the summer break and people want to spend time with their families and their friends, the Prime Minister's rhetoric of, 'We're all in this together,' suddenly disappears. People are going to be plunged into poverty. It's going to happen at the end of this year, and it's going to get worse at the start of next year.
The government says, 'It's alright, because we're recovering from the pandemic.' Can I tell you what? In Melbourne, so much of the Melbourne economy is based on bringing people together and gathering them in small places. It's what the hospitality economy is built on, but, critically, it's what the entertainment sector is built on with things like the comedy festival, the food and wine festival and, of course, performing arts and live music. It is all based on getting lots of people together. No matter what happens more broadly, social-distancing restrictions of some form or another are almost certainly going to continue for some period of time, if not indefinitely. In other words, the business model that so many people have relied on has been decimated and is going to continue to be in many places. As a result, across the country, you have 12 people for every single job vacancy. There are 12 people for every job that's there. So this rhetoric of, 'Just go and find a job; it's okay—we're all bouncing back,' is just not borne out by the facts, and it is going to be harder in many places, like Melbourne, for industries to get back on their feet and get back to where they were, if they are ever going to be able to do it at all.
What the government could do instead is say, 'As we come out of this pandemic, we are not going to give $99 billion a year as subsidies to big corporations and the ultrawealthy and we are not going to give tax cuts to millionaires,' which Liberal and Labor supported. They could say, 'Instead we are going to put the money into making sure that everyone in this country lives above the poverty line.' That's what the government could be doing. For all their rhetoric about jobs, what they could be doing is offering people a job guarantee. The government could be using this opportunity, this crisis, to invest in a green recovery that will tackle the climate crisis, the inequality crisis and the economic crisis all at once, investing to get us not just to 100 per cent renewable energy but to even more so that we can start exporting our renewable energy to other countries and expanding rather than cutting our education, aged-care and health sectors, all the while building half a million new public housing homes over the next 10 to 15 years that would create 40,000 jobs and 4,000 apprenticeships. With the government invested in nation-building, planet-saving projects, we could turn around and guarantee a job for everyone who wants one.
What is this government doing? Instead of guaranteeing a job and lifting people out of poverty, they're giving billions of dollars to big corporations in handouts and to the ultrawealthy in tax cuts. And, as a result, inequality in this country is going to grow. And do you know what? The fact is that cutting these payments is actually going to prolong the recovery, because people who are without a job and who are on low incomes spend most of the money that they receive on essentials. It's not being squirrelled away into wealth portfolios or shares or going on a yacht. It's going on basic essentials, because you need to do that to survive. So, the money that people on low incomes get, gets turned around as they spend it straightaway on food, on housing, on the essentials of life. That is what small businesses—retail, clothing—and housing and all of those sectors rely on. They rely on that money being there to go out the door again, because that's how you buy things.
It's no wonder that lining up to criticise the government's moves are not just people like myself and the Greens, who are concerned about making sure that no-one lives in poverty in a wealthy country like ours, but you've also got, at the other end of the spectrum, consultants like Deloitte, lining up with many other economists, making the point that removing the supplement altogether by Christmas—admittedly it is going a bit later, but not much—would cost the economy $31 billion in reduced spending and the equivalent of 145,000 full-time jobs over two years. So it's not just unfair, it's bad economics to cut the coronavirus supplement.
What is crystal clear is that the government does not understand what it is like to live on $40 a day, because if anyone had any basic understanding of it you would not be bringing legislation before parliament and putting figures in the budget that say, 'We're going to go back to $40 a day next year.' That's what the government is doing. The government is saying to people as they head into Christmas, 'Get ready to live with significant insecurity for a long time, because pretty soon it's going to go back to $40 a day.' And they're saying that to people who are looking for work when there are 12 people looking for every one job and the jobs just aren't there.
What's the answer? The answer is a permanent increase to this sub-poverty-line payment that we force people who are looking for work to live on. And, in the middle of a recession, as we are battling and hopefully getting a pandemic under control, that is when we need to give people support. I make the point again: the cost of living is not going to halve from the height of the pandemic to now, but the payments that people get will if the government has its way. That's why the Greens are pushing to keep the full rate of the coronavirus supplement and effectively make it permanent so that $1,100 a fortnight is the figure that people who are looking for jobs can live on. And let's do it at the same time as we invest in those planet-saving, nation-building projects that allow us to offer a guaranteed job to everyone who wants one so that we get back to full employment in this country—not the trickle-down definition of five per cent unemployment, but two per cent where everyone who wants a job is able to get one, where there's a job for everyone in this country who wants one and where, if you find yourself without one, then you live above the poverty line.
We can do that, and we can fund free education, and we can get dental into Medicare, and we can build those half-a-million new public housing homes so that everyone's got a roof over their head, if we have the guts to stand up to the big corporations and say: 'It's time you paid your fair share of tax. We are going to cease giving you handouts.' As I said, this budget has $99 billion a year in those kinds of handouts, so the money is there. The choice is whether we want to keep giving money to big corporations or whether we want to give it to everyone in this society so that no-one in a wealthy country like ours lives in poverty. That's what the Greens will be pushing for, to retain the rate at $1,100 a fortnight. No-one should be living in poverty, especially in the middle of a recession.
Over the course of this year, my office, along with the offices of many other members in this place, has been inundated with calls from people who have been hit with unemployment in the midst of this pandemic. Nothing separates Labor, Liberal and the Nationals more than when we talk about the most vulnerable people in our communities in this nation. In Labor, we stand up for the most vulnerable people. Today's bill is just further evidence that the Liberal-Nationals would prefer to stand on them. We are all lucky to be here. We've got secure jobs. We have secure salaries. For many people in my electorate, buckling under the weight of mortgages which haven't gotten smaller, wage increases which have been deferred and families that still need to be fed, they rightly expect that the government should be there for them. It makes sense. If you're paying your taxes, if you're obeying the law, if you're earning a salary and you're a good citizen and something happens that's outside your control, our society should collectively step in and give you a hand. That's what makes this country great: we have a safety net. The people in this country know that if a one-in-a-100-year fire or flood or pandemic lands on your communal doorstep, you should have the confidence that the government will be there for you.
We see the bushfire victims from last year are still suffering because this government hasn't actually delivered anything more than an announcement to them. The government should be supporting people—people like mums and dads in McEwen—for as long as necessary for them to get back on their feet again and start working again. This pandemic also has been a body blow for the small businesses in our electorate. They've struggled to make ends meet, despite the government support that has been coming their way.
What's particularly worrying is that the government has not committed to support them beyond the 31 March deadline. The effects of this pandemic aren't going anywhere, but with this deep Morrison recession the economic effects of this pandemic will be felt for a long time to come. As the government delivers a trillion dollars in debt, the recession will be deeper and longer than necessary, because of the decisions made by this government. The Department of Social Services expects the number of people on unemployment support to still be elevated in four years time. Another 160,000 Australians will be added to the jobless queues by Christmas. We must remember this government was dragged kicking and screaming to the coronavirus supplement. They fought tooth and nail not to support people during this pandemic. It's already fallen from $550 a fortnight to $250 a fortnight. By 1 January the government intends to reduce that by a further $100, down to $150 a fortnight. Instead of a plan to get Australians back into work, the Prime Minister is leaving people behind to go it alone.
As we saw recently in Victoria, the state of a COVID outbreak can change so rapidly. It's important that governments maintain flexibility and agility to respond to outbreaks. Yet, what this bill does is seek to prevent the minister from extending the supplement beyond March 2021. Because of this, payment rates will go back to pre-pandemic levels. Too many people in McEwen know that these levels were already too low. Newstart is widely regarded as an unsustainable supplement. It isn't good for individuals, and nor is it good for our economy. Even members of the government benches support an increased payment. The members for New England and Cowper said going back to $40 a day was a 'cruel and unusual punishment'. So the challenge for those members and any member over there that may have a conscience is: will you vote against this heartless bill? I doubt it. But, in any case, it is cruel for the government to roll back these provisions.
On a large scale, this decision will impact around two million people, including those on JobSeeker payments, youth allowance, parenting payment, Austudy, widow allowance and the farm household allowance. These people aren't the proverbial 'dole bludgers' that the government likes to label. They're not corporate big-wigs taking millions in bonuses and dividends during a pandemic. They are nurses, they are students, they are grandparents and they are jobseekers. This government has shone that they do not care about supporting people who need it the most. What else can explain the budget, which abjectly failed to support older workers and women, or when they missed the opportunity to subsidise child care for the millions of families who were struggling to balance home and work in this new COVID world?
As I said, my office has heard from countless people struggling with unemployment. In recent correspondence, a constituent told me how she lost her job in the midst of the COVID downturn in March. She said: 'I'm sick of hearing that I just need to get a job from Mr Frydenberg and Mr Morrison. I'm aware I need a job. Actually, I'd like a job. The fact that I don't have a job is driving me further into depression. I know that there are jobs out there, but there are far too many of us applying. I'm sick of feeling like a leech, but I feel that's how Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg see people like me. It's not a good feeling. We are living below the poverty line.'
This is a heartbreaking story, and it captures the sentiment felt by so many in our communities. It is a story of hurt, loss and struggle in the face of a largely uncaring government. It is also a story which is supported by the facts of the situation. For every single job vacancy, there are more than seven job applicants. Evidence provided to Senate committees indicates that 1.8 million people will be relying on unemployment payments at Christmas, more than twice the number before the pandemic. How many more jobs are going to be lost when JobSeeker is cut in December? We've been asking that. Labor has been seeking this information from the government, but the government fail to provide it. You've got to ask why. It's either because they don't know or they don't care. So the opportunity for government members talking on this bill is to say which one it is.
We have pushed this government to do more and more during the COVID situation. We have been supportive of many of the measures taken, including the coronavirus omnibus bill. Although we're not going to oppose this legislation, we will continue to work constructively, as we have, to make this better. Labor will be moving amendments aimed at getting the government not to cut the coronavirus supplement at Christmas, but we should get the government to say, 'How about we deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of the JobSeeker payment and retain the ongoing powers to keep paying the coronavirus supplement after 31 March 2021?' This is one of those unique situations where the opposition is actually calling on the minister to have more power to help Australians who need it. We want the minister to have flexibility in assessing how dire the situation is for jobseekers and to judge the level of supplement based on that situation. Setting 31 March as the arbitrary date from which the supplement will no longer be available is lazy economic management and cruel politics. Even though the government have never pretended to be compassionate or understanding to those who are doing it tough, they always claim to be good on the economy. But the facts 'bear otherwise', to quote Minister Robert.
We hear all the time, don't we, about how great the Liberals are at economic management and how mature they are when it comes to dealing with your money. Well, that is just another piece of hollow theatre rhetoric from the marketing man masquerading as a prime minister. If they had the slightest bit of economic intelligence, they would listen to the countless economists who say that withdrawing such a substantial amount of government spending will leave an enormous hole in economic activity and an enormous hole in the incomes of businesses and households. Unemployment will skyrocket because these businesses—small businesses—will be unable to keep staff without some medium-term support from the government. In turn, Australians on social security will have less to spend at our local and small businesses. It really does point to shambolic economic management that the government actually thinks that the effects of this pandemic will just stop—finish—being felt 12 months after the world came to a standstill. If the government truly did care about the economy, it would make sure these supplements were extended for as long as the financial hurt was being felt in the community. That would be a win-win situation. It would be good for our economy, and good for our constituents who are struggling to make ends meet.
The bottom line is this: the bill will cut unemployment payments back down to the old Newstart rate from 31 March 2021. If we do not allow this bill passage, the old rate will come into effect at the end of December. The government is holding to ransom Australians in need. Labor will not back down from supporting those who need our help the most. We don't want to see that happen to small businesses and families at a time when they should be enjoying a well-earned rest at the end of what can only be described as the toughest year that I can recall. Nevertheless, we urge the government: search in your conscience, support our amendment on this bill. The amendment will allow the minister flexibility in determining the coronavirus supplement after March 2021. It will help counteract the awful social and economic impacts of the COVID pandemic, which have been exacerbated by the Morrison recession. I genuinely hope that there are members opposite who are smart enough and intelligent enough and compassionate enough to stand there and put politics aside and start helping the people who need their help the most. As I said at the start, we're doing alright: we've got secure jobs, secure employment and secure wages. But there are millions of people in this nation who don't have that luxury, and it is incumbent on us to be the ones to stand up and do the right things for people, and it is incumbent on the Labor Party to continue to stand up for vulnerable people at a time when we can see the government standing on them.
Debate adjourned.
The Speaker has received advice from the Opposition Whip that she has nominated Mr Fitzgibbon to be a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade in place of Mr Champion.
by leave—I move:
That Mr Champion be discharged from the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and that, in his place, Mr Fitzgibbon be appointed a member of the committee.
Question agreed to.
This bill effectively returns the unemployment payments to the old Newstart rate after the 31 March 2021 by removing the minister's power to make a regulation to pay the coronavirus supplement after this time, and we all know that the Australians that are struggling the most under this government are those that are receiving what was the old Newstart but now, of course, is JobSeeker. There have been numerous calls from organisations and former prime ministers for this government to consider permanently increasing the rate of JobSeeker, because, to be frank, Australians simply cannot live on it. It's counterintuitive because it is resulting in people who are receiving JobSeeker having to live on the breadline week to week to make ends meet and being unable to afford transport, to afford the necessary clothing or to afford to put a resume together to actually find employment and get back into the workforce. So I support the amendment that has been moved by the member for Barton requiring the minister to consider not cutting the coronavirus supplement in December and to consider a permanent increase to the base rate of the JobSeeker Payment.
The bill is basically a missed opportunity by the government to deliver a permanent increase to a group of Australians who are struggling the most: those receiving unemployment benefits. It lays bare this government has plans for unemployment and other payments to go back to their pre-pandemic levels on 31 March 2021, and that is why Labor has moved this amendment. The amendment is aimed at getting the Morrison government to ensure that they don't cut the coronavirus supplement at Christmas, that they deliver a permanent increase to the base rate of the JobSeeker Payment, keep ongoing powers to keep paying the coronavirus supplement after 31 March 2021 and keep ongoing powers to make other beneficial changes to taper rates, income tests and eligibility criteria after 31 March 2020.
There are many beneficial elements of this bill, including continuing the coronavirus supplement for youth allowance recipients after December, as well as the increased income-free areas, the taper rates and the partner income tests that were introduced as part of the pandemic arrangements. But this bill makes it plain that the Morrison government intends that JobSeeker will revert to pre-pandemic levels, which are simply unsustainable for those who have to live on them.
We're calling on the government to stop its cruel Christmas cut to unemployment payments and to announce a permanent increase to the base rate of the JobSeeker payment. Taking payments back to pre-pandemic levels will hurt around two million Australians. They include people who have lost their jobs, as well as single parents and students. We all know that millions of families are still carrying the real scars of the economic impact of this pandemic, and that impact will clearly persist for many, many years, with the Department of Social Services expecting the number of people relying upon unemployment support to still be elevated in four years time.
Just how many jobs will be lost when JobSeeker is cut in December? Labor sought this information from the government, but the government either doesn't know or doesn't want to know. The budget left Australians on JobSeeker who are aged over 35—almost a million Australians—out of the budget and ineligible for its wages subsidy. I've had numerous representations from constituents who are in this situation. People who are in their late 50s and early 60s who have worked in occupations for a long period of time are saying, 'How am I going to get another job? How will I get back into the workforce? Why isn't this government supporting me in my endeavours to ensure that I can continue to work?' There was nothing in the budget for older workers in Australia—a missed opportunity to boost the economic performance of a group that needs it the most. Older Australians represent the largest cohort on JobSeeker. They also have the most difficulty finding work because of structural barriers and age discrimination. Over the last 18 years, the proportion of people on unemployment payments who are over 55 has gone from 8.6 per cent to 22½ per cent. It has more than trebled. There are currently over 307,000 people over 55 on unemployment support, and they have the most trouble getting off that payment.
Not only is a permanent increase in the base rate needed; the minister should also have the flexibility to continue extending the coronavirus supplement for as long as the impact of the pandemic persists. Earlier this year, Labor negotiated with the government for a separate power to be included in the coronavirus economic response package which would enable the minister to make other changes to social security to help people impacted by the pandemic. This power, and the regulations made under it, sunset on 31 December this year. This bill proposes to extend this power but only until 31 March 2021. Labor support this extension, but we think that this power needs to persist for longer so the government can continue beneficial arrangements for as long as the impacts of the pandemic persist. Let's face it, it's most likely that the economic impacts of the pandemic are going to be felt well beyond the end of March next year. One only needs to look at the aviation sector and related industries to understand that we won't have made a full recovery by that time.
Because of this power which Labor insisted on, the government has been able to introduce more generous partner income tests for JobSeeker payments, a tapering at 27c in the dollar and cutting out the partner income of $80,000 per year—another change which Labor insisted on. It enabled changes to be made to the JobSeeker and youth allowance personal income tests which provide an income-free area of $300 per fortnight, compared to the pre-pandemic income area of $106 per fortnight—something we are advised around 15,000 people are benefiting from. It also enabled changes to be made to JobSeeker and Youth Allowance eligibility criteria so that sole traders; the self-employed; permanent employees who have been stood down; and people who are self-isolating because they, or someone they are caring for, have been affected by this pandemic continue to be eligible for the payment. We managed to negotiate waiving the ordinary waiting period of one week, the seasonal preclusion period and the newly arrived resident's waiting period. We also managed to negotiate extending the time that people can maintain eligibility for payment, to keep concession cards and make other beneficial changes relating to pension portability, mobility allowance and self-declaration for couple assessments.
This bill removes the minister's ability to make regulations that waive the liquid assets waiting period and the assets period. The government should not have reinstated the liquid assets waiting period in September and they should drop their cruel plan to make people wait 26 weeks to get unemployment support if they have modest savings. That is a false economy. It means that people are forced to run down their last dollar and it makes it more likely that they'll face hardship like struggling to pay the mortgage or taking their car off the road. It also means that people are more likely to need to rely on other services like food banks and emergency relief. OzHarvest operates one of those emergency relief shops in our electorate and I can tell you that the line out the door, waiting for them to open each morning, has been growing and growing and growing during this pandemic. That is because many Australians, unfortunately, are suffering.
The government has missed a huge opportunity to deliver certainty for Australians doing it tough by delivering that permanent increase to JobSeeker in this bill. With more than seven jobseekers for each job vacancy, there are simply not enough jobs for everyone that needs one, and that is going to persist for some time. Both the Reserve Bank and the Treasury estimate that the tail-on effects in unemployment are going to be here for some period of time after we find—if we do find—a vaccine for this pandemic. It's even more difficult to find a job in our regions, the result of this government's failure to deliver the jobs programs that are needed for rural and regional Australia. In rural and regional areas, many families are really, really struggling at the moment. Australians on social security will have less to spend on local and small businesses, and those small businesses will have less to spend on wages and jobs. It all runs through the economy.
Australians are doing it tough and face an anxious and uncertain Christmas. Through this missed opportunity with this bill, this government will extend that anxiety, that worry and that uncertainty by not dealing with a principle issue for government in Australia which is responsible for increases in the rate of poverty in Australia over recent times: the low and unsustainable rate of the JobSeeker payment. This is a huge missed opportunity for the government to extend that payment and to ensure that it is fair and sustainable into the future. It's not just Labor that's been calling for this change to occur. Former prime ministers, including former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, have said that the rate of JobSeeker is unsustainable. St Vincent de Paul, ACOSS and many of the church and welfare organisations have said that the rate of JobSeeker is unsustainable. Members of the government, like the member for New England and others, have said that they couldn't live off the rate of JobSeeker at the moment and the government should increase it on a permanent basis. It's unsustainable to ask Australians to live below the poverty line and try to find employment at the same time. It simply doesn't work. If you have a family and you are struggling to feed them and clothe them, you simply don't have the resources, the time and the commitment to be able to look for work.
What this government is doing is counterintuitive. It is ensuring that people spend prolonged periods of time in unemployment queues, because they simply cannot get the support that they deserve from this government to be able to get out into the workforce and try to find employment. That is why Labor is moving this amendment, and that is why Labor is calling on the government to do the right thing and permanently increase the rate of JobSeeker.
Debate interrupted.
It being 7.30, I propose the question that the House do now adjourn.
The robodebt scheme was announced with great fanfare by the Prime Minister in 2015, when he was social services minister. Members of this government—including the current Attorney-General and the current Minister for Government Services—boasted about robodebt as a hallmark of their economic brilliance, as they gloated about all the money they were pulling in from all those poor people who they claimed had been overpaid by the Department of Social Services. But this government's self-congratulatory boasting about robodebt ended very abruptly, in November 2019, when legal action forced them to finally admit that the scheme was illegal. The government then faced a class action from hundreds of thousands of victims of robodebt, and, of course, the government fearfully surrendered before the hearings commenced and, more to the point, before any of its ministers, or the senior ministers responsible for the scheme, could be called to explain themselves and their blatantly unlawful scheme under oath.
Instead of putting its money where its mouth was, the Morrison government put taxpayers' money where its mouth was. We may never know just what this scheme has cost taxpayers, but rather than raising the over $2 billion the government claimed when the scheme began, it has instead been a massive financial liability, with the government agreeing to pay back all the money the scheme raised over the years it operated, plus interest, compensation and legal costs. We still haven't found out what it cost taxpayers for the Morrison government to run this brutal, failed scheme for more than four years, including what was paid out to consultants and to the third-party debt collectors who were part of it too.
But the financial cost of robodebt, as appalling as it is, pales next to the toll of human suffering that this government callously inflicted on the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Australians who received unlawful robodebt debt notices. How can we assess the stress and misery experienced by those hundreds of thousands of Australians who received a debt notice or were hunted by debt collectors? And we may never know how many vulnerable people were pushed over the edge by those notices and took their own lives. What is unforgivable is that this government was advised on multiple occasions that the robodebt scheme they had devised and let loose on vulnerable Australians was unlawful, and yet they continued with it until court action forced them to admit that their scheme was not only cruel but also illegal.
When asked about the robodebt scheme this week in parliament, this government again refused to take responsibility for the monster that it made and for the harm that it caused. No; it again fell back on the same marketing spin and slippery falsehoods that are the hallmark of the Morrison government. On Saturday, Peter van Onselen described the robodebt disaster as:
without doubt the worst example of maladministration and callous indifference to vulnerable Australians since the Coalition took office in 2013.
That's quite a hurdle to clear, because this government has quite a record when it comes to maladministration and callous indifference to vulnerable Australians. For example, Australians will not forget this Prime Minister and his ministers slithering around trying to avoid responsibility for the 685 deaths of people in aged-care homes, despite manifest failings making up more than two-thirds of the total death toll from this terrible disease. Australians will not forget this Prime Minister refusing last year to meet with retired emergency services chiefs who were desperately trying to warn him about the coming fire season and of the urgent need for more resources and preparation for our nation to be ready. No; this Prime Minister refused to meet with them. And when Australia started burning, the Prime Minister thought the best approach was to jet off to a secret holiday in Hawaii.
Reasonable minds may differ about what was the very worst example of maladministration and callous indifference to vulnerable Australians the Morrison government is responsible for, but I think the vast majority of Australians would agree that this Prime Minister has set a new low in failing to take responsibility for his government and his ministers' failings, and failing to hold himself and his ministers to any standard whatsoever.
Australia's exports have performed remarkably well, despite the challenges of the global coronavirus pandemic. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for October 2020 indicate that exports of goods increased by six per cent, or $1.79 billion, from the revised 2020 estimate of $28.7 billion to $30.53 billion. In particular, exports of metalliferous ores increased by seven per cent, gas exports increased by 18 per cent and exports of meat increased by 21 per cent. Australia exported a record $13.46 billion of metalliferous ores, the majority of which was iron ore, representing 81 per cent, which also reached a record high export value of $10.94 billion for the month. This record mining export value is $658 million higher than the previous record monthly high achieved in June 2020. Similarly, the increase in exports of gas in October is the first month-on-month increase since March 2020, although overall exports of gas have fallen substantially during 2020 as a result of global demand and low prices.
It is fair to say that Australian exporters have been largely responsible for the strength and resilience of the Australian economy as we spearhead the national economic recovery in the wake of the global pandemic, which has devastated economic activity across the world. As a nation that is heavily reliant on international trade, Australia is geographically placed in a unique position within the Indo-Pacific region, which is home to so many emerging economies in our region. Strategically, our future advantage, security and economic prosperity lies in the diversification of our trade and investment relationships with a wide range of nations. Through improved diplomatic relations, trade delegations, international exchanges and foreign aid, Australia can develop better trading and investment relationships with its neighbours.
The coalition government has finalised a range of free trade agreements and strategic economic partnership agreements with many nations in our region, with many other agreements currently in the process of being negotiated. These agreements in themselves do not yield benefits. There's involvement of the private sector in implementing them, which is essential. Governments do not in themselves generate economic development; it is the entrepreneurs of the private sector who create wealth through commerce and trade. Our federal government continues to expand its support for Australian exporters in developing export markets for Australian goods and services overseas, encouraging diversification.
Australia must expand its horizons through expanded diplomatic efforts in the Indo-Pacific region, with regional blocs such as the 10-member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. Diversification of our trading relationships promote strategic risk management in view of cyclical economic conditions and geopolitical events. Many nations of the Indo-Pacific region share our democratic values and desire to cooperate on law enforcement and regional security issues.
Australian businesses must be encouraged to further seek export opportunities. Last financial year, the number of Australian businesses exporting increased to 56,772. Most of this increase was in the category of small exporters, which increased by 11 per cent to 34,451 businesses. The majority of Australian merchandise exporters are small businesses, representing 61 per cent of exporters, which, incidentally, contribute only one per cent of the total export value. While only 12 per cent of merchandise exporters are large businesses, they account for 96 per cent of total export value. Of the 56,772 Australian businesses which exported goods last financial year, only 328 firms exported merchandise with a value of over $100 million, which accounted for 86 per cent of the total export value. The typical exporter has two employees, a turnover of $700,000, exported goods valued at— (Time expired)
The dairy industry is one of Australia's most important agricultural sectors. Each year 5,700 dairy farms produce 8.8 billion litres of milk, employing 46,200 people and generating around $3.2 billion in export income. In northern Victoria 1,100 dairy farmers produce almost 20 per cent of Australia's milk. I know this sector very well. I grew up with my brothers on our parents' dairy farm in Eurack, in south-west Victoria. My oldest brother and his wife continue to farm there, but, faced with uncertainty, rising costs and static milk prices, 11 years ago they moved from dairying to beef production. There are thousands of farming families in the regions who face these same challenges.
In Indi the 2019-20 year has been a dramatic one for our local dairy industry. After years of drought the Black Summer fires devastated huge parts of the Upper Murray, wiping out over a third of the agricultural land and thousands of stock in Towong shire alone. The 190 farmers in Towong shire, many of them dairy farmers, were directly impacted by fire and have now accessed bushfire recovery support. The pandemic and the closure of the New South Wales border brought their own challenges. Many farms along the border were unable to get their workers who lived north of the Murray to work. Many others rely on seasonal migrant labour, which has all but dried up, and now face critical workforce shortages. The difficult start to the season led to a 47 per cent increase in the quantity of purchased feed per milker on the milking area.
The one significant bright spot this year is that strong rains have brought an absolute bumper season. In northern Victoria herd sizes are up five per cent. Milk solids sold per cow are up eight per cent. There has been a 16 per cent increase in the average milk price, and 90 per cent of the farms surveyed by Agriculture Victoria reported a positive return on total assets up 40 per cent from last year. But the outlook for the dairy industry in Australia and in Indi is indeed difficult. The industry is undergoing a significant restructure. In north-east Victoria the failure of Murray Goulburn Co-operative that began in 2016 had a serious impact on farmers, communities and our confidence in the Kiewa, Ovens and King valleys. Just last week Bega bought Lion Dairy for half a billion dollars. These huge shifts are part of a broad trend towards corporatisation of the dairy sector that raises huge challenges for family owned farms.
These huge challenges have been met head-on by one particular community—our community in the Alpine Valleys who have created their own cooperative, Mountain Milk. I pay tribute to the chairperson of that group, Stuart Crosthwaite. That group are committed to their cows and to the environment. The nature of dairy in the north-east valleys depends on family farmers such as those in Mountain Milk, because the physical presence of the valleys makes it hard to reach corporate scale. This means our local dairy farms are having to compete against massive corporate operations. On top of that, the outlook for trade with China both in dairy products and dairy heifers is obviously uncertain. The CSIRO projects that spring rainfall may decline in the Ovens Murray region by 36 per cent—all of this in an environment where the milk price has barely moved in years and where costs increasingly outstrip revenues.
In 2019 the National Dairy Farmer Survey showed that just 270 among 800 farmers felt positive about their industry's future. This was the sixth successive survey revealing declining sentiment in most dairy regions. The Australian dairy industry is the best in the world and we cannot let it wither. I believe the consultations held by John Brumby will play an important role in building a profitable, confident and united industry. In September, after a nationwide collaboration involving more than 1,500 farmers, processors, retailers and investors, Mr Brumby published the Australian Dairy Plan. That plan aims to reform the sector to increase profitability, produce an extra one billion litres of milk and restructure the dairy sector's organisation.
I know that some dairy farmers are sceptical of the process or have lost faith entirely, but if we are truly to transform Australian dairy into a sustainable and profitable industry now and in the future then we need to come together in good faith to implement a comprehensive strategy. We need government to come to the table on making sure purchasers are paying a fair farmgate price. We need to do all we can to stabilise the climate and support our dairy farmers. (Time expired)
Creating and sustaining local jobs is the key to our economic recovery plan. Businesses are the job creators of our economy. As we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic we are putting in place the policies that will enable businesses to do what they do best—delivering the high-quality products and services that they are known for and supporting local jobs. To do this and to lead our economic recovery businesses need affordable, reliable energy.
The Australian Energy Regulator's wholesale markets quarterly report confirmed that energy prices are continuing to fall under the Morrison government. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that retail electricity prices have fallen for seven straight quarters. Nationally prices have fallen 2.5 per cent through the year and 0.7 per cent in the last quarter.
We know that cheaper energy will help drive the economic recovery of many businesses. In Western Sydney we have such a strong manufacturing sector, with the capacity to respond from the pandemic and thrive. This Friday I'm delighted to be hosting an online forum with the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction. Businesses in Lindsay will hear directly about our plans to back them with affordable, reliable energy. It will be great to have many businesses, and I encourage Lindsay businesses to sign up for our forum and to get in touch with me. Listening directly to our local businesses and ensuring that they're across what is possible when it comes to energy is really key to tackling some of the challenges they face.
I am also really focused on the Western Sydney manufacturing sector and implementing the policies that will help them reach their aspirations. That is really important. I established the Advancing Manufacturing Taskforce in Western Sydney to make sure that we can connect with local manufacturers and connect with our local high school educators, TAFEs and universities. We are bringing everyone together to tackle these problems we have in the manufacturing sector and to ensure that we are backing our Australian manufacturers.
Our newest member of the task force is Mal from Baker & Provan. Baker & Provan is a family business based in my electorate of Lindsay. It has a proud history dating back to 1946. I visited their factory in St Marys and saw the incredible work they are doing from Australian sovereign defence capability to our rail industry. Baker & Provan are an outstanding Australian manufacturer. They're located in Western Sydney. They're creating local jobs and also supporting local apprentices. For Baker & Provan now and into the future we need to deliver affordable, reliable energy. Australia's manufacturing sector employs over 850,000 Australians. Their energy needs will continue to grow and expand this important industry.
Gas is also an important part of manufacturing. It is far broader than is typically acknowledged. It plays a pivotal role in the price of energy. Wholesale electricity prices are highly correlated with gas prices. The Morrison government is unlocking supply, strengthening gas infrastructure planning and delivering market reform to lower the price of gas, particularly contract prices for manufacturers and households. As the minister for energy has said, we want to see long-term domestic gas contracts be internationally competitive and support our manufacturing sector. That's what manufacturers are saying to me when I'm out speaking with them about energy prices, particularly for gas. This will ensure that there is sufficient new gas generation to power more businesses and manufacturers.
We're also investing in new technologies to complement gas as a key energy source. Custom Denning is another manufacturer in Western Sydney in my electorate of Lindsay. They're leading the way in emerging technology and are creating one of Australia's first designed and manufactured electric buses. Not only is this pioneering manufacturing taking place in our community with electric and hydrogen fuel cell powered buses but every single component that they can get is Australian made. As part of our $1.9 billion investment in new technologies, we're helping businesses like Custom Denning to get off the ground, employ local people, employ local apprentices and help us emerge from the coronavirus pandemic.
I think everybody in this place would agree that it's been one hell of a year. We are very much looking forward to Christmas. I stopped by Harris Farm fruit markets on Friday. I saw the first Christmas trees for sale, and I snapped one up. I bought a box of cherries from Young and some Christmas bush flowers for the table. I couldn't get into the Christmas spirit fast enough. But, before we break for the holidays, I do want to take some time to thank the people who have helped us to the finish line this year.
I want to start by acknowledging the tireless work of our leader, the member for Grayndler, Anthony Albanese. He worked through the bushfires last summer and he hasn't stopped all year. I hope that he has the opportunity to enjoy a bit of a Christmas break this year because he certainly deserves it. His deputy, the member for Corio, Richard Marles, and the whole leadership team have done a magnificent job this year. I want to thank my colleagues in the federal Labor caucus, particularly my dear friend the member for Fowler, Chris Hayes, who gave us a bit of a scare not so long ago and is facing surgery this week. I know that Chris knows how much he is loved and admired in this place, and we wish him and Bernadette all the very best. I also want to acknowledge the phenomenal work of his able deputy, the member for Lalor, Joanne Ryan—and you, Mr Deputy Speaker Rob Mitchell, and the Speaker's panel as well.
Of course, it's not just my own colleagues on this side I want to acknowledge. All of us in this place and in that other place have had an unusual year and have been called on to support our communities in unusual ways this year. I acknowledge the work of all the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate and most particularly their families who, in some cases, have been separated from their loved ones for weeks at a time as people have been here, quarantining and isolating—all sorts of unusual arrangements. I want to thank my staff in both the electorate and the shadow ministerial parts of my office. Pandemics are very busy times for electorate offices—who would have known? We've been helping people back from overseas. We've been supporting people who are at risk of losing their homes or their businesses. We've been talking to people about rent relief, mortgage holidays, flights, family members stuck overseas, JobKeeper, JobSeeker and all the rest of it. It's very important work, and it has been handled with empathy and professionalism by my staff and, no doubt, by the staff of other members and senators as well.
I want to acknowledge the work of all of those who have made our parliament work in such extraordinary circumstances this year: the Speaker, the clerks—beginning, of course, with Claressa Surtees—and all of the attendants and those who support us. It has been a bit more subdued in here than it has been in previous years but all of you kept our democracy going, so I thank you for that. A lot of work goes into the running of this place. It's a bit like a Broadway musical; there's the bit you see on the stage and then there's a vast network of people supporting it. I acknowledge and thank the cleaners, especially Joy who looks after our office so well; the Comcar drivers; the AFP officers and our security guards; Hazel and Shannon and the brilliant researchers in the parliamentary library; Dom, Brigette and the staff at Aussies; the cafeteria staff and the coffee cart people; and the garden crews and maintenance crews who keep our building and our gardens so beautiful. And to all of my friends in the press gallery, thank you for holding our democracy to account.
I started this year with a speech on Australia Day about patriotism and citizenship and about what we owe each other as Australians. I don't think any of us on Australia Day could have predicted that so much would be required of so many citizens this year. I have been constantly in awe of the way people have risen to the challenges that this year has thrown at us. To our nurses, our doctors, our allied health workers, our aged-care workers and our disability support workers, who put themselves between the virus and vulnerable people; the teachers, who switched almost overnight to online learning; the police officers, who risked their health to enforce public health laws; our frontline community workers, who housed rough sleepers and stepped up as domestic violence has increased; the farmers, truck drivers, delivery workers, warehouse staff and retail workers, who kept food on the table and supplies on our shelves; and our friends in the union movement, who stood up for our rights this year: the discipline and kindness you've shown has made me proud to be Australian. Thank you.
I was thinking about giving the member for Sydney an extension of time so she'd get to thanking me, but that's fine. I thank her for the job she's done, and I concur with her remarks about all the things that people have done.
More and more in my electorate and, might I suggest, in so many others there's a movement starting. It started with a few but it's growing. It started with people from a disparate group, and now I see that even people such as Dr Bob Brown and former senator Christine Milne are part of it. I'm part of it. There are senior people around the countryside who are part of it. It's strange for us all to be drawn together, and it would be even stranger if I told you what it is. It's the movement against wind towers. People are getting sick of them. They are an encroachment, a complete encroachment, into people's private lives. Do you realise that, at 270 metres, the tip of these blades is only slightly lower than Centrepoint Tower in Sydney? We have good people who do not feel they have the power to protest. They feel they are removed from the power to do something about these issues, about these 'things' as they call them. These good people have to look out the windows of places where they have resided in quiet enjoyment—I note the member for Isaacs there; he knows that term very well—and now have to deal with the prospect of seeing their environment turned into an industrial area against their will, without their say so. Certainly, the beneficiary of it is where those towers reside, but that's not them. If someone were to say, 'I'm going to put 270-metre high statues of bananas to encourage you to eat fruit,' even though bananas are a herb, people would say there was something wrong with that: 'Surely I have some buy-in with this.'
It has become even more evident after the New South Wales Liberal Party minister Matt Keane passed a piece of legislation saying that they would close down four more coal-fired power stations and replace them with renewables, which will undoubtedly be wind towers. Wind towers would mean close to 700,000 hectares. That's in excess of 1.5 million acres of further country in New South Wales that would be dedicated to wind turbines, which, to be frank, cannot do the job. They just can't do it. They do not have 24/7 reliability. Let's just leave it at that. So it doesn't matter whether you're at Ben Lomond, in the community I was speaking to the other day, or at Nundle, Kentucky, Clarks Creek, Crookwell or at Rylstone, the movement is growing. They're not coordinated yet, but they're getting coordinated and they're asking to be represented. They're asking that Australians in the Australian parliament stand up against a thing that is 100 per cent imported from overseas, 70 per cent owned by foreign entities and unable to do the job of the power unit it's removing.
We have a dilemma in this nation, and this is it. I'm not a great, religious believer in a carboniferous item, being coal. I'm a great believer in power. But what's happening now is we're saying we can't have coal. We can't even mention the word; we can't say it. We can't have nuclear because of Chernobyl. That was 1954 Soviet technology. If you've driven around in a 1954 Soviet car, you know what that's like. You can't have gas, because that's fracking. You can't have wind towers, because of what I'm dealing with and I have great sympathy for, which is the complete encroachment on other people's lives. If you have solar you've got to have backup, which means you've got to dam rivers to put in pumped hydro, and they don't want that. So the only alternative is that we live in a cave. So I'm telling you to go back to the obvious one, which is highly efficient low-emission ultra-supercritical coal-fired power, because the alternative is the further encroachment on the rights of people and the capacity of the economy.
House adjourned at 20:00
Madam Deputy Speaker Wicks, it's been a tough year for most Australians but it's been a tough year, too, for people in my electorate. It's been a very testing time for our community. COVID-19 has hit my constituents and, in particular, the businesses they run like a sledgehammer.
My constituency's full of restaurants and bars. It's full of night-time entertainment. It's full of sporting facilities. From theatres to music venues, our hotels, our universities, our major transport hubs, travel agents—right across the board, any type of business you can think of is represented in my electorate. So many of them have struggled, and I want to send a message to all of those businesses and the people that they employ that I understand their struggles and I understand what a very difficult year it's been.
So many organisations in my electorate have done work above and beyond the call of duty this year. Just in the last few weeks, I've visited three organisations, including the Glebe Youth Service, which has for many years—many decades—played an invaluable role in the Glebe community. It provided a lifeline to vulnerable young people through their food deliveries. This is unusual for the Glebe Youth Service, but during COVID-19 they delivered 6,000 precooked meals to local households and almost 1,600 parcels of fresh fruit and vegetables, reaching 430 people.
The Girls and Boys Brigade has served the children of inner Sydney since 1882. COVID-19 forced them to close their doors for the first time in their history. They quickly transformed their services into online groups so they could stay connected to young people, children and youth in our electorate. They provided cooking, gardening and craft activities, and even gave their young people dinner online—they have an online dinner program replacing what they used to have as a face-to-face dinner program. They provided internet access, computers and laptops to help kids with remote learning. And, thankfully, they were able to reopen their doors in June. Since then, they've been busier than ever.
I also visited Lou's Place, a community based day refuge for women in crisis who are feeling isolated or need support. Lou's Place has seen a massive increase in the need for their services, and I'm so impressed by the work that they've continued to do at this phenomenally difficult time. We've seen rough sleeping in Sydney with outreach services housing rough sleepers virtually immediately after the pandemic broke out. Congratulations to all of those organisations. (Time expired)
Happiness by helping—isn't that a fantastic motto for a school to have? That's the motto of Emu Heights Public School that the Prime Minister Zoomed into last week when I visited the school. For many schools across our country—particularly, schools in my electorate of Lindsay—going to Canberra in year 6 is something they always look forward to. It's been really tough for them this year that they haven't been able to do that, so I've been bringing Canberra to them.
It was really great to have the Prime Minister join us. He was asked some pretty tough questions by the students. Matthew asked the Prime Minister what the biggest priorities were for the PM this year. It was also great to talk about what we're achieving in Lindsay. Mariah, the school captain, got up and talked about what the students were doing together and how they were living by their motto: Happiness by helping.
While the PM did get a few tricky questions about Sharks taking on Panthers and Panthers winning, overall, we gave great advice to the students about getting ready for next year—that big transition from year 6 in primary school to high school.
The students at Emu Heights aren't the only ones I've been visiting. I also visited Colyton High School recently. That was great. They'd received a grant to upgrade their volleyball court. They used to play volleyball on dirt out the back and now they have a proper court, so that was great. The Year 10 students made me play a professional game of volleyball with them, and it was really enjoyable just getting out with the kids. Ensuring that our children in our community are healthy and active and living healthy and active lives is one of my top priorities.
I also spoke to the year 10 students about what they want in their future and where they'd like to be. As I always say, we have such a wonderful opportunity in Western Sydney. With the international airport coming and all the investment coming into Western Sydney, I want to make sure that children, whether they're in year 10, year 6 or finishing high school, have the best opportunities for a good job and don't have to do the long commute out of our area for a good job, like many of the 300,000 have to do every single day out of Western Sydney. That's something I'm fighting for too.
I would like to thank all the schools who have opened up their schools. It has been a tough year. You've let me in. You've allowed me to present my Lindsay Quiet Achiever Award as well, which has been a real honour. The Lindsay Quiet Achiever Award goes to a student who goes about their school life quietly, helping other students, helping their teachers but, most importantly, doing their very best. I congratulate all the students in Lindsay who've received a Lindsay Quiet Achiever Award this year.
I'm concerned that the Inland Rail will have a high impact on and a low benefit for my community. I'm concerned that the Morrison government is bulldozing ahead with this particular project, cutting approval times and fast-tracking a project that's the subject of a Senate inquiry. There's little consultation in relation to this—and this from a Deputy Prime Minister that thought that the Inland Rail started in Tasmania!
Recently, I attended a meeting of the Willowbank Area Group, which is made up of residents, community members, environmental groups and businesses around the Willowbank area and the RAAF Base Amberley. There were five people there from the Australian Rail Track Corporation. There was an impressive number of attendees—everyone from the Calvert to Kagaru project manager and stakeholder engagement manager to environment groups and the managers responsible for those particular groups. But guess what? The people from the ARTC couldn't answer any questions. Not a single question was able to be answered by the ARTC people there. There were five people there! How serious are they in terms of consultation with my local community?
Recently, Western Australian senator Glenn Sterle, the chair of a Senate inquiry that is looking into this, and Queensland senator Anthony Chisholm visited Millmerran, one of the rural communities in Queensland, and then Ivory's Rock in my community. Ivory's Rock conference centre is an important centre in Peak Crossing south of Ipswich. It's a registered educational charity, with peace as its No. 1 focus. The foundation has invested over $26 million in developing a world-class, in-nature conference and convention centre. It attracts visitors from over 60 countries—5,000 delegates—to its peace conference. It's worth, going forward, $193 million to our local economy between 2018 and 2032.
The Inland Rail is going to adversely impact the conference centre. It's going to go 500 metres from the conference centre. It's going to cut through rural communities and go near Grandchester state primary school. This rail track, which is going to take trains 1.8 kilometres long, with carriages all the way along, is going to adversely impact them. You can hear the noise from Ipswich Boonah Road at the back of the conference centre. You can just imagine the impact of the Inland Rail on Ivory's Rock, this important centre in Ipswich. No compensation, no noise mitigation, no serious consultation—and the ARTC cannot answer any questions. The Morrison government should do much better than this.
I thank Senator Glenn Sterle and Senator Anthony Chisholm for coming and listening to the concerns of Ivory's Rock. I say to the Morrison government: do better, consult better and compensate better. Inland Rail is not having the impact it's supposed to be having.
On a somewhat sombre note, with Queensland announcing $130 billion debt today, it's of some concern that we live in a state that not only didn't pull its weight with COVID, but failed to increase its hotel caps to a level to allow Queenslanders to return. So today I'm calling on the Queensland Premier to allow Queenslanders, particularly from my electorate, to quarantine in my electorate. I have the members for Moncrieff and Brisbane, here on my right, who have citizens quarantining in their electorates. When Annastacia Palaszczuk effectively, figuratively, mugged the Prime Minister with her 500-per-week cap back on 6 July on this notion that a great state like Queensland couldn't handle more than 500 people a week flying into an airport, we were compelled to agree, of course. This was no solitary effort; this was a group mugging by premiers.
When the Victorian Premier shut down Tullamarine, responsible for 27 per cent of arrivals in Australia, what did the other premiers do? Did they say, 'Let's work as a federation and work together cooperatively and support our Victorian mates in distress?' No, they didn't; they went the other way—how little can we do to help this great nation? They came up with a curious cap, and Queensland has the worst. Queensland has around 25 per cent of international arrivals coming into Brisbane, Cairns, the Gold Coast. We came up with the smallest cap possible, just 500 a week. We managed to wind that up to 650 a week on 18 September. Now, I think, it's just over 1,000 a week. These microscopic numbers guarantee that Queenslanders are flying in at top dollar, business-class,. There's little care for them, because it's a fundamental reality: Annastacia Palaszczuk needs to get voted in and she won't get voted in if there's COVID cases coming in. So it was one or the other, wasn't it?
We know that Daniel Andrews let it out and that Annastacia Palaszczuk let it in. This whole same time, the ACT allowed Queenslanders to travel, even during COVID, down to the ACT and that is another Labor premier. They are all off on their own solo flights on COVID.
I'm calling on this premier now—the budget's out, the bad news is out, you got re-elected, COVID worked for you, you milked it to within an inch of its life and you got through—to let the others get through. Let Queenslanders come home. Let Bowman residents quarantine in my great electorate of Bowman, using local hotels, creating local employment. We're the only nation in the world with this embarrassing facade, preventing citizens from coming home. Some are domiciled overseas, some are working overseas, some are holidaying overseas. They want to come home, they deserve to come home and they've got a Labor opposition doing nothing to facilitate it.
An opposition member interjecting—
You've got the number to your mate, Mark. You've got the disaster Dan. You've got the number for your pal Anna. Phone up the Labor premiers. They are the worst-behaved premiers when it comes to aviation caps. I'm calling on the Queensland Premier to increase those caps and to bring those Queenslanders home for Christmas.
Many people in our communities reinforce what an honour it is to be able to represent them in this place. Today, I wish to acknowledge Whittlesea's John Leaford. John is someone who epitomises the Lions code of ethics and the purpose of statement that we Lions stand by. John is a well-respected local builder renowned for building family homes and for developing lifelong friendships with his customers. John is generous in providing his time to those in need directly through his involvement in many community groups he's been part of, including as a sponsor at the Whittlesea show woodchop and as a member of the Whittlesea Lions, the Whittlesea Masonic Lodge, the Whittlesea Agricultural Society, the Whittlesea and surrounding districts art society. He's also a key contributor to the committee that was successful in building the Whittlesea technical school, now known as Whittlesea College. He also received a City of Whittlesea senior citizens award in 2013, and a runner-up at the HIA awards in 1995.
On a personal level, John is someone who likes to build his model trucks and model tractors in particular. If you ever want to get John off-topic on something, start talking about model tractors and you're laughing—he'll keep going all day! He and his lovely wife, Leila, have been instrumental in leading community engagement and fundraising for many community events, emergency response and recovery activities, and the building of community infrastructure for our community of Whittlesea, particularly after the Black Saturday fires.
John is also a life member of the Lions Foundation and the Whittlesea Lions. He's received a George Sherwin commemorative plaque for the bandstand he was involved in building, and an Australia Day Award in 2013. He's received the very honoured Melville Jones Fellowship and the James D. Richardson Award. He's also received a Treasurer's award and is a guiding Lion. Looking back through the Lions attendance book, I noticed John first attended a meeting when I was two years old. He's been involved in Lions for 50 years. It's absolutely incredible to think that people give their time, energy and effort on a volunteer basis for such a long time. For me personally, I think that I must have been able to work John over nicely, because now he allows me to cook the sausages at the Whittlesea Lions Club barbecue—and I know that it's a real big deal for John to give up his tongs. John will see this video on the night he gets his award from Lions Australia. I want to acknowledge the work that John and Leila have done for our community and for the Lions Club in general and the Lions movement. They are people we are very much proud to be associated with.
I will quickly mention the joy I felt when I went to the Whittlesea Men's Shed last week for the big barbecue, where talked about men's health and particularly prostate cancer and the importance of getting an early check-up. When we talk about these sorts of things it's not just about you; it's about you going and getting checked and making sure that you're there for your family, for your kids and for your grandkids. It's so important that we do these things, because prevention allows us to live a much longer and happier life.
Each year, I have the distinct pleasure of running and judging a Christmas card design competition in my electorate of Brisbane. The entrants are local primary school students, and the winners’ artwork is emblazoned in full colour on the front of my Christmas card which I send to all residents right across Brisbane. It's always an occasion when emerging young artists can show off their talent, their flair and their creativity. This year’s entries did not disappoint with their artwork on the theme of 'Christmas At My Place'.
This year's overall winner was Lucy Sadler from Wilston State School. The winner in the Prep/Year 1 category was Sandra Syam of Eagle Junction State School, and the runner-up was Thomas from Newmarket State School. The winner of the Year 2 category was Olivia Bongers of Ashgrove State School, and the runner-up was Sophie Farley, also of Wilston State School. The winner of the Year 3 category was Ava McMillan from Our Lady Help of Christians, and the runner up was Mannat Verma of Enoggera State School. Congratulations to those talented young people right across Brisbane. I thank all of them for making my Christmas card so bright and colourful in 2020. A big thank you also goes to the other 500-plus young participants and entrants from schools right across Brisbane.
The spirit of Christmas remains strong in Brisbane despite—or maybe because of—what has been an incredibly difficult and challenging year for so many residents, groups and local businesses. I want to give a shout-out to two Christmas street events being held soon in support of our fantastic local small businesses—in the Paddington Terraces and in Wilston Village in Kedron Brook Road.
Working closely with Brisbane City Council, I've been pleased to fight for and deliver federal funding to put in place capital works and street improvements for both of these key business districts. The project at Wilston Village has seen $150,000 of federal funding, matched by Brisbane City Council, to deliver balustrades with artist designed panels, creative gobo projections, urban stools and a drinking fountain, including a dog bowl facility. The project in Paddington has seen $250,000 invested to deliver an illuminated welcome gateway sign to the precinct, street tree lighting, gobo projection displays and some really amazing largescale art murals and displays that are helping to make Paddington an even more amazing and unique destination for Brisbane.
I congratulate and thank everyone who has worked so hard to bring these local projects to life, including so many small business people and local organisers who give again and again for the benefit of our local community. And, in closing, I remind all business locals once more how important it is for all of us to remember to support and love our local shops.
I rise today to speak on behalf of the many travel agency operators and their employees and their families who live in my electorate of Hotham. I was lucky, a few weeks ago that a group of people who work in this critical industry took the time to sit down with me—over Zoom, of course, as we're in Victoria—and have a really good conversation about what's happening to them and their businesses. We're hearing a lot of rhetoric in the parliament at the moment coming from the government about how great things are looking and how Australia's staging an economic comeback. But I really want to remind the House that, for tourism operators and for people whose business is fundamentally about international travel, absolutely nothing has changed for them. Their business basically got shut down overnight months and months ago, and they're still exactly where they were back then. I have to tell you, Deputy Speaker, that the amazing people who I talked to are absolutely distraught. The term that kept coming up in the Zoom conversation I had with them was 'soul-destroying'. That's the experience that they have every day when they go to work. And it's not just the operators in my electorate; in the month of August alone, Australia's tourism industry lost $3.3 billion—in a month. Tourism Research Australia has revealed that, since the start of the year, $31.2 billion in domestic tourism has evaporated and $45.4 billion in international tourism has evaporated.
Faced as we are with this unprecedented set of circumstances, what Labor has been calling for for a long time is a set of specific industry supports for this industry. What they face is genuinely so unique. We had an announcement from the government yesterday on this. I just could not believe it when I read what's being offered to them. It is woefully inadequate. It's embarrassing. I feel embarrassed to write to the people in my community who have spent their lives building businesses. The minimum amount available under this scheme is $1,500 an operator. That's not even half a family holiday. I'm really distressed about this, because this is something that Labor has been calling for for a long time, and it's simply not adequate.
I think something that we should probably agree across the chamber here is that we actually want to finish the COVID crisis with a tourism industry of some description that we can rebuild on. That's really the point of having a specific, comprehensive and workable package. That's unfortunately just not what we saw. So I want my operators to know how hard I'll be fighting for them and will continue to fight for them on this really critical issue. We need better and more professional action from the government.
I wish to take the time today to raise awareness for deaf people in Chisholm and all over Australia. I will use Auslan to deliver my speech today. As many of you will know, we celebrated the National Week of Deaf People in September. Deaf people have challenges because of this pandemic. Face masks make it impossible to lip-read and see facial expressions. Doing ordinary things like visiting the shops or chatting to neighbours becomes harder. More than 10 per cent of Australians have some degree of deafness, whether it is complete or partial. In a population of 25 million people, only 10,000 are Auslan users. To help promote the National Week of Deaf People this year, I met with staff at Deaf Children Australia and recorded a video message in Auslan. I've been learning Auslan for just over a month, and the lovely people at Deaf Children Australia tell me I'm getting better. I encourage many of you to join me in learning Auslan too. Let's give it a go. I hope that, by using Auslan to give my speech today, I can encourage some of you to think about learning Auslan, learning sign language, in the future. This action may seem small, not a big deal, to many people, but it means the whole world to people with deafness. So I'm very excited to be able to do this.
I thank the member for Chisholm for her very excellent speech, and I'm sure I speak on behalf of the chamber when I say thank you very, very much.
That was a very good effort. I rise to mourn the passing of Graham Lacey. Graham was a true believer, a trade unionist, and always on the side of the battler, the underdog. He was a grassroots activist and a very effective Richmond City councillor. He was a lifelong member of the Australian Labor Party and was always in the political fray. He was notably active in the anti-apartheid movement and the Vietnam moratoriums in Victoria. It was there he befriended our mutual friends, Paul Slape and Ian Jones from the Municipal Employees Union. He will be much missed. As I say, he was a true believer and he always fought for the underdog. He felt injustice very keenly and that's what motivated him in his public life, and that's what, I guess, led him to his political views on such matters. He is survived by his partner, Nelly Zola, his children, Donna and Shane, and grandchildren, Dylan and Tara. He'll be sorely missed. May he rest in peace.
Also, I acknowledge the passing of Graham Stewart Worrall, who passed away in February this year, but, as the pandemic has affected many things, it has affected my opportunity to place on the record my condolences to his family and friends, and I want to do so now. He passed away in February, as I say. He was a brilliant academic, an excellent and inspiring lecturer and teacher at Monash University. I had the good fortune of being a student of his back in the eighties. I wasn't always attentive to my studies. I wasn't always present at all of my lectures and tutorials, but I have to say that, when it came to Graham Worrell, I did attend and managed to listen to the remarkable exposes. His descriptions and analysis of the French Revolution were remarkable. In fact, there are many beneficiaries who were attendees and students of his. He brought history to life. For that reason, he'll be remembered, certainly as an academic, a lecturer, but I think, most of all, as a teacher. Some academics spend a lot of time publishing works and dealing with such matters, and he had that capacity, but, most importantly, he was focused and dedicated to his students and to his teachings. It is for that he will be mostly remembered. I want to pay tribute to him, and I extend my condolences to his wife, Barbara, his children and grandchildren, and his many friends.
I wish to take this opportunity to speak about an important event: the annual Developing Northern Australia Conference, which was held in my electorate of Capricornia last week. As a proud Central Queenslander and as Assistant Minister for Northern Australia, it was my privilege to welcome 300 delegates from across the country and over 200 virtual delegates to the region I call home. It was a great opportunity for all delegates to discuss the challenges and the opportunity Northern Australia has. The topics of new infrastructure, trade opportunities and emerging technologies were key focuses for the conference over the three days. I want to thank the event organisers, the exhibitors and the presenters who made the conference a huge success. This was not an easy achievement during a pandemic.
Also, I welcomed the release of the CRCNA's State of the north 2020 report during the conference. The report calls for industry, the community and all levels of government to come together in developing a shared vision for Northern Australia as we start to address some of the common themes identified by the centre's research. Northern Australia is continuing to be supported by the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, or the NAIF, by delivering key projects that boost the economic prosperity across the region. So far, around $2.4 billion has been committed to projects, generating around 7½ thousand new jobs and supporting projects worth more than $4.4 billion. Despite what some people on the other side might say, this is real money for real projects and real jobs. Just last week I announced the contractual close of a $76 million loan between the NAIF and CQUniversity, alongside Vice-Chancellor Professor Nick Klomp. Contractual close is an important milestone: it means the university can now start project design and construction, further driving local employment and economic growth. The loan will go a long way in assisting the university to position itself after the COVID-19 pandemic. The loan will be used at campuses across regional Australia for construction work and renovation. It will also go towards upgrading their digital networks to improve delivery of remote learning. With the NAIF's investment the university can now plan for the next two years and be ready to welcome back more students.
We are also finalising a review of the NAIF. In response to these findings, we are pushing on with speeding up its process, making it easier for vital projects to apply for finance and have loans approved. We are listening, and these changes will result in business development, business growth and job creation right across the north. The role northern Australia will have as our economy recovers from this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic is crucial. Both industry recovery and growth will need to be fostered, but the potential of the northern Australia remains as strong as ever. The Australian government is committed to developing the north to reach its full economic capacity.
In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded.
The report is a good bit of work as far as it goes, and at the outset I want to thank the chair for the way in which he conducted the enquiry. He is a decent man, a little bit too politically conservative for me, but he takes his role and responsibilities seriously. The Prime Minister would do well to sack a bunch of the incompetent ministers in the reshuffle and promote people like the member for Berowra. He would do well for the government.
But I want to make some remarks on one aspect in particular of the report, on which I made some additional comments. That's the issue of the SHEV and TPV holders—the safe haven enterprise visa and the temporary protection visa holders, which were covered in the last part of section 4 on the committee's report. There are about 17,400 SHEV and TPV holders in Australia right now. The majority of these people arrived in this country by boat nearly a decade ago, risking their lives on a dangerous and expensive journey fleeing war and persecution. They've been living in Australia for around 10 years—nearly a decade—some even longer, and they've been accepted by our country, officially by the government, as genuine refugees. As the Department of Home Affairs acknowledged during the inquiry, their employment outcomes are excellent. Nearly 87 per cent of SHEV visa holders are in paid employment, contributing to the community, paying taxes and building a future.
But, as the committee heard, for an overwhelming majority of the people, these genuine refugees, there is no realistic pathway to permanency. A false promise has been offered by the government through the SHEV as a pathway to permanency, but for most people it is simply illusory. For a decade they have had limited access to the Adult Migrant English Program, no ability to study, and no hope of being able to actually meet the conditions for the visas that they can theoretically apply for.
These genuine refugees have been condemned by the policies of the Australian government to become members, here in our society, of a permanent underclass of temporary migrants—living here amongst us but never able to plan for their future. They are condemned to a life lived in limbo, hopping from temporary visa to temporary visa, unable to put down roots and contribute fully to Australia with the security that comes from permanent resident status.
Thousands of these people have been separated from families and children. Families are kept apart and broken, with no hope in sight. There are thousands of people in my community in this situation—literally thousands, probably 10,000 or more. I know them, I hear their stories and I witness their pain. The most common issue in my office is migration. It's not the Centrelink stuff-up; it's not the tax office or the NDIS; it's not the rorts or all the other problems that people come in with: it is migration matters. There are men who come in month after month, crying in the foyer, wondering, 10 years on, whether they will ever be able to see their children. They can't go home; they will be murdered. The government has accepted that. But still they just live here in limbo as an underclass. There is no real prospect in the short or medium term of security improving in their homelands. Are we really going to start sending these people back to Afghanistan any time soon? They are, in effect, permanently temporary refugees—safe but never secure in our country.
The committee—indeed the parliament and our nation—must ask: at what point can these people simply become Australian? Is it after 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? Is it at the point where they've lived more than half their lives in the country that we can finally say, 'Okay, you can be Australian.' The very notion of permanently temporary refugees is a nonsense. It does our nation and Australian society no credit and no good to have a permanent underclass living amongst us. How does this help us as a society? Is this the kind of country we really are—a country that's prided ourselves for seven decades on being a permanent settler society?
Resolution of these issues is a much broader problem. I agree, and we acknowledge in the report, that it's outside the scope of the inquiry into the working holiday-maker program. But SHEV and TPV holders demand and deserve serious, thoughtful, creative attention by the government, not just stale talking points about boat people. There has long been bipartisan support for tough border protection policies, and the government well knows it. Humane resolution of this issue is possible without restarting the boats, but to date it has not been politically convenient for the government to address. That is the truth of it.
During the inquiry, the Refugee Council of Australia put forward a proposal to offer permanent residency for SHEV and TPV holders who undertook a year of work in a regional area in industries suffering critical labour shortages. The committee received compelling evidence in support of this from the Australian Hazara community, for example. There is a critical workforce shortage, which government members well know, right now in regional Australia, exacerbated by the reduced temporary migration resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no single solution, as the report makes clear. Australia needs as many people as possible—Australian citizens, permanent residents and temporary migrants of all sorts—to help with the harvest and other critical work in regional Australia over the next 12 months and beyond. It is very clear from the inquiry that, with the right incentives, SHEV and TPV holders could make a significant contribution to help fill these critical labour shortages in regional Australia. I know people from my own electorate who have called me and emailed me and said that they would be prepared to move next week or next month and undertake this work if only they were assured of permanent residency or at least had a realistic pathway.
To be clear, my personal view is that it's well past time in this country that SHEV and TPV holders, as genuine refugees, should simply be granted permanency, subject to the health and character checks. This farce has gone long enough—dragging these people out when it's convenient for the minister to beat up on boat people and then putting them back into the cupboard till next time, as if they're not human and as if they don't have families and the right to build a life—and that after a decade here and multiple assessments that they are genuine refugees who can't safely return home, they shouldn't have to abandon their lives and jobs in the city or elsewhere and go and pick fruit just to prove that they should be allowed to stay. But resolution of these broader questions is outside the scope of this inquiry. In any event, I expect the government MPs—and I know, privately, some of them agree with me—would be politically constrained from resolving it, because it suits the government to beat up on refugees some weeks.
Instead, this inquiry threw up the opportunity for a creative bipartisan solution and a response that would at least help some of these people while meeting critical labour shortages in regional Australia, and give some more incentives for these people to go and do this work and make the farmers happy. There are farmers groups that support this. Public comments in support of a creative solution were made by government members during the hearings and then in the media afterwards, but the committee's final report falls short of a courageous recommendation for change. It is a pity that the committee failed to make strong clear recommendations like they did for numerous other temporary migrant groups to incentivise them to take up regional agriculture work. We could do it for working holiday-makers, international students, temporary skilled migrants and many more. But when it comes to genuine refugees, people who have nowhere else to go safely and live, so politicised has the word refugee become and so cowed and confused are government MPs, that they wimp out. They can't bring themselves to apply exactly the same policy logic to refugees—let alone a bit of humanity!
The committee's findings and recommendations do at least represent a small step—a baby step, if you like—in the right direction. I do thank the chair and government members for listening patiently to my rantings and ramblings along the way and, I think it's fair to say, shifting some of the recommendations quite significantly from where they were. I've had the Refugee Council message me and say thank you for at least where we got to. But, pending a broader resolution of the issues facing SHEV and TPV holders, I encourage the government to not just take up the words, which were a battle we could negotiate and not get in trouble with the minister's talking points, but take up the spirit of the recommendations, and provide some stronger incentives and a more realistic pathway to permanency for these 17,000 people. These genuine refugees have been in our country for a decade.
I also understand that this could be of immediate practical benefit to the agricultural industry and regional Australia. This was a potential win-win. It wasn't going to suit everyone—it wasn't going to encourage people who've set up businesses and are employing people to go pick fruit to prove their commitment to the country—but it would have helped some of these people. About 80 per cent of them are men, perfectly capable of doing difficult agricultural work, and willing to do so.
In particular, in closing, I encourage my parliamentary colleagues from the National Party to find their voice on this issue; to back the farmers and the refugees; and to have the guts to say in public, to the minister and in the parliament what they say to me in private. I've met with many of them, I've called them and I've texted them—'Yeah, we agree with you, but, you know.' Well, what? Actually speak up. Do your job. Represent regional Australia. Solve this problem and solve my problem in the city and show some creativity with some bipartisanship. The government should be about delivery and actually doing things, making people's lives better, not just making announcements. I won't recount or attribute the private conversations, but I know there are many government members who want to do more and know they should do more on this issue. I encourage them to stand up and actually make some change.
I want to follow on from the member for Bruce, who I have to say, having watched him and read some of the Hansard, puts a lot of thought and consideration into these issues and, importantly, in terms of this contribution, speaks with a great deal of passion—rightly so—about this issue. I want to welcome his contributions in terms of this debate and thank him for his work in regard to the inquiry.
He is absolutely right in bringing a spotlight to the National Party in this because the National Party has a big interest in this and they do, as the member for Bruce rightly suggested, need to speak up on this. In particular, the National Party's claims that they represent rural interests; want the agriculture sector to do better; and, on top of that, back in the National Farmers Federation's ambition that we as a nation be able to generate $100 billion out of agriculture are not going to be something achieved miraculously or by magic. It takes a lot of people to achieve this. By people, I mean not just the businesses that are run there but also the people who work within them, the labour that is required to make all this happen. This is a very ambition target, $100 billion by 2030, that the National Farmers Federation put forward and that the government has backed, and yet the Liberal-National government have simply no plan to address agriculture workforce shortages that exist and have been worsened through the course of the pandemic.
The Nationals themselves are quite silent on this. They might, as the member for Bruce indicated, make all these private or off the record views known to certainly Labor about how they think this needs to be addressed, but they're not doing anything publicly on it. Certainly the Liberal-National government don't have a plan to stop the spread of exploitation of backpackers, and the slavery like conditions in some cases, that have become all too common across Australia. For example, the horticultural industry in our nation is crying out for the Liberal-National government to provide a durable solution to labour shortages because they're acutely aware that rogue operators and labour hire firms are exploiting people, particularly in regional Australia, where it's thought that out of sight is out of mind. The minister scrambled at the eleventh hour to get together a half-baked code that was first rejected by the states' chief medical officers, couldn't attract the unanimous support of the states and doesn't work for farmers.
In this report, the committee recommended:
… that the Government consider additional concessions to SHEV and TPV holders who undertake at least one year of agricultural or horticultural work in a regional area, and are prepared to settle in a regional areas …
This is a timely recommendation when we consider the current state of the agricultural workforce. My only question is: how many reports, committees and meetings does the Liberal-National government need to get off its hands and start delivering real solutions for Australian farmers? I suspect this is a question that is being posed not just by me; it is also being posed by the agriculture sector.
As I said, the Liberal-National government simply has no plan to address these shortages. It's also a great surprise to me that not only do they have no plan but, when I read estimates—for example, when the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, ABARES, appeared—the government doesn't even track the shortages through its own bodies. In reading the Hansard, I was stunned that, when ABARES was asked this by the committee back in October. They apparently released a labour survey on 17 September. It didn't provide estimates of shortages or gaps; it provided an estimate of labour use through the year. In relation to the labour workforce shortages, they claimed: 'The gap is a difficult thing to measure.' When farmers are worried and say that product—for example, fruit—is just going to rot on trees, I can't believe, and I think a lot of Australians would find it hard to believe, that there's no ability to determine how many people are actually needed to get the job done on Australian farms.
On top of that, it would be remiss of me not to reflect on the fact that a lot of governments, including state governments, have been thinking a lot about attracting people to regional areas to assist with the workforce needs of the agriculture sector. I'm particularly mindful that, through AGMIN, which brings together ministers from across the country, state ministers have been recommending some pretty good ideas to the government about what needs to be done to attract more labour into the agriculture sector during this time of pandemic. These ideas have simply been ignored or have not been responded to in a timely way by the agriculture minister.
There is a pattern to this minister. He loves making announcements. He loves rattling off dollar figures. He loves being able to suggest that there is a plan in place. But the delivery is the test, and this minister, in particular, is all talk and no action whatsoever in this sector. I think he is being found out more and more for that. When you raise issues, as the member for Bendigo did during consideration in detail, when she raised concerns about exploitation, he gets into a huff about that. He gets into a huff about any suggestion that there's exploitation. No-one's suggesting that the entire sector embraces this. In fact, the sector rightly wants to stamp this out. They want to stamp out the rogue operators and the bad and dodgy labour hire firms because they understand that Australians would rightly be shocked and appalled if the food on their tables or the food in their kids' lunch boxes had been picked by exploited backpackers working on Australian farms. If the exploitation we read or hear about is what is happening under the Liberal-National government, through their legal visa program, imagine what's taking place under the cover of the dodginess of illegal operators. It's not enough for the agriculture minister to come into budget consideration in detail and beat his chest and give us the big drama act about how offended he is that there is a suggestion of exploitation. People know it's out there, and it has to be dealt with, because local farmers are the victims of the Morrison government's failures too. They're being faced with these shortages, as well as with the risk of hiring illegal workers.
As I said before, our horticultural industry is crying out for some sort of leadership on this front, because they know what impact this is having on them. During a global pandemic and the first recession in three decades, fruit and vegetables cannot and must not be left to rot on farms across Australia. But, after seven years of being in power, this Liberal-National government still doesn't have a plan for important parts of our economy—specifically, agriculture. So, absolutely, we do need to see better.
By the end of October, we'd seen the launch of the National Agricultural Labour Advisory Committee. They launched this last year, well before COVID. It was tasked to create a strategy for the ag workforce. Despite the increased pressure, particularly on horticultural farmers, the government pushed back the deadline, from July to the end of October, and at the end of that month we saw nothing more than a literature review. As I said, we saw AGMIN tasked with the creation of an agricultural workers code to be presented to and agreed upon by national cabinet. The minister scrambled at the eleventh hour to get together a half-baked code, which was first rejected by the state chief medical officers. Our federal agricultural minister couldn't even attract the unanimous support of the states, and now farmers are still waiting.
As always, this mob can't get it together. They can be there for the press conference and the announcement and to draft the media release, but not for the solution. The strategy, the code, themselves—all are a flop. I certainly hope the government starts to listen to state counterparts, the recommendation from the Joint Standing Committee on Migration and, indeed, the farmers who want to see the delivery of meaningful solutions to the workforce shortages affecting the sector. We definitely need to see better and we definitely need a minister that can deliver. We don't need the delivery of more announcements. We don't need more media stunts. We need tangible results, and we are not going to get them out of this agricultural minister.
I want to kick off by giving the House an anecdote from a recent trip out to a mango farm with the former shadow minister for agriculture. When we spoke with mango farmers, the same grievances that had been made exactly four years earlier were being discussed by those farmers. I think it's important for those listening today to hear that in order to appreciate the context that we're dealing with. This government is in its eighth year. The Nationals are part of this government. Four years with absolutely no action for those mango farmers left them in a situation, when COVID hit, where they didn't have anyone to pick their crop. Farmers are still waiting. I join with the shadow member for agriculture, the member for Chifley, in saying that we need to see some more action out of the minister for agriculture. We really do. It's not good enough for him to get up in question time and flap his gums, saying things that are vaguely relevant to the question asked or talking about what commitments have been made, when there has been little to no follow through.
Turning to the Working Holiday Maker program, I'm pleased to speak to this important issue once again. I did speak to it following the release of the inquiry's interim report, and I'm speaking again because it's incredibly important to the highly valuable sectors of our economy, like tourism, health care and, of course, agriculture. This was a timely inquiry, given COVID-19's effect on disrupting the access of our farmers and our other industries to the workforce. There was also an important question about the possibility of the Australians that have become unemployed during COVID-19 filling those labour shortages. That's something that I'm very supportive of, and that was covered by this inquiry and its report. I also want to acknowledge the commentary made previously by the member for Bruce. He is certainly a passionate advocate for those who want to work. Another important question is whether existing visa criteria and conditions related to working holiday-makers are still adequate and appropriate to address the purpose of this program. For our regions—and I come from one of those regions, from the Top End of Australia—it's absolutely vital to find ways for this Working Holiday Maker program to support economic recovery in parts of our country like the Top End. I won't go through all the policy recommendations in the report, but I will highlight a couple that are particularly relevant for my electorate.
As well as those recommendations, I also want to note that the interim report had recommended that the government develop a 'Have a Gap Year at Home' campaign. I've spoken about that in the past. I very much encourage young Australians, if they find themselves without work or wanting to have a break before continuing on to studies, to get out into regional Australia and have a crack at some of the work that's available out there. You'll be surprised at how much you will enjoy it. I believe that working out in regional Australia can bring character to young Australians. It's a character-building experience when you see a bit of our magnificent country that you might not otherwise see if you spend your life confined to the suburbs of our major cities.
Strengthening this sentiment in younger Australians will I believe teach them resilience, discipline and a little bit more of the social cohesion that we will need more and more of into the future. Our nation will be faced with greater challenges than COVID into the future. The only way that we're going to be able to meet those challenges is through the character-building that will come from not just the example that I've given but a deeper appreciation of the need for social cohesion in our country—that we support each other in the ways that we have always talked about as Australians when met with challenges.
Some implications for the Northern Territory—
A division having been called in the House of Representatives—
Sitting suspended from 16:57 to 17:22
The Northern Territory implications is where I left off. I'm very supportive of a few of the recommendations and, in particular, recommendation 4 from the report, which recommends the government:
… review the definition of 'regional' for the purposes of migration with a view to providing a new tiered definition that recognises:
From our perspective in Darwin and the Top End, I remember when they said that all of a sudden the greater Gold Coast area was regional and potentially could go into a different category. The effect on us in Darwin was that many of our skilled restaurant workers, chefs and so forth then headed for the Gold Coast. That is not really supporting regional Australia in my view, so I welcome that recommendation. Smaller state capital cities like Darwin are different from Sydney and Melbourne, and in important ways we play a very special but different role in our nation's economy and security.
I'm also glad that recommendation 8's implementation would extend the northern Australia visa provision, allowing work in hospitality, tourism and other industries to apply in all regional, rural and remote areas. This is vitally important to our NT growers. As I speak, hundreds of workers from Vanuatu are literally saving the mango harvest in the Northern Territory, which is valued at over $128 million. They're so industrious and helpful that they'll move onto new farms and new crops and make a great contribution. They'll then take some of the fruits of their endeavours back home. To give you an idea of how great the demand for agricultural producers in the NT is, the local mango industry footed the half-a-million-dollar bill to charter these Vanuatu workers to Darwin. That's how important the workforce is. I take this opportunity to say to those workers, our Pacific friends and neighbours: thank you. On behalf of all Territorians, tangkiu tumas.
Programs like the Seasonal Worker Program and the Pacific Labour Scheme are popular among all stakeholders. In the first instance, Australian farmers need practical solutions to chronic skill labour shortages, particularly in agriculture. Earlier I relayed the somewhat disappointing story of when I recently visited a mango farm with the shadow minister for agriculture. Four years earlier we had visited the same farm, when they had complained about the same workforce issues, and nothing has been done in four years.
This report is timely, with COVID making the workforce issue even more critical. We need to look at what we can do to fix it, but it would be good to see some action. I'm also proud to have been involved in helping to facilitate the discussions between the government of Timor-Leste and the government of the Northern Territory. In the Northern Territory, we had seasonal workers from Timor-Leste, and we look forward to them returning. They're very welcome. They're great people. They're great workers. We must have more focus on this area. I know, Deputy Speaker Rick Wilson, that this is something that you're passionate about as well.
I'm very pleased to be speaking on the Joint Standing Committee on Migration's final report of the inquiry into the Working Holiday Maker program. The committee was tasked with inquiring into the Working Holiday Maker program. It's a reciprocal program of 45 years standing and one which is an important component of Australia's migration program.
The Working Holiday Maker program usually sees about 200,000 young people from 44 countries that we have bilateral agreements with come to Australia to do some work and largely enjoy an Australian experience in travelling and learning about Australia, its culture and its people. At the same time, these young people also fill skill shortages largely in the horticulture and agriculture sectors but also in the tourist and hospitality sectors. The travel restrictions on the global movement of people resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic year has placed immense pressure on regional Australia. The inquiry heard evidence from a cross-section of stakeholders—some 90 submissions—who impressed on our committee a sense of urgency in addressing the labour shortages across Australia, especially in the horticulture and agriculture industries, which traditionally have had great difficulty attracting Australians to fill these positions and as such have relied heavily on the Working Holiday Maker program.
The migration committee's terms of reference sought to examine the purposes of the program, to look at the value of the program to the Australian economy, especially in the horticulture, tourism, healthcare and agriculture sectors, to examine the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on the program, both nationally and internationally, and to look at the potential economic impact on regional economies from a disruption to the Working Holiday Maker program and to see if there were indeed any capacity for Australians made unemployed by COVID-19 to fill the labour shortages. The committee also looked at the existing visa conditions and criteria of the program to see if they were still adequate, especially within the context of cultural exchange, and also to look at how they may impact on the creation of job opportunities for Australians.
I want to make the point that COVID-19 also impacted on the ability of the migration committee itself to travel across the country in order to take evidence. Like many other committees, we had to resort to conducting our public hearings via teleconference. There were over 12 public hearings and some 30 hours of evidence taken by teleconference. At times it was challenging, and I want to thank all the witnesses for their patience and for their contributions. But we are thankful the capacity was there for the committee to continue its work, and I do want to thank all those who gave evidence.
The submissions were comprehensive and constructive. We heard from many stakeholders. They were honest and stark in their testimonies and assessments, and from a large number of them came an urgent call to address the labour shortage in regional Australia as farmers, tourist operators, hospitality owners and others struggle to recruit unemployed Australians. The committee has made 14 recommendations that seek to address issues around flexibility for the Working Holiday visa subclass 417 and the Work and Holiday subclass 462 visa holders. We also recommended that the government review the definition of 'regional' for the purposes of migration to look at increasing the working holidaymaker upper age limit to 35 years of age from the existing 30 years where bilateral negotiations yield reciprocal agreements for Australians, and to also consider expanding the program to new countries. These recommendations respond to a recognition that the Working Holiday Maker Program is important to Australia both in helping out where there are seasonal labour shortages and in adding value to our tourist sector. It is estimated the program is worth some $3.1 billion annually to the Australian economy, especially in rural areas.
The committee maintained a strong focus and interest in looking at how we could encourage unemployed Australians to take up work in regional and remote Australia. We heard evidence that there were many impediments to this, ranging from a reluctance to move into the regions, especially from the big city centres, mainly because this kind of employment is seasonal and not necessarily viewed as a desirable employment or career option because it's not by nature secure or long-term. Even in cases where there were more secure opportunities, distance and difficulty relocating and availability and cost of accommodation were major issues. So too was the view that this kind of work was potentially viewed as exploitative with low wages and inadequate conditions. Sufficient evidence was also received about negative experiences that many working holidaymakers have had. The committee took this evidence of accounts of exploitation and bad behaviour by some employers very seriously. This is evidence which is detrimental to the reputation of the Working Holiday Maker Program. In order to address this, the committee recommended that the government expediate the implementation of the recommendations of the report of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce.
In addition, we recommended that the development of an app to augment the recommendation that a hotline be established where working holidaymakers can access all the advice regarding their work rights and to talk about any workplace exploitation concerns they may have. To this, the committee also recommended the Fair Work Ombudsman develop an embassy liaison group to liaise on a regular basis about workplace issues raised with embassies by their citizens. Embassies are an obvious source of information because they are likely to get feedback from their citizens about their working holidaymaker experiences in Australia. It makes absolute sense that there are formal channels of communication where issues can be addressed and resolved in a manner that protects the integrity of the Working Holiday Maker Program as well as protecting the rights of the working holidaymakers, ensuring as best we can that their experience of staying in Australia is a positive one.
Given the extent of the labour shortage resulting from COVID-19, the committee sought to encourage all available people in Australia to take up work in agriculture and horticulture. This included a focus on those who are currently on temporary visas. As foreshadowed in the interim report, the Refugee Council of Australia, in its submission, proposed putting in place special arrangements to encourage those on protection visas and the Safe Haven Enterprise visas holders to undertake work in these areas. Although there were no legislative barriers to SHEV and TPV holders working in regional industries facing labour shortages, and many were keen to take up jobs in regional areas, there were other issues that created a disincentive, and these were largely due to the uncertainty around their futures and the uncertainty about the prospects of being granted clear pathways to permanent residency. We heard from the Hazara coordination groups specifically about these issues, and I want to support the additional comments made by my colleague the member for Bruce and support the proposal put forward by the Refugee Council of Australia to offer permanent residency to SHEV and TPV holders who undertook a year of work in a regional area in industries suffering critical labour shortages.
The committee, in recommendation 14, took steps to address some of the issues that were raised with us. We recommended:
… that the Government consider additional concessions to SHEV and TPV holders who undertake at least one year of agricultural or horticultural work in a regional area, and are prepared to settle in a regional areas, such as:
Subsidised VET training courses for skilled occupations experiencing chronic skills shortages …; and
Other incentives that assist SHEV and TPV holders to meet requirements under a range of available visas, including the skilled migration scheme
Although this was not necessarily what the Refugee Council or SHEV and TPV holders had hoped and argued for, it is a welcomed start to a discussion we must have as a country in relation to the 17,400 SHEV and TPV holders in Australia at the moment who have been here for up to 10 years. These are genuine refugees. They have a strong desire to live here amongst us. They are capable and willing. We should move to resolve their visa status to put an end to their uncertainty and give them realistic opportunities to become permanent residents.
In the time left, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my colleagues who are members of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration, particularly the chair, the member for Berowra. I want to thank the secretariat for the amazing work that they have done in assisting us during what has been a difficult period, this COVID-19 period. I recommend the report to the House.
Debate adjourned.
It's an enormous privilege to be able to speak on this motion honouring the memory of Dame Margaret Guilfoyle. Like many members in this chamber, I knew Dame Margaret—though not well. In my many years as, shall we say, a possibly even more precocious youngish Liberal, I engaged with her regularly around the Kew area, where I was then working as an electoral officer—a very long time ago—and she would periodically come to events. As people will often remark, she was member of the Camberwell South branch, which she joined with her husband Stan Guilfoyle. So I saw her there with Stan and of course at various events, including the Liberal Party State Council.
She always stood as a firm, principled and committed warrior for the Liberal cause. I say that because that, to me, is how I see her. A lot of people remark on the fact that she was the first woman to sit in cabinet with a portfolio and that she was the first woman to hold an economic portfolio. These are matters that are true, but that doesn't change the fact that I have always seen her as a stoic, values-driven politician who lived the meaning of the Menzian ideal of liberalism around a forward-looking, modern liberalism reflective of the times and driving the progress of our great country.
Shortly after her death, I read a copy of her biography, written by my good friend and former upper house member in the Victorian parliament, Margaret Fitzherbert, who wrote about Margaret Guilfoyle:
Margaret Guilfoyle would have been an unusual candidate for any political party when she stood for election to the Senate in 1970. Decades before such arrangements became commonplace, flexible working hours allowed Guilfoyle to combine her career as an accountant with raising her three children. Her qualifications and experience later boosted Guilfoyle’s chances of obtaining a seat in Parliament, and gave her skills that equipped her to enter the Fraser ministry and eventually Cabinet, while her status as a working mother proved an irresistible angle for journalists throughout her political career
People might be distracted by those facts, but the reality is that it was her liberalism that motivated her ideals. In fact, I understand that shortly after her death a journalist contacted Stan and asked, 'How, in a couple of points, would you define Dame Margaret's political ideals?' And it was 'a commitment to free enterprise'. Of course, many of us in this chamber are motivated by high ideals as the basis of political service, but what she always had was a connection back to the practical reality of politics and the implementation of ideas.
I was reviewing her first speech in the lead-up to today, where it's quite clear how much she was anchored in the practical realities of realising the ambitions of this country. Her first speech included a reference to the considerable uncertainty about farm product in the forthcoming year and, of course, a very studious assessment of the Commonwealth budget, including the quote:
The total Commonwealth receipts are estimated to be of the order of $8,822m, an increase of 9.9 per cent.
And then going into various different sums assessing the accounts of the nation. So, of course, you can very clearly see the accountant in her.
It was that anchoring in those liberal ideals that she continued to pursue in her life, including in particular her commitment to environmental stewardship. From her first speech:
When speaking of environmental measures we must speak of individual responsibilities. If we are talking about environmental measures we must accept that just as the first syllable of management is man, so is it man's individual responsibility to ensure that a personal unselfishness and, perhaps, selflessness is brought to bear in the interests of the preservation of our natural resources.
She understood that liberalism was about our commitment to not just economic and social progress—though that is critical—but also environmental stewardship. You can see this particular commitment to environmental stewardship throughout her entire political career.
But I don't think we want to underplay her commitment to social progress either. She spoke extensively about the importance of social mobility as part of her commitment of realising liberalism. People have made reflections about her fights against various different budget measures and cuts, where she saw the importance of welfare being to mobilise people to be able to live out the fullness of their life, to be able to stand on their own two feet and to be part of the contribution to be successful.
In her valedictory speech, she reflected on the fact that her career was often defined by her gender. But it isn't just, of course, based on the world that you inherit; it is also based on the world that you leave behind. In her valedictory speech she acknowledged:
I am conscious of the fact that when I came here I was one of two women in the Parliament, but now there are many more women in this place and the other House. To me that has the significance that it will be more acceptable in the future to understand that ultimate responsibility is able to be handled by women. It was said that I was the first to hold a Cabinet post and administer a department-that might be true-but it had to be very important that I was not the last. I have watched with great interest the way in which Senator Ryan—
talking about the former late senator Susan Ryan, who I served with at the Human Rights Commission—
has handled her difficult and interesting portfolio, and I will be even more interested in watching the women who follow in the future to see that their contribution is recognised and is not in any way segregated from the overall contribution that must be made by people handling extensive portfolio work.
So it wasn't just about the contribution she made while she was is in this place, but the opportunities—whether it was through the promotion of environmental stewardship, social mobility or economic prosperity as the foundation for her liberalism—and what she left behind for future generations that will be her lasting legacy. May she rest in peace.
I'm honoured to be able to say a few words in this condolence motion for the late Dame Margaret Guilfoyle. Her contribution to Australia, to Victoria and, indeed, to the Liberal Party has been well documented in the remarks made by the Treasurer and others since then. An immigrant whose father died when she was just 10, her achievements were the product of her determination to gain an education, her hard work and her persistence. Elected to the Senate in 1971, she served there until 1987, holding a number of important portfolios, including Social Security and Finance. She later served on a series of boards and inquiries.
What comes through in many of the many comments that have been made in the last few days about Dame Margaret Guilfoyle was her capability as an administrator. Sometimes I suspect in this age of digital communication, television and the like, the ability of a minister is reflected in their performance on television. But, ultimately, first and foremost, a minister must be a capable administrator. They are sworn in to administer a department or departments of the state, and that was something which Margaret Guilfoyle was very good at. Her time as Minister for Social Security, I believe, reflected in part those childhood experiences, as a teenager and as a young woman, living in an immigrant family to this country and whose father had died when she was relatively at an early age.
I personally recall Margaret on many occasions giving me sage and kind advice at numerous Liberal Party functions that I attended when I was first elected to this place. She'd been gone for four or five years at that stage but, nonetheless, she maintained a very keen interest in the activities of the parliament, the direction of Australia and of course her beloved Liberal Party. That advice was always kindly offered. It was usually short but to the point, and I remember it fondly on many occasions. To Stan and members of the family, I offer my sincere condolences. May she rest in peace.
I rise today to acknowledge the passing of Dame Margaret Georgina Constance Guilfoyle AC DBE. Dame Margaret I didn't have the pleasure of meeting, but she's one of the many women from all sides of politics who have paved the way for a greater gender balance in parliament. I note my gratitude for her service and her legacy and, on behalf of the people of Warringah, I convey my condolences to her loved ones.
Typically, I would say we've failed to properly promote and highlight her trailblazing achievements until just now. It's important that we tell the story of women such as Dame Margaret and their many achievements. We need to do this more to set the example and encourage more women.
Dame Margaret's family migrated from Belfast when she was just two years old, settling into their new life in Melbourne, but tragically this new beginning was shattered when her father died when she was just 10 years old. Her widowed mother was left to raise Margaret and her two siblings with no immediate family to assist. The experience showed Margaret the importance of education and careers for women. She later said that she became aware early in life that at any time a woman must be capable of independence—wise words, indeed.
At the age of 15, Margaret was working as a secretary while continuing her studies in accountancy at night. By 1946, Margaret was a qualified accountant and chartered secretary. A year later she was head office accountant at Overseas Corporation Australia Limited, a firm that promoted Australian exports, and was clearly already a trailblazer.
In 1952 she married Stanley Martin Leslie Guilfoyle, and the couple had three children—two daughters and a son. Moving into private practice gave her more time with her family although she reportedly preferred working for a large company—an early example of dealing with a challenge that still confronts many women of being the primary caregiver for children and a qualified professional.
Dame Margaret ran for preselection for the position of Liberal Party senator for Victoria in 1970 in a field of 20 candidates. In an extraordinary and well-reported exchange during the preselection interviews, Mr John Jess, the Liberal member for La Trobe at the time, asked Guilfoyle who would look after her three children if she became a senator. Her response was:
I'm asking you to make a decision to give me responsibility to be a representative in the Senate and I would ask that you would accept that I have responsibility to make the decisions regarding my family.
Sadly, those questions still get asked quite frequently, I would suggest, of female members of parliament today.
Guilfoyle was successful in her preselection and was elected to the Senate with her term commencing in July 1971. In her first speech to parliament, Senator Guilfoyle referred to a range of topics, including those related to her financial and economic expertise but also the problem of pressures placed on the environment through pollution and population growth, and the need for increased funding for the arts.
Then began a 16-year term in parliament that, perhaps unwittingly, laid the foundations for generations of female parliamentarians to follow. As noted in The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate, Dame Margaret took committee roles that were in line with her own professional experience but perhaps at odds with the expected policy interests of a woman at that time. She was offered the opportunity of joining the Senate Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, but Guilfoyle believed that, because of her accounting background, she could do better as a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Government Operations. She also joined the Public Accounts Committee and served on estimates committees. Over the course of those 16 years, Dame Margaret Guilfoyle achieved many noteworthy firsts. She was the first woman in cabinet with a ministerial portfolio, she was the first woman senator in cabinet and she was the first woman to hold a major economic portfolio. She was the Minister for Education in 1975, the Minister for Social Security between 1975 and 1980, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister in Child Care Matters in 1975-76 and the Minister for Finance from 1980 to 1983.
After her time in parliament, Dame Margaret took on a number of board appointments in the health and welfare sector, including as deputy chair of the Mental Health Research Institute from 1988 to 2001 and the Infertility Treatment Authority from 1996 to 2002. She was president of the Royal Melbourne Hospital Board of Management from 1993 to 1995 and a member of the National Inquiry into the Human Rights of People with Mental Illness from 1990 to 1993. It was an incredibly busy and distinguished career, truly a life of service, and I thank her for it.
Her service highlights one thing—the increasing role of women in parliament. Dame Margaret would no doubt be very pleased to see the number of women in parliament today, but there is still much work to do. In this 46th Parliament, there are 45 women in the House of Representatives, just under 30 per cent. In the Senate, Dame Margaret's former workplace, the numbers are slightly better, amounting to nearly 50 per cent. The reality is that Australia is still only fifth worst in the OECD for inequality in political participation, above only Lithuania, Japan, Israel and Hungary. I was so dejected when I read that, but I was also dejected to read that a recent survey by Plan International of 2,000 young Australian women found that, among those aged 18 to 25 years old, zero per cent expressed an interest in politics as a career. Clearly we need to do a better job of highlighting the legacy and the stories of women like Dame Margaret and their contribution so that these young women can aspire to also make their mark. We must do better. We owe it to Dame Margaret to do better. In her own words:
Equal participation of women in the Parliament, in the whole of community life, can only lead us to a better understanding of humanity and to the fulfilment of the aspirations that we would have for a civilised society.
So we must do better to increase female participation and representation in the political process. I commend groups like Women for Election Australia, who aim to inspire and equip women to run for office and to sustain them once elected. The team there have identified that the reasons for women's underrepresentation in politics fall under the 'five Cs', and some of these resonate with Dame Margaret's own journey in politics. The first is confidence. Women are less likely to step forward for selection. No. 2 is cash. Women have less access than men to resources. Then there is culture. A gendered culture is often prevalent within major political parties. Then we have child care. Women are more likely to have this responsibility. Finally is candidate selection procedures. The processes by which political parties select candidates pose a significant obstacle to women's political participation, as Dame Margaret's own story would show.
I commend the work of Women for Election and I wish them all the best in their endeavours to inspire and equip 2,000 women to run for political office by 2022. To do so would ensure that the legacy of Dame Margaret and the many others like her is not only respected but is endorsed, built upon and celebrated. It's the least we can do to honour this trailblazer who quietly and humbly dismantled so many barriers and opened up doors to those of us who followed.
I rise in this chamber to pay tribute to a stalwart of the Australian parliament. Dame Margaret Guilfoyle AC DBE passed away in Melbourne last month, leaving behind a great legacy and impact on our political landscape and, indeed, the country at large. She will forever hold a unique and important place in our collective history. As a member of prime minister Malcolm Fraser's cabinet from 1975 to 1984, Ms Guilfoyle was the first woman to run an Australian government department, the first woman in cabinet with ministerial portfolio and the first woman to hold a major economic portfolio, making her the highest-ranking woman in the Australian government until 2010. That is quite an achievement. Known for her hardworking and considered nature, she built a strong record of achievement, with her performance as a minister praised on all sides of politics. She knew that women had a vital role to play in politics and in the leadership of our country. She was principled and determined, with her legacy profoundly changing the operation of Australian society.
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1926, Dame Margaret migrated with her family to my home city of Melbourne in 1928. As a child of the Great Depression, following the death of her father when she was just 10 years old she understood the importance of education and economic security for women, stating that 'At any time a woman must be capable of independence.' It's almost hard to imagine, actually, for a young woman to be given that sense of how she needs to have independence.
She was certainly someone who led by example. She undertook secretarial and accounting studies while maintaining a full-time job. In 1971, as a qualified accountant and mother of three, Dame Margaret entered parliament as a senator for Victoria—one of only two women. Immediately she made a considered point of joining and later leading committees that were focused on economics and finance rather than family issues alone. Yet when parliament discussed issues that impacted women and families, Dame Margaret was a vocal and fervent advocate for all women. She understood that equal participation in leadership is necessary in order to ensure the fulfilment of aspirations for a civilised society. In this life she argued passionately for the provision of maternity leave for all women, not just Commonwealth employees. She ensured the delivery of social services for women, frequently reminding her colleagues that at the time 83 per cent of social security payments were made to women. Indeed, as head of the Office of Child Care she presided over a historic and major expansion of government support for preschool, child care and afterschool care, a measure that parents like myself continue to benefit from and appreciate today.
It is indubitable that Dame Margaret paved the way for other women in politics, myself included. Certainly she was an immense figure in the Liberal Party and an inspiration for so many of us. With mentors such as Elizabeth Couchman, Ivy Wedgwood and Edith Haynes, she was encouraged and supported to become the embodiment of a Liberal woman. In her first speech Dame Margaret applauded the party's equal representation on all party committees in the Victorian Liberal Party during her time, paying tribute to the work of the Australian Women's National League as well as her mentors, who insisted on the equality of voting power within the party. She once famously answered a preselector's question about her children, by saying, 'I'm asking you to make a decision to give me responsibility to be a representative in the Senate. And I would ask that you would accept that I have responsibility to make the decisions regarding my family.' As my daughters would say, she had some sass. Indeed, following her departure from the Senate, Dame Margaret remained an ambassador and trailblazer for women's leadership, becoming the chair of the Liberal Women's Forum in 1993, seeking to encourage more women into the Liberal Party. As an aside, I will be speaking to the Liberal Women's Forum this evening, and we will be speaking about Dame Margaret and the legacy she has left us.
For decades women in our country did not have the same magnitude or number of role models to look to as men had. Indeed, this is true in the history of mankind—in fact we should say the history of 'humankind'. It is only in recent history that we have witnessed the ascension of women to positions of power and impact, with great leaders, including Dame Margaret, leading the way. However, as for men, it's crucial that women and girls are able to look across our country's leadership and see themselves represented at every point of significance. I know firsthand that role models are crucial in helping to broaden our horizons, open doors and pave the way for an equal society. My late and great cousin Margaret Bondfield was the first female member of cabinet in the UK parliament, almost 100 years ago. In those days, women, like our party's co-founder, Dame Elizabeth Couchman, had to choose between a public life and having a family. Certainly, my forebear Margaret Bondfield did not marry and did not have a family; she devoted herself to public service and she devoted herself to politics. Indeed, Dame Margaret's legacy as a cabinet minister, qualified accountant and mother of three has further opened doors. As the Prime Minister said, they will never be shut again. The legacy of these women is left for all of us here, in this place, to champion.
When I read Dame Margaret's first speech to the Senate in 1971, numerous key themes resonated, many of which I spoke about in my own first speech last year. Dame Margaret identified her concerns about the economy and the provision of economic security for women. I'd like to pay tribute to my predecessor as the member for Higgins, the Hon. Kelly O'Dwyer, for the work she did in developing the first Women's economic security statement in 2018, which has been refreshed and updated in the most recent 2020 budget, with the second Women's economic security statement and increased funding given to that. She also discussed the pressures placed on the environment and the importance of supporting the arts—two things that are very dear to my heart. The similarities between two such speeches signifies that there is always more to be done in this place to support women, our environment and the economy as we work towards the fulfilment of a civilised and thriving society that people like Dame Margaret have continued to envision.
As I said before, one of the centrepieces of this year's budget was the updated Women's economic security statement. This builds on the important work of the former member for Higgins, Kelly O'Dwyer. The statement sought to invest in three key pillars: workforce participation, earning potential and economic independence. This year's updated statement will see our government invest $240 million in measures and programs to support things that I think Dame Margaret would have approved of. This includes women's safety at work and at home; new cadetships and apprenticeships for the women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics; and job creation and entrepreneurialism. The statement was of particular importance this year following the vast impact of the economic fallout from COVID on women in our communities. As Dame Margaret understood, provision of support to bolster the efforts of women is crucial in order to achieve equal participation of women in parliament and in the whole of community life. In 1944, Sir Robert Menzies, founder of the Liberal Party, foreshadowed that women were unquestionably destined to exercise more and more influence on practical politics in Australia. Perhaps Menzies was predicting at that time the astounding legacy and leadership of Dame Margaret, which would change the landscape for ever more, only a few decades later.
Now, in 2020, the Liberal Party remains committed to an Australia where women are full and active participants in all spheres of public and private life. At the end of the Howard government, around one-third of government board positions were occupied by women. In 2016, we set a target of women occupying 50 per cent of Australian government board positions. I'm proud to be part of a government that is ensuring that this target is on track to be met, with 46 per cent of positions, which is the highest proportion ever held by women. Furthermore, there are currently seven women in cabinet, which maintains the record of women in cabinet for an Australian government. At the same time, we now have equal gender representation in the Senate, with 38 women and 38 men for the first time ever. The achievements of the Liberal Party to date are testament to our commitment to recognising, protecting and enhancing the position and opportunities for Australian women. This commitment remains inspired by the leadership of the greats who came before us, including Dame Margaret Guilfoyle. Certainly, Dame Margaret leaves behind an astounding legacy that has profoundly changed how Australian society operates. The Australian parliament, the Liberal Party and, indeed, the entire nation are better for her service. Vale, Dame Margaret Guilfoyle.
I understand it is the wish of honourable members to signify at this stage their respect and sympathy by rising in their places.
Honourable members having stood in their places—
I thank the Federation Chamber.
I move:
That further proceedings be conducted in the House.
Question agreed to.
On 12 November 2012, the then Prime Minister the Hon. Julia Gillard MP announced the establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, with an estimated 60,000 children having been abused by those entrusted with their care. The work of the commission concluded when it handed its final report, with 409 recommendations, to the Governor-General on 15 December 2017. The cost of the commission was a staggering $345 million—taxpayer dollars well spent, when one considers the odious prevalence of abuse within our institutions, laid bare for all to see through the commission's work.
Arising from the commission's work was the creation of a single National Redress Scheme intended to provide financial compensation to abuse survivors and, just as importantly, the provision of direct personal responses to survivors from culpable institutions. Institutions identified by the commission have until 30 December 2020 to sign up to participate in the scheme. It is pleasing to see that almost all of those institutions have signed up to fully participate. This will no doubt provide some comfort for survivors, going forward, knowing that they have been heard and that there is contrition, and knowing that they may receive some monetary compensation. To date, I understand that around 8,300 applications have been lodged with the National Redress Scheme, with decisions made on 4,670 of those.
Regrettably there is one notable institution identified in the Prime Minister's statement that is yet to agree to willingly sign up to the scheme. I refer to the Jehovah's Witnesses. They are probably best known amongst the general population as those who don't accept blood transfusions. It is estimated that there are 8.5 million converts worldwide, with approximately 68,000 in Australia. I believe the vast majority of those people are good people, and very faithful to their beliefs. However, the same cannot be said of the organisation's global leadership, who totally control their followers, and about whom I direct my remarks.
Jehovah's Witness activities are banned by over 30 countries in the world. They are one of Canada's wealthiest and least transparent charities. America is the head office of this organisation, with an estimated 1.25 million converts. They don't believe in military service, national anthems or voting. They don't celebrate holidays. They shun those who, in their eyes, go astray, and they believe sins require two witnesses to be verified.
Arising from the royal commission, there were 1,800 Jehovah's Witnesses identified as victims of abuse, 1,006 potential perpetrators and, startlingly, 537 self-confessed perpetrators. As stated by one writer, and as it would appear from the figures available, the Jehovah's Witnesses had the worst rates of child sexual abuse and cover-up of any institution examined by the royal commission. There is no evidence of any referrals to police or other authorities. Clearly, they also believe they are above the law. When faced with a complaint of child abuse within the Jehovah's Witness organisation, the two-witness rule applies. Put simply, this requires an abused child to have an eye witness, independent of themselves, give evidence before Jehovah's Witness elders that they witnessed the abuse complained of by a victim. The practice is fully set out in the report of case study 29, released by the commission in 2016. So what is the justification put forward by the Jehovah's Witnesses to not participate in the national redress scheme? Alarmingly, despite all the evidence to the contrary, they assert that no institutional child abuse occurs. They claim the abuse uncovered is familial abuse. They assert that, because they do not run childcare camps or other social activities that have a child away from the parents, the institution is not responsible and therefore not liable for any wrongdoing. The assertion is facile and does not withstand any scrutiny. The Jehovah's Witnesses exert more control over their flock than any other organisation examined by the commission. They run quasi-judicial hearings into complaints, overseen by their elders. It is seen as a sin for any Jehovah's Witness member to seek assistance from society's correct channels. To do so would lead to one being shunned by the congregation—disturbingly, this includes family members.
The Jehovah's Witnesses are a very wealthy organisation. All assets belong to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and not the local congregants. They call their churches Kingdom Halls, and they are built using congregants' labour and donations. The labour is unpaid and, I understand, at times includes the labour of children. They derive money from deceased estates bequeathed to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society by convening district conventions and circuit assemblies, and through the sale of real estate, which appears to have escalated since the royal commission in Australia and enquiries into their organisations in other countries. Their wealth is estimated in billions, not millions, of dollars. They are more than financially capable of participating in the redress scheme.
No institution is to be congratulated for participating in the redress scheme. It is the only moral path to follow, given the commission's findings. Any institution failing to participate stands to be condemned. The minister has indicated that those institutions failing to join run the real risk of having their charitable tax status revoked. This message was reinforced by the Prime Minister and is supported by Labor. It is a position that I support. The government should immediately withdraw charitable tax status from Jehovah's Witnesses or any other named entity that does not join the national redress scheme.
Over recent weeks, I have been contacted by several people who have raised with me matters of sexual abuse, related suicides and attempted suicides, and the difficulty in ceasing seeking redress or justice through the court system. These are people that were associated with the Jehovah's Witness church. The royal commission, the redress scheme and now the federal government's intervention in bringing the Jehovah's Witnesses to account are their last hopes.
One person who recently contacted me is trying to seek redress through the court system. It is proving to be extremely difficult, and the redress scheme was perhaps the last option for that person. In another case, dealing with suicides, again, the same applies—trying to prove what happened is near impossible, given the culture within that organisation. Therefore the redress scheme was the last and only hope for all of these people. I urge the government to follow through with the commitment to bring to account organisations that do not participate in the redress scheme and to ensure that they are accountable to victims of the abuse that occurred under their watch.
I've been thinking a lot about this speech—effectively, ever since the apology was given two years ago. It's for this simple reason: when the Prime Minister and then Leader of the Opposition spoke, they both kept using the words, 'I believe you.'
I was reflecting on the significance of the first people who said that. It's so important for those words 'I believe you' to be said and so reassuring for kids who've gone through all sorts of hell. But we also need to remember that for many, many years no-one was saying that and that the first few people who made that comment were extraordinarily brave and that sometimes we haven't recognised them either. So the apology and everything about it quite rightly is about the individuals who have been the targets of institutional abuse.
One of the natures of abuse is that it is always a person who is a figure of trust. It is always a person who is a figure of authority. So when the allegation is first made by someone who was themselves in a situation of being powerless the person they talk to first often has a whole lot at stake as well.
My final year at school was at the very beginning of when different allegations started to emerge about a number of the Christian Brothers. As I first started to hear the allegations—I'd gone through eight years at the same school, and I'd had no idea as to some of the things that had gone on—no matter how many speeches we make of 'I believe you' the instinctive reaction was, 'That can't be true.' That's your starting point when you hear about a person who had been in a position of trust.
I want to pay tribute to one teacher, by the name of Merv McCormack, who was our year master at school, who I think it's fair to say was arguably the first person for many kids who said, 'I believe you.' His career at that point was on a huge upward trajectory. While he still had a good career, I think it's fair to say that he took a hit for saying three words. Those three words were: I believe you.
It was a few years later that stories about some of the problems that had been within that order emerged. Certainly it was not everybody in that order, and I don't think anyone would take the words that way. But some people within that order had been involved in actions that were the opposite of the reason that a whole lot of other young men had decided to devote their lives to what they believed was a good, noble cause started by a bloke called Edmund Ignatius Rice.
The courage of the first person who said, 'I believe you,' needs to be noted, needs to be remembered and needs to be the challenge for us, because one day it's just as likely to be one of us. As easy as the speeches are now—and they're not easy in an emotional sense—here's the challenge: there will be times that we don't expect, when somebody who we have trusted, who is in a position of authority, has behaved appallingly and in an abusive way behind closed doors. If they weren't in a position of authority, they never would have been in that privileged circumstance of trust. I hope we all have the courage of Merv McCormack, because those words 'I believe you' are powerful in a speech but often really hard for people to say.
No matter how powerless the person who first hears about it might feel, they're a whole lot more powerful than the kid who is reporting to them. They're a lot more powerful than the person who's now an adult who's been holding this information back their entire life.
I've rarely mentioned my school in the time I've been here. In fact, I think it's the first time I have done so. It was a good school for me, a great place. The brothers who were there and the order were all good, as far as my interactions were concerned. But some people had a horrific experience. But it is the case that, around the country, there were people who said, 'I believe you, even though you're the kid, even though you're talking about someone who might be my boss.' That is what teachers at different points would have had to have gone through. I just hope we all have that strength. If we don't, then the apology was, in fact, an event for a day.
The apology won't end occasions where abuse occurs, but it has to end occasions where abuse is covered up. It has to be the end of occasions where the reaction is to say: 'That couldn't possibly be true.' I think that part of the argument, which we sometimes get ourselves into when we're react to child abuse, makes it harder for some kids to report it. Sometimes we get into an argument where we say: 'That person is a monster.' The challenge here is that sometimes people have a series of personas, public versus private, that are radically different, and thinking that we know someone and that something couldn't possibly be true doesn't take you anywhere.
To all those teachers, those parents, those family friends, those admin workers, those counsellors and those members of organisations around the country who have reacted with the words 'I believe you', I simply say: you have been part of the saving of the nation. These sort of crimes are the worst blemishes the nation ever has to consider. I hope that the apology we're remembering today goes some way to helping the victims themselves, the targets—the survivors, which is the term. I also hope that we do remember that group that we probably haven't thought enough about: the first people who said 'I believe you'. A lot of them lost their jobs. A lot of them lost their careers. But all of them protected the country.
In rising to commemorate the second anniversary of the National Apology to Victims and Survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, I want to join with the other speakers in acknowledging all of those who suffered as a consequence of that abuse. There are people who lost their lives as a consequence of that abuse. They never recovered from the trauma. They were never able to live with what they had been through, and some of them never even disclosed what they had been through. There were children who tried to report what was happening to them and weren't believed. There were children who weren't able to find the words to report what was happening to them and carried it with them into adulthood. There are adults who made their first disclosure later in life. There are adults who made their first disclosure, having thought about it and lived with it for years and years—decades in some cases.
There were victims who did not survive, and there are survivors. Many of those survivors fought for a long time to be able to live with what happened, to be able to bring the perpetrators to justice and to seek the disinfection of sunlight in relation to child sexual abuse.
In my electorate, I want to mention Lotus Place and Micah Projects, who've worked very hard with victims and survivors. All of the people who attend Lotus Place do so because of historical abuse. I also want to mention CLAN and a friend of mine Bill Marklew, who has been an advocate for people who are survivors of abuse. But there are so many more people who stood up and said that as a nation we have to come to terms with what happened. We've got to face up to it. We can't wish it never happened and turn our eyes and divert our gaze. We have to look squarely in the face of what happened so it never happens again.
The royal commission into institutional abuse was a moment for looking squarely in the face of what happened to so many people. It was a national moment for doing that. Thousands of people, 17,000 people, came forward in that royal commission and 8,000 of them shared their stories. It was a massive groundswell of pain that was ventilated at that royal commission, and that was a royal commission that Julia Gillard instituted. I pay tribute to her and the government at the time for doing that. I also pay tribute to the now Prime Minister and the former Leader of the Opposition for making the national apology a little more than two years ago. That apology was a really important moment for all of us, certainly all of us here in this parliament to bear witness while our leaders, our elected leaders, the people the nation chose to speak for them, on behalf of the nation gave that apology. It was an important day, not because it signified the conclusion of shining the light, the conclusion of dealing with these issues, but because it signified an important step at the beginning of that long process.
We have the National Redress Scheme. The National Redress Scheme is incredibly important. You can never compensate for pain. You can never compensate for abuse. You can never compensate for trauma. All the compensation, all the redress and all the funding can be are symbols of the grief, the regret, the apology, the pain. No money in the world is enough to make up for what happened but that's not a reason not to make sure the money isn't adequate to be an expression of the regret, of the pain and of genuine redress.
As at the beginning of November, the scheme had received 8,577 applications. It had made more than 4,900 decisions, issued almost 5,000 outcomes, finalised more than 4,000 applications, including more than 4,000 payments totalling approximately $340.3 million. It had made 588 offers of redress which were currently with applicants to consider, and were processing 4,121 applications. But eight years since the announcement of the royal commission and two years since the apology, survivors in many cases are still waiting and, tragically, some of them are not living long enough to see the finalisation of their applications for redress.
In the last couple of minutes available to me before the debate moves on, I do say it's important to make sure the redress scheme is fit for purpose and accommodates the needs of survivors, particularly those survivors who are elderly, who are frail. It's important as well for those institutions that haven't yet signed on, if they have been named in an application, to do the right thing and sign up. Do the right thing and sign up to the scheme. We on this side have also been arguing for the cap to be lifted to $200,000 rather than the $150,000 the states and the Commonwealth have agreed to. But whatever is done, fairness is important. We should not have a situation where there's insult added to injury, so I do call on the government to make sure they do everything possible to ensure the scheme is fair.
In closing, let me say again to those victims and survivors: as everyone in this debate has said, we believe you, we are grateful for your courage and we hear you.
The anniversary of the apology reminds us of an event which was very significant and this parliament at its best. It comes as a step in a road which began with a Senate enquiry into children in institutional care, which saw the delivery of a Senate report on 30 August 2004 called Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children. From then until the apology, we have seen a transformation in the way in which this country has viewed this issue and it's a transformation which I've had the honour of seeing personally over that period as part of my journey in respect of this journey.
It being 6.30, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192B. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed on a future date.
I have to confess I'm a little envious of many members opposite—people like the member for Dawson, the member for Hinkler and the member for Hughes—who are untroubled by one of the major concerns which bedevils and confronts most Australian. I'd love to live in a world without climate change as they seem to; a world without any need to worry about extreme weather events destroying the lives and property in Australia; and a world without concerns about the Great Barrier Reef, waves of extinctions drowning out our irreplaceable Australian species or the most basic level of water security for future generations.
I understand the impulse to reject reality because, like anyone who actually takes science seriously, what is happening worries—no, it actually scares me too. And I'm not alone. The overwhelming majority of Australians shares my fears on our climate future. We know this, because we've asked them. We even know how few people share the opinions of the climate denialists amongst the government opposite—nine per cent. Let's be very clear on that: the nutbag antiscience denialists in the government represent only nine per cent of Australian.
We know that there's a spectrum of engagement with climate change issues in the community from the very engaged activist types to the completely dismissive—the 'she'll be right' mob. But the majority of Australians do see climate change to a lesser or greater degree as an existential threat to humanity and our way of life.
I can understand why so many government MPs want to believe that what's already happening is somehow magically not that bad, that the Bureau of Meteorology are secretly manipulating the weather data for no possible gain or that a mysterious army of invisible arsonists, aided and abetted by the greenies and the environment movement, are responsible for the bushfires which devastated so much of our country this time last year and that have started again.
On some level I also want to think that 50 years of climate science has all been a silly mistake and that we don't actually have to make changes to the way we work and live. It's far easier and far more comforting to just pretend that climate change isn't happening—it's just changing the climate—or to pretend that COVID-19 isn't real, that it's not a threat, than it is to actually make hard decisions, but necessary decisions, to wear masks, restrict activities or put up with other inconveniences.
It's also no shock that many people who were seduced by one conspiracy theory are also comforted by others. So let's just drop a few reality bombs on some of the loonier members of the government opposite: 5G will not rot your brain; vaccines are not filled with science fiction tracking devices; Donald Trump didn't win the election; masks do help stop COVID but bleach and hydroxychloroquine are not a cure; this one—the world is not run by a secret cabal of lizard paedophiles linked to the British royal family—as much as I dislike them, QAnon; and climate change is not a hoax. These mad right-wing fantasies should be called out, not given succour by government members or ever tolerated by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's failure to challenge the climate lunacy on his backbench, and now in his cabinet—he promoted the member for Hinkler—is a failure of leadership. On some level, I think the Prime Minister actually quite likes this arrangement. He hates taking action and actually being responsible. He's just a daggy dad hanging at home in the Lodge with his personal photographer. But Australians desperately need a government willing to take action and to seize opportunities. There's too much at stake. We need leadership, not a marketing department that masquerades as a government.
It's sad that the politicised subject of climate change—the very words 'climate change' have been politicised now—has reached a point where those at the extremes are no longer persuadable by facts and evidence. We're clear on that. The research shows that charts and slides don't change hearts and minds. But we don't actually need to persuade anyone, because over 90 per cent of Australians want action. Most MPs were elected to this parliament promising to take action. The member for Higgins over there was. She's one of those moderate Liberals we hear about. She has a background in research and science. I respect her for that. The member for Higgins knows what the data is telling us and understands the threats we face and the opportunities that this country could seize. But too many government MPs, these moderate Liberals, are gutless. They don't speak up. They just give in to the nutters over there who threaten to blow up the government if they act on climate change. I think the real sin of the member for Dawson—who, unlike perhaps the member for Hughes, is not actually stupid—is that he knows exactly what he's doing. He's a very clever man. But these so-called Liberal moderates, these fakes, should know that Australians see them and they'll remember their complicity in dodging the greatest threat of our age.
Labor has been willing for years to find a bipartisan and politically sustainable solution to this issue, but the Liberals are too scared of the nutters in their own ranks. Government should be about robust debate about policy. Australians can actually handle the truth. We used to have leaders that could give people the truth and take them from one place to another. Over 90 per cent of Australians—we'll keep saying it—accept the reality of climate change. We know that the vast majority want leadership and urgent action to reduce emissions, not just because they're scared but because they understand the huge opportunities for our country. It's not too late to transition to being the regional renewable superpower we should already be—exporting clean energy to our neighbours and green tech to the world. We could be embarking on a truly nation-building project, creating thousands of sustainable jobs. The Labor leader, in his budget reply, outlined practical policies to create thousands of jobs. Even the Liberal state governments are facing reality and taking action. They've all signed up to net zero by 2050—all of them.
Australians can understand the science, yet, when they hear members of their own national government parroting lies about clean coal, their respect for government itself diminishes, and it makes us as a nation look like fools in the developed world. As Malcolm Turnbull recently said on Q+A, saying you believe or disbelieve in global warming is like saying you believe or disbelieve in gravity. It's wonderful, of course, isn't it, to see Malcolm's spine is growing back! Tony Abbott was hostile to climate change, and how did that end for him? It's good to see that Liberal voters in Hughes are now fed up with the member for Hughes. They've taken the drastic step of forming a local grassroots organisation to find a better and saner local MP, one that isn't internationally regarded as a laughing-stock. When your own voting base is actively mobilising against you, Member for Hughes, maybe it's time to go back to your old career as a furniture salesman.
It was back in 2010 that then US President Barack Obama warned that America's growing distrust of science, manipulated for political ends by Republicans, wasn't just dangerous for scientific progress and prosperity; it was dangerous as it undermined public trust in institutions. Right now the United States shows us what happens when trust is weakened. Governments exist to provide stability and security and solve collective problems. Policy must be based on evidence. A government which treats science as something people can take or leave, as though science itself is a matter of prejudice or opinion, or a game where you barrack for your favourite team, erodes trust in the public good and damages our democracy.
The Prime Minister has told the nation all year that his COVID response was based on scientific advice. Well, that's good and as it should be. But, if he can follow the science on COVID, why not on climate change? Scientists tell us that climate change is a much greater threat to humanity than COVID. The overwhelming majority of Australians recognise the need for, and are calling out for, real action on climate change. Yet delusional demands from government MPs for taxpayer subsidies for coal fired power stations or rejection of the evidence before our own eyes as bushfire seasons start earlier and earlier, see more and more public trust fall away.
The compact between the parliament and the people who elected us is a vital but fragile one, and the responsibility for preserving it depends on every member on this place being honest and in leaders leading. The Prime Minister needs to start taking his job seriously, stand up to the nutters in his government or get rid of them, not promote them to cabinet, and lead. Right now the Prime Minister is quarantining at The Lodge with his personal photographer. Instead of holing up with his chief of staff or his economic adviser or the Chief Scientist, or working intensively on real problems like poverty or climate change, this failed marketing guy chose a photographer to take photos of him pretending to be an ordinary guy.
The thing is, he is not an ordinary guy. He is the Prime Minister. He is supposed to lead and act on real problems, not muck around with chook sheds and shorts and baseball caps. There is no task more urgent for humanity's long-term future then tackling man made climate change. The government needs to set meaningful targets for emissions reduction, not fake targets. We need a proper road map for how industry and energy will transition to a low carbon future—like just about every developed nation in the world has except for us—and how Australia will take advantage of the jobs and the social benefits of renewable energy, sustainable technology and sustainable industry. If this is too difficult for the Liberal and National parties to deal with, or deal with the nutters in their government, they should stand aside and let a government that accepts reality take over.
I hoped the previous member would stay for this debate, because he has been talking about how important science is, and that is actually the topic of my contribution this evening. I am very pleased to be able to provide what I think are some quite sensible remarks.
The first thing I would like to say is that the previous speaker, on the opposite side, doesn't seem to understand the concept of our democracy, which is based on freedom of speech. So too for science. Science is about freedom of speech, it is about the contest of ideas, respectfully. So what is interesting is that the previous speaker made a lot of very personal comments about our Prime Minister, which I find deeply offensive. It is extremely offensive to be playing the man and not the ball. But anyway, we will leave it at that.
As we face a post-COVID world, it has become even important that we turn to science, because science will help us build the skills we need for economic recovery. Seventy-five per cent of jobs in the future are slated to require skills in science, technology and engineering and mathematics, or what are commonly referred to as the STEM subjects. It is now more important than ever that we arm Australians of all ages as they need to be able to understand our tech led recovery.
As a scientist, I have always believed in enabling others through the powerful exchange of ideas. That does not mean gagging ideas. It means listening respectfully, debating them and then coming to a conclusion that is expert, informed and evidence based. Science represents an ideal form for this exchange, especially in encouraging greater fascination amongst people of all ages in understanding the world we live in.
Some people think that science is just something you read about in a book, but in fact you actually need to go and discover it for yourself or as a scientist. It is about discovery. It is about curiosity. It is about being open-minded. Our country depends on problem solvers who are educated, trained and curious. Boosting the confidence and engagement of our next generation of STEM students, especially among young women, is fundamental to our government's agenda of ensuring that the next generation is prepared for the future of work, a future that is underpinned by the growth of the knowledge economy.
As a medical researcher for many years, I spent time in the profession understanding the importance of science, technology, engineering and maths. It's a real passion of mine, and I am proud to be a part of a government that is investing deeply in STEM. Indeed, Australia has produced some of the best medical research on the planet. We really do punch above our weight. A unique blend of Aussie character, of seeking opportunity but being resourceful and resilient by making do with what we have, can be seen as much in the corridors of our research institutes and universities as in the outback of our sunburnt country. Having travelled internationally for many years and worked as a professor at a UK university, I believe we have a unique blend of resilience and resourcefulness in our science, and that leads to a very unique approach to our science. The need and demand for skills in STEM have only grown, and we need to make sure that we support our young scientist as they go out into the world.
That takes me to another point, and that is that the take-up of STEM subjects is showing some encouraging results in our education system. I was able to see this firsthand recently when a young constituent, Grace, an eight-year-old from a local school in my electorate, Malvern Primary School, visited in me in my electoral office to explain to me her amazing idea. Importantly, she was actually awarded an enormous cheque for this amazing idea. She received a cheque of $10,000 for winning the Origin Energy company's Little Big Idea competition with her idea. Grace came up with a 'kick me pedestrian button' in the wake of the COVID crisis. This idea was to stop people using their hands to touch the buttons at traffic lights and therefore prevent COVID from spreading. I repeat: this is an eight-year-old girl in my electorate who came up with this idea. During our meeting, we spoke about how she wants to become a scientist when she grows up and find a cure for diabetes, since she has it in her family. We had a chat about disease treatments and cures and some of the studies that I've worked on in my career as a medical researcher.
After my meeting with Grace, I feel confident that the future will be very bright, especially with even more investment from the Morrison government to back STEM. And, my goodness, what a lot of investment the Morrison government is making into STEM and STEM skills for young Australians. We have provided significant funding for initiatives to teach and learn STEM in early learning in schools. This was announced in the recent 2020 budget. This includes $9.6 million to extend and evaluate the Primary Connections, Science by Doing and reSolve: Mathematics by Inquiry science programs to support student learning, including resources for teachers; $5.7 million to support the Foundation to Year Two expansion of the Early Learning STEM Australia program to improve STEM literacy and numeracy in Australian schools; $4.8 million to extend and evaluate the STEM Professionals in Schools program by partnering teachers with STEM professionals to enhance STEM teaching practices and deliver engaging STEM education in Australian schools; $4.4 million to extend and evaluate the Let’s Count program to help develop the early numeracy skills of disadvantaged children; and $2.8 million to extend and evaluate the Little Scientists program to help early learning educators to build their skills and confidence in STEM so that they can lead fun and inquiry-based learning.
The government is also providing $1.5 million to support the delivery of Artificial Intelligence in Schools, under the Australian Technology and Science Growth Plan, as part of the $29.9 million Artificial Intelligence Capability Fund measure; $9.5 million to strengthen the capacity of teachers across Australia to teach mathematics and numeracy through online professional development courses for teachers of foundation to Year 10 students, supported by face-to-face professional learning, and a repository of teaching and learning resources through an online mathematics hub—all music to my ears.
But, more than that, our government has a focus on women in STEM. The Morrison government's Women's Economic Security statement, which has been handed down for the second time in this year's budget, builds on our commitment to women in STEM. If you are to bridge the gender pay gap then it is critical that we equip women and girls to gain the skills to access high-skilled, high-paying jobs. That is why the Morrison government is providing an additional $14.5 million to support women and girls looking to enter STEM fields. The government is provide additional funding for the Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship grants program, called the WISE program. To date, the WISE program has provided $8 million to 46 organisations supporting a range of projects that have increased women and girls' participation in STEM and entrepreneurship. The government is also committing $25 million for women in STEM cadetships and advanced apprenticeships to create STEM career pathways for up to 500 women through industry sponsored advanced apprenticeship-style courses starting next year. I encourage anyone in my electorate or, indeed, right across Australia who is interested in any of these programs to apply—and, if they don't know how to apply, to contact me, because I'm really very interested in mentoring women in STEM and making sure that we can provide the grants that are needed to get women back into STEM and to make sure that they participate in STEM in greater numbers.
On this sides of the House, we know that science and technology are fuelling a transformation in the workforce. That is why the government has passed legislation to increase the number of graduates in areas of expected employment growth and demand, including STEM and IT. This will incentivise students to make more job relevant choices, which will lead to more job ready graduates by reducing the contribution of areas of expected employment growth and demand.
We know the jobs of the future that are expanding at speed are in health, IT and psychology, and we want our education to provide for those students so that they are job-ready for the explosion of jobs in these areas. This is particularly important as we look to pivot to new market opportunities, as reliance on our resources shifts in the new energy order that is evolving as we speak. We need to better educate and train the next generation in STEM to ensure we grasp the new opportunities with both hands. This includes investment in renewables, batteries and storage, and hydrogen. We have a $500 million commitment to building a hydrogen export industry. This is to be welcomed and is part of the first Low Emissions Technology Statement that was delivered recently by the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor. The minister had five economic stretch goals in the Low Emissions Technology Statement. Technology, not taxes, is what we have been driving forward when we are looking to an opportunity of agreeing a renewable future.
Science is a contest of ideas, just like politics, and we should champion scientific solutions for the challenges we face. We can achieve this through investment and actively encouraging more participation in STEM, particularly among women. As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to create an agile and innovative economy with highly skilled and highly paid jobs. Investment in STEM is key to achieving this.
Anybody who has been in the Parramatta CBD lately will really relate to this story. I went to my office a couple of weeks ago. I walked on the footpath and I was going to go in my front door, but there was a truck parked across it. I couldn't actually get to the door. There was a giant truck and six guys with sledge hammers and such things on the footpath. I could not get to the door of my office. Businesses in the Parramatta CBD have been living with that for quite some time. If you drive through the Parramatta CBD, one day you can turn right, the next day you can't. You detour two blocks one way and then you can turn right again. Whole streets are blocked off every single day and they have been for months. Footpaths are torn up and businesses are literally blocked off from their customers, and you never know, from one day to the next, what it will look like the next day. Driving through Parramatta now is a nightmare. It can take you 20 minutes longer to get from one side of Parramatta to the other, simply because everyone is channelled through it sometimes. You can't turn off. You go from one side to the other, straight through, in one narrow lane because that's all that's left. It is a total and absolute mess, and it's because of the building of the Parramatta Light Rail.
What I'm hearing is that the light rail construction has devastated the retail and restaurant hub of Church Street. In fact, 'Eat Street' is essentially a construction zone from one end to the other. You can't even drive through it. Earlier this year, businesses said that trade was down between 30 and 80 per cent. That was pre-COVID. Businesses are facing a double whammy now of COVID and a 24/7 construction zone on their doorstep. It's not just the noise and the dust that's hurting business. The once busy street is pretty much inaccessible. There is no parking anymore. You can get to the two parking stations if you can figure out how to get there, which is increasingly difficult because you can't turn into the street that they're in, and many businesses now fear that customers won't return at all. Council is running promotions, such as free parking in their stations, but assistance is extremely limited and there is no sign of compensation from the New South Wales government. Businesses are closing early, laying off staff, cutting their hours or closing up altogether. John Chammas, from Mama & Papas, said half the restaurants were gone now and Parramatta risked becoming a ghost town. It really is appalling. Anthony Lichaa from Lichaa Menswear called for compensation from the state government.
One of the worst things about this is that it is stage 1 of the Parramatta Light Rail. We're supposed to have stage 2. Stage 2 is the bit that made sense. It was just heavy rail from Carlingford to Parramatta, and it was ripped up and replaced with light rail and then extended to Westmead, so that you could catch three trains from Westmead to Parramatta instead of one. So there's very little new here; it's just about throwing out the old and replacing it with something else. Stage 2 made sense, because it was the one that linked it through to Homebush and the heavier rail, but stage 2 was cancelled. Now we've got this extraordinary ripping up of heritage buildings, heritage buildings being knocked down and business basically being destroyed for stage 1, which will now stand alone and shuttle people from Carlingford to Westmead, which you used to be able to do on the train—the heavy rail—anyway. This is an absolute mess. I encourage my constituents and the people of Parramatta to get in touch with their state member. It's not usual for a federal politician to say, 'Contact a Liberal state member,' but I really suggest that you do. Only he can sort this out. He has the power to do that. There is still time to build stage 2, there is still time to turn this around and there is still time to consider the damage that's being done right now to businesses in Parramatta.
The Parramatta light rail isn't just doing damage to business. I want to talk about a few of my constituents that are really struggling with this build. A man from my electorate contacted my office about construction work going on after hours. He said that the noise shakes his house and that his baby can't sleep at all. His wife is exhausted and recently had a seizure due to stress. He said he was seeing birds literally dropping dead during construction due to the dust. He's made a complaint, but there has been no meaningful action at all.
I'm going to talk about another constituent who is also suffering because of the Parramatta light rail construction. Neesha called my office about the terrible toll the Parramatta light rail construction is taking on her health, her husband's health and her home. She lives in a ground floor apartment by the river on Church Street and says that there's intolerable noise all day and late into the night. There is constant dust pollution, which is making her house dirty. She cleans it, and it's dirty again the next day. Her garden has died because of the dust pollution. Her husband's garden has died because of the dust. She says that he won't go into the garden anymore and that he's depressed, has stopped sleeping and just sits on his bed. She's now becoming depressed. She's phoned light rail several times. They've done nothing about her concerns and they suggested they wear earplugs. That was it. Her husband's injury means earplugs are not an option for him. When she called us, she was at the end of her tether, quite reasonably. She felt that no-one was listening and that she's living in a war zone. We've heard from many people like Neesha—many.
Another person, Kylie, has been suffering because of the Parramatta light rail. Kylie contacted my office a couple of months ago about the night works in Parramatta and the terrible toll this is taking on her family. Night works would run outside her home between 7 am and 9 pm until 5 am, sometimes 24 hours, for three to four days at a time. Kylie is a single mum with two kids. Her young son has autism and noise sensitivity, meaning that noise causes him physical pain. During night works, he wouldn't sleep, and he'd sit in the corner all night in a state of extreme distress. His fear and distress are expressed as anger, and Kylie told us she was worried it was holding back his learning and development. She doesn't understand why the night works are necessary, when the roads are already blocked off all day. Kylie also said that she felt trapped because her son thrives on routine and his routine and the family support network are in Parramatta. She raised her concerns with Parramatta light rail. They sent someone out to do a noise check. They recorded noise above the minimum level, but nothing changed. Parramatta light rail offered to put Kylie and her young family in a hotel during night works, but that's not an option for her son because of his autism. Kylie said that even if it were an option she doesn't believe that they would have followed through. Ultimately, she was forced to move to an apartment with double glazing. Her rent went from $340 to $570 a week. The process of moving was extremely distressing for her son, and it took him three weeks to adjust to a new premises.
These are just some of the stories of real people in Parramatta whose needs as families and individuals are being completely ignored during this construction phase. Again, I would suggest to anybody who is struggling with the noise, the dust and the vibrations from this construction zone to call their state member and have something to say about it, because this is really causing incredible distress.
There's another rail project in Parramatta. It's not just the Parramatta light rail, which will take a number of years to build. There's also the Sydney Metro West, which is a heavier rail that's running from the CBD, north of the current line, through Strathfield and Homebush to Parramatta and then to Westmead. So that's the third train line from Parramatta to Westmead. But it also goes from the city to Parramatta. This has been hailed as this great train project to link up the rapidly growing suburbs between Homebush and Parramatta. The problem is there are no stops between Homebush and Parramatta. There's a 10-kilometre gap in the plan, so in the biggest growth area, Camellia—with all of the high-density apartments, all the talk about 'uplift' for people buying properties near the train line when they first talked about building this—there's no stop between Parramatta and Homebush. The reason they have given is that it would slow the train down. In the 10 kilometres there are none but on the other side of Homebush, between Homebush and the CBD, there is a train stop every 2.5 kilometres; there are five of them. So they can put five train stops between Homebush and the CBD in areas that are already built largely to their capacity but they can't put one, not even one, in the 10 kilometres between Parramatta and the CBD.
Again I am urging people to talk to their state member, because the line has not yet even started to be built for Westmead. In fact, they are only calling for tenders for the drilling for the tunnelling now. Nothing has happened yet which can't be fixed because the work hasn't started. So please, again, talk to your state member, phone the minister, phone any Liberal politician you think might listen to you and tell them that this is nonsense because it is. Parramatta to Homebush with no stops, no stop in Camellia will mean that the light rail project goes from Carlingford all the way into Parramatta and then change trains and go out through Camellia. And even though they can't put a stop in Camellia, they can compulsorily acquire the speedway which has been there for decades in order to put in a shunting yard. So they can't put a stop there but they can acquire the land and build rail tracks. This is absurd, so call your local member and get it fixed.
Perhaps it is common ground that we both agree we have grievances with our respective state governments. Certainly that is a position on which we agree. In my maiden speech, I talked about advocating for all those in my electorate and across the country on a number of social issues including domestic violence, drug and alcohol challenges, child sex abuse, mental health and eating disorders. I also said I would like to assist those living with homelessness.
Difficult issues often contribute to problems that lead to homelessness. They all kind of roll into one oftentimes. People don't really want to talk about homelessness, which touches so many Australians, and sometimes just a couple of life events can combine to lead to a person becoming homeless. Recently the risks, as we all know, have been higher for many in our communities. Of course the circumstances and life events that may lead to homelessness may vary, based on a range of factors including gender, and cultural and linguistic diversity. For example, women over 60 may become homeless due to the death of an income-earning spouse, a lack of retirement savings or super, being forced out of the workforce early or indeed due to divorce and/or domestic violence. Homelessness is indeed a very complex issue and, as such, so too are the solutions and wraparound services that are required to help homeless people.
Even though services for the homeless and for day-to-day housing are the responsibility of state and territory governments, the Morrison government is making a significant investment in solutions to help the states and territories meet their responsibilities. This government recognises the need for housing that is safe, affordable and secure, and many Australians may not be aware that this recognition is backed with an annual investment of $6 billion in both housing and in improving homelessness outcomes. This includes $4.6 billion a year in Commonwealth rent assistance to Australians on welfare payments and it also includes $1.6 billion a year through the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, the NHHA, with the states and territories.
In 2021, my home state of Queensland will receive $326.6 million, including around $32.9 million in dedicated homelessness funding, under the NHHA. Older women and children affected by domestic violence are prioritised under the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement. Unfortunately, in the past, the Queensland government has not delivered the level of cooperation or the results that one would expect given that amount of funding.
I was elected in May 2019, as you're probably aware, Mr Deputy Speaker Andrews. In October of the same year, some few months later, I, along with my city's mayor, requested a meeting with the minister for housing in Queensland. We requested that he, together with the federal assistant minister for homelessness, come to discuss a way forward and to talk about working together on this very complex issue that is affecting my electorate on the Gold Coast. What happened? When I extended that invitation to the state minister for housing, he refused.
Dr Aly interjecting—
Member for Cowan, he refused. He wouldn't meet with me and he wouldn't meet with our city's mayor, and he certainly wouldn't meet with the federal minister. The first question that I would ask is: what happens to that $1.6 million that goes to the states and territories from the federal government to help the people in my electorate who are homeless? I'm passionate about improving the situation for Gold Coasters who find themselves in this situation and about the flow-on effects on our community—on the likes of the St John's Crisis Centre in Surfers Paradise, which is now helping with the extra demand around this very difficult and complex issue.
At the grassroots level on the Gold Coast, just this week I had in my office a gentleman from the Rotary Club of Surfers Paradise who was receiving a volunteer award. He was telling me that his Rotary club is building housing for those people who are at risk of homelessness. So my community is actually taking it into its own hands to help those who need extra help during this period. They have built a development in Moncrieff to house those pensioners.
When the pandemic hit, some Australians faced a greater risk of homelessness. I was working very closely with stakeholders to address the urgent needs of our community, so I do know a little bit about this issue, which I have a grievance with the state government over. I'm sad to say that there was a disappointing lack of action at the state level—a lack of support from the Queensland government for the community groups that do such a great job supporting those in our community who are doing it tough. They took too long to step up to the mark. Of course, local community groups, like St John's Crisis Centre, are close to the problem and have insight and agility to meet local needs, if they have sufficient funding. But these groups are themselves under strain because of the circumstances of the pandemic. Those small charities have no revenue because hall hire has dried up because Rotary clubs and Lions clubs have stopped meeting; therefore, their donations towards these smaller charities, which don't have any emergency relief funding, has dried up. Also, the safety of volunteers, many of whom are older citizens, has, in many cases, meant major changes to operations in these small charities, resulting in the cessation of delivery of those services by volunteers.
The federal government always has emergency relief providers in place; we know that. We swung into action to support grassroots community organisations. In Surfers Paradise, I worked with St John's Crisis Centre, in particular, and Minister Ruston to make sure that there were more funds forthcoming for those providers. Extra funding was delivered quickly to emergency response providers across the country. In fact, an extra $200 million was provided very quickly by the Morrison government.
So I ask those opposite and their state colleagues: who could those small charities in our communities turn to during their time of extra need—in that gap before the coronavirus supplement was announced? I would say that the Morrison government is who they could turn to, yes. They could also turn to the Gold Coast Community Fund. The Gold Coast Community Fund stepped in when the state government didn't. With letters of support through my office, the Gold Coast Community Fund paid the utility bills of those small charities. It paid for the plastic containers for all those extra meals that went out to the community, and it has paid for food vouchers for smaller charities, like Havafeed, who are helping those who are, unfortunately, homeless. It's all been exacerbated throughout this period with coronavirus and, as I've outlined, there is no lack of investment at the federal level, so the question must be asked of the Queensland state government: what are you doing? What are you doing with the funds that we deliver to assist with this problem? This is what I'm unhappy about. I will keep asking it. I'm unhappy that the former minister wouldn't meet with me to discuss it and I'm hoping that the new minister, sworn in just a few weeks ago, will agree to meet with me and the assistant minister for homelessness so that we can deliver together for Gold Coasters, for those people who find themselves in this very difficult position of homelessness.
At the local level—in addition to the Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate, who's also passionate about this issue—local Councillors Brooke Patterson and Darren Taylor are active in seeking to address this issue. I've also had a couple of roundtable meetings with the member for Southport, Rob Molhoek, councillors and Rotary to try to address this problem for locals on the Gold Coast and the flow-on effects that it has in in our public areas.
I know there's deep and genuine empathy at all levels of government and from all parties for homeless people, but execution has indeed been lacking from the Queensland government. There's a lack of urgency in delivering assistance to those who need it most, and so the council has taken it into their own hands to put on two council officers to help with the homelessness issue on the Gold Coast to make sure that those in our society, in our community, in Surfers Paradise and Southport, are supported. The state government, quite frankly, is missing in action when it comes to delivering those federal government funds—over $300 million—that go to them every year, to Queensland. I would ask the Queensland government to step up and help out.
I rise on this grievance motion tonight to take the opportunity to talk about some of the cases in my electorate of families that have been separated because of the pandemic this year and who have family members stranded overseas. I also want to raise a grievance about the lack of government assistance and action from this government in ensuring that those Australian citizens who are overseas and those who are onshore here but have family members overseas are being given their due attention.
We currently have over 35,000 Australians stranded overseas in various countries, and the Prime Minister made a promise to those people that he would get them home by Christmas. As of today, that's around three weeks away. We are now in December, and the number of people who are stranded overseas has not dwindled since the time that the Prime Minister made that promise.
There's a kind of a cliche around politicians and the promises they make and the promises they break. I think we need, in this day and age, when the trust in politics is at such a low level, to be mindful of the expectations that we set up among the people that we serve here in this place. If you are the Prime Minister, you need to be particularly mindful of those expectations that you set up. If you make a promise to people that you'll get them home by Christmas, then you need to do your utmost to ensure that you do not break that promise.
When it first became apparent that there would be thousands of Australians unable to return home during the pandemic, Labor offered some very practical solutions. I thought they were excellent solutions that came from Senator Wong's and Senator Keneally's office. They included opening up new facilities for quarantine. We have all these facilities dotted around Australia that are costing us millions of dollars to keep, but we're not even using them. That was a great suggestion I thought: open those up for quarantine, if quarantine is the issue. Those suggestions also included using underutilised arrival ports, particularly air arrival ports, to accommodate incoming flights or an increase in incoming flights—again, a really good suggestion. The third suggestion was using RAAF flights or charter flights to get people home, which of course was a good suggestion as well. But none of those suggestions was taken up.
Now Australians are shaking their heads at the fact that this government couldn't make RAAF flights or charter flights available for stranded Australians but managed to make RAAF flights available for former Senator Cormann to travel around Europe in the lap of luxury, all in aid of securing himself a position on the OECD. Don't get me wrong. Labor of course supports the appointment of an Australian to the OECD, but we didn't support the use of a private jet at the stupendous cost of $4,000 an hour—not $4,000 a day; $4,000 an hour—at a time when Australians are doing it real tough. Australians didn't write this government a blank cheque to spend on what essentially amounts to a post-political-career job interview for one of its former senators. When asked to justify the cost of flying former Senator Cormann around, the Prime Minister argued that it was essential to keep former Senator Cormann safe from COVID.
I wish the Prime Minister showed the same level of compassion to the citizens of Australia. I wish he demonstrated equal concern for the safety, wellbeing and mental health of Australians stranded overseas and the families here in Australia who are desperate to be reunited with their loved ones. I know that every single member in this parliament, like me, has been inundated with requests for assistance either from people here or from people who are stranded overseas. It is the most common issue that my office is dealing with at the moment, the most common issue presenting to my office. Sometimes we're really fortunate in that we do have a success in bringing somebody home. Those successes, unfortunately, are too few and far between.
Recently one of those successes was with Mr and Mrs Tompkins, who had sought some advice on how to bring their mother to Australia. They were given a G2G PASS by the Western Australian government and thought that that was all they needed. So the elderly mother sold her home and sold all her belongings, all her furniture, got to the airport and then was told at the airport that she didn't have the right papers. They came to me in absolute desperation. I can see on everyone's faces here that you've had those same heartbreaking stories present to you in your offices too. You know what I'm talking about. We were very fortunate that we were able to assist, and Mr and Mrs Tompkins's mother came over from the UK. Rather than having her be left homeless for a long period of time, we were able to get her onto the next flight and she was able to come here. She had to quarantine for two weeks but is now reunited with her family.
I've got Mr Brown from Girrawheen, whose baby son was born in Russia. He has never met his baby boy, who was born in February. He can't bring them here. They are stuck overseas. It is absolutely heartbreaking. I've got someone who asked about an elderly friend of theirs in Poland who has got everything ready to go but was told that she needs to get from Poland to Dubai in order to get back to Australia, without any assistance about how to do that.
I heard one of the most heartbreaking stories recently. I was at a school recently and one of the young girls in a year 9 class came up to me and said, 'You said that some people come to you and they ask for your help to bring someone back from overseas,' and I said, 'Yes,' and she said, 'Can you help me?' and she started bawling her eyes out. This 15-year-old girl hadn't seen her mum since February. Her dad, Mr Joshi, is the priest at the local Hindu vegan temple, and his wife and her mum, Mrs Joshi, travelled back to India to complete the final semester of her studies when COVID hit. So this 15-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother haven't seen their mum since February. This gorgeous young girl started bawling her eyes out and I said to her, 'Please get your father to call my office and we'll see what we can do.' We're currently working on that case as well.
The stories go on and on—and I know that that is the case for everyone. It makes me wonder why more hasn't been done and why those suggestions that we made haven't been taken up. Don't make a promise—a promise that gives people so much hope and that touches so many lives, from a 15-year-old girl to a baby boy who hasn't met his dad yet—to these people that you are going to reunite them by Christmas when you can't fulfil that promise. And, if you do make that promise, do your damnedest to make sure that you follow through. We're not just talking about fairy tales here. These are real people. These are real lives. I urge the government to start taking this more seriously than they have been.
All of us as MPs, particularly regional and rural MPs, want to see our regions grow and prosper. The Liberal-National government since 2013 has had a decentralisation agenda to support our regions to grow and also to alleviate the pressure in capital cities. The benefits of living in Australia's regions has certainly been shown off this year. If there was ever a time to consider a sea or tree change, it's now. COVID-19 has shown us that you don't have to live in a capital city to have a good job that pays well. We now have better telecommunications. The mobile blackspots have been improved. We have much better highways and the federal government has invested in aviation to keep our regional airlines flying. This has meant better access between the regions and the cities and more fluid access between both of them. So many city dwellers, both young and old, are taking up those lifestyle benefits and moving to the country, moving to the regional cities and rural towns.
For Coffs Harbour, which is in the northern part of my electorate, our decentralisation agenda has provided over 60 jobs in the last 18 months. There were 50 jobs in the Australian Maritime Safety Authority when they moved to Coffs Harbour in 2019, and a further 10 new jobs relocated from Canberra to Coffs Harbour in the National Indigenous Australians Agency. But, while we're attracting more people to Coffs Harbour and the Mid North Coast region, it's becoming evident—and it's been an issue for some time—that our housing stocks just can't keep up with demand. This is a vital resource in the growth and prosperity of our region. Without housing, we're unable to take full advantage of this government's agenda and measures to strengthen and grow the regions.
Last week, I attended a housing roundtable in Coffs Harbour with the New South Wales Minister for Housing and the New South Wales member for Coffs Harbour. Importantly—a necessity, of course—the general manager of the Coffs Harbour City Council was there as well as representatives from the building and real estate industries and the New South Wales government housing and homelessness services. Regional Development Australia Mid North Coast was also there. The meeting was prompted by the chronic diminishing housing stock on the Coffs coast, either houses for rent or for sale.
Other parts of the electorate of Cowper as well are experiencing extremely high demand. Real estate agents are telling me that there is a shortage of properties coming onto the market and an unmet demand for rental properties. They're receiving anywhere from 30 to 60 applications for one property. In one case there were over 180 applications for one rental property in the space of two days. I had one constituent tell me that going to an open house—a rental property—is now like going to an auction. Prospective tenants invariably offer to pay above the asking price in fear of not being able to get a new lease before their old lease has expired, and this effectively starts a bidding war. The flow-on effect of this is the knock-on effect for vulnerable residents, who are unfortunately experiencing greater financial stress and finding themselves needing to either sleep rough or sleep in their cars or on the streets. It's a fact.
The recent Everybody's Home report released during national Homelessness Week in August claimed that there were 4,400 people homeless in my electorate. This is a lot higher than the ABS Census of Population and Housing estimate taken in 2016, but the figure of 4,400 is certainly anecdotally supported.
There are other pockets within my electorate suffering from significant social and economic disadvantage as well. The New South Wales Council of Social Service, in their report of September last year, found that 20 to 28 per cent of people living in Nambucca Heads and Kempsey were in economic disadvantage, and across the board in Cowper the figure is between 15 and 20 per cent. That's much higher than the national average. Whilst it's the state and territory governments that are largely responsible for the provision of day-to-day housing and homelessness services, the Commonwealth government supports states and territories by spending more than $6 billion every year to improve housing and homelessness—$4.6 billion in 2020-21 through Commonwealth rent assistance to help eligible Australians on low and moderate incomes to pay their rent; around $1.6 billion a year through the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement to states and territories; and up to $118 million over five years starting in July 2018 for the Reconnect Program, which is a community based program for early intervention and prevention for young people and their families who are at risk of being homeless or who are homeless.
One very positive thing that occurred after the budget is that for my electorate it included $6.5 million for a new youth and family hub in Kempsey for young mothers and children escaping domestic violence and homelessness. This is jointly delivered with the New South Wales government and will provide more than just crisis accommodation. It will provide services for young people to ensure they reach their full potential. In terms of accommodation space, there are 24 rooms, so you have 24 rooms providing a safe place for young people to stay, which is a great thing for the Kempsey community.
The housing shortage across the broader region has no easy solution. It's not as simple as supply and demand. There are so many factors contributing to it, such as property zoning, land release, planning predictions, occupancy type, social services, infrastructure, stamp duty, land tax. I could go on and on and on. There is just no silver bullet. But what I do know is that we have to act, we have to act together and we have to act now so that our most vulnerable people have access to housing. They must have access to housing and, by doing that and by concentrating on this, we can find ways to grow without disturbing the environment and without ripping down large swathes of trees and we can provide that solution, not just for my electorate. It's not uncommon, my friend across the floor. We face the same thing.
We have a bypass that is coming to Coffs Harbour very, very soon. That is going to create 12,000 much wanted jobs. But what it will also create is another pressure on the housing market, because, although many of the jobs will be filled by people living in the electorate, many of them won't. Now, whether that's 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000, that's going to put a great deal of strain on the community. You'll have people in the construction industry who are being paid very, very well, and they'll be able to afford those properties. They'll get in before everybody else. That will leave the community of Coffs Harbour. Whether you're middle income or low income, that will put pressure on you if you don't own your own home. In a situation where you're renting, it'll put pressure on you financially and it'll put pressure on your family. We need to find a solution before then. So I was very pleased to be there at the round table with all the cohorts, and I will continue to work with them. We have to find a solution not just for the short term but for the long term, and that is exactly what we will do.
The time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted. In accordance with standing order 192B, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.
Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:32